by C. E. Murphy
Except I wasn’t going to let her do it. Not on any level, not tonight, not ever. I reached for Rattler, feeling his comforting presence, and turned my attention to Tia.
Judge, jury, executioner. That was the role I’d seen Big Coyote in, in his white-hot desert. I played the same one now, without compunction. I knew now what the anomaly I’d seen in her DNA was. Not the cancer which had attacked her, but a twist of genetics that made her other than human. I unwound that spur, unthreaded it and filed it down with a rattlesnake’s rattler made raspy, made it smooth and even, nothing unusual about it. It felt almost gentle, the push of magic that slowly altered the wolf under my hands into a woman again, but I wasn’t kidding myself. There was nothing gentle or kind about what I was doing. It was ruthless and brutal and I had no doubt at all Tia would probably rather die than be changed the way I was changing her.
That would have to be her choice, though. I wasn’t going to make it for her.
I finally sat back, letting go the magic that pinned her down as I let go the healing—if I could call it that—magic as well. Tia’s eyes opened and I saw—only saw, didn’t feel— her reach for the shapeshifting magic; saw her try to become what she’d been, a massive, dangerous beast who preyed on those weaker than herself.
Saw her try, and saw her fail, the magic no longer hers to command. No longer an active part of her, though I wasn’t really certain I’d stripped it away entirely; I wasn’t sure that could be done. But it would take years at best for her to find it again, and I thought a lifetime might not be enough.
Her screams tore at my skin as I got up to find my clothes.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The cavern, which I had by and large failed to pay any attention to, was filled with enough smoke to provide me some degree of modesty. Not that I knew where Billy or Morrison were, and not, at the moment, that I particularly cared if everybody got an eyeful of Mostly Naked Joanne. I found my shredded sweater and nearly gave up on even trying to wear it, but shapeshifting, it turned out, didn’t heal all wounds, and I was too tired and much too dull-witted to heal myself right then. I stripped my T-shirt off, wrapped it around the worst of my injuries, discarded another blown-out bra and yanked my sweater on. It wasn’t quite as revealing as nudity, so I called it good and shoved around for my jeans.
They were in wretched condition, torn up from Morrison’s antics at the theater, and then from me shifting in them again. But, like the sweater, they were slightly better than parading around naked. My shoes, at least, were unscathed, and I found the copper bracelet Dad had given me, though my glasses had disappeared entirely. Still, once dressed, I was afforded some degree of decency, which was about as much as I could ask for. Only then did I look around, trying to think what else needed to be done, now that the werewolf was neutralized.
It took a moment to realize there was no more fire. Smoke, yes, lots of it, but the fire itself had blown out. Not because of lack of oxygen, though given the cave’s dimensions and the fire’s size, that would’ve been my first guess. The way I wasn’t lying on the floor choking for air, however, suggested something else had happened, and it seemed likely the something had been me. Even the wholly internal magic of shapeshifting had whooshed enough power over the room to almost obliterate the flames once. For all I knew, building my power circle—which still shimmered around the cave—had sucked up the fire’s energy and converted it to something less harmful. Maybe Billy had a better idea of what had happened, or maybe I could reconstruct it once I sat down to clear my head. Either way, it fell under yet another thing I didn’t have to worry about at that red-hot second, which was all that really mattered.
The wicker man was next. I sluffed back toward him with half-formed intentions of pulling his branches apart by hand if necessary, and arrived at one of his hollow thighs to find it unoccupied. That made no sense, so I went to the next one, which was empty, too. Not burned, not full of dead men, just a bit broken apart and empty. So, when I tilted my head back, were the cages and the wicker man’s torso. I couldn’t wrap my mind around that, but Tia was still screaming, which gave me something else to do. I crossed to her, crouched, and said, very gently, “If you don’t shut up I’m going to disconnect your vocal cords, Tia.”
My magic gave a disapproving thump that turned the world white with its emphaticness, but Tia didn’t know that. When my vision cleared again she was enraged but silent. I patted her cheek and stood up, knowing I was a world-class asshole and absolutely, utterly unable to give a shit.
Billy, from about a million miles away, said, “Joanne?”
I turned around, waving my hands in the air to clear smoke, and the world began to resolve in a manner which made sense again. My partner was mooshed up against the boundary of my power circle, wolfy Morrison on one side of him and five goggle-eyed homeless guys on his other side. I should have known he’d deal with the rescue while I dealt with the werewolf. That was just basically the kind of person Billy was.
“We’re stuck,” Billy said cautiously. “Something’s holding us in.”
“That’d be me.” I was a little afraid to bring the power circle down. I’d leeched magic from the very walls of the cavern to build it, and I was uncomfortably aware that the cave was a magical creation itself. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I dissolved the circle, particularly with the way my power was exploding in and out. In theory, the circle’s magic would just melt back from whence it came, but theory wasn’t working out so well for me right now.
“I’m going to shield you,” I said after a minute. “I think the shield will let you walk through the power circle unscathed. Then just get out of here, okay? I’ll be right behind you.”
Nobody on earth would believe that line, including my partner. He gave me a very hard look, but nodded. I pulled up my favorite pearlescent Star Trek style shield idea and wrapped all seven of them in it, whispering encouragement to the circle that while it was a keep-things-in circle, my magic could and should be let out. Then I nodded at Billy, who edged forward, rolling the shield with him. It bumped against the circle, which hesitated, sighed, and let him out. The five guys he’d rescued hurried after him.
Morrison, damn his wolf eyes, stayed. The shield popped around him as the others got farther away, and he just sat there, waiting, his expression patient.
“I can’t change you back while we’re down here, Morrison. I mean, I think right now I could, but you’d be naked.”
His ears flattened and he looked at himself in such a Morrison-the-man way that I surprised myself with a laugh. “It’s a long walk home, naked. You might as well go with them. Get Billy to drive home…” Not that Billy could, because he’d come downtown in Petite with me, and I was still in the round room beneath the lake with no absolute sure method of escape. “Okay, get Billy to call Gar…shit.”
Morrison’s tongue lolled out of his mouth, wolfish amusement, and he lay down where he was, obviously and irritatingly content to wait on me and whatever final dramatics I had up my sleeve. I groaned and finally turned back to Tia. “Well, what am I going to do with you.”
Her face contorted in a furious sneer. “Kill me.”
“Mmm. No. I’d have done that already if I was going to. Look, boss. For once I’ve actually caught the killer alive and well. I bet we can even get her up on kidnapping charges. Those guys Billy’s helping sure saw her face. I don’t see how we’re going to make Naomi’s and Lynn’s murder charges stick, but we can probably manage attempted murder for what happened down here. The forensics team is going to hate this. Is it even our jurisdiction?” I was talking to hear myself, because Morrison couldn’t answer and I didn’t want Tia to. In fact, what I wanted was to keep talking until I was certain Billy and the men whose names I didn’t know had gotten far enough away that I was sure bringing down the power circle couldn’t hurt them.
That, however, had seemed like a better plan before Morrison decided to stick around. I was willing to risk my own neck, and even willing to risk Tia’
s, since I didn’t like her very much, but Morrison was a different kettle of fish. Or pack of wolves. Something animal analogy, anyway. And I’d obviously run out of words, so I sighed, knelt at Tia’s side and said, “C’mere, boss. I need you right beside me if this goes pear-shaped.”
He got up, trotted over and lay back down again. I put one hand in his ruff and took Tia’s hand with the other, building a shield around all three of us. A visible one, for once: I wanted Morrison to understand why he shouldn’t go dashing off, and for him to be able to see the limits of where he could dash to if he was seized by an irresistible urge to do so. Though, really, that sounded much more like something I’d do than Morrison.
“This, Joanne,” I said under my breath, “is procrastinating.”
Very cautiously, I powered down the circle.
An unkindness of ravens exploded within the confines of my skull.
It wasn’t my Raven: these were three, and they beat wing around a tall, slender, dark-haired woman who stood with her back to me. She wore midnight-blue robes: certainly nothing modern, which left her arms bare. Strong arms, both biceps banded with knotwork tattoos defining a curve of muscle that said whoever she was, she’d spent a lot of time at hard physical activity. A silver link circlet glittered against her hair, and when she turned toward me, I recognized it with a shock: it was my necklace, triskelions breaking apart silver tubes, with a delicate four-spoked power circle as its pendent/centerpiece.
And it was seated above a face which flashed from fresh-faced maiden to grim warrior to death’s skull, each one glaring at me in expectant challenge.
The incessant fishhook tug in my belly turned to a fist, knotted around me and yanked.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
SUNDAY, MARCH 19, 3:38 A.M.
I had to move. Fumbling around with my power, trying to find the most tentative, safe way to get Morrison, Tia and me out of there, was no longer an option, not with claws hauling me out of the chamber, out of the Underground, out of every last excuse I’d ever made up. I bent and scooped Tia into a fireman’s carry, not sure how I’d get her through tight tunnels that way but damned certain I was not going to flop her gorgeous naked self over Morrison’s furry back. She bellowed an objection that went abruptly silent when Morrison snapped his teeth half an inch from her nose.
Ravens kept beating at the inside of my head, making my vision flash white and overwhelming, but power called like to like, and we slipped through the circle I’d raised without it objecting. I kept my own shield up, but put Tia down to walk on her own, sandwiched between Morrison in the lead and me behind her. She tried once to bolt, and bounced off the shield so hard I expected to hear a clang. Morrison made a very human sound of amusement as she staggered back into line, and she didn’t try that again. I let the circle fade once we were back in man-made territory, and all three of us stopped, hairs lifting on napes as the walls around us shuddered and rumbled. I felt the cavern—not exactly collapsing. Disappearing. Refilling, like the bits of world that had been taken away were finally returning. I wondered if Thunderbird Falls would still be there when we got out.
Rita waited for us in the stretch of Underground we’d paused in to borrow flashlights and recruit a small homeless army. Relief and joy already permeated her aura, but it redoubled when we appeared, and she dashed forward to hug me, despite my burden and my torn-up clothes. “Detective Holliday brought the guys topside so he could call an ambulance for them. He said he’d wait for you. Thank you, Detective Walker. Thank you so much. You—” Her voice went ragged and her hands fluttered, trying to make up for words that meant too much to speak.
I’d gotten pretty good at nonverbal communication lately, though, and interpreted the fluttering as “You came through for us against the odds.” Trusting that was close enough to right, I pulled a little grin up for her. “You’re welcome. And please, call me Joanne. I should be on a first-name basis with my streetwise eyes, right?”
That wonderful smile of hers lit up again. “Joanne.”
Tia snarled, “Please. Can we just arrest me so I don’t have to listen to this sentimental shit?”
I was happy enough to oblige. Rita led us back to the Persephone gate, more for the company than the necessity, and when we crawled out into a Seattle back lot, Billy was waiting for us. Alone: he had the good sense to be alone, which meant not having to explain the hundred-and-ninety-pound wolf who scrabbled out behind Rita. He put Tia in cuffs, and I went to get Petite while Morrison waited in the alley.
There was something appealing about having a giant silver wolf climb into Petite’s limited back seat and stretch out. Not quite as appealing as a tuxedo-clad Morrison in the front seat would’ve been, but still, somehow it went straight to the emo twelve-year-old girl inside me. “It’s about four in the morning,” I said to his reflection in the rearview mirror. “I don’t really want to wake the dance troupe up. I can bring you home and try shifting you back myself, or we can wait until a more reasonable hour and go see them then. Which do you want to do?”
Improved non-verbal communications or not, I’d clearly offered too many choices to a creature who couldn’t actually talk. Morrison glowered at me in the mirror until I sighed. “Sorry. Home?”
He lay down, which I took as a yes, and drove us to his house, where, with an expression of great regret, Morrison nosed out a spare key—under a rock by the door, yes, but by the back door, and it proved to open a shed in the backyard rather than the house. The house key was in a small nail-filled box in a larger toolbox. I wisely did not say, “Christ, Morrison, any thief would just break a window anyway,” and let us in the back door.
Morrison left me in the kitchen, his toenails clicking until he reached carpeted floors. Nosy and curious, I followed him as far as the living room before realizing he was going to a bedroom. I wobbled in place, curiosity warring with bravery, but being a chickenshit won out. It didn’t matter: a few seconds later he emerged again, dragging a blanket which he managed to fling over himself quite tidily before looking at me with a certain amount of flat expectation.
“Ah. I take it we’re not waiting on the dance troupe, then.”
He cocked his head, conveying “No shit,” although that wasn’t a phrase I remembered Morrison using. Feeling a bit random, I said, “I need some of your ties,” and went to get a handful, my shyness at entering his bedroom completely evaporated. He didn’t stop me. He just watched, not growing even one whit more incredulous as I made a circle around him with the ties. Dogs did baffled very well, so I translated his unchanging expression as my behavior being par for the course. “Salt would probably make a fine circle barrier, too,” I muttered in unasked-for explanation. “But it’d be a bitch to get out of the carpet, and the ties are invested with a sense of you as a man. Just don’t cross out of the circle, okay?” I stepped within it myself, then lit it up with power: keep-things-in, keep-things-out. “Rattler?”
“She isss busssy today,” my spirit guide responded in amusement. “Sso much help nessssessssary.” He was a thing of light and lines, but Morrison nearly startled out of his skin, suddenly on all fours with snapping teeth bared. I put a hand on his big furry shoulder, less surprised than I should have been that Rattler had appeared visibly to my boss. I’d called him up by name, out loud: that had to signify quite a lot to him, in terms of what I trusted Morrison with.
“It’s been a rough day. I’ll bring you gifts, don’t worry.” Raven liked shiny food. Rattler was more fond of, well. Snake food. Rats and rabbits. I wished he’d develop a taste for Pop-Tarts, but it didn’t seem likely, so the pet store on the Way had been getting my business recently. They had pre-frozen snake food available, and Rattler, thank heavens, didn’t seem to care if it was fresh or frozen. I didn’t quite get how spirit animals managed to eat, or at least partake of, physical food anyway, but the arrangement was satisfactory on all sides, so I didn’t worry about it too much. Either way, Rattler gave a satisfied hiss and wound his barely-corporeal self toward
Morrison.
Who sat, ears flat against his head as he gave me a credible wolfy scowl, and then lay down with the air of one who would have words with me when this was over. Well, I needed to have words with him, too, and he probably wouldn’t like them, so that was fine. My stomach jolted, fresh reminder of the insistent tugging within, and I knelt between my boss and my spirit animal, one hand extended toward each.
Even with all the fresh newborn Siobhán Walkingstick power flaring through me, it would have been easier with the dance troupe and their focused, deliberate shifting magic. It wasn’t difficult to envision Morrison as a man—God knew I could call up his image in an instant, usually when I didn’t want to—but pouring him from the wolf mold into the man mold simply took a long time. Rattler’s presence was a calming thrum at the back of my mind, promising that caution was wise and the attempt would be effective for all its ponderousness. Morrison, unaware of that surety, lay there patiently, blue gaze never straying from my face as he slipped toward human. There were a handful of moments when he looked like a Hollywood special effect, flawlessly blurred between man and wolf, before very suddenly he was himself again.
I had never had occasion to greet someone who had spent several hours as a wild animal thanks to my screw-ups. I was still trying to figure out what to say when he got up, remarkably dignified for a man draped in a blanket, and went to find clothes.
Saved from having to address the topic of his shapeshifting, I mumbled, “I need to borrow your phone,” to his retreating back, and did so without actually getting permission. He came back in jeans and a tank top like the one he’d worn in his garden just as I was hanging up. My brain slipped a notch and I stared at him in drawn-out silence, wondering just what that choice of wardrobe meant. Maybe everything. Maybe nothing. After a good solid minute of us both just standing there looking at one another, I decided somebody had better say something.