Urban Shaman

school. You don’t feel like Cernunnos. I thought I’d know you.”

He put his hands over mine, surprisingly cool and very large. His nails were thick and heavy, hinting of claws. “Because I can mask myself deeper than you know how to go, little healer. And you have no time to learn.”

“But I did better than you expected.” I hadn’t taken my eyes off his, depthless and green. His gaze had none of the drowning power that Cernunnos’s did, but like Cernunnos, it betrayed him. Under his confidence was a layer of concern. I worried him. Once I tasted that fear, the totality of his power swept over me, thundering, meant to drown me. I tightened my fingers in his shirt a little and lifted my chin, letting it wash all around me like Moses and the Red Sea.

Herne’s memories weighed heavily, a man caught in a position of something less than a god, but granted hundreds of years beyond a man’s lifespan. His mortal life had at least had purpose: he guarded his lands, and faint recollection told me the land had once responded to him. He’d been the Green Man, not a god, no, but at least a protective spirit. But he was too much between two worlds: a taint ran deep in him, all the way back to the half-shared moment where he’d lifted his sword and driven it into his king’s body instead of mine.

Real! It slammed through me like a shock. That moment had been real. His power had dragged me back through time, displacing me. If I had died there, I would have died here, too. Henrietta would have died.

And Richard the Second would never have hanged the Hunter. From the very beginning of his immortal life, Herne had been something less than he could have been. That knowledge poisoned him as much as—

He wrenched back from me, breaking eye contact and tearing loose from my grip on his shirt. The memories I’d delved in to shattered, losing me any further insight to the half god standing before me. “I’m stronger than you think I am,” I said.

“Not strong enough.” Herne’s eyes were glassy, with no more openings to his power or his soul. “Not strong enough,” he repeated. “You don’t have enough time.”

“I have a day,” I said calmly, and smiled as shock rose in his eyes. “See? I know more than you think I do, too.” It occurred to me that I’d just played my trump card by telling him that. I didn’t know half as much as I needed to. Shock faded from his gaze, replaced by wariness. Hell. If he thought I knew what he was doing, he’d be all the more cautious, and all the harder to track. Oh, yeah. I’d blown it. Good form, Joanne. I needed a neon pink shirt that read NOVICE in big fat letters. Just in case anybody had any doubts on the matter. Herne and I stared at each other another long moment. Then a rangy security guard materialized at my elbow.

“Everything all right here, folks?” he asked casually. As if by mutual agreement, Herne and I broke off from looking at one another to fix the guard with equally grim expressions.

“Fine,” I said shortly, then muttered, “was I speeding, officer?” The guard frowned at me. “Nevermind,” I said out loud. “We’re fine.”

“Maybe it’s time for you to go on and catch your plane, or head home, ma’am, sir. It’s late, and nobody wants any trouble.” The guard actually looked as if a little trouble might be welcome.

Herne and I looked at one another again. “Twenty-three hours, Siobhan Walkingstick,” Herne said, and I flinched. I didn’t like this thing where people were reading my birth name out of my mind. He hadn’t used it before. Had I given away as much in that memory link as he had? I was going to have to do something about this, about all of it. Assuming I survived the next day. Funny how making it through an hour or a day at a time had never been an issue before.

“Twenty-three hours, Hunter. Sorry for the fuss, officer.” I stepped past them both and went to pick up my luggage.

CHAPTER 17

The desk attendant handed over my luggage with a perfunctory glance at my tickets and I was out of the airport and on the way home within ten minutes. It felt like a bad omen, that actually getting the luggage had gone so smoothly. It wasn’t good when things going easily seemed like a sure sign of doom. I was going to need some extensive therapy when this was all over.

Halfway home I passed a bad wreck, two cars and the freeway wall. Paramedics loaded a body bag into the back of an ambulance as I went by, and Herne’s pointer about the effects of using my new power stood out vividly in my mind. I slowed as I rounded a corner, then pulled over, shivering as I unpeeled my death grip from the steering wheel and shook my hands until blood started flowing again.

When my fingers started tingling from returning blood, I wrapped my arms around myself and folded over, my forehead against the wheel as I tried to take deep breaths without hyperventilating. I’d been so sure I would recognize Herne, and the only reason I had at all was a sheer chance of light. It had taken him, a killer, to warn me of the consequences of my actions. I was so far out of my league it wasn’t funny, and it was going to get me killed.

I didn’t want to die.

Light colored in my eyelids, red and blue. I sat up to squint at the cop car that was pulling over in front of me. I didn’t recognize the cop who got out, but I hardly knew every cop in the greater Seattle area. I rolled down the window and leaned my head against the steering wheel, waiting for the ritual.

“Everything okay, ma’am?”

I sighed, straightened up, and looked at her. She was pretty. Blue eyes, and blond hair tucked neatly under her hat.

“Everything’s fine.” I couldn’t think of a good explanation as to what I was doing pulled off on the side of the freeway, so I didn’t say anything else.

“Car troubles?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Been drinking?”

Would I be dumb enough to answer that in the affirmative if I had? “No, ma’am,” I repeated. “Just coming back from the airport.”

“Late flight, huh? Tired?” She smiled. It was a nice smile that didn’t have anything to do with Celtic gods or shamans. I smiled back.

“Yeah. I just needed a breather. I’ll be on my way in a second here.”

The cop nodded. “Drive carefully, okay? And have a good night, all right?”

“I will. Thanks.” I watched her walk back to her car, then smiled and stuck my head out the window. “Hey, officer?”

She turned back, eyebrows lifted under her cap. “Yes?”

“You’d be good at playing Questions, you know that?”

She laughed, a sound as pleasant as her smile. “What makes you say that?” She climbed in her car and drove away, leaving me feeling like the world was a better place. I sighed and slumped back in my seat with a yawn, eyes closed for a moment before I reached for the gear stick.

Light filled my eyelids again. Shimmering, pearly silver light that was about as much like headlights as peacock feathers were. For a long moment I refused to open my eyes again, under the dubious logic that if I couldn’t see whatever was making the light, it couldn’t see me.

“It doesn’t work that way,” a sibilant voice murmured. I wasn’t at all sure if I’d heard it in my ears or my head. It didn’t matter. I knew the voice. Since it didn’t work that way, I gritted my teeth and opened my eyes.

Cernunnos’s host swarmed around my car, flickering with quite literally unearthly light, as if they were no more than figures on an old silent movie screen. The horses skittered, not quite touching the car. Red-eared hellhounds slunk under the horses’ bellies, baring gleaming white fangs at me through the window. One rider glared down through the windshield at me, craggy face bearded and stern. If he weren’t undead, I might have considered him handsome.

“Not undead,” Cernunnos corrected. A few of the host melted away as he approached on his enormous stallion. “The undead do not bleed.” Hatred seeped into his voice with the last word. He straightened in the saddle and I saw that he held an arm wrapped around his ribs. He sat tight as a bowstring, the