by C. E. Murphy
The wiser part of my brain suggested it would be nothing good, but I didn’t see a lot of choice in the matter. I extended my hands and waggled my fingers like they were tasty energy sausages, and the wights pounced.
This time I let them land. I kept my shields in place, kept them ratcheted up to full power, and I scrambled for mental imagery that would let me try turning the whammy on the wights. Draining things wasn’t so hard. Oil tanks, gas lines, even air from tires. The thing they all had in common was a valve of some kind.
I didn’t much want to use the most common human drainage valve for this particular experiment. I settled for sticking my fingers into the mouth of the nearest wight, and imagining an oil tank releasing its black gooey contents onto the ground.
The good news was they had no shields at all. Nothing prevented me from doing as I imagined.
The bad news was its corrupted life force came out exactly as I imagined, as horrible stench-ridden sticky black goo. I shouted in disgust. It would have been more effective with a voice, but it made shock waves anyway, magic reverberating against the air. The wight pulled backward, screaming. Black oil stretched from it to my fingers, thickening instead of thinning. Its life drained away, corruption skimming down my ethereal arms and searching for ways in.
It weighed a tremendous amount. I’d mostly had experience with things trying to kill me. Attempts at corruption had been relatively subtle, but there was nothing subtle about this. It coated me, growing stickier and more alarming as it rushed over my torso and toward my face. The wight I was draining kept screaming even as it faded, but there was a vicious triumph in its cold eyes as it screamed. I started to get the idea that I had once more made a terrible mistake. I wasn’t turboed up like I’d been before, but possibly leaving my body behind and attacking a bunch of soul-sucking monsters while one of my spirit animals was going great guns working magic inside my head had not been all that well thought out.
I wished for the umpteenth time that someone had given me a goddamned handbook, and then I put that thought to bed forever, because I’d gotten this far without one and I wasn’t dead yet. I could hold on through this. I could take on every inch, every ounce, every spot of nastiness these things had, and when they’d poured it all onto me I could wrap it up in a big shining blue-and-silver bow, and obliterate it. All I had to do was hang on while they gnawed and pierced and did their best to get inside me. I shut my eyes, sealed my mouth, did my best to pinch my nostrils together. No access. I was a seal, with crazy ear flaps that kept water out.
Rattler stirred at the base of my skull. I hastily assured him I did not want to actually turn into a seal right then. He settled again, and I stuck with the imagery. Nothing was going to get inside me, and I was going to suck these bastards dry. The first one’s howl began to lose confidence, like it had believed it would break through and then have all of my potential for its pickings. My own confidence picked up. I could do it. I was going to do it, one at a time or all of the rest of them at once, I didn’t care, and then Aidan wouldn’t have to fight a battle nobody his age should be seeing. A kind of give-me-your-best-shot triumph crashed through me.
So did a freight train’s worth of white magic.
* * *
Every ounce of my attention had been wrapped up in the wights. I had nothing left to keep my metaphorical feet on the ground. Aidan’s power slammed me backward into the forest. Bark and bugs and leaves and twigs smeared through my spirit and my impression of the world, and only gradually slowed me down. Six months ago they’d have stopped me cold, because my consciousness would have accepted them as totally solid, the kind of thing a body would crash into and slither down. Now not only could I register them as ephemeral, but also myself.
Under other circumstances I might have been proud of myself for that change of belief. Under these ones, I wished I hadn’t come quite so far in accepting the new way my world worked, because it left me thirty trees back from Aidan and the wights as they went into a throw-down.
I’d lost the one into whose mouth I’d shoved my fingers. The muck connecting us had been vaporized, sparks of it still lingering in the air. I got myself heading the right direction again and shot back to the fight.
All five wights had risen into the air, bodies arched with exultation. Near-white magic danced between them, sucked out of Aidan at an impossible speed. I was close enough now to shield him, and threw a wall of magic between him and the undead.
Or I tried, anyway. I didn’t know if he felt it coming or if my timing was just excruciatingly bad, but in the half an instant between throwing the magic and it manifesting, his power changed. He wrenched it back from the wights with brute strength that even I admired, rechanneled it and threw it like a massive missile, intent on destroying the wights. I squeaked, but it was too late.
Aidan’s magic backfired. I knew exactly what it felt like, because I’d had it happen myself. He was a healer, and healing magic had strong opinions about being weaponized. I was astonished it hadn’t happened when he bowled me over, but my guess was that had been solely intended to save me, not damage the wights. Magic, the living stuff of the soul, had a sense of the intent behind its use. Violently saving somebody was borderline okay. Taking the fight to the bad guys was something else. That was why my own path had been such a tricky one to get right. I hoped Aidan would never have to walk it. But right now he was dangerously close to trying, and I watched his magic roll up and shut down.
For what I bet was the first time in his life, his spiritual presence became quite ordinary, if spiked with fear. I Saw him struggling to call the magic again, and watched it retreat deeper into him, until there was nothing left but a scared kid.
A scared kid with a black mark on his soul.
Renee finished her work, and my body surged through time and space, slamming my spirit back into place. It rattled my teeth, but not my vision.
With all his magic tamped down, I could See the streak of darkness that had lodged in Aidan’s center. It was a small scar, but it sizzled and stung like cold iron melting magic away. It was growing fast, like his magic had been holding it in place and it now suddenly had room to expand. I took a half dozen running steps, my hands alight with power, though I already knew it wasn’t an infection I could simply wipe away. I would have to go into his garden—be invited into his garden, after the fuss I’d made yesterday—and we would have to tackle that growing corruption together.
Two steps away from him, the wights threw down a thunderous wall of magic that cut me off from Aidan entirely. I bounced off, shocked, and shot a look upward. They were gathered together, cannibalizing the magic that sustained them in order to build a funnel between themselves and Aidan. The black mark inside him expanded exponentially, seizing his retreating magic and bending it to its own will.
I slammed my sword into existence and bashed it against the cascading magic, but its strength called on exactly the same things that had made me vulnerable to my mother’s power: in Ireland, Mom’s magic had known mine well enough to break in. Here, Aidan’s magic knew mine well enough to keep it out. And I was unaccustomed to forcing myself in where I wasn’t wanted, magically. I doubted it had been high on Mom’s list of honed talents, either, but she had, after all, been one of the bad guys when she did it to me.
I was not one of the bad guys, but the power draw was reaching a crescendo. If I didn’t act now, something bad was going to happen, and I didn’t even have enough imagination to wonder what. I whispered, “Sorry, kid,” and let my spirit go a second time.
This time I dove deep, as deep into the mountain as I could go, then turned tail and began scrambling back toward the surface, but on the other side of the magic pouring from the sky. I was a mouse, a badger, a wombat, any digging thing. The images were familiar to me from my first journeys into my garden, but this time I was digging my way toward Aidan’s. He could be righteously furious and I cou
ld be properly apologetic later. Right now we had bigger problems, and the only way to defeat them was from the inside out.
I focused on the black streak consuming Aidan, aiming for it. Within seconds, I burst through the surface on the inside of the wights’ casting of magic.
Aidan’s eyes were black and soulless, his mouth contorted with wicked glee. He raised one hand, calling on power. I redoubled my shields, even though he shouldn’t be able to throw any more magic around, and was glad I did. The blow that hit me had the Master’s strength behind it, cold and enraged and viciously satisfied all at once. It was diluted, compared to what he’d thrown at me in Ireland, but there was no mistaking the source of power. I skidded backward but kept my feet, cementing the belief that the Master was weaker than he’d been. In Ireland he’d sliced and diced me for the fun of it, and I hadn’t been able to raise a finger against him, much less shield myself.
Unasked for, a bunch of pieces fell into place. We’d pretty well knocked the Master around the block, in Ireland. We’d slain his dragon, wiped out his banshees, killed the banshee queen, destroyed the Morrígan, and then punched a bunch of holes in him and sent him scurrying back to his realm to lick his wounds. And when I said “we” I mostly meant my mother, Gary and Méabh, the warrior queen of Connacht, because during a lot of that activity I’d been busy taking it in the teeth. Perhaps I could consider myself the sacrificial lamb, hanging out to get everybody’s attention while my allies did the heavy lifting, but really I just thought they’d saved my bacon a lot.
But put it all together, and we had dealt the Master some serious blows. He’d used the banshees for blood rituals and power collection, and we’d cut that source off. He’d barely been fed in the past thirty years, and had to be going mad with hunger. The wights were power siphons, not such a far cry from the banshees, only without hundreds of years of practice behind them. I still didn’t think it was coincidence it had come home to North Carolina, but it seemed likely he was scrambling to rebuild his power base. Anything we did to draw the line here meant he would be weaker yet, and for me, planning to face him down, that was a good thing.
So I did not fight back. Not for a lot of reasons, the primary one being I had no wish to risk Aidan any further. But also because any active magic I used could be sucked down and used to power up the wights, whereas if I could keep them pouring out the strength they’d taken from Aidan, they might just burn themselves out. It was a dangerous gamble with Aidan’s life, but I was confident of being able to keep that, at least, together. I did, quietly, say, “C’mon, kid. Let me in.” I was three steps away. If he would invite me into his garden, we could stamp out the stain building in him.
The stain, though, was very dark and strong by now, though it had only been growing a few seconds. I could See glimpses of his spirit animals, torn with agitation as they fought with, and gradually for, the darkness overtaking him. Two of them were familiar: a raven and a walking stick. I said, “Screw this,” considerably more loudly, and then, “Raven?” in a normal tone.
He erupted from my shoulders like flights of angels. In the magic-rich environment, he was less a concept and more of a bird, weight to his wings instead of just the beautiful tendrils of light that he often manifested as. “Go talk to him,” I said, and he chortled and darted toward Aidan.
The wall of magic leapt over me, compressing around Aidan. I snapped back into my body. Raven dove, quick and desperate, and I saw a flash of Aidan’s walking stick leaping like it was trying to connect with my spirit bird.
Instead, it hit the shrinking wall of magic, and time flexed.
Everything turned rubbery, including my legs. The air rippled, starting with Aidan and rushing out at great speed. It felt nothing like my train wreck through time in Ireland, but I was convinced something similar was happening. Maybe the difference was I had Renee along to smooth out the bumps.
Or maybe the difference was that the twelve-year-old epicenter of the quake had his spirit walking stick along, and it had a much clearer idea of how to surf time than I did. Aidan’s eyes were entirely black and his expression was one of unholy delight. I shrieked for Renee and dug my heels in, throwing everything I had at the idea of staying put in time.
The world ripped apart, shock waves redoubling around us, then expanding out in a pulse faster than the eye could see. Almost faster than I could See, for that matter: a leading edge of discoloration showed me where it was headed, and gave the impression that it was picking up speed and intent as it rolled. Whatever the time wave wanted, I did not want it leaving the valley. There was enough sorrow and pain for the wights to feed on in this protected haven. The idea of what they, hooked into Aidan’s magic, might be able to do with the world outside the valley didn’t bear thinking about.
I forgot about rescuing Aidan and threw everything I had at the mountainous borders of the valley. It was too far, just like Aidan had been too far, but I was desperate. Shields flickered in the distance, gunmetal faint against the blue sky. They were weak. Feeble, because raw cosmic power or no, a valley was a lot of territory to cover, and I lacked confidence in being able to do it. I saw the power surge roll toward them like a tsunami, and braced myself.
It hit, wobbled, and passed through. A huge amount of magic rolled back at me, caught by the shields, but some of it kept going. I had no idea what that meant in terms of the world outside this valley. Within it, the trees bent until they snapped, splinters erupting into the air. Birds and animals shrieked. So did I, for that matter, ducking and flinging my arms over my head. Branches and falling trees bounced off my shields, pummeling me. When the destruction finally stopped, I lifted my head, eyes wide.
Aidan was gone. The wights were gone. A village stood around me instead, men and women frozen in their activities and staring at me. Cherokee men and women, wearing traditional leather clothing: pants, tunics. A few women wore woven shirts from some fiber I didn’t recognize. They were all barefoot in the spring weather. I felt overdressed.
And for some reason, that thought reminded me of Morrison.
Chapter Fourteen
My first impulse was to run like hell back to the other end of the valley, where I’d left the love of my life just before hauling a chunk of real estate somewhere else in time. My second and third impulses were pretty much the same, but by that time the locals had worked through their first, second and third impulses, too.
Some of them threw down what they were carrying and ran shrieking. Others fell down and pressed their faces to the earth. One decided the only smart thing to do was shoot me.
Despite being on the wrong end of the arrow, I kinda liked him for it. The arrow spanged off my shields, which made several more people fall down. I decided discretion was the better part of valor and started backing away. There was a creek around here somewhere. No doubt if I fell in it I could get myself far enough downstream to not threaten these people, which made me wonder if my vaccinations were recent enough for it to be safe for me to even be breathing near them. I wondered if Aidan’s were, since he probably had at least one more set of them due before adulthood arrived. I would not, God damn it, permit myself, Aidan or Morrison, whose vaccinations I was confident were up-to-date, be the carriers for every disease that smeared across the Americas post-European-contact. Even if I had to single-handedly heal every living soul on the continent, I would not let that happen.
For one crazy heart-lurching moment I wondered if that was even possible. Probably not without killing myself, but it was one of those closed time loops anyway: the Native American population had largely not survived European contact, therefore I had not gone through healing millions of people. I still had another heart-fluttery moment where I held on to the idea, imagining how the world might look on my end of time if I’d managed to somehow effectively vaccinate a continent’s worth of people against the diseases that were coming to wipe them out.
The
timeline was not that flexible, and I knew it. If I managed something like that I would end up returning to a future that was nothing like the one I’d come from. Alternate worlds. I knew the potential for them existed: I’d seen too many of the paths I hadn’t taken roll out before me to doubt it. And much as I’d like to see a world where American natives rose up as a major power, I didn’t want to lose the life I had, either. The timeline would have to remain as it was.
I fell into the creek about then, and despaired for my white leather coat.
The creek turned out to be more of a river, in this day and age. It snatched me up and tossed me downstream. Another arrow or two came flying my way, but they had a sense of “Yeah! And stay away!” about them, rather than real threat. I got knocked and buffeted around, shields keeping me from any dangerous injuries, and after a while hit a shallow enough stretch that I was able to fling myself out of the water. Dripping and battered, I scrambled out of my coat and held it up to see how badly damaged it was.
It wasn’t torn, scraped, stretched, bruised or marked up. In fact, although I was soaked to the skin and had water pouring from my hair into my eyes, it wasn’t even wet. The only water on it was where my hands clutched its shoulders, and there, it beaded and rolled away. I boggled at it, then turned the Sight on, searching for an explanation.
Apparently the coat was taking on the properties of superhero outfits, which never seemed to get shredded when heroes ran off at supersonic speeds or got shot up by the moron of the week. It had some shielding of its own, a faint shimmer of gunmetal. My subconscious evidently did not intend to let another Morrígan shred the coat’s sleeves again, or indeed to allow my clumsiness to soak and ruin the leather. I was deeply, deeply grateful for my subconscious, and also very slightly resentful that it didn’t think the rest of me was worth keeping dry. Especially since I couldn’t think of a way to use the magic to dry myself after the fact. At least I wasn’t coated in glitter anymore. Muttering, I put the coat back on and looked around, trying to get my bearings.