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at least. I don't think Mister Stinky here cares much about whether he's noshing on outdoorsmen anymore."
"If what works?"
Crap. I'd forgotten he couldn't See what I was doing. "I'm going to try to catch it in a net. I just want to hold it in
place until everybody's safe. It didn't work yesterday, but it's more real now and Coyote's backing me up."
"Joanne Walkingstick, what the hell are you doing?" Sara'd caught up to us, but I still didn't think it was a good
time to answer her questions. I almost hoped she'd grab me. I had this idea that power would zot off me like an
electrical arc, and she'd end up ten feet away in the snow with her hair all frazzled. It wasn't nice, but it was
funny.
Gary was apparently down with ignoring the Feds, too. His voice dropped to a low enough grumble that it
raised hairs on my nape: "And if it don't work?"
"Then we're all fucked."
"Gotcha. Just tell me when, darlin'."
Coyote eyed me. "Are you always this inspiring?"
"You should see me on a bad day. Ready?"
"Joanne, what are you doing?"
Nobody paid Sara any heed at all. Coyote nodded, tensing in preparation. I launched the net and yelled, "Run!"
at Gary as the wendigo leaped.
Time, as it so often did, collapsed into infinite slow motion as everything went to hell.
* * *
I understood immediately that my mistake had been in making the shield one-way. It was meant to keep
wendigos out, not FBI agents in. Not, as it turned out, FBI agents and over-eager television news reporters.
Laurie was there all of a sudden, cameraman in tow, two steps behind Sara and on the wrong side of the shield.
A part of me was given over to admiring Sara's weapon stance as she slapped her duty weapon from its holster
and brought it up, firing repeatedly at the wendigo. Her honey-blond hair made her vivid and living against
white snow and black trees, real in a way the wendigo wasn't. I saw flashes from the muzzle of her weapon,
bright imprints in dilated time, and I could almost watch the bullets spin through the air.
I could without question see how they utterly failed to impress the wendigo. They didn't seem to strike it at all:
no shudder of impact, no mist of blood, no slowing of its headlong rush. Middle World means clearly couldn't
stop it, even if it was more connected than it had been yesterday.
Corvallis and her cameraman were Sara's civilian mirrors. The guy was on his knees, face stretched with
enthusiasm and terror, but his camera light was flashing and the lens was angled to catch the wendigo's leap.
Corvallis, as admirable and idiotic as Sara, shouted breathless commentary while five hundred pounds of
monster barreled toward her.
I swear to God, people like them should've gotten my shiny weird power set. They were delighted to throw
themselves into danger's face, ready and eager to take on the world, happy to do stupid, stupid things in the
name of truth, justice, and getting the story. I had no desire for that much excitement in my life.
That was probably why I got it, and they didn't.
I flung my net forward, putting all my will behind it: it had to hold. Its cables were steel, titanium, unobtanium,
whatever couldn't be broken. I had held gods with that net. I could, by God, hold one nasty little demon spirit.
Wendigo and net collided, and the net stretched, pulled out of shape by the wendigo's need to feed. I let out a
wordless roar that felt every bit as deep and earth-shattering as anything the wendigo had voiced, and surged
forward a step, holding the line.
The net rebounded from its stretch, knocking the wendigo ass-over-teakettle back up the mountain road. It
bumped and crashed and shuddered to a stop, thrashing and snarling as it fought the psychic bonds that held it.
Over its screams I heard Sara shouting, "What the hell? What the hell!?" as she fired her gun again and again.
I yelled, "Get behind me! Get behind me!" Instead, a dozen more federal agents ran forward to join her in trying
to shoot to death a creature that only barely had a corporeal body.
Exasperation erupted in my chest and I had sudden, bone-deep sympathy for Coyote and everybody else who'd
dealt with me in the first months of my shamanistic career. The federal agents simply would not accept that
were facing something they were completely unprepared for, which was the moral equivalent of me utterly
refusing to accept my talents. It was incredibly frustrating, and I made a note to apologize to everyone I knew.
Right after we got out of this alive.
I kept feeling pops in my power, like soap bubbles exploding in the air. A bit of the wendigo, an elbow or a
claw or an ear or a tooth, broke through the net every time it happened. The net resealed itself, drawing more
power each time, and I got a double-vision impression that the monster was slipping between its physical and
psychic form. I had its tangible self under control, but if it pulled itself just a little farther into the spirit realm I
wasn't sure I could hold it. The nets I'd cast in the past had held physical things, not spirits.
A small, weary part of myself thought I should probably be able to hold spirits, as well, and that we were going
to pay heavily for my lack of skill. But slowed-down time or not, I didn't have the luxury of dwelling. "Coyote,
can you kill it?"
"Me?" Incredulous horror spiked through the question, though he toned it back down with the next question:
"With what?"
I shot a sideways glance at him. He looked like breathing and maintaining his part of the shield was just about
the limit of his capability, which made my brain cramp again. He was my teacher, for pity's sake. I wasn't
supposed to walk all over him in the sheer wattage department.
On the other hand, again, not such a good time to worry about it. I turned my attention back to the wendigo and
the popping net. One hand fisted of its own accord, like I was holding on tighter, and the rest of me divorced
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