Urban Shaman (3 page)

“No, wait.”

Gary sighed, exasperated, and leaned against a pew, arms folded across his chest. Seventy-three or not, he made a pretty impressive wall of a man. “Then do your thing and find the broad.”

I looked at him. “My thing?”

“You got some kinda thing going on here, lady. Normal people don’t stick their heads out a plane window and see dames that need rescuing. So do your thing and rescue her. My meter’s still running.”

Oh, God. It probably was, too. “Hope you take credit cards.” I walked to the front of the church and around the pulpit.

I really, honest-to-God, expected to see the woman cowering in the back side of the pulpit. That she wasn’t came as a shock. “Well, shit.”

“What? You find your body after all?” Gary shoved off his pew and came long-legging it up to the front.

“No, you ghoul. There’s nobody here. I really thought she would be.”

“I’ll cut you a break and won’t expect a tip, just for the satisfaction of being right.” He leaned on the pulpit, grinning whitely at me. I had the sudden urge to pop him in those nice straight clean teeth. It must have shown in my face, because his grin got even wider. “You wanna try it?”

“No,” I said sourly. “I think you’d break me in half.”

“Only a little bit.”

“Gee. Thanks.” I backed up a couple steps and leaned on the edge of the…hell if I know what it’s called. Looked like an altar to me. All gilded and dour. It had probably never been introduced to a woman’s behind in its whole existence. Or maybe it had been. You always heard stories about the priest who’s a pillar of the community but turns out to be having affairs with half the congregation. Seemed to me if you’re going to sin, you might as well do it right. On the altar would be a nice big sin. “I thought she’d be here.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Churches are supposed to be sanctuary, or something. I thought she’d be safe in here. Consecrated ground.”

“What century are you living in, lady?”

“The wrong one, I guess.” I thumped on the edge of the altar, annoyed.

The top slipped.

I leaped off it like it had bitten me. Gary’s bushy
eyebrows went up. We both stared at the inch-wide crack at the edge of the box where the lid had pushed back. “You don’t believe in vampires, do you, Gary?”

“God damn it,” he said, “I was trying
real
hard not to think that way.”

“Kind of fits, though, doesn’t it? Scary-looking church, big old crypt in the middle, the living dead ris—”

“It’s past dawn,” Gary said hastily. “No vampires after dawn. Right?”

“There’s no such thing as vampires, Gary.”

He stared at me dubiously. I stared at the crypt dubiously. Funny how a second ago it had been an altar and now it was a crypt. “Well?” he demanded. “Are you gonna look in it?”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“As soon as I get up the nerve.”

He prodded me in the small of my back, pushing me forward. I admired the resistance in my body. I felt like he was trying to move a me-shaped lead weight. I expected to hear my feet scraping along with the sound of metal ripping up hardwood. Instead, I stumbled half a step forward, then glared over my shoulder at Gary. “You’re a big strong man. Aren’t you supposed to be plunging into danger before me?”

“You’re forty-seven years younger than me, lady,” he pointed out. “And almost as tall as I am. And you’re in my weight class. And it’s
your
vampire in the coffin.”

“I am
not
in your weight class,” I said, offended.
“You’ve got to outweigh me by at least forty pounds.” I edged a quarter of a step closer to the crypt. “And it’s not a vampire.”

“How much do you weigh?”

“Isn’t it rude to ask a woman how much she weighs?”

“Nah, it’s rude to ask how old she is, and I already know.”

Oh. Damn. I stepped forward, holding my breath. The crypt didn’t do anything. “I weigh one seventy-two.”

“No shit?”

“I’m almost six feet tall, Gary, what do you want me to weigh, a hundred and thirty? I’d be dead.” I peeked into the little hole the lid made where it had slid over. If there was a vampire in there, it was a very small, very hidden vampire. Or maybe it blended with shadows well. Vampires were supposed to do that, weren’t they?

I was scaring myself. “Give me a hand with this.”

Gary crept forward. “I outweigh you by sixty pounds.”

“That’s why you’re a linebacker, and I’m not. Push on three. One, two, three!”

I underestimated how much push we could provide. The lid shot off the box, crashing to the floor with a thud that rattled the rafters. I fell forward, shrieking, with visions of being sucked dry by vampires supplied by my too-vivid imagination.

Halfway into the crypt, I was met by another shrieking woman on her way out.

M
y head hit the floor with a crack only slightly less impressive than the crypt lid had made. My vision swam to black, and my tailbone decompressed like a series of firecrackers. I wouldn’t need to visit the chiropractor after all.

Vision returned in time to see something bright and glittery arching down at me. I flung my hand up, barely deflecting the fall of a knife. My wrist hit the woman’s with the solid thunk that meant a week from now, after I’d forgotten this had happened, a bone bruise would color half my arm. The woman’s grip loosened and the knife glanced off my cheekbone instead of driving into my throat. I hit her again, and the knife skittered away, bouncing across the hardwood floor.

The woman shrieked again—or maybe she hadn’t
stopped—and scrambled after the knife. I tackled her, flinging my arms around her. Her white blouse suddenly stained red where my cheek pressed against it.

Gary pulled her out from under me and to her feet, pushing her elbows in against her waist and holding her still. His hands looked bizarrely large in proportion to her waist. She winced and hissed, her head down as I got up unsteadily and touched my face. Blood skimmed over my fingertips and into my palm, coloring in the lifeline. I watched vacantly as it trailed all the way around the side of my hand and down my wrist. My face didn’t hurt. It seemed like it should.

“You got lucky,” Gary said. “She was gonna cut your throat right out. What should I do with her?”

I looked up, startled and vacant. “Oh, fer Chrissakes,” he said, “You’re shocky, or somethin’. Get something to stop the bleeding.”

That seemed like a pretty good idea. I looked around, silver catching my eye again. The knife she’d cut me with lay against the foot of a pew, a nice heavy butterfly knife. I picked it up and cut a piece off the altar banner, holding it to my face while Gary asked again what to do with the woman.

“Um,” I said, and
then
my face started to hurt. For a minute I was too busy blinking back tears to give a damn what Gary did. I croaked, “Hold her for a minute,” and tried increasing the pressure on my cut to see if it helped the pain any. It didn’t. I looked up through teary eyes. It had to be the same woman. She had hip-length dark brown hair with just enough curl to make me covet it. “You’re the one I saw from the airplane.”

She lifted her head to look at me, eyes wide. I dropped my hand from my face and the makeshift bandage fell to the floor as I gawked at her.

She was beautiful. Not your garden-variety pretty girl, not your movie-star kind of beautiful. She was the sort of beautiful that Troy had gone to war over. High, fragile cheekbones, delicate pointed chin, absolutely unblemished pale skin. Long-lashed blue eyes, thin straight eyebrows. A rosebud mouth, for God’s sake. There were very fine lines of pain around the corners of her mouth and eyes, and the nostrils of her perfectly straight nose were flared a little, none of which detracted from her beauty.

“Jesus.” I suddenly had a very good idea of why she’d been chased.

“What?” Gary demanded. I just kept ogling the woman. She had a perfect throat. She had great collarbones. She had Mae West curves, too, a real hourglass figure. She was at least eight inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter than I was. It said something for her momentum that she’d knocked me flat on my ass. I didn’t think I could have knocked Gary over, if I’d been her and he’d been me.

I hated her.

I was so busy staring and hating her it took a while to notice there was drying blood on her shirt, not just the new stuff I’d put there, but sticky, half-dried brown spots. “Shit. Let her go, Gary.”

“What?”

“Let her go. Her arms are all cut up. You’re hurting her.”

Gary let go like his hands were on fire. The woman made a small sound and folded her arms under her breasts, shallow gashes leaking blood onto her shirt again. I expected her voice to be musical, dulcet tones, with an exotic accent. Instead she was an alto who sounded like she was from Nowhere In Particular, U.S.A. “You saw me from an airplane?”

People kept saying that. I took a breath to respond and realized I didn’t feel like I needed to throw up anymore. The twist of sickness in my belly had disipated. My shoulders dropped and I let the breath go in a sigh. I wasn’t a fan of my innards guiding my actions. Now all I had to do was explain myself so I could go get fired and go home to sleep. “At about seven this morning. I was flying in from Dublin.” As if that had anything to do with anything. “I saw you running, and something was after you. Dogs, or something. And a guy with a knife.” I looked at the knife I was still holding. “This knife? How’d you get past him? How’d you get away from the dogs?”

“I ran away from the dogs,” the woman said, “and I kicked the guy with the knife in the head.”

Gary and I both stared at her. She smiled a little bit. A little bit of a smile from her was like spending a little bit of time with Marilyn Monroe. It went a long way. “I guess I don’t look like a kickboxer,” she said.

“That’s for damned sure,” Gary mumbled. He looked even more awed than I felt. I guessed it was nice to know some things didn’t change even when you hit your eighth decade. “So how’d you get all cut up?” he asked.

She shrugged a little. “I had to get close enough to kick him.”

“That his tooth out there?”

Her whole face lit up. “I knocked a tooth loose?” She looked like a little kid who’d just gotten her very own Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. I almost laughed.

“You knew him? Why was he chasing you?” Even as I asked, I knew the question was idiotic. Men have hunted people down for much less attractive prizes. I
liked
being tall. Next to this woman I felt as ungainly as a giraffe.

“Why did you come to save me if you don’t know who he is?” she asked at almost the same time. We stared at each other.

“Let’s start again,” I said after a long moment of silence. Then I had no idea where to start with someone who’d been attacked and who just tried to cut my throat out. Names seemed like a good place. “I’m Joanne Walkingstick.”

It’s physically impossible to look at your own mouth in astonishment. I gave it a good shot. I hadn’t called myself by that name in at least five years. More like ten. Gary raised his bushy eyebrows at me curiously.

“You don’t look like an Indian,” he said, which really meant, “How the hell did you end up with a last name like Walkingstick?” I’d heard it for the first twelve years of my life.

“I know.” I hadn’t known that a practiced tone of controlled patience could lie in wait for the next time it was needed, but there it was. It hadn’t been needed
for years. It meant I wasn’t going to say anything else, and if you wanted to make a big deal of it, you’d end up in a fistfight.

I was good at brawling.

Gary, the linebacker, let the tone blow right over him and stayed there with his arms folded and eyebrows lifted. The woman studied me through drawn-down eyebrows. It made a wrinkle in the middle of her forehead. On me, that wrinkle was scary. On her, it was cute. I hated her some more.

Gary was wrong, anyway. I did look Indian. My coloring was wrong, but in black-and-white photos I looked like I didn’t have a drop of Irish blood in me. I’d changed my last name to Walker when I turned eighteen and graduated from high school. Nowhere official. I just filled out every piece of paperwork, even the diploma application, with Walker. My birth certificate was the only piece of paper I owned that had Walkingstick as my official last name.

“My name is Marie D’Ambra,” the woman said.

“You don’t look Italia—” I nearly bit my tongue off.

“Adopted,” she replied, amusement sparkling in her eyes.

Oh. “My mother was black Irish,” I said after a moment. “I got her coloring.” It seemed like a fair exchange of information. “Why was that guy after you? What was
chasing
you? It didn’t look like a dog pack. Exactly.”

Marie inclined her head. It looked gracious. How did she do that? “It wasn’t. His name is Cernunnos, and he is the leader of the Wild Hunt. It was the Hunt who chased me. Why did you come to help me?”

I looked sideways at Gary, who shrugged almost imperceptibly. I wouldn’t think a guy with shoulders that wide could shrug imperceptibly. It should be more like plate tectonics. I hoped I was in that kind of shape when I was seventy-something. Marie waited patiently, and I shrugged more perceptibly. I really didn’t want to say, “I felt like I was going to puke if I didn’t,” but I heard myself saying it anyway. I curled a lip, shook my head, and added, “You looked like you needed help. I felt like I had to try to find you.”

One half of her mouth curved up in a smile. I stopped hating her. I couldn’t hate a smile like that. Her smile made the world seem like it would all be okay. “A
gwyld
at the crossroads,” she murmured, and I frowned at her.

“A what?”

She shook her head and did the wonderful half smile again. “Nothing. I’m sorry for cutting you. I thought you had to be one of Cernunnos’s people. I couldn’t imagine why anyone else would be looking for me.”

“One of his people? Not him himself?” That sounded wrong. “He himself.”

Marie shook her head. “Christian earth. Even Cernunnos can only stand on it a few minutes. None of the Hunt can at all.”

I looked at Gary. Gary looked at me. We both looked at Marie. She smiled the tight little smile of someone who knows she sounds crazy. It made me feel better. “This isn’t the best place to talk about this,” she said.

“Why not? You just said the guy who was after you can’t come here,” Gary said.

“No, but he can send people who can,” I said before Marie could. She nodded. “If he couldn’t, she wouldn’t have thought we might be trouble.” I touched my cheek gingerly. It was still bleeding. “An emergency room might be a good place to go. This is going to need stitches, and you should get looked at, too.”

Marie extended her arms, palms up. Half a dozen cuts still oozed red as she looked at them. She looked like a clumsy suicide attempt. “They’ll heal,” she said dismissively. “He knows I was hurt. I’d rather not go somewhere so obvious.”

“You’d rather
bleed?
” I demanded. Gary cleared his throat.

“I got a first-aid kit in the car.”

I glared at him. He smiled and shrugged. “Sure,” I said, “the pretty one whose face isn’t cut up gets her way. Fine.” I stomped off the dais, picking the butterfly knife up off the pulpit. It made a satisfying series of clicks as the blade and handles slapped against each other when I closed it.

“Hey. That’s mine.” Marie had to take two steps to every one of mine, even after she ran to catch up with me.

“Not anymore, it isn’t. Call it a finder’s fee.”

“You didn’t find it.”

“I found you.” I shoved the knife into my waistband. Two steps later the elastic shifted and the knife slid down my leg and out of my pants, clattering to the floor. Gary choked back a guffaw and Marie grinned broadly.

I picked up the knife with as much dignity as I could muster and stalked out of the church.

I thought going into a diner all bloody and bandaged was more conspicuous than going to an emergency room, but Marie insisted. Gary butterfly-bandaged my cheek and wrapped up Marie’s arms while I sulked. As a gesture of peace he turned the meter off, but my face hurt too much for me to be grateful.

I dragged a coat out of my carry-on and pulled it on over my bloody T-shirt as we went into the diner. Marie walked in like she was daring the world to comment on her bloodstains. No one did. We sat down, silent until the waitress brought us our drinks. I didn’t know what it was about food, but it always seemed to make it easier to talk.

Marie folded her hands around an enormous glass of orange juice. I had a coffee. Actually, this being Seattle, I didn’t have just a coffee, even at a cheap diner. I had a grande double-shot latte with a shot of amaretto. Just the smell of the stuff got me high.

“Cernunnos leads the Wild Hunt,” Marie said to her orange juice. “They ride to collect the souls of the dead.” She looked up to see if that cleared things up for us. Gary just waited. He really was having a regular black coffee. I didn’t even know they made that anymore. He’d ordered breakfast, too. I was hungry, but between adrenaline and no sleep, I was pretty sure food would just come back up again. Now that I thought about it, the injection of caffeine probably wasn’t such a great idea on that combination. Food would have been better.

“You ain’t dead,” Gary pointed out. Marie winced, producing a pained smile.

“An oversight.”

“Fill in us dumb ones,” I said. “What’s a wild hunt?”

“
The
Wild Hunt,” she corrected.

“Okay,
the
wild hunt. What is it?”

She sat back, her hands still wrapped around the orange juice glass. She hadn’t drunk any yet. “Cernunnos was an old Celtic god,” she said slowly. “When Christianity came to Ireland and Britain, his cult was so powerful that it took a while for it to die out. And it never entirely faded.”

“Like any pagan religion,” I interrupted. Marie lifted her eyes to look at me. The muscle in my shoulder blade twitched again and I shrugged, trying to loosen it. “The Peop—the Cherokee still practice their old ways, too. Faith is hard to stomp out.” The People. Walkingstick. What was wrong with me?