shots thundered in the night, and I felt one bullet whip over my spine and heard another smack into a barrel cactus to my left. Flidais grunted as she took a slug in the arm, then roared in outrage as she realized what had happened.
“Kill him!” she shrieked, and I unthinkingly leapt to obey, as did Oberon. But unlike Oberon, I managed an independent thought after the first couple of steps, and that stopped me. Killing a ranger would bring the law down upon us, perhaps forcing us to flee, and I did not want to leave Arizona. I changed back to my human form, and immediately the fog lifted from my mind. Flidais had been controlling me as a hound, just as she was controlling Oberon-just as she could control all animals. Unable to resist without the protection of cold iron, Oberon had not stopped, and now he had the man flat on his back, screaming. I tried to call him off, but it was no use with Flidais binding him to her will; I could not even feel his mental presence as I normally could.
“Flidais! Release my hound now!” I snapped, and the man’s screams stopped. But it was already too late. Without ceremony, without any dramatic growls or shivering violins, my hound had torn out the poor man’s throat.
Oberon’s thoughts returned and a flood of questions filled my mind. ‹Atticus? What happened? I taste blood. Who is this man? Where am I? I thought we were supposed to be hunting sheep. I didn’t do this, did I?›
Step away from him and I’ll explain in a moment, I said. When one has seen as much death as Flidais and I have, there are no expressions of disbelief at a person’s sudden end. There is no gibbering, no wailing, no tearing of hair. There is only a cool assessment of the consequences. But if the consequences are dire, then a display of emotion is allowed.
“That was not necessary!” I shouted, but carefully kept my eyes on the corpse. “We could have disarmed him. His death will cause me and my hound much trouble.”
“I do not see how,” Flidais replied. “We can simply dispose of the body.”
“That is not so simple as it used to be. They will find it eventually, and when they do, they will find canine DNA in the wounds.”
“You speak of the mortals?” the huntress asked.
What does one do when one needs to pray to the gods for patience but a god is causing the need for patience? “Yes, the mortals!” I spat.
“What is this DNA you speak of?”
I ground my teeth and heard the short yips of Coyote on the thin desert air. He was laughing at me.
“Never mind.”
“I think it well he is dead, Druid. He shot me and tried to shoot you. And he also surprised me, which should not have been possible.”
I had to admit that piqued my curiosity. I stepped closer to the body and warned Oberon off.
‹Atticus?› he practically whined. ‹Are you angry with me?›
No, Oberon, I said. You didn’t do this. Flidais did. She used your teeth as a weapon, just as she would use a knife or her bow.
He whined in earnest. ‹I feel terrible. Sick. Auggh!› He coughed and hacked, vomiting onto the dry, rocky soil.
I crouched down to take a closer look at the ranger. He was a young Latino with a wispy mustache and a pair of thick lips. His aura was already gone, his soul traveling elsewhere, but when I used one of my charms to check out the magical spectrum, I saw traces of Druidry in a diamond stud in his left ear. That set off alarms.
I rose and gestured at the man. “Flidais, his earring is magical. Can you determine its purpose, or perhaps its origin?” Its origin was clear to me, but the knots in these particular bindings were unfamiliar. My query was a sort of test: If Flidais confirmed their Druidic origin and even recognized their purpose, she was not playing double. If she tried to tell me it was Voudoun, however, or something else completely different, then she was on some other side than mine. Flidais’s boots crunched toward me, her trophy ram and wounded arm forgotten. She squatted next to the ranger’s head and examined the earring. “Ah, yes, I recognize these bindings. It’s not the sort of thing the lesser Fae can do. This man was under the control of the Tuatha De.”
“That is enough for me,” I said, satisfied she was telling the truth. “I’m sure it was Aenghus Og himself. He gave the man a cloaking spell and then broke it abruptly as he was about to speak, ensuring our surprise and the man’s death. It is the sort of puppetry Aenghus enjoys.” I did not mention that Flidais seemed to enjoy it too. I felt like joining Oberon in a nice, cathartic vomit, utterly repulsed by these beings who robbed creatures of their own free will.
I had looked up Aenghus Og on the Internet once to see if the mortals had a clue about his true nature. They describe him as a god of love and beauty, with four birds following him about, representing his kisses or some such nonsense. Who would tolerate four birds flapping about his head, constantly letting loose their bowels and screeching? Not the Aenghus I know. But some accounts provide a better picture of his character by also telling of his deeds, such as taking his father’s house from him by trickery and slaying both his stepfather and his foster mother. Or the time he left a girl who was hopelessly in love with him and who died of grief a few weeks later. That’s more the kind of man we are talking about.
No, the Celtic god of love isn’t a cherub with cute little wings, nor is he a siren born of the sea in a giant clamshell. He is not benevolent or merciful or even inclined to be nice on a regular basis. Though it pains me to think of it because of what it says about my people, our god of love is a ruthless seeker of conquest, wholly self- serving, and more than a little vindictive.
As if to punctuate that thought, emergency sirens began to wail in the night.
“That noise is used by mortal law enforcement, is it not?” Flidais asked.
“Aye, it is.”
“Do you think it probable that they are headed here?”
“Of course. Aenghus sent this man to die,” I said, waving at the ranger, “and he wants us to be inconvenienced as much as possible.” The chance that the police would not know precisely where in the park to look for us was as close to zero as I could imagine.
“And I suppose,” she said with asperity, “that you would not want me to kill the mortal authorities so that I can take time to harvest my trophy.”
She was not joking. She really would have killed them without compunction. From her tone, it was clear that I should be grateful to her for recognizing that I might have a different set of priorities.
“You suppose correctly, Flidais. Living as I do amongst the mortals, I am subject to their laws and do not wish to draw undue attention to myself.”
The huntress sighed in exasperation. “Then we must hurry. The best I can do is to have the earth swallow him,” she said, yanking her knife out of the dead man’s shoulder.
I shook my head. “The police will have him out of the ground again as soon as we leave. But go ahead, since it is the best we can do. It may contaminate the evidence somewhat.”
Flidais spoke some of the old tongue, and the skin around her tattoos whitened briefly as she drew power from the land. She frowned a bit: There was not as much to be had out here as in the Old World, and it cost her more effort than it should have. But she waved her fingers, said, “Oscail,” and the dirt beneath the ranger obeyed. First the surface gravel began to skitter away from him, then the crust began to cave and ripple beneath him, and he sank. Once he was only a couple of feet below the surface, Flidais waved her fingers in the opposite direction, muttered, “Dun,” and the earth closed over him. It was magic I could have performed myself, albeit not so quickly. There was nothing subtle about it though. The earth looked churned up and disturbed, and the police would have little trouble deciding where to look for a freshly killed body. The sirens were close now.
“Back to the chariot,” she said, and I nodded and set off at a ground-eating pace, calling Oberon to follow. Flidais paused only to collect her bow and pull her arrow out of the ram, then she caught up and ran with us.
The sirens stopped, and we heard the dull whump of car doors slamming to the south as we reached her chariot. If they had a guide, and I had no doubt they did, the police would reach the body in minutes.
‹Why isn’t your tail wagging, puppy?› one of the stags said.
‹Were you a bad doggie?› the other chimed in.
Before I could, Flidais told them to shut up and thankfully Oberon bit back any response he would have given. Flidais cast invisibility on us-a wonderful trick, that-and we hoofed it out of there without delay.
The goddess of the hunt was seething. “My first new hunt in an age of man,” she said through gritted teeth, “and it was ruined by Aenghus Og. Well, I will be avenged. The huntress can be patient.”
