Shaman Rises (The Walker Papers) (25 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

It had been so easy. So easy to manipulate the host into giving up her body and calling my brother to her like he was a lost dog.

The shape of the thought gave me momentary pause, its form so different from how the old man had spoken. Such was the price of a mortal shell, that their small minds wore thoughts and words into familiar patterns, like a river cutting through soft soil. I could reshape them if I wished.

But some of the sweetness of agony came from letting whatever spark of the host’s mind remained hear and see and think in the way she was accustomed to, forcing her to feel my actions as if they were her own. In desperation, she wanted to think of me as
the Master,
a thing separate from herself, but it was my delight to make us one, and leave her unable to protest. So: it had been
easy,
and I reveled in the way she thought it, because it hurt her all the more for me to think that way, too.

My brother came as if this host were the star around which he spun. He burned more brightly than he had in our last encounter, strengthened, perhaps, by her affection, and that pleased me.

He knew in the moment of change that he had been tricked. Some outward seeming of this body’s demeanor: the blackness of my eyes, or an uncanny sight that showed him my domination of the small shamanic spirit. His pleasure turned to pain, then to fury, almost as furious as the captured soul inside me. She screamed within my mind, puny fists pummeling me, louder by far than either the old man or her lover, but even so, too small to be so much as an irritation. Strange that she could also be large enough to feed my hunger for rage and despair. She had capitulated so easily, her companions such easy marks, and now before me stood an angry green god.

Hungering, I reached for him.

An emptiness swallowed me, startling and brief. It was this body’s nature to use its own power, and there was none to be had.

In that instant, the green god struck at me instead.

He showed no regard for the host’s fragile body, driving a silver blade deep through its chest. Pain, more intimate and immediate than any I had ever known, lived in me, though the buried voice of my host laughed in agonizing familiarity. Guided by her, I lifted my gaze, struggling for breath to make the words. “Really, my lord god of the Hunt? Again? We keep doing this dance. You stab me, I stab you...”

I wrapped my hand around the blade itself and withdrew it from my own body. My heart stuttered, knees weakening. Blood spilled, coating my chest, my clothes, making red streaks on my black coat. I tried again to breathe and couldn’t: there was a hole in me where there shouldn’t be.

Two holes. A physical one, piercing the body, and an emptiness where her magic had been. I scrabbled for it, hands making useless claws that closed on nothing. My weakened knees failed and I fell to them, broken stone sending lesser shards of pain through my legs.

Foggily, faintly, it came to me that I had perhaps been tricked. That this host had known what magic it would take to call a god from beyond his time, and had done it more willingly than I’d known. It had used all the magic she had inside her, and all that was left for me to feed on was her pain and rage.

And even that was diminished. Worse than diminished: gone. Fallen into exhaustion, unsustainable. She hadn’t even left me with so much as despair. She was still
there,
still present, a hint of life within my mind, but it was as if she slept, and intended to sleep forevermore. There was no anger, no hate, nothing but weary calm.

With astonishing clarity and for the first time in my impossibly long existence, I thought,
I will die here,
and believed it. I would die here, because a snot-nosed mortal and my brother had conspired together without speech, and I had let it happen.

No. If this body couldn’t be healed by its own magic, then the lives of this world would feed me as I bled, until I forced my brother from the shape he knew and took it for myself. With bared teeth and my own rage to feed me, I shoved to my feet again, searching for the nearest dregs of humanity to feast upon.

To my delight, it came in the form of the old man and his wife, in the form of the Raven Mocker, and in the form of the one Joanne Walker loved. Their fear for my host was rich, powerful and, if not healing, at least sufficient. Still bleeding, I gathered their anger, their hatred, their worry, and coiled those weighted emotions in my hands like whips. I cracked them once, and even I rocked at the sound: thunderclaps in our very presence, knocking the mortals aside.

I lashed again, bringing the whips of my power together to catch a god.

A young goddess rose from the earth and caught the strike.

For half a heartbeat, had I a heartbeat left, I stood stunned, gaping, as taken aback as any of the mortals. Not so much, perhaps, as my brother, whose despair was suddenly piquant.

I
knew
this girl. Not just through my host, whose horror was sharp enough to waken her from silence within me, but in my own right. She was new to me, a recent taste; a recent taint. I saw it within her, black roots spidering through a green that blazed nearly so bright as the god himself. They were tied together, child-goddess and ancient god, blood calling to blood. Power calling to power, and all power, from the start of the universe until its end, had a choice to make.

I would make her choose me, and through her I would have Cernunnos, my brother, her grandfather. Through her I would bleed my brother dry forever, and never again fear hungering for pain.

I pulled the whips and she stumbled forward, unable to release them. Never able, had I my way: the spidering blackness inside her was already reaching to connect with the magic I bound her with. But the goddess only stumbled, then stopped. Held her ground, leaned back against the pain of my whips, and spoke with a shaking, determined voice. “Leave my grandfather alone, you son of a bitch.”

“Is this what you’ve come to?” I crowed to Cernunnos. “Hiding behind children? Letting them die for you? This is better than I ever imagined, my lord god of the Hunt. This is
rich.
”

“He’s not hiding,” the girl whispered. “I’m protecting him. There’s a difference.”

“There is,” I said gleefully. “Okay, kiddo. If you can stand against me, I’ll give him to you.” I hadn’t imagined, when I began to take human hosts, how their own words would affect mine, but the cringe of discomfort on the girl’s face as I spoke with her friend’s voice was well worth it. My host had reacted the same way when I had used the others, and used their voices. I’d known having a body would be superior. I hadn’t realized it would be
fun.

The girl paled, then lifted her chin. Her eyes were those of her grandfather, emerald-green and startling in a so-human face. “I’m strong,” she said. “You don’t scare me.”

I smiled. It was easier now, having practiced with the old man. “No. I
terrorize
you, Suzy.” That was the name the host knew for this girl, and she blanched again when I used it. “But I don’t have to. Join me, and let me show you what you might be.”

It had always been easy to pluck dreams of greatness from the minds of mortals; it was how my creatures had come to me, time and again. They had a need they imagined I could fill, and this child was no different. She had strength and knew it. She had undone a life in her time, a dangerous and terrible thing, but to her, worse than that, was the thought of how she might
make
one, if she could so easily undo one.

She had lost her parents, I saw. Mortal parents, no blood of her blood, but those who had raised and nurtured her, given her the link to humanity that she still clung to. Their deaths were a still-raw wound, and she had dreamed of salving that pain.

“Like this?” I gestured and they stood beside me, Rachel and David Quinley, startled and joyful.

The girl gasped, and the darkness in her grew. She lurched a step forward, but I waggled a scolding finger at her. “Not yet, Suzy. They can’t live again until you’re mine. That’s how this works.”

“Suzy.” The old man’s voice grumbled over my winning ploy. “Suzy, you were there, doll. You remember Archie Redding. You remember what he did to bring his family back, and you gotta remember it wasn’t ever really them. That ain’t Jo in there and you know it. It’s the Master, and he’s about death and pain, not about giving you your loved ones back.”

“You got your wife back!” The girl’s voice cracked in accusation and agony. Laughter bled in me just like the wound in my chest, but I held it back, knowing Suzy was fragile and that laughing now would lose her.

“Only ’cause she never really died. Your own gran’pa there took her and kept her safe for me, Suzy.”

The girl whirled on the green god, her pale hair a living thing. “Then why didn’t you save my parents?”

His gaze went to the old man and woman, then returned to the girl. “I had meddled too close to that time already. Time would not allow another change.”

“Why did you choose her?” Misery rang in the girl’s voice.

I sighed contentedly, tasting her betrayal, tasting her sadness and fears. Tasting her loneliness, and offering a salve for it: her mother’s simulacrum stepped forward with outstretched arms. “Suzy, sweetheart. Come to us. We miss you so much, baby. I’m so sorry we left you.”

“You didn’t leave. You were taken.” The girl had more strength in her than I imagined: she didn’t turn, although she trembled with the effort. Instead she looked on my brother, still seeking answers he wouldn’t give, while she spoke to the images of her parents. “It wasn’t your fault, but I still hate that you’re gone. Sometimes I hate you for being gone.”

Tears scalded her voice, tears of fire, tears so sweet I could feel their fire and revel in them. I was healing, the body knitting itself back together with the meal of her rage and sorrow. I’d be ready to strike soon, and tried to hold myself still with the anticipation of it.

“Why?” The girl threw the question at the god again. “Why did you choose her, and not my parents?”

“Because I too see all the possible paths, and their deaths led to this moment, where their survival did not. Because
her
survival led to this moment, and her death did not. If it could have been otherwise and led here, I might have chosen differently.”

“Why? What’s so important about here?”

“You.” My brother took a step forward, just as her false parents had done. I didn’t like that, didn’t like that they continued to speak, but I was so nearly healed, and her pain was so great, that I knew I could be whole again before she had made her choice. Then I would have her whether she wanted it or not, and then I would have them all.

“You,” the god said again. “Even more than my corrupt little shaman, in this moment you are important, granddaughter. Your parents died so you would awaken to your heritage. Annie Muldoon lived so this moment could come, with you aware and able to choose.”

The girl half turned, her gaze glassy between myself and the green god. “Are you telling me the fate of the world rides on what I choose?”

My brother almost laughed. “No. Only my fate. You know that our fates are not fixed, granddaughter, but you also know that they...trend.”

“But I can’t see the trends anymore. It’s just all black.” Despair rose in her, blackened and strengthened by the false faces of her parents turned hopefully on her. “If it’s all black, then the paths are chosen, aren’t they? There’s no point in even trying.”

I had her. In that moment, I had her, and triumph rose in my chest. The wounds sealed, my strength burgeoning as I drew darkness from girl. It was startling, how weak these bodies were, but in a minute or two it would no longer matter. Now it was just the joy of waiting, the stretching out of anticipation. I coiled a little, ready to pounce.

The green god spoke as though I wasn’t even there, much less of any importance. “Being unable to see the path does not mean it has disappeared. It means only that you must trust yourself, and if you cannot trust yourself, then trust me. I still see the paths, and I tell you that neither your fate nor mine is yet written on them. Find a light, Suzanne. Cling to it.”

Impossibly, her power in me weakened, fading away as her strength to resist grew. Seeing that, I risked all. To the hissing, spitting rage of the host mind, I gave the mother-simulacrum palpable form, and with it touched the girl’s face.

Suzanne’s resistance crumbled.

* * *

For one instant I wrenched control back from the Master and screamed, “Suzy, no!”

* * *

It came too suddenly to stop. I’d never imagined that a mortal mind could wrest control from me, and in my surprise, I lost the simulacrums. The mother-thing vanished and the girl’s face changed profoundly: horror, sorrow, resolution.

“Joanne’s good,” she said in a clear light voice. “Joanne’s awesome. But I’m a quarter god, and that trumps good. Come on, you son of a bitch. Catch me if you can.”

She fled, and I left Joanne Walker behind to pursue her.

* * *

I hit the ground like a sack of rocks, every muscle spasming from the Master’s sudden release. I fumbled for healing power, trying to calm the convulsions that wracked me, and wasn’t exactly surprised when the magic didn’t answer. I’d emptied it breaking all the laws of how gods worked when I brought Cernunnos into this world, and whatever hideous stitching-back-together the Master had done after Cernunnos had impaled him did not exactly lend itself to healing magic thinking everything was all systems go.

The warmth of a low desert sun relaxed my twisting body, and the heat of desert sand washed upward, taking the pain away. I melted against the ground, immediately aware that it wasn’t soft giving sand, but actually concrete, and smiled up at Coyote. “Hey. Thanks.” I sounded like I’d been drinking glass.

His return smile was sad. “You’re welcome. Better power up, Jo. Things are going to hell.” He offered a hand and pulled me to my feet.

It felt weird to be fully back in control of my own body. I leaned on Coyote, taking quick assessment. The headache had vanished, for which I was eternally grateful. Morrison and the Muldoons no longer looked like they were under any kind of attack, but their distress hadn’t lessened one bit at all. I followed their attention, wondering what had gone wrong in the five or six seconds since the Master had abandoned me.