“Bring. Him. Back,” he says.
She shakes her head. “This is between you and Cory.”
“Then take me to him so I can finish this, and then you’re going to help me find Marina.”
She shakes her head again. “I will not interfere.”
“Bullshit. You’ve done nothing but interfere since the first day I became a Wildling.”
She regards him steadily for a long moment before she says, “Tell your men to put away their weapons.”
“Yeah, not going to happen.”
Did you ever hear the sound of a hundred or so pairs of wings? Let me tell you, dude. Shades of Hitchcock and seriously creepy. I don’t know where they came from, but suddenly the sky is full of crows, not making a sound other than the beating of their wings. They settle in the raggedy trees. More still perch on the junked cars.
Chaingang’s gaze leaves Auntie Min’s to take in the birds. He shakes his head and looks back at her. “Maybe from where you’re standing, we don’t seem so important,” he says, “but you don’t want us to be your enemy.”
“You’re right,” she tells him. “I’ve always considered us allies.”
“Then what’s with the army?” he asks, waving his arm to take in all the crows.
She shrugs. “They are here of their own accord. Most likely, they think you are threatening me.”
“Chaingang,” one of the bikers calls out. “Just say the word. We’ll take out the birds just like we did the dogs.”
“They aren’t birds,” Chaingang replies without turning. “And I need her,” he says, still looking at Auntie Min.
Man, I so hope this is like a team-up in the comics and we get done with the fighting and yelling at each other. Maybe Chaingang is thinking the same thing.
“Everybody,” he says. “Put down your guns.”
Another of the bikers shakes his head. “No way—” he starts.
“Don’t make me have to come and do it for you,” Chaingang says, still not turning around. Then he focuses his attention back to Auntie Min. “What do you want from us?” he asks her.
“Nothing more than I ever have. For you to stand by us, as we stand by you.”
“You’ve got my man Coltrane on the ground and you’ve taken my brother. In my book, that’s not standing by me.”
“Let the young man go,” Auntie Min tells Donalita.
Donalita frowns, but she releases his arm and steps aside. Coltrane comes up, grabbing her ankle and swinging at her, so she punches him in the side of the head. He goes down and lies very still in the dirt.
“Sorry,” Donalita says. She’s trying to look contrite, but the laughter in her eyes gives her away. I hold my breath until Chaingang sighs.
“Not your fault,” he tells her, then he’s back glaring at Auntie Min. “Now, my brother.”
“Do you vouch for him?” Auntie Min asks.
“Vouch for him? What kind of bullshit is this? You come onto our turf, and walk all over us and him, and you expect him to say, ‘Yes, ma’am, thank you, ma’am’?”
“Your turf?” Donalita says. “You’re going to tell Auntie Min that this land is your responsibility?”
“Okay, point taken. But you’ve got to see it from his point of view. Bunch of dogs attack us, then you show up disrespecting him. The guy’s got a rep to maintain.”
“Do you vouch for him?” Auntie Min repeats.
“He’s my brother. I’ve got his back, he’s got mine. Of course I freaking vouch for him.”
“Donalita?” Auntie Min says.
I’m expecting what happens next, so I look at the Ocean Avers when she disappears. I’m not kidding myself—I wouldn’t want to go one-on-one with any of them. But dude, even tough guys look dumb with their mouths hanging open like that.
She and Cory are back a moment later. Cory’s still holding on to J-Dog, who’s now covered in red dust, like he’s been up in the hills somewhere, fighting. His body language says he’s defeated, but his eyes are full of rage. Cory’s jeans and hoodie don’t have a speck of dust on them. Donalita’s holding J-Dog’s big gun. She snaps the barrel off and drops both pieces in the dirt.
“Oops,” she says, and winks at me.
J-Dog shakes off Cory’s grip and walks over to Chaingang, wiping the dirt from his face with his trashed T-shirt.
“What the fuck did you get us into?” he growls at Chaingang. Chaingang nods. “My bad. You and the boys should walk away.”
“Yeah, like that’s gonna happen any time soon.”
He turns so that he and Chaingang are facing the Wildlings. Auntie Min looks solemn; Donalita’s still amused. Cory’s eyes flash with an anger as dark as J-Dog’s.
“So, are we going to keep up this pissing contest,” Cory says, “or are we going to work together?”
“What about the dead dogs?” Chaingang asks.
“Oh, you’ll still be answering for that,” Cory answers.
Chaingang stands a little taller. “To you?”
“Enough,” Auntie Min says. “Both of you.” Her gaze lifts to take in the other bikers. “All of you. There is work to be done. Those of you who won’t help must leave now.”
“Or what?” J-Dog says.
“You will be removed.”
“Yeah? By you and what army?”
Crows start drifting to the ground from the trees and their perches on the junked cars. As they reach the dirt, they turn into tall, lean, dark-haired men. In moments there are dozens standing around us and the trees are still full of birds.
J-Dog nods like he sees this all the time.
“You got all your homeboys,” he says, “so what do you need us for?”
“I never said I did,” Auntie Min tells him. “But Theo appears to want you with us, and I don’t care enough one way or the other to argue with him about it.”
Donalita starts to giggle, but she stops as soon as Auntie Min gives her a stern look.
J-Dog’s eyes narrow like he’s trying to figure out if Auntie Min’s dissing him. I’m trying to figure it out myself.
“So what’s the gig?” he asks finally.
Auntie Min counts it off on her fingers. “The rally on Saturday. Keep the congressman from being killed and becoming a martyr.” She raises a second finger and waves her hand toward the nearest dog corpse. “And find out who’s behind all of this,” she says, “and stop them.”
“And find Josh and Marina,” I say when she pauses.
J-Dog gives me a glare. “Who the fuck are you?”
I want to take a step back, but I force myself to hold my ground.
“That’s Des,” Chaingang says before I can answer, “and he’s my man, straight up. Nobody messes with him unless they come through me first.”
Wow, really?
I suppose Chaingang sees something in my face because he gives me a look that says, “Zip it.” I keep my mouth shut.
“Considering how … efficiently Josh dealt with Vincenzo,” Auntie Min says, “I don’t think we have to worry about his safety. As for the otter—”
“We need to get Marina back—now,” Chaingang says. “And if Vincenzo’s brothers are as strong as he was, we’re going to need Josh’s fire power.”
“I’m hoping we can resolve this without more butchery.”
Ouch. She’s looking around at the carnage. The dead dogs. The dead guy. I feel like she expects Chaingang to apologize, but I don’t see that happening. It’s just not the way he rolls.
While nothing shows on Chaingang’s face, I don’t have to guess about what J-Dog’s thinking.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he says to Chaingang. “Why are you even listening to these fools? What kind of a Wildling are you, anyway? A pussy?”
“Shut up,” Donalita tells him.
“Listen, little girl—”
She waves a hand at him. “Yeah, yeah. We get it. Everybody’s an alpha—especially you. Now shut your stupid mouth and let Auntie Min speak.”
J-Dog’s voic
e goes quiet. “Oh, you’re going to pay for that slow, bitch. And Auntie Min? What kind of a douche name is—”
“Seriously, Jason,” Chaingang tells him. “Either walk away, or shut up.”
“What the—” J-Dog starts, but Chaingang holds his hand up, glares at him and mimes zipping his lip. Then he turns his attention back to Auntie Min.
“The dogs didn’t give us a choice. Come after me or mine and you go down, end of story.”
“Your grandmother—is she protected now?”
“We left Tall Boy to keep an eye on things. He’s one of ours.”
“I will send extra guards,” Auntie Min says.
“Josh’s mom, too,” I put in. If my phone call worked, Solana and Matteson might already be over there, but it can’t hurt to send reinforcements, especially ones that can fight fire with fire. I don’t know what to do about Marina.
Auntie Min nods. I don’t see her say anything, but a half-dozen of the dark-haired crow men shift into birds and fly off, three heading in the direction of the Orchards, the others toward town.
“Now—” Auntie Min begins, but Chaingang cuts her off.
“I know you’ve got your own agenda,” he says, “but here’s my priority number one: we find Marina and bring her back. And then we lay a little righteous head-busting on whoever was stupid enough to grab her.”
“We are all concerned about the young otter,” Auntie Min says, “but our first priority is to keep the congressman alive.”
“I don’t care about no asshole congressman,” Chaingang tells her.
“You don’t understand,” Auntie Min says. “If they kill him and make it look like the work of a Wildling, the authorities will not rest until they have every one of you locked away.” Chaingang shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t turn my back on my friends.”
“Or girlfriends,” Cory mutters.
Chaingang fixes Cory with that hard stare of his. “Say what?”
“You heard me.”
“It doesn’t matter what Marina and I are,” Chaingang tells him, “I’m not about to let her hang out to dry without doing whatever it takes to get her back.”
“That’s commendable,” Auntie Min begins, “however—”
“You’re not listening,” Chaingang cuts her off.
“I’ll go find her,” Cory says. “I’m the best of any of us at tracking somebody through the otherworld. And I’ll do it better if I bring someone with me who knows her well.”
“That would be me,” Chaingang says.
Cory shakes his head and points at me. “No, that would
be Des.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Oh, and have you known her for the better part of your life?” Cory asks. “Because that’s the kind of knowing I’m talking about.”
“Maybe I haven’t. But you’re going to need somebody who can fight and that’s me—no offence, Des.”
Cory nods. “Which is why Donalita’s coming, too.”
Auntie Min extends her hands toward Chaingang and interlaces her fingers. “We can achieve all of our goals by working together,” she says. “Some have unique skills that will provide a surer success. If Des goes, it doesn’t mean he’s better than you.”
“You think I give a rat’s ass about that?”
No one says anything. I know what he’s thinking. He wants to be the one to ride in and save Marina. I don’t mind that it’s me who gets the role, but not for the same reason. Dude, I just want to do something useful around all the people with their superpowers. But I totally understand.
We stand there in the hot sun for a few long moments until Chaingang finally nods.
“Okay,” he says. “We’ll do it your way. But”—he points at Cory, and then me—“don’t you screw it up.”
The look on his face is so dark I almost want to throw up my arms and tell him, “No, dude. You do it.”
But I’ve got this. I think. Whatever the this is that Cory figures I can do.
I clear my throat. “We won’t,” I tell him.
Then Donalita’s on one side of me, Cory on the other. They each take one of my arms.
“Just take a step,” Donalita says.
I do, in unison with them, but we don’t move a pace forward in the dusty junkyard. Instead the step takes us someplace else entirely.
Seriously, this is so cool.
We have a dinner of rice and beans washed down with tea that isn’t laced with any drugs, recreational or otherwise. I don’t ask, but I take a long, considering sniff before I drink any. Tío Goyo makes no comment. The night’s clear and the stars feel very close. I lie back looking up at them, and absorb the pleasing mix of scents from around me. Pine and wood smoke, and a hundred messages that the wind carries up from the rocky landscape below the lip of the cliff.
“So, are you guys like priests,” I ask, “or did you ever have a girlfriend?”
“What kind of a question is that?”
I shrug. “You seem to know everything about me.”
He studies me for a moment, then slowly adds another piece of wood to the fire, poking the burning pile with a stick and staring into the coals.
“No girlfriend,” he says.
“Never? Really?” Sounds like the priesthood to me, but I don’t say that.
He waits another moment before he answers. “When I was your age, yes. But then I became involved with my brothers of the Halcón Pueblo and there was no longer time.”
“Hobbies?” I ask. “You know, other than spying, and killing evil spirits, and drugging people?”
“You’re still angry.”
“I just wonder, when you go around interfering with people living ordinary lives, having normal bad dreams, if you ever consider how you’re intruding on their right to privacy.”
“It’s only because of what my brothers do that they are able to live ordinary lives.”
“Unless you kill them.”
He sighs and shakes his head. “You know it’s not like that. I’m turning in. We’ll try again tomorrow morning to see if we can wake the map in your head.”
“You shouldn’t be surprised that I’d want to know what I’m getting into with you.”
He doesn’t answer. Instead he sets his mug by the fire and lies down on the bed. I hear his breathing even out. I look back up into the night sky.
When I’m sure he’s asleep, I shift to my mountain lion shape and pad off silently into the darkness. Though it’s not dark to my eyes. There’s enough light from the moon and stars that I could read a book. But the mountain lion is only interested in reading the night.
I run for a while, following the rim of the mesa until I come to a dry waterfall. In the monsoon season it’s probably a roaring torrent. Right now there’s not even a trickle of water. I follow the tumble of boulders down until I reach the lower ground. I move without making a sound, but wherever I go, the night falls still. The nocturnal animals think I’m hunting. I can smell them: jackrabbits, javelinas, mice, rats. Once, a pair of mule deer. But although the mountain lion wants to hunt, that’s not why I left the camp.
I leap high into the lower branches of one of the big ponderosa pines and stretch out along a limb. As the minutes go by, the night life returns to its business once more.
I need to get the map in my head working again.
If I got anything from what Tío Goyo’s been talking about today, it’s that everything is all about … oh, let’s just call it magic. And everything to do with magic works because of our will.
I can change shape because I will it.
I dial down intense smells and sounds by deliberately willing that to happen.
I’ve shut down the flow of pheromones I was putting out because I willed it to stop.
I know I can rise into the air in spirit form and safely return because I can will it.
So that’s what I do now.
I don’t try to relax, or empty my head, or anything else we’ve tried before. Instead, I imagine
a wall in my mind and behind it is the map I’m trying to access. I study the big stones of the wall for a long moment, then I will it to come down.
In my imagination the wall explodes as though a giant boot kicked it aside. I have a moment to smile, thinking about Des and those old Monty Python shows he likes, and then there’s my map—that weird GPS thing that first appeared in my head, back when I was in the skatepark. Like it never went away.
It’s so stupidly easy.
I can see it all in my head, the landscape and everything around me for a radius of a hundred yards or so. I push it out farther, taking in the route I took to get here. The dry waterfall, the rim of the mesa, the camp. I note Tío Goyo, still sleeping.
Why does it work now, when it wouldn’t before?
Because this time, I believed it would. I was relaxed about it. It’s that simple. Just like you don’t think about reaching out and picking something up. You don’t forget how to move your arm, your fingers. You just do it.
I shut the map down and call it back up a few times, just to practice and explore it. I keep it close, let it spread out for miles, then reel it in again. Not until I’m sure I can call it up whenever I want, do I practice the other thing I came here to try.
I let my mind fill with everything I felt when my spirit rose out of my body—every part of that disconcerting sensation of slipping out of my flesh that I experienced after drinking Tío Goyo’s special tea. When I’m sure I’ve got it all figured out, I let it happen again.
It’s like throwing a switch. One moment I’m in my body, the next I’m looking down at myself in my mountain lion shape. Then that tawny shape dissolves into the long branch of the pine it’s lying on and I shoot back to the camp, quick as a thought. I mean literally.
I hover there, high in the night sky, and look down at Tío Goyo’s sleeping form.
I don’t entirely trust him. I suppose I should take him at face value, seeing how he hasn’t steered me wrong so far. Or at least not that I know. He could honestly be helping me find Elzie. But he could also be pulling some kind of mental sleight of hand, making me think he’s my friend, and instead leading me into a confrontation with one of those evil spirit monsters he and his brothers are chasing. Maybe he needs my help to defeat one of them. Well, I’m not about to join their little priesthood.