The scent became a shape. Like a man, but not. Too thick in the torso, the neck, the head. Antlers there, like the stag. Green eyes, not like the stag. Relentless gaze. No prey animal would lock eyes with me, the wolf, the quick and strong one. I made myself larger, ruff standing on end, and the stag-man said a word: “Enough.”
It made me small, that word. Made me quiver. Made my bladder tighten and made me lie down with only the tip of my tail moving. Pleading for forgiveness. I did not understand. The stag-man should be prey. Should be afraid. Should be careful.
I rolled onto my back and stretched my throat long for the second time, but this time in submission, and didn’t know why.
The stag-man knelt beside me and took my fur in his hand. Over my throat, squeezing, pressing, warning as he whispered, “Foolish shifter. Do you think you frighten me? I am Cernunnos, god of the hunt, and you, foolish beast, are a hunter. You are mine, first and so long before you belonged to that thing they call the Master. You have made your allegiances, but never dream that I cannot still master you. Now release my shaman, foolish shifter, or I will destroy you here, in this place so close to your birth space that you will be called back and will never again see sunlight.”
He could. He would. I knew it in my bowels, in the way my tail curled between my legs in terror. But he couldn’t. Couldn’t destroy me without destroying her, the one who wasn’t wolf. My tail uncoiled a little, and the stag-god smiled. Sharp teeth in that smile. As sharp as mine. “It would be a shame,” he said, “but do not imagine her life is so unimportant that I would let a monster live in her place.”
The wolf whimpered and flowed away. Pain shot through me again and I lay there, Joanne-shaped, naked and with Cernunnos’s mouth half an inch from mine. Had his hand not also been crushing my windpipe quite so thoroughly, it would have been a supremely erotically charged moment. Good thing Morrison wasn’t here, which wasn’t something I often found myself thinking. “…thanks.”
Cernunnos raked a glance over me, ending with a smile so repressed that it obviously said, “Oh, anytime!” Without looking, and with consummate grace, he caught my coat in his free hand as Gary tossed it our way, and covered me with it in some semblance of modesty. I sat up to shove my arms in the sleeves, somewhere between dismayed and relieved that my left arm responded properly. It didn’t hurt anymore, either, but it was still shiny and infected-looking. Amputation was starting to sound like a viable option.
“You are damaged, my gwyld,” Cernunnos said, too softly for Gary to hear. I shot a “no duh” look between my arm and him, but he shook his star-filled hair. “More deeply than that wound can say. Pain remains in your soul, and until that pain is excised you will be susceptible to magics like this one. Shall I offer again?” He sounded almost lonely. “I offered once, Siobhán Walkingstick. Shall I offer again, to take away that pain?”
I closed the coat at my throat and shook my head. “I’d still say no. I have to. I’m sorry.”
“Then see to the wounds that scar you,” he advised. “Face them, Joanne. You cannot go on this way.”
I thought of my mother, of the few things we’d managed to say and all the ones left unsaid, and nodded. “I’m working on it.”
Without condemnation, he said, “Work harder,” and drew me to my feet. “She is yours to watch over now,” he told Gary, and my big buddy lumbered over to hand me my shirt and hug me.
“Thank you,” Cernunnos went on, still to Gary. “Had she not called you—”
“But I didn’t.” It was a terrible time to interrupt, but I honestly had no idea how Gary had arrived in the nick of time. “I needed the sword, I tried to call it, but…”
Cernunnos paused, looking at me, then waited on Gary, who spread his hands. “The fight was over, doll. Had been for a while. I was ridin’ with the Hunt when the sword went all blue and started fadin’. I held on as hard as I could, an’ next thing I know I was here and you looked like you could use some rescuin’.”
“All I had to do to get you back was call the sword?” I had not called the sword at least twice in the past day, thinking it out of reach. All that worry over Gary for nothing. I clicked my heels together a couple times and muttered, “There’s no place like home,” then exhaled and gestured to Cernunnos, giving the floor back to him.
He inclined his crown of horns toward me, then addressed Gary again. “Had she not called you, I could not have followed. This is not my place, this world below the world. I belong elsewhere.” He left us to crouch and collect Méabh’s lanky form. She didn’t move, didn’t even groan, which scared me, but I wasn’t about to risk another healing. Maybe Cernunnos could tell me someday if she’d made it. If he’d succeeded in bringing her to his world, and all the rest of her people with her.
As if he’d heard the thoughts, he said, “The sí are a gift to me, Joanne Walker. I could not have made this offer to them anywhere, anytime, else,” and I remembered that his memory worked in both directions.
I cracked a grimace meant to be a smile of relief. “You just kept me from howling down the roof and bringing the Master here. Let’s call it even.”
He nodded and gave me the brief, wicked look that made my heart go pitter-pat, then, Méabh in his arms, mounted his silver stallion and rode away again, sunset swallowing them whole.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I knelt by the smear of Méabh’s blood on the stones, fingertips just above it, not quite touching. There were ridges of dust in it already: some white, some black. I hadn’t even seen Gancanagh die. It was probably just as well. I didn’t think I’d have handled seeing Morrison fall very well. Still, it seemed like I’d owed him that much, even if Méabh and I had been trying to kill each other over him.
Gary came to stand beside me, a hand on my shoulder. “Pyrrhic victory, doll?”
I looked up, uncomprehending, and he said, “Me in exchange for her?”
“No. Jesus, no, don’t ever think that. They—she, but they, somebody else died, too—they were gone before you showed up. And you saved my life. No. I just…” I glanced back down at the blood, thinking I ought to have tears. I ought to be able to cry. Somehow I was just too tired, right then. “What happened to you? I lost you. I thought I wasn’t going to get you back. Did you win the fight?”
He said, “We won,” with an odd note. I looked up again and he shook his head. “I’ll tell you about it later. Point is, the cauldron got bound, and that was the whole reason for doin’ it, right? Now, look, Jo,” he went on before I could answer. His hand slid off my shoulder, an accusing finger pointed at my arm. “I know you said you could shapeshift now, but that ain’t good. What’s goin’ on with you?”
I sighed. “I got bit by a werewolf.”
His voice went suspiciously neutral. “When?”
I sighed again. “Saturday night. Sunday morning. Right before I got on the plane, anyway.”
“Mike know ’bout this?”
Never in a thousand years was I going to get used to Morrison being referred to as Mike. “No.”
“Joanne Grace Wa—” Gary’s register went up like an outraged parent’s, and almost idly, beneath the scold, I said, “Siobhán.”
“She—what?”
It didn’t seem quite possible that Gary, to whom I usually confessed all, was the last of my close friends to learn my proper name. People had been using it all day, in front of him even, but I kind of suspected it had been a lot more than one day for Gary, and that he’d probably had other things to worry about than what names people were calling me by. So I said, “Siobhán Grainne MacNamarra Walkingstick,” mostly to the sparkling mess on the floor. “My name’s not Joanne Grace, it’s Siobhán Grainne, which is more or less the Irish version of Joanne Grace. I just figure if you’re going to read me the riot act you might as well do it with all guns at your disposal.”