C.E. Murphy - Raven Calls

I dared a glance at the them in question, the banshees who still hung about the rafters, all hungry haunted eyes and silent voices. “Aibhill was very reasonable, too. Right up until she gutted Méabh. So forgive me if I don’t quite trust reasonable and polite.”

“Aibhill,” my mother said softly, “did not have the bond of bone and blood broken before her soul became the Master’s. More, she did not have it done by her daughter, nor with the help of a goddess she had long since loved.”

That whole ritual on the mountaintop seemed very distant just then. I looked at her for a long time, trying to understand what she meant, and finally said, “You mean it worked? You’re free?”

“Free to choose, cuisle mo chroí, and I’ve chosen this cloak to wear.”

I couldn’t have heard her correctly. My expression indicated as much, and after a moment she smiled. Not Aibhill’s sweet, syrupy smile, but a smile with points. With fangs. A smile that reminded me how my mother had chosen to die through willpower alone, and therefore a smile that I found peculiarly reassuring. I still had to say it. “Why on God’s little green earth would you do that? This is… I mean, Mom. Doesn’t this kind of cut you out of the circle of life? Of reincarnation? You’ve got to be an old soul, even if I’m not. Why would you do that?”

“There’s not a one of them with power, my girl,” Sheila said as if it explained everything. It didn’t. She pursed her lips to hide another smile and went on. “Aibhill had power in her mortal life, alanna . The magic of her voice, to warn men of their deaths, but the magic to strike vengeance was the Master’s alone. The rest are vassals only, creatures of Aibhill’s making and of his. Without me, they remain his, but I have power, Joanne. I have the strength they do not. I can guide them. I can draw them away from him, and make them what they once were meant to be. Harbingers, not bringers, of death. There’s no harm in knowing death comes,” she added even more quietly. “It gives those that know how to take it a chance to say goodbye.”

There were worlds of meaning in that, things we really probably should discuss, but sitting on the floor of a ruined castle in the Irish version of the Lower World, with banshees and my best friend overlooking us, was not the time or place to discuss them. I pulled my scattered brain cells together and said, “You’ve done an end-route,” blankly. “You pulled a Hail Mary on the big bad. Jesus, Mom, that could have gone all wrong.”

She smiled again. “I trusted you.”

“Me?” Man, and I thought I wasn’t too bright sometimes.

“That you would find your magic. That you would come back to Ireland to take up the mantle I discarded too early. That you would stop the ritual from being completed, and that I would be free to make the choices I had to make.”

My throat was dry. “You took a hell of a risk.”

“But I was right.” Sheila MacNamarra stood and offered me a hand. “Now, my daughter, shall we end this fight we began together eight and twenty years ago?”

“Eight and twenty, Mom? Really?” Still, I got up and offered her my hand. Right hand. The left continued to be a dead weight. Sheila frowned and instead of taking the one I offered, reached for the useless other. I pulled about half an inch away, realized there was nowhere to hide and slumped as she caught the bitten flesh in her hands.

Her eyebrows drew down. “What’s this magic you’re working, my heart?”

“Magic I’m wo— I’m not working any magic! I got bit by a damned werewolf a couple days ago!”

She gave me a puzzled look. “So?”

“So my magic’s screwed up because I’m trying to keep from going all furry!”

Silence met my outburst. After a long moment, my mother said, as gently as she could, “Sure and you don’t think a bite transforms you into a werewolf, do you, cuisle mo chroí? ”

“Of course it does. Everybody knows tha…” I swallowed. “Everybody knows that.”

The queen of the banshees looked like she was trying not to laugh. “You’ve watched too many movies, Joanne. Where does magic come from?”

“Within.” I actually knew that one, and as soon as I said it started to feel uncomfortable. “I mean… Well, yeah. It comes from within.”

“And so how,” she wondered, “could a bite, an external wound, change you from one thing to another?”

My face heated up and I grabbed my arm defensively. A wave of pain washed over me, which helped my righteousness as I snapped, “It’s an infection. It gets into the blood. That’s the whole idea of how werewolves work.”

“Magic is bloodlines, my girl. It can’t be forced on you from without. At most it can suggest, but the mind must be willing.”

“Bullshit. I turned Morrison into a wolf last week. You can’t tell me he was willing for that to happen.”

Gary cleared his throat. “Didn’t you say that whole spirit dance thing was softenin’ people up for transformation, Jo?”

I gave him a gimlet stare. “Yeah. Spiritual transformation, though, not physical.”

He shrugged one big shoulder. “Maybe, but you can’t tell me Mike ain’t willin’ to take on you and your magic, sweetheart.”

My jaw worked. Gary widened his eyes in an approximation of innocence. I spluttered, then muttered, “Okay, fine, you may have a point. But it’s not like I’m lining up to turn into a werewolf! ”

“You have the shifting power within you,” Sheila said, and my stomach turned to lead. “If the thought is buried in your mind, Joanne, that this is what happens, then the magic within you may well grasp the magic without and bend toward its will. The wolf blood is borne from mother to daughter, but if an adept embraces the change, why should the blood not accept her?”

“So you’re saying I’m turning myself into a werewolf?”

Way at the back of my mind, that obnoxious little voice I hadn’t heard for a while said, “Ding!”

Its long silence did not make its return any more welcome. It was the voice of reason, the one I’d only started noticing around the time my shamanic gifts woke up. I hadn’t thought about it, but if I had, I’d have thought I’d incorporated the voice of reason into my everyday thoughts, thus muffling its irritating commentary. Apparently I hadn’t quite managed it.

If I was my own worst enemy, that explained why Áine had failed in cleansing the werewolf venom out of me. It also explained why Rattler had come closer to succeeding, but had still ultimately failed. I stared at my enflamed arm like I could set it on fire with the power of my mind, then despite myself, grinned. Good thing Caitríona had gone home, or she’d no doubt be glad to do it for me.

Humor faded, though, leaving me staring at my arm. “Can you heal it, Mom? Caitríona said you used to give them magic Band-Aids.”

She shook her head as I glanced up. “Mage I may be, but healing lies within the realm of the living, alanna . It’s your own self who’ll have to do the job.”

I’d been afraid she would say that. “You realize this is not a good time. I mean, we’re hanging out in the Irish underworld, which the Master has corrupted half of, we’ve killed one of his dragons and his head banshee, and the new banshee boss in town is the twentieth-century version of his arch-enemy. And you think I should go have a nice communion with myself and get the werewolf bite all sorted out now? ”

My mother, who had no particular right to use a Mother Knows Best expression on me, assumed one. “Do you think going into battle against the Master with his poison running in your veins is wise?”