“Many,” he said. “Most of which are hard to pronounce. But you don’t need a name. You seem to know who I am.”
“I know what you are, which is not precisely the same,” Eli said.
“A nice distinction. What is it you want?”
“What makes you think we want something?” said Victor. He was never one for standing on the sidelines.
“You’ve trapped me here. There must be a reason for that.” He waved expansively at the circle. “I don’t know how you did it, I’ll admit. Most things don’t affect me much. But trapping me took a lot more thought and planning than simply trying to kill me, for example. So you want something from me, no?”
He sounded reasonable enough, but I’d been under his thrall twice now. Maybe his reasonableness was another, more subtle form of the same thing. The sky had grown dark, and the only illumination came from the ring of rune stones that glowing faintly as they pulsed with power. The Wendigo’s face was half hidden in a greenish shadow, giving him a diabolical cast. The devil’s a smooth talker, they say. Eli slowly nodded.
“True enough. We want you to find someone and bring them back.”
“Oh? From where?”
“If we knew that, we wouldn’t be talking to you. She’s… somewhere, not quite in this world but not quite out of it, either. Something you might be familiar with.”
“What’s her name?”
Eli hesitated. It seemed dangerous information to be giving out, but if we weren’t willing to do so, what was the point of catching this thing, anyway?
“Sherwood,” he said.
“Sherwood,” he repeated softly, caressing the name softly. It set off echoes in my mind.
He closed his eyes and for a moment his entire form blurred. When he opened his eyes, he shook his head. “Too many possibilities. I’m going to need more information.”
“She reached out to me,” I said. “At first she was in a featureless void, but then it resolved into a specific place, like a movie set from Wuthering Heights.” The Wendigo looked at me blankly. “Her favorite movie,” I explained. “Moors, fog, stunted bushes, bleak vistas-that sort of thing.”
“Ah, I see. A construct. That makes it easier.” He closed his eyes again, and this time when he opened them, he nodded. “I see her. I can call her.”
“What does she look like?” I asked, not trusting him.
“Dark hair. Pretty. She’s sitting on a rock, high on a hillside, overlooking the moor you described. Not really, of course, but that’s the way she perceives it.” So he might not be trustworthy, but he wasn’t faking it, either. “The question now is,” he continued, “what are you going to do for me in return?”
“Well, there’s a problem about that,” Eli said. “You tried to take Mason from us once already. I don’t think it would have been a good thing for him if you’d succeeded. What’s to say you wouldn’t try the same sort of thing once you were free? A lot of innocents walk through the woods. It was hard enough to catch you once, and I don’t think it would be easy to catch you a second time.” The Wendigo chuckled, deep in his throat.
“No, probably not.”
“So you see the dilemma.”
“I do. Well, first of all you seem to have the wrong idea about me. I have no use for ordinary humans. Although I find them interesting. Especially their music.” He looked over at me. “You’re a musician, yes?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” I said.
“Everything, but you should know that. Practitioners, now, that’s a different matter. I absorb energy from them. But as far as people go, what do you think I’d do with them? Eat them?” He made it sound like a joke, but that was exactly what I thought he’d do. “The energy is what keeps me strong. But it doesn’t hurt them any-in fact, afterward they usually forget they ever met me.”
“Richard Cory,” I said.
“Ah, you know him? Delightful fellow. I got enough from him to keep me going for a month.”
“And where is he now?”
“Back with his friends, I imagine. Have you checked with them?”
I hadn’t, and of course there was no way to do that now. But it wasn’t impossible. Rolf wouldn’t have bothered to tell me if Richard had returned. He just didn’t think that way.
“What about those hikers,” Victor said, “the ones who were torn to shreds. We’ve been assuming it was something else, but now I’m beginning to wonder.”
The Wendigo gave him what was supposed to be a bright and cheery smile, but under the glow of the rune stones it looked more like a satanic leer.
“Oh, come, now. All of you seem strangely eager to jump to conclusions, based on nothing at all. Now, that beast, yes, it’s possible. It’s a vicious animal, though not truly intelligent.” He gestured over at Lou. “And although it hates everyone and everything, it especially despises Ifrits.”
“Why is that?” Eli asked. Once again, academic curiosity had overcome the practical problem in front of us.
“Because of how it came into this world. It was pulled in by an overload of talent-I would guess from these very stones you used to trap me. The magic has run wild, coursing through its bloodstream, and that’s made it sick, almost like a rabid dog.” He looked over at me. “So it’s not really the beast’s fault-it’s yours.”
“Never mind that,” Victor said. “Mason, you’re the one this fellow first called-you must have some idea of his nature. Do you buy it?”
I thought about what Campbell had said, about it not really being a Wendigo the way Eli had assumed. More like an elemental, with unknown motives. And I realized I had indeed made a lot of assumptions about it. But letting it out of the circle did not seem safe.
“Could be,” I said slowly. “But there’s no way to know for sure.”
“Well, how about if you call up Sherwood for us,” Victor said. “If you can. Then we’ll talk about what’s to be done with you.”
“I have a better idea. How about you let me out of here, and then we’ll talk about getting this Sherwood person back.”
Classic impasse, a Mexican standoff. I don’t know how it would have been resolved, but then the unexpected happened, as it often does.
We’d all been focused on the Wendigo, not surprisingly. So when the fake Ifrit burst out from behind the closest bush, it caught us all by surprise, even Lou. It ran right by, ignoring me, and sprang at Victor. That made sense; he was the one holding the shotgun. Victor spun around, but he didn’t have time to line up the barrel for a shot. The creature launched itself at his throat, snarling with a thick, guttural roar. Victor did just manage to get the shotgun up to protect his throat, using both hands, but instead of blocking the creature’s charge, he threw himself backward. He used the length of the gun as a lever and flipped the creature over his head as he went down. It was like watching a goddamned ninja movie.
He sprang to his feet as if he were made of rubber, leveled the shotgun, and pulled the trigger. The sound was enormous in the quiet. Before I could even react he’d pumped off four more rounds. The creature dodged, incredibly fast, and despite Victor’s vaunted marksmanship and competence he only managed to graze it at best. The creature screamed as if it had been hit and dropped to the ground, where it flopped around like a dog’s chew toy. But it was on its feet almost instantly. Victor was out of rounds and would need to reload, but it didn’t know that. It decided it had had enough on this particular night. It bolted past me, whipping out a passing claw in an attempt to slice through Lou, but he ducked it easily. Then it was gone, bounding off into the night. The whole thing had lasted no more than ten seconds.
But there was one small unintended consequence. Between the flying pellets and the creature thrashing around, the circle of stones was in ruin. Not that it was a circle anymore; it was now merely a random collection of stones. The Wendigo casually stepped forward out of what was left of the circle, kicking a few of the remaining stones out of the way.