C.E. Murphy - Raven Calls

Only Gancanagh responded quickly. I didn’t see him move. He simply landed on Aibhill with all fours—all fours, his hand had grown back —and he slammed her to the ground. She shrieked, an ordinary woman’s scream, but the longer it went on, the more banshee cries I heard in it. They piled in, one on top of another, until her voice could peel paint from the walls, separate solderings, hell, split atoms. It was unbearable, blasting out my eardrums and making my nose bleed. Horrible, itchy, painful blood, except I had it easy, because Méabh was bleeding from everywhere.

From her nose, from her ears, from her belly. She fell to the floor in slow stages: knees, hip, hand, collapse. I forgot the rivalry that had driven me to tackle her in the first place, and crawled another inch toward her. She lay barely three feet away, but Aibhill’s screams were a physical barrier. I focused, trying to make my shields pointy so they would slide through the sound more easily, but there was nothing easy about it. Méabh was dying, and I wasn’t going to be able to save her. I was afraid to even look at Caitríona for fear her head would have exploded from Aibhill’s cries.

I didn’t know how the banshee queen could keep screaming while she and Gancanagh fought. They’d rolled several feet away, weight changing from one to the other, but she didn’t seem to need to draw breath in order to scream. I wasn’t even sure she needed to open her mouth. The screams came off her in relentless waves, and somehow Gancanagh still held on. I could all but see his fury rolling off him, fury that he, of all creatures, had been caught in Aibhill’s net. He wasn’t fighting for me or Méabh or against the Master. He was fighting for his own lost dignity, for having been the seduced instead of the seducer. He was fighting to restore his sense of self, and he would do anything to achieve that.

Anything. Even die. And he was about to, because he was a thing of small magics, and Aibhill was fed not only by the Master but by the banshees she reigned over. The thought finally came all the way clear: youth and beauty retained by draining the vitality from others. It was classic, in a fairy-tale sense. With half of her host already obliterated, Aibhill was at the weakest she’d ever be.

And it wasn’t weak enough. Not for Gancanagh to take her out. But he could distract her, hurt her, give me time to get Méabh back on her feet and maybe, just maybe, give the Morrígan’s daughters a fighting chance.

I bellowed from the bottom of my lungs and surged the foot or two to Méabh’s side. Collapsed beside her and called for the healing power as triumph entered Aibhill’s scream and dust filled the air. Fairy dust, I thought inanely, and wondered if it could make me fly.

What it could not do, it seemed, was make me heal. The power stuttered and ended at my fingertips, as it had done in the past when I’d been making bad choices. I whimpered in shock, which wasn’t very grown-up, but at least it was heartfelt. I tried again. No magic, no healing, though since I hadn’t turned completely into a werewolf I assumed the power was still running rampant in my veins.

“It’s my territory, lass,” Aibhill said, and the mockery in her voice was so sweet it could have been sympathy. “There are things I cannot stop you from doing, perhaps, but there are others that I can. Be grateful, little shaman. If I release your power now, the wolf will take you.”

I smiled, vicious invitation, and she blanched, backing off as if I had already become the wolf. Then a sneer marred her lovely features and she lifted her voice in another scream.

The walls crumbled, mortar shuddering from between enormous squares of stone. The tall roof I’d admired so much was collapsing, and I could barely focus enough to keep huge chunks from flattening us. It wasn’t fair. Whether Mom wanted it to be or not, until the banshee queen was dead, her scream was part of Aibhill’s. That let Aibhill get under my shields. They shivered and broke apart, hairline fractures reappearing as quickly as I repaired them. The weight of stone crashing down didn’t help. I flinched again and again, feeling impacts against my flesh, though none of them broke through to crush bone and body. Not yet, anyway. I rolled my jaw, fingers dug against the gray stone floor.

Incongruous golden sunlight spilled over my hands, sunset revealed by the falling walls. I took a little heart from that: it seemed like a tether back to the Middle World, and although I wasn’t at all sure I could get myself home, I thought I could at least shove Cat back into reality. I wished I dared call Coyote and ask for his help, but I lacked the concentration and was afraid that if I succeeded, it would open a channel straight from Aibhill to him, and that would be unacceptable. I had to do it on my own. Just this once, and I’d apologize to him later.

Easy enough to say, when I doubted there would be a later. My laugh broke and Caitríona seized my arm. I said, “It’s okay. We’re going home. I’m going to open a path back home. As soon as you see it, run. I’ll cover you and be right on your heels.”

“We won’t save Sheila if we run! The fight will be over, we’ll—”

“The fight’s already over. Do as I say, Cat. Just do as I say.” I had nothing left for words. Coyote was so good at opening passageways between the Middle and Lower Worlds. I tried to remember how he did it, calling yellow roads and low red sunlight. The light tinted more toward crimson, either the oncoming night or a successful path. I decided it was the path and envisioned it more fully, remembering what it had looked like when Coyote sent me into the Lower World to fight the wendigo. Caitríona gasped, signal that she saw it, too, and I said, “Run.”

She ran, and I shut the road down behind her.

Surprise changed Aibhill’s voice for a moment. Deepened it enough that I could shake off the very, very worst of the effects and raise my head to look at her. She stared at the space where Caitríona had been, then turned an enraged gaze on me. She was still beautiful. Even with her wild white robes stained with Méabh’s blood and the glittering dust that had once been Gancanagh, even with the voice that tore me apart and held my mother captive, she was beautiful. I wanted evil to be ugly, or to wear black hats. That, after all, was why I’d bought my dramatic white leather coat.

For some reason, thinking about the coat gave me the wherewithal to get on my feet. I wasn’t kidding myself. I wasn’t going to be able to fight that voice, not with it cracking bigger and bigger pieces off my shield, but I wasn’t by God going to go out on my knees. I wished like hell I had my sword, even reached for it, then bit back a sob when it didn’t appear. When it, like Gary, was lost to me. My left arm was completely useless, but I shook my right hand until silver-blue power shone through it. Maybe I could take her out with me, one last explosive release of magic that would no doubt shut down my ability to call it forever, but that was okay, since it wasn’t looking good for the home team anyway.

Aibhill recognized what I was doing, and gave me a stunning smile. We circled each other, me surprised I could move at all, and stopped when we’d reversed positions. She had the setting sun to her back, golden glow making her all the more angelic, and it felt like the sun had lent her every ounce of its nuclear power when she opened her mouth and screamed again.

My shields flaked away, leaving every weary aspect of me on display. Leaving my despair over Gary and my love for Morrison and my concerns for Aidan all right there for the taking. Leaving Petite, my Mustang, the one lifelong love affair I’d had, out in the open. Leaving my perception of Petite reflecting the state of my soul there for her to see. Leaving Billy and Melinda and their kids and my coworkers and my fondness for Cernunnos and my protective streak over Suzanne Quinley and my foolish pride in learning swordplay and my regret over my fencing teacher’s discomfort with my shamanism and on and on and on, all of it raw and exposed and coming apart beneath the sounds of her never-ending screams.