When my fingers started tingling from returning blood, I wrapped my arms around myself and folded over, my forehead against the wheel as I tried to take deep breaths without hyperventilating. I’d been so sure I would recognize Herne, and the only reason I had at all was a sheer chance of light. It had taken him, a killer, to warn me of the consequences of my actions. I was so far out of my league it wasn’t funny, and it was going to get me killed.
I didn’t want to die.
Light colored in my eyelids, red and blue. I sat up to squint at the cop car that was pulling over in front of me. I didn’t recognize the cop who got out, but I hardly knew every cop in the greater Seattle area. I rolled down the window and leaned my head against the steering wheel, waiting for the ritual.
“Everything okay, ma’am?”
I sighed, straightened up, and looked at her. She was pretty. Blue eyes, and blond hair tucked neatly under her hat.
“Everything’s fine.” I couldn’t think of a good explanation as to what I was doing pulled off on the side of the freeway, so I didn’t say anything else.
“Car troubles?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Been drinking?”
Would I be dumb enough to answer that in the affirmative if I had? “No, ma’am,” I repeated. “Just coming back from the airport.”
“Late flight, huh? Tired?” She smiled. It was a nice smile that didn’t have anything to do with Celtic gods or shamans. I smiled back.
“Yeah. I just needed a breather. I’ll be on my way in a second here.”
The cop nodded. “Drive carefully, okay? And have a good night, all right?”
“I will. Thanks.” I watched her walk back to her car, then smiled and stuck my head out the window. “Hey, officer?”
She turned back, eyebrows lifted under her cap. “Yes?”
“You’d be good at playing Questions, you know that?”
She laughed, a sound as pleasant as her smile. “What makes you say that?” She climbed in her car and drove away, leaving me feeling like the world was a better place. I sighed and slumped back in my seat with a yawn, eyes closed for a moment before I reached for the gear stick.
Light filled my eyelids again. Shimmering, pearly silver light that was about as much like headlights as peacock feathers were. For a long moment I refused to open my eyes again, under the dubious logic that if I couldn’t see whatever was making the light, it couldn’t see me.
“It doesn’t work that way,” a sibilant voice murmured. I wasn’t at all sure if I’d heard it in my ears or my head. It didn’t matter. I knew the voice. Since it didn’t work that way, I gritted my teeth and opened my eyes.
Cernunnos’s host swarmed around my car, flickering with quite literally unearthly light, as if they were no more than figures on an old silent movie screen. The horses skittered, not quite touching the car. Red-eared hellhounds slunk under the horses’ bellies, baring gleaming white fangs at me through the window. One rider glared down through the windshield at me, craggy face bearded and stern. If he weren’t undead, I might have considered him handsome.
“Not undead,” Cernunnos corrected. A few of the host melted away as he approached on his enormous stallion. “The undead do not bleed. ” Hatred seeped into his voice with the last word. He straightened in the saddle and I saw that he held an arm wrapped around his ribs. He sat tight as a bowstring, the elegant line of his jaw clenched. He was pale, even in comparison to the others, even bearing in mind the color-leaching lights along the freeway.
“I thought you’d have healed.” One of the hounds made a lunge at the open window, his teeth snapping shut centimeters from my arm. I flinched back, and the hound dropped a few inches, smacking his chin on the window frame. He let out a high-pitched yelp of pain and backed off, snarling at the car.
“We do not heal well from iron,” Cernunnos said, warm liquid voice still distorted with fury. The dog slunk toward his master and lay down between the stallion’s forelegs, lips pulled back from his teeth as he looked at me.
“So I really hurt you,” I whispered, watching the hound. Cernunnos let out a bark of laughter. My eyes snapped up to his. His distance and the stallion’s restless shuffling kept his eyes from having the drowning power I remembered from the diner, but even through the amber lights, they were compelling, violent green, filled with rage.
“Oh, yes.” He edged his stallion closer. The hound jumped up and slunk around to the horse’s back heels, his head lowered, crimson eyes as dangerous-looking as the ivory canines. I watched them, and shrank back a little farther into my car.
“Am I safe in here?” I wondered out loud. “The steel?” I was suddenly very glad I didn’t like show cars like Corvettes, all fiberglass and no substance. Petite was solid steel through and through. She felt safe.
At least, she felt safe until Cernunnos laughed, a sound that could scratch glass. “Safer than you would be outside of it. Not safe enough. Glass holds no power to hurt, and your window is open.” He lifted a hand, graceful, though his nostrils flared as he pulled at the injured tissue in his side. One of his host raised a bow as tall as I was, and sighted me down the long narrow shaft of an arrow.
I saw a special on PBS once, with a Welshman demonstrating the power of a longbow. Standing much farther away from his target than Cernunnos’s man was from me, he put an arrow through platemail armor, through the dummy body, and out again through the back of the platemail.
All of a sudden Petite didn’t seem nearly so safe. Cernunnos edged his stallion to the side, to give his man a clear shot. The archer was tall and slender and very blond, his expression almost sympathetic and clearly bored. Shooting at mortals in tin cans apparently wasn’t much sport. I certainly didn’t think it was very sporting.
I flung Petite into Drive. She roared and leaped forward. Fire burned over the back of my shoulders as the arrow sliced through shirt and skin without hitting anything vital. It embedded in the passenger door with a shriek and I winced, the injury to my car more offensive than the injury to myself.
Two of the ghostly hellhounds disappeared beneath Petite’s wheels, making horribly solid thunks as the Mustang hit them. For one moment, one of the host stood in my way, the bearded man on a washed-out roan. We met eyes, and I braced myself for the impact, knowing none of us, not horse and rider nor car and driver, were going to survive.
The roan gathered himself, catlike, and sprang forward, in so little time I barely saw it happen. Hooves flashed over Petite’s windshield, silvery shoes glittering. I wondered what kind of metal fairy horses were shod with, and in the rearview mirror saw the roan come down lightly, back feet tucked up to miss Petite’s tail end as she careened forward. The rider put a hand solidly against the roan’s neck, and turned to watch me go without the slightest expression on his face.
I caught one glimpse of myself, wide-eyed with shock, in the rearview, then snapped my eyes back to the road, twitching the steering wheel as I tried to avoid a hellhound stupid enough to fling himself at the Mustang. I heard Petite dent, but the dog bounced off with a painful yelp. It rolled away and didn’t get up again.
Another sharp chink sounded as Petite’s wheels squealed and we tore off down the freeway, zero to sixty in about seven seconds. I pushed her up to ninety for maybe two minutes, then remembered the cop who’d stopped to talk to me, and slowed down to somewhere around the speed limit. There was no possible way a herd of riders were going to catch me.
Petite coughed, a sick little sound, and lost power for a second.
“Oh, no.” I breathed the words over the steering wheel. “Be good, girl.” The gas gauge was lower than I remembered it being, but it had been a long drive out to the airport. Petite coughed once more, then rumbled contentedly. I sank down in my seat. “Good girl,” I whispered again. “That’s my baby.” Don’t tell me talking to your car doesn’t help.
She coughed again, lurching as her power drained. “What? What’d I do? I’m sorry I left you in a garage for four months. This is fun, though, right? Out on the freeway, driving fast? This is fun. Come on, baby. What’s wrong?”
We drifted to the side of the road, where she gave one more pathetic little cough and settled into a heap with an apologetic sigh. I leaned my forehead against the steering wheel for a moment, eyes closed. “Okay, nice cop
