River Marked Part 19

"The power was here before Stonehenge," said Calvin, "but the construct seems to make it more accessible. There are a couple of places near here that were more traditional places of power and probably were better before Sam Hill built this here."

"Did Coyote tell you what he wanted you to do with all this magic?" I asked.

"Coyote?" asked Calvin, "Who is Coyote?"

"Coyote," said Jim dryly.

Calvin smiled uncertainly, blinked a couple of times, then seemed to get it. "Coyote?"

Then he looked at me. "She knows Coy-" He broke off mid-word, staring at me.

"d.a.m.n," he said in awe. "Oh, hot d.a.m.n."

"Watch your mouth, boy," Jim said.

"Freak'n sh-" Calvin bit off the last word. "That's why. That's why you are a walker when your mother is white. Coyote is your freakin' father."

I don't know why his reaction offended me. "No. I have it on the best of authority that Coyote is not my father. My My father was a Blackfeet bull rider who died in a car wreck before I was born." I wasn't completely sure that Coyote wasn't my father-but I knew that he didn't think so-and I wasn't claiming him if he wasn't claiming me. father was a Blackfeet bull rider who died in a car wreck before I was born." I wasn't completely sure that Coyote wasn't my father-but I knew that he didn't think so-and I wasn't claiming him if he wasn't claiming me.

Calvin frowned at me.

"I am not," I said clearly if through my clenched teeth, "Coyote's daughter."

Jim took a deep breath. "Glad that's cleared up. Yes, Coyote told me what he wanted me to do. It's all set up inside the circle."

"Let's go see it, then," Adam said. He took Calvin by the arm, and said, "Follow me. I'll keep you on your feet."

We walked past the heel stone, a sixteen-foot-tall monolith just a little northeast of the rest of the monument and under the continuous ring of cement-formed stone that was the outer edge of the henge. I looked up warily when we walked underneath the cement slab where both hawks were perched.

They were about fifteen feet over our heads, and my inner coyote was sure that wasn't far enough away. We were loud, too; the fine-textured gravel wasn't conducive to quietness.

"Hawks hunt by day." Adam's grip on Calvin had s.h.i.+fted upward until he just rested a hand on his shoulder-but he was talking to me. "As long as Hank doesn't have a gun, wolf trumps hawk at night."

One of the hawks screamed an insult back, and Adam smiled, an expression that was as full of challenge as the hawk's cry.

"Anytime, hawk," he said. "Anytime."

He was still ticked off about being shot, I thought. Come to think of it, I wasn't too happy about that, either.

"Calvin and I came about an hour ago," Jim was saying, ignoring the prefight exchange, "and set up what we needed with flashlights. Coyote was pretty firm about no visible modern technology for the ceremony." He looked at Calvin, and I was sure he could see in the dark a lot better than his nephew. "Flashlights were mentioned particularly. But I'm an old man and a big believer in 'work smarter, not harder,' so we came up with the truck."

Stonehenge consisted of the heel stone, a pair of concentric circles-the first the ring of lintel stones held up by standing stones, the second a ring of monoliths-maybe eight or nine feet tall-and an inner court.

The inner court was shaped somewhat like a horseshoe with the open end pointed northeast-at the heel stone, in fact. The outer rim of the horseshoe was delineated by five huge sets of stones, each made of two standing stones holding up a lintel stone. They always reminded me of those staples used in furniture building with a small band and tall legs. There were two on each side of the horseshoe and one in the center; all of them are taller than the outer ring, and the center one was taller still. Inside these ma.s.sive rock sculptures was another set of the monoliths, following the horseshoe pattern.

On top of all of the monoliths, both in the inner court and the outer, were fat, clear gla.s.s containers that protected the fat, white, unlit candles inside of them. The candle wicks were mostly blackened, indicating that they'd been used before.

In front of the tallest of the ma.s.sive cement-pretending-to-be-rock staplelike things, there was an altar-eight or ten feet long by three feet wide and two feet high.

A few feet in front of the altar, the wood for a small fire had been set on top of what looked like a circle of two-inch-thick coa.r.s.e gravel, much darker and coa.r.s.er than the gravel already there. I bent down to touch it, and Jim spoke.

"Tomorrow morning, when we can see, we'll come clean up," he told me. "The gravel will make it easy to erase any sign of fire. We don't want to give anyone ideas and have a bunch of teenagers lighting fires up here at night. It will also make sure that the fire doesn't spread. Gra.s.s fires happen this time of year, but I don't want to be the one who is responsible for one."

Adam had climbed up on a monolith to take a closer look at the candles, a casual pull-up that hinted at the strength he kept in check. He dropped to the ground and dusted his hands. "Hard to light from down here."

"We kept the stool I used to put them all up there." Calvin had stayed near Adam but kept taking surrept.i.tious glances at me. Then he frowned. "Mercy? Is that a black eye?"

I reached up to touch it.

"She got into a fight in Wal-Mart," Adam said. Someone who didn't know him probably wouldn't hear the amus.e.m.e.nt in his voice.

"What?"

"She was attacked in Wal-Mart."

"You should see the other woman," I said. I noticed we were missing someone. "Where's Jim?" He'd been talking to me just a minute ago. I'd have thought that the noisy gravel would keep him from sneaking around. Apparently, I'd been wrong.

"He's gone to wash and change." Calvin said. "There's a little building over there, used to be a tourist shop, but it's been closed for a few years now. Jim has a key. I'd better start lighting the candles. It takes a while."

"We can help." Adam took a cigarette lighter out of his pocket. Adam didn't smoke, but he took being prepared to a whole new level.

"I only have one stool," Calvin apologized.

"That's okay." Adam moved behind me, grabbed my hips, and lifted me up over his head and onto his shoulders.

"Hey," I said indignantly.

It would have gone a little smoother if he warned me first. As it was, I had to scramble a bit for balance. He waited until I was steady, then patted me on the hip.

"I don't need a step stool," Adam said, walking over to one of the monoliths and handing up a lighter. "I have a Mercy."

Even with the three of us working on it, lighting the candles took a long time. I'd never noticed how many of them there were before. More than thirty, I thought, maybe even fifty of them.

When we were through, there was a Christmasy air provided by dozens of white candles. By happenstance or design, we met Calvin at the last standing stone, right next to the altar. Adam set me on the ground while Calvin finished the last light. In the short time, the magic in the ground had grown, and it jumped at me like an eager flame when my feet hit the gravel. I staggered a bit, and Adam, probably thinking I was still off balance, put a hand on my shoulder to steady me.

Calvin climbed off his step stool, put his lighter in his pocket, and folded up the stool. "I'm going to take this over to the parking lot. Meanwhile, Uncle Jim asked me to tell you that you need to take the shape of your beasts."

"Do you know what Coyote has us doing?" I asked.

Calvin dropped his eyes. "No."

I snorted before he could say anything. "Don't bother. You are without a doubt the worst liar I have ever met. Good for you. But you might keep it in mind and compensate for it. Cultivate a mysterious air and don't answer the things that might tempt you to lie." That was what Bran did. Even Bran couldn't lie to a werewolf. I didn't think he could anyway.

"How long do we have?" Adam asked. "Walkers may be able to flash between shapes, but I take more time."

"I didn't know. Sorry. I should have told you before I started on the lights."

"If they want us here, they'll wait for us," I told Adam.

"Yeah," Calvin agreed. "I'm pretty sure that this ceremony needs both of you." He took a step away from us, then stopped. "Hey, Fred told me you were asking about deaths on the Columbia. He asked me to check into it, so I asked a friend of mine who's a cop on the river. He told me that in the past three weeks there have been twenty-six people who are presumed drowned between the John Day Dam and the one at The Dalles, not including the family of four that was reported missing late this afternoon when their car was found at a state park on the Oregon side of the Columbia. That's more people than we've lost on the river in the last five years combined."

"What family?" I asked.

"A stockbroker and his elementary-teacher wife and their two young children," he told me.

"Lee and Janice Morrison." The dream had been real. I could have done something about it. Surely I could have done something.

"That's right. Did you see today's paper?"

Adam's hand was on my shoulder. "How long had they been missing?" he asked.

"Two days."

Before my dream. I'd seen something that had happened in the past. No chance of doing anything. It should have made me feel better, but it didn't.

"I think," said Adam softly, "it is safe to say that this is something that needs to be hunted down and killed."

Calvin nodded. "Word is that there is an FBI team working on the idea that we have some sort of serial killer on the loose. They're being quiet so far; they don't want to encourage the killer or panic anyone. My buddy was pretty interested in why I was asking. I told him it was because of Benny and Faith." He looked at me. "That way I wasn't lying to him."

"Let's go change," I said. I didn't want to think about Janice and her family anymore. They were gone, and there was nothing I could do for them.

HAD WE BEEN HOME WITH THE WOLF PACK AROUND, we'd just have stripped and changed, but I wasn't comfortable stripping in front of strangers anymore. Even if I'd been willing to, Adam would not change in public.

Bran had requested the wolves refrain from changing where others could see. The werewolves were beautiful-but the change is horrific. No sense in scaring people with what they were, Bran said, not when the wolves were still trying to be tame for the news cameras.

So we left Stonehenge and climbed over the drop-off just beyond, which hid us effectively from Calvin, Hank, and Fred-as long as the hawks stayed on the far side of the henge.

Still, we were exposed. There were no trees nearby, and we could see all the way down to the river and beyond to the highway-miles and miles. Darkness ensured that no one down there could actually see us, but it felt like they could.

Beside Adam, who was doing the same thing, I took off my clothes, folding them tightly to discourage any bugs attracted by the leftover warmth. I stuffed my socks in my shoes.

"I'll stay human until you've s.h.i.+fted," I told him. So I could guard his back or run interference if I had to.

s.h.i.+fting to coyote wasn't without its cost. I could do it several times a day, but eventually I wore out. I could also stay human for a long time-months if I had to. Wolves are different.

Werewolves are moon called. They have to change during the full moon, and it is harder for them to control the wolf during that time, too. However, a lot of werewolves only s.h.i.+ft during the full moon-two or three days a month. The s.h.i.+ft is painful and takes a lot of energy. s.h.i.+fting more than a couple of times a week was beyond a lot of wolves' abilities. Adam had been changing much more than that lately.

His s.h.i.+ft was a lot slower than usual-and it looked as though it was a lot more painful, too. I sat beside him on the pad my folded-up clothes made. Maybe I should have left my clothes on, but since, tonight, at least, I wasn't wet, it wasn't cold. I stayed close to him, but not so close I'd touch him inadvertently and hurt him.

The pulse of Stonehenge's magic was growing more regular, like a beating heart. I thought it was getting even stronger, too, but that might have been because I was sitting on the ground. My own heart sped up a little until it kept beat with the magic. It wasn't unpleasant, just disconcerting.

"Mercy?" Calvin called.

"Not yet," I told him.

"How long?"

"As long as it takes," growled Adam, his voice hoa.r.s.e and deep as he was caught halfway between wolf and man.

The flow of magic paused, as if it had heard him, then took up its beat again. I didn't like it.

"Are you all right?" I asked, very quietly.

He didn't say anything, which I took as answer enough.

His breathing grew labored until I started to be seriously worried for him.

"It's the earth's magic," Coyote said, sitting down beside me on the side opposite Adam's struggle.

Adam growled, a hoa.r.s.e and pained sound that was nonetheless a threat.

"No harm to you or yours," Coyote told him. "I stand guard for you. They were supposed to tell you to change before you came here. I suppose the instructions got garbled in the translation from Jim to Calvin. Mother Earth does not change easily-that is an aspect of water or flame. Earth magic is interfering with his change, but it shouldn't make it impossible."

Impossible wasn't good-but I b.u.t.toned my lips because even I knew that intent and will played a part in any kind of magic. No sense putting doubts into Adam's head until he really failed to s.h.i.+ft.

"What are we doing tonight?" I asked Coyote to give myself something else to think about.

"Probably wasting our time." He didn't look at me but stared out over the world spread beneath our feet. I noticed that he seldom spoke directly to me. Half the time it felt as though he addressed the open air instead.

"And if we aren't wasting our time?" I waited a minute, trying not to listen to Adam's struggles because he wouldn't want me to hear him. I could feel the claustrophobic panic that he was repressing. He couldn't afford for me to panic, too. "Come on, Coyote. It isn't a secret because even Calvin knows."

He laughed, slapping his leg. "Point to you. Fine. Fine. I'm hoping to call a little help. We aren't what we once were, and some of us never were much for interfering with people. But Raven is curious, and Otter should feel he has something at stake." He paused, glanced at me, and continued, "Nice black eye, Mercy. Upon reflection, Otter might be on the wrong side. That would be unfortunate."

"You're calling the others like you?" I asked.

"There are no others like me," he returned. "None as handsome or strong. None as clever or skilled. None with so many stories told about them. Who was it brought fire down so people could roast their food and keep warm in the winter? But I'm hoping to call the others, yes."

"Other what, exactly?" I asked. "Just what kind of creature are you?" The fae, some of them, had set themselves over the early residents of Europe as deities. The Coyote stories never had that feel to them. Coyote was a power but not one who asked to be wors.h.i.+pped.

"Have you read Plato?" he asked.

"Have you?" I returned because the idea of Coyote reading The Republic The Republic or or Apology Apology was absurd and somehow totally believable because of its very absurdity. was absurd and somehow totally believable because of its very absurdity.

"You are familiar with his theory of forms," Coyote continued without answering my question.

"That our world isn't real but a reflection of reality. And in the real world there are archetypes of things that exist in our world, which is how we can look at a chair we've never seen before, and say, 'Hey, look. It's a chair.' Because in the real world, there is an object that is the epitome of chairness." I used my history degree about twice a year whether I needed to or not.

"Close enough," he agreed. "I am the reality of all coyotes. The archetype. The epitome." He smiled out into the darkness. "You are just a reflection of me."

"They should have called you Narcissus," I told him, trying not to flinch at the sounds that Adam made. "Too bad you you aren't the enemy we need to defeat. We could just put out a mirror for you to admire yourself in." aren't the enemy we need to defeat. We could just put out a mirror for you to admire yourself in."

"And then they wouldn't call you Mercy anymore," he said. "Your name would be She Who Traps Coyote." He reached over and took my hand, and said in a low voice, "It won't be much longer. But I'd wait until he invites you to look before you gaze into his eyes."

"Are your sisters really berries in your stomach?" I asked him.

"Ah," he said delightedly. "You need to find someone to teach you the rude versions of my stories. They are much more entertaining. Modesty prevents me from telling stories about myself."

I laughed, as he meant me to.