Raven Calls

wanted, but it was better than having my head handed to me. I took a step toward her, but just one. I had the screaming stone at my back and wanted to keep it there. Her mouth flattened, recognition of what I was doing, and for an instant her gaze went beyond me, to Gary and Lugh.

I knew I shouldn’t look. I knew it, and I couldn’t help it. Just one quick glance over my shoulder, to make sure they were all right.

When I looked back, ravens tried to eat my face.

I shrieked, dropped my sword and flailed at the damned birds. Beaks and talons caught my hands, my hair, my arms, my cheeks, scoring vicious digs and slashes. Healing magic sluiced through me, keeping blood from spattering, but I didn’t know how to fight a flock of birds.

We ssstrike, Rattler said in audible irritation, and my left hand snapped out to seize one of the ravens by its throat.

The snaky impulse was to squeeze and crack its fragile bones. Somehow I didn’t, though I felt the play of muscle in my arm and saw it enter my hand. It stopped just before my fingers spasmed shut. The raven, with no evident concern for its mortality, twisted its head and bit the tender flesh between the thumb and forefinger.

The other two ravens beat wings backward, taking themselves just out of my range of attack. Taking themselves out of their range of attack, too, for which I was grateful. Bird in one hand, I knelt to scoop up my sword, then leveled it at the Morrígan, who once more looked astonished. And furious, but she held still, which led me to a rapid conclusion. “Your power’s tied up in the birds. What happens if one dies? You can’t fly out of here on their wings the way you just arrived, that’s for damned sure. Quite a letdown to walk where you once flew, eh? What else, Morrígan? What else do you lose if you lose a bird?”

Truth was, I hadn’t stopped myself from killing the raven because I thought it might be a bargaining chip. I hadn’t killed it because Raven was my other spirit animal, and I thought he might take issue with me obliterating one of his brethren. But the Morrígan didn’t have to know that. I was pretty pleased with myself.

Right up until she snarled, “Less than if I lose the sacrifice,” and with another twitch of her fingers, broke the bird’s neck.

Don’t ever try to tell me animals don’t mourn. The remaining ravens made god-awful sounds, noises that I would call shrieks of horror in humans, and renewed their attack. On me, not on the damned Morrígan, even though she was the actual criminal here. I dropped the dead raven and swung wide with my rapier, cutting an errant feather as it fell. For half a breath I was impressed with the sword’s sharpness, and then I was back to facing three opponents as the Morrígan took the fight to me again.

Rattler’s power surged through me, lending me the speed to meet hers. I already had the strength, thanks to having spent most of a lifetime working on cars. I did not, however, have a duo of infuriated ravens on my side, and the birds were rapidly tipping the odds in her favor. I blurted, “Raven?” out loud and a pleased kak kak KAK! ricocheted through my mind as Raven exploded from the back of my head.

That’s what it felt like, anyway, and from the Morrígan’s expression that might have been what it looked like. Unlike Rattler, Raven wasn’t worn to a nub. Just the opposite, in fact. He hadn’t scraped me off a highway after I’d been hit by a truck, but he had partaken in the following spirit dance. It had brought Rattler and me from exhausted to functioning, and had taken the already-lively spirit bird from functioning to exuberant. This was his first chance since then to burn off some of that energy. He came swinging around my head in a sparkling display of brilliance and smacked the nearest normal raven with his wing.

Nominally normal, anyway. I wasn’t sure how normal any bird that helped fly a full-grown woman through the sky was, but it was black and glossy and looked like it belonged to the real world, whereas my Raven was made of fireworks. My Raven was also about two and a half feet long with a nearly five-foot wingspan, which made him gigantic in raven terms. The Morrígan’s were merely ordinary in comparison.

And they were totally unprepared to be buffeted by those great long wings. He’d hit me with them any number of times. It hurt. Apparently the Morrígan’s raven thought so, too, because it squawked in outrage and left off whacking me to claw at Raven. He did a lovely wing-tip pivot practically on top of my head and crashed into the other raven, then shot skyward with two black streaks of cawing anger chasing him. I said, “Thank you!” and got down to the serious business of having my ass handed to me.

I mean, really. I had strength, I had speed, but not in a hundred years would I have skill like the Morrígan’s. Hell, she even looked tougher than me, though I had a brief vision of how Gary probably saw us—her decked out in blue robes with long flying black hair, me with my short-cropped ’do and flowing white leather coat—and I decided we probably both looked pretty badass. Her more than me, though, because she was obviously the one taking her opponent apart bit by bit with her swordplay.

I parried like hell and tried every trick Phoebe’d taught me, plus a few I’d made up myself. I ducked. I jumped. I threw grass in her face. I kicked and almost got my foot cut off for my troubles. My left forearm throbbed worse with every passing moment, and the Morrígan smiled every time I fumbled on that side, like she knew exactly where my weakness was and only had to wait for me to give in.

Well, I was nothing if not stubborn. I might be bleeding, cursed with a dark mark and about to turn into a werewolf, but I wasn’t going to give the beautiful bitch the satisfaction of my failure. I retreated until I had the Stone of Destiny against my spine. Lugh and Gary weren’t there anymore, which I hoped was good.

What I really wanted was a minute to stop and think. What I got was a merry chase around the Stone, which was small enough to hug and therefore not really much use as an object to hide behind. Still, I ran around it, the Morrígan on my heels, while I tried to put it all together. It was obvious Lugh was fundamentally wrong about his Ireland being a place of balance and peace if the Morrígan recognized a werewolf bite as her master’s mark. I’d watched the werewolves being birthed from the mouth of a black hellhole. I knew their master, at least in passing. He was not one of the good guys.

In fact, he’d been trying to kill me since before I was born. My mother had thwarted him and sent me to America to keep me safe, but I’d regained his attention when my shamanic powers reawakened last year. If the Morrígan, mistress of death and war and doom, was under his command, then—

Then I tripped on the toes of my stompy boots, which were not meant for running circles in, and did a nosedive into the soft earth of ancient Tara.

Lugh, the goddamned fool, came up out of nowhere and took the blow that would have ended my life.

Chapter Six

Blood spattered me, the Stone, the green grass, everything, but I couldn’t even cry out. My voice was lodged in my throat, held there by horror. The Morrígan howled a mixture of delight and anger. She’d gotten her sacrifice, if not her target. Lugh slid off her sword and dropped to the earth. For an instant even the ravens ceased fighting and we all stared at the king’s prone form.

Then he dragged a shallow, shuddering breath, and hope seared me. I jammed my rapier upward, scoring the first blood I’d actually taken from the Morrígan, but not doing enough damage to take her down for the count. She shrieked and whirled, sword lifted to impale me.

Gary, hero of the revolution, bashed her on the back of the head with a rock.

There was something about watching the mighty fall ignominiously. Goddesses weren’t supposed to be taken down with a stone any more than Goliaths were. It lacked respect, and if I’d learned anything, it was that power demanded respect.

With that in mind, I bellowed, “Hot damn, you go, Gary!��� dropped my sword and scrambled across the Morrígan’s unconscious body to get at Lugh.

Blood bubbled at his lips, a fine deadly froth. I was pretty sure that meant she’d gotten him in the lung. That should bode ill for him, but I’d healed myself from a punctured lung once. Healing somebody else couldn’t be that hard, especially since he knew of and accepted the power shamans wielded. Nothing like a willing victim to ease things along. I reached for the healing magic within me, flexing it for the first time since I’d arrived in Lugh’s era.

The Stone of Destiny stopped screaming.