by C. E. Murphy
It slipped from my claws, narrowing, elongating, taking a new and familiar shape: the shape of my old enemy, the serpent. That was as it should be. We had been locked in this battle, in these shapes, for as long as humanity had existed. For longer, perhaps, but without humans to count time, the aeons before had no meaning.
The snake reared up, still winged, but its wings would never be as powerful as mine. I crashed mine together with the sound of thunder. Dizziness came into its featureless eyes. I cried delight and struck again, but this time it flung itself sideways and rose again, lightning quick in its counterattack. Its fangs scraped my shields, unexpectedly sending blue sparks up: I had already forgotten that the Joanne part of me used magic that color, when Thunderbird-me was as gold as sunrise. We fought, tearing the land around us, waking currents in the water and rending clouds from the sky in our battle. It weakened and I did not. It was only a matter of time, and time was as much my gift as this magnificent shape. Time was Renee, my walking stick, and she was on my side.
A weight smashed into me from nowhere, hitting me between the wings. It flattened me against the earth, impossibly strong. I kicked and scraped the sand, trying to gain purchase and flip myself over, but it pushed harder, crushing my breath and my bird bones. The serpent-angel was beneath me. That was something. I opened my beak and slashed again, determined to kill it before my breath was gone forever.
It sank into the sand as if the thing crushing me was shoving it away, as well, until it was absorbed like silver oil. I screamed, thunderous anger that shook the very grains beneath me, but I couldn’t clear the sand away to find the retreating serpent. Rage blinded me, turning my vision molten gold. Under that heat the raven and the rattlesnake began to disentangle, sinking away just as the serpent did. I tried to catch them, too, but they slipped through my feathers-becoming-fingers, leaving me strangely bereft and magicless in the Lower World.
Distantly, very distantly, I heard shouts. That was unusual. Activity in the Middle World didn’t generally pass into my attention when I was in the Lower World. Of course, my journeys into the spirit realms, although they seemed to me to take place in real time, often happened inside the space of a breath or the blink of an eye. It was very possible I’d never been in here long enough for things to happen in the real world around me. This made twice in one day, though, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad sign.
The shouts were getting clearer. People were worried about fibbing, which made me laugh. Or I tried, anyway. My chest was hideously heavy, like I’d lost the lottery and was being pressed to death. I forgot about trying to laugh and just tried to breathe. I had magic. I should be able to clear the pain from my chest, but my focus was gone, black and blurry behind closed eyelids. It hurt badly, frighteningly badly.
Defibrillator. That was the word I was hearing, not fib at all. That was good. Fibbing would have been silly. Defibrillators, though, that seemed important. Dangerous. Alarming, even, except I couldn’t breathe deeply enough to be alarmed about anything except the lack of air in my lungs. A familiar voice said something outrageous in response to the need for a defibrillator. No, it said, let me. There were arguments, but another voice I knew spoke more strongly. Get out of the way. Let him help. I wished they were clearer, wished I could put names to them, but I was choking on a breath, shuddering as I tried to pull it in. My chest weighed so much, like all the anger in the world had built up in it.
Maybe, I thought in horror, maybe that was how the silver-winged serpent burst the hearts out of the coven. I started trying to scrape my healing magic together, appalled at how fragile it felt. My shields were still there, but they seemed to be barely keeping me from being crushed. Fuzzy-minded, I tried to remember if I had directly tangled with Raven Mocker, and if I had, whether it had left me this depleted. I’d been a mess the whole time I was in North Carolina, anyway, so I couldn’t say for sure. The wraiths had sure sucked me dry, and it felt like the silver-winged angel had dragged every dribble of magic out of me and sunk it into the sand as it had disappeared.
That was going to be a problem, if it couldn’t be stopped. Which was probably the Master’s whole plan. He wasn’t ever going to face me directly. He was just going to send minions to suck the power out of me.
Power crashed into me, as ferocious and shocking as the threatened defibrillator. I arched and gasped, then hit the ground before doing it all again. After the third or fourth time, I squeaked a protest and managed to get my hands up, waving them around. “Okay, okay, I’m fine. I’m fine. What—agh, what is that?” I batted away the tickles attacking my face, twitching my cheeks to try sending them away.
It didn’t work. Itchy-nosed and offended by it, I opened my eyes to discover it was Coyote’s long black hair falling over his shoulders to curtain us from the world.
Chapter Nine
“Hwaa? Whaa? Kye...wha? What?” It was hard to fling oneself into someone’s arms from lying down, but I did my best. I only knocked our skulls together a little bit in the effort. Coyote grunted and fell onto his butt, hugging me more gingerly than I did him. He still smelled like sunshine and sand. I dragged a couple breaths of that, holding on tight, then rocked back far enough to gawk at him. “What are you doing here?”
“Saving your ass again, it looks like.” His smile was genuine, but held reservation, and his gold-filtered gaze was cautious. “Hi, Jo.”
“Yes, yes, hi, but what are you doing here? How did you know to come? How did—”
“You really think you could just wake me up by shouting through the ether from Ireland and I wouldn’t be here when you came home?”
When he put it like that, well, no, I didn’t think so. I started to apologize, but before I got that far Coyote looked stiffly at Morrison, who did not literally hover over us only because hovering was not in his skill set, and admitted, “He called me from the Atlanta airport and told me to get up here as fast as I could. He said you were going to need me. So here I am.”
I looked up at Morrison, too. He was leaning over us, face flat with concern. His hands were held in loose fists, as if he was keeping himself from grabbing one or both of us. That stance made me realize there were other people around me, not just my friends, but a handful of bewildered paramedics, one of whom had the defibrillator I’d half heard them talking about. Something had apparently gone very wrong while I was fighting Marcia.
I would follow that thought in a minute. Right now I was too grateful for Coyote’s presence, and completely overwhelmed that Morrison, of all people, had called for him. Some of the concern was leaving my captain’s expression, but he still hovered. I whispered, “Thank you.”
The corner of his mouth curled up. My heart turned into a gooshy mess of goop, then lost whatever hold on cohesion it had when Morrison winked and took a step back, giving us some space. I was still smiling goofily when I looked back at Coyote.
I hadn’t known a heart could go gooshy and break at the same time, but the glop of mine shattered. Coyote held himself like he was injured, his shoulders tense and the line of his jaw hard. I’d always been able to read everything in his golden eyes, which let me watch the last vestiges of hope fade away. My own smile disappeared into sorrow, if not regret, and he saw that, too.
Less than a week ago I’d said goodbye to the little girl in me who had loved him, and he’d helped me fight off a corrupting infection, anyway. Today he was here, taking another one for the team, and this time he had to do it while watching me with the man I’d chosen over him. It wasn’t fair. He deserved better. And he wasn’t going to get it. “Cyrano...”
“It’s okay.” He cleared his throat, glanced away and looked back. The smile he put on was almost convincing. “You were right, Jo. I couldn’t give up the desert for you. It’s not fair to ask you to give up the city for me. Even if...” He took a sharp breath, like he could swallow those last two words.
I knew what t
hey led into, though. Even if the student had surpassed the master. Even if I had more power than he could ever dream of. Some part of me thought that if I’d been given that much, maybe I could give a little, too, and go where my less-powerful friend and mentor wanted me to be. The rest of me knew that was a choice, a sacrifice, that had to be made out of unstinting love, untainted by pity, and the truth was, I didn’t love him enough. Not now, not after the road I’d been down. He was my childhood and he was magic, and I loved him deeply. But he wasn’t the grounded, solid man that I needed, and nothing was going to change that. So I let the even if go, because there was nothing I could say.
Well, nothing except, “Thank you for coming. Thank you for being here. Thank you for saving my ass. Again. I’m okay,” I said to the paramedics firmly. “You can leave now.”
“We...can’t,” one said, very much like they wanted to and couldn’t figure out how.
A little belatedly I realized two of them were kneeling next to Marcia’s body, but were staring at me. I pointed at her. “Then help her, not me. I’m fine. You don’t have to worry about me. I won’t tell anybody.”
All of them exchanged glances before the one with the defibrillator turned back to Marcia, muttering, “I’ve met those two before. They’re freaks. Forget them. Let’s do the job.” As a whole, they began to pretend we didn’t exist while I, with a jolt, recognized the speaker as a paramedic I’d encountered months ago. Everything was coming around again, and it was only three in the afternoon. I was afraid of who I might see by supper.
That was a bridge to burn when I got there. Once the paramedics were out of immediate earshot, I blurted, “What the hell happened in there? I was doing so well!”
“I got a pretty good look when it was coming at us. I think it was a leanansidhe.” The answer came from a totally unexpected source: Suzy, standing a few feet beyond Coyote like some kind of slim teenage goddess. “I’ve read about them. I’ve read a lot since this started,” she said almost apologetically.
“God, kid, don’t be sorry for knowing something. We’ve all read a lot since this started, but I don’t know this one. What’s a leanansidhe?”
“An Irish monster. It’s this angelic-looking thing that eats hearts as a way of getting at souls.”
Hearts for the leanansidhe and livers for Raven Mocker. Just great. I scrunched my face. “Any tips on how to kill it?”
Suzy deflated, which was answer enough. I gave her my best reassuring smile, which probably would have gone over better if I still wasn’t plunk on my butt after having had it handed to me, to stretch the metaphor beyond its comfort zone. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out. Still doesn’t explain what happened in there. I mean, the wraiths were all about sucking my power out, but this just felt like a meteor landed on me.”
Halfway through that I peered at the sky, like a meteor might actually be on the way. One wasn’t, but I wondered if I really had been doing well against the leanansidhe. Well enough to worry the Master. Maybe he’d put a foot between my shoulder blades and pressed down, giving his creature time to escape. That was a lot more proactive than he’d been in the past, but we were kind of beyond mincing around. Besides, he had at least one and probably two actual avatars running around now, and that had to give him far more physical strength on this plane than I was accustomed to seeing from him.
“Okay,” I said, more or less to the sky, “so first we find and destroy or incapacitate the leanansidhe. I’m guessing that’ll either bring the Master or Raven Mocker running. We want Raven Mocker first, if we can draw him out, because if we get rid of him, then the Master loses his foothold. Then we take it to the mat with the man himself, and all go out for shawarma.”
“How do we take it to the mat if he’s lost his foothold?” Coyote asked, but I could see Gary and Annie behind Suzy, and all of them were nodding.
I tapped my temple. “I do it in here. Out there.” I waved my hand. “In every realm I can reach into. I’m going to...” I stared at them, all my friends, and suddenly lit up with a grin. “That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to build a great big power circle to draw their attention, and I’m going to post you all in different planes. We’re gonna link up and fight fire with fire. He won’t know what hit him.”
“Darlin’,” Gary said, “ain’t all of us magic, you know.”
“Says the man who rode with the Wild Hunt for, like, ever.”
Suzy spun around, green eyes alight. “You did? You rode with my grandfa— Oh.”
That, I bet, was the sound of her Looking at Annie, and Seeing the god’s green power still swirling around the older woman’s aura. “Oh,” Suzy whispered again. “Oh, you’re very beautiful.”
“Thank you, dear.” Annie stepped forward and kissed Suzy’s cheek. “That’s a kind thing to say to an old woman.”
Coyote and I took each other’s hands, pulling each other to our feet. Annie smiled beyond Suzy at us, her eyebrows lifted with curiosity. “And who is this handsome young man? Introductions were overlooked in the urgency of the moment.”
“Your heart was stuttering,” Coyote told me quietly. “I didn’t think I should take time to say hi.”
I put my hand against my chest. Everything in there felt normal, no missed beats or discomfort, no swirl of poison in the blood saying air hadn’t been carried well enough. Not even my magic was drained, though I’d certainly felt it sucking out of me as I fought the leanansidhe. “Seriously? I feel fine. I feel great.”
Coyote, dryly, said, “You’re welcome,” and gave me a more honest smile when I knocked into him and mumbled thanks. He turned that smile on Annie, offering his hand, too. “I’m Cyrano Bia, an old friend of Joanne’s.”
“Annie Muldoon, recently back from the dead.”
Coyote froze with his hand in Annie’s, trying to look at me without moving his head. “It’s okay,” I said. “I brought her back. We’re, uh...”
“Keeping an eye on me,” Annie offered. “Don’t worry, young man. I don’t fully trust me, either.”
“I’m not sure if that makes me feel better,” Coyote muttered, but shook Annie’s hand, then retrieved his own, managing not to look hurried about it. I introduced him to Suzy, too, and after shaking her hand, he said, “So where do we build your power circle, Jo?”
“An hour ago I would have said here. And it might even still be a good idea, in a kind of take-back-the-night way, except they’re going to be cleaning up here for hours. Days.” I glanced skyward, letting the Sight wash back over my vision so I could judge the amount of darkness staining the falls’ column of light.
It didn’t look worse than before. It certainly wasn’t better, but maybe my little run-in with Marcia had stopped the taint from spreading.
Marcia. I clutched my chest like I would discover that she’d actually dived into it, physical form and all, though I’d seen her body. “Wait. Wait. Where did that magic go? I mean, I fought it into the ground, but I don’t think I defeated it. What...what happened? What did you guys see happen?”
“You got between Annie and her, doll,” Gary said after a moment. “She tackled you like a pro linebacker. You hit the ground and she...exploded?” He looked at the others for confirmation. Suzy nodded uncertainly, glancing between me and the sky like maybe she’d seen something a little different. I raised a finger to suggest she hold that thought, and she held her breath instead. Or maybe the thought was in her mouth and she was holding her breath so it couldn’t escape. Either way, there was holding going on.
“You weren’t breathin’ by the time you hit the ground,” Gary went on. “You were cold and goin’ gray. We yelled for help. The paramedics came, checked your pulse, started talkin’ about CPR and defibrillators, an’ then Coyote here showed up outta nowhere and woke you up again. You been here for the rest.”
So things had happened more quickly in the Lower Wor
ld than in the Middle, as usual. I hadn’t missed much, not really. I pointed my still-uplifted finger at Suzy and made questions of my eyebrows.
“She went up,” Suzy whispered. “I think she went up. I saw the wings—Saw them, I mean?” I nodded my understanding and she continued with more confidence. “I Saw them flare when you smashed into each other, and I got a...a blur, I guess? Just a glimpse, like she was running away.”
“Or running to,” I said grimly. I’d have been happier if she’d squished into the ground and disappeared, since that was where the pressure in the Lower World had forced her. On the other hand, if she’d squished into the ground I would no doubt find ways to read that as returning to the hellish place from whence she came, so maybe it just didn’t matter. “Screw it,” I said aloud. “Seattle’s my town, and Thunderbird Falls is my damned territory. We’ll do it here. Morrison?”
He stepped up like he’d never been out of the conversation. Strangely, very few of the professionals were paying attention to us, even though Morrison kept slipping in and out of the actual investigation going on around us. People usually forgot about magic as fast as they could, but I’d never seen them forgetting it while things were still going on under their noses. That wasn’t me. I wondered if it was the Master, or if it was just pragmatic desperation on the part of humanity. Hear no magic, see no magic, speak no magic. Just get on with life, even if life meant picking up the pieces of the violently dead in preference to noticing a gathering of magic-users in its midst.
A large gathering, because even if the cops weren’t paying attention, the murder witnesses were. They were drawn to the falls because it was magic, and enough of them had some trace of talent that Marcia’s and my little throw-down hadn’t gone unnoticed. They were gathering around us in a loose circle, far enough back to be unobtrusive, but definitely interested. “We’re going to need to get them out of here,” I said to Morrison, then lifted my voice.
