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*Trickster *

by anonymous

Part I of III

Don't you know who I am?

Coyote, who howled the fireflies up and into glittering constellations. Coyote, who stole fire from the gods. Coyote, who had put a trickster's spark into the race of mortal men for sheer joy at the chaos it caused. Coyote, who answered to no-one and nothing.

"A bitch. My bitch. Used to think you'd give me some smart puppies. Now... well, now I ain't so sure, but..."

The collar was made of leather, but it felt heavy as iron around her neck. In mostly human form as a wandering mountain man, she'd snared one of his hunting dogs with it--the collar she'd forged before time began to bind the Colorado River itself, strong enough to hold back the worst of its flash floods. And he'd told her that he was after stronger prey--after a bounty the government issued for a monster stalking the local flocks.

It was the fiercest predator they'd ever seen, and nobody had been able to catch it. I can, Coyote boasted. He could, too, he said, but he didn't have a strong enough snare. She'd bragged about the ropes she crafted. He'd offered to split the bounty; made her a deal. And now, he was leering. "What do you say, goddess? You in heat yet?"

Sometimes he let her walk on two legs. Not now. She fell to the ground as her limbs shortened, and she picked herself up, shaking dirt from her pelt. Even on four legs she was still Coyote, after all; still divine. Still timeless. Still better than him. "I'm not whelping a litter for your curs. I've told you that. You can't keep me forever."

"Can't I? Wasn't that the deal? Didn't you say your collar bound anything?"

She snarled at him, and the man chuckled.

It was an ugly chuckle. He was an ugly man. "What was that?" he asked, and she saw him reach behind his back. He pulled out a compound bow. She did not know his name, which might have given her some semblance of power. He raided traplines, and rustled horses. He had a few dogs. The one by his side, the one she'd snared, was a mongrel with short brown fur and crooked ears and a stupid, feral grin.

Except when he was hunting something. Except he was going after her, his teeth seeking her throat, snarling. Even then he was brutal and rough. None of a coyote's craft. None of a coyote's charm and guile. He would be terrible mother to--father, she corrected herself, with a shudder--the young of something immortal. "You heard me."

He had an arrow fitted, the bowstring drawn taut, and watched her with a smirk. She didn't back down. Even if he had forgotten who she was, the goddess had not. I am Coyote, who stole the sun and gave it back from the goodness of my heart! Coyote, who--

The impact drove the breath from her lungs, and it was several seconds before she even felt the pain. She snarled again, tried to raise her head, and couldn't. It was stuck. She was stuck. The arrow-point was embedded in the ground, and she was pinned with it. And after that realization came the pain: sharp, burning its way through her chest from where he'd fired the compound bow to where the tip had punched from her.

Coyote cried out. The man laughed at her feral yelp, and she tasted copper at the back of her tongue. Coughed bright red into the dirt. She could smell the blood when she inhaled--shallowly, ever breath jolting her with the agony of her punctured lung--and the earth, and the scent of coming rain. The man's stink. The heavy musk that came before the footfalls of his dog.

"Looks like I got one," he told the animal. "Better finish her off."

The first time Coyote, who fashioned life from clay, had felt his calloused fingers around her throat she'd struggled, and fought in a blind panic as he cut off her breath, and her muscles failed her, and she left her own body while he kept his iron grip until he was sure the job was done. She existed in a deep, black emptiness for some timeless stretch.

And then she opened her eyes, the collar still about her, the bruises from his fingers healed. The poacher had grinned, like he'd known what was going to happen all along. And then, to be sure, he'd drawn his revolver and fired it into the side of her skull before she could protest. Now that she knew there was no escape--was she not a god, after all? How could death bind her?--the prospect of death should've seemed like a relief.

But she fought it anyway, a biological urge to resist surrender. By reflex she tried to pull herself from the earth. Twisting, eyes squinted against the pain of her shredded insides, she tried to get purchase on the end of the shaft sticking from just behind her shoulderblades. She was whimpering, knew she was whimpering, and then she saw the dog. He was watching her. His tongue lolled.

Finish her off. Yes. There would be a bit of violence, sure. A few seconds of suffering as he tossed her from side to side until her neck finally snapped. But it was better than the alternative, feeling her body slowly weaken and betray her. The dog wasn't moving, though. His teeth weren't bared.

At length he padded out of her peripheral vision, and she felt the shock of his cold nose pushing up under her bushy tail. Coyote--Coyote, who twisted the dreams of madmen into the northern lights!--yelped in protest, and tried to shuffle her hips away. But the arrow made that impossible, and the yelp had emptied her lungs. Blood bubbled into them, and as she gagged it back and into the dampening earth the dog's weight was suddenly _on _her.

"Stop," she gasped pleadingly. "Stop it--him! Stop him!"

Not that the poacher would. Of course. His dog humped, and Coyote felt the tip now protruding from his sheath bump into her, nudge and prod and push. Her back arched, trying to escape despite the lance of agony the movement brought, but it spared her for only a few seconds. His aim had grown surer, and when she settled back down the dog found his mark.

An inch of tapered, slick feral cock slid in, and when he felt that the cur hunched up and started forcing the rest. There was cattle-dog in his lineage, and shepherd, and something else_ big_. He stretched her lithe body out obscenely, and she screamed in tongues too ancient for the human to know as that rigid canine meat sank in to the hilt, spearing her as awfully as the arrow had done.

Her captor didn't understand the language, but he understood the scream. He patted her between the ears, and ran his finger under the collar. "Good dog," he told his pet, as the dog started to buck his way in rough, jarring strokes. One after the other, fast and purposeful, slamming into her body, putting pressure between her raised hips and her pinned shoulders.

She screamed. Like a coyote, an anguished howl that kept choking off in sputtering coughs. Eyes, keen eyes that had seen the dawn of the world, looked pleadingly up at the man and saw his answer in his leer. He knew. Coyote's blood soaked the earth in a crimson fan about her muzzle where it dug in, and trickled down from her shoulders.

The dog didn't care. He gripped hard on her haunches and thrust in a frenzy. Hot, slimy saliva dripped onto her back, mixing with her blood. His knot was swelling. He was going to claim her. Thick, awful, stabbing flesh pumped into her rapidly as the hung feral worked for his peak in her violated body.

I'll get you back. I'll get free of this and you--oh, you won't know the _end of your tortures_, she thought. Her mind raced with it, with the taste of revenge, with how the man's broken-toothed smile would look as it turned to a rictus of something unfathomable, something truly divine in its horror. Coyote, who gave man corn and linen and music, would exact_ payback so _terrible that--

The dog rammed up and into her one last time, one time deep and hard enough _that she felt the knot punch in and knew he was tying her. Stuck in his bitch, his pace frantic now as his paws shifted from side to side and the hung feral tensed with the coming release of his heavy sack. The knot hurt--_fuck, it was one thing when she was Coyote the Rake, the Lecherous, seeding some village girl. When they _squealed it was because a _god was breeding them.

This? The dog jerked to a stop. There was a hot, wet spray inside her. Another, and another. Thin and salty, like the blood trickling in her throat. Worse, somehow. If she was in heat, if it took hold... if--Coyote yelped, like any tied bitch, and wrenched her head around, and snapped at the dog. She got a mouthful of fur; red streaked it, but that was hers. She couldn't turn further, couldn't really get a grip with her teeth.

He was still filling her. Dangerously potent canine seed pumped into Coyote's womb in long, disgusting spurts. She tried to bite him again. Tried to bite the man, too, when he stepped in to intervene. He stopped. "Bad girl," he warned, and took the bow back out, nocking another arrow with its razor-sharp head. Like it was a threat, by that point. Like she wanted anything else.

She lunged, and he fired, and she was trapped. The second arrow transfixed her, leaving her forearms splayed and quivering and her muzzle jammed into the dirt. Somehow he'd missed her heart, but every shallow breath, tugging at the arrows lodged in her, grew more difficult and strained and liquid. She couldn't yelp anymore. For a bit longer she whined through her nose, until the dribbling blood quieted that, too.

Coyote, who tricked the moon into hiding her face one a month, was dying. Her haunches slumped, and though it pulled gratingly on her wounds she didn't have the strength to hold herself up, let alone the big dog still filling her with his load. He turned, his rump to hers, keeping her a few inches aloft. Her brain fired erratically--the cum was sating in her, biologically gratifying beyond its warmth. She needed to say something. She was going to curse the poacher. She had her victory, for now. She--

Couldn't breathe. Her lungs didn't work at all, now; fighting for air only bubbled slick liquid down her sides and over her tongue. I made a mistake, it was all a mistake--she tried to push herself upright again and her rear legs stiffed, but nothing else, she could make them do nothing else. Her body was failing. She convulsed with the final desperate efforts to resist it as her life flowed into the dirt. Scrabbled. Went limp. Her tail flitted.

---

Of course it'll bind your prey, he'd told the hunter after freeing his mutt, rolling his eyes. Don't you know who I am? I'm Coyote. It can bind anything.

Anything? He was getting greedy. Coyote had put the collar on himself, careful to hold the other end of the lead, and dared the mortal to undo it. It dulled his knife. It resisted his fingers. He tugged at the god, and the god went with him, the other end still in his paw. Whoever held that, held the collar's victim. The poacher didn't know that, of course.

He let the human drag him around for a bit. Ignored the sting of humiliation when he ordered him to shift into a comely maiden. Good trick, he'd told his cur, then. Might be we'll settle down, huh? And she'd smiled demurely, the lead still gripped in her hand. The transformation was her idea. He was almost hers. The prize money for whatever the man was after didn't matter.

If it was supposed to be uncatchable, well, then who better than the mightiest hunter to catch it? The human and his dog, she could throw off a canyon for the crows. He ordered her to turn back into a coyote. She stayed on two legs, then, glaring at him. Well? Satisfied?

I don't know.

Growing impatient, she'd asked what he was waiting for, already. And he'd said the lead was too long for the trees where he intended to fix the snare. Coyote bit back a snarl, and got her knife out, and asked him how short he wanted it, already. His fingers had roamed the sinew before picking a spot. Here.

And she'd cut it. And the lead fell away, save for what was pinched between his fingers.

And the man had grinned.

---

Coyote watched her limp body. The dog finally pulled free, and padded off to clean himself. A pool of canine semen puddled from one end, in lewd counterpoint to the blood growing tacky about her still head. The poacher put his boot on her ribs, and yanked the arrows free. There was no response. Her essence had long since fled.

He ran his finger along the collar, and muttered something, and the universe disappeared.

Her body was knitting itself back together. Coyote knew only senseless emptiness, decades of it without external reference to the stars she'd help craft and the trees she'd given form to and the crackle of campfires lit with the fire she'd stolen, a bulwark against just this darkness... it must truly have taken seconds, or minutes perhaps, but it seemed to last forever, the void.

Until she heard a chuckle, and felt her chest rise and fall as fresh air filled her lungs. "Welcome back, goddess." Her eyes opened and she was looking at him again. Looking at that gap-toothed, foul-breathed grin. "Let there be light."