WE ALL HAVE DIFFERENT WAYS OF HANDLING such situations. If I’d been alone, I would have run without a moment’s hesitation. Hell, it had worked once. Victor automatically crouched into a fighting stance. I don’t think he even knew he had done so; it was just a reaction as unconscious and natural to him as breathing. Eli simply walked forward until he was two feet away. He gestured toward the darkness where the fake Ifrit had vanished.
“Was that your doing?”
The Wendigo smiled, but it wasn’t bright and cheery this time.
“Not at all. I would imagine your clever stone circle attracted it.”
“Quite possibly,” said Eli. “So, you’re free. What now? Are you going to help us or not?”
You had to admire him. Eli just assumed, matter-of factly, that there was no danger now that the Wendigo was free. He just carried on as if nothing about the situation had changed. I’ve seen him do that before. Mostly, it works, but that’s because it’s Eli. If I tried something like that, I would most likely end up as lunch. But the Wendigo seemed more than happy to play along. Maybe he’d been telling the truth after all.
“Again, what’s in it for me?” he said. “You don’t seem to have as much to offer now.”
Eli pointed at the stones scattered on the ground. After the test runs and the trap, they were barely glowing.
“You absorb magical power. Those stones have enough to keep you going for I don’t know how long-months, at least, I’d say.”
The Wendigo glanced down at them.
“Not anymore, they don’t. They’re almost used up.”
“Yes, but we have more of them. We’ll trade you-stones for Sherwood. You bring her back and we’ll give you enough of them to last quite a while.”
“Now, that is tempting.”
“He claims Richard Cory is back safe,” I put in. “If he is, if he’s telling the truth, great. But if not…”
“You’ll hunt me down like a dog?”
“We can at least make your life difficult,” said Victor.
“I’m sure you could. And if I just take care of you all right now? I could, you know.”
“Possibly,” said Eli. “But to what purpose? You wouldn’t get any stones that way. And maybe it wouldn’t turn out for you as well as you might think. Those stones are not our only tools.”
Eli seemed to grow in size and bulk, and his voice became quietly menacing. He was an impressive figure, and anyone or anything would think twice about taking him on. What the Wendigo didn’t know was that it was entirely a bluff. Eli of course has great intellect and presence, but no real intrinsic power. Victor would put up a fight, but even with my help I had a feeling we’d be badly outmanned. But it worked. I don’t know if the Wendigo was unsure of our powers, or if he simply had no bad intentions, or if he really wanted those stones, but it worked.
“Deal,” he said. “I’ll be at your house tomorrow morning. I’ll call back this Sherwood for you, and you’ll hand over the stones.”
“My house?” said Victor. “You don’t know where I live.”
“Don’t I? I’ll see you there.”
He walked off, brushing by me. Lou looked over at me, asking if I wanted him to follow, but I shook my head no.
I WAS AT VICTOR’S EARLY NEXT MORNING. IT hadn’t been a bad night’s work. We’d found the Wendigo and got him to agree to do what we wanted. The fake Ifrit had been a surprise, but at least no one had got hurt.
Victor was eating breakfast and grudgingly provided me with coffee. Lou didn’t even bother to beg; he knew it was useless. Victor looked tired as well, which was unusual for him. His earlier leg injury must have taken more out of him than I’d thought. He hadn’t even got around to reading the morning Chronicle, still secure in its orange plastic wrapper.
“Do you think he’ll show?” I asked for the third time. Victor had thrown open the tall front windows, and the early sunlight was streaming through. A pleasant breeze came off the ocean, uncharacteristically warm for so early in the day. For once there was no morning fog. I was sipping coffee, Eli was pacing back and forth, Maggie was sitting by the window, and Lou was lying on a rug, hogging a patch of sun and catching up on his interrupted sleep. He hated mornings almost as much as I did.
We’d got home late, since as soon as we’d left Fort Point I’d driven down to the Bay Bridge to try to find Rolf. He wasn’t around, and even Lou had some trouble tracking him down, so it was a while before we’d run him to ground. And yes, it turned out Richard Cory had indeed returned.
“Was he okay?” I’d asked. “Can I talk to him? He must have some information about this Wendigo.”
“Depends on what you mean by okay,” Rolf had answered. “Weirder than ever-he’s finding it hard to keep a human form these days. And I’m sure he could tell you a lot, but I don’t think he’ll talk to you-I’m not sure he could even if he wanted to. But otherwise, yeah, he’s fine.”
I didn’t bother to complain that he might at least have informed me. It wouldn’t have done any good. But if that much had turned out to be true, there was a good chance our Wendigo would be showing up. And if he did, there was a good chance he could do what he said he could. Otherwise, why bother to make an appearance?
I don’t know what I expected. Maybe for him to materialize in the middle of the study with a puff of smoke, or something equally dramatic, so when the knock on the front door came it was an anticlimax.
Victor answered the door, and there he stood. His forest garb had been replaced by a colored tee with a picture of Elvin Jones behind a drum set and a pair of jeans. He stood in the doorway and looked around appreciatively.
“Quite the warding system,” he said. “Very impressive. I’m not sure even I could get in here without your permission.”
That was something of a relief. The wards around Victor’s house were not strictly his own-Eli and a lot of other knowledgeable practitioners had helped design them, as well as contributing their own power into keeping them strong. The wards around my own house are clever and subtle, strong enough to do the job, but nothing special. Victor was protected by state-of-the-art constructions, utilitarian, sleek and gleaming, and composed mostly of lines of sheer and forbidding power. It was reassuring they could block even a magical creature of power.
Victor reached out and touched him on the shoulder. An almost invisible spark of energy passed between them, providing the Wendigo with the magical equivalent of a key card. Once he was inside, Victor led the way up to the study.
“Very nice,” said the Wendigo, looking around at the dark paneling, huge fireplace, and tall windows. “A bit too faux Victorian for my tastes, but nice, nonetheless.”
“Thank you,” said Victor without the slightest trace of sarcasm. “Let’s get down to business.”
“You have the stones?”
Eli opened the old messenger bag and showed the stones to him, then closed it firmly. Like at Mama Yara’s botanica, it reminded me of nothing so much as a dope deal, complete with suspicion on both sides. The Wendigo turned to me.
“I’ll need your help,” he said. “Or rather, it will be a lot easier if you’re involved.”
“Okay,” I said. I still didn’t trust him, though. “Are we actually going somewhere, physically, or is this just a psychic journey?” I remembered asking Eli the same question when I’d gone seeking the origin of the rune stones, more than a year ago.
“Ahh, well, that depends on how you look at it,” the Wendigo said. I should have known.
“Let me guess. It’s not an either/or question.”
“Exactly. I’m glad you understand.”
“Yeah, me, too. But on the practical side, what if something happens to us there?”
“Well, then the question becomes academic, but we won’t wake up safe in our beds; that I can assure you.” He held out his hand, impatiently. “Here, just relax; take my hand. Envision the place where you were when you saw her.” I wasn’t that eager to let him touch me, but I did it. His hand was warm, pulsing with magical energy. Nothing else happened. “It might be easier if you close your eyes and block out your present surroundings.”
I did what he asked, concentrated on my breathing, and one by one blocked out the distractions around me. It wasn’t that hard; it’s a basic of both yoga training and magical discipline. The last senses to go were touch and smell, the breath of salt air on my face coming through the open windows.
It grew stronger, and the tang of the ocean was replaced with the slightly musty odor of gorse and bracken, and the breeze had turned cold and damp. When I opened my eyes I was back on the moor.
But this time it was different. It was dark, as if the winter sun was just sinking under the horizon. Patches of thick, evil-looking fog closed in around us, obscuring the landscape one moment, swirling away the next to reveal a barren and desolate scene. Before, the moor had been dramatic and full of mystery. This time it gave off an aura of evil and danger.
The Wendigo was standing next to me, but Lou was nowhere in sight. I had a moment of not quite panic-he’d never failed to follow me anywhere before. But then he burst out of a nearby thicket and stood there, tongue out and panting as if he’d run a long way. The Wendigo looked surprised.
“I didn’t think that was possible,” he said. “He didn’t come with us, and there’s no way he could have followed us here-there isn’t any ‘here’ to follow us to, strictly speaking.”
“He is a talented creature,” I said. “So, what now?”
“Your part is done. Now that we’re here, all I need to do is call her home. It won’t be a problem.”
I could have told him that was the wrong thing to say. It’s a form of unconscious hubris, poking your finger in the eye of the gods. Sure enough, the minute he finished talking I heard a long-drawn-out, muffled howl in the distance, sounding like a hound from hell.
“What in God’s name is that?” I asked. For the first time since I’d seen him, the Wendigo looked ill at ease.
“Oh, shit,” he said. Not a reassuring response.
“I didn’t hear anything like that the last time.”
“Last time, you were pulled into Sherwood’s construct. This time, it’s partly yours as well. You mentioned that the moor looked like a movie set. Wuthering Heights, I think you said.”
“Yeah.”
“This isn’t exactly the same place, is it? Have you ever actually been on a moor?”
“No,” I said.
“But this is partly your own construct. So where did you get your idea of it from? What do you think of when you imagine a moor?” I didn’t have to think about that one.
“The Hound of the Baskervilles.” Another howl, closer, punctuated my remark.
“And that is?”
“Sherlock Holmes. A story about a gigantic, spectral hound who roams the moors, killing people.”
“I see.”
“But in the story it wasn’t really anything supernatural,” I explained. “It turned out to be a huge, vicious, but quite ordinary dog.”
“Maybe in the story. But not in your construct-trust me on that.”
Another howl, long-drawn-out and definitely closer. Now it sounded less like a hound and more like some creature from hell. Lou flinched involuntarily and started picking up first one paw, then the other, the way he does when he’s nervous.
“What are you worried about?” I said. “You can take a shotgun blast without it bothering you, and you can control things with just your voice. A ghostly hound shouldn’t pose much of a problem.”
“You’d think. But you mostly missed me with that shotgun. You only thought you hit me. A couple of pellets nicked me, but that was all. Misdirection and illusion are my true strengths.” So we had something in common after all.
“Your voice is no illusion,” I said.
“Sure, it is. It doesn’t control anyone. It just makes them think they have no choice.” That seemed like semantics to me, but this was no time for a philosophical discussion.
“So use it, then,” I said.
“Believe me, I would if I could. But things work differently in places like this. I can call Sherwood; that’s what I came here for. But other than that, I’m as vulnerable as you are. Maybe more so-it’s your place, and you at least should still have your talent here. So it’s up to you, I’m afraid.”
Another howl, worse than before, and considerably nearer. My throat got dry, and this time it wasn’t only Lou who flinched. For the first time since I’d met him, the Wendigo had lost his self-assured demeanor.
About twenty yards to the left of us the ground cover thinned out and dissolved into a small patch of swampy bog, no bigger than a double bed. I reached out to see if I could feel talent working, and it was. I didn’t have enough power to expand it to a useful size, at least not directly. But I could gather swamp essence from the small patch and flip it over, effectively doubling it in size. Then again, and again once more. With the power of geometrical progression, it wasn’t long before I had created an area some fifty yards square. Technically, I wasn’t using enough power to transform a large area, but it worked. That’s why it’s called magic, at least by those who don’t fully understand it. Which would include me, though I usually don’t use that term.
I called Lou over and worked on his paws, expanding and flattening them until they were like tiny snowshoes, which took more energy and skill than creating the entire swamp did. When I was done, he ran back and forth, trying them out and stumbling a few times. Twice, he even fell over his feet before he got the hang of managing them. He wouldn’t be nearly as agile as usual, but he wouldn’t have to be. He’d just need to make it to the swamp.
I used the rest of my energy to put a deflection spell around myself and the Wendigo, using the fog and the bleak and featureless landscape as my model. It wouldn’t fool the hound for long-for one thing, dogs rely on scent as much as they do sight, but it would make us hard to locate at first. I hoped it would work. If it didn’t, we were in trouble, since I’d now used up most of my power. I would have been a lot more confident if I could have somehow brought along the Remington 870.
Just as I finished, the hound materialized out of a patch of fog. It was close to two hundred pounds, looking like a cross between a mastiff and a wolf. Muscles rippled under a short coat of hair, and it bounded toward us, light on its feet. No clever dodging aside was going to work with this one. Its eyes glowed a deep phosphorescent green, and its muzzle was full of strong and sharp teeth, covered with foaming slobber.
If the Wendigo was correct, it was a creature created in part out of my own subconscious. Which didn’t say much for my imagination. It was a stock Hollywood monster, a stereotype. But that was just its physical appearance. It also projected an aura of inevitability-it was going to kill us all, rend us limb from limb, slashing muscle and crunching bone. When things created from the unconscious take on an independent existence, they’re always worse than your everyday monster.
Despite my attempt at masking, it instantly zeroed in on our location and swerved toward us, uttering a bay of triumph. The closer it got, the larger it looked, and there was nowhere to hide. It didn’t notice Lou, discreetly standing behind me, and just before it reached us, Lou bolted out from behind me and ran right under the beast’s muzzle. It snapped at him out of reflex, like a dog after a fly, but Lou knew what he was doing. He dodged just as the muzzle lowered, and the teeth snapped shut on empty air.
Lou squealed as if mortally hurt, and the thing couldn’t resist. Prey drive kicked in and it spun and went after Lou as if he were a wounded rabbit. Lou took off toward the swamp area, occasionally uttering that wounded cry. The hound was faster in a straight line than Lou was, especially a Lou with altered paws, but it couldn’t change direction like he could. Lou zigged and zagged, always just a little out of reach. At one point he stumbled and nearly went down, and my heart skipped a beat. But he was just playing the beast, making sure it wouldn’t abandon the chase, like a mother duck who pretends to have a crippled wing to draw a predator away from its brood.
When Lou reached the boggy area he flew right over it. At twelve pounds with magically altered paws, he barely sank into it at all, skimming over the bog like a water strider on a summer pond. The hound was right on his tail, and its momentum carried it well into the morass before it realized the danger and started to sink. In seconds it was floundering helplessly, each desperate struggle trapping it more securely in the mire. Lou doubled back, making sure not to get too close to the mire, and ran up to where I waited.
“Good job,” I said to him. It looked like he was going to be living on bacon instead of kibble from now on for quite a while. I returned his paws to normal, and he stood there shaking them out like an athlete after a hard training run.
“Nice work,” said the Wendigo. “I wasn’t sure you had it in you.”
“I’m full of surprises.” I watched the hound struggling, sinking inexorably deeper with every effort. I felt kind of sorry for it. It must have shown, because the Wendigo picked up on it immediately.
“Not to worry. It doesn’t really exist, you know, any more than this place does.”
“Are you trying to say it couldn’t have hurt us after all?” That didn’t jibe with what I knew about such things.
“Oh, no. Just because it isn’t real doesn’t mean it couldn’t have torn us to shreds.”
“Glad you cleared that up,” I said. “Now, any chance you can do what we came here for, before something worse shows up?”
“Of course.” He spun in a circle, sniffing the damp air, like Lou on a scent. “This way.”
We trudged over the moor, through the drifting fog. I immediately lost all sense of direction, but the Wendigo seemed sure of his direction. We walked for fifteen minutes or so, until a break in the fog revealed a rocky crag in the distance. It was familiar, and I thought I could see a misty figure blending into the rock.
“Close enough,” said the Wendigo. He faced in that direction and called softly, “Sherwood.” At first I could barely hear him, but the sound grew until it filled the landscape as strongly as if he had shouted at the top of his lungs. He spoke again. “Sherwood. Come.”
The Wendigo wasn’t speaking to me, but I still felt the pull. I wish I knew how he did it. The fog had closed in again and I could no longer see the crag, but he turned and began to walk away. He headed directly for a particularly dense area of fog, where the vapor turned to water the moment it touched your skin and you couldn’t see more than five feet in front of your face.
“Home,” he breathed, again the word barely audible. The fog closed in thicker than ever until it was almost as disorienting as the featureless void I’d entered at the Columbarium. A bright, diffuse light source appeared, illuminating the fog from the side, further disorienting me. A faint shape loomed ominously right at the limit of my vision, then another. The rocky ground softened under my feet, and as the fog thinned, the shapes resolved themselves into the figures of Eli and Victor. The rocky floor became a carpet, the bright light became sunlight streaming through tall windows, and then we were back in Victor’s study.
Sherwood lay crumpled on the floor. Eli bounded over toward her, but I beat him to it. I put my fingers on the side of her throat and felt warmth, but no pulse. Then I moved my fingers slightly and found it, reassuringly strong and steady. She was alive. I didn’t want to let go of her-I could hardly believe she was back, solid of flesh and breathing easily, but Eli shouldered me aside, looking worried.
“What’s wrong? Why is she unconscious?” he asked the Wendigo, putting his large fingers where mine had been.
“Don’t worry,” said the Wendigo. “She’ll be fine. Remember, she was suspended in that place for a very long time. The psychic shock of returning has just temporarily short-circuited her consciousness, that’s all.”
I moved around Eli to the other side. I needed to touch her again, to feel her, to make sure this wasn’t just a cruel illusion. Eli scooped her up in his massive arms and laid her gently on the couch, and Victor joined us at her side. We all just stood there, staring silently down at her.
“Ahem,” said the Wendigo, with a fake cough. “I hate to break up this touching reunion, but I believe you have something you want to give me.”
“Not until she comes to,” Victor said.
As if on cue, Sherwood opened her eyes, looked up with a puzzled expression, and then closed them again. Eli leaned over and looked at her closely.
“I think he’s right,” he said. “She’ll be fine. Give him what he wants.” He glanced over at the Wendigo. “And if she isn’t…”
Victor picked up the messenger bag, now half full of rune stones, and handed it over, a bit reluctantly. A quick look inside, and the Wendigo was satisfied.
“Nice doing business with you,” he said and headed toward the door, then stopped.
“By the way,” he said, “did you get a chance to look at this morning’s paper?”
“No,” Eli answered. “Why?”
“You might find it interesting.”
Victor picked up the paper from the desk and slipped it out of its orange plastic bag. He unfolded it with a snap of his wrist, and I could read the headline from across the room: “Another Hiker Dead!” The Wendigo smiled and turned back toward the door.
“Just a moment,” said Victor sharply. He read down a ways. “This says it happened right at dusk. In Marin County.”
The Wendigo stopped and stared back at him.
“I hope you’re not thinking of welshing on the deal,” the Wendigo said. “That would be a very bad idea, I guarantee you.”
“No, not at all,” said Eli, and I knew he meant it. He’d warned us often enough about the dangers of reneging on promises made to uncanny creatures. “But you knew about that headline. It couldn’t have been the fake Ifrit; it was stalking us at the time. It couldn’t have been you; you were trapped in the circle. So what was it, then?”
“That does seem to be the question.”
“You want to tell us what’s been going on?”
“Why should I?” he said. “I’m not real fond of any of you.” He pointed at me. “You tried to kill me, remember, the first time I saw you.” He pointed at Victor. “And then you trapped me in that cage. What would have happened to me if I hadn’t escaped?” He shook his head. “No, I’m not overly fond of any of you.”
“You and the Ifrit creature aren’t the only things that came out of the energy pool, were you?” I said, finally getting it.
“Brilliant,” he said. “Right on top of things, I see.”
“But you won’t tell us what it was? Can you at least tell us what it looks like? I did save your ass out on that moor, after all.”
“Yeah, and your own as well.” He laughed, suddenly, sounding very human indeed.
“How about a hint? Just to show there are no hard feelings.”
“But there are. Just stay close to home and I’m sure you’ll figure it out, anyway. Eventually. But of course by that time it will be too late.”
Without another word, he walked through the door and down the stairs, and this time Victor didn’t try to stop him. A moment later, the sound of the front door slamming shut echoed up to us.
Eli turned his attention back to Sherwood. He bent down close and took her hand.
“Sherwood?” She opened her eyes briefly.
“Grmff,” she said, and closed them again.
“She’s coming out of it,” Eli said.
Victor meanwhile was skimming through the rest of the article in the paper.
“Damn,” he said. “Another girl. They pinpointed the attack to eight in the evening-just about the time we were catching the Wendigo, and fighting off the fake Ifrit. So it really wasn’t the fake Ifrit and it wasn’t our Wendigo, either. Damn.”
Sherwood interrupted whatever else he was going to say by opening her eyes and sitting up suddenly and speaking.
“What happened?” she said in a clear and lucid voice. “Where’s Christoph? How did we get back to Victor’s?”
For a moment I thought she was asking about her return from the moors, but Eli nodded in comprehension and a second later I caught on as well.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” he asked, still holding on to her hand. She shuddered.
“We were up at McClaren Park. Chistoph had hold of me. He’d taken over my mind, somehow-I was fighting all the time, but he was too strong. Then he let go and made a gesture in my direction. I felt a blast of energy, everything went white, and then suddenly I’m here with all of you staring down at me solemnly. Am I hurt?”
“Not exactly,” Eli said. “But there’s a lot to tell you. You had better get comfortable-this is going to be rather a long story. Victor, some tea perhaps?”
“I could use a cup of coffee,” I said. Victor ignored me, and Sherwood said tea would be nice.
It took all of an hour for Eli to explain what had happened during the last year while I’d thought she was dead. Sherwood took it all in, interrupting only a few times with questions. At the end of Eli’s tale, she only said, “What about my apartment?”
“Gone. You can stay here, though.”
“And my stuff?”
“Also gone. There didn’t seem any point in keeping it.” She was silent for a moment.
“Well, thank God my parents are dead. I never thought I’d say that, but it would have killed them.” Another moment of silence. “I should be thankful, I guess, but to me it’s like nothing happened. Except that I’ve lost a year of my life. What a total drag.”
“Not really,” Eli said. “We’ve all aged a year, but you haven’t. Think of it as if you had traveled into the future.”
“Exactly,” I added. “You’re looking at it the wrong way around. You haven’t lost a year-you’ve gained one. Like Eli said, it’s as if you were a time traveler. You’re only a few days older than you were that day up in McClaren Park, but Eli and Victor and me have aged since then. You’ve gained over a year on all of us-you’re in the future.”
“I suppose you’re right,” she said.
We spent what was left of the day filling her in on the state of the world these days. One of the things she was most interested in was Timothy and how long Victor and he had been together. By afternoon, she was exhausted and crashed in one of Victor’s spare rooms. She may not have remembered anything about her yearlong sojourn into the netherworld, but it had affected her nonetheless. She kept losing her train of thought and asking us to repeat things. It was worrisome, but Eli thought she’d be fine in a few days.
By the time I got home, I was drained as well. But when I entered my flat, there was something waiting there for me. Not a ravenous ghoul or ghostly apparition, but something far worse. The goddamned message light on the phone was blinking again.