Tricked

Colorado wouldn’t lift a pebble to help me fight them directly. I turned off my faerie specs since they wouldn’t help me anymore, but left night vision on.
    Normally bugs don’t grow more than six inches in length, due to the limitations of their tracheal systems, and all that heavy chitin they have to lug around has got to be a drag. Coyote had screwed that all up. He gave these bugs plenty of Wind—way too much, in point of fact—and those old First World spirits took full advantage of the chance to be on top of the food chain. The spirits of these locusts hadn’t been raised on a diet of grains but rather on human flesh whenever they could get it. If they lived to reproduce, cities would have to invest in antiaircraft batteries to protect their citizens from swarms. Locusts would descend on small towns and eat people like corn on the cob. Did FEMA have a contingency plan in place for something like that?
    I found myself missing Mr. Semerdjian and his garage full of rocket-propelled grenade launchers. And again I missed Fragarach—I doubted Moralltach would make a dent in the locusts’ armor. It was green and sleek and looked like it was made of that impenetrable counter-top material. But … maybe I could pull a Rancor? You don’t find hard, chitinous exoskeleton on the inside of a bug. I almost immediately discarded that thought, because those multiple mandibles—blades and feelers and way more moving parts than a mouth should have—were alarmingly efficient at chewing up Coyote. But after checking to make sure Granuaile was still running for the hogan, I charged anyway, yelling as I went to snare its attention.
    When one doesn’t have Fragarach handy, the answer to strong armor is stronger blunt force; a baseball bat will do more damage than a sword blade. Confined to a large, bulky body, the spirit didn’t have unnatural speed anymore—it had the speed of a grasshopper, to be sure, but that wasn’t impossible for me to match. Boosting my speed and strength and transferring Moralltach to my left hand, I bent down and scooped up a stone the size of a softball, like a shortstop on a 6–3 play. First base in this case was the locust’s left eye. I whipped it at him, but he saw it coming and flinched away. Rather than hitting his eye, the stone caught him on the side of the mouth, knocking the lower half of Coyote’s body loose with a slurping noise, which was quickly followed by a keening screech. One of those little twitching maxilla thingies was hanging loose and slack now, and the creature leapt away, fluttering its wings with a low rumble of thunder.
    » Aw, he got a widdle toof ache. «
    The spirits probably had to deal with pain in a whole new way now that they had their own physical housings—dealing with it, period, would be a new sensation for them. I figured they’d let their human hosts feel most of the pain before—even with the fire, they’d fled the light more than the heat—but now they didn’t have a choice. Casting a quick glance at the hogan, I saw Granuaile disappearing around to the east side, where the door was. That seemed like a good idea, with one hopper distracted and the other one still munching away on Joe, so I swerved in that direction myself.
    I swerved too soon.
    The locust decided that the best way to deal with pain was to go after the thing that caused it. It wasn’t the correct lesson I’d wanted it to learn from the experience—but, then, if they weren’t used to feeling pain, then they weren’t used to fearing it either. The sound of its wings gave me a warning, but it was in the air so quickly that it was almost on me before I could spot it—directly above my head.
    » There are only three things you can do when something falls from the sky, « my archdruid used to say. » Get out of the way, get underneath some shelter, or give it some reason to change its mind about falling on you. « Then he threw a pissed-off rooster at me.
    I had no shelter from the locust except for the hogan, which might as well have been in New Zealand for all the good it would do me now. Trying to scramble out of the way when the hopper literally had the drop on me would only give it more convenient access to my flesh. So I would let it fall on top of my sword.
    I dropped to my back, using my left arm to cushion the impact while thrusting Moralltach directly above my face and locking my elbow. If Coyote’s demise offered any clue, it wanted my head. It tried to brush