If I turned and faced him, I’d barely have time to draw a weapon before being trampled, never mind having the time to fire up a spell. Running away was only a temporary solution, since his legs were easily twice as long as mine. While I had to run around trees and large bushes as I went along, Snorri could walk over or crash right through them. And every time I tried to change course, the giant cut me off, almost as if he wanted me to maintain my current heading.

  If he’s herding me, I’d damned sure bet it’s toward somewhere I don’t want to go.

  And backup? Besides Larry, I had none to speak of. The factions only brought me in on jobs they didn’t care to mess with, and that meant I almost always worked alone.

  In short, I was royally, hopelessly fucked. What was supposed to have been a relatively routine apprehension—and a convenient opportunity to test out a new spell or two—had now turned into a life or death struggle, with my own life hanging in the balance.

  Think, Colin. Think!

  Soon, the woods thinned, and I exited the trees into a relatively clear area that headed up a short rise. At first, I thought I might be able to gain some ground there, but no such luck. As I crested the rise, I saw that what lay before me was no hill, but instead a seventy-five-foot cliff that overlooked the scenic Pedernales River below.

  2

  A tree fell with a tremendous crash behind me, startling me out of the oh shit moment I had when I first saw the cliff ahead. A quick glance over my shoulder informed me that Snorri was about three steps away from smashing me into Colin jelly. With nowhere left to run, I ran full tilt at the cliff. Then, I leapt over.

  Now, a savvy magic user would have some slick-ass spell handy for times like this—say a feather spell to slow your fall, or a limited levitation charm that would allow said magic-user to glide gently over to the opposite cliff. But me? I had no such clever back-up plan, since I wasn’t exactly the savviest of druids.

  Once my feet left solid earth, things happened in slow motion for the span of several seconds. First, I heard Snorri’s gasp of surprise behind me, stretched out like a dying man’s final breath. Then, I noticed my legs pumping at the empty space beneath me, as if trying to gain purchase on molecules of air in a vain attempt to prevent the inevitable. A bright ray of sunlight shone through the clouds in the distance, and a passing bird gave me a somewhat sympathetic look that said, “Man, it must be a bitch to not have wings.”

  Then, everything sped up all at once, and I was falling.

  As the ground hurtled up at me—or rather, as I hurtled down at it—two thoughts crossed my mind.

  First thought?

  This is going to suck balls.

  Second thought?

  If this works, I’m going to fuck this giant up.

  Now, a sane person would never think to jump off a cliff to avoid getting smashed and eaten by a giant. That’d never happen, because the human self-preservation drive is too strong. No, anyone who wasn’t batshit crazy would have stood and fought, knowing that at least they’d have a small chance of escape.

  Some might even rationalize the situation in an attempt to convince themselves that it wasn’t all that dire. Thoughts would cross their mind, like, What if the giant just wants to rough me up a bit before letting me go? and Geez, I wonder if I can reason with the fifteen-foot-tall cannibal with extra teeth and fingers expressly made for the purpose of rending human flesh?

  That wasn’t me, though, because I’d been down this road before. Not the part about being on the giant’s lunch menu, although I knew it’d be a done deal if he caught me. But the part about jumping off a cliff was old hat—so I knew what came after terminal velocity and rapid deceleration, and it was not my imminent demise.

  See, there was a time when my insides had been so knotted up with self-hate and guilt that I’d tried to kill myself numerous times—“try” being the operative word. And man, did I try everything. Guns, blades, large vehicles moving at fast speeds, poison, fire—and yes, long falls from high places that ended abruptly on hard, flat surfaces.

  In each instance, Death refused to take me. Or rather, my Hyde-side refused to let me die. Instead, it simply took over and patched me up, good as new.

  Yep, every time I attempted to take my own life, my ríastrad, or “warp-spasm,” kicked in. That other side of me emerged to prevent my demise. Stopped heart? Started again. Shattered bones? Mended. Spine severed? Merely a flesh wound. Pulverized flesh? Knitted whole once more.

  I’d once hated my alter-ego for that. But not anymore.

  Back then, I’d thought of my Fomorian side as a separate entity—that was my way of denying any guilt for the things my Hyde-side had done before I gained control of it. Now, however, I knew it was as much a part of me as my DNA—because in essence, that’s what it was.

  Normally, that part of me remained hidden until I called on it or until it decided to come out and save me from a hideous, excruciating death. Of course, it still hurt like hell, that was a given. The nearly dying part was always agony, and the rapid shifting and healing that came after sucked giant, boulder-sized donkey balls.

  And falling from great heights was no exception. Being smashed into a vaguely human-looking sack of gelatinous human goo, and then having all that goo almost instantly rearranged into a nine-foot-tall cross between the Hulk and Quasimodo, well…

  Let’s just say it wasn’t my idea of a good time.

  So, when the ground finally came rushing up to greet me at fifty miles an hour, I was thinking that things would get really, really bad for a second or two, and then they’d get really, really good again. A few seconds of agony in exchange for teaching Snorri not to fuck with a descendent of Fionn MacCumhaill, the guy who’d also inherited the ríastrad from Cú Chulainn, son of Lugh? Oh yeah, I’d take that deal, any day of the week.

  But the luck of the Irish is never a cure for poor planning, and there was one crucial detail I’d forgotten when I launched myself off the cliff. Dummy that I was, I totally forgot that I’d stealth-shifted earlier to increase my odds of survival against Norris the Cannibalistic Giant. So, when my body connected with the rugged, rocky terrain at the bottom of that cliff, it was agony alright.

  Unfortunately, because I was already partially shifted into my Fomorian form, I didn’t even come close to dying. Nope. And that meant my ríastrad was not fully triggered, and good old Mr. Hyde-side definitely was not coming out to play.

  Fuck. Me.

  Snorri was halfway down the cliff when the excruciating pain of multiple broken bones brought me back to consciousness. Apparently, that cliff was even too high by the giant’s standards, and I guess that was saying something. My only comfort was that he was having a hard time of it, mostly because the handholds were too small for giant-sized hands, so he was forced to take his time coming down.

  Knowing I had only seconds before the jötunn arrived to finish the job, I did a quick mental inventory of my injuries.

  Broken wrist and fingers, check. Shattered ankles, check. Flail chest, check. Busted pelvis, double-check. Dislocated shoulder and knee, check, check.

  Obviously, I wasn’t going to fight or spell my way out of this situation, not in my current state. And I certainly wasn’t in any shape to flee. So, that left me with just one alternative—the one I wasn’t supposed to resort to today.

  “Ah, fuck it,” I said, although it came out sort of garbled, more like, “Uhfuzzit,” presumably because my jaw was broken. Then, I prepared to shift.

  On a good day, I could manage the full transformation from human to Fomorian in as little as twenty seconds, if I was in top form and uninjured. Serious injuries slowed the process considerably, because intense pain affected my focus and made it difficult to complete the change. But desperation is a phenomenal motivator, so I held my breath and triggered the process.

  It was much worse than I’d expected.

  In the past, when my Hyde-side had taken over and initiated the shift autonomously, it had happened almost instantly. That was the deal when my alter-ego took over—it was in complete control, and it had much better control over the transformation than me, even after many months of practice. But since I was now in control of my Fomorian half, the shifting, rearranging, and healing of my injuries happened at what seemed like a snail’s pace. That resulted in a prolonged process that I could only liken to being put through a wood chipper and glued back together again with iodine and salt.

  Did I scream? You bet your granny’s fanny, I screamed.

  And, of course, that attracted Snorri’s attention. When he figured out what I was doing, he dropped the last forty feet or so to the bottom of the cliff. As luck would have it, I was still only halfway through the change when his feet hit bottom.

  I’d never been attacked while injured and in the middle of the change, so I had no idea what would happen. The jötunn was likely to simply rip my head from my shoulders while I remained incapacitated, and I doubted that even my Hyde-side could heal from that. I needed to do something to save myself, and fast.

  With no better alternative, I focused on healing my jaw and right arm, which I hid beneath me while covering my face with my other arm. This was absolutely the last thing I wanted to do, since my left humerus was sticking through the skin in two places. I sweated bullets and blood while focusing on controlling my breathing, urging the change to speed up while prepping the simplest spell possible.

  “Heard ’bout yer other side,” Snorri said as he strolled toward me. “Nasty, that one. Can’t be havin’ that, so’s I think I’ll jes’ squish ya’ good now. Say yer prayers, drood.”

  I turned my head ever so slightly, just enough to glance out of the corner of my eye as Snorri lifted his massive leg to stomp me. Immediately, I rolled onto my back and thrust my right hand out, pointing my open palm at the exposed flesh on the underside of his foot.

  “Bladhaire!” I hissed, still in agony as my bones and flesh healed and rearranged at a funeral pace.

  Flames shot out of my hand, blazing forth in a brief gout of fire and heat that completely enveloped the underside of the giant’s foot. I watched with satisfaction as his skin blackened and blistered. While the spell was among the simplest I knew, fire was a frost giant’s weakness, and even a simple flame spell was sure to do some damage.

  Snorri howled in rage and pain, grabbing his foot as he hopped around the clearing. The river was nearby and he headed for it immediately, eager to stop the pain and prevent further injury from occurring. Tall as he was, the giant made it into the river in two hops, immersing his foot in the cool waters with a sizzling hiss. Meanwhile, I put every last bit of energy and effort I could muster into completing my change while the seconds ticked by.

  By the time Snorri turned toward me again I’d completely healed, and my body was in the final stages of the change. His lip curled in a snarl that revealed his double-row of teeth, reminding me that I’d very nearly ended up in his belly. The giant locked eyes with me, and if I saw a momentary flicker of fear there, it was for good reason—even though I was still only half his size. It wasn’t for nothing that the Tuatha Dé Danann had once feared the Fomori above all other races.

  My bones were now longer and thicker, stretching my frame to roughly nine feet—ten, if it weren’t for the huge hump in my broad upper back that caused me to hunch something terrible. The entire musculature of my body had thickened as well, increasing my mass to roughly four times that of my normal weight and bulk. My left arm remained thinner than my right, and it ended in a claw-like hand that seemed purpose-made for ripping things asunder. Conversely, my right arm was swollen with bulging muscles and sinews, and it ended in a massive wrecking ball of a fist. Thick, almost calloused skin covered my body from head to toe, and my eyes were deep-set beneath a Cro-Magnon brow that jutted out over a crooked, smashed-up face and a too-large mouth full of jagged, yellow teeth.

  “Now, giant,” I rumbled in a deep, menacing voice as I pushed myself to my feet. “Let us see if the fierce reputation of the jötnar is as well-deserved as the sagas claim.”

  The weird thing about going full-on Hyde-side was that my personality changed as well as my appearance. When I let my Fomorian DNA have its way, I generally became much more ruthless, cold, and calculating—all traits the war-like Fomori were said to possess in spades. That sometimes evidenced itself in my speech patterns, as I tended toward slightly more archaic and flowery turns of phrase when I was in full-shift mode.

  “Big words, for such a little giant.” Snorri smirked as he replied. “Les’ see if you can back ’em.”

  The giant grabbed a nearby boulder that sat in the shallows near the shore and hurled it at me with speed that belied his size. I was prepared for such an attack, however, as I’d seen how giants fought before and knew they loved to toss large objects. Ducking under the boulder as it sailed past, I was already sprinting to meet Snorri at the shoreline as he stepped out of the river.

  Since the giant still towered over me even in my fully-shifted form, I decided to take him off his feet in order to negate his size advantage. When I was close enough and running at considerable speed, I dove at his knees while attempting to tackle him. Unfortunately, the giant had expected my attack, and he kneed me straight in the face as I was diving in.

  Normally, that sort of blow would’ve stunned your average giant or ogre. However, my Hyde-side was all about the pain, and instead of allowing myself to be deflected, I took the brunt of the blow and hung onto Snorri’s leg. Holding his leg up with one arm, I stepped behind his other leg, tripping him while I shoved him hard with my free hand.

  The giant fell backward into the river with a splash. I crawled on top of him, kicking him in the nuts along the way. However, Snorri was no slouch when it came to wrestling, and he was able to buck me off him and make it to his knees. I rolled and came up to my feet, then jumped and drop-kicked him in the chest. Snorri partially avoided the kick by turning his shoulders, deflecting much of the force and causing me to land awkwardly on my back.

  The giant fell atop me, pinning me beneath the water with one of his hubcap-sized hands. I struggled to free myself, but before I could squirm out of his grasp, he straddled me in order to use all his weight to hold me down. I sat up, hoping to get a breath of air, but Snorri used that opportunity to begin choking me with both his hands. He leaned forward, using the bulk of his upper body to force my head back beneath the river’s surface.

  This was a simple but effective tactic, since it kept me from using magic by preventing me from saying the trigger words to my spells. And fool that I was, I’d given Snorri just what he wanted by choosing to fight him in the river. In my rush to engage him, I’d completely overlooked the fact that the water would negate my most effective spells.

  And then there was the fact that I couldn’t breathe water.

  Sure, I could hold my breath for some time in my Fomorian form, much longer than I was able to normally. But even in this form, my body needed oxygen to function, and I was burning through my reserves fast by struggling against the giant’s weight. Snorri was also cutting off the blood flow to my brain, compounding the effects of my current inability to breathe.

  My first response was to bridge my hips in an effort to roll him off me, but each time I tried, my feet simply sank into the muck beneath us. I tried to peel his hands off my throat, but his grip was strong as a vice and his hands were slick with mud from forcing my head into the river bottom. When that tactic failed, I yanked at his wrists in an attempt to pull his hands apart, but it was like pulling at two iron beams. I even attempted to push him off me, but my arms weren’t long enough. The more I struggled, the more things got fuzzy around the edges, and I knew I was in danger of blacking out.

  So, I decided to change tactics. I began to flail around as if I were on the verge of drowning. Truthfully, the human part of my brain was close to panic, but the Fomorian side of me was in charge and it wasn’t about to go down like that. Faking that I was losing consciousness, my movements slowed and weakened, then I exhaled every last bit of air from my lungs in a stream of bubbles before relaxing completely.

  Snorri held me under a moment longer, then released his grip on my throat. I was close to blacking out, and my lungs burned as if I’d inhaled one of my own fireball spells. Still, I knew I had to wait for the precise moment, else I’d end up in the same situation—and this time, Snorri wouldn’t let up until he knew I was dead.

  I felt the giant shift his weight back, and then his hips lifted off me as he rocked back onto his feet. That was all the space I needed, and I immediately sat up and latched onto the giant’s inner thigh with my teeth, grasping both arms around his leg to prevent him from dislodging me as I gnawed and chewed my way down to the bone. Giant skin was thick and tough, but in this bestial form, my teeth and jaw muscles were up to the task.

  Snorri’s fists beat at me around my head and shoulders all the while, but I remained undeterred, determined to defeat this bastard before I blacked out. Fighting the urge to lift my head up and draw a breath, I continued to rip through the muscle and flesh of his leg like a dog until I felt the hot, salty rush of blood in my mouth that told me I’d hit an artery. I bit down hard, and then I yanked my head away, ripping a huge chunk of Snorri’s thigh out in a gush of blood that covered me completely as the giant’s life bled out into the river.

  The giant’s blows subsided, allowing me to push away from him and stand as he fell to his knees, pale and weakened by the rapid, massive blood loss he’d suffered. I wiped blood from my eyes and spat a gob of flesh in his face as I rose, then took a first desperate gasp of air, choking on some blood in the process.

 

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