Free Drag Hunt by Pat Kelleher Page B

trust them. How do you know they’ll keep their word? You know what we’re like—fickle, vindictive, and capricious. You’ve been on the raw end too often not to have something on them, am I right? What did you hear? What is it?”
    Nataero pressed his lips together and shook his head. He wasn’t telling.
    Coyote’s eyes narrowed. “Well, I’m still here and free, so they’re not going to be too happy, are they? They’ll blame you. Do you really think they’ll let you take your place after this?”
    Nataero chewed his lip, considering, weighing his options which, right now, were pitifully few.
    Coyote waited.
    “They... they were talking about a birthing—”
    Coyote didn’t like the sound of that. So that’s what they wanted his pecker for, to conceive something? It felt like an assault. They hadn’t asked. They hadn’t even bought him dinner. Or a turkey baster. Did they have some old Elder god brood hag bound up somewhere? To be fair, his penis would shag anything. It was incorrigible. But there was no way he was going to consent to be a sperm donor to some misbegotten ritual to birth, what, some dark eldritch monstrosity? And if they did, they’d better not come after him for maintenance.
    “Who? Who were talking?” asked Coyote, shaking the god by the shoulders.
    Nataero shook his head and sneered. “It’s too late. They have everything they need. You can’t stop them. They’ll know you’re here. You’ve cost me everything. It’s all lost.” There was another silence, then, finally, in a small voice he said, “They mentioned the club.”
    “A club, which club?”
    Nataero looked tired now, beaten . “The Club. There’s only one. They’ll be afraid I talked. I must—”
    He stopped when the glass in the front door shattered and the door splintered open, followed by a gust of cold wind that made Richard’s eyes sting.
    “Christ, where did that come from?” he yelled above the gale.
    “Raróg!” wailed Nataero hopelessly. “It is a Raróg!”
    The wind whipped around their feet in little eddies, gaining speed and power.
    Richard grabbed the Roman god’s wrist. “What the hell’s going on? Just tell us!”
    Nataero snatched his arm back, and looked at him with hatred and disgust. “Why? You have destroyed me. Don’t you understand? Just when everything I desired was within my grasp, you fucking mortal! It’s over! Over!” He sagged against the wall and looked as if he might weep.
    Richard left him there.
    The Raróg gathered momentum, building in size, becoming a whirlwind. It weaved unsteadily about the hall, whipping up loose papers and parchment.
    Richard and Coyote pushed through the rooms, along the narrow trenches that ran between the high tumbling mounds of other people’s belongings. There must be a back door, somewhere.
    Around them, objects began shaking and dancing, before taking to the air, caught up in the whirlwind as it began churning up the accumulated lost and stolen ephemera of millennia, and drawing them into itself.
    Above the cacophony of wind came a howl of despair.
    “No! Please!”
    Blinded by dust, Richard and Coyote flung themselves on the floor as the roaring increased and the whirlwind passed over, Coyote hugging his war bundle to him, to prevent the Raróg from consuming that too.
    At some point, the sound of the wind lessened and died.
    When Richard raised his head, they were lying on the dusty floorboards in the dining room of an old, abandoned house. Of all Nataero’s hoarded objects, there was no sign. The house was empty.
    “Well, what do you know,” said Coyote, dusting himself off. “They do want me alive.”
    “Nataero!” called Richard.
    No answer.
    They found him, curled in a foetal position against the hall wall; blank eyed, with saliva dribbling from his mouth.
    Richard shook him. There was no response. No recognition. He was catatonic.
    “There’s nothing we can do. His mind has gone,” said Coyote.
    “How? What the hell