John Levitt - Unleashed

Lou was unaffected, unsurprisingly, and he was barking constantly, using that high-pitched yelp that cuts through anything, nipping at my heels, trying to distract me and break whatever hold that thing had on me. But it was useless. I was barely conscious of his presence, as if he were some distant and long-forgotten dream.

I still held the shotgun in a death grip. I would have let it fall uselessly to the ground, but I no longer had control of the muscles needed to open my hands. Lou was growing ever more frantic, and I felt a momentary twinge of sorrow for him.

Finally, in desperation, he threw himself under my feet so that one foot came down directly on him. He squealed in pain as I stumbled and went down, sprawling full length on the ground. I was still holding the shotgun, and my finger must have remained on the trigger, because it went off with a roar inches from my head, momentarily deafening me. At the same time, the butt kicked back and caught me on the jaw, stunning me.

There was a ringing in my ears, but it broke the spell. I had about fifteen seconds before my hearing would return, and with it, my relentless march toward God only knew what.

I gathered my wits and reached out to the quiet of the forest. Then I took my own temporary deafness and wove it into a feedback loop, cutting off all sound. The ringing faded, but in its place was blessed silence.

The man was becoming impatient and looked somewhat puzzled. I saw his mouth form words, but heard nothing, safe in my cocoon of silence. He shrugged and lowered himself to the next branch down. Agile as he was, it wouldn’t take him more than a moment to reach the forest floor. I thought about using talent, trying to come up with some sort of spell to deal with him, but I didn’t think about it for long. Whatever it was, this thing was quite possibly resistant to magical operations, much like Ifrits are.

Instead, I aimed and squeezed the trigger. The recoil slammed into my shoulder, but I didn’t stop. I racked in another round without taking the gun from my shoulder, then another. He was still standing on the branch, one leg dangling idly to the side. Every shot had missed. Or worse, maybe they hadn’t. I jacked in the last round, the slug, and aimed more carefully before firing. I thought I saw him flinch, but I could have imagined it. But he clearly was way out of my league.

Before he could make it out of the tree I had sprinted past and was hightailing it back toward the parking lot and my van. Lou was well out in front; I might have knocked the wind out of him, but he could still move faster than I could.

I made it to the van, and was roaring back down Highway 1 in no time. I drove in ghastly silence until I realized I’d neglected to take the hearing spell off. As soon as I was back over the bridge I turned the van toward Victor’s. Checking out something for Rolf was one thing, but this was serious and I needed help.

Victor was at his desk in the study, scribbling notes about something. Eli was also there, as usual, and he was annoyed.

“I’ve been calling you all day,” he said. “Were you going to tell me about the Columbarium and Sherwood, or just wait until I asked?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I figured Victor would fill you in.”

“Well, he did, of course. But I want to hear it from you.”

“Okay, but there’s something else going on. Something important.”

“More important than Sherwood?”

“Well, no. More urgent, though.” He regarded me skeptically until I began my story. “You remember how Rolf said something else came out of that energy sink?”

“Rolf?”

“Bridge Guy. His name is Rolf.”

“Oh. Of course.”

“Well, I found what that was, or at least I think I did. And it’s bad.”

After I finished the tale, Victor sad, “So it never actually did anything to you, then? I mean, before you tried to kill it?”

“You weren’t there. You would have done the same.”

“Possibly. But I wouldn’t have missed.”

“I don’t think I did.”

Eli had walked over to the window and was staring out at the ocean as if Victor and I didn’t exist. I started to ask him a question, but Victor put his finger to his lips and shook his head. We sat there in silence for a good five minutes. The only other thing that happened was that Lou curled up and went to sleep.

“The world is a strange and wondrous place,” Eli finally said, turning back from the window. Not a statement that required comment, but I tossed one out anyway.

“Strange, yes. I’m not so sure about the wondrous part.” Eli smiled, but in an abstracted fashion. “So what do you think? Apart from it being wondrous and strange?”

“I think we’re in very deep waters indeed.” He turned to the window, staring out again, his back toward us when he continued. His voice took on that familiar professorial tone, as if lecturing in a classroom. “Now, you’ll remember a few months ago, when I posited that some of the creatures you were dealing with were archetypes-werewolves, trolls, and the like. Or rather, their uncontrolled talent had caused them to take on those aspects.” I nodded, but of course he couldn’t see me. “Well, I think we’re dealing with the same thing here, except on a far more powerful level. The energy that helped bring it into existence was enormous-not only from your friend under the bridge and his cohorts but from those rune stones. The fake Ifrit, that horrible creature, was bound by the invocation-limited in scope. Dangerous, but not any more so than any predator with near-human intelligence. But what came next was not a result of a focused spell-so it took on the aspect of legend, and I’m afraid it’s very powerful indeed.”

“But what is it?” I asked. “I can’t recall anything about tree-dwelling men with hypnotic powers.

“It wouldn’t have to be an exact replica of anything from mythology,” said Victor. “It could be an amalgam of legends-including more modern tales, works of fiction.”

“Like H. P. Lovecraft?” I scoffed. “You mean we’re lucky they didn’t call up Cthulhu, lord of the universe?”

“No,” Eli said. “But there are also ancient legends that got a modern makeover. Native American myths, for one.”

He turned back and pointed a finger at Victor. “A creature who lives in the forest. When it calls your name, you have to go with it, over the treetops. ‘Oh, my burning feet of fire!’ Do you recognize that?”

I hadn’t told Eli about my feet feeling like they were burning up. This was too close to the mark for my liking. I didn’t get Eli’s reference, but Victor did.

“Algernon Blackwood. The Wendigo,” he said.

“A Wendigo? Isn’t that a spirit that possesses people? Turns them into cannibals?”

“There are many diverse legends, from different tribes,” said Eli. “Blackwood took a little here, a little there. He also got ideas from his unconscious, I’m sure. And the unconscious certainly taps into that Jungian archetype pool. Haven’t you told me that sometimes when you’re playing at your best, the ideas aren’t so much yours as they are channeled from somewhere outside you? As if you’re tapping into something-much like accessing talent, by the way.”

“Well, sure, but that’s music. That’s a different thing.”

“Is it? Maybe, but whatever the mechanism, I think that’s what we’re seeing here.” He turned away again to continue his contemplation of the ocean, so his next words were muffled. “Who would have thought. A Wendigo.”

At least, that was what he’d obviously said, given the context. But he’d spoken softly, and the words were obscured. What I actually heard was “a wennigo.” Wennigo. When I go. Oh, my ever-loving God.

“When I go,” I said. “That’s what Sherwood said, out on the moor. It made no sense. ‘He must call me. When I go.’ She was talking about a Wendigo.”