C.E. Murphy - Shaman Rises

“Walker, I can’t go without you!”

That was so preposterous I stopped trembling and gaped at Morrison. He passed a hand through his silver hair. “A mass murder at Thunderbird Falls is your department, Walker. Whatever’s happened there, you’re going to need to see it. I can’t give you what you’re going to need in a written report. You have to see it. To See it. The sooner, the better, right? Because magic doesn’t linger and you can’t track it.”

I stared at him a long moment or two, wondering when he’d become such an expert on magic. Over the past fifteen months, obviously, but it still jarred me to hear him say such things outright. “Yes. Yeah. You’re right. I just—”

A door down the hall behind us banged open. Morrison and I both flinched, reaching for duty weapons neither of us were carrying. A few seconds later, Suzy, now wearing a light blue T-shirt, sailed past, balanced on the back lower frame of a wheelchair occupied by a small figure in a gray hoodie. “Taking Grandma for her walk!” she caroled as they swept past the nurses’ station two dozen feet ahead of us. “We’ll be back in twenty minutes!”

“Get off that wheelchair, young lady!” somebody bellowed after her. Suzy jumped off the frame and ushered the wheelchair into an open elevator before anybody had time to stop her. The doors slid closed, leaving me and Morrison goggling down the hall.

Gary, shrugging on a Windbreaker and carrying my drum in one hand, lumbered up to us. “I hear we got places to be, doll.” He sounded more like his old self. I stared at him without much comprehension, too, until he swung a finger, lassolike, and pointed it toward the elevators. “That girl’s gonna be out the front door in three minutes, Jo. We goin’, or what?”

“Yes! Yeah! We’re going. We’re...going.” I jolted into motion with the first word, and tried not to let my feet slow down as I stuttered toward the end of the sentence. Morrison, marching alongside me, was as apoplectic as he ever had been when facing down the curves my life threw at him. Gary, however, had a grin that looked fit to beat the devil.

Since that was kind of what we had to do, it gave me heart. The three of us got in another elevator and followed Suzy out of the hospital. Nobody gave any of us a second look: there were plenty of other patients in wheelchairs or on crutches, making slow rounds over the hospital grounds. Morrison broke into a jog, gaining ground on us before disappearing into the parking lot. When we were as far away from the hospital front doors as we could get, he appeared in our rented car.

Annie Muldoon clambered inside the car and threw her hood back to reveal a delighted smile. “I always wanted to ride in a getaway car! I apologize, Captain Morrison, for putting you in this awkward position. I’m grateful for your assistance.”

Suzy flung herself into the far passenger’s side of the car, catching Morrison’s look of bewilderment. “I explained everything to Grandma, I mean, Mrs. Muldoon, on the way out.”

Morrison breathed, “I sincerely doubt that,” and Suzy huffed in exasperation.

“I explained enough. She knows who you are.”

“And I appreciate the difficulty of your situation,” Annie said. By that time we were all in the car, me riding shotgun after Gary and I had engaged in a silent discussion-slash-argument about whether he or I would take it. In the end he’d pointed ferociously at Annie, indicating he was not moving an inch farther from her side than necessary. I put my drum in the trunk and got in the front passenger seat.

“Mrs. Muldoon, I’m not sure even I appreciate the difficulty of my situation right now.” That said, Morrison put the car in Drive and peeled out of the parking lot. “Walker, call Dispatch. Tell them to put out an APB that I am in a rented blue Toyota Avalon, license plate number CTAK3887—”

“You know the car’s license plate number?” I asked in admiring astonishment.

Morrison’s lifted eyebrow suggested he memorized the plates of every vehicle he ever got in, no matter how little time he expected to spend in it. “And that I am approaching Thunderbird Falls from the southwest, at as high a speed as I can manage. This vehicle is not to be stopped for traffic violations.”

Morrison was going to rack up traffic violations on my behalf. I’d never heard anything half so sexy in my life. I put the call in and gasped gladly when I recognized the dispatcher who picked up: my old friend Bruce. “I’ll see if I can get any squad cars to clear some streets for you,” he offered without missing a beat. “Where are you coming from, exactly?”

I told him, finishing with, “If I could cook I’d make you and Elise the best meal you’d ever had, in thanks.”

“I can cook,” Annie put in.

I laughed, relaying the offer, although not who it was from. Bruce counter-offered with a cook-off, his wife’s tamales against the best Annie could come up with, and then got serious again. “I can get you a police escort starting in about fifteen blocks. I’ve got other cars moving to clear the road ahead of you, but with the escort you’ll have sirens. Be careful, Joanie.”

“It’s Jo, now. And we will be.” I hung up, gave Morrison the down-low and spent the next seven minutes trying not to shriek with speed-demon joy as my staid, steady boss took corners too fast, blew traffic lights, rode the meridian and braked hard from accelerations.

Annie, in the back middle seat, bounced and clapped her hands when the escort, sirens wailing and lights flashing, joined us. I burst out laughing, and Suzy had her knuckles in her mouth, trying to hold back squeals. “Wonder if this is what the president feels like,” Gary rumbled.

Morrison shot him one short look in the rearview mirror before bringing his attention back to the road. “The president doesn’t usually travel this fast in land vehicles. This better get us there in time, Walker.”

That cut the legs right out from under my glee. There was no in time: people were already dead. But if I could work a power circle, at least maybe I could contain the black magic swallowing up the falls’ power, and if we were incredibly lucky, maybe we could snare the murderer.

Chances were not good that we’d be incredibly lucky.

With the police escort, we got to the falls in record time. I was out of the car before Morrison had finished pulling into a parking space, but somehow he was still only two steps behind me. I half noticed Gary getting out with Annie and Suzy, but he drew them away from the crime scene that Morrison and I ran for. I was grateful for that: Annie might’ve been a nurse, but Suzy was just a kid, and she didn’t need to see the horror smeared across the beach.

I didn’t count them. I just saw that there were lots, and mentally leaped to the number: thirteen. A coven. A coven meant they all had at least some tiny flush of magical talent. That had to be the ultimate murder prize for the Master. That had to help him to no end. No wonder the falls’ magic was so badly damaged, and no wonder it kept getting worse. I was willing to bet these people had been pouring their hearts and souls into that power right up to the moment of their deaths.

And they weren’t just dead. They’d had their hearts ripped out, every single one of them. Their ribs were broken outward like someone had shoved a hand through their backs and emerged clutching the hardest-working muscle in the body. The blood sprays looked like that, too, easily visible because the victims were all flat on their backs in a perfect circle, as if something very startling had leaped from the earth at their center and the surprise had knocked them all over backward. The blood looked like their hearts had been ripped out after that, like the same something had then come up through their spines and taken the hearts skyward. I shuddered, unable to drag my gaze from the red gaping holes in their chests.