Urban Shaman

kicked him in the head while he was doubled, and knocked his sword away as he fell gracelessly to the ground. It was the perfect moment to bear down upon my enemy and smite him in a gladiator-inspired hour of triumph. Too bad I was digging the rapier into the ground for support and afraid that if I moved I’d collapse on top of him.

Instead, I did what I’d been trying to do before.

I took all my own power, and the offered strength from my friends, and reached just a little farther and took what the others who had stayed didn’t know how to offer. Fear surged through a few of the new links, and those I let go as quickly as I could. The last thing I wanted to do was leave scars in my friends’ minds.

The remaining power I wove into a net, visualizing all the colors spinning together, shoring up weaknesses and sharing strengths. They bled together and knotted, becoming heavy in my hands. When I looked down I almost couldn’t tell where the net began and I left off. My skin had disappeared again, leaving me nothing but a network of power and strength, silver-blue oil-slick rainbows.

I wanted to stay like this forever. I could feel everything in Babylon: the healing, the fear, the confidence that I would make good my promise and take Cernunnos and his riders away from this place. Beyond that, between the blackness of the stars, I could feel other life, a tremendously deep hum that spread from one end of eternity to the other. It was the void that bound all the worlds, and I knew I could step out into it, explore it, with just the impulse to do so.

But Cernunnos was rolling to his feet, graceful again, though seeming tremendously slow. His broad shoulders shifted, weight coming forward, and I could feel his intent as clearly as if it were my own. Reaching his sword was first: after that he would turn on me and crush me like the mortal fool I was. I flung the net of power out from splayed fingers, not at where Cernunnos was, but at where he’d be.

He and the net came together in glorious slow motion, the vivid green of his power smashing into the woven silver tendrils of mine. Mine collapsed, not under his assault, but as it should, just like any perfectly ordinary net, tangling around him. He stumbled and crashed to the cobblestones, rolling as he struggled to get free. He thrashed his head, antlers ripping the net apart, but it wove back together as I clung to the idea of it.

“You won’t yield, I know that,” I whispered. “So I’ll drag you back, just like you’d have had to have done to me.” I pulled the rapier out of the stones with a whimper and forced myself upright without it. I was breathing through my teeth, every motion a jab of pain through my middle, but I felt absurdly attached to the need to do this without the pretense of physical support. I pulled the net in to myself, hand over fist, tightening it around Cernunnos until he was caught in an embrace tight as a lover’s.

I dragged him across the cobblestones, taking stumbling, half-running steps, afraid that if I stopped I would never be able to start again. I used my shoddy momentum and the borrowed strength of my friends to fling him over the haunches of his magnificent stallion. Then, with all the grace and arrogance I could manage, I swung up onto the stallion’s back myself. The sword hole running through me screamed. Cernunnos screamed.

The stallion held very still, his ears pinned back and tail snapping with disapproval, his teeth bared. I leaned forward, because sitting up hurt too much, and put my forehead against the crest of his mane. “Just bring me home, beautiful,” I whispered into the liquid silver hair. I stroked his neck, and lifted my head very slowly. Cernunnos’s fury was palpable, a living green thing that drove spikes out at me as he tried to free himself from the net. My head swam suddenly, blood loss and exhaustion crashing over me. I stretched one hand forward, whispering, “By candlelight, and back again.”

The candle flickered into being, a light to guide me out of Babylon with the Wild Hunt riding behind me.

I opened my eyes to a different sort of chaos. Three or four of the cops had collapsed and lay where they’d fallen. My shoulders slumped in dismay; I’d been trying not to hurt anyone. Voices were lifted all around, not quite shouting as paramedics swept in to examine the people who’d fallen.

Most of the group were still standing around me, with expressions ranging from surprise to fear. I could barely bring myself to look from one face to another, afraid to learn what people thought of me now. Billy looked tired but not frightened. That was something. Gary watched me with curious respect. He wasn’t beating the drum anymore.

And the Hunt swarmed around the mortals in the room, half-visible, like ghosts. I wasn’t the only one who could see them: Jen and Billy kept flinching as enormous horses and hounds slid through them.

Cernunnos, looking nearly as bad as I felt, was mounted on his stallion, forthright fury in the beautiful eyes. “I won, my lord master of the Hunt,” I croaked. Gary sat up straighter, looking to see to whom I was speaking.

“You won,” the god growled, “but this is not over yet, little shaman.” I wasn’t sure if I heard the words in my mind or my ears. The ease of speech in Babylon was already slipping from me.

I grinned very wearily. My body hurt from the fight, but the ache in my head had died away some. I couldn’t remember if I’d managed to heal myself while in Babylon, but maybe being a conduit for the kind of power I’d been using had some kind of positive effect. It was equally possible that I was horribly deluding myself, but I didn’t want to think too hard about it, for fear of making the pain start again. “Not quite yet,” I said to Cernunnos. “Who do you think will make it to your son first, me or you?”

“For the sake of thy world and thy soul,” Cernunnos said through fixed teeth, “thou hast best hope it is thyself. I would not wager on it, little shaman.”

“Not so little,” I protested. By now nearly everyone was staring at me, the bustle of moments earlier dissipated into expectant waiting. “I defeated a god in fair combat.” Was I out of my mind? Throwing his loss into his face? I wasn’t that good.

No: as I said the words, Cernunnos became a solid thing, every bit as real as the cops who’d been more prosaically visible all along. Thor the Thunder God said, “Holy shit,” and everyone still on their feet backed up against the walls.

Cernunnos filled the room. Had it not had the garage’s high roof, he’d never have fit. As it was, he took up all the air again, just as he had at the diner, his emerald eyes burning with anger so hot I thought I would burn. “Defeated, Siobhan Walkingstick,” he said in his velvet voice. I wondered if everyone else could understand him. “Defeated, but not dead. Your soul will be mine to collect before the midnight hour, gwyld.”

Gwjld. It was the word Marie had used. It meant shaman, or wise man, in Gaelic. That knowledge came to me, so I knew I was hearing Cernunnos in my mind again, his gift for breaching languages as strong a thing as Babylon had.

“Open the doors,” I whispered, turning my head toward Billy. “Open the garage doors. Let them go without the steel and concrete to harm them.”

The big cop frowned down at me. “You sure, Joanie?”

“I’m sure.” I didn’t dare take my eyes off Cernunnos. “He’s not—they’re not— meant to be bound by people like us. Let the Hunt go. Tonight they’ll be sent back home, anyway.”

There was, for a moment, respect in Cernunnos’s alien eyes. “You are a fool, gwyld,” he said.

“Everybody’s got problems,” I said with a tiny shrug. “Tonight, my lord master of the Hunt.”

“Tonight.” Cernunnos turned his massive stallion in the small confines of the room. He ducked as he left through the door. The host followed him, the sound of hooves ringing loud on the concrete floor as they faded away, leaving a silent and awestruck police force behind.

CHAPTER 27

It took a minute to trust that I could get up. Gary took the rapier away from me and slung it over his shoulder, then offered me a hand. “You’re gonna poke somebody’s eye out with that thing,” I said as he pulled me to my feet. He glanced at the blade, bushy eyebrows lifted, and lowered it to lean against his leg instead.

“Just helping Darwin along. Now what, boss?” He tilted his head at the dispersing cops. Few of them wanted to look at me. Part of me wanted to be a fly on the wall to hear the gossip for die next few hours. More of me wished my life was still normal, like it had been a mere seventy-two hours earlier. Yeah, well, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. I patted myself down, seeing if there was any part of me that hurt too much to ignore. There wasn’t, although I could feel the ball of energy inside me fizzling out. You want your car analogies. Talk