Free Tricked by Kevin Hearne Page B

been a two-ton boulder above his head with one hand. As I watched, he jumped high into the air with it, one of those super anime leaps that are wholly unnecessary but completely awesome, and then came down with that boulder in his hand like he was dunking a basketball—a two-ton sandstone basketball that he slammed onto the head of the third
draugr
. The creature just disappeared under that rock, and Frank crouched down to land on top. If he’d been in the movies, he would have stayed there and risen slowly, heroically, as the dust cleared, but he leapt right down off that boulder and charged the last
draugr
, who was coming for me. Frank’s shirt strained at the buttons as muscles he didn’t have before threatened to burst out. His eyes were completely white and glowed a bit. I switched my vision to the magical spectrum, and Frank didn’t have that cute little white line in his aura anymore; he was almost entirely made of white magic now, at godlike levels. He whipped around his right arm in a backhand swing at the
draugr
’s head, and when his fist connected, it was like he had teed off on the fourth hole. The head sailed away into the north sky, in the directionthat Hel had run, and the dead blue corpse sank to the ground. Frank roared at it, and the veins on his trunk-size neck stood out; the turquoise stone of his bolo tie snapped off the cord and went zinging away, and his massive quivering pecs reminded me of Lou Ferrigno’s. His opinion of the
draugr
established, he turned in a circle, searching for more foes. He looked faintly disappointed not to find any more—Hel was gone—and those glowing eyes examined us again for an uncomfortable few seconds, to make sure we weren’t legal targets. And then he began to deflate, the light winked out of his eyes, and he coughed once, violently, before slumping into a faint. Coyote darted in quickly to catch him; he was a frail old man again.

Chapter 6
     
    “Okay, Coy—Mr. Benally, I mean—what the fuck just happened?”
    “I should ask you the same thing, Mr. Collins!” Coyote snarled. “Who was that lady and what were those things?”
    “Tell me about Frank first. Is he going to be okay?”
    “Yeah, he’ll be all right,” Coyote said, the anger in his voice modulating to regret. Frank’s chest was still moving up and down. “Wished he hadn’t of done that, though. He ain’t gonna get another shot, and I was kinda countin’ on him to use it on somethin’ else.”
    “What’d he do?”
    “He called Changing Woman and told her we had monsters here. Let himself be a vessel, see? So she sent her son, Monster Slayer, to help us out, a onetime limited engagement.” So that
had
been a god inside him. An aptly named one.
    Granuaile’s footsteps approached from the south. “I’m assuming it’s safe now? Ugh,” she said, looking at the headless corpses. “What are those things?”
    “They’re sort of like zombies on Red Bull with a little bit of ghost mixed in,” I said.
    Frank moaned and his eyes snapped open. Then he closed them again and raised a hand to his head, saying something in Navajo that made Coyote laugh. He musthave a killer headache. Coyote helped him up to a sitting position and patted him companionably on the back.
    “All right, Mr. Collins,” Coyote said. “It’s your turn. Who was that lady?”
    “Yeah,” Frank said. “I nearly crapped my pants.”
    “That was Hel,” I said, “the Norse goddess of death.”
    Frank turned to Coyote to see if he was buying it. “He’s not bullshitting?”
    “Naw, this guy don’t usually tell stretchers about gods,” he answered. Then he asked me, “What did she want with you?”
    “She, um, wanted my help, I guess.”
    “Help with what?” Granuaile said, her lip curled. “Personal hygiene?”
    “Um … destroying the world.” I tossed Moralltach aside and sat down heavily in the red dust next to Frank, executing a double face-palm. Saying that out loud took quite a bit out of