Valknut: The Binding (27 page)

For it seemed that Junkyard’s feelings for
Lennie Cook had grown beyond simple affection. And so the girl
would be his undoing. Fenrir curled his fingers one by one into a
fist, popping each knuckle.

And then Junkyard would destroy her in
turn.

Lost in visions of victory to come, Fenrir
didn’t hear the noise at first, drifting down the riverbank. Clumsy
feet swished through old, wet leaves. Whistled bits of song niggled
at Fenrir, drawing him in annoyance from his glorious anticipation.
He had heard the tune before, a hundred years ago, and it made his
hackles rise. He strained all his faculties to discover who was
whistling...whistling...

Whistling Dixie
, suggested a small,
familiar voice in the recesses of Fenrir’s mind.

The voice did not belong to him.

The invasion stunned Fenrir. Since the day of
his binding, thousands of years before, he had held his rage in
precarious balance, a boulder teetering on a pinnacle. But never in
all those years had he been so violated. Weakened by a shockwave of
outrage, his control wobbled. His human form melted to wolf,
seeking strength, finding confusion, then flowed back to man form.
In a fury, he turned the dark tendrils inward, tracking the voice
back to its source.

He found it, buried deep, the barest spark
that kept this body alive. He had indeed heard the voice before,
though not in more than a century. And then only briefly in the
screams of the man whose body he had assumed.

Impossible! The soul of Angus Cook should be
nothing more than a dried crumb on the bottom of this body’s
brainpan. Fenrir was at the peak of his power, nearing his moment
of triumph—how could that feeble soul break through?

There had to be a catalyst. Outside help, of
some sort. Fenrir searched the clearing, but all he sensed were the
pathetic, ragged thoughts of the pathetic, ragged humans circled
around the fire.

Then he found it, a scorching presence that
sent the tendrils of his mind snapping back into his head like
broken rubber bands. A low growl vibrated at the back of Fenrir’s
throat.

The whistler had arrived, and it was Jungle
Jim.

***

The hobo clown left the riverbank and headed
for the landing with a high-stepping stride, yellow shoes flashing
in the firelight. He stopped at the boathouse and waved across the
landing at Lennie and Junkyard. The current poet, a man in
moth-eaten tails and a genuine top hat, stopped reading in the
middle of a word and stared at Jungle Jim with a mixture of
amusement and deference. They all gazed at him that way, the hard
lines of their faces softening as they greeted him.

Lennie watched the old man, loving him for
his gentle silliness. Then she frowned a little. Something about
him had changed. He looked the same as he had that morning, with
his crooked, polka-dotted tie and the dirt still clinging to his
spray-painted shoes. Only now she sensed a subtle power that she
hadn’t noticed before.

But then, she had not known of her own power
until this evening. She rubbed the three triangles on her hand, a
habit now, and wondered whether it was he who had changed, or
she.

***

Toward the front of the audience, a younger
man in top-dollar basketball shoes waved Jungle Jim over. “Here,
Jim. You can have my seat.”

This was one of Monte’s men. Fenrir touched
the gangbanger’s thoughts and an inaudible growl vibrated his
throat. The useless fool. The predispositions Fenrir had planted in
his mind had been completely nullified. Fenrir glared at Jungle Jim
through glowing yellow slits. How could this dullard interfere so
easily? That such as this could stand in his way...

The growl in Fenrir’s throat deepened to a
snarl. He hungered to become the wolf and tear the limbs from
Jungle Jim while frightened little hobos scurried away like
roaches. With effort, Fenrir fought back the blood lust and forced
himself to remain contained in human form. It became harder and
more distasteful with each day.

Then let it go.
 Fenrir licked his
lips.

Hobos in the audience moved aside to give
Jungle Jim a path to the open seat. Someone toward the back called
out, “Hey, Jim—give us a song!”

Go on, be the wolf.

Shouts of affirmation rose to the treetops,
as though the hobos agreed with the voice in Fenrir’s head. The
audience wanted a song, and they wanted it from Jungle Jim. The
hobo clown shook his head shyly and waved them off. “Naw, it
wouldn’t be right to interrupt Mackinaw Matty. Not right dab in the
middle of his poem.”

Think on it, Fenrir. All that nice, hot
blood.

And the taste of human blood was on Fenrir’s
tongue. His human shape slipped and the strength of the wolf filled
him.

No.
 Fenrir shook his head,
violently, like a dog with a bug in its ear. He couldn’t let his
man-shape go. Not yet. He was still too vulnerable. He slammed his
full will against the puny essence of Angus Cook. 
You will
be silent.

The voice did not answer.

Mackinaw Matty doffed his hat. “It’s all
right, Jim. I was nearly finished, anyway.” He stepped aside,
making room for Jungle Jim by the oil drum. “Do you have something
new for us?”

“Matter o’ fact, I do, Matty.”

Jungle Jim picked his way through the
audience. As he passed, he leaned on a shoulder here: Tonight, the
fork-bearded hobo would rummage for food in the garbage behind a
restaurant and a pre-teen runaway would return home after an hour
of sulking in the empty lot behind a gas station. Jungle Jim
brushed a leg there: The quiet man would walk past the strip club
and spend a quiet night in a shelter.

With each step, with each pause, with every
touch of a hand, Jungle Jim undid all the malicious tinkering
Fenrir had affected on these, the foot soldiers of his army.

Fenrir watched, hating the hobo clown. He had
waited millennia for his release from Odin’s trap, suffered more
than a century of patient planning, and now, as the end finally
approached, Jungle Jim plagued him with swarm of gnat-like
set-backs that seemed likely to drive him mad.

Simple, defective Jim Tuttle must somehow be
more than he appeared to be.

For perhaps the hundredth time, Fenrir probed
the hobo’s mind. As always, he couldn’t get past the images of
dollar-store magic and small children begging for candy. Pathways
to deeper memories and desires, easily accessed in normal humans,
were closed off by a wall of damaged tissue. Fenrir had never been
able to penetrate it.

The more direct solution hadn’t worked,
either. The gangbangers he’d sent to kill Tuttle had returned, one
after another, not only failing in their mission, but made so
useless that Fenrir had to destroy them. Even the normally reliable
Bill Sutter refused to kill him. Sutter would be punished for that.
And Fenrir would find another way to rid himself of Jungle Jim
Tuttle.

A sudden wind ghosted through the trees,
dislodging leaf-captured rain. The fire popped and hissed angrily.
Jungle Jim bent to the pile of kindling near the oil drum and added
broken branches to the fire.

Straightening, he pulled a bright red
handkerchief from his pocket and started to wipe his hands. A blue
handkerchief followed the red, then a green, and yellow, hanging
like garish laundry on the line. A chuckle passed around the
audience. Grinning sheepishly, Jungle Jim stuffed the colored
cloths back into his pocket.

Then the kindling caught and the fire flared.
In that one blink, that small moment it took for eyes to adjust,
the happy clown was gone. Jungle Jim wore the same face, but
somehow changed, as though another person wore it.

The difference, Fenrir realized, was in the
eyes. Before, the murky surfaces of those eyes reflected a cloudy
mind. Now, they focused with an intensity that almost glowed.
Surely another entity had invaded Jungle Jim’s mind, becoming
trapped in a defective host. Only one like himself could interfere
so easily with his plans.

Perhaps it was Tyr....

His eyes burned yellow at the thought, for it
was Tyr who had baited the trap One-Eye laid for him. He probed
Tuttle again. The wall seemed softer now. He pushed against it,
feeling it give. The hobo stiffened and lifted his head, as though
sensing the invasion. His eyes turned unerringly, staring through
the shadow Fenrir wore like a cloak, straight into Fenrir’s
eyes.

The moment was broken by the muffled
thrashing of running footsteps in the woods. The wall in Jungle
Jim’s mind solidified and his eyes dimmed, just a ridiculous fool
once more.

Fenrir withdrew, disturbed. Tuttle had
tracked him. That had never happened before. He did not know what
it meant. Still, the wall had given way for a moment. It would do
so again. And he would be waiting.

***

Briggs crashed through the woods, berating
himself as he ran. There’s nothing to run from, you idiot.

A tree branch loomed suddenly out of the
dark. He dodged and tried to slow down. But the hill was steep and
the wet leaves were slippery and he couldn’t seem to stop running,
no matter how sensible his thoughts were.

Then, without warning, he broke into a
clearing lit by the dim, orange light of an oil-drum fire. More
than a dozen pairs of eyes swerved toward him, staring with
everything from indifference to open hostility.

It seemed he had found the poetry
reading.

Not exactly how he had planned to make his
entrance. He hadn’t planned to make an entrance at all—just wait in
the trees until he could get Tuttle alone. I’ve got to get over
this fear of black birds.

Feeling exposed, he forced his breathing to
slow and scanned the motley collection of men gathered in the dim
light of the fire. No friendly faces in this bunch. He was sure
they could all read the panic on his dripping, wild-eyed face.

Two big thugs stepped closer, looking ready
to make a park bench out of him. Briggs forced a smile and kept his
hands well away from his gun and nightstick. Clearing his throat,
he tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t antagonize them
more. Before he could speak, a familiar voice hailed him from the
direction of the fire. An oddly dressed man jumped up and down in
the space that served as a stage, waving an arm at him.

“Hi, there—I remember you, I do.”

The cheerful greeting hung oddly in the
hostility charged air. Briggs waved, painfully aware that his every
move could trigger unpleasantness. At least he had not made the
trip to Minneapolis for nothing. Tuttle was here, safe, and
possibly saving his life.

“Hello, Jim.”

“Hey, everybody! This is my friend, Detective
Briggs! He gave me some donuts one time. And a Coke, too! On a day
hotter’n a coal furnace. Isn’t that right, Mr. Briggs?”

Briggs cleared his throat. This was no time
for a nervous crackle in his voice. “Sure, Jim. I remember. Good to
see you again.”

A smile lifted Tuttle’s paunchy cheeks. He
made his way to the two glowering thugs and rested his hands on
their shoulders. The thugs seemed to relax and some of the
antagonism bled out of their faces. The expressions on the hobos
closest to Tuttle softened, as well. The effect rippled through the
rest of the crowd.

Briggs watched, so amazed he almost forgot
his danger. In all his years of policing the railroad, he had never
seen anyone have such an effect on a group of ornery, independent,
sometimes violent, and always eccentric hobos like these. Briggs
still didn’t feel safe, but at least the hobos looked wary instead
of openly hostile, sullen instead of angry. Better.

But the improvement might not last. Briggs
chose his next words carefully, trying to keep from sounding
official. “I’m glad you’re here, Jim. I was hoping we’d get a
chance to chat.”

That drew some sharp looks, but Tuttle nodded
happily. “You betcha, Mr. Briggs. I’s just about to sing a
song—maybe we can talk after that.”

Tuttle patted the two thugs on the back and
returned to the oil barrel limelight. The audience settled onto
their seats of cement and damp cardboard. They hadn’t accepted
Briggs, but they would tolerate him for Tuttle’s sake. The thugs
lingered, glaring at Briggs in a way that inspired images of park
benches wearing Briggs’s clothes. He did his best to be invisible
and waited for Tuttle to begin.

“You folks are probably wantin’ a funny
little ditty—somethin’ cheerful, I suppose. But I don’t have it in
me tonight. Not even a little.” Tuttle reached into the inner
pocket of his patched suit coat and pulled out a carefully folded
scrap of packing paper. “Instead, I’s hopin’ you wouldn’t mind me
singing a song I wrote for a friend of mine. It’s
called 
The Ballad of Tin Can Petey
.”

There was a moment of silence. Apparently the
news of Peter Olson’s death had spread quickly. A man in a
button-covered jean jacket called out, “Sure, Jim. Sing it for
Petey. And sing it for everyone who died the way he did.”

The man’s voice sounded strained with
emotion, as though he had personal experience with one of victims.
Briggs eyed him, thinking he looked familiar, but he couldn’t place
the face. He’d have to get a closer look at him before he took
Tuttle to the police station.

Tuttle took off his felt hat and tucked it
under his arm. There was a brief flurry of movement around the fire
as other men did the same. His eyes swept the audience, gathering
them into his sorrow. Then he began to sing in a clear, sorrowful
tenor, and Briggs forgot all about the man in the jean jacket, the
hobos, and the two thugs waiting to rearrange his anatomy.

Me and Petey caught out of Topeka,

Doin’ the boxcar slide.

Got stuck in the hole down Elmont way,