Binding: Book Two of the Moon Wolf Saga Page 13

  “Get out of here! Get out!”

  “You don’t mean that.” The second voice was sly, and it evoked a laugh from several others.

  “Please… !”

  Three men, young men, had crossed this way recently. Two nervous, one excited, and all just a bit rank. Jason started toward the back. I held out a hand and he stopped and looked at me, his brow raised.

  “My town,” I said. “My lead.”

  Jason smiled. He bowed and gestured me to the back room.

  The woman's voice rose, suddenly fierce, “Don’t touch that! No!”

  “Nothing's going to happen to it,” sly-voice said. “It's so beautiful—and expensive.”

  I walked through the door to the big back room—no wards had been laid, no surprise there, considering—and took in the three heavy-set youths, standing a little too close to the slight woman with the long dark braid. She wore smudged jeans and a paint-spattered work shirt. They had pinned her, by their positions, against a stack of crates and boxes, on the far side of the room from the land line that stood nearly buried under piles of papers on the desk. Her body was taut with fear and anger, her eyes were riveted on the violin in the hand of the tallest one, as though the intensity of her gaze could keep it safe. This guy spun around as I entered, holding the violin by the neck with one hand, and brandishing the bow with the other. This must be sly-guy, the excited one, and I marked him also as the danger man. His henchmen were slower to turn. One was almost as big as sly-guy, but more nervous. The other guy was heavier, and as his eyes fell on me, an unpleasant interest rose in them.

  “Hi!” I said brightly, to everyone in the room. “Can I buy a drum? Are you open? Can I buy one today?”

  “Get out,” the big henchman said. He glanced at sly-guy for approval, and then moved to loom over me. “She's not open.”

  I’m five foot nothing on two feet. I look about as threatening as a glass of fruit juice. Until I smile. Then, I look disconcertingly as though I have too many teeth, and that's a little scary.

  “Oh,” I said, chipper and friendly, “oh, what a nice violin!” I walked up to danger-man and reached for the instrument, and as I did so I tried out Jonathan's trick. He’d been in human form, but his growl was pure bear, which meant he had to change just this much, just there—the sound vibrated deep in my throat and chest, too low for the human ear to register as sound, but I felt the reaction of the four humans in the room, and I plucked the violin and the bow from danger-man's hands before he could stop me. I stepped back a few steps, and then he reacted.

  “Give that here!”

  And then I smiled. Just for him. I felt my eyes turn gold. He stopped. The music lady shuffled to one side behind him, and the henchmen looked from him to me.

  “But it's beautiful!” I said, to give her time, and hold their attention. “Don’t you think so?”

  “Girl, give that back before I—”

  And that's when the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being racked came from behind the guys, and they all turned, mouths open. She held it pointed at the sly-guy's stomach. He put his hands out between the muzzle and his body, as though that would do any good. I took a long step to one side, just in case she was inspired to let loose.

  “Get out of my store,” she said, and her voice had a growl in it too, good for her! “Now. Or I will kill you.”

  Sly-guy paused just as long as he dared. He gave her a look that meant, “This isn’t over,” and “we’ll be back,” and he turned and shoved his way past his two henchmen, punching the second one hard in the shoulder just so everyone in the room knew that he was a really tough guy. The store lady's hands started shaking as soon as their backs were turned, but she clutched the gun and stalked after them to the doorway. She was stopped by shrieks and howls coming from the store. When we got through the door, the guys were gone, Jason was standing by the front door radiating innocence, and Yvette had a smirk on her face that meant she had just enjoyed a good show. There was a tiny tang of piss in the air. I gave Jason the eye.

  The shop lady sat down heavily on a box by the door, cradling the shotgun.

  “What did you do?” I demanded of the bear.

  “Who, me? Nothing!”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, you can put your head on straight now.”

  He looked up, guiltily. He was the one who’d taught me the trick of wearing both my aspects, one superimposed over the other. I saw again how impressive it looked. I didn’t tell him, though. It had been my hunt, and I would have figured out how to finish it in another moment. Probably. And anyway, bears are vain enough.

  “I’m sorry,” the shop lady said, and now her voice was shaky with reaction. “Are you people all right?” She heaved herself to her feet. “I’m not quite open yet. I’m sorry you had to see that. I called the police the last time they were here, but they said they couldn’t do anything. Not until something happened. But if something happened it would be too late.” Her voice was rising. She was babbling to let her fear and rage run out, and that was fine.

  “Don’t worry,” Yvette told her cheerfully. “They’re not going to be back. Because—you scared them off with the shotgun, yeah. They went out of here so fast.” She caught Jason's eye and they both stifled a laugh.

  “I’m Ariadne Pierson. I’m just opening up this week—oh, I’m sorry.” She realized she was still holding the shotgun, and went into the back room to put it away.

  “Cool shop!” Yvette told her when she came back. “Are you going to have more drums? I have a drum, a djembe, it's from Ghana.”

  I offered Ariadne the violin. “Thank you,” she said. She took it from me, and the bow, holding them delicately. “Thank you for coming in just when you did. That was lucky.” She gave a laugh. “If I’d lost this…” She set the violin under her chin, and her body changed. She took on a posture that was practiced, certain, as different from her previous stance as though, like one of the wolf kind, or the bear kind, she had changed form. Then she drew the bow along the strings and the violin sang out with passion and fury, in beauty and marvelous joy. When she lifted the bow from the strings after just this brief music, each of us took a breath. We’d been holding ours.

  “Oh!” said Yvette. “Do that again! Do it some more.”

  Ariadne broke into a smile so sweet, it was like an echo of the music that still hung in the air. She raised the violin and again she changed, again the music rang out, soaring, searing, delightful, but this time she did not stop. Yvette sat at her chosen drum set and tapped lightly on the edge of one of the drums, adding bits of percussion as she followed the music. I leaned against the wall, listening in Whittier, but seeing again, and smelling again, the forest at home, strips of foggy light among the dark trees, a long hunt with my dad, who’d been missing a long time now, and life the way it used to be, when I was younger and we were happy. Jason stared out the window, thinking in the manner of the bear kind. He came over to Yvette, laid a huge hand on her shoulder and bent and kissed her head. I missed Richard then. Richard, my dad, the life I’d expected, everything changed and difficult and uncertain… Tears welled in my eyes. I looked away. It was the music, that's all. That woman was good.

  Yvette had us helping Ariadne move boxes around, the two of them talking up a storm, before we got away from the place. Not even the offer of letting her drive up to my place tempted Yvette from her enthusiasm for a ground-floor part in a local music store operation. When I offered to leave her there while I went back to my apartment, and come back for her later, she finally tore herself away, promising the music lady to come back and help another time. Yvette chattered on about the possibility of local drumming classes all the way to my place. I drove.

  Van sat on the steps that led up to my apartment, her bags packed neatly at her feet, glasses perched on her nose, reading from one of those electronic books as we came around from the carport where I’d parked my car.

  “Ah!” she exclaimed when she saw us. “Good timing, I just finished up. Here.” She handed
me my key. “You open it and walk in, and that will set the wards into play.”

  I could feel a strong organization of energy as I approached my door. I concentrated, and tried to track the energy to its source, but it wandered like little individual winds, leading my concentration astray. I thought this might really work. I shot her a glance, and she gave me a smug look. It was true, she was good.

  “Maybe you should stay out,” I said to Yvette and the bear. “You shouldn’t get caught up in this working, or you might get scryed if someone was looking for me.”

  Jason raised one quizzical brow. “And this would be a problem, why?”

  You can’t tell a bear not to do something that might endanger him. They don’t know the meaning of the word. I hesitated in front of my door. Bringing down trouble on your friends is a good way to lose them, and I didn’t have any to spare.

  “Me, too,” Yvette said. “I’ll go in too. ‘Cause if they’re scrying for you and they come up with me, they’ll know they’re a loser.”

  “We should all go through,” Van agreed. “It will help to keep things confused. And if someone wants to try and scry me…” She left off there, but her smile was wicked.

  So I opened the door, and we all trooped in to my little apartment where I hadn’t set foot in a week. Van had lit candles in all the rooms, though they were gone now. She had sprinkled water scented with bay, and burned sage. The swirl of energy was stronger here, a little tangled, and even more distracting. We all trooped through the living area, which became the dining area because the table was there, which became the kitchen, demarked by the linoleum. We took turns going in and out of the bathroom, because we wouldn’t all fit in there, and they all went into my bedroom, where there's a bed, by which time the energy Van had set loose in the place was sufficiently stirred up.

  Beneath the traces of Van's presence this afternoon, Richard's scent was still everywhere. In the kitchen, where he had rearranged everything to his liking, there were traces of not only him, but of everything he’d cooked for me in the weeks we’d been together. Yvette wandered through, opening the larder door, looking out the window at the view of the building's back patio, discovering the linen cupboard, where the extra blanket lives, and going back into the bathroom and closing the door. Most of the apartments on this whole street were designed to be rented to students at Whittier College living off-campus, so they were partly furnished with battered, hardy furniture. Mine was just the same, and aside from the jumble of special kitchen equipment that Richard had insisted we acquire, there was nothing personal in the place.

  Van finished her circuit and said she was off. She was going back to Costa Mesa to have dinner with Tamara and her friends, and wanted to beat the traffic. I thanked her again, but she waved it off. Her smile was still smug at the job she’d done. Jason said he would catch a ride with Van. Yvette wanted to go back to the new, local music store. She and the bear indulged in some cuddling on my front stoop while Van pointedly looked away, but then Yvette walked down to Van's car with Jason's arm draped over her shoulders, gave him another kiss, and headed back down to Greenleaf.

  I was finally alone, which was good, because there was something I needed to do. I was safe from scryers seeking me, though people who already knew where I lived would probably show up. In fact, someone had hung out in front of my house for some time earlier that day. I’d caught his scent before, when I’d seen Richard at Tamara's. I was looking forward to seeing this Richard close up. And I was looking forward to dealing with the guy who was doing it. But first, I had to see someone out in Pomona.

  I waited just long enough so that I would not pass by Yvette on my way out, since there was no reason for her to know any more of my business than she already did. I dog-legged onto Whittier Boulevard and caught the freeway up to the 60, and headed east, in good time to miss the rush hour traffic. The day was bright and the air was sufficiently clear I could see the mountains on my left, and the hills to the right. I took the 57 north and then exited onto the streets of Pomona.

  The accepted method for contacting the Rag Man was to buy a bag of food for him from his favorite taqueria, sit in the park opposite, and wait for him to show up. I had an advantage, however. I knew where he lived.

  I parked a few blocks down from the burned-out house behind the chain link fence on Garey. It was still light, so I walked on two feet along the fence line, turned down the alley and found the place where the fence was cut, leaving just enough room for someone to insinuate themself through the opening. By this time, I had sensed something wrong. If the Rag Man still lived here, I should have picked up his fresh scent already. His many comings and goings had led me to this place when I’d first found it. Now, I caught traces of him, because he’d stayed here for months, but none of the traces were recent.

  I knew before I changed, slipped through the gap in the fence on four feet, and nosed into the lean-to he’d built himself under the porch of the collapsed house, that the Rag Man hadn’t slept here in weeks. Dead end.

  Back when Richard and I were trying to find out if his dreaded ancient enemy had come to town, Richard had introduced me to the Rag Man as the best scryer in the city. The Rag Man was cursed, but the result of it was that he could scry just about anything, a handful of stones, bits of broken glass, or even his oatmeal. Now, I needed to know if two people who had once been kind to me were all right. I’d come to ask the Rag Man if he could see what had happened to Marge and Andy, and why their cabin on Mount Baldy stood empty. But the Rag Man wasn’t home.

  I drove down to the taqueria. There was no fresh trace of the Rag Man there either. I went in and bought myself one of their pretty good burritos, and a burrito and some tacos for the Rag Man when I found him. I asked the woman at the counter if she’d seen the narrow guy with the unkempt straight hair, the knit cap, the layers of clothes, whose hands were tied up in rags, but she didn’t seem to understand me. I walked across the street to the picnic table that was his usual rendezvous, but the Rag Man hadn’t been there in weeks either. I sat down and ate my food. I wasn’t expecting him to show by then, and he didn’t.

  I drove up to the reservoir, to see if the Holy Workers were still camped up on the hill over the city. The Rag Man was friendly with them, and they might know where he was. I was stopped at the electric gate by a big guy in dark glasses, who leaned down and asked what I was doing up there. His mouth was smiling, but his body was pretty clearly suggesting that I should turn back right now. He wasn’t actually offensive, but part of me couldn’t help working out the logistics of, say, biting off one ear without actually getting out of the car. And another part of me realized I just might have to do that to get by this guy, because I didn’t know the Rag Man's real name. But I made an attempt to be civilized.

  “I was here about a month ago,” I explained. “We brought a friend, who's called the Rag Man—”

  But it turned out, that's all I had to say. He straightened up, and his smile became real, and he pointed me down one of the new black roads between the meticulously marked out RV camping spaces, and the green lawns, and gave me a slot number to look for. There seemed to be more open spaces than there were a month ago, but groups of the Heiligen Arbeiters still gathered under each others’ canopies, or by each others’ barbecue set-ups, and watched my car as I passed by. Fires were burning. Meat hadn’t been set to roasting yet, but barbecues were definitely in the offing. The stretches of grass between the precisely measured spaces were pristine, recently mowed, and all the painted white lines recently touched up.

  The slot I’d been directed to was occupied by a little round steel trailer with no car to pull it, standing in a space meant for a mega-camper. I parked in the adjoining space, but even before I’d gotten out of my car I smelled him, though with some differences. He’d been around here quite a bit, his tracks traced and retraced routes in different directions. He smelled clean. He smelled of shampoo. And what was manifestly missing was the smell of sickness, charred flesh, blood, and
pus. Still, knowing all that, when he stepped out of the trailer I didn’t recognize him.

  He walked up to me with a smile, holding out his hands, and I nearly snarled at him, because I don’t care for familiarities like that. Then I caught his scent, and it was him, the Rag Man, but he was clean and neat, he wore new clothes and shoes, and his hands were not bandaged.

  “Hey!” he said. “I know you!” He opened his arms, and hugged me. And I let him.

  “Hey,” I said. “You look great.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Check this out.” He held out his hands to me. The flesh was pink and new, but there were no burns anywhere.

  I was happy for him, but also disappointed. It was through his curse that he was the best scryer in all the land, and here he seemed to be over it.

  “You don’t scry anymore?”

  “Oh, sure, I do that. Here. Come and sit. Want a beer? I got a beer.”

  I turned down the beer. I don’t drink things that spit at me. I offered him the bag of cold greasy food, and he took it out of politeness. Before he would have scarfed it down, but now, he set it on a little camp table, and offered me the second handsome wooden camp chair. With a plump green cushion. His view looked out over the greater Los Angeles valley. The sun was beginning to drop into the haze in the west.

  From this view the Rag Man had at one time pointed out the bite mark that the World Snake was going to make. Now he said, “She's gone, you know. The World Snake isn’t coming.”

  “I know. Richard and me, we did it.”

  “That's what he said.”

  That got my attention. “He told you? When did he tell you?”

  “Day after the earthquake. He came to my digs. You know the place. Down there.”

  I nodded because I did know the place, I’d just been there, but I was trying to figure out how he’d seen Richard after the last earthquake. Richard had been with me. Every minute. Right up until the new moon set him free. “The last earthquake? A month ago?” Richard couldn’t have visited him.