Tricked

Chapter 31

I admit that I froze, and it wasn’t just because I was scared. I was woefully unprepared.

Locusts of Unusual Size weren’t supposed to exist. I had seen a large insect fairly recently, but it was a type of assassin beetle called a wheel bug, and it wasn’t really a bug at all but rather a demon using that shape to scare the bejesus out of people. Demons don’t belong on this plane, and Gaia has no trouble giving me an assist in dealing with them. I could use Cold Fire on them or summon the local elemental to throw down for me — which is what Sonora had done in that case. But these weren’t demons; as far as Gaia was concerned, they were natural creatures — just big’uns — so that meant magic was off limits, and Colorado wouldn’t lift a pebble to help me fight them directly. I turned off my faerie specs since they wouldn’t help me anymore, but left night vision on.

Normally bugs don’t grow more than six inches in length, due to the limitations of their tracheal systems, and all that heavy chitin they have to lug around has got to be a drag. Coyote had screwed that all up. He gave these bugs plenty of Wind — way too much, in point of fact — and those old First World spirits took full advantage of the chance to be on top of the food chain. The spirits of these locusts hadn’t been raised on a diet of grains but rather on human flesh whenever they could get it. If they lived to reproduce, cities would have to invest in antiaircraft batteries to protect their citizens from swarms. Locusts would descend on small towns and eat people like corn on the cob. Did FEMA have a contingency plan in place for something like that?

I found myself missing Mr. Semerdjian and his garage full of rocket-propelled grenade launchers. And again I missed Fragarach — I doubted Moralltach would make a dent in the locusts’ armor. It was green and sleek and looked like it was made of that impenetrable counter-top material. But … maybe I could pull a Rancor? You don’t find hard, chitinous exoskeleton on the inside of a bug. I almost immediately discarded that thought, because those multiple mandibles — blades and feelers and way more moving parts than a mouth should have — were alarmingly efficient at chewing up Coyote. But after checking to make sure Granuaile was still running for the hogan, I charged anyway, yelling as I went to snare its attention.

When one doesn’t have Fragarach handy, the answer to strong armor is stronger blunt force; a baseball bat will do more damage than a sword blade. Confined to a large, bulky body, the spirit didn’t have unnatural speed anymore — it had the speed of a grasshopper, to be sure, but that wasn’t impossible for me to match. Boosting my speed and strength and transferring Moralltach to my left hand, I bent down and scooped up a stone the size of a softball, like a shortstop on a 6–3 play. First base in this case was the locust’s left eye. I whipped it at him, but he saw it coming and flinched away. Rather than hitting his eye, the stone caught him on the side of the mouth, knocking the lower half of Coyote’s body loose with a slurping noise, which was quickly followed by a keening screech. One of those little twitching maxilla thingies was hanging loose and slack now, and the creature leapt away, fluttering its wings with a low rumble of thunder.

“Aw, he got a widdle toof ache.”

The spirits probably had to deal with pain in a whole new way now that they had their own physical housings — dealing with it, period, would be a new sensation for them. I figured they’d let their human hosts feel most of the pain before — even with the fire, they’d fled the light more than the heat — but now they didn’t have a choice. Casting a quick glance at the hogan, I saw Granuaile disappearing around to the east side, where the door was. That seemed like a good idea, with one hopper distracted and the other one still munching away on Joe, so I swerved in that direction myself.

I swerved too soon.

The locust decided that the best way to deal with pain was to go after the thing that caused it. It wasn’t the correct lesson I’d wanted it to learn from the experience — but, then, if they weren’t used to feeling pain, then they weren’t used to fearing it either. The sound of its wings gave me a warning, but it was in the air so quickly that it was almost on me before I could spot it — directly above my head.

“There are only three things you can do when something falls from the sky,” my archdruid used to say. “Get out of the way, get underneath some shelter, or give it some reason to change its mind about falling on you.” Then he threw a pissed-off rooster at me.

I had no shelter from the locust except for the hogan, which might as well have been in New Zealand for all the good it would do me now. Trying to scramble out of the way when the hopper literally had the drop on me would only give it more convenient access to my flesh. So I would let it fall on top of my sword.

I dropped to my back, using my left arm to cushion the impact while thrusting Moralltach directly above my face and locking my elbow. If Coyote’s demise offered any clue, it wanted my head. It tried to brush aside the sword with a leg as it fell, but instead of properly doing so by slapping the flat of the blade, its leg caught the edge and neatly severed itself. That meant it took the point directly in its nasty ten-part grasshopper gob, falling directly down the blade until Moralltach erupted through the back of its head and kept going—gahh—

I hit my own head on the rock of the mesa and lost a fraction of a second there, during which the damn thing continued to slide down my sword. I admit that I lost my shit at that point, because the hilt didn’t stop anything and my hand and forearm disappeared into its mouth while its heavy, ichor-filled body thumped against mine like the world’s heaviest water balloon. It was dead and already turning black from Moralltach’s enchantment, but I couldn’t move. Something was dreadfully wrong with my hand and arm — I couldn’t move either of them, and it hurt like hell. My blood was leaking down my arm, and though I logically knew I had won, my instincts were screaming that I was being eaten by the grossest thing in the entire world — which pretty much meant that I was screaming, period.

Hoppers have more than just mandibles; they have a labrum and labium and maxillae with segmented palps like spider’s legs, plus antennae waving around and those gods-awful alien eyes that stare without emotion while they eat your corn or wheat grass or whatever. I can reliably report that seeing any part of your body in the grasp of such mouth parts will freak your shit right out. Give me a shark with straight up-and-down teeth every time if I’m going to be eaten; don’t give me these chitinous plates and stubby appendages that come in from the sides and tickle as they feed you into a crop before you go to a proper stomach.

I bucked and tried to yank free, but something inside had pierced me and held me fast, and I had such poor leverage that I couldn’t get out from under the creature anyway. My ribs reminded me that they weren’t in good condition either. I shut down the pain in hopes that it would allow me to think. A throbbing buzz startled me — perhaps the locust wasn’t dead after all? But then I remembered that there was another one …

I turned my head and saw the second locust’s head approaching, six long legs splayed out from the sides; its perfectly working mouth parts were covered in Joe’s blood and twitching in anticipation of sampling mine. Its dead eyes were fixed on me and I’m sure it had no trouble locating me by sound, because I was hollering incoherently in an attempt to die angry at maximum volume. Anger was kind of taking a backseat to fear, unfortunately, but I don’t think even my eternally irate father could keep his edge if he was unable to move or defend himself from becoming the main course on the all-night bug breakfast menu.

A bright light overhead distracted me—

“All right, I heard you,” Granuaile said. She was holding aloft one of the kerosene-soaked stakes we’d prepared to defend the SUV in the hogan; she’d lit it up as a makeshift torch. Standing directly to the left of my head — or to the right of the dead locust’s head — she kept her eyes on the other locust and breathed, “You’d better tell me they’re still afraid of fire though, or we’re toast.”

The locust had stopped advancing. It remembered what fire was very well.

“Do you have any other weapons?” I asked.

“No, just this and a spare in my pocket. Get out of there.”

“I can’t. I’m stuck.”

“What do you mean, you’re stuck? Unstick yourself.”

“I seriously can’t. I’m hooked on something inside its head.”

“So do some magic.”

“Like what? I can’t think of anything.” Frank Herbert said that Fear is the mind-killer. He was a wise man.

“Well, look — I sort of can’t help you right now. Trying to outstare the spooky bug.”

It was inching closer. Much too close for my comfort. It made little clicking and fluttering noises as it moved. I think most of the noise came from its mouth.

“Be careful, it’s much faster than you think.”

Granuaile lunged at the locust with her torch and was rewarded with a small cringe and an unholy screech. But it didn’t fly away and leave us alone. We were too much like Lunchables, and this stalemate couldn’t go on forever.

“You have another stake, you said?”

“Yeah.”

“Light it up and go for the wings.”

“Oh! Right.” She pulled another stake out of her pocket and lit it by touching the soaked end to the flame of her other one.

“Excellent. Throw the one you just lit over its head far back enough to hit the wings. Lob it like you’re playing Skee-Ball.”

She switched the torches in her hand so that she could throw right-handed; the newly lit torch was flaring brighter and had a better chance of catching.

“Weapons hot,” she said drily. Oh, what a fabulous Druid she was going to be, when she could make puns under pressure!

“Fire at will,” I responded in the same tone.

She tossed the torch in a low arc over the locust’s head, and it backed up a couple of steps, then stopped, forgetting perhaps that it wasn’t a spirit anymore and it had a big, physical body behind its eyes. It cocked its head, almost as if to say, “Ha-ha, you missed,” and then found out Granuaile hadn’t missed after all.

I couldn’t see precisely how the torch landed, nor could Granuaile, but the locust certainly reacted. It hopped back — it wasn’t going forward when Granuaile still had the other torch — and fluttered its wings a tiny bit, landing only twenty yards or so away. It repeated this a couple of more times, hopping to either side, but that didn’t help. Then it leapt up high in desperation and tried to fly with a full extension of its wings, but that resulted in a crazy spiraling crash back to the mesa, its wings on fire, fanned to a cheerful blaze by its own efforts. We saw that the stake had lodged itself point first into the joint where the wings attached to the thorax. The noise it made wasn’t threatening or terrifying now but rather comforting. It hadn’t ever heard of stop, drop, and roll, so all its flailing did nothing but feed the flames more oxygen. The fire continued to spread along the locust’s body and I was able to return my attention to my predicament.

“That was excellent, Granuaile. Feel like tearing apart this head for me now?”

“Um,” she replied. I looked up at her and she wasn’t paying attention to me at all. Her gaze was directed back at the hogan, and I followed the line of her sight until I spied a large crow resting on the roof of the hogan. Its eyes were red, but they faded to black even as I watched.

“Good evening, Siodhachan,” the Morrigan said.

“Have you been there all this while?” I asked, outraged.

“I only just arrived.”

“A bit late, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would say in good time. Introduce me to your brave young apprentice.”

“Oh, I do beg your pardon. My manners must have been consumed by this locust, along with my arm. Granuaile MacTiernan, meet the Morrigan of the Tuatha Dé Danann, Chooser of the Slain, also known as Badb, Macha, or Nemain when occasion calls.”

The crow flew off the roof toward Granuaile and sort of melted in midair until there was a naked woman with milk-white skin striding toward her, hand extended.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” the Morrigan said.

“Likewise,” Granuaile managed, shaking the Morrigan’s hand. “I think we prayed to you on Samhain.”

The Morrigan smiled. “Yes, you did. Please continue praying to me, as I’m the only one of the Tuatha Dé Danann who knows both of you are alive.”

The locust’s screeching ceased and clued us in that it had finally died, though its body continued to burn. The Morrigan tilted her head down to look at me.

“You will find, once you are free, that your tattoos are badly damaged. You will need to have them touched up, and I am the only one who can do it now. Call me when you are ready.”

She took a step or two back and raised her arms in preparation to shift back to a crow. “Wait!” I said. “Aren’t you going to help me out of this?”

“You’re perfectly capable of figuring it out on your own, Siodhachan, now that you have time to think,” she said, and then nodded once to Granuaile. “Farewell.”

She shifted to a crow and left us there. Oh, were we going to have a talk later.

“Wow,” Granuaile said.

“Yeah.”

“I just shook hands with a naked goddess. What was that she called you? She-ya-han? Does that mean dumbass in Old Irish or something?”

“No, that’s my real name. Maybe it does mean dumbass, though. Keep calling me Atticus. Watch out — step back about ten yards, will you?”

The Morrigan had been right. Now that the creature was dead and I wasn’t so panicked, I could think and use Druidry to get myself out of this. Still, I needed to see what I was doing. There was an awful lot of blood and now ichor oozing down my arm, and I was starting to feel a bit light-headed. My healing had stopped. I tried to retrigger my healing charm but nothing happened. That meant the healing knots on my hand had been badly marred. I could still ask Colorado to heal me, and he would, but not having the agency to do it myself was a problem.

//Colorado / Druid needs healing / Please//

//Healing// the elemental said, and there was harmony.

Granuaile was out of the way now, so I crafted a binding between Moralltach’s blade and the northern butte. Rather than the butte moving to the sword, Moralltach would cut through the locust’s head to get to the butte. All I had to do was let go of the hilt. I energized it and Moralltach ripped through the head, splitting it open down to just above my hand. I dissolved the binding while it was still flying and the sword fell to the ground.

“Great. Now, Granuaile, can you tear off this half?” I gestured with my left hand to the right’s side of the locust’s head.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. My hand is stuck in there and I have to figure out what’s causing it.”

“This is so gross. I’m going to have nightmares.”

“Me too, believe me. Blame Coyote.”

“Oh, I do.” Her nose scrunched up in disgust, she grabbed hold of the chitinous edge of the head and pulled, ripping the gooey flesh down the middle and spilling a sludge of ichor onto my face. I spluttered and coughed.

“Gah! Sorry!” she said.

“Had to be done. It’s all right,” I croaked, trying not to vomit. I felt air on the inside of my forearm. “Can you see my hand?” I asked.

Granuaile peered closer. “Yeah, it’s there. Something’s sticking through your palm a little bit.”

“Ah, that would be why I’m having problems healing, then. It’s pierced me through the back of my hand.”

“That circle and triskele governs your ability to heal?”

“Yep.”

“And you must have blocked the nerves there or you’d be in severe pain.”

“Right. But it also means I can’t do much with it right now. Would you mind pulling it off there?”

“Okay.” Grasping me by the wrist, she pulled my hand off the obstruction with a squishy sucking sound. When my hand fell away, we could see what had been keeping it there: the locust’s left mandible. It had broken off — aided in part by my thrown rock, no doubt — and been shoved up into the mouth along with the sword hilt and my arm, and then when I tried to yank my hand loose it had been waiting there like a spearhead.

To get out from under the bulk of the beast, I bound the top of its thorax to the ground on my right. This effectively rolled the carcass over and allowed me to stand and shudder.

“I really need to get cleaned up,” I said.

“There’s all that ice in the chest,” Granuaile said.

“Good thinking. All the way around, really,” I said. “And thank you.”

“You’re welcome, sensei.”

“Will you do two things while I’m washing up? Go get that manila envelope over there and let’s see what’s inside. Then bring out another stake and set this one on fire too.”

She nodded and I went to wash off my arm and my face. I had no idea how long it would take the Coyotes to respawn and come back, but I suspected it would be before dawn, and I wasn’t planning to be around when they did. Let them figure it out on their own and clean up their own mess. Colorado had moved the gold under the mesa, so as far as I was concerned we were square. Time for me to get out and live the life of a dead man, like I’d always wanted.

The ice water was refreshing. It wouldn’t wash away my guilt over Frank’s or Darren’s death, but physically I felt better not to have bug juice all over me.

Granuaile came in, left me the envelope unopened, and took out a few stakes to burn the carcass of the second locust.

Having only one functioning hand, I cheated and unbound the envelope with a bit of magic, then shook out the contents. It was a set of official tribal documents and a lease on a trailer in Many Farms, giving permission for a white male and white female to live among the Diné. So that’s what he’d been doing — arranging a place for me to train Granuaile. I noticed it said we had black hair, which was probably a good idea. Too many people had seen a couple of redheads in the area, and if I wanted the peace to train her right, it was time to pretend I wasn’t Irish for a while. We’d have to get a whole new set of documents from Hal, though, and Coyote hadn’t been able to resist having fun with our new names.

I hadn’t planned on staying in the area, but the idea had some appeal now that I thought about it. Reservations don’t get much satellite surveillance, and there wasn’t a gauntlet of security cameras recording your every move. Besides that, I needed to stay nearby to keep a close eye on the coal mine. And I could make trips down to the valley every couple of weeks to work on the wasted land around Tony Cabin and then reward myself with fish and chips at Rúla Búla.

“So what was in the envelope?” Granuaile asked, returning inside.

“New identities and a place to live, courtesy of Coyote. See for yourself.” I handed her the sheaf of papers.

A giggle escaped Granuaile’s lips and she covered them up with her hand. “You’re going to spend the next twelve years as Sterling Silver?” she asked.

“Yours isn’t much better,” I said.

Her laughter cut off abruptly as her eyes found the blank with her new name in it. “Oh, that bastard. He put me down as Betty Baker.”

“Let’s get him back by stealing his truck.”

Her eyes flicked to the big black truck Coyote had driven onto the site, and she nodded. “Yeah!”

After retrieving Moralltach, I turned on the truck’s ignition with a binding — there was no way I was going to search for keys in Coyote’s remains — and Granuaile got us on the road back to Flagstaff. There was a hound down there who needed some hugs.