Raven Calls

long way, but my friend Coyote can skip and bounce all over the place.” I peered at the sun, but the gloom was too significant to tell whether it hung closer to the land than normal.

“It’s the fairy realm.” Gancanagh stopped beside me, suddenly very close and smelling very good, with his too-green gaze intent on mine. I swallowed and looked away, but that made it worse, because then his scent and body nearness seemed all the more Morrison. I wet my lips and looked back to find him smiling. Devilish, charming smile. The kind of smile that clearly needed either a kiss or a slap. Possibly both. I wet my lips again and he, being no fool, moved in for the kill.

But he had to tilt his chin up to do so. I was a good two inches taller than he was, but Morrison was exactly my height. Another mark against the seductive fairy. I got my hand between us just in time, croaked, “Walk,” and pushed him away.

In a world that made sense, he would have taken the hint and gone off all dejected. In the world I lived in, however, he looked more like I’d presented an unexpected challenge, and delight glinted in his eyes as he did as he was told.

Méabh stomped by, the weight of her footsteps putting my earlier stomp to shame. I started to protest my innocence, but Caitríona came along behind her, not so much stomping as seeming to propel herself forward by the force of exaggerated eye-rolling. Amusement overcame the feeling of unjust persecution and I tagged along behind them all, grinning. Gan’s voice drifted back to me: “This realm’s been tainted, it’s true, but I’m still part of it. It knows I’m not a threat, and lets me walk as I wish.”

His voice was like honey mead and warm chocolate, which I thought was cheating. Morrison’s voice was fine, particularly when lowered in intimacy, but Gancanagh had somehow kicked it up a notch. I clung to the content of his words, not the delivery, but it still took quite a lot of walking before I shook off the effects. “Wait, what do you mean, you’re part of it. That can’t be good, if it’s tainted.”

Gancanagh looked back at me. By all rights it was too gloomy to see well, and I wasn’t using the Sight, but his gaze was vivid and bright anyway. He breathed, “Sure and she doesn’t know much, does she,” briefly sounding more like an Irish monster than like Morrison, then went back to the more Americanized way of phrasing things. “Nothing’s all light and happiness, Walker. Seduction’s got its dark side, and so someone like me is susceptible to someone like him. And when you’re part of a pantheon that’s all magic, it’s easy for the corruption to spread. I wasn’t his way in, but I would never be able to stop him, either.”

I scurried to catch up with Méabh. “Are you two part of the same pantheon? I mean, you’re both…not human. You called him fae. You’re aos sí. I’m pretty sure that qualifies as fae.” I wished Gary was there. He’d know for sure.

Méabh scowled. “We’re all of us other than human, so we are. I’d not say I was of the likes of him.”

From her emphasis, I assumed everybody else would. “But you’re not gods, either. I mean, that’s what I’ve met so far, gods and monsters. You fae sorts are the first non-human non-monsters I’ve come across. I didn’t know there were things like you out there. I mean, where did you come from? I don’t even know if you’ve got North American counterparts. Not that I’ve run into, anyway.” I sighed. “On the other hand, there are plenty of people who’ve managed to be corrupted by the Master on my home turf, too, so even if the lineup is different I guess the results aren’t. Look, Gan, you’re also the first person I’ve talked to who was willing or maybe able to discuss the Master’s influence. So just how badly into this are you?”

He shrugged, which was distractingly attractive. “I’m nothing, really. He gets a lot more power from murders and black magic than from something like me, but if dark impulses are acted upon, he gains strength from them.”

“So couldn’t you ignore the impulses?”

He looked over his shoulder at me. “Could you ignore the magic that boils in your belly, all hot and ready, Walker?”

He really hadn’t needed to add the hot and ready part. My throat went dry and other parts of me went a bit hot and ready. “Jesus, Morris—Gancanagh.”

“And why is it we’re trusting him?” Caitríona muttered.

It seemed like a good question, and I was pretty sure “Because he’s sexxxay” was the wrong answer. Méabh came up with a better one: “What choice have we? It’s this or chase werewolves, and Aili— Gancanagh—is finer to look upon.”

“He looks like me da!”

I took that to mean Cat wished we would stop having palpitations over the guy, which was fair enough. I wished we would, too, but I couldn’t stop sneaking glances at his backside. “How long,” I said a bit desperately. “How long will it take to get to Evil’s lair?”

“Ah, sure,” Gancanagh said blithely, “ah sure and we’re there.”

A three-headed dragon rose out of the dark and spat fire at us.

Chapter Twenty-Three

If the werewolf hadn’t bit me, I wouldn’t have learned to keep my shields up at all times and we would have been roasted, so in some small way Tia Carley had done me a favor. But the heat blast still knocked us over backward, and we lay there in the dark for a split second before the beast galumphed toward us. Méabh, always quick with a sword, sprang to her feet and charged the dragon head-on while I mostly just wondered who or what I’d offended in a past life that this one was peopled by dragons. Except I didn’t have any past lives, so apparently I’d offended somebody in this life and was facing instant karma. That didn’t really improve anything, in my ever so humble opinion.

Caitríona sat up beside me, both hands fisted against her mouth. Tiny sounds emitted from behind the fists, but at least she wasn’t all-out screaming. Me, I kept lying there, reviewing my list of things to do: heal the werewolf bite. Kill the Morrígan. Find Gary. Save my mother. I added “string Gancanagh up by his luscious toes and use him for target practice” to the list, and finally sat up.

Gancanagh had disappeared. Quel surprise. Méabh’s silver sword barely dented the dragon’s scales, but on the other hand, neither it nor she nor her armor were melting as the monster spat fire at her again. I knew I should leap up and rush to her side, but I didn’t have a damned thing to fight a dragon with. My sword was missing, and besides that, not much use, if Méabh’s was any indication. My power never had cottoned on to being used as a weapon, and frankly, I didn’t think a dragon would be much impressed if I went after it with tooth and nail.

The damned bite flared up again, suggesting I had more tooth and nail at my disposal than usual. I ground my teeth and reached past both pain and temptation—the goddamned thing didn’t hurt when I gave in, at least not once the actual transformation was over—and rather pathetically whispered, Rattler? at the back of my mind. Any chance we can push past the poison for a…normal…shapeshifting?

Perhaps. The magic is there. But the taint is…distracting. My poor snaky spirit guide was really wiped out, if he wasn’t getting all sibilant on his esses. Fix a simple shape in mind, Siobhán Walkingssstick. Something familiar to us both. Something—

“Something that strikes?” I started shimmying out of my clothes. Caitríona dropped her fists to gape at me and I handed her my glasses. “Don’t let them get crunched, okay?”

She took them speechlessly and I interpreted that as agreement. Everything else, including my precious, ruined coat, became a pile on the ground as Rattler coiled himself in my mind. He got stronger the tighter he curled on himself, like he was concentrating his focus so we might shove past the poison trying to turn me into a monster. He balled up smaller and smaller, becoming brighter and brighter, and just at the moment he became incandescent, I snapped the image of what I wanted to become into place.

It was not supposed to feel like the world was being torn apart. Like I was being torn apart. Like my left arm, specifically, had gone to war with the rest of me, resisting transformation with a will of its own. I was a mass of twisting bones, trying to find a shape that satisfied me, but the shape I wanted was at odds with the werewolf’s curse. I changed partway and gasped for breath, caught in a loop of unending shifts.