The Junkyard Druid Box Set 2

by M. D. Massey

  “There may still be survivors. Just one more search, then I’ll call it quits.”

  Finn’s eyes brimmed with sympathetic tears as he responded. “Colin, you’re exhausted. It’s been hours since you had to shift back to your fully human form, and your mortal body can’t keep this up forever. There are plenty of human rescue workers on the scene now, and we’ve done all we can. It’s time to let the mundanes pick up the pieces.”

  I rubbed my face with my hands and looked out the window again. “Maybe you’re right.”

  Practically falling into a nearby chair, I took a deep breath as I released the tension I’d been holding. Immediately, exhaustion set in. A quick survey of my person told me I had cuts and scrapes everywhere. I was also bruised and battered from climbing into overturned cars and through debris, and energy-wise I was running on fumes. Nearby, a television tuned to local news coverage announced the body count at 702 and climbing.

  I leaned on the table and hung my head. “This is my fault, Finn. If I hadn’t given up the Eye to save my mom, none of this would’ve happened. Those people might still be—”

  Smack!

  The sound of Finn’s hand slapping me across my face echoed inside the restaurant.

  “Stop!” he shouted at me, shaking me by my shoulders. “You stop that shit right damned now!”

  “But—”

  “But nothing!” Finnegas said as he wagged a finger in my face. “As long as I’ve known you, every time something bad happens around you, you blame yourself. ‘Poor me, everything I touch turns to shit. Poor me, my life is a tragedy, and I’m the cause of it all.’ It’s fucking pathetic, the way you beat yourself up for shit you had no control over and that wasn’t your fucking fault in the first place. It’s time you stopped.”

  I glared at him. “So, you’re saying it wasn’t my fault that Jesse died?”

  Finn’s face turned red, and he blew out his cheeks in frustration. “No, it was mine! I’m the damned fool who sent you in there, knowing darned good and well that the ríastrad was going to surface sooner or later. Did I know that bitch the Caoránach was going to be at her full strength? No, and that was someone else’s doing. But hell if I wasn’t the one who sent you in there to die, and that’s what caused the change to come over you.” He poked me in the chest to emphasize every next word. “It. Was. Not. Your. Fault.”

  “So, what?” I whispered. “I’m just supposed to absolve myself from the consequences of my own actions?”

  Finnegas hooked his thumbs in his jeans and closed his eyes with a slow sigh. Then, he took a seat across the table from me. “No, you’re not. But you do have to stop taking responsibility for every single fecking tragic thing that happens. You’re not God—hell, you’re not even a god, even though you’ve somehow managed to kill a few. So, stop acting like you hold the fate of the world in your hands. Even though you’ll likely live a very long life, you’re only mortal. You cannot know or control the future.”

  I looked down at the table, poking a molar with my tongue as I nodded. “And what if I did? What if I knew something terrible was going to happen, and I was the only one who could stop it?”

  “Ah, there it is—the savior complex rears its ugly head.” He tsked and frowned at me, crossing his arms over his chest. “Son, when are you ever going to learn that you can try to save the world, but you don’t have to do it all on your own?”

  I chose not to answer that question. Finnegas stood and gently clapped a hand on my shoulder.

  “Go home, Colin. And when you figure out where that bastard of a wizard went, you call for help. Family goes deeper than blood, you know—and we’ll always have your back.”

  21

  After getting home around five o’clock, I showered and collapsed into bed. Not long after I fell asleep, I heard Jesse’s voice echoing from just outside my room.

  “Colin? Psst! I’m lonely, come talk to me!”

  I tried covering my ears with my pillow, but hell if she wasn’t standing right outside and magically projecting her voice through the walls. Damn it—her ability to range away from the oak must be increasing.

  Jumping out of bed, I stormed out of the warehouse barefoot and in my underwear, but she was nowhere to be found. So, I marched my ass right over to the druid oak, where Jesse was hanging off a tree branch from her knees.

  “There you are! You’d been gone so long, I was worried sick—”

  I’d already started stealth-shifting on the way over from the warehouse—a sure sign that deep down in my gut, I really did not trust dryad Jesse. I snarled, and a bit of my Hyde-side slipped into my voice as I answered her.

  “Jesse, I have had one hell of a shitty week. I’m injured, I’m tired, and I just want to sleep and forget about everything that’s happened.”

  “Ooh, someone’s a little grouchy-poo. Did I wake you, sugar bear?” She disappeared, popping up behind me with her arms around my waist. “I bet I know how to make you feel better,” she purred.

  I felt Jesse’s hands slide down the front of my Jockey shorts, and that’s when I lost it.

  Quick as a wink, I grabbed her wrists and yanked her around in front of me. Using all the restraint I could muster, I pushed the dryad firmly but gently against the tree trunk with her wrists pinned across her chest. Despite my obvious anger, she was still acting like it was all a game, looking up at me with doe eyes and a smart-assed grin.

  Time to set this basket case straight.

  I didn’t like getting physical with a creature who looked so much like my ex, but enough was enough—and being sexually assaulted by this doppelgänger was the final straw. She was an abomination, one that needed to be put down.

  But not today.

  I was tired, and cranky, and not thinking straight, and the last thing I had wanted was a confrontation. I decided that a warning would suffice for now. My voice was low and dangerous as I spoke, because by this time, I was about halfway to completing the change.

  “You need to back the fuck off. I don’t have the patience to play your games today, Jesse—or whatever you are.” I saw something flicker in her eyes when I said that last bit. “Hmm—you don’t like it when I insinuate that you’re not who you say you are, do you? Well, you’re nothing like the Jesse I once knew, the woman I loved. She was kind, and strong, and considerate—and she didn’t pester and push herself on me constantly, like a needy fucking whore!”

  “You’re hurting me,” she whispered.

  “Hurting you? You’re a monster, and from what I’ve seen, practically invulnerable! If anything, I’m being gentle right now.”

  “Still,” she hissed, “I don’t like it.”

  Jesse wrenched an arm free and punched me square in the face. The force of the blow snapped my head back and sent me head over heels in a reverse somersault across the yard. I landed in a three-point stance, roaring in anger as I finished shifting into my full-on Hyde-side mode.

  “That fucking does it!”

  I leapt at the dryad who looked like my ex-girlfriend, closing the space between us faster than any mortal could manage. In response, she merely blinked out of existence, much the same way Click had when I’d tried to teach him a similar lesson. Being close to my full height now, my head almost reached the lower branches of the druid oak. Unfortunately, that placed me within punching range of my crazy ex.

  “Surprise!” she said as she popped out of the leafy canopy above to strike me directly on top of my head.

  The force of the blow was sufficient to stagger me, but I recovered in time to leap up in an attempt to pull her out of the tree. Again, she vanished from sight, only to pop her head out of the foliage on the opposite side of the tree, several yards away.

  “Wow, you look really mad,” she exclaimed with glee in her voice. “I bet it makes you super-angry that you can’t rip me limb from limb like you did in that cave in Kingsland.”

  “Stop messing with my head!” I roared as I leapt up into the branches of the tree.

  On
ce aloft, I swung from limb to limb, chasing the dryad as she blinked in and out of sight, always just beyond my reach. This went on for a few minutes, and with each passing second my anger increased dramatically. I was angry enough when I was human, but changing into my Fomorian form intensified those emotions. That was my weakness in this form—my rage.

  By the time several minutes had passed, I was fuming while Jesse laughed her head off. If I’d been human, I would have realized the ludicrousness of the situation, and I might have even apologized and laughed it up with her. But in this form, I was incapable of calming down once my ire had been raised.

  I swung down from a tree branch to the ground below, steaming mad while Jesse clung to the oak’s trunk several feet away, sticking her tongue out at me. I was about to leap after her again when I experienced a rare moment of clarity.

  The tree—that’s her source of power. That’s how I can hurt her.

  I launched myself at her, knowing she’d simply disappear again. And that’s what I was counting on. I turned that leap into the hardest Superman punch I’d ever thrown, making myself into a virtual ballistic missile. When my fist impacted the side of the druid oak, it crushed the outer layers and shattered the cambium and sapwood beneath. Bark and splinters flew everywhere, and on the other side of the tree, Jesse let out a yelp of pain and surprise.

  So, I struck the tree again. And again, and again, each time eliciting a cry of pain from the dryad. Before I knew it, I’d pulverized a good portion of the trunk, and soon I was nearly to the heartwood of the tree. I reared back for another blow, but just as I was about to unleash it Jesse snapped into existence in front of me, shielding the tree with her body.

  “Please, Colin, stop—you’re killing us,” she panted.

  She was bruised and disheveled, with dark brown contusions all over her body and face. Thick green sap ran in rivulets from her nose, ears, and mouth, and her skin color had paled considerably from her normal shade of vibrant green.

  I flashed back to what had happened in that cavern in Kingsland, when we’d gone after the Caoránach and the ríastrad first came over me. Once the warp spasm had taken hold I’d gone straight for the dragon, that ancient mother of demons and monsters, diving down her gullet and tearing her apart from the inside out. But that hadn’t been enough, because by that point my Hyde-side was in complete control.

  Then, Jesse was there, trying to talk me down. In my mind, I could still see my Hyde-side pummeling and ripping her to pieces. All I could do was watch.

  Oh, my poor Jesse.

  I clenched my fists, gritted my teeth, and howled at the sky.

  Jesse—not my Jesse, but this green imitation of her—cowered in a heap at the base of the oak.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  I shook my head and shifted back into my human form. I was still fuming, but at least now I had full control of my faculties.

  “Why’d you come back, Jesse? Why risk insanity and losing your identity for good? Why not just move on, leave this world behind and accept your eternal reward?”

  “I came back for you, Colin,” she whispered. “You need me, even if you don’t realize it.”

  “I need this? A crazy ex-girlfriend with god-like powers to stalk and harass me, and make my life hell? You moved into my backyard, sabotaged my relationship with my girlfriend, and got me into a fight with—”

  It felt like my brain skipped a beat. What I’d been about to say hung just on the edge of my memory, only to slip away like quicksilver.

  “I’m not that bad,” she protested through pouty lips, breaking me out of my reverie. Her wounds were already healing, but the tree wasn’t for some reason. “And I’m not a monster,” she whispered, looking down at the ground.

  “You’re not a—?” I stopped myself from saying it again, because this day had been cruel enough as it was. “You know what? I never asked you to come back. That was your decision, and if you’ll recall, you never once consulted me about it. You just decided to make a deal with the Dagda to have him resurrect you, and in exchange for what? So he’d have a means of controlling me through you?”

  “That’s not what he wants,” she said, so softly it was barely audible.

  “You know what? I don’t care what he gets out of the deal. All I know is that you’ve made my life hell and turned it upside down ever since you came back from the dead in this body.”

  “I really don’t understand why you’re so upset. You forget that I watched you mourn my death for months on end. I watched you try to kill yourself, time and time again. And I heard you cry my name deep in the night, as you hugged one of my old sweatshirts and rocked yourself to sleep. So, why would I not try something—anything—to come back to you?”

  I covered my eyes and squeezed my temples, because what she said was true. “Yes, Jesse, I mourned you. And I hated myself for the way you died. But I also moved on. I got over your death, started a new life, a new relationship—”

  “Do you love her?” She was looking up at me, and those deep green doe eyes brimmed with tears.

  “I—what does that have to do with anything?”

  “That’s what I thought,” she replied matter-of-factly. “Because you never really did get over me. Admit it, Colin—you still love me.”

  “No, you’re wrong. I still love Jesse, but you’re not her. And you never will be.”

  I spun on heel and stormed off, the sounds of Jesse’s lookalike sobbing behind me. It took everything I had to resist turning right back around to comfort her.

  Don’t do it—don’t give in.

  After a moment’s deliberation, I kept on walking. When I exited the yard, Maureen was waiting on the front steps of the warehouse. “Lovers’ spat, I take it?”

  “Maureen, I’m not in the mood. I just watched seven hundred people die and spent eighteen hours pulling survivors from the wreckage. All I want is to curl up in bed and sleep for a week.”

  Maureen cocked her head, arching an eyebrow at me as she spoke. “As I’m aware—I was there, ya’ know. But that’s hardly the end o’ yer problems. Fecking hell, lad! You’ve got the dryad who looks like yer ex to deal with, that wizard is still out there running around with the Eye doing who knows what with it, and yer walking around with a haunted look in yer eyes, like ya’ just did a tour o’ duty on the front lines in the Middle East.”

  “So?”

  “So, I thought ya’ might want ta’ talk about it.”

  “Nope,” I said as I stomped up the steps past her.

  “Ya’ know, that tree won’t heal on its own. Ya’ have ta’ claim it and order it ta’ heal itself.”

  I stopped at the entrance to the warehouse with my hand on the door knob. “Did Finnegas send you? Because he and I already had this discussion.”

  “I came o’ my own free will, out o’ concern for a certain dolt of a druid apprentice who has a tendency to muck things up. The oak was slowly dying on its own before. Now that you’ve damaged it, the process will accelerate. It may be only a matter of days.”

  “At which time what? The tree will die, along with Jesse?”

  She pursed her lips. “Yes. Forever diminishing yer power and puttin’ an end to the reign of druidkind, forever.”

  I scratched at my hairline, yawning. “Honestly, Maureen, right now I could give a fuck.”

  “An’ fecked ye’ll be if that tree dies. It’s more important than you know.”

  I gave a halfhearted wave and slammed the warehouse door behind me, then headed off to bed and the blessed forgetfulness of sleep. But sleep didn’t come for a long, long while. As I lay there tossing and turning, all I could think about was seven hundred lives, lost because I’d chosen my family over the greater good.

  I woke up some time later with bright light shining all around me. Sitting up on the edge of my bed, I yawned and balled my fists to rub the sleep from my eyes.

  Sheesh, what time is it?

  Cracking open my eyes to look for my phone, I saw it wasn’t
there. In fact, nothing was there. Not my phone, not my milk crate bedside table, not my cinder block and scrap wood bookshelves, not my espresso machine—not even my room. My bed was there, of course, but by all appearances the bed and I had been transported to some weird alternate dimension.

  The place looked like a setting from a Harry Potter flick, the Magic Mountain ride at Disney, and Whoville had kinky sex while tripping balls on shrooms, and this was the resulting offspring. There were weird floating pathways and conveyor belts going everywhere, like a big ball of spaghetti that made zero sense to my tired eyes. Each followed winding, circuitous paths between floating islands in space, upon which sat ornate warehouse shelves that were easily two or three stories high.

  The paths and conveyor belts were lit, but by no visible light source I could determine. Beyond those spaces it was pitch dark—hell, darker even, if that was possible. If I could describe the complete absence of light, it would not suffice to explain how black it was beyond those lit areas. Yet the pathways, conveyors, islands, and the shelves thereon might as well have been sitting in the middle of a field on a bright, sunny day.

  Speaking of which, those shelves were stacked with all manner of odds and ends, including: swords, shields, and armor from various historical periods; other armaments of every type and kind; horns, drums, gongs, chimes, and other strange musical and noise-making devices; gems, jewelry, clothes, and various types of footwear; food and drink; firearms, ammunition, small kegs of gunpowder, crates of explosives, and various other munitions that seemed to range over several centuries and time periods in origin; and other miscellaneous items that were too numerous to identify by name.

  Even more strange, here and there feather dusters, hand brooms, and polishing cloths floated from item to item of their own accord, cleaning and straightening the inventory, and generally keeping everything neat and tidy.