by M. D. Massey
Me, lucky. Yeah right.
I’d cross those bridges when I was ready to burn them to ash. For now, I had more immediate concerns. Since I’d chosen to let him live, Keane had likely already checked in with a status update. By now, the Circle knew I’d escaped Keane’s trap, which meant they’d have other teams out looking for me.
Finn’s words echoed in my head. If you freeze, you die. That was the first lesson of combat, and it was why I needed to get moving.
As I made my way through the concrete expanse of the Cameron Road industrial district, I felt the proverbial noose tightening around me. Every street and alley seemed to have a black SUV or late model sedan cruising it, circling the area around me like sharks closing in on a passenger lost at sea.
I ducked behind an air-conditioning unit and some trash cans as a black Yukon with dark tinted windows rolled past. To make my escape, I needed to cross a well-lit street so I could get to a large, nearly empty parking lot bordering an open field. That led to a wooded area, and from there I could get lost in the IH-35 corridor, steal a car, and go on the attack. Only a hundred yards or so to go, then I’d be free from the Circle’s search cordon.
After the SUV turned the corner, I sprinted across the street, hiding behind cars whenever possible as I headed for the open field. I briefly considered stealing a late-model Ford truck as I crossed the lot, but was afraid I’d be spotted on the desolate streets of the industrial district. It was best to stay off the roads for now. Checking the area to make certain I was in the clear, I ran like a scalded dog for the field.
The terrain beyond the parking lot was a marshy expanse of undeveloped urban wetlands. That worked in my favor, because the field was dark and the tall grasses and vegetation offered some cover from prying eyes. Roughly the size of two football fields, I was halfway across when I heard the howl of a coyote, followed by answering yips and howls from three directions around me.
What the fuck?
Coyotes were not an uncommon presence in this area, as the local mix of warehouses, fields, and small patches of woodland made it the ideal habitat for canis latrans. However, it was rare that a pack would hunt a human, as it simply wasn’t in the nature of the species to interact with people. At first, I thought they might be tracking an injured deer, or a lone fawn—but based on their positioning I concluded they were on my trail.
Shit. I ran.
As I neared the strip of woods that would lead me to IH-35, three coyotes emerged from the trees ahead of me. I slowed my pace as I glanced behind me. Five more were trailing me through the marshy field, spread out to box me in. I turned to face those ahead of me, entering my druid trance to reach out and let them know I wasn’t a threat.
“Don’t bother,” a voice said from the direction of the trees.
I opened my eyes in time to see a ninth, larger coyote lope out of the woods, tongue lolling as it regarded me with yellow-brown eyes. As I met its gaze, it morphed from animal to human form. The man was fully naked, except for a coyote pelt that he wore like a cloak around his shoulders. He looked to be of Latino or Native American descent, with brown skin, almond eyes, a hooked nose, and straight, jet-black hair that hung loosely past his shoulders. With his sunken cheeks and thin but athletic build, he looked to be every bit the predator he was.
“Well, well,” he said. “The pack and I are going to eat good this week. Bounty on your head is a thousand, druid—all I got to do is keep you here and wait for the white men to round you up.”
17
“Just a grand? Really? I’m insulted.”
The dark-skinned man shook his head. “Not a thousand bucks—a thousand gold coins. A small fortune, more than enough to buy a stretch of land in the hills, out where my pack and I can enjoy some peace.”
I crossed my arms, casually glancing around to mark the location of each coyote in the group. “Open land is getting harder and harder to come by, I’ll give you that. Still, you should consider the safety of your pack, skinwalker, before you weigh their lives against mine.”
He chuckled, and it was not a happy sound. “You’ve met my kind before, I take it. Funny, most hunters mistake me for a ’thrope.” The man sniffed the air as he regarded me, an almost imperceptible gesture that he tried to conceal. “Don’t think that makes me like you though, druid. My kind are solitary. We don’t even care for each other much. Or for people in general.”
The situation was less than ideal. If I ran, the coyotes would attempt to bring me down, and I’d have to kill them. Animals operating under the influence of magic hardly deserved such a fate. How I hate magic-users who use nature’s creatures to do their dirty work.
On the other hand, if I stood and fought, I’d still have to hurt the pack while dealing with their leader. Fighting him while trying to avoid injuring the animals would be difficult. Skinwalkers were fast and ornery as hell, and they often possessed powers that made them difficult to cope with in battle. For those reasons, hunters tended to avoid them whenever possible.
I decided to change the subject, biding my time until I could decide what to do about the skinwalker and his pets.
“I’m surprised Samson has tolerated your presence.”
The skinwalker flashed me a coyote’s smile, one that was all teeth with no warmth to it. “I’ve made it a point to stay beneath his notice. What he doesn’t know can’t piss him off. Besides, I don’t fall under his purview. I’m a magic-user, druid, not a ’thrope.”
“But you are a shifter,” I countered.
“No, not like you. The alpha has no claim on me.” He swiveled an ear at an almost imperceptible sound in the distance, an altogether inhuman thing to do. “Your time grows short, human.”
“You’re making a mistake,” I said. “Again, consider your pack.”
“You won’t kill them,” he replied. “You’d kill a fae in a heartbeat, but an innocent animal? No, I believe they’re safe.”
“Perhaps, but I have no such compunctions about killing you.”
“Ah, but you’d have to go through them to do it. And you obviously don’t want that, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”
“True—which is why I don’t intend to.” I triggered the spell I’d been silently preparing as I whipped my arms apart, spreading them wide and pointing one hand in front of me and one behind. I squeezed my eyes shut as bright light and concussive sound exploded from my palms, temporarily blinding and deafening the coyotes… and their master.
The spell was an amalgam of cantrips I’d cooked up after my run-in with the Dark Druid, a sort of ace in the hole that I reserved for dire situations. It was a combination of a flashbang cantrip, see-me-not spell, and ward booster. I hated using it, not because it was ineffective or hard to pull off, but because every Circle operative in a three-mile radius was now alerted to my location.
Blinded, the coyotes scattered in all directions, tripping and running into random objects. I felt pang of regret over that, but it was only temporary and better than the alternative. That left the skinwalker, who crouched in a defensive stance as he blinked rapidly to regain his eyesight.
Fat chance.
I grabbed a large rock and tossed it to his left. The skinwalker didn’t even flinch, which told me he’d had his hearing blown out as well. I sprinted to his right, slowing just enough to snatch his coyote skin from his shoulders as I ran past. Why? Well, for one, I didn’t want him tracking me, and second, I thought it’d be funny to leave him out here naked as the day he was born.
Leave it to me to poke the bear—or coyote, in this case.
The skinwalker howled in anguish at the loss of his animal totem, turning this way and that as he tossed sickly-green, phantasmic spells that shriveled the grass and withered small trees. Death magic—not cool. Spells like those were designed to suck the life right out of you, aging you a few years in an instant. Not enough to kill you in one shot, but certainly no trip to the ice cream parlor, either.
I’d almost felt sorry for him, th
e way he cried out when I stole his, um, stole. But now I was almost tempted to go back and finish him off. Death magic was just as bad as necromancy, and the fact that he was throwing it around indiscriminately really pissed me off.
One swipe of my sword is all it will take…
Once again, I couldn’t tell if that thought was my own or not. As I considered the source of my urge to kill the skinwalker, a bush to my left instantly decayed into dust. At that moment, I very nearly said “fuck it” and headed back to finish him off, working under the assumption that my freshly-boosted wards were strong enough to fend off at least one of those death magic spells.
Fortunately for him, the roar of engines and a flash of headlights in the distance told me now was not the time to be dealing with random death magicians. I could always hunt the skinwalker down and settle things with him later, but for now I needed to avoid being caught by the Circle.
Another time, skinwalker. Another time.
I ran off into the woods, hoping the see-me-not spell would conceal me during my escape. As I did, the skinwalker’s voice echoed loudly behind me.
“You’ve made a dangerous enemy, druid. You will regret this, I swear it!”
An hour later, I stole a late model Caddie from a pimp down on Rundberg, after I stomped his knee backwards for slapping a street walker. Proving that no good deed goes unpunished, she pulled a chrome .25 caliber pistol on me. I took a slug in the outside of the thigh, just my luck. It was an in and out, through the skin and fatty tissue—more of a nuisance than anything.
Bleeding all over the pimp’s front seat, I did my best to drive under the speed limit until I put some distance between myself and the warehouse. A few miles down the road, I pulled over behind a convenience store and took a better look at my leg.
I’ll be damned, the bleeding’s stopped. That wasn’t good. I didn’t possess any accelerated healing powers, except when I was partially or fully shifted. The entrance and exit wounds were still there, but they’d already scabbed over during the fifteen minutes or so since I’d gotten shot.
Angling the rearview mirror toward me, I took a good look at myself. The changes were subtle, but they were there—my Fomorian side was coming out, little by little. It was apparent in the more prominent brow ridge and cheekbones, the set of my eyes, the angular look of my face.
Shit. What the hell is going on here?
More than anything, I feared losing control to my Hyde-side and hurting an innocent, like I’d done with Jesse. At one time I’d thought I’d come to grips with that part of me, but now something was forcing that more primal, violent personality to the surface.
Is it a curse? I checked my wards, and nothing was amiss.
Jesse must be doing this to me. That was the only answer I could come up with. Maybe she thought it would force Bells and me apart, or perhaps she was doing it unintentionally. Whatever the reasons, I needed answers, and it was high time I confronted her on the matter. Besides, she had something I needed, something that would likely help me find Mei and Derp.
Heading back to the junkyard was a shit move, because the Circle would definitely have it staked out. I’d already texted Maureen, Bells, Luther’s people, and Samson’s daughter, Fallyn, to inform them of the situation. Maureen would tell the old man and keep him out of it, for now. Batman to my Nightwing, he trusted me enough to let me solve my own problems, but he’d also step in if I was really in a jam.
At least I knew they’d all steer clear of the junkyard—when I showed up it’d be bedlam, for sure. I had another card up my sleeve to play, and I intended to put it to use. If it all worked out the way I’d planned, those Circle jerks wouldn’t know I was there until it was too late.
I dumped the Cadillac six blocks from the junkyard. Back on my own turf—it’s showtime. Intimately familiar with the area’s rhythms and cycles, I knew exactly what belonged and what didn’t. No way the Circle was going to surprise me in my own neighborhood. Not today.
Sneaking closer to the junkyard was easy. The Circle’s surveillance vehicles drew more attention than a ringtone at a funeral service, so ducking them was a piece of cake. I crossed Dittmar and used a wooded area behind the yard to sneak within viewing distance of my home.
Of course, the Circle had the perimeter of the place staked out. I spotted at least three operatives hiding along the fence line in front of me. Communing with the animals in the area revealed two more close by, more on the other three sides of the fence, and a team atop a two-story building just south of the yard.
Getting in is gonna be tough. Let’s hope this works.
I rummaged around in my Bag for the item I’d held in check ’til now—Gunnarson’s cloak. Experimentation with it had produced mixed results, at best. Like my Craneskin Bag, it was semi-sentient, and magically linked to Gunnarson’s family tree. Moreover, the thing was not pleased that I’d killed its master, the last descendant in his line.
I could force the thing to work with a great deal of willpower and effort, but only for a few minutes. Complicating matters further, the length of time I could get it to work was iffy. On some attempts, I could remain unseen for several minutes—yet on others, the effects only lasted seconds.
Despite the risks, I had to get into the junkyard, both to speak with Jesse and retrieve what I needed. It was simply a chance I’d have to take, although the decision to take that gamble was based as much on pride as it was on strategic necessity. No way I was going to let these punks keep me out of my own home. And after I got what I needed from the druid grove, they were all in for a rude awakening.
If I do get into a scrape on the way in, it’ll likely be wetwork. Let’s hope I don’t lose control.
I pulled my hunting dagger from the sheath at the small of my back and draped the cloak over my shoulders. Then, I commanded it to do its thing.
Forcing the cloak to activate was like willing the earth to move off its axis, so stubborn was the entity that powered the thing. After several minutes of struggle, I won the battle of wills. Opening my eyes, I held my hands in front of my face and marveled at the shimmering outline that represented my limbs. It looked a lot like the Predator when it cloaked itself to hide from Arnold Schwarzenegger, but way, way cooler.
I’d learned early on that this was the cloak’s way of keeping you from being totally disoriented when under its spell. Not being able to see yourself while moving was a lot like being blind, because it made it difficult to determine where you were in relation to your surroundings. For that reason, the cloak allowed you to see your own outline—but only just.
And as for everyone else? So powerful was its illusory magic that others wouldn’t see a thing, not a hint of my presence. Even if I disturbed grass or dirt beneath my feet, or brushed against a leafy branch, the cloak would hide those signs of my passing.
It was a damned handy thing to have—when it worked properly.
I headed through the woods as quickly and silently as possible, coming up behind a sentry I simply could not avoid. She hid right in front of a backdoor I’d left in my wards, a “lock and key” opening I’d designed for just such an occasion. I’d have to take her out if I wanted to get inside.
The woman was tall and lithe with a runner’s build, and had dark brown hair pulled in a ponytail through the back of a black ball cap. She wore a matching rain jacket and dark green fatigue pants over hiking boots, but she carried no weapons, at least none that I could see.
A mage. Great. Can’t let her make a sound, or else she’ll trigger a spell.
As I snuck through the undergrowth, moving as slow as possible so as not to make a sound, thoughts of violence and mayhem kept running through my mind.
Snap her neck.
Slit her throat.
Shove the blade just below her C1 vertebrae. Angle it slightly down as you push it in, then up again. She’ll drop like a rock.
Cover her mouth and drive the blade cleanly between the fourth and fifth rib, next to her sternum, so it slides right into he
r heart. She’ll be gone before she can scream.
Each thought more vicious and gruesome than the last. I fought the urges off, shoving them down deep into the recesses of my mind, but still they whispered at me as I approached my target.
kill…
Kill…
KILL!
It took everything I had to resist snapping her neck as I reached around from behind, driving my forearm under her chin until her windpipe was in the crook of my arm.
Pull your arm back a few inches, so the wrist bone is against her throat—one yank and her windpipe will be crushed, the dark voice within me crooned.
Instead, I squeezed my forearm to my shoulder, clapping my other hand over her mouth and nose to prevent her from calling out. With my strength augmented by the Fomorian DNA currently expressing itself, it took mere seconds to choke her into unconsciousness. As I felt the Circle operative’s body go limp, I slowly lowered her to the ground.
Immediately, I released my wards in this section of the fence and pulled back a corrugated sheet metal panel to squeeze through. Dense vegetation hid my movements, and I made it through the fence without being noticed.
Just in time, too. I knelt in shadow between two junked cars, reaching out with my druid sense to check for intruders inside the fence. The yard had yet to be breached, but as I opened my eyes I felt and saw the cloak’s magic being wrested from my control. My limbs coalesced back into view, and I sighed as I swept the cloak off my shoulders, balling it up and tossing it inside the Bag.
Well, at least it got me in. Now to get what I came for, before the sentries outside discover their squad mate.
Knowing that the interior of the yard was being watched from the rooftop of a building adjacent to the grounds, I crept my way to the clearing where the druid tree resided. Then, I grabbed a rusty bolt from the dirt at my feet and tossed it across the yard to Roscoe’s favorite sleeping spot.
Barking and growling erupted as the dogs investigated the noise. I desperately hoped the ruckus they made would draw the attention of the surveillance teams on overwatch. They’d almost certainly be armed with sniper rifles, and getting shot by a high-powered rifle round was a lot different than getting hit by a .25 caliber pistol. If they spotted me, I’d be toast.