Drag Hunt (14 page)

Kubera, the god-dwarf, followed him. A select number of gods and goddesses spilled out of other cars; all had contributed to the task at hand in one way or another, and had earned the right to be here.

From the boots of two cars, thralls carried two locked and chained trunks into the warehouse.

Last came Bran, stumbling, escorted by human thralls. He looked around, confused, fresh Ambrosiate flowing through his veins, his presence an act of sheer hubris on Lugh’s part.

C
ERRIDWEN’S CAULDRON STOOD
in the vast iron-pillared space of the warehouse, remade. Whole. She wandered over to it. Richard could not help but follow.

This was no ordinary cauldron, this was a ritual object of great significance. It stood six feet high, was six feet wide across its mouth and its entire surface was covered in intricate Celtic patterns and designs of great power.

Richard could feel her joy through the psychic link and could not help but share in it. He watched as she ran her fingers lightly over the metalwork, tracing the designs. It was hard to tell the difference between the original fragments and the new parts. The smiths had done their work well and Gobannon had excelled himself, forging the pieces together. You could barely see the joins, even on a psychic level.

Gobannan also circled the cauldron, but with less joy and more professionalism, checking his handiwork.

The gods’ thralls had built a small platform to ensure that those who performed the ritual had access to the cauldron’s lip. Several thralls were already stirring contents into the vessel’s depths in preparation for the ritual ahead.

Others were lighting the fire beneath the cauldron, a sacred fire kindled from the bones of holy men and sacred oils gathered from a thousand religious sites around the world.

Two more servants placed the trunks on the platform and opened them, revealing phials of ichor and, Richard noted, the silver reliquary containing Coyote’s penis.

C
OYOTE WAS DISAPPOINTED
to find there were no elks in Britain.

He and Weyland stood in Richmond park, eyeing up the deer. It had been closed to the public for some hours, but Coyote was no respecter of social boundaries or commercial opening times.

“Wait for me here,” he told Weyland.

His war bundle over his shoulder, he went to talk to a deer as it grazed. He sat down before her and the pair conversed. The deer, recognising her older brother, bowed her head to listen.

When Coyote had finished talking, the deer nodded her head solemnly.

Coyote thanked her profusely, apologised out of respect, then slit the deer’s throat. Its body dropped to the ground and he cut into its abdomen.

He strode back to Weyland, a sack in his hands seeping blood from its contents.

Weyland opened his mouth to ask a question, but Coyote glowered angrily and shook his head, cutting off any discussion.

“Let’s just do this,” he said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Coyote and His Bag of Tricks

B
ACK AT
W
EYLAND’S
forge under the railway arches, Coyote took the deer’s liver and fashioned a vulva for himself. Then he took the deer’s kidneys and made a pair of breasts from them. Then, using old magic and medicine paint from his war bundle, he used them to change his sex.

When he’d done that, he dressed himself in a woman’s business suit and then he was a she, transformed under Weyland’s guidance into one of the very likenesses of Cerridwen herself. In this way, he convinced Weyland that he could get them near the warehouse without raising suspicion.

W
EYLAND STARED AT
the change. It was uncanny. It could
be
Cerridwen in her mother phase, if you squinted, and didn’t look too carefully. He walked round the transformed Coyote, shaking his head in wonder.

“I don’t know how you managed that, trickster, but that is one hell of a trick.”

“I know, right?” said Coyote-Cerridwen, with a playful wink. “While it may not fool gods up close, it will certainly fool their servants and thralls. That’s the plan, anyway.” He took one last look at himself in the dirty scratched mirror Weyland had provided, and wiped away a stray smear of lipstick from the corner of his mouth. “Right,” he said. “Time to go.”

Weyland was already arming himself with his hammer and chain.

“Oh, and one small favour?” said Coyote-Cerridwen. “You wouldn’t carry my war bundle for the moment, would you? I daren’t touch it in this form. It contains powerful and sacred magic and the only thing that can destroy its power is menstrual blood.” He pulled a face. “Awkward.”

Weyland raised his eyebrows. “You mean you can get pregnant in that form?”

“Oh yes,” said Coyote-Cerridwen, brightly. “Several times.”

T
HEY APPEARED NEAR
the river warehouse. It wasn’t hard to miss. The psychic emanations were intensifying as they watched. Whatever Cerridwen and her coven were planning, it was already under way.

They surveyed the long four-storey red brick building. One flock of battle ravens wheeled and swirled round the warehouse before landing on the roof, then another flock would rise and do the same, so there was a constant aerial agitation.

The hounds of Pwyll patrolled the ground around the building, their red eyes glowing in the twilight, and surrounding the building itself were human thralls.

Coyote’s phone beeped. A text message.

It was Shu:
WHAT ARE YOU DOING? THE THREAD IS STILL FRAYING!

Honestly, Shu wanted to do this now? He really didn’t need the pressure. Did the old man know how hard it was to keep this form? And as for the feeling of liver between his legs, let’s just say it reminded him of how much he missed his younger brother.

Coyote texted back:
Not now, I’m working!

He pressed send.

Message failed.

Psychic interference. Oh well, Shu would have to wait.

He put the phone away in her jacket pocket.

“I know there’s no point in asking you, of all people,” said Weyland, keeping watch on the distant warehouse, “but what is the plan?”

Coyote-Cerridwen paused and thought for a moment, tapping a manicured finger on his lip. “I just figured I’d get my penis back before I become a sperm donor. That ought to stop them, don’t you think?”

Weyland nodded in agreement. “I expect so, yes.”

T
HEY SET OUT
across the vacant concrete wasteland surrounding the warehouse. The hounds bounded towards them, barking.

If they smelt the deer’s liver and kidneys, this was going to get messy. Weyland tensed, wrapping another set of chain links round his arm.

There was only one thing to do. Coyote-Cerridwen didn’t like it, but needs must.

“Younger brother,” he said, out of the corner of his mouth. “Younger brother anus, I know we’ve had our differences, but right now I need you to work with me on this. Okay?”

There was a shrill unlady-like trump from the skirt area.

“Bergamot and vanilla, you hear that, younger brother anus? Bergamot and vanilla. This is a chance to redeem yourself.”

The trickster’s anus expelled gas in quiet puffs, the sweet smelling fragrance that he recognised from Weyland’s lock-up. Bergamot and vanilla. He began to walk with more confidence.

Younger brother anus kept it up.
Pfft. Pfft. Pffffft!

The huge black hounds slowed to a lollop as they approached, sniffing the air, recognising the scent and whining. They walked round them, tongues lolling, before bounding off into the dark again.

Coyote-Cerridwen and Weyland breathed sighs of relief as they continued on to the building.

T
HERE WAS A
wet plop as the deer liver fell out onto the ground.

Useless bloody deer. Next time he’d wait for elk offal. That lasted for months. You could have sex, get pregnant and give birth with that stuff.

Coyote and Weyland looked down at the bloody mess at the same time and exchanged glances.

“Run?” suggested Coyote.

T
HEIR SUDDEN MOVEMENT
attracted the curiosity of several battle ravens. The air filled with caws as they swooped down. Distracted by the offal that had fallen from Coyote’s disintegrating disguise, they set to squabbling over it and tearing great gobbets off it with their beaks.

Also drawn by the scent of offal, the hounds came running toward them. Coyote shed the rest of his disguise as they fled. It peeled away and turned to dust.

Weyland turned and swung his chain round his head, building its speed. The whirling links took out several diving battle ravens that disintegrated into black vapour under the impact.

“War bundle!” cried Coyote.

Weyland tossed him the deerskin package as the first of the dogs charged, fangs bared.

By now, the sky was alive and writhing with eruptions of agitated battle ravens.

They needed to get inside, quick.

Coyote glanced toward the building as he rooted in his war bundle. They needed to get through the line of thralls that was advancing toward them with menace.

“Remember! This was all
your
idea!” roared Weyland over his shoulder as the chain flailed through the air and several more ravens and a hound burst into sprays of black vapour at its bite.

“Shut up and make for the building,” said Coyote taking out a flute.

Weyland didn’t need telling twice. With a flick of his arm, he wrapped the slack of the chain about it and ran for the building.

Coyote played a melody that was old when even he first walked the Earth. While he played, it would paralyse the running power of the enemy.

Within the sound of it, the hounds cowered and whimpered, turning round in confusion, and the human thralls slowed to a drunken stagger. The battle ravens lost control of their flight, colliding with each other and tumbling from the sky, impacting on the side of the building and bursting into thick black balls of mist.

Weyland and Coyote flinched and ducked as the birds dropped, exploding like water bombs into mystic gas.

Coyote stopped playing. “The confusion will last a little longer, we might make the building,” he told Weyland.

They dodged past the last few falling birds and whining hounds, and swerved round the bewildered and clumsy thralls.

They made it into the building, drawn by the sound of chanting and incantation.

Weyland abandoned his chain for stealth, pooling it quietly on the floor and taking his forge hammer from the tool loop at his thigh. They used the shadows and kept the iron pillars between them and the watching gods gathered round the large cauldron in the centre of the warehouse.

It was an impressive piece of workmanship, even to Weyland’s eyes.

“They’ve really done it!” he whispered to Coyote. “I never thought it would be so beautiful.”

“You said it had been destroyed before,” said Coyote in an urgent whisper.

“What? Oh, yes. It was Bran’s half brother, Evnissyen, who destroyed it.”

“That’s good to know,” said Coyote “because it may come to that.”

“There’s a catch,” said Weyland.

“I’m a trickster,” said Coyote with a sigh, “there always is.”

Weyland turned his gaze from the cauldron to Coyote. “It can only be destroyed from the inside.”

“Ah,” said Coyote. “That’s quite a catch.”

A soft blue-white celestial light began to issue from the interior of the cauldron, fluctuating, illuminating the warehouse and casting long shadows from the surrounding gods.

Despite their predicament, Coyote had to smile. Gods! Even after thirty years down here, give ’em a taste of the old mumbo jumbo and they loved to slip back into traditional costume.

Lugh stood on the raised platform, next to Cerridwen, who had her hands stretched out over the mouth of the cauldron, fingers splayed as she continued her unearthly chant. By her side, Osiris held the instruments of his office, looking every inch a hieroglyphic prig. The silver casket that contained Coyote’s penis sat between them on a plinth. Among the others, he made out Morrigan, Gobannon, and the unmistakable dwarfish silhouette of Kubera.

“Why the dirty double crosser!” muttered Coyote.

He slipped along to another pillar and caught sight of Richard, looking up in adoration at Cerridwen.

“At least he’s got an excuse for being a toady,” he muttered.

R
ICHARD WATCHED THE
gods, a smile on his face. He had tried struggling against Cerridwen’s grip on his mind, but she had been too strong. She was his whole world and he did not want any other. His eyes fell on the silver casket. It reminded him that she wasn’t his whole world, at all. That’s just what she wanted him to think, but somewhere, there was Coyote. That red shrivelled thing through the glass in the casket was a part of him. He kept the tiny sliver of his mind she let him keep focused on the reliquary. As the ritual took up more of her concentration, her hold on his mind weakened. Little by little, he was able to flex a thought, without rebuke. He kept thinking, gently easing his own mind out of her grip, waiting for an opportunity to slip out of it entirely...

C
OYOTE SLID ALONG
from one pillar to another, trying to get closer.

The intensity of incantations over the cauldron increased as Osiris joined in the recitation with Cerridwen. Lugh unstoppered the phials of ichor and poured them into the cauldron.

The blue-white light dimmed as the ichor was absorbed, and then flared again, brighter than before.

There, in its light, he noticed a recent acquaintance. Standing slightly apart from the others, tears running down his face from golden Ambrosia tinted eyes, was Bran, muttering to himself, his lips moving inaudibly.

“Raven brother,” whispered Coyote.

Bran’s lips stopped moving and he glanced toward Coyote out of the corner of his eye.

“Are you another wraith come to torture me?” Bran asked in a whisper.