After sundown on November 4th Burleigh Falls in Kawartha Lakes had another fentanyl victim who, my inner doctors assured me, had two options: joining my army, or permanent brain damage and getting fed like a toddler for the rest of his life. He chose option A. I drank through the fresh injection marks, so the people discovering the young Indian man’s body wouldn’t even be wrong when they pointed to the cause of death. My crew had just gained a chemical engineering student who knew a lot about fuel cells, so he’d be making the mindscape’s vehicles run faster and longer.

Sitting near the little community’s chuckling falls with a damp breeze in my face, I sent my flying head south to scan Peterborough, which would probably be my biggest feeding chance before Toronto itself.

No one was using psychic speech to talk about the vogelfrei or Nocome the wendigo in the city, or even about vampires. I was reminded of those conversations in Toronto I had detected but been unable to pinpoint and truly eavesdrop on. The hunters might still be spreading out further north. I retreated with my flying head from Peterborough for a larger scan …

… and got nothing. None of the hits in Sudbury or Barrie I had come to rely on, none on the road near Nipigon or Timmons.

Shit. They were on to me, cloaked against my long-range peeping. And the next step to cloaking themselves against me would be noticing my flying head and following it back to my body.

I need some cybersecurity person … my computer people so far have been too well-behaved.

Peterborough could be a problem after all, and the city’s Regional Health Centre might be manned by middle-management types on a short leash with Toronto’s tutelaries. I decided that I’d go but play it safe, sticking to the private homes.

Once that was settled I was restless, so I exercised until dawn was just an hour away, twisting burpees and gymnastics and weight-shifting and solidity-shifting into a single routine in the half-bare treetops south of Burleigh Falls. Handstands, one-handstands, finger stands, twirls beyond the ice skater or ballerina, snaking like smoke around trunks, falling from the tops of trees but then floating rather than crashing down, mastering this video game character I had become, throwing in the occasional pure-strength jump or toss of a rock. I had somewhat neglected coordinating everything into a single fluid routine, the individual acts easy but the mixture bewildering at first.

With a decent thirst built up I capped off the night’s end by opening up a groggy deer, sniffing it out and chasing it down with ease, giving insufficient warning for the animal itself or its tutelary. Once the animal was dead I spoke casually to the carcass, telling the Navajo witch spirit about her sisters and brothers condemned to serve Nocome.

“If I’m ever in a bar having one of those stupid arguments – Batman versus Superman, Godzilla versus Kong – now I can cross one off my list: wendigo beats skinwalker.”

The two dead eyes glared a little, but didn’t move.

“If they’re not all cunts like you, perhaps I’ll have them stick around once I’ve finally solved the Nocome problem. Daphne told me that Nocome has some sort of chain or rope to control her old meals, though my tulpas couldn’t see them. Know anything about that?”

The dead deer head said nothing. I wiped my chin of the last of the gulps, and then my mouth moved on its own.

“Speak four-walker. Manidoowaaling has my hand on its wall, and I put my hand to your heart.” 

Suddenly the dead deer was gnashing its teeth and snarling, a high whistling scream tearing at my ears. I cringed away, but didn’t flee, a slow smile on my face.

Daphne Laframbois, recovered from Nocome’s prison, was just getting warmed up. She took command of my right arm and showed the palm at the deer, speaking still in a language that I understood only seconds after the final word.

“You will speak four-walker. I see how you bought your power. Like a daughter of Lot, though your father was just bones.” 

Hmm, incestuous necrophilia. That was up there with cannibalism as a way to get yourself a hit of dark magic.

The dried dead deer husk spasmed and flapped and tried to rise up to fly away, but could not, wriggling like an impaled worm.

“Tear off and wear the witch’s skin,” Daphne told me.

I set to work, hurrying because the sun was rising. This was going to be quick and messy.

“Hurry.” I got my teeth in there to get the skin off the meat, peeling the deer’s hide and flaying it open enough for me to crudely wear it. In my haste I almost tore my own clothes off before donning my new suit.

“Send your flying head out again, before the dawn!” 

I complied, and I perceived

(oh wow oh wow)

what a skinwalker can perceive, through the eyes and ears and other senses of all the animals they have defiled throughout their life. Deer, coyote, foxes, hounds, owls, falcons, crows …

“Percy! Your engine! Hurry!” This was information at a volume beyond anything I had ever experienced, a thousand little whispers replaced with millions of roars.