by M. D. Massey
“Holy cripes, druid. In all my life, I have never seen anybody break someone’s spirit so ruthlessly and efficiently.”
“Larry, I have zero time and even less patience for bullshit like that right now. I’m running on almost no sleep, I have at least one and probably several gods hunting me, and I have less than 72 hours to stop an undead corgi necromancer from spreading the Z-vyrus in my city.” I shrugged. “Besides that, I fucking hate bullies.”
“I’d never have guessed,” Larry replied. He cocked his head, ears twitching. “Say, you hear that?
31
I might not have had enhanced hearing in my human form, but even I could hear the weird drumming sound in the distance. I shaded my eyes with my hand, straining to see what it might be, but the source of the sound remained hidden over the rise in the distance. Yet it was getting louder—and closer.
Rattling off the words to a hearing enhancement cantrip, I cocked my head to focus in on the sound. There were two distinct rhythms, that much was plain, although I couldn’t identify them. One was deeper and louder, like a bass drum being played in quick-time. The other sounded more like a snare drum, similar to the opening drum solo from an old Van Halen song my dad had liked.
Could it be… footsteps?
“You’re hearing that, right, druid?” Larry asked.
“Yeah, I hear it.” I reached for my Craneskin Bag—and promptly realized I’d left it inside the Druid Grove. “Shit. Larry, run back to the junkyard and find Finnegas. Tell him to bring my Bag.”
“You sure you don’t need my help?”
“Now, Larry!”
“Okay, I’m goin’, I’m goin’ already.”
The cryptid took off like a shot. I paid him no mind, instead searching the immediate environment for a suitable weapon. My eyes settled on a roughly three-foot-long piece of rebar sticking out of a pile of construction rubble just off the side of the road. It wasn’t a sword, but it’d have to do. I jogged to the pile and pulled it out, finding it to be slightly longer than I thought, but serviceable just the same.
By that time, the clattering, clacking footsteps sounded as if they were almost upon me. Weapon in hand, I swung it experimentally a few times, then I turned to face the oncoming threat. As the source of the noise crested the hill, I blinked and rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.
“What in the actual fuck is that?”
Larry chimed in beside me, slightly out of breath. “The one on the left looks like Canis dirus, otherwise known as the North American dire wolf. Or, at least, the skeleton of one.”
“Okay, so I’m not imagining things. And the one on the right?”
“Saber-toothed. Smilodon fatalis, from the looks of it.” He squinted his eyes, pausing for a moment. “Nope, I take that back. It’s Homotherium, for sure—a scimitar-toothed cat.”
“How do you…? You know what, never mind.”
“You mean how do I know about Pleistocene-era megafauna? Those fuckers on Plum Island, that’s how. Government scientists were obsessed with cloning saber-toothed tigers and short-faced bears from fossil DNA.”
“I’d ask if they succeeded, but I don’t think I want to know.” Turning my attention to the threat at hand, I slammed the rebar into my palm as I watched the two massive animated skeletons bear down on us. “Fucking bone golems. This has to be Kiki’s work.”
“No doubt. This is exactly the type of nutty shit she’d come up with every time we had a fight. Do you know that one time she raised a mastodon out of the La Brea Tar Pits just because I forgot our anniversary?”
“Larry…”
“And the crazy thing was, it was mostly intact. Still had its sense of smell, and uncanny hearing, too. Chased me around for days, tracking me by scent and sound, until the damned spell wore off.”
“Larry, I don’t think this is the time—”
“Those were the days. Man, sometimes I miss that crazy bitch.”
I decided to let him drone on, knowing from experience that he’d disappear long before he was in any real danger. Besides, the dire wolf and the saber-toothed tiger were nearly on top of us. Both had closed to within fifty yards, and they were hauling ass right at me. And hell if they didn’t look hungry, if it were possible for a skeleton.
It had been a long time since I’d had to face real danger without my Fomorian powers. My stomach felt like it was full of butterflies, my legs trembled, and bile had risen to the back of my throat. My hands tightened on the rusted length of rebar, and I wished like hell I had Dyrnwyn in my hands.
“Ah, fuck it,” I said, yelling over my shoulder as I took off at a sprint for the dire wolf. “Larry, go get my Bag from Finnegas.”
“Again? I was just over there—”
“Would you go, already?”
Mid-stride I switched grips on the rebar, hefting it over my shoulder like a hunting spear as I muttered a spell. When I got within fifteen feet of the thing, I threw the length of iron with everything I had in me. After I launched the rebar, three things happened at once.
First, the makeshift spear sailed across the space between us, burying itself in the wolf’s empty eye socket.
Second, the dire wolf kept coming without missing a single step.
And third, the saber-toothed cat leapt into an attack.
Well, fuck.
Rather than getting pounced on by the big cat or being bowled over and mauled by its companion, I dropped and slid at the wolf. As the cat sailed over me, the canid tried pulling up short, but it had too much momentum to stop quickly—especially since its bony paws didn’t give it much traction on the asphalt. The great beast snapped its jaws at me as I slid under it, missing my nose by mere millimeters.
As I came out from under the wolf skeleton, I kicked its rear leg at the knee, buckling it. That caused it to stumble, which gave me just enough time to scramble to my feet before it turned on me. No way was I giving it a chance to recover. When the thing swung its head around, I shouted the trigger word to release my spell.
“Liathróid dóiteáin!”
A fireball roughly the size of a large watermelon exploded from my hands, enveloping the wolf’s skull in yellow and blue fire. Bone, being mostly made up of minerals like calcium and phosphorus, was just about impossible to burn. But I knew from experience that intense heat could make it quite brittle, so I’d cranked up the intensity of the spell when I cast it.
Even at the hottest temperatures I could manage, that spell would take a minute to do its work. Thankfully the fire was distracting the bone golem, causing it to swing its head back and forth as it thrashed about in an attempt to extinguish the flames. While the dire wolf was preoccupied, I spun to face the cat as it circled around the wolf in an attempt to flank me.
32
There I was, facing down what was in essence a reanimated lion’s skeleton, barehanded and without having prepared a second spell to deal with it. The good news was that an animal’s skeleton only made up a small percentage of its total body mass, less than ten percent even in animals with the densest bone structure. So, I had a slight size and even bigger mass advantage working for me—but I was still fighting the animal version of the Terminator.
Part of my druid hunter training had been studying how various supernatural creatures attacked. The closest thing to the golem I could think of was a cat sidhe, a faery cat. That species preferred to sneak up on their prey and quickly snap their victim’s neck with their powerful jaws. But when forced to attack from the front, they tended to latch on and disembowel their prey with their hind claws, much like any large cat would.
So, my only chance would be to grapple with the bone golem, getting up close where the cat couldn’t use its limbs and jaws to attack. And to hope like hell that the dire wolf would remain occupied as I did so. Then, if I could get in close enough to wrestle it, and if the dire wolf didn’t recover and jump in the fray, maybe, just maybe, I could figure out a way to eliminate them both.
Easy, peasy. Right.
>
Unsure how to close the fighting distance with the great cat, the creature made the decision for me by leaping into another attack. With a battle yell that probably sounded more like a scared screech, I grabbed the cat’s forelegs, rolling backward and pulling it over me with a weak tomoe nage, or circular throw. However, instead of kicking the skeleton over me I rolled over with it, simultaneously locking my legs around its torso and swimming inside its forelegs to hug it around the neck.
Then I held on for dear life. At first, the bone golem tried to scratch and bite me, to no avail. On discovering that it couldn’t bring its most powerful weapons to bear, the big cat bucked, rolled, thrashed, and generally did everything possible to try to dislodge me. That turned out to be a mistake, because it allowed me to squirm to its back, much like a jiu-jitsu player going for the rear naked choke—a move that’s a lot more brutal and not quite as pornographic as it sounds.
Once there, I had a brief moment of respite while the cat puzzled out what to do. In that moment, I caught a quick glance at the dire wolf, noting that the residual flames from my fireball spell were burning out. If that wasn’t bad enough, the cat decided to roll to its feet and take off at a run toward the junkyard fence.
What the—? Oh, fuck me sideways.
Instead of leaping the fence and being fried by my wards, the damned thing ran parallel to the barrier, dragging me against it. Since the fence was made of corrugated sheet metal panels supported by thick steel pipe, it felt very much like I was being dragged across a giant cheese grater at speed.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow,” I said every time I bounced off the fence. Soon I found my grip loosening, and I realized things were about to turn out very poorly for me if I didn’t figure out a way to end this cat.
If only I could find a way to make it cross my wards. They’d negate the necromantic spell and de-animate this fucking thing.
Then it occurred to me—I was looking at the problem from the wrong angle. Actually, I didn’t need to get it to pass my wards. Instead, all I had to do was apply the same de-animation magic to this creature’s skeleton.
Clinging as tightly as possible to avoid being dislodged from the cat’s back, I looked at the skeleton in the magical spectrum. Maintaining the concentration to do so while being dragged against a corrugated metal fence at 20 mph was a challenge, but it was that or be mauled to death by the animal versions of Jack Skellington. Despite the distractions, I soon detected the dark, sinuous weaves of magic that constituted Kiki’s necromantic working.
From there, it was simply a matter of infusing those weaves with nature magic—in essence, life itself—to counteract the spell. By enforcing the natural order on the skeleton, my druid magic instantly negated Kiki’s casting. As soon as it did, the bone golem collapsed in a heap below me—and I went tumbling into a nearby ditch.
Groaning loudly, I sat up, rubbing my shoulder and immediately regretting it. That whole side of my body was going to be one huge bruise tomorrow. I looked around to try to get my bearings, wondering where the dire wolf had gone. I doubted I could pull the same trick twice, as it’d be a hell of a feat to jump on the wolf’s back in my current condition.
“Druid, look out!”
Larry’s voice alerted me to the other bone golem’s galloping approach, just in time for me to stumble to my feet and face it. Its skull was charred and blackened, and small wisps of flame and smoke curled in trails behind it as it ran at me. I noticed that the length of rebar was still stuck in its eye socket, and that gave me an idea.
This is going to hurt.
As the wolf lunged at me, I sidestepped and grabbed the iron bar with both hands, hearing the sizzle of my skin before I felt the burn. Ignoring the pain, I set my feet and pivoted as if I were a train conductor throwing a brake switch. My efforts were met by a satisfying crack as the skeleton’s head split down the middle.
I held on to the rebar, despite the fact that it was so hot it was frying my hands. Yanking it free, I flipped it over, pulling seared skin and flesh from my palms and fingers as I did. Then I turned and brought it down on the wolf’s head, shattering it to pieces. Instantly, the bone golem collapsed, much as its companion had moments earlier.
I discarded the still-smoking iron bar and sank to my knees, cradling my ruined hands against my torso. Seconds later, Larry shimmered into view a few feet in front of me with my Craneskin Bag in his mouth. He spat it out at my feet then sat back on his haunches, cocking his head as he looked me up and down.
“You know what, druid? You don’t look so good. By the way, the old man found your Bag.”
33
Minutes later, I sat in the junkyard office as Maureen fussed over my ruined hands and Finnegas worked on healing them. The old druid had gotten rid of the evidence, turning the now de-animated skeletons to ash before the cops arrived. Then, we’d beat feet back to the junkyard to avoid being questioned. I only hoped that no one had gotten video of the bone golems traipsing across South Austin—but if they had, I’d leave it to Maeve’s fixers to sort that out.
Although my hands were a mess, I’d forgone a trip to the Grove to heal, because I wasn’t about to let Larry out of my sight. And there was no way was I going to try to sneak him in, not after the manner in which the Grove had reacted to him earlier. As the old man spread dark-green goop on my burns, I glanced up to address both him and Maureen.
“You know, I could just shift real quick and—”
“No!” Finnegas and Maureen yelled in unison.
“Alright, sheesh.”
Maureen glowered at Larry, who sat in the corner gnawing on a rawhide bone he’d found somewhere. That was one of the reasons why Roscoe and Rufus hated him so much—Larry was always stealing their stuff. Finding the chupacabra to be unimpressed with her glare, the half-kelpie turned it on me as she gave me my marching orders.
“There will be no shiftin’ and bleedin’ out, not if I have any say in the matter. Yer gonna sit right there and let the Seer heal ya’, and that’s that.”
“But the deadline, and Kiki—”
“Nope, not gonna hear a word of it. Can’t cast spells or swing a sword like that anyway. Naw, yer ta’ park yer tail and wait ’til those burns heal. Then ya’ can go gallivanting all over town chasing zombie pups ta’ yer heart’s content.”
“Fine. Question is, what are we going to do about her?”
Larry stopped gnawing on his rawhide for a second to answer my question. “Aw, don’t worry about it. Help is on the way.”
“Somehow, I don’t think I like the sound of that,” Finnegas said, keeping his eyes on his task as he wrapped my hands in gauze.
“Hang on—just what do you mean by ‘help’?” I asked. “Or rather, who?”
The chupacabra attacked the rawhide treat with gusto, growling as if it might surrender in fear at any moment. Then, he gave a creepy little dog shrug. “Just getting the old gang together. Same bunch of guys that helped me ditch her last time. Some pals from the old days.”
“Now I’m sure I don’t like it,” Finnegas muttered as he tied the last knot on my bandages.
I started to rub my temples, cursing in frustration when I realized I couldn’t. “Larry, when you say, ‘the old days,’ do you mean when you and Kiki met, or—?”
“Nah, that’s recent history. I met these guys back on Plum Island. A couple of them helped bust me and the others out.”
Finnegas stood up, reaching for his tobacco pouch. “This all sounds utterly disastrous, and I’ll not hear another word of it. If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the Grove taking a nap.” As he was leaving, he gave me a withering look. “That’s where you’d be, if you knew what was good for you. We may have two more days according to Maeve’s clock, but Aenghus could show up any minute. The sooner we’re ready to leave, the better.”
“Yeah, I’m aware. But who’s going to take care of this mess if I don’t?”
Maureen shook her head. “Let the factions handle it. Eventually one of ’em will decide they do
n’t want to take the heat. Then, they’ll deal with it. No sense in you gettin’ sidetracked cleaning up that mangy mutt’s messes, not with Aenghus the Young breathing down yer’ neck.”
“Fine,” I muttered. “But there’s no way I’m taking my eyes off Larry, not with Kiki on the prowl.”
Maureen rolled her eyes. “Suit yerself, but the mangy mutt managed ta’ survive long before he met ya’, and it’s safe ta’ say he’ll do so long after yer’ gone. Now, I have an appointment at the spa, so I’ll leave ya’ pair o’ knuckleheads to it.”
After Maureen left, Larry continued to gnaw on the rawhide treat in silence while I surfed a few parts websites, looking for a new carb and headers for the Gremlin. An hour later, the chupacabra cleared his throat.
“Yes, Larry?”
“So, I was wonderin’ if you had a plan for catching Kiki.”
I kept my eyes on the screen, letting him stew for a few moments before I answered. “I’ve been thinking about it, yeah. But it’s going to take more than me and you to pull it off, and I don’t think Maureen and Finnegas are about to volunteer their help.”
“Phew! That’s a relief.”
Swiveling my chair to face him, I snorted a derisive laugh. “A relief that we’re short-handed, and we might not be able to pull off my plan?”
Larry’s wheezing chuckle made him sound a bit like Dick Dastardly’s sidekick, Muttley. “Aw, don’t you worry about that. So long as you got a plan, we’ll have plenty of hands to help.”
I exhaled heavily, turning my eyes back to the screen. “Why do I have the feeling I’m going to regret getting involved in this mess?”
34
I spent the rest of the afternoon letting my hands heal while I prepared for nightfall, when I suspected that Kiki would return for round three. I’d already sent Roscoe and Rufus to the Grove for safekeeping and I’d sent the staff home early, so we had the junkyard to ourselves. Dusk had arrived by the time I’d nearly finished. I only hoped the precautions I’d taken would be enough.