River Marked

Chapter 12

I DIDN'T SLEEP. WHAT WAS THE POINT? I COULD HAVE nightmares while I was awake just as well as when I was asleep.
I had made the right decision, the only decision. But that didn't make it any easier to live with the deaths of four people I could have saved.
I fed Adam, and when he grunted at me, I fed myself, too. I had to keep my strength up. If four people had died to give me a chance to help kill the river devil, it wouldn't do to fail because I hadn't eaten.
About 5:00 A.M., when the first pale hint of dawn touched the sky, Adam and I got in the truck and headed back up to Stonehenge. Without Adam to converse with and nothing much to do, I would drive us both crazy if we stayed at the campsite. Stonehenge needed to be cleaned up. I could do that and save Jim and Calvin some work.
It had been nearly 2:00 A.M. when we'd packed up that morning, and Jim had looked like a man who'd been rode hard and put away wet. I didn't expect him to arrive until a more civilized hour. But he and Calvin drove up about ten minutes after I finally found the step stool so I could get high enough to remove the candles from the tops of the standing stones. Chin-ups on forty-five monoliths (I counted them while contemplating how to get the candles down) had struck me as too energetically taxing when I had a monster to kill later.
Calvin waved at me and hopped in the back of the truck to grab two boxes. He jumped back out and trotted over while Jim got out of the truck and shut the door.
"Hey," said Calvin. "Didn't expect--" He saw Adam and stopped dead. "Uhm. What's wrong with him?"
Even happy werewolves are scary in broad daylight if your eyes let you really see what they are. Adam was not a happy werewolf.
"Wolf took offense at the bite," I said. "So Adam can't change back to human right now."
"Jeez," said Calvin. "That sucks--and it's your honeymoon." Then his face flushed darker with embarrassment.
That was not what had Adam's hackles up, though. I'd told him about Coyote's sisters after Coyote left. And whispering very quietly what the plan to kill the monster was. Adam couldn't talk to tell me what he thought. I knew that he understood that it was the best plan we could come up with. I also knew that he didn't like it. At all. Amazing what body language can convey.
"Coyote is sure it is temporary," I told him, getting the next candle down while Calvin started to set them in the boxes he'd brought. The boxes were like the ones moving companies use to pack glasses, with cardboard inserts that kept each of the candles separate from the others. "Just don't look him in the eyes, okay?"
It took us about an hour and a half to get the place cleaned up and looking the way it had before we'd come. Hardest was getting the coarse dark gravel out of the much finer pale gravel.
"You could have used a plywood board," I told Jim, who was sitting on the altar criticizing Calvin and me while we picked up gravel one piece at a time and put it in a wheelbarrow.
"No," he said. "I could not have. The fire had to rest on earth. Even the gravel was cheating a bit."
"Next time." Even Calvin the Ever Cheerful was getting grumpy. "Next time I vote we put the fire on the ground. I'll dig it out afterward and put fresh gravel that matches the original back over the top."
Jim grunted. "That is more work. We did it that way for a few years until I started to do it this way." "What about a gunnysack?" I asked. "Something porous but not so loose a weave that the big gravel can drop through. Or use gravel that would blend in better with what is already here."
"Might work," agreed Jim. "But then what would I use to keep my apprentice busy? I suppose I could do what my teacher did and teach him beading."
"I'll pick up gravel, Uncle, thank you," Calvin said meekly.
The medicine man laughed. "I thought you might feel that way."
I STOPPED AT THE GAS STATION IN BIGGS AND GOT A pair of ice-cream cones--banana and strawberry--and a notebook. We ate the ice cream in the truck until Adam was finished with his strawberry cone because I couldn't feed myself and Adam and drive at the same time.
As I drove back over the bridge, still licking my banana ice cream, I could see the Maryhill Campground, full of tents, trailers, and RVs. Had MacKenzie been staying there with her family? Or had they been somewhere more private? I hadn't noticed any other campers. But if it had been the Maryhill Campground, Coyote might have been able to get to her in time to save her while I kept River Devil busy. If she'd been at the Maryhill Campground, and we had known where she was.
I drove back to camp and started writing. A letter to my mother and one to each of my sisters. I did not, of course, mention Coyote. A long letter to Samuel and Bran. A letter to Jesse. A letter to Stefan. A lot of pages that I'd burn if I survived the night.
Jesse called Adam's phone while I was in the middle of writing the letter to her. He brought his phone to me so I could answer it--after a little fumbling.
"I need Daddy," Jesse said intensely. "Now."
"He can't talk." Adam put his chin on my leg.
"I don't care. Take the phone to him in the bathroom."
"He's a wolf, Jesse," I told her patiently. "He can't talk. Is there something I can do for you?"
"Why is he a wolf?" she said, sounding shocked. "It's your honeymoon."
"Jesse. Much as I'd love to discuss my honeymoon with you--what do you need?"
"It's Darryl," she wailed. "He's impossible. Auriele left to do something or other, and he says I can't go shopping. My favorite store has a four- hour sale, from noon to four, and he won't let me go."
Jesse, to my certain knowledge, had never cared about shopping. There were other things she did worry about, and I could think of only one of them that would put that frantic tone in her voice.
"Gabriel wants to go do something," I interpreted. "Maybe a movie? Darryl would be an inconvenience, and you thought if you figured out something that he would not do, he'd let you do it without him."
"Darryl's right here, you know?" she said.
"Your father might have bought your story, but I doubt it," I told her. "Where are you going?"
"Darryl critiques movies," she said. "Loudly. During the movie, and Gabriel . . ."
Gabriel had changed in the last half year. He'd been kicked out of his house by a mother he loved (and who loved him back--that was part of the problem) and held captive by a fairy queen. Things like that change a person. Mostly he was a little more wary and a lot more somber.
Gabriel was living in the house that replaced my old one, so he and Jesse were now neighbors. But he'd lost the easy confidence that everything would turn out right--once he'd seen the monsters being monsters. Around some of the werewolves he was very . . . cautious. Adam didn't seem to bother him, but Darryl did. "How about Kyle and Warren?" I asked. Warren had that whole aw-shucks-ma'am going for him and was nearly as good at hiding his dominance as Bran. People tended to like Warren, and he and Gabriel got on just fine.
There was a little silence. "Kyle's important, Mercy. He and Warren can't just take the time to go to a movie with a couple of kids."
I laughed, and Adam sneezed. "Did you hear that, Darryl? Kyle's important."
"Good to know someone is important around here," he grumbled. He wasn't angry, though. Darryl had a Ph.D. and worked in a federally funded think tank as an analyst of things too complex for most people's brains. He and his mate, Auriele, had become Jesse's de facto babysitters when her mother left because female werewolves were few and far between: Adam's pack only had two. And Darryl was Adam's second in command, a wolf more than up to taking on anyone who might try to hurt the daughter of the Columbia Basin Pack's Alpha.
"I'll call them," Darryl said. "Now that I know what the trouble is. You could have told me, Jesse."
"I didn't want to hurt your feelings," Jesse muttered. "It's not that he doesn't like you."
"I know exactly what it's about." Darryl's voice was so deep it rumbled. "It's okay. I don't mind scaring people. I especially don't mind scaring your boyfriends."
"Everything good now?" I asked.
"I guess," Jesse said.
"If Kyle and Warren can't go, check with Samuel and Ariana."
"I'll do that," said Darryl.
"Love you, Jesse." I kept it casual. "See you." Probably. Maybe. The death of eight-year-old MacKenzie in the wee small hours this morning had taken the edge off my usual optimism.
"Tell Daddy he better not spend the whole honeymoon in wolf shape," Jesse said. "Love you both."
Adam had been reading my letter. I finally figured out how to hang up his phone, then met his eyes.
"I'm not planning on dying," I told him. "But, Mr. Always Prepared for Anything, there are things I'd like to tell people if I do."
Like I loved them. Like someone needed to watch out for Stefan, who still didn't seem to be doing too well. Warren had called with an update a couple of days ago and reported that Stefan's people seemed to be better. Stefan had collected a couple of people in Portland, but he was still too thin. Warren and Ben would be taking turns dropping by and feeding Stefan themselves, but that was a temporary fix. And someone needed to wait about ten more years, then track down the grown-up kids who belonged to that poor trucker who'd been framed for murders committed by a vampire and tell them he hadn't suddenly gone crazy and killed a bunch of innocent people. Those kinds of things needed to be taken care of if I wasn't there to do it.
Adam was restless and angry, so I sent him out to hunt something. Maybe killing something would make him feel better.
I wrote his letter while he was gone. When I was through, I lay down on the bed and tried to figure out some other way out of this disaster.
Calling the werewolves for help was out. The fae . . . Zee was my friend. I could call Zee. I considered it. Was it a good idea?
Not if the river devil could mark the fae, I realized. Fae were not proof against magic. I'd seen a fairy queen force other fae to worship her --and some of those had been fairly powerful.
If the river devil could suborn Zee . . . I've only seen Zee without his glamour a couple of times, and it was impressive. More impressive was the way the other fae treated him: wary respect--even from the Gray Lords themselves. If he had to obey the river devil, it would not be a good thing.
So. Coyote and his kinfolk were going to get themselves eaten. And Heaven help anyone left if I didn't kill the monster. I was going to swim over and try to take it out with a flint knife--presumably Coyote would provide that.
Scuba gear might be good.
I seemed to remember . . .
I went to the bench in the kitchen area and pulled up the cushion and set it aside. The hard top of the bench opened, revealing two complete sets of snorkeling gear. I'd noticed it when I was exploring the trailer, and now it made me wonder just how much Yo-yo Girl had seen in her vision. It wouldn't have been Adam who put them there.
I know a couple of adrenaline-junkie werewolves who scuba, but none that snorkel. It is not, strictly speaking, necessary to be able to swim when scuba ping, where sinking and rising are controlled by weight belts and an air- filled vest.
I pulled out a pair of water socks that looked to be my size and the smaller of the sets of fins. The snorkel I left where it was. My old college roommate had spent an entire summer trying to teach me to snorkel. We proved that the fins greatly increased my speed in the water and that the snorkel greatly increased the chance of my drowning myself.
Hank Owens called as I was closing up the compartment under the bench and asked for Adam. "He's out running," I told him.
"Would you give him my apologies, ma'am. First time I've ever shot a civilian."
"You didn't shoot him on purpose," I said.
"Not to argue, ma'am," he said gently, "but I pointed my gun at him and pulled the trigger. That's as `on purpose' as it gets."
I sensed we could argue back and forth all day. "Fine. I don't think you owe him an apology. He won't think you owe him an apology, but I will tell him you offered it. How are you doing? That sand- and-drop thing Hawk did to you didn't look very pleasant."
"No, ma'am. But I'm fine."
"Good."
"Thank you for conveying my message, ma'am."
"You're very welcome."
By the time Adam came back, I had decided that Coyote's plan stood as good a chance as any and that I was as prepared as I was going to be.
"Catch anything?" I asked.
He shook his head. Then he shook everything else.
"Hank called to apologize for shooting you."
He flattened his ears.
"That's what I told him. But he seemed to feel the need, so I told him I'd let you know."
I had done all I could. If we stayed here, all I was going to do was lapse into a funk that Adam was only too likely to join.
"Hey, Adam? Let's go out to lunch." This might be my last day on earth, and I refused to spend it moping around. Even if I'd had to let four people die this morning to preserve my life. I swallowed down my gorge.
Adam woofed in agreement to my proposal and escorted me out to the truck.
We ate takeout. Most restaurants don't let dogs in. We drove to the first pretty place I saw and ate fast-food tacos with flowers blooming all around us. The seagulls mostly left us alone because of Adam. When we were through eating, I bundled up the garbage and lay down with my head on Adam and went to sleep, soaking up the heat of the day like a balm to my soul.
And I didn't dream at all that I remember.
I woke with Adam licking my face--it felt a little hot. I don't sunburn much, but falling asleep in the middle of a hot summer afternoon just might do it. I touched my face with my fingertips, but it didn't seem sore, just warm.
"You ought to use sunscreen if you're going to sleep outside like this. Someday you might not have a fairy godfather to come and take care of the sunburn." Coyote sat next to us, chewing on a piece of grass. "Are you ready?"
I don't know how long I'd been there, but the sun was nearly down. I sat up. Dinnertime had come and gone, but I wasn't hungry. The werewolf would be another matter.
"Adam will need more food," I said, eyeing him sideways. "But yes, I'm as ready as I'm going to get."
"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked.
"I didn't know that you also played fairy godfather."
"It's a secondary thing," he said modestly, bouncing to his feet. "Let's go get some food."
COYOTE RODE IN THE BACKSEAT AND ATE TWICE WHAT Adam did--and that was saying something.
"I've got knives for you," he said, licking the salt from the last french fry off his fingers.
"Knives?"
"Yes. Last time I did this, it took nine blades, so I brought you twelve. They are obsidian--be careful you don't slice yourself while you're at it. My sisters made the sheath and the knives, so they are as sharp as any knife I've seen. Remember, obsidian is brittle and doesn't hold an edge forever, which is why I brought you so many."
"All right," I said. I realized that I hadn't lied to Coyote back in the little park: I was ready. The nap in the sun with Adam's heartbeat in my ear had steadied me, had given me courage. Succeed or fail, I would do my best to make sure that the river devil died tonight. That was all anyone could do.
THERE WERE SEVEN OF THEM WAITING FOR US AT OUR trailer. Evidently, Hawk had decided to help as well. They'd let themselves in and helped themselves to food, drink, and--from the looks of it--every sweet thing in the place. It looked like an invasion of pirates. If I'd known what they liked, I'd have brought back a couple of dozen doughnuts.
Dark was falling.
No one said much, but when the sun touched the western horizon, clothing disappeared as they garbed themselves in things suitable to war. Like the old clans of the Scots, for most of the tribes of the Americas, war meant as close to naked as makes no never mind. Apparent age dropped away, and the animal spirits who walked out to the river with me wore bodies as smoothly muscled as any werewolves. They also were furred or feathered as their aspect demanded, and their heads were those of beasts--their true shapes, as beautiful and strange as anything I have ever seen. It reminded me of the Egyptian gods; I'd never thought about the similarity before. They went armed, too--all but the birds, who would fight the battle from the air in their animal forms.
There were no passive sacrifices here. They would go fighting, but none of them seemed to believe that they wouldn't go down.
They all knew the river devil better than I.
I wore my old blue tank swimsuit with a soft leather sheath packed with obsidian knives. The sheath wrapped around me like a snug Miss America sash or one of those old bandoleer bullet belts. The knives were stuck in and held tightly by the pale, well-tanned leather of the sheath. They didn't look a great deal like a normal knife--or even the knives Coyote had drawn to drive the river devil back to the water. These were knives like the one Gordon had used to dig the bullet out of Adam. Using them would be more like using the blade of a box cutter than anything else. There was no handle, just a blunt side that was safe to hold and a very sharp side for cutting.
Over the top of the bandoleer I wore one of Adam's dark gray dress shirts. No sense advertising our plans.
Coyote nodded at me, and I walked out into the river. Adam paced unhappily back and forth on the shore just beyond where the river devil had landed, so he would be out of her reach. He hadn't been happy about agreeing to stay out of the river, but he wasn't stupid. We couldn't risk that she could gain control of him as she had Hank.
The plan was for me to stay safe until it was my turn to act--but still we needed me to be the bait that drew her in close. We'd decided, Coyote and I, that I should go in no farther than knee-deep, which put me about fifteen feet from shore. So close, Coyote was confident he could grab me before she pulled me out into the deep water. Knee-deep meant the entirety of the river mark on my leg was underwater. Raven took to the skies to see if he could spot her from the air when she came, though it was unlikely. The night-dark river didn't give up her secrets easily.
I was ready. Ten minutes came and went.
Nothing happened. Nothing except that I was getting cold. And scared because I'm not stupid. Somewhere in this river was a monster who wanted to eat me, and I was daring her to do just that.
I looked at the shoreline, but no one seemed impatient--except Adam. Even with him, it was not so much impatience as growing frustration. Raven waved, and I waved in return before the feeling of having nothing to watch my back made me turn around again.
"She's not stupid," I muttered to myself as I stared at the dark water. "She's got to be wondering what I'm doing going out into the river again after this morning." I tried to put myself inside her head. "I wouldn't come to her to save a child, but now I'm cavorting about in the water. Is this woman merely stupid? she'll wonder. Is Mercedes the bait for one of Coyote's traps? He's killed her before, but she is stronger now and he weaker. Even if it is a trap, what does she have to fear?" I hoped that she would be more arrogant than suspicious.
"Maybe she can sense the assault team on the shore." I thought about it for a minute. "But that shouldn't worry her. None of them think they have a chance of killing her. She probably doesn't think they can, either."
Their fatality had surprised me a little. I know a bit about warriors and testosterone--and Coyote and his friends were the first and definitely had the second. Good warriors understand how to assess risk, but they also tend to beat their chests and brag a bit. Coyote certainly didn't seem to eschew bragging, but no one was predicting victory here.
After a half hour, I decided that knee-deep wasn't working. I took a deep breath and held it, listening intently to the river. Nothing--or at least nothing I could distinguish from the normal sounds. The problem was that there was too much noise. Water brushing the shore, night birds and insects hunting food or mates, even the highways all worked to camouflage any sound the river devil might make.
I stared out at the far shore and imagined her out there, watching me and waiting. I took another step out, feeling the ground under my feet start to drop off. Another step, and I was abruptly waist- deep.
From the shore, Adam howled. I turned around and waved to them to show that the move had been voluntary.
"Knee-deep isn't working," I said. "I thought I'd try a little deeper." Two steps was all it had taken --I was still quite close to shore.
An otter head popped up about ten feet from me, looking smug. He couldn't hurt me here in the swimming area, according to Uncle Mike. But where the otters were, quite often the river devil was as well. I lost my nerve and turned to go back --and something wrapped around one ankle and hauled me through the water like a water-ski boat. Something that might have been Coyote's hand brushed mine, then was gone.
I spread my body out, trying to create as much drag as I could, even as I fumbled with Adam's shirt, trying to get it open enough to get at the knives. I knew what she was doing; I'd seen her do it to others. I had no intention of being her meal, but I wasn't sure if I'd have time to do anything to stop it.
I had to try. If I died first, the whole enterprise was at risk.
So I concentrated on the advice Sensei Johanson had once told me was the first and most important way to win a sparring match: "Be ready."
The river devil had pulled me deep under the surface, and it was dark. I was watching for her, and I saw nothing--but I felt the change in the currents of the water as she opened her mouth.
You, I shall consume with much pleasure, the river devil told me. And then I shall know how you defy me when no other mortal thing has. I shall learn and learning grow stronger.
Mercy! It was Adam, his voice a roar in my head overwhelming her words so I could move again.
More by luck than by skill, though I was trying to feel for anything I could grab, my free foot caught the outside of a tooth that was longer than my shinbone, and I grabbed another upper tooth with my left hand and stopped myself, arching my body away from her.
Mercedes. His voice was a howl of grief that I couldn't answer, not if I wanted to save myself.
I remembered, from seeing her head above the water, that the teeth in the front of her mouth were spiky and stuck out almost like the quills of a porcupine. They were also long, and I hoped that she couldn't open her mouth wide enough to engulf me as long as I kept my feet braced on the outside of her lower jaw and my grip on the upper tooth.
You make things harder than they should be, she told me. You are caught and cannot get away.
She snapped her teeth together with wicked speed--but I am wicked fast, too. I bent and straightened with her. The water helped as well. When she snapped her mouth closed, the water pushed out.
She changed tactics and tried to use her tentacle to shake me loose. I noticed that this close to her, the tentacle seemed to be operating a little less efficiently, like a rubber band that was too loose. It could hold on to me, it could pull me --but it couldn't push me.
I didn't know why she didn't try to grab me with another tentacle. Maybe she was just too angry right now. But when she did, I was dead. If this stalemate lasted much longer, I was dead anyway. My abilities didn't extend to breathing water, and I'd been underwater for a while.
On a particularly hard jerk, I took a chance and stopped resisting with my legs. She was pulling so hard that she yanked my legs up past her upper teeth. She quit pulling as soon as she realized what she had done, but too late. She'd already given me enough slack to twist my tentacle-caught leg around one of the long spikelike teeth at the front of her mouth. The next time she pulled her tentacle, she'd be pulling on her own tooth instead of my leg.
All well and good, but if I didn't get air soon, all the cleverness in the world wouldn't help me. I wiggled until I was on top of her muzzle instead of in front of it. I'd managed to pull open Adam's shirt while she was hauling me to her, and now I slipped a knife out of the bandoleer and sliced the tentacle just around my ankle.
Her tentacles must have been extremely sensitive. Just as she had when Adam freed me, she jerked her head up out of the water. Since I was on top, the motion catapulted me out of the river, off her head, and into the air. I landed about fifteen feet from where I'd started and plunged back into the water. She'd thrown me upstream, so the current would bring me right back to her. I broke surface again just about the time she let loose with a shriek that hurt my ears.
She saw me and dropped back into the water, disappearing under the surface. I swam as fast as I could, but, not being a fish, I was pretty sure I was going to be food.
Something grabbed my shoulders and I screamed, reaching up to grab whatever it was as it yanked me out of the water. I quit screaming as the river devil's open mouth appeared on the surface of the water below my toes, which were now about five feet in the air. My hands closed around two leather-covered steel-strong bones that could only be the legs of a very, very big predatory bird.
My food, my food. Thief! The river devil's voice in my head made me tighten my grip on the great bird's legs and draw my feet up as far as I could.
He shouldn't have been able to bear my weight, even as big as he was--and with his wings outspread, he was huge. But he wasn't just a thunderbird--he was Thunderbird--and I supposed that made a difference.
The river devil broke the surface but had misjudged her strike because Thunderbird swooped sideways at the last moment. She hung where she was a moment before toppling sideways and crashing into the river like a whale breaching. Thunderbird carried me to the river's edge and dropped me, gently, next to where Adam should have been waiting.
And wasn't.
"Adam," I shrieked, wiping the water out of my eyes. She couldn't have him. He was mine. I staggered into a run toward the river about the time Adam emerged, knocking me over and drenching me further with the water held by his fur.
I swore at him. "You have got to stay out of the water," I told him through gritted, chattering teeth. "If she gets you, she won't have to bother killing me--she can make you do it."
It scared me. I understood why he'd done it, understood it viscerally, but he had to stay out of the river. I tried to roll out from under him, but a big paw on my shoulder held me down and he snarled at me.
That's when I realized that I wasn't dealing with Adam. Adam knew why he had to stay out of the water. But the wolf didn't understand, and the wolf had taken over.
We didn't have time for this. I had to get my fins on and be ready to swim out to wherever the river devil was when she went comatose.
I heard a war cry--someone had made it out to her.
"Adam," I said. "Let me up."
Instead, he lay down on top of me. Damn Wolf. If Adam had been in his human shape, the wolf would never have gotten this much of an upper hand.
But I knew how to deal with this--if I calmed down, he would, too. He was responding as much to the frantic beat of my heart and my fear as he was to seeing me jerked underwater. He hadn't seen me fight underwater with something I couldn't see, where I could only feel those sharp spiky teeth and--that wasn't going to help me quiet down at all.
I closed my eyes and sought that calm place I'd learned to find in the dojo. It came in handy both when working on engines and when dealing with unhappy customers.
It took longer than it might have because I couldn't help but listen to the sounds of the battle I couldn't see, but eventually my pulse settled down, and I was relaxed under Adam.
"Okay," I told him. "I'm okay. You need to get off of me before I'm squished."
The wolf growled.
"Adam," I said sharply. "Get off me."
He closed his yellow eyes and took a deep breath.
"Adam?"
When his eyes opened it was Adam who looked back at me. He stood up and backed off.
"Thank you," I said, rolling to my feet a little less gracefully than I meant to.
Out in the river there was a feeding frenzy going on. There was blood in the water; I could smell it even though I couldn't see. I could hear the cries of the birds--Hawk, Raven, and Thunderbird as they attacked from above, but the devil was too far out in the middle of the river. Even with my night vision, I had trouble seeing what was going on. I grabbed my water socks and pulled them on my feet, ignoring the rough tear that wept blood on the foot I'd managed to brace on the river devil's teeth.
The fight was moving gradually toward the little swimming hole, and I felt Adam's attention focus as he figured out what she was doing. Our bond allowed me to understand it, too: she was herding them into the cove because she didn't want anyone to escape, and it would make it easier for her to locate body parts if she missed anything.
It would make my job easier, too.
I was worried I wasn't going to be able to get Adam to let me back in the water. I was pretty sure I was going to be terrified--
She was close enough I could see her bright green eyes--which meant that Adam and I were too close to the river.
"Come on," I said. "Let's--"
There was a tremendous splash and her head lifted out of the water. Speared on her teeth was a man with a canine head. She opened her mouth as a single tentacle pulled him off the teeth that impaled him. She threw him into the air, and, tipping her head back, caught him in her rear teeth and chewed him to bits.
Adam collapsed, like a puppet whose strings were cut. Coyote howled a tribute.
She had eaten Wolf.
I didn't know what had happened to Adam. He was breathing, his heart was steady--he was just unconscious. I was kneeling beside him, looking for any injury, when pain rushed over me, and I understood why he'd fallen.
My skin was on fire, and I felt as if someone had poured boiling water over me. I screamed, stumbling to my feet. And this time it was I, tears sliding down my wet face, who howled a tribute-- and Coyote who died.
It didn't last long after that. I think that when they were all alive, they'd been able to harry her, to play off one another's strengths. But as they died, they lost the ability to distract her.
Raven died trying to keep Snake alive--the distraction allowed Snake to drive his spear deep into her side, but not deep enough. Watching her, I realized why she'd only grabbed me with one tentacle--she could only use one of them at a time. The unused tentacles bobbed about her head as if she had thick wire hair. She dove on top of Snake, and I didn't see him again. The only ones that seemed to be remaining were Thunderbird and Hawk.
Thunderbird dove like an F-15, striking with both taloned feet extended. I'd seen him score a deep furrow on her nose a few moments before. But this time, she whipped her tentacle around his legs and snatched him out of the air and into the water.
Suddenly she shrieked--neither she nor I had seen Hawk, and he'd managed to take out an eye while she was concentrating on Thunderbird. But Hawk's talons were stuck, and she dove abruptly. For a moment, the river was still, and Thunderbird floated alone on the surface, bobbing gently with the current. Then he disappeared under the water, tugged by something underneath him.
Wait until she surfaces and is still, Coyote had cautioned me as he ate a couple of fast-food burgers in the backseat of the truck--one greasy sandwich in each hand. If there aren't enough of us to cause her to go belly-up, there's no sense in you dying, too.
I'd asked him what to do if she didn't react the way he'd hoped.
Maybe then it might be time to bring in the nuclear warheads, he'd said. For all that there was a smile on his face, I had been pretty sure he hadn't been joking.
I stripped off Adam's shirt. When I saw blood, I realized that Thunderbird had opened up a good slice under one arm when he rescued me. Under the circumstances, I wasn't going to complain. I checked the knife belt. There were a few knives missing, but I still had eight left. Hopefully, that would be enough.
I waded out into the river until I was knee-deep, then put on the long, bright pink fins. And then I waited, nearly in the same spot as I'd waited before.
I'd have expected that the water would keep the smell of carnage to a minimum, but I could smell blood. Something bumped my knee, and I fell over backward trying to scramble away in my clumsy fins, landing with a splash on my backside. The bandoleer jerked and I grabbed the otter with one hand and threw him as far as I could before I stood up. I checked the sheath, but it seemed to be okay except for a bite mark on one edge. There were still eight knives.
A long, pale shape appeared on the surface about ten feet from me. It waved lazily back and forth as the current caught it. It was joined by another and another, then her head appeared-- half her head anyway, the rest lurking beneath the water--one eye skyward and her mouth open wide. Finally, her body surfaced, limp and huge. Really, really huge. I was pretty sure it was longer than Coyote's estimate of ninety-odd feet.
Showtime.
I waded out, ignoring the otterkin who were circling me. If they could have attacked me before this, they would have. Whatever the fae had done to this cove, it was serving my purposes now.
As soon as the water was thigh-deep, I dove forward and let the fins do the work of getting me to the river devil.
I'd expected that I would have to chase her downstream, but her greed for the last bit of flesh kept her in the backwater of the swimming cove. It didn't matter for my task--but if I was successful, it might mean that I'd have a lot easier time getting back to Adam.
I noticed that there were flashing lights on the big highway--someone had seen a disturbance over here, I thought. We'd known there was a good chance that people would notice eventually. If I killed her, then it wouldn't matter. If I didn't, it would likely give her a whole slew of victims, but I wouldn't care. Coyote might, just might, come back from the dead--but I wouldn't.
Her body floated about three feet above the river surface, the pectoral fin stuck straight up in the air. I couldn't get to it from the underside. I swam around her head--because it was the shortest way--but I tried not to look too closely at her open mouth. Her bad eye, the eye Hawk had hit, was the one that I could see.
I don't know how long she'll stay somnolent, Coyote had told me on the way here. I don't even have a best guess. All we can do is feed her everyone we can and hope it is enough. Then he'd grinned. She might sleep for a week digesting me alone.
Something brushed against me, and I spun to look, expecting an otterkin. But it was just a feather. A feather as long as my forearm attached to a piece of skin and caught between her teeth. I swam faster.
Her topside was rougher than her underbelly had been. I might have been able to scale it, but I didn't have to. A spear sunk deep into her flesh gave me an easier way up. I pulled off my fins and gave them to the river before I started to climb.
Her skin was cold and faintly mucous. She smelled like fish and magic. I'd thought she would have big scales, but they were small, even finer than a trout's on her underbelly. On her back, they were more like a snake's. I put my hand on the base of her pectoral fin and measured out four hand spans, then I pulled out one of my knives and made the first cut.
I held my breath as the skin parted reluctantly, but she was still as death. If it weren't for the faint pulse beneath my knees and the fluttering of her gills about three feet in front of me, I might have thought she was already dead.
The first knife made it through the tough skin before it lost its edge. I didn't notice at first, wasting precious time dragging the dull rock against her unyielding flesh. By the fourth knife, my cut was nearly a foot deep and twice that wide. I braced it open by tucking my knee in the fissure while watery pink blood filled the bottom. I had to stop and empty it out a couple of times so I could make sure that the knife was still cutting.
You have to get it wide enough to get to the heart, Coyote had told me, holding his hands about two feet apart. She doesn't have ribs--she's a fish. But she doesn't need them. Her flesh is made of magic as much as flesh. That's why the steel didn't work, that's why bullets won't work, that's why a grenade wouldn't work. I'm not sure a nuclear strike would work--but it would be interesting to try. Of course, after that no one could use water from that river for a hundred years or so . . .
The otters swam around, tugging at her tentacles and doing something with magic--I could feel it. Fae magic felt different to me from the magic that kept the river devil alive. They were trying to wake her up.
I kept looking out on the beach, but Adam hadn't moved. What are you doing, Mercedes? Her voice rang in my head, and I froze, certain that I'd failed, that she was awake.
You are not strong enough for the task you were given, she said. You should have come to me this morning and let those children live. At least then your death would mean something.
The tissue under my blade was surging with the beat of her heart, a sign, Coyote had told me, that I was close. I switched to a new blade--I had three left--and kept working.
My hands were cold and numb, and I'd slipped a couple of times. There was at least one cut that would need stitches if I survived. The new blade broke. I tossed it at one of the otterkin and hit it in the head. It chittered at me, and I stuck my tongue out at it as I grabbed another knife.
Two left.
Not enough, Mercedes, she said. Not good enough. Poor Coyote died in vain and took with him the last of the spirit warriors who walk our Mother Earth. You fail, but don't worry--you won't have to live with your failure.
That blade dulled. And then there was only one. Had she moved underneath me?
I took it out and went to work. It would either be enough, or it wouldn't. The ankle that she'd grabbed me by throbbed in time with the beat of her heart. The hip attached to that ankle ached dully--I must have pulled a muscle in it. The cut under my arm burned every time I moved my hand.
And the tissue parted, exposing her heart.
It didn't look like any heart I had ever seen--it was black and veined with gray, and the magic of it was so strong it stung the tips of my fingers.
It's no use trying to stab her heart. Coyote had chewed for a while, then swallowed. It's too hard. You need to go for the connective tissue.
So I did. There were four webs of gristle that held the heart in place. Once I took care of that, the veins and arteries were soft enough I could pull them out with my bare hand, or so Coyote had assured me.
I set my knife to the first of the webs--and right about that time, she woke up.