Seawitch (31 page)

Mute from lack of breath and the jabbing agony in my side, I shook my head. Behind her I could see the bubble of the overlapping worlds shivering as if some wind had touched it and I thought we were about out of time. If I couldn’t break her power before the gateway collapsed, I wasn’t sure that we’d ever leave.

The sea witch bared her jagged teeth at me and I could see the wisps of ghosts drawn to her through the ether of the Grey, streaming like mist filled with faces that screamed in panic and pain before flowing into her. She threw her arms upward; the sea rushed up, too, and then rained back down in torrents of red as the sky seemed to catch fire. Fish and firelit water pelted back down and I cringed, still holding the bell to my chest. Beyond the end of the dock full-on war raged in the heaving waters of the cove.

Holding on to the bell with one hand and trying to steady the writhing Fielding with the other, I had no way to defend myself. I rolled on top of the bell, my broken rib stabbing at my side and sending dizzying pain through my chest. Jacque gestured and the air seemed to fill with small, voracious sea creatures that swam through the falling bloody rain to attack me, needle teeth biting into my face, hands, and the back of my neck. I could have swatted them aside with the barest effort, but that would have taken my hands off the bell or Fielding and I couldn’t risk either. Time seemed to jerk and start, coming and going in washes of blackness as I fought to stay conscious, and tingles of Quinton’s reflected adrenaline jolted across my nerves.

“I have him!” Solis shouted. I assumed he meant Fielding but I didn’t turn to look.

I shook off the biting things long enough to plunge my hands into the bell. The green energy net sizzled and burned against my skin, pulling a strangled whimper from my throat. This time they did not resist—I’d brought them to the right place and the right moment. I yanked at the magical restraints without plan or thought, ripping them aside so the ghosts spilled out, and the searing feel of the magic gusted away on a puff of bitter wind.

The ghosts of
Valencia
whirled around Jacque in a maelstrom of tormented faces that screamed and cried and spun her away from me. She fought them—or for them—grabbing at them and trying to clutch them to her chest or stuff them into her mouth, but they continually slipped away and soared, spinning upward to spread out in the dome of the bubble like a white cloud.

The ghosts screamed and sighed and wailed as they lashed past her, seeming to tear the strength from her in wisps that rose with them until they rushed upward, free. Their howls of horror and agony slid into shouts of joy at their escape as they touched the edge of the overlapping worlds and burst through the silver wall of ghostlight, sparking in the last rays of the sun.

As the last of them slipped out of her grasp, Jacque let out a scream that rose and shook until the edges of the worlds shook with it. The silvery bubble of the Grey collapsed with the sound of a gong reverberating across the water and the last impressions of the ghosts vanished into the darkness of the natural sky thickly spread with stars and smeared here and there with the smudges of summer clouds still holding the ruddy tinge of the sun that had already slipped below the horizon. It hadn’t felt like fifteen minutes had elapsed. . . .

But, against my hope, the sea witch was still here, or, more to the point, not
there
. The gateway had collapsed but she was here in the world—the normal world—and I didn’t have the ghost receptacles, which meant she still had power. I didn’t know why she was still here and not locked away again in her bubble of Otherplace, but I’d have to worry about it later as my mind threw out a stream of curses I didn’t have the breath to vent.

The sea witch threw herself at me, no words this time, no declarations of hate, only action meant to bring me down. As long as the other ghosts remained unclaimed she still had power, but she seemed too angry to use it and turned to her fists and teeth instead.

I dropped the bell and fought back, but I was slow and dizzy from the pain in my chest that seemed to be shutting down my ability to breathe, to focus, to see. . . . I struck back more by instinct than anything else, blind and desperate and flailing.

I managed to duck her next blow, diving to the deck and rolling forward, but the cost in black agony was high and I staggered, trying to rise again. I turned around as she flung herself at me with taloned hands outstretched, jaws opening improbably wide to bite at my face. I hopped sideways, falling as much as anything, and turning to get behind her, but she still managed to gouge a bit of waterproof nylon and flesh from my left arm as she whirled around.

I stifled a cry as the yellow slicker shed tears of my blood. She turned back and grinned as I lost my footing and landed hard with one knee against the wet dock boards. Then she darted forward again, swooping lower this time, knowing I could only go down to avoid her.

I knew Solis was somewhere behind me but I wasn’t sure how far away or if his hands were full. I couldn’t spare the attention to find out. I’d have to fend for myself. My vision was unfocused through tears that welled with the agony in my side and arm but I could still see her coming. I shoved my right hand into my pocket and hoped I wouldn’t pass out. . . .

She raked her hands toward my throat, scoring lines in my skin.

I fell flat backward, clutching the gun in my pocket and tilting it upward. I squeezed the grips and trigger, feeling the jolt and burn as the bullet ripped through the fabric, scattering burning residue and jetting hot gas against my hand in the confined hollow of my coat pocket.

She made a guttural sound as she passed over me, kicking, then turning with a jerk, unharmed. She was laughing. She stomped at my head and I rolled aside but she still connected. I screamed as her foot dug into my unbroken ribs, jarring the rest of my body and heaving me a short distance forward, where I folded into a half-fallen heap, unable to breathe or move out of her path, barely staying as upright and conscious as I was. I squeezed my eyes against the pain and tried to rise past my knees—I did
not
want to die again. Not now and especially not crushed down like a broken toy.

I could hear her moving closer, speaking, her voice rising with a wind that came to her call. Electricity hummed and crackled in the air, raising the hair on my neck and arms and prickling across my skin. I didn’t know any counters to this but to shut her mouth, and though I struggled to point the gun at her again, I couldn’t see her well enough between my pain and tears to be sure I would hit her.

There was a scrabbling sound behind her and the sea witch gasped, lunged down against me, then squealed and went limp, her weight shoving me all the way to the deck. I pushed her weakly aside and crawled away, turning my head to see why she had collapsed.

Panting and wiping red fluid from his face, Solis backed away from the crumpled, still body of the sea witch. The karambit, clutched in his fist, dripped blood from its claw-shaped blade.

Fielding yelped behind him and rolled onto his side, his shape shifting toward otter. Solis spun, the knife low and ready to take on whatever came next. Then he dropped it to the decking and dove after the mutating dobhar-chú. It eeled out of his grasp and bounded for the seaward end of the dock. Solis scrambled to catch the creature but the odds seemed to be in Fielding’s favor.

I managed to pull my pistol out of my inner jacket pocket and from my prone position it wasn’t so hard to fire into the wooden planking just ahead of the fleeing otter. Pure dumb luck, I assure you, because I was shaking too hard for it to be anything else. Fielding skidded to a stop and looked around for another escape.

I gulped in a breath. “Don’t try,” I warned him. “I will shoot you. Next time. And damn to Father Otter.” I felt like I’d been steamrollered, but I must have been terrifying: still dangerous even flattened to the deck.

Fielding stayed, cringing, where he was and slowly shifted back to his human form. “I’m sorry. Please don’t shoot me. I won’t run.”

I glanced up at Solis and watched him turn to collect Fielding and bundle him into the boat.

I put my head down for a moment and lay on the wet dock until Solis returned to help me up. “That wasn’t fifteen minutes,” I whispered. “We failed.”

He shook his head and kept me moving forward. “Not yet.”

I staggered with him to the boat as he dragged the bell along. I tried not to look weak as a newborn until it was too late for Fielding to change his mind, but maybe no one cared, since I was sure I looked as helpless as I felt. I needed to stop making a habit of this sort of bravado, especially when my head was reeling and I was barely keeping my feet under me. I figured my luck was nearly over.

I oozed into the dinghy and literally sat on Fielding to keep him from shifting form all the way back to
Mambo Moon.

TWENTY-SEVEN

T
he waters of the cove fell still and silent as Solis guided the little boat back to the larger one. The surface no longer churned and there was no sign of the battling creatures of fur and fin, though I was sure they were somewhere. As we maneuvered to come next to
Mambo Moon
’s steps, I thought I heard a woman’s voice from the deck just out of view. Quinton, seeming prescient but probably just hearing the engine, leaned over the side and caught the line Solis tossed to him to help us tie up and come aboard. I needed a lot more help than I had when we left, and keeping Fielding in line had to be put in the hands of another.

The other being Father Otter, who jumped down into the dinghy as we left it and hauled Fielding out, fairly chasing him up on deck with sharp pinches and snaps of his teeth, reminiscent of the way he’d bitten and shaken the other dobhar-chú earlier when they were both in otter form. I was so startled to see Father Otter that I stared in bold silence as Quinton and Solis helped me on board and along the deck. But there was more yet to shock me: As we rounded the side and came onto the aft deck and into the glow of electric light shining from the cabin, I saw Shelly Knight standing beside the fish hold and talking to Paul Zantree—who was holding a slender, curved sword that was certainly not a pirate-show prop.

Shelly’s pale green hair swirled around her as if she were floating in water rather than standing on the deck in plain air. She was the same woman I’d seen in the photos and a few minutes before on the dock and yet she had changed dramatically—she glowed now and had a regal air, seeming taller and moving with ineffable grace. It appeared Zantree had lent her a bathrobe and that seemed a faintly ridiculous cover for such arresting beauty. Her skin reflected the light from the cabin like the surface of a pearl—a sheen of rose, green, and blue hovering over her exposed limbs and face. Her voice was very low but it cut through the creaking of the boat and the lapping of waves with the clear, quiet sound of water trickling over rocks, softly, gently wearing them away.

Zantree turned toward the commotion raised by Father Otter chivvying Fielding along and Fielding himself drew up short, taking a nasty smack across the head from Father Otter for doing so.

“Shelly,” Fielding breathed.

She gave him a cool glance, then looked past him to me as Quinton eased me into a chair. She pointed at a pile of barnacle-crusted objects at her feet with a finger tipped by a hooked white nail. “I believe these are what Gary was after. I’m sorry to have left you to confront my mother on your own but I knew the gateway would collapse soon and I had to take the chance that presented itself.”

Father Otter started forward, scowling, as if he meant to confront Shelly in some fashion.

Quinton put out his hand to restrain him. “Let’s not do that again,” he suggested.

Apparently things had been much livelier than I’d imagined here on
Mambo Moon
while Solis and I were in transit. I glanced at Quinton, who gave a tiny shake of his head. I wasn’t going to argue with his brush-off; all I really wanted was to fall into bed and sleep until I stopped aching.

Father Otter issued a guttural hiss, but took a half step back and made another ill-tempered snap at Fielding’s ear. Fielding flinched.

Shelly looked disgusted. “I won’t say I’m happy about the death of my mother,” she started, sending a quick glare at Solis, “but it is better for all of us that she’s gone. And I don’t need these, nor do I want them. Since I found Gary snooping around them and you had the
Valencia
’s bell on the dock, I assume it’s you who wants them. Though I suppose it could have been the dobhar-chú who sent him, trying to steal them and break my mother’s power.”

She gave Father Otter a dirty look. He curled his lip and gave a low growl in return.

I leaned back in my chair like a boneless thing, not caring how weak or impolite it might look—I hurt too much to play that game. “Why?” I asked, panting a little against the painful constriction of breath in my chest. “Don’t you need them?”

“No. When I realized how my mother’s power worked I went looking for something else. I knew how to make sure we weren’t closed in the cove again but I wasn’t going to do it for her sake—not after what she’d done to me. And now that she’s dead I can claim my own power; I don’t need this filthy stuff.”

“So the whole virgin thing . . .” I started, making a rolling gesture with my hand to encourage her explanation.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh . . . Mother . . .” She shook her head. “She couldn’t very well tell me I didn’t need her, could she? As long as I was a sheltered little fry, hidden away in her cove, she could control me and my magic. When I went outside, bad things happened and she used that to convince me to stay under her thumb. But I’m not stupid. I realized she had lied to me about power and about . . . your kind. I couldn’t and won’t do what she could do, but I can do my own tricks. I don’t need these,” she added, pointing again to the relics on the deck. She looked at Fielding. “And I don’t need you or anyone else to show me what I really am and what I can do for myself and my folk.”

Fielding looked stricken and moaned her name.

She sighed. “Oh, Gary. You’re such a selfish jerk. A pretty one, but still a jerk. My people have been devastated but we can survive—as long as we don’t have to fight our neighbors all the time. I could take you as a hostage, I guess, like some kind of royal insurance policy, but, frankly, I just don’t want you. If that makes Father Otter angry, we’ll have to find some other way to bring peace here. But you . . . ? I think we’d all be better off if you left.”

I cut in, trying to keep the conversation on track. “So, you can’t even use these?”

Shelly made a face and shook her head. “I could do that kind of magic but I won’t and I don’t want them here. They stir up bad feelings. Take them and do as you like.”

Father Otter inched forward and started to reach for one of the objects in the pile. Shelly sucked in a breath and made fists of her hands at her sides, as if she were restraining herself from slapping him away. I did it for her, though the movement sent a flare of nauseating pain through my chest and sides. Father Otter flinched and glared at me.

“Don’t. It won’t help you or your people and now is not the time to get greedy.” I turned back to Shelly. “You don’t plan on . . . using your siren wiles on other boats, do you?”

“No. Well . . . not that way. I might like an occasional frolic, but I have seen too much death and pain and I don’t have any taste for killing if I don’t have to.”

“Then I’ll thank you for giving these to me.” I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do with the things, writhing and foaming as they did with shadows and shades.

Solis glanced up from his watch. “Fifteen minutes,” he said.

I frowned. Fifteen minutes from what?

The surfaces of the objects on deck—bells and bottles, bowls and boxes—shimmered and sparked a moment; then the gleams of color that bound them fell away, unraveling like rope decayed to dust.

“Just touch them,” Solis added. “I think I’ve guessed it right.”

I bent forward like an arthritic old woman and brushed my fingertips over the nearest of the crusted trove—another bell, this one much smaller than
Valencia
’s and not as heavy, gleaming a bit of brass through its veil of seaweed and barnacles. A flood of silver mist and white light burst out of the bell, flashing for a moment into four images: two young women and two men. They let out a sob and a cry, then leapt for the night sky above us, spiraling away into the scattered starlight of the Milky Way’s spangled band.

I turned an amazed glance on Solis. “Everything balances out—we lost fifteen minutes the first time we rang the bell, so this time we had to regain it.”

“What about the bubble around the cove?”

“Why would ringing the doorbell count on that timer?”

It was loopy, but it made as much sense as anything else in the Grey and more than some things. “How did I miss that?”

He shrugged. “Busy.”

I suppose they would have responded as well to anyone, now that the spell was broken, but everyone seemed to have agreed it was my job to let the ghosts out of their shells. As uncomfortable as it was, I managed to creep to each of the receptacles and brush away the last remaining strands that held the souls of the drowned at bay. Each time they poured out and upward in swells of lambent mist and shimmering light, sighing and weeping, then crying out in joy and vaulting for the deepening night sky that stretched above us, pierced like black velvet with the brightness of stars. The river of the Milky Way, tipped for a while into our planet’s tilted, whirling view, seemed to grow brighter and thicker as the ghosts rushed away from their captivity into freedom. An uncanny wind blew them away in coils of silvery mist that turned a massive head in our direction just long enough for me to recognize the passing shape of the Guardian Beast shepherding the spirits of the dead onward. It didn’t pause to say thank you and the velocity of its passage rocked and shook the boat as easily as an autumn leaf. I got no sense that it cared the deed was done or done by me. The balance of power in the area had been leveled and that was all that concerned it. There was, indeed, nothing human or humane remaining in the Beast and I finally put that niggling thought away, relieved.

When the last spirit was no more than a memory of sound and light in our senses, I eased back into my chair once again, satisfied but struggling with my exhaustion and discomfort. I glanced at Shelly, who was still standing, looking up at the sky, smiling a bittersweet kind of smile.

It seemed wrong to break the moment but I had to. “I think . . . we’re done here,” I said.

She lowered her eyes to mine, her expression growing more grave and a touch sad. “I still need peace with the otter people.”

I glanced at Father Otter and she took that as I meant it; it wasn’t up to me.

“Will you stay a moment as my witnesses?” she asked, looking from me to Zantree and back. . . .

As we nodded to her, Father Otter cast rapid glances at each of us, lingering longest on Shelly and Fielding. He stared hard at Fielding, who shrank from his gaze, for a moment, then turned back to Shelly, asking, “You don’t want this one?”

“What would I want
him
for?”

“Revenge. He harmed you, he broke your power, he ruined your value, and he allowed your mother to imprison you.”

“Why should I care after all this time about what was or could have been? None of that is important anymore. Do
you
want to keep on living in the past? Living in a state of war because of some stupid dispute hundreds of years old? We could do a lot for each other, my people and yours. We don’t have to keep on killing each other. You and me . . . we don’t have to be friends but we could at least call a truce and let our people heal.”

Father Otter scowled but it wasn’t the angry expression he’d had before. “Your people, our people . . . That may be enough for the Puget folk, but none of the others will abide by such a truce.”

“Not at first but we can do our best for ourselves and let the rest come around in their own time.”

“What about the Columbia people? They will kill and die and they will not respect our truce if we cross the bar.”

“Then maybe we should send an emissary. Someone who’s
from
the Columbia.” Shelly turned her gaze and looked hard at Fielding. “We can net two fish with one cast: Send Gary away from here
and
let him be useful elsewhere. And never come back,” she added under her breath.

“What does it net us to send him away?”

Shelly laughed and the sound set my teeth on edge. “You don’t actually
want
him to stay? Disruptive, whining, self-centered idiot that he is.”

Fielding sat down hard on the deck. “I’m not
that
bad!”

“In a shark’s eye,” Shelly shot back. She looked at Father Otter. “Am I right?”

Father Otter was clearly calculating something. “We can send him back to his mother’s people . . . Though we hate to give such a prize away. . . .”

“Gary’s no prize,” Shelly said.

Father Otter turned his head and cocked it to one side. “To the Columbia people he is. His mother was the last royal dobhar-chú on the river.”

Fielding made an ugly face at Father Otter. “You lied to me! You said you didn’t know anything about my mother!”

“Her
where
abouts. Who she was—certainly we knew that, whelp!”

“You didn’t say so.”

“Why should we give such information to you when you brought us nothing but trouble? And you didn’t ask the right questions.” Father Otter turned his attention back to Shelly, as if Fielding had disappeared. “We will consider sending a message. . . .”

“Don’t pretend you don’t want him gone as much as I do.”

“What do you offer us to make it worth our effort to conduct him safely back to the Columbia? Our folk outnumber yours and we could order them to attack again.”

“That battle will not be as easy as you think, Fa Dobhar-chú. My mother’s power no longer restrains mine and you don’t know what I can do. . . .” She gave him a cunning look and stared him down for a moment. Having made her threat, she paused and then her face brightened and she added, “Besides . . . I have treasures: pearls and the salvage of hundreds of lost ships. . . . Such knowledge as your folk could do much with. And I will share with you if you become my allies rather than my enemies.”

Father Otter smiled a little; it wasn’t a greedy smile but an appreciative one.

“What if I don’t want to go back to Oregon?” Fielding objected. “You can’t compel me, either of you. Not if I choose to live in this form.”

Solis cleared his throat. “In this form you will return to Seattle with me and stand trial for what happened aboard the
Seawitch
.”

Fielding looked smug but the expression was wobbly. “By what evidence and under what charge?”

“Piracy, perhaps, or criminal negligence as the captain who allowed his ship to be taken and his charges killed. And as you are the only surviving member of the crew, the questions will be pointed. If your answers don’t please the court, you would be remanded for psychological examination at Western State Hospital, which could take quite some time in that landlocked and miserable place.”