I had been flipping through Mrs. Grimes’s thick notebook as Rusty grunted and plowed our van over the snow-covered road. A section of the notebook had been removed. When I referred to the table of contents, I saw which one.
“The notes on the Wendigo are gone.”
“Mrs. Grimes said there was no info on how to destroy it,” Takara said.
“I wanted Yoofi to look over the summoning ceremony anyway. Could have been similar to something he was familiar with, given him some ideas on how to put it back down.”
“Killing the host will do the job,” she said.
“And if the host is Austin Grimes?”
“Is there any doubt at this point?”
I thought about the evidence: his unexplained absences, his change in behavior, the hidden notebook with the pages on the Wendigo ceremony removed. “Maybe not, but you heard his mother’s story. The Shaking Man deliberately told her how to summon the creature. He wanted her to spread the info like a virus. And he lied, claiming the ceremony would bring the summoner power.”
“Austin murdered his friend for that power,” Takara pointed out. “He’s not innocent.”
She was right, of course. I was thinking of him as a fellow man-turned-beast. But where I had been chosen—and Takara cursed—Austin had brought on his transformation through an unspeakable act, and with full awareness of what he was doing. I thought of Connor’s picture. A soldier.
“No, he’s not,” I agreed.
When we got to the mayor’s office, I found the scene much as we’d left it. The mayor was sitting up again, but his eyes remained bloodshot and puffy. He turned his head at my entrance.
“Get what you wanted?” he asked quietly.
He showed all the signs of submission, but I knew it would be dangerous to assume he’d stay that way.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I said, looking from him to the warden and Sean. “Mayor Grimes and Wabberson will take one vehicle back to the house, where you’ll stay put. Olaf will follow with Sean in Sean’s truck. He’ll remain with you for your safety.” I wanted to avoid a repeat of the El Rosario mission where the preacher had tailed us to the cave and mortally wounded the shaman. I was putting the family and Wabberson on the equivalent of house arrest with Olaf standing guard. I hated not having Olaf along for the final push, but I needed the others for their specific skill sets. And I wanted Olaf at the house in case Austin returned.
Grimes blinked slowly. “What are you going to be doing?”
“Recovering two missing persons.” There was still a hole in my wolf being where Nadie had been, but at least she had returned to her realm. Sarah and Ms. Welch were God knew where.
“You think Austin’s wrapped up in this, don’t you?”
“We’re going to try to find him,” I said, which wasn’t a lie.
But Grimes read between the lines. When he spoke, it was with eerie calmness. “You harm one hair on his body, and I’ll kill you.”
“Olaf,” I said, jerking my head. He plodded after me to the far corner of the room. “Did you catch what I said?”
“I follow them to house and stand guard.”
“That’s right. I rounded up the weapons before we left and hid them out back. Mrs. Grimes is still armed. Revolver, holstered on her left hip. You’ll disarm her without force and requisition her phone—it’s the only working one in the house. We’ll stay in contact that way. When everyone’s inside, disable the vehicles.” If Grimes or the other two slipped out, I didn’t want them to have transportation. “Do you follow?”
Olaf’s dull eyes remained fixed on my visor. “Yes. Anything else?”
“One more thing.” I pulled out my tablet. Though the system was still down, I had the info from the mission file uploaded to the device. I opened a folder and scrolled through the images. In my peripheral vision, I could see Mayor Grimes watching us. When I arrived at Austin’s picture, I angled the screen toward Olaf.
“If he shows up,” I whispered, “put him down.”
Except for Takara, Olaf was the only one I trusted to take a lethal shot without flinching.
“Yes,” he said.
After searching the mayor’s vehicle to ensure it was clear of weapons, I signaled for Grimes and Wabberson to climb in. They did so wordlessly while Sean and Olaf got into the young man’s truck. The vehicles ground off slowly through the snow. The rest of us climbed into the van and headed back toward the lodge.
We had a location—Cavern Lake—but without Yoofi’s magic we wouldn’t be able to penetrate the veil where the Wendigo had stashed Sarah and Ms. Welch. And I still hadn’t been able to get ahold of Croft.
“Where are we with Dabu?” I asked Yoofi.
He shook his head. “Dabu’s trick did not work. Muluku neutralized the bad magic, and now he is using the staff to keep the death dogs back. Dabu is trapped in the bottom of the underworld.”
“Is there anything else you can use to channel his power?”
“Yes, but Dabu says he can spare no magic. He must use it to keep Muluku back.” Yoofi shook his head some more. “It does not look good, Mr. Wolfe.”
“You mentioned taking trips to the underworld,” I said.
“Oh, yes, but I never like to go. I get very nervous down there.”
I thought of our armory back at the lodge. We still had plenty of salt rounds.
“I want to make a deal.”
“A deal?”
“Tell Dabu I’ll help fight Muluku off and recover your staff, but then he has to help us with the Wendigo.”
Yoofi closed his eyes and took several puffs from a cigar. A moment later, he giggled through the smoke. “Dabu is saying he wonders why he never thought of that.”
Probably because he’s a self-absorbed dick, I thought.
“Yes,” Yoofi said decisively. “Dabu agrees.”
“Good. What will it take to get us there?”
Rusty looked back nervously. “The underworld?”
“You won’t be going. It’ll just be me and Yoofi.”
Eyes still closed, Yoofi began to speak in Congolese. Soon his face creased and he raised his voice in anger. He shook his head and opened his eyes again. “Dabu says we need to go to a place that honors him, even though I tell him that there are none here. He only knows my country. He does not understand that there is a whole ocean between Canada and the Congo.”
“Well, what happened during the exercise last night?” I asked. “There were no places like that at the compound for the dogs to come and go.”
“Yes, because the power of the staff created the portal. It pulled from this side and Dabu pushed from that side. To get there, we must do the opposite. But without the staff, there is only Dabu to pull and nothing to push. It is not enough. The kuna between our worlds is too thick.”
“Kuna?”
“Yes, it is like a rind of energy.”
“Well, if the issue is Dabu needing us at a spot where the rind is thinner, would a Cree site work?” When Yoofi gave me a skeptical smile, I said, “We have to get that staff somehow.”
“We can try, Mr. Wolfe. But do we know where any of these sites are?”
I held up Mrs. Grimes’s notebook. “We do now.”
An hour later the four of us were on foot, descending into a bowl-shaped depression north of our base. When we arrived at the bottom, I peered around through the storm. At the cardinal directions, snow-covered humps showed where large stone cairns had once stood. I referred back to the notebook.
“This is the place,” I said.
“Yes,” Yoofi said, his coat billowing around his suited body. “I can feel the power here.” He spread out several woven blankets that he had insisted we would need for the ceremony, then began pinning their corners with rocks. Rusty and I helped.
En route, we had stopped at the lodge to arm up. We would proceed to Cavern Lake once we recovered Yoofi’s staff. Two hours had already elapsed since the Wendigo had grabbed Sarah, and there was no telling how l
ong our round trip to the underworld would take—assuming we could even get there.
Rusty adjusted his grip on his weapon so he could bury his other hand into his coat pocket. “Just the two of you are going, right?” he asked through chattering teeth and for the third time.
“You and Takara are staying up here for security.”
Yoofi nodded. “Yes, very important, in case anything tries to come out.” Yoofi knelt and planted the wooden idol of Dabu in the snow at one end of the blankets. “Mr. Wolfe, I am ready for you to lie down.”
I had removed my helmet—I didn’t want anything obstructing my senses—and set it to one side. I then did as Yoofi said, lowering myself onto my back. When I braced my MP88 across my chest, I felt like I was posing for my own funeral. I hoped Yoofi knew what he was doing.
He chanted over the idol for several seconds, then lit a thick cigar and held it toward my muzzle. My nostrils wrinkled from the pungent smoke. “Is that really necessary?” I asked.
“Yes, it will help Dabu to find us,” he said.
I took the cigar between my lips and puffed shallowly. Yoofi lit a cigar for himself and walked in a circle around the blankets. When something splashed across my face, I realized he had opened a flask and was tossing brandy on me. It was much stronger than the brandy he normally drank.
“How long does this ceremony go on?” I asked in annoyance.
“Okay,” Yoofi blurted. He joined me on the blankets as if he had just set up a countdown on a camera and was rushing to beat the timer. He lay beside me with his head at my feet and clasped my hand. “Close your eyes, and do not let go of me, whatever you do. Otherwise, you will get lost in the kuna.”
He picked up the chanting again, this time in a voice that rose and fell like a drumbeat. I caught a trembling snort from Rusty—I’m sure we looked ridiculous. I was doubting this would even work. Then we began to spin.
I squinted my right eye open, expecting to see the sides of the basin rotating, but everything was still. Yoofi squeezed my hand in warning, and I closed my eye again. The spinning resumed, picking up speed. I didn’t like the sensation. I clutched my MP88 hard. In the next moment a lightness came over me and we were lifting off the blankets. I fought the urge to peek again.
When we landed with a jolt, I realized Yoofi had broken off the chant.
“Okay, Mr. Wolfe,” he said in a whisper. “You can open your eyes.”
“Are we there?” I asked. But when I looked around, we were still in the snowy basin. I released Yoofi’s hand and pushed myself up. My hackles rose suddenly when I realized Takara and Rusty were gone. I heaved my MP88 into position and scanned the basin rim.
“We are through the kuna,” Yoofi said.
My nostrils flared as I stalked from the blankets. Beyond the stink of the cigar that still smoked from my lips, the smells here were more intense, more alive. The landscape seemed to shimmer.
“We’re not in Canada anymore,” I said in understanding.
“We are in the Cree realm. Now we must wait to see if Dabu can find us.”
“And if he can’t?” I asked around the stogie.
“Then we go back. His idol will guide us.”
Yoofi’s eyes clamped closed.
“What is it?” I asked.
But instead of answering me, Yoofi spoke Congolese. Apparently, he was in another argument with Dabu. I picked up movement in my peripheral vision and spun toward it. A young man’s painted face was peering over the rim. His eyes flashed with white light as he ducked out of sight. I didn’t know much about the Cree, but something about his face paint suggested warrior.
“Ugh,” Yoofi complained. “Dabu is being difficult.”
“In what way?” I asked, scanning the rim of the basin for others.
“He is worried now that it will take too much of his energy to bring us to the underworld. And if we are unable to defeat Muluku, then he will not have enough power to fend him off.”
“We had a deal,” I growled.
As Yoofi resumed his argument with Dabu, another warrior’s face rose into view. I could smell them now. There were at least a dozen, and they had pegged us as intruders. Their earthen scents hummed with a power not of our world. I kept my finger on the trigger guard.
“Tell him to get us down there,” I said. “Now.”
The warriors crested the rim, bows in their grips. The dozen-odd men were idealized forms. The handsome animal skins they wore complemented their bronzed, muscled bodies. White starlight gleamed from their eyes. They came down the sides of the basin smoothly, swiftly. I switched my aim from one to the other, but I couldn’t bring myself to squeeze off a shot.
“Yoofi?” I shouted, losing my cigar.
He remained pitched in debate with Dabu. And with his eyes closed, he was oblivious to the danger closing in. With a final cry, he spiked his own cigar against the ground. Fire plumed up where it hit, sending smoke and sparks into the night sky. The warriors paused in their advance.
“This way, Mr. Wolfe,” Yoofi called.
There was a hole in the snow and earth where the cigar had struck, reminding me of the portal to the Chagrath’s realm.
“Quickly! Dabu has agreed, but he will not keep the way open forever.” Yoofi had been waving at me, but now he straightened and blinked around at the warriors. “Who are they?”
“Not happy we’re here,” I said, hustling toward him. “Do we just jump in?”
“Yes, yes!”
Without breaking stride, I seized him around the waist and stepped over the opening. We plummeted with a force greater than gravity. I felt my body stretching like taffy. Even my weapon seemed to be pulling apart. Above the rush, I could hear Yoofi screaming.
Like with the Chagrath’s realm, we didn’t land so much as materialize in another world. I checked to ensure I was intact before peering around. To all sides of us were animals—elephants, lions, chimpanzees—and they were clashing with hordes of two-headed dogs. A dark force I’d come to associate with Yoofi’s staff warped the air like an approaching storm.
Dabu had pulled us right into the middle of his damned war.
22
Dabu’s realm wasn’t what I had expected. Instead of a system of caverns, we were in a broad valley beneath an orange sky, cliff walls rising to either side. My first impulse was to start shooting, but I had no sense of the battle. I needed to get to higher ground. Still carrying Yoofi, I sprinted for an opening.
I raced through the confusion until I was scaling the near wall, talons knifing into crevices. When I reached a shelf, I set Yoofi down and looked over the battle while he clung to the wall.
“This is Dea-Dep,” Yoofi said. “And that is the Dombola River.” He pointed quickly to a dark river that snaked through the barren valley. “It leads there.” I followed its course to a massive stone complex that could have been a feature of the landscape. “That is where Dabu rules. All of the great ancestral families have houses inside. It is a beautiful place except for the death dogs.”
I listened for a drumbeat. “Do you see Muluku?”
Yoofi squinted around. “There,” he said, pointing him out.
Muluku was seated atop an elephant that lumbered in the middle of a large formation wedging its way through the death dogs. Instead of a drum, Muluku wielded Yoofi’s staff. A globe of dark energy warped the air around the blade. Though some dogs were trying to clamber past the protective wedge to reach the staff, the majority were snarling and backing from its power.
“Dabu has moved all the death dogs out here to slow down Muluku,” Yoofi said. “If he reaches the inside, there will only be his staff to protect him. He says we must recover my staff before that happens.”
Which was what I was trying to figure out. Muluku was about two hundred meters away, within range of my weapon. But if I took him out from this distance, one of his chimps could just grab the staff like last time, and Muluku would call the whole zoo back to his neck of the god realm.
“We’re
going to create a diversion,” I said.
I reached into my vest and started pulling out salt grenades and handing them to Yoofi.
He took them reluctantly and placed them in his pockets. “Oh, I don’t know, Mr. Wolfe. You have seen me in training. My aim is not very good.”
“It doesn’t have to be. I’m going back down. When I reach that spot, I want you to arm the first grenade and throw it as far as you can, out ahead of Muluku. Count to ten and repeat. Keep going till you’re out.”
Yoofi nodded uncertainly.
Slinging my MP88 around to my back, I descended. When I reached the valley, I opened fire, blowing a lane through a knot of death dogs. I plunged into the smoke of their dispersing bodies, passing the spot I’d pointed out to Yoofi. Seconds later, the first grenade detonated more or less where I’d wanted it to. Creatures went up in explosions of smoke. Muluku’s wedge stopped and wobbled.
I used the confusion to approach the god from behind. I dodged the animals I could and blew apart those I couldn’t. When the second grenade detonated, animals began breaking from the wedge.
At the rear of the formation, I leapt onto one of the elephants that remained in place and jumped from one to the other toward Muluku. The god looked around until his hooded gaze fixed on Yoofi, who was waiting to arm another grenade. Before I could reach him, Muluku raised the staff and a black bolt spiraled from the blade. I heard Yoofi shout as the bolt disintegrated his ledge and swallowed him in thick smoke. Yoofi plummeted with the ensuing rock slide.
I winced but kept going. I’d have to check on my teammate later.
When I was one elephant away, Muluku sensed me. He turned, but I was already to him. I slammed an elbow into his neck and ripped the staff from his grip. Good thing I could get my hands on him down here, because I was pretty fucking fed up with this family feud.
The elephant trumpeted and reared up, but twice now I had clung to dragons mid flight. This was child’s play. I dug my heels into the elephant’s sides and pinned Muluku harder. He grunted beneath me.
“You attack my teammates again,” I said into his ear, “and I’ll jam this staff down your throat till it comes out the other end.”
Blue Howl (Blue Wolf Book 3) Page 18