Kevin Hearne: Tricked

“I dig that too. It’s cool how almost every culture has some sort of trickster figure like Coyote, who’s always cocking something up — oh, shit.” I paled.

“What?”

“This could be very bad.” The Coyotes had unfurled their sacred buckskins over the burning bodies and briefly let them rest on top, smothering the flames before lifting the buckskins and letting the Wind blow underneath them for the first time. The resulting plume of smoke and ash was made worse by the enraged ch’įįdiis and spirits.

“Coyote is one of the First People, not one of the Holy People,” I pointed out. He didn’t have the same powers of creation. Granuaile understood right away.

“Oh, shit,” she breathed, as the Coyotes dropped the buckskins a second time and lifted them again, inviting the Wind to blow. In my magical sight, I saw the ch’įįdiis weakening and the spirits straining mightily to break free.

“Yeah. And there’s a whole series of tales where Coyote tries to imitate Badger and Wolf and so on, and every time he does, he fails spectacularly.”

“Fails as in nothing happens, or fails as in something explodes?”

The Coyotes dropped their buckskins a third time, and when they rose again to invite the Wind to blow, the ch’įįdiis were almost gone. The spirits would be free the next time they raised those skins. Or they’d be trapped inside the form of a bug.

“Depends on the story. A bit of both.” Without realizing it, I had drawn Moralltach and set myself in a defensive stance.

“Gah! Can’t we do something?”

“Hope nothing happens,” I said, watching the buckskins fall for the fourth time. But when the Coyotes lifted them from the fire, something happened: Instead of smoke and ch’įįdiis and spirits, giant locusts the size of half-ton pickups erupted from underneath them, and the source of that torn-metal skinwalker scream became woefully clear. It was also clear we would not be stepping on these bugs.

“Run for the hogan!” I shouted over the noise, giving her a tiny shove in that direction. She would have to run around, because Coyote’s locust was between us. I began a charge at it but then halted as it fluttered enormous wings — the sound and wind was like a helicopter taking off — and leapt out of the fire. It pivoted and seized Coyote with its front legs and bit off his head, hat and all. A fevered glance backward showed that Joe was also abruptly on the menu. Occupied as they were with their Coyote Crunch ’n’ Munch, the horrors didn’t forget about us. They shifted their giant back legs a bit and fixed their nasty compound eyes on our progress. Granuaile and I were next.

I admit that I froze, and it wasn’t just because I was scared. I was woefully unprepared.

Locusts of Unusual Size weren’t supposed to exist. I had seen a large insect fairly recently, but it was a type of assassin beetle called a wheel bug, and it wasn’t really a bug at all but rather a demon using that shape to scare the bejesus out of people. Demons don’t belong on this plane, and Gaia has no trouble giving me an assist in dealing with them. I could use Cold Fire on them or summon the local elemental to throw down for me — which is what Sonora had done in that case. But these weren’t demons; as far as Gaia was concerned, they were natural creatures — just big’uns — so that meant magic was off limits, and Colorado wouldn’t lift a pebble to help me fight them directly. I turned off my faerie specs since they wouldn’t help me anymore, but left night vision on.

Normally bugs don’t grow more than six inches in length, due to the limitations of their tracheal systems, and all that heavy chitin they have to lug around has got to be a drag. Coyote had screwed that all up. He gave these bugs plenty of Wind — way too much, in point of fact — and those old First World spirits took full advantage of the chance to be on top of the food chain. The spirits of these locusts hadn’t been raised on a diet of grains but rather on human flesh whenever they could get it. If they lived to reproduce, cities would have to invest in antiaircraft batteries to protect their citizens from swarms. Locusts would descend on small towns and eat people like corn on the cob. Did FEMA have a contingency plan in place for something like that?

I found myself missing Mr. Semerdjian and his garage full of rocket-propelled grenade launchers. And again I missed Fragarach — I doubted Moralltach would make a dent in the locusts’ armor. It was green and sleek and looked like it was made of that impenetrable counter-top material. But … maybe I could pull a Rancor? You don’t find hard, chitinous exoskeleton on the inside of a bug. I almost immediately discarded that thought, because those multiple mandibles — blades and feelers and way more moving parts than a mouth should have — were alarmingly efficient at chewing up Coyote. But after checking to make sure Granuaile was still running for the hogan, I charged anyway, yelling as I went to snare its attention.

When one doesn’t have Fragarach handy, the answer to strong armor is stronger blunt force; a baseball bat will do more damage than a sword blade. Confined to a large, bulky body, the spirit didn’t have unnatural speed anymore — it had the speed of a grasshopper, to be sure, but that wasn’t impossible for me to match. Boosting my speed and strength and transferring Moralltach to my left hand, I bent down and scooped up a stone the size of a softball, like a shortstop on a 6–3 play. First base in this case was the locust’s left eye. I whipped it at him, but he saw it coming and flinched away. Rather than hitting his eye, the stone caught him on the side of the mouth, knocking the lower half of Coyote’s body loose with a slurping noise, which was quickly followed by a keening screech. One of those little twitching maxilla thingies was hanging loose and slack now, and the creature leapt away, fluttering its wings with a low rumble of thunder.

“Aw, he got a widdle toof ache.”

The spirits probably had to deal with pain in a whole new way now that they had their own physical housings — dealing with it, period, would be a new sensation for them. I figured they’d let their human hosts feel most of the pain before — even with the fire, they’d fled the light more than the heat — but now they didn’t have a choice. Casting a quick glance at the hogan, I saw Granuaile disappearing around to the east side, where the door was. That seemed like a good idea, with one hopper distracted and the other one still munching away on Joe, so I swerved in that direction myself.

I swerved too soon.

The locust decided that the best way to deal with pain was to go after the thing that caused it. It wasn’t the correct lesson I’d wanted it to learn from the experience — but, then, if they weren’t used to feeling pain, then they weren’t used to fearing it either. The sound of its wings gave me a warning, but it was in the air so quickly that it was almost on me before I could spot it — directly above my head.

“There are only three things you can do when something falls from the sky,” my archdruid used to say. “Get out of the way, get underneath some shelter, or give it some reason to change its mind about falling on you.” Then he threw a pissed-off rooster at me.

I had no shelter from the locust except for the hogan, which might as well have been in New Zealand for all the good it would do me now. Trying to scramble out of the way when the hopper literally had the drop on me would only give it more convenient access to my flesh. So I would let it fall on top of my sword.