came back to the bed and sat down, taking her hand.
The touch opened a link, unexpectedly vivid. Mem ory bludgeoned into me, relegating Henrietta’s words to the distance: “I turned around.”
I/Henrietta turned around to unfolding horror. Mark, a sandy-haired basketball player who got poor grades because he was lazy, lay sprawled on the floor, dark blood spilling from a gash that opened his chest. Jennifer, voice choked off by a hand around her throat, was dangling in the air, struggling against the man who held her up. Her killer cast her aside and her body caught on one of the chairs. Blood drained down her shirt as she slowly tilted over. Other children screamed, knocking desks over and pushing them out of the way as they tried to get away. The memory resonated peculiarly before I realized what was wrong with it: high school kids weren’t children, to me. They were, well, kids. Henrietta’s thoughts defined them differently. I felt a wave of dizziness that had nothing to do with what was going on in front of me and a lot to do with breaking down the walls of my own perceptions. I shivered, wondering if it was Henrietta or me doing it, and brought my attention back to what was going on.
The man in the children’s midst was not large; he merely seemed that way, wide shoulders and gore-covered hands adding a terrifying depth to him. Long light brown hair splashed over his shoulders, drops of blood coloring it. He reached out with inhuman speed to close a massive hand around another boy’s arm. “Anthony,” Mrs. Potter said, very faintly. “Oh, no. Not Anthony.” I wasn’t sure if the words were spoken out loud, or if I was hearing her thoughts at the time the memories came from.
With one savage jerk the killer shoved a knife into Anthony’s chest and yanked it up. The boy fell to the floor. Jennifer’s body collapsed over his, her hair spilling over his legs and onto the floor. Perhaps five seconds had passed since the first bewildered, terrified squeak.
I could see more, now, through Henrietta’s memory. The blond girl I’d seen in the theater stood pressed up against a far wall, screaming. Other children scrambled by her. A boy grabbed her arm and pulled her down to the floor. She disappeared in a flash of pale hair as the killer swelled. Blood and ichor seemed to fill him, making him appear too large to fit into the room. What Adina said about power spilling over from the inside suddenly made sense.
Oh, God, I was so far out of my league.
Paralysis left my-Henrietta’s-muscles, and I leaped forward, crashing into the killer’s back an instant too late, another child already dead in his hands. He stumbled forward, dropping the boy. A tiny sound cut through the killer’s roars of frustration and my own incoherent screams: the clink of dog tags. The last dead boy was his mother’s only child, Adrian, and he wore the tags from a father who’d died in a war fifteen years earlier.
I looked up into the killer’s eyes. His voice, thick and distorted with rage, filled my mind. Fool! he screamed. The circle is broken! His eyes were green, brilliantly green, inhuman, like Cernunnos. The snarl he gave me showed eyeteeth that curved into unnaturally vicious points.
Then there was pain, white fire plunging into my belly. I screamed, my memories separating from Henrietta’s and leaving me with a final conscious thought: Oh no. Not again.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Oak trees surrounded me, so large and neatly spaced I began counting them. I reached thirty-five before realizing I wasn’t seeing the forest for the trees. I shook myself and took a better look around.
The oaks weren’t the only foliage; they just dominated it. Slighter trees grew between them, stretching up toward slate-gray light. It was drizzling, most of the rain filtered out by the enormous trees. The forest floor was very green, soft moss rolling up over gentle hills. Everything was muted, clouds and moss combining to quiet the sounds of the forest. I took a deep breath of damp cool air. Only then did it occur to me to wonder where the hell I was. I was getting jaded.
I looked around again. In my limited experience, wondering where the hell I was made somebody show up and tell me.
No one showed up. I stood there for a minute. “I’d like to go home now,” I announced hopefully. Wind ruffled my hair, but I didn’t think it was responding to me. I shrugged and stuck my hands in my pockets and went for a walk. I hadn’t been in a forest since I left North Carolina. I was surprised at how much I’d missed the sound of wind and rain on the leaves. In ten years I hadn’t even thought about it.
There was a lot I hadn’t thought about. I was pretty sure it was all going to come home very soon now. I pushed the idea away and kept walking.
A stag walked out of the forest in front of me, so calm I expected him to say something to me. He didn’t. We gazed at each other across several yards of empty space, and then he tossed his head and bounded off into the woods as silently as he’d arrived. I grinned after him. I wasn’t just getting jaded. I was turning into a world-class freak. Talking stags. What next?
As if in answer, a branch snapped behind me. I turned curiously.
A monster, more than half my height and twice as wide, charged out of the trees on four short, thick legs. Beady, vicious eyes sighted me and it swerved toward me, bristly head lowered in a charge that would end with me impaled on yellowing ivory tusks.
I shrieked and flung myself to the side, suddenly comprehending why wild boar hunting had been considered such a dangerous sport. The boar swerved again, barely missed trampling me and made a passing nod at goring me. Then, just like the stag, it disappeared into perfect silence.
I lay propped on my elbows, gasping after the animal. “Note to self,” I whispered when it appeared it wasn’t coming back, “do not ask ‘what next?’ in realms unknown.”
A horse leaped over my head and I shrieked again, curling up in a little ball. With my head pressed against the ground I could feel the vibrations of what seemed like a herd of horses pounding the earth. Then rough-voiced men shouted cheerfully over the rattle of tack, and I lifted my head cautiously. Six grinning men on horseback made a half circle in the woods, all of them facing me, right in the center of their circle. I froze. They jostled back and forth, changing position into some preferred layout that I couldn’t appreciate.
What I could appreciate was that none of them seemed to be paying attention to me. I let out a sigh of relief and uncurled.
“Stand ready, my liege,” someone said. “The boar comes.”
That was not what I wanted to hear. I jumped up and sprinted for the safety of a tree just as the boar burst out of the woods again, this time with half a dozen men in full and glorious pursuit. In the boar’s position, I would have been terrified. He just looked furious, like he knew he was going to die and he was going to take as many of the green-clad bastards with him as he could. The green-clad bastards in question all let forth howls of delight, and charged forth to meet the angry boar. Spears flew, horses leaped, and somehow all the weaponry missed the giant pig. It ducked beneath a horse, twisting its squat neck up and around. Its ivory tusks ripped the horse’s belly out. Rider and beast fell together.
Another rider flung himself off his horse, landing on top of the fallen man, and beneath the boar’s hooves. The boar squealed and slammed its head forward, tearing a bloody line across the second man’s stomach.
The forest faded away around me, thinning to younger trees. The second man, with a calm and bitter smile, sat atop a horse, a knotted rope around his neck. “Is this how you repay me for your life, my liege?” he asked, the last words he ever spoke. A man slapped the horse’s hindquarters and it bolted.
At my elbow, the second man watched himself hang, and said to me, “Do you enjoy a good hanging, my lady?”
I’d like to say I didn’t so much as flinch, but I almost jumped out of my skin. “No.” I watched the dangling man with sick fascination. “What is this? When did this happen? Who are you?”
“Six hundred years ago,” the man beside me said. He was green-eyed and broad-shouldered, light brown hair worn loose over his shoulders. Malevolence flowed off him in such force that I shivered, just standing by him. “I was called Herne, then. Herne the Hunter. The man I saved, who had me hanged, was Richard, my lord king and liege. Would you care to walk?” He offered me his elbow, a fluid elegant gesture.
I took it against my own volition, then flinched again, trying to pull away. Herne smiled, keeping his lips closed. “This,” he hissed, “is my garden, and you are here of my will, not yours. You will walk with me.”
And I did. We walked away from his twitching body and into open fields, following a footpath worn into the
