Shaman Rises (The Walker Papers) (5 page)

This had all started with a crypt, or darned near, anyway. Me and Gary, we’d gone hunting for a lady I’d seen from an airplane, and we’d shoved the top off a church altar that we’d started thinking of as a crypt as soon as Gary had wondered out loud if maybe a vampire was in it. I had sworn up and down that there was no such thing as vampires, and indeed, there had been no vampire, only a screaming woman who ejected herself from the altar-cum-crypt at a high velocity.

“You can scream,” I told Annie through my teeth, “but if you turn out to be a vampire I am going to be
really
pissed off. Vampires don’t exist.”

Annie, sleepily, murmured, “Of course they do.”

Chapter Four

I screeched and bucked backward. The vortex howled delight and tried to seize me. Swearing, I dug my fingers into Annie’s cocoon and hauled myself closer to it. Her lashes untangled, revealing eyes that were vividly green in the cocoon’s light. I wondered what color they were supposed to be and muttered, “There are. No. Vampires.”

Annie’s gaze and voice both grew clearer, as if she was just learning to focus. “What on earth do you imagine the Master
is,
Joanne? Oh! Joanne!” Even caught in the cocoon, she reached for me like a mother might, fingertips trying to graze my cheekbone. “I know you,” she whispered in astonishment. “You’re my Gary’s Joanne. My father painted you.”

I gave myself a quick look to see if I’d been war-painted recently without noticing. I hadn’t, or at least not on any body parts that were easily visible. A couple seconds later I realized that probably wasn’t what she’d meant, and turned red enough that I could see my skin turn a sickly brown in the sarcophagus’s green glow.

“Am I dreaming?” Annie asked, then looked pained. “How many patients have I heard say that, but...I remember...I remember...I was dying. The god came. The god.” Her eyes widened in a breathless admiration I knew all too well. “The horned god. Did he really come? There was the stag and the cat,” and she took a moment out of her admiration to look exasperated at the very idea, which made me absolutely adore her. I was going to bring her home not just for Gary, but for me, because I couldn’t help but love anybody whose estimation of a big-cat spirit animal was in league with mine. “The cat,” she repeated, “the cat and the light. The white—oh. Oh. I am dead, aren’t I. I was a nurse too long, young lady. Don’t imagine I haven’t heard people talk about the white light.”

“You’re not dead.” My voice cracked. “And I’m going to keep you that way. I’ve looked into that white light more than once. Usually it’s just the sun trying to burn out my retinas.”

Perplexity slid across her face, then turned to a smile. Probably she hadn’t imagined death to involve people muttering about burned-out eyeballs, which probably gave her some hope that I was telling the truth. “But then what’s happened to me? To Gary?”

“Gary’s waiting for you, sweetheart. Cernunnos stole you out of time, put you to sleep in Tir na nOg, until I could come help out. You know me.” My voice cracked again and tears stung my nose. “And I’m going to. I’m going to save you, Annie.”

“No, I wasn’t sleeping. I dreamed...I dreamed I was...” She trailed off like the dream had escaped her, as they do, and seriousness rose in Cernunnos-green eyes. “You can’t save everyone, Joanne. Sometimes we make sacrifices so others can live. Don’t imagine you can’t sacrifice me, if you need to.”

“Sacrifices are what the bad guys make,” I whispered. “Sacrifices are—”

Realizations tumbled together in my mind, pieces crashing into place, making a picture I’d never even known I was supposed to see. Cernunnos and Tir na nOg had come so close to death with the cauldron. All of a sudden I thought it hadn’t just been the Master taking advantage of the cauldron’s bindings breaking. It had been his move against Cernunnos for stealing Annie from him. Kill Tir na nOg and Annie would die, too. Cernunnos had nearly sacrificed
everything,
betting on me. And he’d won. There had been no sacrifice of his godhood, of his world. I’d thwarted it, even if I hadn’t known it at the time. Things kept coming together, circles closing.

Boy, the Master had to hate me right down to the black burned bones of his rotten soul.

That made me happy. More than happy. Absofreakinglutely joyful, and with that joy came a spike of gunmetal magic that shot skyward, spiking through the vortex.

Its pull faltered and a sense of shock washed through me, as if the vortex itself hadn’t expected me to fight back at all. As if the thing on its other side hadn’t imagined I had it in me. I pressed a finger against Annie’s cocoon, near where her own hand had tried to reach for me. “You hang out here a minute. I’m going to go spit in death’s eye.”

Two minutes earlier I’d have said getting to my feet would be asking to be sucked into the netherworld the Master commanded. Two minutes earlier I might have been right, but things had changed since then. Annie Muldoon was alive and, as far as I could tell, human through and through. A god had bet the rent on me and won. My best friend had traveled through time to save the woman he loved, and the man I loved believed in me.

If I ever needed grounding, those things would always be there. I stood up, digging my toes into the shimmering green softness that contained Annie. It was cool and earthy, centering me in my world and in Tir na nOg. I thrust my left hand toward the sucking vortex and shouted.

My rapier, the
aos sí–
crafted blade of silver that I’d taken from Cernunnos the first time we met, materialized in my hand. Shamanic power poured into it, healer and warrior no longer at odds with each other. It gathered, strengthened, readied itself, and when I shouted again and thrust the sword skyward, a burst of magic cracked forth like lightning from a bottle. The vortex sucked it in, encouraging it to run faster, until the first splinter of power touched it. Then the vortex shied back, rejecting the shamanic magic. I stabbed upward again, sending another shock upward.

I felt like Conan. I felt like Red Sonja in white leather instead of a chain-mail bikini. I felt like a match for the dark side of the Force, and I was going to take one more toy from the Master right now, because I
could.
“This one’s mine, you bleak bastard! The
gods
chose this one, you mean son of a bitch, and you can’t do a thing about it.
I
choose this one,” I said more softly, “and you’re not taking her away.”

I knelt, still with power pouring through the sword. The Master wasn’t going to let us go easily, once he got over his surprise at my audacity, so I dug my fingers into Annie’s cocoon, working my way through its ferociously green threads. Cernunnos’s strength was a lover twining around my hand, clinging to my arm, searching for a way into my heart.

I let it in. I had to: I could never shield myself against the horned god. He was too primal and too enticing, and had etched himself in my soul the first time I’d laid eyes on him.

But neither was I his. He’d offered me a place at his side time and again, and three times, I’d taken it. I’d ridden with him and his Wild Hunt, and I knew in my core that if I rode with him again I would lose my humanity, and want nothing but the god. For all my fears and uncertainties, I still wanted my human life. I wanted Morrison. I wanted the future we could share, if we were that lucky. If we survived this. So no matter how deeply Cernunnos’s power ran or how eagerly it prodded, I wouldn’t let it steal me away. Annie needed his strength more than I did right now, and I intended to leave her everything I could.

Thread by thread, Annie’s features came clearer as Cernunnos’s magic recognized mine and released its prize to me. Here, under the god’s care, in the heart of his magic and at the center of her garden, she was young and lovely, with humor and spark in her face. My fingers touched hers, then wrapped around her hand. I pulled her to her feet, surprised at how tiny she was: nearly a foot shorter than me, and dressed in a full-skirted 1950s dress that made the most of her small waist. She reminded me of Gary in his own garden, a young man in his prime, handsome, fit, confident. They were a beautiful couple, and I was going to see them back together in the Middle World.

The last of Cernunnos’s green power unwound, releasing Annie from the cocoon. Some of the unwinding magic swirled around my own, joining the blended silver and blue that raced upward. With that green haze sweeping around my power, the two of us, shaman and god, in it together, it seemed only appropriate to cry, “From hell’s heart, I stab at thee,” to the cringing vortex above.

That, of course, was a mistake.

The vortex lost cohesion, which sounded like it should be a positive development. Except instead of falling apart, it became a spidery black thing, thin piercing legs breaking apart from the core and slamming downward. Not even at me, not really. At Annie, who was weak on her feet, barely learning to move again after being cocooned for years on end.

Her hand was still in mine. My shields slid around her as snugly as a hug. Her presence within them solidified, as if she took comfort from the metaphysical embrace. I felt the first spark of
her
aura, burnished copper with streaks of red, reasserting itself after the cushion of Cernunnos’s magic. The thinnest threads of green still sparkled through it, just as I imagined I felt them in mine: Cernunnos was within us, not quite apart from this battle, but not quite there, either. That was okay. His moral support was enough.

Spider legs tapped against our shields, prickling and prying. The sound settled behind my ears and made hairs rise on my arms. Annie’s breath was sharp and rough now that she was out of the cocoon, like the emphysema was coming on full bore.

Like thinking it gave the spidery attack an opening, a chink appeared in our armor. Annie’s hand clenched on mine. “It’s me. I can’t hold it back. It’s still in me.”

“I can hold it back.” Even as I spoke, one of the skinny legs wriggled its way through, making the thinnest stain of black on the inside of my shields. My lip curled and I strengthened them, cutting off the darkness. No more seeped through, but what was there leaped from the shields into Annie, blackening the copper of her spirit and coating her lungs.

My hands were full, one with Annie’s grip, the other with my sword, as power continued to roar toward the shattering vortex. I still tried to move to fight the infection, and instead spasmed violently to check myself from my first impulse.

Annie’s attention snapped from the emerging spider to me. “What was that?”

“A really bad idea.”

She glanced back at the sky, at the killing cloud that had spent years trying to dig her out of Cernunnos’s protective tomb, then gave me an arch look. “Worse than that?”

“Yeah.” I looked skyward, too, then drew a sharp breath through my nostrils. “Unless you trust me completely.”

“With my life,” Annie Muldoon said with such simple clarity that I nearly wept.

Then I drove my sword into her heart.

It was hard to tell who was more surprised, Annie or the evil thing hungering for her soul. Her mouth and eyes turned to enormous circles, but she remained silent. Silent, when somebody had just stuffed a sword into her. Silent, which told me it probably didn’t hurt, which was what I’d expected. We were in the much-depleted garden of her soul, but it was her soul. I wasn’t attacking her physical body, but the sickness inside it. Still, being stabbed was the sort of thing that might instinctively cause a person to scream, and she didn’t.

Nor did the vortex, not yet. I clenched my stomach, wondering why, wondering what I had missed, and it came to me with absurd clarity.
Of course there are vampires,
Annie had just said to me, and everybody knew you didn’t kill a vampire just with silver. It took wood, too.

I reached inside my coat and took out the hair stick I’d discovered over New Orleans, clasping it against the hilt of my rapier and infusing the silver with ash.

The vortex became a sound of pain and rage so great I could barely comprehend it. Tornadoes and tearing metal, cats fighting and fingernails on chalkboard, on and on in outrage and fear. A breath escaped me, not quite as triumphant as laughter. Just a breath that acknowledged my stupid-ass idea had some merit, if the howling darkness was so angry at the action.

Because swords—my sword in particular—cut both ways. It was a weapon, by its very nature meant to kill, and there was something here to kill, a creeping illness that ate and tore at Annie’s life. I saw that sickness punch downward, gathered by the rapier and stretched, rather than torn, by the complex weave of ash wood inside the silver blade. It came out beside her spine, the rapier driving it through and then out of Annie’s body. Mostly out: threads, scraps, still clung inside her, hooked ends catching in the bronchi and alveoli and holding on. Annie shuddered, though she still said nothing, wildfire-green eyes intent on me. Trusting me, which was so brave as to be madness. But her father had dreamed me, Gary loved me, and she had spent years wrapped in Cernunnos’s land, protected by a god who knew and coveted me. I was a stranger, but not unknown. I gave her my best smile and a confident nod, and released the sword’s other edge within her.

Killing, yes. That was what a blade like this was made for. But scalpels saved lives, too, and my sword, like myself, had accepted its destiny and heritage. A killing thrust to pierce the sickness, but also to drive healing magic through Annie’s center. Silver and blue split apart, burning through her veins faster than any heart could send it. It lit her up from within, racing back and forth, up and down, crashing into itself and splashing waves of gunmetal where it merged. Sizzling heat turned to flashes of silver fire where it encountered the Master’s invading power. As fast as I saw it, it was gone again, leaving only my magic in its place. My power split again, chasing the sickness and glowing with heat of its own, like molten silver.

Molten silver. I had watched Nuada, the sword’s maker, turn his own living silver flesh into this blade, and for the first time I wondered if some part of the elf king was part of this battle, too. If he reached through time in his own way, lending a whisper of elfin immortality to the fight against the Master. It would never make a mortal live forever, but its inexorable age might lend a little more light to the path Annie had to tread.

Because I couldn’t get it all. I should be able to, in the heart of Annie’s garden, in the lingering warmth of Cernunnos’s cocoon. I’d fought so many battles in spirit realms that I’d almost thought it was going to be that easy. That I was going to save Annie Muldoon here in the heart of her garden, and cast the Master out forever.

But from here, watching and feeling the threads of his power burn and hiss, I could tell they reached back into the Middle World. He’d had his fingers dug into Annie’s ordinary human life so deeply and for so long in the Middle World that maybe I could
never
have won this fight purely in the spiritual planes. More than that, though, the Master finally had a host in the real world: Raven Mocker was out there somewhere, anchoring him. That meant the Master was more strongly entrenched in the world now than he had ever been in my encounters with him, and I was pretty sure winning a real-world throw-down would tie him to the world far more strongly than any kind of spiritual battle could. After all this time and effort, he wasn’t going to settle for second best.