Fiddleback Trilogy 2 - Evil Ascending

by Stackpole, Michael A.

  Mickey's wave of fear crested over Rajani, then she felt an equally sharp jolt of pleasure from the wolfman. With a bitter, coppery taste in her mouth, she realized the wolfman hungered for Mickey's terror, lusted after it as Andy had lusted after her.

  "If you dare touch him . . ." she began. Beyond him, backing him, a dozen dogs and coyotes slunk forward. One, a huge Alsatian, came forward more boldly and bared his fangs at Rex. The Alsatian started to growl and set itself to lunge, but the wolfman turned and snarled at the Alsatian, forcing it to back off.

  Mickey's fear almost overrode the exchange between wolfman and Alsatian. In it, Rajani sensed the Alsatian's resentment at the wolfman's domination of what had been his pack. In return, the wolfman radiated invincibility and contempt for the Alsatian. The pack shifted uneasily, as if to deny they ever objected to the wolfman's leadership, and the Alsatian backed away from the emotional fury projected by the wolfman.

  The wolfman turned and studied Rajani. He sniffed the air, but the slight breeze curled the smoke's fire around her like a cloak. He sneezed once, then nodded. "You are most interesting prey, but it is not you that I want." He pointed at Mickey with a clawed finger, then gestured with it to command the boy forward.

  Mickey buried his head in the blanket, and Rajani felt his terror rip through her like a chain saw. The wolfman's eyes glazed over almost orgasmically, and he howled in delight. Discipline wavered among his pack, then he snarled and the various curs backed away. The Alsatian moved the least and turned to face the wolfman directly.

  His control over them is not complete. Dropping to one knee, she reached back with her right hand and let the rattler slither forward into it. The wolfman's eyes followed the snake's movement, then he looked up and she made eye contact. «I will not let you have the boy.»

  «I give you no choice, alien.»

  "Dorothy, scream!"

  Though she had put on a brave front, Dorothy let all her fear out through her scream. The wolfman oriented on her, then back to Mickey when his sister's screams spiked his terror higher than ever. The wolfman grinned sloppily and opened himself wide to the emotional feast the two human children provided him.

  Mickey's fear hammered Rajani, but she fought against it. Instead of letting her shield slide up to protect her, she let her own fear and anguish pour out. She felt hormones course through her body, giving her more physical energy that she translated into mental power. Reshaping and guiding Mickey's fright, she forged it into a weapon.

  The wolfman soaked up the emotional storm like a plant basking in sunlight. Rajani took her share of that same energy and forced it back into itself. She trapped and concentrated it, like light trapped in a laser tube. She squeezed it tighter and tighter, letting the pressure build. Her hands balled into fists, and her teeth ground together. Finally, when she could hold it no more, she directed the fear at the wolfman and gave him everything.

  Open as he was, the wolfman had no time to muster his defenses. As had happened with the shadow man, the golden bolt Rajani projected pierced him. Unlike the shadow man, however, it did more than show itself in his eyes and nostrils. It jetted like dragonfire from every orifice of his body. It seeped out over his skin like sweat and poured out of his ears and nose like blood. His mouth opened, but gold energy, not words, vomited forth.

  In a heartbeat, the wolfman went from hunger to satiation, then beyond. Brimming with fear, he could not metabolize it all. It covered him, permeated him and became him. Panic seized and twisted him, stunning his mind and crushing his psyche. Locked in the throes of a psychic meltdown, he made a last-ditch effort to save himself. Relinquishing his grasp on the energy, he vented as much as he could into the area.

  The pack instantly sensed his terror and attacked. Leaping, yipping canine forms closed on him. A brindle pit bull sank its teeth into the wolfman's calf while a Doberman pinscher dove at his throat and a terrier worried his left ankle. The wolfman tried to bat the Doberman aside, but a rottweiler took a bite out of his left hamstring, and he went down. Before he could yell, the snarling canine mass buried him.

  The Alsatian had hung back, but started forward when the wolfman lost his footing. But before he could join the melee, Rex hit him from the flank and locked his white teeth on the Alsatian's throat. They rolled over and over out into the shadows to be quickly eclipsed by the bloody and frenzied pack.

  "Move, fast!" Rajani pointed back away from the yellow eyes and reddened teeth of the roiling dogfight.

  "Eh!" shouted Mickey as he stood.

  "Rex will find us, Mickey. Move!" Dorothy grabbed Mickey's hand and started sprinting on through the thin woods.

  Rajani took one look back at the pack, then followed the children. Her right leg throbbed with pain, but seemed to be functional. Tracking the kids more by emotion than sight or sound, she caught up with them quickly and led the way down a steep hill. Using her night vision to pick out deer trails, she got them safely away from their old campsite.

  Dorothy leaned heavily on a tree. "Wait, gotta catch my breath." She gulped down air. "That was a luper, wasn't it?"

  Rajani shook her head. "A luper?"

  "A werewolf, a loup-garou." Dorothy bent over and breathed in through her nose. "My dad's girlfriend was Cajun. She told us stories."

  "Ah oaries."

  "Yes, Mickey, bad stories." Dorothy looked up at her. "That was one, wasn't it?"

  "I don't know." Werewolves? There are no such things, or were none when I went into stasis. Were my parents wrong? Was Dr. Chandra mistaken? Have things changed so much in such little time?

  Rajani turned and peered back along their backtrail. She saw movement through the brush, then heard something. Mickey smiled and pointed. "Eheze!"

  "C'mere, Rex!" Dorothy shouted.

  Mickey clapped his hands and Rajani smiled. She watched the dog descend the hill. "Aside from the limp, Rex looks okay."

  She reached out with her mind to welcome Rex, but she sensed nothing from him. As the canine approached them, the dog's form shifted and bloated, it thickened and widened, growing taller as it reared up on its hind legs. Torn and bleeding, dragging its left leg behind it, the creature they had taken to be Rex transformed itself into the luper they had left behind.

  "Almost worked . . . your trick. I killed them." He clutched his right hand to his stomach, and Rajani saw at least two of his fingers had been gnawed off. "Even your Rex." He swallowed hard and looked at her. "Share the boy with me. Please."

  "No. Go away."

  The luper grimaced painfully. "I asked. Now I demand. I need him. Give him to me."

  "No!" Rajani slowly crouched and pushed Mickey behind her. «I will not surrender him to you.»

  «You cannot stand against me!» The wolfman's lower jaw dropped open in a lupine grin. «We should have dominion over these creatures. If I must destroy you first to get it, I will.»

  «Your bark does not frighten me.»

  «Then perhaps my bite will!»

  The wolfman looked at her, and again they made eye contact. Rajani began to push more fear out at him, but hot, raw, bestial emotions slammed back down the link. Gore-drenched tableaux raped her mind as she saw the wolfman lead his pack through massacres in outlying towns. Transferred to her was the obscene delight he took in slaking his thirst with bright, arterial blood. The victim's horror pulsed out stronger and stronger as his heart weakened and he knew he was dying, but feared he would not die fast enough.

  Rajani snapped her head to the left and felt her hair veil half her face. She brought her defenses up, but they merely filtered the wolfman's blood-spattered fantasies.

  Instead of seeing them in any organized fashion, things became a blended mixture of corpses bobbing in bloody pools, with terror rising from them like scarlet steam.

  Rajani felt the wolfman probing her mind, looking for her fears so they could be woven into his sick fantasies, but she deflected him. She tried to turn his thoughts back on him, but his physical weakness only seemed to strengthen
him mentally. Sensing her resistance, he poured the power on and a blood-red world congealed around her. She felt locked in as the blood dried to a deep maroon, then became clear so she could watch the wolfman stalk toward Mickey.

  «You are done.» The wolfman, to her eyes, blazed with an unholy red light. «I am Invincible!»

  Then, suddenly, the wolfman jerked up to his full height. Rajani saw something waver in and out of focus as she fought to see empathically. Concentrate. Focus. She locked her jaw and fed despair into anger and hope. What is happening?

  The scene cleared, and she saw it. Glowing with a bright silver light, one of the search drones burrowed its way through the werewolf's back, it drilled its way in, going almost all the way out of its chest, then it reversed direction and withdrew. It shot straight up into the sky, and she heard laughter echo from everywhere at the same time.

  «I love it when they make themselves into such wonderful targets.» Rajani felt the rictus holding her face as a shadow hand touched her on the shoulder. «Make the child safe.»

  The world shifted abruptly, and Rajani found herself staring at the crumpled wolfman. Mickey looked at it, then her, and then waved his hand.

  "Yes, Mickey, it went bye-bye." Dorothy hugged her little brother, then stared at Rajani. "What happened? He stared at you and you stopped moving. Then he clutches his stomach and starts bleeding from the mouth and nose. What happened?"

  "Kishal." Mickey pointed at the body. "Kishal."

  "Crystal, Mickey?" Dorothy looked very confused. "What is he talking about?"

  Rajani shook her head. "I don't know. Maybe he saw something. I think the beast had some internal injuries from the fight with his pack. Running after us did him in. He was dead, but didn't even notice it." As she saw Dorothy's face hardening, she added quickly, "I've seen that sort of thing happen in Eclipse."

  Dorothy shook her head slightly, then relented. "Maybe, but I don't know."

  "It doesn't matter, Dorothy. We'll be safe for the rest of tonight. Then, tomorrow or the next day, we can be in Flagstaff and reunite you with your father." Then you'll be safe, and I can go to Phoenix and find this Coyote.

  Sweat matting the dark hair on his chest, Coyote finished his hundredth sit-up and smiled as Mong appeared in the doorway of his cell. He uncrossed his hands from his chest and levered himself to his feet. Drawing his heels together, he bowed to the red-robed monk. "Good morning, Lama Mong."

  Mong studied him for a moment, and Coyote found the expression on the elderly man's face unfathomable. The monk nodded, then smiled. "I am pleased to see you have recovered from travel lethargy. You have slept much and deeply since you arrived here."

  Coyote used a bed sheet to wipe the sweat from his face. "I must confess, I think it was more than just jet lag. The last month has been rather stressful for me. I did not realize it until I lay down to sleep that first night, but there had been a background level of pressure on me throughout that time. It felt as though I was on a leash and constantly struggling against it. Here I feel none of that, and the exhaustion caught up with me."

  The monk pointed to the black silk robe that matched the pants Coyote already had pulled on. "Finish dressing, and I will lead you on a tour here. There is much for you to learn."

  The silk felt cold at first, but it warmed quickly as he belted it in place with a sash. "How long will it take you to teach me what I need to know?"

  Mong shrugged as he led the way into a dimly lit, narrow corridor. "I do not know. The Dark Lords do not inform us of their training techniques or curriculum."

  Coyote nodded bitterly. "And I have no knowledge of it."

  "Conscious knowledge, you mean," Mong mused. "We shall see what skills you possess and what you must learn."

  As the monk guided him through the lamasery, its antiquity impressed him. Of his life he knew little beyond what he had discovered in the past month. While Jytte Ravel had made available to him the files about his early life, much of the things he learned from them were rumors and probably exaggerated beyond reality anyway. In contrast, the building had a strength and history that he hungered for.

  He let his fingertips brush along the rough-hewn wall, reveling in the gritty reality of the stones. This place will be a cocoon for me. Remembering how Fiddleback had called him a pet and treated him like something subhuman stoked his desire to destroy his former master. Here I will complete my chrysalis. I will become my own master. I will turn what you gave me into what will destroy you.

  The lama paused beside a doorway and waved Coyote on through it. "This is our armory and training center."

  Coyote slowly descended the blocky stone steps. Three dozen stone pillars supported the roof, and Coyote guessed the whole training complex sat directly below the main temple. The pillars broke the room down into small 10 x 10-foot training areas, with longer strips in the outer perimeter. Thick mats, darkened by the dirt of thousands of feet, covered most of the floor and the soot from hanging butter-fat lamps blackened the ceiling.

  Two dozen brown-robed rapjungs worked through a series of katas. They advanced, punched, blocked and kicked in unison, mirroring their instructor's display. Many of the young men wore broad smiles, as if what they were doing was play, but a select few looked serene and peaceful even as they fought against shadows.

  Mong descended the long staircase behind Coyote. "Awareness of self and the fragility of the physical body are important in our studies. All too often, the concept of self one has involves thought or a list of attributes. Only through a conscious integration of mind and body, to the point where the union becomes automatic and unconscious, is it possible to begin down the path of enlightenment."

  The tall man nodded and pointed to a wall upon which hung a full array of weapons. "And knowledge of these reinforces knowledge of life's fragility?"

  "That, and it confirms more about mankind." Mong gestured broadly, taking in all the weapons at once. "Consider, if you will, that man's earliest tools were rocks and sticks. Every weapon, every tool is, in effect, descended from those very humble beginnings. Things become vastly more complex as man refines his tools over and over again. Man is a toolmaker, and acknowledgment of that fact is crucial to understanding mankind."

  Coyote pulled a short weapon from the wall with his left hand. The blade ran perpendicular to the haft as with an ax, but was more slender as befitting a dagger with a single interior edge. From the point where the blade had been bolted to the shaft, a weighted length of metal chain hung down. With his right hand he grasped the chain about a foot from the weight and whirled it around. "Kusari-gama, Japanese in origin, favored by ninja. Yadama Shinryukan dispatched many a samurai with one of these before Araki Mataemon tricked him into fighting in a bamboo grove."

  "And what is the sickle part but a stick, and the weight but a rock?"

  Coyote acknowledged the monk's comment with a nod, then thought for a moment. "Your point is well made, but are you not stretching it to suggest all tools, all machines, come from sticks and stones? What of radios and cars?"

  The monk smiled. "Modern devices do make defending my thesis more difficult. Bear in mind that mankind has always struggled against nature and the circumstances that would kill him. Sticks and stones allowed him to translate superior mental power into superior physical power. By bashing two sticks together, for example, he could alert other hunters in his band to potential prey. In doing this he would effectively double or triple his own strength by augmenting it with others, it may be stretching things to suggest a radio is merely two sticks that can be heard over vast distances, but the core of the reality is the same."

  "That reality being that man is a toolmaker and through his tools has learned to survive." Coyote increased the speed of the spinning weight, then let the chain play out through his fingers. The diamond-shaped steel weight arced out and struck a spark from one of the pillars, then Coyote pitched the weight's rotational plane sharply upward. The weight reached the peak of the arc, then looped back down and he ca
ught it in his right hand.

  "I've used this before."

  "Apparently." The monk pointed to other weapons on the wall. "What of the others, Kyi-can?"

  "All of them?" He hung the kusari-gama back in its place on the wall. "Spears, assagai, yari, naginata, a reproduction of a Roman pilum, an Inuit walrus spear and even a boar spear. The swords: claymore, rapier, daito, katena, wakizashi, shamsheer, scimitar, broadsword and obsidian-edged Aztec war club."

  As he looked at each weapon, he knew how it would feel in his hands. He knew its weight and its limitations. He knew what sort of damage it would do, how best to employ it in attacks and how to defend against it. If I was Fiddleback's pet, then he was training me to be a fighting pet. Knowledge of these things is more than I would need to know to be an assassin.

  "I know them all, lama. I know these and very much more." Coyote shook his head grimly, "It would appear that much of your work has already been done."