The Walker Papers: Raven Calls Part 12

Under any other circ.u.mstances I'd have applauded the entrance. The woman was amazing, with her blue-black hair and her blue-banded biceps and the flowing, gorgeous robes that didn't impede her fighting ability at all. Furthermore, my shields glimmered around her as she pushed through, giving her a glowing curtain of power that clung to her skin and shone silver highlights on the curve of strong muscles. Meabh was Amazonian, but fair-haired. The Morrigan seemed more like what I could look like if I was at my absolute peak of awesomeness.

My forearm burned suddenly, the half-forgotten bite awakening again. The Morrigan lay along an unforgiving path, where admiring any part of her made me all the more susceptible to her master's powers. I clenched my right hand over the bite and squeezed hard, half hoping it would pop, pimplelike, and all the poisoned blood would gush out.

Well. That was gross enough to wipe away the folly of admiring the bad guys. I surged to my feet, snapping, "You can't be here, but I could See the path she'd taken to get in. There were too many links here: me, Sheila, Meabh and the necklace, all of us tied to the Morrigan in one way or another. That, and although a few hundred generations separated us, we had a trace of magic in common, too. It made my shields just vulnerable enough, when I'd already invited her daughter through them.

Meabh and Sheila both spun to see the interloper, Meabh with her sword drawn before she'd finished turning. I started to reach for my own sword and stopped, remembering with a pang that it and Gary were lost to time. Lost to a battle they'd fought against the woman who'd just walked into my garden as if it were her own. Smart money was on kicking her right out, but I'd never been all that smart. "Tell me what happened to Gary."

Meabh gave me a sharp look, and Sheila a curious one, but neither of them questioned me as the Morrigan laughed, low and warm and friendly. "And why would I do that?"

Every once in a while my s.h.i.t came together and I knew the right answer to a challenging question. Cool with anger, I straightened to my full height-a height which was more impressive among humans; the Morrigan didn't tower over me the way Meabh did, but she still had me by a couple inches-and did my best to look disdainfully down my nose at a G.o.ddess. "Because I'll let you go free from this place if you do, and otherwise I will bind you beneath the stone of this mountain as your master has been bound beneath the earth before, and you will lie with its weight pressing down on you, and its white power will stymie your magics and you will be a prisoner until the end of time."

It was my garden. I could have counted her nose hairs, if I'd wanted to. I didn't, but I could see, very clearly, the wave of goose b.u.mps rise and settle on her arms. She held off a full-body shiver through will alone, but her gaze slipped sideways, betraying uncertainty before she thrust her chin out in body language that reminded me of myself. "And how would you do that?"

Meabh took a very shallow breath. She'd thrown a similar gauntlet at me not all that long ago and I'd picked it up and b.i.t.c.h slapped her with it. She pretty clearly expected me to do the same again.

So, frankly, did I. I walked forward, taking point between my mother and Meabh, and spoke softly. "By having three of your blood here, Morrigan, and by having a fourth no more than a shout away. By dint of you being within my garden, where the world is shaped as I will have it. By the depth of magic lent to me by a raven, who is no less my companion than yours, and of another here who is also raven-bound. Nuada, a man, was able to break your power with a circlet and a splash of my blood. What do you think four of your daughters and their ravens and all the magic at their command can do?"

The Morrigan's gaze slipped away again. I had the distinct impression this was not going the way she'd planned. Since virtually nothing in my life went the way I planned, I had no sympathy for her at all. "Tell me," I said again. "Tell me what happened to Gary."

She looked back at me, snake-quick, and hissed her answer: "He is lost to you, gwyld, daughter of my daughters. Time is his enemy and you are not its master. He fought well, he fought valiantly, but in the end, what could you expect? He was old when you sent him to fight death, and death conquers us all. The banshee comes for him, as she comes for all of those you love. It will be her beginning and his end."

I said, "Wrong answer," and lashed a fist out to hit her in the face.

Her head snapped back with the impact, bright blood blossoming over her mouth. I'd gotten lucky and knew it. I would never get another hit like that in. But d.a.m.n, it had been satisfying.

Satisfaction lasted long enough for the Morrigan to crank her head back up and throw a backhanded fist across my cheekbone. Bone shattered and healed in the same instant, a combination of pain and relief so sharp it left me dizzy. Healing myself wasn't working so well outside my garden, not with the bite s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up my powers, but in here I conformed to my own template. The fact that I was even aware of the werewolf bite in here was testimony to its strength: it should have been left in the physical world, rather than tag along into my perception of myself.

In the moment I spent reeling, swords clashed. Meabh had the look of a woman planning to take it to the limit, and I wondered if she and her mother had ever gone mano a mano before. Watching the viciousness with which they struck at one another, I was just as glad Sheila and I were merely estranged, not actually enemies. People of great power generally made bad enemies. When both sides were equally stacked in the mojo department, the resulting altercations were a bit on the earth-shattering side.

Or in this case, garden-shattering. Soft dirt came dislodged under their feet, the spa.r.s.e green gra.s.s losing its hold. I'd put a lot of effort into getting it as lush as it was, and was childishly upset at the mess they were making. "Meabh!"

She hesitated, which would have been fatal if she hadn't been within my garden. Silvery-blue shields bounced the Morrigan's next blow back, leaving both of them surprised. Meabh, however, stepped away from the fight, which was what I wanted.

This place was my heart and soul. The small changes I'd made in improving it had been part and parcel of my own spirit growing up and getting it together. I'd never fought a real battle here, or needed the garden for more than that.

Not until now, anyway. I flexed, feeling the spring's pool respond; feeling the earth under my feet respond. The Morrigan sneered and swung her sword, such a lazy open blow that her contempt for me was clear.

I crouched, catching a bit of torn-up dirt in my fingertips, and when I scooped my open hand upward again, the garden came with it. My hand, replicated at about eight times its own size in earth, rose up and seized the Morrigan. Tossed her with my gesture across the garden into one of the st.u.r.dy stone walls. I felt like the driver of one of those giant mechs, the factory machines that let an individual lift multi-ton items. The Morrigan slithered down the wall to land on her b.u.t.t in the dirt, no longer looking quite so threatening. I was beginning to think she wasn't such a bada.s.s after all. Earthen hands ready to capture her again, I growled, "My garden. My rules."

Rage glinted in the Morrigan's eyes and she curled her fingers up, nails suddenly long and deadly looking. "True, so true, but it was never you I was here for, daughter of my daughters. It was never you I wanted."

Surprise held me motionless for a fateful half second. The Morrigan's fist closed and Sheila wailed as power dragged her across the garden. Her cries grew sharper and louder, less human and more deadly, as the Morrigan buried her fingers in her hair, then hauled her, kicking and screaming, out of my garden fair.

I came awake on the mountaintop. Raven was nowhere to be seen, but that was probably okay. He'd want to scold me for having left the Dead Zone without his guidance, and in retrospect, that had probably been a stupid thing to do. Caitriona was snapping a hand in front of Meabh's eyes, saying, "h.e.l.lo? h.e.l.lo? Are ye in there so?" She yelped when Meabh suddenly came to life again and batted her hand out of the way.

My great-grandmother turned on me in a barely controlled fury. "Have ye found what we needed to know? Is she held by my mother's master? Do ye know where to take the fight to them? Are we-"

I started out saying "No" quietly and graduated to a full-fledged bellow halfway through her last question. Her mouth snapped shut and I muttered, "No," one more time. "We were just...bonding. Well, and she sa-"

"Bonding. Bonding? It's your own self who won't sacrifice the woman, Joanne. What are we to do if you cannot find it in you to learn what we must know to win this battle? This is no time for bonding."

I looked up, more neutral than I expected to be. "I know it's not, but this is really our last chance. This has to be over by sunset one way or another." I'd chosen sunset because midnight was too arbitrary, too much a function of human time-keeping devices. Sunset was the end of day for older cultures, and I'd rather get it all done early than find myself holding the ball after the game ended. "Sorry I blew it. Sort of."

I didn't even quite know how Sheila and I had gone from sniping to bonding, but I did know I'd have regretted not having those couple minutes far more than I would ever bring myself to regret what might happen because we had. "Caitriona, do you get along with your mom?"

She startled. "What? Yes, of course I do. What kind of question is that?"

I shrugged my eyebrows. "Just hoping somebody here did, that's all. She was glad to hear you were here, was Sheila. She says you'll be an incredible power for good."

Caitriona puffed up like a cardinal. "Did she, now?"

Okay, maybe I was extrapolating from what Mother had said, but the sentiment was close enough. "She's proud of you, Cat. You're gonna be amazing. And she says magery is about spells and preparation, so you were mostly right, Meabh. Initial explosions of power or no, Cat's got a lot of studying to do."

"Who'll teach me?"

I looked off the mountain like the answer would come to me. It didn't, so after a moment I shrugged my shoulders as well as my eyebrows. "I don't know. Me, maybe, at least for a little while. I'll have to find you somebody versed in magery, but I can teach you about the safeties and shielding, anyway." Coyote would find that very ironic. h.e.l.l, I found it ironic. I also rubbed my forearm, the bite a dull itching throb. There'd been no more impulse to change since we got to the top of Croagh Patrick, but I was a little afraid of what would happen when we left. And staying there wasn't an option. "She said we have to defeat the banshee queen."

Meabh rounded on me again, this time in angry astonishment. "Why did ye not say so?"

"You were too busy yelling at me."

She fell abruptly silent, which I thought was a pleasant change. "Cat, any idea where we find a banshee queen?"

My cousin eyed the silent warrior queen, then nervously said, "It's Evil you'd want so."

I sighed. "I'm pretty sure it's evil we're trying to defeat, yes. If you don't know, that's fine. We'll..." I didn't know what we'd do. I frowned, trying to clear my thoughts.

"No. Aibhill, Joanne. A-i-b-h-i-l-l. Aibhill," she said one more time. It still sounded like evil to me, or maybe just slightly like "Ae-vil," but I got the point even before she said, "The O'Brien banshee. Queen of the banshees, they say. It's her we'd need to fight."

"We?"

"Sure and I'm not leaving you now, just when it's getting good."

I smiled despite myself. "You sound like my friend Gary. I'll introduce you. I hope." I bit my lip, then bit it harder. "Okay. How do we find Aibhill?" I wasn't sure I liked all the changes I'd gone through, particularly since I was now calmly contemplating hunting somebody down and killing her. Of course, the somebody in question was presumably a monster, but even so.

"The O'Briens were in Munster," Caitriona said cautiously.

I squinted. "What's wrong with Munster?" My sum total knowledge of Munster was that, like Connacht, it was one of the ancient Irish provinces. There was an Ulster and a something else, too. "So?"

"Nothing, save it's as far away as we can get on this island. We'll never make it before sunset." Caitriona sagged. "Not get to the O'Brien lands, call up Aibhill and fight her, however it is we'd do that anyway. Auntie Sheila's doomed."

"Good att.i.tude, good att.i.tude." I looked across the mountaintop at the remains of my mother's bones. They still smoldered, a faint light coming from within. Maybe Wings was in there. I couldn't leave him behind. Still thinking, I made my way toward the mess, aware that Meabh and Caitriona trailed behind me. "We're going to have to try. I mean, I've got nothing else. Meabh, do you know anything about the magic of Munster?"

"It's where I built an Mhor Chuaird," she said after a moment.

Caitriona made an astonished sound of recognition as I sagged. She said, "The Ring of Kerry? But there's no..." She trailed off, obviously suddenly wondering if what she knew was true. "No standing stones defining the ring. You couldn't have built that, it's just a tourist circle and it's the size of the county itself."

Meabh's eyebrows quirked upward. "Large it was, but not so large as that. But at the heart of Kerry a circle once stood. If the stones are gone, then time has taken them. I couldn't risk Tara, you see, and had to go as far from it as I could. All that old power there, even when I was young. What if it had gone wrong? What if my mother's master had wrested control from me? Twisted the magic so the wolves were many instead of few? No." Meabh shook her head. "It had to be a new circle, its power untried. So yes, I built the Ring of Kerry, and it's pleased I am to hear its name still lingers."

"That's grand, we can go there then-" Caitriona stopped, remembering her own original protest.

It was only around eleven in the morning. We might have been able to make it into Munster, but the Ring of Kerry was, in fact, about as far away as a person could get and stay on the island. If Irish roads were broader and less twisty, it might not be an issue, but even I, who had cut my teeth on equally twisty Appalachian mountains, was dubious about my ability to get us into the Ring before sundown. And that didn't even count the difficulty of finding its center in time to be of any use. "It can't be Kerry," I said, mostly to myself. "Brigid said it began and ended at Tara. We're going to have to risk contaminating it. Maybe we can use it as a gauntlet, throw it down to challenge the banshee queen..." I got to Sheila's immolated bones and trailed off.

It was not Wings lighting them up. It was a soft glow from a pit lying beneath the bones in a physically impossible manner. It looked like it went straight to China, or to whatever was opposite Ireland on the globe, and the ashy remains were resting quietly on the air above it, as if it didn't really quite exist. I nudged a stone toward its edge.

The stone rolled in, bounced off the sides a couple times, and fell a long, long way. For a hole that didn't exist, it was a very convincing fall. I cleared my throat and glanced at my companions. "Either of you do this?"

They obviously hadn't. They also looked like I felt, which was to say, they suspected that in a few short minutes we would all be going down the rabbit hole, because rabbit holes did not appear in our lives for absolutely no reason at all. Tentative, I called on the Sight, and gave a rushed laugh of relief.

The pit glowed with white magic, with the power that had so recently scrubbed the mountain clean. It smelled, as my coat did, of stardust, and as a result I found myself trusting it.

"It looks safe," Caitriona said dubiously, which suggested she was feeling the same effect I was. Meabh frowned at us both, but the expression lightened when she looked into the hole. Apparently she thought it looked safe, too.

"Isn't that what Alice thought before she went down the rabbit hole?"

Caitriona, sounding very nineteen, said, "Oh, what the h.e.l.l," and dove in headfirst.

Chapter Twenty-One.

Tuesday, March 21, 11:00 a.m.

I was not normally blessed with lightning-quick reflexes, but I snagged the back of Cat's shirt just before she disappeared into the hole. Meabh, thank goodness, snagged the back of mine, preventing us both from tumbling headlong into its depths. Cat came up flush with disappointment, and I wagged a finger at her without being able to work myself up to a real scolding. Truth was, I wanted to dive right after her. All that stopped me was the dire uncertainty of whether we'd be coming back. That in and of itself didn't bother me so much. I'd kind of gotten used to not knowing if I was coming back. But I'd never had somebody to say goodbye to before, not for real. I stopped wagging a finger at Caitriona, and walked a little distance away to call Morrison.

His phone rang while I tried to subtract time zones. It was something like four in the morning again, another totally uncivilized time to call, but he picked up fast, with a gruff, "I haven't heard from him. Are you okay?"

I bit my lip, which made speaking clearly difficult, but I managed to say, "Not dead yet, anyway. How's things there?"

"The usual." He sounded very awake for a man I'd presumably woken up. "Baxter wonders if you quit because of the shooting, Ray Campbell is stomping around glaring at me like it's all my fault and Holliday is preparing a lecture for when you get home. He's used it on about half of Homicide already. He made one of them cry."

The guys I worked with were generally a bunch of tough mooks. I gawked at the view, trying to imagine which of them might have been brought to tears, then heard Morrison's faint breath of laughter. "Not really, Walker. He is ready to read you the riot act, though."

"You're probably first in line to do that."

"Not as long as you come home safe. Why're you calling?"

Sadly for me, those two sentences were clearly connected. I sighed. "Because I'm off to do something stupid again, and I wanted to say..." My throat swelled up and I had a hard time swallowing.

Three little words. Not that hard to say, except in the sense of never having said them to somebody before, which somehow made them unbearably scary. There was a momentary pause before Morrison said, "Yeah, I know, Walker," like he understood the tongue-tied-ness. "Be careful, okay? I'll talk to you soon."

"No!" Panic sharpened the word and I could all but hear Morrison bring the phone back to his ear. "No," I said again. "I mean it, Morrison. I love you."

"Yeah," he said, and this time I was sure I could hear him smile. "Yeah, I know, Walker. I love you, too. Talk to you later."

It sounded so easy for him to say. I hung up, folded the phone against my chest and turned to find Meabh and Caitriona both standing there with dippy yet knowledgeable smiles. The pit aine had dug-I a.s.sumed she was behind it, since it glowed with her power-glimmered behind them, somehow as dippily pleased as they were. I muttered, "All right, all right, the show's over, let's get this wagon train rolling," and together we all jumped into the rabbit hole.

The world inverted, went black and spat us out the other side into sunlight. It was weirdly familiar: I'd entered my garden that way more than once, and overall it rea.s.sured me.

Or it did, anyway, until I recognized where we'd been spat.

Meabh's tomb stood on a near-distant hilltop. Forests lay between us and it, which was not true in my time. Cold rushed me and I turned around slowly, afraid of what I would see.

A bleak black hole lay in the mountainside right behind us. I knew that hole. It wasn't infested with aine's light. It was much more the other end of the spectrum, dark and scary and dank. Werewolves had come rolling out of that hole once upon a time, mutated monsters made at the Master's bidding. Three of them. Three women, in fact.

Stiff, afraid, barely breathing, I lifted my hands to look at them.

They were my hands, unchanged, including the bite on my forearm, which was picking up in the itching department again. Sick relief soured my stomach. I'd had the ugly idea that we'd been twisted into monsters and regurgitated into Ireland's history. And maybe we had been, but if so, at least we weren't the wolves. I'd seen them when they came out of the earth, mewling black slicks of evil, and all three of us looked perfectly normal. I sat down, looped my arms around my knees and exhaled squeakily. "Not really what I was expecting. Where are we? Or maybe when are we, I know where we are. But-"

"The cairns are as I knew them as a child," Meabh said to the distant hilltops. To the cairn that bore her own name, specifically. I glanced toward it, squinted and decided maybe it was smaller than it was in my day. "There's something about the land, Joanne," she said uncertainly before Caitriona interrupted in delight.

"Are we time traveling?"

"I'm not sure." I leaned forward to take a handful of earth, wishing it could tell me where aine had sent us.

As it happened, the fact I was leaning forward saved my life.

In my vision, the werewolves had come boiling from the cave at night, black on black, as writhing hideous little beasts that got larger and more dangerous as they rolled and wriggled from the cave mouth. But then, in my vision, Meabh had built her power circle in the northwest of the island, where she'd been born and had reigned as queen, and the Ring of Kerry was in the southwest. Visions, I was learning, were a bit on the symbolic side, and not so much with the accurate details.

Three long-legged, full-grown beasts raced from the cave, two of them leaping over my head to attack Meabh and Caitriona. The third slung itself low, coming for me, and in a moment of grace worthy of my own usual antics, tripped over its own feet and went crashing halfway down the mountain. It yelped as it bounced off rocks and b.u.mps. I had no doubt it would whip around and come back again, but in the instant the fight was met, I was given respite, and it probably saved us all.

Meabh, who I was beginning to think of as an unstoppable killing machine, managed to draw her sword before her wolf tackled her. She didn't get it up, didn't make a killing blow, but she had it out, and blocked the creature's gnashy teeth with the sword's edge. Silver shot from the blade, leaping to the wolf as if the metal had a life and will of its own. Streaks raced back from the wolf's mouth, etching along its fur until it had racing stripes. Still too close to use the sword, Meabh strong-armed the animal, grabbing its throat and throwing it off her. Half a breath later she was chasing it, but it skittered and leapt away, able to cover far more distance in a step with its four legs than she could with her two.

At the same time, Cat's wolf dragged her to the ground, teeth shredding her sweater. I threw a shield at her, forcing it against her skin so she glimmered with power, and the wolf's next tearing bite sc.r.a.ped off the magic and saved her from the same fate I was currently facing.

That gave me a bright idea, and for the second time in two days I gave myself up to the bite burning my arm.

This was not proper shifting. The pain began in the bite and exploded outward relentlessly, twisting my bones, stretching and compressing them, breaking them until I was made anew. The smart thing would've been to call on Rattler and try to push my way to a shape of my own, but my magic wasn't working so well internally. I felt pretty sure it was this or nothing, and right now I needed a something.

Besides, it felt so good. Not the shift itself, but the utter abandon that came with success. All of a sudden I didn't care anymore. I didn't care who won or who lost, just as long as I came out on top. I didn't care what the price of power was on myself or on my friends. I didn't worry about Gary, about my mother, about Meabh or Caitriona, about anything at all except the hunt. And there were three glorious b.i.t.c.hes just asking for somebody to take them down. I scrambled free of my pants-the shirt was less constricting-and went after the wolf on Caitriona. It yelped-so did Cat-as I knocked it off her, and we rolled, snarling and snapping, a few yards away.

I was bigger than she was. Whether it was a woman of the modern era versus a person of an older age or whether I'd just gotten lucky, I was bigger, and I felt her struggling for breath beneath my weight. She writhed, paws scrabbling, then heaved a mighty heave that got her out from under me. I crashed into her again, but all of a sudden she had two heads and an awful lot of claws, plus she'd grown some shining silver streaks.

Ah. Meabh's wolf had come to play. I flung myself backward and got out of reach, shoulders hunched within my shirt. I needed to learn to undress before shifting. Especially before a fight: the cloth might give my enemies extra purchase to hold me with. The thought angered me and I snarled, ready for the battle to be on again.

But the small pack scented of confusion. I was one of them, impossible as that was. They were new, fresh-born, and they were three. I was a fourth, larger, by physical definition more dominant, and moreover, unexpected, which made them weak. I snarled and stepped forward one pace, and Streaks, the larger of the two facing me, flinched. My growl was made of triumph.

Except my wolf, the clumsy one, hadn't gotten the memo, and came tearing back up the hill to slam into my side. Smaller or not, she had momentum, and I hit the dirt with a deep grunt.

All three of them were on me in a heartbeat. I twisted, snapping everywhere, and saw flashes of snarling white teeth in response. Fury blinded me. I was bigger, I was dominant, I would win. I reached for my power, ready to use it offensively if I had to.

There was no response. No hint of magic waiting to be called on. No healing power, no sense of the earth offering strength for me to lean on, no nothing. I hadn't come up that dry since I'd come half an inch from sacrificing myself on a sorcerer's altar.

A very dim idea of oh, s.h.i.t wafted after that realization, and with bone-wrenching intensity, I shifted back to my own form and waited to die.