CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

 

We ended up down in the garage break room, the place I was most comfortable in the station. A surprising number of people followed us down, evidently all struck with the need to take a break at exactly the same time. Morrison was conspicuous by his absence, for which I was both grateful and resentful. He, after all, had seen the diner's security tapes and had come around far enough to reinstate me to work on the case. It seemed like he should come keep an eye on me while I did the weird stuff that he'd reinstated me to do.

Maybe I didn't need to work on that damsel in distress routine after all. The idea of Morrison keeping his eye on me implied I might need him to rescue me, which seemed both unlikely and annoying. Fortunately, my replacement, Thor the Thunder God, came in from the garage with the rest of the mechanics. His arrival knocked me out of sulking over the captain.

"This really isn't going to be that exciting," I said to Gary. He had a duffel bag over his shoulder and was carrying it carefully. I assumed my drum was in there, protected against the weather.

"Want me to get 'em out of here?" He looked more hulking than usual, like a rooster with his feathers fluffed out. I almost laughed.

"No, I think it's okay. I just, ah." I stopped arranging an empty space on the floor and looked around at the two dozen men and women crowding the break room. "No. No, in fact, I think I have an idea. All right, look, everybody." I lifted my voice and straightened, arms akimbo. Nearly everyone came to attention, like I was their worst drill sergeant returned to haunt them. I fought off laughter again.

"This isn't," I repeated, "going to be very exciting. I'm going to sit here in a trance while Gary bangs a drum. I take it pretty much everybody's gotten the lowdown by now."

Nobody would quite look at me, or at each other. Especially at me. I couldn't help wondering if they were here to see if my freaky new life was real, or if I'd just lost my mind. Either way, I couldn't help laughing. Nothing traveled faster than gossip, and getting the lowdown had brought most of them here. "Right," I said. Bruce, at least, met my eye with an unapologetic little shrug. "Since you're all here anyway, I'm gonna ask a favor of you."

Maybe a dozen people were left when I was done explaining what I wanted to try. To my surprise, Thor stayed. He glowered and folded his arms over his chest when I arched an eyebrow at him, but he didn't move. I wondered what his real name was as I waited another moment before beginning. No one else left, so I sat down Indian-style in the middle of the crowd. Gary sat down across from me and took my drum out from the duffel bag.

"I brought this, too." He withdrew Cernunnos's rapier, sheathed in leather, from the bag. My eyes widened.

"Don't tell me you had a scabbard just lying around."

Gary shrugged a bit. "Okay, I won't tell you. Take it." He offered the sheathed blade to me, and I placed it across my lap. Curious murmurs rose and fell, but no one asked outright. That would come later, I imagined. A lot of questions were going to come later. Either that or a lot of people were going to start finding excuses not to talk to me ever again. I wondered which route I'd have taken, if someone else had been trying to pull this off.

"Not gonna lie down this time?" Gary asked.

"I think I'll be okay. If I fall over, somebody can prop me up." I inhaled, a long slow breath through my nostrils, and let my eyes drift closed. The first beat of the drum was deep and certain and sent chills over my arms. I straightened my spine involuntarily.

I knew I could do what I wanted to do. I didn't know if I could do it on purpose. I remembered the electric awareness of the airport, the charge in the air that was the life force of hundreds of people coming and going about their business. It had been so available, the urge to tap it obvious and nearly irresistible.

There, on the scale I'd reached for power on, it would have been deadly. Here I wanted only a fraction of that power, and I was asking for it to be volunteered. The drum settled into a rhythm that matched my heartbeat. I exhaled, and with the exhalation stood, leaving my body sitting empty on the floor, motor functions operating while my consciousness stepped out for a breather.

The room's inhabitants glowed with the same peculiar neon life force I'd seen outside my apartment when I'd gone for the inadvertent visit to the dead shamans. It was the same force that had unlocked inside me, although less potent; the same astonishing skinlessness I'd experienced in the coffee shop while talking with Morrison. They were full of life, breathing and pulsing with it. Curiosity caught me for a moment and I looked past them, through the walls of the garage, to study the look of living earth from below instead of above.

I shouldn't have; it was depressing. Bisected and intersected with concrete, there wasn't much living at all. The sunken building walls had their own sense of purpose, their own energy, but it wasn't what I was looking for and I didn't have the time to examine it more carefully.

I withdrew back into the break room, concentrating instead on the brilliant auras of my co-workers and friends. And Thor. Billy had shown up, a stolid wall of fuchsias and oranges. Unlike almost everyone else, he held his hands in front of him, a coiling ball of color writhing between his palms. Jen, nearby, held the same kind of ball, in boiling yellow and brown. I didn't even know brown came in neon.

A few of the others stood that way as well. The others simply stood where they were, casting curious, silent glances at the body I'd temporarily abandoned—not that it was apparent I'd done so—and at the people around them. Their energy rolled off them in waves, flickering away like flame. Some were clearly concentrating on extending goodwill toward me, visible in sheets that dissipated without focus. The rest had less ability to focus, offering not much more than their simple essence.

I reached for the sheets of goodwill first, wondering how to temper the power. Was a wish of good thoughts an infinite gift, or did it exhaust the giver? If it did, I had to make this very fast, or find a way to slow down the output. There was too much I didn't know.

On the other hand, there wasn't a lot of time to sit around agonizing over that fact, either. I cupped my hands, siphoning the unfocused power into a ball between my own palms, watching the startling colors spin and dance around one another without quite melding. Where they touched, flashes of gray and black and white blurred them together, making them cohesive without taking away any of the individuality. Mesmerizing patterns formed within the ball, all of them unique and yet still sounding a common theme. I watched a moment, then shook myself. If I was lucky, there'd be time later to study the universal similarities in man. If I wasn't, I'd be dead and it wouldn't be much of a worry for me anyway.

Calling the already-focused power that Billy and Jen offered was easier. Their energy flowed to me when I called them, dancing around the ball I held like electrons around an atom, almost too fast to see. All of the power I held traced thin lines back to its creators, bright snaps of color that wound around each other in intricate braids without ever tangling together.

I wasn't taking anything at all from at least a quarter of the people in the room, the ones who weren't able to offer it up as easily as the others. I could take it outright, borrow some of their life force, just as I'd intended to in the airport, but for now I left them.

Babylon. How did I get back? By candlelight, and back again. I closed my eyes and fell inward on myself, reaching backward and within for the starry void. My hands and feet and head sucked inward, collapsing into my belly button. My entire self shriveled and shrunk until with an audible pop I imploded entirely and exploded back out of my belly button again, exactly as I'd been, only facing the opposite direction and looking into the racing starscape instead of the garage break room.

"Hey," I said out loud. "That was cool." The energy I'd borrowed was no longer visible in a ball between my palms. Instead I could feel it settled in my abdomen, a life force there that was, and was not, part of myself. I shuddered and tried to shut myself away from recognizing the feeling. With a jarring shock, spiderweb cracks shot through me, deeper and sharper than anything before.

"Give me a break," I whispered. "This isn't the time." I superimposed clarity over the cracks, and they faded out reluctantly. It oc-curred to me that all three times I'd found my way to the star scape, the past I'd tried so hard to leave behind had resurfaced. I wondered, very briefly, what exactly this place between the worlds was. Then the candle appeared and I wrapped my hands around it and whispered, "Babylon."

A noise like the end of the world hit me, sending me staggering back a few steps. A huge knobby root caught me in the back of the knees. I sat down hard at the foot of a Joshua Spire, trying to make sense of the chaos that had become Babylon.

The sky had lost its blue-gray color, tinged now with deep, sickening red. The silver Joshua Spires twisted up into the bloody sky, hanging gardens torn and falling down the sides of the trees. They shifted restlessly, not pushed by the wind, but like dying creatures making a last desperate snatch at life before giving away to the inevitable end.

The restless, cheerful babble that had filled the air was gone, too, leaving lonely wind and cries of fear and pain in its place. For one crystalline moment, I saw a long view of human history, reaching far back to the first days of mankind. I saw a small woman with thick curves and dark eyes, recognizable as human, yet alien all the same. She met my eyes and performed a shrug, small, wry, fully understandable.

We came here once, she said, when we were few.

This was Babel, I said back. This is where we came to all speak together. To share and understand each other. When we bred too many...Babel was lost?

She nodded and smiled, warm and approving.

You're Eve, I said. She threw her head back and laughed, a very human sound.

They called me Mother, when I was there. I was not the first in the way you think of Eve as being. It was not so easy as that. But —-yes. Eve might

do as a name. But go, she said, or all my children will lose the place we once had, forever.

Goodbye, Mother, I whispered. The roar of angry wind filled my ears. I had never left Babel, but I could see it again. The street cobbles were torn, chunks of stone flung at wild angles that suggested an earthquake of devastating magnitude. Where they'd been the warm color of rust before, they were splattered with red, the dangerous crimsons and dark shades that meant vital blood had been spilled. I rubbed my breastbone, feeling sick. There was too much to think about, too much to assimilate and far too little time.

People hid behind every cockeyed piece of street, some dead, some dying, others mourning and still others screaming out their defiance against the Hunt that rode through them. As I watched, a line of soldiers, arm in arm, stood up together and walked forward. Before them, the street shivered and reformed, cobbles lying back down under the force of their will. Behind them, it lay smooth, a gauntlet thrown in the face of the chaos that was the Wild Hunt.

And down the newly relaid road they came, a dozen too-solid riders and the lonely pale mare. Cernunnos rode at their lead, his elegant antlers sweeping back to tangle with his ashy hair. He carried the new double-edged sword. Beneath the blood, it gleamed as bright a silver as the rapier I'd taken from him. As I watched, his stallion leaped a still-broken section of road, and Cernunnos smiled brilliantly at a young woman scrambling to get out of the way. Her lips parted and she went still, fear replaced by the compulsion of the god's green eyes. He laughed, like the music of breaking glass. His deadly bright blade swept down in a gleaming arch, and the girl stiffened, waiting for the blow.

I whispered, "No."

The god's sword smashed into my spoken word like it was a shield, and rebounded. Cernunnos jolted back, and for a moment the entire Hunt hesitated. The girl, freed from Cernunnos's eyes, turned and ran. With precise slowness, Cernunnos transferred his sword from his left hand to his right. He curved the fingers of his left hand down, rubbing them against his palm, and stretched them wide again. Then he lifted his hand, palm up, and looked slowly around with the intent of a deadly, confident predator.

It was suddenly important that I face him before he called me out. I pushed away from my tree root and walked forward, coming into the street ahead of the line of soldiers, who stood still now, remaining arm in arm, waiting and watching. Their healing power still rolled off them, spreading out through the ruined city of Babylon. A wave of fierce protection wrapped around my heart. I would die before I let anyone else here die. Let him see nothing but me, I willed. Let him forget them.

Cernunnos watched me silently, fascination visible even in features only half-human. Behind him, the archer and the thick-shouldered rider exchanged glances. The thick-shouldered man smiled before returning his attention to me; the archer nocked an arrow, but didn't draw. I thought it was rather unsporting of him anyway. I'd seen how fast he could nock an arrow, earlier. It wasn't like he needed the extra time afforded by doing it now.

"Little shaman," Cernunnos said. The beautiful voice was harsher now, distorted by the thickened neck and changed vocal cords.

"My lord master of the Hunt," I replied. The thick-shouldered man did smile at that. Cernunnos did too, a twist of a mouth that had the fullness of the man's lips pulled into a stunted muzzle, neither human nor animal. He bowed from the waist, a small gesture as impossibly elegant as anything I'd ever seen him do. It wasn't enough, though, to wipe the blood from the blade he carried. The power I'd borrowed boiled in my belly, asking to be used.

"I hardly expected to see you again, little shaman."

"I hardly intended to leave you here. This isn't your place, Cernunnos."

"Oh, but it is," he murmured, and lifted his hands, bloody sword in one, to encompass the bleak red sky and the death in the streets. "Look what I have wrought."

"You marked it. That doesn't make it yours. Come on, my lord master of the Hunt." The words sounded like they would if I'd said them to Morrison, full of sarcasm. "Mano a mano, eh? You and me. If you win, I take the child's place in the Hunt and you ride unbound. If I win, you leave this place now and forever and return to Earth with me."

"Now and forever?" the god asked, a gleam in his brilliant eyes.

"That remains to be seen," I said steadily. He lowered his head, ivory horns catching the bloody light, and considered me.

"How did you say it? Mano a mano. So it shall be. I swear it by my name and by my power and once more by my immortal life. Should I lose here to you, nevermore shall the Hunt return to Babylon, and with you we will go, to the place you call Earth."

I wondered, briefly, what that name he swore by was. It was not, I was sure, Cernunnos. There was something deeper, more private, that he answered to in the most secret part of his soul, and no one else would ever know that name. Except maybe the camel, I thought in a fit of pure irreverence. I hoped he hadn't heard that, and spoke out loud to cover the thought. "I have no immortal life to swear by. Should I swear by yours?"

Scathing disdain filled Cernunnos's vivid eyes. My mouth twisted in a smirk. "Don't have much sense of humor, do you?" I straightened my shoulders. Being a smart-ass might help keep my courage up, but this was important. My heartbeat, steady as the drum, sounded loud in my ears as I spoke. "As you swear it, so shall I, by my name and my power and my all-too mortal life. If I lose to you here, I'll ride in your missing child's place, and try no more to bind you." A constriction came over me as I spoke, a very real compulsion, and it occurred to me once more that I'd gotten in way over my head. There was a proverb about that. Looking and leaping. Maybe someday I'd remember it before I leaped.

God knows what I was expecting. It wasn't the force of Cer-nunnos's will smashing down on me like a hammer, though. My words were still lingering in the air when he hit me, green strength like a mountain coming down. I dropped to my knees, the air crushed from my body, and held onto the contents of my stomach through clenched teeth.

Cernunnos dismounted with predatory grace, stalking toward me across the new cobblestones. I swayed, watching him and distantly remembering the helpless fear in the woman's face a few minutes ago. I had been here before, weighed down under his power. Unfortunately, Gary wasn't here this time to haul my ass out of the fire. I was going to have to do it myself. I reached for the internalized strength I'd borrowed from my friends, and hesitated.

Not yet. Cernunnos stopped a few feet away from me, easily within the reach of his sword. "Thou art bold, little shaman," he murmured. "Foolish, but bold." He drew the blade back, preparing for a deeply disabling strike. I didn't think he was going to kill me. Not unless he knew a way to capture a newly released soul, which, now that I thought about it, I wouldn't put past him. That didn't make me feel any better.

He lunged forward, and I fell over.

It certainly didn't have any of the grace the god persisted in showing, but it did get me out of his path without me having to fight off the weight of his power to get up. He stumbled, taken off guard, and I rolled forward, into his legs. Gratifyingly, he lost his balance for a moment. I twisted on my back and drove a booted foot up into his groin.

For one horrible moment Cernunnos stared down at me and I was afraid I might as well have kicked one of the Joshua Spires.

Then he screamed, so deep and angry it twisted my bones. The gray veil that I had willed Babylon behind shivered and faded. Cernunnos flung both hands up, his sword knotted in his fists, and drove it down toward me.

The weight of his power was gone, though, shattered by pain as thoroughly as crystal was by sound. I came to my feet as the sword slammed down into cobblestone. As he began to draw it back out I kicked him in the jaw. He spun around, torso moving faster than his legs, one full turn and an aborted half, just like Charlie Chaplin.

Against all the rules of good sportsmanship, I kicked him while he was down. I caught him one solid blow in the ribs, moving his whole body a few inches, but the second time he caught my foot and twisted it hard to the side. Something that shouldn't have popped in my knee and I screamed, collapsing almost on top of the god. For a few seconds we lay there, panting at each other. I saw a flash of anger in his eyes.

It was just enough warning to throw up a shield as his power slammed down on me again. This time I could see it, the deep snarling green of his strength pushing at the silver-gray barrier I'd flung up, testing it for weaknesses.

And finding them. Uncertainty, lack of knowledge, simple fear, they were holes I didn't know how to plug up. Like the Lilliputians with Gulliver, Cernunnos pinned me down through those holes, threading green power into the stone around me. He grinned, feral and strange on the half-animal face, and rolled to his feet, dragging his sword out of the stone.

An incongruous thought made me look away from him, to the thick-shouldered rider in the host. He lifted his bearded chin, a trace of amusement in his face, and then he nodded, a single drop of his chin. Something familiar glittered in his eyes as Cernun-nos's sword came free of the stone with a scrape. Then there was no more time to contemplate the riders while I looked for a way to get free of Cernunnos's bonds.

The god rose up and drove his sword into my belly, and I stopped thinking at all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

One thing I'd learned in the last few days was that a body gets used to different degrees of pain. For example, my head still throbbed, but I'd more or less forgotten about it while concentrating on the return to Babylon. The very bad popping in my knee was excruciating, but letting it distract me from the matter at hand was suicidal, so I didn't.

Getting a sword in the gut for the second or third time in a week was not something you could get used to. I was too surprised to scream; instead I opened my mouth and a pathetic little bloody cough came out. Above me, smiling brilliantly, Cernunnos asked, "Do you yield?"

Interesting question to ask a shish-kabob. He leaned on the sword a little more, turning it slightly. I opened my mouth to scream again and didn't even manage the pathetic cough that time. "Do you yield?" Cernunnos asked again. Pleasantly, even.

My vision faded out, into blood, and back in again with the peripheries stained red. The rest of the Hunt was gathered around us when I could see again. I felt like a particularly novel and newly discovered bug, skewered on an examining table.

"I..." I croaked. Cernunnos, still smiling brilliantly, leaned closer to hear me.

"I'll see you in hell first," I whispered, and did the most amazingly stupid thing I could think of. I released the coil of energy inside me.

It blasted out in every direction, most of its force screaming in a multicolored ball up the sword to smash into Cernunnos. There was one delightful moment of complete surprise on his face before he flew back, ass over teakettle. I heard a dull thud as he crashed into one of the Joshua Spires, and another one as he hit the earth a moment later. His sword made a dull tink against the stones as it landed somewhere between us.

Unexpectedly, all my pain went away. I stood up slowly, my vision turning to swirls of red and blue: infrared and ultraviolet. Detail faded to impressions, splotches of heat and cool. Energy still boiled out of me. It felt exhilarating, utter freedom from constraint, self-imposed or otherwise. I felt as if nothing could possibly stop me. A tiny part of me knew it was a false high, but for the moment I hung on and looked around.

Babylon, behind the mist of obscurity I'd put up around it, was healing. I could see within the Joshua Spires, like I'd been able to see through the city buildings. Men and women formed circles around and inside the spires. I could see power rising from them, flowing out over the mythical city. Where their power touched damage, it healed. Only the bodies the Hunt had left behind remained still and unliving as the shamans worked together to heal their gathering place.

They dared focus on the healing because they trusted me to deal with the Hunt. I could feel that, too. Not supreme confidence, but quiet expectation, the belief that it was safe to pay attention to other tasks. Only the line of soldiers whom I'd seen first still stood linked across the street, watching me. I lifted a hand toward them, meaning to smile, but the sight of my own hand drove all other thought from my mind.

There was no hand, nor wrist or elbow or, as I looked down at myself, any of the other usual flesh and blood extremities that came with being human. I was human-shaped, with fingers and breasts and hips and feet, but it was like someone had taken all the coverings off and left me with nothing more than the spirit that filled those parts. No wonder I'd stopped hurting. There wasn't anything physical left to hurt.

Color swam over what wasn't my skin, like oil held in by surface tension. Rainbows gleamed and swirled and mixed and were reborn. It was ridiculously beautiful. For a second or two I just stared down at myself, lost in the random patterns of spirit unbound by flesh.

A small sound roused me, and I looked up, toward Cernunnos. Other than the groan, he hadn't moved since I threw him into the spire. I discovered I was holding him down, just as he'd held me earlier, with the force of my power. The green of his strength met the silver rainbow of mine, pushing against it enough to prevent him from being crushed, but not enough to let him escape. I cocked my head and walked forward.

The host moved back from me, not precisely a retreat, but certainly a respectful and cautious distance. Their features were lost in the reddish haze as they looked away from me to their captured leader. I crouched beside Cernunnos, watching his power push against mine. It wasn't, maybe, fair. I still felt the good will of my friends reaching out to me, pouring in to me, and he had only his own power.

Then again, he was a god. "Do you yield?" I asked, nearly as po-litely as he had. It seemed like a good protocol, although I knew he'd say no, just like I had.

The problem was, neither of us would ever yield. We could keep fighting until together we destroyed Babylon. At some distant point one of us would destroy the other. The only thing I had on my side was that if Cernunnos actually killed me, he'd have no one to take the Rider's place. Suzanne Quinley's place. Of course, it would leave him free to terrorize Babylon. I had fewer constraints, except I didn't know if the Hunt could be led back into my world, or their own, if Cernunnos himself was dead. I preferred not to find out.

Cernunnos growled, feral eyes full of rage. "I do not yield,"he snarled.

"No," I said, "I didn't think you would."

I tested the depth of the power I was tapped in to, not taking my eyes off the god. The power ran deep, but not deep enough: I could feel the bottom of it, like I was reaching through a stream-bed when I needed a river. I mumbled a prayer and reached for the rest of the people surrounding my physical body, the ones who didn't know how to offer, but who hadn't left the room when I'd explained what I needed.

And my hold on Cernunnos slipped. He roared and sprang forward, knocking me down. My damaged and too-solid flesh came back as I crashed into the cobblestones, the god's taloned nails at my throat. My head hit the stones, and for another moment the gray veil around us wavered again, Babylon visible during that breath. Pain did bad things to my vision, narrowing it down to pinpricks. Cernunnos lifted one hand from my throat, extending it beyond where I could see. Then silver glittered, as he drew the broadsword into my line of vision. For one exciting moment I comprehended just how very long I was going to be dead. I brought my hands up to stop the sword, a futile gesture.

Then I remembered what else Gary had brought to the station.

The surprise on Cernunnos's face was almost worth the near-death experience, as his broadsword bore down and clanged into the flat of my rapier. I held it extended at an awkward angle that barely prevented him from slicing my throat open, but it was all I needed. I gathered my strength with a shout and shoved him off me, rolling to my feet.

That's when I found out, for the second time in two days, how much it hurt to stand up with a two inch hole sliced through your insides. I nearly fell over again right there, content to have done with it, but Cernunnos smiled, a bright flash of triumph. The idea of letting him win pissed me off enough to keep me on my feet. Bleeding and swaying, with an arm wrapped around my abdomen, but on my feet. It's the small victories, I tell you.

It didn't seem fair that he wasn't actually hurt, while I was bleeding and staggering all over the place. He came at me carelessly, an easy overhead stroke that expected nothing in response. Without any particular conscious intent on my own part, the rapier came up, catching the broadsword a second time. Metal rang out again, pure clean tone of a bell, and the god once more looked surprised. Hell, I was surprised, too. I wouldn't have bet on being able to parry a toothpick, much less the heavy blade Cernunnos carried. I could feel the rapier, though, as if it came from the same source the coil of energy within me did. The slender sword's strength was from more than just the metal it was forged with. It was filled with my will and the power lent to me by my friends, and its very presence was a response to my need.

Since I didn't have any world-class fencing skills, I kicked Cernunnos in the nuts again. I didn't have to know how to use a sword to do that, and he was standing there like he was asking for it, so it seemed justified. Shock and rage filled his green eyes all over again as he doubled. I guess there must be rules that people fight-ing gods usually followed. Next time, maybe somebody would give me a primer. Since nobody had this time, though, I kicked him in the head while he was doubled, and knocked his sword away as he fell gracelessly to the ground. It was the perfect moment to bear down upon my enemy and smite him in a gladiator-inspired hour of triumph. Too bad I was digging the rapier into the ground for support and afraid that if I moved I'd collapse on top of him.

Instead, I did what I'd been trying to do before.

I took all my own power, and the offered strength from my friends, and reached just a little farther and took what the others who had stayed didn't know how to offer. Fear surged through a few of the new links, and those I let go as quickly as I could. The last thing I wanted to do was leave scars in my friends' minds.

The remaining power I wove into a net, visualizing all the colors spinning together, shoring up weaknesses and sharing strengths. They bled together and knotted, becoming heavy in my hands. When I looked down I almost couldn't tell where the net began and I left off. My skin had disappeared again, leaving me nothing but a network of power and strength, silver-blue oil-slick rainbows.

I wanted to stay like this forever. I could feel everything in Babylon: the healing, the fear, the confidence that I would make good my promise and take Cernunnos and his riders away from this place. Beyond that, between the blackness of the stars, I could feel other life, a tremendously deep hum that spread from one end of eternity to the other. It was the void that bound all the worlds, and I knew I could step out into it, explore it, with just the impulse to do so.

But Cernunnos was rolling to his feet, graceful again, though seeming tremendously slow. His broad shoulders shifted, weight coming forward, and I could feel his intent as clearly as if it were my own. Reaching his sword was first: after that he would turn on me and crush me like the mortal fool I was. I flung the net of power out from splayed fingers, not at where Cernunnos was, but at where he'd be.

He and the net came together in glorious slow motion, the vivid green of his power smashing into the woven silver tendrils of mine. Mine collapsed, not under his assault, but as it should, just like any perfectly ordinary net, tangling around him. He stumbled and crashed to the cobblestones, rolling as he struggled to get free. He thrashed his head, antlers ripping the net apart, but it wove back together as I clung to the idea of it.

"You won't yield, I know that," I whispered. "So I'll drag you back, just like you'd have had to have done to me." I pulled the rapier out of the stones with a whimper and forced myself upright without it. I was breathing through my teeth, every motion a jab of pain through my middle, but I felt absurdly attached to the need to do this without the pretense of physical support. I pulled the net in to myself, hand over fist, tightening it around Cernunnos until he was caught in an embrace tight as a lover's.

I dragged him across the cobblestones, taking stumbling, half-running steps, afraid that if I stopped I would never be able to start again. I used my shoddy momentum and the borrowed strength of my friends to fling him over the haunches of his magnificent stallion. Then, with all the grace and arrogance I could manage, I swung up onto the stallion's back myself. The sword hole running through me screamed. Cernunnos screamed.

The stallion held very still, his ears pinned back and tail snapping with disapproval, his teeth bared. I leaned forward, because sitting up hurt too much, and put my forehead against the crest of his mane. "Just bring me home, beautiful," I whispered into the liquid silver hair. I stroked his neck, and lifted my head very slowly. Cernunnos's fury was palpable, a living green thing that drove spikes out at me as he tried to free himself from the net. My head swam suddenly, blood loss and exhaustion crashing over me. I stretched one hand forward, whispering, "By candlelight, and back again."

The candle flickered into being, a light to guide me out of Babylon with the Wild Hunt riding behind me.

I opened my eyes to a different sort of chaos. Three or four of the cops had collapsed and lay where they'd fallen. My shoulders slumped in dismay; I'd been trying not to hurt anyone. Voices were lifted all around, not quite shouting as paramedics swept in to examine the people who'd fallen.

Most of the group were still standing around me, with expressions ranging from surprise to fear. I could barely bring myself to look from one face to another, afraid to learn what people thought of me now. Billy looked tired but not frightened. That was something. Gary watched me with curious respect. He wasn't beating the drum anymore.

And the Hunt swarmed around the mortals in the room, half-visible, like ghosts. I wasn't the only one who could see them: Jen and Billy kept flinching as enormous horses and hounds slid through them.

Cernunnos, looking nearly as bad as I felt, was mounted on his stallion, forthright fury in the beautiful eyes. "I won, my lord master of the Hunt," I croaked. Gary sat up straighter, looking to see to whom I was speaking.

"You won," the god growled, "but this is not over yet, little shaman." I wasn't sure if I heard the words in my mind or my ears. The ease of speech in Babylon was already slipping from me.

I grinned very wearily. My body hurt from the fight, but the ache in my head had died away some. I couldn't remember if I'd managed to heal myself while in Babylon, but maybe being a con-duit for the kind of power I'd been using had some kind of positive effect. It was equally possible that I was horribly deluding myself, but I didn't want to think too hard about it, for fear of making the pain start again. "Not quite yet," I said to Cernunnos. "Who do you think will make it to your son first, me or you?"

"For the sake of thy world and thy soul," Cernunnos said through fixed teeth, "thou hast best hope it is thyself. I would not wager on it, little shaman."

"Not so little," I protested. By now nearly everyone was staring at me, the bustle of moments earlier dissipated into expectant waiting. "I defeated a god in fair combat." Was I out of my mind? Throwing his loss into his face? I wasn't that good.

No: as I said the words, Cernunnos became a solid thing, every bit as real as the cops who'd been more prosaically visible all along. Thor the Thunder God said, "Holy shit,"and everyone still on their feet backed up against the walls.

Cernunnos filled the room. Had it not had the garage's high roof, he'd never have fit. As it was, he took up all the air again, just as he had at the diner, his emerald eyes burning with anger so hot I thought I would burn. "Defeated, Siobhan Walkingstick," he said in his velvet voice. I wondered if everyone else could understand him. "Defeated, but not dead. Your soul will be mine to collect before the midnight hour, gwyld."

Gwjld. It was the word Marie had used. It meant shaman, or wise man, in Gaelic. That knowledge came to me, so I knew I was hearing Cernunnos in my mind again, his gift for breaching languages as strong a thing as Babylon had.

"Open the doors," I whispered, turning my head toward Billy. "Open the garage doors. Let them go without the steel and concrete to harm them."

The big cop frowned down at me. "You sure, Joanie?"

"I'm sure." I didn't dare take my eyes off Cernunnos. "He's not—they're not—meant to be bound by people like us. Let the Hunt go. Tonight they'll be sent back home, anyway."

There was, for a moment, respect in Cernunnos's alien eyes. "You are a fool, gwyld," he said.

"Everybody's got problems," I said with a tiny shrug. "Tonight, my lord master of the Hunt."

"Tonight." Cernunnos turned his massive stallion in the small confines of the room. He ducked as he left through the door. The host followed him, the sound of hooves ringing loud on the concrete floor as they faded away, leaving a silent and awestruck police force behind.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

It took a minute to trust that I could get up. Gary took the rapier away from me and slung it over his shoulder, then offered me a hand. "You're gonna poke somebody's eye out with that thing," I said as he pulled me to my feet. He glanced at the blade, bushy eyebrows lifted, and lowered it to lean against his leg instead.

"Just helping Darwin along. Now what, boss?" He tilted his head at the dispersing cops. Few of them wanted to look at me. Part of me wanted to be a fly on the wall to hear the gossip for die next few hours. More of me wished my life was still normal, like it had been a mere seventy-two hours earlier. Yeah, well, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. I patted myself down, seeing if there was any part of me that hurt too much to ignore. There wasn't, although I could feel the ball of energy inside me fizzling out. You want your car analogies. Talk about running on empty. I exhaled, puffing my cheeks. "'Boss', huh? I kind of like that. We're going to go look for a pretty teenage girl."

Gary grinned, cheerfully wicked. "Sounds like my kind of plan."

"You're an old pervert."

We left the office a few steps behind the mechanics. Nick, my former supervisor, averted his eyes when I offered him a weary smile. It felt like a gut-punch. Gary saw it and nudged my shoulder as we went by.

"Hey, it's a tough job, being a dirty old man. Who's the girl?"

My head swam. It didn't seem possible Gary didn't know what had happened, but telling him distracted me from Nick's carefully blank expression. Gary herded me into the front seat of his cab and I spent most of the drive to Suzy's address to get all the details in more or less the right order. When I was done talking, I looked around for the first time, realizing we'd driven into one of the precinct's posher neighborhoods while I'd been concentrating. "Suzy Q's a rich girl," I murmured.

"Poor kids don't go to Blanchet High, Jo," Gary said. I shrugged.

"Never paid attention." I remembered how clean and big the school was, though, and tried not to compare it to my high school.

That led, inevitably, to trying not to remember old scabs Cer-nunnos had ripped the tops off. I hunched my shoulders and stared resolutely out the window, not thinking about it.

The problem with not thinking about a specific topic is that it eats at your brain and won't let you think about anything else until you're distracted by an outside influence. I was grateful when Gary pulled up beside an imposing, dark-windowed house, and said, "Here we go. Doesn't look like anybody's home."

I leaned forward to peer out the windshield at the house. It was painted in cream with brown trim and had enormous, imposing pillars holding up a front porch. "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter," Gary corrected. I glared sideways at him and got out of the cab. Most of the muscles in my body groaned in protest, and the bruise from Cernunnos's sword reminded me it was there. I rubbed it gingerly as I climbed the steps to the front door. A neat little red-and-gold sign greeted me: No Solicitors.

"Wonder what they've got against lawyers." I cast a wary glance over my shoulder. Gary was still in the cab, from whence he couldn't hear me making smart-ass remarks to myself. Satisfied, I located the doorbell, which was irritatingly hidden in an intricate carving of leaves framing the door, and rang it.

There was no answer. I stood there a minute, then rang the doorbell again, more than half-expecting a tuxedo-clad butler to appear, looking irritated and aloof. When, after another minute, one didn't appear, I idly tested the doorknob.

Which turned, and the door swung open. I jumped back with a yelp and stared into the foyer. The floor had the ugliest tile pattern I'd ever seen, fleur de lis of thick blocky lines. I imagined it was very expensive.

"Well, now what?" Gary asked from behind me. I yelped, turning to scowl at him.

"I didn't hear you."

He looked like a pleased five-year-old. "I know. I snuck up on you."

"Well, don't!" He might've looked like a pleased five-year-old, but I sounded like a petulant one. "Oh, be quiet," I muttered, and turned around to look into the foyer again. "Now what?"

"I asked you first."

Damn. I'd been hoping he wouldn't remember that.

"Front door's open," I said. "Isn't that an invitation for cops to sneak in, in the movies? As long as you don't touch anything? To, um, make sure everything's okay?"

"This isn't a movie," Gary pointed out, "and the door wasn't open.

"It was unlocked. That's like open." I leaned forward and stuck my head into the foyer, shouting, "Hello?"

It echoed, but no one answered. I looked at Gary. He shrugged. "This is the police!" I shouted, and then burst into a fit of giggling. Gary grinned. "Sorry," I said when I got my breath back. "That was just fun to say." In fact, I said it again. "This is the police! Is anybody home? Suzanne? Mrs. Quinley? Mr. Quinley?" The foyer smelled faintly of chocolate, like someone had been baking.

Still no one answered. Gary shrugged again when I looked back at him. "Got any gut feelings on it?"

One very small part of me announced, / don't do gut feelings, but by this time not even I believed that, so I didn't say it out loud. Instead I took a step back, crowding into Gary. He muttered and moved back while I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the aches and pains and goldfish that kept distracting me from focusing my power. Every time I opened myself to it, it collapsed around me like a misty waterfall: there, but intangible. Distantly, I recognized what the shamans might have considered to be rudimentary shields causing that collapse. My mind and body knew when I'd pushed them too far, even if I didn't want to acknowledge it. I couldn't afford to burn out yet.

"Jo?"

I became aware I'd been standing with my eves closed for over a minute. "Just a little tired." The words came out thick, like syrup. I rubbed my breastbone, above the bruise, and dropped my chin to my chest. If I couldn't control it, I'd try for the other way. "C'mon," I said out loud, to the city. "Hit me with everything you got."

In the future, remind me not to ask a city to hit me with everything it's got. Cernunnos had nothing on the influx of power that slammed through me as my pathetic shields disintegrated. I staggered back, my back foot catching the edge of the top step. I held my balance there, weight off-center, the city revitalizing me like fresh strong blood in my veins. Inside a breath I was a mugger, a fireman, a newborn, a dying man. The impatient roar of vehicles filled my ears, the city's lifeblood flowing from one place to another. Even the air was charged, electricity carried in the molecules along with particles of smog and dust. If I could carry this in me all the time, I would never be tired, never need to eat or breathe. It was exhilarating, every life in the city my own, and mine a part of everyone's. Had this once been shared by all humanity, as Eve had implied? A long time ago, when there were far fewer of us? I couldn't imagine anyone being willing to give up something this good, being so connected.

There was a storm building off the coast. It was only a change in the wind now. In a few days, it would gather, and late next week it would dump eight inches of snow on the city. I knew it as clearly as if I were already in the midst of it.

"Jo?" Gary said again. I opened my eyes. He was brilliant again, the thrumming V-8 engine, his colors surrounding him in curious pulses. Unable to resist, I reached for him specifically, out of the millions of lives in Seattle. His was a joyous one to touch, tempered with pain. In his memory, I sat by Annie's deathbed, holding her hand. She was delicate and pretty, thin hair neatly coiled. Her grip was firm even though she was dying. She spoke quietly, smiling, not about regrets, but about all the beautiful things in her life. Stories about me, about us, making me laugh, even knowing the conversation was her last. Leaving a good memory, for the last one.

And the first one. A tiny elegant young woman, in an evening gown the color of peaches, the back swept down low and her golden hair in permanent waves, Veronica Lake-style. I was a soldier on leave. I asked her to dance, knowing from the very beginning that I wanted to spend my life with her. Daring and confident,

I kissed her at the end of the evening. What a lifetime it was going to be, with Annie at my side.

Scarlet fever, terrifying. Annie, never robust but always strong, so fragile I counted her breaths to make sure she still lived. The doctor, apologetic. There would be no children. It didn't matter: my Annie was still alive. The fights, oh, the fights over that, when she wouldn't believe that I still wanted her, when she saw herself as only half a woman. I held on and waited it out. There was nothing else I could do. In time the pain faded.

I drew back from Gary's memories with a shiver. He watched me with a frown, tilting his head toward the house. "Anything?"

I remembered what I was supposed to be doing. With the strength of the city energizing me, I left my body behind and stepped into the foyer.

The house was eerily cold. I hadn't noticed temperatures before, except in the desert where Coyote met me in the first place. It had been, well, desertlike, but not even the void between the stars had been cold like the Quinley's house was. Even with the force of the city running through me, I couldn't feel any life in the austere building.

I walked across the ugly tiles silently, then up a sweeping Cinderella staircase, perfect for making an entrance. Glittering above the stairway was a silver Mylar sign, block letters spelling out Happy Birthday, Sweetie!

The hall the stairs led to was marble, too, the same ugly tile as the foyer, though the stairs themselves were white. This was a house for sneaking around in barefoot. Woe betide anyone in hard-soled shoes trying to make a silent getaway.

Upstairs was more oppressive than the foyer, the cold deeper. I stood in the hallway, trying to analyze the chill. Was it just that the house had never seen much love between its walls? That seemed so corny I rejected it, despite my crash course in the strange and unusual. It felt more complicated than that, and I was supposed to be paying attention to how things felt.

I exhaled, nevermind that my body was somewhere else. The sound was muffled, like I'd breathed into a blanket. That was it: the heavy lifelessness lay over the house like a blanket, like something someone else had put there.

Like something Herne had put there. I recognized the touch with a shock, the dark taint of the god's son settled over Suzanne Quinley's home.

"Call the police," I said out loud. A small part of me was aware of Gary startling, and hurrying for the cab. I waited until I heard the static of the CB before steeling myself to walk forward. Past two doors on the right—linen closet, bathroom, my supercon-scious told me—and turned to the left, into a bedroom. Fear hit me like a wall as I stepped over the threshold. I squeezed my eyes shut.

Unfortunately, although screwing my metaphysical eyes shut had the peculiar effect of rendering me unable to see, it had no effect at all on the shattering agony that stained the room. Far more clearly than I could see with my eyes, I watched and felt everything that had happened here in history so recent it hadn't really ended yet.

Rachel Quinley worked part-time as a lawyer, her mornings tied up in legalese. She was always home by midafternoon, though, so Suzanne wouldn't come home to an empty house. She hadn't gone to work today for a hundred reasons. First, it was Suzy's birthday, though the Mylar sign seemed tacky in the face of yesterday's horror at the school. Then there was that thing itself, so many of Suzy's friends brutally murdered. Rachel had wanted Suzy to stay home today, but the girl—young woman, her mother thought with a combination of regret and pride—insisted on going. There were to be no classes. It was going to be a day of counseling and healing and talking. Suzy still wanted the cake for after dinner, too: she'd said it would make her feel more normal. How anyone could feel normal after yesterday—but Suzy'd been strange for months already. It was part of growing up. Rachel remembered the alienation she'd felt in high school, for all that she'd been popular. It was a universal feeling, she thought.

But she'd stayed home. To make the cake—chocolate with raspberry swirls, Suzy's favorite—and to wait to see if Suzanne needed to come home early. She wanted to be home, so her daughter wouldn't feel any distress over interrupting Mom at work. Just in case, she'd told herself. Just in case.

David Quinley came home at lunch, just in time to lick a cake beater. He was taking a half day off from his own law firm, to be home when Suzy got in. But she wasn't home yet, and they both were...

I blushed my way through the next eternity. I really thought people only used kitchen counters for that in the movies. This being a shaman thing was very enlightening, in an embarrassing way. When the cake was done baking, they moved upstairs to the bedroom, and that's where Herne found them.

I didn't envy them what happened next. I stood there, eyes shut, a silent, screaming observer of a thing I was too late to stop. It was not as fast or as comparatively easy a death as Marie had suffered, or the Blanchet High students, or Mrs. Potter. I understood what he was doing, if not how: Herne was harnessing the last of the power he needed to complete his night's task, and that took ritual.

I could feel him drawing in power in a way that felt like what I'd done with the police officers at the station. Where they'd offered goodwill and hope, though, Herne seemed to be taking from the darker things that man had to offer: lust and pain and greed. The coil of energy inside my belly spat and bubbled so fiercely my insides cramped, reacting physically to the dark power Herne called up.

The horrifying thing was how close it felt to the power inside me. The other side of the coin, a razor's edge away. Yeah, so I was mixing metaphors again, but that's how it felt: clearly the other side of the power I could access, so close it would be terribly easy to slip over the edge and call on it. It was a difference of motivation, the slender line between compassion and vengeance.

Even what he was doing wasn't so far from what I'd done with Cernunnos. I'd bound the god to drag him back to a world he could be controlled in. Herne bound Suzanne's parents in the same way, weaving a net of power. The difference was that he intended to take them all the way into himself, subsume them and use their power to strengthen himself without leaving anything for them to return to. They were the last piece of his power source, made a part of him, where I'd only held Cernunnos captive a brief while.

I couldn't help but wonder if it would have been easier with more bodies, creating the same kind of power circle Henrietta Potter had disrupted in the classroom. I watched him—no longer obscured, at least for this task, although I could feel a gray blank-ness within the city where he was out there now—as he opened veins and drew a bloody circle, himself and the Quinleys inside. The gift of Babylon had left me, and he made no effort, as Cernunnos had done, to be understood. His invocation was in an old language, but not, I thought, the Gaelic Cernunnos spoke. It wasn't Latin, either, but something harsher and uglier: a dead language, but more to the point, a death language. In the same way that I'd seen the energy offered up by the cops, I could see the life forces that Herne stole from the Quinleys. Where what I'd been given had been free and without fear, the Quinley's spirits were streaked with pain and terror, the brightness of their lives swallowed whole by the darkness Herne carried within himself.

I realized I was throwing everything I had at the memories the room held, trying desperately to stop what was happening in front of me. Waves of silver power rolled off me, splashing uselessly into the apparitions. Had I been here earlier, I could have stopped this. I watched brilliance slowly rise up from the dying Quinleys, blackening like burning paper as Herne stole their life force for his own purposes.

A purpose you still don't understand! a little panicked part of me screamed. How could I stop the child of a god when I didn't know what he intended? How did he mean to protect himself against hurt?

By taking Cernunnos's place in the Hunt. The thought struck me so hard I literally staggered. I didn't know if I'd come on it myself or if it had slipped away from Herne in the midst of his intake of power, but that was it.

Holy God. Cernunnos might have been better off if I'd left him in Babylon. I shuddered. Herne, his head held triumphant, closed his fists in the memory of the room. The last of what had been David and Rachel Quinley became his, swallowed whole by his hatred. He smiled, thin and mocking, and looked directly at me. I clamped down on a useless scream as he crouched and dipped a hand into blood, then stepped to a wall.

Against my will, I opened my eyes to read the message he'd left me.

Too late, gwyld.

CHAPTERTWENTY-EIGHT

When I opened my eyes—the physical ones—I was lying flat on my back with my heels still on one of the cement steps leading up to the porch. My head hurt again. More. Gary came hurrying up the driveway and crouched beside me.

"Cops are coming," he said.

"What am I doing on the ground?"

He frowned at me. "You fell over as soon as I asked if you sensed anything in the house."

"Uh-huh. Has me falling over gotten to be such old hat that you figured you'd just leave me here?" I, personally, was all for leaving me here. My head hurt, but nothing like as badly as I suspected it would when I stood up and blood started changing directions.

The big cabby looked offended. "'Course not. I was coming to pick you up when you told me to call the cops. I figured if you could talk in my head you weren't hurt too bad."

That was irritatingly logical. Except for one thing: "In your head?"

"Don't tell me you think that's weird, after alia this," Gary said.

I shrugged my eyebrows. He had a point. I pinched the bridge of my nose, as much movement as I could convince myself to make. "Suzanne Quinley's parents are dead."

Gary let out a puff of breath that steamed in the air. "What about her?"

"Not here. I don't think she even came home from school."

Gary nodded. "What next?"

I couldn't decide if I liked him assuming I knew what to do next, or if the idea of being in charge terrified me out of my mind. "Next I see if I can sit up without puking." I gingerly slid my hand under my head. There was water from melted snow and rain, but there didn't seem to be any mushy bits that would indicate my brains were leaking. Gary offered me a hand and I took it with my free one, letting him pull me up slowly while I kept my hand clamped to the back of my head.

"Y'know."I tried to imagine the pain away. "I used to think people who believed in all this crap were soft in the head. If they all get into messes like I'm in, they really are. If I get hit in the head one more time, I'll be..." My imagination failed me, both in terms of what I'd be and in making my head stop hurting.

"A monkey's uncle," Gary supplied. I winced.

"Don't say that. The way things are going around here, anything is possible."

"Got any brothers or sisters?"

"No, and I'm a girl, too, but at the moment I'm not willing to discount any absurdities. Okay, help me stand up." I clung to Gary's arm rather more than I wanted to, trying to keep my balance. "I don't feel very good," I reported, once I was on my feet.

"Gee," Gary said dryly, "I wonder why."

"I think it's all the caffeine," I said seriously, and spread one hand when Gary looked at me. "I should eat some real food. I read something saying you should eat and drink after you've been running around out of body. To ground yourself again."

"There's a pastrami sandwich in the car."

I looked up at him gratefully. "I would worship at your toes for..." I was having a hard time completing thoughts. "For as long as I could stay awake," I finished, feeling it was something of a triumph to manage to get through the sentence. Gary laughed.

"I don't figure I'm in for much worshipping, then. Can you stay up?"

I spread my hands a little more, judging my balance. "Yeah, I think so." He stepped away, toward the car. I maintained an upright position for about five seconds, then decided the stairs would be nice to sit on. My butt was already cold and wet anyway from the spill I'd just taken. "How long was I out, Gary?"

"I dunno. Two minutes, maybe."

"Oh." I wondered if you actually had to travel to fairyland to experience the more-time-passes-here-than-there phenomenon. Thus far, all my experiences had seemed much longer to me than to the mundane world around me. Gary handed me the sandwich and an unopened bottle of water. I gobbled the sandwich down so fast I almost didn't taste it, and drank most of the water before I even thought to thank him.

Right about then the cops showed up. Under normal circumstances—which is to say, in any case I wasn't involved with—Morrison would not have been heading the pack. As it was, I wavered on how to feel about it, but ended up just going with tired. I didn't try to stand up. He could yell at me while I was sitting down just as well. "Two bodies upstairs in the master bedroom," I said to his knees. "Suzanne Quinley's parents."

"You went in there?"

"Not physically." I sounded like my voice was coming from somewhere a very long way away from me. I wished the high I'd gotten from my first attempt at a trance was with me now. Right now anything I did took everything out of me. Borrowing power from the city and from the people around me was the only thing that was letting me function as a seminormal human being.

"Not physically?"

I stood up, half-concussed or no. I was on a higher step and stood four inches taller than my boss. "Don't," I said flatly. "Just don't. Okay? Can we not do this, this time?"

Morrison pressed his lips together, staring up at me. I admired him: he didn't climb the step to put himself on an even keel with me. I doubted I'd have been able to resist. Morrison was a better man than I.

Well, duh.

"What happened," he said after a long few moments.

I stared at him, then looked away. "I got here too late. I don't know if I could 've gotten here on time. Maybe—" My voice sounded hollow. Maybe if I hadn't fallen for Cernunnos's little seduction, if I hadn't fallen on the steps, if I hadn't gone to lunch with Kevin—

Truth was, I hadn't had the information on who Suzy was in time to have done any good at all, and if I hadn't fallen on the steps, I'd have gone to Suzy's school anyway. I simply wouldn't have been here to stop Herne. Somehow the thought didn't really help.

"They're dead. I'm sorry." It was the only thing I had left to say. Morrison kept looking up at me, a scowl written around the edges of his mouth. Then he let out a quiet sigh and shook his head.

"All right. What's next?"

I looked at him without comprehension for what felt like a long time. "I already know what happened here. I don't understand a lot of it, but I need to find Suzy. She's—she's okay still." God, I hoped I was telling the truth. "I need to get ahold of Jen and ask her some stuff, and I need to find Herne."

"You don't know where he is?"

I gestured to the southeast. "That way." I couldn't even feel his wall obscuring the city right now. I was as ordinary as I'd been a week ago. Less than an hour ago, that'd been all I ever wanted. Why didn't it make me happier?

"You're not filling me with confidence, Walker."

"Great. That's two of us." I moved cautiously onto his step. "Do you have a cell phone I can call Jen with?"

"Use the radio."

Oh. "Right. Thanks." I wobbled down the last step. Gary offered me his arm. I leaned. Morrison turned to watch us.

"Walker."

I didn't want to stop. I didn't want to look over my shoulder and see censure in the captain's eyes. Anything was better; our endlessly antagonistic relationship was much better. My shoulders tensed up as I looked back at him.

"Be careful." Morrison inclined his head, then took the steps up to the Quinley house two at a time, leaving me gaping at his broad shoulders.

"Toldja," Gary said. "He likes you."

"Oh, for God's sake, Gary." I groaned and staggered down to Morrison's car, flopping across the front seat and picked the radio up. "This is Car I87, over."

"Your voice sure has changed, Captain. Over."

I grinned wearily. "Hi, Bruce. What're you doing on dispatch? Is Jen still there?" He sounded as if everything were completely normal. I wanted to hug him.

"Amber's on a potty break and Jules called in sick. Yeah, she's here, hang on."

A minute later Jen's faint accent came through the radio. "What's up, Joanne?"

"That kid who has a crush on Suzy."

"Yeah?"

"Got his name? Number? Anything?"

"You ask for the damnedest things."

"Part of my charm."

Gary, leaning on the door, snorted. "That's my line, lady."

I cackled over the sound of my stomach rumbling. It had noticed the sandwich and was now on the warpath for more. I rubbed my hand over it, whimpered when I hit the bruise, and sat on my hand.

"All right, give me a few."

I closed my eyes and let the radio fall on the floor. I'm pretty sure I fell asleep in the three minutes before the radio let out a burst of static. "Joanne?"

I flinched up. "Yeah?"

"His name's Stuart. Damned if the kid didn't put down his number in case we needed anything else. Got something to write with?"

"I'm in a cop car, Jen."

She laughed. "Yeah, sorry." She read off the number and I scribbled it down on the notepad on the dashboard.

"—wait! Jen?

"What?"

I put my teeth together. "That file on Suzy. Does she have any other family?"

Dismayed silence answered me before Jen's voice came through, low. "I can check. Bad news?"

"About as bad as it gets. Her parents are dead."

"Jesus." And a silence in which I could all but hear her nod. "I'll find out."

"Thanks Jen." You owe me.

"I'll fix your car for a year. Thanks again." I clipped the radio back in place and tore the paper off the pad. Great. Now I had to stand up again. I wasn't so crazy about that part right now. The car was comparatively warm and smelled strangely familiar. Like worn leather and cloves and a little bit of Old Spice. Like Morrison. Great, twice. Why did I know what Morrison smelled like?

Sliding out of the car was easier than pursuing that particular train of thought. "Cell phone," I said generally, and one of the cops nearby tossed me one. I punched out Stuart's number without really thinking about what I was going to say.

"Ssturrit."

I frowned. "What?" I hadn't thought about what I was going to say, but I had expected words I understood on the other end of the phone.

Infinite patience: "This is Stuart."

"Oh. Oh! Stuart, hi, this is Joanne Walker with the police."

"Oh, shit," the kid on the other end of the line said. "Is Suzy okay?"

"I was hoping you could tell me. Do you know if she came home after school tonight?"

"Naw, her dad picked her up."

I turned around and stared at the house. "What? Mr. Quinley?"

"No, her other dad." Usually a sentence like that would be delivered with sarcasm, but Stuart appeared to be perfectly sincere. "She's adopted, you know? She looked up her blood parents when we were in sixth grade. Turns out her sperm dad lived in Seattle."

I choked. "Sperm dad?"

I could hear Stuart's grin. "That's what she called him. Anyway, it's her birthday, so they were going out to the carousel at the Seattle Center before she went home."

I felt like I was about two laps behind. "Carousel?"

"Yeah, the carousel. She likes carousels. I guess I didn't send any pictures of her on it." Worry came into the boy's voice. "Is she okay, Miss Walker? She's been acting funny."

"Funny how?"

"She's always been kinda artsy and weird, y'know? But she's been even weirder for about, I dunno, the last year. I remember 'cuz she completely zoned out during her birthday party last year. And since, like, Halloween, it's like she's practically forgotten how to talk."

"Since when?'

"Since like Halloween. I remember 'cuz she passed out at the Halloween dance. I never saw anybody faint before. It's freaky. She just fell over and nobody caught her like they do on TV. She hit her head on a table and bled for about six years. She had to go to the E.R."

"Jesus. Halloween? Halloween doesn't make any se—oh! Oh, crap, yeah, of course. Halloween. Sam-haine."I was more than a little slow on the uptake. "The Hunt starts then."

"What?" Poor Stuart sounded completely bewildered.

"Sam..." No, that wasn't how they'd said it. "Sow.. .it doesn't matter. The Hun...it doesn't matter. Look, you've been very helpful, thanks, Stuart."

"Is she gonna be okay, Miss Walker?" Stuart was scared, and I didn't have a reassuring answer for him.

"I hope so. I'm going to do everything I can to make sure she is. You've been a lot of help."

"Thanks." The boy's voice was nothing more than a whisper. "Will you call me if anything bad happens?"

Morrison would kill me. "Yeah," I said without hesitation. "Yeah, I will, Stuart, I promise. Just hang tight. And Stuart?"

"Yeah?"

"Think good thoughts for her."

"You mean pray?"

"If that's how you want to do it. It makes a difference." I hung up, hoping I hadn't just warped the boy for life. If I didn't get Suzy out of her predicament, the poor kid might blame himself for not thinking good enough thoughts. Why didn't I ever think of these things before I said anything?

I tossed the phone back to its owner with a nod of thanks, and tucked Stuart's phone number in my back pocket. "Somebody tell Morrison I'm going to the Space Needle." I grabbed Gary and we went before anybody actually had time to tell Morrison. It seemed like the best route. Easier to get forgiveness, and all that, although I thought I had tacit permission to go off chasing wild hares. Or Wild Hunts, more accurately. I took another catnap in the cab, unable to stay awake with the quiet thrum of the engine sounding in my ears and the car's vibrations relaxing my muscles.

It was dark when I opened my eyes again, city lights reflecting off low gray clouds, the top of the Space Needle wisped with fog. Gary pulled into the I st Avenue North Garage, crawling up to the roof parking. We sat under the off-colored light for a few moments, staring around the empty lot.

"I ain't never seen this place empty," Gary announced.

"Me either," I said nervously. "Especially not at six at night."

"Is there some kinda construction going on?" Gary shifted his shoulders. I shook my head, climbing out of the cab. Hairs on my arms stood up, even under my jacket, and I rubbed them briskly.

"This isn't natural."

"No kidding." Gary closed his door behind him, eyeing me. "This is prime parking. The monorail stops here."

"Yeah, I know. Well, hell." I leaned on the hood of the car, puffing my cheeks out. "Faint heart never won fair lady, right?"

I stepped out of my body, all my rudimentary shields collapsing.

Grayness rushed over me like a tidal wave, drowning me with its weight. I could barely breathe in the thickness, my lungs filling like it was poisoned air. It had a purpose, that grayness. It was meant to obscure. I took a few steps away from the car, toward the doors that led down to the Center. "Jesus, we're right on top of him."

"Jo?" Gary asked nervously. I turned around to find my body slumped over the hood of the car, the unnerved cab driver staring at it.

"I'm over here," I said, half to see if he could hear me. He twitched and straightened, looking around warily. I waved. He didn't react. "To your left," I volunteered. He jerked to the right.

"Stop that,"he demanded, not looking quite at either my unconscious body or my spirit self. "I can't see where your voice is coming from."

I grinned. My body did, too. I squinted at it. I wasn't really keen on the idea of leaving it lying around. It seemed sloppy, not to mention dangerous. "Okay," I said under my breath. "I did this earlier, right? Saw in two worlds while operating the flesh. I can do this."

I edged back toward myself and folded down over myself, which felt tremendously weird. I settled in again, remembering the idea of breathing while hanging on to the deep sense of the world around me, and then, tentatively, opened my eyes.

The world shifted, 3-D afterimages playing with my vision as I refocused with my physical eyes without losing the peculiar vision that let me see the colors and shapes of the spiritual world. Gray settled over the amber-lit parking lot as the two worlds resolved into one. I was going to have to learn to turn this second sight thing on and off with fewer dramatics. Right now I had all the grace of a bull in a china shop.

Right now, that didn't really matter. I straightened up, no longer afraid that the slightest movement would jostle myself out of alignment again. "Sorry. They're in there. He's in there, at least." I could see a center to the grayness now. Either I was getting better, or Herne was distracted enough that his shield was failing. I could even follow the slender line of truth that had tied me to him in the first place.

I opened the back of the cab and took out Cernunnos's sword. It shivered a vibrant blue, stronger than the gray of Herne's obscurity. It had a purpose, too. It was meant to end things.

I spun the hilt in my hand, watching the blue glitter, then grinned faintly at Gary as I headed for the door. "Coming?"

"Lady, I wouldn't miss it for the world."

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The Space Needle is only the most famous structure in the Seattle Center. The whole Center covers something like seventy acres and has everything you can think of except a way to prevent people from wandering the grounds at any hour, day or night.

It was entirely empty. No bums, no skateboarding teens, no businessmen coming down from the monorail to catch a bus or to go to their cars. Coming out of the parking garage was like walking into a barbed wire fence: every step forward bit and nipped at me, trying to push me back. Gary, a step or two behind me, grunted. "It's all in your mind," I muttered.

Streetlamps discolored patches of snow into unhealthy yellows and lilacs. Bits of paper debris scattered across stretches of concrete, their rattling surprisingly loud without the sounds of people to muffle them. The desolation was uncomfortable, and that was just on the obvious side of things. With the brilliant colors of my other Sight distorted with gray, the Center looked a carnie's particular view of Hell.

"Where we going, Jo?" Gary asked very quietly. He was spooked, his big shoulders hunched and his colors muted in a way that had nothing to do with Herne's obscurement.

"It's all right," I said. "You don't have to be here, you know."

Gary straightened, offended. "You think I'm backin' out now? After being along for the whole ride?"

I shifted my shoulders uncomfortably, but didn't slow my pace. The thread between Herne and myself was contracting, drawing us closer together and getting stronger. I couldn't see him yet, but I felt him. I wondered if he felt me. "You could get killed," I said. "So far everybody else has."

"Nah,"the cabby said. "I'm your good-luck charm."

I laughed, the sound unexpectedly bright in the gray light and the frozen walls. "You're a little big to put in my pocket."

"Guess I better just tag along, then." He straightened his shoulders again. I smiled.

"Gary?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"Sure. Now, what's the plan?"

"The plan? I'm supposed to have a plan?" The cord contracted again, a physical pull, and I stumbled. Gary put a hand out to steady me. "The plan is to rescue the princess, slay the dragon, kick some booty and be home in time for dinner. What time is it, anyway?"

"Couple minutes to six. You need a watch."

"I have one." I put out my wrist and discovered I was still wearing the bracelet, my watch abandoned at home where it presumably continued to tell the time in Moscow. "Nevermind."

The cord contracted a third time. For a moment, the careful realignment I'd done of body to soul was pulled askew and I flashed forward through the park to the carousel.

It spun, its music turned down, not needing to compete with the sounds of other rides or people calling back and forth. On the outer ring, a slender blond girl rode a beautifully carved wooden horse, painted golden as sunlight. She stood up in the stirrups as I watched, leaning to make a laughing snatch at a brass ring.

"Almost," Herne said, full of amusement. I looked past Suzanne to the inner ring of the carousel. The god's son leaned against an intricate red dragon, watching the child of his blood settle back down into her saddle.

Kevin Sadler leaned against the red dragon, watching his daughter pout with laughter and get ready for another try.

I snapped back into my body, stumbling from shock. "Oh, my God, I am so stupid." I spat bile and began to run. Gary startled, then fell into a run behind me.

We skidded over the threshold of the carousel together, just in time to see Suzy make another grab for the ring, and, with a triumphant shout, come away with it clenched in her fist.

With it came down the walls that separated one world from another. Cernunnos's stallion screamed, the deep primal sound that kept making me want to scream in return. Suzanne did scream in response, clutching at the wooden horse's spiral pole as the Wild Hunt burst from the sky to ride down at her, twelve riders strong and one lonely mare. Even as she screamed, Suzanne's eyes went to the mare, longing. Cernunnos shifted in his saddle, leaning toward her like a hero in an old western, about to scoop up his beloved.

Herne stepped in front of her, the vestiges of his assumed human form shedding away.

I should have seen it before. Everything was there, the green eyes, the long jaw and high cheekbones. The man was slight where the demigod was broad, but the hair was the same ash-brown, albeit in different quantities. And I had known almost from the start that Herne wasn't trapped in just one shape.

"Stop," the god's son said, really very softly. The host parted and swept around them like waves, galloping ethereally through the carousel. Only Cernunnos reined up with easy strength, no sign of the injury I'd done him a few days earlier. The stallion reared back to kick at Herne before prancing nervously to the ground again. In moments, the riders swung back around and gathered behind Cernunnos, stilling their horses. The red-eared hounds slunk under the horses and leaned against their forelegs, glaring toward Herne with angry red eyes.

Suzanne hung onto the wooden horse, crouched small, too frightened to make a sound. Now that I was closer, looking at her was difficult. The slender body seemed overfull, and my eyes slid off her like I was trying to follow the shape of a second person occupying her space.

"You're much too late, Father," Herne whispered. His voice carried across the silent grounds with the clarity of a sound studio, words clipped and edged. "I've worked for this. Can't you feel it? The Rider's almost lost to you. Only a few more minutes."

Cernunnos looked beyond Herne to Suzanne. "Take her," he murmured. "I have one to replace her." He smiled, curved teeth bright in the ugly light, and looked from Suzanne to me. Herne turned, surprise filtering through his eyes. Greener eyes than they were as Kevin Sadler, but still unmistakably the same. How could I have missed it?

"You didn't check your messages, Jo," he said affably. Herne's faint English accent was gone, replaced by Kevin's Anywhere America accent. "You'd be halfway to Portland by now. I'm disappointed."

"I didn 't have time," I admitted. There didn 't seem much point in lying. "Lucky for me, I guess." I wondered if they made dunce caps big enough to hide under. Forever. I shifted my gaze from Herne to Cernunnos, and added, "I beat you once already, my lord master of the Hunt. I don't owe you anything."

"I lost one challenge," Cernunnos agreed, "and my word keeps me from Babylon forever. There was no caveat against a second reckoning, little shaman."

Oops. Oh well. I'd deal with that later. Assuming there was a later. "What have you done to her, Herne?"

"Can't you tell?" The touch of England was back in his voice. "Really, I knew you were a novice, but I thought it would be obvious even to you. Look closer, Joanne Walker. Siobhan Walking-stick. Gwyld."

I didn't want to. Looking at Suzanne with the second sight made my head hurt. Herne's voice, though, was terrifyingly compelling. I shuddered, trying not to look, but against my own wishes, my head turned and I Saw.

Suzanne Quinley was overflowing, two bright souls battling for dominance in her slender body. One was so old I didn't dare look at it for long, feeling the pull of its power even at a glance. I could drown in its strength, every bit as easily as I could drown in Cer-nunnos's. That soul's ties ran in bright silver threads to each of the riders and to Herne, and strongest of all to Cernunnos. It was also bound, by blood and darkness, to the far more fragile soul that was Suzanne's, a mortal child buried under the weight of eternity. With every moment that passed, the immortal Rider's soul became more firmly a part of Suzanne. It was a matter of minutes before the girl herself was gone forever.

The most terrible thing was that the Rider's soul held no evil in it. It had been siphoned from its true host in fragments, stretched thin over many years, until there was so little left binding soul to body that the body could no longer keep its hold, and the soul abandoned it entirely, in need of a place to continue. And Suzanne Quinley had been primed as the new body.

"Her birthday's in a few minutes." I said softly. "I mean, die time of her birth. How did you lose her, Herne? Your own daughter. You must have tried for a very long time to father the perfect child.

Was Adina her mother?" How had he hidden himself from Adina? Had she chosen not to see, or was his strength so much greater than hers that she never stood a chance? All I knew about her was that she'd tried to help me.

"Of course not. Her mother's dead. It's easy to lose children when you've fathered as many as I have. I only found her a few years ago."

Memory, sharp and searing, cut through my mind, something I'd written off as a dream. A brick red boy, a few years older than I was, lifting startled golden eyes, to smile at me. Welcome, Siobhan, he'd said, offering me a hand. This is where it begins. Brightness of body, brightness of soul. I'd woken up with my first period staining my panties.

"When she hit puberty," I said stupidly. I remembered the brick red boy from other dreams, here and there, until I was fifteen. I even remembered thinking that it seemed like he was visiting me on purpose. They stopped very suddenly. I hadn't had one in twelve years. I was going to have to ask Coyote about that.

Later. Now there was too much to do. Herne looked ever so slightly impressed. Not, unfortunately, impressed enough to lie down and roll over for me, but a little impressed. "Very good. There were so many factors. Most important—"

"Was the birthday. Twelve days after Christmas. So that when you defeated Cernunnos, it was at the height of his power, and it was all yours. That much," I said bitterly, "I figured out."

"But too late." Herne turned his back on me. Nice to know I was such a threat. Cernunnos watched Suzanne calculatingly and a bad feeling came into the pit of my stomach.

"Gary?"

"Yeah?"

"You still any good at the whole linebacker gig?"

The big man chuckled. "Not quite as limber as I used to be, but I can make do in a pinch."

"Cernunnos is going to kill Suzanne at six-oh-seven. I may be busy. Stop him."

Gary lifted a bushy eyebrow at me. "At six-oh-seven?"

"It's when she was born," I said softly. "Her soul and the Rider's will be irrevocably bound at that moment. If he destroys her, he destroys the thing that keeps him from riding free."

"'M I supposed to understand what you're talkin' about?"

I shot him a dirty look. The other sight flashed red into the look, physical effect of a glare. I bet there were some people out there who could really kill with that kind of look. "Just be ready to play ball."

Gary grinned, bright white. I jerked my head around, startled. While I'd been talking to Herne, the obscurity had failed. I wished I thought it was a sign of his power weakening. It was more likely it just wasn't worth the bother, now that I'd found him and his moment was at hand.

"You have her," Cernunnos said, "but you still have me to defeat, my son."

I muttered, "I am your father, Luke,"and moved forward, stepping up onto the carousel platform. Suzanne was slumped over her carousel horse. The pale mare stood beside her, between worlds, her tail flickering through the red dragon Herne had leaned against. She nosed at Suzy's sleeve, less than the wind in effect.

Just ahead of them, Herne drew a sword nearly identical to his father's, and bowed without half the grace that Cernunnos returned the acknowledgment with. I could see why he was jealous.

The clash of swords had nothing on the roar of power that was released as the two came together. Unshielded either physically or psychically, I staggered under the onslaught of strength, green and brown and impossibly potent. Lightning slammed down from the sky, into both opponents. Neither flinched. Nor did Suzanne. This close, I felt her heartbeat faltering, uncertain under the insistent pressure of the Rider. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gary edging closer, watching Herne and Cernunnos intently. I nodded, relieved, and stepped behind a winged swan, coming up behind Suzanne to pull her off the carousel horse and into my arms.

Electricity slammed through me, endless painful voltage. My muscles locked up hard enough to make me tremble, and I dropped to my knees, but I kept Suzanne in my arms. The bright soul of the Rider swept over me without malice, only the simple determination to survive. Entangled with it, I felt the faintest slender thread back to the body it had once owned, fey and green-eyed and boyish. And dying.

Ironic, the Rider said, less words or coherent thought than a fleeting feeling. The child who housed the soul of Death itself was finally dying in turn. Hour by hour he had slipped away from his fragile body, guided by the only thing that could compel him: demands made by another of his bloodline. Herne called the young Rider's spirit to him, binding it with blood and death, weakening him as Herne bided his own time.

Until now. Until this most recent of Rides, on All Hallow's Eve, when the world walls were thinnest. The Rider had led the Hunt forth into the void between worlds, and Herne had struck a telling blow. Taking power stored from centuries of sacrifices, he smashed the link betwixt body and soul, sending the boy Rider's body tumbling back through blackness to the world he called home. Binding the freed soul to a girl. His daughter. Suzy. Only the most tenuous connection still held the Rider's soul to the body he'd once owned.

More than just sacrifices, the Rider murmured to me. Like Suzanne, those he killed to gain his power were blood of his blood. Little is as strong as blood magic.

"Blood—" I shook my head, confused, then understood: how many children had Herne fathered over the years? Half the world could share his bloodline by now. Hell, I could.

Except the Old Man had apparently made me from scratch, and it seemed like if you were going to bother to do that, you'd make sure you weren't getting anybody else's magic tangled up in your recipe.

Which was so not what I needed to be thinking about right now. I could still feel the Rider's thoughts and memories, dispassionately shared with me. He'd been caught in my world, separated from the host body and terribly vulnerable. With Herne's direction, he sought a new host. The child in—where was it? It was the silver misted world whose loss I had felt so keenly outside of Babylon, but what was it named?

Tir na nOg, the Rider replied, and for the first time there was longing in his thoughts. Herne's bindings hadn't yet wiped the need for home out of the Rider's soul. Anwyn,Avalon,fairyland, Islands of the West, name it what you will. It is older by far than mankind and will continue whenyou and your names are ancient dust. There was no apology or sympathy in the telling, the Rider's concerns too remote to be even neutral.

The dying body, the boy Rider in Tir na nOg, was Cernun-nos's first child, half-mortal and half-god. He no longer knew, if he ever had, who his mother was. Blood of the god's blood, he'd taken a piece of the god's power with his birth, and with it tied the Horned God to the mortal cycle of death and life. He rode with Cernunnos of his own free will, and doing so rendered himself immortal, untouchable by the god who might otherwise sacrifice his first-born child in favor of riding free. In all his terribly long life, no one had ever compelled him against his will.

Until Herne. Blood of the god's blood, once more. Brother to the ancient Rider, but a lesser creature. There was no remorse in the Rider's thoughts: for him there was, and there was not. Neither had any reason to carry emotion. Our father learned from me. To be cautious of what he gave the women he lay with. No other son of Cernunnos can bind him as I do; no other child has such power.

"But Suzy," I whispered. I couldn't tell if it was out loud or not, but it didn't seem to matter. The Rider responded with the vast indifference of an immortal shrug.

She will change the bond. Blood magic is strong, and my brother has chosen well. He has sacrificed the one he loved.

Adina, I thought in despair. Had the other shamans been her friends before death? Had Herne gained his blood power through killing everyone closest to the ones closest to him?

The girl's parents. Her friends. The Rider's answer was an agreement. It changes the balance of power. My loyalty is Herne's.

"But that's wrong!"

I felt the surprise of the Rider's soul as it seemed to turn and look at me for the first time, leaving off in its quest to take over Suzy's body.

Human fallacies, he said. Right and wrong do not matter to me.

"What does?"

Suzanne herself turned her head to look for the pale mare. "Riding," she whispered, the desire in her voice clear and pure. She was a fourteen-year-old girl. She didn't even need the Rider's soul to want that horse with everything she had, but the power of the immortal soul within her gave the single word such an ache that I felt tightness in my throat, tears stinging my eyes. It would be Herne whom the Rider would follow, and with this child's innocent strength behind him, Herne would defeat Cernunnos and take his place. It made no difference at all to the Rider. His power and purpose were enough to rein in any god, and he would do so gladly until the end of time.

I wondered, very briefly, if Herne realized he wasn't going to be obtaining ultimate power if he won the battle. Then the electricity of the Rider's power left me and there was no time left at all in which to think.

I heard it like a chime, the clear moment of Suzanne Quinley's birth, resonating down through fourteen years. I dove to the side, dragging Suzy with me. Cernunnos vaulted the wooden carousel horse, leaving a surprised and furious Herne behind. Gary bellowed a war-cry and flung himself at Cernunnos, crashing into the god with a braced shoulder. The Rider howled in delight and dove deep into Suzanne's body, while the remaining fragments of the girl's soul shrieked in desperation and fled.

I'd caught Cernunnos with a net, in Babylon. There was so little of Suzy left that she'd slip right through a net. Instead I reached inside myself for the weary coil of energy and shaped it into a ball, fragile and pearlescent as a soap bubble. There wasn't enough time!

Except inside the little bubble of my shield, there was. The music of the chime held, a long thin sound vibrating the air. Nothing stopped, but what had been chaos almost too fast to see played out in elegant slow motion.

Cernunnos jolted to the side as Gary impacted him. His sword dragged a thin line of red across my shoulder blade as I rolled with Suzanne. I felt skin parting, and waited for it to hurt, but the pain came even more slowly than the attack. Stumbling, his features contorting with rage, Cernunnos drew the broadsword back as he turned to face Gary, the motions so precise it could have been a choreographed ballet.

No ballet I had ever seen, though, had the bad guy stick a real live four-foot long sword through the good guy's rib cage. Sur-prise widened Gary's eyes as he doubled and staggered back, sliding off the sword and crashing hard into the wooden horse. As easily as that, Cernunnos dismissed him, turning in slow motion back to Suzanne and myself.

My roll brought us up against the red dragon's pole, my back to Cernunnos, protecting the girl as best I could. The chime that sounded her birth hour in my head was still loud and strong, her fragmented soul caught against the bubble of slow time. Knowing it was going to get me killed, I contracted the bubble, bringing the slowness and the shards of Suzanne's soul closer and smaller until it was within her entirely, and time outside it sped back up.

I followed the bubble in.

The Rider's soul was a parasite, rust on a car, captured in the last seconds before it destroyed its host entirely, no more able to free itself from the slow time bubble than Suzanne's soul was able to wrest free from the Rider's. In here, I had all the time in the world to do repairs. Out there, if I wasn't careful and quick, I wouldn't have a body to go home to.

Just like the Rider didn't.

Your world, Cernunnos had said, and made one fist. My world. Another fist, not quite touching the first. And we are here. The blackness between the worlds. I could reach that. Could I take down the walls that held the two worlds apart?

I closed my fist around the bubble of slow time, reached for power, and threw myself into the void, dragging the Rider and Suzanne along. I didn't know where the strength to do it came from: I was afraid to wonder, just then. It flooded through me, though, once more washing away all the exhaustion and pain of the past three days. I felt, quite literally, as if I were flying.

Flashes of other worlds, closer to mine, came and went in bright colors that moved too fast to imprint. For a painfully long moment there was nothing, not even the starscape, just an agonizing emptiness. I held on to the sound of the chime and dredged up my own memories of the silver mist world. I flung both those things into the emptiness, like sonar, hoping for them to be recognized and draw me to the right place.

Home. The longing in the Rider's voice was so intent it hurt. Inside of an instant, I was the tagalong, no longer in control. The binding wound around the Rider shattered, my power replacing Herne's as the Rider and I reached for a common goal.

My power replacing Herne's. This would be a good time to instigate some control. The last thing I wanted was for the youthful Rider to leave Cernunnos behind on Earth, where he could wreak all the havoc he wanted without the controlling influence of the child.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a single goddamned clue how to do that. Stop! Or I'll say stop again!

The Rider laughed at me, a sharp, bitter sound, and darkness exploded into a haven of deep green leaves and silver trees, wreathed by gentle cooling mists. Home, the Rider thought, and I echoed it, his need for refuge resonating deep in my own soul. His need overrode my purpose, and for a deadly moment I relaxed. Triumph, as palpable as with Cernunnos, leaped through the link we shared and I knew I was lost, unable to control the son of a god. Tir na nOg would be peace; it would be rest, after a very long journey. It was enough. I followed the Rider's lead, content to have done with it.

Home, Suzanne whispered, like a memory. It stung me into remembering her, remembering the world we were leaving behind, and I groaned. "No." My own voice was a whisper, too little power behind it to make the Rider take pause. I closed my eyes against the green misty world and said something I'd told Gary not to, about a million years earlier: "In Cernunnos's name I set my geas."

The Rider stopped so abruptly I flew ahead of him, my own journey not yet finished.

A boy slept in the silver woods, fey and slender and so pale it seemed like death must have already visited him. I knelt beside him, putting my hand on his chest. There was a heartbeat, so faint and irregular I might have imagined it, and his chest rose and fell very slowly, the last breaths of a dying child. I couldn't remember the words to the spell I'd found on the Internet, but it hardly mattered. I had the idea of them in the back of my mind, and I bent over the child, whispering them.

"I call down the walls of the world to help free you. I call on the god who must listen to me. I call on wind and earth and sea. I call on fire to help free you. In Cernunnos's name I set this geas. By my will and by these words I bind you to ride eternity."

The coil of energy unleashed inside me as I spoke, weaving a net of silver mist and green power that wrapped itself around the boy's sleeping body. I pulled it into my arms as I'd done with Cer-nunnos and stood, cradling the child. He weighed almost nothing, as if he were spun from air. I could feel the resistance from his soul, which wanted nothing more than to stay in Tir na nOg, in the silence and safety that had been torn from it. He struggled against the binding I'd wrought, but he'd told me himself: blood magic was strong, and I'd invoked the strongest blood link of all, that of the father and son.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I need you to send Cernunnos home. Just a few more hours and the ride will be done until next year. You'll be able to go home. I'm sorry."

I fled the compelling world of Tir na nOg, bringing the boy's body back as a physical thing.

CHAPTER THIRTY

We surged out of the void into a blackness unlike anything I'd ever seen in a city, split by lightning from a storm that hadn't been there when I went under. The wind was colder than death, cutting through me and yanking at my hair like it was trying to pull it out. Pellets of snow and water struck my hands and face.

There was an extraordinary line of fire stretched over my back. When I tried to roll over the movement made me scream, a hoarse guttural sound that I was growing all too familiar with. For a moment I just lay there, trying to breathe.

Then, because there wasn't really time to lie around feeling sorry for myself, I forced my head up. As obvious as it was that I had something desperately wrong with me, it was equally obvious that Suzanne hadn't been struck by Cernunnos's blade. Her eyes were closed, but there was color in her cheeks that even the flashes of lightning couldn't bleach out, and her breathing was steady.

Which meant either I'd succeeded utterly or failed completely.

There was no boy in my arms. Wasn't that a Scottish fairy tale? I laughed, a high-pitched sound of panic, and rolled over just in time to miss being stabbed in the back a second time by an extremely unhappy god. The sword stuck into the wooden carousel floor. Cernunnos snarled. I smiled up at him and looked through his legs to see what was going on.

In the flashes of light, Gary slid down the carousel horse, dark blood seeping through his coat to stain it black. Behind him, a spark with the same unearthly luminescence as the Hunt appeared, whirling in unexpected directions as the wind snatched it back and forth. The Hunt came forward through the storm, gathering around the rapidly growing spark.

Cernunnos yanked his sword from the floor as the pale mare let out a nicker of pleasure and shadowed through both Gary and the carousel horse. The Hunt parted their circle for her, and I realized I was still seeing through solid objects.

"Stupid shaman," I mumbled, and closed my eyes. The darkness went away, replaced by the brilliance of pure spirit in everything from the carved carousel animals to the god of the Hunt himself. When I opened my eyes again it was easier to see, phys-ical forms faded to lesser importance.

Gary was dying. Every heartbeat drove thick blood out, more slowly now than a few moments ago. Suzanne—I didn't even need to turn my head to see her—was growing stronger, her breathing deeper. Cernunnos swept his sword up and I flinched, too badly hurt to move more, waiting for the next blow.

Instead the god parried a blow he couldn't have seen, sword braced over his shoulder as Herne drove his own sword down from behind Cernunnos. Metal sang as they smashed together, then scraped as Cernunnos whirled, drawing his blade along the length of Herne's. It was perfect: Herne's sword was pushed wide, and Cernunnos opened his son's ribs from side to side in one long sweep. Herne dropped to his knees, sword falling from numb fingers, the emeralds and browns of his colors suddenly bleaching.

Cernunnos drew back his sword for the final blow, and a child's voice rang out: "Stop!"

Cernunnos dropped his sword like a marionette released from its strings, turning in shocked rage to face the young Rider. He stood fey and slender and stunningly beautiful, with a look of deep resolve in his brilliant emerald eyes. He sat astride his pale mare, one palm reassuringly against her neck, his other hand easy on the reins. Behind him, the Hunt were gathered, the hounds sitting and lying at the horses' hooves rather than slinking around.

"This one is not yours, Father," the boy said, almost apologetically. "I would that he were, for the Hell that has been visited on me. But of your blood, none is less meant for you than he but I myself."

Cernunnos's mouth curled in a snarl. "Thou wouldst have mercy on the one who stole your power and would have usurped mine?"

The boy shrugged, as painfully graceful as Cernunnos. "It is not mine to say. There is no mark on his soul that gives him to you. He is your child, Father. You cannot have him. It is the way of things."

Behind me, Suzanne whimpered and shifted, the warmth of her body moving away. Cernunnos turned, eyes bright with anger, and lifted his sword again. I felt a peculiar kind of relief, knowing that I was his target, rather than the young woman sprawled on the carousel floor.

"Father," the boy said, apologetic and warning.

"I can see the mark on this one," Cernunnos growled. The boy inclined his head.

"So can we all, Father, but not yet. She has a long journey before she comes to the Shadowlands."

That didn't relieve me as much as it should have. "Nor are you done here,gwyld,"the boy said. "Get up. Finish your tasks. We have a long Hunt before us tonight, and I will not ride until I see this thing finished."

"You're welcome too," I croaked. Ungrateful little bastard.

"Make right what has been put asunder," the boy said sharply. The mare pranced, a few nervous steps, and he stroked her neck again.

"Make right," I mumbled. "Make what right?" I closed my eyes again and sank into myself, reaching out toward everyone who stood or lay around the carousel, looking for something that was obviously wrong, knowing better than to expect the superficial physical wounds to be the problem.

Big fat sword holes are superficial? a little part of my brain asked. I told it to shut up and go away. To my surprise, it did.

Nor were my own flaws the problem. I knew that without bothering to look to myself. I touched the others only fleetingly; it was Herne, I knew that, much as I didn't want to face another encounter with him. A schism ran through his soul, a chasm of pure blackness, holding apart the thing that he was from the thing he was meant to be.

Green Man. Protector. Healer. Godling. Those things lay on the wrong side of the gap, torn and distorted by a terrible jealousy, by anger and bitterness at a mortal lifetime gone wrong, hundreds of years ago. Herne had turned his back on a shaman's path, and his immortal blood had granted him no peace since then. He'd buried pain in the pursuit of power.

Would this have happened to me? I could see the potential in myself, the buried anger from a dozen years ago, never acknowledged, never dealt with. Nor was I ready to deal with them now.

But I could acknowledge. I swallowed hard and laid myself open to Herne, soul to soul, matching wound for wound, fissure for fissure. His were deeper, more plentiful than mine, but this wasn't a popularity contest. Shared pain was pain eased. The elder who'd given me my drum had told me that after Ayita died. I'd turned away.

As Herne tried to turn away now. I caught him in a web of silver rainbows, wondering where I was getting the power to maintain my own strength, when I'd started out the evening exhausted already.

Soul to soul, we met, and Herne screamed out the unfairness of his death six hundred years before.

You're right, I said without thinking. It sucks.

On some microcosmic level, he stopped shouting and stared at me in astonishment. I shrugged. It sucks, I repeated. It wasn't fair. But nobody said life is fair, and you've been behaving like a three-year-old long enough.

Herne gaped at me.

Look, I'm calling the kettle black here, okay? Except I've only been sulking for twelve years, not six centuries. You're the soul of the forests,you idiot. You've been ignoring them for half a millennium. Look what's happening to them. Look what's happening to you. Green Man. I poked him in the chest with two fingers. He stumbled back a step, looking down at himself.

It still lay within him, the depths of the great woods, buried beneath centuries of pain. Once noticed, the ancient strength of growing things flared up like a challenge. It lit him from the inside, showing all the cracks and flaws in his character, just as my own spiderweb of broken glass did to me. Herne howled and flung his arms up, an action of denial even as his hands curved as if to pull all the power and strength of the woods into himself. He stood frozen like that for what seemed a brief eternity, and then the lure of power was too great for him to resist. He grasped at it, and something fundamental changed in the world.

A roar surfaced, so loud it threatened my eardrums, so loud it seemed impossible that everyone could not hear it. It was the sound of welcome, of green things recognizing the touch of their protector, and it went on and on.

Even with the onslaught of power and welcome from the earth, it took a terribly long time to delve into Herne's dearly held grievances and draw them out. But I had made him listen, for one brief moment. Long enough to begin a change somewhere deep within him, and once begun, I neither could nor would stop until the healing was complete. The power within me exulted, shooting sparks through my body that kept me on my feet much longer than I thought I could manage. There was joy in the healing, empty places inside me filling with relief and purpose that I'd never known I was missing.

I went at Herne mindlessly, stripping away lies: Richard had not betrayed him; Cernunnos had not abandoned him. Herne shrieked with rage and pain, fighting to cling to the lies and the life he'd built around them.

Adina. The essence of the woman rolled over me, through us, and for a moment it seemed like she stood with us at the carousel, expression sad. She had known, of course, that her husband had power, and more, that he had been in great pain. But she was no more able to see through the veil Herne constructed than I had been. I was grateful, very briefly, that I wasn't the only one who couldn't recognize Herne and his power instantly, even if I'd been convinced I could. Adina seemed to share a sad, wry smile with me, and then she was gone.

With her departure went the tangled remains of Herne's pain. I realized with a shock that we were tearing down even the links that held soul to body, and drew back, alarmed.

"Let it go." As with Cernunnos, I wasn't sure if the words were spoken aloud or inside my head, but they were said with tired con-fidence. I hesitated, and Herne repeated himself more insistently: "Let it go."

He stood in front of me, hands spread a little. The pale-skinned half god was gone. In his place was a woodling god, skin dark and gnarled as an oak tree, fingers knotty and a little too long. Looking at his face was difficult, like finding faces in tree trunks. The pale brown hair had thickened, darkened, flowing back from his face in knots and tangles. Even his colors, the otherworldly light from within, had deepened, into rich browns and dark greens, the color of good soil and summer leaves. In the half-light, only his eyes were the same, brilliant emerald-green. The betrayal in those eyes had been replaced by loss and an ancient sadness.

"Did you have the right to do this?" he asked, and his voice scraped, like rough bark being torn.

"Yes," I said without hesitation. "I couldn't have if you hadn't agreed. Hadn't helped me. All I did was make you see."

"I feel no peace," the Green Man said. I tilted my head.

"I don't think it comes that easily. Still, you've got all the time in the world."

Herne laughed, wind through leaves. "Sever the last bonds, gwyld. Let me go."

I looked down at the shallowly breathing body. Only a few threads still held the tree spirit to the physical form. I put my hand on Herne's chest and looked up at the godling one more time to be certain. He nodded.

I drew the rapier and swung it in a low phantom loop just above Kevin Sadler's body. The threads leaped free, coiling up into Herne as fast as released springs.

A ball of pure light erupted, expanded beyond the carousel in a flare of shocking brilliance, as white as a nuclear bomb. It collapsed back in on itself in the same instant, and the Green Man was gone.

* * *

I woke up a little while later with Gary crouching over me. The Center was dark, the lights on the Space Needle blacked out. I wasn't seeing in two worlds anymore, but the Wild Hunt still milled around, bearing with them their own unearthly light. "You're dying," I accused. Gary grinned.

"Not anymore."

"Oh, good," I said faintly. "How'd that happen?" I shifted a shoulder tentatively. The line of fire in my back had disappeared. "I missed something, didn't I? What happened to the lights?"

"They went out when you grabbed Suzanne," Gary answered, taking the questions in the opposite order. "All over the place."

Oh. That maybe explained how I'd kept on my feet, metaphysically speaking. I'd borrowed the whole city's power. I hoped I hadn't hurt anybody. "And you're not dead because...?"

"Big ball of light," Gary reported. "Weirdest damned thing I ever saw. I could see you lying down on the job over here and standing nose to nose with Herne at the same time. You swung the sword and he lit up and you faded away. Thought you were dead. Then the light faded and everybody was patched up. Was that you or him?"

"I dunno." I sat up carefully. Suzanne Quinley was kneeling by the extraordinarily ordinary body of Kevin Sadler, sightlessly rocking forward and back. I glanced at Gary, then climbed to my feet and walked to the girl in an almost straight line. "Suzanne?"

"My parents are dead, aren't they," she said in the same thin soprano I remembered from the theatre.

"Yeah," I said quietly. "I'm sorry."

"He killed them. My sperm dad killed them."

"Yeah," I said again, because I didn't know what else to say.

"Why?"

God. What a question. "Someone hurt him a long time ago," I

said slowly. "I think maybe it drove him insane. He was trying to protect himself from being hurt again."

Suzanne swallowed and looked up at me, then climbed to her feet. "He was trying to steal my soul, wasn't he? Could he do that? What was he?"

I rubbed my breastbone. "Do you really want the answer to that?"

She gave me a scornful look. "I saw what happened. He turned into a...spirit-thing. What was he?"

"A demigod," Cernunnos said from a few yards away. His stallion stood stone still, radiating impatience to be off. "His name was Herne, and he was my son."

"He still is your son," I mumbled. "Just a little less corporeal."

"So you're my grandfather." Suzanne ignored me. Cernunnos blinked, taken aback.

"We must go, Father," the youngest Rider said quietly. Cernunnos glanced at the boy, then back at Suzanne.

"I am," he agreed, and shot me a look of venom. "But I am bound to another world, granddaughter, and I cannot stay."

"Will I ever see you again?" Suzanne sounded very young and alone. I bit my lower lip. Cernunnos looked back at the young Rider, who smiled.

"At the hour of your birth, each and every year until your mortal life ends, we will greet you, if only for a moment, niece. I will lead the Hunt to you. Only do not fear us, and all will be well."

Suzanne lifted her chin and nodded, green eyes wide. "I'll see you next year, then," she whispered, and looked down at the body at her feet. Anger set her jaw, and she drew one foot back and kicked Kevin Sadler's body in the ribs, hard. Then, chin lifted again, she stepped over the body with immense dignity and walked away from the carousel, pausing for one moment to put her hand on the nose of the pale horse she'd ridden. Then she stepped down and began walking across the Center grounds back toward the parking lot. It was only then that I noticed red-and-blue flashes of light and the approaching sound of sirens, and closed my eyes. It was all over but the yelling.

"Not quite yet, gwyld," Cernunnos murmured.

"Oh, no," I said out loud, and opened my eyes again. Standing on the carousel, I wasn't at eye level with the god, but at least I didn't have to crane my neck too badly to meet his eye. "Go away," I said, and flapped a hand. "I won. Go ride. You don't have a lot of time."

"More than you think," the young Rider said. "We count the days from dusk to dusk. Still, waste no more time than you must, Father." He shifted his weight to the side, not using the reins at all. The pale mare turned and walked away with the rest of the Hunt following after.

"I will see thee again, Siobhan Walkingstick," the horned god said to me. I ducked my head and smiled.

"Will you visit me like you'll visit Suzanne? I may be marked for you, Cernunnos, but not yet. I've got a few things to do, first."

He reached down and slid gloved fingers under my chin, tilting it up so I met his eye again. "Not yet," he agreed, emerald eyes full of things unfamiliar: respect, admiration, even affection. "Thou art a worthy opponent, gwjld. I think I will leave you a gift. It amuses me."

He bent with all his customary grace, and even though I knew what was coming, the compulsion of his brilliant eyes held me where I was. Or maybe I just didn't really want to move. In the distance, Morrison bellowed, "Walker!", and Cernunnos kissed me, a horrifyingly good kiss that would have weakened the knees of a lesser woman.

Oh, all right, a horrifyingly good kiss that weakened my knees. Gary, the helpful son of a bitch, let out a piercing wolf whistle, and I colored from my collarbones to my hairline. Cernunnos released me, chuckling. "Until later, Siobhan Walkingstick."

I had just enough presence of mind to sketch a half bow, and reply, "Until later, my lord master of the Hunt."

Cernunnos returned the bow, then whirled the stallion about and, with a shout, led the Wild Hunt in a gallop up over the heads of the arriving cops. Even Morrison ducked, then glared at me through the distance like it was my fault. The lights were coming back on, slowly.

"Consorting with the enemy, Walker?" he demanded as soon as he was close enough to speak.

"That's not the enemy. The enemy's over there." I jerked my head toward the carousel, still watching the Hunt disappear up into the stars. Morrison climbed up onto the carousel and went to look at the body, eyebrows drawn down.

"That's a demigod?"

"Not anymore," I admitted. Morrison scowled at the body.

"What happened?"

I groaned. "I'll put it in my report. That's what I'm supposed to say, right? I'll put it in my report?"

Morrison frowned magnificently at me. "You're sure that's him?"

"Oh, yeah," I said in a chorus with Gary. We exchanged weary grins that nearly turned into exhausted giggles before I pulled myself back together. "Suzanne Quinley just walked away on her own." I had to stare hard at Morrison to keep my thoughts in order. "Her whole family's dead. Somebody should get her."

Morrison's mouth thinned as he looked to where I gestured, then turned away briefly, calling, "Gonzalez! She's that way."

Jen Gonzalez came out of the dark and jogged across the Center grounds after Suzy. Morrison and I both watched her, before he looked back at me. "Her aunt lives in Olympia. Gonzalez called her. She's on her way." He hesitated a moment before adding, "Suzy'll be okay."

I dropped my chin to my chest. Jen'd come through for a girl who wasn't missing and Morrison was enough on top of the details to be able to reassure me. I was wary of saying thanks, out of fear I might fall apart. Instead I swallowed and nodded. "Can we go back to the station so I can fill out whatever paperwork I need to fill out, and go sleep for a week?"

Morrison thrust his chin out. "Is it your fault all the lights went out?"

"...probably."

"Care to tell me how you managed to keep power going at hospitals and emergency services and nowhere else?"

I lifted my head and stared at him for a tremendously long time. "No," I finally said, but I smiled. "No, I don't care to tell you that at all. Neat trick, though, huh?"

Morrison scowled some more. "Yeah. It was." He struggled with the next words for a few moments, looking as if he was trying to find a way not to say them: "Good job." He gave me one sharp little nod, then flared his nostrils. "Get your ass in the car, Walker, and get back to the station. I want to know what happened here."

I took a couple steps, then paused and looked back at him. "Isn't that, 'Get your ass in the car, Officer Walker'?"

Morrison glared hard enough to set my hair on fire. Thank heavens he didn't have my exciting new power set. "Get your ass in the car, Officer Walker, you..." He trailed off, unable to come up with sufficient invective to describe me.

Grinning, I got my ass in the car, and fell asleep on the way back to the station. There was a hell of a lot waiting for me just on the other side of sleep, but I pushed it away. For a few min-utes, at least, I figured I deserved to be satisfied with saving the girl and stymieing Morrison. The rest of the world could wait until tomorrow.

I was pretty sure it would.

Joanne gets a little rest before she gets back on the job. 

Look for BANSHEE CRIES this November in WINTER MOON—a collection from LUNA Books also featuring Mercedes Lackey.

And Coyote returns next summer.

Don't miss THUNDERBIRD FALLS.

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C.E. (Catie) Murphy holds an utterly impractical degree in English and history, making her unfit for any sort of duty beyond Web design and novel writing. Fortunately, those are precisely the sorts of things she likes to do.

At age six, Catie submitted several poems to an elementary school publication. The teacher producing it chose (inevitably) the one she thought was the worst of the three, but he also stopped her in the hall one day and said two words that made an indelible impression: "Keep writing."

Heady stuff for a six-year-old. It was sound advice, and she's pretty much never looked back.

She lives in Alaska with her husband, Ted, roommate Shaun and a number of pets. More information about Catie and her writing can be found at www.cemurphy.net.

 

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