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A dog appeared behind the badger, hunched down and whimpering, restrained by unseen forces. The badger turned around and attacked with a loud growl, throwing the dog to the ground and ripping open the flesh of its abdomen. Screaming and howling, the dog tried to get away, but the badger continued its attack, ripping intestines from the still-living creature and flinging them to the ground.
I fought to wake from the nightmare, but the badger looked over its shoulder, intestines hanging from its teeth, and mumbled, “This is only the beginning.”
I awoke screaming, my nose still filled with the scent of blood. I jumped out of bed and ran to the toilet, throwing up what was left of my dinner from hours earlier. I tried to purge the image from my head along with the contents of my stomach. The image wasn’t as easy to lose.
After I rinsed out my mouth, I made sure all the window ledges were protected with salt, which helped keep out the nasties. I went into my living room and grabbed my laptop, hoping to uncover some information about the creature from my dream. I wasn’t even sure what to look for. My biggest problem was that four hundred years ago the colonists had been more intent on converting the Native Americans to Christianity than they were on recording their belief system. Multiple tribes had been wiped from existence without making more than a blip on the historical record, which meant that finding specific information about the gods and spirits was next to impossible. I’d already checked the local library and bookstore and performed every conceivable Internet search. I needed to know what I was fighting—or at the very least defending myself against—but there was so little to find.
I curled up on the oversized sofa with an afghan and glanced at the clock, surprised I hadn’t yet had a visitor. Maybe they’d skip tonight since I’d been out by the tree.
But that was wishful thinking. The banging on my front door started at 4:00 a.m., close to dawn—when the spirits were usually at their strongest.
The mark on my palm itched and burned, making me cringe. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with a messenger, but it wasn’t like I had a choice. If I didn’t answer, the thing would keep pounding and moaning and might awaken my neighbors. And if anyone came to investigate, there was a good chance the spirit would take their manitou, the essence of life in all living things. So, I either answered the door or risked killing my neighbors and condemning them to hell. Too bad I liked my neighbors.
“Curse Keeper! I summon you.”
Setting my laptop on the sofa, I threw off the afghan and padded to the front door.
“Who’s there?”
“Who are you to speak to me this way!”
I groaned. It had to be Kanim, the messenger spirit of Okeus. As if the badger thing hadn’t been enough for one night. Taking a deep breath, I cracked open the door and spread my legs apart to brace myself against the wind with which the spirit would most likely blast me.
The cold gust hit me in the face, and instead of the usual dark blob hovering over the wooden floor of my deck, a large bird with a human head and flowing white hair was perched on the rail of my front porch.
It was Wapi, the northern wind god.
Oh crap. He was just a shadowy spirit the first time I met him. I’d seen his true form when the gates of hell burst open, but most of the messengers who’d visited me after that night still showed up as shadows. Wapi had been free the longest of all the gods, so there’d been more time for him to regain his strength. What did it mean about the others if Wapi was already strong enough to come to me in his corporeal state?
Part of me was terrified. If he’d regained his true form, what was he capable of doing? The marks on my door would only keep him from coming in to get me. They wouldn’t protect me once I left the apartment.
I gripped the edge of the door. “What do you want, Wapi?” There was no love lost between us. He’d tried to suck out my manitou a couple of days after the curse was first broken.
“Okeus has placed his mark on your arm.”
My hand self-consciously rubbed the zigzag scar made by Okeus’s claw. “Ahone has claimed me.”
“Ahone,” the bird spit. “Ahone is a weak coward. He hides in the heavens. Where is your Ahone now? Where will he be when Okeus comes to claim that which is his?”
I couldn’t help thinking that ‘that which is his’ meant me.
I rested my temple on the edge of the door frame. “I’m tired, so cut to the chase. What do you want?”
“You are running out of time. You must choose a side. Okeus or Ahone.”
“And if I don’t?”
His leer sent chills down my spine before I slammed the door closed. I expected him to howl and scream in protest, but it remained blessedly silent outside. After a moment, I turned and rested the back of my head against the door.
The bottom line was that Wapi was right. I would have to choose…and it wasn’t much of a choice. Okeus promised me an eternal life in hell. Ahone promised little other than his protection, but at least my soul wouldn’t be damned. Not that I knew of, anyway.
Not like Collin’s.
Perhaps I could put Ahone’s mark on my back if I knew what it was. One thing was for sure: I really was running out of time.
I stumbled back to the sofa in exhaustion and dozed there for a few hours, my dreams remarkably quiet, until Claire let herself into the apartment.
“You look like shit.” she said as she kicked the door closed behind her and handed me a cup of coffee from the shop across the alley.
