Kevin Hearne: Hounded

Pinky was so focused on me, she seemed unaware that she was standing in the center of a very strange vortex. She looked like she was going to hurl a choice curse or two my way, targeting my voice to see if the curse would stick, but at that moment the earth opened up beneath her feet and swallowed her whole, a swirling curtain of pine needles following her down before the crust collapsed shut, choking off her screams with finality.

The other two witches’ eyes bugged and they took that as their cue to run, crying out for mercy as they fled the forest, heading for the meadow surrounding the lake—believing, perhaps, that it would be safer than staying underneath the trees.

Coppertone never made it out. Branches from the surrounding ponderosas swung down, whipping and tearing at her bare skin, and she fought back with Romany curses, exploding branches and shattering trunks of trees. It only enraged Kaibab further, though, and eventually the tip of a well-aimed branch pierced Coppertone through one eye, silencing her curses forever.

Coffee did make it out to the meadow, bloodied but in one piece. She quickly discovered, however, that she wasn’t any safer in open space. Kaibab sent the animals of the forest after her as she hurriedly tried to draw a circle of protection for herself near the lake.

In those animated movies for kids, the beautiful heroine starts singing in the forest and the animals gradually gather around her and sing along until they’ve practically created a utopia with the power of their golden-throated warbling. This was sort of like watching what would happen if Edgar Allan Poe were in charge of those sequences. Birds got there first, pouring out of the surrounding forest from all directions: bluebirds, nuthatches, robins, crows, woodpeckers, even hummingbirds and a golden eagle. All of them harried her and pecked at her head, preventing her from completing her circle and giving the larger animals time to arrive and do some real damage. She destroyed a number of them, but there were too many to deal with and she got no respite. A coyote hurried into the meadow from the north, and a bobcat sprinted in from the east, apparently the only predators nearby. They nipped at her heels and legs and bloodied her, but she managed to kill them both before they could take her down. I was dismayed by that and took a few steps in her direction to help out, but then I saw it would be unnecessary. Their harassment, combined with the cacophony of the birds, had masked the charge of a magnificent bull elk from the south, who now rammed full speed into her back and sent her flying a good twenty feet or so. The herd of wild horses I’d seen grazing by the lake earlier followed up from the same direction. They mercilessly finished her off, trampling her to death in a mess of blood and mud on their hooves.

//Druid help / Release small one / Gratitude// Kaibab said through my tattoos, and I picked my way past the tumbled stone circle to retrieve the metal cage. I carried the Kaibab squirrel to the nearest unscarred pine tree and opened the cage door near its base. The creature scampered out and straight up the tree’s trunk, no worse off than it had been when it woke that morning, though it would probably have nightmares when it hibernated.

//Gratitude / Justice / Harmony// Kaibab said. The forest animals were gathered at the edge of the meadow, looking at me in silence. Once I’d turned to face them, they bobbed their heads at me once before Kaibab released them to fly or gallop away in whatever direction they chose.

//Relief / Welcome// I replied. I set down the cage and tied myself to a hound’s form once more, then spent some time snuffling around the area where the witches had bound Kaibab. I found their velour tracksuits folded neatly nearby, and I dug up a hole and buried them in it, but didn’t try too hard to conceal it. Some bags of herbs were there, too, but I carried them off much farther and did a better job of burying them, along with the Seal of Arielis that had rested underneath the squirrel’s cage. Before I left for good, I lifted my leg on the seal carved into the ponderosa, ruining the smeared knotweed and dissolving for good any remnants of magical power it held.

The police, when they eventually came, would have a merry old time trying to reconstruct this crime scene.

My work finished, I extended my legs into the ground-eating lope for which wolfhounds are celebrated, across the bloody meadow to the forest road, where I headed south. I met Oberon several minutes later trotting up to find me. he asked.

Had to help out a trapped squirrel is all , I said.

Well, that’s the short version, but yeah .

Well, we can take our time heading back to the car. Everything’s fine now .

Really? I don’t think so , I said. To me it’s perfectly natural .