Out of This World (31 page)

But there's only me. Chaingang and Josh don't even know where I am. Canejo—even if he has all kinds of powers—won't be able to move quickly enough to save me. I'm sure Thorn's heart is in the right place, but I can't see him even being in the running. As for Lionel … well, he's the reason Nanuq's got me.

The little freaking
puto
pushed me right into the giant's grasp. I wish I could wipe that ugly smirk off his face.

It's thinking of Lionel that does it. The idea of him getting away with this.

I know that whatever I do is only going to postpone the inevitable, but I've never just given up without a fight, and I'm not going to start now.

I hang limp in Nanuq's grip as he's arguing with Canejo. He's not paying any attention to me—why would he? What could I possibly do?

Well, I can do this.

With all my Wildling strength and speed, I knee the big jerk right in his
cojones
. I don't care how big and tough a guy is. Hit him where it hurts and you do some pain.

The roar that pulls out of him makes my heart sing.

His grip loosens enough for me to pull free and I roll away—

but not before I rip that medallion from his chest.

And then I go invisible, just like Thorn showed me. I pull that mental cloak of invisibility over me and disappear.

If Nanuq was pissed off at getting kneed in the groin, my stealing his medallion makes him crazy.

I'm right in between the two condors and Nanuq, so not in any kind of a safety zone. All someone has to do is bump into me and they'll know where I am. But I don't dare move. I don't think I can keep my invisibility except by staying utterly still.

“Find that little bitch!” Nanuq orders.

The condors start to look around, then stop when they see that none of the dogs are moving—neither the ones in human shape, nor the ones that are still canines.

Nanuq focuses a glare on the nearest group.

“Are you deaf?” he says. “Find her. Bring her to me.”

One of the dog men shakes his head. “No. You don't command us anymore.”

“I could break you like a twig,” Nanuq tells him.

“Probably. But could you break us all?”

The other dogs are drifting over from the various fires.

It's the medallion, I realize. It doesn't only open a way out of this world. It also controls the dogs, and if Nanuq doesn't have it, they don't have to listen to him anymore.

Then another thought comes to me.

I'm holding the medallion now. Does that mean they have to listen to me?

Could I command the whole pack to take on Nanuq and bring him and the condors down?

The dog men flanking Cory on either side stop so suddenly that I almost run into the one on his left. I back off quickly when he growls at me. The ones guarding Donalita and me stop just as abruptly.

“Huh,” the one to Cory's right says. He looks around at his companions. “You feel that?”

They nod.

Some unspoken communication goes between them, then the ones that are in human shape shift into dogs. The whole group takes off, loping down the street ahead and leaving us behind.

“Wait!” Cory yells.

They just ignore him and keep going.

“What the hell just happened?” I ask after we all stand there for a moment, nobody saying anything.

“I have no idea,” Cory says.

“So, just to be clear here,” I say, “are we actually in a situation where Cory doesn't know everything about everything?”

When I'm nervous, I joke. Oh, who am I kidding? I'm always a wise-ass. It's in my DNA.

“Des!” Donalita says, but she can't help smiling.

“Is that the way it seems?” Cory asks me.

“Kind of,” I tell him.

“Because I could fill a library with what I don't know,” he says.

“Did anybody notice if the dogs still had their brands and tattoos?” Donalita asks.

Cory and I shake our heads.

“I didn't, either,” she goes on. “But the way they stopped dead and then just took off—I'd guess that whoever had a hold on them just lost it, and they're heading for some payback. I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of whoever was yanking their chains because …”

Her eyebrows rise and she draws a finger across her throat.

“You're probably right,” Cory says. “So we'd better make tracks if we want to see who it is.”

He sets off at a quick run. Donalita and I follow, but he soon leaves us behind. The only reason she doesn't keep up with him is because she's holding pace with me.

She holds out her arms. “Want a ride?” she asks.

“No thanks. I'd rather not get into the habit.”

Yeah, I know. She's a cousin—stronger, faster, blah blah blah. But she's still a girl.

I'd rather show up late to wherever we're going.

She laughs, picking up the pace just enough to make me have to work for it.

“I. Know. People,” I get out as we jog along. “I. Could. Have. You. Killed.”

That just makes her laugh harder.

Sympathy? There's none.

I appear in the sky above what looks like a fairly serious confrontation between a whole bunch of people I don't know. If they looked up, they'd just see a hawk. But no one does. They're all cousins—some of them really old—and all their attention is on each other. I see bunches of dogs grouped around fires. A pair of condors—which I take to be Vincenzo's brothers. A—really? A polar bear? Well, why not?

He and a jackrabbit are doing most of the talking, except the jackrabbit appears to have little antelope horns, so what does that make him? The rabbit only has two people standing with him. One's some kind of fish like a barracuda, the other—I don't know what he is. He could be a cousin, but he doesn't have an animal shape that I can read. I just see a big stone that stands somewhere overlooking an ocean.

The real problem is, there's no Marina down there. Sure, the little GPS pulse in my head indicates her presence on a spot on my map, but she's not where it says she is.

I pull up higher to get a better look at my surroundings.

I can't figure out what this place is. It looks like it was once a modern city, but for as far as I can see, there's just block after
block of broken-down buildings and rubble—the way New York City might look after some devastating earthquake.

I'm about to drop lower to make a more concerted effort to find Marina when I see a half-dozen more dog cousins heading this way. I can't tell if they're running toward the group below, or away from something that I can't see. I let my awareness expand farther in the direction they came from and get a serious surprise: someone familiar is approaching along one of the rubble-strewn streets.

Cory.

What's
he
doing here?

And then my heart skips a beat because trailing a couple of blocks behind Cory is Des in the company of a coatimundi girl.

Marina, Des, Cory. Did they all come looking for me?

If that's the case, then the fact that Chaingang's not here means that Vincenzo really did kill him back on the clifftop. Crap. I know I've been fighting this jealousy about him being with Marina, but I'd never have wished for him to die.

Now I do drop back down and hover above a cornice of the building. With everything going on, nobody would give any notice to a hawk perched up here, or the other one circling high above. The map in my head shows that Tío Goyo's followed me here.

I ignore everything else and concentrate on Marina. My map says she should be right there on the cracked pavement, pretty much equidistant between the polar bear and the condors, but there's no sign of her.

So I shift my focus to what this confrontation is all about.

“—would have given her a quick death,” the polar bear man is saying, “but because of what she's stolen from me, I'll see that
she suffers and dies slowly now. And that same slow death will be yours if you don't speak up now. So tell me. Where. Is. She?”

The jackrabbit man doesn't seem particularly phased by the threat.

“Why not have your hounds find her for you?” he says. “Oh, wait. You no longer control them, do you?”

“I know you, Canejo,” the polar bear says. “I know how old you are, the gifts that the Thunders have given you. But they won't support you in this. The girl is mine by kin-blood law. They won't lend you strength if you stand against me.”

Canejo shakes his head. “I'll say it again. Your bully boy wasn't blood kin to anyone but his miserable brothers, so you have no justified cause to go after his killer, and especially not his killer's friends. If you have the need to avenge a dead condor, then go and deal with this as you should, cousin to cousin.”

“He's unborn, not a cousin!”

“And the girl is innocent.”

“She
stole
from me!”

“Only after you threatened her life,” Canejo says. “Carry your fight to the mountain lion cub if you must, but she is under my protection and you will not harm her.”

“You don't get to tell me what—”

“And Nanuq,” the rabbit man continues. “I don't need any gifts from the Thunders to deal with the likes of you.”

I never get to hear what the polar bear man responds because it's all been coming together for me as they speak. I know who they're talking about. Me. Vincenzo. Marina. I don't have a clue who this Canejo is, but I do know that Nanuq is the one who sent Vincenzo after me and my friends and family. He's the mastermind behind it all, and now that I've got him
in front of me, and know that he's threatening Marina, I just see red.

I drop from my perch and go for him, my hawk spirit screaming, talons outstretched.

I'm fast, but he's faster. Even though he's surprised, he dodges easily, but I couldn't have touched him even if I had been faster. How could I? I'm a spirit. He sees a crazed red-tailed hawk, but I'm no more substantial than a blistering lick on my guitar. You can't ignore it, but you can't touch it, either.

He raises his arm and peers upward, so I decide to give him another shock. I drop to the ground and call up my body from the earth, then stand there, right in front of him.

He lowers his arm and stares back at me. I can see that my appearance throws him off. First he saw a hawk, but now I'm the boy with a mountain lion under my skin. He can see the lion as easily as I can the polar bear under his. They all can. The condors, the dogs, the rabbit man. They can't figure it out and it makes them cautious. The only one who doesn't bat an eye is Canejo, who just nods to himself, all Zen-like.

Nanuq recovers first.

“You,” he says.

“Me,” I agree. “What do you think? Is this a good day to die?” I wish Des were closer. He'd love to hear me quote Bruce Willis.

Rage flares in the polar bear man's eyes.

I know this is stupid. I was barely able to handle Vincenzo on my own, and now I'm up against Nanuq, a pair of condors and a few dozen dogs all at once. I'm so pissed off I don't care. I just want this to end, and I think I know how to do it. I'll do what Tío Goyo must do: take my spirit shape again and then re-form
inside
him. I'll take him down and it'll be over. The others can come at me. I have no experience at this, so no doubt they'll kill me, but the important thing is that Nanuq won't be able to hurt anyone else. And especially not Marina. Wherever the hell she is.

I don't get the chance to see how it will play out. Nanuq roars and takes a step in my direction. I'm about to implement my plan and let my body return to the earth when the nearest dog men move in between us. I growl, low in my chest, but they're not facing me. Others join them, making a wall of dogs and cousins between Nanuq and his condors, and me.

“You're done here,” I hear Canejo say to Nanuq.

I see the same anger in Nanuq's eyes as in mine. The same indifference as to what will happen to him, just so long as he gets to take me out.