"An excellent banishment, if unexpected. You re- buke my nonchalance, and rightly so. She is coming and it will be better for all of us if you are dead by then." The wendigo bared his fangs and advanced, taloned fingers extended. "It is time for the end."

Sam knew he was no physical match for the three- meter monster, but he scrambled to his feet, any- way. He crouched, presenting a smaller target. He hoped. The wendigo was stronger and faster than he was. Staring death in the face and having no better idea, he dove forward, surprising the wendigo and 349.

slipping beneath the outstetched paws. But Sam was not fast enough to escape unscathed. The wendigo whirled and raked Sam across the back, slicing fringe into a scattering of leather scraps and cutting through to shred the jacket and its lining. Four rows of fire burned into Sam's upper torso. The impact knocked him to the floor and beneath of the sweep of the wen- digo's second swipe.Sam rolled away, trying to gain enough room to get to his feet again. Pain seared through him as he flexed his muscles to keep moving. Each time his back hit the floor, the agony spiked.

An immense vise closed on his right ankle and he knew his maneuver had failed. The wendigo lifted him by his ankle and he dangled in the monster's grip.

The Ares Predator slipped from its holster, whacking Sam's elbow as it fell. His arm went numb.

"I thought you were Dog, not Rabbit," the wendigo scoffed.

Inexplicably, the wendigo howled in pain and flung Sam away.

Sam was parallel to the floor when he hit the wall.

Pain exploded in his chest and he blacked out for a second. He came to on the floor. His ears were ringing and he felt like he was going to vomit. His left leg was twisted underneath him. He felt no pain from it, but by the angle, he knew it had to be broken. It hurtto breathe, causing sharp stabbing pains in his chest.

Ribs broken too, he thought. No more running now.

The wendigo was clawing at the back of his left shoulder as if madly trying to scratch an itch. He roared in rage and pain. Sam heard a metallic click, and the wendigo straightened up, one arm wrapped across his chest to hold the opposite shoulder.

"Over here, furface."

With the ringing in his ears, Sam thought he did well to recognize the voice as female.

350.

Robert N. Charrette The wendigo turned to face the newcomer's voice.

Sam could see blood leaking from beneath the black- skinned hand. Even through the scratches that the wendigo's own talons had made were closing as Sam watched, the monster still bled from the weapon wound."You too. I should have known."

"Payback time, furface."

The wendigo dodged to one side and a whirring metal disk rushed through the space he had occupied.

The weapon buried itself in the wall over Sam's head.

He looked up. It was a spoked wheel with a series of wickedly sharp curved blades along its perimeter. It was a signature design, a shuriken in the shape of a Katherine's wheel.

"Hart," Sam croaked.

He could just catch glimpses of her beyond the bulk of the wendigo. She was a wraith in black leather, night to the day of the wendigo's white fur. Her right hand was cocked back, another of the shurikens ready to throw. In her left she carried a heavy pistol.

Having watched the fruitless attacks of Willie's drones, Sam knew the gun would do little harm to the wendigo.

The wendigo himself seemed contemptuous of it as well; his attention focused on the hand that held the throwing weapon. It must be the metal. Some awak- ened beings had allergic reactions to certain metals.For long moments the two opponents feinted. Each seemed unwilling to commit to a move that might open an attack line for the other. Hart's hand blurred for- ward suddenly, unleashing a glittering star toward the wendigo. He shifted to his right fast enough that the shuriken whizzed past. He had anticipated her throw, but had not foreseen the diving roll to her right that she made as soon as the throwing weapon left her hand. He checked his charge and started to turn to her 351.

new location. Hart fired from the floor and the wen- digo's right hand vanished in an explosion of blood and shattered bone fragments.

The wendigo's howl nearly deafened Sam. The sound, which should have been full of pain, carried nothing but outrage. He thought he heard the scream re-echo through the residence as the monster recov- ered from his surprise and charged Hart.

Trying to stand, Hart missed with her next two shots. The bullets blew craters in the wall. As Sam had done, she tried to duck under the sweep of the wendigo's arms. Also like Sam, she wasn't fastenough. One arm caught her in the hip and sent her spinning into a bookshelf. Covered in blood, she col- lapsed in a pile of books, artifacts, and simsense car- tridges.

In two steps the wendigo reached her, but instead of going for her, he grabbed the top of the bookcase with his remaining hand and tugged. The heavy wooden shelves creaked as they leaned out from the walls, the anchor bolts squealing as they pulled free from their moorings. The shelves crashed down just as Hart scrambled out of their way on her hands and knees.

"Do something, dogboy!" she shouted at Sam.

"Throw a spell! Call a spirit! Do something!"

What could he do? He had called a spirit already and the wendigo had corrupted it and turned it back against him with contemptuous ease. What could he do against such powerful magic? He was just a Dog shaman.

He wasa151 He was in a forest glade in the middle of a city, sitting on the grass. A mongrel sat by his side.

"Dog!" Sam exclaimed."Man," Dog said, mimicking Sam's intonation. "I was wondering when you'd get to me."

352.

Robert N. Charrette "I thought you were always with me?"

"I am. You're just not always with me. "

"I don't know what to do, Dog. Tell me," Sam pleaded.

"Tell you? You're the one out in the world, man.

You've got to make your own decisions. You wanna be a pup all your life, that's okay. 7 can live with it, but you can't, 'cause it ain't gonna be a long life if you don't wake up and smell the world like it is.

"The world smells like death."

"That's the wendigo talking. I thought you were a man."

"lam."

"So show me," Dog yelped. "The men I know don't give up so easily. Fight it, man."

"I don't know how," Sam complained."If you don't despair, you do."

Somewhere else, the wendigo advanced on Hart.

She drew a dagger from her belt. The orichalcum symbols inlaid in the blade's side glowed slightly, the power of that most magic of metals would enable the blade's kiss to wound the wendigo. But it was only a dagger; he had talons and fangs, and was more than twice her mass.

"He'll kill her," Sam said to Dog.

"Yup," Dog agreed jauntily. "Then you. Then lots more people. You gonna stop him?"

"What can I do?"

"Where's your faith? Us dog types believe in you men types."

Somewhere else, the wendigo smashed the dagger out of Hart's hand. The disarming move cost him a deep gash in his forearm, but he seemed content with the trade. His return strike was an open slap that caught Hart on her right temple. She tried to roll with the blow but the force was too much. She went down. 353 "She's got no hope, Dog."

"She's got you. Show some spirit, man."

Sam felt utterly stupid. Dog had been telling him what he had to do all along, and he was just being dense. The wendigo had turned the building's spirit because it was primarily the spirit of the place; and places, no matter how pure they had been, could be corrupted. Places were just things made to be used.

But people were more than things. Certainly they were physical bodies, but they were more as well, hearts and souls. Hearts could be corrupted too, but the soul's purest essence was not so easily swayed. Confused, tricked, and misled for a while, perhaps; but not for- ever, as long as there was hope and faith and belief in the ultimate goodness of life.

The wendigo had embraced death and despair, but even his creed was tainted with hope. Though the wendigo called Blight his totem and walked a toxic path, he still saw a hopeful end. He used his corrupt tools in his warped fight to rid the earth of what he considered a plague. His was a terrible path, but ul- timately a misguided one. For the shaman, Sam sud- denly felt pity. For the wendigo nature of the beinghe felt no such pity. The being it had been deserved the pity, but that being had long since died inside the great furred body.

Sam opened himself to the spirit world. Brighton Centrum was full of people, full of life. He avoided the dark corners and sought the light. In a rundown squat of a shack cobbled together in the mall space of a section scheduled for reconstruction, he found what he wanted. Nurtured by the love and hope of a family who had taken all the drek that life had thrown at them and stayed a family, a spirit dwelled here. It was a little grungy around the edges, but it had never known despair.

354.

Robert N. Charrette Sam sang the song Dog had taught him, wooing thespirit. At first it seemed deaf to his pleas, but at last it heard the song and stirred. Sam coaxed it from its place with flattery and fed it his strength. The spirit drifted through the distanceless space and joined him.

Sam rejoiced. He spoke to it of the urgency of his need. Its aura pulsed, flaring in indignation and rage as he told it of the wendigo. The spirit allowed him to sculpt its raw purity into a concentrated crystal of di- amond clarity and adamantine strength.

All the while, Dog sang counterpoint.

As Sam returned his consciousness to the mundane world, the wendigo pinned Hart beneath his foot.

He leaned forward, putting his weight onto her chest.

Sam heard her ribs crack. He feared for her life, but he was not distracted from the song. If he gave in to the fear, all hope would truly be lost.

The spirit forged of man's nature manifested as a small child. It was dirty and wore ragged castoff cloth- ing. It held a pipe in its right hand which it smacked grimly into the palm of its left.

"Yo, furball!" it called.The wendigo turned his head at the new interrup- tion. His eyes narrowed and nostrils distended as he drank in the power of the spirit.

"You gotta go, furball," the spirit said.

The wendigo moved faster than Sam had ever seen him do before. The foot that had been crushing the life out of Hart swept around toward the manifestion.

The spirit blocked with one hand on either end of the pipe, stopping the blow dead. The spirit then slid its upper hand down to the lower, raised the pipe above its head, and slammed it into the wendigo's still-raised leg. The room shook as the wendigo crashed to the floor. The splintered ends of bones protruded from his leg.

355.

The spirit's assault didn't slow. Its pipe blurred up and down, pummeling the wendigo. The spirit's strength was magical, unconstrained by its physical appearance. The wendigo was no match for its fury.

.Soon, he lay helpless.

The spirit drove the end of the pipe through the wen- digo's left shoulder and into the floor. With twoswift hammer blows of its tiny fist, it bent the pipe over, forming a staple that pinned the wendigo to the floor.

The fight seemed to go out of the wendigo and he lay limp on the floor. He watched fearfully as the spirit knelt on his chest and placed a hand on either side of his broad head. Their eyes locked, and the wendigo screamed.

The air seemed charged with electricity, but Sam knew it was magic. He slipped into his astral senses and saw the storm of mana that raged between the spirit and the wendigo. Glowing like a sun, the spirit poured golden light from its eyes into the wendigo's dark orbs. At first, all that glorious light fought against streamers of darkness that emanated from the wendi- go's eyes and wrapped around the twin columns of light as if to smother them. Seconds latera151or was it hours?a151the dark wrappings started to fade until they finally turned translucent and drifted away like smoke.

The body of the wendigo began to glow from inside as the golden light poured into him from the spirit.

The spirit grew dimmer as the wendigo grewbrighter and brighter, until Sam could no longer bear the in- tensity. Just before he dropped back to his mundane senses, he thought he saw a shape within the wendigo's form. But the glare made it too hard to be sure.

On the mundane plane, the wendigo's body looked shrunken, a bag of skin over a frame of bone. The spirit stood by the side of the body and pulled the pipe free.

356.

Robert N. Charrette "The darkness is gone," it said in a voice only Sam could hear.

"You have done all that I could ask, spirit. I can think of no better way to thank you than by giving you your freedom."

"You would do this for me? I still owe you ser- vices.""We fought a common foe. You owe me nothing, and I ask nothing more of you. You are free."

"Honor to you, man," the spirit said as it faded from sight.

Sam could have followed its departure astrally. He wanted to. He desperately wanted to know where the spirit would go. But somehow that didn't seem right.

He crawled past the husk of the wendigo toward Hart. Her breathing was ragged and shallow, and he hurried even though he knew that he was aggravating his own injuries. Pain seemed a small price to pay to be by her side. He touched her face with his hands and found that she was crying. She stirred at his touch and opened her eyes. It took her a few seconds to recog- nize him. Once she did, she tried to raise her arm.

"Wrist," she gasped.

Trying not to hurt her, Sam unsnapped the cuff and rolled back her sleeve. Sam recognized the name and logo of DocWagon on the circuit board embeddedwithin the clear plastic band she wore. The base color of the board was platinum.

"Don't leave home without it." She tried to smile at him, but the effort to talk had exhausted her waning strength.

He pressed the stud that would summon the medical service.

His own injuries sapped his strength, but he knew that unless he did something foolish, he would prob- ably live. He was not so sure about her. After all she 357.

had done to keep him from stopping the wendigo, she had risked her life to save him and give him the time to call the spirit.

"Why?" he asked.

"I wish I knew."

She passed out.43 By the time Janice reached the residence floor, ev- erything was quiet. That made her nervous. She had heard his last scream. It had been so full of pain that she feared for his safety. How could anything have happened to him? He was stronger than any norm sha- man.

She skirted the hole on the entryway floor. Unlike in the elevator shaft, there was no strong residue of magic. The destruction here was purely physical.

The doors of the formal entrance were open.

Through them wafted the faint odor of blood. Tense and alert, she padded through the archway.

There were a lot of scents in the air, but all were faint; the floor's climate control system was busy pumping warm air out the shattered northern window wall and diluting the concentrations below the level she could track. Still, she identified the scent of strangers lingering in the air. One, a male, was vaguely familiar, but the other, a female, was new to her.

There was also the ozone tang of machines like the onethat had almost struck her in the elevator shaft. That odor was strong enough to indicate that there might be sev- eral of the things; they didn't have enough individu- 358.

Robert N. Charrette ality for her to tell if there had been only the one or if more might be lurking about. The machine had been small enough to hide effectively.

The one scent she most wanted to smell was the most elusive.