Unleashed

FIFTEEN

IT WAS HARD TO BELIEVE A SPACE SO SMALL could feel so empty. My flat is great, but it wasn’t suited for pacing, and I couldn’t sit still. Four strides and I was up against a wall; four more brought me to the opposite side of the room.

This wasn’t the first time Lou had gone missing. But the previous time I’d thought he’d simply left, abandoned me. That happens sometimes with Ifrits; it’s a lurking fear felt by every practitioner who’s blessed with one. It had plunged me into a depression and paralyzed me, but this time it was different. He’d been taken, swept up by the energy pool, and I didn’t even know if he was alive or dead. And if he was alive, I had no idea how to locate him. Neither did Eli or Victor. It was like watching someone fall into a raging river, swept away by the current. You stand on the bank, watching helplessly as the torrent sweeps them away. You feel you have to do something, but there’s nothing you can do.

Which was ironic. If it had been me that had fallen into that thing, Lou could have found me, and he would have, come hell or high water. But I wasn’t as clever.

Victor wanted to try closing the pool again, but Eli nixed that idea. He pointed out that if we closed the pool now, Lou would be gone forever. The chances of his finding his way back were slim, but if the pool were destroyed, those chances would drop to zero.

Besides, he was worried. Trying to close the pool had instead made it even stronger. Another attempt might have unintended disastrous consequences. A lot more research and thought would need to be done before the next attempt, and that would take some time.

I didn’t care about any of that. I wanted Lou back. The only person I could think of who might be able to help find him was the Wendigo, and the only way that I knew to find the Wendigo involved using Lou’s talents. Catch- 22.

For once, the knock on the door came as a welcome distraction. When I answered, the Wendigo stood outside. I’d never been so glad to see an untrustworthy supernatural entity in my life. But why was he here? Of course. He was still hoping to get the remaining stones.

“May I come in?” he politely asked.

Normally I wouldn’t have wanted him to. But now I treated him like an honored guest.

“Of course,” I said.

He nodded and walked in, looking around with curiosity. He wandered back and forth, picking up things and putting them down again before sitting down at the kitchen table, much like Morgan had done. With him it seemed rude and out of place, though. I guess he hadn’t quite got the human conception of appropriate boundaries yet. But a lot of normal people are the same way.

“Sorry about what happened at the energy pool,” he said. Once again he seemed to know everything, which saved some time and explanation. “You’ve got to be careful with those things.”

“I get that. And it was pointless, anyway; it’s still there. But Lou’s not.”

“I know. A shame, really.”

“Yes, it is. I don’t suppose you have any ideas?”

“About what?”

“Locating Lou. Bringing him back-if he’s still alive.”

“Oh, he’s alive all right, unless something on the other end got him.” Relief flooded over me at hearing the word “alive,” but I didn’t like the rest of the sentence.

“What other end?” I said, suspecting I wouldn’t like the answer. The Wendigo looked at me patiently.

“The other end of the energy pool. It doesn’t work quite the way you seem to think it does.”

I regarded him sourly.

“I have no idea how it works.”

“Take a guess,” he said. I thought about it.

“Well, Eli thinks it creates things based on archetypes, bringing them into existence in some fashion.”

“With all due respect, Eli is totally clueless about that. The pool doesn’t create anything. It pulls things from other places, things that already exist elsewhere. Sometimes the things it pulls up have entered this world before-that’s why I seem so familiar, and mimic legend and myth in some manner. It’s not that I was ‘created’ by some archetypal template; it’s because others like me have visited before and people remember.”

“So the pool could never have created an actual Ifrit, then?”

“Of course not. It simply pulled in a creature from somewhere else that resemble Ifrits in some ways.”

“And how did you get sucked into it?”

“That’s a little different. I wasn’t an accident-I was just waiting for an opening. When someone like myself gets into this world, we gain some powers, ones we don’t ordinarily have. That’s why I like it here, and that’s why I intend to stay.”

“And the shape-shifters?”

“Same thing. In their world, nothing but mindless beasts. Here-well, you can see how clever they become.”

“So Lou wasn’t swallowed up and dissolved by the energy field?”

“No. He just went somewhere else, much like I came here.”

“Goddamn it,” I said. “I should have gone after him.” The Wendigo shook his head.

“If you had, you might well have ended up somewhere entirely different, and I doubt you’d ever have found your way back.”

“Why hasn’t Lou found his way back, though? That’s something he’s very good at, after all.”

“That I couldn’t say. Maybe the pool took him somewhere his tracking sense doesn’t work. Different places, different rules. Maybe he’s trapped by something and can’t get away.”

“And maybe he’s dead.”

“Maybe.”

“But if he’s alive, you could find him,” I said, making it into a statement. “And bring him back, like you did for Sherwood.”

“Possibly. I’d like to help, if I could.” That didn’t sound very believable.

“In return for what?” I asked bluntly.

“Maybe I just would like to help. Is that so hard to believe? Of course, if you wanted to show your appreciation…”

“By handing over the rest of the stones, for instance?”

“That would indeed be a handsome gesture.”

“And I’m supposed to trust that you’ll do your part?”

He smiled, but it wasn’t triumphant, or knowing, or smug. It actually seemed a bit sad.

“What choice do you have?”

And that was the truest thing he’d said since I’d met him.

“Deal,” I said, walking over to the trunk where I kept them. I pulled out the remaining stones, placed them on the kitchen table, and pushed them across toward him. I was breaking one of the cardinal rules of bargaining-never front the money. But he had the upper hand, and he knew it. Now that he had what he wanted, there was no reason for him to renege on the deal, though. If I tried to play hardball with him instead, he’d feel obligated to find a way to screw with me. At least, that was how I read him. He let them sit there, as if afraid I’d change my mind if he tried to pick them up.

“What now?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away and I thought he was thinking, but then noticed he had focused on a drawing on the wall over my computer, a sketch of me at a gig done by an artist friend. A Wendigo with ADD. How perfect. I rapped on the table, making him start.

“Sorry,” he said, pulling his attention back to the subject at hand. “Tell you what. I won’t try to track him down myself-that could be very difficult.”

“But you said you could do it.”

“I said it was possible. But not only would it be difficult; it could be dangerous. You never know what you’ll run into, or how the place you end up in may affect your powers. Remember that beast on the moor?

“So no, I won’t go there-I’m just getting used to it here. But what I will do is help you get there on your own, if you like. Getting back will be up to you, though.”

“That will do just fine,” I said.

“It’s got to be at night,” he said. “So I’ll come back this evening.”

He swept up the stones on the table with an exaggerated flourish and tucked them away in an inside pocket. “Again, a pleasure doing business with you.”

WHEN HE KNOCKED AT MY DOOR THAT EVENING, I was ready. I had a ham sandwich, matches, a heavy shirt, my old semiwaterproof leather jacket, my hiking boots, and of course, the Remington. If I ended up in some exotic city full of God knew who or what, I was going to feel rather foolish, but there are worse things than feeling foolish.

I also had my Buck knife, and Lou’s rawhide chew toy. Or rather, part of it. I’d sawed it in half, and part of it was now in the corner of the room, while I set the other half on the kitchen table. This was the most important thing I was taking-Lou might not have his full abilities, not enough to find his way home, but there’s nothing stronger than half of a once-undivided whole. They call to each other, magically speaking, and I had confidence Lou could use half his favorite toy to find his way to the other half. If not, we might spend the rest of our lives in a foreign dimension, amidst the alien corn.

I felt bad about not telling Eli about what I was doing, but he would have gone ballistic on me, at least as much as he ever does. He would have pointed out how stupid it was to go off half-cocked, and he would have been right. No doubt he would have tried to stop me. But Lou had vanished once before, and I had sat around feeling sorry for myself. If Campbell hadn’t been there to kick my ass in gear, I would have been too late to help him, and that wasn’t going to happen again.

When the Wendigo finally showed up, he looked at the half chew toy on the table and nodded approvingly.

“Very clever,” he said, getting it immediately. “It might even work.” He looked around and then shook his head as he spotted the shotgun. “Bad idea.”

“What is?”

“The shotgun.”

“I don’t see why. Talent may not work when I get to wherever Lou is. You already said his own abilities probably aren’t working right. It just might save my butt.”

“It might,” he said. “But it also might not. You’re not going into battle, after all. You’re not hunting anything. You’re on a rescue mission, and you want to get in there and out of there as quickly as you can. You don’t want to go in with guns blazing; you want to be invisible.”

“Sure,” I said. “But it never hurts to have a backup, just in case.”

“If you say so. But when a person has an option, most of the time they end up using it. No shotgun and you run. If you have it, you stand and fight, and that can be a fatal mistake. It’s your funeral, though.”

I hated taking advice from the Wendigo. For one thing, I didn’t trust him, and I never would. But when I thought about it, it made a certain sense. The problems I was going to run into weren’t going to be solved with a convenient blast from a shotgun.

I put my knife in one pocket and the chew toy in the other, crammed the ham sandwich in with it, and looked longingly at the Remington that was leaning against the wall.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m ready. What now?”

The Wendigo gave me a sardonic stare.

“Well, great, but I can’t just transport you out of here.”

“What, then?”

“Back to the energy pool. You’re going to have to go through it yourself. How else did you think you were going to get there?”

ROLF WAS NOWHERE TO BE SEEN WHEN WE GOT to the construction site under the bridge, so I had to clamber over the gate, barely avoiding cutting my hands on the barbed wire, even with my usual hardening spell for my hands. The Wendigo watched with amusement, then bounded over himself, skimming over the gate without so much as touching it, like a low-gravity moonwalker. I had got so used to him I’d forgotten he wasn’t human at all.

The faint glow of the energy pool, still going strong, was visible at the back of the site. We walked up to the edge, right where the shifting bands of color swirled and pulsed.

“What do I do now?” I asked.

“Go ahead,” the Wendigo said. “Just walk right into it.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“Not at all. How else do you think you’re going to find him? I’ll provide the psychic push that will determine where you’ll go and make sure it’s the same place your Ifrit ended up.”

I took a step forward, then stopped. Talking about it was one thing, but plunging right in was not something I relished, any more than diving into a midwinter lake through a hole in the ice. I remembered Lou’s startled yelp as he was pulled into it, but it didn’t make me feel any more determined. The Wendigo came over and stood beside me.

“Changed your mind?” he said. I shook my head, and he smiled. “Well, let me give you a little push, then.”

He took a step back, placed his hand on the small of my back, and gave a powerful shove. The promised push turned out to be more than metaphorical. Instead of bravely stepping forward into the unknown, I was propelled, stumbling and flailing, into the center of the maelstrom.