Urban Shaman

CHAPTER 16

Nothing happened.

Nothing kept right on happening while I fell asleep leaning on the door. My knees buckled, jolting me awake, and I staggered to the computer chair. There had to be something I could find about Herne, something that would tell me what was going on. If it wasn’t on the Internet, it didn’t exist, right? So it had to be, some kind of information about Cernunnos’s sullen son. I clicked through to a new site, slumped in my chair and wondered how many shoes had already dropped.

“Shoes,” I said out loud, and looked at my feet. My luggage. I hadn’t actually promised Morrison I’d stay home, and I was out of underwear. I glanced at the computer screen, where the page loaded with excruciating slowness. Stifling a yawn, I went into the bedroom and kicked over my carry-on, digging through it until I found my baggage ticket. The page still hadn’t loaded when I came back out, so I switched the screen off and left it to load, grabbing my keys on my way out the door. Airports seemed nice and safe. They had all those metal detectors that would keep people with swords from coming after me, and lots of security with no sense of humor to discourage someone if he evaded the metal detectors.

Not that it seemed even slightly plausible that airport security could handle Cernunnos. Or Herne, for that matter, since he seemed to be the one going around actually killing Seattleites. I switched lanes and listened to the uneven pattern of changing asphalt textures under the wheels of the car. Headlights flashed by, going the other direction, rhythmic whisks of light and sound in the dark. When this was over, I promised myself, I was going to go take a nice long drive to somewhere very quiet and try to get a grip on my shiny, weird new life.

Which task I would obviously accomplish with the copious spare cash hanging around in my savings account, during the long periods of free time I’d have between writing parking tickets.

An old Cadillac, big as a boat, flashed by. I remembered the church and reached across the car to open the glove box, letting the butterfly knife tumble forward with the various papers stuffed into the box. It made a solid thud, cushioned by paper, and I glanced at it while I drove.

Marie swore it hadn’t been Cernunnos waiting for her outside the church. I believed her: Cernunnos was not someone I would ever mistake for somebody else. That suggested it was Herne; certainly he appeared to be the one who’d murdered her. I closed my eyes, trying to remember the shape of the man I’d seen from the air, wondering if he fit Herne’s shape. Then I remembered I was driving. Maybe I should stop thinking until I wasn’t on a freeway.

I left the knife in the car when I got to the airport. Security might not be able to stop Herne, but they could certainly stop me. There was a Back in Fifteen Minutes sign on the baggage claim desk, so I wandered upstairs to one of the cafes to find some food, half-expecting to see someone I knew. I always expected to, at airports.

I got an overpriced but surprisingly good hamburger, and a cup of too-hot coffee. I took my bounty and found a table by a window, where I could watch the midnight international flights take off in the distance while I gnoshed on my burger.

“Waiting for someone?”

I focused on the reflection in the window, a broad-shouldered man in a sweatshirt, wearing his long brown hair tied in a pony-tail. “Yeah,” I mumbled. “My boyfriend.”

He grinned. “Your large, bad-tempered, jealous boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” I repeated. “Big. Bigger than you. Samoan,” I added in a fit of inspiration.

“Mind if I join you?”

I looked over at him. “I’m not a prostitute or out looking for a good time, and I’ve had a bad day,” I warned him. “If you make one pass at me, I’ll kick your ass right back to the Carolinas.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Joanne.”

“What the hell are you doing here, Casey?” I stood up and hugged him, letting out an oof as his hug popped my spine.

“Looking for lost souls,” he said by my ear, and put me back down. “Did I find one?”

“Funny you should say that. You look good. You bulked up.”

“It’s been a couple years. People change.”

“It’s been three and a half. And you always looked good.” Round-faced and quiet, Casey O’Brien didn’t come anywhere near what I considered my type, but he had graceful hands that I’d lusted after in college. He never stood up straight, which drove me crazy, because he was three inches taller than me but came across as shorter.

“You’re lying.” Casey sat down across from me, wrapping his hands around mine. I discovered I hadn’t stopped lusting. “What are you doing here?”

“What?” I looked up from his hands. “Urn. Trying to locate my luggage. It got left here a couple days ago. What’re you doing here?”

“On my way back up to Alaska. New job up there.”

“Congratulations. Hey,” I said suddenly. “Do you know a Doctor Marie D’Ambra?”

“Not personally. I’ve heard of her. She’s kind of a kook. Claims to know when people are going to die. I think she’s been reading too many fairy tales.” Casey turned my hand over and traced his thumb over my lifeline. “Why, did you meet her?”

“Yeah,” I said. “She’s dead.”

Casey looked up, pale blue eyes shocked. “You’re kidding.”

“No. I met her yesterday morning. She was murdered last night.”

“Jeez, Joanne, I know you go on first impressions, but you really think you should start killing people you don’t like?”

Despite myself, I laughed. “Is that my mistake? I’ll work on that.” I shook my head, sobering. “She thought someone was after her. Look, you’re an anthropologist. Do you think…” I trailed off, uncertain of what to say. “Do you think studying old civilizations can make you susceptible to their beliefs?”

“You’re asking the wrong person. I’m an archaeologist, not a cultural anthropologist.” Casey pressed his lips together. “I don’t think an anthropologist should dismiss the reality of what she studies. But claiming you can tell when someone’s going to die? If she could do that, how come she’s dead? Shouldn’t she have known to run away?”

“She thought she was going to die,” I admitted. “She thought…” I really didn’t want to tell Casey that Marie had thought an old Celtic god was after her. Not even if it was true. The only reason I believed was because I’d come face-to-face and blade to blade with something that pretty definitely wasn’t human. “She thought I was going to die,” I said instead.

“You’re looking pretty perky for a dead girl.” Casey studied me, then reached out and turned my face, frowning. “How’d you get that scar? I just noticed it.”

I rubbed it. “Guess it’s not wildly disfiguring, then. Marie D’Ambra cut me with a knife.”

Casey’s eyebrows crinkled. “What’d she do that for? I thought you said you met her yesterday.”

“Yeah.”

“But it’s all healed up.”

“I know. Have you ever had a week so strange it was inexplicable?”

“Um.” Casey studied me again. “I don’t think so.”

I picked up my coffee cup. “I’m having one. If I live through it and manage to get some perspective, I’ll tell you about it.” The coffee was cool enough to drink, and I took a grateful slurp. “Tell me something. Do you think the world needs saving?”

“Needs? Sure. Deserves? Dunno about that.” Casey reached across the table and stole one of my fries. They were cold, so I didn’t stop him. “People basically suck. Maybe we should kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out. Let the planet start over.”

“Do you really think that?” I pushed the plate toward Casey as he took another fry. He chewed slowly, thinking about his answer.

“Sometimes,” he said after a minute. “What do you think?”

I took another sip of coffee and stared at the dwindling pile of fries while I thought about it. A few days ago I would have laughed and agreed. Kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out.

But I’d told Billy I felt like I could save the world—or Seattle, anyway. I’d promised the priest I’d stop the nutcase who was murdering children. I’d told Kevin I’d find the guy who’d killed his wife. “I guess I don’t think people basically suck. I think…I don’t know what I think.” I put the coffee cup down and my head in my hands, trying to work my way through a thought. “I think we lost our sense of direction,” I finally said. “I think we need to…” I looked up. Casey’s eyes flashed emerald-green at me, like a reflected light was somewhere behind my head.

A thin trickle of cold followed the warmth of the coffee down the inside of my throat, spreading out through my stomach. “I think we need to heal the people who are hurt.” I picked up my coffee again and twisted around to look behind me. There was nothing green, not even as much as an exit sign. “Heal the ones who can do the most harm, first, and then work our way down through the ranks.” I turned back to him. “I think we should start with you.”

Casey’s eyes shifted. “Me? Since when did I become one of the bad guys?”

“I think you always were,” I whispered. “Herne, son of Cernunnos.” Names had power, I’d read that. Casey began to stand up and I reached across the table to knot my fist in his shirt, locking eyes with him.

“Give me my friend back. Now.”

Color bled out of Casey’s eyes, pale blue giving way to virulent green. A small numb part of me watched it and knew I should be scared, but after watching all the color drain from Marie’s eyes, after reliving the memory of the teenagers’ deaths, all that I could feel was rage replacing the fear that had chilled my belly. I saw surprise deepen the color of his eyes: he expected me to be afraid. I hauled him forward a few inches, and snarled, “Give me back my friend.”

“What if he was never here?” Casey’s voice tinged with a nasal, arrogant accent. Herne’s voice in his garden had been richer, fuller and far more heavily accented, but the intonations were the same.

“All the better,” I growled. “Then you’re the only casualty I’ll have to worry about.”

“You can’t,” he murmured with absolute confidence. “Healer.” The word was an epithet. I tightened my fingers in his shirt and moved around the table, until I was face-to-face with him. I could feel power again, the way I’d felt it earlier, roiling through me. It was free now, unlocked and ready to be used. There were other patrons in the restaurant, some of them watching us openly, a few of them pretending very hard not to see us. I didn’t want them to see us.

All I’d used the power inside me for was healing, so far, but my skin felt abused by the pressure of light on it. Invisibility was just a matter of bending light waves around something. I pushed the bubble of energy inside me out, expanding its surface so that it swallowed Herne and me whole. It felt silver-clear to me, ticklish, as if the rules of the universe had changed in the space I was standing in. I guessed they had: I could see, from the corners of my eyes, that the watchers were frowning faintly, then dismissing what they’d seen—or not seen—as impossible. In a few seconds no one was looking our way at all. My fingers tingled with the outpouring of energy.

Beyond the restaurant, the airport hummed with power, the energy of people leaving and returning home. I only had to redirect all that energy, and I could fry Herne right here where he stood, without any witnesses. I began pulling it in, as natural as breathing, even as the idea made me shudder.

Herne smiled, thin-lipped. “Healer,” he spat again. He looked nothing like Casey any longer, canines dangerously curved and build resuming its natural narrow-hipped shape. “You can do nothing here. What will happen to these people if you draw on the energy output here? How many planes will come down when the airport falls off the radar? How many children will you frighten with blackouts? Let me go, little healer. I know how to choose my battlegrounds.”

Like a heartbeat, the truth of his words pounded into me. Cause and effect. I could destroy him here, on the physical plane, and it would cost hundreds of lives. I would be as bad, worse, than he. I loosened my hold on the invisibility that wrapped around us, unsure if maintaining it might cause damage, too.

“Why didn’t I recognize you?” I didn’t release my grip on his shirt. “I was sure I would. After today. After the school. You don’t feel like Cernunnos. I thought I’d know you.”

He put his hands over mine, surprisingly cool and very large. His nails were thick and heavy, hinting of claws. “Because I can mask myself deeper than you know how to go, little healer. And you have no time to learn.”

“But I did better than you expected.” I hadn’t taken my eyes off his, depthless and green. His gaze had none of the drowning power that Cernunnos’s did, but like Cernunnos, it betrayed him. Under his confidence was a layer of concern. I worried him. Once I tasted that fear, the totality of his power swept over me, thundering, meant to drown me. I tightened my fingers in his shirt a little and lifted my chin, letting it wash all around me like Moses and the Red Sea.

Herne’s memories weighed heavily, a man caught in a position of something less than a god, but granted hundreds of years beyond a man’s lifespan. His mortal life had at least had purpose: he guarded his lands, and faint recollection told me the land had once responded to him. He’d been the Green Man, not a god, no, but at least a protective spirit. But he was too much between two worlds: a taint ran deep in him, all the way back to the half-shared moment where he’d lifted his sword and driven it into his king’s body instead of mine.

Real! It slammed through me like a shock. That moment had been real. His power had dragged me back through time, displacing me. If I had died there, I would have died here, too. Henrietta would have died.

And Richard the Second would never have hanged the Hunter. From the very beginning of his immortal life, Herne had been something less than he could have been. That knowledge poisoned him as much as—

He wrenched back from me, breaking eye contact and tearing loose from my grip on his shirt. The memories I’d delved in to shattered, losing me any further insight to the half god standing before me. “I’m stronger than you think I am,” I said.

“Not strong enough.” Herne’s eyes were glassy, with no more openings to his power or his soul. “Not strong enough,” he repeated. “You don’t have enough time.”

“I have a day,” I said calmly, and smiled as shock rose in his eyes. “See? I know more than you think I do, too.” It occurred to me that I’d just played my trump card by telling him that. I didn’t know half as much as I needed to. Shock faded from his gaze, replaced by wariness. Hell. If he thought I knew what he was doing, he’d be all the more cautious, and all the harder to track. Oh, yeah. I’d blown it. Good form, Joanne. I needed a neon pink shirt that read NOVICE in big fat letters. Just in case anybody had any doubts on the matter. Herne and I stared at each other another long moment. Then a rangy security guard materialized at my elbow.

“Everything all right here, folks?” he asked casually. As if by mutual agreement, Herne and I broke off from looking at one another to fix the guard with equally grim expressions.

“Fine,” I said shortly, then muttered, “was I speeding, officer?” The guard frowned at me. “Nevermind,” I said out loud. “We’re fine.”

“Maybe it’s time for you to go on and catch your plane, or head home, ma’am, sir. It’s late, and nobody wants any trouble.” The guard actually looked as if a little trouble might be welcome.

Herne and I looked at one another again. “Twenty-three hours, Siobhan Walkingstick,” Herne said, and I flinched. I didn’t like this thing where people were reading my birth name out of my mind. He hadn’t used it before. Had I given away as much in that memory link as he had? I was going to have to do something about this, about all of it. Assuming I survived the next day. Funny how making it through an hour or a day at a time had never been an issue before.

“Twenty-three hours, Hunter. Sorry for the fuss, officer.” I stepped past them both and went to pick up my luggage.