Tricked

“Got … the f**ker,” he whispered.

“Yeah, you got him,” I agreed. “Just wait a sec, I’m going to fix this.”

But his hand left my arm and returned to his chest, his eyes squinting shut in pain. This was wrong. The poison shouldn’t be acting this quickly. I should have time to break down the toxins so the ambulance could get here. I should be able to keep him alive until he got to the hospital, where they’d have the antidote for alkaloid poisoning.

“Frank, are you having a heart attack?” My fingers sought the pulse in his neck and found it, but then it disappeared even as all the tension drained from his limbs.

“No!” I flung his hand away from his chest and began CPR. There are no bindings to restart a stopped heart. All healing depends on a functioning circulatory system, and all life needs a will to live. I began shouting at him as I pressed his chest. “Frank, come back! I have something to tell you! Don’t go, Frank! There’s so much I can teach you, and I need you to teach me! Frank! Breathe!”

A chill wrapped itself around me, and I scrambled away from Frank and turned on my faerie specs, dreading what I would see but needing the confirmation. Frank’s ch’įįdii was there, looking at me. It was a pale, weak, nebulous thing compared to Darren’s, barely more than a whisper of breath in the cold, and it meant Frank wasn’t going to come back. It also meant that most of Frank, gods bless him, was already in harmony with the universe. I knelt there, defeated, and stared at it. It returned my stare with cold equanimity.

“All right, then, Frank,” I said softly, holding out my arm and letting the ch’įįdii wrap itself around me and disperse. “Those were good last words. Go and be at peace.”

Frank’s ch’įįdii was merely the smallest wisp of a ghost, and if it had any power to affect the living, I can’t imagine it was capable of doing much beyond bringing on a bad mood. It wasn’t the only ch’įįdii hanging around, however. When I turned around to see the ch’įįdiis of the skinwalkers, I flinched backward. Their ch’įįdiis were gothic horrors, larger than the men themselves, and far, far worse than Darren’s. They pulsed and writhed with disharmony, and I realized that they each had two sets of eyes. There were two things attached to those bodies, and they were intertwined as well—a black menace and a blacker one.

“Well, hello there, First World spirits,” I said. “Guess you’re bound to those men a bit closer than you’d wish right now.”

The nearest one—the one Frank had killed—lunged in my direction. I was beyond the length of its metaphorical chain, however, and grateful for it. I wasn’t anxious to plunge my arm into that darkness; it wasn’t a simple ch’įįdii to disperse but a being with its own identity and a sense of purpose.

The rumble of an engine and the yellow cones of headlights tore my gaze away from the spooky eyes in the darkness. I dispelled my faerie specs but kept the night vision.

“Granuaile!” I called. “It’s okay to come out. See who’s in the truck.”

I retrieved my clothes, moving a bit gingerly due to my injured ribs. I pulled on my jeans but left off the shirt, since my wounds weren’t fully closed and still rather bloody. I wiped some of the blood off with the shirt and focused my efforts on closing up the skin.

When the truck engine cut off, I heard two doors slam. Then Granuaile’s voice rang out, raw with anger.

“You got a lot of nerve showing up now, you bastard!”

It was Coyote. And he’d brought a friend.

Chapter 30

I searched frantically for Moralltach. I didn’t know what Coyote’s intentions were, but his arrival at this particular moment spoke of calculation on his part. He was far too conveniently present after the skinwalkers had been dispatched. Stepping carefully around the caltrops, I found the sword and picked it up, then minced my steps again going the other way so that I could give Coyote my two cents’ worth.

“Now, calm down there, Miss Druid,” he was saying. “I ain’t the bad guy here, not by a long shot.”

“Well, you’re damn sure the coward here,” she said.

“Coward, you say? Who let himself get chopped to pieces for the sake of your master? Who let himself be a doggie treat for a giant hound from Hel? Was that a coward that did that?”

“Where have you been while we’ve been dealing with your mess?” she demanded, ignoring his retort.

“I wouldn’t mind hearing the answer to that myself,” I said as I approached.

Coyote turned and spied me coming. “Ah, Mr. Druid. A good evenin’ to you.”

Apparently we didn’t have to worry about using fake identities in front of this stranger. “Whatever, Coyote. Where have you been?”

“I been down to Many Farms, messin’ with the many farmers. Runnin’ some errands on your behalf while I was at it.”

“On my behalf?”

“Yeah, but we can talk about that later. How are the skinwalkers?”

“You know very well how they are, or you wouldn’t be here.”

Coyote grinned shamelessly. “That’s right. You kilt ’em for me, just like I knew you would. You got some o’ that noble shit in your aura, you know that?”

“I can’t see my own aura, Coyote, only the white glow of my magic.”

“Well, it looks like a really pompous yellow. Most self-important color I ever did see.”

“Frank is dead, Coyote,” I said, and Granuaile gasped. “You brought him in on this project, and now he’s gone because of you.”

“You’re lookin’ at it the wrong way, Mr. Druid. Two skinwalkers are gone because of him. That hataałii over there was one o’ the best men I knew. He did what was right for the Diné. And that’s what I’m doin’ too.” He turned back to his truck, and his boots crunched on the gravel of the mesa as he walked to the bed. The man who’d gotten out of the passenger side of the truck had said nothing, but a tiny smirk on his face indicated that he found our irritation amusing. His hair was long and straight underneath a white cowboy hat. He wore blue jeans and boots, a black undershirt, and a blue denim jacket over it. He held what looked like a jish in his right hand. Perhaps he was another hataałii. Granuaile followed close on Coyote’s heels.

“And what about Darren Yazzie?” she asked.

“Look, Miss Druid,” he said as he pulled a red plastic gasoline container and a thick manila envelope out of the back. Most of the good humor had bled out of his tone and now he sounded tired. “I didn’t know they was gonna get kilt. But I sacrificed myself twice and saved Mr. Druid’s life while I was at it. So I’ll be waitin’ for a thank-you note or maybe a nice batch of cookies from you. I think I’ve earned a coupla cookies.” He stalked away from the truck and headed for the nearest skinwalker corpse. The anonymous second man kept pace with him.

“I don’t make anyone cookies!” Granuaile growled at his back.

“Ain’t it time you learned?” Coyote said over his shoulder. “You ’n Betty Crocker can bake someone happy.”

Granuaile balled her fists and started after him, and I put a hand on her shoulder.

“Hold on, Granuaile, he’s just pushing your buttons.”

She shrugged off my hand and whirled to face me, pointing at Coyote’s back. “I’m going to kick him where it counts and give him a sad sack. I’m tired of his chauvinist bullshit and his cavalier attitude about people dying for him while he runs off and hides somewhere.”

“Well, you’re welcome to try that a bit later when he’s not expecting it,” I said in low tones. “Right now I want to see what he’s up to and meet this other guy, so hang back a bit and follow my lead, okay?”

She gathered herself with some effort and exhaled, letting the anger go for now. “Okay, sensei.”

We followed Coyote and his friend up to the nearest skinwalker body, the one Frank had killed with Moralltach. We stayed outside the ring of caltrops. Coyote hardly spared the body a glance. He directed his gaze above it, where the ch’įįdii was. I flipped my faerie specs on to take another look. If anything, it looked worse than before. The seething blacker portion of the spirit was overwhelming the darkness of the ch’įįdii.

“Ah, yes, this is one of the old ones,” Coyote said. “He’s tryin’ to break loose. Give ’im all night and he’ll probably manage it. The ch’įįdii will start to disperse, and then he’ll be free to go find some other black soul to turn into a skinwalker. Can’t let that happen.”

“Nope,” said the mysterious man.

The last time I’d looked at Coyote in the magical spectrum was back at a high school courtyard in Mesa. We’d been fighting a fallen angel together, and at the time I’d found him somewhat mesmerizing to look at; he was a kaleidoscope of shifting colors, an infinite potential of shapes confined to this human form only so long as he willed it. He still looked that way, but what surprised me was that the nameless man beside him looked precisely the same.

“Hey, Coyote, who’s your friend?”

“That’s Coyote. Coyote, meet Mr. Druid.”

“Howdy, Mr. Druid,” the man said. His voice was deep, like Michael Clarke Duncan’s, a low resonant bass that you felt as much as heard.

“Hi,” I said, then frowned at Coyote. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Is he from another tribe?”

“Nope, he’s from the Diné,” Coyote replied, obviously enjoying my confusion. “You don’t know our stories as well as you should. Most tribes have only the one Coyote, but in some versions of the Diné Bahane’—the tale of Emergence—there are two.”

“I’m Great Coyote,” the deep voice said. “Or sometimes Coyote Who Was Formed in the Water.”

“And I’m the one the Diné call Áłtsé Hashké,” Coyote said, then tossed his head at his companion. “He definitely has the better reputation. I get blamed for everything.”

“Two Coyotes?” I said. “What should I call you? Black Hat and White Hat? I can’t call you both the same thing.”

Coyote in the white hat said, “I tell people sometimes that my name is Joe,” he said. “Does that work for you?”

“Very well,” I said, and turned to Coyote in the black hat, who’d apparently been playing me for a sucker much longer than I thought. “And what about you?”

“You ain’t gonna call me by my real name, so just keep callin’ me Coyote and that way you won’t get confused.”

It was no wonder, I thought, that Frank hadn’t been sure which one of the First People Mr. Benally was. His comment that they were “capable of trickin’ a fella pretty good” made much more sense now. To my magical sight, Coyote and Joe looked exactly the same. There was no way to tell them apart. Only in the visible spectrum did they appear any different, and I’m sure that was by choice.

“Gotta thank you, Mr. Druid,” Coyote said. “Haven’t been able to get a shot at these boys in a long time.”

Joe nodded. “That’s right. This time we should be able to take care of them.”

“Take care of them how?” I gestured at the red gasoline containers. “You going to burn the bodies?”

“Well, for a start. If we stopped there, then the First World spirits could take off,” Coyote explained.

I was lost for a moment, but then I nodded. “Oh, I see. Because they’re bound to the ch’įįdiis and the ch’įįdiis are bound to the bodies.”

“Right. So if we just burn ’em and disperse the ghosts, then they’ll hightail it to Window Rock or someplace, turning regular a**holes into superfast shape-shifting cannibal a**holes.”

“Don’t you have a ritual to combat these guys?”

Coyote lifted his hat and scratched his head. “Well, Mr. Druid, it’s all defense and no offense. It’s protection like the Blessing Way, and there’s some exorcism in the Enemy Way—but there’s nothin’ to kill ’em with. All the killing rituals are on their side—’cause they’re practicin’ Áńł’įįh, the Witchery Way. Sometimes we get lucky and can turn their own spells against ’em. But these guys got smart and stopped doin’ ceremonies like that a long time ago, stopped spreadin’ their corpse powder around. Ain’t a doubt in my mind these spirits were behind that. They used their speed and strength to kill people and left me an’ the hataałiis nothin’ to work with.”

“So how do you kill them?”

“You can’t kill ’em,” Joe said, his voice cut with a note of impatience. “They’re damn spirits. All you can do is send ’em somewhere else—somewhere safe.”

“An’ that means sendin’ ’em back to First World,” Coyote said. “These things have been playin’ around up here for far too long. Once we get ’em back there, they’ll be stuck.”

“Why would they be stuck?” Granuaile asked. “Is there flypaper for spirits down there or something?”

Joe laughed and squatted down on his haunches to untie his jish. “That’d be nice, ’cause then they wouldn’t bother us when we visit. But Coyote means they won’t be able to leave First World again. The doorway to Second World was closed long ago, an’ now only he an’ I can go back there an’ return again.” He peered up at Coyote. “We’re gonna need to get these caltrops outta the way, though, before we can start.”