Coyote shouted “Ha!” once and then began to yip in amusement, scampering across the courtyard in his animal shape, taunting the fallen angel, and Basasael launched himself skyward to give chase.
While he was thus diverted, I took the opportunity to sheathe Fragarach and grab the school administrator by the collar, dragging her back to the office doors. She yelped in startlement, and I shouted at her as I tossed her inside, “Put the school in lockdown now! Just do it before someone else gets killed!” Every school in America had a lockdown procedure they followed to keep students safe in an emergency.
“What? Who got killed?”
“Take attendance and you’ll find out. It’s what you’re best at, because the gods know it’s not teaching them English. Damn kids don’t know the difference between an adjective and an adverb!” I needed to shut up. Stress was making me take my frustrations out on this poor frumpy lady who probably never got laid.
“Who are …? Why can’t I see you?”
“Lockdown! Attendance! Stay inside!” I slammed the door shut for extra emphasis and hoped that would galvanize her to the proper course of action. Turning back to the courtyard, I saw that Basasael was trying to fry Coyote from the air with his great balls o’ fire. Coyote was thus far a mite too fast for him, but I wasn’t sure how long that would last or if Coyote would be able to withstand a direct hit of hellfire.
I scurried over to where I’d dropped my bow in the courtyard. It was still camouflaged, so I couldn’t see it, and it took me a few frantic moments to stumble into it. The act of bending over to pick it up exacerbated the wounds in my side, and, duly reminded of them, I drew power to close them up and begin the tissue-mending process.
Two arrows left. Coyote had presumably dropped the remainder of his somewhere. I nocked one and tried not to laugh at the image of Basasael flying around with a feathery shaft sticking out between his cheeks. I chose my own target carefully, and the bowstring thwocked as the arrow sailed up and through the fallen angel’s right wing. It tore a magnificent white hole through it and began to widen, which caused Basasael to screech and tumble ignominiously to the earth—precisely where I wanted him.
“Dóigh!” I shouted, pointing my right index finger at him and drawing strength from the earth as I cast Cold Fire. I immediately felt weaker, as if I were suffering from low blood sugar; my muscles were like leaden weights and sluggish to obey my commands. It wasn’t as bad as the first time I’d cast it, when I completely collapsed from the effort, but it was a fact that I wouldn’t be pulling that bowstring again today. I’d have to lie down and spend some time recuperating.
The school’s loudspeaker crackled to life, and a stern voice of authority boomed metallically off the courtyard walls. “Teachers, please go into lockdown at this time. Once again, teachers, please go into lockdown immediately.”
Apparently the repeated unholy shrieks from Basasael and random jets of flame in the courtyard had convinced the administration something was amiss, and this, on top of the commands delivered from a mysterious disembodied voice who seemed dissatisfied with the school’s English instruction, compelled them to act.
Basasael began to rise slowly from the ground, the arrows clearly (and finally) bothering him now. As yet he betrayed no sign that the Cold Fire was working on him, but I had hope it would take effect in short order.
Coyote, returned to human form, had dashed back to where his bow and arrows were and called to me, “What’d ya do to him, Mr. Druid?”
“I’m not sure if I did anything,” I called back. “You might wanna shoot him a couple more times.”
“Oh yeah, that brilliant strategy ya learned from Attila the Hun. Almost forgot.”
As Coyote nocked an arrow and began to pull the bowstring, Basasael was ripping the arrows from his hand and his belly and making horrible noises in the process. He was gingerly trying to deal with the final arrow (Mercutio’s phrase about the “blind bow-boy’s butt shaft” took on new meaning in this situation) when Coyote’s shot took him straight in the throat, choking off all further screams. It allowed us to hear the sound of approaching police sirens.
“Yeah!” Coyote whooped and pumped his fist. “Sit down and have a tall glass of shut-the-hell-up!”
I was quickly turning loopy because, as the fallen angel was nonverbally communicating his distress with an impressive array of spastic twitches and concomitant white ejecta from his wounds, I was thinking, It’s too bad we’ll never get a chance to talk over a cup of tea. Besides the Morrigan, I rarely had conversations with beings older than I was, and I treasured them whenever they happened along.
My doubts about whether Cold Fire would work on a fallen angel were soon allayed: The bubbling mess inside Basasael’s wounds began to spread all over his body, so that his legs and arms were roiling like maggots running rampant under a corpse’s skin. The next second, he tried to curl inward on himself in a mockery of the fetal position, and then he exploded in a slimy mass of purulence and gore. His tarlike substance polluted the courtyard, covering grass, trees, steel, and cement alike with the remains of the partially digested teenager splattered liberally amongst the mess. The falling rain was a benediction now, for the earth had been cleansed of an ancient evil, but it would never be able to wash this away before school got out, much less before the cops got here.
“That’s right, son!” Coyote shouted at the remains. “You don’ come into my house an’ ’spect to live!”
“By Balor’s evil eye, what are we going to do about all this goo?” I said.
“What’s this ‘we’ you talkin’ about, Mr. Druid? Ain’t my demon, an’ it ain’t my mess.”
“Yeah, I know. But I can’t get any ghouls out here now to clean it up. People are gonna have to deal with it and rationalize it away somehow. They can call the Ghostbusters to take a sample o’ the ectoplasmic discharge or whatever. Or they’ll have to bring in Mulder an’ Scully, because there ain’t no CSI on the planet that’ll ever be able to explain this.”
“I have no idea what you’re talkin’ about, Mr. Druid.”
I didn’t care to explain. I just pointed at the carnage and said, “This right here will be the birthplace of a thousand conspiracy theories about aliens an’ most likely a sign of the comin’ apocalypse. You watch, it’ll be in the Weekly World News.”
Coyote shrugged. “Hey, I don’ care. It’ll be a damn funny story whatever they come up with.”
“We should get the arrows,” I said. “Better not leave them lyin’ around.”
“Yeah, good idea,” Coyote replied. I put my sandals back on before venturing out to wade amongst the hellish mess, then joined Coyote in tracking down the arrows. Police officers began to stream into the courtyard, but we kept our mouths shut, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to hear us or see us, except as a flicker of movement they’d dismiss as a trick of the rain.
Once the quiver was full again, we dodged around a few police officers and administrative types to get back to the office door. I remembered one last detail before we left the scene: I had to get rid of any blood that may have dropped after Basasael stabbed me. I found a few drops near the wall, not as much as I’d feared; it had mostly been soaked up by my shirt. I grabbed a few handfuls of water from the continuing runoff and washed it away, erasing evidence for the coming forensics specialists and leaving nothing behind for witches.
The bell rang, signaling the end of class and beginning of lunchtime. Since the school was in lockdown, the kids would remain in class and simply go hungry for a while. But they’d be safe now.
Feeling pretty good about ourselves, the two of us walked back through the office building to our stolen SUV waiting in the drop-off zone. It was surrounded by police cars. Oh well.
We kept the camouflage on and walked south, thoroughly drenched and starting to get cold. “There’s another high school just south o’ the freeway,” Coyote explained once we were a safe distance from the office, lazily gesturing down Crismon Road. “It’s called Desert Ridge. Parkin’ lot full o’ unattended cars there to steal.”
“Think I’ll just call myself a taxi at that convenience store there,” I replied, pointing to a friendly red-and-white logo glowing dimly through the rain. “I’ve caused enough grief for high school students today. These poor Skyline—what are they?” I couldn’t think of their mascot, and I turned back to their marquee sign to check. It said HOME OF THE COYOTES, and I swore in Old Irish with such prolixity my father would have been proud.
Coyote was already laughing and putting distance between us. He knew I’d be annoyed at being tricked, and I was.
“Not in your house, eh? Did one of the Diné even die back there?” I challenged him. “You lied to me about that maiden gettin’ eaten, didn’t you?”
“Yep, only white people died.” Coyote grinned wickedly. “But I didn’t wanna let you wait aroun’ until one o’ my people became his breakfast, because I do have some o’ my people at this school and I did wanna protect ’em.”
“So you put me at tremendous risk? I wasn’t really ready to confront this guy. I wanted to take him on at my place of power on my own terms.”
“Now don’ be mad, Mr. Druid. I helped you take care of a big problem. You mighta not made it if it weren’t for me.”
“Yeah, what about that? You took your sweet time getting ’round to helpin’ when he came after me.”
“Well, y’know, I just couldn’t resist doin’ it the way I did it. You know how people are always threatenin’ to shove this or that up someone’s ass, but they never really do it? Well, now there’s a new story gonna be told ’round the fire: ‘How Coyote Shoved an Arrow Up a Fallen Angel’s Ass.’ Can’t wait to hear myself tell it! An’ don’t you worry, Mr. Druid, I’ll make sure to include how I got the best o’ you!” He melted into his animal form and trotted off into the rain, yipping his merriment and grinning back at me over his shoulder.
Chapter 10
I spent most of the cab ride home muttering about thrice-cursed trickster gods, but by the end of it I was smiling in spite of myself. I wasn’t the first guy who’d been tricked by Coyote, and I wouldn’t be the last. I’d actually gotten off pretty lightly, walking away with nothing more than a flesh wound.
Lunch with Oberon was unusually relaxing, perhaps because I’d rid myself of a large piece of unfinished business. My hound had five Weisswurst sausages, and I had peanut butter and orange marmalade on wheat with a glass of milk. Oberon wanted to discuss what he’d seen in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, how Nurse Ratched was really the Man and how Wavy Gravy would have shown her a thing or two if he’d been there. He wanted to talk about where Chief Bromden went at the end, whether I thought he went back to the Columbia River or whether he might have gone out to fight against the Combine. He also, very somberly, wanted to talk about end-of-life decisions.
"If the Man ever cuts out half my brain and I’m a vegetable like McMurphy," he said, "then I want you to do what Chief did, okay?"
I didn’t know what to say. Chief had smothered McMurphy with a pillow. I unexpectedly teared up just thinking about it and scratched him behind the ears. Then that wasn’t enough, so I squatted down and gave him a hug. Oberon didn’t know it, but he had already outlived every Irish wolfhound that had ever walked the earth. The tragedy of his magnificent breed is their fairly short life span, only six or seven years. But I’d been giving Oberon the same blend of herbs and magic that kept me looking and feeling twenty-one instead of twenty-one hundred, a brew I jokingly called Immortali-Tea. Oberon was now fifteen and had no idea that he should have been dead years ago, not running around with the energy and strength of a three-year-old adult. Okay, buddy, I finally said.
Before I could descend further into maudlin sentiment, my cell phone began to play “Witchy Woman,” an Eagles ringtone I’d downloaded especially for Malina’s calls.
I walked out to my backyard before answering it, deciding to recharge a bit while I spoke with her. She thanked me for the shipment of bloodwort and made polite noises about its superior quality; I made polite noises back, thanking her for her business; and I thought all the while that it was good to be back to our formal relationship. Then she got down to the business I wanted to hear.
“We were able to confirm in last night’s ritual that die Töchter des dritten Hauses are here in the East Valley, but we were sadly unable to pinpoint their precise location.”
“Then you have both my congratulations and condolences. Any ideas on why you couldn’t get a clearer picture?”
“Perhaps our effectiveness is reduced with only six of us left. Perhaps they have cast some sort of cloak about themselves that we are unable to penetrate. Most likely it is a little bit of both,” she said. “We will try again tonight. Did you try divining their location yourself?”
“No, I haven’t had the time to use my own methods,” I said. “Kind of had a busy morning. I ought to have some time to try after work.”
“I doubt you will have any time at all. We also performed our divination ritual to locate the Bacchants and had much more success. They are here—twelve of them, to be exact—and they plan to begin causing mischief in Scottsdale this evening. Saturnalian orgies will ensue unless you intervene.”
“Is it truly important I intervene tonight?” I hadn’t heard anything more from Laksha, and I might not have an effective way of doing so. “What lasting damage could one night of true bacchanalia really do to Scottsdale?”