by C. E. Murphy
Saturday, April 1, 3:25 p.m.
Not in a million years did I think that would be enough, but to my bewilderment, people nodded and broke into smaller groups or away. I couldn’t help remembering the bonfire the now-dead coven and I had set in Ravenna Park, which no one had noticed, either. Magic had a way, consciously or not, of going unseen. Shields shone here and there, some as sturdy-looking as my own, encompassing one or two or five people. They merged and strengthened as they passed by one another, then faded back to normalcy when people parted again. Men and women stopped to talk to the cops, leaving their contact information, and after Morrison spoke to them, the cops let the witnesses go, furrows creased between their eyebrows.
A few of the adepts put their hands to their hearts as they met my gaze on their way past. I nodded, trying to look confident instead of confused, and when the bulk of them had left, I breathed, “I cannot believe that worked.”
“I can.” Suzy’s eyes were bright. “You were like the president or something. You sounded like a, a, like a king. Like my grandfather. And you’re glowing.”
I glanced at myself, then at my other friends. Gary nodded, a smile twitching his mouth. “Even I can see it, doll. You could lead armies, General.”
“I told you I don’t want to be a general, Gary. I don’t want to be sending those people into battle.”
“An’ I told you sometimes we gotta do things we don’t like. They’re gonna keep the city safer, ain’t they?”
“And maybe make themselves incredibly vulnerable in the effort.”
“Then we better get this thing finished before too many folks get hurt. Tell us where you want us, sweetheart.”
I looked at the falls’ tainted power again and pressed my lips together. “What I really want is for us to surround the falls and reclaim it, but that means...healing its magic. Twelve or thirteen people died to contaminate it. That’s a lot of black magic, and I’m not sure...” My gaze skittered to Annie.
She bowed her head. “I won’t participate, of course.”
“That’s the thing. I’m not sure you shouldn’t. I can’t keep an eye on you if you don’t. And the touch of power they’ve left in you means you might be exactly the key I need to call Raven Mocker or even the Master straight to me. Or you might be the fracture point.” That wasn’t exactly the most delicate way I could have put it.
Gary’s face went bleak. “Listen here, doll, that’s my wife you’re talkin’ to. You watch your tongue.”
Annie put her hand on his arm. She looked far less fragile than she had in the hospital. I couldn’t decide if that was good or bad. “It’s all right, Gary. We know this is difficult.”
“I don’t know that,” the big man growled. “You’re my Annie, sweetheart. I know that.”
“I could keep an eye on her,” Coyote offered, but I shook my head.
“No, I need you in the circle, ’yote. You’re my left hand, man. I wouldn’t know what to do without you. And I can’t do without Suzy, either, because you’re kind of fiery green power wrapped in girl skin,” I finished to her.
“Which means I might be the vulnerable point, too,” she reminded me. “My visions are still black, Ms. Walker.”
“I know, but...” This wasn’t going to work. It hit me hard enough that I rolled back on my heels, frowning faintly around my group of friends. The concept was solid, but Annie and Suzy represented too much vulnerability, and I had nobody that I could set to watch over them that I couldn’t use more inside the circle. “But it’s such a good idea!”
That came perilously close to a whine. I stared at the gathering again. Morrison, with the magical aptitude of a turnip. Gary, about that magical himself, but invested with a certain long view, after his adventures with Cernunnos. Suzy, bursting with magic and maybe already in danger. Annie, back from the dead and unquestionably tainted, but maybe a useful tool. And Coyote, the only one of us who knew more about magic than I did. I wished Billy was here. I knew he’d be here soon, but I needed him now.
“Shit.” I stomped in a circle, then pointed a finger at Coyote. “Okay. You’re going to have to keep all of them safe, ’yote. I’m going to have to do the power circle by myself.”
Five jaws dropped in perfect synchronization, and after a heartbeat, five voices all started talking at once. “Are you crazy, doll—? You’re going to try healing the falls alone—? Are you nuts—? You’re going to call the Master or the Raven Mocker down on you all by yourself—? What’re you thinking—? Don’t you remember what happened when you faced Raven Mocker in North Carolina, Walker—? You can’t be serious—”
“Jo,” Coyote said under all of it, quietly enough to be heard clearly, “I can’t shield like you do. If I falter—”
“You won’t. You can’t.” It was very simple, as far as I was concerned, and I put the fact that reality didn’t work that way firmly out of my head. Sometimes reality did work that way, and right now I needed it to. “They need you, and Cyrano, in all the time I’ve known you, you have never failed to come through for me when I needed you.”
“No pressure, then.”
I smiled lopsidedly. “None at all. Look, Annie may be tainted, Suzy may be tempting, but I’m the big shiny red target. If he or they can take me out, everybody else becomes much easier, so I think if I lay down some bucket loads of power here, anybody coming for us is going to gun for me. Just keep things on the down-low while I do the showy stuff.”
Somewhere in there I concluded that was probably the wrong approach. I didn’t know that Coyote was envious of my supersize power set, but it couldn’t be easy to watch me surpass him. On the other hand, surpassing him meant I was, in fact, the shiny red target, which really ought to be some kind of comfort. Nobody in their right mind would want to be in my position right now.
Which position was already beginning to sketch a power circle around the falls. It was going to be a pain in the ass, with bluffs to climb and probably a corner of parking lot to encompass, but I wanted to make it as round as I could. I clapped Coyote on the shoulder as I stepped away. He gave me one last unhappy look, then gathered the others closer with his desert-sky-and-dunes aura extending.
Morrison’s voice was the last thing to break Coyote’s protective circle. “Walker.” I looked back. “Watch yourself, Joanne.”
I flicked a lighthearted salute that I meant all the way to my bones. “Aye, aye, Captain.”
I couldn’t get over the idea that nobody was trying to stop me. Police officers and forensics teams and an increasingly large gathering of busybodies were in the area, with the latter being fended off by some impatient-looking cops, but nobody seemed to take any notice of me climbing bluffs and muttering greetings in each of the cardinal directions. There had to be some kind of low-key “look away” vibe emanating from me, even if I wasn’t aware of putting it off. Most of the time I wasn’t aware of keeping my shields up anymore, either, so maybe the two things were going part and parcel. I was grateful, but I also felt a niggling sense that it would be important to figure out at some point soon.
Not right now, though. I had bigger fish to fry. A handful of stepping stones got me across the head of the falls themselves, but I had to go into the lake to keep the circle from being lopsided. I figured the lake, like the parking lot, had been part of what was affected by the falls’ birth, so it seemed appropriate even if it meant finishing the circle with wet feet.
When it was done, since my feet were wet anyway, I went back up to the top of the falls and stood in them. They were about calf-deep, rushing water more powerful than I expected. I spent a moment or two looking up the stream that fed them, wondering where all that water came from. We’d screwed up the water table mightily when we’d created the falls. All the local neighborhoods had been without water for weeks while the city got it fixed. I still felt bad about that. Maybe later I would go around, knock on everybody’s door and apologize. Right now, though, I tipped my chin up to take one more look at the contaminated column of power.
It was, frankly, huge. Vast. Enormous. Very large. Troublesomely large, really. It had been made clear to me over the past fifteen months that I had unusually deep reserves of magic. I came from two magical bloodlines. I was a new soul, mixed up fresh for this fight. New souls apparently came with boundless energy. No common sense, but lots of energy. Put it together and I was something special, and I had repeatedly pushed the limits of that specialty. Often, admittedly, because I didn’t know where they were.
I didn’t have to know where they were to be daunted by a pillar of magic broad enough that three of me couldn’t have put our arms around it, particularly when that pillar was stained and dripping gray. If I wanted to cleanse it, I was going to have to empty my reservoirs. That was a scary prospect, given what else I had to do today. But cleansing it was the only way to be sure it didn’t rain down poison on Seattle, and that it didn’t keep feeding the Master through his avatars. And I needed him as weak as I could get him, because I wasn’t fooling myself. Cosmically speaking, he was a very large fish, and I was a wiggly little tadpole.
“But I’ve got spirit, by gum,” I muttered, then snorted laughter at myself. Well, it worked in the movies. Human ingenuity and spirit overcame the worst odds. I’d take my inspirations where I could find them. Stomach clenched, eyes still on the column of magic, I finally triggered the power circle, awakening it.
A roar deafened me. Shook me right to the bone, leaving me trembling in the waterfall’s current. I wasn’t used to magic having sound, but the rise of my power circle did, like a shout against the darkness.
Darkness answered, slamming out of the column to smash against the walls of my circle.
I knew instantly that I was never going to win.
Panic surged in my belly. I clamped down on it, certain I wouldn’t get out of there alive if I let myself panic. It still sent cold thrills through me, yellow-orange spider legs of fear shooting through my power. The taint swarmed toward those spikes of fear, hungry for them. That didn’t exactly make it easier to tamp down on them, which was all too obviously a feedback loop I didn’t want to be part of. I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling the cold pressure of my hands even through my coat and clothes. But it helped: hugs always helped, and this one was invested with reinforcing my personal shields. Terror didn’t so much disappear as get tucked deep into the blankets like a hard-to-find cat.
The tainted magic of a dozen slaughtered witches scraped and scrabbled at the walls of my power circle even after I’d gotten my fear under control. Tendrils held them to the column, white magic leaking out like so much lifeblood, black magic surging back in as it passed through the corrupted souls. The falls’ magic darkened further with every passing moment. I might have phenomenal cosmic power, but I couldn’t hold back a year’s worth of magic being corrupted. Not all in one go. My mother had done it in Ireland over the course of her lifetime, and in the end it had taken a goddess to ignite the power Mom had laid down. I was not in a position to repeat that feat, not today.
But if I couldn’t heal it, I could at least use it to draw the leanansidhe’s attention, and through her, the Master. Raven Mocker was out there somewhere, too, probably heading for Seattle, but I was going to have to deal with that later.
I seemed to be putting a lot of faith in there being a later. Some part of me was therefore confident. That was a relief. Unless it was just raging stupidity, not confidence, which wasn’t so much of a relief. I decided not to think about it, and to distract myself, went ahead and let that clamped-down fear back out again.
Screams of glee shattered through the power circle as the corruption swept down on the freshly offered emotion. Food. Dark emotion and blood were food to the Master. I wasn’t about to offer up any blood, but I had no problem with letting anger follow fear. I pushed it out of me, unloading myself into the column of rising power, and after a while realized I was bellowing. “You want it, buddy? Come and get it. Right here, a delicious Joanne sandwich full of how much I hate you. You have fucked up my life, asshole, and I am in the mood to give a little back. Come on, eat up, because you and me, we’ve got a reckoning today!”
I felt something ripple the edges of the power circle. A purr, vibrating and tickling, like I’d pleased a giant cat. The darkness gathered, taking a shape: Marcia, massive, winged, deadly and strangely beautiful. Her mouth opened in something that looked like a razor-sharp laugh, and the purr ripped through the circle again.
My fear and anger disappeared like a tap had been turned off, replaced by satisfaction. It surprised both of us—Marcia-leanansidhe because she’d been feeding off the fury, strengthened by it, and me because I’d kinda figured blind rage was all that was gonna get me through this. But a deeper and smarter part of me knew I’d been pouring out all that emotion as a gauntlet, and now somebody had picked it up. I had every reason to be satisfied.
Marcia’s silver wings pounded hard enough to disturb the power column itself, then closed around her. She contracted, making a weird little inverse hiccup sound, then did it again. She seemed more solid after the second one, less of a shining ghost. It happened again, then again, faster each time. I gathered magic, preparing for the inevitable attack, but not certain what would happen if I struck first.
In less than thirty seconds she’d reduced from giant-size to human-size. Her wings unfurled and she lifted her eyes, full of a dark sparkle.
Then she blew me a kiss and walked out of the circle.
Chapter Eleven
I stood there stunned for an embarrassingly long time, gaping at where she’d walked away. She shouldn’t have been able to. The circle was a keep-things-in circle, meant to contain the power of the falls.
It came clear to me in slow, agonizing heartbeats.
I’d had her. God damn it, I’d had her. When she’d hit me and I’d pulled her into the Lower World, it had disembodied her. Now with this stupid-ass stunt, I’d poured enough anger and fear into the circle to reincorporate her. And she’d taken all that emotion, my emotion, and walked out of my circle because she tasted of me.
I’d walked right into the Master’s trap. Forget rage. I bordered on despair, my power circle faltering as the magic sustaining it shriveled with horror. I had made everything worse. Again. I mean, maybe Morrison was just outside the circle, had noticed Marcia walking away and had shot her dead, but I couldn’t hear the echoes of a gunshot and I doubted a bullet would take her down anyway.
I gave up the circle, letting it go with no ceremony at all, and collapsed to my knees in the waterfall. That was a terrible idea: freezing water splashed to my armpits as it rushed by, no more caring of my presence than of the rocks it also passed over. Hypothermia would not help matters, but I couldn’t get myself to move. I was probably less danger to the world as a frozen lump in a stream than fighting this battle, if my method of fighting was to give the bad guys a leg up in getting a foothold here. The Sight had slid off when I dropped, and I looked over Lake Washington as if I’d never seen it before. The water was hard and blue, with white light bouncing off to half blind me. Sunlight warmed my hair enough to contrast with the iciness of my skin. I lifted one hand to put it in my hair, hoping to warm my fingers, but instead cold water drizzled down my neck and made me even colder. Things were not going as I’d planned. I sat there awhile, trying to figure out what to do next.
“You fell.” Coyote and Morrison were both there, gazes concerned and hands extended. I looked at them dully, then put my hands in theirs.
It was about as much as my water-laden, half-frozen muscles could manage. They had to pull me to my feet, and even so, I fell, soaking Morrison almost as badly as I was drenched when he caught me. We got out of the waterfall’s stream and Coyote slung his leather coat over my shoulders. Its warmth made me start shivering violently. He said, “Jo,” in a perfect blend of exasperation and worry.
Desert heat rolled over me, a light touch of his healing power sinking into my bones and driving the chill from my body. It did squat-all to dry me off, but
after several seconds I regained enough motor control to squirm out of my coat and start wringing it. It hadn’t gotten wet when I’d fallen in a river in North Carolina. Apparently I’d spilled enough magic just now that my subconscious couldn’t cope with details like that. Coyote took the coat and began wringing it himself so I could rub my chest instead. “Th-thanks.”
Morrison stepped up to wrap his arms around me. His body temperature felt like it was about five hundred degrees, compared to mine. I expected to see steam rise where we touched as I huddled against him gratefully. “You fell,” he repeated. “What happened?”
“Everybody’s okay?” I whispered. “The shields held, Coyote? Nobody attacked?”
“Attacked? No. You did it.” Coyote was hushed with awe. “You did it, Jo. I didn’t think you could.”
“I did what? I let Marcia walk right out? Yeah. Yay. Good job me.”
They both stared at me, blue eyes and gold equally befuddled. Coyote nodded toward the falls. “No, you did it. You cleansed the magic here.”
I stared back at them, uncomprehending. It took a while to think to use the Sight, to look beyond them at the column of magic rising from Thunderbird Falls.
It was white again, the taint entirely vanished. Morrison must have seen recognition of the fact in my face, because he gave a sudden grin and clapped my shoulder. “I knew you could do it, Walker.”
“No.” I sounded faint. “No, I mean, maybe I did, but I didn’t. If the dark magic is gone it’s because she needed it to reincorporate. Like the wraiths feeding Raven Mocker’s arrival, Morrison. Oh, we struck a blow, maybe,” I said bitterly. “Two of them. We took Annie back first and then we knocked the leanansidhe out of Marcia, probably because it wasn’t as firmly embedded in Marcia as it would’ve been in Annie. But then I built it a nice big circle to suck power from and filled it up with my own hate and now she’s out there again and it’s all my fault.”
I was proud of myself. I’d come a long way in the past fifteen months. When this started, those last three words would have been pure snivel. Now they were grim acceptance. I felt Coyote and Morrison exchanging glances, and by some arcane male signaling, it was apparently decided that Morrison should speak. “Walker, Marcia Williams’s body is down there by the falls. The paramedics have been working on her since you and she crashed together. Remember? They declared her while you were up here.”
