by C. E. Murphy
It sounded like a respectable Plan A. I very cautiously triggered the tamped-down Sight again, hoping it wouldn’t blast my eyeballs out. It merely filtered on, the way it was supposed to. Pleased, I tapped Billy’s shoulder and went into a complicated mime routine trying to explain what I intended to do. After about thirty seconds of playing peekaboo, which completely failed to get across the idea of “I’m going to wrap myself in an invisibility cloak,” he rolled his eyes, mouthed, “Just do it,” and hunched back down to await my antics.
If the Sight could knock me senseless for a couple minutes, I could hardly imagine how badly something that inherently screwed with the laws of physics might end up if I wasn’t careful. I delved into my magic more delicately than I’d ever done, trying not to do more than scrape enough off its surface to bend light around myself. Even those tiny scrapes left bright silver-white marks, like I was coming dangerously close to unleashing power I was totally unprepared to deal with. If I had to do anything fast while we were down here, that Plan B with the bubble shields might well come in necessary.
Gradually I felt like I’d succeeded, but one of the problems with this trick was I could still see myself. In fact, I was pretty sure it violated laws of physics all over the place, since I could also see out of my invisibility cloak, which technically I shouldn’t be able to do. Magic, however, wasn’t physics. I tapped Billy’s shoulder again and he flinched, suggesting he couldn’t see me. Satisfied, I crept forward, flashlight knotted in my hand like the bludgeoning tool it was shortly to be used as.
Morrison and Tia had gone halfway around the wicker man, Tia stopping every few feet to examine something. I paused where she had, trying to see what she’d seen, but gave it up after a couple of attempts and edged around the circle as quickly and quietly as I could, until I was opposite Billy and only a few yards from my furry boss and his golden-haired girlfriend.
Tia scruffed the top of Morrison’s head and said something inaudible to him. He lay down immediately, chin on his paws, but his whole body quivered like a dog who wasn’t at all sure he wanted to do as he was told. I wondered abruptly who was the boss in a wolf pack, the alpha male or the alpha female. In an awful lot of pack structures, the males were there for protection and breeding, and the females ruled the roost. Morrison looked very much like his roost was being ruled. Tia crouched to scruff him again and he lay flatter, ears and tail full of displeased body language, but Tia ignored him as she laid a hand on the wooden ring she’d built.
Fire exploded everywhere.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I hit the nearest cave wall with my spine and slithered down whimpering with pain and confusion. The wicker man’s firewood ring was fully ablaze, pouring off heat that turned dampness on walls to steam, and though the wicker man himself wasn’t yet on fire, his occupants were shrieking bloody, terrified murder. That seemed perfectly reasonable, and any second now I was going to extricate my backbone from stone and leap forth to rescue them. Any second now. Honest.
Rather than engaging in that activity, though, my brain insisted on whirring around the idea that setting the wicker man alight now, before the fullest moon, made no sense. There were five human beings in that thing. Just the right number for points of a pentagram, if that sort of thing was important, though if the poor bastard in the torso had been in the head I’d have thought it more likely to be relevant. On the other hand, the torso was probably sturdier. A sufficiently motivated kidnap victim might be able to wrench the head off. Or maybe Lynn really had been intended to fill that last space, and the guy in the torso represented heart’s blood. Given what had happened to Naomi’s heart, that didn’t seem impossible, either.
This was a lousy time to hypothesize. I tried straightening up and discovered part of the reason I’d been sitting there was for the second time that night, moving hurt like hell. The healing magic within me was going gangbusters again, and I kind of didn’t want to know just how much damage I’d sustained bashing into the rough cave walls.
I could almost hear Coyote’s scolding: “If you would remember your shields, Joanne, this kind of thing wouldn’t happen.” I nodded obediently, trying to make a note. Mental shields were all well and good, but when someone had been put on a warrior’s path, she probably ought to make a habit of permanent physical shields as well. I promised myself I’d get on that as soon as I could walk again. A deep breath made my back crack, and I thought maybe I had another thirty seconds or a minute before I trusted all my parts to properly do their thing.
Thirty seconds was a long time in terms of dry wood and smoke inhalation. Teeth gritted, I shoved myself upward. Black swam through my vision and I clenched my eyes shut, determined not to pass out. I was not going to let people die because of a measly cracked spine.
Tia Carley put her hand around my throat and strong-armed me up the wall.
Her eyes were fire-gold, like she drew on magic to have the strength to hold me there. Like the flames behind her fed her, for that matter: she was beautiful in their light. Dangerous, bonkers and scary, but beautiful. I clawed my hands around her wrist, trying to loosen her fingers, but she squeezed a bit harder, making it difficult to get purchase.
“Shaman. Healer. You’re even better than the dancers. That was you there tonight, wasn’t it? Shielding them? I tried,” she said with a note of petulancy. “I tried to scoop your magic last night after you healed me.”
Ah. That had been the nosing-about I’d felt. It hadn’t felt like an attack, but perhaps she’d been being careful. Or maybe my shields had been well in place for once. If I had a time machine I’d go back and check, but I didn’t, so I just hung there on the wall clawing at her wrist while she added, “Breast cancer,” incredulously. “What kind of bullshit is that? I’m barely even human, and you waltz up and tell me I’m going to die of breast cancer? That I’ve got a predisposition for it? That bitch queen screwed us even more than I knew.”
I said, “Bitch queen?” except with her hand crushing my larynx, it came out a lot more like “Kakghk agggh?” Pain erupted in my stomach, the familiar feel of fishhooks hauling me somewhere else. I wished they’d haul me out from Tia’s grasp, but they weren’t nearly that accommodating. They didn’t really have to be, though: she’d grabbed me too high, under the jawbone, which meant I wasn’t going to choke out anytime soon. I only needed another ten seconds or so to get my spine in alignment and then I was going to kick her naked pansy ass from here to eternity.
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve got you now. I won’t need the dancers tomorrow.”
Goddamn it. Three nights of power. Three nights of ghost dances. Three nights of sacrifices. I’d prevented Winona’s death earlier, which was probably why the wicker man’s denizens were getting toasty tonight. They’d almost certainly been intended for tomorrow night’s party. But I’d shown up on the scene, so Tia was improvising, and damned if she wasn’t doing it well.
I stiff-handed her in the throat.
It wasn’t what I wanted to do. I really wanted to kick her in the gut so hard she’d fly back and land in her own bonfire, but I didn’t have room to pull my legs up that far. Besides, it would’ve been telegraphed, whereas unwrapping one hand from the grip at my throat and jabbing the eighteen inches to her throat took almost no effort.
Her grip weakened satisfyingly and she dropped me. I fell to my hands and toes and sprang forward, tackling her. I had two inches and at least twenty pounds on her. One solid slam against stone and a fist to her jaw should have been all it took.
Except instead of landing on top of a wheezing, gasping woman, I landed on top of a snarling, snapping wolf, and the fist I was driving toward its face suddenly looked very small and vulnerable in comparison to all those teeth. I pulled the punch and got a paw across my face for my troubles. My glasses went flying and pain erupted where claws scored their mark. Half a second later we’d both twisted and flung ourselves aside to land on our feet, Tia on all fours, me on just the two. I couldn’t see well out of my left e
ye, puffy flesh and tears already marring my vision. Aggravatingly, that was the eye I had better vision in, so although I was by no means debilitated, Tia’s edges were a little softer than I might have liked. It didn’t matter. If I could see well enough to drive without my glasses, I could certainly see well enough to beat a werewolf into next week without them.
She leaped at me and I ducked into the attack, shouldering up to catch her chest and use her own momentum against her. She went a lot farther than either of us expected, hitting the ground with a yelp that turned to furious growling. I spun, ready to catch her the same way again, but she darted around me and came in for my hamstrings, moving faster than I’d known wolves could do. I jammed my hips forward, narrowly keeping my legs out of her teeth, and it struck me, a little belatedly, that an unarmed human versus a wolf was probably shit out of luck.
I reached for my sword, and got a shock when it refused to come at my call.
Tia circled around and flattened me in the moment I stood there dumbstruck, her full weight bearing down as she drove her teeth at my throat. Smacking my head against stone was a sufficient wake-up call to get me in action again, though my brain was a static mess of bewilderment. Fighting, though, wasn’t necessarily a brainy thing to do. I grabbed two fistfuls of Tia’s ruff and kicked her in the belly, using leg strength to throw her over my head. I caught a glimpse of a magnificent aerial twist and she landed on her feet, facing me but still skidding backward from momentum. It gave me enough time to roll to my own feet and try again to call my sword to me.
I got a sensation of magnets interacting: magics rejecting each other, rebounding when they tried to meet. Then Tia had her feet under her again and was charging forward. I threw myself sideways, landing alarmingly near the bonfire. It was picking up serious heat, now that I noticed it: all the cave’s dampness had been sucked away and the close quarters were making air thin and dry. I doubted Tia had considered that when she chose the cavern as her magical roasting pit. Her captives were screaming and coughing, and frustration tore through me. Short of bringing down the ceiling, I didn’t know how to magically put a fire out, and any experimentation would give Tia more than enough opportunity to chew me into little bits. It had to be one crisis at a time, but I didn’t see how I was going to get everybody out of there alive, that way. Not without throwing myself wholesale into a magic whose topped-up, shiny new strength didn’t yet have any grasp on consequences or limitations.
Tia came at me again, and the time for debate ended. I whispered, Rattler, help?, and when Tia hit me, it was a coyote she rolled backward over the broad stone floor.
There was something to be said for the element of surprise. She had, perfectly reasonably, expected to smash into a six-foot-tall, hundred-and-sixty-five-pound woman. The same amount of coyote was a whole different mouthful, pretty much literally: her teeth snapped on where my throat should have been, but I’d changed shape so radically she caught air half a foot from my skull instead. Almost without losing momentum, she jumped away again, then spun back to gape at me, an expression as comical on a wolf as it was on a human. Then she fell back a few more steps, hackles rising warily.
Part of my brain—the part that was pure coyote, I imagined—informed me that wolves were bigger and stronger than coyotes. That they were a higher-apex predator, and that I shouldn’t mess with one. But that part didn’t take into account the magic at work with both of us. Tia was broader than I, musculature heavier and more compact. I was rangier, longer-legged and therefore theoretically faster. She no doubt had far more experience fighting in canine form, but I outweighed her any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Even my canine mind was starting to think it looked like a fair fight, and I could almost see Tia’s own wolf-brain calculating just what the hell its odds were against a coyote bigger than itself. Feeling confident, I took a step forward.
And tangled myself in my jeans. Tia’s lips pulled back from her teeth in a distinctly wolfish grin. She charged as I scrambled and kicked my way free of the pants. My sweater and T-shirt were a constrictive mess, but they were also a barrier: I crashed to the side and her teeth snagged in knitted cotton, tearing it but not me. She turned again, snarling, and this time I deliberately let her grab a mouthful of sweater, then used her ferocious, angry tugging to help me back out of it. The T-shirt loosened instantly, no longer as twisted around my body, and I chalked it up to good enough as I swung to face my opponent.
My vision erupted. Every flicker of movement suddenly caught my attention: Tia, minutely shifting her weight as she tried to decide whether to press the attack. That was fine. That was detail I wanted.
Flame darting in and out of existence was not detail I wanted. Every lick that reached for the wicker man or the ceiling caught my attention, dragging it away from the imminent assault. Trickles of water I’d thought steamed away glittered at the cave’s top edges, tiny droplets forming beautiful, shining, distracting jewels. Terrified men scrabbled and reached out of the wicker man, trying to escape somehow; acting like prey animals, making me want to pounce and bite and tear. Bits of branch fell away inside the fire ring, their disintegration to charcoal and ash vivid and compelling. Smoke roiled up, fascinating in its curls. Everything demanded my full regard, and my brain shrieked, trying to process the overload of motion surrounding me.
I collapsed, paws over my eyes, and howled a miserable cry against stone. It echoed, rebounded and came back to me as the cries of frightened humans; as the snap and bite of flame in the air; as the hiss of steam and the drip of water. Tia’s breath, far too quiet for any reasonable chance at being heard, scraped at my ears with its harshness, and the clack of her claws against stone sounded like apocalyptic drums, pounding in the end of the world. And her smell. Not human, not animal, but something in between. Not even like Morrison, whose scent leaped to my attention over the fire and smoke and steam. Somehow he had been one thing, man and man-scented, and now was the other, wolf and wolf-scented, but Tia was neither and both. Transforming would never change her scent: she would always smell half-wild, musky, carnivore, to a nose sensitive enough to catch it. I didn’t know how I’d missed it at the theater, it was so obvious to me now. Everything, everything was obvious, so obvious as to pound me down, a sensory overload I was totally unprepared to deal with. Exploding the amulet, being bowled over by too-vivid Sight; those things had warned me about the price of untempered magic, but this was a thousand times worse. This was the world hammering into me, taking full advantage of the enhanced senses a coyote had over a human.
For one brief, horrifying moment I wondered just how badly I could have damaged the world around me if I’d tried an external magic rather than one as internal as shapeshifting, and then the world, in the form of Tia Carley’s lupine self, came up and laid the smacketh down.
I was already on the floor, flat as I could get, as if spreading myself thin might reduce the raging strength of sensory attack. She landed on me with a crunch, and to my eternal gratitude, it appeared my sense of touch hadn’t been blown beyond the edge of coping. Possibly being hit by a semi and then thrown into a wall had already pushed it beyond its ability to respond any further, but I didn’t care. At least there was one aspect of a too-loud, too-vivid, too-smelly world I wasn’t entirely inundated by. Heartened by that one small gift, I surged upward, shaking Tia off before she got her teeth into me. Teeth, ugh: I bet my sense of taste had been upgraded, too, and I gagged on the memory of the theater door handle.
The world seemed a little less overpowering once I was back on my feet. I shook myself, then let out what was meant to be a barbaric shout, something to expel excess energy from within me. It came out a series of tripping howls and yips, not very barbaric at all, though it was plenty wild, and to my huge relief, it did batter down some of the extreme-sports levels of attention I was paying to everything.
And like it had physical presence, it dampened some of the fire. Inside a breath or two, the air was cooler, smelling less of flame and smoke and more of ter
rified, unwashed humans. I sneezed, made a mental note to apologize to Morrison for laughing at him when we’d walked through the stinky sections of Underground, and staggered in a clumsy line, trying to shake off the last of the blowout’s after-effects.
Clearly they’d only affected me. My head was still ringing when Tia slammed into me from the side, knocking us both into sooty but not-flaming firewood. I caught a glimpse of one of the caged men above me, his expression twisted with bewildered relief: whatever was going on, he wasn’t going to roast to death in the next three minutes, which made his life a whole lot better than it had been thirty seconds ago.
Which made my life seem a whole lot better than it had thirty seconds ago. I twisted under Tia, got my teeth dangerously closer to her jaws, and then for the first time in my life, found myself in the middle of a dogfight.
I’d seen them, of course. Usually just brief spates, two animals suddenly making themselves a single roiling ball of teeth and claws and snarls. Nobody in their right mind wanted to get in the middle of that: it was obviously dangerous, and a fire hose seemed like the best way to break it up.
From inside, a fire hose seemed like the best way to break it up. I had no idea how to win this fight, but I didn’t have to: my coyote brain knew exactly what to do in a tussle with another dog. Tia moved one way; I was there to meet her. I jerked another direction; she was there to stop me. Claws and teeth flashed, striking scores. Fur flew, and the animalistic scent/taste of her blood settled in my teeth. We smashed into the wicker man’s foot, a fact I knew only because the guy inside it screamed.
