Raven Calls

die because of that, Brigid. I get that closed time loops are tidy and all—” and, hoo boy, was I developing a hate-on for them “—but we’re talking about people’s lives here.”

“I would not set such a spell,” she said both serenely and alliteratively, “but the years are long between now and then, are they not? Even the most powerful of magics may slip, over so much time. And how many would die, Siobhán Walkingstick, if I did not make the magic at all?”

Using logic to derail my head of steam was a lousy trick. I muttered, “Well, at least promise to tighten up the wards every few centuries so the bindings can only be broken if I’m there. Or better yet, so only I can break them. Without murdering poor Jason Chen.” It didn’t work that way. I knew it didn’t, because it hadn’t. I doubted we’d get back to our time and discover history had retrofitted itself and that Jason had gotten to take his sisters trick-or-treating after all. For one intense, searing moment I wished like hell it did work that way, but time, life and Grandfather Sky were not that kind. If I ever got to meet the makers of the world I had a word or two I wanted to say to them.

Brigid promised, “I’ll do my best,” and I nodded, knowing it wouldn’t be enough. Then I followed her gaze as it went to Lugh. She murmured, “My sister must take her sacrifice so we might find the cauldron to bind it,” apologetically.

It wasn’t physically possible for my head to spin, but it tried. A headache sprang up for its efforts, and while I was struggling to find something politic to say, Gary growled, “You gotta be kidding, lady. All this and you don’t even know where the damned thing is?”

Brigid stiffened. “It would be a great prize for my sister’s master. They would not leave it somewhere easy to find.”

“It’s in the cave.” I sighed as Gary and Brigid both raised their eyebrows at me. “The one the werewolves came from. Somewhere to the west of here, near a…” I waved my hands. “Near another hill.”

“Ireland,” Brigid said dryly, “is full of hills.”

I glowered. “A built-up one. Somebody made a huge pile of rocks on top of a gigantic flat hill.”

“Cnoc na rí,” Brigid said every bit as dryly as before. “We would call it a mountain, Joanne Walker. The mountain of kings. You speak of the cairns atop it.”

“I don’t know what Knocknaree is,” I said, approximating her pronunciation as best I could, “but it’s a marker for the cave, and if you know where it is, we should probably haul ass that direction and bind the damned cauldron so Gary and I can go home.”

Gary squeaked, “That might be a problem, doll,” and when I looked over, the Morrígan had my sword at his throat.

I had shot somebody four mornings ago. It was not something I was proud of and not something I wanted to repeat. Ever. Except I’d have dropped the Morrígan in a heartbeat, if I’d had my gun. I doubted it would change the whole history of the world. Someone else similar would just replace her. But I didn’t have my gun, and later I would probably think that was good, because digging modern-day shell casings out of a millennia-old Tara hillside would really throw archaeologists for a loop.

Right now, though, my fingers clenched like I was squeezing a trigger, and the Morrígan gave me a tight, nasty smile. “Don’t think of it, gwyld. You may draw a blade from the air, but not while it resides in my hand.”

She was right, too. I could almost feel the hilt in my hand, but there was a trembling resistance, too, like a magnet not quite strong enough to pull its counterpart toward it. But the Morrígan’s magic—or grip—was stronger, and the harder I tried calling it to me, the redder a scratch on Gary’s throat became.

I stopped trying. The sword relaxed, giving Gary room to swallow. In fact, his whole big self relaxed. Sagged, some might even say. He had both hands on the Morrígan’s arm, classic knife-at-throat pose, but he wasn’t going to be able to pull her away without slitting his own gullet. His head fell forward, shoulders caved as best they could to protect his throat in a moment of defeat. His spirit animal’s presence was agitated, not something I’d ever imagined a tortoise could be. But even tortoises had vulnerable throats.

I was trying to figure out what to do when Gary threw his head back and smashed the Morrígan’s nose.

Roughly one million awful things happened at once.

Cartilage crunched. The Morrígan bellowed with pain. She even dropped the sword, but blood was already pouring from Gary’s throat: he’d cut it himself with the sheer violence of his action.

The Morrígan dropped him, too, and staggered back with both hands clapped to her nose. Blood ran down her forearms toward her elbows. Normally I would mock a warrior woman who couldn’t take the pain of a little broken nose, but Gary was bleeding, and besides, I’d broken my nose when I was a kid. It hurt like a motherfucker.

Gary’s hands went to his throat, such a familiar cinematic response that it could have been funny if it wasn’t a real person a few seconds from bleeding to death. He dropped to the earth with lumbering grace as I charged forward, vision turning silver-blue with fear and fury.

In the center of that brilliance, the Morrígan crouched over Lugh’s body. She glanced up, saw me coming and splayed one hand open with much the same gesture she’d used to ruin my coat. Power exploded out, black wrath laced with blue.

Brigid, inexplicably, stood between me and the burst of power. Her shields flared, white and gold, but the blast of black magic still hit hard enough that her torso bowed with the impact. She fell gracefully, never in my way as I ran for Gary.

An ugly sound of frustration erupted from the back of the Morrígan’s throat, but she didn’t try again. Her ravens came to her, one on each shoulder. She sneered at me, then dissipated in a whirl of blue mist.

The sleeve of my coat turned to shredded leather again as she disappeared.

I hit the bloodstained grass on my knees, both hands covering Gary’s at his throat. There was no careful visualization, no rebuilding of vessels, veins, muscle, tendons, skin one by very quick one. No delving into the garden of Gary’s soul to find the heart of him and the idea of how he thought he should be. I didn’t need to, for two reasons. One, I’d tried healing a cut throat once before. It hadn’t worked, but the concept was familiar.

Two, and much more important, he and I both had total faith in my ability to heal him. That was all it took, really. A rush of magic and suddenly all the blood was on our hands, on our clothes, on the ground, without any more pumping free of his body.

I sat back on my heels, my own heart pumping at about a zillion miles an hour. As far as I could tell, the entire incident, from the moment the Morrígan put the rapier to Gary’s throat all the way through to his healing, had taken about ten seconds. Ten very exciting, heavily punctuated seconds, but ten seconds.

Gary, hands now exploring his throat to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, croaked, “What took you so long, doll?”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. It was high-pitched and hysterical, not amused, but I did laugh, and he gave me one of the sexy old coot grins that had all my friends convinced he was my sugar daddy. I waved a bloody hand, said, “Oh, you know, I could tell she hadn’t hit the jugular, I had all the time in the world,” then burst into tears and fell over on him. “What were you thinking?!”

He put his arm around me, mouth on top of my head. “Figured I knew a girl who could fix me up in no time flat if I did somethin’ crazy to break the status quo. You were never gonna risk it.”

“Of course I wasn’t! Jesus, Gary!” I wanted to punch him, but punching a guy who’d just had his throat cut seemed low. I sniffled into his shoulder instead.

He chuckled against my hair, then drew a deep breath. “Thanks, sweetheart.”

I wrapped my arm over his ribs and hugged him as hard as I could. “I’d say ‘anytime,’ except if you ever do something like that again I’ll kill you myself.”

“Nah, you wouldn’t. Who’d go on all these crazy adventures with you then?”

“Billy. Morrison, the poor bastard. Random strangers getting swept up in my wake. Ha—” The last sound wasn’t a word, just an inhaled breath that Gary rumbled a laugh over.

“Yeah yeah yeah. Look, I hate to break our quality time up, Jo, but wasn’t there a bad guy here a minute ago?”

We both pushed up on our elbows. The Morrígan’s disappearing act had left no trace of where she’d