C.E. Murphy - Raven Calls

Gary had my sword. If he was in Méabh’s tomb, he could chop my arm off for me. That would be easier than tearing it off. Buoyed by that unlikely, feverish logic, I staggered to my feet and lurched toward the cairn above.

The view from the top of Knocknaree was magnificent. I could see half of Ireland, even if it was doing a wavy little dance. Everybody needed to dance now and again. I wobbled around the whole cairn, which was a fancy word for “big pile of rocks,” for about twenty minutes. There was no entrance anywhere, and when I came around to the front again I noticed a sign I’d missed while admiring the wobbly view. It said Méabh’s “tomb,” quotation marks theirs, was a Neolithic structure and had never been excavated. Also, it said, please don’t take any rocks. I nodded solemnly, spun back to the big piles of rocks and started pitching stones away.

Three minutes later a grinning skeleton toppled out of the cairn and spat its false teeth at me.

I screamed in genuine horror-movie terror. The skeleton fell apart into about eleventy million pieces, or at least two hundred and six. Seven, counting the teeth. I dropped to my knees and scooped them up, already blinded by tears. Finding Gary’s bones might technically qualify as him waiting for me in the tomb, but it was not the answer I was looking for. The teeth were heavy and sharp, a snaggle catching my palm as I turned them over and over. If this was going to be my legacy, I didn’t want it. To hell with phenomenal cosmic power, to hell with saving the world, to hell with all the lessons I’d learned clawing my way to where I was now. I’d stepped up. I’d done everything I could to be the hero, and all I’d gotten for it was a view to literally die for.

Somehow I was on my feet, screaming at the distant horizon. “Fuck you! Fuck you all! I did not sign up for getting my friends killed, and you can all go fuck yourselves! I am not playing this game anymore! ” I threw the teeth as hard as I could, the snaggle poking my hand a second time as I clenched and released. A sob wrenched my throat and I fell to my knees again, face buried in my hands. The stupid little poke from the teeth itched. Nothing like the werewolf bite, but enough to be a horrible reminder that I’d just thrown away the last remnant of the best friend I’d ever had. I’d come to grips with my powers because people had died when I hadn’t. People dying because I had seemed like a justifiable reason to lose that grip. Gary wouldn’t want me to, but I didn’t have so many friends I was willing to lose them over a power set I hadn’t asked for. I reversed my legs, scootching on my butt toward the downward path. I was going home. I was going to ask Morrison for my job back. Or not, because I couldn’t be his employee and his girlfriend at the same time. Maybe I’d open that mechanic shop I’d always wanted to. With all the spare cash I’d saved up against quitting my job on no notice. It didn’t matter. The Morrígan and the cauldron and Brigid and the Master and whatever the hell else was out there could just sort itself out, and I’d amputate my goddamned arm to avoid becoming a werewolf. I was done.

A stray bolt of sunlight caught the white curve of the teeth I’d thrown down the hill.

Gary’s teeth were perfect.

My whole body went so cold the werewolf bite stopped itching. I sat there on my butt, utterly frozen, staring at the teeth as the illuminating sunlight faded away. They had a snaggle, and Gary’s teeth were perfect. The collapsed skeleton behind me did not belong to my friend.

For the second time in as many minutes I was on my feet, shrieking at the horizon again as I punched the sky. “Take that, motherfuckers! Take that, you ugly sons of bitches! I’m going to find you, you hear me? I’m going to find you and me and Gary are gonna kick your asses! Fuck you! Fuck all of you right in the ear!”

I went on like that for quite a while, until I noticed that tears were streaming down my face again. It struck me that I was possibly in need of some therapy. I wondered what the police department shrink, who had told me just three days ago that I was handling having shot somebody pretty well, would think of my current antics. I wondered if she was in any way equipped to therapize somebody like me, whose life really did encompass the impossible. I’d have to ask when I got back, because it had been a rough weekend even by my standards, and there wasn’t much standing between me and a total mental breakdown. It seemed like Gary not being quantifiably dead should restore me, not send me over the edge, but I was teetering dangerously close to the edge.

Gary. If that wasn’t Gary up there, it was somebody else. Somebody who’d died recently enough to have modern false teeth. Somebody who had been buried shallowly in a national monument, and hadn’t yet been discovered.

Somebody who had decomposed into a fragile skeleton instead of a heap of smelly flesh. Maybe it wasn’t such a recent death after all. I pulled myself together and went to check.

The skeleton really was in about two hundred and six pieces, and there were no markers—no clothes, no jewelry, no handy wallet—to indicate who it might once have been. I was no forensic anthropologist. I couldn’t tell if the splayed hip bones were male or female. And ghosts were not my strong suit, which was to say, I couldn’t call one up if my life depended on it. Even Billy wouldn’t be much help this time, since he was good with the newly dead, and unless my friend here had been dumped in a vat of acid, he wasn’t all that newly dead. So he was probably a murder victim, and I should probably call the local cops.

The question of whether or not to call was abruptly negated by a banshee rising out of the disturbed bones.

I’d met a banshee before. This one was…fresher. Skin drawn less tightly across her bones, black hair still thick and lush instead of scraggly. Clawed fingernails slightly less clawlike, as if she hadn’t had centuries to hone them. And I guessed that answered the question of whether the skeleton was male or female. For an instant we stared at one another, me shocked and her—I don’t know what she was thinking. It looked like she was assessing me as a potential threat. I started to reach for my sword, remembered it was lost somewhere in time with Gary and with that failure apparently came up lacking in the banshee’s estimation. She dove at me, shrieking, and I fell ass over teakettle trying to get out of the way. The bite on my arm flared, itch suddenly all-consuming as the urge to become other struck me again.

This time I was tempted. I hadn’t come out so well fighting a banshee the first time around. It had taken my dead mother to pull my hiney out of the fire, and I didn’t think she would be able to do it again. Being four-legged, furry and with vicious teeth sounded like a better bet than my own raggedy-ass self. The only problem was I wanted to be in control of a change. The raging heat in my forearm assured me I wouldn’t be.

The banshee overshot thanks to my display of gymnastic excellence. I scrambled to all fours, crouching on the mountaintop as she swung back around. Her aura shone black against the cloud-spattered skies, making my tight-to-skin shields a bastion of light in comparison. She probably literally had the home field advantage, but I hadn’t been in control of my magic when I’d last met a banshee. I repeated that to myself and tried not to look too hard at her nails. They were more than long enough to eviscerate me. Shields or not, I still wanted my tender underbelly well out of her reach. It wasn’t killing season as far as ritualistically feeding the Master was concerned, but it also wasn’t far off, and besides, I felt relatively certain he’d make a special exception if one of his minions managed to get me served up on a plate.