“Run,” he said.
Gary grabbed my hand and pelted down the path, pulling me in his wake. The path still had its cover of greenery, but now the ceiling of leaf and stem was tall enough for us to stand upright in.
As soon as I was running all out, Gary dropped my hand. I tucked the walking stick under my free arm, put my head down, and ran as the howls of the dog became baying and a second dog joined in the chorus. Joel had evidently lost his battle for control—and Coyote’s trick with the landscape didn’t stop the dogs from hunting us in it.
Speaking of Coyote … I glanced over my shoulder in time to see that a four-footed coyote had stopped in the middle of the path behind us. He was a little bigger than the usual coyote, but if I’d seen him out my window, I wouldn’t have given him a second look. He gave me a grin and a wag of his tail before running the other way.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” Gary chanted as he ran. “Stupid freaking Coyote. Always getting me in trouble.”
I bumped him with my shoulder. “Accept some responsibility for your own life,” I panted, finally. “You could have stayed sitting in the middle of the road. You chose to come with us.”
Gary gave me an irritated look. “Whose side are you on anyway?”
He wasn’t as out of breath as I was. Maybe he had more practice running.
“I didn’t know there was a side to be on,” I grunted.
I could still hear the dogs. No. Not dogs. I thought of the giant forms, the ones that Coyote said could not be harmed by mundane means. These were Guayota’s children. They were tibicenas.
“They sound like they’re getting closer,” Gary said. I wished he hadn’t, because I’d been thinking the same thing.
“I thought Coyote was going to divert them.” My voice was breathy because I didn’t have much air to spare.
“Right,” said Gary. “Just like he diverted the police when I ended up in jail. I think we’re the intended diversion here.”
“He dumped me in a river where there was a monster killing things,” I told him.
“There you go. That’s the Coyote I know and hate.”
The woods and brush thinned, and we were running on the hill down to the gravel road we’d traveled before.
“Which way?” said Gary.
I looked frantically, but there was nothing to distinguish one direction from another. Although the moon had been in the sky when we ducked into the tunnel of brush, there was no sign of her now. I felt down the pack bonds and the bond I shared with Adam. Though I could tell they were somewhere, I got no sense of where they were in relation to me. The connection was foggy, as if they were a lot farther away than an hour’s walk.
“You pick,” I said, as we hit the bottom of the hill—and he jerked my hand and pulled me to the right.
I made the mistake of looking up the hill and caught sight of one of the tibicenas cresting the top—the female. She saw us and bayed twice before plunging down the hillside after us. I quit looking back and concentrated on running—and on hoping that she didn’t give that cry we’d heard before, the one that had frozen me in my tracks.
“Isn’t that walking stick supposed to take you home?” Gary asked. “Why don’t you say the magic words? ‘There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.’”
Where did he get enough breath to be sarcastic? If he wasn’t being sarcastic, then he didn’t know fae artifacts as well as I did.
“They aren’t Dorothy’s ruby slippers,” I said. “Fae artifacts have a mind of their own, and this one is particularly contrary.”
I’d turned my head to glance at him, and I noticed that there was a house in the distance—the first house I’d seen all night.
“Look, Gar—” I ran full tilt into something solid planted right in front of me. I lost my balance, and my feet skidded sideways to tangle with Gary’s. Everyone fell, tumbling and rolling on a gravel driveway because Gary and I had been running really fast. And the solid thing hadn’t been a tree, like I thought, it had been Adam.
“Hi,” I said, panting, sprawled out on top of my husband, who’d done the chivalrous thing and taken the brunt of the fall. “A funny thing happened when I went to get a glass of water.” He smelled so good, warm and safe and Adam.
Coyote had dumped Gary and me right in front of Honey’s house, at the exact spot where my husband stood … had been standing until I hit him running full out when he wasn’t expecting an attack from the ether.
Still lying flat on his back, Adam looked over at the walking stick that had missed clocking him in the head by an inch, maybe less. Coyote hadn’t fixed the walking stick entirely, or possibly at all, because I got the distinct impression that the walking stick had tried to hurt Adam but hadn’t quite managed it. I tightened my hand on the old wood, and the impression faded until it was only a stick in my hand. The effect Adam had on me was such that it was only then I remembered that I should be afraid.
I lifted my head and listened as hard as I could. But I couldn’t hear them.
“Are they still following us?” I asked urgently.
“We’re not dead,” said Gary, who hadn’t moved from his prone position on the ground. “I’d guess that we lost them when we got dumped back here. It’s too much to say that we’re safe, not when Himself is about—but safe for now.”
“I take it you met with Coyote?” Adam said politely as he sat up so I was sitting on him instead of lying on him and glanced at Gary. “Both of you?”
Gary got up and started pulling goathead thorns out of his arm. “I hate Coyote,” he said without aiming the remark at anyone.
I ignored Gary and answered Adam. “Was it the walking stick that gave it away?” I asked with mock interest that would have worked better if I weren’t still trying to catch my breath. My heart was beating so hard that the force of my pulse almost hurt.
“No, I figured it out earlier, when your scent trail disappeared into nothing. Mostly. The walking stick just meant my suspicions were correct.” Adam closed his fingers on my shoulder, not quite hard enough to hurt. “Don’t do that again,” he said. “My heart can’t take it.”
“I didn’t intend to do it the first time,” I half whined. I would have all-the-way whined, but it was suddenly too difficult to whine. Why was it that I could run and run—but a minute or so after I stopped, I couldn’t breathe anymore?