The Walker Papers: Raven Calls Part 1

C.E. Murphy.

Raven Calls.

This one's for my Mom, Rosie Murphy, because it's the rest of the story.

Chapter One.

Sunday, March 19, 9:53 a.m.

The werewolf bite on my forearm itched.

Itching was wrong. It wasn't old enough to itch. It should hurt like the d.i.c.kens, because I'd obtained it maybe six hours earlier. Instead it itched like it was a two-week-old injury, well on the way to healing.

Only I was quite sure it wasn't healing. For one thing, I kept peeking at it, and it was still a big nasty slashy bite that oozed blood when the bandages were loosened. For another thing, my stock in trade was healing. Fourteen months, two weeks and three days ago-but who was counting?-I had been stabbed through the chest. A smart-a.s.s coyote-kinda my spirit guide-had given me a choice between dying or becoming a shaman. Even for someone with no use for the esoteric, like I'd been, it hadn't been much of a choice. So now, nearly fifteen months on, a bite on my forearm was something I really should be able to deal with.

And it wasn't that I hadn't tried healing it, because I had. Magic slid off like oil and water, or possibly more like oil and gashed flesh, if oil slid off gashed flesh, which I a.s.sumed it did but didn't want to actually find out. Either way, the magic wasn't working. Normally that would be a bad sign, but my talent had taken both a beating and a boosting in the past twenty-four hours, and wasn't behaving. It reacted explosively when I tried using it, and I didn't want to explode my arm. So I was getting on a plane with absolutely no notice and flying to Ireland, because I'd had a vision of the woman who had turned werewolves from slavering beasties 100% of the time into part-time monsters, and in my vision, she'd been in Ireland. I figured if anybody could keep me human, it had to be the woman who'd bound the wolves to the moon's cycle.

That's what I was telling myself, anyway, because it was slightly better than a full-on panic attack in the middle of the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. A day earlier I hadn't believed werewolves existed. Now I was petrified that come the next full moon-which was tonight, the second of three-I would get all hairy and toothy. It was a dire possibility even without adding international air travel to the mix, which, who was I kidding, was possibly the worst idea I'd ever had. Turning into a werewolf was potentially bad enough. Doing it mid-flight presumably meant a plane full of handy victims, although I might get lucky and have an air marshal on board so it would just be me who got dead.

My life was a mess, if I considered that lucky. But I had this rash idea that because I'd be missing moonrise all the way around the globe, the magic shouldn't trigger. And I could always lock myself in the bathroom if I thought I was about to get b.e.s.t.i.a.l. Locking myself in the bathroom wasn't that bad an idea anyway. I was afraid of flying, and bathrooms didn't have windows. That automatically made them less scary than the body of the plane. Either way, it wasn't just the werewolf cure that had me wandering the duty-free shops at SeaTac. The other vision I'd had, the one of a sneering warrior woman, had made my healing magic respond as if a gauntlet had been thrown down. It felt like fishhooks in my belly, hauling me east. I was going to Ireland whether I liked it or not.

My personal opinion leaned heavily toward or not. There were places I'd rather be and things I'd rather be doing. Specifically, those things were Captain Michael Morrison of the Seattle Police Department, who up to about three hours earlier had been my boss. I'd quit, he'd kissed me and the more I thought about him, the more I wanted to tear out of the airport, jump in a cab and race back into his arms. The fishhooks pulling at my gut, though, weren't about to let that happen. Their horrible p.r.i.c.kle and tug had become familiar enough over the past year that I knew it meant something serious coming down the line, as if finding a cure for a werewolf's bite wasn't serious enough. Whatever awaited me in Ireland, I was not especially looking forward to it. So I was trying to distract myself by shopping, which wasn't my favorite pastime in the best of circ.u.mstances. Still, I'd wandered the international terminal twice already. The shops hadn't changed displays since my first pa.s.s, but the second time through I laid eyes on something I neither needed at all, nor was I sure I could live without.

A not-helpful part of my brain whispered that I had a credit card. I mean, I was American. I didn't think I'd be allowed to keep my citizenship if I didn't have at least one rectangle of plastic money. But it was reserved for emergencies, like buying a plane ticket to Ireland on no notice.

An ankle-length white leather coat did not in any way qualify as an emergency.

I stood there staring at it through the shop window. The shoulders were subtly padded, just enough to give the mannequin a really square silhouette. It had a Chinese-style high collar and leather-covered white b.u.t.tons offset from the center straight down the length of the entire coat. It nipped in at the waist tightly enough to look pinned, but n.o.body would pin leather of that quality. There had to be a discreet belt on the back. Its skirts fell in wide loose folds, and looked like they would flare with wonderful drama.

No normal person would wear a coat like that. A movie star might. A tall movie star. A tall, leggy movie star with really good sungla.s.ses and enough confidence to shift the earth with her smile alone.

I stepped back from the window. Light caught just so, letting me see my reflection.

n.o.body could argue that, at a smidge under six feet in height, I wasn't tall and leggy. I had cool sungla.s.ses, although I wasn't wearing them. And that coat might instill enough confidence in the wearer that she could do anything.

Five minutes later I was eighteen hundred dollars poorer, but so pleased with myself I slept the whole flight to Ireland without once worrying about the plane falling out of the sky.

Monday, March 20, 6:28 a.m.

I wasn't a werewolf when I woke up. Fuzzy logic said I'd left the States on Sunday morning, flown all day and arrived in Ireland early Monday morning, thus having skipped the night of the full moon entirely and saving myself from shifting into a monster of yore. That was very fuzzy logic, but then, the whole not being a werewolf thing supported it. Besides, who was I to say an ancient curse wouldn't work that way, when magic by its very definition defied the laws of physics. I left the plane grateful to not be furry and, aware of the advantages of having been born in Ireland, slipped through customs on the European Union pa.s.sport holders side.

The insistent ball of magic within me wanted me to head west, but Irish roads were legendarily convoluted. I needed a car, a map and a cup of coffee before I struck off into the sunset. Never mind that sunrise was in about half an hour, so I had many hours to wait before I could strike off into its sister darkness.

For a woman who'd slept the entire ten-hour flight across a continent and an ocean, I was certainly running on at the brain. I stopped just outside the arrivals area and scrubbed both hands over my face hard, trying to waken some degree of native intelligence.

"Hey, doll," said a familiar voice. "Can I give you a lift?"

I left my hands where they were, covering my face, for a good long minute while I tried to understand how that voice-the voice of my best friend, a seventy-four-year-old Seattle cab driver-could possibly be addressing me in the Dublin International Airport. Last I'd known, Gary Muldoon had been in California for the St. Patrick's Day weekend, partying with old Army buddies in a yearly event he refused to give details on. Since it was now the twentieth of March and the weekend in question had just ended, my information was pretty up-to-date. It was therefore impossible in every way for Gary to be here. It had to be somebody else. Satisfied with my reasoning, I lowered my fingers enough to peer over them.

Gary leaned against a pillar, arms folded across his still-broad chest, and gave me a wink and a grin that from a man thirty years younger would set my heart aflutter.

I rubbed my eyes again and squinted. Gary's grin got wider. He looked like a devilish old movie star in a set scene, and like he knew d.a.m.ned good and well his presence was the culminating factor. After about thirty seconds' more silence, I said, "Sure," and wished I'd been suave enough to just say that in the first place. And then because I wasn't suave at all, I squeaked, "What the h.e.l.l are you doing here?!" in disbelieving delight.

Gary threw his head back and laughed out loud. He had suspiciously good teeth for a man his age who used to smoke. I suspected dentures, but had never been rude enough to ask. Then he stepped forward and swept me up in a bear hug, which put paid to any thoughts of his teeth as I grunted happily and repeated, "No, seriously, what the h.e.l.l?"

"Mike called me. Told me to, and I quote, get my old a.s.s on the next flight to Dublin and try to catch up to Joanne G.o.dd.a.m.ned Walker, who's gone off again and needs somebody to keep her from doing anything stupid, end quote. So I got on the next flight outta L.A. Got in ten minutes ago. What's going on?"

I pulled my head back far enough to look up at him. "Mike? Mike who? You mean Morrison? Morrison called you? Morrison sent you to Ireland after me? Morrison, my boss? That Morrison?"

"That's the one." Gary set me back, hands on my shoulders, as his grin faded. "'Cept I hear he ain't the boss anymore."

"Not the boss of me, anyway." I wrinkled my nose. "I'm not six, really."

"What happened, doll?" Real concern was in my big friend's gray eyes. I'd gotten into Gary's cab over a year ago, on the very morning my shamanic powers had been violently awakened. He'd been at my side, backing me up, ever since. Gary was the sort of person I wanted to grow old to be: vital, fascinated by the world and always up for an adventure. At twenty-six, when I'd met him, I'd been none of those things. At pushing twenty-eight I was just getting on the bandwagon. I couldn't have a better role model.

"It's okay, I quit. I mean, I didn't get fired. Everything's cool. I just..." It turned out I had other things to not think about besides a werewolf bite. The enormity of what I'd done-quit my detective job on the police force with no notice and with no prospects for other employment in the future-hit me, a mere twelve hours after the fact. Or a full day, counting elapsed travel time. Either way, I felt myself go colorless and the insistent pit of magic in my belly turned to just a boring old pit of sickness for a moment.

Gary put a hand under one of my elbows and crooked a smile. "Don't worry, Joanie. I can always get you a job at Tripoli Cabs."

If Gary was calling me Joanie, I looked even worse than I suddenly felt. Usually he went with Jo, a nickname I'd never liked until he used it. Still, rough laughter bubbled up from somewhere beneath the ook in my tummy. "Pet.i.te would never forgive me if I took to driving another car most of the day."

"You better not tell her 'bout your plans to get a winter vehicle, then."

"She'd understand," I said unconvincingly. "Cla.s.sic Mustangs aren't meant to weather the winters Seattle's been having lately. She's got no clearance. I'll just get her a boyfriend. A 1936 Dodge pickup. In red."

"They got no clearance, either, darlin'," Gary said with the confidence of a man who'd been there and done that, never mind that he'd been only four years old in 1936. "'Sides, you get that sweet young thing an old fella like a '36 Dodge and you'll start giving me ideas."

Laughter won again, this time because half the people I knew were convinced I had a Thing going on with Gary. Even Morrison thought so, despite it being fairly clear that I was hopelessly, idiotically, madly in love with him. "Pet.i.te's older than I am," I pointed out, like it made a difference.

"And I'm older than a '36 Dodge. You all right, Joanie?"

"Stop that. It makes me think I'm falling apart."

"Are you?"

"A w-" I nearly swallowed my tongue. I hadn't even told Morrison a werewolf had bitten me, and there I was about to confess all to Gary. It wasn't that I didn't feel like sharing. Mostly I just figured they couldn't do anything about it, so there was no point in worrying them. I said, "A wee little bit," instead, in honor of being in Ireland, where one adjective was never enough if three would do. "It's been a really long day. Weekend. You missed a lot."

Childish dismay splashed across Gary's face. "One weekend, Jo! I went to California for one weekend, and you had to have adventures without me?"

"You have no idea. I can shapeshift now," I said almost idly. The weird thing was, learning to shapeshift really did come low on the totem pole of what had gone on the past three days. No wonder I'd slept so hard on the plane. I was pretty sure the last time I'd napped had been in the shower a couple of days earlier.

Gary's eyes bugged and he pointed imperiously to the door. "We gotta get out of here so you can show me."

A tug in my gut wiped away the last of my job-related nausea. My boiling-over magic thought getting out of there was an excellent idea. We made mad rushes for different car rental agencies, eyeing each other to see whose line moved more quickly. I beat Gary to a counter by thirty seconds, and he came to loom over me as I filled out paperwork. "Second driver?" the woman asked, and Gary muttered, "Don't you dare think I ain't doin' some of the driving, Jo."

I obediently put him down as the second driver. He snagged the keys out from under my fingertips and in retaliation I grabbed his carry-on suitcase as well as my own. He looked ever so slightly smug and I suspected I had gotten the raw end of the deal, but he flashed me another one of his legendary grins. "Hey, Jo?"

I muttered, "What?" about as graciously as an angry alligator, and the big lug of an old man earned a lifetime's forgiveness with two words as we headed out the door: "Nice coat."

Chapter Two.

The last time I'd been in Ireland-also the first time, overlooking the detail of having been born here, which I didn't remember-I'd had none of the phenomenal cosmic powers I was now endowed with. Part of me wanted to trigger the Sight and look into the depths of history and magic the island was legendary for.

The much smarter part of me didn't want to, since I'd stolen the keys back and was driving. The Sight had been whiting out and blinding me for the past twenty-four hours. Driving blind seemed like a spectacularly bad idea. So instead of calling up the mystical mojo, I filled Gary in on the weekend's details while we worked our way through Dublin traffic, which was negligible compared to Seattle. By the time I got to the werewolves, we'd left the capital city behind, and Gary kept saying, "Werewolves," in audible disappointment. "Werewolves. I'm never around for the good stuff."

"Says the man who left an annual shindig to fly last-minute to Ireland."

"I couldn't risk missin' something else, now, could I?" Gary peered out the window. In theory there were green rolling hills out there. In reality, there were concrete walls fifteen feet high that blocked off the countryside. "Where we goin', anyway?"

"The Hill of Tara." I knew almost as much about Irish history as I'd known about shamanism a year ago, which was to say nothing, but even I'd heard of Tara. I scowled at the road, trying to remember if I'd gotten that far in what I'd told Gary. "It's in County Meath, which is sort of the wrong way, more north than west, and I keep feeling like I need to go west. But I had a vision last night. Or the night before. Sat.u.r.day night. Anyway, I saw a hill in the vision, so Tara seems like a good place to start."

"What with bein' a hill and all," Gary agreed solemnly.

I said, "Exactly," even though I knew perfectly well I was being mocked. Gary laughed and I gave him a dirty look. "Besides, starting with a known cultural and spiritual center probably isn't a bad idea, even if it's the wrong one. Did I tell you about the woman wearing my mother's necklace?"

Gary arched his bushy eyebrows, which I took as a no, and I asked, "You ever get the feeling your life is a string festooned with bells and tied to hundreds of others you don't know anything about? And that sometimes somebody pulls their string, and your bells ring?"

Gary looked at me a long moment before rather gently saying, "Yes and no, darlin'. We all get that feeling from time to time. Difference is, with you, it could be real."

"But Coyote said I was a new soul. Mixed up fresh." I wasn't sure I'd ever mentioned that to Gary. Or to anybody else, for that matter. There were, according to my mentor, old souls and new souls. Mostly people were old souls, with all the baggage and all the wisdom from previous incarnations resting somewhere in the hind brain, there to draw on or drown in. I was something of a rarity, mixed up fresh and new by Somebody or Something responsible for those aspects of the universe. The positive side of being a new soul was a lack of baggage and the potential for great power. The negative side was the corresponding lack of acc.u.mulated wisdom with which to wield that power. I'd certainly demonstrated that lack time and again the past fifteen months.

Either I'd mentioned the whole new-soul thing to Gary, or he thought it didn't matter, because he snorted. "So what if you are? New soul don't mean no ties. You still got parents, right? Grandparents? Cousins? And friends or lovers can tug your strings, too. No man's an island, Jo."

That was not the first time Gary had gone philosophical on me, nor was it the first time I was surprised by it. Properly chastened, I swallowed and continued my original line of thought: "The woman with my mother's necklace rang my be..." That sentence could not end anywhere happy. Gary guffawed and I grinned despite myself. "You know what I mean."

"I know Mike's gonna be real disappointed if some woman's ringing your bells, darlin'."

"When did you start calling him Mike?"

"After the zombies," Gary said with aplomb.

I cast a glance heavenward and nearly missed our exit. Gary grabbed his door's armrest as I yanked us into the rightwhich was to say, correct, which in on Irish roads meant left-lane, and muttered, "After the zombies. Of course. Normal people don't say things like that, Gary."

"Normal people don't fight zombies."

That line of conversation wasn't going to end anywhere happy, either. I let out an explosive breath and tried again. "The woman in my mother's necklace had some kind of pull with me. Maybe it was just that she looked all sneery and challenging, but there was some kind of connection. I have to find out who she was."

Gary, cautiously, said, "It wasn't your mother, was it?"

"No. She kind of looked like her, dark hair, pale skin, but no. My mother was sort of restrained and prim. She liked Altoids. This woman was more of a kick a.s.s and take names type." Only it had turned out my mother was exactly that kind of person, too. I just hadn't known it until after she died.

I hadn't known much of anything about my mother until after she died, except that she'd flown to America and left me with my father when I was six months old. I hadn't seen her again until I was twenty-six. That kind of thing leaves a mark. In my case, it was an entirely unjustified mark, as Mother had been trying to protect me from a bad guy bigger and nastier than I ever wanted to deal with. But again, I hadn't known that until after she died. Nothing like a little "I was trying to save your life" to take the wind out of sails puffed up with childish abandonment issues. I wished I'd had the opportunity to tell her I finally understood.

But that was spilt milk, and I was getting better about not crying over it. I turned down the road leading to Tara and Gary frowned as a tour bus taking up two-thirds of the road came the other direction. "You sure this is the right way?"

"Yeah. Only in Ireland do they put cultural heritage monuments at the end of one-track roads." I couldn't decide if I liked the idea or not. It certainly gave the impression the heritage site had been there forever, which was true. On the other hand, I had to hold my breath as I pulled over to let the bus pa.s.s, for fear we'd be broadsided if I didn't. Gary let his breath out in a rush when the bigger vehicle rambled by, and we grinned sheepishly at each other as I pulled forward again. "Glad it's not just me. At least we're not on a mountainside with roads this narrow. The landscape kind of reminds me of North Carolina."

"Never been out there," Gary said. "I kept getting stuck in St. Louis. Annie and I used to go to the jazz festival."

"Did you play?" Gary's wife had died before I met him, but he'd mentioned once or twice that he'd been an itinerant sax player for a few years after the Korean War, while Annie, a nurse, had brought home the bacon.

"Nah. Left that to the guys who were really good." Gary leaned into the window as we went up the hill leading to the, er, Hill, and frowned. "Thought there'd be more cars."

"Me, too." The parking lot-small and graveled and graced at one end by gift shops and at the other by a switchback path-was completely empty of vehicles besides our own. I got out of the car and turned in a slow circle, taking in the view-there was a tower in the distance, soft with misty air-and finally came back to Gary, who stood on the other side of our car with a befuddled expression. "You remember that night at the Seattle Center?"

"You mean the night somebody stuffed a broadsword through me? Nah. Why would I?"

"Remember how quiet it was?" The parking garage had been empty. There'd been no late-night tourists wandering, n.o.body from the monorail hurrying one way or the other, no joggers making their way across the closed grounds.

Gary, very firmly, said, "Jo, no matter how much I love you, I ain't gettin' stuck with another sword."

"Don't worry. I've got mine now." I patted my hip like I wore a sword there, which of course I didn't, because I lived in the early twenty-first century, not the early seventeenth. Not that as a woman I'd have been able to carry a sword in the seventeenth century anyway, but that wasn't the point. The point was I had an honest-to-G.o.d magic sword that I'd taken off an ancient Celtic G.o.d, and I'd spent a good chunk of the past fifteen months learning how to use it properly. If anybody tried skewering Gary-or me, for that matter-I had defenses.

"Your sword's in Seattle."

I put on my very best mysterious magic user voice: "A detail which is nothing to one such as I." Gary snorted and I laughed, then waved at the path. "Come on, if we've got the place to ourselves we might as well take advantage of it. Busloads of tourists will probably show up any minute."

Gary fell in behind me dubiously. "You really think so?"

"No. I think something's conspiring to keep the place quiet awhile, and that we'll probably regret finding out why. But I'm trying to keep a positive mind-set." The path up to Tara was foot-worn but not paved. Nothing suggested "tourist attraction" except for the gift shops, and even they weren't particularly in-your-face about it. Gary and I kept pace with one another, both stealing glimpses at each other from the corners of our eyes like we expected something to jump out at us but if the other was cool, we weren't going to show our nerves. After the third or fourth time we caught gazes, Gary actually giggled, which was unnerving in itself. Six-foot-one former linebackers in their seventies weren't supposed to giggle.

A woman said, "There'll be nothing to worry about," out of nowhere, and we both shrieked like little girls. I regained my equilibrium first. Gary, after all, had already been giggling, which was bad enough with me as an audience, never mind with a complete stranger looking on. We turned together, though, to find a lovely woman of indeterminate age smiling at us. She wore a white eyelet-lace sundress with gold scarves wrapped around her hips and shoulders, and sandals on her feet. On most people I would call it a hippy-dippy look, but somehow she imbued it with more elegance than that. Her hair was the color of sunrise shot with clouds. She wasn't young, even if I couldn't tell how old she was.

"You'll be Siobhan Walkingstick," she said to me.

Hairs stood up on my arms. The bite itched, and I rubbed it surrept.i.tiously, resulting in a wave of oh G.o.d, scratching feels so good I may never be able to stop that sometimes happens. I wondered suddenly if that was why dogs would go thumpa-thumpa-thump with a hind leg when a human got a good itchy spot, and then I wondered if, as a werewolf, I would do the same thing.

I stopped scratching and muttered, "People don't normally use that name for me. Who're you?"

"Am I wrong to think until very recently it wouldn't have been you at all?"

Another chill ran over me. I made fists to keep from scratching again. "...you're not wrong." The name she'd used, Siobhan Walkingstick, was technically the one I'd been born to. Siobhan Grainne MacNamarra Walkingstick. Dad had taken one look at that mess and nicknamed me Joanne. I'd dropped the Walkingstick myself, taking Walker as my mostly official last name when I graduated high school. Joanne Walker and Siobhan Walkingstick had almost nothing in common, at least not up until the past year. More specifically, up until two nights earlier, when I'd been reborn under a rattlesnake shapeshifter's guidance. That had a lot to do with why my powers were out-of-control wonky. Joanne had had a handle on her skill set. Siobhan apparently resided in another league. And I was going to have to stop thinking of them as separate or I'd become a headcase in no time flat.

"But you'll prefer Joanne," the woman said with a nod, then looked to Gary. "And you come with a companion."