The neck I was after wasn’t so scrawny anymore but was still within the compass of my jaws. The problem now was that there were human limbs and musculature to deal with, and he had a speed and will to wield them viciously. Even as Frank yelled a “Hyaaah!” and brought Moralltach clumsily down across the back of the skinwalker, the creature’s left arm buffeted me backward. This gave him time to roll over and kick Frank powerfully in the gut before I could descend upon him again. Frank staggered backward, Moralltach sailing from his hand as he reflexively sought to cushion his fall and protect his head. He fell outside our circle and onto the waiting caltrops-or so I imagined, judging by peripheral vision and what I heard, which was a dismayed “Shit!” I was too busy tearing after the skinwalker’s throat. The creature punched my ribs so mightily with his right hand that I heard them crack.
In the movies, you go flying away into the night after a shot like that, landing ruinously against a rock or cement wall, and somehow your mere flesh and bone shatters said rock or cement and you get up afterward and brush dust off your shoulders as the soundtrack swells dramatically. In reality, what happens is that your lungs empty of all air and you fall over-and if you do fly into a rock wall, it will shatter your bones long before you shatter it.
My healing charm was already working on the flesh the other skinwalker had torn as a bird, but it did nothing to reinflate my lungs. As I lay gasping, the cursed thing-Robert or Ray Peshlakai, if Sophie was right-staggered to his feet to finish me off. Instead, he collapsed on top of me, further injuring my ribs as black ruin suffused his entire twitching body, spreading from the wound that Frank had delivered with Moralltach. Unlike my Fourth World poisons, the Fae enchantment on the sword was more than the First World spirit could heal-Fae magic being as alien to First World as the other way around. He died with a hoarse cry of terror, and I think I might have joined him-partly because it was the only sound I could manage and partly because watching a head shrivel and turn black right next to yours is profoundly disturbing.
I couldn’t kick him off me, nor could I struggle out from underneath him, injured as I was. I would have to shift back to human to help Frank and call Granuaile for help.
Shifting with bone injuries is never a great idea, but I didn’t see what choice I had. The transition nearly turned the cracks in my ribs to breaks, and my half-strangled cry of pain, when added to all the other cries in the night, caused Granuaile to call out from the hogan.
“Atticus? You all right?”
I didn’t answer right away. I would be fine eventually, but I was worried about Frank and trying to recover my breath. He rolled back into the circle, several caltrops sticking out of his back and perhaps more elsewhere that I couldn’t see. His right hand fumbled into his back pocket for the antidote I’d given him.
“Yes!” I managed to say, trying to encourage him. I shoved the blackened corpse off me with revulsion and winced at the pain the exertion caused. I began to crawl toward Frank. His hand was shaking as he took the box out of his pocket. He dropped it to the ground in front of him and gasped-his breath was wheezy and unsteady already.
“Let me help, Frank,” I said, shutting down my pain to allow me to move faster. He had three caltrops lodged in his back and I yanked these out as quickly as I could, being careful about the points, then reached for the antidote. The box was mashed up a bit, and that worried me. I remembered how he’d fallen. “No, no, no…” I breathed, my fingers scrabbling at the box to get it open. The syringe inside was broken, crushed when Frank’s full weight had fallen on it.
Frank’s elbow trembled and unlocked on him and he collapsed, then rolled over, clutching his chest. His breath came in short gasps and he was in obvious distress.
“Hold on, Frank, I’m going to try something,” I said, discarding the useless antidote. I reached for the side of his neck, intending to heal him directly in spite of the risk to myself-if I caused him any harm while using magic, my own life would be forfeit. He clutched at my arm and the ghost of a smile passed his lips as his eyes flicked to the dead skinwalker.
“Got… the fucker,” 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’iidii 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’iidii wrap itself around me and disperse. “Those were good last words. Go and be at peace.”
Frank’s ch’iidii 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’iidii hanging around, however. When I turned around to see the ch’iidiis of the skinwalkers, I flinched backward. Their ch’iidiis 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’iidii 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.
