by Kevin Hearne
Whatever, you big baby. Negative thirteen sausages.
Thirteen, with a possible bonus if your report is satisfactory.
Oberon dropped the rope suddenly and Ben Keonie staggered backward a bit with the sudden release of tension. “Whoa!” he said, as he watched Oberon bound away down the hill.
“Come on,” I told Granuaile. “Let’s go.” I filled her in on the plan, such as it was, on the way down to the Black Mesa mine. It was located about twenty miles south of Kayenta. She’d drop me off at a gas station located on the highway; I’d camouflage myself and run in the rest of the way to the mine property. She’d come back to pick me up at five. If I wasn’t there by five-thirty, she was to get a room in Kayenta and I’d catch up with her at the hogan the next morning.
I left Moralltach in her car, because deadly Fae swords aren’t very useful in disabling heavy machinery. Jogging in along the access road, I got passed by a couple of trucks but nothing else. It was the middle of a shift; they worked it round-the-clock six days a week, shipping the coal to a power plant in Page and producing a good chunk of the state’s electricity. Since it was Saturday, I’d be hitting it right before they had a day off.
It was more of a sprawling complex than I’d anticipated. First up was a gated area full of hauling trucks and yellow machines of various stripes. The gate was open, and I slipped through unnoticed to pay special attention to every vehicle in the lot. I needed line-of-sight to complete the unbinding, and it wasn’t a simple process like triggering one of my charms either. It took two minutes with the hoods or engine covers open to make it happen.
I had to get clever once I got around the running machines. I started banging on the engine covers loudly with a crowbar I’d found, and panicked operators would turn off their earth-shredding behemoths or conveyor belts to investigate the noise before it got any worse. They’d obligingly come down, open the engine compartment for me, and I’d unbind and then rebind the pistons, fusing them to the engine block while they stared uncomprehendingly at it. Once they were satisfied and returned to their station or cockpit to turn it back on, all they got were little red lights telling them of an engine failure. More investigation would ensue, and I’d move on to the next target.
Before I got to the end, they had shut down all the machines to preempt whatever mysterious mechanical failure was afflicting all the engines. Foremen were losing their minds because they were thinking about all the lost revenue for every minute those machines weren’t stripping coal out of the earth. It would take them a while to figure out precisely what the problem was; they’d have to bust open the engine casings to discover that their pistons and cylinders were permanently wedded.
They had a coal-washing facility too, and I sabotaged that for good measure, even though it wasn’t strictly necessary; without a steady supply of new coal coming in, it would run out of work in a day or so.
I allowed myself a satisfied grin. Public Relations men could sugarcoat it all they wanted, but strip mining was foul, and monkey-wrenching it felt good. Nobody had been injured, much less killed, yet I’d shut down the entire operation. Unfortunately, I’d also lost track of time. The sun was sinking below the horizon when I finished, which meant I’d already missed my rendezvous with Granuaile. I’d have to make my way back to Kayenta on foot. I could fly there as an owl, but then I’d have to steal a new set of clothes before I could show myself in public, and that sort of thing always made me feel cheap and sketchy. (Costing a corporate mining operation millions in lost revenue and equipment replacement made me feel great, by comparison.) Colorado would provide me with the energy for the run, but it would still be a good couple of hours on the road.
While going cross-country afforded a straighter path back to Kayenta, I risked facing obstacles that I couldn’t pass without shape-shifting, and I didn’t know the lay of the land. I chose to stick to the roads instead. Once safely back to the highway and off the coal mine property, I considered dissolving my camouflage, because it was, frankly, an unnecessary drain on the earth. It was nighttime, I had no reflective clothing on, and no one would notice or care about a lone white man jogging well off the shoulder of the road. But paranoia made me keep it on. There were two skinwalkers out there with Famine’s curse on them, and their tummies wouldn’t stop rumbling until they tore into me.
While one of the skinwalkers might have been laid up and in no shape to hunt for edible Druids, the other one, I discovered, was quite able to stalk me, camouflage be damned. The speed and surprise of its attack overwhelmed me. I saw a flash of movement underneath a stretch of barbed-wire fence ahead of me, but before I could identify it as a kangaroo rat or a roadrunner or anything else, the bobcat it turned out to be drove me to the ground, its teeth at my throat. Before I could shout a completely pointless demand to get off, he’d already ripped out my windpipe and one side of my neck, my life’s breath and blood spilling into the cold air. I weakly brought a hand up to prevent further attack, but he was greedily gulping down the mouthful of flesh he already had. I dissolved my camouflage, since it was clearly useless, and triggered my healing charm, focusing my efforts on rebuilding my trachea, but I doubted it would make a difference. The skinwalker would snuff me long before I’d be in any shape to put up any sort of spirited defense. I wished I hadn’t left Moralltach in the trunk of Granuaile’s car.
As I finished that thought and the bobcat finished swallowing my poor neck, its fur looked like it was bubbling, rippling as if it had those scarab beetles from The Mummy running around underneath its skin. Its dead eyes—curiously, not orange the way they had been in human form—were focused on me, considering where it might take its next mouthful, when something slapped forcefully into its flesh, sending it tumbling and howling over my head. Belatedly I heard the crack of a firearm. It howled anew in response to a second shot, and the skinwalker fled, which was just fine with me. He might have ended my long life with one more bite. He might have already ended it with one.
I was drawing on the earth, feverishly trying to rebuild my windpipe and stop the bleeding, all the while wondering why the Morrigan hadn’t warned me of this. It occurred to me that this encounter, with what was outwardly an animal, probably didn’t count as a battle to her, and thus it was out of her sphere of influence. I was on my own—with the possible exception of whoever was out there with a sniper rifle. That person, however, was a good distance away, judging by the delay in hearing the shots. To be in a position to take that shot, though, they had to be stalking me. Who was it?
Tired. So tired … My thoughts went fuzzy as my brain struggled with lack of blood and oxygen. But the rebuilding continued on autopilot now that my healing charm was activated, the bindings executed in hierarchical order, healing circulatory and respiratory systems first, nervous systems next, and so on. Rebuilding muscle tissue was always last, and always the most time-consuming. I gasped in a giant, burning lungful of air when my trachea mended, staving off a blackout for a few more seconds. The walls were thin and fragile but enough to keep me breathing as I tried to splice together my torn carotid and jugular. That was more dire, and all my power went into restoring that circulation so I could think clearly and quickly again. I know I lost consciousness for anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, because there were no boots in my vision one second and then they were there the next, with no warning of approach from my ears. A dry voice tinged with contempt addressed me from above, and a flashlight shone into my eyes.
“Skinwalkers wanna make a Manwich outta you and you prance around in the dark all by yourself, no ninja stars or nothin’? You’ve gotta be the dumbest white man I ever met, and I’ve met more’n’ my fair share.” Coyote paused to spit juicily on the shoulder of the road, his boots shifting like sandpaper in the gravel. “Still, I ain�
�t never been able to make a skinwalker hold still long enough to get shot afore this, so I s’pose I should congratulate ya for smellin’ so damn tasty, heh heh.”
Any witty retort I might have made was rendered impossible by my complete lack of vocal cords. I couldn’t even look up and stick out my tongue at him, because my neck wouldn’t move. Coyote knew this and rubbed it in.
“Man, he didn’t put no ketchup on ya or nothin’, just ate ya raw and sweaty, no fries with that or a slice o’ pie afterward.”
Coyote’s boots shifted again, pointing northeast up the highway. “Hey, Mr. Druid, I know your dog is pretty big, but there’s a truck-size hound with red eyes coming at us. He’s six feet tall at the shoulder or I’m a horny toad. Ain’t no skinwalker can get itself a dog skin like that. You got any ideas? Friend or foe?”
I couldn’t see what he was talking about, of course. But if it wasn’t a skinwalker, it had to be something sent by Hel, and the only hound Hel knew was … Gods Below! I scrawled two words hastily in the dirt by Coyote’s boots. GARM. RUN!
“Run? Can’t I just shoot ’im?”
I kept circling the word RUN with my finger until he got the message. I heard the rifle and flashlight clatter to the ground behind me, and Coyote grunted as he picked me up off the ground and slung me over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
“You’re turnin’ out to be a giant pain in my ass, Mr. Druid.” A strained wheeze puffed out of me as the whiplash from flopping against his back reopened my delicate windpipe and sent searing needles of torture along the short highway from my throat to my brain. Coyote laughed about it. “Guess I’m a giant pain in your neck, huh?”
Chapter 11
Coyote took four steps before he shifted us somewhere significantly different. Not only did we shift from an arid plateau in winter to a lush riverbank in spring, we arrived in the daytime. Fat bumblebees lazily pollinated the flowering bushes as the river sang its song over partially submerged rocks. Birds serenaded us and the wind sighed gently of serenity and fulsomeness. Coyote answered the question I wanted to ask.
“We are in Third World, or Yellow World, on the banks of the Great Male River, near the dwellin’ place of White Shell Girl.” He set me down on the smooth, sandy bank much more gently than he had picked me up. “Oughtta be a good place for you to hide up and heal for a while.”
I wanted to shake my head, but of course I couldn’t. I couldn’t hold it up. But the power running through here was strong; this plane was bound tightly to the earth, and, had we the time, I could have enjoyed recuperating here. But it wasn’t a safe place. Nowhere was safe from Garm. Unlike Hel, he wasn’t bound to the nine realms of the World Tree. Supporting myself with one arm locked at the elbow, I scrawled another message in the sand of the riverbank.
Garm shifts planes.
Coyote read this and shrugged. “So what if he can? He don’t know where we are.”
I scowled and wrote furiously. He TRACKS!
“Aw, bull—” Coyote’s dismissal got cut off by the sound of an epic belly flop combined with a surprised howl. Water fooshed into the sky as something elephantine displaced much of the river’s flow.
“Son of a fucking bitch, Mr. Druid!”
Propped up as I was, I got my first look at the monstrosity pursuing us. It was Garm, Hel’s personal widdle doggie: black fur over a thickly muscled, stocky frame and a muzzle curled at the lips to show slavering teeth with disturbingly red gums. His eyes were glowing egg yolks, burning Scut Farkus eyes to make your kidneys cringe. He rose from the riverbed, which was only three feet deep, and shook himself, showering either bank and making his fur stand out in spiky clumps. Coyote was hoisting me back over his shoulder, and I thought briefly about trying to run on my own while holding my head up with my hands, but I was too weak from blood loss to make a go of it. Garm spotted us and rolled out such a deep, vibrating bark that I thought it might be the etymological origin of the term subwoofer. He launched himself toward us, the water hampering his movements, and Coyote was able to take four steps and shift us away before Garm could close the distance.
We arrived someplace where the ground was as blue as the sky. Startled by our sudden appearance, blue pheasants erupted out of the blue grass and shat blue shit.
“This is Blue World,” Coyote explained helpfully, but this time he continued to run away from the place where we’d shifted, and I had to concentrate on keeping my head attached and my fluids inside as I flopped over his back. “He’ll be along soon, so we gotta figure somethin’ out fast. Tap once for no, twice for yes, okay?”
I tapped his ass twice.
“Do you know how to kill it?” No. “Is this because o’ that Famine thing that giant spooky bitch pulled? He’ll keep comin’ until he eats you?” Yes. “She said it was scent-based, right?” Yes. “Do you smell the same when you shift to an animal form?” No. I thought he was going to suggest I shift to an animal and stay that way, which might have been effective in the short term, but that was only half his plan. “So how about I copy your form again, all the way down to your scent, you shift to an animal, and then I run back up to White World and let him think I’m you?”
That was brilliant and … brave. Unexpected. It deserved a compliment, but I had to content myself with a couple of taps for yes.
“Can you shift, all torn up like that?”
I could, but it risked tearing my tender tissues again. I’d lost a lot of blood and didn’t think I could afford to lose much more. I needed time I didn’t have. If I didn’t try it, though, there was no hope of shaking off Garm. I signaled yes, and as I did so, Hel’s wet and extremely hungry hound popped into view behind us, about fifty yards away. He barked at us triumphantly, the sound vibrating our bones. I figured we had about three seconds.
“All right, then,” Coyote said, “let’s do it afore I think about it too much.” He shifted us back up to Yellow World, and we were a little ways upriver from where we’d first arrived and fled. Coyote set me down near the bank and latched on to my arm.
“You hide out near here and I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said as he copied me. We had done the same thing earlier in the week to fool the thunder gods and the Norse; it worked despite my cold-iron aura, probably because he was targeting himself and he was beginning with skin-to-skin contact. Starting at his hand and rippling up from there, his rich brown skin turned pale and his clothes shifted to match mine. His neck sagged limply to the side, the same wound appearing, and it was disconcerting to see myself in such bad shape. On the plus side, Coyote couldn’t talk anymore. When the copy was complete, he let go of my arm and gave me a thumbs-up, then twirled his finger around to indicate I should get on with it. I triggered the charm on my necklace that bound my spirit to the shape of an otter, hoping that shrinking my size would keep my mended vessels and trachea in one piece. It worked, but I felt like the victim of a first-year acupuncture student, needles of pain shooting through my entire right side. Trapped in my shirt, I squeezed through the head hole and began to crawl weakly toward the river, as Coyote staggered to his feet and then actually stomped, barefoot, away from the riverbank. He was trying to blaze the clearest trail possible, leaving my scent behind to lead Garm away from the river when he made his inevitable appearance.
The waters of the Great Male River were somewhat swift and I figured the current would carry me a good distance downstream when I attempted to cross it, but that was not necessarily a bad thing, considering that Garm would shortly arrive behind me. Of greater concern was surviving the crossing. My neck wound was still open, though it was now otter-size, and submerging it in water as I tried to swim with a weakened system wasn’t the best idea I’d ever heard. If I passed out, I’d drown. If I didn’t try, Garm might gulp me down like a fun-size candy bar when he showed up.
I waded into the cold water and discovered that I’d have to turn over on my back, because I couldn’t hold my head up out of the water otherwise. I wasn’t a quarter of the way across when I saw Garm splas
h into the shallows, where I’d been just moments before. He whipped his head around and those yellow eyes passed right over me, since he was obsessed with searching for a particular human at the moment. Seeing none, he put his nose down to the shore and searched for my scent. He paid attention to my clothes first, but then he spent some time at the water’s edge, which puzzled me since I’d only come there as an otter. Then it struck me that my necklace was drenched in my scent, and I still had it on. Garm’s head came up and looked across the water again. This time he saw me, and he growled, chops rippling over teeth the size of my hands. I kept swimming, moving my tail back and forth and putting distance between us, but I didn’t think for one second that I could outpace him if he decided to splash into the river after me. I held what little breath I had and eyed him fearfully. Had I not screwed up fate, this was the dog who was supposed to fight Týr at Ragnarok. Now that Týr was dead, cut down by Coyote, who would stop him? Not a wounded otter in the Great Male River.
He put his nose down to the bank again as I neared the north side. He might be hungry for my scent, but he was after more than a snack; I didn’t match the size or shape of his target. I wondered how good Coyote really was at copying; matching a scent is a tricky chemical business, and his assertion that he could do it did not make it so. Garm swerved away from the bank, following my otter trail back, woofed when he caught a stronger whiff near where Coyote had stood, then bounded off in the direction Coyote had taken. He vanished from sight and I heard one more bark, then nothing above the chuckle of the river, plenty of birdsong, and the susurrus of the leaves in a soft wind.
Relief washed over me like the waters of the river. I was alone in Yellow World.
Unlike Blue World, it wasn’t monochromatic. The environment was reminiscent of southwestern Colorado or the more verdant areas of northern New Mexico—except for the birds. Here they were unusually active. Jays and woodpeckers and hummingbirds flitted about, chirped in challenge and triumph, defended their territory, and stole wee little bugs from one another. Their activity was such that I began to wonder if it might augur something in the original sense of the word. It didn’t take me long to discern a pattern; though I’m not a fan of augury as a method of divination, it occasionally takes on the qualities of a baseball bat coming at your face—that is, you ignore it at your peril. Perhaps it was my vulnerable state that made me tune in; perhaps it was because this message was practically shouting at me.