by C. E. Murphy
“And I did change it, doll.” Gary took a deep, uncertain breath. “Can’t help wonderin’ if that means I brought this down on us. If I hadn’t fought for Annie—”
“Then you wouldn’t be the man she and I both adore,” I interrupted. “I mean, damn, Gary, you challenged death and time itself for love. That’s...that’s amazing. That’s everything. That’s love conquering all.”
“Hah. Horns said the same thing. Guess he’d know,” Gary said more softly. “Guess he’s been around long enough to know what endures.”
“So listen to the god,” I suggested, then sighed. “Besides, you said it yourself. Annie was always going to be involved. Lives don’t go along without touching each other, do they? So if your life and mine were ever going to get involved, maybe the rest of it was going to happen, too. And you said it was like a fog lifting from the real memories. I don’t think you changed most of the time line, Gary. I think the Master clouded the truth in hopes that you not knowing what had happened would weaken you enough that he could get to Annie one last time without interference. I don’t think even he can yank one time line out of place and replace it with another that thoroughly.”
“Why doncha think so?”
“Because he’d have done it with me and made sure I never survived to be born, if he could’ve.”
Gary went quiet a minute. “Pretty good argument, doll.”
I took a bow as we walked. “Thank you. I do my best.”
Gary started to smile, but before he got anywhere near done with it, a building fell down in front of us.
Chapter Seventeen
Dust rose like a wall, black-spattered and vindictive. It swept around us, my shields thoroughly in place even as screams filled the air. Glass rained, dull and ugly in the dust and downpour. Metal twisted and shrieked as more of the building came down, and as I watched, bricks imploded under the strain of falling struts. The ground continued to shake, great rolling waves that could have been further earthquakes or could have simply been impact upon impact as twenty stories came down on the street.
I could not imagine how many people had just died. Dozens, maybe hundreds: the street had been busy with looters, refugees, families trying to work their way out of the shock-ridden city center. A second rush of filler, dust, brick, things I didn’t know the name of, came rumbling down. I threw shields as widely as I could, trying to protect those who were still unharmed, then fell back as far as I dared, trying to assess the damage.
I couldn’t, not from where I stood. I put my hand on Gary’s arm. “Don’t let me fall down.”
“Eh?” He slid his arm around my waist, though, and I tried something I’d never really done deliberately: I shot out of my body, not in search of an astral plane, but just to have a look at this one, to see what we were facing.
From a vantage of a couple hundred feet, seen with the Sight, it looked far worse than my piddly imagination had envisioned. Buildings by their nature glowed with green intent, protective, comforting; they knew their duty in shielding men and beasts from nature’s crueler elements.
The building just in front of us, and half a dozen more all the way down the street, were ripped and torn apart not just physically, but spiritually. Their steadfast green bled red and orange with pain and tinted toward black despair. They had failed their people: they had fallen, and in falling, taken lives. That was not their purpose, and for all that they weren’t sentient, their spirits still felt the pain of failure.
Below those shards of pain lay the living heartbeats of people trapped within broken bits of building. Some flickered and went out as I watched, and more flared with fear when another quake rattled more debris down. Half a block lay beneath the fallen buildings, and more people than I could count.
I snapped back to my body with tears running down my face. “I can See them, Gary. If I could only change this stuff, if I was strong enough—” I remembered my father walking through a blood rain that turned to rose petals under the force of his will, and extended my hands.
Coyote caught my wrist. “Jo, you can’t.”
“I have to try!”
“It’s hundreds of tons of building material, Jo. If you try, if you succeed, you’re going to have to hold it in place, never faltering, never doubting, until every single person has crawled free. You can’t do it. Nobody can.”
“Then help me!” He was right. He was horribly, horribly right. I had to change it all at once, and keep it that way. If I lost confidence for even a heartbeat, it would all change back again. It might collapse, might kill people, when at least right now they were tucked into nooks and crannies that existed and might continue to exist until they were freed. I dropped my hands, then lowered the dome and fell to my knees. My hands came up again as my head lowered, wrists crossing like I could gain just that much more support by resting one against the other.
“Jo, what are you doing?”
“I’m going to keep them alive.” Tears streamed down my dusty cheeks and my voice sounded throttled even to me. “I am not going to let anybody else die in there. If I can’t get them out, at least I can heal them and keep them alive until somebody else can get them out. Now shut up or help me.”
“Joanne, if Annie wakes up—”
“Don’t let her! Gary! Morrison! Just—don’t let her.”
Coyote protested again, but I shut it out. I shut everything out, crushing my eyes closed and turning my focus inward.
The magic was there, as it had been for so long now. Not tied in a knot under my breastbone, but coursing through me, as natural and life-giving as blood or breath. “I need so much of you now,” I said to it, or to myself. To my spirit animals, who sat together within my mind, quiet and focused. “I need so much of anyone who can give it right now, anyone who can spare a thought or a hope for the people trapped in there.”
And there were so many people whose thoughts and fears and hopes were directed that way. So much energy, coiling uselessly through the air: prayers and positive thoughts offered up, unable to affect anything without guidance.
“Thank you,” I whispered to every single soul whose best wishes I could turn into magic, and did.
I had once asked Seattle to hit me with its best shot. I’d put the city’s lights out that time. This felt almost like that, except I was only taking what I was given, and it was so much more powerful for being offered. Emotion slammed through me, converting to magic, and I became faintly aware that I could barely breathe through the tears and snot running down my face. But my own magic wasn’t about to let me asphyxiate, so I didn’t worry. I just let the healing power flow.
There were people trapped beneath the rubble who were barely scratched, and there were those who were dying. The scratches and bruises were nothing, a quick rub with a bit of polish on a rag as my power swept over them. I couldn’t afford to linger over each of the more badly injured bodies, or I would lose some of them. “Be well,” I said again and again, “be well.” I believed I could make them well, and most of them—most of them—were in no condition to disbelieve. They became well, broken bones healing, torn flesh knitting, opened veins closing. I didn’t let myself think about how many of them there were, or wonder what would happen if the goodwill of the gathered crowd faded. That shared strength came in from all over Seattle now, waves of hope and desperation as word spread of the latest disaster. For a few shining seconds, prayers even beat back the black dust, setting it on fire, turning it white with compassion. The weight of the buildings seemed lesser after that, as if spiritual offerings could lighten physical loads. It helped. It all helped.
But the impossible ones weren’t just broken, but crushed. Legs, arms, chests, pressed between pillars and girders, lungs or guts pierced by shards of glass and metal. I could heal them around those injuries, but it wouldn’t do much good to be healed all except for the pane of glass cutting through one leg.
Dad had turned blood rain to roses. It had changed back again when he’d stopped concentrating, but there had still been rose petals on the ground. They hadn’t reverted. Only the new stuff had been unchanged. One. I would try it with one man, someone close to me whose leg was half-severed by a huge sheet of glass. Aside from that piece, the space he was in was clear and safe: I could feel it trying to be a protective place, and feel its anguish at failing, just as clearly as I could feel the man’s harsh breath and shocking pain. Nothing balanced on the glass. There was nothing that could fall or shift with its removal. “Air,” I whispered. “Just be...air.”
Air. I almost felt the glass consider that idea like it was new and interesting. It was meant to be seen through, as air was. It had that in common with air. It hesitated, vibrating, and I felt—almost heard—the man swallow another cry of pain. Then the glass acquiesced to my strange request, accepted the tenet of shamanism that was change, and it became as I imagined it: air, clean, clear, breathable.
Blood went everywhere, horrible spurts from a sliced artery. I clamped down on it like it was a fuel line, and felt the man’s astonishment, astonishment so great that for a critical moment he believed anything was possible. In that moment, it was, and he was healed.
A sob of relief shook me. This was my magic as it should be used, and I thought my heart would tear apart from the joy of succeeding. I went on, finding others who were terribly damaged, hoping to save more lives that could not reasonably expect to be saved.
There were people I didn’t dare try it with. Removing fallen girders was an engineer’s job, checking to see what was balanced where, what else would come down if it was moved. I hesitated over those people, heart tearing all over again, then chose to dull their agony. Maybe it was wrong. Maybe they would have preferred to be aware of their pain, knowing it told them they were alive, but I couldn’t do nothing.
Then they were all healed or helped as much as I could do, and I snapped back into myself, shaking and still sobbing. I had no will to keep using the Sight; it would show me things I couldn’t help, right now. “Get paramedics. Get fire engineers. I can tell them where everyone is, if they can just get to them.”
“You’ve done enough, Jo.” Coyote’s voice sounded strange, and his eyes were shadowed when I looked at him. “I wouldn’t have thought it was possible. I tried to stop you. It was like throwing myself at a steel wall.”
I stared at him in befuddlement. I’d had no sensation at all of his attempts at interfering. “Why would you do that?”
“I was afraid you were going to kill yourself. I was— Joanne, you can’t do what you did. No one can. You were...unassailable.”
I had never heard the note in his voice before. It wasn’t respect, not exactly, nor was it precisely shock. It encompassed those things, but there was more to it, and I hoped the rest wasn’t anger or envy. If it was, I tried heading it off with the truth. “I had a good teacher.”
Coyote made a short sound bordering on amusement. “You did. Jo—”
“She’s waking up again, Walker.” Morrison’s warning made me twist toward the other two men, who sat together with Annie Muldoon stretched across their laps. Gary stroked her temple very lightly, avoiding the purpling bruise where I’d kicked her. He looked old again, old and heartbroken. They were all coated in dust that kept rolling from the falling buildings.
“She’s getting weaker,” Morrison said. “We can’t keep knocking her out.”
I pulled the dome-shaped shield back in place and crawled to them, Coyote dogging my heels. The air in my shield was still thick with dust, making Gary cough when he drew a deeper breath. I shoved the idea of a filter through the dome, catching all contaminants in the air and pushing them out the side of the shield, so we were in a peculiarly clean little circle at the heart of devastation. Annie took a deeper breath, too, eyelids flickering. I touched her cheek, sending the faintest whisper of healing power to fade the bruise on her cheek. I sent a tiny suggestion of sleep to her, too, afraid to do more. Afraid I might feed the leanansidhe within her if I made absolutely certain that Annie slept. But the bruise looked better, at least, and Gary’s gaze lifted to mine, gray eyes wet with tears and with thanks. I reached past Annie to take his hand and squeeze it. “I should’ve done that earlier. Sorry.”
He grated, “You been busy,” and we left it at that.
Coyote, standing behind me, said, “I can See you’re still filled with power, Jo. Maybe if we worked together with her...?” and knelt, reaching for Annie’s shoulder.
“No.” Gary gathered his wife closer, as much to my surprise as Coyote’s. “Nah, kid, we can’t risk it. Not right now. If she wakes up and can call Suzy to her here, where we ain’t ready to face the two of ’em...” Reluctance and pain filled every word, but he was adamant. “I gotta get my Annie back, Jo. We gotta be certain, when we act. No dominion,” he whispered to Annie, like it was a promise that I couldn’t understand.
I knelt up and leaned forward, putting my hand behind Gary’s neck to pull his forehead against mine. “You’re the bravest man I’ve ever known, Garrison Matthew Muldoon. I love you, you know that, right?”
“Yeah, doll. I know. I love you, too.”
Morrison, deliberately, said, “Hnf,” and everybody, even Coyote, laughed. I sat back again, looking between the three men, and wondered how I’d been so lucky as to end up with all of them in my life. In fact, it seemed like a good time to say just that. “You three are my rocks. I don’t know what I would do without you. Thank you all for everything. For everything. I love all of you.”
Coyote looked down, his smile shadowed, but I couldn’t give him more than what I already had. When he glanced up again, his expression said that he knew that, and that he’d accepted it. “We love you, too, Jo.”
Morrison didn’t join in the declarations of love. Not aloud, anyway. He only smiled when I met his eyes, and that was enough. More than enough. My hard-as-flint police captain’s eyes were soft and fond, and I didn’t need more than that.
“Arright. Enough with the love-in, doll. What’re we gonna do about Annie?”
“We’re gonna—”
Stone scraped behind me. I was on my feet, facing the rubble, my sword in hand and brilliant with magic before I’d even known I’d drawn it. We’d had too long a reprieve. Suzy would be coming for us, and we hadn’t made it to the damned Seattle Center. This was not where I wanted to make my last stand, but I’d spent too much time here, and would pay the consequences.
A fistful of detritus spilled from the collapsed building in front of us, and then a greater scrape sounded. It struck me that Suzy would not be digging her way out of the ruins. She would blow her way out, destroying half of downtown in her arrival. Somebody was in there, trying to get out. I ran forward, half intending to use my sword as a lever to clear rubble away, when one last chunk of brick shifted and a man emerged blinking into the light.
I knew him. Even without the Sight, I knew he was the man I’d first risked healing, the one closest to me. The one whose leg had been half-severed by glass. His jeans were a red, sticky, dusty, matted mess, and brown spatters marked where the artery had sprayed blood over the rest of him and mixed with dust. His thigh was scarred, a thin line where the glass had cut through him. I stared at that scar, vaguely offended by it. I didn’t leave scars when I healed people. On the other hand, I didn’t usually heal hundreds at once, or dozens of life-threatening wounds. A scar was much less distressing than being dead.
The man lifted his eyes, brown in a dusty face, and gaped at me. “Bruja?”
For a few seconds I wondered why anybody would think a woman with a shiny blue sword standing in the ruins of downtown Seattle would think I was a witch rather than a crazy lady, and then memory hit me with the force of a sledgehammer. A sledgehammer, because that was this man’s tool of trade. I’d met him once, less than
a day after my powers had awakened. “Manny?”
“You blessed me, bruja. You blessed me. You saved me.” The faint Hispanic accent I remembered was much stronger just now, and his voice shook.
I threw my sword away and staggered forward to hug him. I didn’t think of myself as a really huggy person, but there were tears streaming down my face again and all I wanted to do was really reassure myself he was alive. Reassure myself that just this once, encountering me hadn’t been a death sentence. Manny smelled like smoke and dust and, very faintly under all that, of baby oil. It made me remember everything I’d learned about him in the few minutes we’d shared space while I was trying to use my new powers to accomplish something useful.
He closed his arms around me slowly, then tightened them like we were long-lost lovers and he would never let go. The breath squeezed right out of me and my sobs turned to a squished little laugh. I squirmed out of the embrace, saying, “I saved you. Oh, thank you, Manny. Thank you. Go home. Go home to your pretty wife and the twin girls and the little boy and the new baby, and keep them inside until the storm passes.”
Something like awe struck his dusty features. “You know all that? About me?”
“I guessed about the new baby.” I sniffled and wiped my nose on my arm. “Go on, go home. Stay out of the rain.”
Manny nodded, touched his heart, then—unlike any of my closer friends—actually did what he was told, breaking into a run as he left the wreckage.
I watched him go, then turned back to my friends with a smile blinded by tears. “It’s going to take hours for the paramedics to get here, with all the chaos. This will all be over by then, one way or another. We can come back to help then. Come on. Come on. Right now I think we can actually win this thing.”
Chapter Eighteen
Saturday, April 1, 6:44 p.m.
It took almost two hours to get the two miles to the Seattle Center, but the traffic—both vehicle and human—had cleared out by the time we arrived. The only people around were cops. Morrison handed Annie to Gary—they’d been trading off with her and my drum, after a brief argument about Coyote being perfectly able-bodied. “Able-bodied,” Gary had growled as he took his wife, “an’ one of two of us who can see somethin’ magic coming down the line. You and Jo gotta keep your hands free.”
