Paper & Blood Read online

  It had been easy to be cavalier about the situation when the creature was a hundred meters away. It was like watching a cool CGI effect in the movies and saying, Huh, isn’t that something? But up close, when you can hear it and smell it and see it fill your vision and know in every fiber of your being that it wants to disembowel you and enjoy the feeling of a full belly thanks to your own flesh, it’s much different. And Buck may have had an excellent point about the job.

  It tried to spear me with a mantis claw, and I batted it away, but just barely. It scratched my arm, tearing through the fabric and tracing a line of fire across the muscle. The dragon head, as I expected, followed up. It just needed a bite, a taste, to infect me, and then it could back off and consume me later when I eventually succumbed to fever and convulsions. But I whipped my cane back and caught it on the snout, and the reaction to that was much more severe than I thought the blow warranted. It wasn’t a home-run swing, and it didn’t have the sort of force one might consider a mortal blow, but the monster screeched and recoiled and began to steam, then smoke. It crisped and flash-fried, the entire bulk turning to ash and crumbling into a rather large pile of greasy dust. Ya-ping’s sai and Connor’s hatchet fell into the midst of it.

  “Gods damn it, ol’ man,” Buck cried, “ye said the spiders here were my size!”

  [I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t a native species.]

  “Granted, but I’d still say ye undersold the spiders by orders of magnitude. That thing was the weight class of a bulldozer.”

  Connor and his dogs dropped their camouflage and appeared on our right.

  “That wasn’t a demon, Al,” he said. “It didn’t die from the Cold Fire on my hatchet. It died from iron. The tiny bit from my hatchet blade just annoyed it, but you two did the real damage, between Ya-ping’s sai and your cane. Do you have sigils on those?”

  “The Sigil of Iron Gall, yes,” Ya-ping said. It accelerated iron poisoning in magical creatures. It was painted on my cane as well.

  “Which means that thing—that turtle dragon spider—wasn’t infernal. It was Fae.”

  I nodded in agreement, and Buck said aloud what I was thinking, getting faster and more manic as his adrenaline worked itself out.

  “Now, I’m no census taker, mind, but I’ve never seen anything like that in Tír na nÓg. I mean, I’ve never seen anything like that anywhere without hallucinogens, on the kind of nights ye’re wearin’ incontinence trousers ’cause ye expect tae piss yerself before it’s over. That wasnae the product of a furious faery hump ’n’ pump, ye know what I’m sayin’? Unless there’s some kinky shagging going on in one of the planes I don’t know about. How does a thing like that even get born? What came first, the turtle dragon spider or the egg?”

  Connor shook his head. “I’m not familiar with this either. The Dagda created many unusual Fae creatures but nothing that resembled such an organic scrapyard. There are layers of strangeness here. I haven’t seen a chimera like this on earth since ancient days.”

  “If that’s the sort of thing we can expect,” Ya-ping said to me, “it’s no wonder Sifu Lin warned of extreme danger. I hope she’s okay.”

  [I need to make the witnesses forget this and heal at least one of them. Then we should get to the picnic area. This is going to be a containment issue.]

  It was indeed an issue. Because while we had been dealing with the turtle dragon spider, the two women who’d lost Scott and Keith had been calling authorities on their cell phones and screaming about dead people at the Donnelly Weir picnic area. Dead bodies in a public place attract attention, and not just from police. The media love to report such things.

  They had dutifully waited in the car for me to “take their statement,” but I had forgotten to instruct them not to call anyone, so it was really my fault. The uninjured one was in the driver’s seat with the window rolled down and was shouting at someone on the phone. “It was a wild animal! I don’t know, but it was huge! And it just tore them apart! Send someone to help now! My friend needs an ambulance!”

  I winced in dismay. She was smart and hadn’t said the word monster, so that was going to mobilize a response. A large part of my job was not only making sure that the proverbial monsters stayed away but that their very existence could be easily dismissed and disbelieved by modern society. Getting police and media involved would make that difficult. There were ten cars in the lot, and that probably meant twenty people out there at minimum, if one assumed that no one went hiking solo, and perhaps more. If any of them were alive, they’d need to remember nothing, and if they weren’t alive, they’d need to disappear, unfortunately. We couldn’t have forensic investigation reveal an unnatural cause of death and unknown DNA—though I suppose, in this case, the DNA would reveal known animals. Just in combinations that should be impossible.

  The injured woman did need an ambulance. She was sweating and trembling in the passenger seat, her hands curled into fists.

  I pulled out my official ID and showed it to the driver again, letting the sigils work. “Ma’am, I need you to hang up and give me your phone.”

  She blinked. “Of course.” She thumbed the call off and handed it over.

  “Thanks. Did your friend get bitten?”

  “Yes. Right on the bum.”

  “Okay. Wait a minute and I’ll take care of it.”

  It was a good thing she was still conscious. I walked around to the passenger side and got her phone too, then had her look at a Sigil of Knit Flesh and another of Restorative Care. She sighed in relief as the pain eased. She’d nod off soon and her infection would subside, for the most part—though a follow-up with a doctor would be wise. But getting them out of there and not bringing any more people to the scene would require some stronger measures.

  The Sigil of Lethe River is reserved for people who need to forget what they’ve seen. It basically attacks recent neural connections in the brain, making the person lose the events of the last hour. I don’t like to use it, because sometimes very important things that need to be remembered get wiped out with the things that need to be forgotten. But in this case, I really needed Shouting Woman and Injured Bum to forget that they’d seen Scott and Keith get killed by a turtle dragon spider. They would, no doubt, endure an agony of not knowing what happened to their beaus, and I wished I knew how to fix that too, but at least I could save them from nightmares and possibly psychiatric evaluation.

  Once both of them had a gander at those sigils, I pulled out my official ID once more and gave them some more instructions while they were open to suggestion. “Go home and get some rest. Get some new phones later, and don’t worry about Scott and Keith. They’re fine, wherever they are. And see a doctor about your injury.”

  They nodded, thoroughly confused about how they’d gotten to their vehicle and how one of them had sustained a bite on the arse, but they mumbled thanks and left the car park. I met up with the others at the back of the wizard van and handed the phones to Buck.

  “Why ye giving me these?”

  [Destroy them,] I said. [We can’t have them traced or their data recovered.]

  “I can unbind the interior components if you want,” Connor volunteered. “Turn it all into a molecular slurry. The cases can remain intact and you can just toss them in the bin that way.”

  “Ye can do that?” my hobgoblin said.

  “Sure.”

  Buck tossed them to him, one by one, and he spent perhaps thirty seconds just staring at them, though we heard muffled pops and hissing from inside the phones as the silicon and other metals melted and re-formed into a mess.

  [So you still have most of your powers, obviously,] I said. I’d been curious about that, since the tattoos on a Druid’s right side were bindings to the earth that allowed him or her to perform their duties. Losing his arm, therefore, meant losing some of his magical abilities.

  “Oh, aye,�
�� he said, with a tiny grin. “Losing the arm was not nearly as bad as I thought it was at first. I can’t shape-shift anymore and I can’t travel the planes, and my ability to heal myself and others requires the help of the local elemental, but all the binding and unbinding remains intact. I’m lucky to still be here, frankly.”

  My sigils of strength and agility wore off at that point and I felt all my years again. Connor noticed, perhaps because my shoulders slumped perceptibly or the corners of my mouth drooped a little.

  “Coming down from the juice is never fun, eh? But I think it’s good to be reminded of our limitations. Keeps us humble.” His head turned toward Oberon, the wolfhound, who obviously had something to say about that. “That’s right, Oberon, you have nothing to be humble about. You are magnificent.”

  He tossed the phones back to Buck so that his hand would be free to pet Oberon. Starbuck danced around, wanting his share of attention, and Ya-ping said, “I’ll pet you, Starbuck. You are magnificent too.” The Boston trotted over to her and she gave him some scritches while Buck shook his head and turned to find a bin for the phones.

  “If ye ever try tae pet me, MacBharrais, I’ll punch yer stones up intae yer pelvis.”

  We had hoped to get moving quickly, but the raised alarm meant that we had to deal with arriving emergency vehicles, and that delayed us somewhat. I had Ya-ping practice on the ambulance, which arrived first, and she deployed the Sigil of Certain Authority very well and got them turned around. The police followed up soon after and were a bit tougher to convince that there was nothing for them to do there. They required a Sigil of Porous Mind to weaken their resolve and a Sigil of Quick Compliance to shut down higher cerebral function and open them to accepting just about any suggestion that wouldn’t harm them; then Certain Authority could do its work.

  Once Ya-ping got the police turned around, I typed, [You might wish to make an ID like mine with all three sigils on it and just hit them at the same time. The specially treated goatskin preserves potency when there’s no target, so it remains useful for weeks or even months.]

  “I’ve asked Sifu Lin before, but I’ll ask you too: Why do they resist it so much?”

  [Police tend to see themselves as the authority in most situations—and they are. And in your case, unfortunately, you’re also fighting against your perceived age, in addition to whatever misogyny and racism lives in their hearts. It’s going to be more difficult for them to accept you as an authority.]

  A corner of her mouth quirked up, and I realized I’d just been tested.

  [Did I get that right?]

  “You mean the sigils would work better if I were an old white guy.”

  [Yes.] It was a sad and unfortunate truth.

  “Good. I’m glad you’re aware.”

  We needed to check the picnic ground but couldn’t leave the car park unattended, so I left her my official ID to deal with any new arrivals while we were investigating. The Iron Druid went ahead with his dogs to check things out, but there was only carnage awaiting us.

  Scott and Keith were easily found near the picnic-grounds rotunda: white males in their twenties, bodies pierced by mantis claws and partially gnawed on and undergoing further chewing by some carrion birds attracted by the blood. There were two other bodies as well, presumably an unrelated couple whose car would be waiting in the car park. Their picnic basket was undisturbed, except that their bottle of wine had spilled.

  “Oberon and Starbuck, will you scout the perimeter and see if you can find out which direction the turtle dragon spider came from? But don’t leave my sight—and if you smell or hear any more coming, let me know.”

  The dogs immediately fanned out and began to circle the area, noses to the green. It would be a beautiful area if it weren’t for the bloody murder in the middle of it. Next to the picnic ground, Donnellys Creek fell over the low wall of the weir and exhaled a misty breath of white noise, and below that it chuckled over what great fun it was to have had that small adventure as it ran under a wooden pedestrian bridge. The air smelled of eucalyptus and the copper-penny tang of blood, though Buck picked up something else.

  “I smell cheese. Abandoned cheese, MacBharrais, that needs tae be loved again.”

  He was looking at the couple’s picnic basket, and I typed furiously.

  [Don’t you dare.]

  “Wot? There’s no sense in letting it go tae waste.”

  [We can’t have anyone find the bodies, but their families need to assume the worst. Abandoned cheese will send the signal that something terrible happened and might provide closure. Don’t take that away from them.]

  The hobgoblin hunkered down and considered. “Huh. I would never have thought about it that way, but I think ye may be right, ol’ man. Abandoned cheese is a sure sign that something’s gone wrong. Like, it’s so obvious ye would think it would be a clue in all the detective shows. An unseasoned constable sees a scene like this and suggests it might be a suicide pact, and then the detective walks in—it’s you, MacBharrais—and he twirls his luxuriant mustache. If it was a suicide, Constable, then why would they pack expensive cheese and no eat it? Naw, that’s abandoned cheese, so it is, and that means it was murder! And then ye would squeeze it, sniff it, and tell him it feels soft and smells funky, like his maw.”

  [I would not!]

  The dogs reported that the monstrosity had indeed come from the direction of the Mount St. Leonard trail, so we had confirmation that the bad business was that way. But we still had a huge mess on our hands, which Buck pointed out.

  “What are we gonnay do about them?”

  “We’ll hide them for now,” Connor said, even though the question hadn’t been directed at him, “and when the threat is taken care of, we can reveal their location and the families can have a proper farewell.”

  Buck raised his furry caterpillar eyebrows. “MacBharrais just said we cannae ever let them be found.”

  “That would be the right call if I weren’t here,” Connor said. “I can do some unbinding, though, remove the weird trace evidence that might point to a supernatural cause of death. It’s still going to look weird—there will be investigations and so on—but no chimeric DNA.” I nodded agreement, and then he added, “I’ll need your help, though. Can you two bring the bodies up over there for me, away from the high-traffic area? I’ll make a grave.”

  I nodded at him and turned to the bodies of Scott and Keith—I had no idea which was which without checking for ID, but if they had that on them, I was going to leave it for easier identification later. They both curiously looked like a lead singer from a rock band my son liked—American chaps, I believed, called Foo Fighters. They had dark hair, narrow faces, and goatees framing their mouths.

  My hobgoblin sidled up to me and said in a low tone, “MacBharrais, what exactly do ye think I can do here? I’m no a musclebound ogre. I’m a wee hobgoblin.”

  [I’ll take the head and you just keep the heels from dragging on the ground.]

  “Can I just cheer ye on? I don’t wannay get ma fine new clothes dirty, and I can be tremendously encouraging when I put ma mind tae it.”

  [It had better be legendary encouragement.]

  And that is how I came to drag four bloody corpses about twenty meters while a hobgoblin complimented my extraordinary musculature and said, if only I’d take my shirt off, he could sell tickets to Aussies who’d line up to slather my ancient yet chiseled carcass in baby oil.

  “Listen, MacBharrais: Glisten. That’s where the money is. Niche markets are like shy veins of gold, but they can run deep, and I’m telling ye, photo ops with glistening old men are a niche that’s about tae be golden in a big way, and it all starts today with yer oiled-up pecs. Now, I know we don’t have any baby oil with us, but I could catch a trout in the creek and give ye a rub with it, how would that be? Ye would have the fish oil coating yer bod, see, all o’ those omega-three fatty
acids on yer nipples, and maybe some scales too, and they’d sparkle in the sun. People would call ye ‘Fish-Tits MacBharrais’ and ye never know, ye might even get famous for it in America, because I hear the Yanks are mad for tits.”

  Connor was doing a very poor job trying to disguise his laughter. But what he had done, with the help of the elemental, was roll back a six-foot-wide strip of turf, and then the earth underneath it compressed and deepened about three feet. I placed the dead in there, then Connor rolled back the turf, and the ground looked entirely undisturbed.

  “It’s kinda scary how well ye can hide a body,” Buck observed.

  “I’ve had more practice than I would like,” Connor admitted, all mirth leaving his face. I felt mine falling too. It was a grim thing to see innocent life mown down like that, to think that those young men had been happy perhaps an hour ago, out with their girlfriends for a picnic in a pretty spot, and now they were dead. And there was a precipice overlooking a vast chasm of guilt too, and it began with If only I’d…Been faster. Shaved ten minutes off our time somehow and gotten here earlier. Felt more urgency than I already did. Then maybe those two men wouldn’t be lying in a shallow grave.

  But, like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expects a turtle dragon spider.

  Time was slipping away from us, midafternoon creeping toward the evening, and we still hadn’t gotten on the trail yet. When we realized it was nearing five p.m. and no one else had come to enjoy the park for a while, we decided to gamble that no further hikers would arrive today. The nine cars remaining in the car park (besides our wizard van) suggested that there would be a terrible sight to behold on the trail, and we needed to get going. If one belonged to the pair who’d abandoned their cheese, and if another belonged to Scott or Keith, that was still seven cars and a minimum of seven people out there, but likely more.

  Ya-ping had identified one of the cars as Shu-hua’s and another as Sara’s, which took the number of unaccounted-for vehicles down to five.