Authors: John Levitt
Unleashed (17 page)
“Thank you,” said Victor without the slightest trace of sarcasm. “Let’s get down to business.”
“You have the stones?”
Eli opened the old messenger bag and showed the stones to him, then closed it firmly. Like at Mama Yara’s botanica, it reminded me of nothing so much as a dope deal, complete with suspicion on both sides. The Wendigo turned to me.
“I’ll need your help,” he said. “Or rather, it will be a lot easier if you’re involved.”
“Okay,” I said. I still didn’t trust him, though. “Are we actually going somewhere, physically, or is this just a psychic journey?” I remembered asking Eli the same question when I’d gone seeking the origin of the rune stones, more than a year ago.
“Ahh, well, that depends on how you look at it,” the Wendigo said. I should have known.
“Let me guess. It’s not an either/or question.”
“Exactly. I’m glad you understand.”
“Yeah, me, too. But on the practical side, what if something happens to us there?”
“Well, then the question becomes academic, but we won’t wake up safe in our beds; that I can assure you.” He held out his hand, impatiently. “Here, just relax; take my hand. Envision the place where you were when you saw her.” I wasn’t that eager to let him touch me, but I did it. His hand was warm, pulsing with magical energy. Nothing else happened. “It might be easier if you close your eyes and block out your present surroundings.”
I did what he asked, concentrated on my breathing, and one by one blocked out the distractions around me. It wasn’t that hard; it’s a basic of both yoga training and magical discipline. The last senses to go were touch and smell, the breath of salt air on my face coming through the open windows.
It grew stronger, and the tang of the ocean was replaced with the slightly musty odor of gorse and bracken, and the breeze had turned cold and damp. When I opened my eyes I was back on the moor.
But this time it was different. It was dark, as if the winter sun was just sinking under the horizon. Patches of thick, evil-looking fog closed in around us, obscuring the landscape one moment, swirling away the next to reveal a barren and desolate scene. Before, the moor had been dramatic and full of mystery. This time it gave off an aura of evil and danger.
The Wendigo was standing next to me, but Lou was nowhere in sight. I had a moment of not quite panic—he’d never failed to follow me anywhere before. But then he burst out of a nearby thicket and stood there, tongue out and panting as if he’d run a long way. The Wendigo looked surprised.
“I didn’t think that was possible,” he said. “He didn’t come with us, and there’s no way he could have followed us here—there isn’t any ‘here’ to follow us to, strictly speaking.”
“He is a talented creature,” I said. “So, what now?”
“Your part is done. Now that we’re here, all I need to do is call her home. It won’t be a problem.”
I could have told him that was the wrong thing to say. It’s a form of unconscious hubris, poking your finger in the eye of the gods. Sure enough, the minute he finished talking I heard a long-drawn-out, muffled howl in the distance, sounding like a hound from hell.
“What in God’s name is that?” I asked. For the first time since I’d seen him, the Wendigo looked ill at ease.
“Oh, shit,” he said. Not a reassuring response.
“I didn’t hear anything like that the last time.”
“Last time, you were pulled into Sherwood’s construct. This time, it’s partly yours as well. You mentioned that the moor looked like a movie set.
Wuthering Heights
, I think you said.”
Wuthering Heights
, I think you said.”
“Yeah.”
“This isn’t exactly the same place, is it? Have you ever actually been on a moor?”
“No,” I said.
“But this is partly your own construct. So where did you get your idea of it from? What do you think of when you imagine a moor?” I didn’t have to think about that one.
“
The Hound of the Baskervilles.
” Another howl, closer, punctuated my remark.
The Hound of the Baskervilles.
” Another howl, closer, punctuated my remark.
“And that is?”
“Sherlock Holmes. A story about a gigantic, spectral hound who roams the moors, killing people.”
“I see.”
“But in the story it wasn’t really anything supernatural,” I explained. “It turned out to be a huge, vicious, but quite ordinary dog.”
“Maybe in the story. But not in your construct—trust me on that.”
Another howl, long-drawn-out and definitely closer. Now it sounded less like a hound and more like some creature from hell. Lou flinched involuntarily and started picking up first one paw, then the other, the way he does when he’s nervous.
“What are you worried about?” I said. “You can take a shotgun blast without it bothering you, and you can control things with just your voice. A ghostly hound shouldn’t pose much of a problem.”
“You’d think. But you mostly missed me with that shotgun. You only thought you hit me. A couple of pellets nicked me, but that was all. Misdirection and illusion are my true strengths.” So we had something in common after all.
“Your voice is no illusion,” I said.
“Sure, it is. It doesn’t control anyone. It just makes them think they have no choice.” That seemed like semantics to me, but this was no time for a philosophical discussion.
“So use it, then,” I said.
“Believe me, I would if I could. But things work differently in places like this. I can call Sherwood; that’s what I came here for. But other than that, I’m as vulnerable as you are. Maybe more so—it’s your place, and you at least should still have your talent here. So it’s up to you, I’m afraid.”
Another howl, worse than before, and considerably nearer. My throat got dry, and this time it wasn’t only Lou who flinched. For the first time since I’d met him, the Wendigo had lost his self-assured demeanor.
About twenty yards to the left of us the ground cover thinned out and dissolved into a small patch of swampy bog, no bigger than a double bed. I reached out to see if I could feel talent working, and it was. I didn’t have enough power to expand it to a useful size, at least not directly. But I could gather swamp essence from the small patch and flip it over, effectively doubling it in size. Then again, and again once more. With the power of geometrical progression, it wasn’t long before I had created an area some fifty yards square. Technically, I wasn’t using enough power to transform a large area, but it worked. That’s why it’s called magic, at least by those who don’t fully understand it. Which would include me, though I usually don’t use that term.
I called Lou over and worked on his paws, expanding and flattening them until they were like tiny snowshoes, which took more energy and skill than creating the entire swamp did. When I was done, he ran back and forth, trying them out and stumbling a few times. Twice, he even fell over his feet before he got the hang of managing them. He wouldn’t be nearly as agile as usual, but he wouldn’t have to be. He’d just need to make it to the swamp.
I used the rest of my energy to put a deflection spell around myself and the Wendigo, using the fog and the bleak and featureless landscape as my model. It wouldn’t fool the hound for long—for one thing, dogs rely on scent as much as they do sight, but it would make us hard to locate at first. I hoped it would work. If it didn’t, we were in trouble, since I’d now used up most of my power. I would have been a lot more confident if I could have somehow brought along the Remington 870.
Just as I finished, the hound materialized out of a patch of fog. It was close to two hundred pounds, looking like a cross between a mastiff and a wolf. Muscles rippled under a short coat of hair, and it bounded toward us, light on its feet. No clever dodging aside was going to work with this one. Its eyes glowed a deep phosphorescent green, and its muzzle was full of strong and sharp teeth, covered with foaming slobber.
If the Wendigo was correct, it was a creature created in part out of my own subconscious. Which didn’t say much for my imagination. It was a stock Hollywood monster, a stereotype. But that was just its physical appearance. It also projected an aura of inevitability—it was going to kill us all, rend us limb from limb, slashing muscle and crunching bone. When things created from the unconscious take on an independent existence, they’re always worse than your everyday monster.
Despite my attempt at masking, it instantly zeroed in on our location and swerved toward us, uttering a bay of triumph. The closer it got, the larger it looked, and there was nowhere to hide. It didn’t notice Lou, discreetly standing behind me, and just before it reached us, Lou bolted out from behind me and ran right under the beast’s muzzle. It snapped at him out of reflex, like a dog after a fly, but Lou knew what he was doing. He dodged just as the muzzle lowered, and the teeth snapped shut on empty air.
Lou squealed as if mortally hurt, and the thing couldn’t resist. Prey drive kicked in and it spun and went after Lou as if he were a wounded rabbit. Lou took off toward the swamp area, occasionally uttering that wounded cry. The hound was faster in a straight line than Lou was, especially a Lou with altered paws, but it couldn’t change direction like he could. Lou zigged and zagged, always just a little out of reach. At one point he stumbled and nearly went down, and my heart skipped a beat. But he was just playing the beast, making sure it wouldn’t abandon the chase, like a mother duck who pretends to have a crippled wing to draw a predator away from its brood.
When Lou reached the boggy area he flew right over it. At twelve pounds with magically altered paws, he barely sank into it at all, skimming over the bog like a water strider on a summer pond. The hound was right on his tail, and its momentum carried it well into the morass before it realized the danger and started to sink. In seconds it was floundering helplessly, each desperate struggle trapping it more securely in the mire. Lou doubled back, making sure not to get too close to the mire, and ran up to where I waited.
“Good job,” I said to him. It looked like he was going to be living on bacon instead of kibble from now on for quite a while. I returned his paws to normal, and he stood there shaking them out like an athlete after a hard training run.
“Nice work,” said the Wendigo. “I wasn’t sure you had it in you.”
“I’m full of surprises.” I watched the hound struggling, sinking inexorably deeper with every effort. I felt kind of sorry for it. It must have shown, because the Wendigo picked up on it immediately.
“Not to worry. It doesn’t really exist, you know, any more than this place does.”
“Are you trying to say it couldn’t have hurt us after all?” That didn’t jibe with what I knew about such things.
“Oh, no. Just because it isn’t real doesn’t mean it couldn’t have torn us to shreds.”
“Glad you cleared that up,” I said. “Now, any chance you can do what we came here for, before something worse shows up?”
“Of course.” He spun in a circle, sniffing the damp air, like Lou on a scent. “This way.”
We trudged over the moor, through the drifting fog. I immediately lost all sense of direction, but the Wendigo seemed sure of his direction. We walked for fifteen minutes or so, until a break in the fog revealed a rocky crag in the distance. It was familiar, and I thought I could see a misty figure blending into the rock.
“Close enough,” said the Wendigo. He faced in that direction and called softly, “Sherwood.” At first I could barely hear him, but the sound grew until it filled the landscape as strongly as if he had shouted at the top of his lungs. He spoke again. “Sherwood. Come.”
The Wendigo wasn’t speaking to me, but I still felt the pull. I wish I knew how he did it. The fog had closed in again and I could no longer see the crag, but he turned and began to walk away. He headed directly for a particularly dense area of fog, where the vapor turned to water the moment it touched your skin and you couldn’t see more than five feet in front of your face.
“Home,” he breathed, again the word barely audible. The fog closed in thicker than ever until it was almost as disorienting as the featureless void I’d entered at the Columbarium. A bright, diffuse light source appeared, illuminating the fog from the side, further disorienting me. A faint shape loomed ominously right at the limit of my vision, then another. The rocky ground softened under my feet, and as the fog thinned, the shapes resolved themselves into the figures of Eli and Victor. The rocky floor became a carpet, the bright light became sunlight streaming through tall windows, and then we were back in Victor’s study.
Sherwood lay crumpled on the floor. Eli bounded over toward her, but I beat him to it. I put my fingers on the side of her throat and felt warmth, but no pulse. Then I moved my fingers slightly and found it, reassuringly strong and steady. She was alive. I didn’t want to let go of her—I could hardly believe she was back, solid of flesh and breathing easily, but Eli shouldered me aside, looking worried.
“What’s wrong? Why is she unconscious?” he asked the Wendigo, putting his large fingers where mine had been.
“Don’t worry,” said the Wendigo. “She’ll be fine. Remember, she was suspended in that place for a very long time. The psychic shock of returning has just temporarily short-circuited her consciousness, that’s all.”
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