I’m about to drop lower to make a more concerted effort to find Marina when I see a half-dozen more dog cousins heading this way. I can’t tell if they’re running toward the group below, or away from something that I can’t see. I let my awareness expand farther in the direction they came from and get a serious surprise: someone familiar is approaching along one of the rubble-strewn streets.
Cory.
What’s he doing here?
And then my heart skips a beat because trailing a couple of blocks behind Cory is Des in the company of a coatimundi girl.
Marina, Des, Cory. Did they all come looking for me?
If that’s the case, then the fact that Chaingang’s not here means that Vincenzo really did kill him back on the clifftop. Crap. I know I’ve been fighting this jealousy about him being with Marina, but I’d never have wished for him to die.
Now I do drop back down and hover above a cornice of the building. With everything going on, nobody would give any notice to a hawk perched up here, or the other one circling high above. The map in my head shows that Tío Goyo’s followed me here.
I ignore everything else and concentrate on Marina. My map says she should be right there on the cracked pavement, pretty much equidistant between the polar bear and the condors, but there’s no sign of her.
So I shift my focus to what this confrontation is all about.
“—would have given her a quick death,” the polar bear man is saying, “but because of what she’s stolen from me, I’ll see that she suffers and dies slowly now. And that same slow death will be yours if you don’t speak up now. So tell me. Where. Is. She?”
The jackrabbit man doesn’t seem particularly phased by the threat.
“Why not have your hounds find her for you?” he says. “Oh, wait. You no longer control them, do you?”
“I know you, Canejo,” the polar bear says. “I know how old you are, the gifts that the Thunders have given you. But they won’t support you in this. The girl is mine by kin-blood law. They won’t lend you strength if you stand against me.”
Canejo shakes his head. “I’ll say it again. Your bully boy wasn’t blood kin to anyone but his miserable brothers, so you have no justified cause to go after his killer, and especially not his killer’s friends. If you have the need to avenge a dead condor, then go and deal with this as you should, cousin to cousin.”
“He’s unborn, not a cousin!”
“And the girl is innocent.”
“She stole from me!”
“Only after you threatened her life,” Canejo says. “Carry your fight to the mountain lion cub if you must, but she is under my protection and you will not harm her.”
“You don’t get to tell me what—”
“And Nanuq,” the rabbit man continues. “I don’t need any gifts from the Thunders to deal with the likes of you.”
I never get to hear what the polar bear man responds because it’s all been coming together for me as they speak. I know who they’re talking about. Me. Vincenzo. Marina. I don’t have a clue who this Canejo is, but I do know that Nanuq is the one who sent Vincenzo after me and my friends and family. He’s the mastermind behind it all, and now that I’ve got him in front of me, and know that he’s threatening Marina, I just see red.
I drop from my perch and go for him, my hawk spirit screaming, talons outstretched.
I’m fast, but he’s faster. Even though he’s surprised, he dodges easily, but I couldn’t have touched him even if I had been faster. How could I? I’m a spirit. He sees a crazed red-tailed hawk, but I’m no more substantial than a blistering lick on my guitar. You can’t ignore it, but you can’t touch it, either.
He raises his arm and peers upward, so I decide to give him another shock. I drop to the ground and call up my body from the earth, then stand there, right in front of him.
He lowers his arm and stares back at me. I can see that my appearance throws him off. First he saw a hawk, but now I’m the boy with a mountain lion under my skin. He can see the lion as easily as I can the polar bear under his. They all can. The condors, the dogs, the rabbit man. They can’t figure it out and it makes them cautious. The only one who doesn’t bat an eye is Canejo, who just nods to himself, all Zen-like.
Nanuq recovers first.
“You,” he says.
“Me,” I agree. “What do you think? Is this a good day to die?” I wish Des were closer. He’d love to hear me quote Bruce Willis.
Rage flares in the polar bear man’s eyes.
I know this is stupid. I was barely able to handle Vincenzo on my own, and now I’m up against Nanuq, a pair of condors and a few dozen dogs all at once. I’m so pissed off I don’t care. I just want this to end, and I think I know how to do it. I’ll do what Tío Goyo must do: take my spirit shape again and then re-form inside him. I’ll take him down and it’ll be over. The others can come at me. I have no experience at this, so no doubt they’ll kill me, but the important thing is that Nanuq won’t be able to hurt anyone else. And especially not Marina. Wherever the hell she is.
I don’t get the chance to see how it will play out. Nanuq roars and takes a step in my direction. I’m about to implement my plan and let my body return to the earth when the nearest dog men move in between us. I growl, low in my chest, but they’re not facing me. Others join them, making a wall of dogs and cousins between Nanuq and his condors, and me.
“You’re done here,” I hear Canejo say to Nanuq.
I see the same anger in Nanuq’s eyes as in mine. The same indifference as to what will happen to him, just so long as he gets to take me out.
But his face changes and he lets it go. He straightens his back and nods. “You’re right,” he says.
The condors have moved in to flank him. He puts one big hand on each of their shoulders and takes a step forward.
And they’re gone.
I’m ready to follow, wherever it takes me. I raise the maps in my head, trying to track him, except as suddenly as he disappears, Marina appears, a little bit behind where he and the condors were. Through a gap between a couple of the dog cousins, I see her crouched on the ground, eyes big as she stares at me.
My anger disappears as quickly as Nanuq’s did and I push through the dogs until I can pull her to her feet. She throws her arms around me and holds me tight.
As I hug her back, I know she’s just relieved to see me. This doesn’t mean anything more than that. But holding her in my arms like this, I’ve never felt as whole and complete as I do right now.
Yeah, I know. How messed up is that?
I start to pull away, but she holds on a moment longer before she lets me go. Tears glisten in her eyes, and mine are pretty much the same. Her right hand is closed in a fist with the broken ends of a fine chain hanging loose from it. Her left grabs mine and holds it tight.
“How were you invisible?” I say at the same time as she asks, “How can you turn into a hawk?”
“It wasn’t what it looked like,” we both answer at the same time.
Even through our tears I see a flash of laughter in her eyes that I know is echoed in my own. How many times have we said the same thing at once? I see a lot more in her eyes. They seem older, more serious, more determined—if that’s even possible because once she sets her mind to something, she’s more tenacious than anyone I know.
“You first,” I say. I need to swallow this lump in my throat before I can continue talking.
But then Cory’s here. He starts yelling at Canejo—thinking he’s Nanuq, I guess, because he’s putting the blame for a lot of things on the jackrabbit man’s shoulders. One of the female dog cousins puts a hand on Cory’s arm and starts to fill him in on what really happened.
The next thing I know, Des shows up with his new friend. He’s too out of breath to talk, but he’s grinning from ear to ear. Even though he’s winded, he pulls me out of Marina’s grip, picks me up and swings me around before setting me back down. God, I hate it when he does that, but this time it feels good.
He reaches over and rubs Marina’s shoulders as if to make sure she’s real. She grins back at him.
Meanwhile his coati friend keeps staring at me with big round eyes, like I’m some kind of rare animal she’s come across in a zoo. Marina grabs my hand again and tells me her name is Donalita. The coati girl smiles widely.
“How do you do, dude,” she says, bouncing on her toes and looking smugly at me, then Des. Obviously he’s been rubbing off on her.
It takes a few moments for everybody to calm down enough so that we can sort things out.
“Nice trick you pulled there,” Canejo tells Marina before making formal introductions.
He gives one of the guys beside him a knowing smile, then introduces him to us as Thorn. Damned if he doesn’t look like a dwarf right out of one of the Tolkien movies.
The other guy—the barracuda—is named Lionel. I don’t know how he fits into the hierarchy of whatever’s going on around here, but from the vibes, it’s clear that nobody seems to like him.
Marina lets go of my hand. She steps up to Lionel, and with no warning, punches him right in the face. He goes down holding his nose, blood streaming out between his fingers. Nobody seems surprised except for Des and me.
“Dude,” Des says in a mild voice. “What was that for?”
When she tells us, a rumble starts up in my chest and I start for him. Marina grabs my hand and pulls me back.
“It’s okay,” she says. “He’s not worth it.”
There’s dead silence and I realize everybody’s waiting to see what I’ll do. I force myself to calm down.
“Whatever you say,” I tell her.
“Hit the road, Lionel,” Canejo says.
The idiot totally wants to argue the point. He looks from the rabbit man to Marina. Then he meets my flat gaze and scrambles to his feet. Still holding his nose, he heads off down the street. The dog cousins make way for him. The ones in dog shape are stiff-legged and growling, but no one prevents him from leaving.
“So,” Canejo says to Marina, like nothing ever happened, “did you order the canids to step up like that?”
Before she can reply, one of the dog men answers. “No,” he says. “That was our own decision.”
“Why would you think Marina could make them do anything?” I ask Canejo.
Marina opens her closed hand to show me a medallion. It seems to be made of fired clay, and has a symbol on it that seems familiar. Then I realize it’s because all the dog cousins have that same symbol—a circle with a lightning bolt inside—as tattoos on their arms if they’re in human shape, or as brands on the dogs.
“This is what Nanuq was using to control them,” she says. “It’s also the only way out of this pocket world.”
I call up my maps and see that she’s right. The only thing that comes up is this broken-down city around us.
“So why did you help?” I ask the dog man.
He shrugs. “We have the same enemy.”
“Just like that?” Donalita asks, another irrepressible grin on her face. “Suddenly we’re all friends, tra-la-la?”
“No,” he says. “But it makes us allies.”
There’s obviously something going on between them that I don’t understand, but right now I’m more concerned with Nanuq.
“If the medallion is the only way out of this world,” I say, “how come Nanuq was able to leave without using it?”
“He made this world,” Canejo tells me, “so he can come and go as he pleases without the medallion. But the world exists on its own now, so he can’t unmake it.”
“How do we make this world open to anyone who wants to come in or get out?” Marina asks.
Canejo points to the medallion. “You break that.”
“Except that would also free the dogs, wouldn’t it?” Donalita says. “Which maybe isn’t such a good idea, seeing how they outnumber us.”
I sense the hackles rising on the dogs closest to me and hear a few low growls.
“But you don’t have anything against us, do you?” Marina asks the dog man who spoke earlier. She must also have noticed the slight edge in his exchange with Donalita.
He shakes his head, but there’s a banked fire in his eyes that I don’t trust. “You rule us now,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what we think.”
“How could this happen?” Cory wants to know.
The dog man shrugs. “A few worried individuals made the mistake of joining Nanuq’s cause, then they convinced others. Because of the pack bond, the medallion soon controlled the majority of us, whether we agreed to the binding or not.”
“What do you mean, I rule you?” Marina asks him.
“Whatever you ask of us, we will do—or we will die trying.”
Handy, I think, except it doesn’t sit right with me.
Marina holds up the medallion. “Because of this?”
The dog man nods.
Marina’s brow creases in displeasure. “No way,” she says.
She drops the medallion onto the ground and smashes her foot down on it, grinding the clay into dust. As soon as she does, maps spread out in my head, world after world. I look up and see Tío Goyo is still high in the dark sky, turning in lazy circles. I wonder if the fact that there is or isn’t a gate makes any difference to him. I also wonder how pissed he is that I showed off my own little hawk trick again.
All around us everyone is still, their gazes locked on the crushed medallion. Then the dog man goes down on one knee and raises his hands to Marina.
“My name,” he says with a formal tone, “is Hernán de la Costa, of the Hierro Madera Yellow Dog Clan. We are forever in your debt. If we can ever be of aid to you or your kin, you have but to ask, and we will come.”
Marina shoots me a confused glance before she looks back at him.
“What are you talking about?” she says. “I thought I just freed you from all of that.”
He rolls up his sleeve to show that the tattoo has disappeared.
“You did,” he says. “You had everything to gain and nothing to lose, yet you still broke the binding on us. For this, you have our gratitude and friendship.”
“Sure, but—”
“Don’t friends look out for each other?” he asks.
Marina looks at me, then Des, and nods. “Of course.”
“So that is what we will do for you.”
“Okay,” Marina says, “but it’s not a one-way deal. The same goes for me and your clan—you know, if you need anything.”
Hernán grins with a joy that seems to radiate from every part of him. If he had a tail in human shape, I’m sure it’d be wagging.
The dog man gets up, but before we can move on to something else, the woman who was speaking with Cory takes Hernán’s place and assumes the same position. She’s lean and dark-haired like the men.
“My name,” she says in the same formal tone, “is Lupe Gonzalez of the East Riversea Blue Dog Clan. We are forever in your debt. If we can ever be of aid to you or your kin, you have but to ask, and we will come.”
Marina is gracious with her, as she is with the next three canids, accepting their thanks and friendship and promising her own to each of them in return. I guess these five are clan leaders because when the last of them stands up, all the canids raise their faces to the sky and let rip with a joyous howl that echoes and bounces back from the buildings around us.
Marina glows. She looks like one of the saints in her mother’s shrines. Everybody’s smiling, even the coati girl Donalita, who was full of dire warnings a few moments ago.
All the canids who aren’t already in dog shape begin to shift. The huge pack lopes off and starts to disappear in twos and threes. I watch their progress on the maps in my head as they move from world to world, going back home.
I turn my attention back to the business still at hand.
A whole
group of people have filed out of the building behind Canejo and Thorn. The weird thing is, I recognize a few of them as kids from school.
“Marina was just telling us about you,” Canejo says, drawing my attention back to him. “She told us about the mountain lion under your skin, and I can see that aspect of yours as plainly as you see mine. But what puzzles me is how you appeared here, and the fact that you can also wear a hawk’s shape.”
I think of Nanuq’s plan to kill all the Wildlings. Of the hummingbird man’s reaction to me.
“I’m unborn,” I say. “Isn’t that what you call us? You think that makes us less than you, but maybe it makes us more.”
Marina nudges me and rests her head against my arm. “Don’t be pissy,” she says. “He’s my friend. If it hadn’t been for him, Nanuq would have had me and taken me away before you ever got here.”
I don’t correct her. It doesn’t matter where Nanuq would have dragged her—the maps in my head would have led me right to them. But I take her point.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Canejo, “but not every cousin I’ve met has been pleasant.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
I shrug. “And I can’t tell you about the hawk because it’s not my story to tell.”
His gaze flickers skyward to where I know Tío Goyo is still circling above us.
“Of course,” he says.
I figure he knows something, or at least guesses, but we leave it at that.
“Speaking of carrying more than one aspect,” I say, “you seem to be both jackrabbit and antelope.”
“Jackalope,” Marina, says, grinning.
“That’s too cool,” Des says, pushing forward. Then he turns to Thorn. “And are you a real dwarf?”
“Des!” Marina says, eyes wide.
He gives her an innocent look. “What?”
But Thorn smiles, obviously not taking offence. “No, I’m a stone warden.”
“Cool. And what’s that?”
“The cliffs of the western Sea Dales in Tal Avelle are under my care.”
Des nods like he has a clue. “This is my first time … um … off-world,” he says and I know he feels like he’s waited his whole life to be able to say that. Now just give him a cape and a superpower, and he can die a happy man.
Out of This World Page 22
