The Summoning (13 page)

I kept clear of people for the most part, because it’s not worth the trouble, but I did run right through the elaborate castle being perfected for the high tide, and ran on, grinning, to the music of the various yells and howls of the builders behind me.

Further down the beach a couple of guys were throwing frisbees into the sea for their dogs, so I joined them, making catches with leaps into the air that left my limbs flailing and their eyes starting out of their heads. They walked softly toward me, speaking kindly, and I let them think for moments that they might take home a new dog, a big one, before I kicked my heels in their faces and left them behind.

All right, I wasn’t thinking. I was just charging around making fun where I found it. But I needed to blow off some steam before I gave serious consideration to what I had found myself involved in. And anyway, I felt like it.

I ran along the surf until I was panting so hard my tongue kept tasting sand, and the scent of the water was driving me crazy. Then I walked up to human country where a kiosk sold cold drinks and coffee, and I bought a large bottle of water and made my way back at a walk.

All right. Was I committed to this adventure, or not? If I was not, I needed to leave Los Angeles, which wasn’t as simple as just driving out of town. I would need to form a whole new set of plans about where to hide next, and how to get there without leaving a trail.

If I stayed, it meant I was committed to the side of the power raisers who wanted to stop the World Snake from devouring the city. That was only right, because Whittier was well within the bite mark that the Rag Man pointed out to us.

Everyone said I was important in this fight. I couldn’t just hide anymore, biding my time, inhabiting a little space, putting food on the table and paying the bills. I liked the idea of being a player, a power in the land, someone who mattered. And if I wasn’t in this fight, why had I driven all these miles already, to ask questions and find things out?

Well, because of Richard. Richard needed my help. I was involved in two quests, not just one. I’d helped the demon recover his soul. We’d found a sorceress who might be able to help him get himself free. We were bound together in the battle against the World Snake, but before the World Snake would come the Eater of Souls, and defeating him, Richard said, came first. I was already involved. If Richard needed saving, I would save him. I walked faster. If he was going to face the monster, I would face it with him. We would fight together. I wasn’t alone anymore. I was committed. I turned and started back down the beach to where Richard would be waiting.

We needed information. We needed to know how to kill these critters, if they could be killed, and how to get rid of them if they couldn’t. Tamara might come up with something. We’d found the priest. He might tell us more on another day. In this big city, there might be others. I’d get Richard to tell me who else we could ask.

The shadows were growing long. The air was chilly. Walkers along the surf huddled now in coats and sweaters. The patient surfers were paddling in. My hair was ragged and damp from the sun and wind and water. I was sweaty and sticky from the salt, still exhilarated by the air and exercise. I started thinking about dinner.

Bonfires blazed up ahead on the beach. People claimed picnic areas in groups or extended families, and brought out the hotdogs, s’mores, and beer. The smells were tantalizing. I quickened my pace.

I smelled the fire first, up where I’d told Richard to wait. Then I smelled the pack—or gang, rather, for these guys were quite depressingly human. Most of their heads were shaved, and all they’d brought to the party were bottles of beer and bottles of harder stuff in paper bags. And a bunch of them were holding Richard down on the sand while some stood over him, pouring something onto his face.

Rage roared up in me, and happy anticipation sang. I glanced up and down the beach—no one to interfere as far as I could see. Oh, this was going to be fun.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
here were about a dozen guys, and three or four girls on the sidelines preparing food. The girls were staying well away from the ones tormenting Richard. As I came up closer, I caught a whiff of Richard’s blood, and then I wasn’t happy anymore. But I didn’t change. I sashayed right into their group, all five feet of me, in my dark blue sweatshirt, and black jeans, and tennis shoes. I tagged the leader, the danger-man, standing back a little while his lieutenants vied for his favors by thinking up new things to do to the blond intruder.

“Hi!” I said cheerfully, when I got close.

The danger-man turned. He was in his late twenties, one of the oldest of the bunch, with a clean-shaven head, wearing an ironed white t-shirt like most of the other guys. He held a bottle of beer close to his face, as though for comfort. His eyes were dead. One of the handful of guys next to him, younger, this one with a stubble growth of hair, said to me, “This is a private party.”

“Yeah?” I sashayed some more and smiled at them. “What about him?” I pointed to Richard, still lying on the ground, three guys on top of him, five more standing over him.

“What, him?” the biggest of the tormenters laughed, and hauled back his leg to kick Richard in the ribs.

I told you I’m fast. With a leap I landed with my paws on the ground and his leg between them, took a huge, satisfying chomp out of his calf, and twisted for good measure as I stood up, spitting denim and blood and hair as I rose and faced him very close on two feet, and said, “Yes. Him.” And I smiled. I could still taste the blood on my lips as he fell down, shouting. The others were paralyzed, not sure what they had seen, but pretty sure they saw me now, bigger than I looked, with yellow eyes, and with blood dripping from my mouth.

Then the leader said, “Get her,” and the guys around him charged.

I backed away, laughing. I was still having fun, then. The rest of them were circling and I started to think about retreat and escape—but there was Richard, still held down, and he couldn’t run as fast as I could.

I edged to the left, so that one of them got between me and the other two. That one swung at me, and I ducked and kicked him hard in the side of the knee. He cried out and went down. The other two lunged and I went down as well—onto four legs, my blood up. One little hop and I’d have a throat in my teeth, and I cannot tell you how satisfying that feels, how soft the flesh is, how it collapses as you press your teeth together. You can do it slowly, and hear the scream drown in a gurgle, or you can do it quick and hear the intoxicating crunches as the blood comes up on your tongue… but I couldn’t kill them. Come on, it wouldn’t be fair. So this would be a leg fest. But I struck high at the next one, and caught his thigh at the groin and, oh, did he leap away, the baby. The next one, I went for the knee, but he was already dodging as I leaped, and he fell. I charged back to the fire, where the women were screaming and running, and several of the guys had retreated behind the fire. One guy was on a cell phone shouting to the police about a crazy lady and a crazy dog, no, a wolf, really! Come quick, half in Spanish and half in English. And the dead-eyed guy stood steady as I came on, with a gun he lifted from his waistband cool as can be, and aimed straight at my head.

License to kill. Just as I can grow large, I can grow small to the eye. I shrank on the bound and then leaped in the air. He fired twice, once into the sand and once over my head, and then I was on him, both paws on his shoulders and he went down backwards and the gun flew into the air, and he was flat on his back, and I was above him and he stared up at me, and his eyes weren’t dead any longer. They were like a helpless child’s, staring up into the face of a nightmare come to life. He closed his eyes and tried to get his hands between me and his throat.

Yeah, okay, I didn’t kill him. The first scream was when I took off the end of his nose. That hurts a lot, you know. I took a delicate chomp on his lip—that was the second scream—then I reached out and grabbed his gun hand and chewed three or four times, working my way up his forearm. Felt the bones crack, but it was the tendons I was after. He wasn’t going to shoot a gun again with that hand, not without a lot of major rehab first. Then a couple of his boys came up to tackle me, but I heard them and I was gone while they were still in the air. They fell on their boss hard, and that was the third scream, and then they were crying out because there was quite a lot of blood.

I stood up and looked around. “Richard?”

“Here.”

He was sitting up, giving a shove to the gangbanger who hurried to get off his legs and back away with the other two as I came up. There was blood in his hair, but it wasn’t running hard.

“Can you get up?”

In answer he did so, stiffly but quickly.

Four or five of them were regrouping, starting toward us again. Behind them people were clustered around their leader, trying to stop the bleeding. People were calling to one another in Spanish and English, some of them hysterically. One of the women walked toward us holding up a little silver cross from the end of a rosary and screaming prayers. I backed away from the guys coming at us as Richard limped to my side.

I looked him over quickly. He’d taken some damage, but it looked like mostly bruising. “You all right?” It was hard to see in the twilight.

He nodded, his eyes wide. We backed away from the five of them now making a wide circle, pushing us toward the sea.

“How’s your fighting?” I asked breathlessly. “You been in scraps before?”

I saw him smile then, and it did wonders for me. “I’ve been in the wars,” he said.

I grinned back at him. “All right, then. They’re toast. Come on, this way—follow me!”

I charged the nearest two who were closing in on us. I changed as I leaped for his body, and almost stopped in the air as a gray form streaked by me, and a second wolf leaped on the other man. There were more screams, and the others turned and ran. I caught a whiff of the wolf. Gods damn. It was Richard. I charged past him at the next gangster, but they were all running now, and we chased them down the beach in a wild flight, their screams, their scent and Richard’s all urging me on, and Richard only a little behind me. I caught up easily and passed through the midst of them, enjoying the howls, the falls and the floundering as they found me among them, and the second wave of howls and dodges as Richard came up behind me, and we passed them by, and they turned and ran the other way. We let them run for a while, and then we went after them again. That time as we passed through them we heard the sirens, and we kept going, running in the deepening twilight along the surf at an easy lope.

When we were out of sight of the gangsters’ bonfire, I changed, and turned. The gray wolf was favoring his left side. He looked ragged and unsure, and his tail hung down as I looked at him. I waited, to see what he would do, if he would change back right away. I wondered if he could, or if I’d be breaking my lease’s “no pets” policy from now on. He let out a whine, turned one way and another, and then he changed and fell to the sand as a man.

I dropped down near him, staring down at him. He was breathing hard. He reached out to me, and I grabbed his hands and held them. After a moment, he turned over on his back, and I let him go. His eyes were wide, astonished.

I said, “Have you ever…?”

He shook his head.

I said, because I knew it, “You’re not…”

He shook his head again. Then he sat up, put his hands to his face, took them away, stared down at them. He touched his lips, found blood there, and wiped at it hard. Then he got on his hands and knees and retched. I knelt down next to him. I reached out and laid my hand on his head for a moment. He crawled to the sea and got himself a handful of water. He cleaned his lips. When the next wave came in, he gathered a handful, soaking himself to the knees, and washed his face, took a sip, and spat. Then he came back and sat near me.

“Better?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Tell me what happened,” I said. “You changed. How did you do that?”

He looked at me, eyes wide, his face lit by the faint last evening glow of orange twilight. He said, as though I should have known, “You told me to.”

CHAPTER NINE

R
ichard reached out and touched his fingers to my side. I let him. When he brought them away, wet and dark, I felt the pain for the first time.

“Hey!” I exclaimed, touching my ribs myself. Son of a bitch! If I’d known the bullet came that close, by the Lady, that maggot-eyed muscle-driven piece of work would have been dead. I snarled. I could still taste his blood. I became aware of other bruises and aches as I got to my feet.

Richard started to get up, and I gave him a hand as he got to his feet pretty slowly too. But when he spoke, he asked about me. “Is it bad?”

I was still swearing. “No.” I pressed my sweatshirt against my side to staunch the bleeding. “What’s bad is having regrets. Come on.”

I was still holding his hand. We went up the beach a ways further before we headed up to the streets. We could still hear sirens and babble and see a dark crowd of people gathering down the beach. Richard gently drew me close and put his arm around me. We wandered back to the car, keeping to the unlighted side of the street, but no one spoke to us, and there were no cops by the car. It was a long drive back to Whittier. I turned the heat on full. Richard was shivering.

“You all right?”

“Yeah.” He flashed me a grin. “That was…” He shook his head, wide-eyed. “Amazing.”

There’s a great Chinese restaurant down the street from my house on Philadelphia. I went in and ordered take-out. The waiter pretended he didn’t notice the state of my clothes. Or me. Richard hobbled down to the drug store while I waited for the food, and then we drove up the hill.

When we were full up of House Special Lo Mein, tangerine beef, and shrimp fried rice, I went into the bathroom to clean up and have a look at my wounds. I had some bruises and abrasions, most of which I had no idea where they’d come from. The bullet had split the skin in one place along my side. When I pulled off my sweatshirt, it opened up again. I took a quick and not very effective shower because everything had started to hurt. I used one towel to staunch the blood while I dried myself with the other one. That’s when Richard knocked on the door.