by C. E. Murphy
That was obviously not how Danny had planned for the conversation to go. He made a sound of impotent rage and stomped a few feet away. Only a few feet--I bet he wasn't kidding about the dangers of the mine, and that there was indeed a shaft close enough to get thrown down.
My father said, "Dan?" incredulously, but Morrison only chuckled. Apparently he wasn't too worried about me being pitched into pits, which was heartening.
After a few minutes we ventured out again, this time avoiding any further chopper passes. Within half an hour we were in a moonlit vale that, from ground level, had the faintest signs of human habitation. I thought they must be less visible from above, and wondered how far from modern civilization we were.
The cave system Dan led us into was natural and deep. I was astonished it hadn't been exploited for minerals, but even the most assiduous explorers sometimes missed things. There could've been a rainstorm the day they went through this valley, who knew, or maybe somehow they'd just never come this way. Whatever the reason, he led us a fair distance down, stopping to turn a flashlight on once we were well past the cave's mouth.
The light caught attention down below. A number of people came to greet us, most of them expecting Dan and wary when they caught sight of the rest of us. Some relaxed at Dad's presence, but more of them tensed up at mine. I was not exactly endearing myself to my former townspeople.
Les's grandfather pushed through to the front, shaking Dad's hand, patting Danny on the shoulder and subtly ushering them both into the crowd behind him, which necessarily left Morrison and me on our own. Dad realized what had happened about half a step too late. I splayed my fingers when he made to come back, trying to stop him. If they threw us out, we, and probably they, would be better off with Dad in there. At least he had some idea of what was going on, and they might listen to him if we were ejected.
"There's a problem, Joanne." Les Senior looked pained but determined. Me, I only nodded. I was sure there was a problem. It was just a question of whether his interpretation of the problem lined up with mine. "We've been warned, you see," Grandpa Les went on. "Wasn't much of a surprise, what with all this trouble starting just before you came back, but it's coming from a source I trust, you see?"
I waited. He would nerve himself up to the confession soon enough, but I wasn't going to make it any easier for him.
"It's Aidan, you see," Grandpa Les said after a moment, and my heart dropped. Aidan hadn't thrown off the infection after all. He was still the source of the CDC's hunt, maybe imprisoned by, or worse, damaging the Cherokee who had retreated into the woods. I was about to ask to see him when Grandpa Les finished, "He says it's you who's been taken by Kolona Ayeliski."
* * *
Of course he does. I didn't think I said it out loud, but the thought rocked me back on my heels and shuttered my eyes for a moment. Of course he did. I should have seen that coming. I really should have, and I really hadn't. Clever damned child. Clever Master, manipulating him. I heard Dan bark a triumphant sound, and my father and Morrison start to protest.
I raised a hand, trying to silence them, and met Les Senior's eyes. "It's not true, but obviously that's what I would say. I'm afraid that Aidan's been taken by Raven Mocker, but obviously I would say that, too. And I'm completely flat, totally out of power right now, so I don't even think there's any way I could use magic to prove myself to you. I was going to ask for a drum circle," I said wearily. "I was going to ask for your help, so I could try to protect you and this valley from an evil that's coming."
"We know about that evil," somebody growled. "We hear their helicopters and know they hunt the hills for us."
"The military is not the problem." That was grossly untrue. The military was potentially a huge problem. But there were other problems on the plate first, like "The wights are part of the problem. Will someone tell me how many there are now?"
Somebody else muttered, "She oughta know, if she's Kolona Ayeliski," but another person hawked in disbelief. "She wouldn't let on if she knew, would she."
"We burned them." Sara pushed her way to the front, red spots high on her cheekbones. Her gaze darted from me to my father and back again, but she focused on answering the question. "After the first ones rose, we burned the ones they killed, but the seven got away. They spread out and we don't know how far they got. When we found bodies, we burned them, too, but we only found a few." She looked between me and Dad again, then focused on me with cold fear in her eyes. "Where's Lucas, Joanne? You found your dad. Where's Lucas? Where's my husband?"
"I'm sorry, Sara."
She went white, making the hot spots on her cheeks stand out all the more. She wasn't surprised: she'd known, really, from the moment Dad and I showed up without him. "What happened? Where is he? What happened, Joanne?"
"The Nothing pulled him into another time, onto a battlefield. Dad followed, but it was too late. I'm so sorry, Sara. I'm so sorry."
Even the red faded, now, though she kept herself bolt upright. "Another time? There's not even a body?"
"I'm sorry." Dad spoke this time. "I did the rites. I bathed him and I buried him so no sorcerer could steal his soul. I don't know if it's what his people would have done, but it was all I could do."
Sara's attention snapped to him, but she was so rigid that the motion unbalanced her. I reached to support her and she slapped my hand away, swaying. "You're sure it was him? It could have been anyone--"
"He was wearing jeans and a Lakers T-shirt, Sara. We were out of time. No one else was dressed that way. It was Lucas. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't there sooner."
Sara made fists, shoulders high as she stared at the ground. "Would it have helped if I'd called Joanne sooner? Would it have made a difference?"
Dad shook his head. "I don't think so. We'd have had to have gone through the Nothing together for him to have a chance. I just wasn't soon enough. Joanne couldn't have made a difference."
"You said through time." Her voice was turning harsh with swallowed sobs now. "Can you...can you go back? Can you rescue him?"
"I can't." Dad looked at me this time, and Sara's entire body filled with tension.
There was really only one thing I could say. "I'll try. I can't right now, Sara, I really am wiped out, but I'll try as soon as I'm powered up."
To my utter surprise, she stepped past Les Senior and took up a place by my side. "Then I'll drum for you."
"Sara..." Grandpa Lester's voice carried a warning note.
Sara's head came up, color high again as her eyes flashed a warning of their own. "What, maybe I'm siding with the enemy? I don't care, Grandpa Les. If it gets me my husband back, I don't care. Besides, Joanne's a lot of things, including dumb, but she's not evil. I've seen her at work. She's the thing evil runs from. If she thinks Aidan's the problem here, then he probably is. Don't say she didn't warn you, when it's all over."
She was the last person on earth I expected to defend me. A hundred times over the past year I'd thought I didn't deserve the quality of friends I had. Right now I didn't even deserve the quality of nemeses I had. Sara outshone me on every level, and I swore to God I would do everything I could to get Lucas back for her.
One more person pushed through the crowd, her dark eyes haggard. "How sure are you? About Aidan. How sure are you?"
"Pretty sure. We saw him caught up in some bad magic. He's got it in him to fight it, but it's going to be bad. I've got to help him. Dad, me, anybody who's willing."
Ada Monroe nodded once, and stepped to my side of the line.
Chapter Twenty-Five
That was it. Five of us: two shamans, one grieving widow, a desperate mother and a police captain with the magical aptitude of a horseradish. Sheriff Les watched us go, his gaze uncertain, but he didn't join us, and the others were more strongly swayed by Grandpa Les and Danny Little Turtle. And by Aidan, for that matter, and the bitter thing was I couldn't really blame them for trusting him more than they trusted me.
"He leaves every night at sundown," Ada r
eported in a low, tense voice as we abandoned the caves to look for a sanctuary of our own. "He says he's going out to make sure the valley is shielded from the searchers, but I don't like him being alone in the dark. And how did the CDC know to come to Cherokee anyway? How did he know to warn us about them? It doesn't add up, Joanne. It doesn't add up."
Worse, it did add up, but she didn't like the sum it came to. Neither did I. "He always used to tell me everything," Ada went on. "Now he won't talk to me at all."
That sounded a lot like a typical preteen, but the timing was too convenient for me to say so. Aidan would almost certainly clam up and stop telling his mother everything, but chances of it happening naturally on the same day he'd gotten pumped full of death magic was an unlikely coincidence. "We'll get him back, Ada. He's a tough kid, with a lot of power. He's going to be fine."
"You can't know that."
I stopped in the middle of the forest and turned to her, a finger of fire awakening in me. "Yes, I can. I know it because I'll die trying to make this right, if I have to, and no way am I going to the extreme of dying and then failing to make it right." It wasn't very sound logic, but it was heartfelt.
Ada gave me a peculiar look. "You were always a strange girl, Joanne." She passed by, following my father and Sara.
Morrison stayed at my side, both of us looking after Ada. "She's right, you know. I don't know about always, but you do say strange things."
"Like I'm not going to die trying and fail? I don't know, I think it makes sense. It would be embarrassing to fail if you died trying."
"You didn't say that to Sara."
"Sara wouldn't appreciate the hyperbole. Not that I'm being hyperbolic. But you know what I mean."
"I'm not sure I do, but I'm not sure it matters, either. Joanne, how are you going to manage this? Even I can tell your energy is low, and you still haven't eaten anything but some apples."
"I should've asked them for some food." I glanced back, then started walking again. "Oh well. Too late now. They probably wouldn't have shared anyway, if they think I'm Raven Mocker. You don't even know what that means, do you. Argh."
"Your dad told me."
"When? Oh." When I'd been in Petite, trying to pull myself together, no doubt. Dad had explained everything about the scene at the hospital, and probably about Raven Mocker chasing Grandmother off the road. Neither of those topics accounted for their sudden silence when I got out of the car, but now, as then, I wasn't absolutely sure I wanted to know what they'd moved on to saying about me. "Good. Raven Mocker isn't something you defeat, Morrison. He's an archetype, a demon archetype, like a trickster only malevolent instead of...flaky."
"Like the Master." It was guarded, almost a question.
I exhaled. "Yeah. I'm sure Raven Mocker is an aspect of the Master. I'm not sure if he is the Master. If he is I don't know...you remember the banshee, right?"
"It's hard to forget, Walker."
"Heh. Yes, it is. Those murders interrupted a banshee ritual that fed the Master. My mother interrupted one twenty-eight years ago, too. He's starving, and I'm not sure he can break through to this plane of existence when he's this hungry. It's why he needs the wights and the Executioner, to funnel food to him. So I'm not sure Raven Mocker can be the Master, because Raven Mocker came after Grandmother himself, see?"
"Did he?"
I frowned at Morrison as we climbed over a fallen tree in my father's wake. "You saw him. We all did."
"We saw an apparition. A manifestation of something you recognized as a specific Cherokee demon. But none of us touched it, Walker. None of us fought it hand to hand, not even your grandmother. It just chased her off a mountain. It may never have been something physical, just frightening. Especially to someone who believed she had a great deal to lose. You."
That, I believed was possible. The Master had been lurking at the edges of my subconscious for months. He'd come close to breaking free of the bonds that held him more than once, and had finally, briefly, walked in the Lower World just last week. I could believe the possibility that he had at least once gathered himself strongly enough to force an apparition into this world, even if he'd been too weak to follow it bodily. "I'm going to have to ask-- Dad! Hey, Dad!"
Dad ducked under a branch, looking back at me, and that was what saved his life.
* * *
The bullet's crack followed so close on my shout that it almost drowned me out. Leaves exploded above Dad's head, falling in a rain of green and branches. Ada screamed. Sara grabbed her and hit the deck. Morrison snatched his duty weapon from its holster and spun so fast I expected him to be able to sight by the rifle's still-bright muzzle flash.
Sight by the rifle. I shoved my feet under Morrison's, slapped my hand on top of his head and commanded, "See!"
Power rushed out fast enough to leave me woozy. I didn't fight it, dropping to the ground so I was well and truly out of Morrison's way. Two guns fired at once, and a scream followed.
It wasn't Morrison's. That was all that mattered. It came from behind us, in the direction he'd fired. It was a man's scream, though, and I ran through the list of possibilities. Les. Les Senior. Danny Little Turtle. Dozens of others, but they were the most likely candidates, the ones we'd been interacting with. I barely got my feet under me enough to scramble back toward the screams, supporting myself with my hands as much as my legs. I was going to end up with a bad case of poison ivy.
It was Danny, which kind of relieved me. Morrison had taken him in the right collarbone, a debilitating shot that probably wouldn't kill him. It was a hell of a shot, actually, since judging from where the rifle currently lay, Dan was right-handed and had no doubt had the gun against that shoulder. Sharpshooting with the Sight was apparently a distinct advantage. I thought I'd probably better not ever let Morrison, or anybody else, do that again.
Danny had gotten his screams under control and was making a terrible, high-pitched, breathless whining sound instead. I'd never been shot, but I was pretty certain I wouldn't be able to stop screaming that fast. I admired his pride even as I whispered, "You damn fool," and reached for healing power.
It started, sputtered, and failed. I yelled, not nearly as loudly as Danny was doing, but with far more frustration. "I'm sorry, okay? I'll never build a rainbow bridge for a car again! Can I please have my power back now? Please?"
Raven, Rattler, and Renee all pretty much said, "Pblbblhtht,"-- inside my head. As much fun as the crazy drive had been, throwing together an instantaneous air bridge had apparently taken it out of all of us.
I said, "Shut up, Danny, you're going to be fine," and Dad came out of the forest to say, "He is?"
"Of course he is. You're going to heal him."
"He just shot at me!"
"He's sick, Dad. His heart is broken. His grandmother just died and he sees us as at fault. He's a perfect vessel for Raven Mocker to guide. If you can't forgive him for being weak, then build a power circle right here and start drumming so that I can heal him." I couldn't blame Dad. Barely two weeks ago I'd walked out on the woman I'd shot, unwilling and unable to heal her after she'd nearly taken Billy Holliday's life. Nobody was perfect, but this particular burden was one I could shoulder if Dad couldn't. I just needed a power jump.
A laugh broke from somewhere deep in my chest. If only I'd thought of it in those terms when I was back with Petite. I was pretty certain I could've gotten a jump from her sweet inanimate soul, the very image of my own. It was so easy to envision, the jumper cables locked onto her battery posts, me holding the other ends with a manic grin. Her big beautiful engine roaring to life, feeding power into my worn-down magic. A few minutes of hanging on, and my own engines would restart, battery coming to life again, and everything would be okay.
A single shot of sparkling purple magic arced over the mountains and slammed into me. It knocked me flat, dropping me on top of poor Danny, who justifiably shrieked with pain.
Healing power sparked, lit, and flooded into him. Fragments of bone were like
debris in the gas line, swept together and tidied back into place rather than flushed out. Torn flesh stitched back together under the image of ragged hoses replaced. Within a few seconds, Danny's shoulder was a massive black-and-blue bruise, the shattered bone repaired and the ruined flesh healed.
Mostly, anyway. I let go and shoved myself back a couple feet, stopping the flow of magic. Danny's eyes were huge in the moonlight, his breath coming in short fast pants. "It doesn't hurt as much."
"Good. It should still hurt enough that if you take another shot at us it's going to knock you on your ass and maybe rebreak that bone. I'll fix it all the way once we're clear of this, but I don't have time for you to be playing hunter while we're trying to hunt something a lot more dangerous."
"You bitch," he said in breathless astonishment. "You can't do that. You're a shaman."
I seriously considered rebreaking his shoulder, and had to take several steps away to make sure I didn't. "Looks like I can. Morrison, if you wanted to handcuff him to a tree or something, I wouldn't hate that. No, don't. God forbid we couldn't find him again later and he starved to death tied to a tree."
"How did you do that?" My father's eyes were gold in the darkness, studying me with the Sight. "Where did the power come from?"
I opened my mouth and shut it again. Turned out I didn't want to confess that Petite, the big purple heart of my soul, had so much of me invested in her that she really could jump-start my magic again, even from miles away. I would tell Morrison about it later, and maybe Gary, who would think it was awesome. But Dad belonged to another tradition from mine, and while I loved him, I wasn't quite sure I trusted him with that kind of information. So I sent a mental apology winging toward Petite for belittling her role, and shrugged. "I told you. I do what I have to do, Dad. Somebody should find out if he's got anybody else with him, and we should move before--"
Before helicopter blades started cutting the air, the military alerted to a large presence of hot-bodied humans by their infrared scanners. The sound had to have been somewhere at the back of my mind for a couple of minutes before I started recognizing it and feeling the need to move, but that was a problem with being of the modern era. Helicopters, planes, cars, sirens, heavy machinery, all of that was background noise to the subconscious. It was easy not to recognize it until verging on too late, and Danny had provided plenty of distraction. By the time I finished speaking, vast white searchlights were flashing through the leaves, and a relentless loudspeaker voice was announcing that this was the U.S. military, lay down your weapons and surrender to their authority.