I recognized the skull—the one from the bookshelf in Talvi Inverno’s office.
And its glowing eyes were focused solely upon Tripp Gregory.
“Oh crap,” I muttered. “An otso.”
“W-what?” Tripp said.
“Spirit bear,” I said. “Corrupted servitor of a Lapland hag, if I’m guessing right. And it’s pissed.”
“Heebie Jeebies,” Tripp babbled. “I’m having the Heebie Jeebies. I need to go lay down.”
“I can see it too, idiot,” I snarled.
He stared blankly at me and asked, “You’ve got them too?”
My brain went into overdrive. The best call here would have been to get in the car and drive the hell away—but Tripp Gregory, the blithering moron, had made that impossible. A simple circle would have protected us from the furious spirit, but with a high tech explosive device about five feet away, I didn’t dare use my power. It killed cell phones at the best of times, and I couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t set off the bomb. Nor could I just depart and leave the damned thing where it was—there were too many people around, passing by in cars and on their way down Chicago’s streets on a muggy summer evening.
But all the potential bystanders meant that whoever had planted the bomb hadn’t had a lot of time. A couple of minutes, top. Odds were good that it hadn’t been wired to blow if removed—that could have been suicide for the bomber if someone had interrupted him, for example.
I decided to chance it. I reached under the car, seized the device, took a breath and then yanked it free. It had been held to the old metal gas tank by strong magnets and came loose readily enough, and suddenly I was holding a big fistful of kaboom in my hand. I straightened as the spirit bear closed to a dozen yards and—
--and thought about leaving Tripp to the thing.
It would solve so many problems.
But it was no way to live.
So I grabbed him by the jacket, screamed, “Run!” and hauled him into a sprint with me.
I’ll give Tripp this much: he was in shape. Though he was considerably shorter, he burst into a run that carried him half a step ahead of me within twenty yards, his eyes wide and panicked.
Behind us, the otso crashed out of the alley and slammed into the side of the Munstermobile, crumpling its front quarterpanel as if it had been made of aluminum instead of Detroit steel. The car jounced a foot out into the street, causing horns to honk and brakes to squeal. A jogger staggered to one side, staring in shock as the only semi-visible form of the otso regained its balance, shaking the very visible skull with a dazed-looking gesture, then oriented itself on us and set out in pursuit. Lights exploded into showers of sparks as it galumphed past them, leaving a swath of darkness and screams in its wake.
“Heebie Jeebies!” Tripp squealed, casting a terrified glance over his shoulder. “This is Heebie Jeebies! This isn’t real!”
“Come on,” I growled. There was a spot close where I might have a chance to handle the thing, if we could make it there. I took a left, sprinted diagonally across an intersection and nearly got us hit by a fancy town-SUV. Horns blared—at least for a few seconds. Then the otso came sprinting its ghostly way across the intersection in pursuit of us, blowing out lights and engines （and horns） with equal disdain.
I glanced down at the bomb in my hands and gulped. The otso was apparently as disruptive to tech as me when I was working. If it got close enough to set the thing off…
I needed open space.
The Battle of Chicago had left a lot of wreckage. The Titan’s arcane superweapon had collapsed forty-four buildings, most of them of the very tall persuasion, and dozens more had been damaged or destroyed when they collapsed. In the month that had gone by since then, they’d mostly gotten the streets cleared out where possible, but there were still entire blocks covered in rubble and wreckage, and the city had been forced to resort to simply walling off those blocks with sheets of plastic until the reclamation and salvage crews from the city’s rebuilding project could come through and start digging them free. The news estimated that it would be at least a year before all the rubble was cleaned up, and maybe another one before all the reconstruction could begin.