The Junkyard Druid Box Set 2

by M. D. Massey

  “Answers about why the dead roam the park? Why La Llorona ranges so far south, haunting and hunting the Rio Grande instead of the Rio Colorado? Answers to why a skinwalker wants me dead?”

  I inclined my head. “Yes. And how to stop it.”

  She tilted her head back and laughed. “Hah! You’re the reason for it, druid. Leave, and these troubles leave with you. But you will not. You will choose to face him here, in this remote area, and me and mine will suffer for it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The witch pulled a stick from the fire, pointing the glowing end at me. “Do you know what I protect here—what Ernesto Bylilly really wants?”

  “No, I don’t,” I said, squirming just a little beneath her cold, hard stare.

  “Some would call it a kiva, but it’s more than that. It’s not just a ceremonial structure, but an actual gateway that leads to the underworld. The skinwalker wants to use it to draw spirits to himself, evil spirits that will increase his power. I can’t let that happen.”

  I scratched my head. “Now I’m confused. He said he wanted your pelt, so he could steal your powers.”

  “That’s simply the way Ernesto works. He made a deal with the one who seeks you, that if he helped capture you, that one would get me out of the way so the skinwalker could gain access this cave. But Ernesto is clever. If he could get you to go after me, he wouldn’t have to put himself at risk. When you and I fought, you would win, but the cost to you would be high. Ernesto planned to capture you after you’d been weakened by the battle. Then, he’d have what he wanted, and he could sell you to the other for a high price.”

  “Who is this ‘other’ person that you keep referring to?” I asked.

  “You know of whom I speak. La Llorona even warned you of him, although you didn’t listen. Who do you know that hates you, who also has the power to raise the dead?”

  Shit.

  “The Dark Druid.”

  La Onza nodded. “Yes. From what I understand, he engaged the younger skinwalker’s services after you bested him in your most recent battle. Stanley was supposed to keep an eye on you and keep the Dark One updated as to your whereabouts. When he heard you were forced to leave Austin, he sent the skinwalker after you.”

  “Huh,” I sagely observed. “And how’d Ernesto get involved?”

  “Stanley let slip that he was working a job involving a certain druid, and that piqued the old man’s interest. He made his son arrange a meeting with the Dark One, and then Ernesto convinced him he could deliver you in exchange for assistance in dealing with me. But, as I said, the elder skinwalker would betray his own mother if he thought it would gain him some small advantage. So, he tried to pit us against each other.”

  I chuckled humorlessly. “If Ernesto thinks he can double-cross the Fear Doirich and get away with it, he has another thing coming.”

  La Onza stirred the coals with her stick. “It doesn’t matter, now that you’ve refused to help him. As he sees it, you’ve broken your agreement, and he’ll do whatever he can to help the Dark One gain his revenge on you.”

  “Speaking of which, how do you know all this?”

  Larry appeared on the other side of the fire next to La Onza. “I, uh, might have been spying on Ernesto for her. Sorry, bud, but we didn’t know if you could be trusted.”

  La Onza absently scratched Larry behind the ears as she stared at the flames. “This one came to me for help in breaking the curse Ernesto placed on him. I told him the only way to break the curse would be to kill the caster.”

  I chewed my thumbnail, out of habit as much as a desire to make things a bit clearer. Old Fionn’s magic did still have its uses, after all. “And that’s a task you’re either incapable of or unwilling to take on. Otherwise, you’d have gotten rid of Ernesto yourself a long time ago.”

  “You speak the truth of things,” she said as she threw another branch on the fire. “We are evenly matched, in both skill and power. I am older and more knowledgeable, but the path he follows allows one to gain much power quickly—but at a terrible cost.”

  “Death magic and necromancy always come with a high price, at least from what I’ve seen,” I replied. “It did a hell of a number on the Dark Druid.”

  “But you are the cause for his current condition.” A branch in the fire crackled, sending sparks and motes of ash into the sky. “Because of that, the Dark One’s hatred for you runs deep, and he’ll do anything to get revenge. But what he wants most now is to escape from his rapidly-decaying body. And you may have brought him the means to do so.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “He’s locked in that body for good now—no more jumping to a new host for him. Finnegas and I made sure of that.”

  “Unless he had access to magic that could reverse the effects of the spell you cast on him. He’d need a source of power that could both give life and reach across into the realm of the dead.” She locked eyes with me across the fire. “There is one who came with you who has such talents, is there not?”

  “Jesse—you’re telling me he’s after Jesse?”

  La Onza nodded. “The girl is unique in that she somehow can use both life magic and death magic at once. If he siphons off her power, he’ll have the means of breaking the spell that locks him inside his current host.”

  “I have to get back to camp and warn them.” I stood up quickly, already stealth-shifting on the fly. “Will you help us, La Onza? The enemy of my enemy, and all that?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not my fight, druid. This is a white man’s war, and it has nothing to do with me. Besides, my responsibility is to protect the gateway from brujos like Ernesto Bylilly. And if you’ve made the deal with my guardian that I think you have, I’ll need to stick close to this place—just in case you fail to defeat the Dark One.”

  “Well, I can’t say I blame you, and thanks for the warning.” I looked at the mangy rat-dog sitting beside her. “Larry, you coming?”

  “I think I’ll stay right here, druid—no offense,” he replied. “Thing is, if you win, I’m free. If not, then I don’t want to give Ernesto a reason to curse me twice. Sorry, but a chupacabra has to look out for himself.”

  “Again, I can’t blame you. Good luck, Larry,” I said as I leapt off the cliff to the canyon below.

  “Same to you, druid,“ he yelled. “And not just because I want that curse lifted!”

  I took off at a dead run, wishing for about the millionth time that I had the ability to magically gate myself from place to place. I’d been gone for hours, and there was no telling what had happened since I’d left earlier that morning. For all I knew, the Dark Druid had shown up and snatched Jesse, and it was twenty miles to camp across some of the roughest country in the state. Even at an all-out sprint in my full Hyde-side form, it’d take me well over an hour to get back and warn the others.

  Or, maybe not.

  It’d been a few days since we’d parted ways with the Druid Oak—surely that was enough time for it to heal and rid itself of the tracking devices? Besides, time worked differently in the Grove and the Void, so maybe it was already up to snuff and just waiting on my signal to return.

  But could I call the Grove from here, if it was floating somewhere in the Void? I had no idea how my connection to the Grove worked across distances, as I’d never tried to communicate with it when I wasn’t in its immediate presence.

  No time like the present to find out.

  As I sprinted through the desert, I tested my connection to the Grove and Druid Oak. At first I got nothing, but then I thought I sensed just the barest tickle of the Grove’s presence in my mind. It was there, but distant and ever so faint. I tried to grab onto that tiny thread between us, but just when I thought I had a handle on it, the connection would slip away.

  C’mon, c’mon!

  Running wasn’t helping my concentration any, so I came to a stop and sat down on a nearby boulder. I took several deep breaths to calm myself, slowing my breathing so I could focus on re
aching the Grove. Again, I searched for the connection. When I found it, rather than snatching at it, I simply relaxed my mind and let it come to me. Soon, I felt the bond between us getting stronger of its own accord.

  That must be the secret—trying too hard just screws things up. I have to work with the natural flow of our bond, and not against it, just like everything else in druidic magic.

  The process of strengthening the connection took several minutes, and I had to resist the urge to jump up and start running back to camp again. But my patience was soon rewarded, as I had a somewhat weak but serviceable link to the Druid Oak and Grove. I sent it a simple query, not wishing to strain the connection between us.

  Have you rid yourself of the tracking devices?

  The images it returned were faint—dead leaves falling off a tree, metal bugs being squashed by falling branches, and the like. I took it to mean that the Oak had done as I asked.

  Good, then I need you here, now. My friends are in trouble, and I—

  Before I finished that thought, I felt the Oak’s presence beside me. I opened my eyes, and there in the moonlight stood a fifty-foot tall oak tree, looking for all the world like the most anomalous thing that had ever grown in the Big Bend desert basin.

  “Man, it’s good to see you,” I said aloud, meaning it. Images of warm spring days and sunshine washed over me, making me chuckle in spite of the dire situation. “I need to get somewhere, fast. Can you take me there?”

  I sent the Oak an image of the plateau where we’d made our camp. An instant later, I felt the distinct sensation of being magically transported into the sentient pocket dimension I’d come to know as the Grove. Before I could even get my bearings inside the Grove, I was outside of it again, standing next to the Druid Oak on top of our campsite plateau.

  Hemi was sitting next to the fire when I arrived, keeping watch. The sudden appearance of the Druid Oak startled him, at least until he noticed me standing beside it.

  “Damned invisibility and portal magic,” he complained. “I’ll never get used to people popping in and out all the time.”

  I took a quick visual survey of the campsite. Everything seemed to be in place, except Fallyn and Bells were nowhere to be found. Thankfully, Jesse was sleeping soundly in a sleeping bag, not far from the fire.

  “Hemi, we’ve got serious trouble—”

  “Since when do we not?”

  “Er, right. First off, where are the others?”

  “Fallyn is off hunting, as usual. We saw Bells at the visitor center, while she was packing up to head home. Said she had better things to do than babysit you.”

  “Huh,” I remarked with my usual astuteness. “I guess she really is cutting me loose.”

  “You think?” he said, lowering his voice so as to avoid waking Jesse. “Once Fallyn got those two to agree that it wasn’t worth it to fight over you, it became a matter of pride for Belladonna to wait and see which one you’d pick.”

  “Which one? Huh? Who says I was going to pick either of them?”

  “Sshh! You want that one to hear?” Hemi said, inclining his head at Jesse’s supine form.

  I looked more closely at her, and it occurred to me that something was off. For starters, Jesse had always been a light sleeper—it was part of the whole druid training thing. Finnegas had taught us that heavy sleepers tended to wake up in the afterlife, so we’d both learned to sleep with one eye open.

  And second, she wasn’t breathing.

  “Shit!”

  I ran over to try to rouse her, but when I touched her shoulder my hand passed right through.

  “Fucking illusion!” I tuned my vision into the magical spectrum to get a signature on the spell. The magic was dark and shadowy in nature—definitely not something Jesse would cast, even if she knew how.

  “Hemi, tell me everything that happened before I got here.”

  The big guy rubbed a hand over his face. “Aw, lemme think. Belladonna left before it got dark, then Fallyn took off as soon as the sun went down. I heated some food, but Jesse said she wasn’t hungry, and she wanted to be alone. She went to go sit by herself, I went to take a piss, and when I came back she was in her bag, asleep.”

  “Where was she sitting when you last saw her—awake, I mean?”

  “Over here,” he said, leading me to a large flat rock next to the cliffs. “She sat right there on that rock.”

  I cast a cantrip to enhance my senses, searching the area around the rock. It didn’t take long to find large, semi-canid footprints, as well as some sort of powder that I couldn’t identify. I pinched a bit between my fingers, and my fingertips immediately went numb where the powder made contact.

  “Skinwalkers?” Hemi asked.

  I nodded. “I’m certain of it. I think they snuck up on Jesse, drugged her, and left the way they came, over the cliffs. See this powdery substance? I’ve heard tell that some brujos use a paralyzing poison, similar to the stuff Haitian bokors use. They use pufferfish toxin and other ingredients, and it’s said to be so potent it makes it look like their victims died of natural causes.”

  “Aw, Colin—this ain’t good. But why’d they take her?”

  “That’s what I came here to tell you. I finally found La Onza, and she turned out to be a font of information. According to the witch, Ernesto and Stanley are working for the Fear Doirich. He’s looking for revenge against me for all the shit I’ve done to him, and he thinks he can use Jesse to help him do it.”

  The big Maori’s brow furrowed. “How’s he think he’ll do that?”

  “By siphoning off her magic. Finnegas and I noticed something different about her this time around. She still retains a bit of the Oak’s nature magic, and has a sort of connection to the Grove as well—just much, much weaker. But all that time she spent roaming around as a ghost affected her too. She’s alive, but she has a definite connection to the world of the dead.”

  “Death magic?” he asked.

  “Either that or a form of necromancy. Think about that—life magic and death magic, all in one package. If it’s ever happened before, I’ve never heard of it. And La Onza thinks the Dark Druid plans to siphon that magic off so he can use it to break the curse Finnegas and I placed on him.”

  “Colin, if that’s the case—”

  “Yup—he’ll be able to take another crack at jumping into my body. And here’s the kicker. Last time I had Balor’s Eye stashed inside my skull, and that made me mostly immune to necromancy. But now? I have no idea if any of that resistance remains.”

  “Bugger all, cuz—we need to find that girl, and fast, before they hand her over to the Dark Druid.”

  “Way ahead of you. I’m going to partially shift and sniff around, figure out which way they went. You scratch out a note for Fallyn to let her know what’s up. Then, we’re going skinwalker hunting.”

  15

  The trail wasn’t hard to find, since Jesse’s scent was familiar to me and unmistakable. I wasn’t as good a tracker as Fallyn, but she hadn’t returned yet, so we took off without her. Hemi and I followed the skinwalkers’ trail for the better part of an hour, to the mountainous area below the South Rim.

  I lost the trail for a time, until I realized they’d obscured their scent and signs of passing with magic. After that, it was just a matter of following the magic instead of trail-sign, and that led us up an impossibly steep slope to a cleft in the ridge-line that was partially hidden by vegetation. Illusory magic had been cast to further obscure the approach, but it was hastily placed and easy to dispel. Finally, we came to yet another cave entrance, one that was suspiciously left unguarded.

  “You reckon they took her in there?” Hemi asked.

  I knelt to examine the ground in front of the cave. The surface beneath our feet here was rocky and barren, but I could just make out a few faint scuff marks on the rocks. It was doubtful that Ernesto or Stanley would have left any physical sign of their passing, unless they were carrying a heavy load.

  “Someone came through h
ere, possibly carrying a body. Besides, I’m pretty sure that crappy obfuscation spell cinches it,” I replied, standing up and scanning the area around the cave. “Weird that there are no wards protecting the cave entrance, though.”

  About that time, I heard shuffling footsteps coming from within the cavern, accompanied by the odd groan or growl. Even without having spent months in the Hellpocalypse, I’d have known what was coming by the smell. Animated rotting corpses tended to throw off putrescence like cheap perfume at a Mary Kay convention—and man, did we get a lungful. A wave of foul air washed over us, just as several dozen ghouls and a handful of revenants came rushing out of the cave.

  I backed up a few steps, getting enough space to draw Dyrnwyn. Hemi didn’t bother backing away. He just reached behind him and pulled his massive, axe-shaped club out of thin air. In the same motion, he spun and swung the heavy end at a couple of unlucky ghouls. The club impacted with a loud, sickening crunch, and the pair of them went sailing off the cliff.

  It’d been a minute since I’d seen my friend in fighting form, and it was still a sight to behold. His tattoos glowed a pale blue, and his war club left a faint after-image of blue light as he spun and swung it around. Although the long, tapered weapon was almost as tall as I was, and as big around as my upper arm at the thick end, Hemi spun and twirled it like a drum major leading a marching band. All the while, he chanted and stomped and made faces at his enemies, working a haka into his dance of death and destruction.

  “Neat trick, pulling that stick out of thin air,” I shouted, jumping into the fray with Drynwyn’s blade lit up like a Roman candle on the Fourth of July. I chopped the arms off a ghoul, kicked another in the chest, and took the head off a revenant as an afterthought. “You’ll need to show me that sometime.”

  Hemi paused and took a two-handed grip on the weapon, which he used to shove a half-dozen ghouls back like a cop on crowd control duty. The lot of them went tumbling, tripping up those behind them. A revenant jumped over the crowd at him, and the big guy smacked it across the face, spinning its head and twisting its neck around at an unnatural angle. The rev dropped to the ground, where it twitched once before going limp.