Raven Calls (The Walker Papers Book 8), page 31
Unbloodied, breathing and chortling. I tripped over my own feet, collapsed on top of him and started hitting his shoulders as tears streamed down my face. I honestly couldn’t talk, my rage and fear and relief so tangled together that even hiccuping sobs were almost more than I could manage. My gut roiled so hard I thought I’d throw up, and almost wished I would. Something had to give, and puking up bile sounded like a necessary release after the ten minutes I’d just had. My body spasmed with shivers, and the fists I thumped against Gary’s shoulders were pathetic in their lack of strength.
Gary sat up, pushed me upright, too, and caught my wrists at his shoulders so I’d stop hitting him. I had nothing left to fight him with. I fell forward bonelessly, the top of my head against his chest, and heaved sobs. He stayed quiet a minute or two, waiting for me to pull it together, but I couldn’t.
Eventually he murmured, "I know you told me not to do anything like that again, darlin’, but you were gettin’ your ass kicked. I could see yer ma and the others out there, stuck on the other side of the power circle, and I thought, hey, banshees, they gotta come warn you when you’re about to die, right? An’ take away the body, maybe, I forget if they do that. So I figured their raison d’être might overrule the power circle and that would get ’em in here. I knew Sheila’d help you then, if she could. So I threw myself on the sword." He chuckled. "Never thought I’d say that and mean it literally. Your mom knocked me sideways before goin’ after you. Made sure I didn’t impale myself. Woman’s got a tackle like a linebacker, doll. Must run in the family."
I’d stopped sobbing somewhere during the explanation, and had lifted my head to stare at him with hollow-feeling eyes. His hopeful smile with the last words made me feel like I should smile in return, but I couldn’t make it there. I’d run past the end of my resources and then had what was left dragged out and kicked across the lawn. Nothing was left. Gary’s expression gentled even further and he stood without letting me go, hugging me against his broad chest. "S’okay, darlin’. It’s all gonna be okay. I got a lot to tell you, y’know? A big ol’ adventure, and also that fight at Knocknaree."
A laugh burst out and died again just as fast. "If your St. Patrick’s Day weekend was a bigger adventure than fighting at Knocknaree…" I had no idea how to finish that, but at least he’d made me smile.
"There’s my girl." Gary kissed the top of my head, took my hand in his and put them both atop the Lia Fáil.
We shot up through the top of the world.
Chapter 34
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22, 3:14 P.M.
The switchback on Croagh Patrick was every bit as bad the second time as it had been the first. This time, however, I was wearing lightweight tennies, not heavy stompy boots, which helped. It was too warm for the long leather coat I had on, but it had—bizarrely—been whole again when Gary and I returned from the Lower World. I didn’t know if killing the Morrígan had undone her most recent magics, or if I’d somehow brought the idea of the coat whole and well back with me and imposed that on the real thing. Whatever the reason, I was so pleased I pretty much hadn’t taken the coat off since discovering its wholeness.
I also pretty much hadn’t stopped eating since we left the Lower World. I stopped halfway up the switchback and defiantly ate two breakfast bars and the half pint of milk I’d been lugging just for that purpose. Defiantly, because Méabh had forbidden me to eat, last time I’d climbed this mountain. Then I went the rest of the way up, and wasn’t surprised to find the mountaintop deserted save one person.
My cousin Caitríona O’Reilly, the Irish Mage. She stood where Méabh had once stood, both hands wrapped loosely around a spear two feet taller than she was. She looked like some odd new version of a Native warrior: pale-skinned, fire-engine-red-haired, wearing a hand-knitted cream sweater two sizes too large and a short black skirt over black leggings and boots as stompy as the ones I often wore. It worked: she exuded a certain confident power as she gazed toward the distant western waters. Her voice, clear and certain, carried back to me: "She was right, you know."
"Was she? About what?" I joined her and offered a breakfast bar. I had two boxes of them with me, and it was nice to share.
Cat took the bar but didn’t open it. "About the darkness on the horizon. About the things coming for the daughters of Méabh."
My appetite vanished. I studied the ocean, then shook my head. "I don’t see the future unless someone else makes me, I guess. I believe you, but I’m just as happy to not see it looming."
"I hope it stays looming long enough for me to learn my duties." Caitríona sat and I joined her. She opened her breakfast bar and took a bite before saying, "You lied to me, down there."
"Yeah."
She snorted, amused. "You’re supposed to apologize."
"Like hell. Gary and I barely made it out. I’m glad I didn’t have to worry about you, too. I’m not gonna apologize for that."
She made another sound, less derisive, and we sat together, eating breakfast bars and contemplating the view. "So what happened?" she asked after a while, and although I had no desire at all to revisit the last few minutes in the Lower World—the Otherworld, Brigid had called it—I did, ending with, "You’ll need to go to Tara soon, Cat. It’s down there, you know."
Caitríona gave me a curious glance and I pulled my knees up, chin resting on them. "Old Tara. The way it was. It’s down there in the Lower World, waiting for somebody to lift it up again. It tried following us when we left." I shivered at the recollection. Tara’s power was immense, and the Otherworld had been shaken free of the Master’s grip. All that power, essentially lost to humanity for eons, was awake again, and ready for a fight.
"You could have done it," Cat said after a judicious pause.
I shook my head. "I think we might be lucky I couldn’t have even lifted a finger right then, Cat. I’d been put through the wringer, and I think if I’d been using any kind of active power it might have latched on and followed us back up. This isn’t my territory. That’s not my decision to make, especially through an exhausted screw-up. It’s your decision and job, not mine."
"Should I?"
"Mmm. I dunno. I want to say yes, just because it was so awesome. But it would literally rearrange the landscape. It would raise a river that went underground centuries ago. It would obliterate a chunk of highway. And it would force people to accept that something extraordinary had happened." I thought about that last, then amended, "At least it would for a while. Probably pretty soon they’d mostly think Tara had always been restored. We’re good at forgetting, especially awkward things like magic. So don’t do anything hasty." Me, advising someone not to be hasty. I laughed, and Cat lifted an eyebrow. I shook my head and repeated, "Just don’t be hasty."
"I’m nineteen so I’ve time." She hesitated, then asked what we’d both been half avoiding. "Will ye stay?"
My phone rang as I started to answer, startling us both into laughter. I patted my pockets until I found it, saying, "I forgot I was even carrying it. Good reception up here," and glanced at the ID as I answered. Unknown caller, so it wasn’t Morrison. I had to talk to him before I decided about staying in Ireland, but I’d already as much as promised Caitríona that I would. "Hello?"
"Joanne?"
A woman’s voice, stiff with discomfort. It took me a few seconds to place it. Then I got to my feet, staring westward, suddenly feeling like I, too, could see the dark mythic clouds on the horizon. "Sara?"
Sara Isaac, née Buchanan, my high school best friend and worst enemy, now married to the man who’d fathered my children, exhaled so sharply I moved the phone from my ear for an instant. Caitríona, alerted by my tone, got up while I brought the phone back to my ear, afraid to miss whatever could possibly be forcing Sara to call. "I got your number from a Captain Morrison at the police department," she said, still stiffly. "I told him I was the FBI agent from the cannibal case in December."
"Sara, what the hell is wrong? Are you okay? Is Lucas okay?"
"I’m fine. We’re fine. We’re in North Carolina."
I suddenly felt like a tower of building blocks, like the game where blocks are removed until the tower tumbles. One of my blocks, way down at the base, had just been removed, and it was only a matter of time until I fell.
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything. Sara waited five whole seconds, then said, "It’s your Dad, Joanne. He’s missing. You need to come home."
Pre-order MOUNTAIN ECHOES now! —but also:
please turn the page for an excerpt from NO DOMINION to find out what happened to Gary when he left Jo's side,
and please enjoy this free teaser snippet about Joanne's cousin Caitríona!
Excerpt: NO DOMINION
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
The Walker Papers are Joanne's story. They were Joanne's story from the start, with no danger of anyone else taking over, ever.
Except when I got to the middle of chapter nine in Raven Calls, Gary rode off into the sunset and I had a powerful compulsion to follow him. So ultimately, I did.
Here is the first chapter of Gary's adventure!
A god, an elf and a shaman walked into a bar.
All right, no, they didn’t. They’d walked backward through time, and so had I, but if I didn’t make some kinda joke about it, I was gonna get nervous. A joke was usually enough to throw off oncoming alarm, and it made me figure maybe standing at the Hill of Tara in ancient Ireland, watching the sun start to fall in the west maybe wasn’t so strange. Not after a year that included tackling gods and line-blocking demons, not to mention fighting zombies and hunting banshees.
And besides, the whole damned world was lit up with what Joanne Walker called the Second Sight. She was the shaman. Me, I was the cab driver who’d ended up her sidekick. I reckoned most folks would think it oughta be the other way around, what with her being twenty-seven and me seventy-four, but I didn’t have magic, just enthusiasm. Not that long ago I hadn’t even had that, but Jo had reawakened a sense of adventure I’d thought died along with my wife.
Funny thing was, as soon as I started living again I couldn’t remember how to stop anymore. The three years I’d spent being a grumpy old man after Annie’s death had faded like they’d happened to somebody else. Good thing, too, 'cause a grumpy old man couldn’t appreciate the world the way I was seeing it right now.
I didn’t know what the colors meant, only that I could see 'em pouring through the land. Giant pillars like Stonehenge—only wood—made a boundary around Tara. Everything inside 'em glowed blue, the same shade of blue I’d seen Jo call up time and again when she was healing somebody. Here an' there, yellow shot up, making for green bursts where it blended with the blue. It all pulsed with life, even down into the ground, where browns and blacks wriggled together like worms and bugs. Right smack in the middle, just a couple dozen feet from where we were standing, shone the whitest magic I’d ever seen. It blasted up from a chest-high stone that had been there in our time, too: the Lia Fáil, the Stone of Destiny. Legend had it that when the true king of Ireland touched it, it would scream so the whole country could hear. I reckoned most folks didn’t look at it with the Sight, 'cause with Jo’s magic flowing through me I could hear the damned thing shrieking inside my head. It was enough to drive a guy crazy.
Or it might be if the elf, the god an’ the shaman weren’t there to break up the monotony. Truth was, I couldn’t hardly look at the god. Cernunnos blazed emerald green against the setting sun’s gold, and left a reverse-color imprint on my eyeballs if I looked at him for more than half a second. There were others with him, a few riders of the Hunt on the ground nearby, and more milling about on horses that pranced on streaks of sunset gold in the sky. I recognized one of 'em: a boy who looked about twelve, even though I knew he had to be older than dirt. He was Cernunnos’s half-human son, and blazed with the same kinda power, just less intense.
The elf was easier to look at than the kid, even. Nuada of the Silver Hand. I’d read about him, but reading didn’t prepare me for a living being who looked like he’d been dipped in molten silver. His left hand was silver, actual living silver metal, and it had some of Cernunnos’s green fire to it. The rest of his—his aura, that’s what Jo would call it—the rest of his aura was earthier, like precious metal veins running through hard stone. He seemed connected to the world in a way even Jo didn’t, like he couldn’t be uprooted. He also looked kinda flummoxed, but that was his own damned fault. He’d asked Jo to prove herself as a shaman by summoning the god, and she’d done it.
She was easiest to look at, and also kinda the most amazing. She was my best girl, had been for over a year now, and I knew her pretty well. I’d seen her working magic any number of times, and I’d seen how it filled her up and spilled out. Still, that wasn’t quite the same as looking at her with the Sight and seeing how gunmetal blue healing magic washed through her like it was her blood.
Blood that was up, right now. The first time I’d met Cernunnos he’d been tryin’ ta kill Jo, who’d gotten in my cab for the first time that morning. Second time I met him was when we went zombie-hunting. This morning was the third time. Best I could count, it was the third time Jo had met him, too, but maybe it was more than that, though, 'cause their connection seemed to run wilder than just a few meetings could account for. Looking at the two of 'em together was like looking into the sun. They burned my eyes, but I couldn’t stop watching. I rubbed my eyes, and some of the magic Jo had put on me faded, making it easier to focus on Cernunnos.
The god was on his silver stallion, which was about the size of a draft horse with lines carved down to the delicacy of a race horse. Cernunnos was like that too: power pared down to slim limbs an’ delicate bones. You could almost think he wasn’t much to look at, if you weren’t too bright. If you didn’t notice how his shoulders thickened an’ how the bone pushed at the thin skin of his temples, antlers tryin’ ta get out. If you never met his eyes, you might think he was just some poor sap with some kinda genetic misfortune to his name. Me, I couldn’t hold his gaze.
My Joanne, though, she couldn’t look away. She was six feet of intensity, leaning in toward Cernunnos like they were drawn together by invisible wire. Most folks looking up at a god like that would seem like supplicants. Even Jo had, first time she saw him. Now it was more like she was holding herself back from pouncing. I knew the man in Joanne’s life, the man she was in love with. Looking at them together, I saw her love running deep, keeping her tied to the earth. Looking at her with Cernunnos, I saw how high she could fly.
An’ prob'ly how fast she could burn, too, 'cause mortals ain’t meant to soar with the gods. But nobody blamed Icarus for trying, and I thought it prob’ly took everything Jo had to say, "I can’t," when Cernunnos said to her, "Come with me. Ride with me to Knocknaree and fight by my side. Let us change the future that you know. Let us defeat death in these backward days of history, and see what new world awaits us."
Joanne pressed her eyes shut like it was killing her to say no, but she shook her head. "I can’t. You know I can’t, Cernunnos. I’ve ridden with you three times already. Once more and…"
Cernunnos got a hunter’s smile and leaned down toward her. "And thou’rt mine," he said softly enough I shouldna been able to hear, but I could. "Be mine, young shaman. Be mine, for thou hast no idea what we shall become."
I looked away, uncomfortable. I didn’t belong watching these two doing their dance, and neither did Nuada.
Jo shook her head again and Cernunnos straightened in his saddle, making a face as if ta say, "Women." But instead of saying it aloud he only said, "A pity," not just to Jo, but to the rest of us too. "It would have been good to challenge the troublesome one so early in his bid for earthly power, but even I will not ride against death without a force for life at my side."
Without quite meaning to, I opened my mouth and said, "I could go."
All three of 'em said, "What?", and for a couple seconds I wondered that myself. Thing was, though, it needed doing. We’d gotten thrown to the wrong end of time, me an’ Jo, an’ a whole lot of things had gone wrong since we’d gotten here. A king had died, an avatar of evil called the Morrígan had cut my throat, and an avatar of good named Brigid had taken a hit for Joanne that woulda dropped her. To top it off, Brigid had realized Jo was the key to binding a death cauldron made by a guy we called the Master: somebody, or something, whose only purpose in existing was to corrupt and kill. We weren’t fooling ourselves. Binding the cauldron was gonna get his attention, and that meant there was gonna be a fight. We’d been planning to get ourselves to the other side of Ireland in order to do the binding and face the fight, but our only way across was Cernunnos.
An’ Jo had just made it real clear she couldn’t ride with him. But we were coming from the other end of time, so we knew the cauldron got bound. It got destroyed, too, eventually. On our end of time, after the binding spell started coming loose. So the binding happened, an’ that meant somebody had to go do the heavy lifting. I figured I was that somebody.
Jo, though, wasn’t having any of that, from how she looked. She came right at me, like being up close would make her extra clear. "No way. Not a chance. Are you nuts? We’re a million years out of time, Gary, and you want to go riding off with the Wild Hunt without me at your back? Are you crazy? Are you nuts?"
I shoved my hands in my pockets. "Ain’t like I haven’t done it before."
Joanne waved her hands in the air, voice rising as fast as they did. "With Morrison! And Suzy! And Billy! And that was in our own time! And—"
"And I didn’t have the Sight," I interrupted. "And somebody’s gotta go, right? There’s a big fight brewing, and Brigid’s gonna be waiting for us, and we got no way to get there except Cernunnos. And you can’t ride with him."
