“Did the old lady give you anything?”
“Yeah, she was all happy I’d helped her and she said she was going to give me something, but all she gave me was a piece of string. I had it in my pocket for a while, but I threw it away.”
“Why?”
“I figured it out,” Lass said, squinting as he tapped the side of his head and tried to look clever. “It was the string that tied the snake-dog to me. I wanted to get rid of it, so I threw the string away. Smart, huh?”
“Where did you throw it away?”
“I’m not gonna tell you! You might go get it…”
“I think the old lady probably wants it back, don’t you?”
I wished Quinton would hurry—the cold fog was crawling into my clothes and making me shiver. I also didn’t much care for Lass and found myself impatient to be done with the creep.
“It’s a bad thing!” he insisted. “It’s the only thing I had—I ain’t got nothing in the world but my clothes, not even family, not even friends—but I didn’t want that piece of string. It’s bad!”
“I agree. But you don’t want it lying around where someone will find it,” said Quinton. “If you tell me where you dropped it, I’ll take it back to the old woman. OK?”
“You would?”
“Yup.”
“In the bricks… After Jenny… I had to get rid of it! You understand?”
Quinton nodded and began to say, “I understand—”
The spawning pool erupted behind us and we all spun to stare as Sisiutl leapt into the air with a rush of water and a shriek like metal tearing apart.
Twisting and flickering through a dozen appearances, it screeched its polyglot language and dove through the air toward us.
Fish shouted in Lushootseed as Lass screamed and jerked out of Quinton’s grip, dashing for a hole between the fog-bound buildings. Confused, Sisiutl whipped toward Fish and roared a string of angry Lushootseed. Fish, bug-eyed with terror, stumbled and fell backward, babbling uselessly.
The face in the center looked disgusted and the serpent heads at each end snapped at the air in fury as the creature whipped around to go after Lass.
Ben waved his arms in the air, shouting out words in as many languages as he could, until the zeqwa turned its attention to him, snapping its various jaws near his head. Ben flinched but didn’t run, continuing to shout and seeming to demand a response.
At last Sisiutl roared a reply and ceased thrashing the air so violently to concentrate on the man between its two hissing heads. As man and monster spoke in a rattle of Latin and several other languages I could almost catch, Fish crawled to me in a daze. He looked sick and shocked.
“Are you going to be all right?” I whispered.
“Yeah… I just… I guess I wasn’t ready for… this,” Fish said.
“No one is. I wish I knew what they were saying…”
“Sisiutl says he wants to eat us. Ben is saying we’re not to be toyed with…
Umm… something about powers and the favor of gods I’m not really getting…”
I stared at Fish. “How do you know that?”
“I can hear him. It’s weird. I know he must be talking to Ben in whatever freaky mix of languages they’re using, but I get Lushootseed in my ears. Some of the words are muffled though. Probably concepts my language doesn’t have.”
Sisiutl rolled like an impatient whale and shrieked.
“He’s losing his temper. He’s hungry. He says the man with the dog wasn’t enough food. He says we’re enemies of the man he helps, so he should eat us.”
Ben frowned and shook his head, making a flinging gesture with his arms as he replied in fast syllables. Then he yelled in English, “I’m telling him he’s free, so he doesn’t have to eat us—we’re not his master’s enemies. He has no master now but Qamaits.”
Sisiutl reared up into a U, the snake heads snapping at us and the main face screaming.
“Uh-oh… he’s going to eat the other guy—Lass. The one who ran off,” Fish exclaimed, scrambling to his feet. “Sistu says he will take him to the sacred ground. Oh, shit…”
Sisiutl sprang into the air and dove into the fog-shrouded water, leaving a knife cut in the rising mist.
“Sacred ground? What? Where?” I demanded.
“There’s a marsh on the other side of the bridge. You know?” Fish burbled, starting to run in the direction Lass has gone. “Foster Island—it used to be sacred to the Duwamish people—they used it as a burial ground! That’s where he’ll go! He’ll herd the man there to kill him! We can’t let him do it!”
“It’s heading for the arboretum!” Ben exclaimed, starting after Fish.
“We can’t catch them on foot,” I said, grabbing Ben as Quinton went after Fish.
“We’ll take the Rover and catch up, but we’ll have to be faster than Sistu—Lass has a lead but the monster won’t kill him in plain sight if the marsh is close,” I thought aloud. “He’ll carry him there in one of his webs.”
“You can’t let him be killed,” Fish said. “He has to answer for his crimes. I–I have to believe those legends. I’ve seen them now! He has to make it good—that’s what the legends say!”
“How?” I asked, starting to run for the truck, thankful for the brace on my knee that kept it from collapsing, and hauling Fish along with me. “The cops won’t believe it.”
“Not them. The sky gods! He used their gift to kill other men—it’s evil! He has to apologize, make good, or they’ll unleash the storms.”
“Storms?” I shouted, incredulous.
“The winds, the rain,” Fish panted as he ran. “These gods… drowned villages for less… in the days of the People. If their… monster exists… the gods must, too. I told you—there will be hell to pay… if this man doesn’t… apologize. Dead or alive.”
CHAPTER 18
We caught sight of Lass running at the end of the bridge before he bolted down the stairs to the greenbelt that ran along the canal edge to McCurdy Park.
Sisiutl leapt from the water and looped across the ground like a giant sidewinder. I turned sharply onto the grass and rammed the front of the truck into Sisiutl’s side. The monster whipped around to glare at me with all its eyes, setting one head to snap at the Rover’s headlights, ripping into the metal around them. The monstrous serpent bit and struck at the truck repeatedly, gouging chunks from the steel body, shrieking in a chorus of languages as Lass dashed farther away.
Roaring when it noticed its prey escaping, Sisiutl lashed one last, hard time at the truck—denting the hood and rocking it on its tires—and bolted back into the water. I turned the truck and gunned its engine, jolting across the grass and into the parking lot beside MOHAI—the Museum of History and Industry—that lay next to the park and the pontoon bridges through the marsh that linked Marsh and Foster Islands to the arboretum beyond.
I left the scarred Rover parked awkwardly at the edge of the fog-filled lot, as close to the footbridge as I could. We all spilled out and started for the bridge, hoping to catch Lass before he entered the marsh, but we were not as fast as the terror-driven speed of his flight and he slipped through ahead of us, making no more sound but the panting of his breath and the slap of his broken-down shoes on the wet boards. He disappeared into the grasping mist, pink tinged as swift winter sunset pierced the clouds.
We pounded behind him onto the bobbing planks of the bridge to Marsh Island. We plunged into the tunnel of fog, stumbling on the uneven, wet ground of the marsh trail in the eye-dazzle of the sunset-colored murk.
Cold, wet mud sucked at my boots where the cinder trail had been washed partially away by the winter storms. The noise of Lass floundering through the marsh, startling animals from the reeds ahead, led us forward. Cattails and knife-edged grasses rattled like bones and slashed at us as we passed. The mist muttered with the voices of water and lost souls. Behind me I heard a splash and a cry.