Valknut: The Binding, page 20
Lennie studied each face, looking for her father’s features, finding no similarities. She and Junkyard sat at the edge of the landing near the path. They were close enough to the front to watch the audience and far enough from the fire to go unnoticed. Junkyard fidgeted and leaned close to Lennie.
“Something’s wrong,” he whispered. “They usually loosen up at these things and have a good time, but they’re all acting like stray dogs without an alpha. Looks like they could turn on each other any minute.”
Lennie shuddered. “I don’t want to get caught in the middle of that.”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll settle down once the readings start.”
But he didn’t look sure. He looked tense, ready to launch to his feet, and his eyes flicked restlessly from face to face. Hardly reassuring.
He glanced over his shoulder at the path. “I hope Jim gets here, soon,” he said in a low voice. “I thought he’d be here, already. I’m getting worried—the Ragman saw him with us this morning.”
“I’m sure he just went someplace to get out of the storm.”
Lennie knew she should be more concerned. Jungle Jim wouldn’t stand a chance against the Ragman or his cronies. But the pressure behind her eyes had returned and she couldn’t think about much else. The feeling was more diffuse this time, as though the focal point were somewhere else. Feeling exposed, she wished she at least had a tree at her back. And that the tree was somewhere in Hawaii.
Finally, a hobo took a hit from a hip flask and stepped beside the oil drum. He pulled a crumpled paper from his pocket and smoothed it between his hands. Chin to chest, he read in a rusty, halting voice.
I heard the freedom whistle blow
From miles on down the track.
I kissed my Lady Saturday–
Goodbye, I won’t be back.
The poem droned on, expounding on hobo themes of itchy feet and freedom. More lies. Lennie shifted uncomfortably and tried to listen. Junkyard had spread a thick layer of newspaper on the ground, but the cold concrete leached through to chill her still-damp backside. She slouched forward, rubbing her temples.
“This poem is no better than the one at the festival’s show.”
Intent on the speaker, Junkyard said nothing at first. Then he bent his head closer to hers and said, “It’s not the poem that’s different. It’s the audience.”
And he was right. The men who had warily circled each other now turned toward the speaker like a ragged chorus before their director. Tears shone in the eyes of one old man, his face a shriveled prune grown moldy with gray whiskers. A younger man with a bruised eye and split, swollen lip paced the landing as though ready to take to the iron road that very moment. All the hobos bore the same look of intense longing on their faces.
“Somewhere over the rainbow,” Lennie murmured. Her anger faded to pity. She fell silent and tried to understand.
One poem followed the next, the speakers with varying amounts of facial hair, dressed in coveralls or frayed jeans. One man mumbled so low that only those in front could hear. Another wore an ancient suit and orated in a deep, singsong voice. “Ah, the wind! The midnight air! Take ease, oh weary feet, in this thunderous chariot of iron!”
Hesitant or loud, spoken or sung, the words were interchangeable, the poetry uniformly bad. It didn’t matter. The audience was as absorbed as though Jack Kerouac had come among them.
They had no idea they were being watched.
***
The clouds broke overhead. The light of a three-quarter moon fell upon the river’s shore, where it struck a shadow with no visible source. Within the shadow, Fenrir sent tendrils of dark thought through the hobo gathering. They listened to their fellows, unspeaking, unthinking, caught in a hobo past, facing a street person’s future.
And as they listened, Fenrir stole their souls.
A twist here: Tonight, the fork-bearded man would find a pre-teen runaway sulking behind a gas station and convince the boy to go with him to see the world. Then the man would rape him and leave him dead in the river. A jab there: Tonight, the fat one in the tattered rain coat would burn a man’s business to the ground, leaving a hundred people jobless. A prod: Tonight, the quiet one at the back would start a fight at a strip club that would send men to the hospital and tie up two squad cars for half the night.
For years, he had sent others like these crawling like fleas across the belly of society, unseen but ever-present, biting the vulnerable, spreading discontent like disease. Now, he did it more out of habit, for his plan was nearly ready. Just a few minor tasks, and the end could begin.
He turned to the two minds that burned most brightly in the dark. His thoughts first snaked over the girl. A powerful anger lay buried within this one, and anger gave him leverage against her, though he did not strike yet. She was not like her father, who was too timid to be more than a short-lived annoyance. Her will had solidified under the pressures of her youth. With each meeting, he had felt her growing stronger. Now the power the Allfather had given her was ready to flower. He must confront her, but not here.
His thoughts flicked to Monte, who swayed like a mad cobra with his unblinking eyes focused on Lennie Cook. Monte would bring her to him, and Fenrir would be pleased, hell yes, very pleased.
Unless the one called Junkyard Doug chose to interfere.
Fenrir narrowed his eyes and studied the girl’s companion. The man looked like a hobo, lounging on cardboard, propped up by a duffle bag held together with duct tape. His shoulder-length brown hair hung damply around his face and two-day’s growth covered his chin.
Junkyard Doug looked the part, but Fenrir had sensed something more in Junkyard’s mind that morning. It was time to find out how much more.
Dark tendrils slithered into the mind of Junkyard Doug.
Anger, hatred, a thirst for revenge—the weapons in Fenrir’s war, but tempered by affection for Jungle Jim and the girl, held in check by sympathy for the misfits among whom Junkyard chose to live. The tendrils wormed deeper, probing the horror and anguish behind the anger, finding the brother...
Ah, the irony. Fenrir’s lips curled wider than any human’s should. The curve of sharp teeth glittered under the three-quarter moon.
The brother had been found wrapped in a strand from Gleipnir, with a black-handled knife lodged in the roof of his mouth.
All who defied Fenrir or saw something that could endanger his plans were sacrificed thus; imprisoned as Fenrir had been imprisoned, wrapped in the tortuous threads of Gleipnir. Their palates were cleft by the symbolic sisters to the sword he bore for thousands of years of excruciating pain. The bodies were left on trains and in rail yards as gauntlets flung at the feet of Odin Allfather, the Foul Betrayer.
And now, the brother of one sacrifice would be used in his own turn.
But how? This one’s mind was far too disciplined to bend easily. The tendrils twisted past surface thought and memory, creeping into the hidden places of Junkyard’s soul—slowly, gently, for here Fenrir’s presence could be felt. Despite Fenrir’s care, Junkyard shifted uneasily, half-rising from the ground. But Fenrir had found what he needed. He slipped his thoughts free. Junkyard blinked and settled back with a shrug.
So simple! Fenrir tipped his head back and laughed. The sound rang with an anger that ran deeper than the ocean abyss where his serpent-brother Jormungand lay imprisoned until the end of days. Those gathered before the oil-drum fire heard the laugh as the howl of a dog. Or so they thought it must be, for when had there last been a wolf in Minneapolis?
It was all so simple. Fenrir felt victory as surely as if the blood of Odin ran down his chin. Oh, how easily these humans were manipulated. Odin was a fool to balance his fate—the fate of the world—on the shoulders of such silly beings.
For it seemed that Junkyard’s feelings for Lennie Cook had grown beyond simple affection. And so the girl would be his undoing. Fenrir curled his fingers one by one into a fist, popping each knuckle.
And then Junkyard would destroy her in turn.
Lost in visions of victory to come, Fenrir didn’t hear the noise at first, drifting down the riverbank. Clumsy feet swished through old, wet leaves. Whistled bits of song niggled at Fenrir, drawing him in annoyance from his glorious anticipation. He had heard the tune before, a hundred years ago, and it made his hackles rise. He strained all his faculties to discover who was whistling...whistling...
Whistling Dixie, suggested a small, familiar voice in the recesses of Fenrir’s mind.
The voice did not belong to him.
The invasion stunned Fenrir. Since the day of his binding, thousands of years before, he had held his rage in precarious balance, a boulder teetering on a pinnacle. But never in all those years had he been so violated. Weakened by a shockwave of outrage, his control wobbled. His human form melted to wolf, seeking strength, finding confusion, then flowed back to man form. In a fury, he turned the dark tendrils inward, tracking the voice back to its source.
He found it, buried deep, the barest spark that kept this body alive. He had indeed heard the voice before, though not in more than a century. And then only briefly in the screams of the man whose body he had assumed.
Impossible! The soul of Angus Cook should be nothing more than a dried crumb on the bottom of this body’s brainpan. Fenrir was at the peak of his power, nearing his moment of triumph—how could that feeble soul break through?
There had to be a catalyst. Outside help, of some sort. Fenrir searched the clearing, but all he sensed were the pathetic, ragged thoughts of the pathetic, ragged humans circled around the fire.
Then he found it, a scorching presence that sent the tendrils of his mind snapping back into his head like broken rubber bands. A low growl vibrated at the back of Fenrir’s throat.
The whistler had arrived, and it was Jungle Jim.
***
The hobo clown left the riverbank and headed for the landing with a high-stepping stride, yellow shoes flashing in the firelight. He stopped at the boathouse and waved across the landing at Lennie and Junkyard. The current poet, a man in moth-eaten tails and a genuine top hat, stopped reading in the middle of a word and stared at Jungle Jim with a mixture of amusement and deference. They all gazed at him that way, the hard lines of their faces softening as they greeted him.
Lennie watched the old man, loving him for his gentle silliness. Then she frowned a little. Something about him had changed. He looked the same as he had that morning, with his crooked, polka-dotted tie and the dirt still clinging to his spray-painted shoes. Only now she sensed a subtle power that she hadn’t noticed before.
But then, she had not known of her own power until this evening. She rubbed the three triangles on her hand, a habit now, and wondered whether it was he who had changed, or she.
***
Toward the front of the audience, a younger man in top-dollar basketball shoes waved Jungle Jim over. “Here, Jim. You can have my seat.”
This was one of Monte’s men. Fenrir touched the gangbanger’s thoughts and an inaudible growl vibrated his throat. The useless fool. The predispositions Fenrir had planted in his mind had been completely nullified. Fenrir glared at Jungle Jim through glowing yellow slits. How could this dullard interfere so easily? That such as this could stand in his way...
The growl in Fenrir’s throat deepened to a snarl. He hungered to become the wolf and tear the limbs from Jungle Jim while frightened little hobos scurried away like roaches. With effort, Fenrir fought back the blood lust and forced himself to remain contained in human form. It became harder and more distasteful with each day.
Then let it go. Fenrir licked his lips.
Hobos in the audience moved aside to give Jungle Jim a path to the open seat. Someone toward the back called out, “Hey, Jim—give us a song!”
Go on, be the wolf.
Shouts of affirmation rose to the treetops, as though the hobos agreed with the voice in Fenrir’s head. The audience wanted a song, and they wanted it from Jungle Jim. The hobo clown shook his head shyly and waved them off. “Naw, it wouldn’t be right to interrupt Mackinaw Matty. Not right dab in the middle of his poem.”
Think on it, Fenrir. All that nice, hot blood.
And the taste of human blood was on Fenrir’s tongue. His human shape slipped and the strength of the wolf filled him.
No. Fenrir shook his head, violently, like a dog with a bug in its ear. He couldn’t let his man-shape go. Not yet. He was still too vulnerable. He slammed his full will against the puny essence of Angus Cook. You will be silent.
The voice did not answer.
Mackinaw Matty doffed his hat. “It’s all right, Jim. I was nearly finished, anyway.” He stepped aside, making room for Jungle Jim by the oil drum. “Do you have something new for us?”
“Matter o’ fact, I do, Matty.”
Jungle Jim picked his way through the audience. As he passed, he leaned on a shoulder here: Tonight, the fork-bearded hobo would rummage for food in the garbage behind a restaurant and a pre-teen runaway would return home after an hour of sulking in the empty lot behind a gas station. Jungle Jim brushed a leg there: The quiet man would walk past the strip club and spend a quiet night in a shelter.
With each step, with each pause, with every touch of a hand, Jungle Jim undid all the malicious tinkering Fenrir had affected on these, the foot soldiers of his army.
Fenrir watched, hating the hobo clown. He had waited millennia for his release from Odin’s trap, suffered more than a century of patient planning, and now, as the end finally approached, Jungle Jim plagued him with swarm of gnat-like set-backs that seemed likely to drive him mad.
Simple, defective Jim Tuttle must somehow be more than he appeared to be.
For perhaps the hundredth time, Fenrir probed the hobo’s mind. As always, he couldn’t get past the images of dollar-store magic and small children begging for candy. Pathways to deeper memories and desires, easily accessed in normal humans, were closed off by a wall of damaged tissue. Fenrir had never been able to penetrate it.
The more direct solution hadn’t worked, either. The gangbangers he’d sent to kill Tuttle had returned, one after another, not only failing in their mission, but made so useless that Fenrir had to destroy them. Even the normally reliable Bill Sutter refused to kill him. Sutter would be punished for that. And Fenrir would find another way to rid himself of Jungle Jim Tuttle.
A sudden wind ghosted through the trees, dislodging leaf-captured rain. The fire popped and hissed angrily. Jungle Jim bent to the pile of kindling near the oil drum and added broken branches to the fire.
Straightening, he pulled a bright red handkerchief from his pocket and started to wipe his hands. A blue handkerchief followed the red, then a green, and yellow, hanging like garish laundry on the line. A chuckle passed around the audience. Grinning sheepishly, Jungle Jim stuffed the colored cloths back into his pocket.
Then the kindling caught and the fire flared. In that one blink, that small moment it took for eyes to adjust, the happy clown was gone. Jungle Jim wore the same face, but somehow changed, as though another person wore it.
The difference, Fenrir realized, was in the eyes. Before, the murky surfaces of those eyes reflected a cloudy mind. Now, they focused with an intensity that almost glowed. Surely another entity had invaded Jungle Jim’s mind, becoming trapped in a defective host. Only one like himself could interfere so easily with his plans.
Perhaps it was Tyr....
His eyes burned yellow at the thought, for it was Tyr who had baited the trap One-Eye laid for him. He probed Tuttle again. The wall seemed softer now. He pushed against it, feeling it give. The hobo stiffened and lifted his head, as though sensing the invasion. His eyes turned unerringly, staring through the shadow Fenrir wore like a cloak, straight into Fenrir’s eyes.
The moment was broken by the muffled thrashing of running footsteps in the woods. The wall in Jungle Jim’s mind solidified and his eyes dimmed, just a ridiculous fool once more.
Fenrir withdrew, disturbed. Tuttle had tracked him. That had never happened before. He did not know what it meant. Still, the wall had given way for a moment. It would do so again. And he would be waiting.
***
Briggs crashed through the woods, berating himself as he ran. There’s nothing to run from, you idiot.
A tree branch loomed suddenly out of the dark. He dodged and tried to slow down. But the hill was steep and the wet leaves were slippery and he couldn’t seem to stop running, no matter how sensible his thoughts were.
Then, without warning, he broke into a clearing lit by the dim, orange light of an oil-drum fire. More than a dozen pairs of eyes swerved toward him, staring with everything from indifference to open hostility.
It seemed he had found the poetry reading.
Not exactly how he had planned to make his entrance. He hadn’t planned to make an entrance at all—just wait in the trees until he could get Tuttle alone. I’ve got to get over this fear of black birds.
Feeling exposed, he forced his breathing to slow and scanned the motley collection of men gathered in the dim light of the fire. No friendly faces in this bunch. He was sure they could all read the panic on his dripping, wild-eyed face.
Two big thugs stepped closer, looking ready to make a park bench out of him. Briggs forced a smile and kept his hands well away from his gun and nightstick. Clearing his throat, he tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t antagonize them more. Before he could speak, a familiar voice hailed him from the direction of the fire. An oddly dressed man jumped up and down in the space that served as a stage, waving an arm at him.
“Hi, there—I remember you, I do.”
The cheerful greeting hung oddly in the hostility charged air. Briggs waved, painfully aware that his every move could trigger unpleasantness. At least he had not made the trip to Minneapolis for nothing. Tuttle was here, safe, and possibly saving his life.
