Hurricane #14: The Cable Guy (Patreon)

Serrano blinked awake at sunlight streaming through the window on her face. The blinds were drawn, but the late morning sun hit at just the right angle to shine straight through.

She’d had no dreams after Irsaw left, despite her desire to conjure one—to see if she could get into Ward’s dreams, to ask him a few polite questions as her giant coyote alter ego. Asking them as her real world self would make her sound like a lunatic, but pinning him under a truck-sized paw and then asking him? He’d fucking answer.

And if she got what she wanted and then just…stepped down on him in the dream, what would happen to him in the waking world? Would he suffer a freakish accident that just happened to match the effects of being squashed by a giant? A crazy, disquieting thought, yet the only news coverage she’d ever found about the damage outside her coffee shop called it a “freak weather event.” It claimed there’d been three casualties: Ned, Karen-vixen, and the cop who’d been investigating the crushed car. Had she done that, too, directly or indirectly? Ned and the vixen hadn’t even been there, and witnesses could contradict the official story. But “giant dream coyote stomped the car and then summoned a tornado while fighting a faerie” hardly made any more sense.

Dragging herself to her paws, she rubbed her eyes and glanced over at the hole in the wall. Yep, still there, although the otherworldly gadget was gone, taken by Irsaw back for further examination. The hyena had warned her that if they disconnected it, it would likely set off an alarm somewhere, but fuck it. After the real-world damage she’d done—and the weird turns in the dream Irsaw had woken her from—they already knew she was on to them. Shit was going to be falling on her head soon either way.

It’d be damn nice if she could figure out how to do a little weather conjuring on her own. Yeah, when Sarah had tried to kill her, she’d been saved by unexpected apparent divine intervention, but “hope Ulohne intervenes to save your fuzzy ass again” was hardly a plan. Could she dare ask Professor Snep for magic defense lessons?

She popped a pod in her single-serve brewer and dumped a mug of water into it. While it gargled out its eight ounces of technically coffee, she got out the mythology book she’d borrowed from the Mensura College library and opened it to the page on Ulohne. Not the only page with a mention of her, checking the index, but the page on her, with the badass illustration and the story about her passing on her power. Hmm. Okay, so maybe whoever was trying to save and/or kill her was Ulohne’s successor. Or her successor’s successor.

Sitting down with the coffee, Serrano flipped pages slowly in the book, reading more about Ulohne. Myths and folktales usually came about to explain things, right? So weather wasn’t a natural phenomenon, it was a supernatural one, governed by a chaotically mercurial goddess. Tales praised Ulohne for bringing rain to crops and keeping rivers flowing, yet also feared her for once in a while waking up and deciding it was a fine day to wipe out a coastline. But what did the tale about passing on her power explain? It could be the good old “with great power comes great responsibility” trope, but the story didn’t depict Ulohne admonishing her successor to use her powers wisely. Anyway, the other tales about the coyote-taur suggested she had roughly zero fucks to give about mortal ideas of responsibility.

She flipped back to the picture of Ulohne’s rampage, pushed the book away, and stared at the ceiling. Maybe she should ask Webb for advice. If anyone knew how to interpret myths, it’d be a librarian, right? But she wouldn’t have any answers about all this parallel world shit. Hopefully Professor Irsaw would come back with something. Or the scary faerie would come back with something. Although she’d also come back expecting Serrano to know something new, to have learned something from the college of magicians more significant than “yep, there is weird shit going on with you, coyote.”

A rap at the door interrupted her thoughts. She tensed up, holding still.

After another knock, she heard low voices outside, too soft to make out their words. A key scraped against the lock, then slid in. What the hell? She stood up slowly. Still no weapon around better than the now-open bottle of scotch.

The door opened, and Ward entered, followed by a short, portly rabbit in overalls. Ward was turned to face him rather than toward Serrano. “—not at all comfortable with…” He turned around mid-sentence, picking up on the rabbit’s stare toward the coyote. “I, uh, didn’t think you were home, Miss Layotl.”

Serrano kept her tone flat. “Surprise.”

The cat’s ears folded back momentarily. Then he cleared his throat. “This is, uh, Bob. From the cable company. There’s apparently some kind of fault in the wiring in the building and he needs to check it out, but we can come back later when you’re not here.”

She squinted at the rabbit. He looked familiar to her. From where? “Just go ahead and do it now, uh Bob. We had a little water damage that might have fried something.” She pointed at the hole in the wall. “Right back there.”

Bob stared at the hole, then narrowed his eyes.

Ward stared, too, and spluttered, hurrying to the hole. “This is—did you hit the wall with a hammer? That’s explicitly against your lease! You’re already walking a very fine line here, ma’am, and we’ve been very lenient with you. This may be the final straw.”

“Hey, it wasn’t me.” True, technically. “But there was something weird back there that seemed to be the source of the water problems I’ve been having. You sure you and uh Bob don’t know anything about that?”

“I don’t think I like what you’re implying.”

“I like it even less.”

The rabbit looked at Serrano, speaking in a tired, gravelly voice. “Where is it?”

“What?”

He sighed deeply. “The junction box you pulled from the wall.”

“We both know it’s not a junction box, uh Bob.”

He looked at her steadily. “You trying to make this difficult?”

“Yeah, I think I am.”

Ward scowled. “We’ll send someone to fix this and fix the wall, and if you want to stay here, Miss Layotl, you’ll stop—stop being contrary.”

“I don’t know if I do want to stay here.”

Bob gave Ward a warning look. The cat cleared his throat and looked to the side. “I just want you to be understanding of our position, not to make you feel unwelcome. We’ll…work something out.”

Serrano looked back and forth between them. More lights were coming on in her head, illuminating ugly truths. “You want to keep me in this apartment, don’t you? Oh, Three fucking Lords. You haven’t been ‘lenient’ with me about rent and noise complaints and whatever. You’ve been paid off, by whoever uh Bob here really works for.”

“You’re starting to sound a little, ah, crazy.” He cleared his throat again.

“Everything about this is a little crazy. A lot crazy. And I know where I saw you.” She pointed at Bob. “In my last dream. You were saying ‘tell Sark.’ Who the hell’s Sark?” She clenched her fists, thinking about storms, tornados, hurricanes. About being bigger than this whole damn apartment building. About the two fuckers in front of her sliding down her throat, or bursting under her paw. She knew when she calmed down she’d be horrified by that thought, but right now, they were both real lucky she couldn’t do in real life what she could in dreams.

(Unless she could)

Bob looked nonplussed. Ward shuffled his paws, clearly looking for a response before giving up. “Okay. Yes. So, we’ll be back to do the repairs.”

“You can just fix the hole,” the rabbit said to him. “We’ll put the junction box somewhere else.”

The cat swallowed and nodded. “Right. So. Uh. Problem solved.” He smiled nervously at Serrano.

Shaking her head, she forced herself to relax, then looked levelly at both of them. “I’m going to figure it out, you know. What you’re doing to me. And then I’ll figure out what I can do to you.”

“Please, Miss Layotl. Stop—stop thinking whatever it is you’re thinking.” He hurried out the door.

The rabbit started to follow, then turned in the doorway, looking back at the coyote. “You don’t wanna invite any more trouble than you already got. You can’t imagine what you’re messing with, lady. Don’t try and scare us. Just let us work and it’ll be over soon.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so. Between you and me, uh Bob?” Serrano glanced toward the mythology book, still open to that glorious illustration of Ulohne visiting unstoppable destruction, then back to him. “I don’t think you can imagine what you’re messing with.” She grinned, baring her fangs. “And I can imagine a lot.”