Free The Smoking Mirror by David Bowles Page A

but coiled back around when it found its struggle useless. Opening its jaws impossibly wide, it flung its diamond-shaped head toward the girl, who had just rolled over and was regarding the demon rushing at her with wide, frightened eyes that closed for a moment before the wolf snarled its way to the surface of her being and scrabbled out of reach.
    Johnny came forward a little, bonding with his tonal so that he could guide it with his conscious, human mind. He roared at Carol, who had run down the slope in her lupine form, the strange tzapame necklace still snug around her neck. She looked back and saw him struggling to hang on to the massive serpent. With a short, barking howl, she turned around and ran at the hellish reptile, leaping at the soft flesh below its head. Realizing that his sister had found the beast’s weak spot, Johnny used his claws to clamber up its side. Together they ripped at the snake with their deadly teeth until great gouts of black began to squirt all over. They dropped to the ground and backed away, their hackles raised. The snake quivered for a moment and then fell, thudding like a dead weight against the mountainside.
    After a few moments of staring at the twitching corpse of their enemy, Carol walked over to her clothes, nuzzling them into a pile that she picked up with her narrow snout. She ducked behind a boulder, and soon Johnny heard her speak.
    “You should probably shift back and get dressed, Johnny. I don’t particularly feel like seeing your naked butt walking around through Mictlan.”   
    And how am I supposed to do that? Johnny was stumped for a second, staring down at his paws, at the mysterious bracelet that encircled his left foreleg, but then he realized that all he needed to do was to come forward , totally inhabiting his body. The tonal obediently backed off, and his body stretched and snapped itself back into the form of a twelve-year-old. To his delight, his feet were completely healed. He pulled on nearly all his clothes, abandoning only the bloody socks, which he was covering with a medium-sized rock when Carol emerged from behind the boulder.
    “Wow.” There was a look of wonderment on her face.
    “I know, right? I guess it’s good Xolotl’s not around. He’d be all ‘see, I told you it would be remarkably easy’ and stuff. I really don’t want to be chewed out right now.”
    Carol giggled. “Yeah, we’re kind of all chewed out , huh?”
    That cracked Johnny up. He doubled up with more laughter than her cheesy joke deserved, partly because it was nice to see her loosen up, partly because he had been so on edge that he needed the release. “That was pretty good,” he managed to say after a few seconds. “All chewed out. Heh. Funny Carol.”
    He showed her his feet, and she gave him a hug for the first time in months. Feels good to click again, like we used to. Nothing like killing a demon snake to bring a family together, I guess!
    They continued down the slope, laughing and comparing their impressions of the fight, what each had sensed in their nagual forms about the reptilian titan and the strange new landscape. They had both noticed the absence of the living web they had discovered they could perceive in their own world. “It’s probably because, uh, yeah, this is the Land of the Dead,” Carol ventured.
    “Well, hello, but not even that snake seemed alive. Did you notice it had no scent? And what the heck was that black stuff? That sure wasn’t blood. Didn’t taste like a regular lizard or snake…and my tonal has eaten a bunch of those.”
    “Maybe it’s some sort of demon, made out of weird, I don’t know, supernatural stuff. And, Johnny? Lizards? Really? Gross.”
    “Uh, didn’t you snack on a tlachuache ?” He made a face and feigned a stuck-up fresa accent. “ Guácala. O sea, qué asco, en serio .”
    Carol sputtered with laughter. “Yeah, I guess an opossum is about on level with a… Holy Mother of God! ”
    “Huh?” Johnny looked