Moon Dog Magic Read online

  The bushes shuddered and the gray-and-white head of a wolf-dog emerged. Her eyes sparkled with a mix of guilt and pride over the small, bloody prey still warm in her mouth.

  “Laika,” Heimdall scolded lightly. “Come.”

  She stepped into the clearing and cocked her head to study the stern expression on her master’s face. Laika stamped her front paws on the soft earth and tried wooing at him with her mouth full, but Heimdall wasn’t budging. With a labored sigh, she dropped the furry body onto the ground and sank down beside it. Resting her head on her forepaws, Laika looked up at Heimdall with pitiful, liquid blue eyes. A hopeful wag shivered through her tail.

  “I told you this was no hunting expedition, not for that kind of prey.”

  Laika nosed her kill a few inches toward her master. Her mouth fell open into a silly grin, her tongue lolling out to one side.

  Heimdall laughed. It was impossible to be angry with this eerily clever animal who had been the most steadfast mortal companion he’d ever had. He wagged a warning finger at her. “You can have it. But no more.”

  She watched him carefully. Heimdall swore the wolf-dog sometimes looked right through him, with an intelligence surpassing even some of the gods’. She dropped her gaze and crawled toward the motionless chipmunk. After one more cautious glance at Heimdall, she snapped up her prey and went to work picking it apart with the patient precision of an experienced sport hunter rather than a hungry predator.

  Watching her entertain herself, Heimdall frowned. He didn’t like the luxury and convenience of this so-called modern world, with food and distraction available at the touch of a button. Generations of relative peace had bred complacency. He used to long for the days of testing and survival, of true warriors and blood-soaked battles. Now even that was a wistful memory. He’d gained enlightenment and compassion, but living among these supposedly more evolved humans had softened him.

  If Ragnarok were to come soon . . . ?

  The cell phone in his pocket chirped. Heimdall knelt on the wet ground, pulled out his phone and checked the display: TXT MSG FROM MAGGIE.

  Moisture seeped into his jeans and clung to his skin. He read Maggie’s message: Can U pick up coffee (med mocha latte w/ skim) & muffins 4 brkfst this AM? (& then tell me Y U have 2 work so many nights?)

  “Crap.” He’d forgotten about his early morning plans with his mortal girlfriend. Every month as the moon waned, he’d made one excuse after another for why he couldn’t spend his evenings with her.

  Telling her he was in the forest hunting for an ancient, mystical tree so he and his immortal kin could save the world wasn’t exactly an option.

  He took another look around the circle of trees, gazing as deep into the woods as his senses would allow. Nothing. Whether it was an especially cunning predator or some dark magick, whatever had moved through the forest was now gone. He looked up at the lightening sky, then checked his watch. 7:02 a.m.

  He glanced at Laika and patted his thigh. “Let’s go, girl. We’re calling it a night.”

  2

  “Fehu. Power, wealth, creativity. Associated with the nature god Freyr. Red. Fire . . .”

  Sally stirred awake, leaning back against the rough bark of a tree. Talking in her sleep again, cataloging the runes. It took a few seconds to understand why she couldn’t move her arms. Baron, purring loudly in her lap, was nestled firmly on top of her hands.

  Gently, Sally tried pulling her right hand out from beneath her plump kitty, but Baron lazily adjusted his body to follow her movement, as if deliberately working to keep her hands trapped.

  Sally closed her eyes and groaned. “Come on, Barry. I really don’t have time for this.”

  She yanked her left hand free. Baron pricked his claws through her clothing as a warning.

  Sally gritted her teeth. “Baron!”

  She forcibly removed the cat from her lap, even though he dug his claws into the flesh of her palms and thighs and growled a low, yowling complaint as he was dislodged. Baron immediately tried climbing back into her lap. Sally waved a warning finger in his face.

  “Nuh-uh. Get over it.

  Sally stretched her slender arms over her head, and silently cursed herself, again, for falling asleep during her spell-working. Baron sat next to her, his tail twitching.

  Her parents had finally left the house just after 7:30 a.m. Sally had complained to her mother of vague nausea and fatigue to secure yet another sick day from school—her fourth in a row—and privately thanked Odin and his kin when her parents hadn’t insisted on taking her to the doctor. It had been a few days since Sally had last looked in the mirror, but she guessed her appearance was genuinely haggard after so many late nights lighting candles and casting spells.

  Minutes after her parents’ departure, Sally packed up her books, candles, rune stones, and rabbit skins and headed for the backyard. Working magick under an open sky, with her altar laid out on the frosted grass instead of the carpet, was a refreshing change after holing up in her bedroom all night. The eight-foot privacy fence prevented the prying eyes of curious neighbors, and Portland’s crisp, clean air helped keep her energy up for the work remaining.

  Instead, she’d fallen asleep beneath the apple tree.

  “At least the apple is sacred to Iduna, keeper of the Grove of Immortality,” Sally grumbled to Baron as she tried to weave her unintentional nap into the larger cloth of her work. It was a stretch.

  “For the love of the gods,” Sally cursed under her breath when she checked the time. 8:53 a.m. The sting of panic rushed into her chest. Less than four minutes until the next working! Did she have everything assembled? She scanned the altar space she’d created beside her on the grass. Polished rune stones lay on the uneven oblong of white rabbit fur in a triangular arrangement from her last spellcasting at 8:02 a.m. exactly.

  She breathed a sigh of relief. The stones still held their pattern of banishing any malignant energies that might interfere with Odin’s Return. Nothing had been disturbed.

  She read over the notes in her Book of Shadows and rubbed the burnt tip of her thumb. It was scabbing over but still painful. The sign of the ox horns would no doubt be visible for years to come but as far as scars went, the potent rune of generative power and determination wasn’t a bad one.

  Following the directions she’d written out in exacting detail, Sally reached for a pair of white chime candles and planted them in the ground on either side of the rabbit fur. She was about to strike a match when Baron sidled up beside the altar, settled his front paws precariously close to the runes Isa and Teiwaz, and began huffing and hacking as he crouched low over the sacred space.

  “Baron!” Sally grabbed the cat and tossed him a few feet away. Baron’s low-hanging belly quivered on his ungainly landing. He turned and sneezed at her.

  “Baron, I won’t have you ruining my work! Keep your heretical hairballs to yourself.”

  Sally swore the cat scowled at her. She made a face back at him.

  Sally lit her candles and closed her eyes. Her open hands hovered over the runes.

  “Father Odin, accept this humble shield and further this protection for such magick and its kin.” She opened one eye and glared at Baron. “And keep grumpy and meddlesome kitties away from my runes.”

  Unfazed, the cat settled down on top of Sally’s copy of Stuart Kleinhaber’s Rhythms of the Runes: Modern Magick from Ways of Old, which lay open on the grass.

  After another time check, Sally grabbed a trio of fresh candles and planted them in a tight triangle to the right of her workspace. She lit each in turn—first blue, then green, then white. Then she tapped her right index finger three times on the tiny patch of empty space between them.

  Turning her attention to the runes, she poured the unused stones into the middle of the rabbit skin and pulled the other pieces of polished hematite out of their triangle pattern and into the center pile. She positioned the stones, one by one, in the order of the Elder Futhark, in a ring around the center of the rabbit
skin.

  Sally reached into a cardboard shoebox by her side for a bottle of clear liquid. She held it up to the morning light and gently shook its contents.

  “Rainwater,” she told Baron. “Unfiltered. Collected at the last Full Moon.”

  Baron yawned.

  Sally poured the water in a slow, clockwise circle around her furry ritual space. “Water is life and sustenance. Water allows magick to flow.”

  Sally tossed the empty bottle back into the box. “Kind of WD-40 for spell-work, Barry.”

  Baron closed his eyes and pretended to sleep.

  Next she pulled out a large pine cone and held it up with reverence. “From the Sitka Spruce. The closest thing I could think of to the legendary World Tree.”

  She looked up at the clouds overhead, feeling a bit silly and self-conscious that the gods might actually be listening. Even if the deities were just the energy of ideas, like her friend Opal said, ideas held power so she treated them as though they were real and distinct. Which, to Sally, they absolutely were.

  “Accept this poor substitute for the Yggdrasil, which keeps the Cosmos anchored in existence. Let this pine cone hook my spell into the deepest fabric of reality, touching everything.”

  Sally rested the pine cone at the apex of her triangle of candles. Baron perked up when she retrieved a silver-gray feather from the shoebox.

  “I call to Odin’s ravens, Huginn and Muninn. Carry my message to the Norse gods—to Odin himself, Frigga, Freya, all the members of the Old Lodge. Tell them the world still needs them.” Sally closed her eyes and held the feather’s base tightly in her right hand. “We need them now more than ever.”

  Baron crept forward and batted a paw at the feather.

  “Baron!” Sally’s eyes flew open in a scowl. “Not. A. Toy.”

  But Baron was mesmerized by the silver feather in her grasp. He couldn’t take his hazel eyes off it. Laughing, Sally waved the feather in the air out of his reach, taunting him. “Technically not from a raven. Pigeon, but I think it will be okay.”

  Not able to get anywhere near his intended prey, Baron gave up on the feather and sharpened his claws on the bark of the tree instead. Sally smoothed out the feather’s barbs before laying it down in the center of the altar. She double-checked her notes, then consulted the time.

  “Okay, Barry. We’ll let this sit for a few minutes, then pack up and head over to meet Opal.”

  The cat lazily glanced at Sally’s altar where the polished hematite stones glinted in the sunlight peeking out from behind the clouds. Sally pulled her Book of Shadows into her lap and paged through her notes. Baron sniffed at the leather-bound journal, then padded across the grass to the rabbit skin. In a single, silent motion, Baron knocked over the pine cone, broke the ring of runes and snapped the feather up in his mouth.

  Sally gasped aloud. Baron froze.

  “Barry!” Sally hissed. “What are you doing?”

  She tried to grab him, but Baron was surprisingly spry for an overweight feline. He sprinted out of her reach, then spat out the feather as he sat down and started cleaning himself.

  “Baron Jaspurr Von Pussington!”

  With a labored sigh, the cat stopped his licking and looked up at her. Sally snatched up the feather—now soggy with cat saliva and suffering a broken shaft—before the cat could pick it up again. She tried straightening the feather and drying it off on her sleeve, but it was no use.

  “For crying out loud, Baron.” She dropped the useless feather into her lap and reached over to prop up the pine cone and repair the line of runes. “We’ll just have to hope your little stunt didn’t cause any permanent damage.”

  Baron lay down in the grass and resumed his bath.

  “You can’t mess around with this stuff, you know.” She picked up the broken feather and turned it between her fingers. “One little mistake and . . . BLAMMO.”

  Hair standing on end, Managarm blinked at the smoking chips of wood scattered on the charred ground before him. His eyebrows were singed, and there were still-smoldering burn holes in his clothing. Wisps of smoke rose from his head. His scalp felt uncomfortably hot and itchy. All that remained of the tent behind him were bits of charred canvas and a blackened metal frame. The campfire that had been roaring a few yards to his right now sputtered and choked, threatening to go out.

  He was pretty sure this wasn’t supposed to happen.

  Managarm tried to catch his breath. Instead, he coughed and spat sooty phlegm into the dirt.

  He growled deep in his throat, a sound indistinguishable from a wolf’s dark warning. If this was going to work properly, he’d need to refine his rune magick, and fast. Unless he wanted to chance self-immolation again.

  Managarm sat back on his heels. He felt the last vestiges of magick trickle out of his body and into the earth, grounding his spell. His vision blurred, and he reached a hand to the dirt behind him to keep from falling over. As far as he knew, it had been centuries since any dark mage dared to scare up such forces. Very few humans could handle, much less direct, so much power. But this was the first time he’d needed to rely on spellcasting himself, and the old god Managarm did not like being humbled.

  And he had no idea if his working had been remotely successful.

  The waning moon hung low in the morning sky on its way below the horizon for another day. Managarm sighed. He had spent centuries chasing the sun and moon to preserve the cycle of day and night. It didn’t matter what modern science said about the vast distances between objects in the solar system. An orbit was an orbit, whether a few meters or thousands of light years across. He was just a dog chasing its tail—a dog charged with destruction and chaos from the moment of his creation—and he’d long since grown dizzy and tired. There’d been no elevated seat for him at the banquet table, no heroic tales of the Moon Dog sung by Norse bards. Just an endless pursuit of a prey he would never catch.

  But come the Black Moon, things would be different.

  Sweat and smoke stung his eyes. Managarm reached for Thurisaz, the triangular shape of the etched rune still a glowing ember in the charred wood chip. But the wood crumbled beneath his fingers as soon as he touched it. He got the same result trying to pick up the smoldering, n-shaped Uruz. As soon as that one had disintegrated, the two remaining chips—inscribed with the runes Pertho and Nauthiz—lost their heat altogether. With the glowing symbols gone, the chips were nothing more than cold ash.

  Managarm scooped up the ashes and rubbed them between his bare hands, spreading black soot over his strong, ruddy palms.

  “Moon Dog the Magician.” He chuckled and knee-walked sideways to stoke the dying fire. He was careful to keep the campfire out of sight of any park ranger who might be out patrolling—or worse, one of those heavily armed gangs of pot farmers who increasingly strayed onto government lands to grow their crops. He’d had enough run-ins with both.

  No sense in attracting unwanted attention, particularly when he was vulnerable—all the gods were these days. It was normal for their strength to wane every four hundred years, just before Iduna’s Grove back in Scandinavia produced its harvest of sacred apples that restored the gods’ divine stamina.

  But this time it was worse. His knees and knuckles ached with arthritis, a curse of aging that had never before touched him, and there were flecks of silver in the stubble of his beard. The longer the gods spent living among humans, and the more generations that passed without real worshippers, the weaker and more pathetic they all became.

  But Managarm would set things right again.

  He sat back in the dirt and unzipped the collar of his fleece pullover and wiped the sweat off his brow, smearing soot across his forehead. Rubbing his hands together in front of the fire, Managarm spotted his darkened palms and laughed. Humming a forgotten tune, he wiped both hands across his cheeks, nose, and chin, blackening the rest of his face.

  “Managarm, the dark god.” He sniffed back surprising, embarrassing tears, then pounded his fist twice into the soft earth�
��once to relieve frustration, and a second time just because it felt good to hit something.

  That’s when the pain hit.

  His temples throbbed angrily. It felt like his scalp was on fire while a cold metal pick was being driven into his cranium. Managarm held his head in his hands.

  “Cursed caffeine migraine.” Managarm growled, but the vibration just made the pain worse. Squinting against the early morning light, he reached into his charred rucksack for a water bottle, a plastic container of ibuprofen and a dented camping kettle that had seen better days. He filled the kettle and settled it carefully in the fire before knocking back a handful of pills.

  A flutter of wings and gentle song overhead signaled the return of the birds who’d been frightened off by his release of inadvertently fiery magick. Managarm wiped the rest of the soot from his damp palms onto his blue jeans and stared into the fire.

  “Out of darkness is born new light.”

  He’d been almost afraid to say the words. His shoulders tensed in an automatic cringe as he glanced quickly at the surrounding forest, as though some ancient curse might rise up out of the earth or swoop down from the trees to smite him for his sacrilege. He’d just used Odin’s own tool—the runes—against him. Or he’d tried to. This was just a test case, a trial run to make sure he had some idea of what he was doing, but it was possible even his dress rehearsal magick had worked.

  It was just as possible he’d be discovered and taken to task for his treason but if any of the old gods had caught a whiff of what he was up to, they’d kept quiet these long months and years he’d been preparing.

  Managarm looked up at the tiny sliver of moon in the early morning sky and resisted the urge to howl—it would still be a while before the ibuprofen went to work on his headache. His orbiting prey was now his ally. The Black Moon was only days away.

  He laughed out loud, and immediately winced at the sound. He rubbed his pounding temples and smiled. What was he worried about? None of the remaining Old Ones could stop him. Here in the 21st century, they were all impotent, himself included. Iduna’s apples would be ripe for the picking in another year or two, but by then Managarm would be the only god left to enjoy the divine fruit.