Contents

Summary

James A. Hunter Mailing List

ONE: The New Ways

TWO: Skinless

THREE: Venántum

FOUR: Shotgun

FIVE: Axolotl

SIX: Bag and Tag

SEVEN: Pi Lamda Chi

EIGHT: Drive Thru

NINE: The Road

TEN: Grandfather Spirit

ELEVEN: Cab Ride

TWELVE: Leads

THIRTEEN: Hotheaded

FOURTEEN: Earrach-Tir

FIFTEEN: Bad Dreams

SIXTEEN: Easy Prey

SEVENTEEN: Atoyatl Eztli

EIGHTEEN: Riddles

NINETEEN: Trial by Fire

TWENTY: Yahui

TWENTY-ONE: Achitometl’s Tale

TWENTY-TWO: Ancient Deceit

TWENTY-THREE: Walk of Shame

TWENTY-FOUR: Home Sweet Home

TWENTY-FIVE: Army of the People

TWENTY-SIX: Quinametzin

TWENTY-SEVEN: Pyramid of the Sun

TWENTY-EIGHT: Sacrifice

TWENTY-NINE: Death Toll

THIRTY: Hard Goodbyes

Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

Other Works by James A. Hunter

Other Works by eden Hudson

Books from Shadow Alley Press

About the Authors

Special Thanks

Copyright

Summary

An ancient evil freed again. A revenge plot centuries in the making. Only one woman can set things right …

When a flayed body is found in Bigfoot territory, Winona Treesinger knows she’ll need the help of her human friend, Detective Chris Fuller, to track down the monster responsible and bring them to justice. What she doesn’t know is she’s going to get the help of the Lucis Venántum, too ... whether she wants it or not.

The Venántum, an organization that keeps the peace between the human and supernatural communities, recently recruited Chris. As part of his training, he’s been assigned a Venántum-approved probation supervisor—Sean Smith, an annoying hedge mage with a big mouth and bigger inferiority complex.

As much as they might wish to, Winona and Chris aren’t going to shake Sean anytime soon. The three of them will have to put their differences aside and work together to stop a revenge plot centuries in the making. But none of them have ever faced a foe this powerful before and if they fail, millions of people will die. If they succeed … well, there’s almost no chance they will.

In the past, the People of the Forest were known for fighting the hopeless battles. Looks like Winona Treesinger might be the chieftain who brings war back to the People of Peace.

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ONE:

The New Ways

The People of the Forest love peace. It is who we are. What we are. We harbor no ill will toward any creature and wish harm to no one. Until recently, we stood ready for war, but only in defense of ourselves and our home. No more. I walked between neat rows of towering warriors, inspecting strikes and blocks as they moved through the prearranged steps of the hyungs or martial art forms. The green grass of the clearing in front of the Great Redwood, Nookomis Giizhig, teemed with Chiye-tanka training to fight.

To kill, if need required.

Grunts carried in the air, along with the pungent scent of sweating bodies and matted fur.

“One moment, Kanti,” I said aloud, stopping the tawny-haired Chiye-tanka mid-form. Among the People, it is common to speak mind-to-mind—telepathy, the Little Brothers and Sisters call it—but I wanted the entire class to hear me. All would benefit from this. “The double knife hand is not a defensive maneuver. If you use it as one when attacked—” I pulled her arm out toward my face as if she had just thrown a haymaker, and she obligingly made a fist.

Then, with a swift motion, I snapped a knife hand into her arm, knocking her stance open, then stepped forward and chopped at her neck, pulling the blow at the last second. “—then the inside block that follows becomes the strike. Or you will strike with the knife hands and follow with a block.” I demonstrated, arms a whirlwind of motion. “It is unlikely you will use two blocks in a row. We are fast, but many of the creatures and spirits of Outworld are faster.”

Kanti nodded, then tried the strike-block maneuver again with greater power, her broad face scrunched up in concentration, brow furrowed.

“Good,” I said, continuing through the ranks.

Under normal circumstances, I would never think to lecture Kanti, a Chiye-tanka many years older and wiser than I, but it seemed that out of our entire People, only my father and I knew how to attack. Many of the old ones knew the defensive forms, true, but of the People, only my father and I knew the offensive techniques. My father, Chief Chankoowashtay, was the one who taught me to fight—to break bone and rend flesh—but he had refused such instruction to others of our kind. The People serve the cause of Peace, he had said, face solemn, arms crossed. Why should they know such things?

It had taken the summoning of an ancient murderous spirit to Inworld to show my father the error in his thinking. To demonstrate that we must stand ready to defend the humans, especially now that the Guild of the Staff—the magi who usually protected humanity from the dark things of Outworld—was at war with itself. Finally, he had relented, allowing me to create this fighting force to police Inworld and defend it from magical threats, with the single stipulation being that only volunteers could be trained. This requirement had proven to be no deterrent. Over fifty Chiye-tanka had volunteered for the fledgling force as soon as they heard about it, with more coming in as word spread.

The trainees had come such a long way in only a few weeks.

At the moment, however, they were far from ready to fight.

“Do not neglect your kicks, Nakoma,” I said, again speaking aloud for the benefit of the entire class. “As Chiye-tanka, it is our tendency to rely on our punches because our arms are our strength. But we are taller and longer of leg than many Outworld creatures. To have kicks in our arsenal as well as punches gives us a powerful weapon that also serves to increase our reach, which is especially effective against shorter, deadlier brawlers who attack in packs.” A memory flashed inside of my head—a vicious group of stubby Teihiihan encircling me like a noose, rusty blades flashing out as they grinned at me with pointed, cannibal teeth.

I turned back to Nakoma. “Please, try that sidekick once more, but this time pivot your foot before you move and visualize hitting through your target.”

With a somewhat skeptical look, Nakoma raised his fists, then pivoted and snapped his leg out. It was much better than the first sidekick I had seen him do and would undoubtedly prove more effective in a real combat situation. I felt certain that Nakoma thought so as well. His expression twitched toward satisfaction at the transformation of his attack, but he quickly suppressed the smile. Though of an age with me and most of the Chiye-tanka training today, Nakoma prided himself on being mature beyond his years, and his pride could not allow him to show anything but detached self-possession at my correction.

That did not bother me as long as he fixed his kicks.

I returned to the foot of the Great Redwood, where a trio of Elders sat on cushions in front of a platter stacked high with onion rings. Ever since my father had agreed to form a fighting force to protect Inworld, the Council of Elders had sent envoys to keep watch over the classes. Today it was Napayshni, Mahal, and Ciqala.

Ciqala—the oldest and most bent of the Elders—appeared to be asleep with a half-eaten onion ring in hand. He was also snoring softly.

I frowned at the pile of battered, deep fried rings still left on the platter. They were not even halfway gone. If I were to continue this experimenting, then I must start making smaller batches.

As I approached their cushions, Elder Napayshni raised his onion ring to me in a friendly salute.

These are very good, Princess, he whispered to my mind, voice raspy like the rustle of leaves in the deep fall. Even better than the last batch.

Thank you, I sent, bowing my head. It was true these were good, but it was also true that they were failures. Someday, I would recreate the onion rings I had eaten at a human saloon on my last trip to Inworld. This fresh batch had a pinch too much paprika and was still missing that unknown something that had made Wild Bob’s Pile o’ Rings so deliciously perfect. I gestured toward the massive pile of golden brown rings still on the platter. Please have as many as you like.

I believe I shall, Napayshni replied, a smile wrinkling his leathery face. I would not want them to go to waste.

I beamed at him. My continued experimentation in trying to find Wild Bob’s secret family recipe had made my father sick of the snacks, but the Elders, it seemed, were developing a taste for them. Perhaps with my next batch I should mix up a bowl of that chili ranch sauce for dipping.

Beside Napayshni, Elder Mahal reached a gnarled hand for another ring. The batter crunched between her gums. She chewed it slowly, thoughtfully, her mint-green eyes inspecting the rows of Chiye-tanka kicking, punching, and blocking before her. This sight could not be like anything the Elders were used to, having grown up in a time of peace and isolation.

If not for Elder Mahal’s presence, I would have wondered whether the council was only sending envoys as an excuse to eat onion rings. Mahal was the sharpest of the Elders, her cunning as piercing as a hedge tree’s thorn, and she had been present at all of my classes so far. She had not yet spoken out in opposition or favor of this fighting force, but whichever way she judged, the rest of the council was sure to follow.

When she saw me watching her, she smiled up at me, revealing her toothless gums.

“These are very tasty, Princess.” She spoke aloud rather than mind-whispering to me, perhaps for the same reason I had spoken aloud to Kanti and Nakoma. “Very tasty and very human.”

The words were spoken softly, without malice. Still, my own smile froze, uncertain whether that was a vote of approval or a sly way of conveying her condemnation. With Elder Mahal, such a thing could not be guessed. She would spring her opinion on me at the least expected, most vulnerable moment to maximize the effect of the lesson.

“Thank you,” I said finally, resisting the urge to fidget under her stare. “My friend treated me to a dinner of them while I was in Inworld.”

“Your human friend,” she said, her serene expression unwavering.

“Yes, my detective friend, who is a very good man, who was also named a Friend of the People,” I replied, trying not to read anything in her tone that was not there. “Chris risked as much as I—perhaps more, as he was the weaker creature—to stop Anukite Sharp-Elbows and banish her once again to the Spirit World.”

“Ah, yes.” Elder Mahal nodded her graying head slowly. “The Friend of the People who assisted the Princess Winona Treesinger in believing that she was human as well.”

I clasped my hands behind my back and looked out over the ranks of training Chiye-tanka spread across the clearing. I took a breath and let it out, centering myself. When speaking to an Elder, one must never allow emotions to run rampant. Especially not when dealing with Elder Mahal, who could even now be leading me into a trap.

“It is true that Chris did not know I was one of the People at first,” I said after a time. “However, I did reveal the truth to him, and after I did so, he chose to help me in spite of my deception. He did this because it was the right thing to do, not because of who or what I am.”

“That”—the Elder leaned over the platter of onion rings, carefully selecting another deep-fried morsel from the pile with one gnarled hand—“remains to be seen.”

My brows furrowed in confusion. “I am sorry, Elder, I do not understand what you—”

With a snort, Elder Ciqala flinched, startled awake, then lifted his head and straightened his stooped shoulders.

“My grandson returns from Inworld,” he said, his voice phlegmy and gravelly. His rheumy eyes searched the tree line at the edge of the Sacred Grove. “He would speak with you, Winona Treesinger, on a grave matter.”

I followed the direction of Ciqala’s gaze. A flash of flaming red hair broke through the lesser trees at the edge of the Sacred Grove.

It was Enyeto Ironarms, one of the guards who had been out patrolling our Inworld territory—another concession my father had made in our quest to keep the humans safe from magical threats.

Enyeto sprinted through the rows of trainees, a head and shoulders taller than any of them, and stopped before me. A wild tuft of his red hair fell into his face. With a swipe of his hand, he raked the unruly shock aside. His chest swelled and deflated rapidly, his breathing heavy.

There is a body in the Bitterroot Forest, he sent to me. A dead human.

Do you know what killed it? I asked.

He shook his head. The wayward tuft of hair wobbled, but stayed back this time.

The human did not succumb to illness, the elements, an accident, or an animal, he sent. That much is certain.

That only left murder as a cause of death.

Will you show me to it? I asked.

Enyeto nodded. But it is at the farthest edge of our territory.

That is all right. There was a chance that some sort of evil or magical creature had killed the human, though it was more likely the result of strictly human evil. Even if the body had been dumped by a murderer hoping animals would dispose of the remains, I would need to notify Chris so the sheriff’s department could begin investigating the crime. Which meant I would need to make my way into Missoula disguised as a human to find him. I quickly walled off the rush of excitement at the thought so Enyeto would not feel it.

Wait one moment, please, I sent. I need to grab some things from my room.

What about your class? Enyeto asked, hooking a thumb at the others.

Only then did I realize that everyone had stopped training and was watching Enyeto and me for some hint at what was going on.

I addressed them aloud.

“There was much to be praised in your efforts today. Continue working on pressing your attacks—acting, not reacting. And remember not to overlook kicking as a weapon. Now, let us say the words.” I spoke first, but the others followed, our collective voices rumbling like an earthquake.

“Life is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a deer in wintertime. It is the shadow which runs across the high plains. It is sacred and fragile—we fight to protect it. But we must never be overzealous in our protection. We must learn to preserve instead of destroy. We deter rather than hurt, hurt rather than maim, and maim rather than kill. The truest warrior of peace need never kill. Regard Heaven as your Father, Earth as your Mother and all creatures as your Brothers and Sisters.”

“That will be all for now,” I finished as the words died around the clearing. “Thank you.” I started to turn back to Enyeto, but the massive pile of onion rings still on the platter caught my eye. I raised my voice once more to be heard and added, “Oh, and please take some onion rings.”

TWO:

Skinless

Enyeto waited for me at the foot of the Great Redwood while I ran inside and up the broad staircase that wound around the heartwood of the tree to my room. I passed my pallet and went straight to the shelves growing from the wall. Alongside the herbs, roots, concentrates, tinctures, and other ingredients I used to craft cures—plus a wide variety of spices from Inworld for my recent culinary experiments—was a stone medicine wheel on a necklace of bone beads. Each direction of the medicine wheel had been woven in one of the sacred colors: yellow, red, black, or white. At the center of the spokes were a pair of turquoise images, one half the size of the other.

I picked it up and ran my thumb over the inlaid human and Chiye-tanka.

The amulet was magical, allowing me to take the form of a Little Sister as long as I wore it. It had been given to the People of the Forest many centuries ago, perhaps because the maker realized there would come a day when Elder and Little Brothers would no longer fellowship openly. Until a few weeks ago, the amulet lay unused in our armory of magical and mundane weapons. I had borrowed the amulet on a somewhat misguided stealth mission with Chris to find and stop Anukite Sharp-Elbows from slaughtering humans.

I felt a brief pang of guilt flash through me, recalling my deception, but pushed it away.

It had been the right choice. And since then, the amulet had rested in my room. Unused, but mine. As much as anything belongs to any one of the People.

I knew that one should never wish harm on another creature—even less that this harm should come from a source of evil that would draw one into conflict—but if Enyeto was right and this human had been murdered, what could it hurt to hope that today would be the day I got to use the amulet again? There was so little contact between the People and humankind, and I had not seen my friend since the night we stopped Anukite. His lopsided smile flashed in my head.

Trying to suppress a grin at the thought of going into Missoula disguised as a human once more, I tucked the amulet in my fist and headed toward the door.

Just before I touched the handle, I remembered clothes.

Humans are obsessed with clothing and greatly discomforted by nakedness. Chris especially. If I walked into the sheriff’s department nude, he would either start yelling at me or have some sort of mental breakdown and start spouting nonsense about football.

I went to the alcove housing the fringed buckskins I wore for special occasions and grabbed the pink flannel shirt and jeans my friend had gifted me with. I would need them if I had to find him. I folded the amulet into the center of the clothes, then tied the bundle with rawhide string and slung it over my shoulder.

Properly packed, I raced back down the stairs to find Enyeto.

Let us go, I sent.

He nodded his head, the unruly shock of red hair falling into his dark face. With a flick of his wrist, he threw it back again, then we sped through the Sacred Grove toward the Cave of Changing. Broad trees and grassy clearings, studded with a vast array of colorful flowers, flowed past in a flash. Before long, the yawning mouth of the Cave loomed before me, the opening dark—both inviting and foreboding.

The Cave of Changing is a thin place between the planes, a way to traverse between Inworld and the Spirit World. From our side, the cave was large enough for Enyeto and me to walk through side by side, but on the other end it would shrink and change, so he waved me through first.

I stepped inside, the thrum of arcane energy washing through my body as time twisted and distorted around me. My foot moved through the air like sluggish sap in cold weather. It seemed as if it should have landed on the stone floor of the cave hours ago, or perhaps minutes, or perhaps it had already landed but my nerves had not relayed the sensation to my mind yet. The Cave of Changing played these tricks on perception. Finally, the pad of my foot touched down on the cave floor, and time and physics seemed to right themselves all at once, the world lurching back into motion.

Patiently, I waited for Enyeto to join me, then we set off down the stone tunnel toward Inworld.

At the exit, a chill like stepping into an icy waterfall poured over my flesh, tingling and numbing. It was Vis, the energy that undergirded all of creation—what the uninitiated often referred to as magic, though much stronger than anything I was able to command.

I ducked through the human-sized entrance into the Bitterroot Valley of northern Montana. From this side, the Cave of Changing looked like a natural formation in the rock face. An unremarkable crevice, easily missed if one could not see true.

A moment later, Enyeto ducked through the cave mouth, his shoulders hunched forward, his eyes scanning the tree line for threats. For people. He shivered once as if shaking off the feeling of the icy Vis, then looked to me.

I am ready, I told him.

Without a word, Enyeto took off in a sprint toward the north.

We ran through the low-canopied Inworld forest, whispering to the lesser trees, politely requesting they step aside. With friendly compliance, they moved out of our path and allowed us a straight passage through the forest.

For the first part of our trek, aspen, pine, and oak blurred around us. We crossed the occasional stream and dirt road the rangers used to access the backcountry here in emergencies. But as time and miles passed, the pitch of the land rose and steepened into mountainside, and the trees thinned out, making way for scrubby brush, rockfall, and scree. We were far from any place humans hiked or drove.

Enyeto slowed to a stop on the windward side of a mountain, near a mound of boulders. Already, I could smell the scent of blood.

It is there, Enyeto mind-spoke to me, gesturing at the boulders with one powerfully muscled arm. On the other side.

I nodded and rounded the pile, moving slowly, steeling myself for the grisly scene I knew awaited me. All adventure and excitement I had been feeling evaporated like tears on hot desert sand.

It is always a shock to see human blood. It is so red—the color of burning rage and sudden violence—and the only time I seem to encounter it is when it has been spilled in malice.

For a moment, the red blinded me to all else, standing in stark contrast to the sun-bleached gray of the boulders and chalky earth. So much red. What looked like rivers and oceans of it. Slowly, a bit of yellow seeped into my vision, and then I could discern fat and tendons and fasciae from the muscle and veins, with the occasional gleam of bone.

Finally, the pieces resolved themselves into the corpse of a human female.

The victim had been flayed, every inch of skin gone. She sat with her back propped up on the boulders as if she had taken shelter there against the wind. Her knees were drawn into her chest, her arms hugging her legs tightly. She was still wet, and the pool of blood around her had turned the ground red-black and marshy.

Though I was loath to do it, I leaned in closer, inspecting the poor creature for weapon marks. Slice-like abrasions covered the muscle tissue—the type one sees when skinning the hide from a buck with a stone knife—but I could see no obvious killing blows from this position, and I could not move the body before the police arrived or I might contaminate the evidence. Silently, I prayed to the Grandfather Spirit that this female had been dead before she was skinned.

I braced myself, then sniffed. Beneath the stench of blood and death, I smelled something faintly sweet and chemical.

I crouched down on my haunches, inspecting the ground for any sign of what had happened. I could find no drag marks, but the earth was hard with the onset of winter, and there was no snow yet to hold a track. Perhaps the strange sweet scent was a drug of some type and the woman had been led disoriented to her death.

What do you think did this? Enyeto asked. He stood at the edge of the boulder pile, eyeing the body uneasily. Do you think it was magical?

I do not know, I admitted, shrugging one shoulder. A very humanlike gesture. At the moment, I could see nothing that could not be explained by a mundane—if disturbing—murder, and there was no stink of magic about the body. No sense of Vis lingering in the air.

And yet her position nagged at my mind.

I stood, skirted the pool of blood, and stared at the body from another angle. Like a sacrifice high in the Andes, this female had been left out to petrify in the elements deep in the heart of the Bitterroot Mountains, where few humans would ever tread. An offering to some unknown and bloodthirsty sky beings?

I do not think we can rule it out, I told Enyeto. How long ago did you find this?

I ran to find you as soon as I stumbled across it, he sent to me. As soon as I was certain it was dead.

Did you touch it? I asked, picturing him taking the human’s pulse.

He shook his head at the image in my mind. I watched it for breath and listened for a heartbeat. There was none.

With the half hour it had taken us to run this distance, he must have found it little more than an hour ago. The wetness of the blood and tissue suggested that the victim could not have been flayed long before Enyeto found it.

You did not see, hear, or smell anyone as you approached?

I could smell nothing but blood, he sent. The stink is overwhelming. He reached up and rubbed at his broad nose as if trying to scrub the scent free. The wind kicked up, sending that disobedient lock of flaming red hair tumbling into his face. He ceased his rubbing and turned his face into the gust so his hair would be blown out of his eyes once more. Are they all red inside like this? Are there none with blood some proper color?

I stared down at the bright splash of scarlet against the wind-blown mountainside. Chiye-tanka blood is purple, a color with many nobler connotations than the violent red of humans and Inworld animals. There are some schools of thought among the People that this is a sign we were created superior to our Little Brothers and Sisters.

There are many of them who cannot even see this color, I sent, thinking of Chris and the deuteranomaly which made all reds and purples appear blue to him. Though I am not certain what that means.

Enyeto snorted and crossed his arms.

I must find my friend, Detective Fuller, I sent, ignoring his standoffishness.

You believe a human will know what did this?

Perhaps not, I sent, but I believe this human’s kin will be searching for her, and that Chris will be able to find them. It is his job. Would you keep watch over the body until I return? We must not allow anything to disturb it before CSI has had a chance to process the scene.

Enyeto stared at me, confused. CSI?

They document and quantify the evidence found at the scene, so the detectives can find the perpetrator, I said. I felt a shameful swell of pride at being perhaps the only Chiye-tanka who knew the proper protocol for human murder investigations.

I will watch over it, Enyeto agreed, though he glanced sidelong at the body as if afraid she might wake screaming at the loss of her skin.

A chill ran down my spine at the thought. She appeared fresh enough to do it.

Thank you, I told Enyeto. I will return as quickly as I can.

With this, I wheeled to the east and began my run toward Missoula, legs eating up ground as I loped along.

When the brown and dying leaves of the lesser trees sheltered me again, I stopped and pulled the amulet from the center of the clothing bundle.

As I clasped the bone beads around my neck, they grew warm—at first only enough to match my body temperature, then hotter. Molten fire against my skin. The steady beating of a frame drum filled my ears, accompanied by the long-noted wail of a medicine man. A moment later, a bell-lined Chegah-Skah-Hdah jangled, and a siyotanka, or courting flute, breathed its sweet trill into the song. The beautiful melody conjured images of feet shuffling through ceremonial dances while firelight flickered in the night. Of lean cougars stalking prey across rocky forest floors. Of fish struggling up gurgling crystalline streams toward their spawning grounds.

As the singing went on, my bones heated like the beads until they smoldered inside my flesh. It was not a painful sensation, necessarily, but a feeling as if I were a wax figure being melted and reformed. Though I was prepared for the sudden softening of my bones, I had to grab the low-hanging branch of a nearby cedar to stay upright. My body narrowed and compressed, mass compacting. Soon the branch I had been leaning on was over my head, almost out of reach. I was barely taller than a Chiye-tanka youth.

As I shrunk, the auburn hair covering my body receded, growing inward and disappearing, leaving hairless red-brown flesh only a shade darker than buckskin behind. My scalp itched and crawled as long black hair grew from it, cascading down the back of my neck like a raven’s wing.

The changing, melting, and compacting finally stopped, taking the music with it, leaving behind only the soft sounds of early morning forest and my chattering teeth. Chill bumps had broken out across this pale, bare flesh, and the slightest breeze set my body shivering. The amulet stayed hot to the touch, but did not provide much protection against the elements. Human bodies were so bald and frail that it was a wonder they could survive winters in a place like Montana.

I dressed as quickly as possible, buttoning the shirt and zipping the jeans with shaking fingers. Though flannel and denim were no protection in combat, they did wonders for blocking out the cold. I sighed with relief at their warm embrace, then turned toward Missoula.

It was time to walk among the humans.

THREE:

Venántum

Brittle, frostbitten grass crunched cheerfully beneath my bare feet as I crossed the manicured lawn toward the white stone courthouse. Day broke late in the Bitterroot Valley, even more so in the winter, and Father Sun had yet to climb above the mountaintops and burn away the night’s frost.

I scanned the far lot across the lawn. Chris’s battered police cruiser was not parked with the rest of the vehicles, but I decided to try inside anyway. Perhaps the SUV was being repaired. If he were not there, I would check at his apartment.

The concrete sidewalk felt cold and rough against my tiny human feet. Overhead, the dead leaves of a carefully trimmed oak rattled, accompanied by the snap and pop of a trio of flags blowing in the breeze. On the street, the stoplights changed, and traffic rolled past, engines roaring and squealing. A dog barked at me from the open window of a passing car.

I smiled. These were the sounds of a human morning. So strange, and yet not so very different from our own.

Ahead of me, a pair of humans—a male and a female—carrying briefcases and wearing somber, angular suits spoke in joking tones about litigation as they climbed the steps to the columned porch of the building. Rather than follow them, I headed around the corner of the building toward the annex that housed the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department.

A uniformed deputy I did not recognize was on his way out of the annex as I went in. He held the door for me, glancing down at my feet as I passed. I thanked him and stepped inside.

When I set my foot down inside, my skin crawled and my toes curled in disgust, trying to get away from the slimy, dead feel of the synthetic industrial wax that humans poured over the stone tiles of their floors. I had forgotten this. I grimaced and raised up onto my tiptoes, trying to make as little contact with the floor as possible as I skipped toward the stairs.

My feet rejoiced when I finally stepped onto the vinyl tiles covering the first step. It, too, was unnatural and unliving, but at least it was not something quarried from the living earth and smothered in manmade chemicals.

On the landing above me, a door slammed and footsteps jogged down the steps. Chris turned the corner of the staircase and nearly collided with me before he realized he was not alone.

“Chris!” I cried.

When he saw me, Chris’s dark eyes widened, and he broke out in a grin. “Winona! What are you doing here?”

“One of my people found a body in the forest this morning. Human.” I paused, lowered my voice. “We suspect murder.”

“Not exactly what I was hoping you’d say.” Professional seriousness took over his expression. “Do you have a description? Gender, height, weight, hair, eyes, skin tone, approximate age?”

“She was female,” I said. “But I did not see her eyes or hair, and her skin was gone. The corpse was flayed.”

“Flayed?” Chris glanced over his shoulder toward the sheriff’s office. “And you definitely saw the body. You know where it is and everything?”

I nodded. “I can take you to it.”

“Okay, this is good,” he said. “We had a corpse go missing two days ago. Anonymous tipster called in what they thought was a Satanic murder near U of M, a body with all the skin peeled off, but when a unit got there, all they found was a pool of blood. Maybe this is our missing vic.”

My brow furrowed. “I do not know, Chris. She appeared very fresh.”

“Regardless, we need to get over there before she goes missing again.” With a gesture, he directed me toward the exit.

I nodded and made my way back across the dead, waxy floor, cringing with each step.

“So, based on what you saw,” Chris said, lowering his voice until only I could hear it, “could you tell if there was any supernatural element to the murder? I mean, could it have actually been Satanic? That’s a real thing, right? Like the Devil?”

“Demons are real, yes,” I said. “But there was no stink of sulfur in the air nor any demonic sigils on or around the body. It does appear similar to a ritual sacrifice, but I cannot be certain of this without further investigation. I thought perhaps you would know of humans who have gone missing in the area and be able to find her next of kin.”

“Yeah, shouldn’t be a problem once we’ve got the body.” He opened the door and waited for me to pass through, then followed.

The sun struck his face as he stepped outside, illuminating pools of shadow beneath his eyes and a gauntness not there before. My friend looked as if he were more tired than even the first time I met him.

Chris smiled when he saw me watching him. “It’s really good to see you, Winona.”

“I am happy to see you as well, friend. Though I am sad to see that you shaved your beard. It was coming along very nicely. Are you not cold without it?”

He chuckled and rubbed his hairless jaw. “You know, I hadn’t thought about it. I haven’t done the beard thing since before the Academy. Stubble’s not really a good look for a cop. Guess if I get too cold this winter, I’ll just have to grow it back.”

We started down the sidewalk toward the street.

“We really need to figure out a way to get in contact with one another,” Chris said, pulling a key ring from his pocket and slinging it in circles around his finger. “I’ve been brainstorming, but the best I’ve come up with so far is sticking a note on a tree. That or just standing at the edge of the woods and yelling until one of your people wander up.”

“I could get you a speaking crystal,” I said, following him toward a line of parked cars. “It works similarly to your cellular phones. You just hold it to your head and try to speak to me with your mind.”

“Yep, that’s exactly how cell phones work,” Chris said. He came to a stop beside an older model sedan with the words Missoula County Sheriff’s Department emblazoned on the side in peeling letters. He thumbed a button on the key fob and the locks chunked open. “Right here.”

“This is not your cruiser,” I said.

“Yeah, well, this’s what I get since I demolished the other one.”

I frowned. “You did not harm your last vehicle, Yawkwawiak did—the stiff-legged bear of old.” I frowned. “Do you not remember that?” I asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion as I searched his head for some sign of injury.

“I can’t tell Sheriff Greene that a giant stegosaurus-bear went Wreck-It Ralph on my car, Winona,” Chris replied, cocking an eyebrow at me. “Not if I want to keep my job. I’m just glad that thing T-boned us instead of coming at us head-on or from the back—or anything else that might suggest the wreck could’ve been my fault.”

“Greene is still sheriff?” I asked, anger building like storm clouds in my chest. “I thought you were going to expose everyone who helped cover up the abuse of Nora Corley?”

“Greene didn’t have anything to do with it,” Chris said, opening the passenger door. It squawked in protest in spite of having no visible dents or damage. He gestured for me to climb inside. “Just because a guy’s an asshole to work for doesn’t mean he’s evil—”

“Hey!” someone shouted. “Hey, Fuller! Wait up!”

Chris sighed and rolled his eyes skyward.

A young human male was running across the manicured lawn toward us, waving. He wore a pair of black horn-rimmed glasses with a square of white over the bridge of his nose, and his black hair was stiff with some sort of hard gel. Brown lace-up brogues clomped over the last few feet of sidewalk, the boots similar to ones I had seen in pictures of early white settlers, but far shinier and much less sturdy.

“Where you going, Fuller?” the young man asked. “Not running off on official business without me, are ya?” He chuckled as if this were a joke, then turned to me. “Who’s your friend?”

Chris gestured from me to the young man.

“Winona, this is Sean Smith. Sean, Winona Treesinger—she’s special. In the know.” He thumbed his nose conspiratorially at the man.

“It is nice to meet you.” I smiled and grabbed his hand, pumping it several times. Sean stumbled a bit, but kept his feet.

When I released his hand, he straightened his checkered shirt, then pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“The pleasure’s all mine, Miss Treesinger.”

“Sean’s actually part of the reason I’ve been trying to get ahold of you,” Chris said, glancing at me. “Not long after you left, a rep from the Lucis Venántum got in touch with me. They heard about us taking down Anukite, and they wanted to recruit me to work for them. I guess they take care of a lot of supernatural threats. Anyway, I remembered you talking about them like they were the good guys, so I figured I’d give it a shot. See if I can help out.”

“Fuller’s an initiate,” Sean offered with a nonchalant shrug. “I’m his probation overseer, supposed to keep an eye on him, show him the ropes, that kind of thing, until he can operate on his own.”

I squinted at Sean, searching for some hint of magic or glamour. The Lucis Venántum tended to attract older humans, former military and law enforcement who had survived attacks by Outworld creatures and retained their sanity in a world that refused to believe the things they had seen.

“You are with the Venántum?” I asked, trying to suppress the incredulity in my voice. “You are very young,” I finished after a moment.

“I’m a third-generation hunter,” Sean said, puffing out his chest. “Been kicking monster ass and taking monster names since I was a little guy. It’s the family business. If you know the community, then you’ve probably heard of the Smiths before.” He cocked his head to one side as though expecting a response. “We’re kind of a dynasty,” he prompted when I said nothing.

I shook my head. “I have not. But I have also never heard of the Venántum requiring new recruits to be shadowed by a senior member. Was I misinformed?”

“Well, it didn’t used to be standard procedure,” Sean said. “But that was before the Mages’ Guild went kablooey. Now it’s like the magical community’s gone nuts. We lost six hunters in two weeks—four of them newbies—so the Venántum decided it was best to try a little occupational training before releasing our newbs into the wild. And it helps to have a respected face along while they’re being introduced to the community, lends them a little credibility.”

Over Sean’s shoulder, Chris looked unimpressed.

I, however, was very impressed. The People of the Forest had long thought that the Lucis Venántum, while well-intentioned, was reckless and irresponsible in its ways. They did not require any formal training and did not even have a central leader who gave orders. Regional directives were often spread by word of mouth or local knowledge, and hunters were left to fend for themselves. If the destruction of the Guild of the Staff had led the Venántum to reconsider its conduct and correct its mistakes, then it could be said that at least one good thing had come of it.

“I hate to be the mean boss,” Sean told Chris, “but you can’t let her ride along on this investigation—in the know or not. It might seem routine right now, but you don’t know what a vodník might do when cornered and we don’t want civilians getting hit in the crossfire. No offense,” he said, offering me an apologetic smile.

“Vodník?” I looked at Chris, asking with my eyes whether this meant who I thought it did.

Chris nodded in confirmation. “Yep. We’re supposed to investigate claims that Merv’s been selling cursed items to humans. I was going to ask if you could back me up when I went to talk to him since you got him to spill the beans last time.”

“Hellooo,” Sean said. “Cursed and potentially dangerous items? An unstable halfie who might be willing to take us down with him? This is a dangerous job, Fuller. Either one of us could be killed.”

“Is he still referring to Merv?” I asked Chris. My brows gathered in confusion. “Of Froggy’s Pawn in Lolo?”

Chris opened his mouth to answer, but Sean cut across him.

“Seriously, dude, we won’t have time to babysit some civilian.”

“Look, Winona’s no civilian,” Chris said. “She’s a powerful medicine woman who does this kind of thing all the time. Plus, she’s a helluva brawler. She can take care of herself. Heck, she’s the one who defeated Anukite.” He grinned and shot me a wink. “I was just her blocker.”

Sean was shaking his head. “No. No, none of this okay. This isn’t some fairy tale where we get to outsmart some dwarf or sprinkle ourselves with a handful of sparkly pixie dust—”

“That is fortunate,” I said. “Dwarves are known for their cunning. I would not hope to outwit one. I would also be wary of allowing the fae to sprinkle anything on you without their having thrice sworn to its true nature. They are an untrustworthy, capricious people at the best of times.”

Chris smirked, folding his arms over his chest.

Sean spluttered, “I wasn’t saying I would ever—”

“She’s coming with us, end of story,” Chris said flatly, his tone saying no nonsense would be tolerated. “Besides, we’ve got more important stuff to worry about right now than some shady pawnbroker. Murder victims take precedence over illegal items.”

“Murder?” Sean asked, his dark brows drawing low over his eyes. “No one told me about any murders. Is this a regular, everyday Rube killing we’re talking about?”

“Perhaps,” I said. “One of my patrols found the body this morning in the mountains. Chris is going to see if it belongs to a murder victim his department lost a few days ago—”

“Hey, we didn’t lose anything,” Chris interjected, slicing his hand through the air. “The body was gone before we got there.”

“—and notify anyone who may be looking for her,” I finished.

“I don’t know,” Sean said. “We were supposed to go check out Benevides today …”

“Could possibly be some kind of arcane ritual,” Chris said as if he were trying to entice the young bespectacled hunter with the promise of dark sacrifices and shadow magicks. “We won’t know until we take a look at the scene.”

Sean squirmed as if he wanted to say yes, but could not in good conscience do so before his Venántum objective had been completed. I looked from him to Chris, seeing the frustration on my friend’s face. I had set Enyeto to guard the body, but if something should happen to it before we returned, there might be no chance at all to find and stop this murderer before they killed again.

“We will speak to Merv afterward,” I said. Chris nodded encouragement behind Sean’s back. “I have been meaning to visit his pawnshop anyway. He has a collector’s item I must check up on before the full moon.”

Sean shimmied a little in his brogues, twisting his lips first to one side then the other. Finally, he broke out in a wide grin.

“Okay, let’s do it!” He clapped his hands together once. “Let’s go take a look at this crime scene. Do some police work before we get down to the real hard stuff.” He slipped past me into the front seat. “Shotgun!”

FOUR:

Shotgun

I slumped in the back of the cruiser with my arms crossed over my narrow human chest as we bumped along the gravel access road toward the mountaintop crime scene. I had been forced to ride out of Missoula in the back seat while Sean took my rightful place in the front with Chris.

Now that the rules had been explained to me, I would not lose this game of Shotgun again.

Outside, the small lesser trees of Inworld, firs and aspens and lodgepole pines, rolled past. I caught a glimpse of the occasional squirrel and curious herd of deer watching our passing. The sun streamed through the leaves and needles, dappling the ground with patches of light and shadow. Gravel pinged and ticked against the underside of the cruiser, and a song about how cowgirls do not cry played over the speakers. Throughout the ride, Chris kept turning the music up. Sean continued speaking as if he did not notice.

“So, can medicine women use Vis?” Sean asked, twisting in his seat to look through the wire partition at me. “I mean, are you like part of the Guild?”

“My people do not use the Vis,” I said, “but even if we could, I believe we would not be welcomed by the Guild.”

“Who needs the jerks, I say,” Sean continued. “I mean, I was a little bummed when they voted against me joining, but looks like I dodged a serious bullet, right? I could be locked up in the Tullianum right now or worse. Besides, what kind of self-respecting person would want to be a Guild mage anyway? I can figure out how to be an arrogant prick on my own, thanks, I don’t need lessons.”

I frowned. “One of my friends is a powerful mage who used to work for the Guild. He sacrificed himself to save many and is likely even now fighting for his soul.”

“Um, I, uh...” Sean turned suddenly to look out the window, absently fiddling with his shirt. “Was that the body back there?” he croaked.

“No,” I said with a shake of my head. “We are still almost a mile from the foot of the mountain where it was found.”

“Oh, right, okay.” Sean sank back in his seat, falling silent for the first time this long ride.

After a few moments’ awkward silence, Chris cleared his throat.

“So, nobody’s going to tell the new guy what this Vis stuff is?” he asked. “I just have to figure it out from the context?”

“Vis is the force underlying creation,” I said, gaze still fixed on the landscape blurring past. “Mages can use it to manipulate reality. It works differently than the magic of my people.”

“Because it’s not really magic at all,” Sean said. “That’s just what Rubes call it because they don’t know any better.”

“That’s what I’m going to call it,” Chris mumbled, shrugging.

I smiled at him in the rearview mirror. He hid a grin under the pretext of watching a briar patch roll by out his window.

“Me, I’m not a full mage per se,” Sean continued, oblivious to Chris’s mockery, “but I can touch the Vis. When I do, my powers are pretty awesome. Fire and Vis-wrought bone spears—cool, lethal stuff like that. It’s been a major factor in most of the missions my family’s taken on. You don’t even know how excited they were to have a hedge mage working for the Venántum. I’m basically their hero.”

I nodded slowly. “I can see how that would be a useful tool for fighting evil. I have often wondered how humans working for the Venántum were able to stand against the forces of the Spirit World without magic.”

“Superior firepower, mostly,” Sean said. “Until I came along, that is. And Venántum folk, we’re just built a little different from your average Rube guys and gals. A little tougher. A little harder. Men and women of action, not words.”

Chris huffed a silent laugh.

Sean’s back straightened, and he stared out through the windshield into the distance. “We’re the last line of defense, there to protect humanity when everybody else fails. We do what we have to do because no one else can.”

“There is much honor in that,” I admitted. It was this very principle that I had fought desperately to prove to my own people not so long ago—that it is the responsibility of the strong to protect the weak. I could not bring myself to hold a grudge against someone who fought for the same belief, even though he had stolen my seat through trickery and guile.

“Just doing my duty,” Sean said. “Could you compare us Venántum folk to the samurai of old? Yeah, you could, but we wouldn’t take the compliment. We’re not in this for the glory or the fame, we’re just—”

“It is this mountain, Chris,” I said, leaning forward to speak through the wire partition. “We will have to climb the rest of the way on foot.”

Chris nodded and pulled the cruiser to the side of the road, shutting the engine off.

The humans climbed out, but I did not. I had to wait for Chris to open my door because there were no handles in the back seat. A sliver of anger at being out-Shotgunned tried to worm its way into my stomach, but I dismissed this as I stepped out of the cruiser. Sean Smith was fighting for all the right ideals; he must be a good man.

Once outside, I unbuttoned my flannel shirt and took it off.

“Hey-o!” Sean’s eyes flew open wide. “What’s going on here?”

Chris stepped between us, whipping off his suit jacket and holding it like a windbreak around me.

“Thank you, Chris,” I said, slipping out of my jeans. “The breeze is very cold today.”

“Remember how we talked about warnings before you get naked?” he asked, red creeping into his jawline. His head was turned so far away that it looked as if he were trying to imitate an owl.

“Yes, I recall that now.” I folded my jeans and shirt. “Is it only you who is made uncomfortable by nudity, Chris? I thought at first that all humans were concerned with wearing clothes, but Sean does not seem to mind.”

“I don’t,” Sean insisted, pushing up his glasses and watching intently as I bundled the clothes and wrapped the rawhide cord around them. “Not at all. It’s part of my upbringing. Very enlightened.”

“Turn around and put your eyes back in your head,” Chris snapped at him.

“Oh, come out of the Dark Ages already, gramps,” Sean said as he stepped to the left, the better to see what I was doing. “It’s the twenty-first century. Women can vote and have jobs and walk around naked if they want to.”

Chris hooked his jacket over my shoulders, then spun around and grabbed Sean by the forearm. In one smooth motion, he twisted the younger man’s arm behind his back and slammed him down on the trunk of the cruiser.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with equality, you little creep, it’s about respect,” Chris growled in Sean’s ear. “Either you learn some or the Venántum’s not going to have its great magical hero much longer.”

“Don’t listen to this misogynist pig, Winona!” Sean shouted. He turned his head so that he could see me from his position on the cruiser. “You do you, girl! Don’t let the man tell you where to dress and undress! Yolo!”

“This violence does seem very unnecessary, Chris,” I said, unclasping the amulet from my throat.

As the long-noted wail of the medicine man filled my ears, my skin tone darkened and my auburn hair regrew from the bald human flesh. The courting flute trilled and the frame drum pounded. Both Chris and Sean’s tiny human frames seemed to shrink as I returned to my true form. The jacket hooked over my shoulders slid off. I grabbed it before it hit the ground.

When the music died away, Sean’s mouth hung open. He blinked a few times in quick succession as if to clear light afterimages from his eyes.

“Okay, raise your hand if you wish could unsee that last ten seconds,” he said. The hand twisted behind his back waved weakly. “Just me?”

Chris rolled his eyes and released the younger man’s arm.

Sean stood, massaging his wrists.

“Obviously, I could’ve countered that police brutality at any point, with or without magic,” he said. “I just didn’t want to hurt a newbie or embarrass you in front of your friend.”

“How far is it to the crime scene, Winona?” Chris asked wearily, ignoring the jab.

“Nearly two miles,” I said, pointing one finger toward the site. “For the sake of speed, I will carry you both.”

Chris did not seem entirely happy about my carrying him, but faced with the logic that I was faster and stronger, he relented and allowed me to pick him up.

Sean, however, was ecstatic. Once he was safe in my other arm, he pulled a smartphone from his pocket.

“Selfie,” he said, holding the phone at arm’s length. An image of Chris, Sean, and my jaw and throat appeared on the screen. “Come on, Winona, this’s my first Sasquatch ride, you have to be in the pic.”

I lowered my head, fascinated by this strange practice. In all our time together before and after Chris had learned my true nature, he had not taken one picture.

“Smile!”

With the snapping sound of an antique shutter closing, our images froze on the phone’s screen. Sean’s mouth was open in a toothy smile. I looked to be inspecting the lens. Chris was glaring off to the side.

“If that shows up on the internet somewhere, I’ll find a reason to arrest you,” Chris said.

“Relax, Fuller, I’m not going to post it,” Sean said, swiping through a number of options that changed the colors and saturation of the photo slightly. “This is just for posterity. I mean seriously, do you know how rare it is to see one of the People of the Forest? One in a million.” He sniffed, then glanced at Chris. “Though I’m used to seeing the unseen, running in the circles I do.”

“Let us go,” I said, beginning the run up the mountain.

Running while carrying two humans was awkward, especially once we left the sure footing of the forest for the scrubs and loose scree of the higher elevation. Rocks slipped beneath my feet and skittered back down the slope. I had to place my feet carefully or risk stumbling and falling.

After several minutes, we crested the mountain and started down on the opposite side, approaching the place where I had left Enyeto with the body. But something was wrong. The wind carried a strange scent to me. Mingled with the smells of death, human blood, warm Chiye-tanka, and cold mountain air was a musty-wet odor like green algae and lake water.

There was no lake or stream near enough to the crime scene to explain the smell.

My brow wrinkled and I sped up, searching the slope for Enyeto or the source of the strange scent as I ran.

There! The stand of boulders where the body had been found. A flash of fiery red hair on the opposite side caught my eye, and I frowned. Enyeto should have been hidden under a veil. What was he doing leaping around a crime scene in full view?

A shout of pain echoed across the mountainside. Enyeto.

“What was that?” Sean asked.

In the confusion, I had nearly forgotten I was carrying passengers. I skidded to a stop and set him and Chris down.

“Something is wrong,” I said.

“We’ll cover you,” Chris said, pulling the blocky black pistol from beneath his jacket.

Sean gave me a confident grin and pushed back his sleeves. “Just show us to the party.”

I nodded my thanks at my friends, then turned and sprinted the remaining fifty yards to the wall of boulders.

As I came around the side, a mass of fiery red hair and greenish-black mottled skin tumbled past. A huge axolotl-like creature—one part slime-covered gill-fronded salamander, one part saltwater crocodile—rolled to the top of the heap, pinning Enyeto down with a pair of backward-facing webbed feet planted on the Chiye-tanka’s wide chest. The axolotl’s bulbous jaw dropped open, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth dripping gray-green venom.

FIVE:

Axolotl

The creature lunged. Enyeto threw his arm between them, catching the axolotl with a forearm to the throat. Its teeth snapped together with an audible clack. Globs of venom-laced saliva splattered onto Enyeto’s cheek.

This was clearly not a creature of Inworld. I did not know how deadly its venom was to a person of our size, but we were too far from my cures and medicines in the Sacred Grove for comfort. I had to draw the axolotl away from Enyeto before it bit him.

I palmed one of the smaller boulders and launched it at the creature’s broad side. The rock smacked into its soft belly with a wet slap and the crackling snap of ribs, eliciting a surprised squawk from the creature.

Enyeto took advantage of the distraction, drawing a knee up and launching it into the axolotl’s gut. The creature huffed, recoiling from the blow. Enyeto drew his leg in again, this time launching a brutal mule kick that caught the creature in the sternum like a battering ram. An ember of pride burned in my chest—the kick had been perfect, just as I’d taught him. The axolotl tumbled down the slope away from us, scattering rocks and dirt, arms pinwheeling, claws scrambling—digging shallow furrows in the hard earth.

I ran to Enyeto’s side and helped him to his feet.

Have you been bitten? I asked, my eyes searching his slime-matted red hair for blood.

Enyeto shook his head. Not yet, but that thing is after the body. I think it is trying to eat it.

Back on its rear-facing feet again, the axolotl scurried up the mountainside toward us. Its long body twined and twisted with almost serpentine movements as it skittered over ridges and around rocks. A thick paddle of a tail whipped along behind it.

We will stop it, I assured him.

Enyeto and I positioned ourselves between the creature and the skinless body, leaving only an arm’s length between us. I crouched low to meet the axolotl head-to-head, the knuckles of my right fist resting on the rocks.

The axolotl growled as it ran—a sound like a burbling brook—and bared its deadly mouthful of needle teeth.

I slammed my fist on the ground and roared in defiance. This overgrown amphibian could not intimidate the future chieftain of the People of the Forest in her own territory.

Still the amphibian dashed at us. I dug my toes into the rocks, ready for the collision.

Behind me, incredulous cursing. Chris.

“Nonono, wait, it’ll work!” Sean. “Just let me—”

A pair of gunshots echoed across the mountainside.

The axolotl stumbled a step, a pink flap of skin opening near the top right gill frond on its bulbous head. The creature snarled, enraged by the sting of the bullet, but undeterred. It lowered its head, bracing for impact, and ran straight for the gap between Enyeto and me.

We both lunged for the axolotl, Enyeto throwing his full weight toward where he expected the creature to be. Too late, I realized the move was a feint. The creature turned at the last moment, its long spine curving unnaturally as it zipped around the outside of my legs. My fingers slipped across its slimy skin unable to find purchase. Enyeto hit the ground with a loud oof! of expelled air and the crunch of gravel. The axolotl’s meaty tail slapped me in the face with surprising force. Sparks danced before my eyes.

A snatch of the lecture I had given to my class earlier about kicks flashed through my mind as I regained my balance: this creature was smaller and weaker, but it used its natural speed and dexterity to its advantage. I spun and ran after it, lashing out with a massive straight-leg kick, catching it in the ribs before it could get to the body. The axolotl tumbled sideways, skidding in the dirt. Its wide head smacked into one of the massive boulders that made up the rock wall, and a handful of teeth went flying.

Before it could clamber back to its feet, Chris leapt from the rock wall and onto the creature’s slimy back, stopping it just yards from the flayed corpse. The axolotl squealed and flailed its head, chomping and biting at him, but the detective was ready. Chris wrapped his arms around its thick neck, growling with exertion as he bearhugged the creature.

“Do not let it bite you, Chris!” I shouted.

“Wasn’t planning on it!” he replied, the tendons in his neck standing out with the effort it took to hold on.

I grabbed another boulder and ran to help my friend.

Something whizzed past my face. A thin white dart of bone. It parted the hair on my shoulder and clattered down the mountainside behind me.

“Woo, yeah!” Sean cried, perched atop the pile of boulders. “Next one’s coming at ya, slimy! Take this!”

He pulled back one arm as if lining up a punch, opened his hand, then jammed it forward at Chris and the axolotl. Another dart shot from Sean’s palm, this one shattering against the boulder I was holding. Nowhere near the axolotl.

“Whoops! My bad, Winona. I meant the next one.”

“No, Sean—”

Before I could tell him to stop shooting, he filled his hand with another dart and launched it. This one flew true, right at the axolotl, right up until the moment it lodged in Chris’s back just below his shoulder blade.

Chris shouted in pain and grabbed instinctively for the dart. Sensing its chance, the creature bucked, throwing him off, and scrambled toward the body. Chris flipped back, eyes wide as he smacked into the hard earth with a grunt, pain flashing across his clean-shaven face.

Enyeto, stop the hedge mage from shooting us, I sent. I will deal with the axolotl.

Affirmative. Enyeto sprinted toward the boulder wall.

Sean shrieked when he saw the nine-and-a-half-foot Chiye-tanka charging him and turned to run the opposite direction, his bravery and boastful words suddenly forgotten.

Confident that Enyeto would deal with the hedge mage, I hurled my boulder just in front of the axolotl. Dust kicked up and rocks flew like shrapnel, peppering the creature’s snout. The axolotl pulled up short, lips pulling back from its teeth in a rictus as it eyed me. Uncertainty marked its movements. Stay? Fight? Flee? The creature was smart enough to know the tide was shifting. Before it could decide to escape, I took a page from Chris’s book and I launched myself at the creature.

The axolotl bolted left, trying to evade, but too slowly.

Dirt and slime sluiced onto my cheek and into my hair as I made contact. The beast squirmed and fought, intentionally making itself as hard as possible to grip. Its slippery body slid through my arms. I dug my fingernails in, desperate to get hold before it shimmed free, but it was too late. The axolotl’s tail broke off cleanly in my hands, wriggling like a frantic eel. I clutched the flailing tail in one hand and shoved myself to my feet with the other. The axolotl’s jaws opened.

It leapt toward the skinless body, maw wide, great strings of saliva drooling down.

I swung the tail at the side of the creature’s bulbous head. The thick part of the tail thwacked against the creature’s cheek, sending it sliding across the scree-covered ground and into the rock wall again. The slimy tail slipped through my fingers, sailing over the boulders. I let it go and ran after the axolotl, my skin crawling in disgust as one of my feet landed on the blood-muddied dirt near the corpse. At the axolotl’s side, I dropped to my knees and grabbed it by the gill fronds.

Rather than thrashing and bucking, the creature let loose with a burping wail.

“Let go!” it croaked with a voice unaccustomed to human speech. “You are hurting Ichtacka! Please, you must let go!”

“Will you leave the body alone if I let go?” I asked, hands clenching down tighter.

“Ichtacka must eat the body,” it insisted. “It is Ichtacka’s part in the sacrifice—to carry the essence to the key!”

I froze. “Your part in the sacrifice? Did you kill this human?”

It shook its bulbous, slimy head, then cried out in pain as this further wrenched its gill fronds.

“Ow, ow! Ichtacka is not a killer, Ichtacka is only the transporter. Please let Ichtacka’s gills go!”

“I cannot set you free until you vow not to touch the body,” I said.

“You are hurting Ichtacka!”

“Swear that you will not touch it,” I demanded.

“Ichtacka swears by the power of Quetzalcoatl on the pain of everlasting torture in the Valley of the Knife Winds that he will not touch the sacrifice if the big hairy woman lets him go. So mote it be, so mote it be, so mote it be.”

Though many creatures of the Spirit World do not conform to the mores of the Chiye-tanka, none will dare break a thrice-sworn vow. I released my grip on the axolotl’s gills and slowly stood, nose wrinkling in disgust as I tried to wipe the slime and dirt and pebbles from my hair. A long soak in the hot springs of the Sacred Grove would not go amiss right now.

The axolotl sat up on its tailless stump of a rear end and scrubbed its backward feet across its gill fronds as if to soothe away their distress.

“Why are you trying to eat this body?” I asked, planting my hands on my hips as a reminder not to rub at the slime—I could not afford to appear distracted before this creature.

“It is Ichtacka’s purpose,” the axolotl burped. “The priest leaves the sacrifice where the sun will touch it and calls Ichtacka from the key to devour it. Then Ichtacka returns to the key with the sacrifice’s essence.” The creature spoke the words as though they should be self-explanatory even to the dullest witted.

I ignored that as a chill that had nothing to do with the cool breeze made the hair down my spine stand on end. There is no shadow magic as dark as the kind that requires the essence of living things. Vim. An unnatural act, harnessing the life force of another. An evil unlike any other.

The axolotl, Ichtacka, glanced at the body, then the boulders. It pressed its backward-facing forefeet together and looked up at me sheepishly.

“May Ichtacka have his tail back?”

“I will get it for you,” I said, “if you tell me who is sacrificing humans.”

Ichtacka shook his head, abused gill fronds slapping against his cheeks. “Ichtacka does not see the priest. Ichtacka waits for the sun-call of the sacrifice.”

“Do you reside inside this key?” I asked.

“The key is Ichtacka’s home-vessel.” A long tongue popped out of the axolotl’s mouth to lick a lidless blue-gray eye.

Chris came to stand beside me, one arm bent behind his back, trying to extract the bone dart. I grabbed the dart and jerked it out for him. He winced.

“Thanks,” he said. Then he turned to the axolotl. “You live in a key and eat flayed bodies?”

The creature nodded.

“Did you eat a body two days ago, over by the U of M football stadium?”

“Sta-di-um?” the axolotl asked, canting its head, eyes narrowing in thought. “Ichtacka does not know sta-di-um. Ichtacka has eaten nineteen sacrifices—two in this land of mountains and valleys. Was supposed to eat this third and complete the powering of the key, but Ichtacka will not break his vow to the hairy woman.”

“I thank you for your cooperation, Ichtacka,” I said, going around the wall of boulders to retrieve the creature’s tail.

On the other side of the wall, Sean was lying flat in the dirt with Enyeto sitting lightly on his back. Not enough to hurt the man, only enough to keep him still, to keep him from hurting us. The hedge mage’s face was dark red and a branching vein stood out in his forehead.

You may release him now, Enyeto. Thank you for your assistance.

Enyeto replied with a sharp nod and hopped to his feet. Sean sucked in a huge breath and started coughing.

Ignoring the hedge mage’s dirty stares, I picked up the axolotl’s tail, which now only squirmed intermittently, dusted the slimy appendage off, and returned to the creature.

“Can you tell us about the ritual of the key?” I asked, handing the tail to him.

The axolotl patted his tail lovingly, then twirled and fitted it to his behind. Within moments it had reattached itself to the stump, odd flesh knitting itself together with uncanny ease.

“The ritual powers the key so that the key may open the door,” he said absently, giving his tail an experimental wiggle. “Twenty sacrifices must be made to power the key to open the door.”

Chris whistled under his breath. “What kind of door needs a key powered by twenty human sacrifices? Or, hell, by one human sacrifice?”

“The door to the Vaults of the Quinametzin,” Ichtacka croaked in a voice that said this should have been obvious to anybody with a mind.

I chewed the inside of my lip. The Quinametzin were a race of flesh-eating giants the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl had locked beneath the earth during the fall of the First Sun to make way for humans to flourish in the new world. It was said the vaults were located beneath the ruins of Teotihuacán near modern-day Mexico City. Releasing these ancient giants would endanger millions of human lives.

“You do not know who might be trying to power the key?” I asked.

The axolotl shook its head, gill fronds swaying with the movement.

“Ichtacka does not know, but the key rests in a dwelling nearby, marked with strange sigils Ichtacka cannot read.” It leaned over a patch of dirt and began scratching with one backward-facing toe. “These are inscribed above its entryway.”

I stooped to study the scratchings, rubbing at my chin in contemplation. A trio of Greek letters stared back at me. Pi lamda chi.

“I do not understand,” I said, frowning. “This spells nothing. It is gibberish.”

Sean stepped forward. “Hey, I know that. It’s the letters of a sorority here in town—the G-Chis.” He grinned, his face still smudged with dirt. “I was over last week for their annual Haunted House Mixer.”

“G-Chi,” I repeated. “Can you take us to it?” I asked. “The key must be somewhere on the premises.”

Sean nodded. “No problem. The ladies there love me. Love me. They’ll be glad to see me again.”

From the opposite side of the writing, Chris was glaring at him, rubbing his shoulder.

“Oh yeah, sorry about your shoulder,” Sean said, pushing his glasses up nervously. “You did kinda jump into my shot, though. I would never have shot you if you hadn’t. I know you’re new to this, so pro tip—stay out of the field of fire.”

“I’m assuming G-Chi is a University of Montana sorority?” Chris asked, still glowering at the hedge mage.

Sean cleared his throat and looked away. “Oh, yeah.”

“That lines up with the first body over by the stadium.” Chris looked at me. “I’ve got to call in crime scene and meet them down on the access road. Once they’re here, we can head over and talk to the sorority.”

“It is a good plan,” I agreed. “Enyeto, will you tell my father where I have gone?”

Enyeto nodded sharply before turning on his heel and speeding off.

“And you, friend?” I turned to Ichtacka. “Where will you go?”

“If Ichtacka cannot consume this sacrifice, then Ichtacka must return to his home-vessel.”

“Thank you for your assistance, Ichtacka of the key,” I said, resting my hand on my chest and bowing my head to him.

“Thank you for returning Ichtacka’s tail and not tearing his gills off,” the axolotl croaked.

With that, the odd creature opened his mouth and let out a wordless squawk. His body grew faint around the edges, then dissolved from reality. No shimmering veil cloaked him, like my people used for passing unseen. For a moment, the faintest hint of Vim lingered in the air, a smell like sulfur and shadow, almost overpowered by the scent of murky water and algae. Then it, too, disappeared.

SIX:

Bag and Tag

While we waited for the deputies, crime scene unit, and other detectives to show up, I went down into the forest and found a patch of late-season prunella vulgaris—purple flowers the Little Brothers and Sisters in the area call “self-heal” for their medicinal properties—and a fernleaf biscuitroot. Without the time to properly boil these into a poultice, I simply crushed the root and flower together, then packed them into Chris’s shoulder wound.

Chris grimaced as I worked, but did not complain.

Sean leaned over my shoulder, watching. “All out of triple antibiotic ointment?”

“I thought you were guarding the victim,” Chris said, a sharp edge in his voice.

“I am.”

“Well, why don’t you go do it over there.”

With a grunt of indignation, Sean stood up and slunk back to the wall of boulders. He climbed onto a large one overlooking the body and sat with his back to us, elbows planted on his knees.

“That was not very kind, Chris,” I said. “He did not mean to shoot you.”

“You didn’t see him when we made it to the fight. He couldn’t even get his magic to work.”

“It is possible to make these mistakes in the heat of battle,” I said. “Even the best of weapons are not always effective.”

Chris sighed and looked down at his sidearm. “Yeah, I’m figuring that out.”

“It was not my intention to belittle your gun,” I said. “There will be times when mundane bullets are effective—against the Teihiihan, for example, they worked quite well—they were just not today. But you adapted quite well despite that.” I paused, eyeing my handiwork. “Your dressing is finished.”

“Thanks.” Chris stood and shrugged his shirt back on, wincing as the wiry knots of muscle around his shoulder moved. “I just thought an organization like the Lucis Venántum would be more … on the ball. More professional. Like cops, but for the supernatural world.”

I glanced over at Sean’s hunched back. “They do tend to be former law enforcement and military. But perhaps since Sean has grown up in the Venántum, he is less sensitive to the dangers.”

Chris’s phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket and answered.

“Fuller. Yeah, you’re on the right road. Just keep driving until you see my cruiser.”

He thumbed the screen and tucked the phone back into his pocket.

“I’m going to head down and wait for them,” he said, hooking a thumb toward a scraggly clump of bushes near the base of the mountain.

I went to sit with Sean, casting a veil over the two of us in order to watch over the corpse unseen.

A little over an hour later, Chris returned with a pair of deputies and a detective from the department, all breathing heavily from the climb. Deputy Traeger, a young woman I had met once before and whom I suspected of being attracted to Chris, was among them, trying her best not to appear fatigued.

“Wowzer,” Sean whispered when he saw the black-haired young deputy. “Kinda makes me wish I’d gone into Rube law enforcement.”

“What is your age, Sean?” I asked, keeping my voice low so that it would not carry to Chris’s colleagues.

Sean snorted and pushed up his glasses. “Yeah, yeah, I know that wasn’t very PC. I’m sorry, I’ll start acting my age not my IQ, har, har.”

My brow furrowed in confusion. One would think that I would be used to the sudden shifts in human thought patterns, but they always caught me off guard.

I picked him up, and we started down the mountain, our watch finished.

“I am genuinely curious,” I said. “It is hard for me to tell a human’s age based on their appearance. Our species are very alike, but also very different. The fact that you can touch the Vis further complicates the estimation, as you may look younger than you are.”

“Oh, I see. I’m twenty-three.”

I nodded. “Chris says that Deputy Traeger cannot legally purchase alcohol yet because of her age. Does that deter you from considering her a potential mate?”

Sean rubbed his chin. “Not exactly. She’s on the force, so she must be at least eighteen, right? If she was into me, yeah, I’d go for it.”

“So age is a factor, but not the defining one.”

“You could say that.” Then he straightened his shoulders and sniffed, regaining the faraway look he had when speaking about the Venántum’s creed. “’Course, I’m not looking for anything long term. Me? I’m a lone wolf. If a girl wants to be with me, she’d have to know I’m not the settling down type. There’s a lot of girls out there with broken hearts wondering when old Seanny’s coming back.”

“You did not tell them?” I asked, a flint arrow’s jagged edge creeping into my voice.

He blinked. “What?”

“Because it should be no wonder that they are upset if you did not tell them that you would not be back. This is a lie of omission, a thing dishonorable and selfish.”

“No, I—when they—” He shook his head. “Look, it’s not literal. They knew what kind of rambling man I was when they fell for me. But you can’t stop a heart from pining after the one that got away, even if you knew going into it that they could never stay.”

I glared straight down the slope at the approaching tree line, biting the insides of my lips together. This childish little brother did not understand what he was saying, the kind of pain he was excusing. But I could not find the words to properly chastise him. Arguments and truths and experienced betrayal flitted through my mind only to be seared into fragments of nonsense by bright hot anger.

There is no wisdom in speaking from anger or pain, I reminded myself.

“Actually,” Sean continued, “if we’re going to the G-Chi house, then you’ll get to see it firsthand. There’s a pretty little gal there who’s probably been crying her eyes out over me since the Haunted House Mixer.”

He shouted with surprise as I dropped him onto the rocky ground.

“Perhaps you should walk the rest of the way,” I said, feeling an immediate spike of guilty vindication.

This was no way for a future chieftain of the People of the Forest to act, throwing a tantrum like a spoiled child. It did, however, serve to raise my spirits for one bright yellow moment. Especially when Sean limped to his feet and ran to catch up with me.

Back on the access road, Chris’s cruiser was now surrounded by police cars, the CSI van, and an ambulance marked Coroner. An older man with a barrel chest leaned against the ambulance, smoking and swiping at his phone’s screen.

I settled in at the edge of the trees and waited. Many minutes later, Sean caught up to me. Without looking over my shoulder, I extended my veil to him. He made more noise joining me than a bear pushing down a rotted tree. I cringed, expecting the barrel-chested man to investigate. Instead, the man only glanced around a few moments before shivering, dropping his cigarette to the road, stubbing it out with his shoe, then climbing into the ambulance’s driver seat and slamming the door.

“Winona,” Sean whispered, his voice almost louder than his tromping had been. “Psst, Winona.”

“Yes?” I replied, more harshly than necessary.

“Hey, are you mad at me?”

I sighed, feeling very human. “I am not mad at you, Sean.” Then I sighed again, the anger melting away like snow in the spring. “I am mad at someone else. But the lackadaisical way you speak of the light-o-loves you have left behind aggravates old wounds.”

“Look, I ... I don’t really ...” A pained expression clouded Sean’s face for a moment, like a muskrat that had been caught in a trap and could not see a way to escape. Then his face cleared, leaving behind only a trace of sadness. He rested one hand gently on my forearm. “I’m sorry some jerk hurt you, Winona. And I’m sorry I stirred up those bad memories.”

“It is nothing you could have known,” I admitted. “I am sorry I dropped you. That was childish.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. I’m all kinds of resilient,” he said, elbowing me playfully in the hip with his tiny human arm. “Anyway, if that dickcheese didn’t realize what a special, big, hairy Sasquatch lady he had, then he didn’t deserve you. I hope the dope got mange and all his hair fell out.”

I smiled to let him know that I appreciated his olive branch, but I did not tell him that Achak was dead. After spending so much time under the knowing and pitying eyes of my kith and kin, it was very relieving to speak to someone who knew nothing about what had happened.

Father Sun was high in the sky when the slide of loose rocks and snap of twigs alerted us to Chris’s return. The wind carried the familiar scent of his sweat and cologne to me long before he appeared. Finally, he stepped out of the trees and onto the access road. For a moment, he looked around for us, his gaze sliding over the veil without stopping. I could not tell whether it was my imagination or if the dark circles under his eyes truly had deepened over the last few hours.

Unable to spot us, Chris went to the ambulance and knocked on the window with one knuckle.

The barrel-chested man opened the door.

“They’re ready to bag and tag,” Chris told him.

With a groan, the barrel-chested man climbed out of the ambulance and led the way to the back doors. He opened one and pulled out a black body bag and a flat red stretcher.

“Don’t suppose you feel like climbing back up there?” the man asked.

Chris gave him an easy smile. “I’ve been up two times already. I think I’m done mountain climbing for today.”

With a shake of his head, the barrel-chested man reached into a pocket with his free hand and came up with a pack of cigarettes. He gave it a shake and poked the one that popped out into his mouth.

“Not sure I brought enough cancer sticks for this kinda work,” he said, the cigarette bobbing along with the words. He tucked the bag and stretcher under his arm and started up the mountainside.

Chris watched him go. When the man was out of earshot, Chris looked around again.

“All right, guys, I know you’re around here somewhere. Are you ready to go yet?”

“Shotgun!” I shouted, dispelling our veil.

“Shotgun!” Sean shouted a half-second too late.

The smile I wore as I put the amulet back on and dressed myself once again in the clothes and body of a human was perhaps a touch more smug than strictly necessary. But when I climbed into the passenger seat next to Chris, he was smiling as well. It made my friend look much less tired.

SEVEN:

Pi Lamda Chi

“This one,” Sean said, speaking through the wire partition between the front and back seats. “The big white house.”

Chris directed the cruiser to the curb and parked in front of a white-sided building large enough to house several families. Just as the axolotl Ichtacka had said, wooden Greek letters painted bright red hung between the windows of the second story: pi lamda chi. Cars and trucks drove past, and male and female humans with backpacks and books walked or rode by on bicycles. This did not seem a likely place for a crocodile-sized axolotl to enter and exit unnoticed, but it was entirely possible that the axolotl had used his magics to transport himself to the sacrifice rather than walking out of the house in plain sight of the passing traffic.

As we exited the vehicle—Chris pausing to open the back door for Sean—a pair of young females of an age with Deputy Traeger crossed the street and stepped onto the sorority house’s front walk. One tossed a volleyball between her hands, and the other wore a weighty backpack and had bright purple streaks in her hair. They stared openly at the cruiser as they passed.

“Excuse me,” Chris said, waving at them. He strode across the grass and met with them on the sidewalk. “MCSD. We need to speak to whoever’s in charge here.”

The young woman with the purple streaks in her hair adjusted her backpack’s straps.

“Oh, you want Emery. She’s our chapter—”

But the young woman with the volleyball stepped in front of her. “Excuse me, but we haven’t seen any sort of badge or proof that you are who you say you are.”

Chris smiled as if he had not heard the hostility in her voice.

“Sure, I wouldn’t believe just anybody who drives a cop car, either.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out his badge.

The dubious young woman tucked the volleyball under her arm and took the badge from Chris, inspecting it as if she expected to find it fake. When she could find nothing wrong with it, she handed it back to Chris.

“What is this pertaining to, Officer?” she asked.

I clenched my fists at my sides. I did not like her tone, but Chris did not react to it or correct her mistaken assumption that he was an officer rather than a detective.

“A murder investigation,” he said. “I need to speak to whoever’s in charge of your house.”

“I’ll text Emery,” the one with the purple hairstreaks said, sliding her finger across her phone’s screen. “She’s usually out of Chem Lab by now.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it,” Chris said.

“Are we suspects, officer?” the girl with the volleyball asked, tossing her bright yellow ponytail.

“Nothing like that,” Chris said. “At this stage, about ninety percent of our leads turn out to be nothing, but we’ve got to run them down just the same.”

The purple-streaked girl’s phone chirped. She checked it, then smiled.

“Emery’ll be here in a sec. Want to wait inside?”

The girl with the volleyball glared at her. “Dammit, Madison, they couldn’t come inside without a warrant! Now they can snoop around all they want because of you.”

I could not hold my peace any longer.

“You are behaving very suspiciously,” I said. “Is there something inside you do not want us to find?”

The volleyball girl’s gray eyes cut to me. “What’re you gonna do? Arrest me for knowing the law? Get your phone back out, Madison.”

Chris stepped between us, raising his hands in a placating gesture.

“Look, we’re not here to hassle you guys over a little bit of weed or underage drinking. We just want to find whoever did this and get them off the streets before they hurt someone else.”

Rather than placate the girl with the volleyball, this made her turn suspicious eyes on me.

“Speaking of ‘we,’ I haven’t seen any identification that shows these two are actual cops,” she said.

“That’s because they’re not cops,” Chris said. “This is Winona Treesinger, an agent with the Bureau of Indian Affairs—”

“Like, obviously.”

“OMG, Nika, racist much?”

“—and Sean Smith, a consultant for the department.”

Sean swept forward, shaking both of their hands. “You ladies probably remember me from last week.”

The girls looked at each other, then back at him.

“The Haunted House Mixer?” he said. Then he shrugged. “Nah, that’s cool. It was a pretty crazy party. And I didn’t spend much of it mingling, anyway.”

The girl with the volleyball raised an eyebrow at him as if he were loose scat she had stepped in.

“So, would you guys like to come inside?” the girl with the purple hair repeated.

“Madison!”

“That’s all right,” Chris said. “If it makes you more comfortable, we can wait out here.”

“That would make us more comfortable,” the volleyball girl said.

They disappeared inside, the purple-haired girl hissing in angry whispers at the girl with the volleyball. The windowed front door slammed behind them.

I rounded on Chris. “Why was she being so rude to you? Has she no respect for your authority as an enforcer of the law?”

Behind me, Sean snorted.

“Wow, you really aren’t in Kansas anymore,” he said. “Nobody respects the po-po, Winona. We’re all sovereign citizens and anarchists and amateur lawyers.”

“Sovereign citizens?” I canted my head to the side. “These words do not make sense together. Is it slang?”

Chris shook his head. “Just don’t take any bait or you’ll end up on YouTube. We’re here to find the key and figure out where it came from. That’s it.”

A young woman on a bicycle rolled up and hopped off.

“Emery?” Chris asked, stepping forward.

“That’s me.” Her hazel eyes passed over Sean and me and landed on Chris’s suit and tie. “You’re the officers?”

“Detective Fuller with the MCSD,” Chris said, showing her his badge. “We’re in the neighborhood investigating a murder, and we need to speak to whoever’s in charge of the house.”

“Well, I’m chapter president.” She unsnapped the strap of her helmet and took it off, fluffing the short brown hair that had been hidden beneath. “The G-Chis will help in any way we can. We’re basically a service sorority. I cannot even believe they just left y’all standing out here. Come on in, please. We’re usually way more hospitable than this.”

We followed her into a large sitting room filled with pairs of comfortable-looking couches arranged facing one another around the room. One was occupied by a young woman reading and eating a bowl of cereal. In the corner, two young women were playing a video game on a large flat-screen television. A burst of gunfire followed by an explosion drifted from the screen as blood and limbs flew in all directions. Sean’s face lit up like summer lightning when he saw this.

“Please, have a seat,” Emery said. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

“No, thank you,” Chris said, sinking onto a couch. “If you don’t mind, we’ll just ask our questions then get out of your hair.”

“Yeah, of course.”

I perched near the end of the couch, sitting lightly so my considerable weight wouldn’t destroy the armrest. Emery sat across from us, stacking her backpack and helmet on the cushion beside her.

Rather than join us, Sean went to the television corner and leaned against the wall, thumbs hooked in his pockets, smiling at the taller of the two girls playing the violent game.

“Fancy running into you here,” he said.

She did not look away from the game. “Um, okay, whoever you are.”

Sean’s face spasmed with surprise and he stood up straight.

“Sean. Sean Smith. From the mixer,” he said. “Halloween night, remember?”

“Yeah, not ringing any bells,” she said, lobbing a grenade across the screen.

On the couch beside me, Chris leaned forward, resting an elbow on one knee.

“Basically, we’re looking for a piece of evidence,” he explained to Emery. “A key of some kind. You all might’ve come across it recently, probably within the last couple weeks.”

“It is most likely Mesoamerican in origin,” I said. “Aztec.”

Emery’s brows drew down. “An Aztec key?”

“It may not be shaped like the traditional car or skeleton key,” I said. “It could be an artifact of obsidian, turquoise, gold, pine resin, or some amalgam of all these materials.”

“That could be pretty much any of the stuff from our Halloween mixer,” Emery said, tucking a short strand of hair behind her ear. “The theme was Ziggurat of the Dead, so Rose and Aubrey went around to a bunch of junk stores buying up all the weird stuff we could use to decorate.”

“What did you all do with the decorations afterward?” Chris asked.

Across the room, Sean was arguing with the indifferent young woman. “We made out for, like, twenty minutes right over there.” He nodded to the opposite corner of the room, where an overstuffed armchair sat.

The shorter girl pointed her controller at Sean. “The dweeb dressed up as Supernatural, right? Remember, Rose? He was all like, ‘I hunt monsters you could never dream of for a living.’” She smiled briefly at him, then turned back to her game. “It was really good commitment to the costume.”

“It wasn’t a—”

“Oh, right,” the taller girl said, nodding. “Yeah, I was super drunk that night, and I’m not really looking for a boyfriend right now, so …” She let the sentence trail off into nothing as she returned her concentration to the screen.

“That’s cool,” Sean said. “No, that’s totally fine. I—I barely remember it, either. I just … thought I recognized you, so … I’m actually here investigating a gruesome ritual murder.”

They both turned to him, eyes wide.

“What?”

“No way!” Gore splattered across their screen and agonized screams filled the air, unnoticed.

“Yeah, the key piece of evidence might be right here in this very—”

Beside me, Chris smiled an apology at Emery. “Can you excuse me for just a second?”

He stood, crossed the room in three strides, then grabbed Sean by the arm and pulled him back to the couches.

The girls followed along behind them, video game forgotten.

Emery pointed at the shorter of the two. “Aubrey, do you know where the decorations from the mixer went? Are they downstairs with the Christmas stuff or did you guys put them in the attic?”

“Fourth of July through Christmas goes in the basement because there’s, like, a ton more than New Year’s through Flag Day.”

“Awesome,” Emery said, standing. “I can take you guys down there now, if you’d like to look through it?”

“That would be great,” Chris said. “Thank you.”

We followed her through a dining room the size of the feast hall in the Great Redwood, then through a cramped kitchen, down a set of narrow stairs, and into an unfinished basement. Emery pulled a string hanging down from the ceiling to turn on a single bare bulb, and its light cast dancing shadows over the room. The air was damp and smelled of wet earth. Metal shelves lined the walls, nearly all of them stacked with cardboard boxes and plastic totes. The shorter girl, Aubrey, went to a stack of green and gray totes.

“They should be in one of these,” she said, pulling them out and arranging them on the floor. “Unless somebody moved everything.”

The taller girl with the game controller still in hand smirked. “Aubrey’s super anal about everything in its place and a place for everything.”

“I’m organized,” Aubrey snapped, glowering at the other girl. Then she smiled at us and softened her voice. “I’m also opening up a professional organizing service, so if any of you are interested or know of anybody who might be interested, just let me know. I’ll get you some business cards.”

While Aubrey went upstairs, the other two young women helped us sort through the totes. My first contained rolls of red and black crepe paper, human-sized plastic goblets covered in blood-splatter patterns, a package of blood packs, another of blood capsules, and a smaller tote labeled Smoke Machine Refills. I checked inside, but found only small clear vials of liquid.

“What about this?” Sean asked, holding up a primitive tomahawk that looked to be shaped from wood and flint. The floor around his feet was covered by daggers, swords, and axes made of plastic and rubber.

I shook my head. “That bears marks of the Wampanoag nation, not Aztecs, in addition to being a very recent creation—the handle is made of compressed wood chips.”

“Oh,” Sean said, ducking his head and returning to his search.

“The key we are looking for will be ancient,” I said.

“Like this?” Chris asked, looking up from his box of headdresses, circlets, and tiaras.

He passed me a dagger, the whole thing one piece of worked obsidian. The blade had been knapped much like flint into a deadly edge. In contrast, the hilt was smooth and gleamed dully in the basement light, shaped like the curling tail of a serpent or fronded salamander. The stone was warm to the touch.

Ichtacka? I mind-whispered to it.

Hairy lady, you have found the home-vessel, the axolotl replied, good cheer flowing through our mental connection. Ichtacka will sleep now, but you are welcomed, Sister of the Forest.

I thanked him, then nodded at Chris.

“This is the key,” I said.

The shorter young woman who liked organizing, Aubrey, was just coming down the stairs with a fan of business cards in her hand.

“Where did you get this dagger?” Chris asked the girls.

“Oh.” Aubrey paused in the midst of handing Sean a small stack of the cards. “Rose and I bought all that stuff on a garage sale-Goodwill-Salvation Army binge. That one came from this kitschy little pawnshop down in Lolo. The Frog Pawnd or something punny like that.”

Across the piles of decoration and junk, Chris’s eyes met mine. Even without speaking mentally, I knew we were thinking of the same thing:

Merv.

EIGHT:

Drive Thru

All three of our stomachs were rumbling like distant thunder as we drove away from the Pi Lamda Chi sorority house, so I suggested a meal at Wild Bob’s Saloon.

Chris shook his head and turned the cruiser onto the highway headed south.

“It’s thirty minutes to Lolo,” he said, single-minded determination etched into the lines of his face. “We need to get down there and talk to Merv. The sooner we figure out who did this, the better.”

I leaned back in my seat—my rightful seat, as I had once again beaten Sean at the game of Shotgun—and gazed out the window at the passing city, recalling how, the last time we worked together, my friend had taken me to Wild Bob’s in the midst of a murder investigation. There had been time then to sit and eat and even to learn the sacred Two-Step of Chris’s people, but there was not now? As every life was sacred, those murders were no less pressing than these. Why did he feel a greater sense of urgency now?

Chris must have mistaken my quiet pondering for disappointment.

“Hey, fairy princess, I’ll make it up to you,” he promised. “We’ll go for Big Sky Burgers and a Pile o’ Rings as soon as we put this case to bed.”

“That is a satisfactory arrangement.” I smiled to let him know I harbored no resentment for his refusal. “That will give me time to further assess Bob’s ingredients. I think I am very close to recreating his secret family recipe.”

“Not to break up the cooking channel fan club,” Sean said from the back seat, “but I know I’m not the only one starving. I can hear y’all’s tummies rumbling. Can we at least stop by a Mickie-D’s? Vis work doesn’t come easy on an empty stomach. That’s why I was having so much trouble back at the crime scene. Shouldn’t have skipped breakfast.”

Chris glanced at the rearview mirror with narrowed eyes, then sighed and returned his gaze to the road.

“Ever had a Bic Mac, Winona?” he asked.

A Big Mac, Chris and Sean explained, was a type of burger sold from a window on the side of a restaurant when one was hungry but in too much of a hurry to go inside and eat. This Big Mac often came with fries. After making certain that the Big Mac was the closest approximation the drive-through restaurant had to the Big Sky Burger and Rings, I agreed to try it. However, when I remembered how tiny Wild Bob’s half-pound sandwich had been, I asked that they order two extra Big Macs for me. My stomach may have been much smaller in human form, but because I retained my mass, strength, and abilities, I still required the same caloric intake.

The food smelled heavenly as we pulled away from the establishment. We sorted our orders out of the bag. Chris drove one-handed while he ate.

I folded my feet beneath me in the seat to get comfortable, then selected a fry out of the greasy cardboard container. Salt gritted against the pads of my human fingers. I popped it into my watering mouth and chewed.

“Ugh!” I winced in surprise. This fry was somehow both mealy and stale at the same time. Surely it had gone bad. I opened my mouth and allowed the half-chewed fry to fall into my hand.

In the back seat, Sean laughed.

“You’re doing it wrong. You’ve gotta eat them like this.” He shoved a handful of the offending potato sticks into his mouth. “That way all you taste is the salt and the heart failure.”

I turned to Chris. “Humans do not truly eat this.”

“We do today,” he said, a wry smile lifting the corner of his lips.

“They are cold and awful and they taste like laboratory-manufactured oil,” I insisted. Then I realized how discourteous I was being. “I am sorry. I was just surprised at the …” I swallowed the word inferiority. McDonald had been kind enough to prepare these to the best of his ability. I should be grateful for his effort. “… the difference between these and Wild Bob’s fare.”

Chris’s eyes sparkled. “Just try not to let your brain compare it to Wild Bob’s—or any real food. That makes it easier to stomach.”

I nodded and steeled myself for the second bite. Cold, stale bits of potato hopped around on my tongue like mealy frogs.

My face must have conveyed my revulsion because Chris chuckled.

“Is it bad that I’m excited to see how you react to the burger?” he asked.

I giggled, then covered my mouth with my hand.

“It is not funny to encourage rudeness, Chris,” I said. Though it was relieving to know I had not offended him.

With no small amount of trepidation, I lifted the Big Mac to my mouth. It smelled wonderful, but then so had the fries.

To my delight, the first bite was vastly better than the fries had been—meat that was somehow both oniony and tangy, and bread soft enough to sleep upon—though it was nothing compared to Wild Bob’s smoky, charred masterpiece. Chris was right, however. If I did not compare the two and allowed only my empty stomach to judge the food, McDonald had created a palatable burger. And three of them were nearly sufficient to fill me up.

All of the food McDonald had prepared for us was gone by the time we drove into Lolo—Sean having scarfed my uneaten fries.

Father Sun always feels so much farther from Inworld during the winter. Though he shined bright this afternoon, his yellow light felt cold and removed as we stepped out of the vehicle in front of the neon green pawnshop marked as Froggy’s Pawn by its flashing sign.

Electronic wind chimes sang out overhead as we entered the shop.

Everything inside was just as I remembered it—the sound of softly flowing water, the raised tile pond filled with green weeds and algae, the tiny baby snapping turtle crawling along the bottom. Merchandise lined the walls and filled glass cases, all shining under the glaring overhead lights.

A door in the far wall burst open and the owner of Froggy’s Pawn, Merv Benevides, strode through, small and round in his human disguise. His short, thick arms were wrapped around a large cardboard box filled with records.

“Welcome, welcome,” he boomed cheerfully. “I’ve got half price on all vintage audio and visual media this week, eight tracks, vinyl, videotapes, even laserdisc—”

When he saw me, Merv’s naturally bulging eyes widened impossibly, and he let out a surprised chirp. His human suit sloughed away to reveal a short, wet creature with faintly green skin, a scraggly moss beard, and the wide froglike head of a half-vodník. His horizontal pupils hopped from me to the delicate porcelain pot he kept proudly displayed on his shelf, then back. The pot was a relic from the Old Country, filled with—Merv claimed—the last soul his father had collected.

“Princess!” He changed directions, walking away from the pot as if to put distance between him and his guilt, and set his box full of records on the glass counter. “I didn’t know you would be back this soon. It’s not the end of the moon cycle already, is it? You know vodníci haven’t got any head for dates! A gent could be forgiven for losing track of the time, couldn’t he? Especially when his intentions were good. I have every intention of releasing our little collector’s item back into the wild as soon as possible.

“But life gets busy, and, of course, it being the shop’s sixtieth anniversary soon—why, you wouldn’t believe the inventory I have to get on-shelf.” He gestured at the box of records. “It’s a never-ending struggle, I kid you not. But I will make the time to deal with that little collector’s item, you have my word.” Merv’s eyes skipped around the room and landed on Chris. His thin lips stretched into a smile, revealing his forefangs. “Ah, and the detective’s back! Good to see you kids worked things out. You hate to see a fight like that end things between a sweet couple like yourselves.”

My brow wrinkled. “Couple?”

“Mr. Benevides,” Chris said, stepping forward, “the Venántum’s had multiple complaints that you’ve been selling cursed items.”

“Why, I would never!” Merv fussed with the straw boater he wore to hide his shiny bald pate. “That is slander! Defamation of character. We here at Froggy’s Pawn have a strict policy of never selling dangerous items to Rubes. That would be negligent, hazardous to the community, and in poor taste.” He grasped his lapels with one hand and raised the other, pointing a webbed finger skyward. “Furthermore …”

Merv’s blustering speech trailed off as I pulled the obsidian dagger from my pocket and set it on the counter.

“A group of college girls from U of M told us you sold this to them two weeks ago,” Chris said, gesturing to it.

“Only as a Halloween decoration,” he said, his pointing finger drooping.

Sean snorted. “I hope you at least made a good profit, because you are in some serious trouble, froggy. The Venántum’s going to come down on you hard for this.”

Merv’s gaze hopped from Sean to Chris to me.

“Oh, come on, how much trouble could a few kids get into? They weren’t even planning to use it. The knife’s the real deal, I’ll admit to that, but as long as no Aztecs sacrifice anybody in the Old Way, then that knife is nothing more than a shiny black letter opener. Seeing as how there aren’t any Aztec priests hanging around Inworld anymore, I didn’t see the harm in making a dollar or two on something”—Merv’s finger returned to the air as his voice gained conviction—“that I bought out of the goodness of my heart, trying to help a poor, down-on-his-luck yahui get back home. Tell me I’m wrong, and I’ll tell you I did what any good soul would do to help his fellow Outworlder. You’d have done the same, Princess, I know you’ve got as soft a heart as I do.”

“You bought this knife from a yahui?” I asked. The tortoise-shell armored, caiman-headed creatures were some of the original halfies, descendants of the world turtle and the Great Caiman. The yahui were not widely known for being particularly malicious or benign, but were more of a neutral race with the same capacity for good or evil as humans or Chiye-tanka. There were even some legends which told of yahui who aided Mesoamerican rulers in times of great need.

“Well, a yahui halfie, I believe,” Merv said. “His human suit was eh …” He seesawed his hand. “I think the poor kid made the disguise himself. He seemed pretty bitter about Inworld. Might’ve had his poor heart broken, I suppose.” Merv leaned toward me as if to impart a secret. “We don’t all get happy endings, you know.”

“Did this yahui guy happen to say where he was going?” Chris asked.

“Nope,” Merv replied, “but if he was looking for the warm embrace of folks like him, then he’d be headed for Mictlan.”

I nodded slowly as I considered this. Mictlan was the Aztec land of the dead, located at one of the farthest corners of Outworld, beyond even the Earrach-Tir, the Spring Court of the fae. Getting there would require months if we went by way of the Sacred Grove.

“Then we must travel to the Hub,” I said, scooping the obsidian dagger from the countertop and returning it to my pocket. “Thank you for your assistance, Merv.”

I turned to go, but Sean stopped me.

“Hang on, Winona, we’re not done here. This guy just admitted to selling dangerous cursed items to humans.”

“Cursed,” Merv admitted, shrugging one shoulder, “but not immediately dangerous.”

“Not dangerous?” Sean let out a sharp bark of derisive laughter. “There’ve been at least two human sacrifices in the last two weeks because of your little stunt, frogger. By Venántum law, I’ve got to bring you in.”

The air sack beneath Merv’s chin started inflating and collapsing like a pulse. His wide eyes leapt from me to Chris to Sean, then back to me.

“But you wouldn’t let them do that, would you, Princess? I’m harmless, you know that. I haven’t broken the Sanctuary agreement—not in spirit, anyway. I’ve never sold any other cursed items. Not in sixty years! A guy’s not allowed to make one mistake in judgement? Come on, Princess, you know I’d never hurt anybody.”

It was true, Merv was not always on the side of the law, but he did not hurt people. It was not in his nature. If Sean took him to the Venántum, chances were good that they would find him guilty of causing the two deaths—however indirectly—and execute him. The Venántum, though often a force for good, had a zero-tolerance policy toward many of the creatures slinking through Inworld, hidden behind their flesh-masks. Fear could make monsters, even of good men.

I sighed and put one hand on Sean’s shoulder.

“Merv did not intend to harm anyone,” I said. “And he has been”—there was no way I could truthfully say that he had been upstanding—“a devoted member of the halfie community here in Lolo for decades. Is there no way you could cite him for his irresponsibility?”

“What, like reckless endangerment?” Chris asked from behind me.

“Yes, exactly.” I nodded. “Cite him for reckless endangerment, and if he falls into any trouble regarding cursed items again, the Venántum may do with him as they please.”

“I don’t know …” Sean’s brogues shimmied on the dingy white tiles, doing a tiny dance of indecision.

“There won’t be any more trouble,” Merv insisted. “Not with cursed items, not with anything. As I said before, this was a one-time lapse in judgement. It won’t happen again. Furthermore, the community of halfies here—once living in fear and suspicion of the Lucis Venántum—will blossom with a newfound respect for the firm but fair force of humans policing them when they hear of your magnanimous ruling. I don’t think it goes too far to say that your kindness will be the cornerstone that ushers in a new era of interspecies understanding, and you will be seen as the revolutionary who made the first move.”

As Merv spoke, Sean’s back straightened and he nodded slightly, almost as if he did not realize he were doing so.

With what looked like an effort of will, Sean forced a stern expression onto his face and glared at the vodník. “Fine, I’ll only cite you today. But you’ve been officially warned. Keep your nose clean or next time I won’t be as understanding.” He lifted a hand, as though to conjure a fireball in warning. I had seen Lazarus do such things with great effect. After a few seconds, though, his palm remained empty. He cleared his throat and dropped his hand, cheeks blushing faintly.

“You have my word,” Merv replied, nodding solemnly.

Sean and I started toward the door where Chris waited, hands on his hips and a sour smirk on his face. He swung the door open for us.

But I recalled the soul in the blue and white pot and turned back.

“Do not forget our agreement about your collector’s item, Merv,” I said. “The moon will be full again soon.”

His thin lips stretched into a smile and he tugged at the mossy hairs of his neckbeard. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Princess.”

NINE:

The Road

“We’ve got a bit of a trip ahead of us if we’re going Hubside,” Sean said as he led the way out of the pawnshop. “We’ll have to—”

“Shotgun!” I shouted, barreling past him to the cruiser. In all the excitement, I had nearly forgotten what was at stake.

“Aw, you suck.” Sean punched me good-naturedly in the biceps when he caught up. “Hey, tell me the truth,” he said, opening the back door, “when I’m riding back here, do I look like some hardened criminal y’all are hauling in for questioning?”

“You lost this round fairly, Sean,” I said, lowering myself into the front seat. “Show grace in defeat.”

Sean laughed as he climbed into the back. We shut our doors as one.

“No, I’m not complaining. What I’m saying is ladies love a bad boy.” He leaned against the partition and scowled, cocking one eyebrow dramatically. “So, do I look like a rebel thunderstorm all caged up back here? Like I’m beautiful from afar, but up close I’m dangerous because I’ll wreck their life and bedroom?”

I twisted my upper body to better study him, the thick black-framed glasses with the white square over the bridge of his nose and the stiff black hair whose straight comb-lines had not been disturbed even by our tussle with the axolotl Ichtacka.

“To me, you resemble a pleasant spring day,” I said. “A little windy, but otherwise quite warm and sunny.”

Sean snorted. “That’s what I get for asking a Sasquatch who can snap a bad boy in half like a twig.”

Chris’s door opened. The car rocked beneath him as he folded his wiry human frame into the driver’s seat and slammed his door.

“What do you think, Fuller?” Sean asked. “Think the girls from G-Chi thought I was some kind of tough guy when they saw me sitting back here?”

“No.” A fire-hardened edge had entered Chris’s tone, sharp and unexpected. His jaw was tight, and his brows were drawn low and together over his dark eyes. He turned the key and the cruiser roared to life. “Where to now?”

I touched his forearm lightly, unsure what had happened to put him in such a mood.

“Chris, are you all right?”

“Yeah, fine. Where—”

“You do not appear fine,” I insisted. “You appear upset. Is something wrong?”

He glared out the windshield. “Well, Winona, Merv sold dangerous stuff to kids and is probably part of the reason at least two people have been sacrificed to some unknown god. Lucky for him, he’s got a Sasquatch princess willing to look the other way as long as he claims he didn’t mean to.”

I drew back in my seat, stung by the venom in my friend’s voice.

“And the Venántum,” Chris said, “an organization that got enough complaints about Merv to send up a red flag, sent a child who’s fine with letting Merv off as long as he gets to look like the big boy who made the decision.”

“First of all,” Sean snapped, pointing at Chris through the partition, “I’m twenty-three. I am not a child.”

Chris threw his hands up and continued as if he hadn’t heard Sean. “I mean, am I the only one who realizes that frog was selling us a line of bullshit? Guys like him are never sorry for what they’ve done—they’re only sorry they got caught.”

“Listen, Fuller,” Sean said, his face so close to the partition that his every word clouded the plexiglass, “what you just witnessed was a delicate feat of balance between the gavel of the law and community outreach. I know you cops aren’t used to tactfully diffusing situations where you can’t shoot somebody in the back—”

“Please, both of you must stop,” I said, but my plea disappeared like the squeaking of a lone prairie dog beneath a thundering herd of buffalo.

“Guess you must be at least part cop, then,” Chris sneered, gesturing to his wounded shoulder.

“I was operating on an empty stomach!” Sean slammed his fist against the plexiglass. It rattled against the wire.

“But you could do better now, right, when the pressure’s off?”

“Not like your bullets did any good against that giant salamander.”

“Stop!” I shouted with all the strength in my lungs.

The word detonated in the air like the great booming fireworks I have observed in the midsummer Inworld sky. Sean and Chris fell silent immediately, staring at me with half-formed retorts lying stunned on their tongues.

I turned to Sean first.

“In the time I have worked with Chris, he has been very patient with and understanding to all those he has dealt with, myself included.” I turned to Chris. “And you? You know Merv would not intentionally harm anyone. Why are you so intent on seeing him punished?”

Chris gripped the bottom curve of the steering wheel with both hands as if he were trying to strangle it.

“What if something Merv sold had hurt your family, Winona?” he asked. “What if one of the cursed items he decided wasn’t dangerous enough to outweigh the profit he could make ended up being used against you or your people?”

It felt as if a spear had suddenly stabbed into my throat. My stomach clenched reflexively.

Chris nodded as if my expression had answered his question. “Yeah, not so great to think about something like that, is it? Those people who were flayed and left to be eaten by that weird salamander thing, they had families. If it had been your dad or one of your friends sacrificed and left out there in the middle of nowhere, do you think you would’ve been happy that we gave a guy like Merv a smack on the wrist and a don’t-do-it-again? Or do you think you would’ve wanted to see some kind of justice done to the guy who knowingly sold what was essentially a ticking time bomb?”

My friend could not know how close the pain was even now to each Chiye-tanka still living. And I—I, of all people—had been so caught up in the excitement and the adventure of traipsing once again through the human world on a mission to destroy another great evil that I had not seen the similarities.

I swallowed hard, attempting to dislodge the pain in my throat, and took a deep breath to calm myself. If I spoke rashly now, then I would surely misspeak.

“Chris, not so long ago my people were betrayed by one of our own. The Kinslayer used a cursed circlet to enslave my people.” My voice was low and quiet like the whisper of grass in a breeze. “This in addition to other unspeakable crimes he committed against us and his own family. Many died because of him. And there was a time when I would have ripped whomever gave him the circlet limb from limb. That is true.” I nodded slowly, my head feeling like a many-ton boulder.

“But as the Elders say, it is senseless to blame a tree for the arrow your enemy fires at you simply because it supplied the wood for the shaft; likewise, the bird who supplied the fletching or the flint that supplied the arrowhead. Though I may feel anger toward whoever gave him the circlet, it was not the giver who made the Kinslayer do evil. It was his decision.”

The frustrated tension bled from Chris’s posture.

“Winona …” He sighed and squeezed his eyes shut, massaging them with a thumb and forefinger. “I’m an asshole. Is there anything else I can stick my foot in my mouth about while we’re here?”

“There is no harm in asking someone to consider another’s viewpoint,” I said, wishing to alleviate his chagrin and some of my own. “I had not considered it, and so I thank you for presenting it to me. Besides, I do not believe you are entirely wrong. I know your love of justice runs deep within your spirit. And it is true that Merv did wrong selling items he should not have sold and deserves to be punished, but can you not also see the wisdom in giving him the chance to change his ways?”

Chris wiped his hand down his face and across his jaw. “Yeah, I guess I can. I just … It feels like tossing a drunk driver the keys and telling him to do some donuts in a school zone. If that had been my sister or one of my nephews up on that mountain …”

“It was not, and it will not be,” I said, patting his arm. “Because we are going to find whoever is sacrificing these humans and stop them.”

“Yeah,” Sean said, leaning up against the wire partition. “The Venántum always get their monster.”

Chris glanced sharply at the rearview mirror, but thankfully did not speak whatever doubts he held about Sean’s statement. This came as a great relief, as I did not feel like shouting at the two of them again.

“So, you said we have to go to some kind of hub,” Chris said, shifting the cruiser into gear with a series of heavy clunks. He glanced over one shoulder as he backed onto the street. “Where is it? Which way do I need to head?” He shifted again, foot light on the pedal as we headed toward Missoula. As we drove, I gently reeled out my seat belt and buckled it. Very gently. I had experienced firsthand the fragility of seat belts in police cruisers.

“Not a hub,” Sean corrected. “The Hub.” Over my shoulder, I watched him pull out his smartphone and begin tapping away at the screen. “If you want to get from Earth to anywhere in Outworld, you have to go through the Hub first. Think of it like an airport or bus station—people go there so they can get to a bunch of different places. So, you’re going to need to turn this car around and get us headed down to Billings. There’s an entrance to the Hub that only a couple of us veteran hunters know about. It’s behind this Thai place—they make the best Three Color Peppers Duck ever. I’ve got directions. Do you want me to read them off the screen to you or do you want me to send them to your phone?”

“It is almost three hundred miles to Billings following the path of the crow,” I said. “It would be much faster to go to the axis mundi in the Bitterroot Valley that leads to the Sacred Grove.”

“The Sacred Grove?” Sean groaned. “But isn’t that almost as far from the Hub as Mictlan is? It’ll take us days to get there—and that’s assuming you can carry us both nonstop.”

“It is not that far,” I said, “but I do not intend to travel through the Sacred Grove. I will ask the holy people to open a way for us directly to the Hub through the Cave of Changing.”

“That sounds a lot faster,” Christ muttered, turning onto highway. “Let’s go with that.”

“Okay, fine,” Sean said, raising his hands as if to say he would not be held responsible now that he had been outvoted. “But we could’ve had some of the best duck in Montana for supper. I want you guys to remember that when you start to get hangry.”

TEN:

Grandfather Spirit

About one quarter of an hour from Lolo, I interrupted another of Sean’s tales of his daring work for the Venántum to direct Chris to turn west onto a winding blacktop that led toward the heart of the Bitterroot Forest. As we did, the police radio mounted to the dash crackled to life.

“Fuller, this is Dispatch, please respond,” a male’s voice demanded.

Chris unhooked the handset and pressed the button on the side. “This is Fuller.”

“We have a prelim on our mountaintop vic,” Dispatch replied. “We’re sending the file to your phone now.”

“Thanks.” He checked the computer on his center console. The screen showed a map. “I’m checking out a lead down in the backcountry. Headed west on Jeep Trail toward Blue Mountain right now, so I may be out of reception here in a minute.”

“Copy,” Dispatch said.

With that, Chris hung up the handset. After a few minutes, his phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket, slid his finger across the screen, and glanced down at it, then back at the road.

“Could you read this to me?” Chris asked, holding the phone out. “I shouldn’t be trying to stare at it while I’m driving.”

My gaze lingered on Chris’s profile as I took the phone from his hand. “You do not mind if I read the case file though I am not an officer of the law?”

He shrugged one shoulder.

“If I know something, you ought to know it, too,” he said, then turned his easy smile toward me. “We’re partners, aren’t we?”

My heart exploded in sunfire.

“I’m your probation overseer,” Sean said from the back seat. “If anybody should get to read the deets on our vic, it’s me.”

Chris ignored him.

The moment I looked down at the screen in my hand, the rush of warm satisfaction froze solid in my chest. Here was a picture of our sacrifice victim—a smiling young woman with silvery braces on her upper teeth, eyes of an even darker loamy shade than Chris’s, and handsome cinnamon skin. Skin that someone had systematically peeled away from her tiny human body. Her wavy black hair was held out of her face with a pink barrette so similar to mine that my hand drifted absently up to touch my own as if to make certain it was still there. Arms were slung around each of the young woman’s shoulders in camaraderie, but the owners of the appendages had been cut out of the photo to emphasize the young woman at the center.

“It is only a picture,” I said.

“You have to scroll down for the report.” Chris glanced over, then back at the winding road. “Uh, that means put your finger on the screen and kind of drag it upward. Like this.” He demonstrated on the center of the steering wheel.

Hesitantly, I touched the screen. The colors of the photo lit up under the pad of my finger. Then, remembering the barrel-chested driver of the coroner’s van, I swiped my finger upward in a swift movement. The picture of the young woman zipped upward and disappeared, replaced by text whirling by too quickly to read.

I winced.

“It’s okay, you just put a little too much mustard on it is all,” Sean said. He was pressed against the partition, looking at the report over my shoulder. “Just drag it back down again—holy sheesh, does that say she was skinned alive?”

“Drugged with chloroform, then all her flesh was removed,” I read. My lips pressed into a hard line as I followed Sean’s directions, swiping my finger to roll the text back down. I stopped it when I came to the bottom of the picture. “It is the way of the Aztec’s old ones,” I explained, “to flay a living sacrifice the way Xipe Totec was flayed. Usually a youth handsome enough to please them.” Like this girl. I took a breath and began to read the report aloud. “Name: Mariposa Trujilla de Camacho. Age: fifteen. Address—there is a note here. It says, ‘Mexican FES student staying with Ryan and Amelia Derry, Missoula.’”

Chris cursed under his breath and ran a hand through his sandy hair.

“Oh, man,” Sean whispered. When I looked over my shoulder, the hedge mage was sinking back in his seat with uncharacteristic sobriety.

“I do not understand the acronym,” I said. “What does it mean?”

In the bright orange light of late afternoon, the lines and shadows in Chris’s face seemed to deepen.

“It means two phone calls,” he said.

“Why?” I felt as if I had missed something desperately important and no one would tell me what it was.

“She was a foreign exchange student,” Sean explained. “She was staying with a family here in Montana while she took a year of classes and learned English and had fun soaking up the local culture. Her real parents aren’t even in this country.” He shook his head. “They probably don’t even know she’s missing yet.”

This landed like a blow to the solar plexus.

“That is awful,” I breathed. Not only were the parents unaware that they had lost something so dear, but this child, Mariposa, she had died alone and in pain, in an unfamiliar land so far from her home.

Tears crept into the edges of my vision and I felt my lower lip tremble. Crescent moons of pain bit into my palm as my human nails broke the skin. I slammed a shaking fist into my thigh. The impact made the cruiser bounce on its shocks.

“This demands answer,” I growled between my teeth. “To take the life of a child …” There were no words for such evil. “The one who has done this must be made to pay.”

Neither Chris nor Sean responded, but I could read the determination in their stony expressions.

After a mile or so of silence, Chris cursed again and slammed the heel of his hand against the steering wheel.

“I should be back at the department, talking to these exchange parents. See if Mariposa was acting strange over the last couple days or they noticed anyone new hanging around her.”

I considered this while staring down at the report that rendered this girl’s life and death in black and white. Neat human letters arranged in easy-to-read rows with only her smiling photo above to remind one that this girl had been emotion and thought and flesh and blood. All red inside, as Enyeto had said.

“There are more detectives with the department, are there not?” I asked after a time.

“Three others,” he said.

“But none of these three know that this was not a mundane murder,” I said. “Only you. Your colleagues will follow every human line of questioning that they can understand, but they will come up empty-handed because they do not see truly. Our path is clear—to find the yahui who sold the cursed dagger to Merv, to learn who he acquired it from, and to trace its path back to the one who hopes to harness the power of these sacrifices to open the Vaults of the Quinametzin. We will find them, and we will stop them.”

Chris glanced across the console at me, resolve hardening his features. He nodded once in agreement, then returned his attention to the road.

Soon, the pull-off came into sight ahead. A muddy gravel patch surrounded by firs.

“Here.” I leaned forward and pointed, not wanting to miss it. “This will work well for your cruiser. The rangers almost never use it.”

We parked and climbed out. A heavy silence had fallen over the three of us like a blanket of wet snow, and it chilled me more deeply than the late autumn wind. I undressed and quickly removed the amulet, glad for the returning warmth of my true form’s auburn hair.

With only the bare minimum of words exchanged, Chris hopped onto my back, arms slung around my neck, while I picked Sean up, cradling him in my arms like a child. Then I ran, blurring toward the Cave of Changing. Delicate aspens, gnarled old oaks, and tall lodgepole pines, all doing their best to look as sturdy and hale as their much larger kin in the Sacred Grove, stepped aside at my request. Herds of deer looked up from munching the last greenery of the season before winter, and a rabbit bounded a few steps out of our path.

A yellow-eyed owl turned its head to watch me pass, but did not call out a greeting. This was in itself a great relief. They are not known as a talkative folk, the owls, and they rarely have anything but ill omens to speak.

We arrived at the Cave of Changing only thirty minutes later. I set my friends down outside the dark crevice, then straightened up to my full height.

Sean yawned and stretched, lifting his glasses to rub his eyes.

“You’re a really comfortable mode of transportation, Winona,” he said. “Is it weird that I almost fell asleep?”

“I do not find that strange,” I replied. “Young Chiye-tanka often doze off while traveling in this way.”

Chris rolled his eyes, but as if he were doing it out of habit, not because he felt any true annoyance.

“What do you need us to do?” he asked me.

“You may sit and rest,” I said. “There is nothing now to do but pray to the holy people, and that falls to me.” I turned toward the mouth of the cave, but faltered as I realized Sean did not know the dangers of an interruption. “Once I begin singing, I must not stop until the song is complete. This would offend the holy people, and there is more danger in this than in anything else we may face.”

“Got it.” Sean brought his hand to his lips and made a locking motion, then pretended to toss the key away. “This yap is sealed.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Chris mumbled.

Ignoring them, I knelt before the Cave of Changing. I traced the medicine wheel in the dust with one finger, aligning the spokes of the compass with the four directions of Inworld, north, east, south, west. The journey from light to dark, from naivety to knowledge.

As I worked, I began to sing, reaching out to the Keeper of the Planes, the Grandfather Spirit. I thanked him for all life, then told him of the child, Mariposa Trujilla de Camacho, who had been stolen from him by a sacrifice to the Aztecan old ones. I explained to the Grandfather Spirit that the one who could lead us to the evil life-thief had gone to Mictlan in the far reaches of Outworld. We were hunting him now, I told the Grandfather Spirit, but the journey would be hard and the track might be lost if we could not overtake him soon. Please, could he open a way for us to the Hub?

As I sang, the air shook and shimmered around me. It was different than the almost-sparkle of a veil that hid something from view. This shimmer was indicative of movement in the air itself. The faint smell of ozone bled into the clearing around the mouth of the cave. My hair stood on end. I pushed the slight tingling sensation to the back of my mind and continued with my prayer. I told the Grandfather Spirit that I understood it was not an easy task to make a way between planes, and I would accept his wisdom if he chose not to create one.

The tingling quickly became a prickling sensation, then rose to a feeling of thousands of needles dancing across my flesh as the air charged around me.

Finally, with a crack and sizzle so loud that it nearly ruptured my eardrums, a thick lightning bolt struck the entrance to the Cave of Changing. When I glanced down, the points of the compass I had drawn on the medicine wheel had moved. Now they aligned with Outworld.

Careful not to miss a beat, I sung my thanks to the Grandfather Spirit for his kindness and for sacred life and creation. When my song ended, I stood slowly and dusted the dirt from my leg hair.

Sean was staring wide-eyed, his gaze leaping from me to the cave entrance and back.

From the boulder he had found to lean against, Chris gave me his familiar lopsided grin.

“Pretty impressive, fairy princess,” he said, his dark eyes sparkling.

“It was the Grandfather Spirit,” I said. I gestured at the Cave of Changing. “He opened a temporary way for us to the Hub.”

Sean shook the look of shock and amazement from his face, attempting to replace it with cool composure. “Yeah, I guess this is a fine way to go, if you’ve got the time and you know a holy person’s favorite tune. Anyway, it beats fighting rush hour in Billings, even with the Thai duck.” Then he bowed and flourished one arm elaborately toward the cave. “After you, milady.”

ELEVEN:

Cab Ride

I had been to the Hub twice before.

Both times to purchase ingredients for cures and healings that I could not find or study elsewhere. And both times I had been the object of so much unwanted attention that I could hardly fight my way through the crowd to otherworldly shopkeepers. It had seemed that everyone in the Hub turned up to gawk at a Person of the Forest so far from her Sacred Grove—even in Outworld my kind was an oddity. Both visits had been frustrating, discomforting experiences, and ones I did not wish to repeat while searching for a murderer. So, before stepping into the Cave of Changing, I reclasped the amulet around my neck and dressed myself once again in the form and clothing of a Little Sister.

As I entered the cave, the customary chill poured over my flesh and my perception of time and space shifted, stretched, and twisted. Up and down ceased to be instinctive, and minutes or hours passed as my foot searched for the dusty surface of the cave floor. Finally, it landed, springing time back into its correct motion and reorienting my senses.

From inside the cave, Chris, Sean, and the trees and grass around them appeared blurred and indistinct as though seen through cloudy glass. Their voices were muffled as if someone were covering my ears. Chris stepped inside next, exclaiming at the icy touch of Vis on his skin. Though it looked to me as if he were doing nothing more than taking a step, the moment Chris’s cowboy boot touched the cave floor, he staggered and flung his arms out as if to catch himself.

I giggled, them slapped my hand over my mouth.

“You didn’t feel that?” he asked, leaning one hand against the cave wall, reeling uncertainly.

“I am used to it,” I replied, hiding my mirth. “But I had forgotten that the first time I brought you through the Cave of Changing, you were unconscious. You had no way of knowing its effects.”

Sean stumbled to a stop beside Chris, then stood and straightened his checkered shirt. “Trippy,” he said, adjusting his thick-framed glasses.

We continued down the length of the cave, coming to the exit that usually opened onto the edge of the Sacred Grove. Now it looked out onto a trash-strewn alleyway. Whereas the weather of Inworld had been chilly but bright, the Hub appeared gray and drizzly, the sky overhead the muddy red-brown of old rust. That sky never changed since it was never truly day or night in the Hub. Nor were there seasons to mark the year. It was a Twilight place, which existed outside of regular space and time, dwelling inside its own pocket dimension.

Immediately upon stepping into the alley, the way the Grandfather Spirit had opened for us disappeared, leaving a grimy, weather-pitted brick wall at our backs. I took the lead, stopping momentarily at the mouth of the alleyway to determine which part of the Hub we had arrived in.

Haphazard dwellings that appeared to be cobbled together from every building material known to Inworld and Out lined the street in both directions. Huts of wood paneling, cinder blocks, and twisted cast-iron fencing. Rusted tin and cardboard shanties, slumping in the rain. Boarded-over houses with cracked clapboard siding and rotten shingles clinging to sagging eaves, many with yawning holes in their roofs. The croon of corpse toads lingered in the air, the creatures coaxed out from their subterranean dwellings by the drizzle.

I watched idly as a rat the size of a small dog scurried out from under an overturned clawfoot bathtub and scrambled down the sidewalk until it found a storm drain mostly free of soggy garbage trash. The rat disappeared into the depths, probably on its way to the Deep Downs.

“Bad part of town,” Chris mumbled, eyeing the shanty town uncertainly.

“It is only an illusion,” I said. “Many of these will belong to citizens gifted or wealthy enough to afford a glamour to disguise their homes. It is a defense mechanism.”

“Nobody wants to break into the ugliest house on the block,” Sean said, removing his glasses and wiping them on his sleeve to clear the water away. “Not when it looks like it’ll fall in on your head and give you tetanus to boot.”

“Makes sense.” Chris nodded. But he unsnapped the strap securing his sidearm in his holster just the same.

This was a wise decision, I thought. Wealthy did not necessarily mean crime-free. In the Hub it often meant the opposite. Crime was how many of these citizens had earned their wealth.

“It is this way,” I told my friends, turning toward the faint neon glow of the city’s heart.

As we walked, the mist clung to our hair and flesh. Water beaded quickly on the lenses of Sean’s glasses. He wiped them three separate times before finally sighing in frustration and sticking them into his shirt pocket. Normally, I found walks in the rain refreshing, but I did not trust the rain of the Hub. There was an oily smell to it. The wetness mixed with the grime covering the sidewalks and roadways to create a gritty film that rasped against the bottom of my bare feet.

Chris faltered as we emerged from the alley, his eyes wide in shock, his skin oddly pale and waxy. “What is this place?” he whispered, the words more for himself than for us.

The reaction was unsurprising. Here, Halfies and full bloods walked in the open, most of them not bothering with flesh-suits or disguises. Here, they were home. A stick of a woman with opalescent skin, stringy black hair, and six eyes floated by, her feet never touching the ground. A burlap sack covered her frail form, cinched tight at the waist with a length of fraying rope. She ignored us completely, in a world of her own, but seeing such a creature was surely a shock. A blue-skinned man with a bulbous body and no legs trotted by in the opposite direction, walking on a set of disproportionately large arms and hands.

“Mind blown,” Sean said, placing a hand on Chris’s shoulder and nudging him forward. “It’ll get easier, brosif.”

We moved onto the narrow sidewalk proper, avoiding scuttling roaches as we made our way uptown.

Traffic splashed past us on the street, motor vehicles, creature-drawn conveyances, rickshaws, and scooters, all throwing mucky water from the enormous potholes and the small seas forming around backed-up sewers. Twice vehicles pulled up to the curb and honked at us. One a rust-covered 1957 Hudson Hornet with a glowing yellow TAXI sign duct taped its roof. Another an immaculate cream-colored Deusenberg Model J with the words Hubwide Transport painted on the door in six languages. The People did not have cars, but they had always fascinated me.

I ducked my head and kept walking, making it clear I wanted no part of their business.

“Aw, come on!” Sean shouted after the Deusenberg pulled away, dousing us with a spray of gutter water. “It’s pouring down rain, Winona. Let’s just take a cab.”

“This?” I frowned, reaching out a hand, palm up. “It is only drizzling.” I shrugged.

“We’re soaked and we’re miserable and we could’ve ridden in a mint condition Deusenberg! Come on, I’ll foot the bill. Next cab we see.”

“I have been cautioned never to trust the taxis in the Hub,” I said, walking faster as I skittered around a light pole jutting up from the center of the sidewalk. My jeans were soaked from the hem to the back of the knee and slung up water with every step. Human clothing may have been useful for keeping the cold at bay, but for rain it seemed greatly impractical. “We could be abducted and sold to one of the organ-harvesting gangs that dwell here.”

“Not if we get one of the union certified guys,” Sean whined, stealing a look at a black-and-yellow checkered cab that streaked by in a blaze of light.

“How much farther are we going?” Chris asked me, slicking water from his face, his gaze restlessly surveying the cityscape.

“It is only a few more miles.”

He nodded. “Look, Winona, I hate to agree with him, but we ought to take a cab. This organ-harvesting thing sounds a lot like the kind of stuff people on Earth used to tell their kids to scare them out of going to the big city. If it was true, don’t you think there’d be a lot less people on transplant waiting lists?”

“Oh, no, it’s totally true,” Sean said, bobbing his head enthusiastically. “You can get a kidney around here for like eight bucks—this place is infested with Little Brothers of the Blade—but if we make sure the cabbie’s got the official city certification, then we’re way less likely to get harvested. Like sixty-five to one.” He turned to me and grinned through the rain. “Come on, Winona. Do you really think you’re going to get overpowered? One of the People? With a powerful mage at your side and an obviously paranoid, gun-wielding cop at your back? Come one. We’ll be fine.”

I bit the insides of my lips together so I would not say that the cop’s gun had been useless more than once in the times we had been forced to fight Outworlders and that the mage had yet to show me anything resembling power.

A shrill whistle saved me from having to hurt anyone’s feelings.

Standing at the curb was another taxi, this one a horse-drawn hearse, its glass viewing windows hung with curtains of black and purple velvet.

Instead of a horse, however, the skeleton of an upright lizard with a bony fin down its spine stood in the harness, draped in matching purple and black bunting. The driver was long and slender, all arms and legs and pointed shoulder bones. His dripping strings of gray hair and maggot-white flesh stood out in bright contrast to the black-and-purple tailcoat he wore. Seeing his whistle had caught my attention, he raised a bony hand and tipped his stovepipe hat. Rainwater spilled down from the brim, splattering on the platform under his spats.

“Give ya a lift?” he shouted to us, his voice as dry and dusty as desert sand.

I crossed my arms and turned to my friends.

Chris scratched his chin with a thumbnail, eyeing the funeral hack with obvious trepidation.

“Honestly, when I sided with Sean, I was hoping the next cab that stopped would be another classic car,” he admitted, “not …” He trailed off. “Well, whatever that is.”

He glanced up and down the street as if to search for an example, but the road had gone temporarily empty of traffic. Nothing so much as a scooter rolled past. As if on cue, the rain picked up, going from a drizzle to a downpour. The cold wind drove the drops down the back of my neck and spine without regard for my human clothing. The yellow sign atop the hearse glowed more brightly against the storm.

“Catch yer death a cold standing out here,” the cabbie said, a lopsided grin stretching across paper-thin lips. The traces jingled and bones rattled as his skeletal lizard shook out its head. “I’ll get ya where ye’re goin’ in a jiff.”

“Guys, I don’t even care,” Sean said, making for the hearse. “I’m freezing and wet and I hate the rain.”

“Yes, step right up, step right up,” the cabbie said, gesturing to the rear of the hack with an overlong arm topped by a spidery hand.

The glass door sprang open unaided. Sean hesitated a moment, then shook his head and crawled inside onto the velvet coffin cushion.

“It’s actually pretty nice in here, guys,” he called to us. He bent an elbow and propped his head on his fist. “Warm.” He tapped a bit of paper taped to the inside of the glass. “And he’s certified.”

“Don’t tap the glass,” the cabbie snapped.

“Oh.” Sean ducked his head. “Sorry.”

Chris looked at me, squinting into the downpour.

“I will not be held responsible if we are harvested for our vital organs,” I said, planting hands on hips as I regarded the carriage.

“That’s fair,” he said. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve never seen any horror movies that started this way.”

I gave the cabbie the name of the bar where we were going—the Lonely Mountain—then followed Chris to the rear of the hearse and crawled inside. The springs bounced and protested under my weight, but did not give out. The interior was wide enough for the three of us to fit, but only lying on our sides. I took the center of the cushion, between the tracks the coffin would roll inside on, facing Chris. Sean lay behind me, looking out at the city.

With another of the cabbie’s sharp whistles, the hearse lurched into motion. Though I expected the plodding speed of an Inworld draft animal, the skeletal lizard pranced daintily through the streets, keeping pace with the rest of the Hub traffic.

Soon the illusion of desolate housing outside gave way to neon signs and blinking billboards advertising the satisfaction of every appetite, vice, and hunger. We were at least headed in the correct direction for the Lonely Mountain, but I reminded myself not to be lulled into a false sense of security. The legends of People who had come to the Hub and not returned could not all be untrue.

The hearse slammed into a pothole. The impact threw us all toward Chris’s side. Sean’s head knocked against my shoulder blade, and I smacked into Chris. The back of Chris’s head hit the glass.

“Don’t tap the glass!” the cabbie yelled.

“Somebody doesn’t want a tip,” Sean muttered, pulling himself back to his side of the coffin tracks.

Chris grimaced and rubbed the back of his head.

“Are you all right, Chris?” I held his jaw steady while I checked the size of his pupils. I had studied medicine extensively, both Inworld and Outworld, and my studies had taught me that human skulls are fragile things. The slightest bash against something hard could damage the brain inside.

“I’m fine,” he said. He looked down at me, lingering on my chest, which was pressed firmly against him. Red crept into his jawline. He cleared his throat. “Could you, uh, get off me?”

“Of course.” I removed my hand from his cheek, the emergent stubble of his five o’clock shadow rasping against my fingertips, then I rolled back to the center of the coffin tracks. “I apologize. My chest and thighs were cold, and your body heat was warming them so nicely that I forgot that your skeletal system is not strong enough to hold up under my weight. I do not recall hearing any cracks or pops when I hit you which might indicate a break. Are you in any pain?”

“Just gonna see if I can turn over here,” he said as if he had not heard my question, twisting and edging himself around until he was looking out the viewing windows at the city. His voice dropped until even I could barely hear him whisper, “Remember that fumble on the third and ten. Football smacked right off his gut. Big, hairy, sweaty man-gut.”

I frowned. “Chris, someday you will have to show me a football game. You speak of them frequently, and yet I can find no obvious significance. It is only a sport, is it not?”

He huffed a laugh, his breath fogging the glass in front of his face.

“Don’t worry about it, it’s probably just a human thing.” He braced himself against a much less violent bump. “So, give me the rundown on this place we’re headed. The Lonely Mountain. Why not head straight to Mictland?”

“Mictlan,” I corrected him. “And though it is logical that we will find the yahui there as Merv said, I think it would be best to see if anyone Hubside can confirm that assumption. The journey there will take several days.”

“And you don’t want to waste time if Merv just sent us on a wild goose chase,” Chris guessed.

I hesitated. After our disagreement over letting the half-vodník off so easily, I did not want to admit that I did not trust Merv. He was harmless—mostly—but that did not mean his information was infallible.

“I want to be certain he was correct,” I said carefully. “And nearly everyone who comes through the Hub stops at the Lonely Mountain because it is a place of thoroughly enforced peace. It will be a good spot to canvass for witnesses.”

From behind, I could only see the right side of Chris’s mouth turn up in a smile.

“Canvassing witnesses?” he said. “You’re starting to sound just like a cop, fairy princess.”

“Thank you. I have been practicing.”

“Now we just gotta work on your contractions so you sound like a human.”

TWELVE:

Leads

The rain had abated somewhat by the time our hearse pulled up to the curb in front of the Lonely Mountain. Chris and I waited in the lee of the hulking building—a multi-story cross between a craggy mountain and a medieval castle—while Sean argued with the dripping cabbie over a square of plastic he called a debit card.

Orgasmic moans and cries that could have been either ecstasy or agony floated down from the flickering red and orange windows overhead. The Lonely Mountain was not only a bar, but a brothel as well.

Chris raised an eyebrow at me. “Come here often?”

“Twice,” I said. “The nachos are very good.”

He nodded. “Everybody I know only goes to Hooters for the hot wings, too.”

“What is—”

“No place on Earth that doesn’t take debit cards,” Sean grumbled, stuffing his wallet into his pocket. On the street, the cabbie was cheerfully stuffing a wad of bills into his. “Outworld needs to get with the times.”

“Thank you for the cab ride, Sean,” I said. “I was wrong about this gentleman wanting to harvest our organs.”

Sean threw a glare at the cabbie as a drunken inkanyamba climbed into the back of the hearse.

“Yeah, well, if there hadn’t been an ATM next door, we all might’ve lost a kidney.”

We made our way past the zombie watching over the entrance and to a set of frosted double doors emblazoned with the words The Lonely Mountain, followed by a strict warning: No Fighting, No Trouble, Violators will be Incinerated.

The interior of the Lonely Mountain throbbed with pounding drums and shrieking guitars, which conjured images of piles of precious jewels glittering in firelight and warriors in heavy armor screaming as they burned to ash. I paid it no mind. I have never been fond of dragon music.

If one could ignore the cloud of smoke lingering in the air—both tobacco and dragon—the interior of the Lonely Mountain was rather homey. Inobtrusive red, orange, and gold lamps flickered from corners, lighting the place like a fire in a warm cave. If I were a creature who hibernated, I thought, it would be a pleasant place to pass a winter.

We passed the recessed red booths along the walls, drawing stares from the beings hidden within. Most citizens of the Hub saw humans as little more than food or entertainment, so I kept an eye on anything that seemed to be watching us. Even humans had nothing to fear here in the Lonely Mountain—the warning on the door was not a clever joke, but a statement of fact—but once we left the safety of the bar, we were fair game.

And many, many eyes were watching us.

Only a few patrons sat at the bar proper this evening, many of them wearing human bodies like myself. There are many creatures of Outworld which can look human, as well as many enchantments and magical items like my amulet which can disguise one’s true nature. Often, for the uninitiated, the eyes are the simplest way to tell a human from an Outworlder wearing human skin. For myself, the different smells were more than enough evidence. The tiny-waisted, round-hipped female we passed smelled of jorogumo silk, and the chunky male at the bar stunk of firefly phosphorescence—an adze from Ghana.

I led my friends away from the chunky adze to the opposite end of the bar, where a trio of conveniently empty stools awaited us. It was a novelty of being in human form that I had to climb up to sit on mine. When I wore the amulet, I was not even six feet tall, concentrating my full six hundred pounds over a much smaller frame. Like the hearse’s springs, the barstool creaked beneath my weight but did not shatter. Outworld furniture was built to accommodate everything from the heaviest dragon to the smallest sprite.

Sean and Chris took a seat on either side of me. Firroth the Red, the dragon who owned this establishment, came down the bar, puffing on a thick cigar. Sean shrank back on his stool instinctively as Firroth approached us. Chris did not move, but his eyes narrowed and his jaw hardened as if he were preparing to face off with a hardened criminal.

In this case, that would be a very bad decision. The dragon would turn my friend to ash before he could draw his sidearm.

Like so many of the creatures that lived in the Hub, Firroth wore the guise of a human man. The red hair atop his head caught the light and shimmered gold, amber, and orange. Tribal tattoos ran down his neck onto his powerfully muscled arms like scales. He and I were nearly the same height when I was in my true form, though it was strange to see something that looked so human standing as tall as one of the People. Even if he were smaller, however, Firroth could never be mistaken for anything other than a dragon, not by anyone paying even the least attention. His irises burned molten gold, and his pupils were black slits. Reptilian, cold, and calculating.

He was also an excellent cook. I liked him very much.

Firroth slammed his hands on the bar and leaned heavily on them, his cigar burning cherry-red, but growing no smaller.

“Thought that was you, Princess,” he growled. “The usual?”

“Please,” I said. “With extra cheese, if that is not too much trouble.”

“Get that right out for you.” He reached under the bar and came up with a dirty plate. This he tossed onto the bar while his molten gold eyes inspected my human form. “What’s with the getup?”

I felt my cheeks redden. “I did not care for the crowd which followed me around last time.”

On my first visit to the Hub, Firroth’s large size and intimidating glare had distracted the looky-loos who followed me into the Lonely Mountain. It was one of the reasons I had stayed so long the first time and come back again on my second visit.

“Well, Princess, it ain’t every day they get to see a real live Person of Peace in the Hub.” Firroth pulled out a half-empty bag of tortilla chips, pinned shut with a wooden clothespin. “You all are getting mighty scarce outside the Grove.”

“This is true,” I admitted solemnly, watching as the dragon rolled open the bag and emptied it onto the plate. A few stray crumbs tumbled onto the bar, affixing to the wood in the wet or sticky spots.

Firroth picked up the plate and disappeared through a door into the kitchen. A few moments later, he returned, the small hill of nachos glistening with spicy cheese, and tossed it onto the bar in front of me. I leaned over the plate and breathed deeply, savoring the warm, spicy aroma.

“Thank you,” I said, popping a nacho into my mouth. The warm, gooey cheese flooded my palate with delight.

“What’re your friends drinking?” Firroth growled around his cigar.

Sean looked from Firroth to the nachos to the dirty glasses lining the far wall as if the dragon could not be serious.

But Chris asked, “What do you have on tap?”

“Arrogant Bastard, Filthy Lucre, and Ol’ Smokey Top.”

“Apt names,” Sean mumbled under his breath.

Firroth glared at him, eyes nearly glowing through the smoke from his cigar. Sean flinched and quickly became interested in something on the floor.

“I’ll take an AB,” Chris said.

The dragon nodded, found a smudgy glass below the bar, then stalked down the taps to pull Chris’s drink.

As soon as he was gone, Sean leaned toward me and hissed in my ear, “You’re not seriously eating those, are you? You didn’t see what he did to it back there. Why do you think he went into the other room with it?”

“Because that is where he keeps the cheese,” I explained, lifting another nacho from the pile and crunching away.

Sean shook his head. “No, because he spit in it, drugged it, or it’s not cheese at all, but something I don’t think somebody of your trusting nature should even know about.”

“It is cheese,” I said. “Firroth showed me the can it comes from. You really should try a bite, Sean.” I did not say that it was much better fare than what McDonald had made for us, but I could not help thinking so. “They are delicious. Chris, you, too.”

Sean grimaced. “Nope.” He pointed to the plate. “That’s how you die of explosive dragon-diarrhea.”

Chris leaned in for a closer look, brow furrowed as he took a deep whiff. “It’s crackhead cheese,” he said.

“Huh?” Sean said.

“I do not know this term, either,” I said.

“Crackhead cheese,” Chris repeated, gesturing to the plate. “You know, the nacho cheese that comes in the little can and you have to add water and microwave it?” He shrugged. “My mom used to make it for movie nights. My sister and I loved it.”

“With good reason,” I agreed. “The flavor reminds me of the flames of a campfire. Upon my first visit here, I asked Firroth for his recipe and he gave me the label from the can.” I chewed thoughtfully for a moment, thinking back on my experimentations with that foodstuff, then swallowed. “I prepared it once for my father, but he did not care for the consistency.”

Chris smiled and selected a pair of nachos stuck together with the molten gold.

“It’s an acquired taste,” he said, shoving them into his mouth then biting down with a hearty crunch.

Firroth returned with Chris’s beer—so dark it was nearly black against the foam—and set it on the bar in front of him. Then he turned to Sean.

“What’ll it be?” he growled. “Or are you too scared I’ll spit in it or drug it when you’re not looking?”

Sean gulped audibly and began to stammer. “I—I—I didn’t—”

Firroth snorted, a wisp of smoke drifting up from his nostrils as he dismissed Sean and turned to me. “So, what’re you doing in town, Princess?” he asked. “Looking for more herbs to study?”

“Not this time.” I finished the bite I had taken. “In truth, Firroth, we are searching for an Aztec halfie—a yahui who may have come through here a week or two past.”

“One of the turtle folk?” he considered this, chewing on his cigar. After a time, he shook his head, his red hair catching the light and glinting ruby, topaz, and gold. “Haven’t seen one in … well, at least a few years. You’d have better luck asking around Mictlan.”

“Thank you for your assistance anyway,” I said. “And thank you again for the nachos. They are wonderful.”

“Top-secret recipe.” The dragon tipped me a wink through the smoke of his cigar, then headed down the bar to get a newcomer’s drink order.

“All right,” Chris said, wiping a bit of cheese from the corner of his lips with one thumb. “I’m sold. You really do come here for the nachos.”

“Why else would I?”

Chris shook his head and took a sip of his beer.

“For the cleanliness and strict adherence to the health code,” Sean mumbled, flicking a crumb off the bar. “What I want to know is how you and the dragon became BFFs.”

“What does this acronym—”

“Excuse me,” a voice like the musical clinking and tocking of wooden wind chimes said. A thin hand tipped with feathery, pendulous fingers like catkins brushed my forearm.

I spun my stool around to face the newcomer. She stood a little over five feet tall, willowy, her skin the gray-brown bark of a weeping willow. A bush of round green leaves sprouted from her head in much the same way humans wore their hair, decorated here and there with dark-fleshed coneflowers.

“’Tis you,” she said, her English deeply accented with notes of modern Celtic. “Princess Winona Treesinger of the People of the Forest. I thought I recognized yer voice. Perhaps ye dinna recall me. I’m Fearnóg, scion of Freyr the Green Man. When I was but a wee twig, ye visited the Spring Court with a cure for the root and collar rot. Sure it is that ye saved me life.”

I nodded. “I greet you, Fearnóg, and am glad to see that you are growing well. That year saw such an outbreak of phytophthora that I was afraid no sapling would survive.”

She paused, glancing left and right. Uncertain. “Apologies, but did I overhear ye were lookin’ for a yahui halfie?”

“We are,” I said, leaning toward her. Mictlan was on the edge of Earrach-Tir, seat of the Spring Court. If anyone would have information on an Aztecan traveler, it would be one of the Spring Fae. “Have you seen one?”

“Aon, not with m’own eyes.” She shook her head, rattling her leaves softly as if a mild breeze were passing through them. “Though there’ve been many strange comin’s and goin’s through Earrach-Tir of late, crossin’ between Mictlan and Inworld. Many’s the lesser fae in the path who havena been seen again. Said to be a victim of the traveler’s dark magic.”

Chris’s eyes met mine, and I saw a flash of eagerness in their dark depths. We were getting somewhere, as he would say. I suppressed the urge to smile at the realization that my friend approved of my detecting methods.

“It does seem quite likely that the two are connected,” I replied, trying to hide the excitement pounding in my chest. “We are hoping to find this yahui and question him about a series of sacrificial murders committed in Inworld.”

“Sure’s glad that I am to have found ye, then,” Fearnóg said. Her eyes sparkled as if this were the direction she had hoped our conversation would turn before she even approached us. Perhaps it was. She was one of the fae, after all. “The Green Man, he’s been on the hunt for a solution to this shadow menacin’ his lands. If ye would but speak with him about it, I would open a portal that would bring ye to him and be all the happier for it.”

I considered this for several long seconds, searching for a hidden snare in the scion’s words and weighing the potential risks.

My friends would have to be briefed about the way to behave in the presence of the fae. Though the People have always had good relations with the Spring Court, they were still a cunning and crafty race and should never be viewed as anything less than dangerous. But perhaps if I told my friends not to speak to anyone while we were there, no harm would come to us. Chris would listen to me, I was certain. And I thought I might be able to bargain for the return of Sean if … or when … he did not.

Taking a portal to Earrach-Tir would save us days’ worth of travel, something Fearnóg would have known before she offered. This was time that could be measured in the lives of more innocent human youths and the potential destruction of modern-day Mexico City by rampaging flesh-hungry Quinametzin.

Finally, I nodded. “We will speak to Freyr about the yahui halfie.”

A smile broke across the scion’s face. “’Tis an agreement, then. Come.”

THIRTEEN:

Hotheaded

After waving goodbye to Firroth, we followed the scion toward the door. I fell a step behind, gesturing for my friends to converge on me. They closed in, but it was Sean who spoke first.

“What are you, psycho?” he hissed. “First you eat dirty nachos, now you’re making deals with the fae? I’m all for the loose cannon routine, but this is beyond reckless. It one hundred percent goes against every Venántum rule about associating with fairies.”

I shrugged. “I am not Venántum,” I replied. “And this deal removes nearly a week of travel time and negates the dangers of many a land I would rather not travel through with humans as my only company. In any case, it is a simple matter of speaking with Freyr. We will do nothing more—agree to nothing, accept nothing, eat nothing. In fact, it may be best if neither of you speak at all while we are in Earrach-Tir.”

Chris frowned. “You’re making this sound pretty dangerous. If it’s that bad, I’m not gonna let you take all the risk.”

“Relations between the People and the Spring Court have always been good,” I said. “They would not hazard damaging them by harming me.” I hope. “Even they fear my father.”

The furrows in his forehead deepened. Chris had met my father face-to-face once—or more accurately, face-to-solar-plexus. Clearly, he could imagine the intimidation other peoples felt standing in the shadow of Chief Chankoowashtay.

“Still …” he said.

“Chris, you do not understand how little the fae care for human life.”

“Which is why going to the freaking seat of the Spring Court is freaking suicide,” Sean muttered. “For somebody like you or me—hardened veterans—this might not be much of an issue, but Fuller’s brand-new to this and you’re teaching him all kinds of bad habits!”

“I am not!”

But I did not get to argue the point further. We had arrived at the door, where a pair of halfies—one short and round with a mustache of feathers, and the other a wall of scaly muscle tall enough to look my true form in the eye—were just coming inside. Chris and I parted to make way for the round, feathered one, but Sean, still intent on arguing with me, walked right into the tall, scaly one.

“Oof!”

“Hey, meat, watch where you’re going!” A many-eyed peacock’s tail fanned out behind the scaly halfie. Clearly he was some combination of magan—a Burmese water spirit—and malik tous.

“You watch it,” Sean snapped, straightening his glasses with jerky movements. “We were walking here first.”

The magan-peacock growled and raised a fist, but his mustached companion grabbed the magan by his scaly arm.

“Say, kid, aren’t you Carl Smith?” The feather-mustached halfie squinted and leaned in closer to inspect Sean. The wattle beneath his neck wobbled like a turkey’s as he nodded. “Don’t that look like Big Carl Smith to you, Kimbo?”

The magan halfie snorted. “Thirty years ago, maybe.”

“Must be one of his big, strapping sons then.” The turkey-like halfie smirked. “They’re legends, every one. Every single one. All except the runt of the litter—what was his name?”

Sean’s fists clenched at his sides and his face reddened, twisting into a scowl.

“The scrawny one with the stupid hair?” The magan sized Sean up, grinning at his livid posture. “The family disappointment?”

I grabbed Sean’s arm and attempted to steer him toward the door, but he would not budge. His muscles trembled with fury under my hand.

“Shut up,” he growled.

“Yeah, I heard the shame of birthing a weakling after all those ass-kickers damn near killed his mom,” the turkey halfie said.

The pair of them threw their heads back and cackled like the birds in their lineages.

“Shut up!” Sean screamed, pulling both hands back to his hips. Darts of bone formed in his palms. “Shut your mouths!”

I saw Sean’s hands lurch forward, but I was too slow to grab him before he launched the bone darts. One zipped over the turkey halfie’s head and pierced the frosted glass of the door. The other lodged in the magan’s bicep.

The magan howled and threw his full weight into a haymaker that would likely have crushed Sean’s skull if it connected. With no other option, I tackled Sean, slamming him out of the way. We hit the floor, my body hunched over his to protect him from an incoming attack. Humans—even mages—were fragile creatures, but I could take any punishment these two could dish out. In my peripheral vision, I saw patrons scatter. Chairs and barstools scraped against the stone floor as Outworlders cleared the path between the dragon who owned the bar and the customers starting trouble.

In his rage, the magan had gone blind to this threat. He darted toward the bar, grabbing one of the abandoned chairs and raising it over his head like an ax. Angry, but slow. I saw an opening and moved on instinct, gaining my feet in a flash and wheeling toward the halfie. As the magan barreled toward me—a roar exploding from his lips—I shot in low, sweeping his legs at the ankle with a well-placed kick. The magan tottered for a moment, dropping the chair as he windmilled his arms. It was no use. His momentum was too great and down he went, slamming into the floor like a felled tree.

With the magan temporarily out of commission, I rounded on Sean, who was back on his feet, another half-formed bone dart manifesting in his hand. I slapped the projectile away and hefted Sean onto my shoulder like a sheaf of wheat.

The stink of sulfur burned my nostrils as I ran for the door. Heat billowed up behind me, radiating no doubt from one very angry red dragon.

Near the entrance, Chris stood with his sidearm out, pointing it at the magan’s turkey-faced friend, who had his hands raised in a gesture of surrender.

“Chris, run!” I shouted.

“Put me down!” Sean screamed, fists beating at my back as he attempted to wriggle out of my grasp. “I can take them! I can take all you bastards! I’ll show you! I’ll show everybody!”

Fearnóg, the scion of Freyr, reached out a willowy gray-brown hand and opened the door for us, an amused smile on lips the color of fresh moss. Rather than opening upon the dingy sidewalk outside the Lonely Mountain, the other side of the door showed nothing but green grass and rolling hills. Off in the distance I could see the blue-gray caul of rain hanging over the Hub.

The portal to Earrach-Tir.

I leapt through without missing a beat, Sean still struggling and screaming on my shoulder, and tumbled into the Spring lands of the fae. Chris came through behind me, and Fearnóg slipped through last, closing the door behind her with a heavy thud.

The portal disappeared behind us with a barely audible pop and a flash of opalescent light.

We were safe, though I felt a sliver of rage rear its head inside my chest. We had escaped, true, but never again would Firroth welcome me into his establishment. Never again would I taste the Lonely Mountain’s nacho platter. Dragons had long memories and an affinity for grudges. I released my death grip on Sean and he rolled away at once, arms flailing wildly as he lurched to his feet, searching for a target to impale with his darts.

“What the hell was that?” Chris rounded on the hedge mage.

“Indeed,” I snapped, pushing myself to my feet. I dusted off my jeans and shirt. “Are you insane? Did you not read the sign which warned of trouble being met with incineration?!”

Fearnóg’s branches rattled with silent laughter. She grinned at the furious hedge mage.

“I dunna believe ye should show yer face near the Lonely Mountain again.”

Sean aimed an open palm at her. “Laugh at me one more time!”

“Sean, you must stop this!” I shouted.

“Now,” Chris warned, pulling a pair of handcuffs from his jacket pocket. “Or I’ll put a stop to it for you.”

Sean threw his hands up in the air, then grabbed himself by the hair. After a moment, his arms dropped to his sides and he deflated like a puffball crushed underfoot. Air exited his lungs in one heavy whoosh.

“I’m sorry,” he croaked. “They just … got to me. Assholes,” he said, glaring over his shoulder as if the portal were still open.

“You think that’s an excuse?” Chris snapped. “Think if somebody’s talking shit to me, I can just pull my gun and start shooting?”

“No—I just—it’s not, but—”

“Reacting from anger is never wise,” I said, lips pressed into a tight line as I shook my head. “I cannot understand what you were thinking.”

“No, you can’t!” Sean said, glaring at me. “You’re Winona Treesinger, legend of the People of the Forest. Firroth the fucking Red knows your name and your favorite meal, for Pete’s sake. You’re not a fucking disappointment to your whole family. No matter what you do, no matter how bad you screw up, they’re always going to be proud of you.”

Chris ran one hand down his face and took a deep breath, then stowed the handcuffs back in his pocket. “You’ve been lying to us,” he said evenly. “Have you even been on a mission for the Venántum before today?”

“Yes!” Sean said. “Tons.”

Chris glared at him and folded his arms. “If I don’t start hearing something that sounds like the truth in the next couple seconds—”

“Okay, okay,” Sean said, raising his hands in surrender. “I only lied to you guys about some stuff. All the stories about my family and the monsters they’ve fought and the good we’ve done—those were true. I just wasn’t always as heroic in them as I made myself out to be. What I said about my family and the Venántum being ecstatic when they found out I could touch the Vis was true.

“They were … right up until they figured out that I can only do it about forty percent of the time.” His shoulders slumped. “And, like, zero percent of the time under pressure. They really just wanted me to go to college and get a nice Rube job—especially after the Mages’ Guild wouldn’t let me in—but that’s not me.” He tapped his chest with both hands. “I’m a hunter. It’s what I was born to do!”

My anger melted at the desperation in Sean’s voice. He wanted so badly to prove to his family that he was useful, worth being proud of. And it had not been so long ago when I felt the bitter sting of shame, certain that my people and my own father were disgraced by me.

“They won’t even let me go on the big missions right now,” Sean said. “I refuse to get a mundane job and live a life of quiet desperation, so they stuck me training the newbs.”

Beside me, Chris was nodding and massaging his temples.

“Of course,” he muttered to himself. “Of course, I get trained by the one staffer so inept nobody else wants him. Welcome to my life.”

“Chris,” I whispered, voice gentle. Soothing. Now is not the time, that tone said.

He sighed and stopped massaging his head. “Look, I get that being powerless sucks, but when you’re in the field, you’ve got to trust everyone you’re working with.” Chris aimed his index finger at Sean’s face. “Winona and I can’t trust a liar. Knock the shit off and tell the truth from here on out.”

Sean blinked behind his thick-framed glasses. “I mean, yeah. Obviously.”

“And stop dicking around trying to impress everybody,” Chris said. “It’s not working, and it’s really annoying.”

Sean studied the ground. “If you thought that’s what I was doing …”

“We’re on a serious case here, and if we screw up, more kids like Mariposa are going to die,” Chris said. “You want that on your conscience, kid?”

With a gulp, Sean shook his head.

Chris took a step closer. “Because if this goes sideways it’s on you. So think long and hard about how many of their faces you want to see when you’re trying to fall sleep at night.”

“N-none!” Sean cleared his throat and repeated himself, this time without the break in his voice. “None.”

“Then get your act together,” Chris said.

“Yeah, definitely.” Sean nodded emphatically. “Already done. No more messing around. Just evil-killing, murderer-catching, all-business Sean from here on out.”

Chris nodded grimly and turned to me.

“Which way are we going?” he asked.

I looked at Fearnóg.

“Just o’er the hill,” she said, gesturing to the north. The amused smile still clung to her features. The last few minutes had likely yielded as much entertainment as she would see in a month at court.

“Let’s go,” Chris said, striding up the hill.

I nodded, watching the scion of Freyr watching each of us in turn, waiting perhaps for more dramatics.

If I could have orchestrated this so that our trio’s problems could have been hashed out somewhere private, I would have. However, as the past could not be changed, the only recourse left was to press forward. I squeezed Sean’s shoulder and turned him toward Earrach-Tir. He shot me a grateful smile, then started up the hill beside me.

FOURTEEN:

Earrach-Tir

On the opposite side of the hill a dense forest greeted us, spreading across the valley below like a vast green blanket. At the heart of the forest, at the heart of the valley, lay the seat of the Spring Court. Darkness fell as we entered the tree line, turning the moody gray sky a midnight blue. There was no light pollution in Earrach-Tir to steal attention from the stars, and like those hanging over the Sacred Grove, they seem to shine brighter, closer, and warmer than the stars of Inworld. Groups of glowing blue moths lit our path through the wood, and fireflies blinked out phosphorescent messages to one another as we passed.

The closer we drew to the Spring Court proper, the more the forest changed around us. Branches of the trees which would normally reach their many-fingered hands toward the sky were intertwined instead, revealing elaborately choreographed patterns, whorls, and knots. These became more and more intricate the deeper into the woods we got, until entire histories of the Spring Fae could be read in their leafy tapestries. Sean marveled openly at these—much to Fearnóg’s delight—and Chris even let out an appreciative whistle.

I listened politely as Fearnóg recounted the cultivation process, but did not comment. It was true this forest was a work of art, nurtured by the extensive love and labor of the nymphs and wood sprites who tended the land, and there was no denying the skill required to create this. But to me, such a place felt … overdone. On the verge of garish. Nature is beautiful in itself, and in truth, I preferred the trees which grew wild in Inworld. There was a savage beauty to their struggle for survival that these coddled and cared for woods could not match.

Finally, we stepped through a swaying curtain of intertwined willow switches and into the clearing at the center of the Spring lands—though to call it a clearing was not technically correct. Trees, shrubs, and vines had been woven and grown together to create sumptuous many-tiered dwellings, all lit with blue-green foxfire, and luminous violet flowers, and bioluminescent bug—slinking caterpillars and darting moths. Rather than arranging their homes into straight rows and squares like human cities, the fae here had grown their homes in concentric circles, as if all of the village were whirling through the steps of a grand dance.

At the center of the dance, a group of seven trees grew in a perfect fairy ring. Yew, oak, apple, rowan, elder, hazel, and alder stood watch over Freyr the Green Man’s throne room, the only building in Earrach-Tir without a canopy of entwined branches separating it from the sky. We entered to find many of the fae already gathered, their faces cast in the blue light of the fluttering swarm of glowing moths illuminating the space. They were a strange lot, the High Fae of Earrach-Tir. Willowy limbed creatures, their eyes large, pupilless and utterly alien, their bodies wrapped in tree bark or conjured from ropes of vine.

None wore clothing, instead covering themselves with brilliant golden leaves or dark blooming flowers never seen before to Inworld eyes. They exuded the steady power of the earth—deities of living foliage given life by ancient magic.

Freyr, though, was something else entirely. Inhuman.

He was a massive creature, twenty feet tall, his body that of a monstrous elk, each hoof the size of a dinner plate, his fur deep brown and stringy. Spikes of bone protruded through the fur along his spine, each one as sharp as a razor and yellowed from age. And growing from the thick-set elk neck—right where his head should’ve been—was a human body, withered, old, skin as dark as wet mud, with a wispy beard trailing from his face, down his belly, and past his groin. Yellowing antlers protruded from the old man’s head, clawing toward the sky like reverse lightning bolts.

The body just hung there, fifteen feet from the ground, limp as a wet noodle. But the man’s eyes blazed with life and wicked intelligence.

Fearnóg stepped forward and bent in a deep bow to her king.

Freyr nodded to his scion—the human body swaying from the movement—giving her leave to speak.

She swept a willowy hand toward us. “My king, I present to ye Princess Winona Treesinger, Daughter of Chief Chankoowashtay, heir apparent and future chieftain of the People of the Forest; Sean Smith, veteran agent of the Lucis Venántum; and Detective Chris Fuller, initiate of the Lucis Venántum.”

Chris glanced my way to see if I would bow as Fearnóg had, but I gave him a fractional shake of the head. Though fae in general were a capricious bunch, given to wild parties and cruel tricks, the fairies of Earrach-Tir prided themselves on their rigid adherence to formality while in court. The Green Man was not our sovereign, and in a court so beholden to literal interpretations of pomp and ceremony, even a polite gesture of respect such as a bow would be considered an ironclad pledge of fealty.

“We greet you, Freyr, Ruler of the Spring Fae,” I said, my back straight as a lodgepole pine, my eyes locked on those of the Green Man.

“Well met, Daughter of the Forest and companions,” Freyr responded in equally formal tones. Though he spoke through human lips, his voice was deep and rocky. Primal and deadly like the rumbling of an earthquake. “It is said that you have left your Sacred Grove in search of an Aztec being who has been traversing the planes to and fro between Outworld and In.”

“This is true,” I agreed. Having had no time to speak to Fearnóg before our audience, the only way he could know such a thing was if his scion had sent someone ahead to inform him of our business. This made it very likely indeed that Fearnóg had overheard us speaking to Firroth the Red, then planned her entire encounter with us at the bar around bringing us to Earrach-Tir to speak to the Green Man. Fae! They created machinations within machinations.

“A great evil has been done,” I continued solemnly, “the sacrifice of a human child, and unless our information is wrong, it was only one of dozens. Our information has led us to believe a yahui halfie currently residing in Mictlan was involved.”

Around us, the rustling of leaves and the rasp of wood filled the air. It took me a long moment to realize it was the High Lords and Ladies of Spring—they were laughing at us. Laughing at the thought of child sacrifice. A reminder of how little they valued human life. The blood ran hot inside my veins, crying out for justice, but I held my tongue. To challenge Freyr in his seat of power, surrounded by his court no less, would have been madness. My friend Yancy Lazarus had done such a thing while in the Black Lodge, home of Arawn the Horned, Protector of the Unfettered Fae.

Even with his formidable power, and the assistance of my father, we had very nearly perished.

Finally, Freyr lifted a twig-thin arm, cutting the laughter off. “You speak of human sacrifice, yet forget our lands are steeped in the blood of human sacrifice. We water our lands with it. Feed off the Vim, which sinks into the soil and ebbs into the roots of our great trees. We care not for human sacrifice.” He paused, his frail human lips pulling back in a rictus to reveal black teeth, filed down to points. He eyed Chris and Sean in turn, the rustle of the high nobles of Spring growing in intensity.

With measured slowness, I stepped forward, positioning myself between Chris and the King of Spring. I balled my fist, offering him a silent snarl that promised I would be no easy game should he pursue such a pass. For a long moment our eyes locked and I felt his mind push against my own, the weight of his mental presence like an ancient mountain. But I did not give him an inch. I raised my head and pushed my thoughts out to him. We were invited to this place—given welcome by a scion of your house. I am here acting under the authority of the People. Do this and you will face the wrath of the Chiye-tanka. We are people of peace, but the handles of our axes stretch long.

He nodded to me, a dip of the head in acknowledgement. “We do not care for the death of your Little Brothers and Sisters,” he said, silencing the court with his words, “but, perhaps, our concerns overlap. Your home sits distant from ours, Princess, so you cannot know that Earrach-Tir’s border with Mictlan has lain dormant in the centuries since the Aztecs cut themselves off from the rest of Outworld.

“For time out of mind, no creatures have crossed the dividing river either in or out of Mictlan. In truth, I wondered many a time whether the lot of them had finally been wiped out. Until recently. A witch has been traversing the Springlands from Mictlan to Inworld. It is a strange, twisted creature with power I do not fully understand. Many a seelie has been murdered in the time since the witch began its trespassing, all struck down by its evil magicks. I would see this menace disposed of before any more of my subjects are lost.”

Sean started to open his mouth, but I cut him with an upraised hand and a sharp glare.

“If what you say of Mictlan’s extreme isolationism is true, then your witch and our yahui halfie may well be one and the same,” I said, thinking it best to avoid any straight declarations.

“Yes,” the Green Man replied. “Perhaps it is so. I will provide you with weapons to rid our lands of the menace plaguing it.” He snapped his finger at a green-fleshed imp standing beneath the rowan tree.

“That will not be necessary,” I said quickly, before the imp could obey the unspoken order. “It is gracious of you to offer aid, but my companions and I have come well prepared to do battle with the creature responsible for the Inworld murders.” Not to mention, accepting the weapons would be to agree to kill the witch for him, whether that witch was related to our yahui or not. “If, by doing so, we also destroy the witch that has been traversing your lands and killing your subjects, then you owe us no debt or gratitude.”

“If you will not accept the weapons, then allow us to provide you with food and beds for the night to regain your strength before facing this dark traveler.” A malevolent glint shone in his eyes. Of course, he had not specified which dark traveler he meant—ours or his—so this was only another attempt to ensnare us into an agreement to kill the witch.

“Your kindness is great, Freyr, but unfortunately my friends and I must decline. The trail of our prey may already be cold. We will travel through the night and camp near the border with Mictlan so that we may enter the Aztecs’ homeland as the sun rises. We do not wish to come upon any surprises in the dark.”

He nodded. “A wise tactic in an unknown land.” The sly smile on his lips slipped as Freyr looked down his long nose at me. His disappointment was as clear as the spring waters of the Sacred Grove. “You will make a shrewd leader one day, Winona Treesinger, daughter of Chief Chankoowashtay.”

“Coming from a ruler as cunning as yourself, this is a great compliment,” I replied, then added, “but I cannot take the credit for it. All the good that is in me has come as a result of my father’s wisdom and teachings.”

“Perhaps it appears that way to you, but there are those among us who remember your mother’s sharp intellect and gentle kindness. She was a star shining in the dark of night.” Freyr stood and waved his frail hands in an intricate pattern of knots in the air above our heads. “Go with the Blessing of Earrach-Tir while you travel our lands, freely bestowed upon the Princess of the Forest, who would accept no other gift.” The smile returned, his lips pulling up on one side. “And when you return again to your Sacred Grove, relay my congratulations to Chief Chankoowashtay on a child well taught.”

FIFTEEN:

Bad Dreams

“I get what you were doing, turning down the allegedly free room and board for the night,” Sean said, his voice weary. “It was the right thing to do when dealing with fae—just say no. You ran the room like a total pro. Exactly how I would’ve handled the sitch.” He yawned loudly. “But a nice, warm bed in a comfy fairy tree house is starting to sound pretty good right about now.”

We had been walking for almost two hours through the forest, and the damp night air had settled in around us like a wet cloak. The breeze smelled heavily of an early spring rain—the only type of rain that fell in the Spring lands—and I feared the weather would break before we made it far enough away from the fae village and close enough to the Mictlan border to make camp for the night. Sensing the potential rain in their future, the majority of the luminescent moths and fireflies had turned in for the night. Only the few whose dim survival instincts would eventually be naturally selected out of the gene pool remained.

Because Chris and Sean’s human sight was not as keen in the dark as mine, they stuck close on either side of me, occasionally clicking on their cell phone lights to check the shadows for pitfalls and tripping hazards.

It was true, however, that we had all three slowed down a great deal over the last several minutes. Sean’s head hung as he walked and his shoulders drooped. I glanced over at Chris. He was not showing any physical signs of fatigue beyond the already dark circles loitering beneath his eyes and the lines of exhaustion etched into his face, but he had not spoken in a very long time. All of his focus, it seemed, had been transferred from conversation to putting one foot in front of the other.

I sighed and rubbed my eyes, which felt hot and dry despite the cool, damp atmosphere of the forest. A sure sign that even I was tired. I had enough energy left to carry my friends for a mile, maybe two, but who would carry me when the last of it was gone and I needed to rest?

“Perhaps we should make camp before we are too tired to start a fire,” I said reluctantly. And before the rain begins and all the firewood and kindling in the forest is too wet to take a flame and we are forced to pass the night miserable and cold, I thought but was too weary to voice. “There is a deadfall ahead. We can shelter there for the night.”

To my right, Chris nodded but remained silent.

“Oh, thank God!” Sean exclaimed on my left. “I was afraid you’d say ten more minutes, then stop.”

I shook my head, though I did not believe he could see me in the dark. “It is unwise to pass up the makings of an easy shelter for an unknown.”

The pine had been struck by lightning, its trunk cracked near the base, and fallen across the sturdy branch of an oak, naturally creating the center support for a lean-to of boughs. While Chris and I scoured the area for branches long enough to stack against the fallen pine and fill in the lean-to roof, Sean set to conjuring a fire. Several times as Chris and I piled boughs onto the roof, I heard the hedge mage cursing the wet air, his empty stomach, the unreliable Vis, the poor surface area of the kindling, and the lack of “a gallon of kerosene and a freakin’ blowtorch.” Over and over he opened his hand, waving it past the little pile of dry tinder, and over and over nothing happened.

Finally the lean-to was finished, and I could put intervention off no longer. I knelt in the dewy grass beside Sean and mimicked one of my father’s jaw-cracking yawns.

“Sean, my legs are so tired.” This, at least, was no lie. “Might we trade jobs so I can rest them? I will try to start the fire if you will help Chris find dry leaves and grass for the bedding.”

“Yeah, fine,” he said, lurching to his feet and stomping off.

I was not sure whether my ploy had convinced him, but at least now I could make a fire before the possibility was rained out. I found a long straight stick of cedar that would work for a spindle and a wider, flatter version for the hearth, then set to work spinning one against the other. Within a few minutes, I was feeding sticks into a cheerful campfire.

Sean came back with an armload of bedding.

“Magic?” he asked, nodding at the fire.

I held up the ember-scorched hearth and stick. “Hand drill.” Then I tossed the set into the flames.

“Nice.” And though his own attempts had failed, he sounded sincere. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m gonna go find the little mage’s room,” he said, then headed off into the darkness.

A few moments later, Chris reappeared from the opposite direction, tossing his armful of dry grass into the lean-to. He gave me a tired, lopsided smile. “You know there are a lot of humans out there who’ll pay good money for somebody to teach them wilderness survival.” He sat on the grass he had just added to the pile and leaned back on his hands. “Something to think about if this medicine woman career doesn’t pan out.”

“Would you pay me for such a lesson?” I asked.

“Nah.” He leaned forward and held his hands out to the blaze. “I camp with a bottle of lighter fluid like every other sane person in the good ol’ US of A.”

A familiar two-beat buzzing sounded from Chris’s vicinity. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. The glow of the screen illuminated his frown in harsh white light.

“I’ve been out of service since we set foot in Outworld, now all of a sudden I’ve got full bars.” He shook his head, then thumbed the screen. The buzzing stopped. “Figures.”

I watched him as he returned the phone to his jacket, the relief at not having to answer evident in his exhale and relaxing posture.

“Was it another of the officers who are jerks to you?” I asked him. I tried to remember what he called them, the deputies from around Missoula who didn’t like the outside hires like Chris. “The good old boys’ BFF club?”

Chris shook his head, smile widening just a hair. “Most of those guys were fired when it came out they buried Nora Corley’s reports of being abused by their buddy Bruce.” He tossed a twig into the fire. “That call was from my sister.”

My brows knit in confusion. I had heard my friend speak to his sister on the phone before and seen pictures of the two of them together. They were close as I had always imagined siblings would be, joking with one another, both eager to come to the other’s aid. In addition to this, his sister had two young boys whom Chris adored and frequently visited. His relief at not taking her call did not make sense.

“Why did you not answer?” I asked, genuinely curious. “Do you not want to speak to her?”

With a heavy sigh, Chris scrubbed a hand across his face. “And say what?” he asked. “‘Sorry, Ruthie, I’m not on Earth right now, I’m tracking down some Aztec turtle guy who might’ve sacrificed twenty kids to this weird salamander key thing’? Hard pass on that.”

We studied the flames for a time. Or rather, Chris studied the flames, and I studied his heavy-lidded stare. He looked as if he were exhausted but did not want to shut his eyes.

“I mean, how do people do it?” he asked. He picked up a stick from the pile and began snapping off its smaller shoots and throwing them into the fire one at a time. “How do they hang around their family and friends once they know evil monsters are a real thing lurking around every corner? How are you supposed to act? You can’t talk to them about any of it. The only way they’ll ever believe you’re not nuts is if they see it for themselves.” His lips twisted into a scowl. “And if that ever happens, they’ll probably be dead before you can do anything to protect them.”

A picture was starting to form in my mind—the isolation, the exhaustion, the short temper. I twirled a twig between my thumb and forefinger as I studied my friend’s face.

“How have you been sleeping since our confrontation with Anukite?”

He huffed a humorless laugh. “Sleep? Yeah, we’re not really on speaking terms at the moment.”

“Chris.”

“I know, I know.” With his stick, he poked at the bed of embers beneath the dancing tongues of fire. Orange sparks flew up toward the underside of the leaves overhead and disappeared. He watched them go. “But now that I’ve seen what can happen, it’s like I need to be out there stopping the monsters before they get their hands on somebody’s kid or sister or …” He trailed off, face ashen. “Except I know I can’t—I’ve met plenty of cops who burned themselves out trying. They couldn’t shut off their work life and deal with their home life. I don’t want to end up like that, but I don’t know how to stop. Evil could be anywhere. It could be anybody. How do you compartmentalize that?” He shook his head and glanced down.

I took a deep breath and exhaled through my nose as I considered his questions. “I do not know,” I admitted after a time. “I have never had to face what you are facing, and I have no answers or advice. But I can help you fall asleep, at least for tonight.”

Chris look up and raised an eyebrow at me. “How?”

“If you would like me to, I can invade your mind and push you to sleep.” My face heated as I confessed, “I … I have done it before. Once. Briefly. When I needed to transport you to Inworld from my room in the Great Redwood without allowing you to see the Sacred Grove.”

“Huh.” His jaw hung slightly askew and he tongued his molars. “I don’t remember that.”

“That is why I did it,” I said. “Would you like me to do it tonight?”

A trace of a smile touched his lips. “You’re so busy taking care of me and the boy wonder, when are you gonna sleep?”

“A Chiye-tanka does not require as much rest as a human.” I went around the fire and knelt beside him. “But I had planned to take the first watch and sleep afterward.”

“All right,” he said, nodding. “But only if you promise to wake me up for second watch.”

I smiled as if I were agreeing—though I had no intention of waking him up so quickly; he needed more than a few hours’ rest. I locked my eyes on his and gently pushed my thoughts out, slipping into the crevices of his mind like smoke winding its way beneath a shut door.

Chris’s brows shot upward as my presence registered in his mind. As with the first time I had put him under, Chris fought me. My friend’s spirit was a strong one, wholly unaccustomed to giving up control. Cases flashed through his mind: human serial killers, gruesome crime scenes, Anukite’s demonic double face, images of the young girl from the mountain both smiling in her braces and huddled skinless and dead. Lingering beneath those grisly images was the steadfast conviction that he should always be doing something. That the safety of the world was his responsibility, and if he didn’t take care of it, no one else would.

A noble thought, true, yet it clung to his consciousness like a parasitic vine to an otherwise healthy tree.

I am here now, Chris, I told him, edging his mind toward the black comfort of sleep. You do not have to do everything yourself anymore. We are partners, and right now, partner, you must rest.

The expression of shock on Chris’s face smoothed away as he stopped fighting me. For a split second his defenses dropped, and I felt a sudden rush of fire and confusion, self-doubt and derision, an intense longing for something impossible, and a painful opposing desire to keep that something separate, to protect its sweet innocence at all costs. This firestorm of feelings passed in the beat of a hummingbird’s heart. Before I could make any sense of it, Chris let go and fell into unconsciousness.

I caught my friend’s collapsing form and gently lowered him onto the dry grass under the lean-to. Then I sat back on my heels, inspecting his sleeping face.

“Messing around in a human’s brain is a big no-no, Winona.”

I jumped at the sound of Sean’s voice. He pushed away from the trunk of a nearby oak just outside the circle of firelight and came into our impromptu camp. I was tempted to ask how long he had been standing there, but I resisted. Obviously, he had been watching long enough to know that I had invaded Chris’s consciousness—one of the worst offenses in the magical world.

“I had his permission.” My words came out defensive, as if I had been caught doing something wrong.

“Even so, you could get into some serious trouble with the Venántum for that kind of thing,” the hedge mage replied softly, lowering himself to sit cross-legged next to the fire. He scrubbed his palms together, then held them out to the flames. “But it was really nice of you.” He glanced at Chris’s sleeping form, then back at the fire. “I assume I’ve got second watch?”

I smiled. “Get some rest, Sean. I will wake you up to trade in a few hours’ time.”

SIXTEEN:

Easy Prey

A splash of water and the hiss of steam. Confused shouting. Chomping teeth and the meaty thud of fists on flesh.

I bolted upright, just missing cracking my head on the pine bole supporting our lean-to. The campfire was drowning in a pool of water.

A mass of scales and teeth slammed into my chest. I hardly had time to register the first attack before the second hit my side. I lashed out with fists and elbows, catching one long, pointed snout after another with punishing blows. Too many snouts for the pair of creatures I thought had attacked me. In the darkness, I could see frail arms, long pointed muzzles, and the upright bodies of only two creatures, but razor-sharp teeth sliced open my frail human skin with nearly every strike I landed.

I grabbed the snout closest to my face, clamping it shut in my fist, then whipped the creature away from me. It slammed against the pine support of our lean-to, its spine snapping. The creature fell limp on the dried grass of our bedding.

But at least three sets of teeth were still chewing on me, ripping through my jeans and tearing into the flesh over my hipbone, knee, and ankle.

“Ambush!” Sean shouted somewhere in the darkness. “It’s an ambush!”

I swung a heavy left cross at the head gnawing on my hip. With an audible snap, the creature’s jaw came unhinged. It shrieked and loped away, running on both its overlong arms and feet.

The extra sets of teeth disappeared with it.

I stumbled to my feet, searching the darkness for my friends, but found only shadows. The lean, muscular frame I associated with Chris whirled and swung a thick, gnarled stick like a club, holding off a snarling pack of the creatures. The smaller shadow that was Sean knelt on the opposite side of camp, throwing ineffectual punches at the long-snouted second head that seemed to be growing from his back.

More creatures chittered quietly around the edges of camp, ambulating on both their arms and legs like reptilian baboons. I roared and charged a small knot of them. They scattered, shrieking. My lip curled in disdain. Pack predators searching for an easy meal. Though I was the same size as my friends, they could sense that I was stronger and did not fear them. I was not prey.

I lunged at another cagey group and snatched the slowest by a hind leg. As soon as my hand closed around its knee joint, teeth crunched down on my fingers. I cried out in surprise and bashed the creature against a nearby tree, trying to loosen its bizarre leg-bite. The creature yelped, but the jaws clamped shut on my fingers only tightened. I swung again. The creature’s head smashed against the tree trunk with a wet crunch, its skull caving in. Finally, the teeth relaxed. I shook my fingers free and let the reptilian corpse drop.

A sharp pain speared my calf. I knew without looking what it would be. I jerked the bone dart from the back of my leg.

Across the camp, stray creatures were surrounding the weakest member of our herd. Sean—still on his knees—was shouting and firing bone darts, alternating blind shots at the creature on his back and wild shots into the gang of creatures converging on him. The darts did not appear to have hit any of them yet.

With the bone dart poking out from the center of my fist like an additional middle finger, I sprinted toward him. The creatures heard me crashing through the grass and undergrowth and tripped over themselves to get clear. A few snapped at my heels as I passed, but a sharp kick to their snouts deterred any notion of outright attack.

As I reached Sean, I cocked my fist back and drove the bone dart through the head of the creature clinging to his back. The end of the bony spit pierced my palm, but I kept pushing until the creature shuddered then seized up, dead. Sean’s shirtsleeve ripped as the creature tumbled from his back, the checkered material caught in one of the many toothy maws scattered around its scaly body.

“Thanks,” Sean breathed.

I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to his feet. He reeled uncertainly as though intoxicated—shock, I suspected—but managed to stay upright. I scanned the area around our camp, but could not see Chris’s shadow anymore. Somewhere off to the left, I heard him grunting and cursing, followed by inhuman shrieks and the thwack of hardwood on flesh.

There was nothing I could do but trust that my friend could take care of himself. The majority of the pack had surrounded Sean and me, and they were closing in, calling back and forth to one another in their chittering language.

Two of the boldest creatures darted in, one from each side, hoping to take us by surprise, but a roundhouse sent one tumbling through the air, and the follow-up spinning hook kick cracked the other’s maxilla. It scrambled back the way it had come, yipping in pain.

Little by little, the pack was still tightening their circle around us.

Sean fired a barrage of darts at the crowd, each one flying over the heads of the creatures. With a mental groan at my stupidity, I realized that if I was struggling to see in this darkness, then Sean and Chris were as good as blind.

“They put out our fire before they attacked,” I said, quickly replaying the order of the sounds I had heard before everything descended into chaos. “They want us confused and unable to see. You must conjure a light for us, Sean.”

“Just slap together a quick weave of fire?” His head swiveled in either direction, surveying the encroaching line of opponents. “Like, right on the spot like this? Yeah, sure, I’ll get right on that. Am I the only one who remembers what happened earlier when I tried to light the campfire?!”

“You cannot think this way,” I barked, stepping forward to meet another daring attack.

Three of the creatures raced in. I slapped aside the open mouth of the first with a knife-hand strike, then slammed my fist into its scaly gut. Without a pause, I wheeled about, driving my elbow backward, crushing the snout of the second attacker. Teeth embedded themselves in my elbow and held fast when I tried to pull away. While I was pinned down by the second, a third leapt and landed on my back, claws slicing through the flannel fabric and digging furrows into my skin. Immediately a multitude of mouths seemed to be chewing away at my shoulders and hips, shredding the flesh in bright, stabbing pain. Everywhere one of the creatures’ joints touched, I was being bitten.

“Do it, Sean! I know you can!” I shouted, pain undercutting the words.

“I’m trying!”

I battered the creature gnawing on my shoulders and hips with a flurry of punches, trying to hit it in the snout—that seemed to be their most sensitive point—but its jaws were at the wrong angle. The only thing I could hit was the top of its head. The creature ripped its head back and forth, tearing a chunk out of my shoulder.

“Dammit, just work!” Sean screamed behind me. “Just freakin’ once in your life!”

Smelling bloody meat, the rest of the pack rushed us at once. Two more slammed into my side, knocking me off balance, and another tackled me to the ground. Like a pack of wild dogs taking down a lion, they piled onto me, biting, gnawing, chewing, scratching. I roared with impotent fury and frustration. This should not be happening. I was stronger and more powerful than these little cowards, but in this tiny body I could not get any leverage. I ripped one hand free of what felt like a dozen sets of teeth and reached behind my neck, tearing off the amulet.

Sean screamed.

The song of the medicine man drowned him out, the frame drum pounding and the sacred rattle jingling. My hair regrew and my bones melted, then resolidified in the shape of a Chiye-tanka. My body expanded to the sound of ripping seams and popping buttons as the pink flannel shirt and jeans gave way. As the music faded away, I swept an arm out, smacking several creatures away like annoying pups who had worn out their welcome.

I was small, but now I am big again. I smiled as I fought my way to my feet. Like all of you. The trouble you were in was small, but now it is big.

Using my arms like the tusks of a rampaging bull elephant to clear the space around me, I beat back my avalanche of attackers, caving in a head here and ribs there, snapping overextended limbs with brutal force. Still, it was nearly impossible to see—the dark an oppressive blanket while a dribble of blood leaked into my right eye. To my right, Sean was screaming. He, too, had been overwhelmed. With a battle cry, I waded into the fray, tearing creatures away from him and tossing them through the air.

A trio of gunshots rang out. Chris. A moment later, a blinding white light slashed through the trees behind me. I spun as the light fell on a gang of the creatures flanking me. Two more shots in quick succession followed. One struck a creature in the gut. It dropped in the dirt, screaming and clutching at the wound, smearing blood across its scaly white underbelly. The second bullet pierced the skull of another creature, sending brain matter and bits of bone flying.

A chittering howl went up, echoed by every one of the strange creatures still alive. They scattered and ran off into the woods. This was not the simple ambush they had hoped for. Instead of three easy-to-devour humans, they had found death and destruction, and they wanted no further part of it.

“You guys all right?” Chris called.

I helped Sean to his feet, checking him over for life-threatening wounds. None of his arteries had been opened, and the only bite marks I could see appeared shallow.

“We are fine,” I called in reply.

The light swiveled as Chris approached, scanning the trees for any stray creatures. Without it shining directly into my eyes, I could see my friend holding his gun in one hand and his cell phone just above it, the flashlight illuminating the forest around us in a semicircle.

Satisfied no threat remained, Chris holstered his gun and returned to us. He shined the light up and down my body, then Sean’s.

“I have already checked him,” I said, picking broken teeth from my elbow. “He has sustained no critical damage. However, I should dress our wounds to avoid infection. Are you injured?”

“I feel like I’ve been mauled by a pack of pit bulls, but I don’t think there’s anything serious,” Chris said, glancing down at himself, running one hand over his chest, then patting at one thigh. “What the hell were those things?”

“May I use your light for a moment?” I asked.

He handed it to me and I made a beeline for our lean-to. It had been destroyed in the chaos, but the body of the first creature that had attacked me was still in the wreckage. I dragged it out and crouched to inspect it.

It was the size of a dwarf, with the head and scaly flesh of a caiman, but its arms and legs were long, and it had the canny five-fingered hands of a primate, topped by hooked black claws. And at every major joint—the shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles—the creature had another tooth-filled mouth.

“A cipactli,” I said. “I have seen its image in Aztec codices. But I cannot understand why they would be so far from Mictlan.” I calculated the remaining distance to the border. “We are still at least an hour from the river.”

By this time, Sean had his phone out and was taking photos of the cipactli. I stood and wandered to the edge of camp, searching the ground that would have been just out of the firelight’s reach.

“What do you have?” Chris asked, joining me.

“Tracks.” I pointed to indicate the trampled grass and broken weeds. “They were here for a long time before they attacked, watching. Waiting for something perhaps?” I looked from Chris to Sean. “How long has it been since I went to sleep? Who was on watch?”

“Still me,” Sean said. “It’s only been … what, an hour since we traded off? These cipactli things must be masters of stealth, because one second I was flipping through pics on my phone, then suddenly the fire was out and everything went all Battle Royale.”

Chris crossed his arms, staring down at the tracks.

“They waited for you to go to sleep,” he said to me. “Somehow they knew you were the biggest threat, so they waited until you were out of the way to attack.”

“Oh, great, so they were just waiting for the weakling to take watch, is that it?” Sean growled. “The loser who can’t do anything right?”

“They could’ve attacked while either of us was on watch,” Chris said. “You just happened to be the one standing guard while the real threat went to sleep.”

“Says the guy who killed two and ran the rest off!” Sean threw his hands up in the air. “Jeez, they could probably smell it on me! They knew I was the useless one! That’s why they waited until I was the only one awake. Slip in and get the easy prey.”

“You cannot know that,” I said.

“I didn’t hear them coming,” he said, ticking fingers off as he went. “I didn’t manage to shoot a single one. I failed at conjuring fire, so we had to fight in the dark. I couldn’t protect myself from one of those things, and then I let Winona get overrun by the whole pack!”

“That was not your fault,” I insisted. “And I did not need light—I can see quite well in the dark. I just thought it would help you and Chris. But Chris managed without the fire.”

Chris shrugged. “After I found my phone, yeah.”

Sean did not look reassured.

“You see, Sean, you did quite well for battling in the dark. Didn’t he, Chris?”

“He didn’t shoot one of us this time.”

I glared at Chris and decided it was probably best not to correct him.

“Let’s just go before I screw something else up,” Sean growled.

Head down, glaring at the ground, the hedge mage turned and stomped off into the woods.

In the wrong direction.

I rounded on Chris, glaring.

“What?” He shrugged. “The kid wasn’t wrong. The evidence is circumstantial at best, but it all points to him being the one they thought they could separate from the herd.”

I rolled my eyes and stalked off to find Sean and turn him back the right way. As I went, I was careful to stride normally. The myriad bites and scratches scattered across my body hurt, and the chunk of flesh the cipactli had ripped from my shoulder stung in the open air—but none of these had penetrated as deeply as Sean’s bone dart. That tiny lance had nearly pierced all the way through the muscle and out the other side. Every step I took further aggravated the wound, but I did not want Chris to see that I was limping and ask what had happened to my calf.

SEVENTEEN:

Atoyatl Eztli

Once we were all going the right direction, I removed the tattered rags that had been my shirt and pants and tied them into a bundle around the amulet. The clasp had bent when I ripped the amulet off, but repairing it was the work of a few moments. I chose not to put the amulet back on, however, thinking it would be safer if I walked in my true form in this land of ambush predators. Not to mention, I would be forced to trudge through these woods naked since I had shredded my clothes.

I did not think Sean would mind such a thing, but Chris was another story.

“I am sorry I ruined another pair of the human clothes you gave me,” I told Chris absently, fingering the bundle of rags.

“Don’t worry about it,” he replied, waving my concern away with one hand. “We’ll pick up another set when we make it back to Missoula. I’m pretty sure if I buy three more, I get the next one free.” He shot me a smile, and for a moment, it felt like he was once again his normal self, happy, confident, easygoing. Despite being abruptly woken up during the ambush, it seemed the peaceful sleep had done him good.

We traveled through the remaining hours of darkness, everyone much too keyed up to sleep again. As we walked, I asked Mother Earth to heal me. Though her touch in Outworld was much lighter, she obliged happily. Sean even noticed my wounds healing and forgot his anger and self-pity long enough to take a video with his phone of my shoulder regrowing the missing chunk of flesh the cipactli had eaten.

“My mom’s gonna flip when she sees this,” he said, nearly touching the phone to my shoulder. “She’s kind of an armchair cryptozoologist.”

“Is she the one you are taking all these photos for?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He bobbed his head. “She loves this stuff, but she hasn’t been able to get in the field much since she hurt her back fighting that qalupalik up in Cold Harbor.”

I smiled. “I think you may be a very good son, Sean.”

“Well, it doesn’t hurt with the ladies, either,” he said, waggling his eyebrows at me.

Chris rolled his eyes, but did not comment. I saw the ghost of a smile grace his lips. After seeing the way the sorority girls interacted with Sean, I had my doubts as well, but the conversation seemed to dispel the dark clouds the night’s battle had hung over everyone’s mood.

The sun was rising as we left the carefully sculpted forest of Earrach-Tir and came to the edge of Atoyatl Eztli, the river that bordered Mictlan. Just across its ruby waves, a smooth black obsidian plain stretched featureless and empty for countless miles before ending at the foot of a jagged black mountain range. Far beyond the mountains, marring the horizon, stood an enormous gold head with squared, stylized features and a turquoise headdress.

“Is that … blood?” Chris asked, eyeing the broad, sweeping river.

I nodded. “In Mictlan, all of the rivers are human blood, and all of the plains are obsidian. I have also read that there is a field where the winds blow flesh-scraping knives, although I am not certain whether that was a statement of fact or an artful metaphor.”

“It’s metal is what it is,” Sean said in an awed voice.

“No. Metaphor,” I enunciated. “The literary device.”

“No, like, ‘Whoa, dude, that’s so metal,’” he said. “You say it when something’s really hardcore. Rivers of blood and flesh-scraping knife winds? That’s so metal.”

“It’s slang,” Chris said.

“Oh.” I nodded along as an example occurred to me. “When I set Deputy Khuri on fire, that was so metal.”

Chris snorted.

Sean’s eyes grew large behind his thick-framed glasses. “You set somebody on fire?”

“Only with my words,” I said, knowing I should not brag, but unable to resist. “I paid him a scathing insult.”

Sean chuckled. “Damn, Winona, you are metal.”

“Guys,” Chris said, gesturing downstream.

A footbridge of gold, red, and green spanned the river at a narrow bend. This would have been a wonderfully convenient way to cross if not for the massive grizzly-sized jaguar guarding the Earrach-Tir side. The jaguar watched us from its place at the foot of the bridge, tail twitching like an agitated cobra.

“That thing looks hungry,” Sean said.

As if it had heard him, the jaguar licked its chops, eyes burning like chunks of molten amber.

Chris pulled his sidearm, ejected the magazine, and counted his remaining bullets. He grunted and shoved the clip back in. He pulled the slide with practiced ease and holstered his weapon—the metal rasping against the leather.

“I think we should swim it,” he said, stealing looks between the jaguar and the blood river.

For a long moment, I studied the churning red waters. I could not say how deep it was, but the waters appeared to flow in that indolent, dreamy way that only wide-bellied rivers can manage with any degree of beauty.

When I looked back at the jaguar, he was prowling around the foot of the bridge. He was quite muscular, and his ears were festooned with an array of golden earrings. They tinkled lightly as he prowled. I thought it very likely that I could take the jaguar in a fight, but looking at the graceful cat, the sacred words rang in my mind: The truest warrior of peace need never kill. Regard Heaven as your Father, Earth as your Mother, and all creatures as your Brothers and Sisters.

Already on this journey, I had killed several cipactli and nearly ended a giant axolotl. I was growing weary of fighting my Brothers and Sisters. And besides, he seemed intent to leave us be so long as we did the same.

“I agree with Chris,” I said. “We will swim.”

Sean clapped his hands together and scrubbed them vigorously. “Sounds easier than fighting a jaguar the size of a house. Who’s got a baggie for the phones?”

We waded in slowly, feeling for drop-offs with our feet. The blood was warm, as if it had just been spilled. Rather than a bed of gooey mud, Atoyatl Eztli had a bottom of silty sand. As I walked in farther, I felt the grains beneath my feet pulled away by the lazy current. Sean held his cellphone out of the water, and Chris did the same with his gun. Soon they were both swim-walking, paddling with one arm and holding their cellphone and gun above their heads with the other. A quarter of the way out, I could no longer touch, either.

I kicked off the bottom and reached out for the first stroke.

A hand grabbed my ankle and jerked me under. Blood filled my mouth and nose—salty and warm—and my eyes burned. I retched and spit, frantically kicking with my feet while I tried not to think about what I had aspirated.

Despite my desperate kicks, the hand dragging me down held tight with incredible strength. I kicked again and again, arms thrashing as I tried to break free and pull myself to the surface, but I might as well have been fighting against the water itself. The implacable hand curled even tighter, then slammed me unceremoniously into the silty riverbed.

Memories of my childhood flashed through my head. Suddenly, I could see the biting cold water of the Bitterroot River pulling me under—could feel the bruising impact, the helpless panic, the pain in my lungs. All as fresh and vivid as it had been to my eleven-year-old self.

Trying to still my racing thoughts, I bent double, feeling around blindly for the creature holding me down. Another hand lashed out, catching hold of my wrist, and then a third twisted in the hair on the back of my head. Tiny claws like those of a racoon scratched my eyelids, and the sharp teeth of an otter bit my fingernails and pulled as if it were trying to rip them free. The panic stampeding inside my chest intensified, but I fought it back with tooth and claw, mind racing as I searched for a solution.

With my free hand, I found the rawhide cord around my neck and grabbed the bundle of clothes. Steadying the tremble in my hand, I dug until I found the jeans’ pocket, then pulled out the obsidian dagger that housed Ichtacka.

I slashed at the creature scratching my eyelids. My knuckles bumped silky fur, but the knife missed. I reversed the motion and stabbed upward, muscles straining. The hide resisted for the briefest of seconds, then gave like a bubble popping. Fresh blood and entrails poured into the river. The hand tangled in my hair disappeared, gone as quickly as it had come.

My temples pounded from the lack of oxygen and my lungs burned, struggling for air that was not there. I had to get to the surface. Quickly.

I focused, hacking at the hand wrapped around my wrist. It tightened. The invisible teeth chewing at my fingernails relented for a moment, before sinking into the webbing between my thumb and forefinger. I chopped again, motions wild and frantic. This time, my blow met flesh—something flat and furry like a tail, but connected to the hand. I pressed the knife blade into the tail and began sawing. The teeth clamped down harder and the hand shook my wrist, but I only sawed faster. Realizing it could not shake me, the hand released my wrist.

One more and then I can breathe again, I thought, bending at the waist and reaching for my captive foot.

Now that I knew the hands were connected to sensitive tails, I grabbed the tail of the final creature and chopped. The sharp obsidian of the cursed dagger cut cleanly through the meat and jolted against the bone. The hand gripping my ankle went limp.

I shook it off, then kicked off the silty river bottom.

As soon as my face broke the surface, I took a deep, loud gulp of air. Something hit me hard in the cheek, parting my skin like a knife, but my vision was still blurry and stinging from the blood. I thought I saw a flash of black. Something raked through the hair atop my head.

Behind me, a splash, then coughing. A cry of surprise. Another splash.

“Chris?!” I scrubbed at my eyes and blinked rapidly, regaining just enough clarity to see the water bubbling downstream to my right.

I dove under, feeling out in front of me with my open left hand, prepared to stab anything furry with the dagger in my right. My fingertips bumped a square of plastic, then a hand. Not fur, just bald human skin. I grabbed it by the wrist and pulled. The owner of the hand thrashed as if it thought I were a threat. I felt down its arm to its trunk, then down the connected leg until I found the furry hand clinging tight. This time, my hack sliced right through the bone. The hand came free in a heartbeat. Bracing my feet against the riverbed, I shoved whoever this was toward the surface. Then I kicked after them and exploded out of the blood with a splash and a gasp.

“Ah, crap, are those freaking knives?” Sean’s voice wheezed.

I could stand here. We were near a bank. I scrubbed the blood out of my eyes again, searching for shore. A knife nicked my ear. Another sliced across my back, crudely shaving away a patch of hair.

“Ow—ow—OW!” Sean yelled. “Go back under! Knife-wind! Knife-wind!”

“No!” I pushed him toward the shore. “Get to the bank, get out! Where is Chris?”

The surface broke upstream, followed by a gasp of air and the manic flapping of arms.

Chris!

He was gone as quickly as he’d appeared, leaving behind frothing ripples in the blood.

I swam toward the bubbling, thrashing pink water, ignoring the flesh-scraping daggers carried by the wind. Chris’s hand broke the surface, flinging up droplets of blood, then disappeared again. I ducked under and smacked my nose against my friend’s forehead. I shot my free hand out, groping at Chris’s jacket. As I had with Sean, I followed Chris’s body down until I came to not one but two of the hand-tipped tails fighting to drown him. I pushed the pain and fear away, going to work as I hacked and chopped. After a few brief seconds of struggle, the butchered limbs fell away and I shoved him toward the surface, following quickly behind.

When I came up, Sean was yelling, “Over here! Swim this way! There aren’t any knives over here!”

Chris and I swam toward his voice. A blade laid open my opposite cheek, so I ducked down until just my eyes were above the water and paddled faster. My feet hit sandy silt and I stumbled and splashed the last few yards to the shore, Chris coughing and kicking up bloody spray beside me. As soon as our feet touched the bank, the knives disappeared, and the wind stopped—banished back to whatever hellish place it had come from. We tripped onto the grass and sprawled out, chests heaving. Right back where we’d started, except now soaked in blood and slightly farther upstream from the bridge.

“Well, that was a shitstorm,” Sean said, breathing hard, mopping blood from his face. “Somebody doesn’t want people swimming across their river.”

This made sense with the isolationism and seclusion Freyr had mentioned. Over centuries, a land could develop very effective deterrents for unwanted visitors. I sat up and shook the blood from my hair. Disgusting. Even worse, there was almost no chance that we would find freshwater to bathe in before we left Outworld.

Chris looked up at me from his place on the bank.

“Jaguar?” he asked between gulps of fresh air.

I nodded. “Jaguar.”

EIGHTEEN:

Riddles

I approached the jaguar at the bridge slowly and steadily, careful not to make any sudden moves which might trigger its hunting instinct, but also showing that I did not fear it. With predatory creatures, any sign of fear—of weakness—could spell disaster. Chris and Sean stood behind me and to either side, covering me with bone dart and pistol.

The jaguar seemed to have lost interest in us, however. He sat at the riverbank, lapping up blood, only looking over his shoulder at me occasionally.

When I was within striking distance, I stopped.

“Brother Jaguar, I greet you in the name of the People of Peace,” I said, voice solemn.

He stood, bowed his back, and stretched his front legs in a deep feline stretch, then lazily turned to face me. Burning amber eyes bored into me, cataloging my features, my wounds, laying open my soul before turning on my companions. Thick lips pulled back from inch-long fangs as the creature measured my friends. Weighed them. Then, after a tense beat, it spoke. “Tell me, Elder Sister”—his voice was a smooth purr—“what do you seek in Mictlan? You are no Aztec being nor soul of the noble dead.” He paused, canting his head to one side. “Why do you travel here?”

Behind me, I could hear Sean and Chris’s footsteps inch closer. The jaguar watched them, lips pulling back another fraction of an inch, but made no move to attack. Perhaps this attempt at harmless-looking conversation was only a ploy to lure them closer. I hoped my friends had enough sense to maintain the defensive triangle so he could not attack us all at once.

Well … in truth, I hoped Sean had enough sense to maintain the triangle. I knew Chris would.

I pushed these thoughts aside—worrying about something that had not happened yet would only distract me from the matter at hand—and held Ichtacka’s dagger out on the flat of my palm. The jaguar’s eyes narrowed and his left ear twitched, sending his golden earrings clinking and clattering.

“We seek the one who is using this to sacrifice humans,” I said.

The jaguar nodded sagely, then lifted his face, nostrils flaring as he sampled the air. “Yes, I see,” he said, tail flicking and dancing as his gaze shifted from me to Sean. “I knew the Guild of the Staff would send someone eventually.” He settled back down on his haunches and lifted one massive front paw, easily the size of a dinner plate. He paused, regarding his golden claws. “You’re later than usual.”

“Late?” I asked.

“Quite,” he growled. “From what I’ve heard”—his ear twitched again, the rings jangling—“Achitometl only needs one more soul to unlock the vaults below Teotihuacán.” He dropped his paw and sniffed in what might have been disapproval. “The Guild must be truly weakened this time. And to send one so …” He paused, a thick black tongue flicking out then disappearing back into his maw as he stared at Sean. “So junior,” he finished at last, his amber eyes glowing with silent laughter.

“The Guild’s broken,” Sean shot back, stepping up beside me, his hands curled into fists. “They’re dealing with a civil war, which means the rest of us need to step up.”

“Aha,” the jaguar purred, cocking his head to the other side. “That explains it. Always before, the magi have sent their most capable warriors to stop the king before he gets this close. Twice before it has happened, and twice before the Guild intervened.” Absently, he stretched out one massive paw and raked at the grass with his claws. “But this time, they sent you three.” He grinned darkly, brows dropping low. “Perhaps this time Achitometl might finally get his revenge. He wants to wipe out the inhabitants of Tenochtitlán, you know. Every last man, woman, and child—I believe that was his vow.”

“Tenochtitlán’s not a thing anymore,” Sean said, folding his arms, radiating smugness. “It’s Mexico City now.”

“Well, I’m sure he won’t mind killing their descendants instead,” the jaguar said.

Chris stepped up to my side, lowering his pistol, though he did not put it away. “Where can we find this Achitometl?” he asked.

The jaguar looked over Chris’s sidearm and smiled. “In the small mirror, hung in a house of fir branches, of course.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Chris asked.

“It is a riddle,” I said. “My people have a similar one. The small mirror is an eye and the branches are the lashes surrounding it.”

The jaguar nodded once as if surrendering a great prize.

“So, we’ll find him in an eye?” Sean asked, an edge of anger in his voice. “Are you jerking us around? Like, ‘we’ll see him when we see him’?”

“One could certainly assume that meaning,” the jaguar agreed, dipping his chin just so. “Of course, riddles are riddles precisely because their only correct answer is actually many correct answers, all the same, and yet each one quite different.”

With this, he looked over his shoulder into the Mictlan distance. As one, our gazes followed his to the huge golden head, its bugging eyes peeking over the jagged black mountain range.

“The head,” I said. “It is a dwelling?”

“A fortress,” the jaguar replied. “The king was locked there by the last Guild envoy, perhaps forty or fifty years ago. Judges Lazarus and Sullivan.” Of course such a task would have fallen to my friend Yancy Lazarus, though hearing James Sullivan’s name sent a jolt of shock through my belly, followed by a wave of dark thoughts. Sullivan had betrayed us—betrayed Yancy Lazarus during the final battle against my betrothed, Achak, and his human pet, Hogg.

“His body can’t leave,” the jaguar continued, drawing me from my stormy thoughts, “but these days he has a visitor. A servant. A yahui halfie has been crossing back and forth, planting the cursed key in places where it can claim the required souls—only children of the Great Empire will do.” He reached out a paw and batted the dagger in my hand softly. “When it claims enough souls, it will open the vaults of the Quinametzin below Teotihuacán, unleashing the giants who’ve been trapped down there with nothing but their ravenous flesh-hunger since the fall of First Sun.”

“Yipes,” Sean whispered. Then feeling all of our stares land on him, he drew himself up straighter and affected great confidence. “Well, we’re here to stop him. Giants, yahui, cursed keys—it’s all in a day’s work for the Lucis Venántum.”

The jaguar flicked his ear again, jingling his many earrings.

“Perhaps you should reconsider. Mictlan is a deadly place, and Achitometl more so, should you reach him, which is doubtful. As I mentioned, the warrior mages the Guild of the Staff usually sends are powerful and well-trained, and they always have their work cut out for them. And from what I’ve seen”—he paused and sniffed the air again—“from what I’ve smelled, you three are no battle mages …”

“Hey, we can hold our own, buddy,” Sean snapped, his face a thunderhead.

The jaguar surveyed us regally. “It is your blood, not mine.” He shrugged one feline shoulder. “And I suppose there are three of you. The odds of one of you reaching Achitometl alive are fair.”

Sean’s face paled, and he fell silent. I, too, felt a chill of trepidation roll down my back. If a pair of battle mages such as Lazarus and Sullivan were usually required to defeat this evil, I could not fathom how a Chiye-tanka, a human, and a hedge mage would accomplish the same task. When I looked to Chris, I could read the same question in his eyes.

The jaguar smiled, pleased at the effect his warning had had on us.

“This time, we are the only ones who can stop him, so we must try,” I said, unable to come up with anything more encouraging to say. “There is no one else.”

“You hearken back to an older time, Sister, when no cause was too hopeless, no race too pathetic for the protection of the People of the Forest.” He lowered himself to his belly, crossed one paw over the other, and laid his head on them. “Of course, that is one reason your people declined so quickly over the centuries—looking after the weakest race of them all.” His golden gaze lingered on my friends.

“Perhaps that is true,” I said, voice hardening in resolve. “But it is what we were created for. If the Grandfather Spirit would have us all pass away at the end of our lives anyway, then better an extinction in the service of our responsibility than hiding in our trees.” I locked my eyes on the distant peaks and the fortress beyond, wanting no more of this talk. “May we cross your bridge, Brother, or shall we prove our strength to you firsthand?” I snarled and raised a clenched fist.

“It would certainly beat fighting the ahuizotl to swim the river,” the jaguar replied.

“That’s what’s in there?” Sean asked. “I thought those things lived in watery cave systems and mimicked crying babies to lure people inside to drown.”

“Inworld ahuizotls, perhaps.” The jaguar stretched his paw again.

“So, was that a yes or a no on letting us cross your bridge?” Chris asked, pushing his blood-soaked jacket back and resting his hands on his hips in a posture I had come to associate with his no-nonsense work attitude.

“You can cross my bridge, human, I won’t stop you. But you won’t live long enough to confront the king in his fortress unless”—the jaguar glanced at me—“one of you knows what is a scarlet macaw as it goes and a raven after it’s gone.” He swiveled his head toward me, eyes locking on my own. “Do the People have a version of that riddle as well?”

“We do.” I nodded. The answer was fire. “Though ours is a cardinal and a crow.”

“Regional differences,” he said, batting a paw in dismissal.

“Thank you for your assistance, Brother Jaguar.” I touched a bloody fist to my breastbone, then opened it to him to illustrate my gratitude.

He dipped his head in acknowledgement. “Thank you for the stimulating conversation, Elder Sister. If you survive, please do come back this way and say hello.”

I nodded. “We will.”

I led the way onto the bridge, my friends edging around the massive jaguar to catch up to me. Chris’s boots clunked and Sean’s sneakers squished on the gold-painted planks. I walked silently as only a Chiye-tanka can, the only evidence of my passing the large set of bloody footprints between the two smaller ones.

“So, I guess the inability to answer yes or no questions isn’t unique to you,” Chris said as we stepped from the bridge into the land of the Aztecs. “It’s all Outworlders.”

But the deadpan humor in his voice was forced. When I looked from him to Sean, I saw a deep unease that mirrored my own. I swallowed the urge to tell them they did not have to come with me into this danger. Though the chances three of us could beat this King Achitometl were slim, alone those chances disappeared altogether. And it was not as if either of them would agree to go home anyway. Like me, they realized this was a job no one else was going to do.

Ahead, the jagged peaks of the mountains loomed like an infantry of giants awaiting the signal to charge. Beyond them, the king’s golden fortress watched our approach with wide, lifeless eyes.

“Remember that riddle if you want to survive long enough to meet Achitometl,” the jaguar called after us.

NINETEEN:

Trial by Fire

Though the mountains appeared to be only a few hours’ walk from the border, it soon became clear that the vast flatness of the obsidian plain stretched much farther than it looked. We walked and walked and yet seemed to get no closer at all. To add to this feeling of making no progress, the sky was never brighter than it had been at dawn. As soon as the sun began its climb, a strange planet, enormous in its closeness, eclipsed it, giving the land an eerie, gloomy cast much like the Hub’s perpetual twilight.

The obsidian was warm and smooth under my bare feet, thrumming with a dark, otherworldly energy that felt almost alive. I had no desire to call out to Mother Earth from this place. I did not want to know what sort of primal, bloodthirsty thing might answer. No plants grew and no animals roamed. No hills or pits or cracks marred the glassy stone beneath our feet. The only features breaking up the monotony of the landscape were great piles of bones that lay strewn across the plain, some many times larger and denser than my own, some even smaller and frailer than those of a human child.

I wondered idly as we walked whether these were the bones Quetzalcoatl tried to steal from Mictlantecuhtli.

Midday came and went, and the mountains seemed as far away as ever. Tempers grew short, no doubt worsened by the crispy, constricting feel of dried blood covering our skin and pulling at our hair. At one point, I was forced to ban Sean from asking if we were even moving and when we were going to get there already, lest Chris do something with his remaining bullets that we would all regret.

It was not until the sun and its shadow planet stood in the evening sky that we reached the foot of the mountain range. Like the plain we had just crossed, the mountains were made of obsidian, but here the rock had been fractured and forced up over countless centuries, peaks biting at the sky like the jagged teeth of some monstrous shark.

A long, straight pass had been carved through the range, though based on the time it had taken us to cross the obsidian plain, I could not begin to guess at its distance. Five miles, perhaps? Or fifty? The mountains on either side of the narrow trail had been sheared off into perfectly flat surfaces and looked like they would not allow a trickle of water or ray of light through if they were pushed together. It was an unnatural thing that left a worm of uncertainty wriggling inside my stomach.

Despite my unease, our spirits lightened at the sight, glad to finally see the fruit of a day’s worth of walking.

Sean sighed with visible relief when he saw the cut. “Phew! I thought we were gonna have to go over, but this’ll save us a ton of time.” He grinned and ran a hand through his hair, then grimaced when it came away caked with sticky blood.

Sadly, the good mood was fleeting at best, shattered like a rotting branch overburdened with winter ice. As we edged closer to the narrow trail, the sky shifted, somber twilight giving way to the black of night in a blink. All around us, the earth itself seemed to acknowledge the change, the ground shaking as the grating rumble of shifting tectonic plates knocked the three of us from our feet. The rock faces on either side of the pass slammed together like enormous hands clapping with a speed I could not believe.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

For a time, my mouth hung open and I could only stare as the thunderous noise rolled over us. Eventually, however, seeing my friends struggling to stand, I pushed myself back to my feet.

“What,” Sean yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth to be heard over the din, “In. The. Crap?”

Chris looked to me as if he thought I would know the answer. I frowned and crossed my arms, staring at the obsidian walls smashing together over and over again in frantic motion. After a moment’s thought, the answer occurred to me, as obvious as the ahuizotls in the bordering river.

“It is another security measure,” I shouted back finally, nodding my head. “It ensures that no one but the souls of the dead or those beings who already know the secret may pass through to the fortress.”

“So, what, there’s like a secret password or hidden doorway?” Chris shouted, hands pressed firmly over his ears. “Maybe some sort of ritual you can perform like you did against Anukite?”

“I do not know, but there must be,” I replied, my brows knitting in concentration. “The jaguar said the yahui has been passing regularly on behalf of the king. He is not a creature of spirit, but one of flesh and bone and blood. If he can get through, then surely there is a way.”

Chris nodded, wincing again at a fresh thunderclap. “Yeah. Okay.” He paused, seesawing his head. “So should we just start looking, then? Maybe check the nearby rock face for some sign of a door?”

Reluctantly, I shrugged. “Until we can think of a better solution.”

The three of us split up and searched the area for more than an hour, coming back at regular intervals to report in, but we found nothing. No secret doors or hidden levers. No signs of the yahui’s passing. In desperation, we stood at the mountain and shouted possible pass phrases, hoping to find an Aztec version of Open Sesame. Chris and Sean rattled off a host of words in English and Spanish. The hedge mage even tried a Mandarin phrase he had learned from a fortune cookie. Meanwhile, I tried my hand at both Modern and Classical Nauhatl—the language of the Aztecs—and even threw in a few words of the Proto-Nahuan their language had evolved from.

Still the mountains clashed on. Ceaseless. Implacable.

With no other ideas, we dropped to the ground and watched their crashing.

“Go around?” Chris suggested, idly running a finger over the glassy ground. “That or climb over.” He paused and stole a sidelong look at me. “Unless you think there’s another way through?”

I shook my head. The mountains stretched out of sight in both directions. If this was a security measure to protect the fortress on the other side, then this would be the only way through.

“What’s your top speed, Winona?” Sean asked, rubbing at his chin as he watched the mountains collide and retreat.

I looked down the corridor of rock that could be five miles long or fifty and counted the time between collisions. Three seconds.

“I do not know,” I said, “but I am certain it is less than five miles per three seconds.” Let alone fifty.

Just as we were discussing searching again for a hidden door in case we overlooked it the first time, the mountains suddenly halted half-closed. The sudden silence was deafening. An avian squawk drew our attention upward to a flash of scarlet.

A burning macaw. It swooped between the deadly rock faces fearlessly, flames trailing from its wings and tailfeathers.

One second passed.

The macaw seemed to be in no hurry, flapping along lazily, a bright spot against the black cliffs and dark sky.

Two seconds.

It landed for a moment near the center and preened the burning feathers of its left wing.

Three.

Still the feather bothered it enough to bite and groom and fuss.

Six.

Finally—finally!—the creature shook its wings out, pleased with the results, and took to the sky again.

Eight seconds. Ten. Twelve.

It swooped out the opposite end to safety, and the mountains slammed shut behind it, the renewed sound rattling the earth once again.

Until that moment, I did not realize I had been tensing my shoulders and holding my breath. I let it out in a rush, slumping with relief.

When they opened again, I thought for certain I heard a caw. The burning scarlet macaw had disappeared, and where it should have been now flew a raven instead. A puff of smoke rose from its black feathers.

“Fire!” I whispered. The sound was lost in the crashing of the mountains.

I turned to my friends. Both were staring after the bird, wide-eyed.

“The trick is fire,” I shouted. “The jaguar told us how to get through—we just need a fire and the mountains will allow us to pass!”

“There’s nothing around here to start a fire with,” Chris yelled back. “No wood, grass, nothing.” He swept a hand out. “Black glass in every direction.”

Sean, however, had gone a sickly shade of green.

“No,” he said. I could not hear him over the sound of the mountains slamming together, but I saw his mouth form the word. He shook his head. “No way.”

“Sean, you are the only one of us who can make fire right now.”

“Are you kidding me?” he shouted, lurching to his feet. “Is there anything about the last couple days which leads you to believe I can even conjure a fire, much less keep it going however long it takes us to walk that?”

“You are our only hope,” I said.

“Are you crazy?!” He slashed his hand through the air. “No, we’ll end up a bloodstain on the walls! Meat paste, Winona. Meat paste.”

Chris was staring at me as if he thought I might truly be crazy. I glared at him. We had no other way of getting through this pass.

Slowly a sick acceptance sunk into his expression. Chris closed his eyes and scratched the back of his head violently.

When he looked up again, he tried to force the smile that usually came so easily to him.

“Come on … buddy,” Chris said, his voice almost lost in the thunder. “You can do it. Lots of people can’t … do anything right until the pressure’s on.”

Sean’s eyebrows came together. “Oh yeah, that’s real convincing! I’m not going to stake all of our lives on me not screwing this up for the first time in my life! Nope. No way.”

“Well, what the hell do you want me to say?” Chris snapped, stepping toe-to-toe with Sean. “You’re bad at magic—you’re bad at practically everything—but you’re the only option here. Either you man up and get us through there, or we turn around and go home while a serial child-murderer walks free and some crazy asshole king unleashes hell on one of the most densely populated cities in America!”

“Chris!” I grabbed him and pulled him away from Sean. “This is not helpful!”

“I’m not trying to be helpful, Winona, I’m trying to get a job done.”

A hard edge of determination had settled in Chris’s features. He was prepared for battle, and I could say nothing to change his mind. I turned instead to Sean.

The hedge mage was staring down at his hand. He brought the thumb and fingertips together, then flicked them outward as if to conjure a flame by surprising it into existence. Nothing happened.

He brought them together again, grimacing with effort.

Flick.

Nothing.

Every muscle in his body seemed to tense as he closed his fingers for a third time. His lips pressed into a thin, white line. His hand and arm trembled, and a bead of sweat rolled down his temple, leaving a pale streak in the dried blood. The branching vein that had appeared the day before when Enyeto sat on him stood out as he concentrated on his closed fingers.

Flick.

A weak flame barely large enough to light a dried reed ignited, floating at the center of his palm. His eyes bulged with surprise, then skipped from the flame to me to Chris and back to the flame.

“You did it,” I said. “Sean, you did it!”

“Nice job!” Chris took a long stride toward him, raising a hand to pound him on the back, but at the weak flicker of the flame thought better of it. He turned the pat on the back into a fire-friendly thumbs-up. “Good work.”

Sean looked more frightened now than before.

“If we’re gonna go, we better do it now,” he said. “I—this—it’s not—”

“It’s fine,” Chris said, voice cool though I could see a glimmer of fear and uncertainty in his eyes. “Let’s go.”

Sean crept toward the mountains, shielding the flame with his free hand to keep the wind from their collisions from snuffing it out. More sweat rolled down the sides of his face and disappeared into the collar of his bloodstained shirt. His mouth became a thin line once more, and I could see his pulse throbbing in his forehead vein.

“No pressure, no pressure, no pressure,” he chanted under his breath like a holy mantra. Finally, he took a deep breath, held it, and stepped into the pass, leading with the flame outthrust.

The mountains halted six feet apart.

Shuddering, Sean took another step. Chris and I crept into the pass behind him.

I placed my feet more carefully than I ever had in my life, terrified of making too much noise or kicking a pebble under one of Sean’s shoes and breaking his concentration. Beside me, Chris moved with painstaking care as well, his wiry frame tense and his dark eyes darting toward the safety of the other side. But he did not break into a run. I was at once thankful for this and frustrated by it. On one hand, running was likely to break Sean’s concentration. On the other, if we all stayed grouped together like this and the flame went out, we would all be crushed.

I took a deep breath through my nose and let it out slowly, centering myself and pushing away the useless emotions. Worry and fear would help no one. I had to trust my friends.

Gradually, deliberately, the three of us crept down the pass. One foot in front of the other. No one spoke nor breathed too loudly. Sweat cascaded down Sean’s face, washing him nearly clean of the dried blood, and his entire body quaked visibly.

The toe of his sneaker caught on a crack in the rock and he lurched forward.

Grab them both and run. Throw them. Shove them. Stick your arms out and try to stop the walls from slamming closed. Scenarios to save them from being crushed flashed through my mind in an instant, all unlikely to work.

Sean caught himself and froze. The fire flickered. I threw my arms out wide, for some reason choosing the most idiotic of options. One of Chris’s hands stopped within an inch of my arm, and the other an inch from Sean’s, as if he had been prepared to grab us both and run.

But the flame did not go out.

Sean inhaled deeply through his nose, then eased the breath back out. When the flame had returned to its original strength, he took a careful step.

The mountains did not slam closed on us.

Adrenaline pounded through my veins. I lowered my arms and forced myself to breathe again just as Sean had. Chris, too, returned his arms to his sides.

We slunk forward once more. My mouth had gone as dry as ash, and my stomach ached from the sudden unexpected scare. It felt as if hours had passed. As if I had taken thousands upon thousands of tiny, cautious steps. Still, I did not dare look away from the flame until we had passed the point where I was certain the macaw had landed.

The exit of the pass was close. So close. In a trick of irony, the pass was actually much shorter than it looked, less than half a mile long, and we were only ten yards from safety. But the vein in Sean’s forehead was throbbing faster than the heart of a panicking shrew, and his face had turned a pallid gray.

Chris saw me looking at the exit, measuring the distance. He stole closer to Sean as if preparing to grab him by the arm and sprint when the fire went out for good. Then he jerked his head from me to the exit, urging me to run.

I shook my head and crept closer to the both of them. I would not leave them behind. If anyone could grab them both and run, it was I.

Five yards from survival.

Sean’s hand shook like a rattlesnake’s tail. Sweat dripped from his hair in bloody pink droplets. The flame burned on.

Six feet left.

Sean realized how close we were to the end. The flame flickered again. Chris and I both lurched toward him, ready to shove him out of the pass, but just in time, Sean returned his focus to the flame in his hand and it steadied.

Three feet.

Two feet.

All three of us leapt the final step and hit the ground. Behind us, the mountains slammed together with a thunderclap that resonated in my ribcage and skull.

I pushed up, my arms and legs shaking with relief. Chris was kneeling beside Sean, pounding him on the back and shouting encouragement. Sean lay on his stomach, face pressed to the smooth obsidian. His shoulders and back were spasming. The acidic sting of vomit reached my nostrils, and I crawled over to pull Sean out of the puddle of sickness.

He was laughing. I hugged him, remembering only at the last moment not to crush him. He turned away to vomit again, then wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his formerly black-and-white checkered shirt and grinned.

TWENTY:

Yahui

When we had all recovered our legs enough to walk, we set off for the fortress looming in the distance. Sean’s accomplishment and our survival gave us renewed energy, buoying us up for the final leg of the journey. It seemed to pass in no time. We arrived at the great golden head just as the sun and the shadow planet were sinking beneath the horizon.

Counting the turquoise feathered headdress, the great head was nearly as tall as Nookomis Giizhig—the Great Redwood at the heart of the grove—but only half as wide. The eyes were stories and stories above us, staring out over a square protrusion of a nose taller than many lesser trees. At the bottom level, its mouth stood open wide and its tongue lolled down into a golden staircase that led between a row of thick, flat teeth as large as boulders. Nothing went in or came out. No sounds echoed from within. The entire fortress seemed completely devoid of life.

Standing at its foot was a large wooden rack displaying seven rows of grinning human skulls, each one threaded horizontally onto a pole and then hung from the rack.

Chris eyed them. “For when words just aren’t enough to convey that special something.”

“It is a tzompantli,” I said. “For displaying the heads of a king’s enemies captured during battle.” I bent to inspect the skulls on an unfinished row near the bottom of the rack, picked clean of all soft tissue and yellowed with the passage of time. “Perhaps many of these came from the mages the jaguar spoke of.”

Battle mages, a frantic part of my mind insisted, these were battle mages, trained to fight powers you cannot even imagine—and yet here they are, trophies adorning a skull rack. You have never fought anything more powerful than an evil spirit. Who did you bring to fight alongside you? A lawman and a hedge mage. They are going to die. You are all going to die.

I swallowed hard as I straightened, trying to push aside the fear and draw on the well of righteous anger in my heart. Twenty innocent youths had been murdered in service to this king’s mad plot to unleash the Quinametzin. Millions more would die if he succeeded. My fists clenched at my sides. Evil like that could not go unanswered. It did not matter if we were outmatched; we were the only ones who could stop this.

“Well, if this joker thinks he’s going to add us to that, then he’s gonna be sorry,” Sean said, pushing back his sleeves and raising a hand as if holding the conjured flame once more—although this time, in a much more devil-may-care posture, a reckless grin on his face. Clearly his victory over the crushing walls of the passage had done much to restore his flagging confidence. “We’ll just give them a taste of the ol’ Seanny special.”

“Saves the day one time and already he thinks he’s the best fire-starter since Charlie McGee,” Chris said, shaking his head. There was, however, a definite sparkle of good humor in my friend’s dark eyes.

I smiled at them, unable to maintain fear in the face of my friends’ blatant humanness. Like the scrappy trees of Inworld, show a human a struggle they cannot win, and they will laugh in its face.

Though all appeared quiet, we climbed the tongue-stairs to the mouth of the fortress cautiously, inspecting each step for traps before moving on. Nothing. Almost as though whatever dwelled in the skull wanted us to make it …

The entrance opened into an oblong altar room flickering with light from oil sconces mounted around the walls. At the center stood a massive circular stone with a golden skeleton lying across it. Worked into the stone’s sides were intricate carvings depicting a god holding the heads of his enemy gods by the hair, though I could not tell which god the carvings depicted. The face of the triumphant conqueror had been viciously gouged out.

A jolt of shock ran through me when I saw humans standing around the room, emaciated and yet bizarrely saggy, holding obsidian-tipped spears, flint-headed warclubs, and machuahuitl—a flat wooden paddle lined with razor-sharp obsidian blades—in their fleshy hands.

Sean let loose a wordless exclamation as he instinctively unleashed one of his bone darts. It flew across the room and shattered against the far wall.

None of the humans moved. Not so much as a twitch.

“They’re not alive,” Chris said, finally. He had slipped his gun free from his holster and held it trained on the odd corpses as though they might spring to life at any moment. He lowered the muzzle, though he did not put the weapon away.

“The sacrifices,” I said, realizing that there were nineteen in all.

I gazed around the room at the empty eye sockets staring back at me, many glinting with gold. Some were male, others female, all youths of an age with Mariposa. All appeared to be of Mesoamerican descent, in different stages of decomposition. I shifted uncomfortably as reality set in: These weren’t corpses. No. Rather, their skins had been harvested then sewn over golden skeletons like the one lying on the stone in the center of the room, giving them the strange appearance of sagging flesh hanging loosely from bones.

Red fury bloomed in my chest.

Children. Each one murdered torturously, their essence consumed for shadow magics, their remains desecrated. It was a thing unthinkable. Unspeakably vile.

Movement in a dark doorway at the rear of the room caught my eye. The yahui’s long caiman mouth snapped opened in shock.

The creature shuffled uncertainly into the dancing firelight, giving us our first clear loot at the creature we’d come hunting, a strange beast of fangs and scales and tearing claws. The yahui stood on two legs and had a thick, tortoise-like body covered in emerald scales, back covered with a bony shell of pale brown. Its head, though, was closer to that of a caiman, its hands stubby, humanoid, and tipped by hooked obsidian claws. The creature wore an intricate loincloth around its nether regions and sported golden arm and ankle bands, inscribed with ancient Aztec runes and symbols.

Shocked, the yahui dropped the bone needle and fresh hide it was carrying. Mariposa’s missing flesh. The wet thwap of her skin hitting the ground filled my belly with hate and turned all I could see into violent shades of red.

I ripped Ichtacka’s dagger from my bundle of clothes.

“You are the one who sacrificed these children!” I roared, voice echoing in the confined space. “You will answer for what you have done, abomination!”

The yahui sneered. “Who’s gonna make me? A silly tree-woman and her human perros?”

The yahui shouted words in Nahuatl. The oily, disgusting feel of Vim flooded the air. All around the room, the flesh-draped golden skeletons jerkily raised their weapons. Obsidian edges glinted in the light of the oil lamps as they staggered to the defense of their murderer.

I charged the yahui, a war cry on my lips. Sean’s bone darts shot over my head and off to each side, impaling flesh-draped skeletons and shattering against walls. One flew true, smashing into the yahui’s chest, but it could not break through the tortoise-like plate armor covering his chest and stomach.

“Chúpame, pendejos!” the yahui shouted, raising both middle fingers to us as he retreated back into the doorway.

A dozen of the skeleton warriors formed a blockade between me and the door.

They swung their clubs and chopped with their machuahuitl. I barreled into the center of them, swinging my fists in a fury—hook, jab, uppercut—catching their attacks on my forearms and with Ichtacka’s dagger. In my anger, I could barely feel the wounds they opened. I pummeled them mercilessly, sending their nearly weightless bodies flying. Skeletons crashed against the walls with the crack of breaking bone and thunk of metal. Seams ripped, spilling shining bones onto the stone floor.

When the space around the door had been cleared, the sound of the battle behind me drew my attention.

Chris had holstered his pistol and grabbed one of the machuahuitl. He wielded the flat obsidian-edged sword like a human baseball bat, lopping off heads and chopping through limbs. A small pile of headless flesh-draped skeletons was growing at his feet. Sean was firing his darts at everything that moved, even hitting a few of the animated dead. However, because his darts were so thin and the skeleton’s bodies lacked any substantial muscle or tissue, his projectiles had little effect on them. Most shot straight through and came out the other side. A trio of the dead warriors were backing him toward the circular stone altar.

Deciding Chris was doing fine on his own, I charged to Sean’s aid. With a swing of my fist, a spear-thrusting skeleton’s flesh ripped at the hairline and the skull sailed over the hedge mage, smacking into the wall. Another—this one wielding a war club—I grabbed by the neck and lifted high into the air before smashing it to the floor with the creaking crunch of metal-covered bone. The last had circled around me, darting for Sean, a blunt club whipping through the air. Surprisingly, Sean was ready. He bolted left, avoiding the club by inches, then kicked the skeleton’s legs out from beneath it.

I rushed forward, raised my leg over my head, and brought it down in a brutal axe kick that decimated its skull.

I spun, searching for another target, but found only inanimate remains.

“Did you see that?” Sean yelled. “I shot, like, fifty darts! Not a single misfire! Plus I basically Chuck Norrised the hell out of that last one. Feet of fury!”

“Nice work,” Chris said, resting the flat side of the obsidian-bladed machuahuitl on his shoulder.

“It is no time for celebration,” I barked, heading for the door the yahui had disappeared into. Yes, we’d dispatched the creatures, but I could not help but see them as the children they had once been. Their lives stolen away, their souls pressed into cruel subjugation. “We cannot allow him to escape. Let us go.”

Through the door was a flight of stairs leading upward and around a blind corner. I sprinted up to the landing, legs pumping furiously, but as I rounded the corner a spear whistled past my face, narrowly missing my cheekbone. The yahui stood on the next landing, loading another spear into a bone atlatl. A quiver of extra spears hung over his arm.

“You think you can come in here and fight me?” the yahui yelled, winging another spear. I ducked back behind the corner. “I’m my master’s chosen vessel, bigfoot! You can’t beat us!”

Chris and Sean caught up to me. I flung out my arms, stopping them from stepping into the path of the yahui’s spears.

“Together, our power is greater than you can even imagine!” the yahui ranted. Another spear clattered against the wall of the landing. “I’ll kill you all and stick your skulls on the tzompantli for decoration! Thanks for bringing the key back, by the way—saved me a trip back to your shitty world to pick it up!”

Another spear slammed into the wall.

“He’s trying to hold us off,” Chris said. “He knows he can’t take us in close quarters.”

“How about one of us distract him while you shoot him?” Sean asked. “A bullet’s got to penetrate better than one of my darts.”

Chris shook his head. “I’ve only got two left, and even if I did think I could jump out there and make the headshot, I got a feeling we’ll need them for Achitometl.”

“I’m gonna laugh when we open the Vaults of Teotihuacán!” the yahui screeched, sending another spear flying down the stairs. It hit the wall, chipping away a bit of the stone, and bounced off. “The Quinametzin will eat your stupid world and every last halfie-hating puta in it!”

“You’re destroying the world because you can’t get a date?” Sean shouted. “Now that’s pathetic.”

“Shut up!” the yahui screamed. More spears came sailing down, one after the other, followed by infuriated Spanish cursing.

“How much ammo do you think he’s got up there?” Sean asked.

I closed my eyes, recalling the momentary look I had gotten of the creature. I could see the quiver hanging over his shoulder, but the bundle of spears inside was a jumble in my memory.

“I do not know,” I replied, shaking my head. “It seemed like many.”

“When he gets low, he’ll stop,” Chris said. “He’ll wait for one of us to give him a clear shot. I’ve seen it in standoffs before.”

“Then we cannot wait for him to get comfortable,” I said. “I am the largest and I heal the fastest. I will rush him. This should frighten him and keep him throwing wildly. You two will come up behind me, Sean first, shooting projectiles around me, then you, Chris, with your machuahuitl.” I faltered. “I think we will have to kill him.”

“No doi,” Sean said, cocking an eyebrow at me.

Chris glared at him.

“What’sa matter?” the yahui yelled, flinging another spear down the stairs. “You scared of me, bigfoot? You’re right to be. I am the end of Earth!”

“My people do not kill unless it cannot be avoided,” I explained to Sean. “Deter rather than hurt, hurt rather than maim, and maim rather than kill—it is our law.” I frowned as the following words rang in my head: The truest warrior of peace need never kill. Perhaps I was not a warrior of peace at all. Another spear clattered against the wall and I shook my head. This was no time for doubts. “But if he truly is the vessel for the king to leave this plane and open the vaults, then we cannot allow that vessel to remain habitable. We must destroy it.”

Sean raised his hands. “Hey, Venántum policy is totally on your side here. Let’s kill the turtle bastard.”

This did not dispel the grub of guilt gnawing at the pit of my stomach. I pushed it aside and prepared to sprint, waiting for the next spear to hit. After he fired one, it would take the yahui precious seconds to reload, allowing me to cover a great distance untouched.

“Man, I feel like an asshole for making the girl take all the hits here,” Chris grumbled under his breath, clutching the machuahuitl in both hands.

“Look out,” Sean said, “more sexism from the Dark Ages.”

“You realize I’m holding a club studded with obsidian razor blades that can take your head off in one swipe, right?”

“It is the only logical approach, Chris,” I said over one shoulder. “The passage is narrow enough and I am wide enough to shield you both. The yahui may have the higher ground, but working together, utilizing each of our strengths, we can overpower him. I am certain of it.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Chris muttered. “Let’s just get this over with.”

I nodded and turned back to watch the passage.

“What’re you waiting for, pendejos?” the yahui shouted. “I can hear you down there, crying like a bunch of babies!”

A spear banged off the pitted wall, chipping away another bit of stone. I rounded the corner and sprinted up the stairs, adrenaline pushing me to top speed in a matter of steps.

The yahui’s reptilian eyes, slit down the center, grew wide with fear. He fumbled with the spear he was loading into his atlatl, nearly dropping it. Just as I had hoped.

From behind me came the sound of running footsteps. I raised my arms and roared, taking up as much of the passageway as possible, trying not to think about the bone darts I would likely feel piercing my back at any moment.

Nearly halfway up the staircase, but no bone darts sailed past or hit me yet. Sean let loose a string of curses.

It was of no matter. Chris would be coming up behind him with the machuahuitl. Between the two of us, we would take down the yahui. We would have to.

The yahui finally succeeded in loading the atlatl and launched a spear at me. It stuck in my shoulder, punching in deep enough to grate against bone. Pain lanced out from the wound, radiating down my arm and up into my chest and neck. I steeled myself and wrenched it free, still running, doing my best to ignore the agony. Honestly, it is far easier for a being of my size to keep going than to stop once we have started, even running uphill.

Frantic, the yahui loaded another spear and hurled it without taking aim. It would have zipped past me, but I lunged into its path and took it in my hip, afraid that letting it pass would spell a vital injury for one of my friends. Another fresh wave of pain cascaded through my body, but I was so close.

Sean’s frustrated shouting continued. Now I could hear only one set of footsteps running behind me, the hedge mage likely having stopped to concentrate on reaching the Vis. I pressed on. I was only steps from the top. I jerked the second spear from my hip, turning them both in my hands to use against their master.

The yahui dropped the spear he was loading and swung the atlatl like a club at my head. With the adrenaline coursing through my veins, sharpening every sense, the attack seemed to play out in slow motion. The club sailed toward me, the creature throwing its considerable weight into the blow. But I ducked under with ease—the club whistling through the air above me—then lunged forward, driving my first spear at his chest. It scored a deep line across the shell, but did not break through.

A multitude of screeches rang out overhead, then the air was filled with flapping leathery wings and flint claws. Ruby eyes glinted and six-inch fangs flashed. Camazotz—death bats, each the size of a mountain lion. I raised one spear overhead to stave them off, but the distraction gave the yahui an opportunity to counterstrike. His atlatl lashed out and caught me hard in the mouth, smashing my bottom lip and sending purple blood flying. I stumbled, then spun out of the way of a second attack.

Chris leapt onto the top step beside me, slicing at the camazotz overhead with his machuahuitl. He chopped into a leathery wing, separating the limb just below the shoulder joint. The death bat screeched and slammed into the wall, unable to control its flight with one wing. Chris rushed forward like whitewater, slashing down, beheading the nightmare before it could recover its feet.

The yahui lunged for me again, encouraged by his successful strike. I sidestepped the blow and jabbed once more with my spear. This time it stuck in the shell, but still it did not penetrate deeply enough to do any lasting damage.

The dying shriek of another camazotz rose up behind me. I mentally cheered for Chris. My friend was doing so well, and with a weapon he had only just found today! There is much to be said for human ingenuity, a trait he possessed mountains of.

The yahui tried to dislodge the spear tip by jerking away, but the point would not come out of his hard shell. Seeing my opportunity, I gave a savage yank, pulling him toward me, and drove my other spear upward through the roof of his open, many-toothed mouth and into his brain.

Shock and fury flashed in the yahui’s expression as he died, then a flurry of talons scratched at my face while leathery wings beat at my head and shoulders. I had to turn away, dropping the spear and flinging up my arm to protect my eyes.

Then the attacking camazotz was gone. Sean whooped in victory. I opened my eyes in time to see a death bat fall to the floor, its disproportionately tiny head impaled on a bone dart.

“Back in business, baby!” Sean yelled.

I smiled as I grabbed the atlatl from the dead yahui’s fist. I had no experience launching spears with such a weapon, but I was more than capable of operating a club. With the added three feet of reach, I smashed furry bodies out of the air easily. Wings cracked, skulls caved, teeth exploded on impact. Sean shot dart after dart into the whirling, screeching mass, cheering himself every time he pierced a leathery wing or punctured a beady eye. Chris barreled up beside me, chopping the wounded creatures down and slicing off fanged heads. In a matter of minutes, the last of the camazotz lay in a pile of furry, winged corpses, a pool of their black blood spreading across the landing and running down the stairs in a goopy stream.

As one, the three of us looked up the staircase, prepared for another threat. This one ended at a doorway. Nothing moved to attack.

Chris and Sean sagged against opposite walls.

“Ol’ Seanny came through,” Chris said, smiling at the younger man.

The hedge mage grinned like mad. “Man, when I can get those darts working consistently, I’m gonna be unstoppable!”

“You will be a hunter to be feared,” I agreed. “But from what I have seen, you are already a credit to the Venántum and your family.”

He snorted.

“Yeah, well, tell them.” He looked up the stairs at the doorway. “Going up?”

“Not yet.” I gestured to the yahui’s corpse. “We must dismember him to make certain the king cannot use him as a vessel any longer. May I borrow your machuahuitl, Chris?”

Chris shook his head.

“I’ll do it,” he said. He pointed from my hip to my shoulder. “You’ve already done more than your fair share, fairy princess—time for me to pull my weight. You work on healing those up.”

“I cannot reach Mother Earth from here,” I replied with a shrug which I regretted at once, “but I can bandage them.” Moving a bit more cautiously this time, I pulled the bundle of clothes off my back and began tearing the remains of my pink flannel shirt into strips. “Are either of you injured?”

“Naw. I’m good,” Sean said. “I didn’t get hit. Your meat shield plan worked to perfection.”

I squinted, looking him over. Closer inspection proved this to be true.

“Yeah, I’m fine, too,” Chris said, beginning the gruesome work of chopping up the yahui’s corpse.

“You are not,” I said. He had sustained scratches to his face and arms, and some bladed weapon had sliced through the sleeve of his bloodstained white shirt, carving a gash into the flat straps of muscle in his forearm, dangerously close to a vein.

Ignoring his protests that I worry about myself first, I bandaged up the cut. Such stubborn things humans were. It was only a surprise that he did not start spouting football non sequiturs while I worked.

TWENTY-ONE:

Achitometl’s Tale

When the yahui was no longer useable as a vessel for possession—a grisly task no one enjoyed—and our major wounds were tended to, we climbed the final flight of stairs to the stone doorway above. We were dirty and battered, covered in the red blood of Mictlan’s bordering river, the black blood of the camazotz, and the green blood of the yahui. I ached from a hundred tiny cuts and bruises as well as the larger injuries, but we had to continue on. If we did not cut the head off this snake now, it would rise up again as soon as it found a new vessel—perhaps another halfie angry and disillusioned with humanity—and start this evil once more.

We stepped through the entryway, weapons at the ready, and into a massive room with two enormous circular windows looking out over the crushing mountains of Mictlan toward the verdant forests of Earrach-Tir. The musty scent of age hung in the air like smoke. More oil lamp sconces burned here, illuminating walls of gold encrusted with precious gems in flickering splashes of orange and red. Scenes had been worked into the golden walls—friezes depicting a beautiful young woman wearing the headdress of a goddess commanding legions of giants as they tore through crowds of humans. At her side, an old man stood holding her hand.

“You killed the yahui halfling,” a dry, rasping voice whispered. Along the wall facing the eye-windows stood a dais with a golden throne worked into the shapes of thousands of human bones. A skeletal creature sat on it—something that had formerly been a man, but was now only desiccated flesh, bone, and bitterness—lying back as if he could no longer raise his head. A faded hummingbird feather headdress sat askew on his head, brittle strands of white hair hanging down from its sides. His robes had long since lost their color, and an obsidian amulet shaped like a human skull, edges worn smooth by time and handling, lay on his chest.

“We had to,” I said, stepping forward. “We could not allow him to take you from this place to open the Vaults of Quinametzin.”

“You think to stop me,” the ancient king rasped, weak but fierce, “but you do not even know why I seek this revenge. I was not always as you see me. The people of Tenochtitlán, servants of Huitzilopochtli, they did this to me. Death is their reward for taking from me that which I held most dear.”

As he spoke, dry bits of his lips crumbled and flaked away into dust. “They came to my kingdom one day and laid eyes upon my daughter. They said she was the most beautiful child on the face of the Earth, and they were not wrong. Their war god, Huitzilopochtli, wanted her as his wife—or so they said. She would become a goddess alongside him, they said, the Woman of Discord. I asked my daughter if this was what she wanted, and she agreed, thinking it would please me to have a goddess for a daughter.” His shriveled, cloudy eyes scratched against the insides of the lids as he looked away sorrowfully.

“And I cannot lie, I was pleased, proud to have produced such a beautiful child, so lovely that even the gods took notice. I gave her to them, thinking she would have immortality, power, strength, and eternal happiness.” His leathery fingers creaked as they bound into a fist. “But it was a lie! Upon the day of the wedding, I walked into the temple to see my beloved child standing beside the war god, but strange, unlike herself. Her fingertips hung loose and her face sagged. It was her flesh!” He slammed his fist against the arm of his throne, throwing up a puff of dust. “They flayed my child and hung her skin on a priest of Huitzilopochtli! They said this was the only way she could become his wife! They murdered my daughter! Sacrificed her on what should have been her happiest day!”

Achitometl’s thundering wheeze echoed around the throne room before falling silent.

“You are murdering the beloved daughters and sons of other fathers and sacrificing them so that you may find revenge against those who sacrificed your daughter,” I said.

“Their sons and daughters,” Achitometl corrected, raising one shriveled finger as if proving that what he was doing was different. Brittle bits of skin cracked off and tumbled to the floor. “I am taking from them what they took from me so that I may fulfill my vow to destroy them, every last man, woman, and child who worshipped Huitzilopochtli.”

“I’m not saying I wouldn’t have sworn the same thing,” Chris said, slowly edging forward. “But what you’re saying is crazy. None of those people are alive anymore to take revenge on.”

“Yet the descendants of his followers still thrive,” Achitometl replied, more of his lips flaking away. “On the very same island, on the very same lake my armies chased their ancestors to. The great city Huitzilopochtli claimed he predestined for them. Pah!” A puff of dust erupted from the ancient king’s mouth at the exclamation. “It was a last resort to escape the mighty armies of the Culhúacan! The old war god knew that once I’d thrice sworn the vow, I would never be stopped, so he hid his followers there.”

The ancient king stood to his feet, joints cracking and dried tendons snapping. “For hundreds of years, I have sought my revenge, learning the arts I needed to survive and finding vessels who would carry my spirit from this prison, helping me achieve my vow so my spirit could finally rest. Each time magi from the Guild of the Staff have interfered where they do not belong—but no more! The Guild is broken, and nothing can stop me. Not you. Not Huitzilopochtli himself.” He took a stiff, unnatural step toward us, dust crumbling and falling from beneath his robes like sand as he reached a withered hand toward us. “The only question remaining is which of you will be my new vessel?”

“None,” I replied, cocking the atlatl and leaning it against my shoulder. “We are here to stop you, once and for all.”

“Then you too shall perish, as all who would stand between me and justice shall.” He raised one fragile arm, a pale golden light taking shape around his hand.

One thing I learned during my time with Guild Mage Yancy Lazarus was that sometimes a good offense was the best defense. I sprinted toward the crumbling king, raising the atlatl high, ready to bring it down in a killing blow. Two gunshots rang out, one right after the other, and a spray of dust and chunks of bone exploded from the back of Achitometl’s chest and throat. The king took another jerking step, the glow around his hand guttering uncertainly. Bone darts shot past him and over his head, shattering on the throne and wall behind him.

The twisted words of some ancient chant took shape on his tongue—a spell that scratched at the inside of my skull and put my hair on end.

But before he could finish, I slammed the atlatl down on his skull, crushing the headdress and showering the room with faded feathers, bits of bone, and dried brain matter.

The shrunken, mummified body collapsed and tumbled off the edge of the dais. I sprang backward and held my breath to avoid aspirating a lungful of ancient corpse powder.

“Well,” Sean said, staring down at the pile of bones and dust. “That was surprisingly easy. Good work, team.”

“That’s it?” Chris asked. He was still aiming his sidearm at the pile of what had been Achitometl, though no bullets remained to fire. He shook his head. “Doesn’t add up. This is the guy who killed a bunch of magical badasses? Did we get lucky or is he—”

Deep, reverberating laughter filled the throne room like rolling thunder.

“—about to pull a horror movie villain on us?” Chris finished, nodding to himself. “Of course.” He stashed the pistol in his holster and hefted the machuahuitl in preparation.

I clutched the atlatl with both hands, staring down at the pile of robes and bone dust. The obsidian amulet burst into blue flames a heartbeat later. I sprang at it, smashing the skull-shaped stone with all of my might. The bone head of the atlatl splintered, a plume of cloying smoke drifting up as pieces ricocheted off the amulet in a spray of blue sparks. Bits embedded themselves in my shins, and I could tell by my friends’ cries that they took slivers of the bone shrapnel as well.

Chris lurched forward next, chopping at the amulet with his yahui-bloodstained machuahuitl, but even the sharp obsidian blades—the hardest substance known to man at the time the sword was made—shattered and flew in all directions.

Sean fired bone dart after bone dart, but of course not even the ones that came close to hitting the amulet were any match for its magic. The blue flames spread across Achitometl’s remains, consuming them, and all the while, that booming laughter echoed through the chamber. The obsidian amulet glowed red with otherworldly heat.

As the last of the corpse burned away, a ghostly blue specter rose from its ashes.

Achitometl as he must have been when he lived: a tall, proud man with high cheekbones, a hooked nose, and long, straight hair. He did not come alone, however. As he pulled free of the ashes, something else followed, clinging to his legs like an overgrown leech. It was a writhing black hole like the maw of some fearsome dragon, covered in spikes. On some intuitive level, I knew it was the embodiment of his hatred.

This mouth consumed Achitometl’s spirit, chewing through the ghostly form and spitting out something warped and evil. Demonic. The once proud king floated distorted before us, his spine humped and spiked. Long, curling talons sprouted from his fingers, and gnashing teeth, too large for his mouth, ripped through his once handsome lips, sending strings of electric-blue drool down his concave chest.

My mind raced, searching for what to do. He was vulnerable now, an evil spirit without a vessel. If I prayed to the holy people in this faraway place, would they hear me? I had never tried outside of the Sacred Grove or Earth.

I could think of nothing else to do. I took a breath, prepared to sing—to cry out in intercession—but when I opened my mouth to sing the first note, the warped and twisted apparition of Achitometl leapt into my body.

TWENTY-TWO:

Ancient Deceit

The throne room disappeared, and I found myself standing at my father’s bedside. But Chief Chankoowashtay was not the powerful, strong Chiye-tanka I knew. No, his eyes had shrunken into his skull, and his body was stooped and frail with age, his lustrous hair thin and patchy. My heart grew sick as I watched his trembling hand reach out. This could not be my father. Chief Chankoowashtay was too strong, too great to descend into old age like any other Elder. My father was mighty, a hero to his people and to me. He would never end like this.

“This is a lie,” I growled, throat hoarse with tears.

“You are a good daughter to your father, Princess Winona,” a deep, smooth voice said. “Dedicated and loving.”

I turned to find Achitometl standing beside me, once again in his ruler’s robes, body returned to its proud, untainted form. I lunged at him, my fist slipping through his chest unhindered.

“But your people are dying. Even your father, strong though he is now, will succumb to time. And who will replace him? You? Perhaps. But the People dwindle, child of the forest.”

Suddenly, I was standing at the foot of the Great Redwood. The fighting force of Chiye-tanka was lined up as if in preparation for another class, but the ranks were shamefully bare. Kanti and several of the older People were missing. No Elders stood at the front of the crowd watching. Chiye-tanka I had grown up with, men like Nakoma and Enyeto, were hunched, toothless and weak, their eyes dim with age.

“This is false as well,” I said, balling hands into tight fists. I shook my head. “This is not happening.”

“False? No. I am showing you the future of the People of Peace,” Achitometl replied, smooth, confident, yet simultaneously consoling. “You are a great people, but you cannot continue to exist when so few are born to you—and fewer every year. Your People are not different from the other tribes, Princess. None of them remain, and as they have gone, so you shall go.”

We stood inside the Great Redwood then, near elderly Chiye-tanka I had grown up with. All stared with teary eyes at a mother holding a newborn babe. It was the last of us. The mother and her mate were old, dying, and still they were the youngest among us save the child. There would be no one to raise it. No one to teach it. To sing the old songs. No mate to love it and no children to continue the Chiye-tanka race. My heart ached for its lonely existence, for the hungry, sad life it would lead.

“You are the last great princess of your kind, Winona Treesinger. But I can make it so that you will not be.” He lifted a hand, golden light breaking from his palm.

Suddenly, I saw my father rising up from his deathbed, years and strength returning to his body. This was the powerful chief that I knew, the father I adored. My heart swelled with love and pride at the sight of him.

“I know the way to strengthen your people,” Achitometl said. “The world is better for your kind. There is no reason it needs to lose you.”

Hundreds upon hundreds of Chiye-tanka filled the Sacred Grove, People of all ages. Ranks of People trained to protect our Little Brothers and Sisters, so many that several instructors had taken up the job. Tears of joy filled my eyes as I watched children running and playing amongst the Great Trees, and more sitting and learning at the feet of the Elders. Little ones! Our people flourished, thrived where once we had withered.

“In my long life, I have learned things that not even the People know. I can return birth and life to your kind. I can take away the cycle of death, and grow them until they thrive once more.”

I reached up and wiped the tears from my eyes with the back of one hand. In my mind, I could once more see my beloved Achak, the promised son of the People. The ghost of a regal-looking Chiye-tanka with a mane of lush black hair, broad shoulders, fierce green eyes, and a noble bearing. He had been a rebel with wild, unconventional notions—not so different from me—but a good heart. He had loved his people with true passion, yet he had made an evil compact. He had traded his freedom to Hogg and to a Greater Guttur Belua, for just such power.

“Achak Kinslayer once said something much the same to me,” I replied, my voice shaking and unsteady. I would mourn my Achak always, but I would not repeat his mistake. “The People are dying, it is true, but this is the way of things. Nothing comes of circumventing the natural order except pain and destruction. I have seen it before, and I will not be a part of it.”

“You’re right to shun evil, Princess,” Achitometl said. “It must be destroyed root and branch wherever it’s found. With my help, you could rid the world of its awful taint, destroy all malicious spirits and demons. Together, we could bring about an age of safety and righteousness, fulfill the purpose the People of Peace were created for.”

“There is nothing you can entice me with, Achitometl.”

“Nothing?” Achitometl asked. The golden glow within his hand burned brighter, a falling star filling the world with its light.

It vanished as quickly as it had come.

But now I stood in my room, surrounded by the shelves of cures and herbs, cradling a newborn of my own, a baby with bright red hair and eyes the healthy green of summer algae. She smiled at me, twisting tiny fingers in my hair, and my heart broke with love for my child. The sacred continuation of life and love embodied, she was at once the future of our people, and mine, my very own.

I shut my eyes, unable to bear this any longer.

“Anything that would come from your evil will bring only more evil,” I said, more to remind myself than anything else. “You are a liar and a tempter. Your promises are empty, spouted only to achieve your revenge at any cost.”

Achitometl growled, returning to his hunched, twisted demonic form.

“I want you to remember all of this while your people waste away, Princess,” he hissed. “You could have saved them, could have been the greatest chief in their history, spoken of in glory and greatness. But you chose to abandon them instead.”

The world around me faded as black crept in all around me, enveloping me in cold, hopeless desperation. And then I was back in the throne room, clutching the broken remains of the atlatl, holding it tight to my chest as though it were the baby girl I would never touch. Is this my legacy? I wondered briefly, staring at the bloody club. Am I nothing more than violence and bloodshed?

“Winona?” Chris asked hesitantly, as if he were not sure I was here. He inched closer, concern etched into the lines of his face as he reached toward me. “Are you—”

“You?” Sean finished. “Like for reals? Or are you the bad guy now?”

Before I could answer, another flash of gold filled the room. Chris staggered backward a step, his eyes glowing with an ethereal light.

“Think of them,” Achitometl’s voice echoed from Chris’s mouth. “The murderers, rapists, monsters you could stop. The victims you could save. I know ways to find them before they draw blood, ways to stop them before they attack.”

“Chris, it is a lie!” I shouted desperately. “Do not listen to him!”

Chris’s chest hitched as if he had been kicked in the stomach, and his lips pulled back in a grimace.

“Your sister knows nothing of the true dangers that creep through her world unseen,” Achitometl whispered through Chris’s mouth. “She sends her sons off to school and lets them go outside to play every day as if it won’t be their last, as if they won’t die screaming and afraid, food for the monsters. I know spells that will guard them. They’ll never have to know what evil lurks just beyond your protection. With my help, you’ll be powerful enough to save them, no longer a weak human with nothing but a useless gun.”

“You must resist his lies, Chris!” I grabbed his arm. Chris’s entire body trembled at whatever horrors Achitometl was showing him. “He will give you nothing that he promises! He is only trying to frighten you into submitting!”

“You would see them die?” Achitometl spat. “You would allow your own flesh and blood to be torn apart? You are no man, you are a coward. Remember this when their blood runs through your fingers, Detective Christopher Fuller—with my help, you could have saved them. Instead you chose to let them die.”

The flash of gold light came again, searing yellow afterimages onto the backs of my eyelids.

As Achitometl left him, Chris lashed out, swinging his machuahuitl in a savage arc meant to cleave through muscle and bone. I ducked out of the way just in time, the wind of the near miss ruffling my hair in its wake. Chris’s face was twisted in a savage snarl, but his eyes had returned to their natural loamy darkness once more. He too had rejected Achitometl. He too had passed the test—resisted a devil not even my beloved Achak had bested.

Fiery pride burned inside me for my friend. Not simply a frail, hairless human, but a creature with a blazing courage and fierce determination to do the right thing.

“Where is he?” Chris demanded, whirling with the machuahuitl raised, searching for a target. “Show yourself, you bastard!”

The booming laughter came from behind me this time. I turned slowly, heart sinking, knowing what I would see.

Sean’s eyes glowed gold like the rising sun.

“I see that you have already begun to come into your own,” Achitometl said, though it was Sean’s lips that moved. “You can reach the Vis sometimes, but it is unreliable. I can show you how to tap into a deeper power—into the power of Nox. The power of death. Wielding the two great powers, you will be truly unstoppable. The Guild of the Staff didn’t appreciate you, didn’t recognize your potential, but together we will make them see.”

“Sean, no!” I cried. “Vim is the darkness, the ruination of all things! No good can come of it!”

“Your name will go down in Venántum history as the greatest hunter of all time,” Achitometl said. “Your family—your great lineage—will be remembered because of you. You’ll defeat evils your family has never dreamed of, save the world countless times. Together, we’ll show them. Every single one. No one will ever laugh at you again.”

“Fight it, Sean,” Chris shouted, knuckles turning white as he gripped the handle of his weapon.

“Imagine what you could be,” Achitometl said. “You’ve always known in your heart that this was your destiny, that you were special among your family. With my help, you’ll finally be what your parents always wished you were. Strong, powerful. The runt of the litter no more—now the hunter you were born to be! Women. Money. Power. Fame. A seat on the Guild’s Elder Council, perhaps? All could be yours.”

“Do not listen to him, Sean!” I shouted. “It is lies! Only lies!”

“How they’ll look at you.” Achitometl’s voice had turned to a whisper, all smooth admiration and amazement. “They’ll love you more than they ever loved your brothers, the way they’ve never loved you. See the adoration in your mother’s smile. Your father will beg you to fight at his side. Look at his eyes, Sean, see the pride in his loving gaze!”

Joyful wonder illuminated Sean’s face as he stared into a future Achitometl would never give him.

“You must fight, Sean,” I begged, desperation turning my voice hoarse. “Your family loves you just as you are.”

“Come on, Sean, you can do it,” Chris said. His jaw hardened with anger. “Kick the bastard out!”

“I …” Sean looked from me to Chris, his eyes burning yellow like fool’s gold, which was exactly what Achitometl’s promises were. Fool’s gold. Tears spilled over his dark lashes and ran down his cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

He raised both hands, pointing one at me and the other at Chris. I tried to dive aside, but was not fast enough. With a crack of lightning that shook the fortress, obsidian spears flew from his palms. One pierced my left leg. The force of the projectile threw me across the throne room, embedding the spear in the stone and pinning me to the wall.

I tried to get my hands beneath me, to push myself up and take the weight off of my impaled leg, but I could not twist far enough. All of my weight hung on the spike. Agony radiated from it, bringing on waves of nausea. Across the room, I heard Chris cursing in pain. He had been speared through his forearm and stuck to the opposite wall. The sulfuric smell of Nox filled the room.

Sean came to me and grabbed the bundle of clothes, snapping the rawhide cord from around my neck. He took Ichtacka’s dagger, then tossed the bundle aside.

“Sean, there is still time,” I begged, teeth gritted against the pain. “You can reject him. Your spirit is stronger than his. Please believe me.”

“You’re wrong,” Achitometl snapped with Sean’s mouth. “He’s strong with me. Without me, he’s nothing.”

He went to the pile of ash that had once been his body and picked up the medallion. Sean’s flesh sizzled against the hot obsidian, but he did not cry out or give any sign of feeling pain. He hung the medallion around his neck. It went from red-hot to cold and black almost immediately.

With a final look back over his shoulder from me to Chris, Achitometl strode from the throne room wearing the body of our friend.

TWENTY-THREE:

Walk of Shame

I braced the foot of my undamaged leg against the stone wall and yanked at the obsidian spear with both hands. The projectile was ridged like Sean’s bone darts, but much larger, with an almost braided texture, and I felt every bump as it slid out of my torn thigh. Chris’s cursing grew muffled and distant as warm blackness crept in at the edges of my vision. I had to stop for a time and focus on breathing to keep from losing consciousness. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Slow and steady.

Once the black had receded—only bright sparks of white worming around my vision from the pain—and the world had stopped reeling beneath me, I resumed the extraction. Inch by painful inch.

With a final shout of effort, the obsidian spear came unstuck from the wall, dumping me onto the floor. I pressed my sweat-slick face to cold stone, basking in its heavenly chill.

“Winona, you all right?” Chris called. “Can you hear me?”

“I should never have allowed you to come here,” I whispered. “I should have sent the both of you home at my first misgivings.”

“I need you to speak up, fairy princess,” Chris cajoled. “Are you okay? Talk to me.”

“Stupid. Self-centered. I thought he must be stopped at all costs, but I wish …”

I rolled over and found the bundle of clothes Sean had discarded. I did not have enough flannel left to wind round my thigh in my true form, so I fastened the amulet around my neck.

The transformation song echoed shrill and unforgiving in my ears. A jumble of too-loud, too-harsh sound. I cringed away from the noise as my body shrunk and compressed into the Little Sister’s I had become so accustomed to. As the music died away, I swallowed past the ache in my throat. It would be so easy to start weeping and never stop.

“Damn kid,” Chris growled, drawing my attention back to the present. My friend was still impaled. He needed me. “Come on, Winona, how we doing over there?”

I sat up with a grunt and a grimace, and promptly set about bandaging my thigh with the remaining flannel. The process was agony. The wound was ferociously deep, the edges rough and ragged, despite the glassy surface of the obsidian spear. Somehow Sean had managed to miss both my femur and my femoral artery, which would have been deadly. I tied off the shirt—cinching it tight to staunch the blood flow—forced myself to my feet, and limped across the throne room to Chris.

His complexion had gone ashen, face twisted in pain, and his sandy hair was matted to his forehead with sweat in wet spikes. I grabbed the obsidian spear pinning his forearm to the wall and opened my mouth to tell him that this would hurt terribly, but could find no breath to force the words past my lips.

Chris gritted his teeth and nodded. Get it done.

I wrapped my fingers around the shaft, knuckles going white, and pulled with all my might. Chris’s scream battered my eardrums as the obsidian spit slid from his arm and came loose. Free of the spike, he slipped down the wall and collapsed on the floor, cradling his arm to his stomach. He readjusted his position, propping his back against the wall, legs sprawled out in front of him. A second later he slumped to the left and vomited onto the floor, then wiped his mouth with the back of his good hand.

Gingerly, I lowered myself down beside him—opposite the vomit, of course—and leaned against the wall, glad to be off my throbbing leg.

“Perhaps,” I said, my voice flat and lifeless, “he was in control enough to ensure that these spears hit us in nonlethal places. He could easily have allowed Achitometl to kill us both.”

“We should’ve seen this coming,” Chris said quietly, shaking his head. “Made fun of and kicked around his whole life? So gung-ho to show everybody? He didn’t stand a chance.” Chris dropped his chin, clenching one fist. “His profile was a recipe for disaster, but I ignored it.”

I closed my eyes and rested my head back against the wall. “I am so certain his family loves him. Those things, they would never ask them of him. They were only what he thought they wanted—what he wanted from himself.”

“Well, now he can finally show everybody what a big shot he is,” Chris said bitterly. “He’ll go down in history all right. As the guy who destroyed half of Mexico.”

“Chris—”

“No, Winona,” he snapped. “They’re all good kids until they get their hands on an AR15.”

I did not have the emotional stamina left to argue. I grabbed the scraps of denim left from my jeans and gently tied them around Chris’s bleeding forearm, running a thumb along the swollen red skin surrounding the wound. When we made it back to the Sacred Grove, I would treat both of our injuries properly.

“We must go,” I said wearily. “He may be finding a final sacrifice even now. As soon as Father Sun touches the body, Ichtacka will be called from the key to consume it, and the counting will be fulfilled. We are the only ones who can stop him.”

Chris nodded, his mouth set in a thin, firm line, and rose. He unbuttoned his white shirt, untucking it from his pants and slipping it from beneath his holster. Underneath he wore a formerly white undershirt, now heavily stained with blood in a variety of hues, both new and old.

“Here,” he said, handing his button-up shirt to me. “I don’t know what happened to my jacket. I had it on last night, but can’t remember if I took it off when we made camp or what.” He ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “Everything about this trip is such a blur.”

“Thank you,” I said, slipping the shirt on, slowly working the buttons. Taking the clothing without protest was the only solace I could think to give my friend, as perhaps the shirt was the only solace he could think to give me. The fabric was stiff with blood, but warm from the heat of his body. Comforting.

“We need to gather up the skin suits downstairs,” Chris said. “That’s twenty missing persons cases, twenty sets of parents who have no idea what happened to their kids.”

I led the way to the door, still buttoning the shirt.

“What will you say to your colleagues?” I asked. “How will you explain finding so many?”

Thinking about work appeared to drain a measure of the anger from Chris’s expression. He sighed and stooped, scooping the obsidian-edged machuahuitl from the floor where it had fallen during the scuffle.

“They’ll have already searched the mountain Mariposa was found on,” he said, using the wall for support as we descended the stairs. “So I’ll find a place around Blue Mountain—that’s the last place I checked in—say I got an anonymous tip from somebody hunting illegally in the area. Know of any caves around there where a sicko might stash a bunch of trophies from his kills?”

I nodded. “There are a few which will suffice.”

In the altar room, we bent to the grisly task of gathering the flesh of the sacrifice victims and removing the golden skeletons from within. We found some cord and tied the hides into a bundle I could carry on my back. They were surprisingly heavy and reeked of dried blood and rotten meat. I shouldered them, grateful for the manual distraction. I could not bear to think about what must be done to stop Achitometl now that our friend was his vessel.

We took one of the burning oil sconces from the wall, then left the fortress behind. With the fire in our hands, the crashing mountains allowed us to pass unharmed. The great obsidian plain seemed to flow by us under the light of the waxing moon and the bright twinkle of stars, powerfully close as celestial objects only are in Outworld. The hedge mage traveled with us like a specter of the mind, haunting us with every step, reminding us of what was to come. Neither of us spoke of Sean, but whenever I winced, it was not the pain in my leg I felt, and whenever Chris muttered under his breath, it was not his injuries he was cursing.

The smooth, featureless landscape was empty of anything save for the piles of bones. Unable to hold the disturbing truth at bay any longer, my mind kept circling around to what had happened. Achitometl was like nothing I had ever seen or read about. He had once been a man—perhaps even up until the moment we had destroyed his body—but now his spirit could leap into the bodies of others without their permission. Even demons needed an invitation of sorts to enter sentient creatures, but Achitometl only needed permission to stay.

Either way, the ancient king’s magic was the darkest I had ever known, driven entirely by hatred and spite, and yet frighteningly seductive. So seductive that it had stolen our friend.

Then, too, there was the problem of defeating Achitometl. The obsidian medallion seemed tied to whether or not his spirit could survive outside of a living vessel, but we had been unable to destroy it. Our failure had allowed his spirit to invade each of us to find one suitable for possession.

There were only two ways I knew to end a possession: either Sean had to reject Achitometl on his own or we would have to kill him.

Though the air around me and the obsidian beneath my feet were warm, a coldness seeped into my limbs. I looked at Chris trudging along beside me. He would have to be told what we must do. He must be prepared for the worst. But I could not do it. The words would not come.

If only I had not been so arrogant as to drag my friends into Mictlan. The jaguar had warned me what would happen, but I had convinced myself that stopping Achitometl justified any ends, no matter how costly.

When we reached the jaguar’s bridge, the moon and stars had shifted a quarter turn across the night sky. The ruby waves of the river of blood looked dull and leaden in the silvery light.

The jaguar arched his back and stretched as we approached.

“When I saw Achitometl leaving these lands, I didn’t think I would see you two again,” he purred. His eyes caught the moonlight and shined like mirrors. “Worse for the wear, but inexplicably alive. This is certainly a pleasant surprise, Sister.”

My heart lurched in my chest at the mention of the evil king’s name.

“How long ago did he pass, Brother Jaguar?”

“An hour, perhaps two.”

“So, he can’t just magic himself to Inworld?” Chris asked.

“We are all bound in one way or another,” the jaguar said, favoring him with a patronizing smile. He yawned and flopped on the grass. “I don’t recall the two of you being so dull the first time we spoke. If I had known Achitometl was going to kill your conversation skills, I would never have let you cross into Mictlan.”

“I apologize, Brother,” I said, “but we are not good company now. I have no strength to banter with you, and our quarry has outpaced us. Perhaps someday I can return under better circumstances, and we can speak at leisure?”

“I look forward to it.” The jaguar dipped his head regally as if granting me a royal favor.

Chris and I traveled on into Earrach-Tir.

The sculpted forest seemed to hum with unheard voices in the night. I did not feel like trying to listen in and hear what they were saying. Millions of lives depended on us. Stripped of any posturing or pride by the urgency and weight of the task we were facing, I reached out to Mother Earth and asked if she would please heal me. I felt so cold and brittle inside that I could not imagine her answering me, but she responded immediately, eager as always to show her love for one of her children even at so great a distance. Each time the soles of my feet touched the ground, the tender warmth that spread upward felt like an electrical shock to my heart. The wounds in my thigh, hip, and shoulder knit themselves, and though I knew pain came with the healing, I could hardly feel it.

Memories of Sean leaning in to record the process on his phone kept floating to the surface of my mind.

As the moon and stars continued their trek toward morning, Chris’s limping steps grew slower and slower, until his feet dragged and he staggered from one tree trunk to the next to keep himself upright.

When my wounds had been healed and my energy restored, I removed Chris’s shirt and handed it back to him, then took off the bandages and the amulet and returned to my true form. I was strong enough in human form to carry Chris, but the height difference would have made the journey unnecessarily awkward.

“This will be much faster if I carry you the rest of the way to Freyr’s hall,” I explained, seeing the confusion on his face.

He nodded, then stripped off his holster, shook his shirt out, and shrugged it on. With tired, clumsy movements, he started fastening the buttons.

“We’re going to have to kill the kid, aren’t we?” he asked me in a voice hoarse from thirst and exhaustion.

I watched my friend’s fingers fumble with the buttons, unable to look him in the eyes.

“It is very likely,” I admitted finally.

Chris sighed. “Shit.”

We did not speak again the rest of the way to the Spring Court. Chris’s curse had summed up the choices that lay in our future too well for elaboration.

TWENTY-FOUR:

Home Sweet Home

The moon had gone to bed and the steely gray of dawn was lightening the horizon when we made it back to Freyr’s hall. I found Fearnóg and asked her to open a portal to the Sacred Grove by right of the blessing Freyr had bestowed upon me before leaving. Had this blessing not been given, I likely would have had to bargain with something that would put me at a great disadvantage to the scion or her liege in the future. As it was, the Green Man still tried to get me to accept food, gifts, favors, and other forms of payment for killing the yahui witch who had been stalking his lands.

I turned each offer down as politely as possible.

To accept payment from another ruler would imply that I, and by extension, the People I would one day be chieftain of, was his paid servant. It was a distinction of hairs’ breadths—portals opened by right of blessings freely given or payments bestowed for a quest completed but never accepted—but for a people as cunning and tricky as the fae, a vastly important one. Luckily for us, Chris and I managed to step through the portal unbeholden to any of the Spring Court and walked into the comforting embrace of the Sacred Grove.

The People were going about their early morning routines among the dwellings in the branches and on the grassy carpet at the foot of the Great Trees. Many stopped and stared, the customary polite greetings frozen in their minds. They could only watch as their princess hurried by, hair matted with a rainbow of dried blood, accompanied by a human. An armed and conscious human, also covered in crusty blood.

Chris’s dark eyes scanned the Great Trees as we walked, taking in the soft chirping of morning birdsong and the sheer beauty and peace of the Sacred Grove. It was a sight most humans would never see, and though he was clearly impressed, this was not enough to ease the gravity of the battle that lay ahead of us.

At the door to the Great Redwood, I found Nakoma standing sentry. Though of an age with me, Nakoma took great pride in seeming dignified beyond his years. As we approached, he tried desperately to show how indifferent he was to both my appearance and the human who walked beside me. Still, a small crease appeared above the bridge of his nose, and his hands balled into hulking fists.

Princess, he sent, opening the door and stepping a bit farther out of our way than necessary to allow passage.

Thank you, I sent to him. The image of him weak, toothless, and nearing death battered against the wall I had erected between our consciousnesses.

I hurried Chris through the great room at ground level—not wishing to be assaulted by the images of the final child of the People surrounded by elderly, dying Chiye-tanka—and up the spiraling staircase to my room on the ninth level of the Great Redwood. Though I considered my friend to be in good health for a human, by the time we made it to my room, his respiration was labored and a sheen of sweat stood out on his forehead.

“I am sorry,” I said, feeling thoughtless and stupid for having forgotten the frailty of human constitutions. “You are wounded and tired. I should have carried you up.”

“’S fine,” he huffed. With his undamaged arm, Chris braced himself against one of the shelves growing from my wall, fighting to regain his breath. “Just those stairs. Built a little taller than I’m used to.”

“Please, sit down and rest,” I said, directing him to my pallet. “Lie down if you would like.”

While Chris looked on, I prepared the cures to dress his wounds. First I applied a distillate of lavender and ashwagandha root to disinfect, then handed Chris one of the small, slimy gray glands I had harvested from a Little Brother of the Blade—the reptilian offspring of the Lamia, who dwelled in the sewers beneath the Hub—to begin regeneration of his damaged tissue.

“What is it?” Chris asked, rolling it around on his palm. It left a shiny wet trail behind, faintly oily.

“It is better if you do not know,” I mumbled in reply. “But I have treated you with one before, the first time I brought you here. Its regenerative effect reacted quite well with your physiology.”

He stared down at the gland, unconvinced. “Do you know what a rocky mountain oyster is? Because this looks like a really tiny one that’s gone bad.”

“This is not a shellfish,” I said.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“You must swallow it.”

He grimaced. “Do I have to chew it up?”

I paused, grimacing as well. “I would not recommend that.”

Chris closed his eyes and tipped the gland into his mouth. I could not help but feel sympathy for my friend as he shuddered—I recalled too well the putrid taste it left behind, a combination of decaying fish and the pus of an infected abscess—but he managed to force it down without vomiting.

I held a stick of licorice root out to him.

“This will help with the taste.” It would also help with his fatigue, but I did not say so. At the moment, the flavor assaulting his mouth was likely his most urgent concern. “You do have to chew it.”

He put the stick in his mouth and bit down cautiously. As the sweet cleanliness of the licorice filled his mouth, his posture relaxed.

“Beats whatever that other thing was.” He switched the stick to the other side of his mouth. “Look, Winona, I know we don’t want to talk about this, but we need to figure out what the plan is from here. We need to talk about Sean, like it or not.”

I turned away from him and began returning the jars and dried herbs to my shelves. “We should eat, and you should rest. Your body will heal much fas—”

“The plan for killing him,” Chris said quietly.

I cringed.

“Where is he now, how do we get there, how do we stop him,” Chris continued. “That kind of thing.”

“The sun has risen,” I said, coming to kneel before the pallet. “We should assume that he has already made the final sacrifice and Ichtacka has carried its essence to the key. He will then have to go to the ruins of Teotihuacán to open the Vaults of Quinametzin. That is where we will find him.”

“Think he’s already done it?”

I glanced out my window at the warm glow of Father Sun and shook my head.

“The Vaults are ancient, their closing tied to the fall of the First Sun,” I said. “To disturb them will cause a great disruption. I believe we will know when they are opened. There will be signs.”

“And sixty-foot giants,” Chris added.

I nodded. “Yes, that too.”

“How do you kill them, quinametzin?” he asked.

“If their internal anatomy is similar to a human’s or Chiye-tanka’s—and I believe it is, from the codices I have read—then any wound that would prove fatal to one of us will kill one of them.” I shrugged. “Just much larger.”

“I don’t think the sheriff’s department has access to any heavy artillery. I’ve got the shottie and a box of armor-piercing incendiary rounds in the cruiser. Your people have anything we can use?”

“Tomahawks, spears, bows and arrows, war clubs, and bolas,” I said. “Though I have never had to use any in a combat situation.”

Chris took a deep breath and blew it out.

“Is there any way around it?” he asked. “Fighting, I mean? Some way to maybe stop this ritual before it gets underway?”

I had been asking myself the same question since we left Achitometl’s fortress. “If he can reject Achitometl,” I said after a moment, finding it impossible to say our friend’s name.

Chris chewed thoughtfully. I traced the living woodgrain of the floor with my eyes.

Neither of us mentioned the fact that Sean had not been able to reject Achitometl in the throne room.

The door to my bedroom banged open, rattling the ingredients on my shelves and making us both jump. My father strode into the room, all nine feet four inches of him boiling with fury.

Are you hurt? he demanded. His moss green eyes traveled over me from head to foot, taking in the blood and gore. The entire Grove is claiming that you were mortally wounded. What did this?

I intended to assure my father that I was fine, but I saw in that moment his sincere desire to rip apart whatever had harmed me. The lines in his face, the way he stood—back straight, chest forward, fingers flexing—told me he was both furious and frustrated that he had failed to protect me. I tried to speak, but the image of my father lying weak, shrunken, and helpless on his deathbed pierced my heart anew. Instead, I threw myself into his arms, sobbing as I had not done since I was a small girl.

My father stumbled back a step, surprised by my outburst, then hugged me close and patted my back.

Did this thing hurt you? he asked, glaring at Chris over my shoulder. Was it his fault?

I heard Chris shift on the pallet, perhaps steeling himself for an attack.

It is awful, Father, I wept. I allowed the memories of the past day to run through my mind, giving him full view of the sacrifice, Achitometl’s plans for the key, and what the ancient king had done to Sean. Millions will be killed if we do not stop Achitometl, but I do not know how to do so without killing our friend. I have tried and tried, but I cannot see another way.

My father tried to run his fingers through my hair as he had when I was a girl, but stopped when they tangled and ripped where the blood had matted into formidable clumps.

“Show me again the moment when his spirit left the remains,” my father said aloud.

Realizing that in my distress I had been speaking mind-to-mind and completely excluding Chris from the conversation, I stepped back and took a moment to compose myself.

“Yes, of course,” I said, recalling the blue flames, the skull-shaped piece of obsidian glowing red, and Achitometl’s spirit rising from the ashes in the clutches of his own burning hatred. I wiped my eyes and sniffed. “I do not know what the medallion is, but it must somehow be tied to his ability to remain on this plane in spirit form.”

“You tried to destroy this medallion?” my father asked, his voice the deep rumble of an earthquake.

“With bone and obsidian,” I said, showing him the memory of my and Chris’s weapons shattering and Sean’s bone darts bouncing off. “Neither so much as chipped it.”

My father nodded. “I have seen this once before. Some mages learn through ambition or desperation the dark magicks required to tie their spirit to an object. In doing so, they become a powerful lich, unkillable as long as the object is not destroyed.”

Chris appeared at my side. “So, it’s a phylactery?”

My father threw his hands up in frustration.

“If you already knew what it was, why did you not say so?” he snapped.

“There’s a pretty damn big difference between realizing you’ve got to destroy a phylactery to kill the boss in a video game and making the same connection in real life,” Chris retorted, returning my father’s glare as if the chief could not tear his head off and toss it out the window with a flick of his hands. “Now that we know what it is, how do we destroy it? There’s usually a trick to it, right?”

A good friend would have cautioned Chris at that moment that my father was not disposed to suffer insolence from any being, let alone a puny human, but I could only look on, astounded that my friend knew more about a creature of the spirit world than I did. Perhaps I should not have overlooked video games in my studies.

“This is true,” my father said begrudgingly, a scowl carved into his face. “Because they are so intent on remaining tied to this plane, liches tend to protect their phylacteries with the strongest provisions they know. The one I knew of could not be destroyed by anything but its maker.”

“How did you defeat this lich?” I asked.

“I did not,” my father growled. “The Guild of the Staff approached the Elders about it while my father, Chief Tahatan, still governed the People.” Our history with the Guild was a long and complicated one, the relationships strained at best. At my startled expression, he explained, “This was long before they became know-it-all tyrants bent on policing peoples older and wiser than themselves. The Guild’s strongest mages could not destroy his phylactery, so Chief Tahatan recommended trapping the lich in Outworld.”

“Let me guess,” Chris said. “In Mictlan, specifically.”

My father nodded.

“Great.” Chris rubbed his eyes wearily. “So nothing’s happening to that medallion unless Achitometl decides he’s tired of living.”

“Which will not happen until he has had his revenge on Tenochtilán,” I said slowly, even as a new plan formed in my mind. “What if I asked the holy people to trap him once more? The Great Thunderer would do so, do you not think? It is his passion to rid Inworld of all evil spirits.”

“Our holy people have no authority over Mictlan,” my father said, folding tree-trunk arms across his barrel chest. “But …” He faltered, tilting his head to one side. “But there is one who knows the working to trap the lich’s body in one place. She taught it to the mages who came to us seeking guidance about Achitometl.”

My breath froze in my chest, and I cringed, certain I knew whose name my father would speak next. “Elder Mahal,” he said.

TWENTY-FIVE:

Army of the People

We found Elder Mahal sitting on a cushion in a patch of sunlight behind the Great Redwood. She appeared to be dozing peacefully, her lined face nodding closer and closer to the blanket draped over her shoulders and wrapped around her chest. I knelt at a respectful distance in front of her, motioning for Chris to do the same beside me.

Very gently, I reached out to her mind. Elder Mahal?

She did not startle, but opened her eyes and smiled. “Princess, you have brought your human detective, the very good man who was also named Friend of the People.”

Chris looked at me, one eyebrow raised. I looked away. I could not tell whether Mahal was mocking me by throwing my words back in my face or only delivering a friendly ribbing, but I felt heat rising to my cheeks all the same.

“Elder, we have come seeking knowledge,” I said, forging on in spite of my embarrassment. “My father told us you once showed human mages the way to trap a lich in his home world. The lich has escaped and will murder millions if we cannot return him there once more. Will you teach me the working to cast the trap?”

“It did not keep him there the first time, Winona,” Mahal said as if lecturing a child. She shrugged her shoulders and delicately plucked a bit of string off her knee. “To try the same tactic again and expect different results is nonsense.”

“What you say is true,” I replied, inclining my head in acknowledgement, “but it took him years and years to escape that time. Please, Elder, he has taken our friend as his new vessel. I do not see the trap as anything but a temporary measure to protect the people the lich wishes to slaughter. Once we have removed them from immediate danger, then we can use the time while the lich tries to escape again to find a way to save our friend.”

For long seconds, Mahal considered this. I forced myself to breathe and retain my calm, as if we had ages to discuss this rather than minutes.

“How long will you search for a way to deliver your friend?” she asked. “A year? Ten? Fifty?”

“As long as it takes,” I said.

“And what would your friend be after ten years as the lich’s vessel?” she asked. “What would he be after one? Would he still be your friend—you the one who trapped him?”

“I will accept the consequences of my actions, Elder, but I will not allow him to be killed while he may yet be saved.”

“Because you know best how one might be saved.” Her gnarled hand crept from beneath her blanket and caressed the soft grass at her side. “There is no difference between the flower torn from the earth and tossed in the fire and the flower lovingly placed in a cup of fresh water, Winona. Only the time it takes to wither and die.”

My hands twitched toward fists as if she had struck me physically, but I pressed them flat against my thighs. To lose control of my emotions now would do no good.

After careful thought, I said, “But saplings whose taproots are wrapped in a wet cloth can survive long enough to be replanted in better soil. They grow all the stronger for the uprooting.”

Elder Mahal turned to Chris. “You have been silent in this, human. Do you not wish to see your friend saved?”

“Yes, ma’am, I do,” he said. “But I was taught not to open my mouth if I didn’t know what I was talking about.”

“Tell me,” she said, tilting her head slightly as if to study him from a different angle. “Would you accept the consequences of your actions, as Winona claims she would?”

Chris shrugged. “Accept ’em or not, they’re coming. Long as I know I did everything I could, I’ll find a way to live with the fallout.”

Mahal’s mint green eyes sparkled.

“You could teach our reckless princess much about what is hers to accept or reject, Detective Fuller.”

I filled my lungs slowly and exhaled, fighting to push away the frustration quickly rising to the surface of my mind. Achitometl could already be arriving in Teotihuacán with the key and Elder Mahal wanted to use my friend’s words to shame me. I already knew Chris was a better soul than I. This was not a lesson that required repetition to sink in.

“Do you, too, wish me to impart the way to trap the lich once more?” Mahal asked.

“I can’t see any other way to stop him,” Chris said.

“This is your job,” the Elder said. “Stopping those who have committed evil before they commit more. And yet there are times when stopping evil requires a sacrifice that you cannot make—this is what our rash-hearted Winona does not understand.”

“I can’t honestly say I understand it either,” Chris said. He glanced down at the ground as if he were struggling to find the right words. “The kid this lich is possessing … He’s not a bad kid. He just never had a chance. If we don’t try to save him, then he’ll never get one.”

“Aha!” Elder Mahal rocked forward on her cushion, pointing her crooked finger at Chris. “But will you see his chance when it comes? You did not even see that Winona Treesinger, Daughter of Chankoowashtay, future chieftain of the People of the Forest, was different from you until she revealed her true form.”

“’Cause she’s not different from me,” Chris said, an edge creeping into his voice. “Get rid of the size difference and the magic, and we both want the same thing—to stop the bad guys. She’s tough and good and she doesn’t give up.” He tapped his chest. “In here we’re the same, and the rest? It doesn’t matter.”

Elder Mahal smiled, showing her toothless pink gums.

“Perhaps you can see true, Detective.” She bobbed her wizened head, then turned her gaze to me. “Your way of capturing the lich will not be as simple as the mages’. They wove flows of earth, air, and spirit, tied them off, and their job was done. Your trap will take much longer and leave you vulnerable while it is completed.”

I nodded to show that I understood and accepted the risk, but I did not interrupt her. I did not wish to give her any opportunity to change her mind about teaching me how to cast the trap.

“You know how to cast a veil to hide yourself in plain sight, this is a thing all People know from their youth,” Mahal said, waving her gnarled hand at the ease of such a task. “But to trap the lich, you must reach out to Mother Earth, ask her to make your veil as solid and impenetrable as diamond so that the creature inside may never leave, then cast this solid veil upon the vessel the lich is occupying.

“When the solid veil has been cast, you must cry out to Father Sun, who walks over every land in Inworld and Out, and ask him to banish the solid veil to Mictlan and tether it there for all time.” She sat back on her cushion and shrunk into herself a bit. “If you survive long enough to accomplish that, your lich and his body will be imprisoned until he finds his way out again.”

I bowed my head, touching my fist to my breastbone and then opening it to her, though I felt like leaping to my feet and hugging her.

“Thank you, Elder, for passing on this knowledge.”

She blinked several times, accepting this with a grave nod, then turned to Chris.

“If you see the boy’s chance, Detective, do not ignore it.” Her mint green eyes glanced at me. “Those who can see true but wish to remain willfully blind can do no more than those who cannot see.”

Chris’s brow furrowed in confusion. “I’ll do my best, ma’am.”

Elder Mahal nodded once more, then closed her eyes and fell silent. By all appearances, she had resumed her nap right where she left off when we interrupted.

I rose to my feet and Chris followed. An eagerness to confront Achitometl thrummed in my chest like war drums.

“We must go,” I said, catching Chris’s hand and squeezing it.

But my friend did not leap into action as I expected him to. Instead he winced and pulled his hand out of my grasp.

“We might be able to save Sean,” Chris said as if he did not quite believe this was true. “We know how to do that part now, sure. But we’re still just two people. There’s no way we’re gonna be able to fight off a herd of flesh-eating giants alone while you dodge Achitometl’s obsidian spears and talk to the sun and the moon and the stars about making his prison.”

“You will not be alone,” Elder Mahal said.

When we looked at her, she was still sitting with her eyes closed and her wrinkled chin nearly touching her chest. Without raising her head, she lifted a hand from beneath her blanket and pointed behind us.

Chris and I turned to find the clearing filled with Chiye-tanka. Each and every member of my fighting force stood ready and many more besides, equipped with weapons from the armory in the Great Redwood—feathered tomahawks, bearded spears, bows strung with the sinew of the great tatanka. Many wore bone bead breastplates or carried war shields of hardened leather. Those who did not, had donned their fringed buckskin shirts as if prepared for a sacred singing.

My father stood at the head of the group, wearing a buffalo headdress and beaded breastplate, holding a war club made of an ancient jawbone in his fist. He looked every inch the chief, powerful and strong. My heart thundered with pride.

“The time has come,” Chief Chankoowashtay of the People of Peace said, his powerful voice echoing through the Sacred Grove, “to fulfill our purpose as protectors of the Earth and her inhabitants.”

Behind him, Chiye-tanka nodded solemnly, rapped their shields, or voiced their agreement.

“I cannot ask you to join this fight,” I said, raising my voice to speak to all of them. “This battle will not be easy.” I paused and tucked a strand of auburn hair behind my ear. “Some of you may die.”

“We have made our decision,” my father said, fierce determination burning in the words. “We will no longer shame ourselves by leaving others to fight the battles we were created for. We will fight beside you today, Winona Treesinger, Daughter of the People.”

TWENTY-SIX:

Quinametzin

I sent a pair of our fastest runners to retrieve Chris’s tactical shotgun and the box of armor-piercing incendiary ammunition from the cruiser.

With that taken care of, we fell into planning with my father and the Elders.

It soon became clear that not all of those who had volunteered for this battle intended to fight. The ones dressed in ceremonial buckskin, carrying shields but no weapons, objected to the violence but wished to protect human life all the same. These were tasked with evacuating the Little Brothers and Sisters from the path of the quinametzin: first from the ruins, then, if the destruction spread, from the urban areas surrounding the ruins. The fighting force, headed by my father, would attempt to contain and take down the ancient giants summoned forth to unleash their wrath.

Meanwhile, Chris and I would find Achitometl. Find him and do all within our power to stop him and free our friend. Or, at least, imprison him until a better solution could be found.

The runners returned just as we finished dividing up tasks. They brought not only the shotgun and ammo, but also a Kevlar vest marked SHERIFFS DEPT in bright yellow letters across the chest. A flak jacket, Chris called it.

“Any chance I can get you to wear this?” Chris asked, holding the vest out to me. “I know it looks small, but it’s adjustable.”

“I am much less fragile than you, Chris,” I said, offering him a reassuring smile.

He sighed and strapped the vest on, then began loading its drop pouches, the shotgun, and the shotgun’s shell carrier with ammunition.

I donned a beaded breastplate like my father’s and selected a tomahawk from the remaining weapons. Though I had never used one in battle before, I felt in my bones that it was the correct choice. Great skill would only be required if I chose to throw it—and I would not. The rest of the time, it would function as an extension of my arm, a fist that cleaved instead of crushed.

Overhead, the sky dimmed. The dark curvature of an unknown heavenly body was intruding between Mother Earth and Father Sun, just as it did daily in Mictlan.

“The vaults,” I said, gaze fixed on the heavenly anomaly.

“Gather!” Elder Ciqala croaked over the murmurs of shock.

Whether he was speaking to the war party or the rest of the Elders, I could not tell. Still, both groups did as he ordered and gathered, the warriors in a grim crowd of weapons and will, and the Elders in a tight circle.

Lifting their voices as one, the Elders began to sing to the Grandfather Spirit, thanking him for sacred life and asking him to open a way to Teotihuacán so our powerful warriors could go through and protect many innocent lives from the evil one who sought to steal them. As they sang, I closed my eyes and breathed an additional prayer, telling the Grandfather Spirit that we were not only going there to save the lives of the innocents, but also the life of a great warrior whom the evil one had trapped.

I thought my muted singing had passed unnoticed, lost in the Elders’ warbling voices, but then I saw that Chris was watching me. A muscle in his jaw twitched, then hardened, and he returned his eyes to the Elders.

The loamy soil beneath our feet vibrated—the tremble of an earthquake in sacred ground that had never felt such a thing before. The Elders’ voices rose, drowning out the deep rumble. Elder Napayshni raised a buckskin frame drum and beat out a steady rhythm as Elder Ayiana broke into a slow, shuffling dance, the Chegah-Skah-Hdah bells wrapped around her ankles jangling in time with the drum. The air around the war party crackled with electricity, an errant gust of air ruffling my hair. Elder Ciqala—the most bent and shriveled of all the Elders—lifted a slim courting flute, a siyotanka, to his lips and began to play.

A sweet, sad, lovely melody. A song of supplication.

The wind picked up, and the sharp scent of ozone filled the air as a bolt of lightning sizzled down from the clear blue sky overhead and struck the earth at the center of the circle of Elders. Thunder boomed, rattling my teeth as a plume of white smoke drifted up from the site of the impact. The cloud of white faded and dissipated; in its place was a shimmering, opalescent slice in reality, ten feet wide and ten feet tall. Large enough for even my father to pass through without stooping.

Whereas I had only been able to open a way using the Cave of Changing because it was a thin place between worlds, the Council of Elders had just opened a rift directly in the center of the Sacred Grove. No mean feat. As one, they stepped back, allowing us to see inside the portal.

On the other side was a wide boulevard—a straight shot through a city of stone ziggurats. What humans called the Avenue of the Dead. The pyramids were ancient things of tiered gray stone with crude steps snaking their way from base to crest. Lush grass lined the sweeping boulevard, butting up against the ruins. The sun overhead had been eclipsed by that strange unknown planet, casting the ruins in an eerie, nearly purple twilight. The earth shook, and large chunks broke off the great Pyramid of the Moon as well as many of the smaller talud-tablero ziggurats flanking the avenue.

As I watched, a massive creature climbed free of the rubble of a lesser pyramid. It was as if my mind could only comprehend parts of it at a time: maggoty white flesh that seemed to glow in the violet gloom of the eclipse. Hands as large as an adult male Chiye-tanka’s entire body. Bloody pink eyes the size of buffalo wallows. Teeth longer than my forearm hanging in a gaping lipless mouth. This one clutched an obsidian-edged machuahuitl as tall as an Inworld cottonwood.

The sound reached my ears then.

The terrified shrieks of humans never meant to see these ancient beings of death and doom.

The distant howling of emergency sirens followed as first responders raced into action with no idea of the danger they would face when they arrived.

At my right hand stood Chris, his face pale but determined. He caught my eye and tucked the butt of the shotgun into his shoulder. Ready.

To my left stood my father. He nodded sternly. He was with me, but as heir to the chieftainship, it fell to me to lead our warriors into battle. It would be my proving. The chieftain who brought war to the People of Peace.

I raised my tomahawk and roared a battle cry, sprinting into the rift. The shouts of my warriors accompanied me. We burst into Teotihuacán at the foot of the Pyramid of the Sun amidst the chaos of the shaking earth, panicking humans, and emerging quinametzin. The oily feel of Vim and Nox permeated the air, and an overwhelming stench of mildew and sour unwashed flesh assailed my nostrils. Three quinametzin already roamed free, snatching up humans and ripping into them with teeth like sharpened gravestones. A spray of warm red blood fell from a nearby giant consuming the torso of what had once been a man.

“Evacuation squad, get the humans to safety! Warriors, bring down the giants!” I barked out the orders, not because I believed my people had forgotten, but to give them a moment of focus in the pandemonium. “If anyone sees the mage, contact me immediately!”

Almost as one, my Chiye-tanka brothers and sisters scattered. Most of the warriors swarmed the freed giants, though some rushed to the smaller pyramids that had been opened and stood at the entrances to the vaults. From there, they attacked anything that rose up from the dark.

The evacuation squad had the hardest job. The humans they were trying to help panicked and fought. They fled en masse, just as terrified of their rescuers as of the monsters emerging from the stony ziggurats. Unable to reason with the frantic Little Brothers and Sisters, many of my warriors cast veils over themselves and began hefting humans over their shoulders, carrying them kicking and screaming from Teotihuacán like frightened children.

Chris and I ran down the Avenue of the Dead searching for Sean, but this did not go as swiftly as I hoped it would. Humans who noticed Chris’s weapon and official gear grabbed onto him, begging in several languages for help or guidance.

“Get out!” Chris ordered them again and again, pointing the shortest route away from danger. “Run! Get as far away from here as you can!”

“Huir! Escapa!” I translated, but most were so hysterical to see another nonhuman being shouting at them that they cowered behind Chris.

He caught onto what I was yelling and repeated it, shoving the humans away from danger.

After one such encounter with a group of frightened German tourists, stone blocks burst from the lesser pyramid just behind us—a talud-tablero structure once thought by humans to be a tomb. That mildewy, unwashed scent rolled across the ground like a tsunami as a massive, wide-eyed quinametzin climbed from the vault with a flint knife as long as I was tall clutched in its deformed fist. The creature let out a guttural roar and marched toward us, ready to kill.

A foot, larger than a pickup truck, rose high into the air, its shadow dancing above Chris and me before smashing into the earth. Chris dove left, and I dove right, narrowly avoiding the huge foot threatening to flatten us. My arms hit gravel, and I turned my shoulders into the fall, quickly rolling back to my feet. As soon as I came to a stop, I wheeled and sprinted toward the giant’s heel, tomahawk clutched in my hand.

“He must have just been here, Chris!” I screamed, though I did not see my friend and my voice was nearly lost in the chaos. “This vault did not open by itself!” A huge hand lashed out, trying to swat me away like a troublesome mosquito. I feinted left, bolted right—dodging the clumsy but powerful blow—and launched myself inside the creature’s guard, hacking at the tendon running down the back of the giant’s leg with my tomahawk. The monster howled in fury as the razor-edged blade connected, parting pale skin and powerful muscle.

The quinametzin spun and came at me with his knife, the blade slicing through the air with a whoosh. I danced away, feet light and quick, just out of the dagger’s reach.

A shotgun blast erupted to my left. Chris was backpedaling away from the giant to get a better shot, the muzzle aimed nearly skyward. He pulled the trigger again. The giant howled and swatted at its enormous eye with its free hand. Chris’s shotgun seemed to do very little damage to the massive creature of nightmare and legend, but it did provide an excellent distraction.

A soft voice spoke to my mind as the shotgun thundered again:

Princess Winona, I see the mage. It was Kanti. She stood near the top of one of the other lesser pyramids, spear in hand. He is directly behind you, heading south.

I whirled around, searching the crowds and the chaos for any sign of thick-framed glasses and stiff black hair.

Sean was not hard to spot. Amidst the humans screaming and running, he was the only one walking with a calm purpose. His eyes glowed gold behind his lenses, and Ichtacka’s dagger gleamed dully in his fist. A human man with a balding pate, pouched gut, and a pair of ornate cowboy boots was unlucky enough to stumble into the hedge mage’s path. Sean lifted his free hand without a thought or moment of hesitation and unleashed an obsidian spear from his palm.

Unfortunately, Achitometl had greatly improved Sean’s aim.

The spear smashed through the man’s chest, hurling him back into the grass ten feet away, body broken, eyes already lifeless, a halo of deep red spreading around him.

My stomach sank, and a wave of nausea threatened to overtake me. Achitometl had done that with my friend’s body. Used him like a murder weapon. Cold. Callous. Soulless. I had to rescue Sean from this evil.

My fingers clenched around the handle of my tomahawk. I would rescue Sean, and I would make Achitometl pay for this sin against nature.

A crash of shattering earth and spray of rocky debris ripped my focus back to the hulking giant trying to pin Chris to the ground with its enormous flint knife. My friend was holding his own surprisingly well; he fired on the move, adjusting his position as his gargantuan target did, fighting to stay in the creature’s blind spot while he worked his shotgun.

“Chris!” I bellowed, trying to get his attention.

But he did not hear me. He had seen an opportunity. Chris planted his feet, squared his shoulders, and took aim once more—this time gunning for the giant’s other eye.

I threw a glance over my shoulder at the possessed hedge mage, then stole a look back at my partner. They were both so far away. If I went after Chris, I might lose sight of Sean long enough for him to open the next vault. But our plan to trap Achitometl and save Sean would not work without two people.

Chris’s gun barked. The armor-piercing round found its mark and exploded inside the quinametzin’s vast pink eye. The giant stumbled forward, reeling uncertainly on colossal feet, slashing blindly at human-height with his knife. Gore streamed down the giant’s face in twin rivers—both eyes wounded beyond healing—but the injuries only seemed to spur the quinametzin on. Chris sidestepped another slash, but the giant’s swing switched directions without warning. The next thing I saw was my partner tumbling across the ground.

Fear reared up inside me like a cobra, and I took off at a sprint. I charged the giant, slipping between the creature’s staggering feet, hacking at its ankles and thick grubby toes as I ran toward Chris’s still form. The giant was bent nearly in half, furiously stabbing the ground, blade approaching my motionless partner. I willed myself to go faster—legs pumping, arms swinging, heart racing—though I was already moving at top speed, the wind parting around me.

The giant’s blinded face passed over the pyramid Kanti stood atop, a mere ten feet from her head.

Kanti, take him down! I sent, trying to control the panic inside my own mind.

The giant’s flint knife whistled down again, this time on a crash course with my friend. With a roar, I put on a final burst of speed, pushing myself to the very edge of my abilities. I ducked under the blade, the tip scraping down my shoulder and across my back in a bright white line of pain, and ripped Chris out of its path. The ground exploded from the impact. Rocks flew as the blade penetrated dirt, then was ripped free again, leaving a deep gash in the earth. The giant reared back for another blow.

But Kanti’s spear was already in flight. It stabbed through the enormous hand still rubbing uselessly at the creature’s damaged eyes and lodged deep in the left socket, almost disappearing. The quinametzin gave an earthshaking groan, its knife hand smashing into the pyramid’s steps as its muscles spasmed, then tumbled over on top of the ancient structure. Kanti climbed onto the creature’s shoulders a moment later and began sawing the giant’s misshapen head from its neck with the huge stone knife.

She worked stoically, her motions sure, no sign of reservation in the work. We were a People of Peace, but once committed to action, we were true. Unwavering, like an arrow fired from a bow.

I put the woman from my thoughts and fell to my knees beside Chris. Gingerly, I turned him over, taking care not to jolt the spinal cord any more than I already had. No blood, no obvious external injuries. He was breathing, and his pulse beat strong in his throat. I steadied his head to open his eyes and check his pupils, but he jerked away from my hands with a grunt.

“What—” He blinked and shook his head. “Winona?” With a groan he sat up, leaning back on his palms.

“He was here, Chris, I saw him.”

His eyes focused. “Sean?”

“Yes. Just over there.” I searched the trajectory the hedge mage had been on when I spotted him. The few humans left in the area were either dead or cowering amongst the rubble. “He is gone.”

I reached out to Kanti again. Can you see the mage?

She looked up from her grisly work, pale pink quinametzin blood coating her arms up to the elbow. I watched her head turn as her sharp eyes scanned the ground and the pyramids for him.

Behind you. He is climbing the largest one, the Pyramid of the Sun. Across the Avenue of the Dead.

“This way,” I told Chris, helping him to his feet.

He wrestled his shotgun around on its sling, then pumped the action, sending a spent shell tumbling away.

“Let’s go,” he said.

I turned and ran, forcing myself to move slowly enough that my human partner could keep up. Chris’s boots crunched in the gravel behind me.

Be careful, Princess, Kanti sent. When he reached the top of the last pyramid, he moved that dagger around, then the side burst open and this thing climbed out.

TWENTY-SEVEN:

Pyramid of the Sun

We raced southeast across the Avenue of the Dead to the largest pyramid in Teotihuacán: the Pyramid of the Sun. Sean was nearly three-quarters of the way up, crossing the huge, landing-like platform before the final climb to the summit. In the violet gloom of the eclipse, I could see the golden flare of Achitometl’s possession reflected and magnified by Sean’s glasses.

I lowered my head and sprinted, turning my mind completely to the task at hand. Chris shouted for me to wait, his voice carrying even over the din of battle, but I could not allow Achitometl to open this vault. Every new vault was more quinametzin for my people to fight, more lives in danger. And this was the biggest vault of all. We could carry out the plan and cast the trap when Chris caught up to me. Until then, I would keep Achitometl busy and the bloodthirsty giants in the tomb contained.

The stairs up the southern side of the pyramid were human-sized. I took them three and four at a time. There were two landings before I reached the first platform. I dashed across it and up the next flight of stairs. High above, Sean-Achitometl had begun the final ascent to the summit. He glanced over his shoulder, his blazing glare hitting me like a hammer blow. Even from this distance, I saw him sneer. He sped up, using hands and feet to climb now, like a child scaling a sandy riverbank.

Unlike the smooth, measured stairs grown from the heart of the Great Redwood, the steps of the Pyramid of the Sun were uneven and rocky, worn down by the elements and the passage of millions of feet. I stumbled on an uneven step, cursing myself for watching Achitometl rather than where I was going. I could not afford mistakes, not this close. Reluctantly, I turned my gaze on the treacherous steps and resumed my heart-pounding sprint.

Though the rocks that made up the pyramid had been taken from the earth and formed into something new by man, they still had contact with Mother Earth, and I could feel her presence blazing through them like a bonfire. That was reassuring since I needed her help to cast the trap.

When I made it to the second platform, my eyes leapt to the top of the pyramid. Sean-Achitometl was almost there, less than ten feet now and closing. I was gaining, but not fast enough. I forced my eyes back down, taking the stairs five at a time, lose scree threatening to trip me at every step.

I hit the third platform, crossed it in two long strides, and leapt onto the far steps. But the morbid temptation to watch the mage’s progress was too strong. I skimmed the palm of my right hand over the guide rail to keep from falling as I looked up. Sean-Achitometl glanced back down at me as he stepped out onto the summit—a vicious grin on his lips—then turned away and disappeared over the horizon line.

My feet flew over the final steps, spurred on by fear and hot-blooded adrenaline. I barely felt the rockwork beneath my soles as I crested the ziggurat’s summit and hefted the tomahawk in my hand, preparing myself for the fight to come. The odds I would have to use the weapon against my friend before we managed to trap Achitometl were high. Especially if I did not want him to open this vault before Chris arrived.

Achitometl stood at the center of the pyramid, pointing Ichtacka’s dagger toward me. He shouted out words in an ancient language I had never heard, then carved an intricate pattern into the air, ghostly trails of golden light staining the air in the blade’s wake.

I braced myself for the magical attack, but nothing happened.

Achitometl turned his back to me, stabbing the key into the southern sky and shouting again. Not an attack, then, but rather some part of the unlocking ceremony. The motions were not so different from the sacred dances of my people, lifting our hands to the points of the compass as we sang prayers to the holy people and rattled the sacred Chegah-Skah-Hdah. I flipped the tomahawk in my hand, gripping it near the blade and raising the handle like a baton. I covered the distance as quickly and silently as a blink and swung.

Achitometl spun around and thrust his free hand at me, fingers splayed wide.

Black fire roared from his palm, engulfing my face and chest in flames. I stumbled away, beating at them while my flesh blistered and cracked. The vitreous humor in my eyeballs boiled. I gasped and choked, lungs screaming and scorched. The flames were eating my oxygen, crawling into my mouth and down my throat every time I tried to breathe.

Too late, a detached part of my mind said I should have continued my attack, tackling the mage while blazing like a falling star. That would have stopped him. Now I could neither see nor hear him over the roaring of the fire.

I fell to my knees on the rocky platform, doubling over with my face pressed into my thighs and my arms hugging my head to smother the terrible conflagration. My lungs hitched and shouted for air. Finally, the flames suffocated and died away. I took reedy, gasping breaths, unable to fully inflate my seared lungs. My skin writhed with agony, residual heat baking my nerve endings. The bead breastplate had sunk into my chest, fusing with my melted flesh.

Mother, help me! I cried out, unable to form a more coherent thought through the mind-killing pain.

The earth’s healing burst through the rocks beneath me like a furious mother bear charging to the rescue of her cubs. It flowed in through my knees and shins, everywhere my body made contact with the pyramid, but the healing was nearly as painful as the burning.

Charred skin sloughed away, crawling and itching as if infested with maggots. I screamed and clawed at it, unable to stop myself.

The new growth pushed the burned bone beads from my chest. They dropped to the ground and scattered, the strings that had woven them together nothing more than ash.

The air sacks in my lungs inflated, ripping fused membranes apart.

Blurry sight returned as my eyes reformed, and hair pushed through my skin to fill in the newly bald patches.

“Winona!” Chris’s boots clunked on the stone behind me.

There was a crack of lightning, then the sound of pottery shattering. Chris let out a grunt as if the air had been knocked from him. On my hands and knees, I turned toward the sound, blinking to clear the last of the distortion from my vision.

Chris was on his back a handful of feet away, a two-foot obsidian spear sticking out of the center of his SHERIFFS DEPT vest. He kicked and scraped at the rock with the heel of his boot, his hands clutching his chest. His face was red, quickly turning an alarming shade of purple. Veins stood out in his neck as he struggled for air, gasping like a fish plucked from a rushing stream.

“Chris!” The word came out garbled thanks to my healing tongue and throat. I spat the shed flesh from my mouth and tried again. “Chris!”

His mouth opened, but no word came out. One hand came up and grasped the spear.

“No!” I shouted, lunging for it. If the projectile was lodged in his heart or a major blood vessel, pulling it out would only allow him to bleed to death faster.

But Chris ripped it free before I could stop him.

A scraping breath filled his lungs with air. Immediately his color improved.

“Just broke ... plate ... in vest,” he croaked, dropping the spear with a glassy clatter. “Didn’t penetrate.”

Relief filled my eyes with tears. I threw my arms around Chris. He winced.

“Then I’ll be sure shoot you in the head next time,” Achitometl said, voice cool and condescending. He stood to my right, training his open hand on us.

I searched the ground frantically for my tomahawk, but found nothing.

Lightning cracked again. I hunched over Chris, trying to cover as much of his head and chest as possible, but the obsidian spear sailed harmlessly over Chris’s head. It was as poor a shot as many of Sean’s bone darts.

Achitometl cursed and took aim again.

I leapt to my feet and jerked Chris to his. We split up, Chris bolting to the north and I to the south. Achitometl stuck Ichtacka’s dagger in his mouth to free up both hands, then raised his palms and attempted to follow us. But we kept spreading apart until he could not look at us at the same time.

Chris aimed his shotgun and fired. The blast hit the mage in the shin—a nonlethal but incapacitating shot—just as planned.

The dagger clattered to the rock, and Sean cried out in pain. My heart lurched in my chest, and a wave of fury flowed in its wake. Of course Achitometl would let our friend feel all of the pain and none of the good.

I charged, fists balled at my sides and ready to strike. Achitometl heard me coming. He swung around on Sean’s good leg, raising a hand, but quickly paid for ignoring the bigger threat: Chris fired again. The armor-piercing round tore through the back of Sean’s thigh and ripped a bloody chunk out the other side.

Sean dropped the ground, whimpering.

“Please, forgive me for this,” I whispered, launching a punch at the back of Sean’s head—a blow that would knock him out cold.

He twisted at the waist, raising his palm to me. It was as if I ran into an invisible quinametzin hand. Achitometl snapped his fingers shut. The air woofed from my lungs as the invisible fist squeezed snugly around me. With his opposite hand, Sean fired an obsidian spear at Chris.

The glassy projectile clipped Chris’s shoulder, sending his shot wide, knocking the shotgun aside, and nearly spinning him around with the impact. Red blood soaked his sleeve.

I fought against the invisible fist holding me tight, but could not break free.

Achitometl grabbed Ichtacka’s dagger from the dusty stone and pointed it to the north. With a quick slashing and stabbing motion, he shouted in that ancient language.

The pyramid rumbled and shook beneath our feet. The grating of stone on stone filled the air, and the scent of mildew and unwashed flesh began to seep up from underground. The whole western side of the Pyramid of the Sun—the hundreds of steps we had climbed—caved in as the vault opened. The rocks fell right out from beneath Chris. His eyes flared wide in shock and he scrambled desperately for purchase, fingers grabbing for the edge. But it was no use. He went over the lip of the ziggurat, disappearing from view.

“Chris!” I fought Achitometl’s invisible grip, reaching stupidly for my friend as if I could somehow stretch the distance in a heartbeat and save him, but he was already gone.

In the next moment, rocks burst from the vault entrance, kicked or smacked aside by the army of quinametzin within.

I forced myself to focus on Sean. Whether Chris was injured or … or worse … there was nothing I could do for him right now. The plan must be carried out. Achitometl must be stopped.

The skull-shaped obsidian medallion glowed red-hot on Sean’s chest. The bullet wounds in his legs stopped bleeding and scarred over as I watched. The lich was repairing his host body.

“Sean, I know you did not mean to hurt Chris,” I yelled, twisting inside the giant hand’s invisible grip as if I were trying to break free. I did not want the lich to realize I was not fighting because I did not need to. My feet still rested on the stone of the pyramid. I could cast the spell like this, so long as I remained connected to Mother Earth. “I know you are in there, and you would never hurt anyone.”

Achitometl laughed as he tested his newly repaired legs. “Do you have any idea how many men, women, and children your hedge mage friend has slaughtered today, tree woman?”

“Not him,” I growled. “You, Achitometl. And you will answer for this evil.”

His glowing eyes flared the furious gold of molten magma.

“This is their answer for the evil they did to my child!” he screamed, flecks of spittle flying from Sean’s mouth. “This is the fulfillment of my vow taken on the day they murdered her! My precious daughter!”

“Evil cannot right evil,” I said, voice grim. At the same moment, I reached out to Mother Earth. Please, I need you now more than ever. Help me save my friend. Please make this veil I cast as solid as diamond, impenetrable by the creature within. In answer, her power flowed up through the rocks to meet me, ready and eager to help. “Just as this bloodshed has not brought your daughter back to you,” I continued, hoping to distract him while Mother Earth did her work.

Sean’s lips twisted in a sneer and he took an angry step closer to me, reaching an open palm toward my heart.

I started to cast the veil.

Suddenly the invisible fist lifted me up. The rocks disappeared from beneath my feet. My contact with Mother Earth vanished like a mirage in the desert.

“Do you think because your magic comes from another source that I cannot feel when you draw on it?” Achitometl snarled. “With arrogance like that, it’s no wonder your people are dying.”

I tried casting the veil anyway, but it was useless. I could not reach Mother Earth’s power. Sean’s body shimmered in and out of visibility, but with a wave of his hand, he dispelled my veil.

“I hoped you would live to see their end—to see what you had done to your people by rejecting my aid—but you are too much of a nuisance,” Achitometl hissed. “You brought your death upon yourself, Winona Treesinger, just as you brought the death of your people upon them.”

He pressed his palm to my breastbone. Lightning cracked as he fired.

TWENTY-EIGHT:

Sacrifice

No obsidian spear pierced my heart.

I blinked in disbelief. Had I not felt it? Could death be so sudden and traumatic that the shock of it numbed the entire body?

But I could feel the giant invisible fist squeezing me, holding me up off the pyramid, and the heat of Sean’s palm pressed over my chest. I could even feel my heart hammering madly as if shouting, Not dead! Not yet!

Achitometl’s snarl melted into confusion. He snatched his hand away and glared down at his palm. He aimed it at the sky. Fired.

Lightning cracked. The scent of ozone filled the air, accompanied by the sulfurous stink of Nox. An obsidian spear exploded outward, sailed in a graceful arc across the gaping entrance to the vault, and crashed to the ground near the center of the Avenue of the Dead.

Reassured, Achitometl returned his palm to my breastbone and tried to fire again.

Nothing happened.

He howled his rage.

But his howl was cut short by laughter.

Sean’s laughter.

“Sucks, don’t it?” Sean said, forcing the words through his own lips with visible effort.

“Stop that this instant!” Achitometl screamed, his ire momentarily contorting Sean’s face into a mask of fury as his eyes flared a brilliant shade of gold. “I showed you how to harness the Vis! How to wield the power of Nox and channel the life essence of Vim. I made you mighty, mageling! Unstoppable!”

Sean grinned as he regained control of his face.

“No, you totally did.” He nodded. “And then I made you a wuss whose magic craps out right when he needs it. So, should we just call it even or what?”

“Think of what you are doing,” Achitometl growled. “Of what you are throwing away with this pointless insolence. Give me my revenge, and the world is yours. Fame. Money. Power. Women. Any of it. All of it. You can be a king. A god.”

“Sure, sure,” Sean replied irreverently, nodding as the golden glow in his eyes faded. “Except that if you weren’t such a wackjob, you would know that sometimes the cost isn’t worth the payout. And this? What we’re doing here? That’s a price I’m not willing to pay.”

Achitometl raged again, cursing in ancient Nahuatl.

“Sean, I know how to save you,” I said, fighting against the magic holding me aloft. “Make him drop me so I can connect with the Earth. I know what to do.”

Sean shook his head. “I don’t think you do, Winona. See, this medallion keeps him from dying. He’s immortal as long as it exists—”

“Yes, I know! It is a phylactery—”

“—and nothing you or anybody else can do will put a dent in it,” he continued as if he had not heard me. “Nothing but Achitometl’s own magic can destroy it. For being such a bag of dicks, the guy was actually pretty clever when he made it. I mean, he was really in this revenge thing for the long haul.”

“I can trap him in Mictlan once more,” I said, rushing ahead full speed, trying to make him see. “You will have to go with him for a time, but I will find a way to remove him from you and destroy the phylactery.”

“Yeah, I feel like you didn’t hear me when I said he made it so only his magic can destroy it.” Sean smiled at me and stepped closer, reaching one hand toward me. “Nothing else, Winona.”

“I understand, but if you make him drop me, I can stop what he is doing now, then later find a way to use his magic to destroy the phylactery.”

“No.” Sean shook his head. “You’re not listening to me, and you really need to.”

Dread grew inside of me at the calm certainty in his words.

When I fell silent, he spoke again, his voice soft, gentle, but resolved. “I already know how to put things right. The idiot was so clever that he built himself into a corner. He created the loophole by trying to cover all his bases.” Slowly, hand and arm trembling as if he were fighting for every inch, Sean turned his palm toward the skull-shaped medallion resting over his heart. “It’s me,” he said. “The vessel can use his magic. I’m the loophole.”

My stomach plummeted, the dread morphing into terror as I realized what Sean meant to do. While Achitometl was possessing him, he had access to Achitometl’s magic. Sean was going to use it to destroy the phylactery and the vessel all at once, leaving the lich with nothing tying his spirit to this plane. Achitometl would be destroyed.

And so would Sean.

“No, no, no,” I whispered, fighting even more frantically against the bonds holding me fast. But nothing I did mattered. “I can do this, Sean! Please—”

“You already helped me more than you’ll ever know, distracting him like that. I couldn’t have gotten the drop on him without it. You and Chris alley-ooped it to me, now it’s time for me to dunk it.”

“Please do not do this,” I begged him. “Let me trap him. Let me try. I’ll find another way—”

“I’m a hunter, Winona,” he said. “I don’t push evil into a corner so it can come out and start slaughtering people again in a few years. This ends today.”

“Take the phylactery off,” I pleaded. “Throw it on the ground and shoot it. Anywhere else.”

Sean shook his head again, his lips pressed into a thin, hard line. “If I take it off, he’ll run into somebody else. They might not be strong enough to do what’s got to be done. I’m the only man for the job.”

Tears burned my eyes, clouding my vision, and I could not get enough air to my lungs.

“Please, Sean!”

“Now, I don’t know what kind of backlash this is gonna have,” he said, pretending he had not heard me. “Soon as the telekinesis lets go, run for cover.”

“Never!” I roared, thrashing wildly, feebly attempting to kick my legs and pry my arms from my sides.

Sean smiled sadly and jerked his chin at someone behind me.

“Get her away, okay?” he said.

I looked over my shoulder to see Chris, covered in mortar dust, his slacks and SHERIFFS DEPT vest torn. Bloody scratches stood out across his face and hands. He gave the hedge mage a nod of agreement.

“You cannot let him do this!” I screamed at Chris. “We know how to save him!”

Chris did not respond. His mouth was set in a grim line of determination, his jaw made of stone. It was his Preparing for Battle face.

Disbelief washed through me, turning everything distant and surreal. My breaths came ragged and uneven. A tear spilled over my lashes and streaked down my cheek. I shook my head, clutching my fists until my fingernails bit into my palms.

“Hey, girl, don’t cry over me,” Sean said, giving me a wink. “Saving the world’s my job.” He paused for a moment, and my heart leapt at the thought that he might be reconsidering. Then he nodded to himself. “Yeah, those’re pretty cool last words.”

Lightning cracked as Sean fired a spear through the center of the phylactery and directly into his heart. The obsidian shattered, and blue-white arcs of electricity exploded from the slivers of the phylactery. Achitometl howled, and Sean’s eyes glowed as brightly as the sun as his body arched in pain. The giant invisible hand holding me aloft disappeared, and I dropped.

Before I even hit the ground, Chris’s shoulder slammed into my hip. It was the only way he could have budged me, and he had timed it perfectly. We tumbled across the top of the pyramid. The whole while, I screamed at him, unable to find a single word, just screaming, furious. When we finally came to a stop, I tossed Chris to the side and rolled to my hands and feet. I pushed off, stumbling the first few steps, then breaking into a dead sprint, beelining for the hedge mage.

For my friend.

Sean was still standing. Six inches of the spear stuck out his chest, while the other two feet protruded from his back, slick with crimson gore. The world slowed as my mind raced. I would take Sean back to the Great Redwood. I would treat him. Remove the spear, repair the damage. Wait, no … Start the damage repair first, then remove it? No, there wouldn’t be time to go back to the Sacred Grove. Beg Mother Earth! If I begged her, she would heal him. She could heal him, could she not? She loved her children, she would heal him. She had to.

Dark red lifeblood ran from Sean’s nose and dripped off his upper lip as he swayed drunkenly, his eyes hazy and unfocused. He opened his mouth and more deep red—so dark it was nearly black—painted his teeth and ran from his lips. His legs buckled and he fell, eyelids fluttering shut. I put on another burst of speed, swooping in to catch him. He thudded against me and I quickly eased him to the ground, positioning him on his side to avoid jostling the obsidian spear. I heard myself speaking, but I could not tell what I said.

Things about healing. Holding on. Pleading.

My friend could not hear me anymore. In some part of my mind, I knew that to be true. But still I begged him not to go. I searched his face for some sign of life. Some trace that he was still with me.

But no.

A moment later, Achitometl’s death howls erupted from Sean’s open mouth, echoing across Teotihuacán. His spirit ripped itself from Sean’s lifeless body, but the obsidian spear through the broken phylactery pinned it in place. He clawed at the uneven stone of the pyramid, desperately trying to pull himself free, but there was no escape. My friend had seen to that. Sean juddered and shook in my arms as the lich struggled wildly. I clasped Sean tighter, afraid he would be torn away from me.

Blue and black flames licked at the ancient king, rising up from nowhere, igniting Achitometl’s spectral form until it was consumed by the otherworldly fire. With a sound like shattering obsidian, his spirit burst into a hail of bright golden sparks—a million fireflies dancing in the midsummer night. They twisted, drifted up, and vanished. After a handful of seconds, there was nothing left but the last ringing shout of the lich’s voice.

Overhead, the strange planet eclipsing the sun groaned, fractured, and cracked. Violet light shined through the jagged fissures. The alien sphere exploded into billions of pieces, transforming into burning meteorites that showered the ruins like fiery rain. I leaned over Sean’s head and chest to protect him from the falling rocks, though none were larger than my fist. After a time, the meteor shower ended, replaced by bright sunlight, which hammered down on us from above. Disturbingly bright and cheerful—at odds with the death and bloodshed all around me.

I sat back on my heels.

Sean’s face was slack and peaceful. A ghost of a reckless smile still tugged at the corners of his lips. His black hair was too heavily gelled to move, but his thick-framed glasses had been knocked askew. I fixed them, then I carefully lowered him to the rocky platform of the Pyramid of the Sun and stood. My heart ached with a dull fire, but I forced the pain away, saving up my tears for later.

My friend could not be hurt by the things of Inworld or Outworld anymore, and there were flesh-hungry giants to kill.

TWENTY-NINE:

Death Toll

It is easy to fight when you do not want to feel. It is a chore, a thing to do with the hands and body, manual labor. Not so different from tending the dirt of a garden or chopping wood for a fire. Fighting does not require great thought, but it occupies the mind and tells the heart later, later.

When I rose from Sean’s body, Chris looked me over and nodded, but wisely kept his distance. I spotted my tomahawk near the northeastern corner of the pyramid’s platform and grabbed the obsidian spear that had broken the ceramic chest plate in Chris’s vest. Tomahawk in my right, spear in my left, I turned and bolted toward the rubble of the pyramid’s steps, not waiting for my friend. In truth, I could not bear to look at Chris, to see his apologizing gaze or the exhaustion etched into his face.

It made no sense, but the image of him standing there, doing nothing as Sean took his own life, threatened to smash down the barrier between thought and emotion. It was not Chris’s fault, I knew, but my heart was unconvinced.

I pushed the troubling thoughts away—later, later, later—as I saw a quinametzin emerging from the vault below, one massive arm raised to shade its enormous pink eyes from the piercing sunlight.

I snarled and leapt from the edge of the pyramid, free-falling for almost fifty feet, wind slapping my face and pulling my hair. I raised the obsidian spear and landed on his pale, meaty shoulder with a whoof. Using the momentum of my swan dive, I drove the conjured weapon through the giant’s thick skull until only the barest nub of obsidian jutted up. The creature gurgled incoherently and stumbled; its arms spasmed wildly. I braced myself as the giant lurched left and collapsed sideways, sending stonework fragments from the pyramid flying.

With a roar—equal parts rage and loss—I jumped from its shoulders, already searching for another target. The key to not feeling was not stopping.

Behind me, Chris was picking his way down the debris, shotgun lowered but still tucked against his shoulder, ready to return to action at a moment’s notice. He appeared to be moving fine, perhaps favoring his right leg, but overall uninjured. I turned my back to him, surveying the chaos of the fighting. All around me, Chiye-tanka warriors chased down and toppled giants. Five of the colossal, reeking bodies already littered the Avenue of the Dead.

Four were yet alive. The wooden handle of my tomahawk creaked as my grip tightened. Time to change that.

I joined a small group of warriors herding one of the huge creatures toward an unopened lesser pyramid.

I was on the creature in a heartbeat, darting between huge legs, hacking through tendons, and slashing at exposed flesh while Nakoma and his companions pressed forward. The whole while I screamed, unshed tears burning in my eyes. The giant tried to swat them away with its massive stone club as it stumbled back, but it could not stand on its left leg, which I had maimed beyond repair. It teetered for the barest moment then toppled, shaking the earth with the impact. Nakoma sprinted across the creature’s chest and leapt onto its head—narrowly avoiding a blow from the club as he did—and thrust his bearded spear through the giant’s eye.

To the north, shotgun blasts let me know Chris had rejoined the fight. Within moments, another massive crash shook the ground beneath my feet.

After millennia below ground, the giants’ eyes had adapted to the lightless vaults. The sun’s return to full strength battered their sensitive pupils and hindered their sight. The final two quinametzin that had surfaced decided they could take it no longer and retreated frantically back into the dark safety of the vaults—one into a lesser ziggurat near me, the other into the vault beneath the Pyramid of the Moon.

More than anything, I wanted to vent my rage against Achitometl, but he was no more, so these demonic giants would have to do. None would live.

Father, I sent mind to mind so as to be heard over the cries of the wounded and dying, let us press our advantage before they can regroup. You take a contingent into the Pyramid of the Moon. I’ll handle the creature heading into the lesser ziggurat.

My father voice no objection, though a flash of barely veiled concern raced through my mind like an abrupt gust of wind. Still, obedience was all that mattered, and he obeyed. Half of our warriors followed me while the rest joined my father.

I led from the front, my warriors spreading out behind me in a loose arc. Darkness engulfed us as we headed through the entry, accompanied by the damp smell of mildew and stale, unwashed flesh, which was overwhelming to my senses. My ears perked up at the sound of Chris’s cowboy boots scraping the tunnel floor behind me. I felt a flicker of something, but I pushed it away savagely. Now was not the time to feel. Now was the time for battle.

For the fall of fists and the cleaving edge of my tomahawk.

We advanced as silently as only the People can—Chris doing his best to match us and failing spectacularly—following the blundering noise of the sun-blind giant as it barreled through the tunnels. In minutes we ran it down and found it in a deep subterranean cavern with jagged walls covered in hanging mosses. Luminescent mushrooms the size of Inworld trees dotted the landscape in small copses all around the room, and strange purple grass grew underfoot. The giant retreated to a crude campsite around a colossal stone-ringed fire pit.

Its life ended in a series of gunshots and hacking blades.

I have been in fights that I felt certain I could not win, and I have been in fights that seemed as if they would never end. Until then, however, I had not been in a fight I wished would never end because I could not face what lay on the other side of the battle.

So instead of retreating to the surface, I called for my warriors to push on.

The underground cavern was riddled with twisting and turning tunnelways, and we searched each to its end, methodically ferreting out the surviving quinametzin from their lightless hovels and putting an end to them too. Only when we were certain the vault had been purged of its inhabitants did we return to the surface and enter the next open vault while my father’s force did the same. Soon, black quinametzin blood matted my hair. My shoulders became sore from swinging the tomahawk, my hand cramped around the handle, and my energy and anger left. Dissipated until I was not sure what kept me standing other than the desire not to stop long enough to think.

The cleansing continued until each of the six unlocked vaults had been emptied of life.

When it was done, I fetched Ichtacka’s dagger from Sean’s body.

“We should open them all,” I suggested despite being exhausted to my soul. “Achitometl is gone, but so long as these creatures remain, the Little Brothers and Sisters of this region will never be safe. It is for the best.” Many of the younger Chiye-tanka nodded along, and Chris agreed too, though he looked far more haggard and worn than any of us.

But my father did not nod. His eyes looked deeply sad. Instead of rebuking me, he slipped in front of me and pulled me into a tight hug, his arms wrapping around me like a comforting quilt. My chest hitched and the tears I had held in check spilled silently down my cheeks as my chin quivered. Sean was dead, and we had yet to see the toll this fight had taken on my People. We were so few and now we would be less. All because of me, because of my insistence that we fight this evil.

“Being a leader is no easy thing, daughter of my heart,” my father whispered in my ear, the rumble of his voice surprisingly gentle and soothing. “It requires making hard choices. Doing the things no one else would do. Or could do. And then you must carry the cost in yourself. You have done well this day. But fear, hurt, anger. These can push us past ourselves. You must keep the balance and remember that we must never be overzealous in our protection.” He repeated the sacred words, then, “Preserve instead of destroy. Deter rather than hurt, hurt rather than maim, and maim rather than kill.”

The message was clear: The remaining unreleased quinametzin had done no harm, perhaps did not even know what had happened on the surface. To kill them unprovoked would be murder.

I swallowed hard and nodded as he let me go.

“Come now,” he said, reaching up and wiping my tears away with his wide thumb. “Let us finish this.”

It was time for the cleanup to begin. Though we had a handful of Chiye-tanka using glamours and mind magicks to hold the authorities, emergency responders, and media at bay, that would only last for so long. We needed to be gone well before it broke, and so did the bloody remains of the pale giants.

We dragged enormous bodies deep into the vaults and collapsed the remaining walls as we withdrew, burying them to the world. Then, we gathered the bodies of our kith and kin. Twenty-two had fallen in all, most to the quinametzin. But one, an evacuator named Bidziil, had been shot by one of the humans he was trying to rescue. His eyes were vacant, one large hand clutched to a ragged hole in his chestnut hair near his heart. Seeing their lifeless bodies, the high price of this battle settled around my shoulders like an iron chain.

Achitometl’s voice echoed in my head—Look what you’ve done to them. Winona Treesinger, the chieftain who brought death upon her people.

Thanks to the evacuation squad, the human casualties were relatively few—little more than a dozen in all. Their bodies we left to be sorted through by the local authorities.

As we labored, members of the fighting force kept coming up to speak with me. They needed reassurance that their efforts had been strong, brave, and right. That they had made a difference and stopped evil. I told each of them the truth: that they had saved millions of lives this day. Still, the words felt empty in my throat. I longed only to be left alone, for it to just be myself and Chris sitting in silence somewhere far away from this place.

With the cleanup finished, the Elders reopened the rift to the Sacred Grove. While our surviving warriors carried the bodies of fallen Chiye-tanka through, Chris and I returned to the Pyramid of the Sun. Ever so gently, I lifted Sean’s body out of the rubble, holding him out a bit from my chest so the obsidian spear piercing his heart would not touch me. The heat of the sun had warmed the surface of his skin, but underneath, his muscles had gone cold.

When I stepped onto the avenue, Chris fell into step beside me. His boots dragged now and then, and his hands clung to the shotgun as if it were holding him up. Dirt, dust, and black quinametzin blood covered him from head to toe. He looked as if the exhaustion had been carved into his face with a knife, but he held his head high as we returned to the rift and stepped into the Sacred Grove.

We were the last ones through. It sealed itself behind us with a sizzle, the ruins of Teotihuacán disappearing in a blink. Gone as though they’d never been.

The body in my arms, though, was proof to the contrary.

Silence hovered over the peaceful clearing. The battle had ended, but no one made a move to leave. They were waiting for something. An end. Closure. A leader who would tell them the fight was over. Who would reassure them, just as my father had reassured me. Who would tell them they could go home, prepare their fallen kin for the return to the earth, and thank the Grandfather Spirit that they had survived.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath while I fought to put my thoughts in order.

What was there to say?

Reluctantly, I opened my eyes, struggling to find the words to start.

“Good work out there today,” Chris said, his voice carrying through the clearing, professional and strong. “You all fought like you’ve been doing it your whole lives. You worked fast, and you saved a lot of people. You stopped a psycho who would’ve destroyed every human in Mexico, maybe even the world. I know this wasn’t your fight, and I know you lost a lot of good men and women, but you saved my people.” He paused, surveying the Chiye-tanka faces, meeting each set of eyes in turn. “Thank you,” he finally finished, the words brimming with sincerity and gratitude.

Finished, my partner looked at me. I nodded, grateful for the extra time he had afforded me.

“You know what it means now,” I said, “to fight evil. To protect the weak. To stand in the gap when there is no one else who can or will. Great evil was defeated this day, and each of you had a hand in it. Let us say the words.”

I shifted Sean’s weight in my arms and began to speak. Immediately, eagerly, the other Chiye-tanka in the clearing followed, the Elders included. My father’s moss green eyes shined with a pride and love I did not feel I deserved. I looked away as I recited:

“Life is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a deer in wintertime. It is the shadow which runs across the high plains. It is sacred and fragile—we fight to protect it.” Sean’s body seemed to grow heavier in my arms. I had to force myself to continue speaking. “But we must never be overzealous in our protection. We must learn to preserve instead of destroy. We deter rather than hurt, hurt rather than maim, and maim rather than kill. The truest warrior of peace need never kill. Regard Heaven as your Father, Earth as your Mother, and all creatures as your Brothers and Sisters.”

As the rumble of our voices died off, so did the unnamable tension that had plagued the group. All that remained was the dismissal.

“Go and prepare your fallen loved ones,” I said softly, eyes falling to the broken body of my friend. “We will return them to Mother Earth tomorrow morning, under the warm embrace of Father Sun. They gave their lives expecting nothing in return. They deserve their rest more than any other.”

The Chiye-tanka dispersed then, my father working his way through the crowd, consoling the families of those who had fallen. Such was the job of a chieftain.

The responsibility of informing Sean’s loved ones, however, fell to me.

Chris and I returned to my room in the Great Redwood with Sean. We did not speak as we removed the obsidian spear from his chest and washed his face. The lenses of his glasses were dirty, so Chris took them off and attempted to clean them on his shirt. His shirt, however, was covered in so much blood it only smeared the lenses further.

“Dammit,” Chris snarled.

“It is no matter,” I said. I took the glasses to the washbasin in the corner of my room, cleaned them carefully with water, then wiped them dry with a cloth.

When I brought them back and slipped them onto Sean’s face, Chris was turned toward the far wall, his eyes squeezed shut tight.

He raked his hand through his hair.

“It was his chance,” he said quietly. “I—your Elder, what she said—it made sense then. Because that was the kid’s one chance to save the world. To be the hero, you know? And he knew that. That’s why he did it.”

“He saved us all,” I said. Absently, I straightened the collar of Sean’s bloodstained checkered shirt. “He was the only one who could defeat Achitometl. His logic was not flawed in that, but in the moment, I wished it was.”

“That makes two of us.” Chris huffed a soft laugh and shook his head. “Finally gets to play the big shot he always talked about being and he’s not around to take the credit. Figures.”

A canned, electronic music began playing. The sound was coming from Sean’s pocket. I reached in and pulled out his smartphone. The screen had shattered near the top, the cracks spreading out like spiderwebs, but it was still readable. It said Mom.

I turned the screen to Chris. His lips pressed into a grim line, and he swallowed hard, Adam’s apple shifting in his throat.

In unspoken agreement, we let it ring. We would do what was right, but not like that. Our friend’s family deserved more.

THIRTY:

Hard Goodbyes

After tending to Chris’s wounds, treating my own, and taking a few minutes to wash the blood and dirt off us, we returned to Inworld via the Cave of Changing. Chris made some calls from his own phone to other Venántum members and found out where Sean’s family lived.

It was an address just north of Missoula.

We returned to the cruiser. I placed Sean carefully in the back seat, then clasped the amulet tightly around my throat, shrinking once more into a Little Sister so that I could fit in the car. Chris said nothing about my nakedness, just climbed into the vehicle and started the engine. I joined him.

Chris spent the ride alternating between being on the radio to Dispatch and on the phone with the sheriff, the other detectives, and the deputies. They were all furious that he had dropped out of all communication without a word. Their conversations disappeared into meaningless static as I caught sight of the body in the back seat.

I had not called shotgun.

“Stop the car,” I whispered.

Chris looked at me.

“Stop the car now,” I demanded, my voice choked with tears.

Without a word, Chris pulled the cruiser to the side of the highway flanked by sturdy pines.

I turned around in my seat.

“I was wrong before,” I told Sean. “When you ride in the back of the cruiser, you do look like a hardened criminal who all the human females want to mate with. You are a rebellious thunderstorm, and you are so metal, Sean, and I am sorry for yelling at you for getting us banned from Firroth’s.” I sniffed hard and scrubbed at the cascade of tears stinging my cheeks. “And if you could speak, I would have lost this round of Shotgun and been so happy to sit in the back pouting while you gloated in the front seat.”

I climbed out of the vehicle, took Sean’s body from the back seat, and gently buckled him into the front. Then I climbed in back and shut my door.

“You won fair and square,” I told Sean.

We stopped by Walmart on our way north, and Chris purchased a replacement pair of jeans and pink flannel shirt for me. We finished the rest of the drive in thoughtful silence, not even turning on the radio.

Sean’s family home was a large, handsome cabin with red cedar siding and a green tin roof, tucked back into the woods at the end of a long gravel drive. Wide triangles of golden light shined into the night from the picture windows accenting its prow roof. A huge river rock chimney at the opposite end billowed smoke.

When we pulled up, a tall woman with graying black hair and a burly man with a bristly beard were waiting on the porch. Chris shut off the cruiser, and we climbed out.

“Mr. and Mrs. Smith?” he asked, raising his badge.

As if he already knew, the man’s face blanched and his knees buckled. His wife caught him by the elbow.

“It’s Sean, isn’t it?” Mrs. Smith asked, her voice hollow. “I knew something was wrong when he didn’t answer …” Her eyes locked on the cruiser and her hand reached out, then pulled back and clutched at the neckline of her sweater.

Her husband followed her line of sight to the still form sitting in the front seat.

“Is that him?” Mr. Smith asked, taking a step toward the vehicle. “Why isn’t he getting out?”

“Sir, ma’am,” Chris said. “Your son Sean was killed this afternoon in a …”

The rest of Chris’s speech was lost in Mr. Smith’s broken wailing. I opened the cruiser’s passenger door and lifted Sean’s lifeless body out. Mr. Smith stumbled off the porch and gathered his son in his arms, taking him from me. Sean should have been too heavy for Mr. Smith, but he carried his son up the steps, cradled to his breast like a baby.

Mrs. Smith opened the door into the house for her husband, running her fingertips across his shoulders as he passed. When they were safely inside, she turned back to Chris and me.

“Y’all’d better come in,” she said.

We drank hot tea that steeped in tiny paper bags and sank into comfortably overstuffed leather couches while we told Mr. and Mrs. Smith how their son had sacrificed himself to bring down an evil no one else could stop. Down the hall, Sean lay in the guest bedroom.

“Little snot always was too big for his britches,” Mr. Smith said, sniffling. “A lich. Hell.” He shook his head, gaze hazy, lost in thought.

Mrs. Smith’s knuckles whitened around her cup, but she said nothing.

I sat forward in my seat. “Are either of you mages?”

“No,” Mrs. Smith said. “Sean was the first one in the family.”

“And none of your other children could touch the Vis?”

She shook her head.

“Then why did you not want him to be a part of the Venántum?” I asked. “As humans yourselves, you must both know that even without magic, one who is properly trained and armed can carry out most of your organization’s directives.”

Mrs. Smith pursed her lips and shook her head.

“You don’t know my son. Sean’s a good boy, a smart boy. He just doesn’t know when things are too big for him. He’s been that way his whole life. He thinks—” She faltered, closing her eyes for a moment “He thought,” she corrected, returning her gaze to mine, “that he could do anything. If he’d taken a Rube job, he would’ve been running whatever company it was within a week … that, or fired. When you’re overconfident in business, the worst that can happen is you lose the deal. When you’re overconfident in hunting …” Her cup trembled in her hands and a tear slipped from the corner of her eye. “But of course, he didn’t want anything to do with anything but hunting. I thought something like training new initiates would be a nice, safe compromise.”

“Ma’am, if your son had known what was too big for him today, we would both be dead now,” Chris said. “Along with everybody in Mexico City. He saved us all.”

“He is a great hero,” I agreed.

“I didn’t want a hero.” Mrs. Smith’s voice quavered, but she quickly brought it back under control. “I just wanted my son to be safe.” She plucked an imaginary bit of lint from the knee of her slacks.

I looked at the floor.

Chris cleared his throat, then pulled out Sean’s shattered phone. He handed it to Mrs. Smith.

“The screen’s busted, but you should still be able to get the photos and videos off of it,” he said. “Sean told us he was taking them to show you guys. He got a couple good ones this last trip.”

Chris helped them open up the pictures and scroll through. Mr. Smith started weeping again when he saw the self-portrait Sean had taken of himself and Chris in my arms. We excused ourselves from the cabin while they watched the footage Sean had taken of my shoulder repairing itself. I could hear Sean’s voice explaining that he took these videos because his mother was an armchair cryptozoologist and she loved this stuff … but it didn’t hurt with the ladies, either.

I closed the door behind me, and his voice was gone.

As we pulled out of the Smith’s driveway, Chris turned the radio on and punched buttons until he found what he was searching for. The display read Come on Up to the House – Tom Waits. It was a slow and mournful tune, and the singer growled out the words as if his soul had been strangled with pain and grief. When the singer asked whether life seemed nasty, brutish, and short, I could take it no longer.

“I do not like this song, Chris,” I said, fists balled in my lap. “It is awful and it hurts and I wish it was over.”

“It’s funeral music, Winona.” He turned it up and sat back in his seat, one hand on the wheel. “It’s not for liking. It’s for feeling.”

I closed my eyes as the song played on. If this was the human method of mourning, then I would endure it with my friend. It did not get easier, but by the time the singer growled out the last note, I knew that not only Chris and I felt the unfairness of the world pressing down upon us. Men like this Tom Waits knew it as well, and he had sent up this song of pain to his holy people. The unfairness may never change, but it was known now.

A warm hand closed around my fist and squeezed. I turned my palm up and squeezed back. Carefully. Other songs came and went as we drove, but the feeling of Chris’s hand in mine stayed, a reminder that not all of life was brutal loss and raw ache.

We were nearing the Bitterroot Forest when Chris’s phone rang. He slipped his hand from mine, checked the screen, then answered it.

“Hey, Ruthie.” The words were barely out of his mouth when a woman’s voice began shouting at him from the other end. He jerked the phone away from his ear, grimacing, then brought it back. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you worry. … Well, really sorry then. Things have been so crazy at the department the last few days—”

More yelling.

“No, I know that’s not an excuse. I was going to call you as soon as I got a chance.” He paused to listen to a much quieter comment. “I haven’t been avoiding anybody! I want to come hang out, it’s just work. … Fine, tell me when. You name it. … Sunday, then. I’ll be there. … I won’t wuss out at the last minute this time, I promise.” He snorted. “Yeah, well, I’ve got this pushy little sister who won’t leave me alone.”

He ended the call and returned the phone to his pocket.

“I did not try to eavesdrop, Chris,” I said. “But this is a good thing, going to spend time with your sister and your nephews. It will help. You will see that it is not as daunting as it seems.”

“I’m actually glad you overheard that,” Chris said, glancing at me. “Because I kind of don’t want to go alone. What’re you doing Sunday?”

Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

If you enjoyed reading about Winona and Chris and want to stay in the loop about the latest book releases, awesome promotional deals, and upcoming book giveaways be sure to subscribe to my Mailing List Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.You can also connect with me on my Facebook Fan Page: James Hunter Fan Page Also, be sure to check out eden Hudson’s other books by checking out her Amazon Author Page

Word-of-mouth and book reviews are crazy helpful for the success of any writer. If you really enjoyed reading about Jacob and the gang, please consider leaving a short review—just a couple of lines about your overall reading experience. You can click here to leave a review at Amazon, and thank you in advance: Soul Game: Legend of the Treesinger (Book 2)

If you love Winona’s crazy, mixed up world and need more right this minute, then you might want to pick up Strange Magic (Yancy Lazarus Episode One) If Harry Dresden had an older, grumpier, drunker, more gun-happy uncle, you’d have Yancy Lazarus. Already read that? Well, you might also like eden Hudson’s Jubal Van Zandt Series, which is gritty, tough, futuristic Urban Fantasy at its finest. Get the first book here: Revenge of the Bloodslinger: A Jubal Van Zandt Novel

Other Works by James A. Hunter

James A. Hunter

Strange Magic (Yancy Lazarus Episode One)

Cold Hearted (Yancy Lazarus Episode Two)

Flashback: Siren Song (Yancy Lazarus Episode 2.5)

Wendigo Rising (Yancy Lazarus Episode Three)

Flashback: The Morrigan (Yancy Lazarus Episode 3.5)

Savage Prophet (Yancy Lazarus Episode Four)
Brimstone Blues: A Yancy Lazarus Novel

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MudMan (A Lazarus World Novel)

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Viridian Gate Online: Cataclysm (Book 1)

Viridian Gate Online: Crimson Alliance (Book 2)

Viridian Gate Online: The Jade Lord (Book 3)

The Artificer DLC 1.1: A Viridian Gate Online Novel

***

War God’s Mantle

Other Works by eden Hudson

eden Hudson

Revenge of the Bloodslinger: A Jubal Van Zandt Novel (Book 1)

Beautiful Corpse: A Jubal Van Zandt Novel (Book 2)

Soul Jar: A Jubal Van Zandt Novel (Book 3)

Garden of Time: A Jubal Van Zandt Novel (Book 4)

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Halo Bound (Redneck Apocalypse Book 1)

Lion’s Den (Redneck Apocalypse Book 1.5)

Hell Bent (Redneck Apocalypse Book 2)

God Killer (Redneck Apocalypse Book 3)

Books from Shadow Alley Press

Aaron Crash

Damnation Robot: Galactic Demon Hunters (Book 1)

Neutron Dragon Attack: Galactic Demon Hunters (Book 2)

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War God’s Mantle

About the Authors

James A. Hunter

Hey all, my name is James Hunter and I’m a writer, among other things. So just a little about me: I’m a former Marine Corps Sergeant, combat veteran, and pirate hunter (seriously). I’m also a member of The Royal Order of the Shellback—’cause that’s a real thing. I’ve also been a missionary and international aid worker in Bangkok, Thailand. And, a space-ship captain, can’t forget that.

Okay … the last one is only in my imagination.

Currently, I’m a stay at home Dad—taking care of my two kids—while also writing full time, making up absurd stories that I hope people will continue to buy. When I’m not working, writing, or spending time with family, I occasionally eat and sleep.

eden Hudson

I am invincible. I am a mutant. I have 3 hearts and was born with no eyes. I had eyes implanted later. I didn’t have hands, either, just stumps. When my eyes were implanted they asked if I would like hands as well and I said, “Yes, I’ll take those,” and pointed with my stump. But sometimes I'm a hellbender peeking out from under a rock. When it rains, I live in a music box.

But I’m also a tattoo-addict, coffee-junkie, drummer, and aspiring skateboarder. I love you. Let’s be friends.

Hang out with me on Goodreads

Drop me a line: imedenhudson@gmail.com

Take a look behind the curtain: WhiteTrashCappuccino.com

Special Thanks

James A. Hunter

I’d like to thank my wife, Jeanette, and my wonderful kids, Lucy and Sam. They are my constant motivation and inspiration. A special thanks to my parents, Greg and Lori. A quick shout out to my brother Aron and his whole brood—Eve, Brook, Grace, and Collin. Brit, probably you’ll never read this book either, but I love you too. I need to say thank you to eden Hudson, who is an amazingly talented author and the best co-author on the planet. Despite what she may say, All the mistakes came from me, and all the exciting, breathtaking, and pulse-pounding scenes came from her.

Here’s to the folks of Team Hunter, my awesome Alpha and Beta readers, and to all the awesome people at Shadow Alley Press: Aaron Crash, Jason Henry Evans, and the amazing eden Hudson—the coolest writer on the planet. And of course a big thanks to my editor, Tamara Blain who rocked this book (if you need editing, go to her, she’s seriously awesome: www.acloserlookediting.com/ ).

—James A. Hunter, April 2018

eden Hudson

Thanks for reading Soul Games! Readers like you are the reason I get to keep living the dream, so I want to tell you sincerely, from the bottom of my liver, thank you. All the mistakes came from me, and all the exciting, breathtaking, and pulse-pounding scenes came from the brilliant mind of my co-author, James Hunter. If you enjoyed reading about Winona and the gang, then you should check out the rest of James’s books here. They’re all just as rip-snorting and action-packed as the law will allow.

In addition to James, here’s the laundry list of other people I need to thank for their inspiration and assistance:

God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit—My part in this book wouldn’t have gotten done without Their help. For the little things and the big things, They’re always there for me.

Everybody at Shadow Alley Press for not shooing me away like the mangy stray I am. They’ll never get rid of me now.

My wonderfully sweet and sour team of advanced readers who took an interest in Winona from the beginning—Silvia d’Elena, Michael Jarvis, Doc, and Montzalee Williams.

The Op boys and girl, Will Greene, Kensey Stedman, and Ronny Khuri—Always. (Don’t worry, guys, Ronny will explain what that’s from.)

Tim McBain and L.T. Vargus—the serial thrillers who kept me entertained with their serial killers, so I didn’t get burned out writing about my own.

My sons, Bear and Oak—one who’s never met a challenge too big for him and one who never gets tired of regaling people with tales of his awesomeness.

And my Joshua, who teaches me more about being human every day.

Copyright

Soul Game: Legend of the Treesinger Book 1 is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2018 by James A. Hunter and Shadow Alley Press, Inc.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email the publisher, subject line “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the email address below.

JStrode@ShadowAlleyPress.com