Raven Calls

by C. E. Murphy

  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.

  As if he’d heard the thoughts, he said, “The sí are a gift to me, Joanne Walker. I could not have made this offer to them anywhere, anytime, else,” and I remembered that his memory worked in both directions.

  I cracked a grimace meant to be a smile of relief. “You just kept me from howling down the roof and bringing the Master here. Let’s call it even.”

  He nodded and gave me the brief, wicked look that made my heart go pitter-pat, then, Méabh in his arms, mounted his silver stallion and rode away again, sunset swallowing them whole.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I knelt by the smear of Méabh’s blood on the stones, fingertips just above it, not quite touching. There were ridges of dust in it already: some white, some black. I hadn’t even seen Gancanagh die. It was probably just as well. I didn’t think I’d have handled seeing Morrison fall very well. Still, it seemed like I’d owed him that much, even if Méabh and I had been trying to kill each other over him.

  Gary came to stand beside me, a hand on my shoulder. “Pyrrhic victory, doll?”

  I looked up, uncomprehending, and he said, “Me in exchange for her?”

  “No. Jesus, no, don’t ever think that. They—she, but they, somebody else died, too—they were gone before you showed up. And you saved my life. No. I just…” I glanced back down at the blood, thinking I ought to have tears. I ought to be able to cry. Somehow I was just too tired, right then. “What happened to you? I lost you. I thought I wasn’t going to get you back. Did you win the fight?”

  He said, “We won,” with an odd note. I looked up again and he shook his head. “I’ll tell you about it later. Point is, the cauldron got bound, and that was the whole reason for doin’ it, right? Now, look, Jo,” he went on before I could answer. His hand slid off my shoulder, an accusing finger pointed at my arm. “I know you said you could shapeshift now, but that ain’t good. What’s goin’ on with you?”

  I sighed. “I got bit by a werewolf.”

  His voice went suspiciously neutral. “When?”

  I sighed again. “Saturday night. Sunday morning. Right before I got on the plane, anyway.”

  “Mike know ’bout this?”

  Never in a thousand years was I going to get used to Morrison being referred to as Mike. “No.”

  “Joanne Grace Wa—” Gary’s register went up like an outraged parent’s, and almost idly, beneath the scold, I said, “Siobhán.”

  “She—what?”

  It didn’t seem quite possible that Gary, to whom I usually confessed all, was the last of my close friends to learn my proper name. People had been using it all day, in front of him even, but I kind of suspected it had been a lot more than one day for Gary, and that he’d probably had other things to worry about than what names people were calling me by. So I said, “Siobhán Grainne MacNamarra Walkingstick,” mostly to the sparkling mess on the floor. “My name’s not Joanne Grace, it’s Siobhán Grainne, which is more or less the Irish version of Joanne Grace. I just figure if you’re going to read me the riot act you might as well do it with all guns at your disposal.”

  “Your name ain’t Joanne?” Gary sounded thunderstruck. I was afraid to look at him, for fear of seeing injury in his eyes.

  “It is. It’s what I’ve used my whole life. It’s just not what’s actually on the birth certificate. You know everything else about me. I thought you should know that, too.”

  “…does Mike?”

  This was not the time to ask him to stop calling Morrison that. My shoulders slumped. “Yeah, he has for months. It came up a while ago.”

  “Jo.” Gary touched my shoulder again, then knelt beside me, bushy eyebrows furrowed. “Jo, does he know about…?”

  Grace under pressure, that was my Gary. Not willing to spell out the details of something I’d clearly been uncomfortable talking about. I hadn’t been able to look at him while I told him about Aidan and Ayita, and he wasn’t making me look at him now, either. I could have kissed him for that, though mostly I just wanted to curl up in his arms and rest. “That came up then, too. He’s known longer than anybody else. Not the details, but he knows.”

  Gary exhaled noisily and let his hands fall into his lap. I dared a glance at him and found his gray gaze serious on mine. “That’s about the most important thing, then, I figure. Even if I oughta read you the riot act. A werewolf, Jo? You got bit by a werewolf?”

  “It was a rough weekend.” I couldn’t find anything else to say, except, eventually, “Méabh was trying to help me save my mother. Sheila was being turned into a banshee. I had to…” I made a small, almost helpless gesture. “I had to save her.” I wondered if I had. We’d burned her bones and killed the banshee queen, but none of the banshees had come flooding down to thank us for our work and then gone off to that happy banshee heaven in the sky. I had no idea where to look for S
heila MacNamarra anymore.

  “’Scuze me for sayin’ so, but I think we gotta save you. What woulda happened if Horns hadn’t been here, Jo?”

  I shuddered all the way from the bottom of my soul. “We’d all be toast. I was about to hand you over to my—the—Master. He made the werewolves. Méabh bound them to the moon. I figured if I gave you and her up to him, he’d break the binding. It seemed like a good idea at the time.” I’d cut holes in jeans and shirts as a small child for that same reason. My father had nearly exploded with frustration over not understanding why I would do such a thing. I’d never been able to get across that it seemed like a good idea at the time was all the reason I could possibly need. It wasn’t a good reason, I was willing to grant that, but it was the only one I had. And handing my best friend over to a murderous dark lord had seemed like a good idea at the time.

  Gary was right. We needed to save me. Because Mom, rest her soul or not, was already dead, and could do only a limited amount of harm. I was alive, kicking and infected with a poison that made me think selling my friends to the devil was a good idea. “I don’t even know where to go, Gary. We lost our guide. Aibhill eviscerated him, too. She was the banshee queen.” There was so much he’d missed, in such a short time. My head spun as I tried to figure out what was most important. “Taking her out was supposed to free Mom, but…”

  But the banshees had gone silent since Aibhill’s screams had faded. Not that I’d seen my mother among them, but it wasn’t like I’d gotten a really good look at the dozen or so left after Méabh had finished razing her way through them. I’d have thought they’d come down to wreak unholy vengeance on us by now. I got to my feet, looking around the fallen castle first with ordinary sight, and then the Sight.

  Evidently banshees could hide behind a sort of psychic shield, too, because they were clearly visible with the Sight. Eleven of them hung about in the rafters like right-side-up bats, and they were all staring at Gary with consternation. I looked at him, too, but didn’t see anything to worry about. He was just himself, albeit armed with my shiny silver sword.

  The sword with which he’d killed Aibhill. A rock dropped into the pit of my stomach. “Oh, dear.”

  “Oh, dear? Oh, dear? Jo, darlin’, you don’t say things like ‘oh, dear.’ What the hell does ‘oh, dear’ mean?” His aura got all trembly and bright, like an engine revving up.

  “I think there’s a new sheriff in town. Do you still have the Sight?”

  “Nah, it wore off bef— What? What? Oh no. Waitaminnit.” Gary stepped over the puddle of blood and shoved the sword into my hands. “I’m just the sidekick. You’re the boss.”

  “Yeah, but you’re the one who killed the O’Br—”

  He clapped his hand over my mouth. “You’re. The. Boss.” He looked at the rafters and repeated that one more time, even more loudly.

  One by one, eleven heads turned my way, gazes fixing on me with far more comprehension and acceptance than they’d shown in looking at Gary. I scowled accusingly at him, but not for very long. These were women scorned, after all. That was how they’d ended up as banshees. Probably leaving a man, any man, even a good man, in charge of them was not the world’s best idea. Maybe even especially a good man, because they’d shred him while he was being decent-hearted. “All right,” I said, resigned. “All right. I’m sure you’re all wondering why I’ve called you here. Can anybody tell me how to find my mother?”

  As one, their attention turned from me to the ruined castle floors. I looked, too, but my mother wasn’t imprisoned within the stone, or any other of the Poe-like dramatics that first leapt to mind. I was about to give them an earful when something moved.

  The whole floor started coming alive, swirling, misting, rising up. No, not the floor: the silver-white dust that had recently been Aibhill. I gripped my sword harder and came up with a few choice words for however the hell magic-born beings were germinated. Shoving a blade through anybody should be enough to take them down permanently, although it wasn’t, of course, enough to take me down permanently. That seemed like a bad line of thought to pursue, so I just gritted my teeth and got ready for another damned fight. Gary edged nearer to me, and I wished that Cat hadn’t taken the spear with her when she ran. But then, I’d been supposed to be on her heels, so there’d have been no actual reason for her to leave it behind. Oh, well.

  By the time I got through those sets of regrets and repudiations, Aibhill’s mesmerizing gown had come together again. I wanted to stick the sword in her immediately, but there didn’t seem to be any body there, just the amorphous dress. Rebuilding her lovely flesh took longer, and she remained wraithlike—I knew, because I poked her a couple times—until in one last sudden instant she coalesced as a whole, features suddenly back in place, long hair suddenly flowing, white hands reaching out. Only it wasn’t Aibhill.

  It was Sheila MacNamarra.

  I had promised. I had promised Méabh that if it came to it, I would be the one to finish my mother off. And now Méabh was dead, or mostly dead, and there was nobody on hand to make me keep that promise except myself.

  My newly risen mother was as beautiful as Aibhill had been, but dark-haired. Green-eyed. Those things were right; the beauty was not. Mom had been prettier than I was, but not beautiful. That made it easier to breathe, “I don’t freaking think so,” and launch myself at her.

  The last thing I expected was a cage of magic bars to slam up around me and hold me in place. I bounced off them, sword clanging, and gaped in astonishment for a second or two. Aibhill had not demonstrated any ability to throw magic around. Then again, Aibhill probably hadn’t been known as the Mage of Ireland while she’d lived. And on the third hand, now I really didn’t understand how creatures of pure magic were birthed, because Mom had been a hundred percent human—well, minus the touch of aos sí blood, apparently—and now she patently was not.

  On the fourth hand, I forgot my stupid magic wasn’t working properly and retaliated.

  Luckily, for some value of luck, I threw a net rather than trying any internal magics, and the external ones were mostly still working okay. Iron bars may a cage make, but magic nets weren’t particularly stymied by them. My silver-and-blue net whisked through the narrow spaces between her gold-and-red cage and spun large, wrapping her as thoroughly as I’d been trapped. Her concentration broke for an instant and I surged through the dissolving cage bars.

  Exasperation flitted across her features. She flung a hand up, palm toward me, and I hit another wall, bouncing onto my butt this time. Mages might be about spells and preparation, but from what I knew of my mother she would have a list of spells as long as her arm prepared. Probably longer. I was going to get knocked around a lot before she worked her way through all of them. Instead of getting up, I tightened my net, and that same mild exasperation showed before concussive power exploded the net all over the place.

  I slithered down a distant wall with no real idea of how I’d gotten there. My head hurt. Worse, it rang like Notre Dame’s bells, and the fragments of my magic were raw and sharp-edged as I tried pulling them back together. It felt like someone had gotten right inside my power and set off a grenade.

  Which, of course, was basically what had happened. Sheila had, after all, been wrapped up nice and tight in a net of my magic. Moreover, she was my mother. She couldn’t have been much more inside my magic than that, both literally and emotionally. It was just dawning on me that none of this fight was likely to go the way I wanted it to when she spoke. “I’ll scream if I have to, cuisle mo chroí.”

  Cushla mahcree. I knew that phrase. Some of my aunts had used it with their children. It meant something like “my heart,” and seemed a little peculiar to add onto the end of a threat.

  Because it was a threat. I’d barely stood up to Aibhill’s scream when it had brought my mother’s voice into it. I’d shatter with Sheila’s voice as the lead. So for once in my life I tried to do the smart thing, and didn’t throw another net.

  Well, mostly t
he smart thing, anyway. I did say, “I have to kill you, you know that, right?”

  She came down to earth—I’d hardly noticed she’d been floating, but now that I thought about it, Aibhill had been, too—and knelt next to me. I scooted along the wall, trying to get far enough away to avoid sudden evisceration. She started to follow, then put her palms on the floor as if to say, “Look, no danger!” and otherwise held still. “I’m dead already, alanna. There’s nothing left to kill.”

  “You’re awfully damned mobile for a dead woman. And I don’t do ghosts, so you’re something else, and that just can’t be good, so I’ve got to finish it. I promised Méabh.”

  Disappointment flashed across my mother’s too-pale face. “I did so want to meet her. Joanne, Siobhán, alanna my dear. Would I be speaking to you this way if I belonged to them?”

  I dared a glance at the them in question, the banshees who still hung about the rafters, all hungry haunted eyes and silent voices. “Aibhill was very reasonable, too. Right up until she gutted Méabh. So forgive me if I don’t quite trust reasonable and polite.”

  “Aibhill,” my mother said softly, “did not have the bond of bone and blood broken before her soul became the Master’s. More, she did not have it done by her daughter, nor with the help of a goddess she had long since loved.”

  That whole ritual on the mountaintop seemed very distant just then. I looked at her for a long time, trying to understand what she meant, and finally said, “You mean it worked? You’re free?”

  “Free to choose, cuisle mo chroí, and I’ve chosen this cloak to wear.”

  I couldn’t have heard her correctly. My expression indicated as much, and after a moment she smiled. Not Aibhill’s sweet, syrupy smile, but a smile with points. With fangs. A smile that reminded me how my mother had chosen to die through willpower alone, and therefore a smile that I found peculiarly reassuring. I still had to say it. “Why on God’s little green earth would you do that? This is… I mean, Mom. Doesn’t this kind of cut you out of the circle of life? Of reincarnation? You’ve got to be an old soul, even if I’m not. Why would you do that?”