C.E. Murphy - Raven Calls

Coyote, with what struck me as remarkable restraint, said, “Isn’t your mother dead?”

“Yeah.”

“I see.” He sat there waiting for more for a full thirty seconds before concluding I wasn’t going to delve any deeper into that particular well, then sighed from the depths of his soul. “Of course I’ll help.”

He didn’t even put a caveat on, which I thought was very gentlemanly of him. I leaned forward and caught his hand with mine. “I swear I’ll call you and tell you the whole story, all of it, no holds barred—” except maybe the part about Morrison kissing me “—and then I’m going to beg you for mentorly advice, because, holy crap, am I in over my head.”

“Call,” he said, making a phone with his fingers, “or call?” he said, gesturing around the garden.

“Call,” I said, repeating the garden motion, and he smiled.

“All right. If I may, then?” He nodded toward my overheated left arm and I flopped it toward him. A hiss escaped between his teeth as he touched it and almost withdrew. “Sorry if that hurt.”

“Actually, it didn’t.” I knew perfectly well that was worse than it hurting. It suggested somewhere within me I’d started accepting the changes, and that was bad. “I’m fighting myself,” I said quietly. “My hind brain is running with the ‘werewolf bites mean turning into werewolves!’ thing and the healing magic, which I guess is smarter than I am—”

Coyote gave me a look that suggested tree frogs were smarter than I was, but didn’t say it. I half smiled and continued. “Anyway, I guess it’s going great guns holding the infection in place, not letting it spread. Or not spread quickly, anyway. Nobody else has been able to get a foothold against it.”

“Who’s tried?”

“A goddess and a spirit animal.”

Coyote’s eyes popped like Sylvester the Cat’s, but he got his expression back under control. “Were either of them invited?”

“Not per se.” I knew a cue when I heard one, though, and straightened my spine so my lungs could be properly filled and my “Coyote, will you heal me?” could come out as a nice solid request.

For some reason it made him laugh. I huffed and he laughed again, then, trying for ritual solemnity, replied, “I will,” before cracking up a third time. “Sorry. I just expected something a lot more formal. Magic makes people talk funny, have you noticed?”

“Have I ever. But I couldn’t figure out a way to dress it up any more than that.”

“No, asking for a healing is really pretty straightforward. All right, listen, Jo. Two things. One, this is probably going to hurt, and two…” He hesitated, regret creasing lines around his mouth. “It’s going to require not holding anything back. That shouldn’t be hard....”

It shouldn’t be, because we’d had a handful of amazing days together only a few months earlier. We’d gotten under each other’s skins, into each other’s magics and seen each other’s souls in a way that only a couple of magic users could ever do. It had been the safest, most comfortable, most erotic intimacy I’d ever imagined.

And then Coyote had gone home to Arizona, and I’d stayed in Seattle, and the truth was, neither of us was going to give up our lives for the other.

More than that, though, was Morrison’s presence in my life. I’d been half in love with Coyote since I was a teenager. He was home to me in a way nobody else could ever be. But Morrison was the one who made me dizzy and weak-kneed and splendidly angry and passionately happy. Coyote’s magic was breathtaking. Morrison’s solidity was my world. Coyote and I both knew it. It hurt him more than it hurt me, but I didn’t want to rub salt in the wound.

On the other hand, I didn’t want to turn into a werewolf, either. I sighed. “No holds barred, ’Yote. I said that already.”

“Okay.” He kept my left hand in his right and put his left over my heart. Nice circle, I thought: heart magic. Without thinking I put my right hand over his heart, too. Not as intimate as the left hand, heart-to-heart, but since my left hand was a festering lump of burning infection, that was probably okay. Coyote nodded once, and I Saw his power light up, blocking the poison magic from the rest of my body with the circle he’d created.

Then desert heat exploded in my veins, and everything went white for a while.

A coyote and a wolf fought on a desert mesa. Eggshell-blue sky, hard white earth, a too-large sun pounding relentlessly on the combatants. The wolf was larger, black-furred, green-eyed and looked hot. The coyote, rangier, golden-eyed and quick, was more comfortable in the heat, but outgunned in terms of body weight. I was too far away to help either of them. I was, in fact, trussed and dangling upside-down from a dead white tree for the second, and I fervently hoped the final, time in my life.

The air this time wasn’t so hot as to be unbreathable. Not quite. I could just barely manage small sips, enough to keep me from gasping at the lack of oxygen. The sounds of battle carried through it: snarls, growls, bites, yips, howls and less obvious noises like claws scrabbling for purchase against hard dirt. Furthermore, heat waves played with the distance, so at some moments the fight seemed very far away and, others, startlingly near. Discomfort fluctuated in my own body as the fight changed distances, sometimes rocketing past pain into blinding agony, other times rolling back to nothing more than a vague nuisance. I kind of thought the waves should reflect which animal seemed to have the upper hand, but there didn’t appear to be a correlation. Or if there was, it hurt more when Coyote was winning. That didn’t seem quite fair.

Of course, I was hanging upside-down from a bleached-out desert tree, so I probably wasn’t in much position to be dictating what was and wasn’t fair. The wolf left black oily footprints behind as it fought, reminiscent of the black shapeless horrors that had formed themselves into the werewolves back at the dawn of time. Once in a while Coyote stepped in some of the goo. My heart rate accelerated every time, in half-rational conviction he would be contaminated by it.

I didn’t quite see it coming when the two animals locked on each other’s throats. I felt it, though. Felt it in my bloodstream: the blue-gold desert power Coyote brought to the game firing all cylinders against the wolf’s slick black magic. My whole body shuddered, contorting into a shape not meant to have arms tied behind its back. I tried for a scream, managed a croak and realized a little belatedly that I was letting Coyote do all the work for me.

My experiences in the desert had mostly been getting pummeled by somebody else’s magic. I didn’t really know what would happen if I called on my own. On the other hand, I had a fairly clear idea of what would happen if I didn’t, and it involved my mentor and one-time lover getting his ass handed to him. I bit my tongue until saliva flooded my mouth, and with that one tiny wet swallow, nerved myself to face the healing power again.

It was losing ground, even with Coyote shoring it up. Silver-blue was being eaten alive, mutated, corrupted, by the buzzing spill of black oil. I pushed back, tentatively, and my flesh wracked again, a modicum of ground regained. I was going to have to regain a lot more than that, and fast, or my extremities were going to be pulled from their sockets as I became more and more wolflike. Healer or no, that was not something I was eager to experience. I shoved again, this time whispering, “Your own worst enemy,” to myself.

It was true. I had been since the beginning. I’d been some other people’s worst enemy, too, often people I’d meant to be a friend to, but mostly I’d been in my own way. There were a million faces to my impediments: my mother, my father, my children, my job prospects, my romantic prospects—basically I’d thrown everything I could think of in the way. Excuses or reasons, regardless of what I called them, they stood there like trenchermen, my own personality determined to hold me back.