Spirit Dances

by C. E. Murphy

  When it reached my fingertips, it jumped off, and the Upper World disappeared from around me.

  I was a little surprised to awaken in Morrison’s garden. I’d forgotten that’s where I’d been headed, before the stick insect interlude. It took a moment to shake off the feeling of hundreds of tiny bug feet crawling all over me, and to take a good look around.

  I was in roughly the same place I’d been last time I’d visited his garden: a granite cliff littered with stubborn trees and a vista that overlooked half the world. Precarious for me, perhaps, but it was an easily defensible spot. Morrison could effectively shove an unwanted visitor off the cliff, if he had to protect the core of what he was. The whole garden was wild country, the sort that could kill somebody anyway, if they weren’t careful, and the fact that it reflected Morrison’s soul said a lot about his confidence and competence.

  It was also perfect territory for a wolf, but I doubted Morrison would be shapeshifted here. If he was, the situation was a whole lot worse than I thought, and my half-baked ideas of bringing him back to the dance troupe were going to require a great deal more baking, and probably Coyote’s guidance as well. My Coyote, Little Coyote, not the desert-stalking archetype. I didn’t want to bother him for any reason, not if I could avoid it.

  Nor did I want to start bellowing for my boss. That seemed inexcusably rude, as if barging into his garden wasn’t already. So I stood there, watching an eagle on an updraft, until I got the spine-itchy feeling of someone looking at me. I turned around.

  Morrison sat a few yards away, a magnificent silver wolf with blue eyes and an expression very like Morrison-the-man could wear: one that said, somewhat impatiently, What are you doing here, Walker?

  “What I’m not doing is having yet another silent conversation with an animal. Come on, Morrison. I know this place, right here, and if I know it, you can’t be so far gone as to be stuck as a wolf in your own garden. I’m sure it’s very sexy and all, but I need to talk t—”

  He shivered into human form somewhere far too close to the beginning of my last sentence, and remained where he was, with the exact same expression he’d had as a wolf. Except now he was--well.

  At least he was dressed. Or at least mostly dressed, which he wouldn’t be if he’d shifted back to human in the real world. He was in jeans, which Morrison almost never wore, and a snug tanktop-style undershirt. No shoes. No socks. No shirt over the tanktop, and for some reason the tank was about eight hundred times more provocative than being totally shirtless would have been. It was the whole promise of something more, I guessed, but damn, it worked. A year ago I’d thought he was a little soft around the middle. The softness had disappeared over the course of the past twelve months, but the tanktop provided an opportunity to appreciate just how not-soft he was. Really clean solid muscular arms looped around his knees. Broad smooth shoulders with the shadow of a tattoo on one, though I couldn’t see what it was. The idea of Morrison having a tattoo at all cranked my brain around a few times and set it on a bewildered spin cycle. It was not, however, my brain which was doing most of the assessment of a half-dressed Morrison, so I didn’t really miss it as I licked my lips and kept right on gawking.

  After a while he arched one eyebrow, which reminded me he was quite aware of my staring. I cleared my throat, wondering why on God’s little green earth I ever opted to use a word like sexy in relation to my boss within his hearing, and then wondering if that word choice had precipitated his clothing decisions on a subliminal level. It took another long moment or three to get past that idea and finally croak, “Hi.”

  “Last time,” Morrison said, “you said this always works in fairy tales. Which one are we in now, Walker? Beauty and the Beast?”

  “I hope not. It took more than a kiss to break that spell.” Once more, I wished I’d shut up ahead of time.

  Because it was Morrison’s garden, he was suddenly no longer in front of me. I spun to find him farther away than he’d been, sitting on a picnic table that hadn’t been there before, with a knife and some kind of wood carving in his hands. Morrison. Half dressed, wielding a knife, creating art. And here I thought he’d cornered the market on sexy before. I went back to staring at him wordlessly, aware that my heartbeat had accelerated and my cheeks were growing steadily warmer. The tattoo was still a shadow, distance obscuring it. I really, really wanted to know what it was, but my scratchy voice said, “I didn’t know you sculpted,” instead of asking.

  “My dad taught me.” That was clearly as much information as he intended to divulge. I took a couple tentative steps toward him and said, “We have a problem.”

  “Yeah, Walker, I know. I chose Beauty and the Beast over Sleeping Beauty for a reason. What are you going to do about it?”

  He was a lot tetchier than he’d been last time I was here. I no doubt deserved it, but it made me feel small and unhappy anyway, and I offered my explanation to the ground, instead of him. “I can try changing you back right now. I’m pretty sure I’ve got the raw power.”

  “But.”

  I looked up, more determined to face that tone than I was inclined to slink away. “But it’s really raw right now. Like I blacked out Seattle raw.”

  Morrison sighed, though his attention was all for the carving. Quick knife strokes pared away the wood, small muscle movements in his arms smooth and distracting as it took on a shape I couldn’t recognize from the distance. “And the other choice?”

  “You stay a wolf in the real world until I can get you back to the dance troupe, where they can do the transformative dances and I can get Coyote to help me focus so I’m sure nothing will go wrong when you change. The only risk there is you staying more in wolf-brain than I wish you would, but I’m kind of hoping me coming in here to talk to you will wake your human mind up more. The shock of shifting without warning can make somebody go all animal, but you’re obviously still in here.”

  “And how do I retain my own mind when we leave here?”

  “I don’t know. Focus on me. I’m a constant, I’ll be right there.”

  “You’re a constant something, all right.” Morrison stood up unexpectedly and I fumbled the catch when he tossed the carving to me.

  It was a jeans-and-sweater–clad woman with short-cropped hair and the most delicate slice of a scar marring her right cheek. I jerked my gaze to Morrison, but he was already gone.

  In another moment, so was I.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Morrison was standing over me when I opened my eyes. Looming, actually. Officer King’s estimation of Morrison’s wolfy self’s size had been off, but not much. He was a good three and a half feet at the shoulder, bigger than a Great Dane, and broader in the chest than any canine I’d ever laid eyes on. I hadn’t really had time to appreciate that when I’d been wrestling with him in the theater. I wasn’t strictly sure I wanted to be appreciating it now, since I had the very clear impression he could crush my skull in his jaws pretty much on a whim. All in all, I preferred the partially dressed man, not that I would ever, ever say that aloud.

  Fortunately, he couldn’t read my mind, and since he hadn’t crushed my skull, I offered a tentative, “Hey, boss. This mean you’re in there?” which got me a steely-eyed glare I interpreted as an affirmative. My shoulders slumped and I rocked forward until my hair brushed his fur, which made both of us startle. “Sorry. All right, look, let’s get you out of here. There are a couple cops up above. Try not to scare them.” I got to my feet. Morrison’s head came up to the bottom of my ribs. I resisted the urge to curl my fingers in his ruff and tried very hard to act like I was just walking out of the marketplace with my boss at my side.

  It worked all the way up to the point we were actually walking out, when King and his partner both said “Jesus Christ!” and other high-voiced panicked exclamations of that nature. Morrison, human brain in control or not, growled, and I raised my hands, getting between him and the officers. “It’s okay. It’s okay. He’s…” I was going to get in so much trouble for this.
“He’s tame. He just got loose tonight and has been a little freaked out.”

  “He should try being me!”

  “I don’t think that would make either of you happy. Look, thanks for calling me in.” Never mind that they hadn’t. Maybe they wouldn’t notice. “I’ll let citywide Dispatch and Animal Control know that the wolf has been contained. No more high alert for tonight.”

  King blew out a long breath. “Hope not. It’s been a crazy day. You heard about the murder just up the street this morning, right?”

  I very much didn’t want his thoughts going that direction, not when Lynn Schumacher’s death had all the earmarks of a dog attack. “It’s the full moon coming on, is all. Everybody’s a little crazy around the full moon. C’mon, fella.” I clicked my tongue at Morrison, whose expression told me I would die soon and painfully, but he trotted along beside me as I hurried up the street, leaving the two young officers behind. As soon as we were out of earshot I muttered, “Sorry,” then called Dispatch as promised. Morrison watched the whole thing, then gave a great huff that I anthropomorphized as relief. Although maybe it wasn’t anthropomorphizing if he was actually a human. Dictionary definitions weren’t meant to encompass my life. Either way, I made the tactical error of reaching out to rub his head as if he was a dog, and discovered that wolves could move very, very fast when they wanted to. My wrist looked astonishingly small and delicate in his mouth. I swallowed and Morrison let me go, but with a dire look which indicated next time he’d probably chomp my arm off.

  My vague intentions of bringing him into the Under ground evaporated. “Let’s get you someplace safe.”

  He whuffed, and I picked up the pace, heading for the parking garage. I didn’t want to think about his big hoary claws scraping up Petite’s black leather seats, but he stepped into the car with unexpected delicacy, as if the same thought had occurred to him. For a man who considered my relationship with my car to be pathological, I thought that was very considerate. I leaned past him, locked the door, said, “Stay,” and hopped back out of the driver’s side to lock the door behind me. Shapechanged boss or not, there was an I-hated-to-say-it werewolf down below, and half a dozen totally ordinary people standing between it and another potential early-morning murder. Morrison was going to have to wait.

  I’d made it forty feet when I heard the distinctive sound of Petite’s door slamming again. I turned to find Morrison with an absolutely filthy look which obviously said, You didn’t think I was smart enough to open a goddamned car door, Walker? A few long loping steps brought him to my side, his expression still infuriated, and I stared between him and the car. “Did you lock her?”

  He bared his teeth at me. Of course he hadn’t. Petite required thumbs to lock from the outside. Chastised and grumpy, I skulked back to Petite to lock her up safely once more.

  If I thought sections of the Underground smelled, my opinion held nothing on Morrison’s: he sneezed violently for a full sixty yards, and came through the worst bit looking like it was all somehow my fault. I said, “You could’ve stayed in Petite,” which was petty, true, and got me another dirty look. I’d had no idea dogs were so good at looking disgusted without also being threatening.

  Most of Rita’s friends had evidently joined her. The remaining two or three were sacked out near the fire and didn’t notice me sneaking by with a giant white wolf on my heels. He and I crept through the tunnel leading to the wolf-woman chamber, and I waved Billy down. He swung up the ladder—one of those chain and metal jobbies they recommended for second-floor fire escapes in private homes—and came nose to nose with Morrison.

  Neither, to their credit, yelped, but it looked like a near thing on both parts. Billy’s eyes bugged and I raised a defensive hand. “He wouldn’t stay in the car. I don’t know how I’m going to explain him to them.”

  “…as a police tracking dog…?” Billy suggested weakly. “A police tracking dog the size of Godzilla? Jesus, Joanne, look at him!”

  “I know. I guess mass doesn’t convert away to make normal-size fauna. Do you think they’d buy it?”

  “I think it doesn’t matter anyway. How do you plan to get him down there?” Billy pointed to the twelve-foot drop to the chamber floor, a factor I hadn’t previously considered.

  Morrison growled and edged forward, ears back, to peer over the tunnel’s edge. Then his massive shoulders rolled, a no problem shrug if I’d ever seen one, and he surged forward, clearing Billy’s head easily and landing three-quarters of the way across the chamber with little more than a grunt.

  It was enough to garner attention, and nobody else was as manly as Billy had been: half a dozen homeless guys did shriek, piercing squeals that echoed off the ceiling. Billy swore and jumped to the chamber floor, trying to break up their vocal panic with his own deep assurances: “Police dog, here to help us track. I know he’s huge, but he’s not aggressive. Just don’t get in his face.”

  “Doesn’t look like a fuckin’ dog to me,” somebody snarled. I saw tension ripple down Morrison’s spine before he looked over his shoulder and gave me another this is your fault glare. I didn’t think that was quite fair, since I’d told him to stay in the car. On the other hand, if he had, I’d have never seen my shapeshifted boss heave a mighty sigh, lie down, and roll over on his back to loll about and invite belly scratches. Ginormous or not, with his tongue hanging out and his spine all a-wriggle against the floor, he didn’t look even slightly dangerous, and the wolf aspects seemed much less dramatic.

  I slithered down the rope ladder, scraping my hands and stomach in my hurry, and scurried over to rub Morrison’s tummy to prove it was safe to do so. He was going to kill me. Oh, God, he was going to kill me, bring me back and kill me again, even if he had to spend a million years learning magic just so he could do it. And if he didn’t, I might do it myself, because I was pretty sure I deserved to be killed repeatedly for getting either of us into this situation.

  The snarly guy muttered, “I’ll be damned,” and Rita snuck over to scratch Morrison’s chest tentatively. He tolerated it for a good ten seconds from both of us, then flipped over again and stayed down, chin on his paws in what I assumed was his best attempt at non-threatening behavior. Probably everybody else interpreted the furious glare he fixed on me as attentive-waiting-for-commands behavior.

  “All right,” Billy said. “We’ve got our crew in place now. Thanks for helping me hold down the fort. It’s best if you head back to your fire now. Wolves won’t generally approach a group of humans or fire, not that we expect this one to get past us. Watch yourselves, though.”

  A few of them started to protest. Morrison sat up. Suddenly none of them wanted to hang around anymore, and there was a rush for the ladder, which, after some debate, they left in place. Thoughtful of them. Within about two minutes, Rita, Billy, Morrison and I were the only ones left, and Rita was staring hard at my boss. “He’s the same size that woman is.”

  “Bigger,” I said ill-advisedly. “Probably has forty pounds on her.”

  She swung around to glare at me, though she pointed an accusing finger at Morrison simultaneously. “Is he like her? A werewolf?”

  Morrison turned his head so slowly I hardly saw him move, but I certainly felt the incredulous weight of his expression. “This is why I didn’t want you to come along,” I said to him. “I didn’t want to explain everything right now. And no,” I said to Rita. “He’s just a victim of me screwing up. Werewolves don’t exist and even if they did, every piece of folklore I know says they’re bound by the phases of the moon.”

  “Which is full tonight,” Billy said. I wanted to kick him. “And if that woman wasn’t a werewolf,” he continued, “what was she?”

  “Well, whatever she is, Morrison’s not, okay? She could shift back and forth and he can’t.” They were right. Tia was a werewolf. And she was probably the dance theater killer, because if legend was right and werewolves were tied to phases of the moon, she probably had some kind of major power suck going down around the full moon,
and I was pretty damned certain the murder’s timing wasn’t coincidental. Moreover, tonight, Sunday night, not Saturday which I suspected Billy had meant, was the actual full moon, which probably meant if we didn’t stop the bitch—no pun intended—she’d attack the dancers one more time.

  I did not want to fight a werewolf. It was up there with zombies. Traditional creatures of the night were just not my thing, damn it, not that anybody had asked me what my thing was. I said, “Shit,” under my breath, and more clearly said, “Rita, this is probably a good time for you to cut loose, too. If she’s a werewolf, hell, I don’t know what happens if you get bitten by a real werewolf, but it can’t be good.”

  “No,” Rita said in a small voice. “I got you into this. I’d like to see it through.”

  “You…” Had gotten me into it, actually, what with giving me the dance concert tickets in the first place, but even so, I shook my head. “This is what I do, Rita. It’s my job.”

  “You’re a police officer,” she said incredulously. “Werewolves aren’t your job.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “My duties encompass a lot more than your average cop’s. Trust me. This is what I do. You didn’t get me into anything I wouldn’t have ended up in one way or another.”

  Morrison cocked his head, curious motion, but Rita remained unconvinced. “I’d still like to help if I can.”

  Feeling completely absurd, I said, “Morrison?”

  He looked between us, then pulled his lips back from his teeth, indicating what he thought of the idea. Billy snorted and Rita scowled, obviously afraid we were making fun of her. Feeling even more absurd, I said, “Rita, this is our boss.