Wolf Hunted, стр. 35
In my manic, raging “youth,” my body’s death-like sleep held my dreams to their most basic state—practice with my clumsy fingers, memories of walking a path, or other simple coordination tasks.
I was, after all, not fully alive; nor am I now, but in my early days I thought less and responded more.
As my mind formed and I began to understand my hungers, my dreams shifted toward touching another with those clumsy fingers, or longing for an unknown woman I followed down a path, or other simple emotional processing.
I suspect that, like any child, I was growing up, except I was re-born into a hideous giant’s body, which also colored my dreams. So yes, overall, my two hundred years of re-life had been filled with the most common dreams a man could have.
None of which explained why I dreamed that I sat cross-legged on the roof of Raven’s Gaze Brewery and Pub, on my sunning mat, in only my shorts. No sun warmed me from above, only the soon-to-be full moon, but I squinted anyway at the brightness.
The air shimmered with heat mirages the way it does in the desert. The mirages also buzzed, the way mirages sing because a mind cannot handle that it is looking at an illusion and fills in sound effects.
Behind the restaurant, Alfheim’s thick, impenetrable forests blocked all light as if I was looking at the dark lands of the Old World and not the pine, ash, and oak of the New. Out there, timber wolves howled. A red hawk and a bald eagle soared above the treetops. Squirrels ran the branches and a white tail buck snorted and hopped back into the trees.
Behind me, at the front of the restaurant, a blindingly bright neon sign blinked: Raven’s Gaze Brewery and Pub, a Crossr…
The rest of the sign was under the edge of the roof. I could not make out what it said.
Around me, the warmth of the moon wafted off the black tar of the restaurant’s roof. To my left, the door leading inside. To my right, chimney stacks.
And directly in front of me, no more than two arm lengths away, Betsy and Ross laid out one by one their pieces of lake glass—white, black, red, and pale green.
Betsy and Ross were not these birds’ names. No, they were Ravensdottir and Ravensson, though neither of those names was correct, either. But they were significantly closer to the truth.
Ravensdottir clucked. Ravensson cawed. They bopped around their cache.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Ravensdottir cocked her head. “When the wolves consume the sun and the moon, who will return the light to the world?” she asked.
Someone poked my shoulder. “Frank!” My real shoulder.
I startled awake.
Maura stood next to my bed with her phone in her hand. “We have a problem.”
Chapter 15
Alfheim woke up with the city version of a headache and a dry, plaque-filled mouth: Someone had plastered posters all over downtown. Large posters covered shop display windows. Small posters greeted customers on doors. Several had been found glued to the sidewalks, and not one of the lampposts along Main Street had been spared.
Remy sent me several photos, and I promptly forgot about my strange raven dream. The elves and the wolves were frantically trying to figure out how someone could have gotten in under their collective magical radar. I was to check the posters for magical residue.
The posters varied somewhat in color, but not design. They all featured a blocky, modernist “Alfheim”—I had to admit that the art was interesting and the design looked professional—plus an equally modernist “Revitalization!” and a website.
The site had a whole lot of nothing. Parts slid, pictures burst forward, and icons moved and declared a bright and shining future. Colors danced on every page. But not one of the catchphrases said anything substantial.
I pulled into the same small lot I’d parked in when I’d come by Sif’s shop yesterday, and parked Bloodyhood off to the side. Even here, someone had glued a large version of the poster onto the adjoining building, and instead of historic brick, I was greeted with a huge “Revitalization!”
The air smelled crystalline and just as dappled with proto-ice as the light was with gold and gray. A hint of the coming storm smudged the northwest horizon. We were in for a bruiser of a blizzard. Close examination of the poster revealed nothing, but the sun had yet to hit the lot, and the night’s shadow still clung to the wall.
I shouldered Sal. This time of the day, I would usually leave her in the truck, but I suspected an extra pair of magical eyes would be appreciated, and the best place for me to start was downtown, where the posters had been layered on the thickest.
Sif was using a big razor blade and a lot of magic to scrape three of the posters off her front window. As I walked up she waved, set down her tools, and wiped her hands on her jeans. “Frank,” she said. “Sal.”
My axe did her version of cuddling up to my shoulder. She was afraid she’d be used to scrape windows.
Sif chuckled. “Don’t be silly.” She returned to scraping her window.
“Did you hear anything last night?” The downtown owners lived in the apartments above their shops. Sif did, and up and down Main Street, others were coming down from their beds to survey the damage.
She shrugged. “No.” She returned to scraping. “Do you see anything?”
I peered at the posters plastered over the windows across the street. They’d covered at least five blocks of shops on Main Street, and hit Wolftown, too. “No one’s alarms went off? No spells were tripped?” All those posters meant a lot of activity.
Sif wiped her hands on her pants. “I slept through the whole thing. Sigard didn’t wake up, either.” She pointed down the street at the tattoo parlor.
Three elves worked at and lived above the tattoo parlor, Sigard Tovsson being the most