And then the poison was gone and the thunderbird somehow managed to pull out of its plummet, smashing into the serpent with such force that we all tumbled down toward the lake, tangled together. I flared my wings, slowing the fall as best I could, while the serpent wrapped itself around me, trying to crush my wings back to my body. It reared its head back, jaws agape, and lunged forward again.
To hit thin silver shielding that sparked and lit with its contact. Snakes weren’t normally much for expression, but as it flinched back I was sure I saw astonishment in its eyes. I let out a cackle of sheer delight. It erupted from my throat as a skree, making the air around me seem to collapse again.
I tore at the serpent’s face with my beak, and as it twisted away, rolled onto my back. Panic shrieked through me, warning me of my vulnerability, but it loosened the serpent’s coil from around most of my body. I rolled again, dug my claws into the Enemy’s belly, snatching it out of the air, and climbed for the sky again.
There was no sunlight left. Thick heavy clouds filled the air, like all the muggy heat of the last several days had finally coalesced together. It was my weather, thunderbird weather, and I felt the bird’s thrill of pleasure as we dragged the serpent into the clouds. Its fragile wings would be easy to rip off, its unprotected belly simple to tear open. The steaming entrails would be a feast.
I gagged. I didn’t even know birds could gag. No, I guessed they could, because mommy birds gagged up dinner for baby birds. I felt badly for the baby birds. Swallowing bird bile was not high on my list of things to do again. At any rate, I was sure eating snake was a fine thing for a bird to do, even a thunderbird, but I needed to do more than that. The coven, with my help, had opened up the passage for not just Amhuluk, but for all manner of creatures that were probably wreaking further havoc on an unsuspecting Seattle. I needed to undo that, or nothing was ever going to get straightened out. I swallowed against bile again, and tried my hand—or throat—at speaking a word with a bird’s voice box.
It came out like thunder. Amhuluk, the serpent’s name, the one I hoped was true and would force it to answer all the way from the depths of its being. Nakaytah, three millennia dead, had offered up the tool I needed to capture the thing and drag it, kicking and screaming, back into the Lower World.
Wriggling and screaming, said the snide little voice at the back of my mind.
Snakes don’t have legs.
It’s a good thing I didn’t know where my real body was. I might’ve convinced the thunderbird to go bite my head off.
The serpent in my claws convulsed, then surged forward, reckless action that let it strike at my throat. Silver sparkling shields flared up again, protecting me, but it had learned. Its goal wasn’t to bite through me, but to grasp my neck in a crushing grip with its mouth. I shrieked, more from fear than pain, my claws opening to scrabble at the serpent’s body. Its weight pulled my head down and suddenly we were falling, an uncontrolled dive back toward the distant lake. I flared my wings, but it only slowed the fall. The serpent lashed around, using its own stubby wings to generate enough lift that it could slam its body weight down onto my right wing.
The expected pain didn’t come: the thunderbird’s bones were less fragile than a smaller creature’s might’ve been. But it unbalanced me badly, and the dive became a tumble, serpent and thunderbird wound about one another as we crashed through the air. I screamed outrage over and over, shattering the storm clouds above us. Rain hit in torrents, sheets of water weighing us further, driving us toward the lake’s surface.
The serpent wrapped itself around my neck, crushing my throat. We hit the water with a splash that felt like it broke every bone in my body.
CHAPTER 34
I felt terribly, terribly small, beneath the surface of the lake. My wings were waterlogged, the serpent’s strength much greater here than in the sky. It slithered around my neck until it held me with the end of its tail, and then began swimming deeper, dragging me farther into the stormy lake. I spread my wings, pathetic painful gesture of protest, and the serpent’s speed slowed a little.
A little. Not enough. I closed my eyes and struggled to backwing, trying to pull myself back toward the surface. The serpent tightened its tail around my throat and swam harder. I wondered how long I could survive underwater, or if a thunderbird didn’t need to do mundane things like breathe.
From the growing tightness in my chest, I suspected I wasn’t going to be that lucky.
Why hadn’t it worked? I’d sure as hell gotten the thing’s attention by bellowing its name. Why hadn’t it bent to my will?
Maybe because I had no ritual. It’d taken ritual to open the world walls with the coven. The water grew colder and darker and I fought to remember any of what they’d done, beyond dancing around a fire and singing in a language I didn’t know. Even in the midst of drowning, I snorted at myself. Water went up my beak and I coughed out most of the air I had left.
Ritual not only wasn’t my style, but I was a little short on time anyway. The serpent had only hesitated when I called its name, not been stopped entirely. I was missing something.
Virissong’s face flashed through the darkness that was becoming all I could see, and I almost laughed. Didn’t, quite: I’d already used up too much air. But almost. And cast down deep into myself, reaching for power at the same time that I made a promise: if I got out of this alive, I was going to spend a whole lot more time studying and a whole lot less time pretending that my gifts didn’t exist.
Approval bubbled through me, not my own. The thunderbird stretched its wings farther and swept them down powerfully, dragging the serpent and its downward journey to a stop. The serpent snapped around, a silver streak in the dark lake, its fangs bared as it lunged for the thunderbird.
My power responded with a flare of brightness that turned the rain-pelted lake to white. I whispered, “My name is Siobhàn Walkingstick,” into the whiteness, and the thunderbird’s voice roared, water shaking away from me in visible shock waves. “I live within Wakinyan, your ancient Enemy.” Maybe I had a little ritual in me after all. “I know you, Amhuluk. And I know the demon whose soul you share.”
I had no way to draw breath, and the impulse to do so nearly killed me. I drew water all the way to the back of my throat before coughing it out again. Dizziness brought my eyesight down to pinpoints, even the thunderbird’s superb color vision unable to offer me more than tiny spots of focus. I took the last air in my lungs and someone else whispered, “Idlirvirissong,” from my mouth as I lunged forward to slam my talons through the serpent’s skull, shattering bone and closing claw through the monster’s mouth.
I had a moment to be astonished while thunder ruptured all the water away from me, sending it spouting up into the sky in a whirlpool that I was the eye of. The serpent was flung into its swirls, squealing hideously as the water swept it farther and farther into the sky. A split appeared in the sky, shredding the clouds and opening a path all the way up to the clear stars. I dragged in a deep breath, feeling warmth and life returning.
I was good with the idea of nets. Cars and nets and cages. Things that held people in, rather than releasing them. What I needed now was an opening, the same kind the coven had created, one that would let not just the serpent, but all the spirits we’d released into Seattle return to their homes.
The idea of sacrifice flirted around the edges of my mind, so obvious and simple that even now I almost fell for it. It’d been made clear to me that it was my power that’d given the coven the strength to do what they had. I was certain that a little thing like the cost of my life would be enough to pay for sending the spirits home again.