River Marked Part 21

I glanced first at Jim, who seemed to be very focused on his song and on feeding the last of the tobacco leaves into the fire, then out at Coyote and Gordon-who were gone.

Adam licked my ear, then lay down between me and the hawks. His front paws hung down over the front of the altar, and I suspect his back paws were off on the other end. The three feet of cement that was the width of the altar was generous for me but wasn't nearly enough to hold a whole werewolf.

Jim closed his eyes and held up his right hand. When he closed his fist, the drumbeat stopped-and with it, the overwhelming pulse of magic. It was like someone had pulled the plug at a nightclub, and all the music stopped. As suddenly as if someone had slammed a door, Stonehenge was as mundane as an exact model of a neolithic calendar could be.

No magic, no mystery, just a gray cement monument that suddenly had a lot more people in it than there had been when the drum had been sounding.

Gordon and Coyote in their human guises were standing in front of the monoliths they'd started out on top of. Between us and them, six Indian men I'd never seen before stepped away from the monoliths.

One man, who looked no older than Calvin, was in a three-piece suit. Adam had taught me to recognize good suits, and this one was several thousand dollars of very nice. Another, like Gordon, was wearing a modern cowboy look, though his was toned down a fair bit. Brown boots, jeans, earth-tone striped s.h.i.+rt, and a brown Montana-style (narrow-brimmed) cowboy hat. Iron gray hair was braided tightly and fell over his shoulder and almost to his knees.

The other four wore traditional native garb, though unlike Coyote's sisters, no two of them were dressed alike. There were two in hunting leathers of slightly different styles. The older one, whose wrinkled face and white hair made Gordon look like a young man, wore leathers that were nearly as pale as the doeskin Coyote's sisters had worn. Except for the fringe around the shoulder seams, his leathers were very plain. The other man's hunting leathers were a rich dark brown with ornate quillwork around his neckline. There were stains on his clothes, as if he'd gone hunting many times wearing that particular s.h.i.+rt and leggings.

The third man in native dress wore leather leggings, but his loose s.h.i.+rt was made of patterned red gingham and tied with a hemp belt that ended in a fringe to which tiny bra.s.s bells were tied. His hair was cut straight around his jawline.

The fourth had a red cloth wrapped around his head, almost like a turban, from which maybe a dozen brownish red feathers stuck straight up. He wore a beaded breechclout that reached his knees in front and back. His s.h.i.+rt was a striped cotton that looked to have been loomed by hand rather than machine from the slight irregularity of the weave.

I got a really good look at his s.h.i.+rt because he walked right up to the altar and grabbed the hawk nearest me, one hand confining the wicked talons. He pulled the bird hard against his body, trapping the wings with his arm, and the sharp beak with his hand.

"So," he said, his voice heavily accented. "She tries to steal my hawk's will."

"As I told you, Hawk," said Coyote. "Can you fix it?"

The man holding the bird gave Coyote a cold stare with eyes as sharp as those of the animal who took his name. The hawk left behind made a soft noise, like a baby bird in the nest.

"I do not approve of you, Coyote. You have always been more concerned with the two-legged people than the people in fur."

"I was asked to help. Would you have refused the request of the Great Spirit?"

Hawk snorted. "You were doing it before that. And look what has happened." He let go of the hawk's talons to make a sweeping gesture. It didn't matter because Hank was limp in his grasp. "There are cars and roads, bridges and houses until the earth cannot breathe. It would have been better had the Great Spirit stopped with the first people."

Coyote sneered, just a little. "As I'm sure you would tell him."

"I'm telling you," said Hawk.

He reached down and grabbed a handful of dirt and small gravel. He tossed it into the air, and the wind caught it, held it. He held the bird up over his head, and the wind blew the handful of earth through the hawk, who cried out when it hit him.

He threw the bird up in the air, gave Coyote another cold look, and disappeared. The bird dropped, and Hank landed in a naked human heap on the ground. Naked meant that it was easy to see that the mark was gone.

Beside me, Fred, also in human skin, scrambled off the altar and over to his brother. Jim, now seated on the rug and looking exhausted but fascinated, motioned to his apprentice, and Calvin took off at a run, presumably for clothes, but I wasn't certain.

"Hawk is impetuous," said the man in the suit. "And I don't like agreeing with him." His casual gaze traveled around Stonehenge in mild curiosity. It pa.s.sed over Adam and me, then returned. Pale blue eyes that looked wrong and somehow utterly right in that oh-so-Native-American face focused on Adam.

"Ah," he said, striding over in the same no-nonsense ground-covering way that Adam used to cross a crowded room. "This is the werewolf."

Adam got slowly to his feet and shook himself lightly. As he stood on top of the altar, his head was level with the collarbone of the suited man-who could only be Wolf.

"I had heard of your kind," Wolf said.

I glanced at the other men there, but they seemed to be happy to let Wolf take center stage as Hawk had done a moment ago.

"Werewolf." Wolf frowned. "I had thought it an abomination when I heard it first. Wolf trapped in the same skin as a human-always in opposition with each other. And in some ways it is abominable. But look at you. You are beautiful."

I thought so, too.

"How is that different from our walkers?" asked Coyote in an interested tone. "They carry both spirits, too."

"No," said Wolf absently, still lost in his examination of Adam. "In our descendants, there is only one spirit that expresses itself as either human or animal. This is different. The wolf is mine, and the man not at all. And yet it works."

He touched Adam, and I felt it through our bond, felt Adam's wolf come forward to meet Wolf. Adam was wary but not alarmed, neither dominant nor dominated.

Wolf's hands traveled all over Adam's head and neck, like a judge at a dog show. Adam showed no sign that it bothered him though it bothered me. Adam was mine.

"The perfect predator," Wolf purred, leaning forward and rubbing his cheek possessively against Adam's cheek.

I may have let out a disgruntled yip.

Wolf glanced over at me with cool blue eyes, and his mouth curled up in the beginnings of a snarl.

"That one is mine," said Coyote. His tone was casual, but there was steel behind it that turned the simple comment into a warning.

Wolf looked at Coyote and reached out to swat me with the back of his hand-and Adam caught that hand in his teeth. Wolf spun back with a hiss, and Adam released his hand-but there was blood. Adam flattened his ears, stepping between me and Wolf. He wasn't quite snarling, but he'd made his position clear.

"Do you see this," Wolf said. "Abomination. Wolves do not run with coyotes."

"It's a romance as old as time," soothed Coyote. "Rules are set up for the good of society. But as soon as you make a rule, someone feels the need to break it. If it helps, most werewolves mate with humans. Even worse, I would think, than one of my coyotes."

Wolf took a step toward Adam. "She is your mate?"

I couldn't tell if that made it better or worse, and I don't think Wolf knew, either. His hand had quit bleeding already. Adam hadn't done much more than break through the skin. It had been a warning and not a real attempt to hurt Wolf. I'd like to think that Adam was too smart to take on something like Wolf-but I was afraid that wasn't true, not if he thought Wolf would hurt me.

I regretted that yip of possession even though I was pretty sure that I'd do it again in the same circ.u.mstances. I didn't like anyone except me having their hands all over him. There had been possession in Wolf's touch, and Adam belonged to me.

"You have left her with the river's mark," said the cowboy Indian in the earth-toned clothes. His voice was silky smooth and beautiful.

"I have, Snake," said Coyote. "Because I have killed the river devil before, she cannot take over Mercy as she does everyone else. But Mercy is now something of interest to the river devil, something that we've already proved can get her attention and bring her to where we want her in pretty short order. The river devil doesn't like its prey to get away from it, and she wants it back." He looked at me. "There are a lot of miles of water between The Dalles and John Day."

And it hadn't taken her ten minutes to find me when Coyote threw me in the river. He'd been right: we had learned a lot from that.

Calvin had returned from wherever he'd gone. He had a couple of blankets, which he gave to Fred and Hank. Hank took one with a nod of thanks; but Fred just changed back into a hawk and flew up to perch next to one of the candles on a nearby standing stone.

The old man in white hunting leathers said, "I think it might be better to let River Devil have her way. When she has eaten the whole world, it can be made anew again."

"You sound so certain," said Gordon in an interested voice. "Are you? I don't think it is as easy as all that."

The old man growled at him, a big, rumbling sound that was somehow fitting coming from that fierce old body.

"Friend Bear," said Coyote. "Change is not bad. Change is just change. Startling to those of us who go away, then come back after a long time, yes. But it is not evil."

"Look at the pollution." Bear took a breath as if he could smell smog out there a hundred miles from anywhere. My nose is very good, and I would have called his bluff if I could have talked. "The roads, the railroads. Look at the houses upon houses that destroy hunting ground and leave only a tiny fraction of the forests free. Wolf has said that Mother Earth cannot move underneath the cement and steel, and I say that he is right."

"There are things that are bad," Coyote said. "But there were bad things then, too. Starving times. Freezing times. Times of sickness. There are good things here." He waved a hand at Wolf. "Look at the clothes you wear. That suit is silk and wool woven in a fas.h.i.+on that was not possible a few centuries ago. All change brings bad things and good things to replace the bad and good things that were before. It is natural to look back and say it was better before-but that does not make it true. Different is not worse. It is just different."

"There is some truth in what you say, Coyote." Wolf was petting his suit jacket with the same sort of possessiveness he'd shown toward Adam.

"I don't like it here," said the man in the darker leathers; he sounded unhappy and uneasy.

"Bobcat." Coyote liked this one. I could tell by the tone of his voice. "There are good hunting grounds here; you just have to find them-as was always true. The sun is still warm, and flowers still smell sweet."

"You should take him to Disneyland," suggested Gordon. "Or I could. I like Disneyland."

The purely human contingent had been very quiet up to this point. But now Calvin spoke. "If you give it a chance, I think you would find it isn't horrible here."

The man with the belt with the bra.s.s bells put an arm around Bobcat. "The problem is this, Bobcat. Things change whether you want them to, or not-unless you are dead." His voice was hoa.r.s.e, like a three-pack-a-day-for-twenty-years smoker. "Don't hold so hard to the past that you die with it."

He looked at Coyote. "There is no sense in this, though. We have all agreed to do as you asked, or we would not be here. Where and when?"

"As Raven says," agreed Coyote formally. Then he described how to find our campsite in a way that ravens, bobcats, wolves, snakes, and bears could find it. When he was finished, he said, "As for when, the sooner the better, I think. Tomorrow?"

"After dark," said Jim. "Calvin says the FBI are looking for whoever is responsible for the killing field that this river has become. You don't want them showing up at the wrong time." He looked at Raven, and said, "Warriors with bang sticks who are river marked is a bad idea."

Raven smiled at him. "I do know who the FBI are," he told Jim. "Coyote is not the only one who still wanders."

While they were talking, the others had left. Some of them seemed to walk away, but I saw Wolf disappear, probably because he did it while still staring at Adam. Who belonged to me.

"Thank you, Raven," said Coyote, after a quick glance to see that the other animal spirits, including Gordon, were gone.

"We may all die forever tomorrow, old friend," said Raven. "But it will be interesting, anyway."

ADAM AND I LEFT TO CHANGE AND GET DRESSED, too-but I was the only one doing any changing. Adam's panicked gaze met mine as I was putting on my jeans.

"Hold on," I told him. "There's help about."

I pulled on my clothes, stuck my shoes on my feet, and grabbed Adam's clothes as fast as I could. Then I bounded back up the hill, hoping like heck that Coyote hadn't already vanished like the rest of them.

Why I was so sure that Coyote knew anything about werewolves was a mystery to me, but it seemed right. He'd known Adam would have trouble s.h.i.+fting when the earth magic was singing.

The candles were all out. Jim and Calvin were gone; Fred and Hank had left before we'd headed out to change. Stonehenge looked deserted.

"Coyote?" I called.

"Mercy?"

I'd been almost certain he was gone, but he and Raven had apparently been sitting on the altar playing a card game in the dark. Hard to believe I'd missed them, but Coyote was that sort, so I didn't worry about it. I had other things on my mind.

"Adam can't change back. Would the earth magic have done something that keeps him from s.h.i.+fting?"

"He can't change back to human?" Coyote folded up his hand of cards and set them on the bronze plaque, giving us his full attention. "That's awkward, this being your honeymoon."

"He can't change," I said, ignoring the last sentence. "Is it the earth magic? Will the effects go away after we leave here?"

Coyote considered it. "The earth magic shouldn't do anything unless directed by a shaman, and I think Jim likes you."

Raven gave his head a birdlike twitch. "It wasn't Jim, and it wasn't the earth magic." His voice left no room for doubt. "Your werewolf bit our Wolf, remember?"

Raven grinned at me, a big warm expression that was infinitely rea.s.suring though I could think of no reason I should trust him. "Wolf takes things like that personally. But he's not one to cling to his angers, either." His face became a little pensive. "Not like Owl."

Coyote snorted. "He still bearing a grudge for that? That happened a long, long time ago."

"How was I to know that it was his favorite thing?" Raven's eyes twinkled with starlight. "It was s.h.i.+ny." He glanced at me. "But it was heavy, so I dropped it in the ocean. It was an accident."

"You think that this is something Wolf did?" I had a good grip on the ruff around Adam's neck. It was a habit I'd developed over the past few months because I found it rea.s.suring.

Adam didn't look worried or nervous, but he wouldn't, not in front of people who were essentially strangers. I was doing the worried and nervous for both of us.

A werewolf can stay wolf for a while. A couple of days, no trouble. A few weeks . . . well, not so good, but most of them will be okay afterward. Months were possible-one or two. After that, he would be all wolf with no human. Bran's son Samuel had experienced that, and his wolf had behaved in a mostly civilized fas.h.i.+on for a couple of weeks without losing it, astonis.h.i.+ng everyone. It was unlikely that Adam, who had not seen his first century, could do the same.

"How long?" I asked.

Coyote sighed. "Mercedes, it takes power to pull forward Adam's wolf so strongly that his human half cannot change. We . . . None of us has a lot of that kind of power over here anymore, which is probably why Wolf did it: to show that he is not to be trifled with." Coyote looked at Adam. "He could have killed you had he desired. It would have been easier. After tomorrow's battle, I should be very surprised if Wolf's punishment does not fade away. It would be easy to be angry with him-but he and the others have agreed to sacrifice themselves. It is, I think, unlikely that he will return to this place soon after that."

"If ever," agreed Raven quietly. He had picked up all the cards and laid out a solitaire pattern. Spider, I thought, or some variant. "So give him his dignity and don't worry."

"Thank you," I told them both. I started to go, then I remembered something. "Hey, Coyote?"

He had just scooped up the cards again and was in the middle of shuffling. "Yes."

"Your sisters told me to tell you that they thought your plan was a good one."

"Did they tell you what it was?" He resumed shuffling, but there was a rapidity to his movement that told me he was feeling something strongly.

"Yes." I took a deep breath. "Weak link here, I think. But I'll do my best."

He smiled. "Yes, I expect you will."

WHEN SOMETHING WOKE ME UP FROM A SOUND SLEEP in the middle of the night, I a.s.sumed it was Coyote again. This time I woke Adam up, too.

"Someone wants me outside," I told him, tapping my head. "I think Coyote might want to talk again."

When I got out of bed, I tripped over the walking stick. I picked it up gently, instead of swearing at it, and leaned it against the wall. Swearing at ancient artifacts seemed a little unwise. Not something I'd do unless I'd carefully considered all the possible effects.

Adam and I made our way out to the swimming hole, where the call was coming from. But it wasn't Coyote.

Out in the darkness I could see her-or at least her wake. The roiling water burbled and swirled as she swam in lazy circles.

Mercedes Thompson. Her voice was in my head. Her voice was in my head.

I sat down on the ground with a thump, in the faint hope that it would somehow make it harder for her to get me into the water. Coyote had been too precipitous in declaring me immune to her charms. Perhaps she couldn't make me drown my own children-and Jesse, thank goodness, was a hundred miles away. But she could call me out to her, and she could speak to me.