Urban Shaman

“Officer Walker.”

I was going to cackle for the rest of the day. Possibly for the rest of my life. I flicked her a jaunty little salute and took the main route through the station as I headed for the front door. Morrison gave me a dour look as I went by his office and waved. I left feeling like I could conquer the world.

CHAPTER 21

Walking out of the police station in a mood that good probably meant somebody was preparing to kick me in the metaphorical balls. I stopped at the base of the steps, looking up and down the street. That line of thinking, I realized, along with my newfound phenomenal cosmic powers, would probably get me kicked less metaphorically and more physically. They say the world is what you expect it to be. Right now I was expecting to get kicked. Not a good attitude.

On the other hand, I was expecting to live through it, which was a lot more than I’d thought when I got up. Does it count as getting up if you only slept in the shower?

“My name is Walker,” I said to no one in particular, grinning like a fool. “I carry a badge.” My badge and I went down the street, the latter of us whistling cheerfully. About half a block past The Missing O, I remembered I’d tried to set up a lunch date with Kevin Sadler, and swung back to the cafe to check my e-mail. The barrista, grinning, offered up another apple fritter, and I realized I wasn’t anywhere near hungry enough for lunch.

Of course, it wasn’t anywhere near lunchtime, either. There was a note from Kevin suggesting we meet at a restaurant near where he lived. I got directions and fired off a note agreeing, then headed out onto the big bad street again.

The problem with being cocksure and full of attitude was that it frequently hides the fact you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. I strode along briskly for about two blocks, then wondered where I’d parked my car and what exactly I thought I was doing.

The car, I could find. I backtracked another half block and climbed up on the hood. It wasn’t Petite; she was in no shape to be driven. It was a rental, a recent-model Ford with about as much personality as a shoelace. I really hoped I wasn’t going to have another run-in with Cernunnos while I was driving it. My paycheck was going to stretch thin covering Petite’s repairs, nevermind the rental agency’s fees if I got one of their vehicles hacked up. I was practically certain my insurance policy didn’t cover acts of gods.

I studied the wall on the opposite side of the parking lot, not really seeing it. I’d been running on adrenaline and impulse for days now. There were fourteen hours until midnight, so no matter what, this thing was almost over. The idea of uninterrupted sleep was nice, but I’d already spent way too much time reacting instead of proacting. I needed to think. The concrete wall across from me, however, seemed to be inspiring very little other than a pleasant pale haze in my mind.

I didn’t know why I was assuming whatever was going to happen would happen at midnight rather than, oh, noon, or an even more civilized four in the afternoon. Midnight was just very dramatic.

It was also the final quarter of the day, as winter was the final quarter of the year. It was good enough for me.

I’d read that some shamans could get a sense of the future by opening themselves up to the world and accepting all the possibilities. The most likely possibilities would be brighter, more obvious senses of potential. It was a matter of disregarding time and trusting the universe. I already knew what sliding through time felt like, although that had been going backward, and controlled by Herne. Undaunted, I closed my eyes and tried to stretch myself forward in time.

It was like a cat trying to push its way out of a canvas bag. I prodded around inside my head, feeling muffled, with absolutely no sense of direction. The only information I was able to gather was that Manny, a big guy working on a building at the back of the lot, thought that he was underpaid, overworked and ready for lunch, and I got that from his rarely pausing soliloquy, not through any more esoteric means. Finally I sighed and opened my eyes. Herne had guided the last jaunt through time. Left to my own devices I didn’t know which buttons to push.

That left logic, a commodity I had precious little of just now. Logic and a police badge. “Okay.” I frowned at my feet. Overlooking the fact that Herne and Cernunnos both wanted to kill me, there was something else they had in common: Marie.

What the hell did Marie have to do with any of it? I took the tooth she’d stolen from Herne out of my jeans pocket and examined it. I’d like to say I studied it thoughtfully, but I’m afraid it was more of a vacant gaze. You take what you can get, I guess. The tooth didn’t do anything, just gleamed in the mild way that ivory gleams. I curled my fingers around it and went back to staring across the parking lot at the wall while I thought.

“She saw dead people,” I said after a while, out loud. Thank goodness there was no one around to hear me talking to myself. Well, there was Manny, but Manny was talking to himself, too, so I figured he didn’t have any room to point fingers. “No, no, Billy sees dead people, Marie saw when people were going to die. Okay. So…what?”

The wall across from me was not forthcoming with answers. I pinched the bridge of my nose and puffed my cheeks out and lay back on the hood of the car and made faces at the sky. Then my stomach muscles contracted involuntarily, pulling me halfway upright again. “Oh shit!”

Manny looked over his shoulder at me, quizzical and concerned. I waved him off and my hand kept up the motion, flapping with excitement. “She saw when people were going to die!”

Cernunnos is primal, not evil. That’s what I’d told Morrison. Cernunnos had told me he wanted his freedom. To ride as he chose. Without the girl, he could do that. Why replace her, then? Why add another Rider?

Unless without a full complement of Riders, the Hunt couldn’t fulfill its—sacred?—duty. Unless without someone who knew which souls to harvest, someone who knew who was going to die, they couldn’t Hunt at all.

Without the child, there’s nothing to stop them from riding forever. The e-mail had told me that, although God knows if it was safe to be trusting random e-mail sources. On the other hand, the guy’d been able to paint the Hunt, so I was willing to run with it. It wasn’t like I had a lot of other really good options.

I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers against my temples, working my way through the idea methodically. My mind felt thick and puddinglike. “Okay. The girl led them to souls, and led the Hunt back to the Otherworld. No, wait.” I thumped the heel of my hand against my forehead. For somebody who’d been hit on the head and knocked around as much as I’d been the past few days, I certainly seemed willing to keep doing myself injury. And the thumping wasn’t helping me think. I stopped.

“She bound them to the Otherworld.” I opened my eyes and stared at the wall. “How can she bind them anywhere if she’s a girl here?”

The wall continued to not provide answers. “She’s not here,” I said to it in despair. “I don’t know why she’s not with Cernunnos, but it’s not because she’s here. Dammit.” I’d sent Jen on a wild-goose chase. I put my hands over my eyelids and thunked the back of my head against the windshield. “So where is she? How do you lose a Rider of the Wild Hunt?”

You don’t. You steal a Rider. I let out a half-voiced yell and sat up again. “That’s what he’s done!”

Manny turned around and eyed me. I shrank down into myself and gave him a cheesy, apologetic smile, but as he turned away again I smacked my fist into my palm triumphantly. “He controls, that’s what Adina said.” God, I hoped I’d always talked to myself. I really couldn’t remember. I was almost excited enough not to worry about it. Almost. “He controls the child. Which means he controls—oh, shit.”

The Hunt. By controlling the missing Rider, the youthful one, Herne could control the Hunt. Cernunnos had to know that. That’s why he’d needed Marie: to replace the child and to lead the Hunt. She could find the people whose souls needed to be taken, but she had no ties to whatever Otherworld Cernunnos and the Hunt were born to. With Marie to guide them, the Hunt could have ridden forever.

I pressed my eyes harder closed as I tried to think. “But Herne controls the real Rider,” I mumbled.