John Levitt - Unleashed

Another howl, worse than before, and considerably nearer. My throat got dry, and this time it wasn’t only Lou who flinched. For the first time since I’d met him, the Wendigo had lost his self-assured demeanor.

About twenty yards to the left of us the ground cover thinned out and dissolved into a small patch of swampy bog, no bigger than a double bed. I reached out to see if I could feel talent working, and it was. I didn’t have enough power to expand it to a useful size, at least not directly. But I could gather swamp essence from the small patch and flip it over, effectively doubling it in size. Then again, and again once more. With the power of geometrical progression, it wasn’t long before I had created an area some fifty yards square. Technically, I wasn’t using enough power to transform a large area, but it worked. That’s why it’s called magic, at least by those who don’t fully understand it. Which would include me, though I usually don’t use that term.

I called Lou over and worked on his paws, expanding and flattening them until they were like tiny snowshoes, which took more energy and skill than creating the entire swamp did. When I was done, he ran back and forth, trying them out and stumbling a few times. Twice, he even fell over his feet before he got the hang of managing them. He wouldn’t be nearly as agile as usual, but he wouldn’t have to be. He’d just need to make it to the swamp.

I used the rest of my energy to put a deflection spell around myself and the Wendigo, using the fog and the bleak and featureless landscape as my model. It wouldn’t fool the hound for long-for one thing, dogs rely on scent as much as they do sight, but it would make us hard to locate at first. I hoped it would work. If it didn’t, we were in trouble, since I’d now used up most of my power. I would have been a lot more confident if I could have somehow brought along the Remington 870.

Just as I finished, the hound materialized out of a patch of fog. It was close to two hundred pounds, looking like a cross between a mastiff and a wolf. Muscles rippled under a short coat of hair, and it bounded toward us, light on its feet. No clever dodging aside was going to work with this one. Its eyes glowed a deep phosphorescent green, and its muzzle was full of strong and sharp teeth, covered with foaming slobber.

If the Wendigo was correct, it was a creature created in part out of my own subconscious. Which didn’t say much for my imagination. It was a stock Hollywood monster, a stereotype. But that was just its physical appearance. It also projected an aura of inevitability-it was going to kill us all, rend us limb from limb, slashing muscle and crunching bone. When things created from the unconscious take on an independent existence, they’re always worse than your everyday monster.

Despite my attempt at masking, it instantly zeroed in on our location and swerved toward us, uttering a bay of triumph. The closer it got, the larger it looked, and there was nowhere to hide. It didn’t notice Lou, discreetly standing behind me, and just before it reached us, Lou bolted out from behind me and ran right under the beast’s muzzle. It snapped at him out of reflex, like a dog after a fly, but Lou knew what he was doing. He dodged just as the muzzle lowered, and the teeth snapped shut on empty air.

Lou squealed as if mortally hurt, and the thing couldn’t resist. Prey drive kicked in and it spun and went after Lou as if he were a wounded rabbit. Lou took off toward the swamp area, occasionally uttering that wounded cry. The hound was faster in a straight line than Lou was, especially a Lou with altered paws, but it couldn’t change direction like he could. Lou zigged and zagged, always just a little out of reach. At one point he stumbled and nearly went down, and my heart skipped a beat. But he was just playing the beast, making sure it wouldn’t abandon the chase, like a mother duck who pretends to have a crippled wing to draw a predator away from its brood.

When Lou reached the boggy area he flew right over it. At twelve pounds with magically altered paws, he barely sank into it at all, skimming over the bog like a water strider on a summer pond. The hound was right on his tail, and its momentum carried it well into the morass before it realized the danger and started to sink. In seconds it was floundering helplessly, each desperate struggle trapping it more securely in the mire. Lou doubled back, making sure not to get too close to the mire, and ran up to where I waited.

“Good job,” I said to him. It looked like he was going to be living on bacon instead of kibble from now on for quite a while. I returned his paws to normal, and he stood there shaking them out like an athlete after a hard training run.

“Nice work,” said the Wendigo. “I wasn’t sure you had it in you.”

“I’m full of surprises.” I watched the hound struggling, sinking inexorably deeper with every effort. I felt kind of sorry for it. It must have shown, because the Wendigo picked up on it immediately.

“Not to worry. It doesn’t really exist, you know, any more than this place does.”

“Are you trying to say it couldn’t have hurt us after all?” That didn’t jibe with what I knew about such things.

“Oh, no. Just because it isn’t real doesn’t mean it couldn’t have torn us to shreds.”

“Glad you cleared that up,” I said. “Now, any chance you can do what we came here for, before something worse shows up?”

“Of course.” He spun in a circle, sniffing the damp air, like Lou on a scent. “This way.”

We trudged over the moor, through the drifting fog. I immediately lost all sense of direction, but the Wendigo seemed sure of his direction. We walked for fifteen minutes or so, until a break in the fog revealed a rocky crag in the distance. It was familiar, and I thought I could see a misty figure blending into the rock.

“Close enough,” said the Wendigo. He faced in that direction and called softly, “Sherwood.” At first I could barely hear him, but the sound grew until it filled the landscape as strongly as if he had shouted at the top of his lungs. He spoke again. “Sherwood. Come.”

The Wendigo wasn’t speaking to me, but I still felt the pull. I wish I knew how he did it. The fog had closed in again and I could no longer see the crag, but he turned and began to walk away. He headed directly for a particularly dense area of fog, where the vapor turned to water the moment it touched your skin and you couldn’t see more than five feet in front of your face.

“Home,” he breathed, again the word barely audible. The fog closed in thicker than ever until it was almost as disorienting as the featureless void I’d entered at the Columbarium. A bright, diffuse light source appeared, illuminating the fog from the side, further disorienting me. A faint shape loomed ominously right at the limit of my vision, then another. The rocky ground softened under my feet, and as the fog thinned, the shapes resolved themselves into the figures of Eli and Victor. The rocky floor became a carpet, the bright light became sunlight streaming through tall windows, and then we were back in Victor’s study.

Sherwood lay crumpled on the floor. Eli bounded over toward her, but I beat him to it. I put my fingers on the side of her throat and felt warmth, but no pulse. Then I moved my fingers slightly and found it, reassuringly strong and steady. She was alive. I didn’t want to let go of her-I could hardly believe she was back, solid of flesh and breathing easily, but Eli shouldered me aside, looking worried.

“What’s wrong? Why is she unconscious?” he asked the Wendigo, putting his large fingers where mine had been.

“Don’t worry,” said the Wendigo. “She’ll be fine. Remember, she was suspended in that place for a very long time. The psychic shock of returning has just temporarily short-circuited her consciousness, that’s all.”