Coyote Dreams

I lifted my eyes and met Barbara’s gaze square on, totally unsurprised that she could see me. Her mouth pinched, eyes tightening, and her shoulders went back. Not with shock, but preparation. Even knowing that for some reason she was only at half strength, watching the changes in her body language sent the primitive lizard part of my brain running screaming into the dark recesses of my mind. I didn’t know what exactly Morrison’s new lover was, but I was very sure I didn’t want her to hit me.

A very small blossom of rage opened up inside me and I realized that more to the point, I didn’t want her to hit him. I felt my lip curl as I leaned forward, literally bracing myself against whatever onslaught she had prepared.

Time went desperately weird.

It went still all around me, worse than the slowed-down clarity of a fight. It froze, as if I’d be able to see raindrops hanging in the air. Barbara’s breathing stopped, though there was no flatness in her eyes that bespoke death. I couldn’t tell if I did the same, because I wasn’t sure I even breathed when I left my body.

I hadn’t been particularly aware of my body for the last several seconds, though I knew in a clinical sense it was out there standing on Morrison’s front porch. Having now spared it a thought, I could almost feel the memories of the past few moments pouring through it, as if it was catching up on details of a movie it hadn’t been paying attention to. Everything rewound, a blur of silence and images, until I’d reamalgamated with myself and all my memories and awareness were in one place, back there on the porch.

I snapped forward again.

This time it hurt, a concussive smash into—

—the future. The present. For a bewildering instant I wasn’t sure where or when I was anymore. Morrison’s kitchen floor was hard under my knees, my body having joined its spirit, apparently without bothering to travel the distance separating the two. My ears rang with a disrupted song of power, jangling noise fading away even as I noticed it. I felt like there were eddies swirling off my skin, as if I’d become a sticking point in a river and that river had briefly bent to my will.

I still saw with the Sight, but ordinary vision lay beneath it, picking up details that hadn’t been important to my projected self. The lingering scent of meat and tomatoes was in the air, reminding me I hadn’t eaten for hours. The dishes hadn’t been done, a frying pan sitting on the stove. I wondered if they’d come back to Morrison’s for dinner after my little display at the restaurant. Streetlamps colored the walls through big windows, no lights on inside.

My outstretched hand now rested on Morrison’s chest, no longer just beneath the surface of his skin. Barbara’s hand, warm and sweaty, lay on top of mine. My own skin shimmered with the silver-sheened rainbow slick of power, but not translucently. And Barbara was breathing again, time loosing its hold on her. Fury glinted in her eyes as she recognized that time had hiccupped, and she drew breath to spit something at me.

I twisted my right hand up to grab her wrist, and brought my left fist around in a roundhouse blow that caught her squarely in the teeth.

With all due modesty, I really think she’d have gone flying if I hadn’t had a grip on her wrist. As it was, the weight of her body pulled me forward as she recoiled. If I hadn’t had thirty pounds on her, I’d have flopped ignominiously across Morrison’s chest. Some rescue that would’ve been.

Although as far as rescues went, this one pretty much sucked, because Morrison wasn’t waking up. I tensed my stomach muscles and surged to my feet, hauling a dazed Barbara with me. I let go of her wrist and knotted both hands in her shirt before she got her feet under her, and discovered I could actually pick her up far enough that her feet dangled just above Morrison’s chest. There was a certain amount of genuine glee involved in whirling around and slamming her up against a wall so I could yell, “What the hell are you?” into her face. I felt like an action hero.

She got enough focus back to stare at me, which I thought was a good sign. Then she smashed her head forward into the bridge of my nose, which wasn’t nearly as good a sign. I dropped her, yowling with pain, and she slithered down the wall. Women, especially cute petite women, weren’t supposed to head-butt people. Girls like me, who stood almost six feet tall, could head-butt in a fight. That was okay. Little women were supposed to shriek and flail and use their fingernails, not their foreheads.

I bet Phoebe would kick my ass just for thinking that. In something like my defense, instead of kneeing me in the crotch, which is what I would’ve done if I’d been her, Barbara dropped to hands and knees and scrambled around my legs while I swore as violently as I could. It didn’t help my nose any, but it made me feel better enough to turn around and deliver a swift kick to Barbara’s ribs. She lifted up a gratifying few inches and went over on her back to land on Morrison’s shins with an oomf! I wanted to take a minute and fix my nose so tears would stop blinding me, but Barb rolled off Morrison and staggered to her feet, reaching toward the counter for support.

Wrong-o, Joanne, I heard myself think, far too brightly. Barb’s actions telegraphed through tear-blurred vision just an instant before she completed them. The counter wasn’t her goal. The frying pan on the stove was. She slung it at me, marinara sauce splattering everywhere. I flung up my arms with another yell, crossing them in front of my face.

The impact bounced off my arms hard enough to leave a bone bruise. I shouted again, half in anticipation of burns than the immediate pain of the pan crashing into my arms. It took a good three seconds to realize there wasn’t any accompanying singeing of my arms or thick boiling liquid dripping down me. I squinted one eye open to discover a sheen of blue-tinged power dancing over my skin, my mental shields made manifest in reality. Only very belatedly did I realize the sauce wasn’t hot, anyway, but had it been, I’d managed to protect myself.

It was the second time that had happened, but this time a sudden crash took place between my ears. I remembered one very long tiring night where Coyote coaxed those shields out, exhausting my brain with the idea of sheltering my whole body in shielding when I thought it was hard enough to protect my mind.

I also remembered falling asleep in English class the next day, with one ear half listening to a discussion on Hamlet. The teacher, suspecting me of sleeping, had called on me and I’d sat upright blurting, “Polonius!” without the foggiest conscious idea of what was being discussed. The teacher’s irate expression and a sense of smugness on my part still lingered, so I knew I’d been right.

I muttered, “Thou canst not then be false to any man,” as I lowered my arms, shielding still washing over my body protectively. I was starting to think the old windbag might’ve been on to something, which would have gratified my English teacher to no end.

To my complete astonishment, the same cool blue protection danced over Morrison, who was almost as liberally spattered with sauce as I was. Once I’d seen it, I could feel the stretch in my mind that said I was maintaining the mental shielding. The connection went deeper than I’d thought, and I had the sudden uncomfortable sensation that I might not be able to undo it.

It didn’t matter, at least not for the moment. Without the shields I could provide, Morrison’s life force would be drained away in very little time, so undoing the thing was out of the question. I wondered, briefly, if other people were as vulnerable as the captain was, and thought it unlikely. For one thing, people I knew would be dying in droves, if it were so. For another, I was pretty certain I’d been right in what I’d told Morrison: it was those I had the deepest emotional connections with who were in the most danger. I guessed it was lucky for Seattle in general that I didn’t have many close friends, or deep hatreds. I’d done what I could with more casual acquaintances with the topaz pieces, and would have to hope they’d work.

Topaz.

I could kill Morrison for giving away that topaz.

My attention came back up to Barbara, who stood by the stove looking very human and confused, so much so that my heart went out to her. I knew that look. I felt like I’d spent an awful lot of time with it on my face. I was actually putting my hand out to her, like I might offer some kind of comfort, when whatever uncertainty had surfaced was swallowed whole again, and Barb sprang across Morrison’s body at me, her hands clawed.

That was more what I expected from a chick. I braced myself, but not enough, and her weight drove me over backward into Morrison’s kitchen table. I heard wood splinter and the smooth surface lurched downward beneath us while Barbara skimmed her lips against her teeth and hissed from the back of her throat. I grabbed her wrists and rolled, crashing off the table into the chairs. More wood splintered, and I wondered how I was going to explain the remains of the kitchen when Morrison woke up.

If Morrison woke up.