Unleashed

SEVEN

FORT POINT SITS JUST UNDER THE SOUTH END of the Golden Gate, hunkered down in the shadow of the bridge. It was built during the Civil War to fend off invading fleets-from whom, I’m not sure, and I don’t think they were, either. It’s become a big tourist attraction, crowded on weekends not only with tourists but with locals as well.

A footpath, several miles long, runs east toward Crissy Field. Most of the path is clear of brush with great views of the bridge and the ocean, but there are parts of it that wend closely through overhanging trees. Overgrown lanes occasionally branch off the main path, where concrete bunkers have reverted back to the wild, almost unrecognizable as man-made constructions.

Eli carried the messenger bag containing the stones. Victor had the iron shavings and the salt, as well as the flashlight with the duct-taped stone. He was also carrying a shotgun. He didn’t even bother to disguise it; if we ran into anyone, he’d use enough of an aversion spell so that they wouldn’t care to look at him.

The shotgun might not be much use against the Wendigo, but Victor hadn’t forgotten about the creature that had savaged his leg. This was smack-dab in the middle of where it had been hanging out, and any display of unusual magical power would bring it running. I wasn’t carrying anything. My job was simple. I was bait.

Dusk is a dicey time of day to be hunting anything. Your eyes play tricks on you, and you can never be quite sure what you’re looking at until it’s right up on top of you. But that was when Morgan had seen me here, so that was when I was here.

I still wasn’t happy with the setup. Too many assumptions were being made, way too many for my comfort. What if the Wendigo wasn’t here? What if it wasn’t a Wendigo at all? What if it was, but could manage to call us all at once-who was going to set up the circle and trap it? Eli assured me that it could focus on only one individual at a time. He seemed quite sure of that, but what if he was wrong? He’d misjudged things in the past. Not often, but he’s not infallible.

And once we had it, what were we going to do with it? Could it really call Sherwood back from whatever place she was? Then what? Did we let it go to continue on its merry way? What if it were bent on wreaking havoc? I don’t mind playing things by ear; in fact, mostly I prefer it. But this was going out on a very long limb without a paddle, so to speak.

It was a warm evening by San Francisco standards. The sound of ocean waves blended pleasantly with the muted sounds of traffic from the opposite direction. The sun had just set, and the last of the evening rays lit up the tops of the bridge towers. I felt strangely at peace, relaxed and happy, even though we were on a dangerous mission with unknown consequences. Lou was trailing along right behind me, looking remarkably at ease himself.

Too much at ease. This was not normal. I looked behind me, and sure enough, Victor and Eli were ambling along lackadaisically, as if they hadn’t a care in the world. I roused myself enough to point out this disturbing state of affairs, but something else caught my attention. This time it wasn’t someone calling me. It was a whisper in the depths of my brain, right at the edge of conscious thought. Come, it urged. Come, Mason.

I knew where it wanted me to go. I stopped by the side of the trail, letting Victor and Eli drift by, lost in their own thoughts, then walked back up the path the way we’d come. Again, it was an odd sensation, a feeling of compulsion that wasn’t compulsion at all. I didn’t have to come to it when it called; it just seemed there was nothing else I could do, really. I went because I was supposed to go. Makes no sense, I know, but it’s the best I can explain it.

A ways farther up the trail I heard Lou’s high-pitched yelp, warning Eli and Victor something was amiss. About time, I thought, but I wondered if they’d get the holding circle up in time. It didn’t worry me either way.

Twenty feet ahead of me, about ten feet up in a small tree, barely visible against the darkening sky, he waited. Eli and Victor would be too late. I felt a vague sorrow about that, and an even stronger regret that I’d never see Lou again, but it wasn’t enough to throw me off stride. What would be, would be.

I’d almost reached the Wendigo’s tree perch when his face lit up with a green glow. Immediately my mind cleared, and I backed off rapidly, almost stumbling over my feet. Apparently Eli had been right about him; he couldn’t keep his mind focused on more than one thing at a time. He sat without moving for a long moment before toppling off the branch and falling to the ground with a heavy thud. He wasn’t hurt, though, and immediately got to his feet with a jerky, uncoordinated motion.

He’d shown a fluid grace while sitting in the tree, but now he was staggering along like a recalcitrant marionette, stumbling and lurching toward the circle. So they’d pulled it off after all. Victor kept the flashlight trained on him until he was completely in the circle. When he switched it off, we all held our breath, waiting to see if the circle would hold.

The Wendigo did a complete three-sixty, examining every aspect of the trap. He put his hands up near the interface of the power grid produced by the stones and the space outside the circle, shook his head, and then calmly sat down.

He looked about the same as the first time I’d seen him-same curly hair, same woodland clothes, although the colors shifted as he sat there, so maybe they weren’t really clothes at all. He was smaller than I remembered, though, only five-eight or so. People who scare you are often smaller than they seem at the time. But this time he seemed more human, less scary. Maybe it was something he could control. Anyone passing by on the street wouldn’t look twice at him.

And now that we had him what were we going to do with him? I wasn’t even sure we could communicate with him, much less get across complex ideas. I needn’t have worried. He looked at each of us in turn and said, “Now what?”

His voice was light and pleasant, with a hint of a Southern twang. I had no idea what to say, but thank God it wasn’t up to me. I was more than happy to let Eli and Victor do the talking. Eli got up close, right to the barrier of stones, before he spoke, and when he did, his tone was mild.

“What do we call you? Have you a name?”

“Many,” he said. “Most of which are hard to pronounce. But you don’t need a name. You seem to know who I am.”

“I know what you are, which is not precisely the same,” Eli said.

“A nice distinction. What is it you want?”

“What makes you think we want something?” said Victor. He was never one for standing on the sidelines.

“You’ve trapped me here. There must be a reason for that.” He waved expansively at the circle. “I don’t know how you did it, I’ll admit. Most things don’t affect me much. But trapping me took a lot more thought and planning than simply trying to kill me, for example. So you want something from me, no?”

He sounded reasonable enough, but I’d been under his thrall twice now. Maybe his reasonableness was another, more subtle form of the same thing. The sky had grown dark, and the only illumination came from the ring of rune stones that glowing faintly as they pulsed with power. The Wendigo’s face was half hidden in a greenish shadow, giving him a diabolical cast. The devil’s a smooth talker, they say. Eli slowly nodded.

“True enough. We want you to find someone and bring them back.”

“Oh? From where?”

“If we knew that, we wouldn’t be talking to you. She’s… somewhere, not quite in this world but not quite out of it, either. Something you might be familiar with.”

“What’s her name?”

Eli hesitated. It seemed dangerous information to be giving out, but if we weren’t willing to do so, what was the point of catching this thing, anyway?

“Sherwood,” he said.

“Sherwood,” he repeated softly, caressing the name softly. It set off echoes in my mind.

He closed his eyes and for a moment his entire form blurred. When he opened his eyes, he shook his head. “Too many possibilities. I’m going to need more information.”

“She reached out to me,” I said. “At first she was in a featureless void, but then it resolved into a specific place, like a movie set from Wuthering Heights.” The Wendigo looked at me blankly. “Her favorite movie,” I explained. “Moors, fog, stunted bushes, bleak vistas-that sort of thing.”

“Ah, I see. A construct. That makes it easier.” He closed his eyes again, and this time when he opened them, he nodded. “I see her. I can call her.”

“What does she look like?” I asked, not trusting him.

“Dark hair. Pretty. She’s sitting on a rock, high on a hillside, overlooking the moor you described. Not really, of course, but that’s the way she perceives it.” So he might not be trustworthy, but he wasn’t faking it, either. “The question now is,” he continued, “what are you going to do for me in return?”

“Well, there’s a problem about that,” Eli said. “You tried to take Mason from us once already. I don’t think it would have been a good thing for him if you’d succeeded. What’s to say you wouldn’t try the same sort of thing once you were free? A lot of innocents walk through the woods. It was hard enough to catch you once, and I don’t think it would be easy to catch you a second time.” The Wendigo chuckled, deep in his throat.

“No, probably not.”

“So you see the dilemma.”

“I do. Well, first of all you seem to have the wrong idea about me. I have no use for ordinary humans. Although I find them interesting. Especially their music.” He looked over at me. “You’re a musician, yes?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” I said.

“Everything, but you should know that. Practitioners, now, that’s a different matter. I absorb energy from them. But as far as people go, what do you think I’d do with them? Eat them?” He made it sound like a joke, but that was exactly what I thought he’d do. “The energy is what keeps me strong. But it doesn’t hurt them any-in fact, afterward they usually forget they ever met me.”

“Richard Cory,” I said.

“Ah, you know him? Delightful fellow. I got enough from him to keep me going for a month.”

“And where is he now?”

“Back with his friends, I imagine. Have you checked with them?”

I hadn’t, and of course there was no way to do that now. But it wasn’t impossible. Rolf wouldn’t have bothered to tell me if Richard had returned. He just didn’t think that way.

“What about those hikers,” Victor said, “the ones who were torn to shreds. We’ve been assuming it was something else, but now I’m beginning to wonder.”

The Wendigo gave him what was supposed to be a bright and cheery smile, but under the glow of the rune stones it looked more like a satanic leer.

“Oh, come, now. All of you seem strangely eager to jump to conclusions, based on nothing at all. Now, that beast, yes, it’s possible. It’s a vicious animal, though not truly intelligent.” He gestured over at Lou. “And although it hates everyone and everything, it especially despises Ifrits.”

“Why is that?” Eli asked. Once again, academic curiosity had overcome the practical problem in front of us.

“Because of how it came into this world. It was pulled in by an overload of talent-I would guess from these very stones you used to trap me. The magic has run wild, coursing through its bloodstream, and that’s made it sick, almost like a rabid dog.” He looked over at me. “So it’s not really the beast’s fault-it’s yours.”

“Never mind that,” Victor said. “Mason, you’re the one this fellow first called-you must have some idea of his nature. Do you buy it?”

I thought about what Campbell had said, about it not really being a Wendigo the way Eli had assumed. More like an elemental, with unknown motives. And I realized I had indeed made a lot of assumptions about it. But letting it out of the circle did not seem safe.

“Could be,” I said slowly. “But there’s no way to know for sure.”

“Well, how about if you call up Sherwood for us,” Victor said. “If you can. Then we’ll talk about what’s to be done with you.”

“I have a better idea. How about you let me out of here, and then we’ll talk about getting this Sherwood person back.”

Classic impasse, a Mexican standoff. I don’t know how it would have been resolved, but then the unexpected happened, as it often does.

We’d all been focused on the Wendigo, not surprisingly. So when the fake Ifrit burst out from behind the closest bush, it caught us all by surprise, even Lou. It ran right by, ignoring me, and sprang at Victor. That made sense; he was the one holding the shotgun. Victor spun around, but he didn’t have time to line up the barrel for a shot. The creature launched itself at his throat, snarling with a thick, guttural roar. Victor did just manage to get the shotgun up to protect his throat, using both hands, but instead of blocking the creature’s charge, he threw himself backward. He used the length of the gun as a lever and flipped the creature over his head as he went down. It was like watching a goddamned ninja movie.

He sprang to his feet as if he were made of rubber, leveled the shotgun, and pulled the trigger. The sound was enormous in the quiet. Before I could even react he’d pumped off four more rounds. The creature dodged, incredibly fast, and despite Victor’s vaunted marksmanship and competence he only managed to graze it at best. The creature screamed as if it had been hit and dropped to the ground, where it flopped around like a dog’s chew toy. But it was on its feet almost instantly. Victor was out of rounds and would need to reload, but it didn’t know that. It decided it had had enough on this particular night. It bolted past me, whipping out a passing claw in an attempt to slice through Lou, but he ducked it easily. Then it was gone, bounding off into the night. The whole thing had lasted no more than ten seconds.

But there was one small unintended consequence. Between the flying pellets and the creature thrashing around, the circle of stones was in ruin. Not that it was a circle anymore; it was now merely a random collection of stones. The Wendigo casually stepped forward out of what was left of the circle, kicking a few of the remaining stones out of the way.

“Well,” he said. “This certainly changes things.”