by C. E. Murphy
Surprise changed Aibhill’s voice for a moment. Deepened it enough that I could shake off the very, very worst of the effects and raise my head to look at her. She stared at the space where Caitríona had been, then turned an enraged gaze on me. She was still beautiful. Even with her wild white robes stained with Méabh’s blood and the glittering dust that had once been Gancanagh, even with the voice that tore me apart and held my mother captive, she was beautiful. I wanted evil to be ugly, or to wear black hats. That, after all, was why I’d bought my dramatic white leather coat.
For some reason, thinking about the coat gave me the wherewithal to get on my feet. I wasn’t kidding myself. I wasn’t going to be able to fight that voice, not with it cracking bigger and bigger pieces off my shield, but I wasn’t by God going to go out on my knees. I wished like hell I had my sword, even reached for it, then bit back a sob when it didn’t appear. When it, like Gary, was lost to me. My left arm was completely useless, but I shook my right hand until silver-blue power shone through it. Maybe I could take her out with me, one last explosive release of magic that would no doubt shut down my ability to call it forever, but that was okay, since it wasn’t looking good for the home team anyway.
Aibhill recognized what I was doing, and gave me a stunning smile. We circled each other, me surprised I could move at all, and stopped when we’d reversed positions. She had the setting sun to her back, golden glow making her all the more angelic, and it felt like the sun had lent her every ounce of its nuclear power when she opened her mouth and screamed again.
My shields flaked away, leaving every weary aspect of me on display. Leaving my despair over Gary and my love for Morrison and my concerns for Aidan all right there for the taking. Leaving Petite, my Mustang, the one lifelong love affair I’d had, out in the open. Leaving my perception of Petite reflecting the state of my soul there for her to see. Leaving Billy and Melinda and their kids and my coworkers and my fondness for Cernunnos and my protective streak over Suzanne Quinley and my foolish pride in learning swordplay and my regret over my fencing teacher’s discomfort with my shamanism and on and on and on, all of it raw and exposed and coming apart beneath the sounds of her never-ending screams.
I was saying my last prayers when Gary rode out of the sunset and shoved my sword through the bitch’s back.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Aibhill’s scream turned to a squeak. She slid forward off the rapier, blood bright over her white gown and astonishment vivid on her pretty face.
Her astonishment had nothing on mine. I stood where I was, shock still, with the vestiges of screams faltering around me. With my shields shivering themselves back together, now that they were no longer under assault. With my heart holding still in my chest and my lungs empty of air, because I was afraid if I breathed again, if my heart beat again, that the vision of Gary would disappear once and for all and he would be gone from my life forever.
Forget Aibhill. Forget Lugh and Nuada and Cernunnos and all the other inhumanly gorgeous people I had ever encountered. I had never seen anything as beautiful as Garrison Matthew Muldoon, seventy-four years old, white-haired, broad-shouldered like a linebacker and with a smile to break the hearts of girls young enough to be his granddaughter. Not that he was smiling now. He sat straight in his saddle, expression solemn as he looked at the woman he’d just killed. Aibhill, whose body slowly degraded from beauty to age as I watched. It would get worse, I thought, and I didn’t want to see the transition from age to extreme age, then to dust as the life force lent to her by the banshees bled away. I wondered what was happening to them, and whether we’d saved Sheila, and then Gary looked up and did give me that movie-star grin, and said, “H’lo, darlin’. Did I miss anything?”
What air was left in my lungs rushed out and I ran forward on willpower alone, no oxygen, no thought, just the need to crash into my best friend’s arms and hug him as hard as I possibly could. He even slid off the horse quickly enough for me to do that, and we both thumped against the animal as I flung myself into his arms. He bent his head over mine and we stayed there until I could draw breath again, which only happened after black dots and stars started dancing in my vision. “Do you have false teeth?”
Gary guffawed. “What kinda question is that, doll?”
“It’s just your teeth are so perfect and I know you used to smoke and I always thought they had to be false and then she said you’d be at Méabh’s tomb and a skeleton was and it had false teeth but they weren’t perfect that was how I knew it wasn’t you but I was so scared and I was sure at first it was and do you?”
Gary set me back and beamed at me. “’Course I do. Got in a fight just after Korea and two of ’em got knocked out. I had the doc pull ’em all. He was furious ’cause I had good teeth, but everybody loses their teeth eventually, so I figured no point in waiting. So what’s this about Méabh’s tomb? Never been there.”
“No, you have to have been, she said you’d be waiting at her final restin—” The breath went out of me again and I got cold. “Her final resting place.”
I did not want to turn around. Did not want to look toward Méabh, who I’d forgotten about in the past minutes. But I couldn’t not, either, not after the day we’d spent together. I grabbed Gary’s hand, both unwilling to ever let him go and reluctant to look at Méabh without support. He gave me a reassuring nod, and I clenched my fingers harder around his and made myself look.
She was horribly still. Eyes open, staring toward the exposed sky. I made a sound, but it didn’t get past my throat. Gary very gently tugged me into motion, and then we were running toward her and collapsing on our knees at her side. Her chest rose and fell, minute motions, but it was something. It was enough, with Aibhill no longer mistress of this domain. I shot a glance at the banshee queen’s body: shriveling now, falling bit by slow bit into white dust. Another minute and she would be nothing. Relieved, I reached for the healing power, and instead was taken aback by another voice I hadn’t expected to hear again.
“I might make you an offer.” Cernunnos rode out of the sunset as well, ash and silver cutting a mark against gold. He wasn’t, though, speaking to me: his gaze was for the woman dying at my side.
Being a master of discretion, I gave a bleat of protest and managed to turn it into words as he dismounted and glanced at me. “She’s not exactly up to a bargain, Cernunnos!”
“There is no bargain to be made. No cost for what I will ask, because it is to my benefit as well as hers.” He knelt on Méabh’s other side, head heavy with horns as he lowered it toward hers. “Do not die here, Queen of Connacht. Instead give up this land, this world and become a creature of my earth instead. It will sustain you and all your kind for as long as I exist, and I am not an easy thing to end.” He glanced at me as he spoke, emerald eyes fiery. Not easy, but not impossible: I had almost seen his end, and that was a deep bond between us. That acknowledgment made, he looked back to Méabh, voice softer still. “You know already that the aos sí do not exist in Joanne’s world, in Joanne’s time. The choice is yours, for all your kin: fade away under the hills, or come beyond the sunset—”
“‘And all the western stars,’” I whispered. “‘Until I die.’”
Méabh’s gaze sharpened on me and she laughed. Breathless ugly sound, but a laugh. “A poet and a warrior. Write my song, then, Granddaughter. Write my song, as I go. I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you, too. I’m glad I got to meet you. And the poem’s not mine.” And I’d mangled it anyway, but it was close enough for the moment. I struggled for the right thing to say, finally blurting, “I’ll say it for you, though. On the old holy days, darkest night and brightest day.”
“Then I’ll go.” She looked at Cernunnos, and for the first time I saw the woman soften. I sympathized, even as my heart wrenched. We’d gone through a lot of adventure together in the past day. I didn’t want to have yanked her out of time only to have gotten her killed. The thought made me give Gary a look of guilty relief. He beetled his b
ushy eyebrows at me.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to explain that while I didn’t want to have gotten Méabh killed out of time, I could live with it, whereas I couldn’t have forgiven myself for doing the same to him. A jolt of bewilderment finally hit me: I didn’t even know how he and Cernunnos had gotten here. Especially since I was still pretty sure “here” was the Lower World, where I doubted Cernunnos belonged at all.
“My people,” Méabh said to Cernunnos, “my people aren’t mine to call. I wouldn’t be one of them, not in my heart, not in my soul.”
“But you are in the blood,” said the god of the hunt, and then, to me, “Give her strength enough to survive the ride across the stars. That alone, and no more. Tir na nOg will do the rest, and she will be better for it. More, the land will come to know her people through her blood, and they will leave this world for mine. It has long been lonesome,” he murmured, and I couldn’t meet his eyes. I only nodded, reaching for my magic.
Half to my surprise, power responded promptly, leaping awake with a rush of enthusiasm. It poured through me, starting in my fingertips and sizzling up my arms. I had about a nanosecond to recognize that usually it went the other direction.
Then I turned into a werewolf.
It happened so fast I didn’t know what had happened. A bolt of pain, but not the drawn-out agony from before. Just a clear pure explosion of it and then the world was a simpler place. Bright sharp smells overwhelmed me: blood and dying magic and surprise and dust and grass and stone and sky. I sneezed once, sending some of the scent away, and focused on the important things.
Like getting out of the itchy human clothes. That was the work of a moment, while I growled over the nice warm lump of bleeding flesh right in front of me. It would sate the hunger in my belly. I’d been so long without food as a human I’d temporarily forgotten the need to eat. Shifting awakened the need, and the bloody, barely breathing body on the floor looked like lunch.
Gary put his hand on my ruff and pulled me back as I dipped my head toward Méabh’s gut wound. I snarled and turned on him, teeth snapping a whisker from his nose.
He didn’t even flinch, just scruffed my spine and then my furry cheeks. My angry wolf brain went blank for just a moment. This was not how prey was supposed to act. I lost some of my aggression, and inside that moment of confusion, Gary said, “You ain’t gonna bite me, darlin’.”
No. No, I wasn’t. That was Gary. My friend Gary. Gary, who’d come back. I kept to short ideas, important thoughts. Gary was my friend. I wouldn’t bite him. I would never bite him. I would never make him a monster. I wasn’t a monster. Not if I could keep from biting Gary. Over and over, the same litany of promises: I had Gary back. I would never risk him again.
Inch by itching inch, my hackles flattened. I edged my front feet forward centimeters at a time until they, too, lay flat, and I had my chin on the floor. Gary kept hold of my face, just like I was still a real girl. He even smiled, all calm and natural, as if holding off a crazed werewolf was all in the line of duty. “There you go,” he said in approval. “That’s better. Now, what’s goin’ on, Jo? You said shapeshifting. Didn’t think that meant eating your buddies.”
I didn’t think much at all, but his voice was soothing. I listened to it, an easy rising and falling cadence, and began to fall asleep. A hint of danger flared as I recognized the oncoming nap, but it was too late: the wolf’s thoughts became stronger than my own, more focused. Food would come later. The old human would weaken. He could be taken then. The Master would be pleased. The Master knew this old man. His scent was familiar. Familiar to all the Master’s creatures. The old man had fought the Master once, long ago. Before my ancestors had come from the earth to do the Master’s bidding. Killing this man would be the Master’s desire. If I brought this man to the Master, he would forgive me and all my kind for their weakness in being captured by Méabh.
Familiar scent flared again and my eyes opened wide. Méabh. The Master knew the dying woman’s scent, too. My kind would be elevated above all others if I brought him the dying woman and the old man. My tail hit the floor once, hard. I gathered my feet under me and sprang away, out of the old man’s reach. Out of reach of the food/dying/Méabh-woman, too, but that wouldn’t matter soon. I made my throat long, gathering breath for a triumphant howl to the sky.
Something I couldn’t see kicked me in the head.
I wobbled, too surprised to howl or whimper. Nothing nothing nothing: my senses were afire, searching for what had attacked me. No scent. No body. No footstep on the floor. I backed away, shoulders hunched, head lowered, teeth bared. Growling at the nothing. Willing it to go away. Willing it to be seen, so I could fight it.
Its scent came first. Heavy, earthen, animal. Prey animal: deer. But not weak, not a doe, not a fawn. A stag. In his prime, musky scent growing stronger. Not easy prey. Not wise prey for a single wolf. A pack could take him, but I had no pack. My kind scattered from each other after the change was forced on us. We hunted alone now. We did not hunt the healthy, the strong. We did not hunt the stag.
But there was the old man and the dying woman, and the promise of the Master’s forgiveness. I was young. Strong. Perhaps I could take the stag. It would fill my belly. I crouched lower, growling.
Something wrong came into the scent. A not-prey smell: dominance. So strong I almost lay down, almost rolled to expose my hungry belly. Maybe it would think me a puppy. Forgive my mistakes.
No. I had to remember. Master. Old man. Dying woman. I sprang up again, snarling.
The scent became a shape. Like a man, but not. Too thick in the torso, the neck, the head. Antlers there, like the stag. Green eyes, not like the stag. Relentless gaze. No prey animal would lock eyes with me, the wolf, the quick and strong one. I made myself larger, ruff standing on end, and the stag-man said a word: “Enough.”
It made me small, that word. Made me quiver. Made my bladder tighten and made me lie down with only the tip of my tail moving. Pleading for forgiveness. I did not understand. The stag-man should be prey. Should be afraid. Should be careful.
I rolled onto my back and stretched my throat long for the second time, but this time in submission, and didn’t know why.
The stag-man knelt beside me and took my fur in his hand. Over my throat, squeezing, pressing, warning as he whispered, “Foolish shifter. Do you think you frighten me? I am Cernunnos, god of the hunt, and you, foolish beast, are a hunter. You are mine, first and so long before you belonged to that thing they call the Master. You have made your allegiances, but never dream that I cannot still master you. Now release my shaman, foolish shifter, or I will destroy you here, in this place so close to your birth space that you will be called back and will never again see sunlight.”
He could. He would. I knew it in my bowels, in the way my tail curled between my legs in terror. But he couldn’t. Couldn’t destroy me without destroying her, the one who wasn’t wolf. My tail uncoiled a little, and the stag-god smiled. Sharp teeth in that smile. As sharp as mine. “It would be a shame,” he said, “but do not imagine her life is so unimportant that I would let a monster live in her place.”
The wolf whimpered and flowed away. Pain shot through me again and I lay there, Joanne-shaped, naked and with Cernunnos’s mouth half an inch from mine. Had his hand not also been crushing my windpipe quite so thoroughly, it would have been a supremely erotically charged moment. Good thing Morrison wasn’t here, which wasn’t something I often found myself thinking. “…thanks.”
Cernunnos raked a glance over me, ending with a smile so repressed that it obviously said, “Oh, anytime!” Without looking, and with consummate grace, he caught my coat in his free hand as Gary tossed it our way, and covered me with it in some semblance of modesty. I sat up to shove my arms in the sleeves, somewhere between dismayed and relieved that my left arm responded properly. It didn’t hurt anymore, either, but it was still shiny and infected-looking. Amputation was starting to sound like a viable option.
“You are
damaged, my gwyld,” Cernunnos said, too softly for Gary to hear. I shot a “no duh” look between my arm and him, but he shook his star-filled hair. “More deeply than that wound can say. Pain remains in your soul, and until that pain is excised you will be susceptible to magics like this one. Shall I offer again?” He sounded almost lonely. “I offered once, Siobhán Walkingstick. Shall I offer again, to take away that pain?”
I closed the coat at my throat and shook my head. “I’d still say no. I have to. I’m sorry.”
“Then see to the wounds that scar you,” he advised. “Face them, Joanne. You cannot go on this way.”
I thought of my mother, of the few things we’d managed to say and all the ones left unsaid, and nodded. “I’m working on it.”
Without condemnation, he said, “Work harder,” and drew me to my feet. “She is yours to watch over now,” he told Gary, and my big buddy lumbered over to hand me my shirt and hug me.
“Thank you,” Cernunnos went on, still to Gary. “Had she not called you—”
“But I didn’t.” It was a terrible time to interrupt, but I honestly had no idea how Gary had arrived in the nick of time. “I needed the sword, I tried to call it, but…”
Cernunnos paused, looking at me, then waited on Gary, who spread his hands. “The fight was over, doll. Had been for a while. I was ridin’ with the Hunt when the sword went all blue and started fadin’. I held on as hard as I could, an’ next thing I know I was here and you looked like you could use some rescuin’.”
“All I had to do to get you back was call the sword?” I had not called the sword at least twice in the past day, thinking it out of reach. All that worry over Gary for nothing. I clicked my heels together a couple times and muttered, “There’s no place like home,” then exhaled and gestured to Cernunnos, giving the floor back to him.
He inclined his crown of horns toward me, then addressed Gary again. “Had she not called you, I could not have followed. This is not my place, this world below the world. I belong elsewhere.” He left us to crouch and collect Méabh’s lanky form. She didn’t move, didn’t even groan, which scared me, but I wasn’t about to risk another healing. Maybe Cernunnos could tell me someday if she’d made it. If he’d succeeded in bringing her to his world, and all the rest of her people with her.
