Urban Shaman (30 page)

I tossed the phone back to its owner with a nod of thanks, and tucked Stuart’s phone number in my back pocket. “Somebody tell Morrison I’m going to the Space Needle.” I grabbed Gary and we went before anybody actually had time to tell Morrison. It seemed
like the best route. Easier to get forgiveness, and all that, although I thought I had tacit permission to go off chasing wild hares. Or Wild Hunts, more accurately. I took another catnap in the cab, unable to stay awake with the quiet thrum of the engine sounding in my ears and the car’s vibrations relaxing my muscles.

It was dark when I opened my eyes again, city lights reflecting off low gray clouds, the top of the Space Needle wisped with fog. Gary pulled into the 1st Avenue North Garage, crawling up to the roof parking. We sat under the off-colored light for a few moments, staring around the empty lot.

“I ain’t never seen this place empty,” Gary announced.

“Me either,” I said nervously. “Especially not at six at night.”

“Is there some kinda construction going on?” Gary shifted his shoulders. I shook my head, climbing out of the cab. Hairs on my arms stood up, even under my jacket, and I rubbed them briskly.

“This isn’t natural.”

“No kidding.” Gary closed his door behind him, eyeing me. “This is prime parking. The monorail stops here.”

“Yeah, I know. Well, hell.” I leaned on the hood of the car, puffing my cheeks out. “Faint heart never won fair lady, right?”

I stepped out of my body, all my rudimentary shields collapsing.

Grayness rushed over me like a tidal wave, drowning me with its weight. I could barely breathe in the
thickness, my lungs filling like it was poisoned air. It had a purpose, that grayness. It was meant to obscure. I took a few steps away from the car, toward the doors that led down to the Center. “Jesus, we’re right on top of him.”

“Jo?” Gary asked nervously. I turned around to find my body slumped over the hood of the car, the unnerved cab driver staring at it.

“I’m over here,” I said, half to see if he could hear me. He twitched and straightened, looking around warily. I waved. He didn’t react. “To your left,” I volunteered. He jerked to the right.

“Stop that,” he demanded, not looking quite at either my unconscious body or my spirit self. “I can’t see where your voice is coming from.”

I grinned. My body did, too. I squinted at it. I wasn’t really keen on the idea of leaving it lying around. It seemed sloppy, not to mention dangerous. “Okay,” I said under my breath. “I did this earlier, right? Saw in two worlds while operating the flesh. I can do this.”

I edged back toward myself and folded down over myself, which felt tremendously weird. I settled in again, remembering the idea of breathing while hanging on to the deep sense of the world around me, and then, tentatively, opened my eyes.

The world shifted, 3-D afterimages playing with my vision as I refocused with my physical eyes without losing the peculiar vision that let me see the colors and shapes of the spiritual world. Gray settled over the amber-lit parking lot as the two worlds resolved into one. I was going to have to learn to turn this sec
ond sight thing on and off with fewer dramatics. Right now I had all the grace of a bull in a china shop.

Right now, that didn’t really matter. I straightened up, no longer afraid that the slightest movement would jostle myself out of alignment again. “Sorry. They’re in there.
He’s
in there, at least.” I could see a center to the grayness now. Either I was getting better, or Herne was distracted enough that his shield was failing. I could even follow the slender line of truth that had tied me to him in the first place.

I opened the back of the cab and took out Cernunnos’s sword. It shivered a vibrant blue, stronger than the gray of Herne’s obscurity. It had a purpose, too. It was meant to end things.

I spun the hilt in my hand, watching the blue glitter, then grinned faintly at Gary as I headed for the door. “Coming?”

“Lady, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

T
he Space Needle is only the most famous structure in the Seattle Center. The whole Center covers something like seventy acres and has everything you can think of except a way to prevent people from wandering the grounds at any hour, day or night.

It was entirely empty. No bums, no skateboarding teens, no businessmen coming down from the monorail to catch a bus or to go to their cars. Coming out of the parking garage was like walking into a barbed wire fence: every step forward bit and nipped at me, trying to push me back. Gary, a step or two behind me, grunted. “It’s all in your mind,” I muttered.

Streetlamps discolored patches of snow into unhealthy yellows and lilacs. Bits of paper debris scattered across stretches of concrete, their rattling surprisingly loud without the sounds of people to muffle them. The
desolation was uncomfortable, and that was just on the obvious side of things. With the brilliant colors of my other Sight distorted with gray, the Center looked a carnie’s particular view of Hell.

“Where we going, Jo?” Gary asked very quietly. He was spooked, his big shoulders hunched and his colors muted in a way that had nothing to do with Herne’s obscurement.

“It’s all right,” I said. “You don’t have to be here, you know.”

Gary straightened, offended. “You think I’m backin’ out now? After being along for the whole ride?”

I shifted my shoulders uncomfortably, but didn’t slow my pace. The thread between Herne and myself was contracting, drawing us closer together and getting stronger. I couldn’t see him yet, but I felt him. I wondered if he felt me. “You could get killed,” I said. “So far everybody else has.”

“Nah,” the cabby said. “I’m your good-luck charm.”

I laughed, the sound unexpectedly bright in the gray light and the frozen walls. “You’re a little big to put in my pocket.”

“Guess I better just tag along, then.” He straightened his shoulders again. I smiled.

“Gary?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“Sure. Now, what’s the plan?”

“The plan? I’m supposed to have a plan?” The cord contracted again, a physical pull, and I stumbled. Gary
put a hand out to steady me. “The plan is to rescue the princess, slay the dragon, kick some booty and be home in time for dinner. What time is it, anyway?”

“Couple minutes to six. You need a watch.”

“I have one.” I put out my wrist and discovered I was still wearing the bracelet, my watch abandoned at home where it presumably continued to tell the time in Moscow. “Nevermind.”

The cord contracted a third time. For a moment, the careful realignment I’d done of body to soul was pulled askew and I flashed forward through the park to the carousel.

It spun, its music turned down, not needing to compete with the sounds of other rides or people calling back and forth. On the outer ring, a slender blond girl rode a beautifully carved wooden horse, painted golden as sunlight. She stood up in the stirrups as I watched, leaning to make a laughing snatch at a brass ring.

“Almost,” Herne said, full of amusement. I looked past Suzanne to the inner ring of the carousel. The god’s son leaned against an intricate red dragon, watching the child of his blood settle back down into her saddle.

Kevin Sadler leaned against the red dragon, watching his daughter pout with laughter and get ready for another try.

I snapped back into my body, stumbling from shock. “Oh, my God, I am so stupid.” I spat bile and began to run. Gary startled, then fell into a run behind me.

We skidded over the threshold of the carousel together, just in time to see Suzy make another grab for the ring, and, with a triumphant shout, come away with it clenched in her fist.

With it came down the walls that separated one world from another. Cernunnos’s stallion screamed, the deep primal sound that kept making me want to scream in return. Suzanne
did
scream in response, clutching at the wooden horse’s spiral pole as the Wild Hunt burst from the sky to ride down at her, twelve riders strong and one lonely mare. Even as she screamed, Suzanne’s eyes went to the mare, longing. Cernunnos shifted in his saddle, leaning toward her like a hero in an old western, about to scoop up his beloved.

Herne stepped in front of her, the vestiges of his assumed human form shedding away.

I should have seen it before. Everything was there, the green eyes, the long jaw and high cheekbones. The man was slight where the demigod was broad, but the hair was the same ash-brown, albeit in different quantities. And I had known almost from the start that Herne wasn’t trapped in just one shape.

“Stop,” the god’s son said, really very softly. The host parted and swept around them like waves, galloping ethereally through the carousel. Only Cernunnos reined up with easy strength, no sign of the injury I’d done him a few days earlier. The stallion reared back to kick at Herne before prancing nervously to the ground again. In moments, the riders swung back around and gathered behind Cernunnos, stilling their horses. The red-eared hounds slunk under the horses
and leaned against their forelegs, glaring toward Herne with angry red eyes.

Suzanne hung onto the wooden horse, crouched small, too frightened to make a sound. Now that I was closer, looking at her was difficult. The slender body seemed overfull, and my eyes slid off her like I was trying to follow the shape of a second person occupying her space.

“You’re much too late, Father,” Herne whispered. His voice carried across the silent grounds with the clarity of a sound studio, words clipped and edged. “I’ve worked for this. Can’t you feel it? The Rider’s almost lost to you. Only a few more minutes.”

Cernunnos looked beyond Herne to Suzanne. “Take her,” he murmured. “I have one to replace her.” He smiled, curved teeth bright in the ugly light, and looked from Suzanne to me. Herne turned, surprise filtering through his eyes. Greener eyes than they were as Kevin Sadler, but still unmistakably the same. How could I have missed it?

“You didn’t check your messages, Jo,” he said affably. Herne’s faint English accent was gone, replaced by Kevin’s Anywhere America accent. “You’d be halfway to Portland by now. I’m disappointed.”

“I didn’t have time,” I admitted. There didn’t seem much point in lying. “Lucky for me, I guess.” I wondered if they made dunce caps big enough to hide under. Forever. I shifted my gaze from Herne to Cernunnos, and added, “I beat you once already, my lord master of the Hunt. I don’t owe you anything.”

“I lost one challenge,” Cernunnos agreed, “and my
word keeps me from Babylon forever. There was no caveat against a second reckoning, little shaman.”

Oops. Oh well. I’d deal with that later. Assuming there was a later. “What have you done to her, Herne?”

“Can’t you tell?” The touch of England was back in his voice. “Really, I knew you were a novice, but I thought it would be obvious even to you. Look closer, Joanne Walker. Siobhán Walkingstick.
Gwyld.
”

I didn’t want to. Looking at Suzanne with the second sight made my head hurt. Herne’s voice, though, was terrifyingly compelling. I shuddered, trying not to look, but against my own wishes, my head turned and I Saw.

Suzanne Quinley
was
overflowing, two bright souls battling for dominance in her slender body. One was so old I didn’t dare look at it for long, feeling the pull of its power even at a glance. I could drown in its strength, every bit as easily as I could drown in Cernunnos’s. That soul’s ties ran in bright silver threads to each of the riders and to Herne, and strongest of all to Cernunnos. It was also bound, by blood and darkness, to the far more fragile soul that was Suzanne’s, a mortal child buried under the weight of eternity. With every moment that passed, the immortal Rider’s soul became more firmly a part of Suzanne. It was a matter of minutes before the girl herself was gone forever.

The most terrible thing was that the Rider’s soul held no evil in it. It had been siphoned from its true host in fragments, stretched thin over many years, until there was so little left binding soul to body that
the body could no longer keep its hold, and the soul abandoned it entirely, in need of a place to continue. And Suzanne Quinley had been primed as the new body.

“Her birthday’s in a few minutes.” I said softly. “I mean, the time of her birth. How did you lose her, Herne? Your own daughter. You must have tried for a very long time to father the perfect child. Was Adina her mother?” How had he hidden himself from Adina? Had she chosen not to see, or was his strength so much greater than hers that she never stood a chance? All I knew about her was that she’d tried to help me.

“Of course not. Her mother’s dead. It’s easy to lose children when you’ve fathered as many as I have. I only found her a few years ago.”

Memory, sharp and searing, cut through my mind, something I’d written off as a dream. A brick red boy, a few years older than I was, lifting startled golden eyes, to smile at me.
Welcome, Siobhán,
he’d said, offering me a hand.
This is where it begins. Brightness of body, brightness of soul.
I’d woken up with my first period staining my panties.

“When she hit puberty,” I said stupidly. I remembered the brick red boy from other dreams, here and there, until I was fifteen. I even remembered thinking that it seemed like he was visiting me on purpose. They stopped very suddenly. I hadn’t had one in twelve years. I was going to have to ask Coyote about that.

Later. Now there was too much to do. Herne looked ever so slightly impressed. Not, unfortunately, impressed enough to lie down and roll over for me, but
a little impressed. “Very good. There were so many factors. Most important—”

“Was the birthday. Twelve days after Christmas. So that when you defeated Cernunnos, it was at the height of his power, and it was all yours.
That
much,” I said bitterly, “I figured out.”

“But too late.” Herne turned his back on me. Nice to know I was such a threat. Cernunnos watched Suzanne calculatingly and a bad feeling came into the pit of my stomach.

“Gary?”

“Yeah?”

“You still any good at the whole linebacker gig?”

The big man chuckled. “Not quite as limber as I used to be, but I can make do in a pinch.”

“Cernunnos is going to kill Suzanne at six-oh-seven. I may be busy. Stop him.”

Gary lifted a bushy eyebrow at me. “At six-oh-seven?”

“It’s when she was born,” I said softly. “Her soul and the Rider’s will be irrevocably bound at that moment. If he destroys her, he destroys the thing that keeps him from riding free.”

“’M I supposed to understand what you’re talkin’ about?”

I shot him a dirty look. The other sight flashed red into the look, physical effect of a glare. I bet there were some people out there who could really kill with that kind of look. “Just be ready to play ball.”

Gary grinned, bright white. I jerked my head around, startled. While I’d been talking to Herne, the obscurity had failed. I wished I thought it was a sign
of his power weakening. It was more likely it just wasn’t worth the bother, now that I’d found him and his moment was at hand.

“You have her,” Cernunnos said, “but you still have me to defeat, my son.”

I muttered, “I am your father, Luke,” and moved forward, stepping up onto the carousel platform. Suzanne was slumped over her carousel horse. The pale mare stood beside her, between worlds, her tail flickering through the red dragon Herne had leaned against. She nosed at Suzy’s sleeve, less than the wind in effect.

Just ahead of them, Herne drew a sword nearly identical to his father’s, and bowed without half the grace that Cernunnos returned the acknowledgment with. I could see why he was jealous.

The clash of swords had nothing on the roar of power that was released as the two came together. Unshielded either physically or psychically, I staggered under the onslaught of strength, green and brown and impossibly potent. Lightning slammed down from the sky, into both opponents. Neither flinched. Nor did Suzanne. This close, I felt her heartbeat faltering, uncertain under the insistent pressure of the Rider. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gary edging closer, watching Herne and Cernunnos intently. I nodded, relieved, and stepped behind a winged swan, coming up behind Suzanne to pull her off the carousel horse and into my arms.

Electricity slammed through me, endless painful voltage. My muscles locked up hard enough to make
me tremble, and I dropped to my knees, but I kept Suzanne in my arms. The bright soul of the Rider swept over me without malice, only the simple determination to survive. Entangled with it, I felt the faintest slender thread back to the body it had once owned, fey and green-eyed and boyish. And dying.

Ironic,
the Rider said, less words or coherent thought than a fleeting feeling. The child who housed the soul of Death itself was finally dying in turn. Hour by hour he had slipped away from his fragile body, guided by the only thing that could compel him: demands made by another of his bloodline. Herne called the young Rider’s spirit to him, binding it with blood and death, weakening him as Herne bided his own time.

Until now. Until this most recent of Rides, on All Hallow’s Eve, when the world walls were thinnest. The Rider had led the Hunt forth into the void between worlds, and Herne had struck a telling blow. Taking power stored from centuries of sacrifices, he smashed the link betwixt body and soul, sending the boy Rider’s body tumbling back through blackness to the world he called home. Binding the freed soul to a girl. His daughter. Suzy. Only the most tenuous connection still held the Rider’s soul to the body he’d once owned.