“Hell,” Joe said. “Most of the time I don’t understand anybody.”

“But why these senseless killings?”

Joe shrugged. “Who knows? Until we actually track down one of these little freaks and—”

He broke off, lifting his head to look back at the wall of brush where Lizzie’s trail ended.

“Incoming,” he said.

Walker hadn’t needed his warning. He was already moving to the trail’s end, Joe right behind him.

“What is it?” I asked, bringing up the rear.

But then I didn’t need anything to be explained to me, either.

Two figures stepped out of the between—a bogan and a man almost twice his height who, with his milky-white eyes, had to be Odawa. The bogan made a cry of warning, but the blind man didn’t seem to have needed it. His sightless gaze went right to us.

“Grab the bogan!” Joe called to me, as he and Walker moved in on Odawa.

I was willing to give it a shot, but I never got a chance. Before I could get my hands on the little man, before Walker and Joe could tackle Odawa, the blind man changed his shape. One moment he was a man, the next an enormous salmon was writhing there between the trees. It was the size of a shark, and when its tail shot out we were all swept from our feet. I banged up against the wall of brush, lost my fiddle case in the tangle of thorns, and had the breath knocked out of me. Walker hit a tree headfirst and went down hard. Joe managed to roll with the blow, coming to his feet almost as soon as he went down.

But he was too late to do anything. The salmon turned a blind gaze toward the bogan who—reluctantly, it seemed to me—caught hold of its dorsal fin and swung himself onto the fish’s back. Then up the salmon went, swimming off into the air, moving in and out of boughs and tree trunks like it was avoiding stone outcrops in rapids.

I got to my feet and all I could do was stare, slack-jawed at the impossible sight.

The salmon was maybe twenty, thirty feet away from us when a large crow rose from the ground where I’d seen Joe moments before. When I say large, I mean it was twice the size of a normal crow, but it was still no match for the salmon. As soon as it got near to the fish, the salmon gave a flick of its tail and knocked the crow from the air. It went tumbling, head over talons, and fell into the branches of a tall pine.

By the time it got itself free, the salmon and its rider were long gone.

The crow sailed back to us, changing into a man once more when it was on the ground.

“Goddamn,” Joe said. “I should have had him.”