Oh, crap.
A roar of challenge rang across the hillside, and Sal charged from the tree line at Hiromi’s back, his long fur-covered arms swinging like opposing pendulums and his head thrust forward. Hiromi only just managed to turn when he plowed into her, his fist pummeling into her stomach so hard she lifted up off of the ground and fell back in a tangle of spider legs and human limbs.
Thank the gods.
I ran toward Reggie to help him, and saw that Silene had already begun to tear at the webbing with a sharp stone, though with little obvious effect.
“No!” another voice shouted from the tree line, and Ned, Hiromi’s boyfriend, ran across the grass toward Sal, pulling his sleeveless T-shirt up over his ginger mohawk and tossing it aside as he ran.
“Sal!” I shouted, but he was already turning.
Ned leaped forward, and transformed into a gray-haired she-wolf the size of a small bear. Even in motion and from a distance, his—her—long yellowed fangs and heavily muscled chest, neck, and jaw looked like a vicious locomotive train of pain. She looked less like a common wolf and more like something He-Man would ride.
Sal roared a challenge and leaped forward into the attack.
The two giant creatures crashed into each other. Sal managed to get his arm up between his throat and Ned’s snapping jaw. Ned’s teeth clenched down on Sal’s arm, and Sal turned, swinging the giant wolf around. I doubted Ned’s teeth could penetrate Sal’s armor-like fur, but a waerwolf that size had enough strength to bite through steel, and Sal’s fur wouldn’t long keep his bones and muscles from being ground to pulp beneath.
Hiromi rose unsteadily to her feet. Sal swung Ned around to put the waerwolf between him and the jorōgumo.
My skin tingled, and the fossilized bone began to flake off in small patches. I would be able to use the revolver soon—and be completely naked and vulnerable. And I was not a trained fighter like Reggie. I glanced from Reggie back to where the small hip pouch lay in the crushed grass. Silene had given up trying to free Reggie from the webbing and was instead trying to reach safely past the webbing to touch his head, I assumed to heal him with her touch and try to counter the sedating poison of the webbing.
I ran for my gun.
Hiromi tried to skitter around Ned to reach Sal, but Sal swung Ned around, the wolf’s rear legs and bushy tail flying through the air and keeping the jorōgumo at a distance. Sal let out a sudden howl of pain and fell back a step. Ned’s grinding bite must be doing serious damage. Sal brought his other fist around in an arching hammer-like blow for the waerwolf’s back.
Ned released his bite and dropped to the ground, in perfect position for a good kick from Sal that would send her flying like a football.
Sal retreated in a low crouch instead, holding his injured arm close to his chest.
Blast. Sasquatches never kicked. Too much danger of having their foot caught, or their legs swept out from under them, exposing their most vulnerable point—the bottoms of their enormous feet. Even with his combat boots, Sal’s conditioned instincts had cost him a chance to take Ned out.
I reached the waist pack, and fumbled at it as the coating of thick bone continued to crumble and flake off my fingers.
Hiromi sprayed Sal with webbing, entangling him.
Ned turned, her tongue lolling out to one side, and spotted me. Her mouth stretched into a wicked, snarling grin, and she began loping in my direction. Saliva ran in steamers from her gaping mouth.
If Ned wasn’t Fettered, then one bite from that mouth could infect me with the waer curse—a bit of Fey spirit that would take root in me and grow into a full animal Fey spirit. I would become a waerwolf, like Ned. And like Pete.
More likely, though, she’d simply tear my throat out.
I raised the revolver in both shaking hands and fumbled back the hammer, causing the chamber to turn and click. Each chamber held a hollow point of iron with a silver-filled tip. They served well to stop most brightblood creatures.
The trick was getting the bullet in the creature.
Ned loped side to side, speeding at me in a zigzag pattern.
I squeezed the trigger. The gun jerked violently, pain shot up the back of my of my hand where the enforcer had smashed it yesterday, and the explosive bang rang in my ears.
I wasn’t sure where the bullet went, except not in Ned, who continued loping at me uninjured and definitely unfriendly.
I cocked back the hammer again, and did my best to still my shaking hands and ignore the pain, to point the gun straight and steady. Ned had crossed more than half the space to me.
I fired.
Ned yelped, and stumbled, but quickly recovered and continued to run at me, now with a slight limp to her gait. I’d grazed her front right leg.
I carefully squeezed the trigger again, not bothering to cock back the hammer.
Ned leaped at me, her yellow teeth and massive paws filling my vision.
The gun fired.
Blood sprayed hot across my skin. Ned yelped, and inertia carried her into me, slamming me to the ground. I flinched, expecting the pain of teeth digging into flesh, but Ned tumbled off of me and across the thick grass.
I moaned, my cheek pressed to the damp ground.
Ned coughed.
*He’s not dead. Get up!* Alynon said.
“I’m trying!” I snapped back.
I rolled away from Ned, and pushed myself to my feet. The gun had flown off into the tall grass, and I couldn’t see where.
Ned transformed back into his human form and held a hand against his left shoulder. Blood oozed out between his fingers. He snarled at me, and tried to sit up, but collapsed back and closed his eyes, his snarl turning into a growl of frustration and pain.
The silver inside him would keep him from transforming, and hopefully knock him out. If not removed, it might even kill him in time, but I would have the DFM take him into custody well before that happened.
If I survived Hiromi.
Sal stood wrapped in webbing, his arms trapped and pushing against the cocoon of milky white ropes as he tried to break free through sheer strength. His fur must protect him against the web’s sedating poison.
One strand of webbing broke with the loud Twang! of a snapping steel cable.
Hiromi advanced on Sal, black pincers growing from the corners of her mouth.
“Hiromi!” I shouted. “Stop, or I kill your boyfriend!”
I held my hand behind me, raised and pointing at Ned as if holding a weapon or wand, my body hiding the lie from Hiromi.
Hiromi turned and hissed at me. I prepared to dodge webbing. Hiromi wouldn’t come attack me directly. She knew by now that my most powerful weapon, my necromancy, would only work if I could touch her. If I were powerful enough to summon her spirit from a distance then I would have done so already.
I just needed to buy Sal and Reggie a little time to get back into the fight.
Hiromi raised her hands in preparation to cast webbing at me.
“Don’t do it!” I said, waving my hand behind me.
“It is not in your nature to kill,” Hiromi said, taking a step toward me, though she lowered her hands. “Not a defenseless being.”
*She has your number,* Alynon said.
“You have no idea what I’m capable of,” I replied to them both.
*Says the man pointing a pretend gun rather than using his real power.*
Hiromi’s eyes narrowed, then she laughed. “Your time has come, meddler,” she said.
I glanced behind me. Ned grinned back at me, one trembling hand held up in some kind of sign. He had signaled my bluff to Hiromi.
Smeg.
Hiromi raised her hands again.
Vines snaked up around her legs.
She twitched back, but the vines held fast.
“What—?” she said, and pulled harder at them, but the leafy green vines continued to snake up and over her legs in a thick, writhing mass.
We both looked at Silene.
The dryad
stood at the edge of the stone ring, leaning forward with her hands both planted in the grass, her chopped bangs only partially hiding eyes closed in concentration.
“Silver Court bitch!” Hiromi screamed. “I’m going to burn your tree down!”
“You can try!” Silene shouted back, and lifted her head. “If you can get free of my web.” Silene raised one hand, and clenched it into a fist.
The vines contracted, pulled downward, and Hiromi’s scream echoed across the bluff, filled with more pain than any single scream should hold. I heard several loud snaps and pops, and Hiromi collapsed down to the ground, three of her spider legs broken free and spurting dark fluid, the remaining legs bent at extreme angles.
“Holy—” I said.
*Shite,* Alynon agreed.
“Hiromi!” Ned screamed, and struggled to his knees. “Hiromi!” he said again, and tried to rise, but fell back down. He looked at me. “Damn you, Gramaraye! Stop that dryad bitch before she kills my Romi!”
I shook my head. “I—I think it’s too late.” But I walked toward Silene anyway. “Silene, that’s enough. She’s not going to hurt anyone else.”
Silene looked at me, her face wild, feral. I became keenly aware of the fact that I was stark naked. I held my hands self-consciously in front of my private area, but Silene’s eyes never left mine.
“She pretended to be one of us,” Silene said. “She betrayed us, and she tried to kill us. Don’t interfere, arcana. This is brightblood justice.”
“You’re within your rights,” I said. “But killing Hiromi isn’t going to help your cause, or yourself. Capturing her, helping us to prove she set you up for the attack on the alchemist, that will show the ARC you can work with us toward our common goals.”
A fresh wave of fury swept across Silene’s features. “This creature is the one responsible for Veirai’s death?”
*Smooth.*
Crap.
“Someone else told her to do it, and that someone’s the real enemy here. But if you kill Hiromi, we won’t find out who, or why.”
“Not true,” Silene said. “You can ask her after she’s dead.”
“Maybe, but—”
Silene raised her hand, spread-fingered, her eyes fixed on Hiromi.
“Please, don’t,” I said. “Talking to her spirit will drain me of life. And if Hiromi’s orders came from the Fey Lords themselves, we need her alive to prove it. You know my word alone won’t be enough to accuse the Forest of Shadows of breaking the Pax.”
Silene stared at Hiromi for a long minute, then slowly lowered her raised hand back to the grass, and shuddered. “It matters little anyway,” she said. “She will not live long.”
She slumped down to rest against the ring’s edge, appearing suddenly exhausted.
I looked at Hiromi, weeping and twitching on the ground.
“Can you heal her?” I asked Silene.
Silene looked from me to Hiromi. “I will not finish her life,” she said, her voice heavy now with weariness. “But neither will I save it.”
I sighed. Why couldn’t anything be easy?
I would need to get Reggie free of the webbing, and have him question Hiromi before she died. Reggie probably had come prepared with a potion or spell to melt jorōgumo webs, but he was the one person who couldn’t help free himself.
Of smeggin’ course.
I hurried to my pile of shredded clothing, and salvaged what I could, tying the remains of the flannel shirt around my waist to drape down like a loincloth.
*Waste of time,* Alynon said. *You have nothing to be embarrassed about except that gut, and sorry to say your loincloth does nothing to hide that.*
I’m not embarrassed, I’m cold, I lied, and began searching for the revolver. Well, I was cold, too. The misty breeze coming up off of the ocean prickled over the goosebumps on my skin, and my feet had long gone numb in the cold grass.
“You’re wasting time!” Ned said as I continued searching the tall weeds. He tried once more to get to his feet and collapsed as if extremely drunk. “She needs a healer!”
I ignored him, and found the revolver. I picked it up, and crossed the grassy bluff to Hiromi.
“Help me,” she cried.
“I’ll do what I can,” I promised, and looked at Sal. He had broken several strands of the webbing around him but still remained entangled from the waist down. “You okay?” I asked.
“Iself’s arm big hurts. But spiderbright webs almost gone.”
“Okay. Hang in there, and we’ll see about your arm.”
I kept clear of Hiromi’s front, where she might still somehow spit webs or lunge at me. I wrapped a shredded jeans leg around one of her detached limbs to protect my hands from the wire-like hairs, and tugged it free of the vines. The leg was as wide around as my calf, ending in a curved, talon-like tip with a wicked sawed edge. I dragged it over to Sal, and sawed at the webbing with the claw. Hiromi’s claw passed through the strands like hot drool through cotton candy, and the webbing fell away from Sal.
“Keep an eye on them,” I said, nodding to Hiromi and Ned, then strode over to Reggie and cut through the webbing covering him.
“Can you revive him?” I asked Silene.
She blinked at me, then at Reggie. “I—maybe.” She kept one hand on the grass, and placed the other on Reggie’s head. After a second, he stirred, and then jerked awake, raising his baton as if to strike me.
“It’s Finn!” I said. “You’re safe.”
He scrambled to his feet, and took in the scene. He looked from Hiromi to Silene. “Your work?” he asked her.
Silene nodded.
“Well done,” he said, and climbed out of the ring, glowing baton in one hand, pistol in the other. Silene climbed out after him.
“We don’t have much time,” I said. “We need to get Hiromi to a healer, or get one here.”
“Not sure it would help at this point,” Reggie said. “Those are mortal wounds for a jorōgumo. Stay here,” he said to Silene, then strode to Hiromi. I went with him. He glanced at me sideways. “Nice look by the way, Tarzan.”
I sighed. “Thanks. Why didn’t you just blast Hiromi with some wizard magic?”
“Reasons I don’t feel like discussing,” Reggie replied. He stopped in front of Hiromi. “Hiromi Haraguchi, you are hereby accused of breaking the rules of the Pax Arcana by inciting war between arcana, feybloods, and the Fey through acts of deception and terror. Tell me your orders, and who gave them, and you may be given asylum in a DFM holding facility. Otherwise, you will face sentencing under Pax law.”
Hiromi hissed a laugh, but it was weak now, and her eyes drooped. “You’re too late, Enforcer,” she said, her words slurred. “I am free. As will all of my brothers and sisters be soon enough.”
She slumped down, and shuddered.
Her remaining legs curled inward.
“No! Hiromi, no!” Ned shouted.
I turned, raising my revolver, and Reggie did the same with his pistol.
Ned rose to his feet, but remained where he stood, swaying slightly.
“You bastards!” he said, tears running down his cheeks. “You took her from me! You took the only good thing in this stinking human world.” He wiped at his face, smearing the blood from his wound across it. “You will all face the Shadows someday.” He turned to Silene. “And you, Silver whore, you will be among the first to suffer.” Then he lurched into a stumbling run at Silene, screaming.
Silene tried to re-enter the protection of the stone ring, but the air flashed orange above the stones. Silene bounced back into the grass. She couldn’t re-enter it without Reggie’s help.
“Stop!” I shouted at Ned. With Hiromi dead, Ned was our best chance for a living witness to hand over to the ARC.
Reggie didn’t bother with a warning. He aimed and fired several shots in rapid succession.
The first two hit Ned in the arm and side, causing wounds to blossom like roses. Ned jerked, but did not fall, continuing his charge at Silene. She retrea
ted but did not run, her expression one of determination. The next two shots missed.
The third hit Ned in the head.
His head jerked away from us, and his body followed the direction of his head, wobbling like a marionette operated by a drunk.
Ned tumbled from the edge of the bluff.
I ran to the edge and looked down. Ned lay in a contorted, bloody mess among the rocks and ferns at the base of the cliff.
A seagull cried as it rode the wind in from the Salish Sea.
*Well, that could have gone better,* Alynon said.
19
I Know You Got Soul
I turned away from the bluff’s edge, away from the view of the sea, away from the sight of Ned broken and dead on the ground far below.
“What now?” I asked Reggie as he stepped beside me and glanced over the edge.
“Now we take them both to the local DFM headquarters,” he said.
“Will the ARC at least have a necromancer Talk to them?” I asked, remembering how the DFM hadn’t even bothered Talking to Veirai.
“Yes,” Reggie said, and rubbed vigorously at the top of his bald head. “But the ARC isn’t going to care too much about clearing your feyblood friends. They’re just going to wanna know about any threats to arcana security, if any of the Fey Demesnes are actively working against us. They may not ask the questions you want asked, and if they do, well, I guess it will depend on who’s doing the asking whether the answers leave the room.”
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind. “So, in other words, if I want to prove Silene and her brightbloods are innocent and make sure they aren’t still in danger, I’ll need to Talk to Hiromi myself.”
“’Fraid so,” Reggie replied.
Veirai’s spirit had been largely intact, her personality whole, because her nature had been largely human, and her Fey nature minimal. But Hiromi, she was as much or more a product of her Fey nature as any human aspect. Whatever of her human spirit I was able to summon, I did not expect it to be entirely whole, sane, or safe.
So not only would getting any answers from Hiromi be much harder—and more draining—but if I got possessed by such a spirit, I’d go all Jack Nicholson, Shining style, and that was if I was lucky.
Bigfootloose and Finn Fancy Free Page 21
