On impulse, I fished Cam’s holy quarter out of my pocket, eyeing it thoughtfully as I rolled it across the backs of my knuckles. Cam’s magic smelled like Mira’s, though I was willing to bet he’d argue that point with me. No matter the method-prayer versus spell casting-the effects had proven the same. And if his blessed coin was just like the magicked one she’d given me, so long ago… It had worked before. I just needed to get the big fur ball into the water.
Kneeling, I quickly buried the coin in the middle of the tiny stream, pressing it into the soft mud to keep it from flitting off down the mountain. The water was cold enough that a thin skin of ice had started to form at the very edges. My fingers went numb, and I tucked them into my armpits to warm them, wishing more than ever that I’d brought a jacket on this little vacation. Add the freak cold snap to the high altitude, and it was going to be downright frigid on this peak tonight.
How much time had passed? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? Thirty? My situation here wasn’t going to get any better, and my friends’ was only going to get worse.
I found a relatively empty place, where the trees were smaller, some of them growing directly out of outcroppings of the mountain’s distinctive pink granite. Keeping the small stream at my back, I planted my feet and drew my sword. The scabbard I tossed away, honestly figuring I’d never be able to go look for it anyway. With both feet grounded against the solid mountain, my breath fogging the air before me, I opened my mouth to call the Yeti’s name.
And choked.
It’s not like I forgot his name. Trust me, those things get in your brain and live there like parasites, all coiled up and oozing ick. You don’t get to just forget the demonic names you hear. You can’t unknow, y’know?
But the moment I tried to say it, my throat closed up, and bile rose, strong enough that I really thought I was going to gag to death on my own puke for a second. My vision got all spotty and dim, and the faint ringing in my ears became a loud clamor as my heart tried to escape out that way and go fleeing into the trees.
I found myself on hands and knees on the forest floor, hacking up my sad little gas station cheeseburger. My throat burned with it, clear up into my sinuses. Oh that was not pleasant at all.
“Why the fuck do people do this on purpose?” I muttered to nobody as I struggled to my feet again. The universe tipped and swayed a bit, then steadied, and I was pleased to find that I was indeed upright, and that I’d never dropped my katana.
Properly forewarned and stomach empty now, I tried again. The name was there, at the tip of my bitter-tasting tongue. It was rage and jealousy, evil and venom, all rolled up into one garbled mash of consonants and vowels and razor wire and strychnine.
I forced every single cursed syllable out around a tongue that refused to cooperate, and a throat that was doing its level best to strangle me for my effort. The moment it passed my lips, a pall of silence descended over the mountain. And I don’t mean “Jesse’s ears are all broke” kind of quiet. I mean quiet like the whole world stopped to hold its breath, the water stopped flowing, the plants stopped growing, the stars stopped moving. That kind of quiet.
Goose bumps sprouted over my arms, my shoulders, and my stomach cramped painfully. Something bad was coming, and I’d invited it in, asked it to come have tea. I was gonna love him, and pet him, and call him George, right up until he ate my spleen.
I kept my eyes focused on the ring of trees around me, barely breathing myself as I strained for that first sound, the one that would tell me where he was coming from.
It turns out, that first sound was a chuckle somewhere behind me. I whirled and found the Yeti lounging quite comfortably on the far side of the tiny creek. He shook his horned head in amusement. “I knew you would call. You are predictably foolish.”
“Yeah, and your mama dresses you funny.” Don’t look at the water. Don’t look at the water. All I needed was for him to charge me, to run through what I really, really hoped was now holy water. “Where are your little pets?” That was the loophole I’d left in the contract. If he was gonna screw me, this was the point.
“I left two of them with your companions. They were hungry.” The white-furred behemoth stretched then, rising to his full height. Pine needles rained down on him where his horns jostled the lower branches. Christ, he was huge. “But this one… she longed for your presence.”
Dammit, I fucking knew it. “What the hell does it take to kill you?”
Handless emerged from the darkness behind the Yeti. Her left arm was gone at the shoulder, the bone a rather diseased gray color where it poked through. Putrid black fluid ran from the wound down her washboard ribs, and her right arm still ended in the jagged bony stump. Somehow, it didn’t make her look any less dangerous. She snarled at me in her silent way.
This was not good. Even unarmed as she was, literally, I couldn’t fight the Yeti-plus-one. Any lapse of attention was going to get me eaten. “Afraid to take me on by yourself, Fuzzy?” Maybe I could get Handless into the stream too? Or maybe I could convince them both to sit down for a game of cutthroat pinochle instead. Seemed just as likely. Bet she’d have a helluva hand, har har har.
“She will not interfere. Provided that you play my game.”
“What game?”
“Any game I wish.” The beast smiled, muzzle wrinkling to reveal those gleaming fangs that had ripped into me almost every night for the last four years.
I kept an eye on Handless, but she didn’t seem inclined to move, just crouching at the Yeti’s heel like a good little hound. “Then we’re just burning moonlight. C’mon, Fuzzy. Give it your best shot.” I had to hope that Cole and the others could hold their own against a few rabid zombies. There wasn’t anything I could do but deal with what was right here before me.
“As you wish.” He dropped to all fours, rocking back and forth on his clawed feet and enormous knuckles for a moment. I swear, as big as he was, the mountain actually rocked with him. Or, it could have been a bit of dizziness from the damaged ears. Whichever.
I settled into a ready stance, sword held low, and waited. C’mon. .. go for a little swim…
The Yeti opened his muzzle and roared, the sound echoing off the peak, crashing through the night air. The sound slammed into me like a tidal wave, and my head reeled with vertigo. The night tilted at off angles, and the ground seemed to ripple beneath my feet.
After what seemed like forever, the echoes died away and my brain corrected itself so that all down things were down and all up things were properly up. I blinked my eyes open in time to see him spring at me. Neatly up and over the goddamn stream.
Well, shit.
19
T he Yeti crossed the distance between us in two giant leaps. The third one took him completely over my head. I dropped to one knee to avoid the claws, and his fur brushed across my face as he passed. It smelled of something musky and rank. A drunk goat swimming in a septic tank, maybe, with the distinctive undertones of sulfur and ozone. Futilely, I lashed out with my sword, trying to connect with anything solid, but the demon wasn’t intent on attacking me. In a crash of brush, he bounded into the trees on the opposite side of the clearing and vanished.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” I hopped to my feet as quickly as I could, focusing on Handless who hadn’t moved at all. She cocked her head to the side, watching me from her one-armed crouch. I didn’t dare take my eyes off her, but… Where did you go, Fuzzy? I strained to hear any trace of the Yeti’s passing, but between my ears and the oppressive demon stillness that had fallen over the area, there was nothing.
The guttural chuckle echoed out of the darkness, but I couldn’t get a bead on the location. “Come find me.”
“I did not sign on to play hide-and-seek!” My own voice bounced back at me mockingly. Hide-and-seek! Hide-and-seek! It sounded odd to my abused eardrums, like the inside of a large glass jar.