Urban Shaman (25 page)

“A land of excess,” I said slowly. Remembering was hard; there was a fog in my mind, and it wanted me to remember the passion of the Hunt, not ancient legends from the world I’d once called home. “Where all men could speak to one another, where gluttony and lust held sway over intellect and reason. They say God was angered by the excess and destroyed the city, so that men could no longer speak to each other and instead were made to fight over misunderstandings. They say that to return to Babylon is to embrace corruption.” I looked around, listening to the rise and fall of voices and laughter. “It feels to me like…peace.”

Cernunnos placed two fingers over my breastbone, where his sword had punched through me a few days earlier. The sudden memory made me blink and shiver before it faded again. “And tell me, little shaman,” he said, “are you at peace now?”

A warning note twinged inside me. There was something I was forgetting, a reason not to be at peace. But Cernunnos smiled, shockingly green eyes inviting, and I forgot it again. “I am, my lord master of the Hunt.”

“I am so very glad.” He curled his fingers under my chin. His hands were cool, even through the leather gloves he wore. I shivered a little. “Don’t be afraid,” he murmured, and kissed me.

Fleetingly, the thought went through my mind:
This is not right,
and was followed hard by,
when was the last time someone kissed me?
Cernunnos’s power closed around me then, no longer a safe blanket of comfort, but tendrils of penetration, enticing passion
from deep within me. I made an uncertain sound, closing my eyes against the pleasure in Cernunnos’s gaze. Green fire filtered through me, swirling up through my groin and into my breasts, sweet and hungry. His kiss was a taste of freedom, unlike anything I remembered since childhood. It was sanctuary.

“What a child we will make together, little shaman,” Cernunnos whispered. “What power, what passion he shall have.”

My eyes flew open, reality crashing back into my bones with a gut-wrenching jolt. “No!” I shoved him away as hard as I could. The god stumbled back, his green eyes alight with outraged astonishment. “No,” I panted again. “No, and no, and
no,
Cernunnos, I am not yours, and
I will not make that mistake again.
”

Passion ignited into rage in his eyes. “Think on your choices, shaman,” he snarled. “Choose me and I’ll grant you eternity, riding at my side. You will guide me as I guide the Hunt. Choose otherwise, and you and this place end now.” He threw his head back and let out a bellow like a wounded hind, a deep throbbing sound that sent tremors through the Joshua Tree spires. Around us the host faded back into being, unconstrained by observing niceties like traveling through physical space or linear time.

I stared at Cernunnos, far too aware of the heat still in my blood and the taste of his power, almost visible as he stood before me. At least the fog in my brain seemed to have burned away. “You need a thirteenth.” I’d figured that much out. Damn, I’d been right. Go team go. But I’d thought he needed Marie specifically.
“You need someone to ride in the child’s place so you can ride. It can be anybody? You’re offering that to
me?
”

“Not anyone,” Cernunnos said through gritted teeth. “Someone with power. Someone who can bear the weight of my touch without shuddering. Someone who can bear a child to replace the one that is lost.”

Tears burned hot in my eyes, an unexpected pang of shared loss lighting the air between the ancient god and myself. For a few seconds I could hardly breathe, my throat tight with memory and loss. The fire in Cernunnos’s eyes burned dark with frustrated rage and sorrow. I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself, holding myself still to prevent myself from going to him and trying to ease his pain.

“Choose,” Cernunnos demanded. He closed his fist around the stallion’s reins and mounted the animal in a single graceful motion. He looked terribly tall, fury stretching the elegant features gaunt, his power lending breadth to the slender form. He didn’t move, but I thought that if he turned his head I would see faint mists of green fire drift away, trails left by the anger in his eyes.

I remembered the sudden longing the silver misty world had woken in me, and took a startled breath. “She’s your daughter. The last Rider, the one who’s missing. And she’s strong enough to call you home. But me, I’m not from that world. I can resist that call. But I’m not—” I shivered again, staring up at him. “I’m not like Marie, my magic doesn’t work like hers. That’s why you need me to make a—” I couldn’t say
the last word, not out loud, not to the primal god on his horse before me. “My magic would overrule the power of that world, the one the Rider calls home. You could use our—” I still couldn’t say it. “You could stay in my world. Led by a child with shamanic magic.”

“A child would be best,” Cernunnos whispered. “Blood of my blood is bound to me whether we like it or not. Blood of your blood would bear much stronger ties to your world than any child I’ve sired before. Blood of our blood would be
rich
with power.” He lifted his stallion’s reins in a clenched fist. “But you, little shaman, you will do. Choose!”

“Just as long as you keep me drugged.” I touched my temple, remembering the green fog of his power. “No. No!”

A feral grin slipped over Cernunnos’s mouth. “Do you know what this place is,
gwyld,
that you have brought me to? Neither your world nor mine. There is no binding here.”

A sick feeling knotted my stomach. Cernunnos grinned again, sharp canines curving over his lower lip a moment. “A land of peace, shaman. They are traveling souls, without defenses, and we are beyond worlds.” He threw his head back again, ash-colored hair flinging back over his shoulders, and let out another spire-shaking bellow, this one more like a hunter’s horn than the wounded stag. When he lifted his head again, his brilliant eyes were narrow slits, full of smug anger. The crown of horn lost its subtlety, sweeping back from his skull in elegant, heavy whorls. His neck and shoulders thickened as I watched, body
changing to support the greater weight of the full crown. “You have chosen,” he snarled. His smile was wicked, so sharp it made me cold. “We ride.”

Morrison waved smelling salts under my nose and I came awake with a shock.

“N
o!” I sat up with a shriek, knocking Morrison’s hand away with all the strength I had. The vial of smelling salts flew out of his hand and bounced over the steps, skidding to a halt in the slushy snow. “No, no, oh, shit, no, I’ve got to go back, I’ve got to get
back!
”

Morrison stared at me, dumbfounded. I wanted to hit him for not understanding, even though I knew I sounded like a lunatic. “I’ve got to get back!”

“Funny,” Morrison said through clenched teeth, “I thought you just came back.”

“No, no! There, out there, I just let Cernunnos loose on, oh, fuck, I’ve got to get back!”

“Should I sedate her, Captain?” someone behind my back asked. Morrison looked up, disgusted.

“Sedate a head injury. Bright idea there.”

All I needed was the reminder. Pain exploded through
the back of my skull like it had been lying in wait. It grew progressively worse as I continued to shout at Morrison, frustration and fear rendering me more incoherent by the moment. Finally he picked up a handful of gritty slush and threw it in my face, which shut me up, as much to his surprise as mine.

“Once more,” he growled, “from the top, this time with complete sentences.”

I took a deep breath and wiped my face clean. Both actions sent ripples of pain down my back, muscle seizing up where I’d hit the stairs. I was sitting on the second one from the bottom, now. Apparently I’d not only wiped out, I’d then slid. And the police station had security cameras running twenty-four/seven. I’d end up in their Greatest Hits collection as soon as they were sure I was all right. I reached back and touched the back of my head. My fingers came away bloody and slushy. Muscles in my back spasmed again.

I explained in as few sentences as I could. Morrison’s expression went from disbelieving to disappointed to dismayed as it became clear I, at least, didn’t think I was hallucinating.

“You used to be so straight.” He stood up, looking frustrated and disgusted. I decided not to follow suit just yet, trying to concentrate enough to heal myself through the rhythmic throbbing of my head. I couldn’t, gave it up as a bad job, and concentrated on climbing to my feet instead.

“I’ve got to find a way back.” I clutched at Morrison’s sleeve to keep myself upright. It wasn’t dignified, but it was almost worth the startled expression it garnered.
Maybe I needed to work on the damsel in distress routine.

“You’ve got a job here to do,” Morrison said dismissively. I stared at him, not quite believing I’d heard him right. “Come on, Walker.” He handed me off to Bruce, who made quiet fussing sounds while I looked slack-jawed at Morrison. “You want to save a world, save this one. We’ve got plenty of lost souls right here.”

“You don’t get it.” I let go of Bruce’s arm and immediately wished I hadn’t. The deed done, though, I took a step forward, trying to tower over Morrison. My shoes weren’t tall enough. “For one thing, that place was full of souls and a lot of them were
from
this world. The Hunt’s harvest there is going to leave a lot of catatonic dying bodies
here.
But that’s not really the point.” My voice was rising again. For some reason it did that around Morrison. “The fucking
point,
Morrison, is that I screwed up, and there is
nobody else
to clean up my mess. I’ve got to get Cernunnos back into
this
world so he and Herne can be dealt with
here.
Ca-fucking-piche?” I’d somehow ended up nose to nose with the police captain again, shouting at him from so close I could have kissed him.

I wished I would stop thinking that.

Morrison held his mouth tight, meeting my eyes without giving an inch. “I understand,” he said, low and harsh, “that you are an officer working in my department and you will God-damned well do as your superior officer tells you to do.”

“Fine,” I said, “I fucking quit.” From behind me, the collected officers let out a collective gasp. I yanked the
badge out of my jacket pocket and threw it into the slush at Morrison’s feet. Snow and water sprayed up over our shoes. His gaze flickered to the badge in the snow and back up to mine.

“You don’t want to do this,” he said very quietly.

The real bitch of the thing was, he was right. But there I was with the badge in the snow and my dignity all tangled around it, and hell if I could think of a way to back down. The rage poured out of me, though, leaving me tired and remembering that I was injured. My head throbbed along with my heartbeat.

“Then let me do this my way.” I didn’t have any fight left in me, suddenly. Standing up took almost everything I had, and my voice was quiet. “I have a responsibility, Morrison. You’re the one who wanted me to live up to my potential.” I spread my hands. “I’m trying.”

Morrison looked down at the badge in the slush again, and back at me again. “Somebody get her a paramedic.” He stepped around me, leaving me on the second step of the station. I crouched very cautiously and picked up the badge. I guessed I’d won that round, but it didn’t feel like much of a victory.

Bruce offered me a steadying arm as I straightened, ushering me into the station. I leaned over his desk and punched out numbers on his phone while Linda, one of the paramedics, tried to doctor the back of my head. It hurt and I kept flinching. She kept swearing.

“Tripoli Cabs,” a rapid-fire, unfriendly male voice said into the phone almost before it rang. “This is Keith. Where do you need a pickup?”

“I don’t. Can you get a message to one of your—
ow!” I glared at Linda, who glared back. “One of your cabbys,” I said resentfully.

Keith’s voice became a few notes more unfriendly. “This isn’t a public service line, ma’am.”

“This is an emergency. Please?”

Deep, put-upon sigh. “It’s always an emergency. Yeah, what do you need.”

“Can you tell Gary Muldoon that Joanne called, and she needs him to go by her apartment, get her drum and come to the police station as soon as he’s off work?”

“A drum is an emergency?” Keith mumbled, but I could hear the tap of a keyboard as he took the message down. “Joanne, get drum, police station. He gets off work at two.”

I looked for a clock. It was three minutes to two. “I hope you can catch him, then. Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

“Yeah, yeah. That’s what they all say, but does anybody ever send chocolate? I got work to do, lady.”

I grinned at the phone and hung up instead of asking if employees of Tripoli Cabs were contractually obliged to call women “lady.”

“Bruce?”

“Yeah?” He sounded relieved that I remembered his name. Linda put something that boiled on the back of my head and I shrieked. Bruce jumped, then glared resentfully at Linda, saving me the trouble of doing it again.

“Where do you order flowers and chocolates from when you’re in the doghouse with Elise?”

He pointed at the phone. “Speed-dial number nine,” he said in a voice that dared me to laugh.

I laughed. It made my head hurt more, but it was worth it. Linda swore again and reached over my shoulder to grasp my jaw in her hand. “Hold still,” she said impatiently, and swabbed the boiling painful stuff onto the back of my head again.

“Ow! What is that, battery acid?”

“Hydrochloric,” she corrected as I dialed Bruce’s flower shop. “There’s all kinds of gook in there. Stop whining.”

“Gook,” I said. “Is that a technical term?”

“Thanks for calling Forgiven Again Flowers. Hi, Bruce,” the woman on the other end of the line said. I laughed again, flinching away from Linda.

“Not Bruce,” I said. “Just borrowing his phone.”

Three minutes later a vase of wildflowers and a box of chocolates were set to be delivered to Keith at Tripoli Cabs, the ibuprofen was starting to kick in, and I was feeling slightly better about the world.

“I faxed that sketch over to Blanchet High,” Jen said from behind me. I turned around. Linda swore yet again and stalked off, muttering disclaimers of responsibility for me. I watched her go, nonplussed, then blinked at Jen.

“And?”

“And there are a thousand students there. The office didn’t recognize her off the bat, but they offered to send the picture over to the yearbook staff to see if anybody knew her. I’m waiting for an answer back from them.” She shrugged and wandered back down the hallway.

“Thank you,” I said, not very loudly, but she threw a smile over her shoulder at me. I sat on the edge of Bruce’s desk and rubbed my eyes. Little stabs of pain winked back through my head, but comparatively it was like a soothing massage, so I kept rubbing.

“When was the last time you slept?” Bruce asked. I smiled lopsidedly.

“I donno. I slept in the shower. I’m fine.”

“You look like the walking dead.”

“Thank you.” I laughed. It didn’t make my head hurt as much, for which I was grateful.

“Why don’t you go take a nap until your drum gets here?” he suggested. I had to admire the perfectly calm collected way he said that, like it was completely normal for people to hang around police stations waiting for drums.

“With a head injury?” I asked, bemusedly echoing Morrison.

“I don’t think it’ll kill you.”

“Mmmph,” I said, and looked around the station. Truth was, I couldn’t think of a damned thing I was good for until Gary and my drum got here. My head hurt less, but still too much to concentrate through, and I was waiting on the yearbook staff at the school. “Yeah,” I said, nodding a little. “If Jen gets anything from the yearbook staff before Gary gets here, send her to wake me up, okay?”

“Sure. Now go on. You’ll only get a few minutes anyway.”

“Yeah,” I said again, and wove my way through desks toward the drop-spot neé broom closet. Much
too small for an office, it was ventilated and kept fastidiously clean. Cops whose desks couldn’t be seen under the crap they had piled up were known to change sheets on the drop-spot cot, and it got swept out twice a day whether it needed it or not. It was the only really clean area in the whole station, and it stayed that way because everybody knew that sooner or later they’d be collapsing into the cot. Nobody wanted to sleep in someone else’s grunge.

I was asleep before my head hit the pillow, which was nice. I didn’t need another impact, no matter how soft, to make my head ache more than it already did.

I woke up to the scent of coffee under my nose. Gary sat on the floor beside the cot, Indian-style and grinning, holding a cup from The Missing O a few inches away from my face. I blinked at him slowly, then seized the cup and took a grateful slurp. Not just coffee. Mint-flavored mocha, heavy on the chocolate but with twice the caffeine.

“You are a god,” I announced as the first slug trickled down my throat and spread out to coat the lining of my stomach. “How’d you know about the mint?”

Gary chuckled. “Blond guy at the front desk said it was the best way to wake you up. I was polite and didn’t ask how he knew.”

I snorted. “I think Bruce knows the best way to wake everybody who works in the North Precinct, including Morrison.”

“Yeah? Whaddaya do, grab a bullhorn and bellow from far enough away that he can’t shoot you?”

I grinned sleepily. “Probably. I’ve never had to try. What time is it?”

“’Bout two-forty. I got here fifteen minutes ago but they sent me for coffee. Said you needed the sleep and the caffeine. Some little Spanish lady has some papers for you.”

I sat all the way up, holding the coffee cup out. “Jen. She’s Hispanic, actually. She must’ve found the girl. Kick ass. Hold this, I gotta change the sheets.”

“You’ve got to what?” Gary watched in bemusement as I stripped the sheets off the bed and put new ones on. “You ever been in the army, lady?”

“Nope. Why do you keep calling me that?”

“You do corners like you were,” he said approvingly, then lifted his bushy eyebrows. “Calling you what?”

“‘Lady.’ I know it’s been over nine hours since you saw me and you’re old, but I did tell you my name.” I took my coffee cup back and grinned at Gary’s faint look of offense.

“Part of my charm,” he said with immense dignity.

“That’s what I told Marie,” I reminded him. “I was kidding.”

He spread his hands. “Turns out you weren’t. Who knew?”

“Are you decent in there?” Jen banged on the door and pushed it open, thrusting a handful of papers at me. I took another sip of my mocha and held the cup in my front teeth while I shuffled through the papers.

“You look like a rabbit,” Gary said. I spared a hand to flip him off.

The yearbook staff at Blanchet High had faxed over half a dozen pages of photos of the slender blond girl, most of them with her alone, often reading or drawing. She consistently wore her hair loose, tucked behind an ear when she was bent over a drawing pad.

“Fmmbmmy onna y’buk sfaff—”

Jen took the cup out of my mouth.

“Somebody on the yearbook staff has a crush on her, huh?” I repeated. Jen grinned and Gary looked startled.

“My guess is him,” Jen said, and pushed one of the faxed pages over to reveal a gawky kid with a camera leaning over one of the girl’s drawings. He had hair that fell over his eyes and good skin, for a teenager, and he would probably grow up cute. The girl was smiling up at him.