The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

Another flap, more dust, still another wingbeats Then, with a pop! in my head that felt like the psychic equivalent of the one you'd make by sticking your finger into your mouth against the inside of your cheek, its feet came all the way out of the Nothing. In its daws writhed the Lizard.

Yolanda grabbed me and kissed me on the cheek. A good thing she did, too, because Tony Sudakis slapped my back so hard, I might have staggered off the warded path and into the dump if she hadn't been holding on to me.

No matter how joyful he was, Michael Manstein didn't do things like slapping people on the back. He shouted, "Brilliantly reasoned, David! The similarity between lizards and snakes was enough to touch off the Garuda Bud's instinctive antipathy."

"Yeah," I said, which I admit wasn't a fitting response to praise like that. But I was too busy watching the fight above my head to get out more than the one word.

The Chumash Lizard was an alligator lizard the size of the biggest anaconda you ever saw. If you live in Angels City, you know about alligator lizards. They're the most common kind of lizard around here. The material ones can get more than a foot long, with yellowish bellies and dirt-brown backs striped with black. For critters their size, they have large, sharp teeth. The ones on the Chumash Lizard looked to be a couple of inches long, and it had a whole mouthful of them.

Alligator lizards also have little short legs, which makes them look even more ophidian than most lizards (they're related to glass snakes, which aren't snakes but lizards with no legs at all). My guess - my hope - was that that would just make the Garuda Bird madder.

The Lizard made horrible hissing noises and bit at the Garuda Bird's legs. However huge and fierce it was, though, it had no more chance against the Bird than an ordinary alligator lizard would have against an eagle that decided to have a reptilian lunch. Crunch! With a noise like a monster cleaver biting into a side of beef, the Garuda Bird bit off the Lizard's head and about the front third of its body. Ichor spattered down all over the dump. Luckily, it didn't splash any of us - talk about your hazardous materia magica.

The Chumash Lizard's body convulsed and thrashed even more wildly than before. Even material lizards are hard to kill. Lizards that are also Powers… But all the thrashing didn't stop the Garuda Bird from gulping down the rest of the lizard.

Michael tapped me on the shoulder. "I believe you may now definitively declare one Chumash Power extinct," he yelled.

"You know what?" I yelled back, °I don't miss it a bit.

Dreadful thing for an EPA man to say, isn't it?"

"I find myself less scandalized than I might be under other circumstances," Michael said.

With another earsplitting bellow, the Garuda Bird tried to poke its clawed feet into the Nothing. Again, it was hard work. But the Bird didn't have to back up and make a second effort - slowly but surely, talons, toes, and feet sank into the Chumash Powers' sphere of encyshnent and disappeared.

The Bird let out a pain-filled screech like the one it had made when (I guess) it seized the lizard. It started flapping its wings again in that half-material way it had used to force itself out of the Nothing. Feet, toes, talons reemerged - and then, with another of those psychic popy's, the Garuda Bird was free once more.

It didn't come out of the Nothing empty-footed, either.

Its claws held what the Chumash called the Great Eagle. I will admit, a golden eagle with a body the size of a Siberian tiger's is pretty Great - under other circumstances, as Michael had put it Up against the Garuda Bird, the Chumash Eagle might as well have been a sparrow.

The Eagle, unlike the Lizard, didn't try to fight. It wriggled, twisted, broke free, and streaked for the sky. I feared it would get away: it seemed so much more graceful in the air than the ponderous Garuda Bird. But the contest wasn't only, or even mostly, bird body against bird body. It was magic against magic, too, and the Garuda Bird had not only its native Indian potency but also all the souping up the Loki Kobold Works had given its sorcerous systems. It didn't just fly - it was destined for space. It shot after the Eagle faster than the eye could follow.

High in the sky, the Eagle tried to dodge - if it couldn't flee the Garuda Bird, maybe it could outjink it But no. One of those immense feet closed on it, and this time there was no escape. I heard a despairing shriek fade and the. Hovering above the dump, the Garuda Bird devoured its prey. A couple of big feathers came spiraling down into the containment area - all that was left of the Chumash Eagle.

"We'll have to decontaminate those," Yolanda said.