Shaman Rises

Chapter Twenty

We hit the floor as we came back, having barely finished slithering down the power circle’s wall. I had a fistful of Coyote’s shirt, anyway, so I took advantage of being that close and took my attack to a purely physical level: a fast elbow swing to the jaw made his eyes cross and bought me four or five seconds of time. “Morrison, he killed Laurie—!”

“Figured that one out on my own, Walker.” Morrison was helping Gary to his feet, hauling him bodily toward Annie. “Take care of Bia. We’ve got this.”

If only I knew how. For a split second I considered seizing the gun Morrison carried, but even if I was sure it would work against Raven Mocker, I wasn’t willing to use it on Coyote. I forgot about the weapon and turned full attention back to Coyote just in time for him to shake off my hit and seize my lapels in both hands. He spun and slammed me into the power circle’s wall, then stretched black wings backward and smashed Gary and Morrison aside. In the same movement, he released me and flipped backward, swear to God, flipped backward from a standing position, and landed over Annie. He crouched above her, hands spread wide, and I Saw the power pour from him into her: black magic, all the gathered power of the wraiths, of a continent’s worth of genocides, of the rituals that had brought Raven Mocker to the Middle World at full strength. Annie surged to wakefulness, leanansidhe-silver burning bright. Coyote leaped back with a raw-voiced howl of delight as she came to her feet, leonine grace at odds with her visible age.

There wasn’t enough room in the circle for them to stalk each other, but they did. Power poured off them, weighing the rest of us down, pinning us in place. I had felt like that when the Master had come to Tara. I fervently hoped this would not be followed by what that had, which was to say, excruciating pain, but honestly I didn’t think the chances of that were good. But I didn’t move, and I wasn’t sure if it was because I couldn’t or just didn’t.

Gary was less conflicted, roaring again with rage. I struggled to lift a hand, staying him. “Wait.” My voice shook. “Wait. Let them.”

“Are you crazy, doll?”

“Yeah.” I looked past Annie and Coyote, who circled each other like dancers waiting for the music to bring them together. Looked past them to the storm-cloud-ridden city, to the fires and the aural flares that spoke of pain and fear. “Yeah, I’m crazy, but this was our idea, wasn’t it? To gather the power here, so it would give Seattle a break. A chance. But we’re fighting this like crazy, and the city is still getting thrashed. We have to do something. Maybe in this case, something is nothing.”

“You sure about this, Jo?”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t, but I could hardly say that to Gary, who was trusting me with something a lot more important to him than his own life. He looked at me a long minute, then nodded.

They were dancing. Ritualized steps, at least, and using identical motions of arms, heads, bodies. They never touched, though their dance became more frenetic and drew them closer to one another. I saw echoes of storytelling in their movements, thrusts and steps that reminded me of the things I’d done over the past year.

No. They didn’t just remind me of them. They were the fights and mistakes and fears I’d had. They danced genuine spirit dances, telling the story of the Master’s coming, and in this time and place, it was my story, too.

It would be absolutely stupid of me to join in, so that’s what I did.

I didn’t exactly mean to. It was just that I saw—Saw—the failures and the sorrows, but nothing of the successes. I had lost Colin Johannsen, it was true. I’d lost Faye Kirkland. But that same day I’d saved Melinda. They weren’t dancing that part, so I did. They danced the serpent; I danced the thunderbird, remembering its strength from a year ago and from just that afternoon.

They danced Barbara Bragg’s possession. Aching with regret, I danced my refusal to fight the Navajo god Begochidi, and felt their anger grow. They danced the walking dead and I threw the cauldron’s shattering back at them. On and on we went, and with every step I felt power coalescing above us, around us. I didn’t dare look out the windows, afraid to take my concentration from Annie and Coyote, but I thought—I hoped—we were bringing the bad magic clouding Seattle to us. And if we were, I would not let it be all bad, because the past year had been hell, but it had offered the best moments of my life, too.

A shocking, familiar sound bounced into my bones: my drum coming to life, heartbeat thump waking a wild joy in me. I caught a glimpse of Morrison playing it, and for the space of one breath, Coyote and Annie’s dance faltered. Breathless with hope, I took the lead.

I danced meeting Gary, all his gruff generosity and the difference it had made in my life, and they were pulled along with me as much as I’d been pulled along with them. They countered me: they danced the danger he’d faced because of me, the sword strike, the heart attack. I threw the tortoise at them, and they danced Gary’s sorrows no more. Before they could take point again, I danced my long story with Morrison, and that, they could barely touch at all. I danced our animosity and our attraction, because they were one and the same, and there was almost nothing they could do about it.

Then they seized a moment of his true anger, a moment when my mistakes had outweighed any fondness. I had endangered a civilian, and Morrison’s fury had been well deserved. They took that, strengthened it and regained their place in the dance. Not as leaders, but as competitors: I fought to hold the line, and they struggled to take it.

Without Morrison playing my drum, without Gary’s half-heard echo of the beat, I could not have stayed the course. I had been granted tremendous power, but Coyote and Annie were lackeys to a creature older than night. My gifts were the gifts of life, and life, regardless of how brightly it burned, was ephemeral. I would eventually lose, but by God I was not going to let them walk away with the win.

It got more difficult the closer we came to now. They became the werewolves, and fear sang in my bloodstream, memory of the shift, of the wild cruelty and hunting hunger coming awake. But I had been saved twice in a handful of moments there, and so I threw Cernunnos’s threat into their teeth: I was better off dead than the Master’s minion, and he was remorseless in his willingness to be the cause of that death.

Annie responded to that. Not the leanansidhe, but Annie herself, some part of her remembering Cernunnos’s embrace. She threw me a lifeline, a single thread of green magic that said continue, and after that the Hunt itself couldn’t have dragged me from the dance. She was in there, and if she was, so was Coyote. I could get them back, if I fought hard enough. I danced the banshee queen’s destruction at Gary’s hand; they mocked me with my own mother’s taking up of that mantle.

When we came to the battle at Tara, black lightning struck the Space Needle.

It wasn’t as though the Needle wasn’t designed to take lightning strikes. Any ridiculously tall building was. But there was lightning, and then there was this stuff. Darkness flashed over the restaurant just as electric-blue light might. A sizzle signaled the electronics burning out, begetting the acrid scent of burned wiring. The floor shuddered as the mechanics that kept it turning ground to a halt, and the air outside our smaller power circle turned smoky.

The second strike set something on fire, but I didn’t dare stop dancing. I was sweating now, but so were Annie and Coyote. My chest heaved and I tasted the stink of burning plastic as all three of us danced my mother’s final death, the one that ensured her spirit would never return to the cycle of reincarnation. It was a blow for both sides: great wisdom and power lost to the good guys, but she had shattered the Master’s hold on his banshees, and hurt him in the shattering. She had saved my life—again—and in so doing, left me to face him now. Neither Coyote and Annie nor I could gain the upper hand in that particular telling of my story, but in the last seconds I thrust a spear into the air, shaking it and heralding the awakening of the new Irish Mage. I felt impotent fury sluice through the dance, and counted that one in my column.

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.