The Walker Papers: Raven Calls Part 14

Caitriona stalked up and hit me in the face with a snow flurry.

Shocking cold ripped me from my stupor. I surged up, shaking my head-my whole upper half, since snake heads weren't hooked on the way human heads were-and spat a forky tongue at my cousin.

She blanched, body heat visibly paling, but she stood her ground, hands lifted in the heart of a tiny snowstorm. I hissed again, ready to have the interfering little human for lunch, but one of the dragon's still-living heads struck at her and I remembered what I was there for.

Lack of ears or not, I certainly felt Caitriona's screech as I launched myself over her head to meet the oncoming dragon. The snowstorm stopped, but I was full of vim and vigor again, ready to take the fight to the mat. Caitriona disappeared from my awareness, presumably having ducked under me and sensibly run away. The dragon and I met in midair above where she'd been, and I swallowed its head.

I didn't exactly mean to. It was just a rattlesnake's attack came in the form of gaping jaws, and none of the dragon's heads were very big. It was like the ma.s.s of a normal one-headed dragon's head had been split into three, which meant my head was bigger than its, and my mouth opened a whole lot farther. It all made for an unfortunately literal head-on collision.

For an instant there we both froze, the dragon mid-fiery-belch, me as bug-eyed and freaked out as a snake could get. Then the dragon finished its burp and fire shot down my throat. I had no voice to scream with, and even if I did, I had a mouthful of dragon stifling the sound. Pain and outrage were expressed by my rattle suddenly sounding like a buzz saw preparing to cut the world apart. I thought swallowing fire like that should probably kill me. I also kind of thought, well, insides are wet, probably it'll just quench the fire, and by some faint grace, my power responded accordingly. Possibly being shapeshifted gave me access to my internal magics, since I was no longer fighting the good fight against the werewolf bite. There was an argument, then, for staying shifted until we got out of Gancanagh's territory alive.

Which was a questionable outcome, just then. I had no incisors, just two great long fangs, so biting the thing's head off wasn't an option. I was grateful for that, really. Swallowing fire was bad enough. I could not imagine the grossitude of a gullet filled with dragon blood.

The dragon, not at all happy with having one of its two remaining heads swallowed, began thrashing and bellowing. It had feet. I didn't. It could get purchase on the ground. I couldn't.

I went whipping around, hanging on to a dragon's neck for dear life. My rattle was going full bore thanks to the dragon's ministrations: I, certainly, wasn't the one shaking it. The peat-bog earth was softer than I expected, my body whacking divots out of it as I was slammed up and down. The remaining head kept lashing at me, trying to break through my shields and scales with teeth or fire, it didn't care. I wanted to bite it, too, but I was afraid to let go of the head I had. It'd taken a couple minutes to suffocate the other one. I didn't want to release this one too soon and earn only a reprieve, not a victory, against the beast.

Power tingled along the entire length of my spine. I opened my eyes-I hadn't even known they were closed-and saw absolutely nothing of where it was coming from. Magic didn't have a visible component most of the time, even if I wasn't relying on a snake's heat vision. I could See power in a sort of uninteresting grayscale when snakeshifted, but I was more than a little concerned about what triggering the Sight might do when I was eyeball deep in dragon and Rattler was somewhere in the dark of my mind making sure I didn't lose control over the shape I currently held. I got bashed into the ground again, bit down harder and decided unless something actively attacked I would a.s.sume the upsurge in magic use was from somebody on my team.

Meabh justified that decision by sweeping in and decapitating the head I'd captured. The headless neck fell away and the remaining living dragon head screamed while the rattlesnake part of my brain automatically swallowed. The human part gagged and choked, but it was too late. I had eaten a dragon head. Whole. That was going to cause some serious, serious problems when I turned back into a human, which idea was horrible enough that I gagged again.

Snakes, it turned out, could regurgitate. I'd had no idea. I had also never been so grateful to learn something so disgusting. I spat out a dragon's head, stared at it and shuddered all the way down the considerable length of my body. I could've stayed there the rest of the day, gagging and being grossed out, but Meabh yelled. The sound reverberated off my skin and I glanced up to see her charging the last dragon head with all the enthusiasm in the world. I sprang after her, foregoing the whole biting scenario to wind myself around the beast's body and haul its head back to expose what I hoped was a vulnerable throat. I was no boa constrictor, but snakes were all muscle, and the dragon was in sorry shape. Meabh, still yelling, struck off the remaining head, and the entire monster collapsed into waves of deep red, almost black, magic. Dissolved, just like the Red Cap had done. I landed in the dirt and magic with a crash while Meabh staggered a few steps back, her body heat peaking and fading as adrenaline crested, then drained away.

Rattler whispered Sssuccesss at the back of my mind, then nudged me. I clung to the idea of my own shape, and slid toward it, shedding the rattlesnake shape as I became myself again. Pain flared in my arm again and I clutched it. I thought you said success?

We defeated the dragon, did we not? he asked irritably, which was fair enough. I sent a wave of apology at him, and he slipped away, leaving a sense of weariness behind. I'd been asking too much of him the past few days. We needed a break, he and I.

A break we weren't likely to get. Caitriona said, "You took off all your clothes and turned into a snake."

"Yes. Yes, I did. And you..." I didn't even know what she'd done. I peered at her through the gloom, hoping for an answer.

She came toward me cautiously, her arms full of my clothes as she mumbled, "Sure and I'll just set it on fire with me mind," in embarra.s.sment, and dropped my clothes. I scrambled into them, trying hard not to wonder if Gancanagh was still around and watching.

"You said Auntie Sheila'd said magery was about spell casting and preparation," Cat said. "I got to thinking the way I'd said it, set it on fire with me mind, so many times, and I thought maybe that was an enchantment in itself. And it was so warm, like the peat was roasting, and I started thinking heat into snow, that's the way it should go, and then it was on me lips and-and-"

"And then she went without shield or sword to draw you back from stupor," Meabh finished with great satisfaction. A far cry from the woman who'd been annoyed at Caitriona's sudden maturity into adepthood a few hours ago, she now all but overflowed with pride. "My granddaughters are warriors indeed."

"We are, but Cat's wiped out." I was only half-dressed, but I managed to half catch my cousin just as her eyes crossed. She didn't faint, but she thumped down with a woozy groan, and I called another pulse of healing power up for her.

It responded as well as it had done earlier-external magics were still okay, apparently-but it enflamed the werewolf bite again, too. I bared my teeth at it. I wanted the itch to go away. More, I didn't want to give in again to the bone-deep nagging impulse to transform, and the deeper we went into the Master-tainted land, the harder I thought it would be to stay on the straight and narrow.

Caitriona looked healthier when she lifted her gaze. "Why does that keep happening to me?"

"Magic comes from two places. Within, which is what you're using now, and which is exhausting, and without, which is what we did with the power circle. You totally saved my bacon, but try not to do that again until I've shown you how to build a circle. I'm thinking maybe mages need one even more than shamans." Or at least more than this particular shaman, but I wasn't going to get into that. "Meabh, what did you do? The sword wasn't working against the drag-"

"The Aillen Trechend," Cat said before I'd even finished the word. Apparently she didn't want dragons to exist any more than I wanted, say, vampires to. I paused obligingly, waiting for her explanation, and she gave a stiff shrug. "It's the beast that beleaguers Tara. It rises from the..." She trailed off to give first me, then the dank, warm peat bog a wide-eyed look. "From the bowels of the earth to savage the sacred circle every twenty-three years. Or it did do, in times gone by. Auntie Sheila always told me the old stories about it and all the other monsters. Was she...?"

"Preparing you? Yeah, I think maybe she was." A pang struck me. I might've been the one Mom told all the stories to, if things had been very different. Caitriona saw the regret in my expression and looked uncomfortable, obviously searching for something to say. I shook my head. "No grudges, Cat. It's played out this way. We'll go with it. I'm just glad you were there for her to teach."

Her shy smile was worth letting that regret go. I smiled back, then exhaled and looked toward Meabh. "So what'd you do? The sword couldn't touch the...Aileen Treygent...at first." Irish p.r.o.nunciation was not my strong suit, but neither of my family members chose to correct me.

"I called on the power of the land, as I did to bind the wolves. A power circle, Joanne, to guide the sword's strength. Against mortal enemies the blade is true, but when the taint it fights is older than its forging..." Meabh shook her head.

I finished getting dressed as she spoke, and asked a question I didn't much want the answer to: "How much older?"

"You already know." Gancanagh spoke from beside me, nearly earning himself a punch in the nose by doing so. He gave me a wink, a once-over and a sly smile, and I did punch him, because Morrison, who he still reminded me of, wouldn't have been so cra.s.s. He clutched his upper arm where I'd hit him, looking crestfallen, and as if hoping to get back in my good graces, said, "The Aillen Trechend has risen from the depths since the ard ri Bres was stolen from time. This is a blow, gwyld. This is a blow against the dark one."

Morrison wouldn't have called me gwyld, either. I almost started to like Gancanagh for that. For differentiating himself. Then I remembered he'd led us smack into the dragon's jaws, and again lifted a fist to hit him. "You said evil's lair!" he blurted before I could. "Not Aibhill's! And we'd reached evil's lair, had we not? Even the mistress of banshees places guards between herself and the world, and her domain lies just beyond. You don't want to be without me, not yet."

I didn't lower my fist. I did look beyond my erstwhile boss at Caitriona and Meabh, to see what they thought. They both looked like I should go back to my original plan of stringing him up by his toes, but Meabh, rolling her jaw, said, "He may still be useful."

"As cannon fodder," Caitriona suggested darkly.

I turned back to Gancanagh with the fist still c.o.c.ked. "One false move, buster. One false move."

Green glinted in his gaze as he lowered his eyes, then led us once more into the darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Four.

Caitriona sidled up to me as we left the dragon's dusted remains. "You turned into a snake."

She'd said that once before. On the other hand, by all reasonable expectation she should be gibbering like a madman about now, so probably a little repet.i.tion wasn't that big a deal. "I have a peculiar repertoire of talents."

"Will I turn into a snake?"

"I seriously doubt it. Even if mages can accomplish shapeshifting, Ireland doesn't have snakes. It probably wouldn't be high on your list of things to turn into." I thought of beached flounders and Coyote's warning about how a shifter should always have a clear idea of their target animal, and amended, "But if it's something you want to change into, then yeah, probably you could. a.s.suming it's in the skill set."

"What about an elk? One of the big ones, the Irish elk?" Hopeful, she extended her hands to approximate the rack on an Irish elk, which was about twice as long as her armspan.

"You'd make a really tiny elk. You saw how big a snake I was? That's because as far as I can tell, ma.s.s doesn't change. I bet one of those baby Irish elk weighs as much as you do, so that's about as big as you'd be. A hundred and sixty-five pounds of rattlesnake is awe-inspiring. A hundred and sixty-five pounds of baby elk wouldn't be so much so."

I saw her do the conversion in her head before offense flew across her face. "I do not weigh twelve stone!"

"No, not you, me. You probably weigh, what, one...fifteen?" I figured it was more like one-thirty, but no one in their right mind ever guessed a woman's weight at what they thought it really was.

She eyed me, doing the conversion again, then resentfully allowed, "A bit more, maybe."

"Okay, so you'd be a..." I was pretty sure a stone equaled fourteen pounds. I did the conversion myself and came up with, "An eight-and-a-half-stone elk. Not exactly the six-foot-tall behemoth you're imagining, right? But I could be wrong, maybe there's a spell that lets you change ma.s.s. You're handling this pretty well."

"I half think I'm dreaming," she admitted. "That it's some wild story Auntie Sheila's telling me, and I'll wake up snug and sound in me own bed. But it's not, is it. Why did ye tell us none of this at the funeral?"

"My life wasn't like this then. It only started after I got home. Besides, I'd have never dreamed anyone would believe me. I didn't know my mother very well. I had no idea she might have softened you up for accepting this kind of weirdness. Do you watch Star Trek?"

Caitriona blinked, rightfully bewildered by the segue. "Sure, who hasn't seen an episode or two?"

"Good. You know the ship's shields? You're going to need something like that to protect yourself with."

"Like you've been using on us, all blue and shimmery?"

"Except yours won't be blue. That's a reflection of my power. Of my aura, really. Mine's blue and silver. Yours is more red and green."

"Ah sure," she said in disgust, "sure and I'm a tartan so."

I laughed, which made Gancanagh look back at me with a full-court-press smile. I bared my teeth at him and he deflated, which somehow made the light dim even further. I checked the impulse to catch up to him and say it was all okay, and instead focused hard on Caitriona. "Do the Irish even have tartans? I thought it was all about the sweaters, here."

"The Aran clan sweaters? That was a marketing ploy." She took no notice of my dismayed gawk as she went on. "We've a few tartans, but not like the Scots. I wouldn't know the O'Reilly tartan if it bit me," she admitted. "How do I build shields?"

"It's a really internal thing, and probably hiking through the heart of the Master's realm isn't the best place to learn. I'd hate for him to get a thread inside your shields, because it's a b.i.t.c.h to root those out."

"You sound like you know what you're talking about."

"In the case of letting unfortunate people inside my shields, yeah, I do. This would be a good time to learn from my mistakes." We'd covered a lot of distance while chatting, but I was starting to get worried. The clock was running out, and I had no way to tell, down beneath the earth, just how close we were pushing it. "Gancanagh?"

"What do you want, Walker?"

I tripped over my own feet, bit my tongue and righted myself with a curse. "Stop that. Don't use my name. Not like that. You are not Morrison. How much farther do we have to go?"

He turned with a finger against his lips: shh. "Do you not hear it?"

I hadn't, of course, because Cat and I had been talking. As soon as we went silent, though, I did hear it: wailing, not unlike the Lia Fail. Only that had been one voice, the voice of the land, whereas this was many. Twenty-five, at a guess, a.s.suming Aibhill was not only mistress of the banshees but a banshee herself. Hairs stood up on my neck and arms and I dragged to a halt.

Truth was, I didn't want to go into banshee stomping grounds. I'd been stomped the one time I'd really gone up against one of Aibhill's blades, and having a touchy aos si and a newborn mage along with me this time didn't seem like it evened the odds enough. "A battle plan might be a good idea here."

"Have ye the lay of the land?" Meabh asked Gancanagh with a note of doubt.

"She'll be in her tower on the hill." Whether it was due to my objection to him sounding like Morrison or because he was talking to Meabh, he sounded more Irish again, for which I was grateful. Morrison didn't put his sentences together the way the Irish did, which made it easier to remember the handsome fellow in front of me wasn't my captain.

Meabh, however, wasn't concerned with his linguistic choices. She grimaced and loosened her sword in its sheath. "And will there be an easy route up that hill, or will it be a battle every step of the way?"

"It can't be." This time the grim note was in my voice. "We can't take on four and twenty banshees, not unless they're already baked in a pie. Even if they were pushovers, which they're not, the odds are too bad. We're going to have to sneak." I prodded at the edges of my power, wondering if I dared call up the invisibility cloak. Of course, we'd already pulled off shapeshifting and weather witchery, so probably I was being too cautious. And if I thought about it, the time for caution was long past. Caution would have been good just before I'd triggered the Sight at Tara and sent us tumbling through history. Caution would have been good when I dragged Gary home with me instead of letting him go off and get himself killed fighting the Master at Knocknaree. Caution would have been good time and again, but right now we were eyeball deep in the bad guy's territory, so caution had clearly been thrown to the wind a while ago and I should now seize the day.

"Joanne," Caitriona said nervously, "you're glowing again."

I didn't even look. I just extended the power that had built up with my silent rant and wrapped everybody, even Gancanagh, in it. My arm itched, but my cohorts all faded from my vision instantly.

That was great, except totally useless in terms of sneaking around as a unit. Muttering, I started reeling power back in to try again-I did not want to have us wandering around visually separated from one another-but a thrill shot through Gancanagh and I felt it. I mean, really felt it, like he, a creature of magic himself, had a visceral, connected reaction to being swathed in more magic. It was baby oil and ma.s.sages and a promise of getting down to the good stuff, for him, and it hit me with a heart-knocking thump of desire at a level usually reserved for hormone-addled teenagers. Then, despite us all being invisible, he found his way to me and pressed up against me smelling all Morrison-y and delicious and absolutely full of wicked intentions.

My mouth went dry. His, soft against my throat, did not. I swallowed and he purred, warm comforting sound that vibrated my skin, which was just about already vibrating on its own. I couldn't get so much as a squeak or a whimper out, mostly because my brain was busy betraying me by thinking there was something kinda dangerous and s.e.xy about an invisible tryst, and making any sort of sound would notify Caitriona and Meabh as to what we were up to.

Meabh said, "Granddaughter," in a tone that suggested she already knew exactly what we were up to. Then, even more coldly, she said, "Ailill," and I remembered she'd already killed her lover once for s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around on her. Cat hadn't said what she'd done to Ailill's girlfriend. I shoved Gancanagh away, gasped for breath and croaked, "We're going now."

His disappointment roiled through me and I staggered away, hoping distance would alleviate some of the one-two punch of psychic desire. It didn't help at all. Swearing under my breath, I forged onward, following the sounds of the banshee cries until Cat, in a small voice, said, "Should we be moving?" from somewhere behind me. "I can't see ye's."

I stopped. Dropped my chin to my chest. Turned back, and went back to concentrating on the idea of an invisibility bubble surrounding all of us, not each of us. My shields, which that particular trick rode on, slowly slithered away from each individual and met up with themselves so we were all encompa.s.sed within them. "Sorry. I got distracted."

Meabh gave Gancanagh a black look and me an even blacker one, but Caitriona just ran to catch up. I marched along beside her, feeling increasingly crabby. I wanted my magic to be nice and comprehensible like it had been a week ago. I wanted the d.a.m.ned bite, which now that it had started itching again, was beginning to drive me to distraction, to be healed. I wanted lots of things, most of which I wasn't going to get, though I would probably get this one: "We should probably be quiet. I have no idea how well banshees hear."

"Not so well, over all that shrieking. The poison's growing worse, isn't it, Granddaughter?" Meabh inserted herself between me and Gancanagh, who was already several body s.p.a.ces away from me.

I clutched my arm, trying not to wince at the wave of pain that induced. "How can you tell?"

"You're flushed." We shared a moment of not looking at Gancanagh, but really, I was afraid he wasn't the reason for the heat building up in me anyway.

Rattler had gotten me through the fight with the dragon, but I'd lost ground during the transformations. My arm was inflamed, not just the forearm but all the way to the shoulder. The joint hurt, and my collarbone was starting to feel fragile. I didn't want to think about what would happen when the poison got to my heart. I entertained the idea that freeing Sheila and getting Gary back would be my heroic last stand, but then I caught another whiff of Morrison's scent off Gancanagh and snapped, "I'll be fine," because there was no way I was giving up my reunion with the Almighty Morrison.

Meabh took a breath to argue, but just then we stepped out of the darkness into blinding afternoon sunlight. All four of us lurched to a stop, me and Caitriona turning to look at the gloom we'd left. There'd been no warning at all of the transition between light and dark, which was impossible, except we were traveling through fairy realms and the rules apparently didn't apply. We glanced at each other, then shrugged and looked back at the monstrous hill in front of us.

"The Rock," Caitriona said after a moment, grimly.

I had to agree with the grim. The hill rose at a steep but climbable angle, green gra.s.s patched with ma.s.sive stones and stretches of bare earth. If it was anything like the real-world Rock of Cashel-and it wasn't the real one, I was sure of that, because we'd been walking a few hours at the most, and Tipperary really was a long way-if it was like the real one, there was a much less steep approach on the other side. Of course, getting to it meant hiking around the hill's foot, during which time it was always possible something would breach the shields and we'd be discovered. Going up the back side would probably be faster. A short gray wall cordoned off the hill's peak, and behind the wall a tower shot toward the sky. A big blocky tower, square and impregnable-looking. "Well," I said half under my breath, "it's our job to pregnate it. Let's go."

About forty feet up the hill I revised my opinion of its climbability and whether it was faster to go this way than hike around. It wasn't, thank G.o.d, as tall as Croagh Patrick, but it was steeper and rougher underfoot, reminding me of the Midwestern badlands for the second time in a day. No one in their right mind would take this route to attack the castle above. A single individual could hold off dozens of men with nothing more than a bow and arrow or some hot pitch. My left arm burned every time I used it, so it became more of an aching dead weight than help climbing, and by the time we reached the wall, I was wheezing.

The wall, of course, wasn't as short as it had seemed from below. It was taller than I was. Taller than Meabh, even. We stared at it, then at each other, and she made stirrups with her hands to offer me a lift. I shook my head and made my own stirrups. "You first. I'm not going to be so good for hauling people up."

She pursed her lips, but nodded and stepped into my hands. I moved as fast as I could, not letting myself think about the roar of agony from my left side as I boosted her upward. Gratifyingly, she all but flew to the wall's top, partly because she was lighter than she looked and partly because I was d.a.m.ned strong, thanks to all the years I'd spent working on cars. She had no idea how much of an admission it was to have sent her up first, because normally I'd have been able to swing any of the three up to the top of the wall without a problem.

"I could go last," Cat volunteered, but I shook my head again.

"I'm tallest with the most reach. It'll be easier for Meabh to grab me than you." I started to make stirrups again, but Gancanagh, to my surprise, intervened and tossed Cat up instead. Then he made a stirrup for me, and when I began the same protest again, shook his head. "Trust me."

"On a cold day in h.e.l.l." But I stepped into the stirrup anyway, and he flung me toward Meabh with far more grace and strength than I expected. I didn't know why: Morrison, whose build he appeared to share, was certainly strong enough to lift me. But I had this idea that under the Morrison image Gancanagh was a slight little thing, and therefore shouldn't be able to fling me around.

Nor should he be able to fling himself around, by that logic, but he leapt up the wall with the insouciance of a cat, which made him seem really truly not human for the first time. He caught me gawking and winked, and I bit back another schoolgirl giggle. Not even Cernunnos made me want to lick him quite so much. Fairy magic, I decided, was dangerous.

Well, on a good day, so was mine. We all thumped down on the other side of the wall-a longer drop than I expected, as the hill ran down against it-and peered up at Aibhill's castle.

There was a front door on the side facing us. That made perverse sense, particularly since the other side of the hill was a less treacherous climb than the side we'd come up. No reason to invite enemies in through the easiest access point. "I don't suppose we just go knock."

"Sure and she'd invite us right in," Caitriona breathed. "What's the worst a banshee can do?"

"Flay your soul from your skin with its voice."

Her eyes bugged. I shrugged stiffly. My left arm didn't want to move at all. I didn't look at it for fear I'd see a wolf's paw dangling from the shredded remains of my coat sleeve. Realistically I didn't think I had a lot of choice coming up: I was afraid I'd have to go all lupine again to have even the slightest chance of us coming out ahead when we fought Aibhill.

The very thought just about talked myself into turning tail and running. Instead I made a dash for the castle's front door.

There were two doors, actually, once I got close enough to see clearly. One was ma.s.sive, large enough to let half an army out at once. The other was set inside the big one and was normal-size. It had one of those little barred windows for checking out incomers before they came in, but no one was standing guard. Instead a big h.o.a.ry-looking lock made a promise that we wouldn't be getting in anytime soon. I sagged as the other three caught up to me, but Caitriona glanced at the lock, sniffed and pulled a jackknife out of her jeans pocket.

Less than sixty seconds later the lock popped open and Cat folded the knife up, eminently satisfied with herself. "What?" she said to our wide-eyed admiration. "Me brothers used to try to keep me out of the shed they stored girly mags in. I thought they were hiding chocolates."

Breathless with astonished laughter, I shoved through the door and the others spilled after me. Gancanagh whisked it shut behind him. We all pushed ourselves up against the big doors as if we were hidden by pressing against them, though in fact we stood inside a gra.s.sy courtyard with not a hint of cover in sight. Still, every one of us was bright with triumph at getting in. All we had to do now was find Aibhill, kill her and rescue my mother.