by C. E. Murphy
Lightning fell around the Space Needle in sheets of blackness, throwing us all into ultraviolet relief. Gary’s, Morrison’s and Annie’s hair glowed blue; Coyote’s shone with highlights so deep I thought I could dip my hands in them. The whole building rocked and shook in time with our steps, in time with the drumbeat. In a way it was magnificent.
We moved faster than sense could accept as we reached the crescendo. The Master had very nearly won in the Qualla; my only real triumph there was in saving Aidan. But he was my son, and his survival meant more to me than my own. And I had reconciled with my father, an unexpected gift, so while their dance was strong and sure, mine at least brought a counterpoint of joy in the memory of mountain echoes.
When we reached the moment I’d walked into Annie’s hospital room and laid hands on her, the earth ripped and the Space Needle listed sharply, throwing us all against the side of the power circle.
Throwing Annie and Coyote together for the first time, their hands finding each other’s unerringly.
The sky tore open, and a miasma plummeted into our circle.
It brought silence as it fell. The lightning stopped; the creak of the tilting building stopped; the groans of the earth stopped. Even the drum’s beat stopped. All that remained was harsh breathing: me, Coyote, Annie. Moonlight, dazzling bright, crashed through the newly washed air outside as if its only purpose was to burn away the black dust that rain had brought.
Except all that dust was inside the restaurant now, making dark living shadows out of tables and chairs and broken chunks of wall. It leaned on our smaller power circle, trying to break in. I caught a faint glimpse of my spirit animals holding their ground, fiery white against the darkness. I was going to have to do something really nice for them if we got out of this alive. And if we didn’t, at least I wouldn’t have to figure out what qualified as a really nice gift for spirit creatures.
Coyote began to speak what I assumed was Navajo. Annie backed him up in Irish, though I was pretty sure Annie herself didn’t speak a word of Irish. Their voices rose and fell in opposites, one strengthening when the other faltered. I scrambled my brain, trying to think of something I could throw into the mix, and landed on Chief Seattle’s prayer. It wasn’t exactly in keeping with my heritage, but on the other hand, it did belong to Seattle in a very real and particular way, so I lifted my voice and chanted all the ideas in it that I could remember. “‘Every part of the earth is sacred, the beasts and the people, we all belong to the same family. The earth is our mother and the rivers our brothers. The wind is our breath, and this we know: the earth does not belong to us. We belong to it.’”
I heard Gary’s and Morrison’s breath rush out when I started to speak, like I’d given them permission to come alive again. Then they looked at me like I was bonkers, but since I had no credible evidence to the contrary, I didn’t mind that so much. Gary, though, apparently kind of figured out what I was doing after a few seconds, and joined in. Not with Chief Seattle’s prayer, but with Shakespeare. Because he was Gary, and only Gary was awesome enough to know the whole of the best speech ever written to throw in the teeth of overwhelming odds. “‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!’”
On and on he went, wonderful words that had been spoken millions of times over the years, lending them even more power than they had on their own. Hairs rose on my arms and I gave him a brief, dippy grin as his deep voice echoed against the power circle’s walls and drowned Coyote’s tenor out.
Morrison stared between us, then straightened and spoke, as well, a speech I should have guessed would resonate with him. “‘Four score and seven years ago...’”
A prayer for the land, a preparation for a fight and a plea for equality. It seemed like a fine trio of speeches to meet the Master with. Gary and Morrison came around the circle to flank me, and together we shouted our defiance back at Annie and Coyote.
Even if it was haphazard, it seemed to help. They were struggling already, their bodies trembling and their heartbeats staggering with the strain of calling their master through to the Middle World. Coyote’s golden skin had paled, and Annie’s was graying, the effort clearly too great for a woman just off her deathbed.
The miasma swirled and flexed, coming together and falling apart again. Coyote’s grip on Annie’s hand looked hard enough to crush her bones. Sweat rolled off both of them, turning Coyote’s hair lank and wetting Annie’s until it lay flat against her head. Two people, a man and a woman, striving to bring a third into the world. A new one, born of their efforts.
Born of their lives. Even Annie’s god-strengthened green aura was flickering as her strength failed; Coyote’s was already nearly depleted, and their heartbeats were becoming increasingly erratic. They were going to die birthing the Master, and there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do about it.
“No.” I heard myself under the roar of the storm, under the pounding rain and the howling wind that had taken up life within the Needle itself. Everyone heard me, for all that I spoke very quietly. Maybe they heard me because I was so quiet: it made them lean in and pay attention. “No. Gary didn’t fight so hard for Annie to have it end this way. I am not giving up on Coyote. I am not letting anyone else die because they crossed paths with me.”
“Walker—”
“I’m sorry, Morrison. Remember that I love you.” Before I had time to think about it further, I ran forward, reaching for Coyote’s and Annie’s outstretched hands. Offering them what they needed: a body, a new soul, to pour the Master into.
Gary got there first.
Chapter Twenty-One
Saturday, April 1, 7:17 p.m.
After the year I’d had, I would have thought I was beyond being surprised by much of anything. I would have been wrong, because I just had not seen that coming. I should have. In the instant that his big linebacker self lumbered between me and birthing Master, I knew I should have seen that coming, and I just flat-out hadn’t. I crashed against Gary’s broad back and felt the shock of the Master slamming into him. Every hair on my body stood out, every nerve went to pin-prickles, and Gary howled from the bottom of his gut.
So did I. Horror, disbelief and anger all ripped out of me in a single word: “GARY!”
He turned, awkward with the burden he now carried, and casually backhanded me.
I flew across the little power circle, blinded by tears that were only half brought on by pain. The circle caught me and dumped me on the floor. I landed on my feet somehow, the stupid coat flaring and settling gracefully around my legs.
About two seconds had passed. Coyote and Annie still didn’t know what had happened, their faces drawn with exhaustion and bodies trembling. They leaned on each other, ghosts of their former selves. Annie looked near to death’s door, and Coyote like he could vomit.
Morrison did know what had happened. His blue eyes widened with shock, face as pale as his silvering hair as he launched himself into motion and arrested that motion just as quickly. He didn’t know where to go, gaze torn between Gary and me.
And Gary. My beloved Gary stood nearly in the center of the circle, bending light in toward himself. Everything bent in toward him: the circle, the light; even the floor dipped with his weight, tilting it so Morrison and the others started sliding toward him. I clenched my gut and spread my toes inside their boots, like I could keep myself from being pulled toward him, too. He shone with blackness that sucked the color away, leaving the world dim and dull and thin-looking. I didn’t need the Sight to see any of that, and I didn’t want the Sight for what I did need to see.
It came to the fore anyway, and I looked into Gary’s tarnished soul.
All the rumbling V8 silver that I knew so well was corroded and black. It crumbled, flaking into pieces that didn’t disappear, but collected around Gary’s feet, deepening the floor’s downward tilt. There was no garden left, just a wasteland streaked by blood so dark I could hardly tell it from the burned earth. My heartbeat was erratic, pulling out of my chest, like it was tryi
ng to go smear itself across the landscape. It made an aching empty place beneath my sternum, one that spread deeper and made my stomach feel sick and hollow, just the opposite of how the shamanic magic within me had felt when it came back to life. That had been a fluttering, pushing thing, trying to live. This was trying to kill me. I tried hard not to think that letting it might be okay, and tried even harder to pull myself out of looking into that endless deathscape.
I wasn’t sure I’d have been able to, if Gary hadn’t moved. His knuckles, where he’d hit me, were rough and bruised. He lifted that hand and rubbed them, then raised gleaming black eyes to mine. I jolted, seeing the real, Middle, world again, and then almost wishing I wasn’t. Even if his eyes had been the right color, I’d have known that what was within Gary’s shape was not my friend. The thing inside him knew nothing of gentleness or kindness, much less love. Only death and hunger saw me. Assessed me, sizing me up as a curiosity, as a danger and as a meal.
The corner of his lip curled back in a false smile, and the voice that spoke was all the worse for being Gary’s own: “Hello, doll.”
Somehow that was worse than his eyes, worse than the bleak wreck of his soul. Air rushed out of me like I’d been hit in the gut, and on the breath I said, “Oh, no. No, you don’t get to—”
“Ain’t this how you always saw me, sweetheart? An old man.” Gary smiled again, and even though I knew his teeth were false, I was still surprised they hadn’t gotten vampire-sharp and pointed. “Looks to me like this is about perfect. You an’ me, doll, together again for the first time. Ain’t that how you say it?”
Ice shot up my spine and over my arms in an uncontrollable shudder. “You don’t want him. You want me.”
“Reckon that’s right.” He started to move, the first steps as if he was testing out the body. The floor shifted under him, like his presence was a black hole, dragging everything down into it, but it recovered—mostly—when his weight shifted to a new place. “On the other hand, this fella’s given me a lot of trouble, and I figure I can make him last awhile.” Gary’s gaze snapped from me to Annie. The smile happened again, bare teeth with no emotional content behind it, and his voice dropped about an octave. “And you. Sweetheart.”
Annie didn’t look good in the first place, her bones sharp beneath thin papery skin, but she looked worse after those three words. Like all her hope had been sucked away, just like that. Like a lifetime of fighting had turned out useless in the end, and like that was more than she could bear.
Coyote put a hand on her shoulder and—both stupidly and admirably—called healing magic, weary dune and soft sky blue shoring Annie up enough that an unnatural stillness overtook Gary before he pulled his lips back from his teeth again. “Raven Mocker.”
“No.” Coyote’s voice shook. I had to admire him for being able to use that word in the Master’s presence. I wasn’t sure I could have.
Gary guffawed, which should have been a comforting, familiar sound. Instead, it was loud and empty, echoing around the restaurant in search of something to give it meaning. It found nothing and faded. Gary’s face had never shown a hint of real humor. “No? It’s kinda late to say no now, Raven Mocker. You brought me through. After so long, someone brought me through.” His s’s got a little sibilant there, like Rattler when he was excited about something. Gary had never done that.
Not that I was under any illusions that Gary was in control, or maybe even alive. I couldn’t See anything of him in the black desert that had once been his garden. Even from outside, the Master’s weight was incredible, still pulling all of us toward him. It was hard to imagine Gary hadn’t just been crushed beneath it. It was hard to imagine there was any point in trying to fight something that distorted gravity in its immediate area. I was used to being overwhelmed. I had been pretty much since the moment Cernunnos and his incredible, vibrant presence had ridden into my life. The Master was that overpowering, only much, much darker.
“I reject you,” Coyote whispered. He didn’t sound very convincing. “I was so, so stupid—”
“That’s enough, kid.” Gary closed a big fist loosely and Coyote’s voice cut off. More than his voice: a short choking sound emerged and his face went red, then pale. Coyote’s hands went to his throat, scrabbling to find something there that he could pull away, but there wasn’t anything, just Gary’s—the Master’s—will, strangling him.
My own voice broke thin and high. “What’re you using, the Force?”
For just a heartbeat, less than a heartbeat, startlement crossed Gary’s face. That’d been one of the first things I’d ever said to him, when he’d driven out of the Sea-Tac parking lot while turned around in his seat to have a conversation with me. Whether the Master remembered it or Gary did, it broke through, and in that instant he lost interest in Coyote again. Coyote dropped, hands splaying against the dipped floor while he tried to drag in deep breaths of air quietly.
Gary cocked his head at an unnatural, or at least unnatural to Gary, angle as he turned back to me. Then he moved it to another angle, the motion between looking weirdly snakelike. “The Force. Reckon I am, darlin’. I reckon I am.”
My mouth went dry. “I’ve got a hell of a lot more Force than Gary does.”
“Really want me outta here, doncha, sweetheart? Mmm-mmm.” Gary shook his head, the same serpentine motion. I guessed that made sense. The Master had an affinity for snakes. I thought nervously of Rattler, and told that part of my brain to shut up. Then I reconsidered, because I already felt like I was thinking too slowly. Way, way too slowly. I had to get the Master out of Gary before something awful happened, and given that Coyote was still struggling to breathe, awful was already on the line. I needed all the parts of my brain that were willing to think at all, even if they were thinking stupid things. Rattler was my spirit guide, not the Master’s back door into my skull.
That, I realized with a mixture of hope and alarm, might even be a useful thought. Rattler?
My rattlesnake spirit animal was not a creature prone to saying, You have got to be kidding me, but as he came to life at the back of my skull, I had the distinct impression that was what he was thinking.
Well, can we? Can we trick him that way ? I demanded. Can you be that sneaky ?
I, he hissed, can be far sneakier than you, ssssilly sssshhaaaman. But this is foolishnessss.
I had absolutely no doubt he was right, but I didn’t have any better ideas, either. Bide time, Rattler ordered, and with the word time, my walking stick spirit awakened, as well. I felt her there, not speaking, only waiting. Well, if anybody knew when the time was right to strike, it was a snake guided by a time traveler. I bided. Bode. Whatever. I waited, trusting my guides, and aloud, croaked, “You bet your ass I want you out of there. I don’t even know how you can fit in Gary. He’s only human.”
Gary laughed again, that sharp blank sound. “Aw, c’mon, sweetheart, doncha think better of the old man than that? Maybe he ain’t magic-born, but he’s been steeped in the stuff his whole life. And more, he has stood against me, thrown time in my teeth, stolen from me—” He didn’t sound like Gary anymore. His voice had lightened, resonating instead of rumbling, and the words were different from the ones Gary would choose. I wondered if it was easiest for the Master to use the familiar cadences of the host body’s usual speaking patterns, and if he only saved his own vocal idiosyncrasies for the really important moments. Like now, as he spat the last of his words and jabbed a finger toward Annie. “Thou. Art. Mine.”
“Never.” Annie lifted her chin, her rejection far more confident than Coyote’s. “Not in all the years of my life, and not in the hereafter.” She got to her feet as she spoke, slim and defiant. “You think we ordinary humans can’t stand against you, but that’s all most of us ever do. You can kill me, but you can’t break me, and you’re too late to make me yours. I belong to Cernunnos now, if I belong to anyone besides my husband. You lost.”
Gary’s lips peeled back to reveal the awful smile again. I knew people conveye
d a lot of subtext with their mouths, but I didn’t usually notice it so much. I wished I didn’t have to notice now. “I have him,” he said to Annie. “Would you like to feel his heartbeat? How it races? How it pounds? How long can it continue this way without giving up? Without bursting?”
Way back in the back of my throat, where I was sure it wouldn’t come out, I made the shape of the word forever. Because the Master was right: Gary was steeped in magic. He’d ridden with Cernunnos. He’d fought with me and with Brigid. He’d chased down a demon or two in his time, and perhaps most importantly, he had two spirit animals, one of whom had come to him after a heart attack, to offer him strength and longevity. Buried in there somewhere was the staid, steady tortoise, its protective shell still holding in place. As long as that creature was with Gary in some way, I had no doubt at all that his body could take what the Master meted out.
The very brave part of me thought maybe the same was true of his soul, but that part apparently hadn’t taken a good look at the pitted ruin of his garden.
“I may lose, too,” Annie said quietly, “but humans do. We live and we love and we die. If Gary dies, I’ll be devastated. Of course I will. But you will still have lost me, and I think you probably take that as a far greater insult than bowing to the inevitability of death is to me. I was a nurse,” she reminded him. “I’ve seen this happen hundreds of times. You, on the other hand...” Somehow she managed a smile. A real one, faint but gentle, an agonizing comparison to the emotionless thing Gary kept spreading across his face. “I think you’re not used to losing at all, but right now you’re standing between the only four people on earth who have defeated you in living memory. And you think we should be afraid?”