Traitor's Son: The Raven Duet Book #2

Chapter 7

“Jehoshaphat!” Raven stared at him in astonishment. “You’re a dreamer.”
Jase might be stupid, but he wasn’t that stupid. The first thing he’d done, when he came out of school that afternoon and found Raven waiting by his car, was tell her all about his dreams.
“What does that mean?”
He’d been trying all day to convince himself that he’d picked up the ragged gash on his knee and the bruises on his body sleepwalking down to the garage—but he didn’t believe it. That dream had been too real, too painful, to be only a dream.
“It wasn’t just a dream,” he added. “Was it?” He wished with all his heart that she’d say yes.
“Yes,” said Raven. “But there are different kinds of dreams. This is the part where you really should have paid attention when your grandfather talked about your heritage. You say he’s a shaman. I wonder if the spirit walks too. It can run in families.”
“Spirit walking.” Jase might not have paid attention to his grandfather, but his social studies teacher had done a whole semester on Alaska Native history and traditions two years ago. “You mean the kind of dreams a shaman has, when he walks in the spirit world?”
“Exactly. But what they call the Spirit World is what one of your scientists might call an interdimensional interface.”
“So”—Jase groped for some middle ground between Native spirituality and physics—“so when I’m dreaming, I’m in your world? Your dimension?”
“Not in it,” said Raven. “Your body is, apparently, running around your house tripping on things. And it sounds like you have some sense of it. I’ve heard that human dream walkers could do that, split their consciousness. But while most of your body is in this world, your mind, and at least some part of your physicality, is manifesting in the Spirit World. And it’s not ‘my dimension,’” she added. “That’s not possible for humans. I’m talking about a… a between place, where our two realities overlap.”
“How come I can’t exist in your dimension and you can exist in mine?”
“It’s because we’re shifters,” Raven told him. “We can materialize bodies pretty much anywhere our consciousness can go. As much of them, or as little, as we want. When your club went—”
“It was a putter.”
“Whatever it was, it went right through Otter Woman, and then she manifested enough to slap you. That took some very deft manipulation on her part, but there’s no reason she couldn’t do it again, and her allies can do it too. This spirit walking, with the enemies you have, it’s really dangerous.”
“Gee.” Jase cupped one hand around his bandaged knee. The damage was invisible under his jeans, but it still throbbed. “Just because they can hurt me and I can’t even touch them, you think that’s… Hey, what about the Olmaat? I hurt him with my spear. I know I did! Is he different from the others?”
“He is different,” said Raven slowly. “But that’s not why you could hurt him. I think that spear is something from your world that you brought into the Spirit World with you.”
“I’ve never seen that spear before in my life,” Jase said. Even if it had been in some museum showcase, the spear had a polished, elegant deadliness he couldn’t have forgotten.
“Oh, it’s not a spear in this world,” said Raven. “It’s something else, which your dreaming mind shaped into a weapon—probably because you needed one so badly.”
“How could I do that? Could I do it with other weapons?”
Jase had never been a gun person, but a pistol would have been very useful in that cave. And if it was a dream weapon, he should be able to reset the DNA trigger lock so he could fire it.
“No, you can’t,” said Raven, crushing his dawning hope that he’d found a way to defend himself. “I’m afraid I’m the one who made that spear possible.”
“You made the spear? How did you know I’d need it?”
“It’s not a spear,” she repeated. “Not here. Think a minute. It’s something that could follow you into the Spirit World. It has to be bound to you on many levels—magically, almost a part of you. A thing that has some aspect that isn’t entirely of this dimension. And it’s something you had to run through the woods and crawl into a cave to reach.”
“I get it.” Jase gazed wonderingly at his car’s control panel. “I got it as soon as you said it had to be bound to me. The spear isn’t Excalibur. It’s my Tesla. But… does that mean I have to sleep in the garage from now on?”
There was no way he could sleep in the Tesla’s bucket seats, no matter how comfortably they conformed. And sleeping in the garage would be impossible to explain to his parents.
“A better strategy would be to learn to control your dreams, so you don’t go spirit walking all the time,” said Raven dryly. “Since it doesn’t sound like you’re much good with a spear.”
“So how do I do that?” Jase asked.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “The way humans access the interface, that’s a human thing. You’ll have to deal with it in human ways. But the way you said you were hiding from her search before, I think that means you can do it. And you’d better learn quickly. The others may have lost you, but now, in your dreams, Otter Woman can reach you anywhere you go.”
The thought sent a chill down Jase’s spine—and he was scared enough already.
“Who could teach me how to control my dreams?”
“You know the answer to that,” Raven said. “I’ll meet you in Valdez, after you’ve talked to him, and we can heal the sea then.”
“Gramps won’t even speak to me,” Jase protested. “Not unless I admit that my father was totally wrong and he was right. About everything!”
“Was he?” Raven asked curiously. “Right about everything seems like a lot to ask.”
“How would I know? It’s a complicated issue, and it deals with laws, and stock sales, and all kinds of stuff I don’t care about. I do care about my family. And Gramps is part of it,” he added grimly. “Whether he admits it or not.”
“Tell him that,” Raven suggested. “Maybe he’ll talk to you then. Because until you learn to control them, your dreams are going to be dangerous. And I mean that in a real, physical sense.”
***

Jase did sleep in the garage that night, waiting till his parents had gone to bed and then dragging several flat sofa pillows and a blanket down to cushion the concrete floor. When his alarm dragged him out of sleep, at an absurdly early hour, he had a vague memory of crouching in the cave, his shining spear clutched in his hands.
If anything had troubled him there, he had no memory of it.
***

He picked Mr. Hillyard up at 6 a.m.—grateful, for once, for the early start. If he made very good time after he dropped off his client, Jase could catch the last water shuttle and reach his grandfather’s home by 10 p.m. In winter, by that time, it would have been dark for hours and freezing cold, which might have encouraged his grandfather to let him in. In the slanting brilliant sunlight of the summer nights, with a resort full of rooms a twenty-minute hike away that wasn’t as likely, but it couldn’t hurt to try. In his grandfather’s house, under a shaman’s protection, maybe he could sleep in a real bed tonight—pillows on concrete left a lot to be desired.
Mr. Hillyard looked more relaxed now that his business was done, though he still had his com board out. They’d been driving for several hours before he shut it down, and looked out the window at the meandering, gravel-bedded river and the white-capped peaks beyond.
“I’ll have to come back here sometime for pleasure,” he said. “This isn’t what I expected.”
“What did you expect?” Jase asked. When the client wanted to chat, you chatted.
“I’d heard that the Alcan Highway was nothing but corridors of trees, trees, and more trees.”
“Some of the part that runs through Canada is.” Jase had driven there too, carrying documents that needed a physical signature, and transportation more discreet than a post office staffed by the signer’s brother-in-law.
“But here in Alaska it’s almost all open,” he went on. “There are stretches where all you see are trees, but the view comes back pretty quickly.”
“And then it’s spectacular,” Mr. Hillyard murmured.
The taiga’s appearance hadn’t changed, but now that Jase knew how much life seethed through it, it didn’t seem ugly anymore. He could hardly tell Mr. Hillyard that.
“So, ah, was this a good trip for you?”
“Oh, yes. Your father’s an excellent lawyer. I paid more than I wanted to, but not outrageously. And my integrated community will have a lot less environmental impact than the condos my competitor was planning, so it will be better for the planet too.”
“That’s good,” said Jase, with a sincerity he wouldn’t have felt little more than a week ago, when he and Mr. Hillyard had met. “I’m sorry you had to pay more.”
“I’m not,” said Mr. Hillyard. “Oh, I’d like to have paid a bit less. But the price you’re willing to pay is a measure of the value you’re buying. And I value what I bought.”
Jase frowned. “I thought… Doesn’t a business always want to pay as little as possible?”
“On one level, yes,” the client said. “But unless you’re being pretty stupid when you research your investments, you get what you pay for—and one way or another, you pay for what you get! When I was just starting out I picked up an old mall, in what I thought was a fantastic deal. I figured I’d just clean it up a bit and turn it around. Make a huge profit. Turns out it had antiquated energy systems, and some of them were leaking. A quarter-million dollars in rebuilding and environmental impact fees. I was lucky to break even on the project.”
“Anyone can be scammed,” said Jase sympathetically.
“Probably, but I wasn’t scammed. Or if I was, it was me doing the scamming. What I got was worth just about what I’d paid for it. Everything’s a tradeoff, one way or the other.” Mr. Hillyard leaned back and closed his eyes. “It usually balances out in the end.”
So maybe those ancient Ananuts had been on to something. Jase wondered if telling his grandfather that his father was making balanced trades would soften the old man, but he doubted it. And was his grandfather’s attitude toward his son so unbalanced because the deal his father had made on behalf of the resort was unbalanced too?
Jase didn’t know, but it might be a good question to ask—if he could get his grandfather to open the door in the first place!
***

Flirting with a speeding ticket all day, Jase reached Valdez in time to catch the last water shuttle with five minutes to spare.
This late shuttle wasn’t so crowded, which meant it wouldn’t need to make many stops. On the other hand, there was no way to keep the crew from noticing his presence. At least there were no football players onboard.
The girl who was posted at the back of the lounge to answer tourists’ questions looked up as Jase came in. Her eyes widened in recognition, and then narrowed in dislike.
He vaguely remembered meeting her at one of the ceremonial feasts his grandfather had insisted he attend. She was pretty, not much older than he was, and she’d been nice, explaining that he didn’t have to eat the traditional cakes of pressed fat, that a lot of people surreptitiously dumped them, but that he’d better compliment Mrs. Hennison’s fruit of the forest pie. And the pie had been delicious.
Now, making his way to the stable center of the boat, Jase could feel the girl’s hostile gaze on his back. Hanging his coat over the seat gave him a chance to look again; she was scowling at him and talking softly into the boat’s com mike.
His grandfather was about to learn that Jase was coming. No surprising him.
Jase settled himself with his com pod and waited out the trip. Since it was the last run of the day, when they entered the inlet a steward put the coffee urn on a cart and brought it around, offering passengers a free cup. To reward them for their determination in reaching the resort so late, he said.
It was free, because after this trip they’d have to dump whatever was left in the urn to clean it for tomorrow. Jase, who’d grabbed a fast-food meal to eat in the car almost four hours ago, would have liked a cup. But after a shuttered glance in his direction, the steward pronounced the urn empty just as it reached Jase’s row.
He told himself not to be paranoid. It was the end of the day and the urn could simply be empty. But Jase had gotten subtly bad service before, from Natives who recognized his name. It was yet another reason he’d rather spend the night at his grandmother’s house than in the resort.
Surely his grandfather, as a shaman, had to help someone who had a problem with spirit-walking dreams?
When Jase got off the shuttle, he saw that the gossip grid had gone into overdrive—his grandmother was waiting on the dock.
“Hello, love.” Her hug was warm enough to soothe the sting left by the ferry crew. “I have to say, I wish you hadn’t come right now.”
“Why? I know it’s late, but frankly, I was hoping that might encourage Gramps to put up with me for a night.”
“Ordinarily it might, but… there’s something going on in the village lately. Something I can’t put my finger on, but people are angrier at your father, angrier about the resort, than they’ve been in years. There’s even been some vandalism. Traditional symbols of banishment and bad luck painted on the outbuildings, that kind of thing.”
Now Jase understood her worried scowl. The resort was the financial mainstay of the village, whether they liked it or not.
“What happened? Did the resort lay down some new policy? Threaten to bus tourists into the village, or cut off the scholarships or something?”
“No. And that’s what I can’t figure out. There’s something stirring people up, but when I talk to them, the ones who’re still speaking to me, they can’t even say why they’re so angry now.”
“Have you seen any strangers hanging around?” Jase asked.
“No. Just the hotel guests. Why?”
It had been only a few days since he’d healed the taiga. The enemies hadn’t found Jase yet, so they couldn’t have found his grandparents. “No reason, I just… Why are people mad at you? Gramps fought the resort tooth and nail. And you’re his wife.”
“I’m also your father’s mother,” she said. “And I refused to take sides between them. I’m on desk duty in the main lodge tonight.” For the first time, Jase noticed the crisp uniform blouse under her sweater. “Kathy got sick, and I promised to fill in for her. Or I swear I’d walk you home myself and drag you through that door, no matter what your grandfather says.”
“If you’re supposed to be at work now, won’t you get in trouble?” Adding to his grandmother’s problems was the last thing Jase wanted.
“I’m on break,” she told him. “If I’m not back on time Lisel will cover for me, but I can’t stretch it to forty minutes to walk you home and come back. Probably an hour, if I allow time to argue with your grandfather. I don’t get off till midnight, but I’ll call and tell him to let you in—and that you’d better be there when I get home! It’s my house.”
Jase grinned at her. “Then with Gramps being such a traditionalist, I should be there when you get off, shouldn’t I? I’ll see you later.”
She smiled, but the worry lingered in her eyes. “What did you come here for?”
“Those shaman questions I had for Gramps last time have gotten more”—he didn’t want to worry her—“interesting. Gima, do you know if anyone in our family, any of my ancestors, had dreams where they walked in the Spirit World?”
He’d become so accustomed to thinking in those terms that he didn’t even feel stupid saying it. But her expression closed, as if he’d turned into a stranger.
“Why do you want to know?”
Was this one of those Native cultural things he kept tripping over? But even if this was something you weren’t supposed to discuss in public, or with people of a certain age or gender, surely his grandfather the shaman would talk about it.
“It’s part of what I have to ask Gramps,” Jase said. “It’s for a… a project. Don’t worry about it.”
The look she cast him then was more worried than it had been before. “I suppose you have to deal with him. Maybe this is a good place to start. And Jason? The answer to your question is yes.”
She turned and went back to the hotel, presumably to call her husband and give him admittance orders.
Jase walked down the path past the golf course, feeling more encouraged than he had for a while. An Ananut matriarch, which his grandmother surely was, laid down the rules for her house.
If he could just talk to the old man, maybe he’d be able to sleep in a bed tonight! If not, he was heading back to the Tesla, even if he had to hire a plane to come get him!
At ten in the evening, the sun was running down a slanted path that would intersect with the northern horizon around midnight. The trees cast long shadows across the trail, interspersed with patches of golden light, and he heard the soft rush of waves on the distant beach.
The village seemed to be empty when Jase went through, which was odd. It was late, on a work night too, but when the sun was up so long people liked to take advantage of it. Some people, Ferd was one of them, hardly seemed to need sleep in the summer.
Jase wasn’t one of those people, but he was surprised not to see more of them out on the streets.
A mop of black fur on long spindly legs lunged at the fence, barking, when Jase went by. A deeper voice bayed in answer somewhere nearby.
The Ananut had never used dogs much. They started their trade circle paddling up the Copper River or down the coast in long dugouts, which they’d obtained trading with their Tlingit neighbors. And although dog sledding was still a popular sport, the days in which every dog in Alaska was a husky were long gone. Jase thought the black mop might be a poodle, without the silly haircut. Another dog, tethered to its shed with a long chain, stared at Jase and then lifted its lip in a silent snarl. It looked to be half Lab, and half something scruffy. All the dogs were properly confined, because dog packs were too dangerous this close to the resort. Aside from the dogs, the village might have been deserted.
Jase actually found himself missing the usual hostile stares.
He marched up the steps to his grandfather’s porch, knocked, and was deeply relieved when the door opened.
“Gramps, I’m glad you’re here. I need to—”
“Was your father right, to break the corporations and bring in the resort to destroy our way of life?”
“Gima said she was going to call you,” Jase protested. “But we can talk about that, and other things too. Inside.”
“She did call.” His grandfather’s mouth tightened. “But it’s my house too—tradition be damned! Was your father right?”
“He may have been wrong,” said Jase. “About some things. But we’re still your fam—”
His grandfather went in and shut the door. Jase threw himself at it, and was twisting the knob when the lock clicked.
“Hey!”
The d-vid came on inside. Jase thought about kicking the door, but the way his luck was running he’d break his toe, and he refused to spend hours sitting on the steps like an unwanted package. He’d have to go back to the resort and wait for his grandmother to get off her shift.
Jase started back down the street and then stopped. The big black poodle had gotten out, and now stood in the middle of the street, staring at him.
Jase had never had a dog, and he didn’t know much about them.
“Good boy,” he said. “I’ll go around on this side, right?”
With a vague notion of territory, Jase chose the side of the street opposite the dog’s yard, but the dog crossed the street to stand in front of him. The low sound it emitted, wavering between a whine and a growl, didn’t sound friendly.
Jase looked for its owner, but the street was still empty.
“Hey!” he called. “Your dog’s loose.”
The d-vid in his grandparents’ house was so loud, he could hear it faintly from where he stood, but that was the only human noise.
The poodle trotted toward him, and Jase backed away. The poodle came faster.
Jase ran for the next gate, lifted the simple latch and bolted through, banging it closed behind him just as the poodle arrived.
The dog was growling now, but it was outside the fenced yard—and this fence, designed to discourage deer, was higher than Jase’s head.
“Ha,” he told the dog. “They’ll call your owner to come get you. No treats for you tonight.”
Though if fury against his father was running as high as his grandmother said, they might reward the beast as soon as Jase’s back was turned. As long as they came and got their dog, he didn’t care.
Jase walked up the graveled path to the house. It had mixed flower and vegetable beds beside it, and this early in the year the cabbages were only slightly bigger than normal. Jase would have sworn he saw a curtain at one of the windows twitch as he approached, but no one answered his knock.
A scraping sound made him turn—the poodle was digging at the gravel under the gate.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
Jase knocked again, louder. These houses had been built almost two centuries ago and most residents, like his grandparents, hadn’t even bothered to install doorbells, much less intercoms. But that was because the houses were small enough you could hear it when someone knocked!
Jase banged on the door, no longer caring if it sounded rude, but no one came. The poodle tried to squeeze under the gate, though only its head emerged on the other side.
Jase tried the knob and found the door locked. People in this small safe village hardly ever locked their doors. Maybe the back door would be open. He climbed off the porch and headed around the house.
The poodle was digging more quickly, its curly head matted with dirt from its attempt to crawl under the gate. Without the fancy haircut, it looked more ferocious than any poodle should. Jase increased his pace to a jog and hurried up the steps to the back door—also locked. But the gate at the back of the yard wasn’t.
He leaped down the stairs and onto the grass, so his footsteps wouldn’t be as audible as they were on gravel. He could sneak away while the poodle was still digging, get a good head start. Surely if its prey was out of sight, the dog wouldn’t follow him.
Why had it chased him in the first place? His father hadn’t done anything to its way of life. And even if its owners were angry enough to set their dog on three-sixteenths, poodles weren’t that kind of dog. Were they?
Taking care not to let the latch clank, Jase eased the gate open. It was in good repair, and didn’t creak when he closed it behind him.
The houses were close enough that Jase could hurry down the alley behind the cottages without the dog at the front gate catching sight of him. Jase hoped the stupid thing dug for hours, and that the house’s owner tripped in the hole—serve them both right!
Most of the houses looked more ragged from the back, but that may have been because that side faced the beach, and salt spray took a toll even on modern paint.
Jase was halfway down the street, when he saw the Lab mix who’d snarled trotting toward him.
One dog escaping to chase him was coincidence. Two dogs escaping… Jase took to his heels and ran. He’d cut back to his grandparents’ house, and break the front window if he had to!
But when he reached an unfenced passage between the alley and the street, the poodle was there. It began to bark, but Jase no longer needed subtle clues. He ran down the alley, heading for the path that followed the base of the rocky bluffs that lined the beach opposite the sea. He’d scrambled up those bluffs as a child, while Gima dug up edible stuff in the tidal flats, and there were places no dog could climb after him.
He’d forgotten how far those places were. Jase looked back. Four dogs loped behind him now, the poodle, the Lab mix, something that looked mostly husky, and a ridiculous beagle scurrying behind the others.
It should have looked comical, but something about the way they paced themselves, keeping the beagle with them, told Jase this was a pack.
Dog packs were some of the most deadly predators on the planet, no matter how motley their breeds.
Jase was still several hundred yards from the nearest bluff when the dogs flattened out and began to run—he’d thought they were moving fast before, but they’d just been jogging!
He would never reach the bluff in time. Looking around frantically, Jase spotted a dead pine at the edge of the forest. It had probably been killed by lightning, but enough low branches remained for him to climb it.
Jase raced for the tree, faster than he’d ever run in his life. Those branches were higher than they’d looked from a distance, but he jumped and caught the lowest. His slick-soled chauffeur shoes scrabbled for purchase on the smooth trunk and caught just enough for him to haul himself into the tree as the dogs dashed up below him.
The husky took a running leap and grabbed one shoe, pulling it from his foot, and Jase found himself three branches higher before he even thought about moving.
The dogs stared up at him with conscienceless eyes. The husky dropped his shoe and sat, clearly prepared to wait. The beagle was panting hard, but its gaze was no less determined than the others’.
No matter what they wanted, they couldn’t reach him. Clinging to the trunk with both arms, Jase finally had time to think.
His heart was trying to pound its way out of his rib cage, and his legs still shook with the effort of the chase. His hands were shaking too, from terror and adrenaline, as he pulled out his com pod and thumbed it on. The screen remained dark.
That battery was supposed to be good for five years!
Jase tried to breathe more slowly, and then tried the pod again. No power. No low battery alerts over the last few weeks to warn him to replace it, either. Could the battery have shifted out of contact during the chase?
Mindful of the attentive dogs below, Jase took off his blazer, carefully maintaining his hold on the tree, which made it tricky. But the battery was small; he didn’t dare risk dropping it.
Jase opened the pod’s case and pulled the circuitry card that held the battery—still snapped neatly into its socket. He turned the plastic wafer over his jacket and flexed it gently till the battery popped out. Examining the slim silver disk, Jase couldn’t see any leakage or corrosion. He snapped it back into the card and checked the wafer itself. Nothing appeared to be broken. The other wafer held the small screen, and Jase looked it over too, but saw nothing broken there either. All the receptor points looked clean. So why wasn’t it working?
He snapped the pod back together and tried to turn it on, but the screen remained blank. “Carp.”
He looked down at the dogs. Three of them were sitting by the base of the tree—only the poodle prowled restlessly.
The tree Jase had chosen was on a rise, and the lowering sun cast the dogs’ shadows onto the beach below, tall and distorted. Something about the poodle’s shadow caught Jase’s eye. The long thin legs seemed to stretch forever, but its body looked bulkier than it should… and instead of flopping down, like the dog’s ears did, the shadow had pointed triangular ears.
Jase rubbed his eyes and looked again, but even though the poodle’s ears fell past its narrow jaw, the shadow’s ears were small, upright, and pricked. One of the shadow ears twitched as he watched, and both the poodle and its shadow turned, seeking the source of some sound he hadn’t heard.
Now that he was looking, the Lab’s shadow had angular pricked ears as well—even the beagle, with its short coat and stubby legs, cast the shadow of a wolf.
The hair on Jase’s arms stood up as goose flesh popped out on most of his body.
The enemy had found him.
He didn’t have time to wait for his grandmother to come home, realize that Jase hadn’t gone back to take a room at the resort, and then organize anyone who hadn’t been bewitched. Now he knew what, who, had been stirring up the villagers!
But whatever search party his grandmother raised, it wouldn’t get here before his enemies did. And he’d be here when Otter Woman and the football players arrived. The dogs, with their wolf shadows, would see to that.
Despite the urgency of the moment, wonder washed over Jase. This wasn’t invisible healing on some invisible ley. This was real magic, in the real, daylight world.
Magic that might kill him, if he couldn’t escape.
Why hadn’t he figured out some way to contact Raven! But even if he had her com code, it wouldn’t help him now. When her enemies showed up, Jase should hand over the pouch just to serve her right for being so shortsighted!
He didn’t want to hand it over.
That old woman, Otter Woman, had upset his grandmother laying this trap. And she’d made Jase’s grandfather, the whole village, more angry with his father—just on the chance that he’d come here and she could capture him. But how could he—
A scratching sound drew his eyes to the foot of the tree. The poodle was digging again, this time at the base of the trunk, and a chill ran over Jase’s skin as he saw how this looser dirt flew from under its busy paws.
The husky, whose shadow almost matched its form, got up and started digging too, and then the Lab and the beagle joined in.
How much was left of the roots that held this tree upright? It felt sturdy, but the lack of bark told him it had died a long time ago.
They can’t kill you themselves, Raven had said. But they’re a lot more adept at using human tools than I thought they’d be.
Maybe the plan wasn’t to use the dogs to keep him pinned till they could come for him. Maybe it was to take the pouch off his mangled corpse after the dogs—tools of this world—had done the job for them. If Jase understood the setup correctly, their fracking rules would allow that just fine.
He had to get out of here. But how? He had a pouch of magical healing dust hanging around his neck. Could it break spells, as well as heal leys?
Jase pulled out his com pod and tried to connect with it, with its essence, as he had in the taiga. He wasn’t attached to his pod like he was to the Tesla, but machines did feel… there to him. He reached out to that feeling of presence, and took a tight grip on the tree trunk. If the power surge he’d felt in the taiga knocked him off his branch, he was done for. Fumbling, because he had to use the arm that was wrapped around the trunk to hold the pod, he pulled out the pouch and extracted a pinch of dust.
“Work,” he whispered, and scattered the dust over the com pod.
No power slammed through him this time, but hope still flickered as he pressed the on button. Nothing.
Frack.
He tried the dogs next, climbing down to the lowest branch and dumping a small handful of dust on the beagle’s back—he wasn’t about to descend and try to bond with them!
The beagle, busily deepening the hole at the base of the tree, didn’t even look up. Its wolf shadow never wavered.
The poodle had stopped digging to watch him descend. Now it leaped up, higher than the husky had, and Jase kicked it away.
It yelped and fell, but Jase was now watching the shadows as warily as he watched the dogs, and as the poodle landed its shadow changed to that of a curly-haired dog with floppy ears.
It shook itself, whining in confusion, and that other shadow flowed over the true one. But sudden pain had shocked it out of the spell, at least for a moment. And they could be hurt.
Was it his imagination that the tree felt less sturdy now than when he’d climbed it? Jase hated the idea of hurting some helpless enchanted dog—but not as much as he hated the idea of the four of them ripping him apart.
He climbed carefully back up the tree and broke off the biggest branch he could manage. It might be just that he was moving pretty wildly, in a higher part of the tree, but it wobbled in a way that told him he didn’t have much time.
Jase buttoned his blazer, for whatever protection it might provide, and descended to the lowest branch.
“OK, dog. Want to jump again?”
Poodles were supposed to be smart, and this one lived up to the rep. It looked up at him for a moment and then went back to digging.
The tree was definitely wobbling now. Jase gripped the branch with both legs and one hand, leaned down as far as he dared, and swung his improvised club.
It struck the Lab’s shoulder, knocking it into a yelping roll. But it lunged to its feet, snarling, and leaped at Jase where he dangled from the tree.
This time Jase was ready, and swung the branch as hard as he could. In sheer self-preservation he aimed for the dog’s head, but wielding the heavy branch one-handed, he hit its nose instead.
It fell to the ground with a sharp cry of pain… and the pricked ears vanished from its shadow.
The Lab licked its nose, whimpering, then dropped into a crouch and scuttled away.
He could break the spell! And if he didn’t, they’d kill him. Jase leaned down, aiming for the poodle next, but he’d underestimated the pack.
The husky jumped up and locked its teeth on Jase’s sleeve, its whole weight dangling from his right arm. Jase gripped the branch with all the strength of his desire to survive… and the tree began to tip.
Slowly at first, slowly enough for Jase to swing the growling husky against the tree’s trunk hard enough to make the dog let go. Slowly enough for Jase to release the branch with his legs, swing down to land on his feet, and scramble out of the dogs’ hole.
He smacked the beagle hard on its muddy snout as he darted past, and it yipped, but Jase was too busy racing out of the path of the falling giant to check its shadow.
He ran to the nearest tree, a live one, and put his back against the trunk before the echoes of the crash had faded. Only the husky and the poodle stalked him now. The husky circling aggressively, waiting for a chance to spring, the poodle prancing out of reach of the stick, watching him with bright, intent eyes.
Jase went for the husky since it was closest. This time he was aiming for the dog’s nose, so of course he missed and struck its head. The dog sank to the ground, its eyes half closed. Hopefully he’d only stunned it—but better for it to die than him!
Jase stepped away from the tree and went after the poodle, quickly, hoping to take it out before the others’ wolf shadows returned.
“Come on. You want me?” He was shouting now, not sure if he hoped to drive it off or force it to attack. The poodle backed up, but its predatory gaze never shifted.
A roar shattered the stillness, and the poodle flinched.
Jase stumbled back to the tree, club raised, as a grizzly erupted from the forest and roared again.
The dogs fled, the husky stumbling behind the other three. Jase didn’t have any attention to spare for their shadows now. He’d have run with them, but running wouldn’t save him.
If the grizzly was determined to kill him, nothing Jase could do would stop it, but the experts said it was better to fight than to do nothing.
Jase gripped his club and waited. Maybe it would ignore him. Maybe it would go away. He was trying not to breathe when a rush of wings hurtled down through the branches.
The raven lit on the tip of his club, heavier than he’d expected. Then it dropped to the ground, bulged, and grew into a slender naked girl.
Who stood between him and the bear.
“Get behind me,” Jase hissed, even as he prayed she had some magic to deal with this.
She glanced back over her shoulder and flashed him a smile, then turned to the great beast, who’d settled on its haunches.
“You see what I mean?” she said. “If this isn’t ‘direct interference,’ I don’t know what is.”
“We tol’ them they can’t attack your human themselvez. For this, they’re uzing the toolz of this world. Azzz allowed.” The bear’s mouth didn’t handle English very well, and goose flesh broke out on Jase’s arms once more—though a shapeshifter, even one speaking English in animal form, was a lot less scary than a grizzly bear. Jase kept the branch, just in case.
“They may be using the tools of this world,” Raven said, “but they’ve also used a lot of ley power, both in setting up this trap and springing it. If they can draw power from the ley then I’ll have to do it too. And I don’t want to weaken the leys more than they already are.”
“True.” The bear looked thoughtful. “Unnaseptable. We’ll deal with them. They’ll spen’ no more power in this world. Not an erg more.”
“You speak for the neutrals?” Raven asked hopefully.
“It will be our edic’.”
The bear nodded its massive head, rose, and lumbered back into the woods. Jase lowered the branch. His fingers were so stiff, it felt like he had to peel them away from the rough surface.
Raven turned, her face alight with joy.
“You did it!”