by C. E. Murphy
Annie, by dint of being the most fragile in our collective perception, got to ride shotgun, while Laurie, to her obvious delight, sat on Coyote’s lap. Coyote didn’t look too upset about it, either, and I told myself firmly that it was no longer my business. Shaking my head at unpredictable jealousy, I squished into the center seat while Suzy sat on Gary’s lap, put an arm around his shoulder and kissed his cheek, charming him completely. Once we were buckled and settled to the best of our ability, I grunted, “To the park, James.”
Morrison shot a startled look at me over his shoulder and I let out a laugh that was too big for the space I was squeezed into. “Sorry. I wasn’t being funny. I actually forgot about that. To the park, Morrison, and be quick about it. Or I’m going to asphyxiate.”
Gary and Coyote both tried scootching away at that complaint, and for an eighth of a second I could breathe again. Then they relaxed and I got smooshed, but I was a big girl. I could handle a little not-breathing for a while. I kept telling myself that the whole drive over, while Laurie persisted in asking Morrison what I’d meant by I forgot about that. Morrison, exasperated, finally said, “You’re a reporter, Corvallis. Look it up online if you’re so curious.”
Laurie looked sullen but subsided as we once more poured out of the vehicle, this time at Woodland Park. I broke away from the crowd, my feet determined to run even if my mind thought I should be hanging back to be the newly appointed superhero Protection Girl.
I didn’t get far anyway. We’d come in from the parking lot nearest to the baseball diamond that had been a murder site last winter. My greatest fear was finding the Marcia-shaped leanansidhe laying down new bodies on the old sites, and closing the circle to gain power of her own.
My imagination clearly did not reach far enough.
Ashen-faced people stood along the baseball diamond’s lines, just far enough apart that their extended arms didn’t quite touch their neighbors’ fingertips. Dozens of them, more than I could count at a glance. They all faced inward, and all trembled as if a great force was pulling them ever closer together. Their auras stretched from their bodies, glimmering faintly between each other but mostly dragged toward the pitcher’s mound, where the Marcia-shaped leanansidhe stood with her head thrown back and her arms spread. She was translucent, the people on the far side of her wobblingly visible through her semi-solid body.
Billy Holliday stood alone with the creature’s shape, his arms wrapped around it as though he could contain all the hatred in the world within the compass of his embrace.
His shields were like nothing I’d ever seen from Billy, so bright, so fierce, that I had to Look twice. It was his colors, orange and fuchsia, but there was something else supporting them. Not Melinda, who was sunshine-yellow and orange, but something more than just Billy allowed him to hold the struggling leanansidhe in place.
It wasn’t enough. Threads of the life force she dragged from the gathered adepts slipped through the shields, strengthening her with every passing moment. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why she hadn’t already taken him, with his gift of seeing and speaking with spirits, but I was grateful for the small favor. His grip shifted, changing to try to contain her as she fought, and I thought he didn’t have much more time.
I said, “Coyote,” dimly, and reached for his hand. It found its way into mine and I squeezed. “Keep them safe.” Then I released him, and poured my soul into trying to break the feed between the leanansidhe and the gathered adepts.
I had built so many shields in recent months, shields that kept a group together and safe. But we’d always been together, with the bad guy on the outside, and this time the bad guy was right smack in the middle of us. One shield wasn’t going to work. I needed dozens, small, individual, unassailable. Thirty-nine of them, the back of my head informed me as I reached out my magic. Thirty-nine spirits that needed explicit protection, thirty-nine souls that needed to be untangled from the leanansidhe’s hunger and returned to their rightful bodies.
I had one of those increasingly rare moments of wondering just how exactly my life had come to this, but for once it was tinged with wry humor. That helped, as if a thread of faint amusement in my seeking magics was a touch of humanity that the leanansidhe couldn’t compete with. It dashed along the power I extended, separating one blur of colors from another. Given half a breath to do so, the gathered mediums clawed their auras back into them, too, helping me help them. Unaccustomed to trying to assist people who could help me or themselves, I couldn’t stop from sending a wash of surprised gratitude down the line, too. Evidently gratitude was also a more human emotion than the leanansidhe could strive for, because it gave the adepts a little more to work with.
Their auras untangled from one another in a sudden rush, the right string pulled to loosen the Gordian knot. The leanansidhe keened, not unlike a banshee, though her sob lacked the soul-shattering edge of banshee cries. She still had hold of the mediums’ life forces, but more weakly now. Her physical struggle with Billy heightened. I ground my teeth and sent a tendril of power toward Billy, offering support.
It rebounded like a slap in the face, Billy’s aura flaring red-edged with panic. Bewildered, I withdrew with injured feelings. Irrationally injured, because if Billy rebuffed me he had some reason to do so, but I’d only been trying to help. Petulant, I returned all my attention to shielding the mediums.
I had to do it one at a time, which felt like it took forever. It was like laying down layers of paint on a car body: each color had to be selected, marked off, laid down, dried and the tape removed before I could go on to the next. I unthreaded one dazzling aura of yellow and red: Sonata Smith, the one person here I knew well enough to individualize her aura. It was a place to start, which was more than I’d thought I would have. I tucked her aura up against her body before wrapping her, aura and all, in gunmetal shielding that could withstand the worst a leanansidhe could throw at it. I hoped. Again and again, until I felt like a mother hen sitting on thirty-nine glowing eggs that could not be allowed to hatch.
The leanansidhe grew more frantic, but not stronger. She became increasingly translucent, wings spreading and battering the ground and Billy. Even all the power she’d taken on at the falls wasn’t enough to keep her borderline corporeal. She really needed a body. Maybe if I could just keep her distracted long enough she’d burn out.
I didn’t believe it for a minute. I didn’t think the Master would make his final play on grounds that shaky. Still, the leanansidhe clearly went through magic like a penguin went through water, so even if I couldn’t burn her out I might be able to keep her weak until I figured out how to kill her.
Like she’d heard the thought, she shrieked again and for half a moment became dust. Billy’s arms collapsed around the space she’d been in. He staggered with surprise, looked around, saw me, wheezed, said, “Took you long enough,” and dropped to press his forehead to the earth as he caught his breath. The leanansidhe ignored him entirely, coming together with wings solid enough to make sound as she flew at the circle of mediums.
She bounced off.
For an instant I thought she was as surprised as I was. Then I laughed, partly because I could feel her fury at being thwarted, but more, really, because I was so prone to doing that kind of thing myself. I’d never imagined the bad guys might fumble that way, too. But the leanansidhe hadn’t thought it through, assuming she could think at all.
They were linked, all the mediums, through the shields I’d built around them. It wasn’t exactly a power circle, but it wasn’t exactly not, either. The leanansidhe ran at them, slamming from one shielded body to another in an attempt to break through. The tries became more frantic, more directed at individual bodies, until I realized she wasn’t trying to break through. She was trying to break in. Trying to take one of the bodies as a host. I didn’t know why she hadn’t the moment a medium showed up, though my gaze dropped to the baseball diamond
lines.
Every medium was just on the outside of those lines. Just on the outside of the bloody lines written on the earth through the sacrifices of three women. By hook or by crook, they had managed not to cross into territory the Master had marked as his own. I’d seen the glimmer of power shared between them before I brought my own magic into the fray, but only now realized they had managed to create a link between themselves that prevented the leanansidhe from escaping once they were in place. I had sent Seattle’s adepts home from Thunderbird Falls, telling them to warn the others and to be wary. I wondered if forewarned had been forearmed, for those gathered here.
Forearmed, I thought irreverently, was half an octopus. What should have been a laugh felt more like a tremor in my chest. The leanansidhe might burn through magic like it was kindling, but she was strong, and I was trying to keep forty people safe. I could keep us here indefinitely—maybe—but I had no idea how to move forward. That was going to become a problem sooner rather than later.
“Stop.” Annie Muldoon joined me, her chin set in a way that I recognized as implacable, even though I’d never seen the expression on her face before. “Stop,” she said again. “Joanne, this is foolishness. You cannot protect us all.”
“I’m not. Coyote’s got, what, five of you? Haha.” The laugh sounded pathetically like I was actually saying the words in an attempt to inject humor into the situation. Not at all convincing. I would have to work on that, but since it had failed anyway, I gritted out, “I can’t stop trying, either.”
Nor was I going to, even though I had to speak through clenched teeth. Sweat beaded on my forehead, which was new and unusual. Holding magic wasn’t normally a physical effort like this. Of course, I wasn’t usually trying to keep three dozen mediums, people whose natural magical talent encouraged them to host other spirits in their bodies, from being possessed, either. My shields glittered around them, swirling and sparking when the leanansidhe renewed her efforts to batter her way into a human body.
“Joanne.” Annie sounded worryingly calm. “I want you to look at this gathering. What do you see?”
I sent a fast glance around the baseball diamond, wondering what I should be looking for. Strained faces blanched with fear looked back at me, but I didn’t think that was what Annie wanted me to see.
“They’re all women, Walker.” Morrison’s voice was low, distorted with concern and uncertainty. “Why are they all women?”
“They’re not—” But he was right. Excepting Billy—who was more in touch with his feminine side than any other guy I’d ever known—every other person who’d been called to the field was female.
“He needs a woman.” Annie still spoke with great clarity. “I can nearly feel it in my soul, Joanne. I can feel it in the places where his stain still colors my body. He needs a woman of great strength or complete corruption.”
Nobody here was completely corrupted. That was kind of the point of holding the line. I opened my mouth to say so and halfway through the first breath realized we did have somebody of great strength.
Me.
It all became very clear suddenly. I took half a step toward the hungering leanansidhe, wondering how to prepare myself for possession.
Turned out it didn’t matter, because delicate little Annie Marie Muldoon popped me one in the nose.
Chapter Fourteen
Shocking white pain blinded me for just an instant. I howled like—well, like a banshee, but under the circumstances I wished I could have thought of a different howling thing. At any rate, I howled and clapped my hands to my nose, astonished at the power of Annie’s punch, and sent magic sizzling through my own face to clear the pain away.
By that time Annie had put on a burst of speed that somebody recently off her deathbed shouldn’t have been able to manage. My shriek of horror sounded high-pitched and girlish above Gary’s heart-wrenching bellow. He and Morrison were in motion already, too, but the linebacker and the cop were never going to catch the small woman running pell-mell toward her doom. I gathered every spare wisp of magic in me, knitted it together and threw a net.
Violently green magic, a fire-green blaze, burned my net away before it came near Annie. I whirled on Suzy, whose colorless face vindicated my suspicions. “It wasn’t me,” she protested, voice rising. “It wasn’t me?”
A string of invective tore from my throat. “Coyote! Laurie! Do—do something about her!” I spun away from the girl again, launching myself into a flat-out run that had no more chance of catching Annie than Gary or Morrison did.
The leanansidhe, unconstrained by middling details of physicality, whipped around, closing the distance between herself and Annie at a literally inhuman speed. Way too late I remembered I had that trick in my own repertoire, and shrieked Renee! inside my skull.
Rattler, not Renee, answered with a burst of snake-speed that drove me forward so fast I felt like my mind was being left behind. Back there, trying to catch up, it remembered that a cheetah had come to Annie when she’d done her spirit quest. That made her astonishing quickness comprehensible, at least to somebody moving with a snake’s striking speed.
Unfortunately, the cheetah had a head start, and Renee didn’t slip me between seconds this time. Maybe a dreadful, ungrateful part of me would rather Annie took on the leanansidhe than myself, although I really hoped I was a better person than that. Maybe too much of my magic was already tangled up in trying to shield the dozens of mediums. If so, I was starting to hate discovering I had limitations, even if they lay in a range that most adepts would consider stupendous.
I passed Gary and Morrison and was barely ten steps from Annie when the leanansidhe took her.
It hit her in the spine, smashing her to the ground. Furrows kicked up where her hands hit, old grass and dark earth startled at the disruption. Her back arched in the shape of a scream, though no sound escaped her. Blackness erupted in her lungs, the same darkness we’d fought so hard to eliminate. It flowed through her like blood, coloring her skin where thin veins lay near the surface. I hoped like hell it was just the Sight showing me that, that Gary couldn’t see it, too. Another convulsion rocked her and she did scream, a tired and weak sound, like she’d been fighting a battle too long already.
Gary fell to his knees, roaring with rage and grief. The Annie-thing twisted to show black, black eyes, and with a terrible smile stretching her mouth. “The body is weak, sure and so. Not the host my master wished for me. Not what he’d prepared, no, but oh, his taste is inside her, and she will grow strong again with my spirit.”
Then the horror of her mouth contorted, a visible struggle beneath her very skin. Her eyes filtered from black to fiery green and back again, before the green dominated a few desperate seconds. “Weak so she has to concentrate to keep me alive, Joanne. Weak because if she lets me die her master can’t come through. Corruption or strength, and I have neither. Kill me now, Joanne. Kill me while I can give you the chance.”
She was right. I knew she was right, and, knowing it, I stalked forward. Gary screamed, coming to his feet in a run. Morrison slammed into him, tackling him to the ground. Dirt and grass flew as they fought. Annie allowed herself one anguished glance, then returned her gaze to me. “I’ve been dead all this time anyway, Joanne. I’m not afraid. Promise me—”
I nodded, took my final step in to her, spun and delivered a roundhouse kick to the side of her head. She didn’t even have time to look surprised as she collapsed. Panting like I’d run a sprint, I stood over her unconscious body and whispered, “Absolutely not.”
Gary bashed into my side like a SCUD, and as I hit the ground I felt a pained ghost of amusement. My head bounced off the earth, less agonizing than smashing into a diner wall, but the whole thing had a familiar ring to it. A ring that was currently in my ears, and only barely quieter than Gary’s grunt of angry confusion. I pushed, trying to dislodge him, and he half sat up, bushy eyebrow
s beetled over storm-dark eyes. When I had enough breath to speak, I said, “You didn’t really think I was going to kill your wife, did you, Gary?”
He sat back on his heels, hands pressed fingers-inward on his thighs, and lowered his white-haired head. I admired the old guy’s flexibility: he was wearing jeans, which were never the easiest thing to kneel in, but he didn’t seem to be suffering the instant lack of circulation to the legs that I always got in that position. After a few seconds he looked up, face bleak. “Thing was, I wasn’t sure you shouldn’t, doll. But didja have to kick her?”
Speaking of which, I crawled the foot and a half to Annie and turned her head carefully. A rather horrible bruise was forming, but my healer’s magic didn’t warn of any real damage. My own head dropped and I sighed. “Yeah, I kinda did. Not just because turnabout is fair play, either. Back in the Qualla everything I threw at the wraiths and Raven Mocker just made them stronger. They kept drinking up my power like I’d turned on a soda fountain. This thing—”
Gary growled, which I thought was patently unfair, since two seconds ago even he’d confessed to not quite trusting Annie. “The thing in Annie,” I corrected myself as patiently as I could. “It appears to be of the same nature. It’s trying like hell to swallow as much power as it can, so I was afraid to try knocking her out with magic.”
“Sorry.” Morrison appeared with the incongruous word. I blinked at him and he rubbed his jaw, eyeing Gary. “He got away. Sorry.”
Apparently I’d missed a fine bout of fisticuffs in the seven seconds I’d been beating up Annie. “It’s okay. He hits like a pile driver.”
“Yes, but—” Morrison shut his mouth on the protest, which I suspected had something to do with masculine pride and thirty-plus years of age difference between himself and the man who’d just taken him in a fistfight.
“The point,” I said, raising my voice as if I could make sense of the world if only I was loud enough, “the point is that if we can keep Annie unconscious until we figure out how to disinfect her, we might have a fighting chance. She says the Master needs a fema...” I stared down at Annie’s unconscious self with dismay. The Master had taken Danny and then Mark for Raven Mocker, and needed a woman to host the leanansidhe. There was an obvious conclusion there, but this, I felt, was not an Occam’s razor moment. He would not have groomed an old lady if he intended to get himself a host the old-fashioned way, and besides, I couldn’t really see him patiently waiting nine months to be born into this world.
