Urban Shaman

CHAPTER 17

The desk attendant handed over my luggage with a perfunctory glance at my tickets and I was out of the airport and on the way home within ten minutes. It felt like a bad omen, that actually getting the luggage had gone so smoothly. It wasn’t good when things going easily seemed like a sure sign of doom. I was going to need some extensive therapy when this was all over.

Halfway home I passed a bad wreck, two cars and the freeway wall. Paramedics loaded a body bag into the back of an ambulance as I went by, and Herne’s pointer about the effects of using my new power stood out vividly in my mind. I slowed as I rounded a corner, then pulled over, shivering as I unpeeled my death grip from the steering wheel and shook my hands until blood started flowing again.

When my fingers started tingling from returning blood, I wrapped my arms around myself and folded over, my forehead against the wheel as I tried to take deep breaths without hyperventilating. I’d been so sure I would recognize Herne, and the only reason I had at all was a sheer chance of light. It had taken him, a killer, to warn me of the consequences of my actions. I was so far out of my league it wasn’t funny, and it was going to get me killed.

I didn’t want to die.

Light colored in my eyelids, red and blue. I sat up to squint at the cop car that was pulling over in front of me. I didn’t recognize the cop who got out, but I hardly knew every cop in the greater Seattle area. I rolled down the window and leaned my head against the steering wheel, waiting for the ritual.

“Everything okay, ma’am?”

I sighed, straightened up, and looked at her. She was pretty. Blue eyes, and blond hair tucked neatly under her hat.

“Everything’s fine.” I couldn’t think of a good explanation as to what I was doing pulled off on the side of the freeway, so I didn’t say anything else.

“Car troubles?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Been drinking?”

Would I be dumb enough to answer that in the affirmative if I had? “No, ma’am,” I repeated. “Just coming back from the airport.”

“Late flight, huh? Tired?” She smiled. It was a nice smile that didn’t have anything to do with Celtic gods or shamans. I smiled back.

“Yeah. I just needed a breather. I’ll be on my way in a second here.”

The cop nodded. “Drive carefully, okay? And have a good night, all right?”

“I will. Thanks.” I watched her walk back to her car, then smiled and stuck my head out the window. “Hey, officer?”

She turned back, eyebrows lifted under her cap. “Yes?”

“You’d be good at playing Questions, you know that?”

She laughed, a sound as pleasant as her smile. “What makes you say that?” She climbed in her car and drove away, leaving me feeling like the world was a better place. I sighed and slumped back in my seat with a yawn, eyes closed for a moment before I reached for the gear stick.

Light filled my eyelids again. Shimmering, pearly silver light that was about as much like headlights as peacock feathers were. For a long moment I refused to open my eyes again, under the dubious logic that if I couldn’t see whatever was making the light, it couldn’t see me.

“It doesn’t work that way,” a sibilant voice murmured. I wasn’t at all sure if I’d heard it in my ears or my head. It didn’t matter. I knew the voice. Since it didn’t work that way, I gritted my teeth and opened my eyes.

Cernunnos’s host swarmed around my car, flickering with quite literally unearthly light, as if they were no more than figures on an old silent movie screen. The horses skittered, not quite touching the car. Red-eared hellhounds slunk under the horses’ bellies, baring gleaming white fangs at me through the window. One rider glared down through the windshield at me, craggy face bearded and stern. If he weren’t undead, I might have considered him handsome.

“Not undead,” Cernunnos corrected. A few of the host melted away as he approached on his enormous stallion. “The undead do not bleed.” Hatred seeped into his voice with the last word. He straightened in the saddle and I saw that he held an arm wrapped around his ribs. He sat tight as a bowstring, the elegant line of his jaw clenched. He was pale, even in comparison to the others, even bearing in mind the color-leaching lights along the freeway.

“I thought you’d have healed.” One of the hounds made a lunge at the open window, his teeth snapping shut centimeters from my arm. I flinched back, and the hound dropped a few inches, smacking his chin on the window frame. He let out a high-pitched yelp of pain and backed off, snarling at the car.

“We do not heal well from iron,” Cernunnos said, warm liquid voice still distorted with fury. The dog slunk toward his master and lay down between the stallion’s forelegs, lips pulled back from his teeth as he looked at me.

“So I really hurt you,” I whispered, watching the hound. Cernunnos let out a bark of laughter. My eyes snapped up to his. His distance and the stallion’s restless shuffling kept his eyes from having the drowning power I remembered from the diner, but even through the amber lights, they were compelling, violent green, filled with rage.

“Oh, yes.” He edged his stallion closer. The hound jumped up and slunk around to the horse’s back heels, his head lowered, crimson eyes as dangerous-looking as the ivory canines. I watched them, and shrank back a little farther into my car.

“Am I safe in here?” I wondered out loud. “The steel?” I was suddenly very glad I didn’t like show cars like Corvettes, all fiberglass and no substance. Petite was solid steel through and through. She felt safe.

At least, she felt safe until Cernunnos laughed, a sound that could scratch glass. “Safer than you would be outside of it. Not safe enough. Glass holds no power to hurt, and your window is open.” He lifted a hand, graceful, though his nostrils flared as he pulled at the injured tissue in his side. One of his host raised a bow as tall as I was, and sighted me down the long narrow shaft of an arrow.

I saw a special on PBS once, with a Welshman demonstrating the power of a longbow. Standing much farther away from his target than Cernunnos’s man was from me, he put an arrow through platemail armor, through the dummy body, and out again through the back of the platemail.

All of a sudden Petite didn’t seem nearly so safe. Cernunnos edged his stallion to the side, to give his man a clear shot. The archer was tall and slender and very blond, his expression almost sympathetic and clearly bored. Shooting at mortals in tin cans apparently wasn’t much sport. I certainly didn’t think it was very sporting.

I flung Petite into Drive. She roared and leaped forward. Fire burned over the back of my shoulders as the arrow sliced through shirt and skin without hitting anything vital. It embedded in the passenger door with a shriek and I winced, the injury to my car more offensive than the injury to myself.

Two of the ghostly hellhounds disappeared beneath Petite’s wheels, making horribly solid thunks as the Mustang hit them. For one moment, one of the host stood in my way, the bearded man on a washed-out roan. We met eyes, and I braced myself for the impact, knowing none of us, not horse and rider nor car and driver, were going to survive.

The roan gathered himself, catlike, and sprang forward, in so little time I barely saw it happen. Hooves flashed over Petite’s windshield, silvery shoes glittering. I wondered what kind of metal fairy horses were shod with, and in the rearview mirror saw the roan come down lightly, back feet tucked up to miss Petite’s tail end as she careened forward. The rider put a hand solidly against the roan’s neck, and turned to watch me go without the slightest expression on his face.

I caught one glimpse of myself, wide-eyed with shock, in the rearview, then snapped my eyes back to the road, twitching the steering wheel as I tried to avoid a hellhound stupid enough to fling himself at the Mustang. I heard Petite dent, but the dog bounced off with a painful yelp. It rolled away and didn’t get up again.

Another sharp chink sounded as Petite’s wheels squealed and we tore off down the freeway, zero to sixty in about seven seconds. I pushed her up to ninety for maybe two minutes, then remembered the cop who’d stopped to talk to me, and slowed down to somewhere around the speed limit. There was no possible way a herd of riders were going to catch me.

Petite coughed, a sick little sound, and lost power for a second.

“Oh, no.” I breathed the words over the steering wheel. “Be good, girl.” The gas gauge was lower than I remembered it being, but it had been a long drive out to the airport. Petite coughed once more, then rumbled contentedly. I sank down in my seat. “Good girl,” I whispered again. “That’s my baby.” Don’t tell me talking to your car doesn’t help.

She coughed again, lurching as her power drained. “What? What’d I do? I’m sorry I left you in a garage for four months. This is fun, though, right? Out on the freeway, driving fast? This is fun. Come on, baby. What’s wrong?”

We drifted to the side of the road, where she gave one more pathetic little cough and settled into a heap with an apologetic sigh. I leaned my forehead against the steering wheel for a moment, eyes closed. “Okay, nice cop lady,” I mumbled. “Come check on me again.” I opened my eyes and peered under the top curve of the wheel at the dashboard. The oil was fine, but the gas registered below empty. “You got thirsty awfully fast, baby.” I flipped the hazards on and climbed out of the car.

The smell of gas was so strong I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before. Oh, adrenaline, maybe? a sarcastic little voice in my head said. I hoped I’d always talked to myself that way, and it wasn’t another shiny new improvement that came along with being a shaman. There was a neat round hole through Petite’s purple rear end, punched through steel like it was plastic wrap. I popped the trunk, my teeth set together, and sure enough, there was another neat round hole jammed at an angle down through the bottom of my trunk. The gas tank was directly below the trunk. I hardly needed to get the flashlight out of the glove compartment to go look, but indeed, there was a neat round hole through the gas tank, too. An arrow was caught in it, scant centimeters from the asphalt. If the arrow’d been another two inches longer, sparks from the metal rubbing the freeway as we sped along would’ve blown me and Petite to Kingdom Come.

I lay on my back, methodically going through all the swear words I knew. When I ran out, I yanked the arrow out through the hole it’d made and climbed to my feet, staring at it.

Then I broke it into as many pieces as I could with my hands, dropped them, jumped up and down on them and swore some more. A few cars whisked by. One slowed way down so the guy in the passenger seat could take a photo. The flash made a sharp shadow on the freeway wall, and I started laughing with furious hysteria as I kicked the arrow bits around and crunched them under my boots. It took about a minute for the novelty to wear off. When it did, I kicked the rest of the wood shards out of my way, got my jack and emergency duct tape out of the trunk, and jacked the car up so I could reach the gas tank.

Duct tape may not be the ultimate answer to everything, but it’s the best temporary ultimate answer I know. I slapped two strips together and taped them over the hole with four more strips, then crawled out from under the car to watch Cernunnos’s host, led by the god and a riderless horse, gallop down from the sky toward me.

For a moment I just stood there, disbelieving. This couldn’t be happening.

The riders forged on. Apparently it was happening. I kicked the jack out from under Petite, who crashed down with a reproachful smash. “Sorry, baby.” I flung the jack back into the trunk and yanked the four-month-old five-gallon emergency gas container out all in the same movement. I untwisted the top and poured a good-sized splash of gasoline out onto the concrete, and because I was moving too fast to be careful, also all over my shoes and shins. “Shit! Dammit, dammit, dammit, shit!” At least I was pretty sure I’d gotten rid of any water that might have built up. I poured the rest into the tank, threw the open container into Petite’s trunk with another apology, slammed the trunk closed and ran around to the driver’s side just in time to almost impale myself on Cernunnos’s sword.

“Oh, look,” I said. “You got a new one. And me without my knife.” I flung myself sideways into the open door, across Petite’s front seats, as the stallion lunged forward, bashing into the door.

I scrambled for the gas pedal and the ignition all at once. Unfortunately, my head was in the passenger footwell, and the pedal and ignition weren’t. I twisted around and sat up as a battle-ax smashed into Petite’s windshield. The glass shattered and caved inward, breaking the ax’s momentum only enough that it didn’t follow through to split open my breastbone. For a couple of seconds I stared at the gleaming metal edge that had broken through the windshield, then cranked the ignition. Petite, God bless her little steel soul, started with a roar.

The ax tore along the windshield in an agonized squeal of glass and metal as I gunned her and shot forward. The thick-shouldered rider on the roan reflected in the side-view mirror for a moment, startled and shaking his hand where Petite’s sudden acceleration had yanked the ax away. Then he caught up his reins and whirled the roan around as Cernunnos’s host began to give chase.

A little belatedly, it occurred to me that running from a hunt was probably the very last thing I wanted to do.

Somehow, I didn’t find any comfort in the thought that it was probably going to be the very last thing I did, either.

I knew foxes went to ground when they were hunted. I couldn’t think of a single damned place that I could go to ground. I didn’t know how, but Cernunnos had found me toodling down the freeway. That didn’t bode well for losing myself in a crowd, and besides, it was already clear the Hunt didn’t mind a little property damage. I hardly wanted to give them the opportunity to start killing people. Other people, at least. They already seemed pretty fixed on the idea of making me dead.

Petite’s speedometer climbed past ninety before the Hunt showed any sign of losing ground. Cernunnos fell back, distantly reflected expression furious, and all the host but one slowed with him.

The riderless horse came on, eating great lengths of distance with each stride. It was impossibly fast, and so clear in its motions that even watching in the mirror I could see the play of muscle under pale golden fur, bunching and releasing as it closed the distance between us. I glanced at the speedometer; I was still adding speed, heading toward a hundred now.

And the riderless horse was gaining on me.

A knot of certainty tied itself in my stomach. If Cernunnos were uninjured, all the Hunt would be gaining on me now. I pressed on the gas pedal and Petite responded with an urgent hum of power as she accelerated. I wasn’t surprised that the riderless horse still gained on me. I topped out at one-fifteen, more out of respect for my poor abused car than being unable to push her faster, and watched the pale horse put on a surge of speed that brought it to my side.

It—she—was huge, as tall as Cernunnos’s stallion, and there was nothing wasted in her. Admiration and envy stung through me. Sparks flew where the mare’s feet made solid connection with the ground she ran on, though I’d seen the Hunt ride and I knew she wasn’t constrained by having to run on the unwieldy concrete. She ran effortlessly, stretched out long and lean, so low that her head was nearly on a level with mine.

She turned her head to look at me, the almost-full-on gaze that horses do, and the weight of her body followed the lead of her head. For the second time in under an hour I braced for the impact, and for the second time the horse avoided it, this time with a tiny burst of speed. She leaped ahead of me, one hoof denting Petite’s hood as she sprang into the sky and wheeled, galloping back to the Hunt, leaving me careening down the freeway alone.