C.E. Murphy - Mountain Echoes

I shook my head. “No, kiddo, you’re not. This kind of crap...happens. It happened to me, too.”

“Why does it happen? I mean, if we’re the good guys...”

“Because good guys put on white hats and let themselves be shot at,” I said softly. “Because sometimes it’s hard to tell if people are good or bad, and it’s our job to assume they’re good until they’ve gone so far overboard there’s no hope of bringing them back. I believe that doesn’t happen very often, but it happens.”

“This magic was never good. The Nothing, the hole in time, the monster inside me, it wasn’t ever good.”

“The monster infected you, Aidan. It wasn’t inside you. Big difference. And you’re right, this magic was never good, and it got to you because of me. Because you’re powerful, and because it would be a big win for the bad guys if they brought you over. But I don’t think that’s even possible. I’ve never seen anybody human who burns as bright as you do.”

He perked right up. “You’ve seen people who aren’t human?”

I grinned. “Quite a few of them. I’ll introduce you sometime.”

Solemnity rolled back into place. “You mean, you’ll introduce me if we get out of this alive.”

“We’ll just have to, won’t we?”

“How?”

“We took out the Executioner. We can manage Raven Mocker. Trust me, Aidan. You’re gonna be fine. Nothing’s going to happen to you as long as I’m still alive.” I rolled a bit more power into my shields, knowing they would help guard the still-recovering garden that lay close to mine.

Aidan’s eyebrows drew down. “You mean that, don’t you? How come? You don’t even know me. Is it ’cause you’re my birth mom?”

“Partly. Mostly, maybe, but really, what kind of asshole would I be if I let monsters tromp around in kids’ heads if I could stop it?”

His eyes popped and he laughed. “You’re not supposed to say things like that. Mom would yell at you.”

“This,” I said dryly, “is one of many reasons why she’s a good mom and I’d probably be a terrible one. Look, Aidan, you know your strength comes from being two-spirited, right? Some of it, anyway.”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Some of the kids at school wanna know if that means I’m gonna start dressing in girls’ clothes.” The eye-rolling turned to a sudden wicked sparkle. “I oughta do it, huh? That’d freak ’em out.”

I grinned. “You probably should. Don’t take me wrong, but you’d make a pretty good girl, at least until your voice changes. You’ve got great cheekbones. Anyway, listen, not the point. The point is you’ve got reserves to draw on. I know the Executioner’s got his claws in you deep, out there. But we’ve loosened his grip in here, and sweetheart, you burn bright. You and Ayita together, honey, I don’t think much of anything can stop you. Just hold on to that, okay? Hold on to Ayita and you’re going to be fine. All I need to work with out there is that spark, and I can get you free of the rest of this.”

“You don’t sound scared.”

“I was scared when your garden was falling apart. Now I know it’s going to be okay.” Even I believed me, more or less. “You ready to go back out there?”

Aidan took a deep breath. “No.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I can’t blame you. Look, just hang on a few minutes, kiddo, and this will all be over. I promisver. I pe. Okay?”

He took another deep breath, then put his hand in mine and nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

I said, “Okay,” one more time, and we walked out of the gardens back into a battle zone.

The last couple minutes in the garden had been so calm that returning to the Middle World was a violent shock. Aidan, despite having just had a reassuring conversation with me, was in fact still twenty feet in the air: the black magic had caught him, kept him from falling when the Red Man had shot a bone arrow into him. The Red Man, the Purple Man, and my father had all taken up points around the circle, each of them at one of the stakes Dad had driven into the ground. Sara and Les appeared to be arguing over which of them should go to the fourth, and while they argued, Morrison ran for it.

With four of them in place, they began hauling the vortex closer to the ground. It was no longer spinning: it was simply a hole ripped in the sky and pierced by the Red Man’s arrows. There were no stars beyond it, and the arrows seemed to be just stuck in the black, which bothered me on a profound level. But there were ropes, or threads, or roots, falling from the arrows, and that was what the men hauled on, dragging the vortex down. Dragging Aidan down, too.

I barked, “Sara!” and she stood straight upright, startled out of her argument. I didn’t think the distraction was her fault: the encroaching magic made me want to fight, too. “Come here, both of you. You need to hold the power circle in place.”

“What? I can’t—”

“You certainly can.” Ada Monroe sounded just like a mother as she stomped over to join us. The poor military guy followed her with the expression of someone who had no idea what shit he’s stepped in but was willing to follow any solid leadership available. Ada said, “Just focus your energy as positively as you can and I’ll do the rest,” to him, then sent him to stand at a quarter-point in the circle. He went meekly. I felt sorry for him.

Les and Sara both radiated disbelief as Ada pointed them toward other quarter-points, too. Apparently so did I, because her chin came up a little as she met my eyes. “I told you, my family had medicine men once.”

“Ada, you are positively amazing. Go!” That was at Sara and Les, who scampered away like kids. I did the same kind of transference that Dad had done with me: palms up, warm magic dancing on them. Ada pressed her hands against mine, taking the weight of the circle, and went a little ashy. For an instant I saw fear in her eyes, the certainty she couldn’t handle it, but I was startlingly confident as I said, “You’ve got it. You’re fine.”

She nodded once, then backed away, taking up the final eight-point around the circle. Energy flared from the four of them, making a softer white shell inside the vast magic Dad was working. That accounted for everybody but Danny, who was still sniveling about his rebroken shoulder. I left him where he was and turned to wait on Aidan’s descent.

He had wings. My heart clenched. Sooty, fiery raven wings, spread wide and beating the air with outrageous determination. Raven Mocker wings, struggling to bring the boy and his power back under their control. I flexed my hands uselessly, afraid to draw magic and refuel the thing trying to eat Aidan’s soul.

Except there was power flying like crazy around here and the wights were all dead. They were the c onduits, the things that fed power to the Executioner and ultimately the Master or Raven Mocker or whatever the hell I wanted to call him. The Executioner had been defeated. Which might mean this was the one shot we had at a full-frontal attack, and it would be a terrible mistake for me to miss it.

I whispered, “Screw it,” and reached for the sky.

Power poured out of me, silver and blue winding together in a rush. I didn’t think I could defeat the oncoming Raven Mocker. I just wanted to shore up Aidan’s reserves, give the kid’s bright spirit a chance to fight back on its own. The rip in the sky came closer, Dad and Morrison and the magic men pulling it down. It had stopped expanding and was beginning to tear, like their efforts were pulling it beyond its ability to stretch.