“All right, Mr. Collins,” Coyote said. “It’s your turn. Who was that lady?”
“Yeah,” Frank said. “I nearly crapped my pants.”
“That was Hel,” I said, “the Norse goddess of death.”
Frank turned to Coyote to see if he was buying it. “He’s not bullshitting?”
“Naw, this guy don’t usually tell stretchers about gods,” he answered. Then he asked me, “What did she want with you?”
“She, um, wanted my help, I guess.”
“Help with what?” Granuaile said, her lip curled. “Personal hygiene?”
“Um … destroying the world.” I tossed Moralltach aside and sat down heavily in the red dust next to Frank, executing a double face-palm. Saying that out loud took quite a bit out of me. What had I done when figures like Hel approached me as a potential ally? My primary reason for going through with the Asgard trip had been to preserve my honor by keeping my word. But I saw no honor in an unstained name now. If Ragnarok began because of me, no one would remember or care that I followed through on my promises. There would be no kind historians to write apologetics for me.
Usually I try to suppress any emotions that savor of regret, because they are invariably aperitifs to a main course of depression, and for the long-lived, that’s a recipe for suicide. But that doesn’t mean they can’t sneak up on me sometimes.
And, like, gang-tackle me.
I felt a slight spell of vertigo as the enormity of what I’d done hit me. I wept silently behind my hands for Mrs. MacDonagh, for Leif, for Gunnar, for Väinämöinen, for the Norse, and for the untold suffering to come because of my bad decisions. Druids were supposed to be forces of preservation, not destruction, and I could not dance around the fact that my stupid pride had turned me into a misbegotten cockwaffle.
Granuaile squatted down next to me and put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Well, clearly she didn’t like what you had to say about that,” she said.
“Just checkin’ here,” Frank said, his voice thick. “Geologists don’t normally get invited to help destroy the world, do they?”
Behind my hands, I shook my head. “No,” I said. “No, they don’t.” I pressed my tears away with my palms and then dropped them to my lap. “But don’t ask me who or what I really am right now. I’m supposed to be dead.”
“Well, it seems to be a day for dead people to be walkin’ around,” Frank said. “And disintegratin’.” He pointed over to the draugr bodies, which were turning into ash and mixing with the dust of the plateau.
“What was the deal with that freaky knife she had?” Coyote wondered aloud.
“It’s called Famine. She said the next thing she cut with it wouldn’t rest until it had eaten me.”
“Ew,” Granuaile said.
Oberon tried to cheer me up. <I’m going to give her a point for originality. “Druid: It’s what’s for dinner!” But then I’m going to take away three million points for how she smelled.>
Frank Chischilly narrowed his eyes. “Did she say if it works on only one thing or on as many things as she cuts with it?”
“That’s a pretty specific question. Why do you ask?”
“Because there’s a couple of skinwalkers livin’ north of here. She’s headed right for ’em.”
<What’s a skinwalker?> Oberon asked.
Granuaile scrunched up her face. “Aren’t they shape-shifters of some kind? They use an animal skin?”
Chischilly nodded. “They have to use a different skin for each shape. They keep to themselves mostly, unless you invade their territory.”
“You say there’s two nearby?” I asked.
“Up past the ranches a few miles thataway.” He pointed in the direction Hel had gone.
I shifted my gaze and glared at Coyote. “So I guess I know why you’re so anxious to have the mine here,” I said. “Its primary qualification isn’t the proximity to Kayenta’s workforce; it’s the proximity to the skinwalkers. You figured I’d take care of them for you once they show up to defend their territory.”
Coyote shrugged, not bothering to deny it. “I can’t go after ’em myself. If they killed me, then they’d just be that much more powerful.”
Frank Chischilly frowned, clearly not understanding how killing a man could make the skinwalkers more powerful. But I understood. Skinwalkers can’t use a man’s skin — they already have their own. Coyote wasn’t a man, though, and that’s what Frank hadn’t quite figured out yet: Coyote was one of the First People, and whenever he died he always left his remnants behind. If the skinwalkers got hold of a Coyote skin, as opposed to a regular coyote skin, there was no telling what kind of shredding they could do with his power. And the Morrigan, I noted, had been right about thrice-cursed trickster gods. They were torrential fucksluices spraying their happy juices on the innocent and the damned alike.
To distract the hataałii from asking an uncomfortable question of Coyote, I asked him one instead: “How would you handle a skinwalker, Frank?”
He was so surprised by the question that he started to chuckle, and that morphed into a hacking cough. When the fit passed, he said, “You can’t handle ’em. Just protect against ’em and wait for dawn.”
That made them sound like vampires. “They can’t be killed?”
Frank hawked up something green and spat on the ground. “Maybe they can, but I never heard of anyone pulling it off. Least not by any normal way you’d kill a man. They’re wicked fast.”
Granuaile asked, “They only come out at night?”
“Usually. Sunlight won’t kill ’em, but they sure don’t like it much.”
“So you’ve run into them before. You have personal experience.”
Frank nodded. “Long time ago.”
“How’d you deal with that one?”
“We reversed a curse on it. We never woulda stood a chance otherwise. But it shot a bone bead into someone and then came back to make sure it was working the next night. We got it then, when it was standing still.”
I squinted at him. “Got it how?”
“Shot it with the same bead. The bead was cursed. They’re basically witches, and if you know how they worked a spell on someone, you can probably turn it back against them. These two ain’t like the ones I’ve seen in the past, though. They don’t use ceremonial magic. They just physically punish people. Can’t fight back against ’em that way.”
“Well, if they tend to come out at night, we’d better get inside before sundown.”
“Yep,” the hataałii agreed, and then he patted his chest as Coyote helped him stand. “Damn. Where’d my bolo tie go?” he said.
“It kind of popped off and sailed away over there,” Coyote said, pointing.
As everyone looked around uncertainly, I shot a quick thought to my hound.
Oberon, think you can find it and bring it to me?
<Sure thing! Blue rock. I can do blue.> He trotted off in the direction of the turquoise’s last known trajectory.
I rose from the ground and retrieved Moralltach, but Frank stopped me before I could take a step back toward the hogan site. “Whatever you are, Mr. Collins — if that’s your name — I get the feeling that you were brought here as Plan B.” His eyes shifted to indicate Coyote. “Except now you’re Plan A.”
I favored Coyote with another glare. “Yeah, the plan is sort of revealing itself to me as we go,” I said. “How many of the others are in on this plan, Frank?”
“Oh, you mean Darren and Sophie and everybody? They all know about the skinwalkers.”
“Damn it, Frank,” Coyote grated softly.
“What? He wasn’t supposed to know? Then why’s he here?”
“Too late now. Tell me everything,” I said.