Kevin Hearne: Tricked

I dropped to my back, using my left arm to cushion the impact while thrusting Moralltach directly above my face and locking my elbow. If Coyote’s demise offered any clue, it wanted my head. It tried to brush aside the sword with a leg as it fell, but instead of properly doing so by slapping the flat of the blade, its leg caught the edge and neatly severed itself. That meant it took the point directly in its nasty ten-part grasshopper gob, falling directly down the blade until Moralltach erupted through the back of its head and kept going— gahh—

I hit my own head on the rock of the mesa and lost a fraction of a second there, during which the damn thing continued to slide down my sword. I admit that I lost my shit at that point, because the hilt didn’t stop anything and my hand and forearm disappeared into its mouth while its heavy, ichor-filled body thumped against mine like the world’s heaviest water balloon. It was dead and already turning black from Moralltach’s enchantment, but I couldn’t move. Something was dreadfully wrong with my hand and arm — I couldn’t move either of them, and it hurt like hell. My blood was leaking down my arm, and though I logically knew I had won, my instincts were screaming that I was being eaten by the grossest thing in the entire world — which pretty much meant that I was screaming, period.

Hoppers have more than just mandibles; they have a labrum and labium and maxillae with segmented palps like spider’s legs, plus antennae waving around and those gods-awful alien eyes that stare without emotion while they eat your corn or wheat grass or whatever. I can reliably report that seeing any part of your body in the grasp of such mouth parts will freak your shit right out. Give me a shark with straight up-and-down teeth every time if I’m going to be eaten; don’t give me these chitinous plates and stubby appendages that come in from the sides and tickle as they feed you into a crop before you go to a proper stomach.

I bucked and tried to yank free, but something inside had pierced me and held me fast, and I had such poor leverage that I couldn’t get out from under the creature anyway. My ribs reminded me that they weren’t in good condition either. I shut down the pain in hopes that it would allow me to think. A throbbing buzz startled me — perhaps the locust wasn’t dead after all? But then I remembered that there was another one …

I turned my head and saw the second locust’s head approaching, six long legs splayed out from the sides; its perfectly working mouth parts were covered in Joe’s blood and twitching in anticipation of sampling mine. Its dead eyes were fixed on me and I’m sure it had no trouble locating me by sound, because I was hollering incoherently in an attempt to die angry at maximum volume. Anger was kind of taking a backseat to fear, unfortunately, but I don’t think even my eternally irate father could keep his edge if he was unable to move or defend himself from becoming the main course on the all-night bug breakfast menu.

A bright light overhead distracted me—

“All right, I heard you,” Granuaile said. She was holding aloft one of the kerosene-soaked stakes we’d prepared to defend the SUV in the hogan; she’d lit it up as a makeshift torch. Standing directly to the left of my head — or to the right of the dead locust’s head — she kept her eyes on the other locust and breathed, “You’d better tell me they’re still afraid of fire though, or we’re toast.”

The locust had stopped advancing. It remembered what fire was very well.

“Do you have any other weapons?” I asked.

“No, just this and a spare in my pocket. Get out of there.”

“I can’t. I’m stuck.”

“What do you mean, you’re stuck? Unstick yourself.”

“I seriously can’t. I’m hooked on something inside its head.”

“So do some magic.”

“Like what? I can’t think of anything.” Frank Herbert said that Fear is the mind-killer. He was a wise man.

“Well, look — I sort of can’t help you right now. Trying to outstare the spooky bug.”

It was inching closer. Much too close for my comfort. It made little clicking and fluttering noises as it moved. I think most of the noise came from its mouth.

“Be careful, it’s much faster than you think.”

Granuaile lunged at the locust with her torch and was rewarded with a small cringe and an unholy screech. But it didn’t fly away and leave us alone. We were too much like Lunchables, and this stalemate couldn’t go on forever.

“You have another stake, you said?”

“Yeah.”

“Light it up and go for the wings.”

“Oh! Right.” She pulled another stake out of her pocket and lit it by touching the soaked end to the flame of her other one.

“Excellent. Throw the one you just lit over its head far back enough to hit the wings. Lob it like you’re playing Skee-Ball.”

She switched the torches in her hand so that she could throw right-handed; the newly lit torch was flaring brighter and had a better chance of catching.

“Weapons hot,” she said drily. Oh, what a fabulous Druid she was going to be, when she could make puns under pressure!

“Fire at will,” I responded in the same tone.

She tossed the torch in a low arc over the locust’s head, and it backed up a couple of steps, then stopped, forgetting perhaps that it wasn’t a spirit anymore and it had a big, physical body behind its eyes. It cocked its head, almost as if to say, “Ha-ha, you missed,” and then found out Granuaile hadn’t missed after all.

I couldn’t see precisely how the torch landed, nor could Granuaile, but the locust certainly reacted. It hopped back — it wasn’t going forward when Granuaile still had the other torch — and fluttered its wings a tiny bit, landing only twenty yards or so away. It repeated this a couple of more times, hopping to either side, but that didn’t help. Then it leapt up high in desperation and tried to fly with a full extension of its wings, but that resulted in a crazy spiraling crash back to the mesa, its wings on fire, fanned to a cheerful blaze by its own efforts. We saw that the stake had lodged itself point first into the joint where the wings attached to the thorax. The noise it made wasn’t threatening or terrifying now but rather comforting. It hadn’t ever heard of stop, drop, and roll, so all its flailing did nothing but feed the flames more oxygen. The fire continued to spread along the locust’s body and I was able to return my attention to my predicament.

“That was excellent, Granuaile. Feel like tearing apart this head for me now?”

“Um,” she replied. I looked up at her and she wasn’t paying attention to me at all. Her gaze was directed back at the hogan, and I followed the line of her sight until I spied a large crow resting on the roof of the hogan. Its eyes were red, but they faded to black even as I watched.

“Good evening, Siodhachan,” the Morrigan said.

“Have you been there all this while?” I asked, outraged.

“I only just arrived.”

“A bit late, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would say in good time. Introduce me to your brave young apprentice.”

“Oh, I do beg your pardon. My manners must have been consumed by this locust, along with my arm. Granuaile MacTiernan, meet the Morrigan of the Tuatha Dé Danann, Chooser of the Slain, also known as Badb, Macha, or Nemain when occasion calls.”

The crow flew off the roof toward Granuaile and sort of melted in midair until there was a naked woman with milk-white skin striding toward her, hand extended.