Tricked

Chapter 27

I’ve often been flabbergasted by modern pharmaceutical ads on television. The list of side effects for some maladies often sounds worse than the condition they’re supposed to treat. Once I even heard “heart failure” listed as a side effect, and I wondered how that happened. Heart failure sounds like a pretty major event to me, and if you’re willing to risk heart failure in order to avoid the mild discomfort of some other condition, then may the gods shield you from harm, since you’re obviously seeking it out.

I sought out a drugstore because most every medicine is actually a poison: The dosage is simply much lower. I prefer working directly from plants, of course, but scooping up a few bottles of pills will work when I’m in a hurry, and in this case I was in quite a hurry indeed.

“Sensei,” Granuaile whispered to me on the way out of the Blue Coffee Pot to Albert’s truck. “I heard you say you don’t have a prescription for all these drugs you need, right?”

“Right.”

“That means you’re going to steal them, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

She sighed in exasperation. “Things like that don’t matter to you, do they?”

We paused to climb into the back of Albert’s truck. Frank rode shotgun and told him where to go. Once we were on our way, I picked up where we’d left off. “Not when people’s lives are at stake, no. I never steal for mere personal gain, if that makes a difference. Well, I take that back. There was that one time in Egypt. And a few years ago I stole some art and precious gems from a businessman in Hong Kong just so he would have a really bad day, and that gained me quite a bit of satisfaction. But I called the cops after a couple of days and told them where to find everything, along with a note telling him not to be such a vag badger. He got most of it back.”

“What? Why didn’t he get all of it?”

“The cops kept some and told him that was all they found.”

“No!”

“Yes. I had to steal the stuff again and give all the crooked cops wedgies. Look, if it makes you feel better, we can make a list of what I pull out of this place, look up the costs elsewhere, and then reimburse them with an anonymous envelope of cash later.”

“That would make me feel better.”

“Okay, that’s what we’ll do.”

“Thank you.” She gave me a couple of patronizing pats on the shoulder. “You’re a very considerate sensei.”

“I’ll say. I haven’t done half the things I’m supposed to yet. Usually there’s a ritualistic leeching after the second week, and here we are three months or so along.”

She squinted at me doubtfully. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Lucky for you there aren’t many leeches in this part of Arizona.”

She cringed a little. “Seriously?”

“But I suppose we can let that slide since I made you eat a steer sack.”

“Shut up!” I shook with laughter and she scowled at me, folding her arms across her chest. “Auggh! You can be so immature sometimes!”

At a quarter to nine we pulled up next to a drugstore to make sure we were out of range of any surveillance cameras, and I got out and walked around to the back. As I left them there, I heard Albert say, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

Once out of sight of Frank and Albert, I cast camouflage on myself and concentrated on the door. Locks aren’t that difficult when you can bind the metal inside to the unlocked position. Security systems are another matter; I’m not sophisticated enough with electronics to tackle those, and much of it is dead plastic anyway. I would doubtless trip something as soon as I walked in, so it would have to be a dash to get everything I needed before the cops arrived.

The first thing I did was grab a plastic bag, and then I went hunting among the shelves. I wasn’t familiar with brand names, so I had to scan active ingredients to find what I needed. I was trying to find the various chemical components of Atropa belladonna, the plant known commonly as deadly nightshade. Chew one leaf as an adult and you’re toast; the collected tropane alkaloids mess with your nervous system so that it can’t regulate involuntary activities like sweating, breathing, and heart rate. But isolate and regulate the dosage of those alkaloids, and you can turn an extremely deadly plant into a medicinal one. I found atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine all sitting on the shelves under various brand names. According to the dosages, it looked like we’d have to hit another store to make enough poison for a decent spread of caltrops. I picked up a package of surgical gloves on my way out; I didn’t want to get any on my skin once I began combining these.

I returned to the truck bed and didn’t dissolve my camouflage until I was in it. Granuaile had heard the rustle of the plastic bag and knew I was there, but Albert and Frank jumped a bit when I tapped on the back of the cab window.

“Let’s go,” I hollered, and Albert peeled out of there with admirable haste. We passed a police car with flashing lights heading toward the store as we drove deeper into town. Frank directed us to a hardware store, and once we got out of the back and could talk, I explained we needed to visit one more drugstore.

“Sure, don’t see why not,” Frank said. “First one went without a hitch.”

Feeling saucy, we walked into the hardware store — which smelled like pressboard and paint — and asked for a buttload of nails.

“We actually have those on sale,” the sales associate said without blinking at our denomination.

Granuaile leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Ask if he sells them by the fuckton.”

Nails and a good stash of drugs in hand, we were (or I was) perhaps too confident when we hit the second drugstore. It wasn’t time for them to open yet, but I surprised a pharmacist who had arrived early to do some paperwork. The alarm to the building was already turned off, but she raised plenty of alarm when the back door seemed to open and close all by itself and my camouflaged form cast a shadow on the floor. She was fast. She made it to the phone and dialed 911 before I could render her unconscious with some deft kung fu. I can’t quite do a Vulcan nerve pinch, but my Druid Doomhold is fairly quick and leaves victims with nothing more than a dire need for aspirin. I looked at her name tag, which read Gina Wachtel.

“Sorry, Gina,” I said. “I do not envy you the headache you will have when you wake up, but until then, rest well, and dream of …” I trailed off. What do pharmacists dream of? Caribbean vacations paid for by GlaxoSmithKline? Sample packs of Percocet?

Her emergency phone call was still a problem. Even though I hung up, dispatch would send somebody out regardless, so close on the heels of the previous visit to the other drugstore. The cops would come running, assuming that the same perpetrator was going Full Stupid with another hit, and they’d be right. I didn’t have much time.

I knew what to look for, thanks to my experience at the first store, and I filled up my bag much faster. Though I got out of there in record time, I still heard sirens approaching as I hoofed it for the truck parked next door. Frank and Albert looked distinctly nervous sitting in the cab; they were in front of a convenience store, in full view of security cameras.

Tossing the bag of camouflaged drugs into the back of the truck, I said, “Granuaile, hop out and go into the store to buy a couple of fountain drinks. I’ll join you in a moment.”

“Got it, sensei.” As she clambered out of the bed, I made sure to camouflage the other bag of drugs too. Since they wouldn’t move now, they’d be completely invisible to anyone looking into the bed. I dissolved my own camouflage and startled Frank when I rapped on his window.

He rolled it down and said, “About time. Let’s go.”

“No, these are probably the same cops coming as before. They saw your truck leaving the scene of the last call and might be curious. We’re going to let them be. So the story is, my sister and I are hitchhikers from Flagstaff headed to Colorado. You’re taking us as far as Teec Nos Pos. Albert’s got time, because the coal mine’s closed, right?”

“Well, yeah, but, shit, don’t you have the drugs in the back?” Albert asked.

“They’re hidden. Don’t worry. Let them look.” The police car showed up as I said this. I tapped the door a couple of times and grinned, performance mode on. “I’m going inside to get a drink, be right back.”

“I’ll be damned if you are! I’m not going to jail for this!” Albert yelled.

Frank held out a hand and shook his head. “Cool it, nephew. It’ll be okay.”

“Uncle Frank, what the hell—”

“I know he looks like a dumbass pretty boy, but, trust me, there’s more to him than that. Just calm down and play it like he said.”

Albert seethed but subsided. Grateful for Frank’s vote of confidence, I strode to the convenience store entrance as the police car pulled up right next to the truck and two officers got out. One went running to the back of the drugstore and the other approached Frank’s window. Better him than Albert, I figured.

The convenience store smelled of stale tobacco and bleach solution, with a top note of all-beef hot dogs and stale buns. Granuaile was standing next to the fountain drink machine with two cups, looking indecisive. I grabbed one from her and murmured the plan in case we needed it, as I filled my cup with unsweetened tea. Turned out we needed it.

The police officer was waiting for us as we exited the store. He was a wee bit pudgy around the gut, stark physical evidence that police work was more about pushing paper than chasing down bad guys. Frank and Albert were out of the truck and standing near one of those freezers full of bagged ice. Both doors to the truck were open.

“Morning,” the officer said to us from behind sunglasses. He gestured to the truck. “Were you two riding in this vehicle?”

“Yes. Is there a problem?”

“May I see your IDs, please?” Ah. He was one of those guys. We handed them over without a word. He considered them carefully for a time and then looked up at us. “Where you folks headed?”

“Colorado,” I said. “We hitched a ride out of Flagstaff.”

“Told ya, Gabe,” Frank said.

“An’ I heard ya, Frank,” the officer said without turning his head, annoyance clear in his tone. I fought to suppress a smile. Frank had followed the plan. Tell the officer a simple story, and then we would come out of the store and independently verify the story. If he was truly suspicious, he’d assume we merely had our story straight, and that was true. Detective Kyle Geffert would never believe anything out of the mouth of Atticus O’Sullivan. But this officer was in a hurry, just covering the bases, and not especially worried about what appeared to be a dumbass pretty boy and his sister; our simple story, therefore, told simply, took on the veneer of truth, especially when it corroborated what Frank said — and Frank was somebody he knew and probably trusted as a hataałii. I tried to look as dumb and guileless as possible.

“Need you folks to stand over there,” he said, gesturing to the ice cooler, “while I search the vehicle.”

“Oh. Okay.” Without questioning, I meekly shuffled over to stand next to Albert and Frank, and Granuaile followed silently. There was no need for us to talk to Albert and Frank. If we were hitchhikers, we wouldn’t commiserate like friends. Officer Gabe stood there a moment to size us up, and then he ducked into the truck cab. He straightened a moment later, holding up a bag from the hardware store.

“You got a whole lotta nails here. What they for?”

“Tree house,” Albert volunteered. “For my kid.” Good one, Albert.

Officer Gabe grunted and resumed his search. He opened the glove compartment, looked behind and under the seats. No giant stash of drugs. He didn’t see anything in the truck bed either.

“All right,” he said, waving at the truck. “Everything seems to be fine. Sorry for the inconvenience. Have a nice day.” Without another word, he turned and went to join his partner at the back of the drugstore. More sirens were approaching — an ambulance, no doubt, for the unfortunate pharmacist who’d been rendered unconscious by a mysterious apparition.

Albert waited until Officer Gabe was out of earshot and then turned to me. “Where’d you put ’em all?”

“No worries, Albert,” I said. “Let’s go have a nice day, build a tree house or something.” The drugs were precisely where I’d left them in the bed of the truck, nicely camouflaged.

“But you still got ’em, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, how’d you hide ’em?” When I just shrugged and grinned, he turned to his uncle. “Where’d you find this guy? He’s too weird for me.”

After that, it took some convincing for Albert to drive us to Frank’s house, where Frank fetched his old six-shooter for me to use.

We had one more stop to make before we could return to the mine site. At the big box store we picked up two five-gallon paint buckets, a large mixing bowl, a slotted mixing spoon, and two bottles of olive oil. Frank also snagged some food for lunch and some ice and drinks to restock the ice chest at the hogan.

Albert dropped us off at the devastated mine site and waved good-bye uncertainly to Frank. He seemed reluctant to leave his uncle all alone with the crazy white people with uncanny talents for breaking and entering and drug concealment.

I was wondering why we were alone at all. Where was Coyote?

We found a couple of unbroken shovels, and we grabbed these to dig a small hole, into which we dumped all the nails. I summoned Ferris, the iron elemental, and showed him how to bind two nails together in such a way that the pointy parts always stuck up no matter how it landed. It was basically a clever twisting; it could be done non-magically with a pair of pliers and lots of patience, but an iron elemental could do it much more quickly. Once Ferris knew what to do, he made me look like a slowpoke. The scattered nails in the hole leapt and jumped about, twisting themselves into caltrops, and I left Frank and Granuaile to fill up a five-gallon bucket with them while I turned my attention to crafting the poison.

It took an inordinate amount of time to get through the packaging and open the capsules into the mixing bowl. Thanks to Ferris, Granuaile and Frank finished with the caltrops long before I got all the pills out and emptied. Frank busied himself at the hogan while Granuaile joined me sitting on the mesa a short distance away.

“Tell me what you’re doing, sensei?”

“Mixing poison. But you mean how, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay. Are you comfy? This is going to take a while.”

“I’m as comfy as I can be.”

“All right, I’ll bind your sight again and we’ll go into details. How are you on your chemistry?”

“Not so good,” she admitted. “Kind of clueless, actually. Do I need to get a clue?”

“If you want to be able to do the sort of thing I’ll be showing you here, yes. Normally you’d go get some nightshade and let nature do all the work for you. Not that poisoning caltrops to take out madly fast shape-shifters is normal. But we don’t have the time to do this conventionally. I can’t shift across to Europe from here and get back before this evening. So what I’m going to do is look at the structure of these alkaloids, synthesize copies, and then distribute them in an oil base, creating a deadly ointment for our skinwalkers.”

“You’re doing this down at the molecular level?” she asked.

“Yep. Much of what I do in the physical world is at that level. Take the engine sabotage as an example. To fuse the pistons to the cylinder walls, I first unbind the steel on the surfaces of both, letting the elements mix a bit, then I rebind them so that it becomes a solid piece. There’s a lot of molecules involved in that, but you can make it go faster by using macrobindings that determine shape and allowed molecular structures.”

“A macro? So what you do is craft one binding that executes multiple tasks?”

“Exactly. Macros are your friends. If I had to bind everything individually, we’d be here forever, right? But I’m going to create three macros to make this poison and you’ll see.”

“Oh, so”—she pointed a finger at my necklace and waggled it around—“your charms are like macros.”

“Yes. Except they execute far faster than they would if I had to speak them aloud. I took the trouble to make them because I’m paranoid and I’m always looking for an edge. They’re bound to trigger words in my Old Irish headspace; I think the command and it happens. If I need a target for a spell like camouflage or night vision, then I add that, but otherwise it targets me by default. And the shape-shifting ones all include the macro to shrink or expand the necklace, depending on the form I choose.”

“That is legit, sensei. I know what these do over here on this side,” she said, indicating my right, where all the shape-shifting charms were, “but what’s over here on the other side of your amulet?”

She put her hand gently on the left side of my face. “Turn your head so I can see them better.” She squinted and leaned in closer, examining the tiny hammered patterns in the silver charms. It brought the top of her head close to my jaw, and I admired the sun-kissed vermilion highlights in her hair and the scent of strawberries and damn I wished the Diamondbacks would get a lights-out closer, because they kept losing all those close games by one or two runs due to a shoddy bullpen. She trailed her fingers down the side of my neck, and I reflected that I didn’t like the swimming-pool remodel at Chase Field very much; the old tile pattern was much more attractive while the pool area was under the sponsorship of a different company.

“These little patterns are neat, sensei, but I don’t know what they mean.” Her fingers left my skin and she leaned back, and I nearly sighed with relief. It’s tough to think about baseball when it’s not in season. Spring training wasn’t for another couple of months.

“Okay, starting from the amulet and going outward, you have camouflage, night vision, faerie specs, healing, and I don’t have a name for the last one. Soulcatcher, maybe.”

“Soulcatcher?”

“I’ve never used it,” I admitted. “I don’t even know if it works.”

“What is it supposed to do?”

“It’s supposed to save my life. But in order to test it, I’d have to die.”

“Oh!” she laughed. “Well, I can see how you’d be reluctant to give that one a test-drive.” She frowned abruptly as something occurred to her. “Why have it at all, then? I mean, why not put on a different charm, like one for unbinding vampires?”

“I think I’m going to pursue that,” I said. “Recent events have pointed out how useful a charm like that would be. But still, if I start now, even with all the experience I’ve had, it’ll be at least fifty years before I can complete it.”

“Why so long?”

“Trial and error. I have to construct those macrobindings to execute from a silver charm via mental command in close proximity to a cold iron amulet. There are no instructions in Druidic lore to guide me through how to craft such a thing. Each of these charms is unique. So each time I test it, I’ll have to have a vampire in front of me to target. That’s going to be a bit dangerous. I didn’t realize how dangerous they were, honestly. I’d always avoided them as a matter of course in my efforts to keep myself inconspicuous whenever I tried to settle somewhere. But to answer your earlier question, I mostly keep the soulcatcher around because I worry about accidental deaths. When I began working on it, the Morrigan and I weren’t quite as chummy as we are now, and Aenghus Óg was still a dire threat.”

“I see. Do you think it’ll work?”

“Honestly? Considering how many times I’ve failed with other charms, no. I had to test them multiple times and change the bindings until I figured out something that worked. This hasn’t been tested at all. It’s kind of a Hail Mary.”

Granuaile smiled. “But you’ve hailed Mary before.”

“Not through my own efforts,” I reminded her. “Ready for poison?” I darted a quick finger at the mixing bowl.

“Yep. Let’s do this.”

I spoke the binding that allowed Granuaile to see with my eyes in the magical spectrum, and then I gradually zoomed in my focus until I could see the various alkaloids on the molecular level — or, rather, a magical proxy for them. I couldn’t really zoom in my eyes like a microscope.

“Okay, have you ever worked with design software where you can do a series of actions, record them, and then bundle them together for later use?”

“Yeah, I’ve done that. Photoshop.”

“Exactly. So that’s what I’m going to do here. See this molecule? That’s atropine. This one’s scopolamine, and this is hyoscyamine. It’s all just carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen in a specific configuration. We have plenty of those elements around. The inactive ingredients in the pills, which form the majority of the material you see in the bowl, are full of those same elements. So we construct a macro that says to rebind the available material here until it’s all one of those three poisons.”

“Won’t there be leftover stuff?”

“Yes. A few bits of carbon or hydrogen. Neutral non-active ingredients.”

I painstakingly constructed the macros and then, before energizing them, zoomed back out and turned off the magical spectrum so that Granuaile could see what happened.

“Watch closely.”

“Watching.”

I energized the bindings and the powder in the bowl stirred and poofed a wee bit.

“Wait. Is that all?” Granuaile said. “Nothing happened.”

“Everything happened. That was a bowl of three percent poison and ninety-seven percent random crap that they put in pills to make you feel like the price you’re paying is worth it. Now it’s almost one hundred percent poison. I never would have been able to do that before I took chemistry.”

“You got a degree?”

“No, I sat camouflaged in the classes and bought the texts. This is now an extremely toxic mixing bowl. Would you mind terribly opening a bottle of olive oil? I don’t want to risk tearing these gloves at all.” She returned shortly with an opened bottle for me. “Pour slowly while I stir?”

“Sure,” she said. “Why the olive oil?”

“It acts as the carrier. This is basically going to be a thin ointment. Once this is all mixed and the alkaloids are distributed evenly, we’ll coat the caltrops with it and we’ll be good to go.”

We worked in silence for a few minutes as we mixed the alkaloids with the base. When I was satisfied, I said, “Lovely. Now we just have to coat the caltrops with it without accidentally poisoning ourselves.”

“That sounds perfectly relaxing, sensei,” Granuaile said. She put on two pairs of gloves, and we arranged a procedure where we coated small batches of caltrops in the bowl, fished them out with the slotted spoon, let the excess oil drain, and then placed them into the second bucket. It was monotonous labor made edgy by the knowledge that a careless splash could kill us. We finished with only a couple of hours to spare before sundown. We hauled the weaponized caltrops up to the hogan, where Frank was sitting cross-legged on the floor in some kind of meditation. We tried to be quiet as we raided the cooler for cheese and crackers and ice-cold cans of tea.

Frank heard us anyway and grunted as he opened an eye. “You all ready, Mr. Collins?”

“As ready as I can be,” I said, nodding.

“Good. So am I.” His other eye opened and he began to clamber to his feet.

“You are? For what?”

“For killin’ skinwalkers, o’ course,” he said, brushing dust off his knees.

I held up a hand. “Frank, I didn’t ask you to take part in this. You oughtta get out of here, actually; give your nephew a call.”

“Naw, I’m doin’ this with you. How many more chances am I gonna have to get me a piece of skinwalker? Think I’ll keep my gun. You slow ’em down for me and I’ll plug ’em good.”

I exchanged a worried glance with Granuaile. “Frank, I can speed myself up enough to have a chance of hitting them. You’re not going to have an advantage like that. You only had the one chance to call Monster Slayer.”

“I know. But you can’t speak my language. What if they wanna talk before killin’ us? Whattaya gonna do then, play charades? Look, son, this is what bein’ a hataałii is all about. I’m s’posed to protect my people from evil. Now, this evil comes from First World; it’s a Diné thing, and it’s threatening Diné people, and I’m damned if I’ll let someone else take care of my problems for me. I’m goin’.”

There is no arguing with pride. Jesus and the Morrigan couldn’t talk me out of going to Asgard, and I wasn’t going to be able to talk Frank out of doing this. I gave him a tight little nod and began to worry about how I would protect him.

“All right, Frank,” I said. “I have a bit more business to conduct before we do this. Excuse me?”

He and Granuaile nodded at me and I exited to find a shady spot — not too tough near sundown. Underneath a shaggy-barked juniper, I sat on the ground and took the opportunity to have an overdue conversation with Colorado.

//Druid greets Colorado / Harmony//

//Harmony// came the reply.

//Coal mine stopped / Will monitor / Query: Move gold now?//

//Yes / Coal stopped / Gratitude / Keep coal mine quiet

/ Will move gold//

//Harmony// I said.

Colorado agreed.

Not for the first time, I reflected that the earth is so much simpler to deal with than people. On the other hand, the earth never gets my jokes.