Read Online Frostbite (Modern Knights Book 1) by Joshua Bader - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Joshua Bader
Tags: Urban Fantasy
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we’re stuck now. I don’t suppose you have any neat anti-wendigo tricks to go along with your telepathic countermeasures and knowledge of secret Indian spirit wars?”
“Never met one. I guess we’ll see when we come nose to snout. You know, we could...”
“No.”
“But you didn’t even let me finish,” my inner voice complained.
“I’ll finish for you. No. I’m not using the Necronomicon to conjure up something to fight it. Nine times out of ten, I’d end up with something worse than a wendigo at the end of the day.”
“But we know it works. The rest of your magic has always been a little bit shaky. And we wouldn’t have to bring something here. We could just open a rip in space and time and suck the wendigo through.”
“And what happens if I can’t close the rip back up and a tentacle or two comes slithering on out? No. Not unless all else fails.”
“Fine. But I’m going to kill you if we become wendigo chow.”
I needed to come up with a game plan. I’d have to learn everything I could about wendigoes (wendigi, wendigoose…let’s stick with wendigoes). I was in an unfamiliar city, against a foe I’d only read about in stories, pretending to be a professional wizard. Oh, and the FBI still thought I was a serial killer in the making. Harry Potter I was not.
I started with the only thing I could think to do. I grabbed a phone book and checked under “Native American.” I don’t know what I was hoping for, but there were no shamans, raindancers, or medicine men listed in the yellow pages. There was a listing for a Red Dirt Native American Museum and Cultural Center. It sounded as promising a place as any to start, so I wrote down the address. On a lark, I flipped to “Wizard”, but no one was brave enough to advertise as such. In L.A., Chicago, or New York, maybe, but apparently I was the only professional wizard in Oklahoma City.
My first difficulty came in buying a map of the metro area. When I started driving as a teenager, all I had to do was stop at any gas station and they’d have three different versions for whatever city I was in. If the station was near the Interstate, there would undoubtedly be a state map, plus another one for the nearest neighboring state. This made good business sense—everybody gets lost from time to time. Apparently, paper maps were going the way of the dodo and the typewriter. The first two store clerks both told me about this great map app on their phone. Numbers three and four weren’t as obnoxiously techno-savvy, but their stores didn’t carry maps, either. A customer behind me in line said that she was addicted to her DumDum GPS or something to that effect. In an Internet age, my inability to use the web was becoming a serious drawback. In the myths, Merlin never had to deal with a demon-possessed messenger pigeon.
At the fifth convenience store, I finally found a paper road map of OKC. I was so delighted to get it that I didn’t even mind fighting with the creases to fold it back up when I was done. However, with traditional map in hand, my second challenge was obvious: Oklahoma City is huge. It doesn’t seem that way. It feels like a quaint, small country town, like Mayberry with more cowboy hats and a handful of skyscrapers. But in reality, it’s one of the biggest cities in the world by total land area. It took me over an hour to drive from my hotel in Midwest City to the museum in Edmond. My only hope was that they didn’t have a rush hour or travel time was going to eat up my entire day.
The museum itself was something of a disappointment. If I had gone there to learn about the contributions of Native Americans to modern society, it would have been a great educational experience. But I had wendigo and spirit wars on the brain. Unless using a flint knife proved to be the secret to killing a cannibal winter spirit, Red Dirt wasn’t much help. I checked the calendar outside the cultural center. There was a lecture on Great Plains Rain
“Never met one. I guess we’ll see when we come nose to snout. You know, we could...”
“No.”
“But you didn’t even let me finish,” my inner voice complained.
“I’ll finish for you. No. I’m not using the Necronomicon to conjure up something to fight it. Nine times out of ten, I’d end up with something worse than a wendigo at the end of the day.”
“But we know it works. The rest of your magic has always been a little bit shaky. And we wouldn’t have to bring something here. We could just open a rip in space and time and suck the wendigo through.”
“And what happens if I can’t close the rip back up and a tentacle or two comes slithering on out? No. Not unless all else fails.”
“Fine. But I’m going to kill you if we become wendigo chow.”
I needed to come up with a game plan. I’d have to learn everything I could about wendigoes (wendigi, wendigoose…let’s stick with wendigoes). I was in an unfamiliar city, against a foe I’d only read about in stories, pretending to be a professional wizard. Oh, and the FBI still thought I was a serial killer in the making. Harry Potter I was not.
I started with the only thing I could think to do. I grabbed a phone book and checked under “Native American.” I don’t know what I was hoping for, but there were no shamans, raindancers, or medicine men listed in the yellow pages. There was a listing for a Red Dirt Native American Museum and Cultural Center. It sounded as promising a place as any to start, so I wrote down the address. On a lark, I flipped to “Wizard”, but no one was brave enough to advertise as such. In L.A., Chicago, or New York, maybe, but apparently I was the only professional wizard in Oklahoma City.
My first difficulty came in buying a map of the metro area. When I started driving as a teenager, all I had to do was stop at any gas station and they’d have three different versions for whatever city I was in. If the station was near the Interstate, there would undoubtedly be a state map, plus another one for the nearest neighboring state. This made good business sense—everybody gets lost from time to time. Apparently, paper maps were going the way of the dodo and the typewriter. The first two store clerks both told me about this great map app on their phone. Numbers three and four weren’t as obnoxiously techno-savvy, but their stores didn’t carry maps, either. A customer behind me in line said that she was addicted to her DumDum GPS or something to that effect. In an Internet age, my inability to use the web was becoming a serious drawback. In the myths, Merlin never had to deal with a demon-possessed messenger pigeon.
At the fifth convenience store, I finally found a paper road map of OKC. I was so delighted to get it that I didn’t even mind fighting with the creases to fold it back up when I was done. However, with traditional map in hand, my second challenge was obvious: Oklahoma City is huge. It doesn’t seem that way. It feels like a quaint, small country town, like Mayberry with more cowboy hats and a handful of skyscrapers. But in reality, it’s one of the biggest cities in the world by total land area. It took me over an hour to drive from my hotel in Midwest City to the museum in Edmond. My only hope was that they didn’t have a rush hour or travel time was going to eat up my entire day.
The museum itself was something of a disappointment. If I had gone there to learn about the contributions of Native Americans to modern society, it would have been a great educational experience. But I had wendigo and spirit wars on the brain. Unless using a flint knife proved to be the secret to killing a cannibal winter spirit, Red Dirt wasn’t much help. I checked the calendar outside the cultural center. There was a lecture on Great Plains Rain
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