Binding: Book Two of the Moon Wolf Saga (17 page)

I was finally alone, which was good, because there was something I needed to do. I was safe from scryers seeking me, though people who already knew where I lived would probably show up. In fact, someone had hung out in front of my house for some time earlier that day. I’d caught his scent before, when I’d seen Richard at Tamara's. I was looking forward to seeing this Richard close up. And I was looking forward to dealing with the guy who was doing it. But first, I had to see someone out in Pomona.

I waited just long enough so that I would not pass by Yvette on my way out, since there was no reason for her to know any more of my business than she already did. I dog-legged onto Whittier Boulevard and caught the freeway up to the 60, and headed east, in good time to miss the rush hour traffic. The day was bright and the air was sufficiently clear I could see the mountains on my left, and the hills to the right. I took the 57 north and then exited onto the streets of Pomona.

The accepted method for contacting the Rag Man was to buy a bag of food for him from his favorite taqueria, sit in the park opposite, and wait for him to show up. I had an advantage, however. I knew where he lived.

I parked a few blocks down from the burned-out house behind the chain link fence on Garey. It was still light, so I walked on two feet along the fence line, turned down the alley and found the place where the fence was cut, leaving just enough room for someone to insinuate themself through the opening. By this time, I had sensed something wrong. If the Rag Man still lived here, I should have picked up his fresh scent already. His many comings and goings had led me to this place when I’d first found it. Now, I caught traces of him, because he’d stayed here for months, but none of the traces were recent.

I knew before I changed, slipped through the gap in the fence on four feet, and nosed into the lean-to he’d built himself under the porch of the collapsed house, that the Rag Man hadn’t slept here in weeks. Dead end.

Back when Richard and I were trying to find out if his dreaded ancient enemy had come to town, Richard had introduced me to the Rag Man as the best scryer in the city. The Rag Man was cursed, but the result of it was that he could scry just about anything, a handful of stones, bits of broken glass, or even his oatmeal. Now, I needed to know if two people who had once been kind to me were all right. I’d come to ask the Rag Man if he could see what had happened to Marge and Andy, and why their cabin on Mount Baldy stood empty. But the Rag Man wasn’t home.

I drove down to the taqueria. There was no fresh trace of the Rag Man there either. I went in and bought myself one of their pretty good burritos, and a burrito and some tacos for the Rag Man when I found him. I asked the woman at the counter if she’d seen the narrow guy with the unkempt straight hair, the knit cap, the layers of clothes, whose hands were tied up in rags, but she didn’t seem to understand me. I walked across the street to the picnic table that was his usual rendezvous, but the Rag Man hadn’t been there in weeks either. I sat down and ate my food. I wasn’t expecting him to show by then, and he didn’t.

I drove up to the reservoir, to see if the Holy Workers were still camped up on the hill over the city. The Rag Man was friendly with them, and they might know where he was. I was stopped at the electric gate by a big guy in dark glasses, who leaned down and asked what I was doing up there. His mouth was smiling, but his body was pretty clearly suggesting that I should turn back right now. He wasn’t actually offensive, but part of me couldn’t help working out the logistics of, say, biting off one ear without actually getting out of the car. And another part of me realized I just might have to do that to get by this guy, because I didn’t know the Rag Man's real name. But I made an attempt to be civilized.

“I was here about a month ago,” I explained. “We brought a friend, who's called the Rag Man—”

But it turned out, that's all I had to say. He straightened up, and his smile became real, and he pointed me down one of the new black roads between the meticulously marked out RV camping spaces, and the green lawns, and gave me a slot number to look for. There seemed to be more open spaces than there were a month ago, but groups of the Heiligen Arbeiters still gathered under each others’ canopies, or by each others’ barbecue set-ups, and watched my car as I passed by. Fires were burning. Meat hadn’t been set to roasting yet, but barbecues were definitely in the offing. The stretches of grass between the precisely measured spaces were pristine, recently mowed, and all the painted white lines recently touched up.

The slot I’d been directed to was occupied by a little round steel trailer with no car to pull it, standing in a space meant for a mega-camper. I parked in the adjoining space, but even before I’d gotten out of my car I smelled him, though with some differences. He’d been around here quite a bit, his tracks traced and retraced routes in different directions. He smelled clean. He smelled of shampoo. And what was manifestly missing was the smell of sickness, charred flesh, blood, and pus. Still, knowing all that, when he stepped out of the trailer I didn’t recognize him.

He walked up to me with a smile, holding out his hands, and I nearly snarled at him, because I don’t care for familiarities like that. Then I caught his scent, and it was him, the Rag Man, but he was clean and neat, he wore new clothes and shoes, and his hands were not bandaged.

“Hey!” he said. “I know you!” He opened his arms, and hugged me. And I let him.

“Hey,” I said. “You look great.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Check this out.” He held out his hands to me. The flesh was pink and new, but there were no burns anywhere.

I was happy for him, but also disappointed. It was through his curse that he was the best scryer in all the land, and here he seemed to be over it.

“You don’t scry anymore?”

“Oh, sure, I do that. Here. Come and sit. Want a beer? I got a beer.”

I turned down the beer. I don’t drink things that spit at me. I offered him the bag of cold greasy food, and he took it out of politeness. Before he would have scarfed it down, but now, he set it on a little camp table, and offered me the second handsome wooden camp chair. With a plump green cushion. His view looked out over the greater Los Angeles valley. The sun was beginning to drop into the haze in the west.

From this view the Rag Man had at one time pointed out the bite mark that the World Snake was going to make. Now he said, “She's gone, you know. The World Snake isn’t coming.”

“I know. Richard and me, we did it.”

“That's what he said.”

That got my attention. “He told you? When did he tell you?”

“Day after the earthquake. He came to my digs. You know the place. Down there.”

I nodded because I did know the place, I’d just been there, but I was trying to figure out how he’d seen Richard after the last earthquake. Richard had been with me. Every minute. Right up until the new moon set him free. “The last earthquake? A month ago?” Richard couldn’t have visited him.

“The one she did when she turned away, that's right. Richard showed up.” His eyes met mine briefly. “I was in a bad way. Got sick.” He cupped his hands in front of him. I still remembered the smell of the infection on his palms. He shot me another look. “I dreamed that someone came.” He tried again. “A wolf. A woman in the form of a wolf. And she…” His voice lost some of its assurance. “Was that you? I thought that was you. But sometimes I can’t tell…”

“You said that Richard came.” That was what I wanted to hear about.

“Yeah.” He shot me another look, still not sure about me. “But that was later. He… did something. In the back of my head. Inside my brain. You know he's a demon, right? Right. Right!” His voice rose as memory returned. “You told me that. That's why I couldn’t scry him directly. Yeah. It was you. Hey, thanks.” He reached out and touched my hand, briefly, so I did not bite him.

I’d cleaned his wounds, in the way of the wolf kind. But that was nothing, since he’d done his best to find Richard for me, when I couldn’t.

“So, can you scry anymore?” I asked. “Now that you’re better?”

He grinned. Now that was a new look for the Rag Man. “Oh, man, wait till I show you.” He kept talking, while he reached down and gathered up a leaf that had managed to stray onto the lawn, a pebble from the asphalt, a few short blades of grass, a rubber band and a bit of string from the pocket of his new jeans, and a receipt that he tore into little bits. “Richard showed me. He didn’t like me to call him Stan anymore, he told me why, no, I knew why when he told me. But watch this!” He dropped the tell-tales into the palm of his hand. “What did you come here to ask me?” I took a breath to answer, but he said, “No, wait. Don’t tell me. Wait.”

He held the miscellaneous bits together in both hands and shook them up. Then he bent and stared down into his hands. His energy changed as his focus strengthened. His eyes went blank and his body tensed, and then there was a soft explosion, a burst of orange light between his fingers. He opened his hands, releasing a puff of black smoke and a few traces of ash. With a wide smile he held out his open hands to me.

“And it doesn’t even hurt!” he exclaimed.

“That's—just—”

“Yeah,” he said happily. “Richard did it. So I’m not cursed anymore.” He rubbed his hands and smelled them. “I still can’t believe it. Man! I’ve had that all my life. All my life!” He looked away, out across the valley he wasn’t seeing. After a moment he turned back. “So, I told these guys the Snake's not coming. Some of them believe me.” He shrugged.

The Holy Workers had been up on this hill chanting protection and deflection from the World Snake for months, in concert with other groups of power raisers all over the greater Los Angeles area, all dealing with the World Snake in their own way, some of which worked contrary to one another. Power raisers working together is pretty much a contradiction in terms.

After Richard cured him, the next time one of the Workers came by asking for help, they’d succeeded in keeping the Rag Man with them.

“This is Fendor's place,” he nodded at the trailer. “He had to go back to Wisconsin. That's where most of these guys are from, up around there. He gave me these,” he wiped his hands on his jeans. “And the shirt. Said he’d gained weight, couldn’t wear them anymore.”

Fendor was a liar. The clothes still held the scent of a couple of young, tense women sweating over them as they worked their sewing machines. But that was all. The Holy Workers were treating the Rag Man all right.

“But, did you see anything?” I asked. “About my question?”

“Oh! Oh, yeah, sure. Two women.”

“Andy and Marge?”

“I don’t get names, mostly. Two women, right? Uh. One older, gray curly hair. One younger, fat, uh, happy. House, small house, stones everywhere, and trees. Uh, it's a cabin, up in the mountains, and it's empty, and there's—” his eyes shot to me. “Someone there. Dangerous. Waiting for you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I met him.”

“Not a man,” he was frowning. “No, he is a man. But… Oh.” He looked at me again. “Okay. It wasn’t a dream.”

“No.”

“You can turn into a wolf.”

“That's right.”

He smiled again. “Good! See? I’m not crazy! Ha! So there.”

“Me neither. But about the women. I just need to know, are they all right?”

He frowned, thought a moment, then shook his head. He reached down again and gathered up some more grass and rolled it in his hands. “Remember when this used to hurt? Oh, man, it is so much easier now that it doesn’t hurt.” He rolled the grass in his palms and a moment later it burst into flame. “Ha!”

“Andy and Marge?”

“Oh. Right.” This time he walked to the end of the lawn where the sculptured landscaping ended and the hillside fell away to the natural California brown grass, low bushes, and aromatic herbs. He picked some mustard flowers, a few dead grass heads and a pinch of dirt, sat down on the edge of the lawn. He shook the stuff in his cupped hands, and then opened them. He studied the mix for a while, and then looked up at me. “They’re all right. They’re happy. Excited. They’ve taken the moon road. You won’t see them for awhile.”

“They’re alive?”

“They’re on a kind of journey.”

“What's the moon road?”

His eyes changed as he looked into the distance, but after a moment he shook his head. “I’m not sure. But they’re going to tell you all about it. Soon, that will be your road.”

He offered to take me along to the barbecue where he was going to dinner, but I was ready to head home. He squatted down at my car door to say, “Hey. You tell Richard hi for me when you see him. And tell him thanks.” He stood up, so I didn’t get to ask him any more about how I was going to see Richard.

If I did see Richard, I sure wanted to know when he’d managed to cure the Rag Man.

I
drove home right into the rush hour, but after I finished creeping down the 57 and got on the 60, traffic was against me and I sped along nicely, while across the median the endless lines of people alone in their cars rolled slowly along. I wondered if the Rag Man was right, and if I could believe that Gray Fox hadn’t harmed Marge and Andy. I hadn’t smelled blood up at the cabin. I hadn’t smelled death. Neither of the women had been there recently. Maybe they had gone on some kind of long hike.

I stopped at the grocery store before heading for my apartment. I was thinking about the Rag Man, and the change in him, about the moon road, and what that might be, as I carried the groceries around the building to my stairs. And then I stopped, because there he was. Richard.

He stood on the steps, waiting for me. It wasn’t Richard, of course, but it was a damn good imitation. The face was right, the bright fair hair, the jeans and boots, even the leather jacket was almost perfect. The stance was not quite right. Richard stood straight as an arrow, and any deviation was a message. This one said, “I’m not actually Richard,” and I was trying not to read it. I stood there, taking him in. I couldn’t help smiling. I couldn’t even help the tears in my eyes, because I loved Richard, and he was gone. I tried hard not to look too closely at the details. I knew he was a fake. And I knew as soon as I came closer, his scent would be wrong, and that would ruin it for me.