by M. D. Massey
Fallyn examined her fingernails. “Right on both counts, but don’t get too familiar. I haven’t decided if I’m going to rip your head off yet or not.”
I smirked at Fallyn. “He does have a point. Still, I’m with you—this is definitely not what a chupacabra is supposed to look like.”
“What, you’ve never seen a chupacabra before?” Larry protested. “C’mon, my mug’s all over the internet! They got pictures of me, video, the whole bit. I’m famous—or internet famous, at least.”
He babbled on about how many followers he had on social media, while Fallyn and I ignored him.
“What do you think we should do with him?”
“Well, he smells like Quorn, so he wasn’t lying about that.” She scratched her nose. “I dunno. Let him go, I guess. Like I said, he seems harmless.”
I looked Larry in the eye. “If I release you, are you just going to follow us back to camp?”
“Of course. You guys are the most excitement we’ve had here in—well, forever. And I can’t wait to see what happens when you two run into that dickhead of a skinwalker—”
Fallyn and I did a double-take.
“What skinwalker?” we practically yelled in unison.
I soon discovered that threatening Larry the Chupacabra was pointless. As it turned out, he’d been cursed by the skinwalker, and thus considered himself to be beyond death’s grasp so long as the curse remained. The logic escaped me, but Larry consistently maintained that he was un-killable due to the effects of the curse. Once we were back at camp, we bribed him with junk food and a few cans of PBR to get him to spill the beans.
“Alright, Larry—tell us what you know about this skinwalker,” I demanded.
Larry had his snout buried in a bag of Funyuns, busily licking up every last crumb. “Like I said, this asshole cursed me a few years back. I’ve been trailing him ever since and waiting for an opportunity to trick him into removing the curse.”
Fallyn leaned over to whisper in my ear. “Pfft. I have a feeling Brainiac here would have a hard time tricking a third-grader out of their lunch money.”
“Why’d the skinwalker curse you?” Hemi asked. He’d become fascinated with Larry as soon as he’d heard the word “chupacabra.” The big guy was deep into conspiracy theories, a hobby he justified on grounds of professional curiosity. He didn’t necessarily believe them, but instead thought most such rumors were started to cover up events that spilled over into the mundane world from the World Beneath.
“I stole a bunch of corn and squash from his garden,” he said as he shook the bag off his snout. He looked up, realizing that everyone was staring at him. “Oh, so now I’m the weird one? Have you kids taken a look in the mirror lately? Let’s see here, we got a druid, a demigod, a werewolf, and whatever yuppie Wednesday Addams over there is—nope, that’s not strange at all. Anyway, you try being a vegan when you don’t have hands. Ever open a can of green beans with your teeth? It ain’t pretty, lemme tell you.”
Fallyn squinted and cocked her head to the side. “Wait a minute—I’m confused. Did the skinwalker turn you into a chupacabra?”
Larry’s mangy ears twitched. “Huh? No, he cursed me so I couldn’t shift into my human form. Duh.”
Jesse piped up from where she sat sulking a few yards distant. “But you just said you don’t have hands, which was why you stole produce from the skinwalker’s garden. Are you saying he cursed you before you stole the vegetables?”
“No, after. Look, I can only transform into a human under the light of a full moon. So, that’s when I normally get all my shopping done and do food prep for the month. I put everything in zip-lock bags—easy to rip open with your teeth.”
Fallyn frowned as she massaged her temples. “This is giving me a headache.”
“Let’s get back on task,” I interjected. “Why is the skinwalker here, Larry?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Larry said as he slurped PBR from a bowl. “His son called and told him you were headed this way.”
Now I was getting a headache. “His son?”
“Yeah, what’s that kid’s name? Stu? Steven?”
“Stanley?” I ventured.
“Yup, that’s it,” the chupacabra nodded. “Stanley Bylilly. The kid’s sort of a pushover, but his dad is a real piece of work, believe me. Half-Hopi, but they cast him out on suspicion of using black magic. He’s, uh, kind of bitter about it—about life in general, really.”
“I thought skinwalkers were a Navajo thing?” Hemi asked.
I shook my head. “Most of the Native American tribes of the Southwest have their own version of the legend. The Navajo term for them is yee naaldlooshii, which roughly translates into ‘with it, he goes on all fours,’ referencing their use of magic or a focus object to shift. Hopi and Utes also have their own versions of skinwalkers, while Mesoamerican tribes have a different term for a practitioner of magic who can slip their skin—nagual, which more or less means a magician.”
Larry’s rat-like tail twitched. “No matter what language you say it in, that old man is bad news. And let me tell you, he is seriously invested in tracking you down.”
“Any idea why this witch is looking for you?” Fallyn asked.
I sighed. “No idea. Then again, Stanley and I have had a couple of run-ins. I’m definitely not his favorite person. Maybe the old man wants to take revenge on me for embarrassing his son?”
“Oh, hell,” Jesse exclaimed as she stood up quickly. “Larry, what’s the father’s name?”
Larry licked the bowl clean of beer foam and belched loudly. “Stanley’s dad goes by Ernie around white people, but I once heard a Hopi call him Istaqa. I’m told it means ‘coyote man.’ Fitting.”
Jesse smacked her forehead. “Colin, think back to the time when I first started haunting you. Doesn’t that name ring a bell?”
I scratched my head. “Hmm, Ernie, Ernest… Ernesto! That’s the old man who helped us find the peyote for that potion Finn cooked up, the one that allowed us to—ahem, communicate while you were a…”
I paused, unwilling to say it.
“When I was a ghost, Colin,” Jesse said. “It’s okay to talk about it. I got over that whole thing a long time ago. Besides, if this skinwalker is coming to collect on the debt you owe, I think we have bigger issues.”
Larry looked back and forth between us. “Man, and I thought my relationship with that zombie corgi was bizarre,” he said under his breath. Everyone turned to stare at the chupacabra, causing him to grin sheepishly. “Oops—did I say that out loud?”
10
“C’mon, Jess—do you really think this guy would bother to track me down, way the hell out here? All he did was give us some psychedelic cacti. Heck, I even offered to pay him for it, but he said he’d rather trade out, favor for favor, at a later date.”
Jesse frowned. “Colin, there had to be a good reason why he insisted on that particular form of payment. He likely sensed or saw something in you that made him think it’d be worth it to have you indebted to him.”
“You mean, like my Fomorian alter-ego?” I asked.
“Exactly,” Jesse replied. “And chances are good he’s going to ask you to do something you won’t like—something he either can’t or doesn’t want to do on his own.”
“Plus, you made a fool out of his kid, twice,” Fallyn interjected. “Don’t forget that part, shit magnet.”
I winced. “That’s really starting to hurt, you know.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, cry me a river.” She began peeling off layers of clothing. “I’m bored and hungry, so I’m going to go hunt. If this skinwalker shows up, give him my regards.”
Larry pushed himself up on his front paws, obviously very much interested in what Fallyn was doing.
“Eyes front, Caladryl,” Fallyn growled.
Larry kept looking until Hemi grabbed him by the scruff and held him over the side of the cliff. “You might not be able to die, but I reckon a fall from this height would hurt. Speaking fr
om experience.”
“Alright, alright already,” the chupacabra groused. “Sheesh, can’t a cryptid have a little fun every once in a while?”
Hemi set Larry down, just in time for him to catch a look at Fallyn’s half-wolf form retreating into the fading dusk. He continued to stare long after she’d gone.
“Wowza, what a canine,” the chupacabra muttered.
Ignoring them both, I pulled out the burner Fallyn had given me. I turned it on and walked around camp, trying to get a signal.
“Aren’t those for emergencies only?” Hemi asked, stroking his chin.
“So she said, but I need to make a call.” I turned the phone off with a growl. “I’m going to head back to the campgrounds, see if I can get a decent signal. If not, I think I saw some pay phones there.”
Hemi shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea—”
“C’mon, Hemi—lighten up. You think the federal government is monitoring every single phone in the nation with voice recognition software, just waiting for me to make a call?”
“Yes,” he stated, crossing his arms over his chest. “Ever hear of a little NSA project known as Boundless Informant? Or PRISM? Carnivore? MYSTIC? Stuff is real, Colin.”
“I have a computer surveillance chip inside my skull,” Larry said to no one in particular.
I tsked, ignoring the chupacabra. “You spend way too much time in those conspiracy groups, dude.”
Hemi arched an eyebrow. “Honestly, Colin, I don’t think—”
Jesse rolled her eyes at me. “Don’t bother. You know he always has to find things out the hard way.”
“Yeah, but you figure a bloke’d learn his lesson, eventually,” Hemi replied.
“I can hear you!” I said as I exited the camp.
“We know!” my friends said in unison.
I was halfway to the visitor’s center when I was startled by a voice that spoke up right next to me.
“Don’t suppose you have any trail mix on you, do you?”
I jumped five feet sideways, landing just off the trail with my Glock in one hand and a fireball in the other. “Holy shit—you scared the hell out of me! And how in the hell did you sneak up on me like that?”
“Magic. Duh.” The chupacabra yawned. “So, no trail mix?”
I holstered my pistol and extinguished the fireball. “Sorry, all out.” Feigning nonchalance, I headed toward the welcome center with the chupacabra padding along beside me. “Larry, why are you following me?”
“Would you believe it’s because you’re the most interesting one of the bunch? Besides that sexy-ass shifter. Hubba, hubba,” he said, somehow managing to waggle his nearly bald, dog-ish eyebrows.
“I’m not buying it. Try again.”
“Well, druid, it might be because you’re my ticket to getting this curse removed. Not that I mind being in my natural form, mind you—it’s just that it’s kind of hard to shop for eczema cream when you look like a coyote with alopecia.”
“Speaking of which,” I said as I picked up the pace, “what exactly are you? As far as I know, the legend of the chupacabra is a fairly recent addition to world folklore. I’ve never seen or heard of a creature quite like you before—”
“Thank you,” Larry replied.
“Um, that wasn’t a compliment. As I was saying, I’ve never seen anything like you before, and it makes me wonder how you came to be.”
“You really want to know?” he asked in a quiet voice.
“Yes, I do. Considering that you seem to have latched onto me and my—er, crew—it seems only fair that I should know more about you and where you came from.”
I let that statement hang in the air, waiting to see how Larry would react.
“Plum Island, New York. That’s where.”
My ears perked up when I heard that name—several of the conspiracy sites I’d recently looked at had mentioned it. “I’ve heard rumors about that place. That’s where the U.S. government studies animal diseases.”
Larry snickered. “Among other things. I mean, if the public only knew what the feds are cooking up there. Stuff that makes me look like a Happy Hugs Build-a-Bear.”
“You were created in a lab?”
“Yup. The military has been researching the genetics of cryptids and supernatural creatures for decades. And before that, they attempted to interbreed various species. Wasn’t until the human genome project was completed that they experienced a breakthrough, though. That’s when they figured out how to combine human and ’thrope DNA.”
I pulled up short, hands on hips. “Come again?”
“Oh, that surprises you? I mean, look at me, for cripes’ sakes. My kind were one of their early failures—and believe me, there are more. The Mothman, the Lizardman of Scrape Ore Swamp, the Skunk Ape, the Shunka Warakin—I could go on and on.”
“Huh. Okay, I’ll bite. How’d they make you?”
Larry sat on his haunches so he could scratch his ear. “They were trying to create Wargs. Can you believe it? The government wanted to create giant war dogs that would obey their every command. So, they decided to mix the DNA of normal dogs with werewolf and kitsune DNA, and bam! They got me.”
“Kitsune—explains how you’re so sneaky, anyway.”
He nodded exuberantly. “Oh yeah, kitsune are good at that stuff. Magical ninjas, almost.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I can see ghosts, too. Shitty talent, really, cuz once a ghost figures out that you can talk to them, they’ll never leave you alone. There’s a bunch hanging out at your camp, by the way. Kinda weird, since I never—”
I cut him off mid-ramble. “Any idea why the government would engineer that trait into your DNA?”
“None. Probably a mistake. Now, if only they’d been able to genetically engineer some hair on me. I—” Larry stopped mid-sentence, sitting up like a prairie dog with his front paws in the air. His ears swiveled left and right, and he let out a low whine. “Aw shit, we gotta hide!”
“Hide? From what?”
“Skinwalkers,” he said, his voice trailing off as he disappeared from view.
Great.
Before Larry had faded off into the night, I had Dyrnwyn out and a lightning spell readied in my other hand. Faint crackles of electricity jumped between my fingers and they ran up and down my forearm, lighting the area around me with an eerie blue-white glow. I didn’t need the light to see, of course, both due to my naturally-heightened senses and because I was already stealth-shifting. Enhanced senses were part of the Fomorian package, after all.
Two shadowy shapes loped out of the darkness, just to the edge of the pool of light. The pair looked somewhat like transformed werewolves, half-human and half-animal, but twisted and distorted in a way that made my stomach churn. Their bodies were long, lean, and covered in short, grey fur that faded to tan and white in places, mostly on their undersides and chests. They moved on all fours in a manner that was both graceful and disconcerting at the same time, as if their limbs were popping in and out of joint with their every stride, in contrast to the quicksilver smoothness of their gait.
But strangest of all were their faces. They looked much more human than animal, muzzles only slightly elongated with most of their human features still in place. The lead skinwalker’s eyes flashed red as my spell flared slightly, while the one trailing had gold-yellow irises that shone in the night. That one scowled at the sight of me, while the apparent leader maintained a poker face that betrayed little in the way of emotion or intent.
Since they’d shown no aggression, I decided to keep Dyrnwyn’s blade extinguished. Besides, I wanted to surprise them if worse came to worst. As they came to a halt they shifted, morphing out of that twisted, four-legged form that tied my stomach in knots. The pair rose on their hind legs, their spines straightening as their hair, teeth, and claws receded, giving way to burnished bronze skin and lean muscle. When the transformation was complete they were each naked, save for the coyote skins draped over their shoulders.
I rai
sed my chin, half in greeting, and half in challenge. “Ernesto, Stanley. Fancy meeting you two here. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Stanley spoke up first, his eyes flashing gold in the dark. “We still have business, druid. I—”
“Sowi'ngwa, quiet!” the old man barked over his shoulder, instantly silencing his son. “As I told you earlier, you may settle your quarrel with him later—after he repays his debt to me.” Ernesto turned to stare me in the eye. “You’ve not forgotten our agreement, have you, druid?”
He hadn’t changed much since I’d last seen him, save for a few more scars and wrinkles. Wispy tendrils of shoulder-length white hair blew in the faint breeze, in stark contrast to his weathered brown skin and the thick gray-brown hair on the pelt that rested across his shoulders. The old man was lean and wiry, with just a hint of fat and loose skin around his midsection, but not so much that you’d mistake him for being soft. His ropy muscles and calloused hands spoke otherwise.
But it was the cold and uncaring look in his eyes that gave him away. This was no harmless old man, no fragile retiree content to collect pension checks and watch reruns on television. No, this man was a killer, and age had only tempered and hardened him in that regard. Unlike his son, Ernesto Bylilly was not a man to be trifled with.
“I remember, and I wondered when you’d come to collect. Kind of strange timing though, tracking me down while I’m on vacation. Speaking of which, how’d you find me?”
Ernesto remained taciturn, his face an inscrutable mask. “As it turns out, my son isn’t a complete fool after all. Stanley guessed you’d go to the wolves for assistance. When you showed up at their hideout, he placed a tracking spell on their vehicles.”
