There was a rhythm to the climb, a comfortable cadence that clearly let my mind wander. I reset my thoughts toward the data I had available, considering what I knew as I edged upward. Boiling rivers and dried-up pipes weren’t making the news, but there had been a recent story about a proposition to dam the other Yakima River source lakes. I didn’t know if Asag was an opportunistic demon, or the kind someone had to raise, but the threat to the free-flowing sources might tie into the signs of his presence here. All the big US rivers and a lot of the smaller ones were already dammed, and the effects of that were visible in dozens of ways all over the country. An environmentalist with his head on wrong might’ve thought a demon would help solve the watershed problems, but it was just as possible that demons struck where the terrain was inviting. The Cascades offered mountains for mating with, plenty of rivers, lakes, creeks and streams, and enough people that if he survived by making them sick, he’d have a steady diet of illness coming his way.
But it didn’t really matter how he’d gotten here, unless someone had raised him. In that case, capturing him would give me a line back to whoever had done the summoning. If he’d simply spent the past four millennia digging his way through from Sumer and only just made it to Eastern Washington, then all I had to do was bury him again. In another four thousand years he could be someone else’s problem. It wasn’t the kind of solution Joanne would embrace, but I’d made my peace with what I could and couldn’t do. Burying evil worked for me.
I’d climbed high enough on those thoughts that the fir trees had thinned around me. A few sturdy ones still grew higher on the mountain, but I’d reached something close enough to a tree line that I sent a silent apology toward Marnie’s teens. They’d no doubt been up around this level too. I checked my phone, which told me I was at about 2600 feet above sea level. A good day’s hike under ordinary circumstances, but probably nowhere near my destination. Rocks slid beneath my feet and bounced a few yards down the mountainside before settling into new beds. The mosquitoes weren’t so bad this high up, but I left the subwoofers on, just in case. Then I started circling toward narrow waterfall trickles and stream rivulets spilling downhill.
I had a great view of the simmering Keechelus Lake. If my instincts were right about the causality being the demon Asag, he had to be within view of the lake himself, or it wouldn’t be boiling. I didn’t want to think about how many square miles the lake was visible from, because Eastern Washington would be a wasteland before I’d explored them all. But Marnie had said her kids were up on this snub-nosed peak, so that was where I had to start. I gulped down most of a sixteen ounce water bottle and stuck what was left into my pack. I had another larger bottle, too, and an unwise lack of concern about what would happen to my guts if I drank straight from the streams. The way I saw it, they’d probably been boiled recently, and besides, my water bottles had filters that were supposed to clear the bacteria out. I hadn’t gotten sick yet while on mission.
More stones shook loose as I made my way around and over boulders. I had rope in my backpack along with some very basic rock climbing gear, but if I ended up anywhere sheer I was going to have to find a way around. Being prepared for every possible contingency just weighed too much. I stopped for another drink of water, wiping sweat away and listening to rocks crack and bounce on their way down the slope.
A long gulp and a few steps later, I realized I hadn’t been walking on shoaly ground for some time now, and hadn’t knocked any stone loose in longer than that.
Carefully, I shrugged my backpack off, knelt, and unzipped it as I looked over my shoulder. Everything in the pack had a designated place. I didn’t need to see what I was doing to find the frags, nor to gently swing the grenade launcher into place so I could load it.
The boulders just down the mountainside from me were moving. Rocking slowly, like giant eggs trying to right themselves on invisible legs. Smaller stones were crushed beneath them as they shifted, puffing into dust and bouncing into the distance. I caught signs of more movement uphill from me, and breathed carefully as I loaded the last grenades into the launcher. Then I looked up.
Stone golems were staggered across the mountainside above me. Taller and broader than me, they had visible black pits of eyes and no hands or feet, just blunt ends to their long arms and stubby legs. They had mouths, too, gaping maws like caverns built into a moving mountainside. They moved slowly and in rhythm with each other. Below me, one of the boulders cracked, egg-like again, and another golem emerged from it. The snap of a second boulder breaking apart sounded like a gunshot. I counted six, and more being birthed. I would need a blanket assault to take them all out at once, and my grenade launcher wasn’t going to be enough.
A rumble started, so deep it made hairs on my neck stand up. It felt familiar, but the sensation slipped away as one of the golems below me crouched, then leapt.
I caught it in the belly with a grenade, and flung myself behind a man-sized huddle of rock to protect myself from the fragments. The roar disrupted the rumbling, but it started up again a moment later, angrier this time. The golems picked up their speed, converging on me. I waited a count of eight, long enough for the ground beneath me to vibrate hard with their running steps, then bounced up and fired again, hoping to catch more than one with the next grenade.
Two golems exploded into pebbles. I bellowed, “Hoo-ah!” and dropped again, waiting for the rest to come closer.
The stone next to me cracked open and a golem dropped its full weight on me.
Air slammed out of me in a sob. My ribs weren’t shattered, but I’d felt them crack. If the golem levered itself up a few inches and dropped on me again, I’d be flattened. I couldn’t afford that, and I didn’t have many other options. Neither did it, though. It growled and snapped at me toothlessly, but I was certain if anything got caught between those flat gums it would be crushed. I exhaled to get the last air out of my gut so I could breathe in again, and when all the air was gone, I squirmed one arm free. The frag rifle was crushed between me and the golem, but even Joanne might think twice about setting off a grenade on her chest. Maybe not—I’d seen her take hits at least that hard and walk away—but it was a rash idea.. And I didn’t have magic to back me up. I wheezed a breath past the pain, fumbled a grenade from the backpack, and swore I would never do anything this stupid again if I lived through doing it once.
Then I pulled the pin and shoved the grenade into the golem’s mouth. I grabbed its lower jaw and jammed it up, closing its mouth on the grenade, and I counted eight seconds in a prayer: “Please, God, let this work. Let it work.”