by C. E. Murphy
Except instead of kicking ass, I was slowly wearing down. That was almost entirely new territory for me. I was accustomed to drawing ridiculously deeply on my own strength, without the need for a power circle. Moreover, I’d leveled up in the past couple weeks, gaining more access to greater power. There was no way a bunch of undead monsters should be able to wear me down so fast. But not only was I starting to stumble, it seemed like they were getting faster and stronger with every hit they took.
A little belatedly, I realized that these things had been created by somebody sucking all the essential force out of seven people, and that throwing bolt after bolt of life magic into them was probably not the best way to defeat them.
For just an instant I wished the snarky little voice in the back of my head was still there. The one that told me when I was being an utter ass, and when I was making really stupid mistakes. Unfortunately, that voice had been the lingering ghost of a much younger me, and she and I had fully integrated now. All I had left was my own voice muttering, “Moron,” and somehow it just didn’t have the same ring to it. I reined in the magic and even drew it out of the sword, so it was just me and a silver rapier against seven wights on a mountainside.
It was the moment they’d been waiting for. They moved as one, so fast I could barely see them. One actually sacrificed itself, leaping belly-first onto my sword. It slid all the way to the hilt, wrapped its long-fingered hands around my wrist, and held on.
Like Carrie, it didn’t weigh very much, but it didn’t have to weigh a lot in order to completely inconvenience me. Apparently being skewered by a relatively ordinary sword wasn’t enough to hurt an undead, never mind kill it, because its grip on my wrist didn’t loosen at all. I couldn’t shake the thing off, and while I was trying, five others did their best to tear me apart. One jumped on my back and wrapped its arm around my throat, going for a rear naked choke hold. I thrust the idea of a fender between its arm and my throat, creating a little more barrier, strengthening my shields there a little, but then another one started gnawing on my ankle and I started to discover inherent shields were one thing, but fighting half a dozen enemies at once were another. I ran backward as best I could, planning to smash the one on my back against the mountain. Instead I tripped on the one chewing my ankle and fell over.
On the positive side, while I didn’t think it was possible to knock a dead man breathless, the impact did at least cause the wight to loosen its grip around my neck. I kicked frantically and rolled away, feeling the earth rumble beneath me. There was a vehicle on the mountain somewhere, a huge roaring V-8 engine like Petite’s eating up the road. I thought it was a kind of nice sound to die by, and surged to my knees against the weight of two more wights pulling me back toward the ground. None of my spirit animals were about strength. Rattler was fast, Raven was clever, Renee was...timey-wimey-wibbly-wobbly, as best I could tell. I needed a freaking bull to draw on.
Or a burst of healing magic used entirely on myself, rather than shoved out into the world. I’d never done that before. It was worth a shot. I concentrated on the idea of a turbo thruster, where the stoked-up, over-oxygenated engine was the muscles in my arms. Blue fire lit up in my biceps, triceps and deltoids. I bellowed from the bottom of my diaphragm, using all that focused energy to fling the wight on my sword upward. Straight up, with the intent to not just dislodge it, but toss it halfway across the mountains.
It would have worked better if the damned thing hadn’t still been clinging to my wrist like a leech, but its unnaturally long fingers lost their grip and I shook the sword free. The wight flopped over instead of flying off, and dragged my arm right back down with its weight. But I was now firing blue power on all muscular cylinders, and bashed my left hand into its face. It drove straight into the earth. I surged to my feet, twitching with the need to act and trying without much success to fight down an unholy glee. This had to be what Olympic athletes felt like at the top of their game: purely unstoppable, fully in their bodies, utterly certain of the physical response they would achieve.
I bet Olympic athletes hardly ever had wights shove a fingertip against their foreheads and begin to siphon off their physical prowess. The wight’s blank face curdled into a hideous smile, and beyond it I saw the others, including Carrie, coming toward me for a final time. My shields slipped and scrambled even as I fundamentally understood what was happening: I was pouring so much power into my own body that there was bleed-off, enough that the monsters could suck some of it up as it spilled out of the shields. And I’d overloaded myself just like a nitroed-up engine: it wasn’t going to come down until the fuel ran out. I had a lot of fuel for them to burn through. I hated to think what they would do with it, once I was depleted and they were all topped up.
My vision got woozy, way faster than I’d have thought possible, and I had the utterly childish thought “this is not fair!” before I dropped to my knees, wondering faintly how I was going to get out of this one.
Petite, my big, beloved 1969 Boss 302 Mustang, custom purple paint job and Washington State vanity plates declaring her name, hit the brakes behind me, spun a flawless 180 in a spray of red dust, and came to a shuddering stop not ten inches from my nose.
Morrison flung her door open, stood up with his duty weapon in hand, and shot Carrie Little Turtle between the eyes.
Chapter Eleven
Carrie dropped. The wight siphoning off my magic screamed and leapt backward, soaring over Petite and landing on her opposite side, closer to Morrison than me. He sighted and fired again, smooth and cool and calm. The wight dodged, taking the bullet in a shoulder instead of the throat, but it wouldn’t go any closer to Morrison. Or to me, for that matter, which was good, because I was too busy being astounded to do anything but gape.
Morrison was in jeans, which was utterly unheard of. Jeans and a snug white T-shirt, equally unheard of. He was also wearing his shoulder holster, which pinned the shirt against his chest even more snugly, and emphasized the line of his shoulders and waist. His silvering hair was bright in the morning sunlight, and he looked absolutely unconcerned that five of the six remaining wights were edging closer to him.
Not much closer, though. They got within fifteen feet, then hissed like they were burning and backed away again. Morrison shot the second one a second time, this time catching it in the forehead as he’d done with Carrie. It collapsed, too. The others howled, rushed forward, came within a few feet of Petite, and screamed their rage and fury as they fell away again.
“Steel.” I whispered the word, and it gave me the strength to stand. Petite was a classic, her sweet body made up of steel, not fiberglass or aluminum or carbon fiber like modern cars. And there wasn’t a monster in the books that didn’t have a revulsion to cold iron. Still whispering, I said, “Keys.”
Morrison, who shouldn’t have been able to hear me, reached into Petite’s interior, turned the engine off and tossed me the keys without ever dropping his weapon’s training on the wights.
I snatched the keys out of midair, took three long steps to Petite’s trunk, opened it, and popped the sawed-off shotgun out of its custom holder. I loaded it and another few steps brought me to Morrison’s side. He, still very steady and calm, said, “Shoot or run?”
I cocked the shotgun, and by the time we started pulling triggers, the wights were running for the hills. The dust from Petite’s arrival wasn’t yet settled when they disappeared from sight entirely. Morrison lowered his weapon and cast me the very slightest hint of a smile in his sideways glance. “Do we go after them?”
“Sure, if you’ve got boots of seven leagues so we can catch up to them WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE?!?!” I threw the shotgun aside and flung myself into Morrison’s arms, which would have been a lot cuter if I was eight inches shorter and seventy pounds lighter than he. Instead we were of a similar height and he probably only had thirty, maybe forty, pounds on me. Instead of a romantic-lovers-reuni
ted embrace it was more of a crashing, staggering thud against Petite’s frame, while I howled and shrieked and beat my fists against his back in utter, stupefied joy. “Oh, my God, Morrison, did you see yourself, holy shit, you were freaking fantastic what are you DOING here how did you FIND me what the HELL!!!”
To my pure, unadulterated delight, he was every bit as silly as I was, roaring laughter into my shoulder as he hugged his arms around my waist. He smelled so good, Old Spice and dust and sweat and wind, and beneath my shouting he said, “Muldoon called me when you left Ireland. I’ve been driving for two days. Walker, are you sparkling?”
I’d forgotten about the glitter bath Les and I had taken, and said, “What? Yes,” before returning to a bellow of semicoherent delight. “PETITE, you’ve been DRIVING PETITE?! I didn’t know you drove so well! You said my relationship with my car was pathological! YOU DROVE MY CAR ACROSS THE COUNTRY, YOU CRAZY MAN! IN TWO DAYS!”
Morrison, who was nothing if not good at taking my outbursts in stride, went on like I wasn’t a maniac shouting into his shoulder. “—called that woman, Sara, when I got to the outskirts of town—”
“WHY DIDN’T YOU CALL ME!”
“I wanted to surprise you. She said you’d headed up into the mountains and something was wrong, so I floored it.”
“YOU FLOORED IT! I DIDN’T THINK YOU KNEW HOW TO FLOOR IT!”
Morrison said, “Of course I do,” and then he kissed me.
It was an extremely effective way to get me to stop shouting. After a minute we sort of collapsed into Petite’s driver’s seat, which was not a comfortable place for two people to be. I had not known from previous experience how awkward it was to get two people from the driver’s seat into the passenger seat, either, but we managed. It might have been easier if I hadn’t been trying to remove Morrison’s shoulder holster and shirt at the same time, but that was not a detail that occurred to me in the moment. We were both giggling and swearing by the time we got into the passenger seat. Morrison fumbled for the seat latch and I grabbed it, sending the seat ratcheting back at top speed. I fell on top of him, laughing, and tried to mumble an apology that he stopped with a kiss, and then some more kisses.
I wanted to sit up so I could see him better, but I couldn’t make myself untangle my fingers from his hair long enough to do it, not even when he skimmed my shirt off and slid his hands over my skin. Petite’s windows were steaming up, despite the door being open and the rising sun heating the air around us. And then for quite a while I stopped noticing much of anything about the world beyond us, or anything that wasn’t Morrison’s scent and touch and warmth.
Saturday, March 25, 8:25 a.m.
I was not asleep. I just wasn’t very conscious, although the only thing keeping me from being unconscious was the fact that my left ankle had been pressed against the gearshift long enough to develop a permanent bruise that was starting to make my whole calf hurt. Aside from that, though, I was...
...well, actually I was hideously uncomfortable, because my jeans had never made it much past my calves, either, and were cutting off circulation, and my right knee, where it was wedged between Morrison’s thigh and the door, was also stuck to Petite’s leather seat. I hated to think just how much of Morrison was stuck to the leather.
Not the important bits, anyway. I smiled, then woke up enough to grin, and within a moment was laughing quietly. I hadn’t been so overwhelmed by sheer adolescent horniness since I’d been an adolescent, and overall, the aftermath of bubbly giggly joy was a lot better than my teen experiences. Maybe there were big bad things out there in the world, but if I was with Morrison I could handle anything. I felt effervescent. Stuck to a muggy, hot black leather interior, but effervescent. My laughter faded back into smiles and I mooshed a kiss against Morrison’s shoulder, just happy to be there.
Morrison turned his head and kissed my hair, murmuring, “I haven’t done that since I was a teenager,” with a smile of his own.
“Really?” I lifted my head to look at him from so close we both went cross-eyed. His eyes were still a lovely blue, even crossed. “You’re very good at it for someone who hasn’t done it in twenty years.”
I got an up close and personal glimpse of his best exasperated look, though for once it seemed tempered by fondness. “In a car, Walker, I meant in a car.”
I propped my elbows on the seat above his shoulders so I could see him a little more clearly. “I can’t believe the staid and steady Morrison has ever had sex in a car. What kind of car was it?”
He stared at me. “Does it matter?”
I laughed out loud and kissed him again. “Probably to everybody but you. Hey,” I said, suddenly a lot more softly. “Hi. You rescued me. Thanks.”
“Probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I had to take it.” Morrison curled his arms around me and pulled me back down against his chest. “You’re welcome.”
I smiled, thought of all the things that were going wrong just beyond Petite’s front end, and sighed. I’d had a very long couple of weeks, and no sleep the night before. I figured we deserved five more minutes of slightly glittery snuggling before we got on with the dirty business of hunting wights. I nestled against Morrison, listening to his heartbeat, and the next thing I knew, the sun had jumped a hand-span in the sky and Sheriff Lester Lee was leaning in Petite’s open driver’s-side door with a look of betrayal and disgust on his youthful features.
* * *
Morrison took a deep waking-up breath, the kind that signaled having gone from totally asleep to totally prepared to shoot something inside a blink. His pistol was in the driver’s seat, which I hadn’t consciously noticed until I discovered my hand on his forearm, stopping him from picking it up. Les, expression flat with displeasure, picked it up instead, and removed it from sight. Morrison tensed very slightly beneath me, though I could see him processing Lester’s uniform and accepting that if anyone had the right to move his weapon it was the local law enforcement. I still murmured, “It’s okay. Les is one of the good guys.”
Les growled, “Get dressed, Joanne,” stood up, and turned his back on us.
I looked back at Morrison, aware that this situation was not at all funny. His blue eyes crinkled up at the edges, and we both buried our faces in each other’s shoulders, trying to muffle high-pitched, teenage giggles. It didn’t work at all, because getting caught having sex in a car was even less dignified as adults than as teens. For a few seconds Petite rocked with our mirth, and we were still giggling and smirking as we found our clothes—mine had littered glitter into the backseat, the foot-wells and on Morrison—and obediently got dressed. Morrison slid his hand into my hair and stole one more kiss before we opened the passenger door and sort of half climbed, half fell out in an undignified tangle of limbs. I zipped my jeans, laced my fingers through Morrison’s, and tried to look apologetic through my grin as Les turned to face us.
“You think this is funny, Joanne?”
“No. Well, yes. I mean, this part? Yes. The rest...” Guilt started getting the better of me and my smile fell away.
The truth was, I had desperately needed—well, Morrison riding to my rescue had been a huge win, but the aftermath had been pretty high up on things Joanne needed, too. Up to and including the nap. I knew people were dying, I knew I’d lost the trail of not just the wights but the Executioner that had created them and I knew taking time out to get laid looked incredibly, mindlessly selfish. And it probably was.
But on the other hand, my mother had just sacrificed her immortal soul to save my life, my father was missing, and my son had come a hair’s breadth from getting eaten by a soul-devouring monster. I’d had very little sleep and insufficient emotional support. I was perfectly willing to admit my timing was terrible, but given the all-or-nothing crisis my life tended to be, it wasn’t like there was going to be a good time to throw my hat in and say, “Go away, the next few hours belon
gs to me.”
So I shoved guilt into a box and booted it to the curb. “Les, this is Captain Michael Morrison of the North Precinct Seattle Police Department. Morrison, this is Sheriff Lester Lee. We’re all on the same side here.”
Les gave me a look that said obviously Morrison was a lot more on my side than he himself was, and that he, rationally or not, resented that. Morrison read the look as clearly as I did, and I could all but feel him file that one away to ask about later. Les didn’t exactly put it aside, muttering, “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t arrest you for fleeing the scene of a crime,” with half-credible threat in his voice.
“Because you know perfectly well I didn’t kill those people, and because I’m guessing if there are any prints scorched into their foreheads, they match up with the bodies who were already in the room.”
He muttered incomprehensibly, then with slightly more volume said, “For public displays of indecency, then.”
He had me dead to rights on that one, even if we were up on a mountaintop and he was the only public around. I was still smart enough to change the subject. “What’s going on down there that you’re up here?”
His expression went black. “The news media picked up last night’s deaths. When you called I was already arguing about whether this had to become a federal case, but with the second wave the FBI has taken over. Murder on the Qualla. Six months from now it’ll be a movie of the week. Sara’s taking point—”
“Really? This isn’t her jurisdiction.”
“It’s her or let somebody who’s got no business here at all come in. At least she knows what’s really going on.”
I winced. Sara had already taken a mystical case in the teeth because of me, when the serial killer she was hunting turned out to be a man-eating monster called a wendigo. I doubted she was even done clawing her way out of that trail having gone cold, and now she was going to be leading another investigation that would have no satisfactory answers. Personally I was grateful it would be her leading it, and not some stick-up-the-ass white man who had no use or respect for the Cherokee culture. Professionally, I wished it was the stick-up-the-ass white guy, because two cases like this in a row could destroy Sara’s career. “So, what, she sent you up here to...?”
