Urban Shaman by C. E. Murphy

Author:C. E. Murphy
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy
Published: 2009-04-23T23:08:32+00:00

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Nothing happened.

Nothing kept right on happening while I fell asleep leaning on the door. My knees buckled, jolting me awake, and I staggered to the computer chair. There had to be something I could find about Herne, something that would tell me what was going on. If it wasn't on the Internet, it didn't exist, right? So it had to be, some kind of information about Cernunnos's sullen son. I clicked through to a new site, slumped in my chair and wondered how many shoes had already dropped.

"Shoes," I said out loud, and looked at my feet. My luggage. I hadn't actually promised Morrison I'd stay home, and I was out of underwear. I glanced at the computer screen, where the page loaded with excruciating slowness. Stifling a yawn, I went into the bedroom and kicked over my carry-on, digging through it until I found my baggage ticket. The page still hadn't loaded when I came back out, so I switched the screen off and left it to load, grabbing my keys on my way out the door. Airports seemed nice and safe. They had all those metal detectors that would keep people with swords from coming after me, and lots of security with no sense of humor to discourage someone if he evaded the metal detectors.

Not that it seemed even slightly plausible that airport security could handle Cernunnos. Or Herne, for that matter, since he seemed to be the one going around actually killing Seattleites. I switched lanes and listened to the uneven pattern of changing asphalt textures under the wheels of the car. Headlights flashed by, going the other direction, rhythmic whisks of light and sound in the dark. When this was over, I promised myself, I was going to go take a nice long drive to somewhere very quiet and try to get a grip on my shiny, weird new life.

Which task I would obviously accomplish with the copious spare cash hanging around in my savings account, during the long periods of free time I'd have between writing parking tickets.

An old Cadillac, big as a boat, flashed by. I remembered the church and reached across the car to open the glove box, letting the butterfly knife tumble forward with the various papers stuffed into the box. It made a solid thud, cushioned by paper, and I glanced at it while I drove.

Marie swore it hadn't been Cernunnos waiting for her outside the church. I believed her: Cernunnos was not someone I would ever mistake for somebody else. That suggested it was Herne; certainly he appeared to be the one who'd murdered her. I closed my eyes, trying to remember the shape of the man I'd seen from the air, wondering if he fit Herne's shape. Then I remembered I was driving. Maybe I should stop thinking until I wasn't on a freeway.

I left the knife in the car when I got to the airport. Security might not be able to stop Herne, but they could certainly stop me.

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