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

“Don’t see what that’s got to do with anything. ‘sides, it all kinda fits together. You saw that picture your pa painted of Cernunnos, the horns on him and all. I don’t figure it’s a coincidence a stag came your way, is what I’m saying. You’re feeling stronger, that’s what matters, right?”

“Strong enough to take the fight to this enemy.” The color in her cheeks wasn’t from blushing anymore. It was the fire of battle getting ready to meet. “Gary, I can’t just let it go out into the world, or the Upper World, wherever you want to say, and let other people be hurt by it. But if I’m strong enough to hold on a while, maybe we’ll win something. Maybe if I can hold this evil inside of me just a little longer than it expects, maybe it’ll mean I take one wrong thing out of the world when I go. That’s worth dying for, Gary. If I’m going to die anyway, I want to make it worth something.”

“You ain’t gonna—”

“Everybody does, sweetheart. Whether it’s tomorrow because of this sickness or thirty years from now from old age, everybody dies. I don’t want to leave you, but if I have to, I’m going to take as much darkness out of the world as I can when I go.”

There wasn’t much I could say to that, so I didn’t try. There was no arguing with the woman at the best of times, an’ this was that, and the worst too. We shut ourselves in together, whispering like kids ‘til way too late in the night, telling secrets about power animals and spirit journeys and doing our best to take ourselves there without anybody helping. I didn’t know what time we fell asleep, but we didn’t wake up until Hester knocked on the door a couple minutes after ten the next morning.

Pretty sure she thought we were too old for the state of dishevelment we came to the door in, but her sour face getting even sourer made me and Annie both laugh. I cooked everybody breakfast while Annie got herself put together.

We spent the whole day doing the rounds, everything Annie usually did. Hester’s eyes went as gold as Jo’s did when she turned on the mojo, which kinda surprised me. I’d figured everybody would have their own color, maybe something to do with their auras, though Jo’s aura wasn’t gold at all, which shot that idea fulla holes. I chuckled at myself, making both women look at me, but I shrugged it off. Explaining any more about future memories was more than I wanted to try.

All three of us got tense when we dropped into the yoga studio, figuring a spiritual center was the most likely place for a magic user, even a dark one, to hole up. Annie introduced Hester around to the teachers, an’ one by one they came up clean, even the new one we’d been laying our bets on. It was coming on toward night again by then, and stronger or not, Annie was wrung out. Hester had to come home with us, ‘cause she’d left her car there, but the drive back was full of her tension and apologies she wasn’t making out loud. Annie finally reached between the front seats and patted Hes’s knee. “It’s not your fault, Miss Jones. Maybe this is a natural illness after all.”

“No. I’ve taken a lot of people to the Lower World to battle their sicknesses, Mrs. Muldoon. No natural illness looks or fights like that.” Hester’s eyes were glowing gold again, like anger was turning them hot. “Shamanism says everything, even illness, has a spirit, and everything with a spirit wants to live, but this is more than that. It doesn’t just want to live. It wants to kill.”

I was watching her in the rear-view mirror, an’ saw her realize she’d said too much. Annie went pale and turned back around to look out the side window, and Hester’s mouth got thin and grim. She was already staring ahead like the Devil himself was waiting at home when we turned up the drive, but she flinched and grabbed the back of my seat as I parked the Chevy. “Who’s here?”

I squinted at her in the mirror. “Nobody, far as I know. Why?”

Annie said, “Probably Myles,” at the same time, adding, “The gardener,” when me and Hester both looked at her. “You haven’t met him yet,” she told me. “He replaced Beth a few weeks ago. I did tell you that.”

“Yeah, I remember. You said he was one of the new folks—” The air got a whole lot colder, raising hairs on my arms. “Hes?”

“It’s like looking into a plague of locusts.” She wasn’t looking at either of us, but at our yard, somewhere past the curve that put the far side outta view. “His aura is overwhelmed with darkness. I can’t See the colors it might once have been. He’s embraced something that lends him power, but at the cost of…of everything he is.” Hester Jones hadn’t been uncertain for even half a heartbeat since we’d met her, but she sounded like the core of her world had been shaken. “I’ve never seen anything…I didn’t even imagine anyone could do that.”

“I—” I shut up on sayin I seen it before . I had, except not for a few years yet. Joanne had gone up against a sorcerer early on, and we’d both seen how he could get into the hearts and souls of people looking for power. Or, hell, even just looking for a way to survive. I reckoned all of that kinda power backtracked eventually to the same source, to the guy we kept calling the Master.

“It’s sorcery,” I said instead, which made Annie gimme another one of those you know too much looks, but she didn’t call me on it. I didn’t figure she was ever gonna.

“Sorcery—” Hester took a deep breath, trying to contain herself. “In shamanic studies, a sorcerer is a shaman who has embraced darkness. Sorcerers can do terrible things. Skinwalk. Steal someone’s will. Cast curses and—”

“And cause sickness instead of healing it.” I’d been on the receiving end of that, though it’d been a corrupted witch, not a sorcerer, who’d magicked me into a heart attack. “Lissen to me, Hester. Most sorcerers are gonna be at least a couple steps removed from the heart o’darkness—”

Annie, beneath her breath, muttered, “ The only thing was for it to come to and wait for the turn of the tide ,” an’ I smirked but kept going. “This fella, there’s a good chance he’s sold himself higher up the river. Ain’t nobody gonna think less of you if you walk away right now, and the truth is, sweetheart, that might be smart. The boss man in this mess, he holds a grudge, and I hate to…”

Way too late, it finally clicked. Hester Jones. Name seemed kinda familiar, yeah, because she’d been one of a half-dozen murders a few years from now. Right at the same time I’d met Jo, in fact, when a demi-god was taking his daddy issues out on the magic users in Seattle. Far as I knew, Herne hadn’t been aligned with the Master, but he’d gone a long way down a road to Hell, and not much of it had been paved with good intentions. When a guy is that far off the path of righteousness, it probably ain’t that hard for a worse bad guy to draw his eyes to a few particular sacrificial lambs.

An’ here I was, pulling Hester neck-deep into a fight a lot bigger an’ uglier than she was counting on. An’ here I was knowing it was already too late, if this was all cause and effect, ‘cause whether I liked it or not, she was gonna die messy in just a couple more years. “ Dammit .”

I coulda been talking the wind for all she cared. Her back was up, eyes flashing, and for a minute I liked her, sour grapes and all. “Sorcery is an abomination. It’s a corruption of everything I’ve ever studied. It’s very…chivalrous,” she said, like it was a bad word, “of you to try to save me trouble, but this isn’t an encounter I could ever walk away from.”

“Are you on the warrior’s path, doll?”

Hester was halfway outta the car when I asked, and sat back again looking genuinely surprised. “I am. How did you know?”