Without having done anything to Natch, I returned to my body. A thought plundered from Crowley trickled through my consciousness. "If Coyote can read my mind..."
"I can't, Crowley, I can't," I lied as I turned toward him and the headshot from the pistol I had given him.
Jytte Ravel opened her eyes when Crowley let her hand slip from his grasp. She found herself in a deep valley on a red planet. Huge red stone walls towered above her, giving her a glimpse of a star-speckled river of darkness above. She felt neither warm nor cold, but found the place as arid as the Arizona desert in high summer.
She had been the last person to be brought to the site, but the others hung back. Mickey, tall and strong as ever, cradled a chubby, black-haired toddler in his arms. An old Native American, the child's grandfather moved his lips as if murmuring softly to the child. A couple of steps away, Ryuhito watched Mickey carefully, and between them stood a small, wizened man wearing the scarlet robes of a Tibetan monk. Though she could see them, and knew they could see her, they remained distant and separate as if in another dimension altogether.
"I thought you might want to see them off," Crowley said, nodding toward the other people, "and to see this."
The shadow man moved aside, and Jytte saw words had been carved deep into the red rock. "Tycho Caine," she read aloud, "Born to be immortal, he died embracing his humanity." She smiled and nodded to Crowley. "He would have liked that, a lot."
"I hope so. He made a tough choice."
"As did Coyote before him."
"True, quite true." Crowley turned and looked at the other five individuals in the valley. "With the training they will get in Kanggenpo, each of them will learn what he needs to know to someday become Coyote and make those difficult decisions."
He raised his hand and waved at them. They mirrored his motions, with Mickey helping Will's son Richard wave good-bye. Jytte waved back, feeling a lump rise in her throat as the monk led them off down the canyon and on up into air on an invisible walkway. As they moved away from her, color leeched out of their images, and before long they were lost to sight against the starry night sky.
Jytte tucked a strand of blond hair behind her right ear. "Will they be able to learn enough in enough time to face off a threat from another Dark Lord?"
"Will's son, most likely yes. He will have the best chance, growing up in Kanggenpo and learning all that Lama Mong has to offer. Likewise, Mickey is young enough intellectually to benefit greatly from what the monastery has to offer." Crowley shrugged slightly. "Ryuhito might be another matter, but he has a good grounding and is willing to work hard. I think he was humbled by his performance as Pygmalion's minion, and he feels a great obligation to Will's son because of having been the reason the boy's father died."
She nodded, analyzing every word and finding that it tallied with her assessment of the situation. "What did his grandfather say when you told him that Ryuhito would not be coming back?"
Crowley scratched at his throat with his right hand, and the gold ring glinted as he did so. "The emperor was not pleased, because he does love his grandson, but he is happy the youth is neither dead nor the author of irreparable mayhem. To make amends, he is urging a number of the zaibatsu to invest in plants on the reservation east of Phoenix and in joint ventures with Lorica to provide jobs for the survivors of the battle for Turquoise."
"Good." Jytte folded her arms and tried to suppress the shiver working up her spine. "Do you think there is enough time for any of these plans to come to fruition? Sinclair and Rajani have decided to marry and adopt Mickey's sister, despite knowing the truth about the world. Nero Loring has resumed his leadership of Lorica, and his daughter is being brought along to replace him."
"I know, I know, and Bat has resumed his career as a pit fighter, Natch still lurks in Eclipse and Hal has thrown himself into the Sunburst Foundation." The shadow man nodded his head. "I think there's time. I hope so. As it is, the Dark Lords and Ladies are in something of an uproar right now. Four of their number died in battling related to Earth. As they do not know the details, they only know that where Dark Lords had been before there are now none. There are some major battles going on right now to snap up what is left of the Empress' domain and Fiddleback's holdings.
"On top of that, the remaining Dark Lords know all of the deceased were connected to and in opposition to Coyote, and they know Coyote is human, and that has them worried."
"How long before they figure out there is no Coyote?"
Crowley reached over and flicked some red dust from the first letter of Tycho Caine's name. "That's the key, isn't it? We need a Coyote to be out doing the things that Coyote does. As long as the Dark Lords think Coyote could kill them, they will be circumspect and tentative. They will not be as decisive as they might be, and their fellows will be poised to snap up their territory at the first sign of trouble."
Jytte wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. "So, are you going to accept the job? By your own admission, it will be a time before even Ryuhito is ready to become Coyote."
Crowley sounded surprised by her question. "Me? Coyote? No, I don't think so. I already run under too many other names, and am known by creatures out there as an annoyance. They could never think I was Coyote."
"But you managed to kill Caine, and he was a Dark Lord at that point." Jytte watched him closely. "Until then, only a Dark Lord had been able to kill a Dark Lord. Is that what you are, Mr. Crowley, a Dark Lord?"
The living silhouette shook his head. "No, I'm no Dark Lord. I pulled the trigger on Coyote's Wildey Wolf, but I did not kill him. He could read my thoughts and he knew what I was going to do before I did it. He knew his aspect was death, and he decided to give himself up to it before he took us with him. A Dark Lord killed a Dark Lord in that death, as well.
"Nor am I Coyote material, Jytte. Not at all." The occultist looked from the grave to her. "But you are."
His suggestion sent a jolt of self-doubt through her. "Me, Coyote? I could never..."
"Nonsense, Jytte. When Coyote went down, you took over the group and ran it. His predecessor had enough trust in your abilities to make you the only person in whom he confided concerning his plan to bring Caine into the fold." Crowley rested his hands on her shoulders. "When we returned from Pygmalion's dimension, you immediately went to work helping Lilith and Mero use the Lorica Citadel's computers to locate the last of the bombs placed by Darius MacNeal's men. You constantly pay forward the debt you owe to Coyote."
A million conflicting emotions and thoughts raced through her mind. She saw her life paraded before her mind's eye in a series of slides that had been shuffled repeatedly. Scenes from her early days with Coyote predominated, showing his kind face and bringing with it a soundtrack filled with warm praise for her efforts. A few images from the times before Pygmalion took her and from during his work on her surfaced, but she fled past them. Finally, things melded together into the picture of the black silicate statue of her that Pygmalion had created and of her bullet shattering it.
I am not that helpless child, I am Jytte. She hesitated for a second, then nodded to herself. I can be Coyote.
"It won't be easy, you know." Crowley slipped his left arm over her shoulders. "You will have to learn how to walk through dimensions and a number of other tricks."
She arched an eyebrow at him. "Can't I just go to the monastery and learn with the rest?"
Crowley laughed. "'Fraid not, Jytte. No women are allowed there. Still, I can instruct you in the disciplines you'll want to master. After that, well..."
"You'll still be willing to help out?" She looked at him expectantly. "You know, from time to time, as needed."
"It would be my pleasure, Ms. Ravel." The shadow man nodded solemnly.
"No need to be so formal, Damon. Jytte smiled and slipped her right hand through the crook of his left arm. "Why don't you just call me...Coyote?"
Fiddleback Trilogy 3 - Evil Triumphant Page 30
