Thunderbird Falls

CHAPTER 24

Exultation boiled through me, peeling the skin from my flesh. The fire gobbled its way inside me, meeting up with the heat I’d taken into myself. Together they tangled and tore me apart from the cellular level out, exploding my bones and my brain and leaving me in a floating haze of pain and delight. Breathing didn’t seem to hurt anymore. I had a vague sense of wrongness about that, like there ought to be pain innot breathing, but it swept over me like a runner’s high. The fire had forced me over a threshold: pain was good. Agony was a decadent ending to the build of heat inside me. It ached through my fingertips and curled my feet, and I tried to breathe it in more deeply, grateful for it.

I couldn’t hear the coven anymore; even the popping fire had faded into a song that rang high and sweet against my eardrums. It sounded like freedom, like bells calling everyone home. The stinging purity brought tears to my eyes, like liquid goose bumps, involuntary and a little startling. They heralded change and acknowledged me as the conduit. I tilted my head back, lifting my arms to embrace the old world and the ancient creatures that had roamed it. I invited them through me, the Mother, bound by blood and fire to the earth.

It was the utter opposite of the thunderbird. Wolves and bears, wild-eyed things I’d never dreamed of in my nightmares and gentle monsters with the light of hope in their souls fed themselves to me a hundred at a time. Some were malignant and dark, tasting of ash and tar. They came hand in wing with lighthearted, benign creatures that left the scent of clean air and roses in my throat. Some were tricky, and stuck like molasses, only to be washed down by the cool water and straight-forward dedication of their counterparts. I couldn’t name most of them even if I’d wanted to, but they fed me and grew fat on me, and through me were born out into the world.

I tore apart with the birth of a thousand creatures, feeling the earth tear with me. I didn’t think I cried out loud, but I didn’t need to: the earth itself shrieked and rumbled with the influx of things from the otherworld. I burned, no longer inside my skin, but in my core, spinning eternally, creating life. Time stretched and snapped and twisted until it was meaningless. I had no sense of age, no sense of purpose; I simply was, and would be until I ended. Nothing could change me, not the life I brought forth nor the death that inevitably cycled with it. I drifted in that complacency, warmed by my core and no longer worried about anything. The world went on. It always would. Birthing pains faded away. I felt nothing, no conscious thought or fear to disrupt me. I spun, bound to my own heat and nothing more.

Something tickled inside my ear.

I ignored it, then swatted at it, writhing with irritation. The tickle turned into a stab of pain and I clawed at it, feeling like I was trying to scrape a needle from my eardrum. The pain grew, wriggling and pricking and poking, until it became a fierce, furious shriek, like a raptor’s call.Raptors don’t hunt at night, I thought peevishly. The idea bounced through me, shocking in that it was made of words and images. I clutched my head, an ache pounding through my temples and reminding me of myself. Reminding me of consciousness and of choice, rather than the act of simply being.

Faye’s voice cut through the screeching birdcall in my head, whispering to me. I could feel the power of the coven behind her, lending her the strength necessary to work through the layers of earth that held me away from them. “Joanne, don’t forget us. Remember our purpose. We can’t lose you. Without you we’ll fail and the world will die with us.” Her voice was deeper than usual, older than I remembered it sounding, like it carried the weight of more than one speaker. It reverberated through the earth, making my skin itch and shudder as if I were a horse trying to dislodge a fly.

Remember. I struggled after Faye’s words, trying to make sense of them. Remember what? Remember—

Remember Gary. Colin. Coyote. Remember the heat wave burning Seattle, spreading out to the world. Remember who I am (Joanne Walker), a back part of my mind said. A part further back, noisily, said, Remember the Alamo! and beneath that whispered another name to me, so hidden and soft that I couldn’t let myself even think it, but I knew what it was. Who it was. Who I was.

I uncurled with a gasp, struggling back to my feet, grasping at an awareness of things like up and down and hot and cold. The earth shouted, ripping apart, as if protesting my actions and my free will.

The fire fell away from around my feet. I hung suspended in the air, my bones shaking and twisting and roaring disapproval. The coven disappeared, out of my inverted sight and out of my ability to sense them, leaving me alone with nothing except stars in the night sky and the treetops I was surrounded by.

A tremendous release of power hit me in the gut with the intensity of a waterfall. It knocked me ass over teakettle, endless roaring filling my ears. I slammed upside-down into one of the trees, crunching into branches with enough force to break them. I tumbled down, catching my shoulder on another branch and flipping right-side up again in time for a solid Y in the tree to catch me in the crotch and hold me. Disorientation smashed over me, leaving my mind blank of anything except an appreciation for excruciating pain. I hadn’t done that since I was a kid, and I didn’t miss it one bit at all. Poor men. Getting caught in the crotch made me wheeze and want to vomit. I couldn’t and didn’t much want to imagine what getting kicked in the nuts felt like.

Then a giant ripped the tree I was in out of the ground and flung it to the earth with a resounding, wet crash, and I stopped caring about anything for a while.

Tuesday, June 21, 5:45 a.m.

I was cold. Goose bumps were all over my skin, and my tank top was clammy and sticky against my back. I kept shivering.

After the last couple of days of heat, and the episode with the fire, I was surprised I could even be cold anymore. I lay there thinking about it, and wondering if I was broken anywhere or if I was just cold. There seemed to be a tree lying partly on top of me, which overall struck me as somewhat peculiar. I remembered being in the tree, but without opening my eyes—which I didn’t much want to do—it felt like I was now lying in mud.

I moved my right hand very slightly, prodding at my resting place. Yes. Yes, it was mud. It schlucked and gooed and generally behaved like mud. Which was all wrong, because last time I was conscious it not only wasn’t muddy, but hadn’t rained in several weeks. Mud was very unusual. I wondered where exactly I was. There was a sound like thunder somewhere nearby, confusingly alien to the whisper of wind through trees that I last remembered. Well, that I last remembered in a world that made sense. There were dark places in my memory that I was reluctant to prod at yet. The mud and the thunder were enough for the moment.

My hand explored a little more, apparently content to do this without me opening my eyes. I was grateful. Perhaps I could get my hand something nice later on, when I’d gotten up again. A manicure, perhaps, or a ring. No, not a ring. A ring would get all nasty with oil and grease. Didn’t matter if I was a cop with a beat these days. I still thought of myself as a mechanic. I could start wearing the copper bracelet my father’d given me. It would look nice on my wrist, close to my hand. I thought my hand would like that. It seemed like a good idea, and I was satisfied.

There were branches and twigs in the mud, and then a puddle. The puddle surprised me enough that I opened my eyes.

It didn’t help. Not that I couldn’t see: I could. It was more that what I saw made no sense. Tree roots stuck up in the air, globs of dark earth hanging from them. Broken branches were strewn in every direction over a shattered landscape. There were huge humps of earth standing with their sides sheered away, looking precarious and wobbly without the support they used to have. One of them had a tree still standing on it, perfectly serene and unbothered by the changed world around it. Its roots stuck out of the sides of its earth pillar, reaching down for ground that had fallen away around it.

I lay in a low point. I pushed up on my elbows, the mud sucking at my face and chest before releasing me. The puddle my hand had discovered wasn’t a puddle at all, but a stream that hadn’t been there the last time I’d looked. It was muddy and thick and quite determined. If I listened I could hear its burble under the sound of thunder.

The thunder came from behind me. I pushed myself up to hands and knees in slow motion, my entire body stiff with mud and sore muscles. I had to scrape my leg out from under the tree I’d fallen with, but I didn’t seem to have taken much damage. As my hand sank into the mud, supporting my weight, I found that the tree was still beneath me, as well, just buried in the muck. It had very probably prevented me from drowning. I patted it with a fingertip and said, “Thanks,” absently, then crawled around in a half circle to see where the thunder was coming from.

Even looking at it, it took several moments to wrap my mind around the idea that the waterfall I was staring at had formerly been the western side of Lake Washington. The ground had collapsed at least fifteen feet. I couldn’t be sure if it was more, from where I rested on my hands and knees. It was a lot, anyway: fifteen feet is a lot when you’re talking about where the ground used to be and isn’t anymore.

The waterfall was broad and enthusiastic, tumbling down noisily and creating the stream my hand had discovered. I wondered if they’d let me call it Jo’s Hand Stream. Probably not. That was okay. It was a terrible name. I sat back on my heels, cautiously, and stared. The sun was rising, painting the falls and the lake behind them a startling gold color. I had no sense of how long I’d been out, or how long the ritual the night before had gone on.

“Oh, Jesus.” I staggered to my feet before consulting my body on whether it was a good idea or not. It wasn’t an impossible feat, but I hung on my fallen tree for a few moments, trying to regain my sense of balance. The coven must have been caught in the earthquake just as I’d been. If any of them were still alive, I had to find them and get help.

“Jesus Christ, there’s somebody over there. Hey. Hey! Lady! Are you okay?”

I wobbled around, trying to place the speaker over the sound of the waterfall. A man a few years older than I was appeared from around one of the tall earth humps, leaping gingerly over the stream and approaching me. “Hey, are you all right?”

“I’m not dead,” I offered. The guy split a grin and jumped over another stream rivulet.

“Well, thank God. We didn’t expect to find anybody alive down here.”

My stomach fell through my feet. “You’ve found dead people?”

“Not so far. It’s a goddamned miracle. Usually this time of year the parks are all madhouses, but it’s so damned hot everybody’s been at home with their air-conditioning.” His expression darkened. He had sandy hair and blue eyes and the complexion of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. “Not that that hasn’t caused its own problems with this quake.”

“What time did it hit?”

“‘Bout ten o’clock last night. 6.2 on the Richter. You don’t remember?”

“I got hit by a tree.” My voice scraped and I coughed, trying to swallow the dryness away. “I don’t remember much after that.”

“Well, you’re goddamned lucky,” he opined. “We’ve got to get you to a hospital, get you checked over. You know your name?”

I blinked at him. “Yeah.” He waited, and I blinked some more before startling. “Oh! It’s Joanne. Joanne Walker.”

He stuck his hand out. “My name’s Crowder. Geologist.”

“Is ‘Geologist’ your first or last name?” I cracked a little grin as I shook his hand. He laughed.

“David Crowder, geologist. Damn, you are one lucky woman. C’mon. Let’s get you out of here. Hey! Ricky! C’mon, help me get Miss Walker out of here! Somebody call an ambulance!”

“I don’t need one,” I protested. “As long as my car’s still there. Oh God.” Panic hit the pit of my stomach again. “Is it? Is the parking lot still there?”

Crowder hesitated. “Kinda. There are islands of it. What do you drive?”

I swallowed and knotted my hands into fists. My left hand suddenly cramped and split through the mud, starting to bleed again, and I fought back tears of pain and dismay. “A Mustang. A purple 1969 Mustang. License plates say PETITE.”

Dismay washed over Crowder’s face and he took a step back like I might kill the messenger. “I saw it tail-down in one of the crevasses. Looked like the back end got pretty badly crunched. We called it in. I’m sorry.”

White rose up over my vision for a few seconds, static hissing in my ears. “How badly crunched?” My voice was hollow, and I don’t think I expected Crowder to give me a real answer. The words just came out as an effort to not start screaming. “Were there any other cars up there?” My hands were cold and my stomach cramped, making something go wrong with my eyesight. More wrong than usual: it was all blurry and stinging, the itch of unshed tears. I could handle pretty much anything, but not my car being destroyed. Between that and Gary I thought I might just throw up.

Crowder took my elbow and started leading me out of the mess that used to be a park. “I bet you can get it fixed.” His encouraging words could’ve been coming from several light-years away. My head rang until I was dizzy, tipping over as I tried to put my feet on solid ground. “Might cost a bundle, but it can probably be winched out, or maybe helicoptered, and then you can really see the damage. But that solid steel frame’ll keep it from being smashed up as some of the others up there, right? You’re the first person we’ve found down here,” he added, clearly hoping to change the subject. “Were you down here with anybody?”

“Some friends.” My answer was low and fuzzy to my own ears, like somebody’d sucked all the life out of me. “I don’t know what happened to them. I’m not sure when they left. Is there a search and rescue team out here?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m part of it. You, ah, not sure when they left, huh?”

Oh, for God’s sake. He thought we’d been doing drugs or something. I put my teeth together against a flare of rage that had more to do with my car than his assumption. “I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the time. No funny business going on. I’m a cop.”

“Oh, no shit. You work in the North Precinct?”

“Yeah.”

“No wonder.”

I didn’t like the sound of that at all. “No wonder what?”

“When we called in your car the dispatcher got a little freaked out. Said she had to verify it and she’d get back to us, but—”

“—but they recognized her. A lot of people know Petite.” I groaned and closed my eyes, then opened them again swiftly, not trusting the ground or my feet. My left hand was still clenched in a fist. I didn’t want to drip blood all over everything and have Crowder insist I go to a hospital. I wanted to look at the injury first and see if I could fix myself, preferably without a repeat of last night’s heat-intense performance. I wanted to curl up in Petite’s bucket seats and sob, too, but I didn’t think I was going to get much of what I wanted. “I’ll call them when we get up there.”

“C’mon, this way.” Crowder led me through a ravine of sharp drops and inclines, ushering me up a hill that I tried climbing without using my left hand. He noticed and stopped me, putting his hand out for mine. I sighed and opened my palm.

Blood seeped through cracks of mud, dripping off the back of my hand. It only hurt on a dull, ignorable level, but Crowder hissed dismay and yanked a handkerchief out of a pocket. “It’s clean,” he promised as he wrapped it around my hand. “That looks deep. You’re gonna need to get it looked at.”

“I know. I will. I just want to get to my car and go home and call my friends and make sure everybody’s okay first. How…is the city okay? I mean, are people…dead?”

“Some injuries.” Crowder started up the hill again. “A handful of heart attacks, a couple dozen women going into labor, that kinda thing. It happens, when there’s an earthquake. Lotta property damage, but it’s pretty localized. Weird behavior. That Corvalis woman on Channel Two is trying like mad to tie it together to the aurora the other night. Swear to God, those people, making news when there’s so much real stuff to report. Here you go, just over the guard rail here.” He boosted me up and I swung my leg over the railing, trying not to think about whether there was a connection between the aurora and the earthquake. People don’t cause earthquakes. It was a ludicrous idea. Of course, people don’t cause massive auroras to come sweeping down, either, and I knew perfectly well the coven and I had been responsible for that, even if the interpretation was wrong.

The parking lot was a disaster. Petite’s nose poked up out of a ditch several yards away. Between me and her, there were pits of earth that had opened up or split apart. The car Garth had driven was stuck halfway in one of the pits. It’d be okay if it could be winched out. I jumped a crack in the earth and hurried toward Petite, swallowing against sickness as I looked down into the crevasse at her smashed back end. She was a heavy vehicle, but Crowder was right about the steel frame. Even from above I could tell that the damage was probably more to the tail lights and back fender than to the body. I couldn’t, at least, see any wrinkles in her body, which didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t there. I was going to have to find a way to get her out of there and into a garage where I could really survey the damage. My hands were shaking and my throat was tight. I didn’t want to burst into tears in front of the helpful geologist, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop myself. I turned my back on him deliberately and knelt by Petite’s front end, putting my forehead against the wheel still hooked over the broken earth. “I am so sorry, baby. I’ll get you out of here and I’ll get you fixed up, okay? And then we’ll go on a really nice long drive out to Utah where we can go super fast on the salt flats. That’ll be fun, right, sweetheart? I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”

“Miss Walker?” Crowder’s diffident voice came from behind me, a polite intrusion. I looked up, swallowing back the tightness in my throat, expecting the geologist to be offering some kind of sympathy or suggestion.

What I found instead was Morrison vaulting the parking lot gates and coming at a run toward me and my car.