All the smile went out of Kevin’s face. “He’s a very dangerous man. A lunatic.”
“I know. But a friend of mine was murdered last night and the police think it’s the same man. Four kids were massacred this morning, and I think it’s the same man. I don’t-” I took a breath and gulped down air. “I don’t have much to go on. He seems to be attracted to different kinds of power.”
Kevin glanced over at me. “What kinds of power?”
Damn. I was going to have to say it out loud. “Shamanic power. And-and death power.”
Kevin nodded slowly. “Adina believed in those kinds of things. Do you?”
I let my breath out, relieved he hadn’t laughed and shown me the door. “I didn’t used to,” I admitted, “but some pretty convincing things have happened to me lately. Adina said she was a shaman and that…I was too.” I didn’t like saying it out loud. “But I don’t know much about it. I’m running blind.”
“But you think you can stop this man.”
“I promised a priest.” I smiled a little. “Seems like the kind of promise you shouldn’t renege on.”
Kevin smiled back without it touching his eyes, and turned away to take the tea bags out of the tea. He offered me a cup. I sipped and watched him struggle for words. “Adina went back east for Christmas,” he finally said. “To visit her family. She came home early to surprise me, and-” He took a shaking breath.
“Hell of a Christmas present,” I mumbled, and clapped a hand over my mouth when I realized I’d said it out loud. Kevin lifted his teacup in a mock salute, a ghost of an unhappy smile on his face.
“And a Happy New Year.”
C.E. Murphy
Urban Shaman
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I left Adina and Kevin’s home with a list of books to check out and no more information at all about Cernunnos or anyone who might be working with him. I stopped off at the University Bookstore on the Ave., found all but one of the recommended books, and went home to check my e-mail. There were two messages promising I could lose fifty pounds in thirty days, and another telling me I could make twenty thousand dollars in the same amount of time. My spam filter was getting sloppy. I manfully resisted these temptations and sat down with one of the books. I was still reading when Gary pounded on the door.
“You look better,” he announced when I let him in. “I was half afraid you’d be dead, too.”
“Gee, thanks. I didn’t think you’d come by.” I let the door swing shut and went into the kitchen to start some coffee. Gary followed me.
“Lady, you’re the most interesting thing that’s happened to me since Annie died. You think I’m gonna miss out on all of this? So what’d you find out?” He leaned against the counter and folded his arms across his chest, looking for all the world like he belonged there. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen a man who looked as comfortable in my kitchen as Gary did. He filled up the room in the same way I imagined Sean Connery might, so easy with himself it was like the air around him vibrated.
I put the distracting but otherwise appealing thought of Sean Connery out of my mind and lifted a hand to tick off my accomplishments for the day. “Priests are losing faith, the police don’t want my help and shamanism is kind of interesting.”
“Shamanism.” Gary’s bushy eyebrows climbed up toward his receded hairline, making deep solid wrinkles in his forehead. “I leave you alone a few hours and I miss all kindsa things.”
“You have no idea.” I frowned at the countertop, trying to find a place to start. There was a crack that ran along the edge of the counter. It had been there since I’d moved in. It had never bothered me before, but it looked dark and uncared for after Adina’s kitchen. I bumped my fingertips over it, shaking my head. “Funny thing is, a lot of this stuff makes sense to me. I mean, drug-induced spirit journeys, I’m not sure if I think that’s real. It could just be the drugs. But trance-induced, that’s easier to take. It’s not being brought on by mind-altering drugs, you know? It’s something your psyche is doing all on its own. But on the other hand, how much of it is influenced by what you’ve read or been told or have held in your subconscious somewhere? Does it matter? Is it any more or less real because it’s been influenced by something?”
“Jo,” Gary said politely, “what in hell are you talking about?”
I looked up and laughed. “Can you play a drum, Gary?”
He leaned back, eyebrows quirked. “I can keep a beat, sure.”
“I want to try an experiment. I went somewhere yesterday when Cernunnos stabbed me. I want to see if I can go there again.”
“Spirit journey,” Gary guessed. I nodded. “Thought you Injun types knew all about that.” He grinned as I rolled my eyes. “Got a drum?”
“Nope. I thought you could use one of my stainless steel pots.”
Gary blinked at me. I laughed out loud, and his blinking faded into mild chagrin. “Makin’ fun of an old man,” he grumbled, but his gray eyes held a spark of humor.
“I don’t see any old men here,” I said as I went back through the living room into my bedroom. I heard his snort of pleasure and the creak of the floorboard as he followed me out of the kitchen. I came out with a drum and handed it to him, trying not to look proud. It must not have worked, because he took it with a great deal of grace and care.
“Where’d you get this, Injun?”
Trying not to sound proud didn’t work, either. “It was a birthday present. One of the elders made it for me.”
I didn’t own much that qualified as art. In fact, the drum was probably the sum total. It was about eighteen inches across, thin stretched hide evenly tanned and evenly pulled over the wooden frame. A raven whose wings sheltered a wolf and a rattlesnake was dyed into the leather, bright colors that hadn’t faded in the fourteen years I’d owned it. Bone and leather strips decorated the frame, hand-carved polished beads dangling down from the ends of stays that crossed under the head to make a handle. The drumstick that went with it had a knotted leather end and a cranberry-red rabbit fur end. I brushed my fingers over the soft drumhead, smiling. “He said I’d need it some day. I thought he was crazy, but it was the most beautiful thing anyone’d ever given me. No one ever made anything just for me before.”
Gary grinned. “Not even a valentine?”
“I wasn’t ever at any schools long enough to get valentines.” Half-truths were a lot easier than whole truths, sometimes.
Gary brought the drum and drumstick together with a deep ringing boom. “Looks to me like that was their loss.”
“You’re too old to flirt with me, Gary.” I grinned, though. I’d been complimented more in the day I’d known Gary than in the past year put together.
“Listen to her. A minute ago she’s sayin’ she didn’t see any old men. ’Sides, the day I’m too old to flirt is the day they nail the coffin shut, lady. Keeps you young.” He reached out and poked me in the chest with the drumstick. “You oughta remember that. This gonna wake up the neighbors?” He knocked the drumstick against the drum again.
“I don’t care if it does. I have to listen to them having kinky sex at two in the morning. They can listen to my drum at two in the afternoon.”
Gary sat down on the couch. “How do you know it’s kinky?”
“You don’t want to know,” I said fervently. “Can you keep a heartbeat rhythm?”
The answer was a pair of beats, the sound of a heartbeat. I snagged a pillow off the couch and stretched out on my back on the floor, eyes half-closed. The drum had a deep warm sound, and Gary’s rhythm was close enough to my own heartbeat to send a wash of chills over me.
“How long we playing for?” Gary asked over the drumbeat.
“Half an hour after my breathing changes.” I admired how confident I sounded, just like I knew what I was talking about. “I’ll wake up when the drum stops.” Well, that’s how the book said it ought to work, anyway.
“Gotcha,” he said, and I drifted.
