I inhaled, tasting my own sorrow in the dreamland. “All my friends,” I said quietly. “If you think taking their lives will weaken me, you’re wrong. If that’s why you’re choosing them to take life force from, let me tell you, it’s not going to work. Not any more than me threatening your people with annihilation would keep you from fighting. You’re putting me in a position where I’ve got nothing to lose, Begochidi.”
Mark turned his face away, almost submissive action, and for one bright moment I had hope. There didn’t have to be an end-all, be-all battle. We could work it out with words.
And then something happened in his eyes, something deep and profound that turned them to agate blue, like Barbara’s. The color of a hard desert sky. My jaw set and I let the Sight film over my own vision, looking to See what I suspected.
I hated being wrong, but there were days I hated being right even more.
CHAPTER 34
Mark’s aura was no longer split. The full spectrum of rainbow colors bled out so sharply it hurt to look at, throbbing and pulsing with power. There were no empty razors of blackness between the brilliant shades, nothing suggesting a weakness. Then again, it wasn’t really Mark. It wasn’t even Barbara, and I had no idea what had happened to her, if Begochidi had consolidated his energy to the dreamlands. The image of her collapsed somewhere wasn’t entirely unappealing, though I knew that was petty and nasty and should be scrubbed from my brain. I’d scrub it later.
Assuming there was a later.
Two attacks. One emotional, trying to trap me in a dream, the other intellectual, trying to weigh me down with implacable logic. The lingering burn in my throat felt tied to the dissipated ache in my wrist, the talismans Gary had girded me with reminding me of what they protected. My heart. My head, which was, for all intents and purposes, where I thought of my soul as residing. That left one obvious method of attack.
I snatched Cernunnos’s sword from my hip and flung up my free hand as if I bore a shield, just as Mark gathered his hands in to his chest, then released them in a burst of winged color. Butterflies swarmed over me, parting with such force as they hit my shield and sword that I felt the reverberations up my arm and through my body.
They were a distraction, nothing more. In the instant they cleared I saw that Mark had disappeared, dreamtime swallowing him as if he’d never been. Swallowing him as effectively as he’d absorbed Coyote. My heart lurched, painful missed beat, and I tightened my hand around the rapier’s hilt. It would not do to keep thinking of him as Mark. This was Begochidi I faced, a god wrapped in a sandy-haired man’s form. I lowered my blade and my shield arm, casting out with hyper-natural senses to see if I could locate Begochidi in the darkness.
A rainbow of color hammered down on me, grasping the narrow threads I put out and draining their silver-blue dry. I reeled back, and lifted my sword again. Begochidi’s assault faded away again, as if he couldn’t attack directly unless I provided him with a power line to feed on, or find me by. I hoped so. I thought that meant he wasn’t drawing any more from the people in Seattle who slept beneath his spell.
A net had done nicely to catch the god of the Hunt. It seemed more than a little ironic that it wouldn’t work on a butterfly god. On the other hand, standing here sending out dribbles of power until he sucked all the life force out of me wasn’t exactly the best plan I’d ever come up with. I took a moment to wonder if there was some kind of handbook on how best to fight powerful otherworldly beings, or if I was going to be stuck making the best of it every time I faced one. I was pretty sure I’d be stuck. That seemed excruciatingly unfair.
On the other hand, maybe it meant the powerful otherworldly beings didn’t have any idea how to fight me, either. The thought cheered me, and I found myself doing like I’d seen in the movies, banging my sword against my shield to call my enemy out. It was only then that I noticed I was in fact carrying a shield, that the purple heart Gary had pinned to my breast had become a small round shield, quartered by a cross, clutched in my left hand. I had no idea how to fight with a sword and shield. I was going to have to go back to fencing lessons, and see if Phoebe could teach me.
Right after I took some names and kicked some godly butt.
I smashed my sword and shield together again, letting out a yell. “Hey! C’mon! You’re going to have to do this the hard way, Begochidi! I’m not going to stand here and spoon-feed you power. You want me, come and get me!” I liked shouting things like that. It made me feel all studly and stuff.
Unfortunately, it also got the god’s attention. He hadn’t been hanging around in the dark waiting for me to lure him out with power, after all. He’d been off stage for a costume change, and nobody’d told me whether I got to have one or not.
On the positive side, he no longer looked like Mark. All the sandiness was gone from his hair, leaving it bright and golden as sunlight, so shadows seemed to slip away from it unnoticed. His eyes were cornflower blue, so mild as to be intense, and his features were strong and regular and handsome, like Aztec paintings had been modeled after him. He was bare-chested and wore a cloak of emerald and violet and sapphire, butterfly patterns woven into the vivid colors so beautifully that when he moved it looked like the cloak flowed with life. He wore leggings with a loincloth over them, and his feet were bare. He carried a massive feathered spear in his left hand. The entire ensemble looked as if it were meant to impress and intimidate.
It worked.
I looked down at myself. Jeans. A button-down shirt with three-quarters length sleeves. Tennies. Impressive I was not. On the other hand, I felt my singular lack of impressiveness gave me license to skip the posturing that he appeared to be going through—he’d stopped and stood there impassively to let me admire his glory—so when I looked up again, it was with a lunge that brought my rapier point a hair from his belly. I actually saw the inhalation that kept me from drawing blood, and an instant later when I met his eyes there was a mixture of outrage and astonishment in his expression. Come to think of it, Cernunnos had looked a lot like that when I’d fought him, too. Gods were apparently not accustomed to mere mortals taking the fight to them.
I stopped having any time to continue my entertaining internal commentary right about then, and started trying to keep myself alive.
Begochidi, unlike the last god I’d fought, didn’t have any inclination toward seducing me, or persuading me in any manner. Or, I thought, given the dreams and visions I’d had, he’d tried and failed, so killing me was just fine, no holds barred. He slapped the spear up so the length of it followed his arm, and swept it around with massive grace. I skittered backward, holding my own breath to keep from being sliced in half. My shirt ripped silently under the spear’s point, giving me an idea of just how sharp the metal head was, and just how much I didn’t want it to touch me. Surprise flashed across Begochidi’s handsome features, as if he’d expected me to hold still and be skewered.
I lunged forward again, six months of fencing classes overriding my brain. It was just as welclass="underline" muscle memory observed how he’d exposed himself without my mind consciously registering it. I brought my shield up to ward off his spear as he drew it back to strike again, a forward attack instead of a sweeping one. He’d taken the haft in both hands now, as if I’d moved up a notch from easy kill to respectable opponent. I parried, tangling our swords together, surprised to find that move actually worked in battle. Then I swung the shield around and clobbered him in his pretty face.