Raven Calls

Surprise filtered across her lovely face. “I see into women’s hearts, of course. Every score, every mark, every bleeding place a man has left, I see, and offer succor.”

Gancanagh drifted even closer to Aibhill, all moth-to-flame. Jealousy flared toward rage. He needed to stay away from the banshee queen. I didn’t like his expression of adoration. I didn’t like how she turned to him with a welcoming smile, or how their gazes met with a profound understanding. They were too much alike to be happy. I bet he could also see into the hearts of men—or women. I bet that was how he was so shiveringly appealing. Aibhill’s smile grew wider still, and she offered him a hand. Smitten, he extended his own.

Méabh, with a barbaric shriek, chopped it off.

Everybody in the room started screaming. Gancanagh, because he was holding the—not bloody, but dusty— stump of his arm in his remaining hand. Aibhill, for no reason that I could see except she was a banshee, which was reason enough. Caitríona, out of shock. Méabh, because she was going after Gancanagh again, sword whicking through the air.

And me, because my great-grandmother had just chopped off Morrison’s hand. Utterly ignoring my lack of weapons, I launched myself at her, knocking her aside just before another blow would’ve severed Gancanagh’s pretty head from his shoulders. Her hand hit the stone floor hard enough to loosen her grip on her sword. I batted it away, then punched her in the mouth.

She bit me, slammed an elbow up, caught me in the windpipe, then kicked me as I rolled around on the floor gasping and she jumped to her feet. Her sword wasn’t very far away. I didn’t have my breath back by the time she got it. Nothing to fight with. No chance against the warrior queen.

Not unless I gave in to the thickness in my arm, the poison running through my blood. Gancanagh’s screams, thin and high and furious with pain, reverberated against my skin. Méabh had hurt my Gancanagh, and a little lupine vengeance sounded just the thing.

Agony crackled in my arm as I relaxed my fight against the wolf. I rolled to all fours, struggling out of my coat, and lowered my head as the itch became unbearable, then delicious—

—and then stopped. Stopped cold, stopped entirely, stopped beneath the vicious cut of Aibhill’s harpy voice. “Both betrayed by Gancanagh’s love. I could ask for no more, with my host so depleted.”

Beautiful, gentle, sweet Aibhill stepped into my line of vision, unleashed a handful of claws and drove them into Méabh’s stomach.

I should have seen it coming. We all should have seen it coming, except the part of me that could still think about something besides Gancanagh had expected her to go for me. Méabh made a horrible soft sound of pain and wrapped her hands around Aibhill’s wrist, but moved no farther. Caitríona had never stopped screaming. I crawled one tiny jerky step toward the entangled pair, but Aibhill clenched her fist and Méabh went whiter and I held still again.

Only Gancanagh responded quickly. I didn’t see him move. He simply landed on Aibhill with all fours—all fours, his hand had grown back—and he slammed her to the ground. She shrieked, an ordinary woman’s scream, but the longer it went on, the more banshee cries I heard in it. They piled in, one on top of another, until her voice could peel paint from the walls, separate solderings, hell, split atoms. It was unbearable, blasting out my eardrums and making my nose bleed. Horrible, itchy, painful blood, except I had it easy, because Méabh was bleeding from everywhere.

From her nose, from her ears, from her belly. She fell to the floor in slow stages: knees, hip, hand, collapse. I forgot the rivalry that had driven me to tackle her in the first place, and crawled another inch toward her. She lay barely three feet away, but Aibhill’s screams were a physical barrier. I focused, trying to make my shields pointy so they would slide through the sound more easily, but there was nothing easy about it. Méabh was dying, and I wasn’t going to be able to save her. I was afraid to even look at Caitríona for fear her head would have exploded from Aibhill’s cries.

I didn’t know how the banshee queen could keep screaming while she and Gancanagh fought. They’d rolled several feet away, weight changing from one to the other, but she didn’t seem to need to draw breath in order to scream. I wasn’t even sure she needed to open her mouth. The screams came off her in relentless waves, and somehow Gancanagh still held on. I could all but see his fury rolling off him, fury that he, of all creatures, had been caught in Aibhill’s net. He wasn’t fighting for me or Méabh or against the Master. He was fighting for his own lost dignity, for having been the seduced instead of the seducer. He was fighting to restore his sense of self, and he would do anything to achieve that.

Anything. Even die. And he was about to, because he was a thing of small magics, and Aibhill was fed not only by the Master but by the banshees she reigned over. The thought finally came all the way clear: youth and beauty retained by draining the vitality from others. It was classic, in a fairy-tale sense. With half of her host already obliterated, Aibhill was at the weakest she’d ever be.

And it wasn’t weak enough. Not for Gancanagh to take her out. But he could distract her, hurt her, give me time to get Méabh back on her feet and maybe, just maybe, give the Morrígan’s daughters a fighting chance.

I bellowed from the bottom of my lungs and surged the foot or two to Méabh’s side. Collapsed beside her and called for the healing power as triumph entered Aibhill’s scream and dust filled the air. Fairy dust, I thought inanely, and wondered if it could make me fly.

What it could not do, it seemed, was make me heal. The power stuttered and ended at my fingertips, as it had done in the past when I’d been making bad choices. I whimpered in shock, which wasn’t very grown-up, but at least it was heartfelt. I tried again. No magic, no healing, though since I hadn’t turned completely into a werewolf I assumed the power was still running rampant in my veins.

“It’s my territory, lass,” Aibhill said, and the mockery in her voice was so sweet it could have been sympathy. “There are things I cannot stop you from doing, perhaps, but there are others that I can. Be grateful, little shaman. If I release your power now, the wolf will take you.”

I smiled, vicious invitation, and she blanched, backing off as if I had already become the wolf. Then a sneer marred her lovely features and she lifted her voice in another scream.

The walls crumbled, mortar shuddering from between enormous squares of stone. The tall roof I’d admired so much was collapsing, and I could barely focus enough to keep huge chunks from flattening us. It wasn’t fair. Whether Mom wanted it to be or not, until the banshee queen was dead, her scream was part of Aibhill’s. That let Aibhill get under my shields. They shivered and broke apart, hairline fractures reappearing as quickly as I repaired them. The weight of stone crashing down didn’t help. I flinched again and again, feeling impacts against my flesh, though none of them broke through to crush bone and body. Not yet, anyway. I rolled my jaw, fingers dug against the gray stone floor.

Incongruous golden sunlight spilled over my hands, sunset revealed by the falling walls. I took a little heart from that: it seemed like a tether back to the Middle World, and although I wasn’t at all sure I could get myself home, I thought I could at least shove Cat back into reality. I wished I dared call Coyote and ask for his help, but I lacked the concentration and was afraid that if I succeeded, it would open a channel straight from Aibhill to him, and that would be unacceptable. I had to do it on my own. Just this once, and I’d apologize to him later.

Easy enough to say, when I doubted there would be a later. My laugh broke and Caitríona seized my arm. I said, “It’s okay. We’re going home. I’m going to open a path back home. As soon as you see it, run. I’ll cover you and be right on your heels.”

“We won’t save Sheila if we run! The fight will be over, we’ll—”

“The fight’s already over. Do as I say, Cat. Just do as I say.” I had nothing left for words. Coyote was so good at opening passageways between the Middle and Lower Worlds. I tried to remember how he did it, calling yellow roads and low red sunlight. The light tinted more toward crimson, either the oncoming night or a successful path. I decided it was the path and envisioned it more fully, remembering what it had looked like when Coyote sent me into the Lower World to fight the wendigo. Caitríona gasped, signal that she saw it, too, and I said, “Run.”

She ran, and I shut the road down behind her.

Surprise changed Aibhill’s voice for a moment. Deepened it enough that I could shake off the very, very worst of the effects and raise my head to look at her. She stared at the space where Caitríona had been, then turned an enraged gaze on me. She was still beautiful. Even with her wild white robes stained with Méabh’s