Bigfootloose and Finn Fancy Free (44 page)

Clay waved nonchalantly in Kaminari's direction. “I meant what I said to her. You are going to die tonight. But since Kaminari is the one who claimed vengeance on you, you have the right to choose the method of combat.”

Great. “I don't suppose a game of checkers would count?”

“Alas, no. It must be a physical contest between you.”

“What about the whole dying tonight thing; I don't suppose we could really stretch the definition of tonight? Like, maybe, before sunrise?” That would give me time to support Dawn at her show, leave her with a good memory of me at least. “I have a prior engagement, you see—”

“No, I'm afraid I cannot do that,” Clay said. “The most I can give you is the time it will take for me to arrange the duel. And just so you don't try to be clever and set it in China or some such nonsense to stretch this out, let's just say it will be held at the camp near your Elwha friends' steading, yes?”

Damn. There went my China plan.

“But I can pick the method?”

Clay sighed. “Yes, that is traditionally how it is done, though I must approve.”

What could I possibly beat Kaminari at? She had more speed and strength than me. I wasn't an expert at any weapon, and the few I could use competently I imagined she would beat me at, even if she started barehanded. Pistols seemed the most likely to succeed, though I imagined with all her web shooting practice she had pretty deadly aim, whereas I was lucky to hit any target smaller than Godzilla.

I thought back to the battle with Hiromi. In the end, it had been Silene entangling her in vines that had made the difference.

“Gramaraye?” Clay asked.

“I'm thinking. Hold on.”

“You cannot claim indecision forever. You must eventually choose, and die.”

“Yeah yeah. I get it. Just hang on. Please.”

What kind of weapon could I use to entangle Kaminari's legs that she couldn't as easily use to entangle me? A bolo? A rebel snowspeeder?

“Dance,” I said, and the word registered in my brain after leaving my lips like the sound of a gunshot reaching the target after the bullet.

“Pardon me,” Clay said. “But I thought you said ‘dance.'”

*Please, no,* Alynon said. *This is our life. You need to be serious.*

Hey, dancing is serious,
I thought back. “Yeah. We're going to have a dance-off,” I said. “You know, a
Saturday Night Fever
fight.
Breakin' 2 Electric Booga
–duel. Winner takes all and saves the dance club. Or, you know, clan.”

Clay arched an eyebrow. “You do realize, of course, that a duel to satisfy vengeance must be to the death, Gramaraye. You cannot have a dance off, or a cook off, or any other kind of off, unless it ends with a head off.”

“I thought you were all about being civilized,” I said.

“Indeed. And that is why when you lose your head, I shall discourage Kaminari from killing every person you love. We are not barbarians, after all.”

“Obviously,” I said.

*Finn! Damn it! Pick guns, or wands, anything that will give us an actual fighting chance.*

She'd kill me even faster if we used weapons,
I replied.
But I'm going to get that girl so twisted up she'll trip and fall, and it will all be over. Points deducted, head removed, problem solved
.

*You're a fool.*

A dancing fool
.

“Very well,” I said to Clay. “Loser loses their head.” Which frankly sounded quite preferable to any of the other ways I saw myself dying in a duel with a jorōgumo, all of them slow and painful and involving seeing parts of me no longer attached to other parts of me. A quick, swift beheading? Wham bam, thank you ma'am. “There can
be
only one,” I added in my best Christopher Lambert impression.

And I fully planned to be that one.

“Excellent,” Clay said. “One moment, please.” He made as if whistling, though I could not hear anything.

*You are exorcising me before this fight,* Alynon said. *You have no right to keep risking
my
life like this.*

We can talk about it after this,
I replied.

Clay whistled silently again.

“Summoning your dogs?” I asked.

“Just one, actually,” Clay said. “I believe you know him. He's provided me with some wonderfully detailed stories about you, and your Negro girlfriend, what is her name? Dawn?”

The undergrowth rustled to my left, and a Yorkshire terrier leaped out of the forest and onto the pavement. Pete growled then stopped. He sniffed at the air with a confused look on his face, and sneezed. The dog padded toward us and transformed, rising up and shifting into a naked man among a cloud of patchouli smell that I now realized helped mask his scent from his fellow waers.

“Barry,” I said, deliberately keeping my eyes on his. “Why am I not surprised you're a shadowbright?”

“Whoa, brah,” he said. “No need for the heavy negativity. We're all friends here.”

“Uh, no, we're not. So, what, you were sent to be a pain in my ass for some reason?”

Barry gave me a pitying smile. “Finn, my friend, you really need to step outside the circle of me me me, brah. One is a lonely number.”

“Yeah, well,
tu
can be as bad as one. No, scratch that, you're worse. So, Duck Hunt, what
were
you doing sniffing around my girlfriend?”

Barry sighed. “You see what I mean?” he said to Clay. “My man here's totally insecure.”

“Indeed,” Clay replied. “But I didn't call you here for a reunion. ‘Your man' has just challenged Kaminari to a dancing contest, and I would like you to stand in as her champion.”

“Wait, what?” I said.

“Whoa,” Barry said. “Totally flattered, Papa Clay, but won't Kaminari kill me after if I take her place? She's a little, uh, intense about this whole vengeance thing.”

“Hey!” I said. “What makes you so certain you're going to win?”

Barry laughed. “That's the spirit, Fightin' Finn.” He turned back to Clay. “Seriously though, what about Kaminari?”

“I will handle Kaminari. You handle Fred Astaire here.”

“Sure thing, boss.” Barry winked at me. “Should be fun, huh? When is it?”

“Tonight,” Clay said. “I promised Kaminari that much.”

“Whoa, harsh,” Barry said, looking at me again. “Guess we're going to totally miss Dawn's show, huh? 'Course, she's likely to be more pissed at you than me. But don't worry, I'll comfort her after she's done yelling at your head and all.”

My hands clenched into fists. “So how do we do this?”

 

29

Giving You the Best That I Got

I didn't relax until the glow of Bellevue was behind us and we drove along the 405 north for Snoqualmie.

I glanced over at Pete in the passenger seat as the lights of passing cars and streetlamps cast his face in slow waves of light and dark.

“Hey,” I said. “Are you okay? Really?”

“No,” he said, his voice small.

“Oh.” My heart ached for him. “That was your first time transforming in the wild, wasn't it? I mean, unbound, outside of the house.”

Pete just nodded.

“Was it scary? Awful?”

“No,” Pete said again. “It was—I don't know. Do you remember when we went to Disneyland, how it felt like … there was this whole other world that was just for us, that was like what we felt inside, and you just wanted to run away and live in the Family Robinson treehouse and spend every day running through the park having adventures?”

“Uh, sort of,” I said.

“Well, it's a little like that,” Pete said. “Beating Georgio in that fight, the run through the forest hunting food, and the, um, having Minerva wanting me, it all felt … good.” He looked down at his hands. “Does that mean I'm a Shadows brightblood? Or that I'm … an animal?”

“No!” I said. “No. Pete, the wolf spirit didn't change your heart, it didn't change who you are. It just kind of lets your wild side out to play every once in a while. And that's not a bad thing, not by itself.”

“But, I almost … I almost attacked you,” he said.

“But you didn't,” I replied.

He was silent for a while. “What if Vee had been there?” he said finally. “What if I had … hunted her.”

“You wouldn't have,” I said.

Pete began to sob. Great, shaking sobs that caused the entire car to bounce lightly and I would have had to shout to be heard, which I knew wouldn't be comforting at all.

I took the next exit and parked on the side of the road. I slid over on the seat, and held Pete, let him cry it out. When there came a lull in the sobs, where it sounded like he was hyperventilating, I said, “Petey, man, you would never hurt Vee. Don't you remember what made you stop growling at me? I mentioned Vee. Just her name was enough to calm you down. If anything, Vee is the one person you should always
want
to have around you. You love her. She loves you. We all love you, Pete, wolf or no wolf.”

Pete's sobs settled into sniffles. “Really?”

“Really.”

He sniffled a little longer, wiping at his face with his shirtsleeves, then said, “I still want to marry her.”

“Well I should hope so. I've been thinking of what to do at your bachelor party.”

“Oh. I forgot about that. I, uh, I'm not sure Vee would want me to watch naked women dancing. Not even nymphs.”

“Well, you don't have to worry about that,” I said. “I'm pretty sure there aren't any naked women at Enchanted Village.”

“Enchanted Village?” Pete asked, perking up a bit. “Could we take Mort? And Mattie? And Vee? She's never been.”

“Uh, sure. It's your bachelor party, I guess you can invite whoever you want.” I smiled. “I love you, Brother. Everything's going to be okay.”

He nodded, and I slid back into the driver's seat, buckled up, and drove north once again.

I hoped I wasn't lying to him, hoped everything really would be okay. I had to beat Barry in this dance off, and end this cycle of clan war before it escalated. Or instead of organizing a bachelor party, I might have to watch from beyond the cold distance of death's veil as Pete and Vee fought for their lives.

*   *   *

After a quick stop at the ARC headquarters under Snoqualmie Falls, Pete took over driving and we headed home with Verna in the seat between us. Her portal equipment rattled in the spacious back of the hearse.

*Thank you,* Alynon said for the fiftieth time.

Stop thanking me,
I replied.
I want to send you home as bad as you want to go.

Verna still wore her ink-stained lab coat, but had let her hair down into a wild silver halo. She blinked at the passing streetlights through her thick glasses, and rattled on about the exciting possibilities of Father's spirit-bridging artifact. I quickly learned that I didn't really need to do much to hold up my end of a conversation with her, just give the occasional sound of interest, or say “Really?” She apologized at one point for rambling.

“I just don't get out of the lab very often.”

“It's okay,” I said. “You're not rambling. Mattie, my niece, now she knows how to ramble.”

“A niece! How nice,” Verna said, pushing her glasses up. “Frederick, that was my husband, never wanted children, you know. I thought about trying to modify the portal magics to peek into parallel dimensions to see what my children might have been like, but the power requirements were far too great. And there was a small chance it would turn all life on the planet into eggplants. The equations were very tricky.”

“Uh, well, that's too bad,” I said, and wondered, had the power requirements not been so huge, might she have given it a try anyway?

Verna continued to ramble as Pete drove us over the floating bridge. The sight of Lake Washington passing beneath and ready to swallow us made me nauseous, so I closed my eyes and focused on finding a way to explain things to Dawn.

Hi Dawn, I came home safe like I promised, but I'm going to be in a dance contest to the death with your good friend Barry the waerdog, and might miss your show due to my lack of having a head.

No explanation I imagined led to a happy ending.

*   *   *

We arrived home an hour and a half later, just past 9:00
A.M.
A dozen cherry walnut waffles from Hudson Point Café warmed my lap through the takeout boxes, their delicious scent driving me crazy.

I'd called home well ahead, so pretty much the entire family sat gathered around the long oak dining table. Sammy and Mattie looked up from working on their laptops, their expressions of relief bathed in the pale glow of the screens, looking like sisters rather than aunt and niece. Sammy's girlfriend, Fatima, sat barefoot and cross-legged on her chair, sketching in her sketch pad, and pushed her long black hair out of her face as we entered. And Mort had the necrotorium's appointment book and payment ledger on the table, frowning at them and making an obvious show of ignoring our entrance. Father was absent, most likely in his room.

Vee rushed to Pete with a worried expression and examined his torn shirt. “What happened?”

Pete gave an uncomfortable shrug.

At the same time, Dawn grabbed the takeout boxes out of my hand, threw them on the table, and punched me in the shoulder, hard, which wrenched the other shoulder that the redcap had struck with his staff.

“Ow!” I winced and held both shoulders. “What? I told you I was going—”

“That's for almost getting stuck in the Other Realm!” Dawn said. “But you're back now, and you took care of Silene's whatever issue, I assume. Mission accomplished, right?” She stopped and looked at my filthy clothes. “Why are you doing a Pig-Pen imitation?”