Tricked (34 page)

“You got a whole lotta nails here. What they for?”

“Tree house,” Albert volunteered. “For my kid.” Good one, Albert.

Officer Gabe grunted and resumed his search. He opened the glove compartment, looked behind and under the seats. No giant stash of drugs. He didn’t see anything in the truck bed either.

“All right,” he said, waving at the truck. “Everything seems to be fine. Sorry for the inconvenience. Have a nice day.” Without another word, he turned and went to join his partner at the back of the drugstore. More sirens were approaching—an ambulance, no doubt, for the unfortunate pharmacist who’d been rendered unconscious by a mysterious apparition.

Albert waited until Officer Gabe was out of earshot and then turned to me. “Where’d you put ’em all?”

“No worries, Albert,” I said. “Let’s go have a nice day, build a tree house or something.” The drugs were precisely where I’d left them in the bed of the truck, nicely camouflaged.

“But you still got ’em, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, how’d you hide ’em?” When I just shrugged and grinned, he turned to his uncle. “Where’d you find this guy? He’s too weird for me.”

After that, it took some convincing for Albert to drive us to Frank’s house, where Frank fetched his old six-shooter for me to use.

We had one more stop to make before we could return to the mine site. At the big box store we picked up two five-gallon paint buckets, a large mixing bowl, a slotted mixing spoon, and two bottles of olive oil. Frank also snagged some food for lunch and some ice and drinks to restock the ice chest at the hogan.

Albert dropped us off at the devastated mine site and waved good-bye uncertainly to Frank. He seemed reluctant to leave his uncle all alone with the crazy white people with uncanny talents for breaking and entering and drug concealment.

I was wondering why we were alone at all. Where was Coyote?

We found a couple of unbroken shovels, and we grabbed these to dig a small hole, into which we dumped all the nails. I summoned Ferris, the iron elemental, and showed him how to bind two nails together in such a way that the pointy parts always stuck up no matter how it landed. It was basically a clever twisting; it could be done non-magically with a pair of pliers and lots of patience, but an iron elemental could do it much more quickly. Once Ferris knew what to do, he made me look like a slowpoke. The scattered nails in the hole leapt and jumped about, twisting themselves into caltrops, and I left Frank and Granuaile to fill up a five-gallon bucket with them while I turned my attention to crafting the poison.

It took an inordinate amount of time to get through the packaging and open the capsules into the mixing bowl. Thanks to Ferris, Granuaile and Frank finished with the caltrops long before I got all the pills out and emptied. Frank busied himself at the hogan while Granuaile joined me sitting on the mesa a short distance away.

“Tell me what you’re doing, sensei?”

“Mixing poison. But you mean how, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay. Are you comfy? This is going to take a while.”

“I’m as comfy as I can be.”

“All right, I’ll bind your sight again and we’ll go into details. How are you on your chemistry?”

“Not so good,” she admitted. “Kind of clueless, actually. Do I need to get a clue?”

“If you want to be able to do the sort of thing I’ll be showing you here, yes. Normally you’d go get some nightshade and let nature do all the work for you. Not that poisoning caltrops to take out madly fast shape-shifters
is normal. But we don’t have the time to do this conventionally. I can’t shift across to Europe from here and get back before this evening. So what I’m going to do is look at the structure of these alkaloids, synthesize copies, and then distribute them in an oil base, creating a deadly ointment for our skinwalkers.”

“You’re doing this down at the molecular level?” she asked.

“Yep. Much of what I do in the physical world is at that level. Take the engine sabotage as an example. To fuse the pistons to the cylinder walls, I first unbind the steel on the surfaces of both, letting the elements mix a bit, then I rebind them so that it becomes a solid piece. There’s a lot of molecules involved in that, but you can make it go faster by using macrobindings that determine shape and allowed molecular structures.”

“A macro? So what you do is craft one binding that executes multiple tasks?”

“Exactly. Macros are your friends. If I had to bind everything individually, we’d be here forever, right? But I’m going to create three macros to make this poison and you’ll see.”

“Oh, so”—she pointed a finger at my necklace and waggled it around—“your charms are like macros.”

“Yes. Except they execute far faster than they would if I had to speak them aloud. I took the trouble to make them because I’m paranoid and I’m always looking for an edge. They’re bound to trigger words in my Old Irish headspace; I think the command and it happens. If I need a target for a spell like camouflage or night vision, then I add that, but otherwise it targets me by default. And the shape-shifting ones all include the macro to shrink or expand the necklace, depending on the form I choose.”

“That is legit, sensei. I know what these do over here on this side,” she said, indicating my right, where all the
shape-shifting charms were, “but what’s over here on the other side of your amulet?”

She put her hand gently on the left side of my face. “Turn your head so I can see them better.” She squinted and leaned in closer, examining the tiny hammered patterns in the silver charms. It brought the top of her head close to my jaw, and I admired the sun-kissed vermilion highlights in her hair and the scent of strawberries and
damn
I wished the Diamondbacks would get a lights-out closer, because they kept losing all those close games by one or two runs due to a shoddy bullpen. She trailed her fingers down the side of my neck, and I reflected that I didn’t like the swimming-pool remodel at Chase Field very much; the old tile pattern was much more attractive while the pool area was under the sponsorship of a different company.

“These little patterns are neat, sensei, but I don’t know what they mean.” Her fingers left my skin and she leaned back, and I nearly sighed with relief. It’s tough to think about baseball when it’s not in season. Spring training wasn’t for another couple of months.

“Okay, starting from the amulet and going outward, you have camouflage, night vision, faerie specs, healing, and I don’t have a name for the last one. Soulcatcher, maybe.”

“Soulcatcher?”

“I’ve never used it,” I admitted. “I don’t even know if it works.”

“What is it supposed to do?”

“It’s supposed to save my life. But in order to test it, I’d have to die.”

“Oh!” she laughed. “Well, I can see how you’d be reluctant to give that one a test-drive.” She frowned abruptly as something occurred to her. “Why have it at all, then? I mean, why not put on a different charm, like one for unbinding vampires?”

“I think I’m going to pursue that,” I said. “Recent events have pointed out how useful a charm like that would be. But still, if I start now, even with all the experience I’ve had, it’ll be at least fifty years before I can complete it.”

“Why so long?”

“Trial and error. I have to construct those macrobindings to execute from a silver charm via mental command in close proximity to a cold iron amulet. There are no instructions in Druidic lore to guide me through how to craft such a thing. Each of these charms is unique. So each time I test it, I’ll have to have a vampire in front of me to target. That’s going to be a bit dangerous. I didn’t realize how dangerous they were, honestly. I’d always avoided them as a matter of course in my efforts to keep myself inconspicuous whenever I tried to settle somewhere. But to answer your earlier question, I mostly keep the soulcatcher around because I worry about accidental deaths. When I began working on it, the Morrigan and I weren’t quite as chummy as we are now, and Aenghus Óg was still a dire threat.”

“I see. Do you think it’ll work?”

“Honestly? Considering how many times I’ve failed with other charms, no. I had to test them multiple times and change the bindings until I figured out something that worked. This hasn’t been tested at all. It’s kind of a Hail Mary.”

Granuaile smiled. “But you’ve hailed Mary before.”

“Not through my own efforts,” I reminded her. “Ready for poison?” I darted a quick finger at the mixing bowl.

“Yep. Let’s do this.”

I spoke the binding that allowed Granuaile to see with my eyes in the magical spectrum, and then I gradually zoomed in my focus until I could see the various alkaloids on the molecular level—or, rather, a magical proxy
for them. I couldn’t really zoom in my eyes like a microscope.

“Okay, have you ever worked with design software where you can do a series of actions, record them, and then bundle them together for later use?”

“Yeah, I’ve done that. Photoshop.”

“Exactly. So that’s what I’m going to do here. See this molecule? That’s atropine. This one’s scopolamine, and this is hyoscyamine. It’s all just carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen in a specific configuration. We have plenty of those elements around. The inactive ingredients in the pills, which form the majority of the material you see in the bowl, are full of those same elements. So we construct a macro that says to rebind the available material here until it’s all one of those three poisons.”

“Won’t there be leftover stuff?”

“Yes. A few bits of carbon or hydrogen. Neutral non-active ingredients.”

I painstakingly constructed the macros and then, before energizing them, zoomed back out and turned off the magical spectrum so that Granuaile could see what happened.

“Watch closely.”

“Watching.”

I energized the bindings and the powder in the bowl stirred and poofed a wee bit.

“Wait. Is that all?” Granuaile said. “Nothing happened.”

“Everything happened. That was a bowl of three percent poison and ninety-seven percent random crap that they put in pills to make you feel like the price you’re paying is worth it. Now it’s almost one hundred percent poison. I never would have been able to do that before I took chemistry.”

“You got a degree?”

“No, I sat camouflaged in the classes and bought the
texts. This is now an extremely toxic mixing bowl. Would you mind terribly opening a bottle of olive oil? I don’t want to risk tearing these gloves at all.” She returned shortly with an opened bottle for me. “Pour slowly while I stir?”

“Sure,” she said. “Why the olive oil?”

“It acts as the carrier. This is basically going to be a thin ointment. Once this is all mixed and the alkaloids are distributed evenly, we’ll coat the caltrops with it and we’ll be good to go.”

We worked in silence for a few minutes as we mixed the alkaloids with the base. When I was satisfied, I said, “Lovely. Now we just have to coat the caltrops with it without accidentally poisoning ourselves.”

“That sounds perfectly relaxing, sensei,” Granuaile said. She put on two pairs of gloves, and we arranged a procedure where we coated small batches of caltrops in the bowl, fished them out with the slotted spoon, let the excess oil drain, and then placed them into the second bucket. It was monotonous labor made edgy by the knowledge that a careless splash could kill us. We finished with only a couple of hours to spare before sundown. We hauled the weaponized caltrops up to the hogan, where Frank was sitting cross-legged on the floor in some kind of meditation. We tried to be quiet as we raided the cooler for cheese and crackers and ice-cold cans of tea.

Frank heard us anyway and grunted as he opened an eye. “You all ready, Mr. Collins?”

“As ready as I can be,” I said, nodding.

“Good. So am I.” His other eye opened and he began to clamber to his feet.

“You are? For what?”

“For killin’ skinwalkers, o’ course,” he said, brushing dust off his knees.

I held up a hand. “Frank, I didn’t ask you to take part
in this. You oughtta get out of here, actually; give your nephew a call.”

“Naw, I’m doin’ this with you. How many more chances am I gonna have to get me a piece of skinwalker? Think I’ll keep my gun. You slow ’em down for me and I’ll plug ’em good.”

I exchanged a worried glance with Granuaile. “Frank, I can speed myself up enough to have a chance of hitting them. You’re not going to have an advantage like that. You only had the one chance to call Monster Slayer.”

“I know. But you can’t speak my language. What if they wanna talk before killin’ us? Whattaya gonna do then, play charades? Look, son, this is what bein’ a
hataałii
is all about. I’m s’posed to protect my people from evil. Now, this evil comes from First World; it’s a Diné thing, and it’s threatening Diné people, and I’m damned if I’ll let someone else take care of my problems for me. I’m goin’.”

There is no arguing with pride. Jesus and the Morrigan couldn’t talk me out of going to Asgard, and I wasn’t going to be able to talk Frank out of doing this. I gave him a tight little nod and began to worry about how I would protect him.

“All right, Frank,” I said. “I have a bit more business to conduct before we do this. Excuse me?”

He and Granuaile nodded at me and I exited to find a shady spot—not too tough near sundown. Underneath a shaggy-barked juniper, I sat on the ground and took the opportunity to have an overdue conversation with Colorado.

//Druid greets Colorado / Harmony//

//Harmony// came the reply.

//Coal mine stopped / Will monitor / Query: Move gold now?//

//Yes / Coal stopped / Gratitude / Keep coal mine quiet

/ Will move gold//

//Harmony// I said.

Colorado agreed.

Not for the first time, I reflected that the earth is so much simpler to deal with than people. On the other hand, the earth never gets my jokes.

Frank and I chose a spot near the south butte, facing the north butte from whence the skinwalkers always appeared. With the approach to our backs defended, I took the five-gallon bucket of poisoned caltrops and carefully scattered them in front of us in a half circle, backing up as I went. I spread them out over fifteen feet or so to make sure the skinwalkers would not leap over them. Frank surveyed the scatter pattern uncertainly.