Valknut: The Binding (32 page)

She hoped Junkyard was already long gone from
Bill’s house.

“He is also your great-great grandfather.”
Verdandi’s voice took on a more chatty tone. “Or thereabouts. It
can be so hard to keep track.”

It took Lennie a moment to realize what
Verdandi was saying. “Oh, come on. Now I 
know 
I’m
dreaming. If he is a god, how can he be my great grandfather—”

“Great-great-great,” piped Skuld’s voice.

“Whatever. It’s all nonsense, anyway. It’s
not like I have any god-like powers—”

“Don’t you?”

Lennie hesitated, thinking of the tattoo on
the back of her hand. She studied Fenrir speculatively as he
extracted a cigarette from a case. He left it hanging from his
lips, unlit.

Verdandi continued. “Well, suffice to say
that Fenrir, or his body, if you care to separate the two, won’t
kill you. He has a soft spot for his progeny.”

Fenrir’s yellow eyes flared and a small light
exploded at the tip of his cigarette. The burning tobacco glowed
above his chin like a third eye.

“That doesn’t mean he won’t make you
uncomfortable, though,” Verdandi added. “I mean, just look what he
did to your father.”

“What do you mean?” Alarmed, Lennie fought to
sit up, but she still couldn’t move. Anything that guy did to her
father would be far worse than a ten-year drinking binge. “Enough
of the documentary. I want real answers. Now. What the hell did
that guy do to my father?”

“Why, don’t you know? Fenrir caught him
and—oh, drat.”

Lennie felt an odd poke in her arm. Odd
because there was no one next to her to deliver it.

Verdandi’s voice grew muffled, as though she
held her hand over the phone. “Not now, One-Eye! We’re not done
with her yet.”

Fenrir began to fade, and the warehouse
showed through the vision as if covered with a gauzy curtain. Then
the warehouse faded, too. Lennie fought to hold onto the dream.

“No—wait! What about my father?”

No one answered. The warehouse was gone, but
the burning bulb remained, its orange cord disappearing into a
black void. It illuminated the feathered pole, suspended against
colorless oblivion where the wall had been. And then the light bulb
and the pole dissolved into nothingness.

“Remember, child—of six threads is it
made...six threads, twisted into one. Bound and knotted, it can be
cut, but it cannot be broken. Use it to face the Wolf.”

Something pulled at Lennie, taking her out of
the dream, and she heard one last call from Urdie. “You must use it
to put things right.”

“No—don’t go! I don’t understand!” Lennie
fought to stay in the dream, but she was drawn away. Her last
thought before awakening was, “Dammit, I wish I knew what the hell
she was talking about.”

Chapter 18

Briggs surveyed the crime scene, noting the
overturned furniture, the toy piano grinding through 
Pop
Goes the Weasel 
on dying batteries, the black cotton
leggings gripped in Jim Tuttle’s convulsed hand. It looked exactly
like the police had said when they called him in—the transient
entered the little girl’s room with the intent to kidnap or harm.
The owner shot him. Cut and dried.

But it didn’t feel right at all. Briggs
couldn’t believe he had been so wrong about the simple
hobo—especially after what he’d seen Tuttle do at the poetry
reading. He squatted next to Tuttle’s body. The peaceful, almost
joyful, expression on the hobo’s face seemed to say that being shot
in the chest had been his last, greatest desire.

And the child’s story...she claimed that
Tuttle’s eyes had glowed yellow in the dark just before her daddy
shot him. Probably a dream, but Briggs couldn’t help thinking of
Marybeth’s spook theories. It was hard to see what the prostitute’s
murder had to do with Jim’s death, but Briggs’s instincts said they
were connected somehow. Just thinking about it made him start to
smell that same foul, rotting animal stench here. He frowned.
Probably just the reek of sweat and death that rose from Tuttle’s
body.

He headed for the bedroom door, hoping to
clear both his head and his nose. But the putrid odor grew stronger
as he drew away from the body. He sniffed uncertainly and stuck his
head into the hallway, almost colliding with Marybeth.

“Hey, Briggs—sorry about your star
witness.”

Her voice was slightly muffled. She was
already wearing a mask and latex gloves. He registered her presence
but didn’t answer. Instead, he moved closer to her, sniffing.

“This is new.” She leaned away, looking
puzzled and amused. “A simple ‘hello’ would work fine.”

“Do you smell that?”

Marybeth pulled her mask down. Her nostrils
flared. “I smell a lot of things, not all of them nice. Do you
brush with garlic toothpaste?”

Briggs shook his head with irritation.
Sometimes it was hard to hold a serious conversation with Marybeth.
“I keep catching a whiff of that same odor we smelled at the
dumpster this afternoon. It doesn’t seem to be coming from the
body, though.”

“Maybe it’s coming from me. I was up to my
armpits in that prostitute’s body all evening.”

He took another sniff. Fried chicken and car
freshener. He stepped past her, leaving her frowning in the
doorway.

She crossed her arms. “Hey, you were supposed
to say, ‘Don’t you ever bathe?’ or something. You’re getting slow,
buddy-boy...oh!” She wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, now I smell it,
too—like a dog that found something dead to roll in.”

The source of the odor couldn’t be the living
room or the kitchen, or Briggs surely would have noticed it when he
first entered the house. That left the bathroom and Sutter’s
bedroom. The light to the bedroom was on, revealing an unmade
double bed, scattered dirty clothes, and his uniform hanging over a
chair.

“I think it’s coming from in there.” Marybeth
had come up behind him to look into the bedroom. “Either something
crawled under the bed to die, or—”

“Or whatever—or whoever—makes that smell is
still in there. Stay here.”

“But—”

“I said stay here.” He glanced back toward
the living room. Sutter sat in his armchair, elbows on knees,
holding his head. A uniform from the MPD stood over him, writing
something in a notebook. The little girl had gone to the neighbor’s
house for the night. “Better yet, go back to the living room and
send Charlie in here.”

Without waiting for an answer, Briggs
unholstered his weapon and entered the room. It didn’t seem likely
that anyone else was in the house. Bill had probably already
checked, himself, after calling the police.
But 
something 
made that smell.

The sparse furnishings offered few hiding
places. The bed was low to the floor. If someone was under there,
he wouldn’t be going anywhere too quickly. The closet seemed a more
likely place for a body to hide—living or dead. Briggs edged toward
it cautiously.

The floor creaked behind him. “Nothing under
here.”

Briggs yelped and jerked around, nearly
dropping his weapon. Marybeth was on her hands and knees, peering
under the bed.

“What the hell are you doing? I told you to
get back to the living room.”

“You don’t really think someone’s hiding in
here, do you?” She looked up at him, one eyebrow lifted
sardonically.

“It’s a possibility,” he said defensively,
“and I don’t want you in the line of fire.”

“Well, there’s nothing under the bed but dust
bunnies and one fuzzy pink slipper.”

He glared at her.
“Nothing, this time. What if one of those dust bunnies
had been a man with a gun?” He paused, absorbing what she had said.
“Pink slipper?”

She reached under the bed and pulled it out.
“Child sized. Whose did you think it was?”

Briggs sighed and let it go. He walked to the
closet door, Marybeth close behind him. The stench intensified.

“Whatever it is, it’s gotta be in here.” He
pulled on a glove and reached for the knob. His stomach churned in
anticipation. “If it looks as bad in there as it smells, I’m going
to start losing weight on this case.”

But when he opened the door, they saw only
normal closet clutter: sneakers on the floor, spare uniform hanging
next to some badly ironed dress shirts, golf clubs, a box of
detective novels. Nothing that should smell like hyena’s
breath.

Then he saw it, hanging just inside the door,
so close it brushed his arm—a five-foot skein of white string.

It was so innocuous-looking that at first he
had thought it was a bathrobe, but his skin crawled where it had
touched him. Leaning close, he took a whiff. Odors exploded in his
sinuses, overwhelming his brain. Layer upon layer of smells as
ancient as time itself—the reek of betrayal, the sour stink of
fear, the acrid burn of hatred, and other smells, more heinous. He
stumbled back and gaped at the string through tearing eyes.

Marybeth crowded behind him. “What is it?
What’s wrong?”

He pulled a pencil from his pocket and lifted
a strand of the string. Pristine white. As if dirt—or blood—would
never cling to it. “We’ve found the source of that smell. And, if
I’m not mistaken...”

He paused. A polished wooden box rested on
the floor below the skein, large enough to hold a pair of boots.
The lid was ajar and he caught the red-gold glint of metal inside.
Could it be...?

He knelt beside the box for a closer look.
The wood was so dark that it appeared black, but the swirls of wood
grain were darker still. He shined a penlight into the gap.

Inside the box, eight bronze knives with
shiny black handles were laid out like crown jewels on plush green
velvet.

Briggs tried to talk, but his throat was
suddenly dry. He coughed and tried again. “Marybeth, I think we’ve
found our killer.”

“What? Which killer?” Marybeth sounded as
dumbstruck as he felt. “What do you mean?”

“The Hobo Spider. It’s Bill Sutter.”

***

Lennie woke up. At least, she thought she was
awake. She was reluctant to open her eyes. Where would she be, this
time? Hanging from a tree? In a boxcar?

Maybe she had never left home in the first
place. Her real home, not the cramped, dilapidated house she had
lived in since her parents’ bank account had run dry. If she opened
her eyes, she might see the fake wood fan whirling on her old
bedroom ceiling, surrounded by glow-in-the-dark stars.

Right. And she would find her dad in the
living room, watching television with her mom. They could all share
a laugh at the crazy dream her life had become and analyze the
symbolism of squirrels and hobos and weird sisters.

She cracked one eye open. The ceiling hung
low above her. Reaching up, her fingers grazed the surface with the
hollow whisper of cardboard. She was back in the refrigerator
box.

“’Bout time you woke up, girl.”

Lennie yelped and tried to sit up, thumping
her head on the ceiling. A dark figure stretched beside her. The
flashlight lay on the floor between them and cast living shadows on
a finely wrinkled face and shaggy, faded-red hair.

“Ramblin’ Red?” Her voice came out as a
croak. She had almost convinced herself that he didn’t exist.

He propped his head on one arm, an unlit
cigarette hanging from his lips. His one eye cast a blue light,
creating another layer of shadow. “Just call me Red.”

The cigarette flared on its own. Neat trick.
Must not be so hard—everyone seemed to be able to do it.

“Are you...real?”

He laughed, amused. “Real? Dang, girl.
’Course I am.” He frowned a little, considering. “Least-wise, most
of the time, I am. I think.”

That was close enough to real for Lennie. She
shoved him onto his back, and threw herself on top of him. Planting
her elbows firmly in his gut, she grabbed his collar and gave his
head a shake. His mysterious demeanor evaporated with a gasp of
cigarette smoke.

“Just what the hell have you gotten me into,
you manipulative, flea-bitten bum!” The words exploded from her in
a spray of spit. She shook him again. His head thumped dully
against the wall and the cigarette flew out of his mouth. “You and
your damn tattoo. You might as well have painted a bull’s-eye on
me. Did you do that to my dad, too? I ought to rip your one eye out
and add it to Bones O’Riley’s stew.”

He gaped at her. His single eye, now dim and
ordinary, stared wide in surprise. She wanted to shake him until
his teeth rattled out of his head, but part of her wondered: should
she be attacking a guy who could call fire from the air and make
his eye glow?

Yes. Under the circumstances, yes.

On the other hand, she needed answers. She
eased up, but only a little. It felt good to be in control for
once. “I want to know what the hell is going on. So start talking
or I’ll be feeding you eye-ball soup.”

Taking his time, he rescued his smoldering
cigarette from the floor and stuck it in his mouth. The cigarette’s
tip burned as he pulled on it again, but not as brightly as his
eye. “A lot’s goin’ on. Can ya be more specific?”

Lennie gripped his collar tighter to keep
from going for his throat. No one had given her a straight answer
since she began this little adventure. Why should she expect Red to
be any different?

“You tricked me onto that train. Why?” She
was too angry to wait for his answer. “As far as I can figure, I’ve
been in a narcotic induced delirium ever since. I’ve had bouts of
paranoia, delusions of power, and just now, three hallucinations
tried to convince me that the world needs me to save it. How am I
doing so far?”

“Not bad, exceptin’ you’re not on drugs and
them weren’t hallucinations. They was manifestations.”

She grimaced, struggling between her need for
answers and a desire to hurt him bad. “Okay. How about the
paranoia?”