Supernatural: Bobby Singer's Guide to Hunting by David Reed Page A

for their actions may be capricious and without merit, their mannerisms childish. Despite that, never forget that they hold dominion over energies and magicks vastly beyond the limits of human understanding and will use them, frankly, to make your life miserable for the simple reason that they find it humorous.
     
    Okay, so, maybe you read that and thought, “Guess I’d better steer clear of tricksters,” but what I took from it was that I’d better find a pointy stick and the blood of one of those spontaneously combusted grandmas from Calico Rock so that I’d have a fighting chance against Anansi if I ran into him again. That meant turning right around and driving cross-country again, probably breaking into a morgue or digging up a grave, just on the off chance that Anansi doesn’t give up his self-imposed retirement. Them’s the breaks.
    I put some ribs on the barbecue (for courage) and planned out my strategy—I was gonna try to get to Mrs. Greyson’s body before it was interred or cremated—if I was too late, the job’d be a whole lot messier. Nobody likes digging up six feet of dirt, much less poking and prodding a mangled corpse. I re-packed my duffel bag full of weapons and other hunting implements and made my way out into the junkyard, where I’d parked.
    The sun was setting over the twisted wrecks of cars in the salvage yard—I’d somehow spent the entire day scouring through books without realizing it. Happens more often than I’d like. A wolf’s howl caught my attention, coming from the forest behind the yard. Wolves aren’t unheard of in South Dakota, but they’re uncommon in these parts. Especially back then, before the ”Save the Wolves” effort was in full swing. You were more likely to see a farmer standing over the carcass of a wolf he’d just killed than hear a wolf in the wild. Hearing it was odd, but I didn’t think anything of it until I heard the exact same howl again only seconds later—and this time it was behind me.
    It’s a little spooky for anything to move that fast, much less a creature with fangs and a taste for bloody red meat, so I decided I should play things safe and pulled a .22-caliber rifle out of my duffel. That kind of firepower would drop a wolf no problem. I got near my car, felt like I was home free . . . then I heard the whimpering. I spun around, fast as I could, scanning the whole yard—I thought it musta been an injured animal, deer, coyote, maybe even a dog, but I couldn’t see anything. The critter whimpered again, this time a little deeper, sadder. It was in pain, whatever it was, and it was close.
    Enough of this “circle of life” hogwash , I thought, and went back to my business, only to be greeted by the strangest sight as I rounded the car to get to the trunk. A bite was taken out of its ass. I don’t mean that metaphorically—something had chomped off the left rear end of the car, slashing into the tire and leaving rent metal with large fang-marks where the bumper, tail lights, and rear quarter-panel had been. It was the car that was whimpering . It was friggin’ making noises like it was a hurt kitten.
    Even for me, that crap wasn’t normal.
    I did the only thing that made sense—I raised my rifle and got ready to shoot it. Hunter rule #27: if a big inanimate object that should never be alive suddenly is alive, you kill it, ASAP. When I got the car in my sights, it growled at me. Deep and guttural, like a bear or a lion. Great, I pissed it off .
    As I pondered how screwed I was, I realized there was no way a .22 was going to kill something that weighed thousands of pounds. My best options:
    A. Run
    B. Run
    C. Run
    D. Piss myself, then run
     
    Then I remembered that it was a car (let’s pause for a big WTF here . . . okay, we can continue), and even with one tire popped, it could still outrun me. Outdrive me. Whatever. It could go faster than me, run me down, and squish my head like a grape.
    With my rifle still trained on the car,