Every Good Trap

126.

"Shit you want isn't cheap Gilbert." Roy Smith was Gilbert's native american artifact supplier. He was an elder in the Duwamish tribe or so he told Gilbert despite his very anglicized name.

"Come on Roy you can't have that much of a need for living elk horn." This was the dance he always did with Roy. It was a tiring endless parade of  this thing you want is too expensive, I guess I could see myself letting it go for blah blah, it tired Gilbert, but he felt under the gun and the dance was obnoxious.

"Actually I'm fresh out, a park ranger bought all the stock I had." Gilbert felt that chill run down his spine, the trap being set by the skin walkers was expanding.

"A park ranger named Simmons?"

"I can't remember for sure, something like that."

"You don't remember for sure? You've got video right? Lets just check that out." Roy tried to say no, but Gilbert had already barreled past him into the office with Clarissa trailing after. The office itself looked like a fight had taken place there, papers and office furniture smashed about. The video player itself lay in pieces. Roy attacked Gilbert with large claws from his hand. Gilbert dodged to the left and ran into part of the wooden desk in the small office, his side burned from banging into it, and then the claws got him on his left shoulder, digging deep in.

Clarissa didn't have her bow with her, it wasn't supposed to be that kind of trip. She did have one of her knives though and she buried it into the skin walker's shoulder. The blade couldn't kill the creature, but it sure did harm it, the creature which was looking less like Roy Smith and more like some a hairless bear turned its attention to Clarissa. She backed out of the office and it followed after her. She tried to look around the shop for something to use against it, but it was all baubles and native american tourism stuff.

"You fucked up now girl, after I eat you, I'll go back for your friend." The skin Walker pulled her knife out and threw it into the wall, the blade went all the way through showing the strength of the creature.

"You'll struggle to do that with my fist in your god damn face." Clarissa just attacked the skin walker, she didn't know why or for what good, but with the options of fight or flee, she took fight. She landed a solid right on the skin walkers jaw which surprised it briefly, but it recovered quickly and snatched her by the throat. With minimal effort it flung her towards the wall and she went through it landing next to Gilbert. Everything hurt for Clarissa, even though the wall wasn't wood she was pretty sure she smashed hard into something.

The Skin Walker advanced on her, it looked bigger than it had before. Clarissa heard something behind her, it sounded like Gilbert. He passed something to her hard and sharp and she knew what it was. The Skin Walker lunged on top of her and she stuck the elk horn hard in its chest, she didn't know if the heart was in the same place as a person, or even where a heart normally was. But she aimed and stabbed. With the aid of the creatures own leap the elk horn stake went through all the way to her hand. The formerly aggressive creature went limp on top of her an almost crushing amount of extra weight.

"Can you like move?" Gilbert who was trapped behind her and in pain from the mauling he'd gotten just wanted to be free.

"I'm trying, but he's heavy and I got thrown through a wall Gilbert."

"Yeah well... can you move?" Clarissa wanted to smack Gilbert, but felt he was probably in worse shape than she was. With a lot of exertion of her legs and some whimpers from Gilbert when she leaned into him, she got the corpse of the skin walker off of her and got Gilbert free. His shoulder looked really bad to her untrained eyes, just too much blood and skin being loose.

"I'll be fine, but this isn't the only skin walker, they are pack hunters and we need to get out of here before others show up."

"Where will we go?" Clarissa didn't like that they only had a couple of the elk stakes to use, and the one she'd used already looked pretty worse for wear.

"We need to get more living elk, I know another guy but I'm so loathe to use him, but he's our only hope here, you'll have to drive, I'll do my best to patch up." Clarissa agreed even if she felt she should be driving him to a hospital.

****

The sign said TL Antiquities, Clarissa wondered why they'd come to an antique dealer for what they were after, but Gilbert insisted they were at the right place. Gilbert himself looked worse for wear, but he insisted they go inside together. The shop looked like a regular antique shop to Clarissa, if a bit extravagant for the rural area of Bellingham it was located in. The proprietor was a tall thin black man with a red goatee but a bald head.

"The answer is no, now leave my shop." And it only got worse from there.