by M. D. Massey
Once that chore was finished, I used the sword to cut a hole in the fences, hoping like hell no one would see the light from the blade. I stuck my head through the hole to get a peek past the illusion, and was relieved to find that shrubbery obscured the view on the other side as well. Lastly, I slung Gunnarson’s cloak around my shoulders and stepped on through to find Mei.
Twenty-One
“Ho-lee shit,” I whispered as I parted the bushes ahead of me. The scene on the other side of the illusion wasn’t anything like it appeared on the outside. Where before I’d seen nothing over the fence but a few well-tended fruit trees, the yard’s grim horror was now fully revealed to me—and it was a fucking nightmare.
The lot had been landscaped in the style of a classical Japanese garden, but it was unlike anything I’d seen before. There were the typical neatly-trimmed shrubs, brightly-colored flowers, stone pathways, and an elegantly simple wooden bridge spanning a meandering stream that fed into a koi pond. Beyond it all, a flagstone patio served as a transition point between the garden and house. However, the central feature of the peaceful scenery conveyed sinister undertones that robbed it of any serenity it might have possessed.
Dead center in the garden stood a twenty-five-foot-tall Japanese cherry tree in full bloom. At first glance, the tree’s symmetry and lush foliage gave an impression of stately beauty, but a closer inspection betrayed its more malevolent features. Rather than the usual delicate, pink-petaled flowers, this tree was covered in blossoms stained a deep, blood-red color. Moreover, the tree’s limbs—and indeed, the entire tree itself—seemed to sway ominously despite a lack of wind.
And there were human bodies suspended from the branches of the tree.
Some of those bodies were wrapped in spider silk, neatly bound and coiled—like foodstuffs stored up for a rainy day or special occasion. Other bodies were laid bare to the elements, and those had been bound hand and foot by the tree’s branches, hanging like sick bloated ornaments on some demented Christmas display.
Further inspection revealed still more corpses that had withered away to skin and bones, and a few newer bodies that had been pierced in various places by the very tips of the tree’s limbs. Blood leaked slowly from those wounds, but not a drop was spared as the tree’s branches brushed away the crimson teardrops with delicate sweeps of those dark red blossoms.
Now I know how the flowers get their color.
I wracked my brain for what this thing might be, because I damned sure wasn’t leaving here tonight without killing it. A jubokko, that’s what it is—a vampire tree. I figured it was probably vulnerable to fire and chainsaws, and since I had one but not the other, fire would have to do.
I willed the cloak to hide me and checked my weapons, then entered the garden and made a beeline for the tree. Interestingly, the jubokko seemed to pick up on my presence immediately. As soon as I stepped out of the shrubbery, the tree’s limbs began to shiver, as if anticipating a fresh meal.
Must be sensing the vibrations from my footsteps. Interesting.
Realizing it was useless to remain invisible, I stopped a good twenty feet from the tree and put the cloak away. Not only did I fear getting caught by the many limbs straining to reach me; I was also turned off by the stench of putrefaction and death that emanated from the creature.
“Yeah, I bet you want a piece of me,” I growled as I circled the thing at a distance, searching the bodies that adorned its limbs for Derp. After making a complete circuit of the tree, two facts stood out. First, the kid hadn’t fallen victim to the tree, so there might be hope that he was still alive. And second, all the bodies on the tree were young males in their early to mid-twenties.
Son of a bitch. Mei’s been feeding some of her victims to the tree.
Even more disturbing, several of the bodies that hung from the tree were still alive—both those the tree fed on, and the half-dozen wrapped in Mei’s webbing. Although those poor souls barely moved, the slow rise and fall of each living victim’s chest was a clear indication that at least some of the poor bastards still lived. Obviously, that meant I couldn’t kill the thing with fire—at least, not without killing them as well.
Then, I remembered the raven’s second telling. I might have been skeptical regarding the accuracy of the nachtkrapp’s augury, but I was no fool. The day after the raven had told my “future,” I’d grabbed a gallon of weed killer from the junkyard warehouse and shoved it inside my Craneskin Bag. And though I’d felt like an idiot at the time for doing so, it looked like the bird hadn’t let me down.
Time to go Monsanto on this motherfucker.
I retrieved the jug of weed killer from my bag and tossed it at the base of the tree, where it landed with a dull thump among the tree’s roots. A few lower branches probed the container, but it was quickly determined to be inorganic and therefore unworthy of the jubokko’s ministrations. As I dug through my Bag, the tree returned its attention to me, slowly but surely lengthening its limbs to cross the distance between us.
“Ah-ah,” I said, as I found what I was searching for inside the Bag. “I’m afraid that, despite my occupation as a druid, I’m no tree hugger.”
My hand grasped a crossbow pistol’s handle inside the Bag. I drew it and fired a single bolt at the jug, pinning it to the tree. Then, I exchanged the crossbow for my practice pistol, a suppressed Walther P-22 automatic. A suppressed twenty-two caliber automatic firing subsonic rounds was about as quiet as a firearm could get, so the gun was less likely to alert others to my presence.
I emptied the magazine into the jug, and ten rounds of .22 long rifle turned the container into a sieve. Weed killer splashed all over the tree’s trunk and roots, darkening the dirt in a puddle.
To my surprise, the tree’s roots and trunk immediately soaked up the weed killer. I could only assume the creature had evolved to absorb any drop of liquid that made direct contact with it. That way, it wouldn’t waste a single drop of its victims’ precious fluids.
Sucks for you. Sayo-fucking-nara, tree.
My celebration was very short-lived, because immediately after the tree sucked up a gallon of Monsanto’s finest, it began to shake in the most violent manner. The tremors it made were so severe that I fell to my knees, bracing myself with one hand on the earth below in order to stay somewhat upright. All the while, I kept my eyes on the vampire tree, wondering silently just how long it might take for a gallon of weed killer to off a tree this big.
Apparently, the effects were not immediate. Instead of shriveling away like last year’s dandelions, the tree’s trunk split at the base with a loud crack. Then, it dipped two of its largest limbs to the ground, using the terminal branches like hands to brace against the dirt. Once it had leverage, the tree ripped each half of its trunk and roots from the ground. It didn’t take an arborist to realize that I’d pissed off the jubokko, and now it was about to go all Treebeard on me.
I suddenly had a vision of me getting stomped like an orc at Isengard—not a pretty sight. I couldn’t use fire on it, because heroism and shit, although the tree’s anthropomorphic fit was definitely making me wonder if being heroic was all it was cracked up to be. Bullets would be a mere nuisance to the thing, and any other elemental attack I made on it would kill the survivors adorning its branches just as handily as fire might.
“Oh, fucking hell,” I hissed, backing up and unlacing my boots. “Let’s hope this doesn’t go completely fucking sideways, and I don’t end up spending the rest of life as a ten-foot-tall Fomorian with a shitty complexion and bad teeth.”
As my new friend the Japanese ent bore down on me, I shrugged off my jacket, gun belt, and sword, shoving them all inside the Bag. Lamenting the loss of a perfectly good shirt and pair of jeans, I morphed as far into my Formorian form as I dared, adding almost four feet in height and more than doubling my weight in the process.
My clothing ripped at the seams as my skeleton lengthened and my muscles swelled. I looked down admiringly at my hands, the right one turning into a t
hickly calloused slab of bone and gristle, while the left became a hooked claw with sharp talons curving from the end of every digit. My skin thickened all over and my entire body shook in an adrenaline-fueled rage.
Deep inside me, the voices went from a whisper to a roar.
kill… Kill… KILL!
The fact that I almost whispered, “Jason, Jason, Jason,” served as proof I was still me, but how long I could hang on to my humanity in this form was anyone’s guess. That meant I couldn’t stay this way for long. I decided I’d kick this tree’s ass, literally ripping it limb from limb, and then I’d shift back into my human form to deal with Mei.
The transformation happened in the span of two heartbeats, but that was time enough for the jubokko to close the gap and attack. A huge, trunk-like arm lashed out, striking me across my upper torso and bowling me across the garden. I rolled with the blow, smashing a granite lantern as I bounced back to my feet.
I growled at the tree as it turned toward me. “Alright, you overgrown topiaric nightmare… let’s dance!”
The jubokko closed on me, storming across the garden with surprising speed for something so large. The very tallest of its branches easily reached fifteen feet or more above my head. However, the bulk of it remained in its trunk and central branches, a fact that made the tree’s size much less intimidating as I sized it up and braced for its attack.
To beat this thing, I’d need to deal some serious damage—the earth-shattering, wrecking ball kind. Keeping that in mind, I lowered my stance and reared back with my right arm. The ground shook with every plodding step the giant tree took. As it drew near, I waited until the very last second before I struck, putting my full weight behind the world’s deadliest overhand right.
My fist shot like a cannonball at the tree’s trunk, right below the juncture where its main branches began to bifurcate away from the central stem. My huge, bony, calloused knuckles bit deeply into the relatively tender skin of the tree, ripping through the inner bark, cambium, and sapwood. Wood split and splinters flew, and for a moment I thought I might topple the tree with that one strike.
Unfortunately, the thing dug its roots into the earth beneath us, anchoring itself in an instant to avoid being felled. Branches whipped at me like lashes all around, leaving welts but thankfully failing to draw blood. A thick, trunk-like appendage swung down at me and I ducked, coming under the limb in an attempt to tackle the tree to the ground.
I dropped my shoulder and lunged forward, driving with both feet and pumping my legs as I collided with the central body of the jubokko. My shoulder landed like a battering ram, shaking the entire tree and causing two bodies to snap loose from the branches above me. One was a corpse, and it fell to the nearby flagstones with a sickening wet crunch—not unlike the sound an overripe melon makes when smashed. The other appeared to be alive, barely, and fortunately that victim fell into the shrubbery, breaking his fall.
Again, the tree dug in with its roots, but this time I noticed something peculiar as I looked down at the tree’s “feet.” Where before the roots that spread out from each leg were too many to count, this time they appeared to have diminished in quantity. Was the tree’s strength derived from the number of victims in its limbs?
Sensing a weakness, I wrapped my legs around the trunk and shimmied up like a monkey until I reached the lower limbs. Once there, I crawled out on one of the branches that was adjacent to a live victim. I grabbed that limb and snapped it off, tossing the branch and the attached victim away in a lobbing, underhand throw.
That caused the tree to go nuts, shaking and spinning this way and that in an effort to shrug me loose. I managed to hang on while locating another branch and victim that I tore off the trunk with a loud crack. Throwing my cargo toward some shrubs, I hoped the poor soul had landed safely. By this time, every bough, branchlet, and twig in my vicinity lashed at me, and soon they began wrapping around my arms and legs to restrain me.
It became more difficult to move, as I had to tear myself free to scramble around the trunk, but move I did. I reached another victim and freed him, dropping him in the koi pond and only realizing after the fact that the fish might be magical—and carnivorous.
Too late now. Sorry, dude.
By this time, the tree had gotten wise. Instead of trying to dislodge me from its branches, it began to envelop me in them. Arm-thick limbs and thinner, rope-like branches closed in around me like a cage, somewhat like the one Jesse had made for Nameless. However, rather than allowing me space to breathe and move, this enclosure bore in on me, squeezing me like a bundle of anacondas.
I tried squirming out, but was held fast in a cocoon of branches, leaves, and twigs. Soon, I began to feel smaller limbs probing my skin, scratching me here and there, searching for a soft spot where the tree might begin to feed. Once the damned things found my eyes and nose I’d be done for, because I was almost certain my mucous membranes and sclera weren’t nearly as tough as the rest of me.
Damn it. Eye, are you there?
-As always. You seem to have gotten yourself into a rather dire situation. Shall I burn us a way out?-
No, because there are innocent victims still attached to the tree. Can you create enough heat to give me some space, but not enough to cause the tree to ignite?
-A few calculations are necessary. Please wait.- The Eye was silent for the span of a few heartbeats. -I have determined the ignition point of this entity, and will not exceed that temperature. When you are ready, open your eyes.-
I’m ready, believe me. It’s getting hard to breathe in here.
I did as asked, and rather than the usual searing heat I felt when the Eye released its magic, instead I felt a growing warmth that increased incrementally. Red light—not quite fire, but instead more like a laser’s beam—seared into the plant growth in front of my face, and as the heat increased the branches parted. Soon, the foliage withdrew from my head and face.
Keep going, Eye. We’re not free yet.
I tucked my chin and looked down, focusing the Eye’s “heat rays” on my chest and arms. Wherever the Eye’s magic touched the tree, it withdrew. Soon, all my limbs were free, and I had enough space to move—although I kept having to sweep my eyes around to prevent the branches from closing in again.
Alright, Eye. Time to burn this thing down.
-I thought you wished to avoid endangering the remaining victims.-
I do, but there’s one spot on the tree where I’m certain we won’t hit any of them, and that’s straight down. When I look at my feet, fry this motherfucker.
-Although I do not understand how an entity that reproduces asexually can engage in intercourse with its parent, I understand your meaning and will comply.-
I pointed my eyes at the trunk beneath me. One short blast ought to do it. Aim for the heartwood. Go.
The Eye cut loose with a momentary burst of heat and energy focused into an intense, twelve-inch-wide beam that incinerated a hole straight down the trunk and into the earth beneath us. The tree released a keening wail that came from nowhere and everywhere around us at once, as if every twig, branch, and leaf on the tree screamed.
Then, it shuddered and was still.
Time to get out of here.
I reached down into the still-smoldering hole below with both hands, bracing one on each side of the opening. Then, I pulled with all my prodigious strength. The tree’s trunk split with a crack and a loud ripping noise as I tore it cleanly in two. Falling into the opening I’d made, I braced my hands against one side and my feet against the other, then pushed until the entire trunk split from top to base.
As the two sides of the tree toppled, I fell in a heap near the roots. After all that violence and mayhem in my fully-shifted form, the angry voices inside rose to a crescendo. They wanted me to relinquish control and go on a rampage. And the fact was, I wanted to go nuclear right now, because it felt good to be powerful.
It felt good to be without fear.
First, I’ll start with Mei, and squ
ash her like the bug she is. Then…
Then what? What would I do next, hurt innocent people?
Kill all the fae, the voice said. They’ve hurt you, more so than any. They deserve it. You deserve it.
I wanted to do it, so badly. Smash Mei, then go after Maeve, her assassins, and her court. And why stop there? I could wipe out every other pocket of fae in the continental United States. Heck, the entire world. I could kill them all, and with the Eye’s power, none of them could stop me.
The question was, when would the killing end?
When all the fae are dead, the voice replied. Then you can finally have peace.
Peace. That sounded… wonderful. But at what cost?
Whatever it takes, the voice replied. Whatever it takes to keep the ones you love safe.
That reminded me of why I was here. I wasn’t here because the fae had killed my uncle. I wasn’t here because the fae had killed a bunch of young men. I wasn’t here because the fae had taken Derp.
Nope. I was here because of Mei—Mei and the Circle. Not the fae.
No, I said to the voice. I refuse.
With a Herculean effort, I forced the voices down, way, way, down, nearly silencing them… but not quite. Still, it was enough. I was the captain of my own ship, and that’s how it would remain.
Nearby, the yūrei materialized and bowed deeply to me. The ghost then floated into one of the corpses still trapped by the tree’s limbs, where it disappeared. I held my breath, and when the corpse didn’t come back to life, I let out a sigh of relief. Then I rolled over, exhausted, and transformed back into my human form.
Close by, someone began clapping, slowly and enthusiastically. “Bravo, druid—bravo.” A man’s voice, deep and resonant, with a slight Asian accent. “Not only did you best the jubokko, which is no small feat, but you also provided a satisfactory demonstration of the very item my employers have assigned me to procure.”
