“Why so long?”
“Trial and error. I have to construct those macrobindings to execute from a silver charm via mental command in close proximity to a cold iron amulet. There are no instructions in Druidic lore to guide me through how to craft such a thing. Each of these charms is unique. So each time I test it, I’ll have to have a vampire in front of me to target. That’s going to be a bit dangerous. I didn’t realize how dangerous they were, honestly. I’d always avoided them as a matter of course in my efforts to keep myself inconspicuous whenever I tried to settle somewhere. But to answer your earlier question, I mostly keep the soulcatcher around because I worry about accidental deaths. When I began working on it, the Morrigan and I weren’t quite as chummy as we are now, and Aenghus Óg was still a dire threat.”
“I see. Do you think it’ll work?”
“Honestly? Considering how many times I’ve failed with other charms, no. I had to test them multiple times and change the bindings until I figured out something that worked. This hasn’t been tested at all. It’s kind of a Hail Mary.”
Granuaile smiled. “But you’ve hailed Mary before.”
“Not through my own efforts,” I reminded her. “Ready for poison?” I darted a quick finger at the mixing bowl.
“Yep. Let’s do this.”
I spoke the binding that allowed Granuaile to see with my eyes in the magical spectrum, and then I gradually zoomed in my focus until I could see the various alkaloids on the molecular level — or, rather, a magical proxy for them. I couldn’t really zoom in my eyes like a microscope.
“Okay, have you ever worked with design software where you can do a series of actions, record them, and then bundle them together for later use?”
“Yeah, I’ve done that. Photoshop.”
“Exactly. So that’s what I’m going to do here. See this molecule? That’s atropine. This one’s scopolamine, and this is hyoscyamine. It’s all just carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen in a specific configuration. We have plenty of those elements around. The inactive ingredients in the pills, which form the majority of the material you see in the bowl, are full of those same elements. So we construct a macro that says to rebind the available material here until it’s all one of those three poisons.”
“Won’t there be leftover stuff?”
“Yes. A few bits of carbon or hydrogen. Neutral non-active ingredients.”
I painstakingly constructed the macros and then, before energizing them, zoomed back out and turned off the magical spectrum so that Granuaile could see what happened.
“Watch closely.”
“Watching.”
I energized the bindings and the powder in the bowl stirred and poofed a wee bit.
“Wait. Is that all?” Granuaile said. “Nothing happened.”
“Everything happened. That was a bowl of three percent poison and ninety-seven percent random crap that they put in pills to make you feel like the price you’re paying is worth it. Now it’s almost one hundred percent poison. I never would have been able to do that before I took chemistry.”
“You got a degree?”
“No, I sat camouflaged in the classes and bought the texts. This is now an extremely toxic mixing bowl. Would you mind terribly opening a bottle of olive oil? I don’t want to risk tearing these gloves at all.” She returned shortly with an opened bottle for me. “Pour slowly while I stir?”
“Sure,” she said. “Why the olive oil?”
“It acts as the carrier. This is basically going to be a thin ointment. Once this is all mixed and the alkaloids are distributed evenly, we’ll coat the caltrops with it and we’ll be good to go.”
We worked in silence for a few minutes as we mixed the alkaloids with the base. When I was satisfied, I said, “Lovely. Now we just have to coat the caltrops with it without accidentally poisoning ourselves.”
“That sounds perfectly relaxing, sensei,” Granuaile said. She put on two pairs of gloves, and we arranged a procedure where we coated small batches of caltrops in the bowl, fished them out with the slotted spoon, let the excess oil drain, and then placed them into the second bucket. It was monotonous labor made edgy by the knowledge that a careless splash could kill us. We finished with only a couple of hours to spare before sundown. We hauled the weaponized caltrops up to the hogan, where Frank was sitting cross-legged on the floor in some kind of meditation. We tried to be quiet as we raided the cooler for cheese and crackers and ice-cold cans of tea.
Frank heard us anyway and grunted as he opened an eye. “You all ready, Mr. Collins?”
“As ready as I can be,” I said, nodding.
“Good. So am I.” His other eye opened and he began to clamber to his feet.
“You are? For what?”
“For killin’ skinwalkers, o’ course,” he said, brushing dust off his knees.
I held up a hand. “Frank, I didn’t ask you to take part in this. You oughtta get out of here, actually; give your nephew a call.”
“Naw, I’m doin’ this with you. How many more chances am I gonna have to get me a piece of skinwalker? Think I’ll keep my gun. You slow ’em down for me and I’ll plug ’em good.”
I exchanged a worried glance with Granuaile. “Frank, I can speed myself up enough to have a chance of hitting them. You’re not going to have an advantage like that. You only had the one chance to call Monster Slayer.”
“I know. But you can’t speak my language. What if they wanna talk before killin’ us? Whattaya gonna do then, play charades? Look, son, this is what bein’ a hataałii is all about. I’m s’posed to protect my people from evil. Now, this evil comes from First World; it’s a Diné thing, and it’s threatening Diné people, and I’m damned if I’ll let someone else take care of my problems for me. I’m goin’.”
There is no arguing with pride. Jesus and the Morrigan couldn’t talk me out of going to Asgard, and I wasn’t going to be able to talk Frank out of doing this. I gave him a tight little nod and began to worry about how I would protect him.
“All right, Frank,” I said. “I have a bit more business to conduct before we do this. Excuse me?”
He and Granuaile nodded at me and I exited to find a shady spot — not too tough near sundown. Underneath a shaggy-barked juniper, I sat on the ground and took the opportunity to have an overdue conversation with Colorado.
//Druid greets Colorado / Harmony//
//Harmony// came the reply.
//Coal mine stopped / Will monitor / Query: Move gold now?//
//Yes / Coal stopped / Gratitude / Keep coal mine quiet
/ Will move gold//
//Harmony// I said.
Colorado agreed.
Not for the first time, I reflected that the earth is so much simpler to deal with than people. On the other hand, the earth never gets my jokes.
Chapter 28
Frank and I chose a spot near the south butte, facing the north butte from whence the skinwalkers always appeared. With the approach to our backs defended, I took the five-gallon bucket of poisoned caltrops and carefully scattered them in front of us in a half circle, backing up as I went. I spread them out over fifteen feet or so to make sure the skinwalkers would not leap over them. Frank surveyed the scatter pattern uncertainly.
“Awful lot of places for them to step without hitting any,” he observed.
“You can head back into the hogan if you want,” I said. “Granuaile would probably appreciate the company.” Her SUV in the roof was still a weakness, but the hogan provided more protection than did the open air. We had re-rigged the fire trap on the roof, and she was ready with a lighter if she needed it.