Shaman Rises

Chapter Twenty-One

After the year I’d had, I would have thought I was beyond being surprised by much of anything. I would have been wrong, because I just had not seen that coming. I should have. In the instant that his big linebacker self lumbered between me and birthing Master, I knew I should have seen that coming, and I just flat-out hadn’t. I crashed against Gary’s broad back and felt the shock of the Master slamming into him. Every hair on my body stood out, every nerve went to pin-prickles, and Gary howled from the bottom of his gut.

So did I. Horror, disbelief and anger all ripped out of me in a single word: “GARY!”

He turned, awkward with the burden he now carried, and casually backhanded me.

I flew across the little power circle, blinded by tears that were only half brought on by pain. The circle caught me and dumped me on the floor. I landed on my feet somehow, the stupid coat flaring and settling gracefully around my legs.

About two seconds had passed. Coyote and Annie still didn’t know what had happened, their faces drawn with exhaustion and bodies trembling. They leaned on each other, ghosts of their former selves. Annie looked near to death’s door, and Coyote like he could vomit.

Morrison did know what had happened. His blue eyes widened with shock, face as pale as his silvering hair as he launched himself into motion and arrested that motion just as quickly. He didn’t know where to go, gaze torn between Gary and me.

And Gary. My beloved Gary stood nearly in the center of the circle, bending light in toward himself. Everything bent in toward him: the circle, the light; even the floor dipped with his weight, tilting it so Morrison and the others started sliding toward him. I clenched my gut and spread my toes inside their boots, like I could keep myself from being pulled toward him, too. He shone with blackness that sucked the color away, leaving the world dim and dull and thin-looking. I didn’t need the Sight to see any of that, and I didn’t want the Sight for what I did need to see.

It came to the fore anyway, and I looked into Gary’s tarnished soul.

All the rumbling V8 silver that I knew so well was corroded and black. It crumbled, flaking into pieces that didn’t disappear, but collected around Gary’s feet, deepening the floor’s downward tilt. There was no garden left, just a wasteland streaked by blood so dark I could hardly tell it from the burned earth. My heartbeat was erratic, pulling out of my chest, like it was trying to go smear itself across the landscape. It made an aching empty place beneath my sternum, one that spread deeper and made my stomach feel sick and hollow, just the opposite of how the shamanic magic within me had felt when it came back to life. That had been a fluttering, pushing thing, trying to live. This was trying to kill me. I tried hard not to think that letting it might be okay, and tried even harder to pull myself out of looking into that endless deathscape.

I wasn’t sure I’d have been able to, if Gary hadn’t moved. His knuckles, where he’d hit me, were rough and bruised. He lifted that hand and rubbed them, then raised gleaming black eyes to mine. I jolted, seeing the real, Middle, world again, and then almost wishing I wasn’t. Even if his eyes had been the right color, I’d have known that what was within Gary’s shape was not my friend. The thing inside him knew nothing of gentleness or kindness, much less love. Only death and hunger saw me. Assessed me, sizing me up as a curiosity, as a danger and as a meal.

The corner of his lip curled back in a false smile, and the voice that spoke was all the worse for being Gary’s own: “Hello, doll.”

Somehow that was worse than his eyes, worse than the bleak wreck of his soul. Air rushed out of me like I’d been hit in the gut, and on the breath I said, “Oh, no. No, you don’t get to—”

“Ain’t this how you always saw me, sweetheart? An old man.” Gary smiled again, and even though I knew his teeth were false, I was still surprised they hadn’t gotten vampire-sharp and pointed. “Looks to me like this is about perfect. You an’ me, doll, together again for the first time. Ain’t that how you say it?”

Ice shot up my spine and over my arms in an uncontrollable shudder. “You don’t want him. You want me.”

“Reckon that’s right.” He started to move, the first steps as if he was testing out the body. The floor shifted under him, like his presence was a black hole, dragging everything down into it, but it recovered—mostly—when his weight shifted to a new place. “On the other hand, this fella’s given me a lot of trouble, and I figure I can make him last awhile.” Gary’s gaze snapped from me to Annie. The smile happened again, bare teeth with no emotional content behind it, and his voice dropped about an octave. “And you. Sweetheart.”

Annie didn’t look good in the first place, her bones sharp beneath thin papery skin, but she looked worse after those three words. Like all her hope had been sucked away, just like that. Like a lifetime of fighting had turned out useless in the end, and like that was more than she could bear.

Coyote put a hand on her shoulder and—both stupidly and admirably—called healing magic, weary dune and soft sky blue shoring Annie up enough that an unnatural stillness overtook Gary before he pulled his lips back from his teeth again. “Raven Mocker.”

“No.” Coyote’s voice shook. I had to admire him for being able to use that word in the Master’s presence. I wasn’t sure I could have.

Gary guffawed, which should have been a comforting, familiar sound. Instead, it was loud and empty, echoing around the restaurant in search of something to give it meaning. It found nothing and faded. Gary’s face had never shown a hint of real humor. “No? It’s kinda late to say no now, Raven Mocker. You brought me through. After so long, someone brought me through.” His s’s got a little sibilant there, like Rattler when he was excited about something. Gary had never done that.

Not that I was under any illusions that Gary was in control, or maybe even alive. I couldn’t See anything of him in the black desert that had once been his garden. Even from outside, the Master’s weight was incredible, still pulling all of us toward him. It was hard to imagine Gary hadn’t just been crushed beneath it. It was hard to imagine there was any point in trying to fight something that distorted gravity in its immediate area. I was used to being overwhelmed. I had been pretty much since the moment Cernunnos and his incredible, vibrant presence had ridden into my life. The Master was that overpowering, only much, much darker.

“I reject you,” Coyote whispered. He didn’t sound very convincing. “I was so, so stupid—”

“That’s enough, kid.” Gary closed a big fist loosely and Coyote’s voice cut off. More than his voice: a short choking sound emerged and his face went red, then pale. Coyote’s hands went to his throat, scrabbling to find something there that he could pull away, but there wasn’t anything, just Gary’s—the Master’s—will, strangling him.

My own voice broke thin and high. “What’re you using, the Force?”

For just a heartbeat, less than a heartbeat, startlement crossed Gary’s face. That’d been one of the first things I’d ever said to him, when he’d driven out of the Sea-Tac parking lot while turned around in his seat to have a conversation with me. Whether the Master remembered it or Gary did, it broke through, and in that instant he lost interest in Coyote again. Coyote dropped, hands splaying against the dipped floor while he tried to drag in deep breaths of air quietly.

Gary cocked his head at an unnatural, or at least unnatural to Gary, angle as he turned back to me. Then he moved it to another angle, the motion between looking weirdly snakelike. “The Force. Reckon I am, darlin’. I reckon I am.”

My mouth went dry. “I’ve got a hell of a lot more Force than Gary does.”

“Really want me outta here, doncha, sweetheart? Mmm-mmm.” Gary shook his head, the same serpentine motion. I guessed that made sense. The Master had an affinity for snakes. I thought nervously of Rattler, and told that part of my brain to shut up. Then I reconsidered, because I already felt like I was thinking too slowly. Way, way too slowly. I had to get the Master out of Gary before something awful happened, and given that Coyote was still struggling to breathe, awful was already on the line. I needed all the parts of my brain that were willing to think at all, even if they were thinking stupid things. Rattler was my spirit guide, not the Master’s back door into my skull.

That, I realized with a mixture of hope and alarm, might even be a useful thought. Rattler?

My rattlesnake spirit animal was not a creature prone to saying, You have got to be kidding me, but as he came to life at the back of my skull, I had the distinct impression that was what he was thinking.

Well, can we? Can we trick him that way? I demanded. Can you be that sneaky?

I, he hissed, can be far sneakier than you, ssssilly sssshhaaaman. But this is foolishnessss.

I had absolutely no doubt he was right, but I didn’t have any better ideas, either. Bide time, Rattler ordered, and with the word time, my walking stick spirit awakened, as well. I felt her there, not speaking, only waiting. Well, if anybody knew when the time was right to strike, it was a snake guided by a time traveler. I bided. Bode. Whatever. I waited, trusting my guides, and aloud, croaked, “You bet your ass I want you out of there. I don’t even know how you can fit in Gary. He’s only human.”

Gary laughed again, that sharp blank sound. “Aw, c’mon, sweetheart, doncha think better of the old man than that? Maybe he ain’t magic-born, but he’s been steeped in the stuff his whole life. And more, he has stood against me, thrown time in my teeth, stolen from me—” He didn’t sound like Gary anymore. His voice had lightened, resonating instead of rumbling, and the words were different from the ones Gary would choose. I wondered if it was easiest for the Master to use the familiar cadences of the host body’s usual speaking patterns, and if he only saved his own vocal idiosyncrasies for the really important moments. Like now, as he spat the last of his words and jabbed a finger toward Annie. “Thou. Art. Mine.”

“Never.” Annie lifted her chin, her rejection far more confident than Coyote’s. “Not in all the years of my life, and not in the hereafter.” She got to her feet as she spoke, slim and defiant. “You think we ordinary humans can’t stand against you, but that’s all most of us ever do. You can kill me, but you can’t break me, and you’re too late to make me yours. I belong to Cernunnos now, if I belong to anyone besides my husband. You lost.”

Gary’s lips peeled back to reveal the awful smile again. I knew people conveyed a lot of subtext with their mouths, but I didn’t usually notice it so much. I wished I didn’t have to notice now. “I have him,” he said to Annie. “Would you like to feel his heartbeat? How it races? How it pounds? How long can it continue this way without giving up? Without bursting?”

Way back in the back of my throat, where I was sure it wouldn’t come out, I made the shape of the word forever. Because the Master was right: Gary was steeped in magic. He’d ridden with Cernunnos. He’d fought with me and with Brigid. He’d chased down a demon or two in his time, and perhaps most importantly, he had two spirit animals, one of whom had come to him after a heart attack, to offer him strength and longevity. Buried in there somewhere was the staid, steady tortoise, its protective shell still holding in place. As long as that creature was with Gary in some way, I had no doubt at all that his body could take what the Master meted out.

The very brave part of me thought maybe the same was true of his soul, but that part apparently hadn’t taken a good look at the pitted ruin of his garden.

“I may lose, too,” Annie said quietly, “but humans do. We live and we love and we die. If Gary dies, I’ll be devastated. Of course I will. But you will still have lost me, and I think you probably take that as a far greater insult than bowing to the inevitability of death is to me. I was a nurse,” she reminded him. “I’ve seen this happen hundreds of times. You, on the other hand...” Somehow she managed a smile. A real one, faint but gentle, an agonizing comparison to the emotionless thing Gary kept spreading across his face. “I think you’re not used to losing at all, but right now you’re standing between the only four people on earth who have defeated you in living memory. And you think we should be afraid?”

When he tried to seize the breath from her body, I was ready. Shields leaped to life, clinging to Annie like an ethereal wedding gown. The Master’s black power hit so hard I swayed with it, but Annie stood straight and tall and not just a little arrogant. I wished she’d been around for all of our adventures, because I could’ve used her kind of positive thinking plenty of times over the past year.

Gary whirled toward me again, big hands curled like claws. The Master was getting better at using the body: everything about the action was sinuous and easy and horrible. I tried to match Annie’s expression of fearless arrogance, but he hadn’t let up on the pressure he was bearing down on Annie, and it was starting to feel like a tidal wave. I thought keeping my feet was doing pretty well.

Actually, I thought it was way more than just doing pretty well. I thought it was enormously unlikely. The Master had flayed me from the inside out a number of times back in Ireland, and all he was doing here was trying to deflate a few lungs. I dragged in a breath like the idea made it hard to breathe, and forced words out under the weight of his presence. “What do you want?”

“You really gotta ask?”

I really didn’t like him sounding like Gary again. Trying to fight something that looked like Gary was going to be bad enough. At least if he sounded different it was easier to remember that my friend wasn’t the one in control. Not that I was going to forget, but it didn’t damned well help. Maybe getting him to talk more would bring out the other voice, the one he had to think about to use, so I managed a sick curve of my lips. “I’ve never been all that good at figuring things out.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” He prowled forward, never lessening the crush of power directed at Annie. She held her ground like it was nothing, but my head was starting to hurt. I didn’t know how long I could protect her. Something was going to have to change, and fast, or he’d just obliterate me. And then everybody I loved. He stalked around me and I tried not to watch, pretending a cold chill didn’t skitter over my whole body at having him behind me. Gary could be graceful, but he didn’t move like that. I wished he’d stop.

He did stop, right behind me. Close enough that I felt his breath against my neck when he spoke. “Blood. Fear. Pain. Death.”

I shivered like the stereotypical leaf in the wind, but also found a snort of derision brave enough to make itself heard. “Yeah, I know that. That’s what you feed on. Death magic, woo woo.” Ah yes, sarcasm, my old friend. The only thing to get me through a lot of stupid, dangerous situations. It never helped, except in making me feel just a tiny bit better. “No, seriously, for a big scary death magic you’re also kind of lame, aren’t you? All these avatars and servants. You don’t do anything yourself. They just feed you from afar, because you can’t even manifest a body. But c’mon, guy like you, what do you even need a body for? They break easily, and it’s not like you can’t get people to do your bidding.”

I carefully didn’t look at Coyote during that last bit, but in not looking at him, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Morrison’s face twitch like he couldn’t believe I was baiting the Master, and also like he couldn’t believe that he couldn’t believe it. It was Schrödinger’s twitch, neither believing nor disbelieving until we got out of here alive. I was glad to provide him with some thread of humor in the midst of this mess, but I also really wished he would just grab Coyote and Annie and run away.

“Gotta have a body to fill up, doll. Can’t get sated if you got no stomach. ’Sides.” Gary came around to face me, eyes glinting black. “You got one thing right. It ain’t this body I want.”

“Then take this one!”

A collective sound of dismay emanated from Morrison, Coyote and Annie. Gary’s attention strayed to them, which was exactly where I didn’t want it, so I shoved him. Put a hand on his shoulder and shoved, which did get his attention, but also shot black pain through my palm and up my arm. It actually had color, that agony: despite my shields it slid right up through my veins, discoloring them. I gasped and knotted my other hand around my forearm, cutting off the sluicing black magic.

When I looked up, Gary’s vicious grin was three inches from my face. “Sweet, darlin’. You’re a better fit, no doubt, but you’re not thinking things through.” He moved that grin even closer, as if he’d kiss me with it, and for a wild moment I wondered if he’d been harboring some secret truth under all the teasing we’d undergone about being a couple. From right there, half an inch from my mouth, he whispered, “I live on pain, babe. You think I’m gonna take you first, when everybody you love is standin’ right here? Don’t be stupid, Jo. We’re just gettin’ started.”