“That’s what I want to know.” Catherine glares at no one in particular. I get the distinct feeling she’s glowering at an imaginary Ned. “No matter how big that man’s mouth is, he doesn’t say things randomly. If he’s talking about your yeti-friends, Dad, he’s got a reason.”
Bernie’s jaw sets, stubborn. “Nobody would have reason to point at yeti. I’m certain, dammit. They got nothing to do with this. They wouldn’t, it’s not in ’em. That one in the woods today? Was a travel companion.”
“A what?”
Bernie sighs. “It came with the one that’s here visiting. They always move in pairs or more.”
“Here visiting?” Dean blinks. “Like . . . HERE-here?”
Bernie nods. “The one in the other room.”
“Does it know what’s going on?” I quell my own surprise in favor of grabbing the opportunity for information. “Do they talk?”
“Oh no. They touch you, then think at you.” He waves both hands beside his head as if shooting thoughts at me.
“You get it in pictures in your head. Not sure what they know. You showed up before I had a chance to talk to him.”
“Will he come out with us here?”
“Think so, if I . . . encourage him.” He heads out of the room, pausing to leave his pipe in a ceramic dish on the coffee table that looks like a handmade present from a grandchild. Maybe the yeti doesn’t like smoke.
Catherine shoots us an apologetic look. “Might take a few minutes. They’re incredibly shy. Took him forever to convince them to even be here when one of us was around, and they still won’t talk to us. They do not like wolves. Hell, they really only like Dad.”
I nod. We wait in edgy silence until Bernie reappears, along with an indistinct, opaque shape that is hard to look at. He enters the living room, the strange distortion of air close by his side. My eyes struggle and I realize it must have a large arm draped over his shoulders. Where the yeti touches him, I can see straight through to the wall and furniture behind him.
The air beside Bernie starts to brighten, shimmer. My breath catches in my throat when I realize that gauging the beast’s size by the distorted space next to Bernie is . . . inaccurate. As it materializes, the yeti rises up on its legs from a bent position, to a full height above eight feet.
A swirl of fine silver hair ripples and settles, catching the ambient light of the room and absorbing it. His head swivels toward us, a dark face standing out starkly in the mass of white hair. Lips pull back, long teeth gleam, and it lunges, screaming.
We fling ourselves backward. My arm whips out, shoving Dean behind me. My other wrist snaps downward in the practiced motion that releases the VisiBlade into my hand. The yeti rocks forward onto its knuckles and charges on all fours, straight for us.
“Don’t!” Bernie yells. The yeti swings itself right into my face, teeth bared, and rises upright again, towering over us. Reflex kicks in past all assurance of bluffs and my arm flies upward, blade angled.
“He won’t hurt you!” In my peripheral vision, Bernie limps across the room as fast as he can, one hand reaching out as if to hold the yeti back.
In the next instant Catherine stands between me and the yeti, unflinching. Still in human form, tiny as she is, she tilts back her head and meets the yeti eye- to-eye, silent and still, her arms folded over her chest.
Low rumbling vocalizations fill the air. Just before Bernie reaches him, the yeti lowers back down onto his knuckles. The magnificence of the creature’s hair strikes me even in my petrified state. Every shift of muscle sends it swaying, until it takes on the appearance of floating underwater. I long to touch it. I don’t know if that’s my fiber-fascination talking or if yeti-hair sparks the same urge in normal people.
Bernie’s hand settles on the yeti’s back. It lifts its hand and pokes one long finger at Catherine’s shoulder. When she doesn’t move or respond, the yeti tilts its head to one side, withdraws its hand as if satisfied, and hoots softly at Bernie.
“Settle down,” Bernie snaps, voice cross. “Damn fool.” He points at the couch, and the yeti turns away. “Put that away,” he waves at my blade. “He won’t hurt anything.” He follows the yeti.
Catherine turns to us, rolling her eyes. “You okay?”
I nod, sheathing the blade with fingers that start shaking in reaction. That thing is BIG. “Thanks,” I manage, knowing that without her, I could have easily knifed the yeti. That likely wouldn’t end well. I look back at Dean to find him chalk-white and shaking, but staring at Catherine with a peculiar expression. Apparently there could be an upside to getting threatened by a yeti and protected by a werewolf.
The yeti continues hooting as he swings himself up onto the couch in a cloud of glittering silver. The couch creaks under him, and for the first time I notice that it, like the room, is set up to accommodate the movements of something huge, without creating frustration or wreckage.
I return to the rocking chair, happy to sit. Dean positions himself behind it, fingers biting into the puffy back. Catherine stays put. The yeti glances at her now and again, but both seem happy to maintain the distance.
Now that it’s calm, I can’t keep my eyes off the yeti, thinking about Ned’s “gorilla on steroids” comment. The posture, stance, length of arm, and size of hand all say “primate.” Hair distribution also resembles the apes, only the face and palms bare. Facial features continue the simian theme, eyes small and close-set under a heavy forehead, nose flatter and broader than a human’s. The prominent canines call up images of snarling baboons stalking baby antelope on Nature programs. His fingers pluck at Bernie—now on his hair, now at his shirt—in the manner of apes grooming.
The differences are just as striking. The length and quality of the hair is more akin to a horse’s mane or human hair than a baboon’s fur. Sheer size and body structure also argues against ape. The yeti doesn’t have the swaybacked bulk of the gorilla, nor the comical long-armed, round-tummy look of the orangutan. The body structure most resembles a chimpanzee with longer legs, or . . . a human with longer arms.
Even as I mentally set yeti characteristics up against the various great apes, the comparison feels wrong, the same way comparing a werewolf to a standard wolf feels off. The yeti encompasses more than a collection of ape-like characteristics, or even human-like characteristics. The silver-moon glow, the intelligent watchful eyes, the gentle way it looks at Bernie, stroking his shoulder, staying within arm’s reach . . . all speak to the “more.”
Then there’s the invisibility and telepathy.
The yeti returns my regard. The weight of his stare brings back my uneasy feeling from the woods. Despite my statement about yeti moving lightly through the world, his presence is tangible, a heavy aura surrounds him. Bernie is right about the yeti possessing deep magic. I’d go so far as “bottomless.”
The yeti’s hand settles on Bernie’s and its head dips toward him. Bernie wraps his gnarled fingers around the long, dark ones and returns the silent, companionable attention. Unexpectedly touched at the image they present, my throat tightens.
Bernie’s face darkens. “You best take a listen.”
Unsure what to do, I push up out of my chair. The yeti extends his right hand and I walk toward him. His dark eyes meet mine, and the world tilts. It’s like a large hand thrusts into my head and pushes. Unsteady, I reach for his offered grip. The cool skin surprises me, but not as much as the inherent gentleness. His fingers close on mine and gravity shifts again, sharper this time. I sink to the floor, knees buckling. The massive strength in his one-handed grip supports me down. I hear Dean in the distance, but the scraps of words fall away with my surroundings as night rises up.
Occasional shafts of moonlight shine through the trees, but mostly it’s just dark. I can’t believe the details in the shadowy recesses of the woods, though, the subtle shading along the spectrum of gray, all discernable to me. Scents fill my awareness, spring itself the most prominent bouquet. Earth like I’ve never smelled it, deep and dark
, crawling with protein. Plants in every scent of green—scent of green? Yes, all the varying greens have their own smells, woody, sweet, bitter. Underneath hangs the reassuring scent of Family.
They slip out of the woods like ghosts. Pale silverwhite, dark reddish-brown, or some mix of the two, moving like gorillas, bent forward with knuckles on the ground. Dark faces watch me, intent and serious. They surround me. I shift my weight and the group moves out as one.
I move fast, faster than I’ve ever run. A cool night breeze sets my hair whipping, silky silver streams flowing over my face. The rhythmic sway of my body surprises me, the impact of my knuckles on the ground nowhere near as uncomfortable as I would have thought. Something burns, a hot stone in my chest, dangerous warmth where there should be only coolness. It pulls me forward, disruptive and wrong, until I break the tree line and see the houses of the Bare.
Head lifting to the wind, a scent like burnt matches floods me. Furious movement, a dark-on-dark image, and there—the little winged ball of death and destruction. My vision telescopes as my Focus narrows. I watch in exaggerated slow motion as chickens careen from one side of a fenced pen to the other, doing cartwheels in the air as they’re flung with astounding strength by vicious jerks from a tiny marauder.
The flat, serpentine head on a long neck snakes around to train disturbing yellow eyes on me. Dark wings spread then fold as it dives, the movement fast even in the slowed perception of Focus. A sharp curved beak drips black with blood. The head darts, beak sinking into a fat chicken with evident relish. It rises into the air and flings the bird to the ground.
Time springs back to full speed as I release my Focus and shriek. The little beast shoots upward then arrows straight for me. Hoots rise into the night. I stand, lifting my arms and shrieking as the thing descends. Family swarms from the trees.
The Winged Death hisses and spits, comes to a dead stop in midair by billowing its wings then twists back on itself and flies away, tail lashing the air. A flash of silver in moonlight makes my Focus snap back, and time slows again, the band of silver encircling the slim neck confusing. The dark sky spins. Stars dissolve, becoming the wooden-beam ceiling of Bernie’s living room.
I find myself on the floor, staring up at a worried Dean. “I’ll be damned. You were right. It’s a dragon.”
“—buzzsaw with wings,” I sketch the size of the dragon with my hands. “I’ve never actually seen one. They’re so tiny!” I round on Bernie. “Did you know the yeti are the reason why dragons don’t cross the Connecticut?”
Bernie nods. “Figured. Dragons are always regional. Had to be something territorial.”
“So how did this one get here?” Dean asks.
Bernie rests his hand on the yeti’s. “Don’t know. They felt it maybe a week ago, so they came looking. They’ve been tracking it. Most dragons get clear of yeti territory damn quick. This one stays. It knows it don’t belong, but won’t leave.”
“That’s never happened before?”
“No. Never seen a dragon in a collar, either.”
“That’s just bizarre,” Catherine states. “No dragon would consent to a collar.”
I cut to the chase. “How do we take it down, take it out?”
Bernie shakes his head. “Can’t kill it without a license. Federally protected. Best thing is to trap it, get that collar off. Can’t figure why it’s staying if not for that collar. The two magics—yeti and dragon—don’t mix. They steer clear naturally. If the yeti can feel it, the dragon can feel it shouldn’t be here.”
“It looked happy enough snacking on chickens. Didn’t seem perturbed until it dive-bombed me. Er . . . him.”
“Dragons are mean sonsabitches.” Bernie warns. “Trapping it’ll be a job.”
“But one we need to do, and fast,” I say. “When he showed me what happened at the Kroeger’s, he screamed. The others, too, and hooted. That clears up who mentioned yeti to Ned.”
Bernie swears. “Kroegers have been here long enough. Probably know some old legends. I just didn’t think the yeti’d been anywhere near the killings.” He grips the yeti’s hand. It becomes agitated, starts to rise, going insubstantial around the edges. He’s ready to bolt.
“Don’t leave!” I appreciate their desire for secrecy and seclusion, but something tells me yeti-assistance is the only thing that’ll bag us a dragon. My brain snags on that. Bag a . . . “Bernie, you’ve got a NetShot 2500, don’t you? I saw one, when you showed me your old gear.”
He shakes his head. “1600. I left the Service before they issued the 2500. But that won’t hold a dragon . . . not even a 2500. They were only ever for werewolf pups and ghouls. And the occasional gnome that got abusive. Dragons would tear right through ’em, wouldn’t matter how you lined the nets. And I only have copper nets.”
I study the yeti. “I understand. But if you still have a net frame, we might have something the dragon can’t burn through.”
Midnight finds us hiding in the woods around the Kilpatrick farm. So far, watching the Kilpatricks’ fields has done nothing but spook the Kilpatricks’ horses, who keep scenting the werewolves. Calmer—or just stupider—the cows stand in clumps.
Turns out all five of Bernie’s daughters have the blood. Four werewolves pace around us as protection, the fifth back at our place with Bernie.
Bernie predicted the dragon would move to the next farm. Only sheer force of Daughters kept Bernie from coming with us, making me grateful they’re as stubborn as their father. Time meanders as we crouch in the damp night, the wolves ranging out then returning. Bernie’s arthritis wouldn’t appreciate the moist chill.
Hanging out in dark woods with a small pack of werewolves is high on Dean’s list of Things Never To Do. I say nothing when he presses close to me.
All remains quiet until just after 3AM when all four werewolves lift their heads in perfect unison. Seconds later, a wolf howl rises in the distance. A feral edge ripples through the pack as four heads swivel in the direction of the howl, and my property.
The pack flows into dark blurs, bounding away, leaving us to jog behind. By the time we stumble into our yard, we’re gasping for breath. In the pasture, my sheep race back and forth, wild-eyed and bleating. Herbert snorts and paws. Five wolves fling themselves into the air over and over, trying to reach the dark shape swooping and diving. The yeti crouches, swinging its arms above its head, shrieking. In the midst of the confusion, my eyes find the body on the ground.
“Bernie!” Dean kneels by him. Long claw gouges run down Bernie’s chest, the tatters of his flannel shirt and overalls gaping over bleeding flesh. His blistering curses reassuring me, I spin to the Uncanny, bringing the NetShot up.
In the stark glare of the outside lights, the yeti becomes even more unearthly, hair whirling, huge shadow dancing in crazy patterns. I sight above his head, knowing it’s the best shot at the dragon. Sure enough, despite the snapping teeth of the leaping wolves, the dragon circles his head, feinting, striking. “DUCK!” The yeti crouches lower. The dragon dodges. I fire.
The net shoots out of the launcher barely visible. To my relief, weighted edges spin out just as designed. I’ve never woven a net for a NetShot. Bernie has, so I trusted his guidance. It glitters, suddenly visible, then winks out; enough to draw the dragon’s sharp eye but not enough to warn. In the next instant the dragon tumbles to the ground, wings and limbs tangled.
The wolves circle. It screeches and flaps, trying to writhe away from wherever the yeti-hair net touches its scaly hide. I shoulder aside the wolves to get to it—the netting leaves bright white scorches on it. I don’t want to torture the thing, but how to restrain it? “Dean! Get my knitting needle case!”
“WHAT?” His incredulous yell makes a laugh bubble up, but the dragon’s pained noises kill it.
“Just DO IT.” I gingerly lift the netting away from the dragon. It strikes like a snake, a lancing bite catching my finger. “Dammit! I’m trying to HELP!”
That works. The dragon stills the frantic beati
ng of its wings and quiets. Untwisting the net, I lift, making sure the weighted edges stay flush with the ground. When the net hangs over the dragon like a little tent, it lays panting, baleful yellow eyes staring at me. Blood drips from my finger. The dragon’s head shoots out, catching the droplets. I try to ignore it as Dean drops down beside me.
“Put some needles around the edges to hold this up. The net hurts it.”
Using size 15s, Dean jams knitting needles into the ground like miniature stakes, twisting the net around the top of each until it forms a net-cage.
“We care that it hurts?” a feral voice growls.
“Your father will.”
“Yep.” Bernie’s voice. Two daughters half-shifted to their intermediary humanoid forms support him.
“It started for the sheep,” one rasps. I recognize Laura, the youngest. “Then Dad came out and it went for him. It was after him. Didn’t even look at me.”
Bernie pulls away from his daughters to kneel down, wincing. He widens a hole in the netting, reaching through. His fingers shake but the dragon stays still, and he touches the collar without getting bitten, mumbling under his breath. The dragon’s tongue flickers out, licking blood from his fingers.
Bernie’s mumbling ends and crackling tree branches bring us around. The dragon hisses, eyes narrowing. Ned Dietrich walks toward us in the jerky, unnatural way I’ve only ever seen in zombies.
“Dammit, Ned,” Bernie sounds cross, but resigned. “Never know when it’ll start on humans, eh? Suppose making me the human takes out two birds. You can stop worrying about me talking, and get everyone yelling for Uncanny blood.” He releases the dragon’s collar.
As if the movement cuts a set of invisible strings holding Ned up, he drops to his knees, gasping. His hand lifts, massaging his chest and throat. A fine leather—leather? no, dragonhide—gauntlet encases his left forearm, like a falconer’s glove. A silver bracelet buckles around it, a match for the dragon’s collar. Ned glares at Bernie, jaw clenching.
A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters Page 24
