C. E. Murphy - No Dominion - A Garrison Report

“Not really, but I’m not sure that matters. Will it make sense as it happens?”

“It should. I’ll bring you to the Lower World—”

“No.” That was me, surprisin’ all of us. Hes straightened up, looking like she was ready to give me a tongue-lashing, but I shook my head and kept talking. “Take her to the Upper World instead, all right? I ain’t sure this thing can’t just walk in and out on whatever levels it wants to, but I know the deeper you go the closer you’re getting to its home territory. Reach for the sky, darling. Don’t dig down deep. All right?”

Hes looked uncertain. “The Upper World’s spirits are more capricious. Trying to draw this illness out for a battle there may let it escape and do harm elsewhere, if we fail.”

“You can’t—” I shut up before I finished asking, ‘cause I already knew the answer. Jo threw magic nets around all over the place, all the time, but I’d seen her and her pal Coyote fighting together once, and it had mostly been on Jo’s shoulders. Coyote was a full-out shaman, one who wasn’t walkin’ the warrior path that Joanne was on. He could manage some shields, but twisting magic into other shapes and catching things in it was outta his league. And Hes here couldn’t even shield somebody else, so there was no chance she was gonna pull out a gimmick like Jo mighta. “I’d say it’s worth risking.”

“And do I get a say in this?” Annie sounded stronger, like her spirit animal was already doing some good. “What kind of harm could it do, Miss Jones?”

“I don’t know. It’s a strong darkness, though. Right now it’s focused on you, but if it’s freed to pursue weakness in others, it could reach hundreds or even thousands.”

“Then there’s no choice at all. My health isn’t worth hundreds of others.”

“Annie—”

“ Gary . Miss Jones, if we try to examine this…darkness…in the Lower World, can you contain it?”

“It’s more likely. I can reinforce our power circle there, which adds layers of protection.”

“ Annie .”

“ Gary . No. I have not spent a lifetime nursing others simply to choose the good of the one in my last days.”

“Dammit, Annie!”

“Garrison Matthew Muldoon.” Annie sat up, cheeks pink and eyes flashing hot. She threw her blanket off an’ got up like she was gonna stare me down. “If I am dying I am by God going to do it on my terms, and you’re going to accept that.”

“On a cold day in Hell, sweetheart.” I stayed sitting, ‘cause I was about a foot taller’n her and didn’t need to stand to be damned near eye level to her. ‘sides, the sauna already wasn’t big enough for three anyway, if two of ‘em were having a fight. “If you’re dying, I’m raging every step of the way.”

Annie spat, “ Though wise men at their end know dark is right ,” and I stood up after all an’ said, “ Do not go gentle , Annie. You wanna try the Lower World journey first, fine, we do that, I ain’t arguing. And I know you’d never forgive yourself, or me, if we did something that got other people hurt or sick, so all right, maybe we don’t try the Upper World journey. But I’m never giving up, you hear me? Though lovers be lost, Annie. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

All the fight went outta her and she put her hand against my chest. “No, Gary. You won’t. Some things we can’t change. Death does have dominion, in the end.”

“Maybe death does, sweetheart, but evil don’t, and this thing that’s coming at us is evil. I ain’t lying down for it.”

“Even if something truly terrible happens because we fight?”

“Awful things happen all the time, Annie. How’re we s’posed to know if our fight makes ‘em happen? How’re—” Somethin’ sick and cold rose up in me fast, making ice sweat stand out on my skin even though it was a hundred and five degrees in there.

There was something God-awful brewing just a couple weeks from now, something so bad it was gonna rock the whole world. I’d watched it on TV the way most folks had, and I remembered thinkin’ at least Annie ain’t here to see it . She’d died three days before, on our wedding anniversary, and even through the pain of losin’ her, it had hit me like a wall.

Feeling hollow and not talking to Annie or Hester at all, I said, “It happened anyway,” like somebody else might be listening. I sure as hell hadn’t saved her, and it had happened anyway. That had to mean it wasn’t black magic getting into souls just soon enough to make a few crazies fly airplanes into buildings. It couldn’t be something we’d done, even if I did somehow save her, ‘cause that kinda thing took time and planning.

‘cept I was standing there outta time myself, carrying memories of the future and not remembering a whole lotta mojo that had spilled through the whole of my life. Something had gone wrong, something had changed in my life, to make me forget all of this, when the whole idea of Horns dropping me in was to try making one big change at the last minute.

An’ I knew from experience, from watching and working with Joanne, that you only got one shot at changing a big event. Time mostly wanted to go the way it already had gone.

There was no goddamned way I was gonna stop September 11th. An’ there was no goddamned way I could know if saving Annie might be the one thing giving the Master a chance to snatch back the dark magic eating up her lungs, and twist it backward in time a little to find the susceptible hearts and souls who could do something unthinkable.

I said, “But it already happened,” again, an’ sat down again with my face in my hands. It already happened, and I didn’t see a way outta this. If I tried saving Annie an’ the towers fell, I couldn’t ever know if I’d helped make that happen. If I didn’t and they fell anyway, I was wasting my one chance. And if I didn’t an’ they didn’t fall, then my future memories were wrong too, an’ I couldn’t trust any of this at all.

Joanne had been real reluctant to take up her healing powers, to become a shaman, back in the beginning. She hadn’t wanted to be a hero. For the first time ever, I started wondering if the girl hadn’t had a point. Being a hero had a down side darker an’ harder than I’d appreciated until just now.

“We do the Lower World,” I finally said, feeling dull an’ thick as a board. “Guess we can’t risk more’n that.”

“Gary?” Annie knelt when I sat, frowning up at me. “What’s wrong?”

“One of them future flashes,” I said, still talking into my hands. I’d seen Jo do that a hundred times over the last year. Never thought I’d be doing it myself. “Something ugly that I’d hate to learn was cause and effect working here.”

“We see patterns where there are none,” Hester said, all unexpected. She still sounded sharp as pins, but she sounded like she was tryin’ ta be sympathetic, too. Annie and me both looked at her and she said, “Humans. We see patterns where none exist. It’s a survival technique. I realize I’ve just warned you about potential ramifications, but you should also understand that because you see a pattern or a connection doesn’t mean there is one. We would all be forever unable to act if we knew what butterfly effect our every activity might cause.”

“Or our every inaction,” Annie said. “Gary, you look worse than you did this morning when the doctor said I was sick. What’s wrong? What did you see?”

“Nothin’ anybody’s gonna be able to stop.”

Hester’s eyebrows wrinkled together. “You’re precognitive?”

“It’s just a passing phase.”

For about half a minute Hes just sat there, looking between me and Annie like we were something she never imagined showing up on her doorstep. Then, like she was pulling all the pieces of her curiosity back and putting ‘em in line where they belonged, she said, “Shall we perform the Lower World journey?”