C.E. Murphy - Mountain Echoes

“We burned them.” Sara pushed her way to the front, red spots high on her cheekbones. Her gaze darted from me to my father and back again, but she focused on answering the question. “After the first ones rose, we burned the ones they killed, but the seven got away. They spread out and we don’t know how far they got. When we found bodies, we burned them, too, but we only found a few.” She looked between me and Dad again, then focused on me with cold fear in her eyes. “Where’s Lucas, Joanne? You found your dad. Where’s Lucas? Where’s my husband?”

“I’m sorry, Sara.”

She went white, making the hot spots on her cheeks stand out all the more. She wasn’t surprised: she’d known, really, from the moment Dad and I showed up without him. “What happened? Where is he? What happened, Joanne?”

“The Nothing pulled him into another time, onto a battlefield. Dad followed, but it was too late. I’m so sorry, Sara. I’m so sorry.”

Even the red faded, now, though she kept herself bolt upright. “Another time? There’s not even a body?”

“I’m sorry.” Dad spoke this time. “I did the rites. I bathed him and I buried him so no sorcerer could steal his soul. I don’t know if it’s what histnow, thoug people would have done, but it was all I could do.”

Sara’s attention snapped to him, but she was so rigid that the motion unbalanced her. I reached to support her and she slapped my hand away, swaying. “You’re sure it was him? It could have been anyone—”

“He was wearing jeans and a Lakers T-shirt, Sara. We were out of time. No one else was dressed that way. It was Lucas. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t there sooner.”

Sara made fists, shoulders high as she stared at the ground. “Would it have helped if I’d called Joanne sooner? Would it have made a difference?”

Dad shook his head. “I don’t think so. We’d have had to have gone through the Nothing together for him to have a chance. I just wasn’t soon enough. Joanne couldn’t have made a difference.”

“You said through time.” Her voice was turning harsh with swallowed sobs now. “Can you...can you go back? Can you rescue him?”

“I can’t.” Dad looked at me this time, and Sara’s entire body filled with tension.

There was really only one thing I could say. “I’ll try. I can’t right now, Sara, I really am wiped out, but I’ll try as soon as I’m powered up.”

To my utter surprise, she stepped past Les Senior and took up a place by my side. “Then I’ll drum for you.”

“Sara...” Grandpa Lester’s voice carried a warning note.

Sara’s head came up, color high again as her eyes flashed a warning of their own. “What, maybe I’m siding with the enemy? I don’t care, Grandpa Les. If it gets me my husband back, I don’t care. Besides, Joanne’s a lot of things, including dumb, but she’s not evil. I’ve seen her at work. She’s the thing evil runs from. If she thinks Aidan’s the problem here, then he probably is. Don’t say she didn’t warn you, when it’s all over.”

She was the last person on earth I expected to defend me. A hundred times over the past year I’d thought I didn’t deserve the quality of friends I had. Right now I didn’t even deserve the quality of nemeses I had. Sara outshone me on every level, and I swore to God I would do everything I could to get Lucas back for her.

One more person pushed through the crowd, her dark eyes haggard. “How sure are you? About Aidan. How sure are you?”

“Pretty sure. We saw him caught up in some bad magic. He’s got it in him to fight it, but it’s going to be bad. I’ve got to help him. Dad, me, anybody who’s willing.”

Ada Monroe nodded once, and stepped to my side of the line.

That was it. Five of us: two shamans, one grieving widow, a desperate mother and a police captain with the magical aptitude of a horseradish. Sheriff Les watched us go, his gaze uncertain, but he didn’t join us, and the others were more strongly swayed by Grandpa Les and Danny Little Turtle. And by Aidan, for that matter, and the bitter thing was I couldn’t really blame them for trusting him more than they trusted me.

“He leaves every night at sundown,” Ada reported in a low, tense voice as we abandoned the caves to look for a sanctuary of our own. “He says he’s going out to make sure the valley is shielded from the searchers, but I don’t like him being alone in the dark. And how did the CDC know to come to Cherokee atnown. nyway? How did he know to warn us about them? It doesn’t add up, Joanne. It doesn’t add up.”

Worse, it did add up, but she didn’t like the sum it came to. Neither did I. “He always used to tell me everything,” Ada went on. “Now he won’t talk to me at all.”

That sounded a lot like a typical preteen, but the timing was too convenient for me to say so. Aidan would almost certainly clam up and stop telling his mother everything, but chances of it happening naturally on the same day he’d gotten pumped full of death magic was an unlikely coincidence. “We’ll get him back, Ada. He’s a tough kid, with a lot of power. He’s going to be fine.”

“You can’t know that.”

I stopped in the middle of the forest and turned to her, a finger of fire awakening in me. “Yes, I can. I know it because I’ll die trying to make this right, if I have to, and no way am I going to the extreme of dying and then failing to make it right.” It wasn’t very sound logic, but it was heartfelt.

Ada gave me a peculiar look. “You were always a strange girl, Joanne.” She passed by, following my father and Sara.

Morrison stayed at my side, both of us looking after Ada. “She’s right, you know. I don’t know about always, but you do say strange things.”

“Like I’m not going to die trying and fail? I don’t know, I think it makes sense. It would be embarrassing to fail if you died trying.”

“You didn’t say that to Sara.”

“Sara wouldn’t appreciate the hyperbole. Not that I’m being hyperbolic. But you know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure I do, but I’m not sure it matters, either. Joanne, how are you going to manage this? Even I can tell your energy is low, and you still haven’t eaten anything but some apples.”

“I should’ve asked them for some food.” I glanced back, then started walking again. “Oh well. Too late now. They probably wouldn’t have shared anyway, if they think I’m Raven Mocker. You don’t even know what that means, do you. Argh.”

“Your dad told me.”

“When? Oh.” When I’d been in Petite, trying to pull myself together, no doubt. Dad had explained everything about the scene at the hospital, and probably about Raven Mocker chasing Grandmother off the road. Neither of those topics accounted for their sudden silence when I got out of the car, but now, as then, I wasn’t absolutely sure I wanted to know what they’d moved on to saying about me. “Good. Raven Mocker isn’t something you defeat, Morrison. He’s an archetype, a demon archetype, like a trickster only malevolent instead of...flaky.”

“Like the Master.” It was guarded, almost a question.

I exhaled. “Yeah. I’m sure Raven Mocker is an aspect of the Master. I’m not sure if he is the Master. If he is I don’t know...you remember the banshee, right?”

“It’s hard to forget, Walker.”

“Heh. Yes, it is. Those murders interrupted a banshee ritual that fed the Master. My mother interrupted one twenty-eight years ago, too. He’s starving, and I’m not sure he can break through to this plane of existence when he’s this hungry. It’s why he needs the wights and the Executioner, to funnel food to him. So I’m not sure Raven Mocker can be the Master, because Raven Mocker came after Grandmother himself, see?”