I knew a couple of other very random things. First, at the behest of the King of Spain, Canary Islanders had settled what became San Antonio, Texas, and set up the first official government in Texas. Second, the original natives of the islands hadn’t been of African phenotype. That and the local island story that there was a mysterious island among the Canaries that disappeared and reappeared had been used to fuel all sorts of Atlantis rumors.
None of what I knew appeared to be useful in the present situation, so I kept my mouth shut.
“That’s right,” Kyle said. “My folks used to vacation there every year—still do for all I know. I haven’t talked to them much since … well, since. Anyway—” He spoke quickly, to get the attention off events that were still painful. Kyle seldom spoke about his family, who had disowned him when he’d told them he was gay. “There was this old woman at my parents’ favorite hotel who watched kids so that the adults could go play. The native Canarians who worked at the hotel swore she was a witch—there are a lot of witches on the Canary Islands. Before I met Warren, I pretty much dismissed all of that as superstition, but now … anyway, the story of Guayota was one of her favorites. One hellish vacation, I heard it five times in three days.” He frowned. “She’s the only one I heard it from, so you should check it out somewhere else. I’m pretty sure she made parts of it up.”
“Keep going,” I told him. “We’ll consult Wikipedia and the library later. Promise.”
“It would be nice,” Laughingdog said with feeling, “to hear something to put what I know in context. It might even help me make some of the odd things more useful. Please, tell us this story about Guayota.”
“Okay,” Kyle said. “Okay. I’ll tell you what I know.” He leaned forward, and I don’t know how he did it, but with a bit of body language and a little warble in his voice, he called to mind a little old lady. I’d always thought that he’d had some drama training at some point. “There is a huge old volcano on Tenerife called El Teide. It’s the tallest peak in Spain and one of the tallest volcanos in the world. The old people who once lived on the island called it Echeyde, which means either ‘hell’ or ‘the gates of hell’ depending upon the person you ask. Guayota lived in El Teide, either guarding the door, ruling there, or both. Only the old ones could tell you for certain, and they are gone long, long ago.”
His voice softened as he talked, and he pulled an accent out of his memory and added it to the story. The chair arm I sat on was uncomfortable, so I slid off it onto the floor. The floor was better, especially when I set my back against the chair and leaned my head against the arm. I’d gotten the post-danger jitters over with while we waited for the Cantrip agents to figure out that Adam wasn’t going to talk until he was good and ready. Now I was just tired. The nap in the car had made it worse, and my eyelids fought to close.
“Now Guayota was, like the Greek Titans, a violent and impetuous creature of great power. He roamed the mountain in the shape of a great, black, hairy dog with red eyes, and tragedy befell any who met him in his runs because he would eat them up. One bite for children, two for mothers, or three for big warriors who came to fight him.”
Hairy? I thought about it. Maybe the way his skin had seemed to drip and crack could be described as hairy, or maybe he had another form, too.
“Charming story to tell children,” said Laughingdog.
“I thought so, too,” agreed Kyle cheerfully in his own voice, then there was a little pause as he remembered that Laughingdog didn’t deserve a cheerful reply. He continued in a more guarded tone. “My littlest sister had nightmares. And when my parents arranged a sightseeing tour up the side of the old volcano, they couldn’t figure out why she wouldn’t go.”
Kyle recloaked himself in the persona of the old woman, and continued, “Guayota was terrifying, but he was also lonesome. Every day, he would look up and see Magec, the sun, running her path in the sky. He thought her beautiful and wondrous and him so lonely and miserable on that mountain. So that old Guayota, he plotted to take her for his own.”
Hadn’t Guayota made some reference to the sun when he was talking about Christy? I tried to visualize Kyle’s story, to put Flores in the place of Guayota, but all I could see was a wizened old witch with a roomful of kids that she was scaring. Witches feed off other people’s pain; I wondered if they could feed off terror as well.
“So one day, he jumped, the old devil, he jumped out of the top of El Teide and captured her for himself. Loud she cried and hard she fought, but she was no match for old Guayota. She could not burn him with her fierceness, for though she was the fire of day, he was born in the fire of the earth, which is more ferocious even than the sun. Nor could she blind him with her bright beauty because his eyes were used to the molten rock of his home. And when she got too bright for his eyes, the old dog, he just closed his eyes and used his ears and his nose, which were as sharp as any shepherd’s dog’s and more so.
“He took her down to his home and caged her inside the volcano. For weeks, the sky was dark, and smoke filled the air. It was then that Guayota’s children were born, while he held Magec in his caves. They are the tibicenas, fierce, hairy black dogs that emerged from the mountain in those days when Guayota held Magec his prisoner. The only light that shone on Tenerife was Magec’s light, escaping here and there from the caves in the old volcano, and the light of the tibicenas’ eyes.
“But the people of the island were frightened that they had no sun. They called and prayed to Achamán, he who created the world. Achamán listened to the cries of the people and came down to the volcano to rescue Magec. Guayota fought mightily because he did not want to give up Magec. The volcano spewed fire and rock, and many died as the two gods battled. At last, knowing that he could not win, Guayota called up the fires of the earth to swallow the island and Magec, so that if he could not have her, neither could anyone else.
“Achamán took Guayota and stuffed him in the volcano, stopping the fire and smoke and rescuing the people of the island. He freed Magec and sent her racing in the sky once more, fierce and bright as she should be. But she is always watchful when she flies over the top of El Teide, lest old Guayota catch her once again.”
Kyle stopped, smiled a little. “I told the story to my dad once. He told me that it was a primitive attempt to explain a volcanic eruption. El Teide is an active volcano, the last eruption was a couple hundred years ago. He also pointed out that the reactions on the sun’s surface are hotter than any volcano magma.”
Talk turned to the night’s adventures, which Adam was more than capable of telling. I drifted off into a dream of a witch who changed children into great, shaggy black dogs that looked like long-haired versions of the dog I’d shot, the one who’d turned into a man. The man raised his dead head to meet my eyes with his. His eyes were the color of lava.
“Mercy,” he said. “Where is my sun?”
“Mercy, wake up,” said Adam.
I sat up like a scalded cat and winced because everything hurt—especially the burn on my cheek.
“Okay,” said Laughingdog. “Adam’s been filling us in on your night. Were you awake for all of Kyle’s story?”
I yawned. “Yep. I didn’t fall asleep until we got to our part. Sorry. Long day.”
“Fine.” Laughingdog settled back into his chair, one leg up and the other doing a restless dance on the floor. “Kyle’s story makes me pretty sure that Guayota is one of the great manitous.”
I frowned at him. “Manitou” was an Algonquin word for spirit, the spirit that lived in all things: in rocks, in rivers, in mountains. Great manitou … I made some quick jumps of logic. “When you say great manitous, you’re talking about creatures like Coyote?”
“That’s right. Mostly right. No.” He made a frustrated sound. “Coyote, Raven, Wolf, are different than manitous. Coyote is the spirit of mischief, of second chances, of adaptation—the archetype of coyotes. It is true that he shares characteristics with the great manitous. Like him, they can take the shape
of people, though they are not people. They are powerful in their sphere of influence.
“Mostly the great manitous ignore us and pay attention only to those things that matter to them. The Columbia has a great manitou, I can feel it sometimes, but I’ve never heard of it manifesting itself, not even in stories.”
“You think Guayota is a great manitou, the spirit of the volcano,” I said. “Sort of like Pele in Hawaii?”
He nodded.
“So what is he doing here? Shouldn’t he be stuck somewhere within a few thousand miles of where he belongs?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he grew bored.” He shrugged. “If he were Coyote, that would be the answer, wouldn’t it? Maybe Guayota grew lonely. The only thing I know is that, although great manitous can manifest and travel for a time, they do need a strong connection to their spirit-home. Without that connection, they will return to their spirit shape and be pulled home.”
“So we need to find out what his connection is,” said Adam.
“Right,” agreed Laughingdog. “But here’s the part that had me—” He substituted “driven to find you” for “breaking out of jail.” He was going to have to be smoother if he didn’t want Kyle to realize something was up. At least he was careful to look at me and not Kyle when he changed up his words. Looking at Kyle would have been a dead giveaway. “I had a few dreams, didn’t mean much to me until you showed up, and I had that freaking nasty Seeing. I would have let it go, but then I had a worse dream.”
“What already?” I said.
“Some things you need to know about my ‘gift.’” He said it with his fingers as quotes so I knew what he thought about his gift from Coyote.
“Okay.”
“One. It usually comes in dreams or small bits, big Seeings aren’t that common. Two. Sometimes I see the future, sometimes the past, most times it’s the present only somewhere else where I can’t freaking do anything about anything.”
I nodded.
“Finally. When I do see the future, while it is possible to change it, the reason I see that particular future is because it has become the most likely scenario, and it’s pretty close to being set in stone.”
“So what did you dream?”
“There is a room with a Texas flag on the wall and paintings of dogs. On the floor is this woman lying dead. At first I thought she was you, but she isn’t. There’s a white pit bull on the floor beside her, with its throat torn out.”
I jerked my head up. “Is she a small woman, Hispanic?”
“She was dead, Mercy, and lying on the floor. I didn’t have a measuring stick. Could have been Hispanic or Indian, which is why I thought it was you originally. She opens her eyes, says your name, then she’s dead again.”
“You know who it is,” Adam said.
I stood up. “You couldn’t have told me this an hour ago? Adam, it’s Joel’s wife, the one who talked to Christy about dogs. We’ve got to go, right now.”
He stood up and took in the room at a glance. “You come, too, Laughingdog. We’ll put you up for the night and help you get where you need to be in the morning.”
“Fine,” Gary said, a little reluctantly. I didn’t think he wanted to do anything more now that he’d given us the information he had.
“Zack?” Adam said.
“Yessir?”
“Anyone gives you a hard time, you tell me or Warren. Or you can tell Kyle, and he’ll tell us.” Adam named the people Zack would be most familiar with. “We’ll take care of it, okay? You are safe here.”
The submissive wolf looked away, his mouth pinched in at the corners. Adam had started out of the room, but the other’s lack of response had him turned back around.
“You will tell one of us.” It was a full-on order; I could feel the stir of pack magic.
Zack threw back his head in a full temper. “Fine.”
Adam nodded once, then jogged out of the house. He stopped at the door. “Kyle? You and Zack get overnight bags packed and head out to Honey’s. This place has been in the papers in connection with Mercy and the pack, and that makes it too easy for him to find.”
“Okay,” Kyle said. “I know where Honey lives, I think. If I get turned around, I’ll call Warren.”
“South Kennewick,” I told Adam for directions as we hopped into the SUV. “Off Olympia.”
“Presa Canario,” he said after we were well on our way. “Warren told me a while ago that the breed originated on the Canary Islands.”
“Where are we going, and why am I going with you?” asked Laughingdog.
“Lucia is a friend. She has a big white Staffordshire terrier.” I glanced over my shoulder at Laughingdog. “Pit bull in layman terms. You didn’t dream of her until after we left you at the prison.”
“That’s right.”
“It was right afterward that Honey and I went to visit with her.” My fault if something happened to Lucia. Why else would Flores pay any attention to her at all?
“And you are bringing me with you because?” he asked again.
“Because Kyle is a lawyer and could lose his license to practice if it comes out that you were at his house,” said Adam. “I promised his partner I’d look after him.”
“Partner,” Laughingdog said musingly. “Warren. Right? That’s the other man you mentioned. I knew Kyle Brooks was tied up with the werewolves after reading about the group that attacked him a few months ago. That’s why I went there. I got turned around, and by the time I figured out where I was, his house was a lot closer than yours, and I was on foot. Four feet. I thought he’d be a werewolf, but as soon as he answered the door, I could tell that he wasn’t. It intrigued me.”
Adam’s voice was like sandpaper when he said, “In my pack, people can date whoever they like.”
“Hey, I’m not pointing fingers, man,” said Laughingdog. “Just explaining why my thoughts went right to look at Zack, but a deaf and blind man could tell that there is nothing between them. So his partner is this other werewolf.” He breathed out through his nose in a huff of amusement. “A gay werewolf. I never thought I’d see the day that a pack let a gay werewolf live.”
“Gary,” I said, “shut up before someone hurts you.”
“Warren,” said Adam at the same time, “survived a lot of idiots with that attitude.” He paused. “And you ought to listen to Mercy’s advice.”
We made it to Joel and Lucia’s house about twenty minutes after we’d left Kyle’s house—most of it in silence. I’d like to have believed that we’d quelled Gary, but his silence was punctuated with amusement that was very palpable.
As soon as we pulled into the driveway, I knew there was something wrong—no dogs were barking. I knocked on the door, the men at my back. When the door opened and Lucia peered around it, my breath left my mouth in a whoosh of relief.
“Mercy?” she asked. She seemed distracted and worried.
I nodded. “Yes. Sorry to come over so late without warning you first, but the matter was urgent. I think that Christy’s stalker is a little more dangerous than we thought—and I might have led him right to your door. I know it’s late, but can we come in to talk?”
She gave the men a cautious look.
“This is Gary Laughingdog,” I told her. “My half brother.” That was a simpler explanation for his presence than any other I could come up with on short notice, and it had the additional benefit of being true. I could feel his eyes boring holes in my back, but he didn’t comment. “And this is my husband, Adam.”
“The werewolf,” he said—and it was just exactly the right thing to say because she smiled a little. “Your husband has worked for me a couple of times.”
“I thought you looked familiar. Sure, come on in.” She opened the door, and we trailed behind her into the house. She saw me look around. “The dogs are back in their kennels for dinner. I’ll bring Aruba back in for the night in an hour or so. The rest kennel outside.”
“Why aren’t they barking?” I asked. “I was worried something had happ
ened to you.”
She smiled again as she led us into the living room, but there was tension around her eyes. “No. We teach them not to bark at night unless they are put on watch. That way, our neighbors do not complain about our dogs.”
“Where’s Joel?” I asked, sitting down on the same couch as last time.
She shook her head, and I realized that Joel was what she was worried about, not us. “He’s late.”
I opened my mouth to say something as reassuring as I could, given that I didn’t have a clue why he’d be late, when my eyes fell on the flag on the opposite wall. The one Gary had seen in his vision.
“Joel is from Texas,” I said, staring at the flag on the wall, thinking that what had popped into my head was absolutely ridiculous. Stupid. But there was that flag staring me in the face, so I had to ask. “Is his family, by any chance, from San Antonio?”
She nodded. “That’s right. San Antonio. He was up here visiting some cousins when we met. We moved to Texas first, but I got homesick, and we moved back to the Tri-Cities.”
A handful of families had been shipped to Texas from the Canary Islands by the King of Spain three centuries ago. There was supposed to have been a much larger immigration, but the whole plan had stalled out for reasons that had escaped my magpie collection of historical trivia. Three centuries was a lot of time, and San Antonio was a huge city.
Assuming Gary was right, Guayota was a manitou, the spirit of the volcano, and he needed something with him that tied him to the Canary Islands. He’d said that the dog I’d killed, his “child,” was immortal. Tied to mortal flesh. And when Guayota left, the dog had turned into a man. Kyle had talked about tibicenas, Guayota’s children who were black dogs. What if it was the tibicenas that served as Guayota’s ties to the volcano? I’d killed the “mortal flesh” his tibicena was tied to. What if he needed to find another man to bind to the tibicena? What if that man had to be descended from a Canary Islander? Maybe Lucia and Joel’s troubles weren’t because I’d come to them for help.
“Do you know,” I asked carefully, “if Joel is one of the Canarios?” Adam looked at me sharply. “A descendant of the Canary Islanders who settled in Texas?”