Walking Dead

the three of them together, the two part-mortal descendants of the god, rude copies of his narrow elegance, and yet both fragile by human terms. She whispered, “I was scared,” and looked up apologetically.

“Frightened enough to tear down walls between the worlds?” Cernunnos did what I wanted to, brushing her hair back with a light touch. His hair was ash with starlight, and hers wheat-pale, but they were of a kind. My heart twisted to see them together, a strange family torn apart by worlds and time. “What could unnerve the child of a god so badly?”

“That.” Suzanne pointed beyond him, beyond me, to the thing I’d forgotten about. I turned, dismayed, to find Matilda Whitehead far less a thing of death, and much more a simulacrum of a living girl.

She might have been pretty, if her idea of herself was true. Not happy, but then, I wouldn’t be happy if I was a hundred-plus years dead, either. She had a solemn face with large eyes, and dark hair tied in a neat braid and decorated with a fat, colorless bow. She was still far too thin, but no longer cadaverous; another few bursts of magic on my part, and she might work her way up to healthy, though she’d never be plump.

Cernunnos let go a breath cold enough to chill the air, and turned to me with a look of both disgust and cunning. “This is a thing that isn’t meant to be, little shaman, and it’s born of you and your magic.”

“I know.” Non-existent bugs crawled over my skin and I shuddered, trying to wipe them away. “I was trying to get rid of it when Suzy called for you.”

“Its name is Matilda,” the thought-formed ghost said in a thin voice. She watched me like I was her next and maybe only meal. Hairs stood up on my arms and I told myself-again—that there was no such thing as vampires. “I only want to live. You can give me life.”

“You’ve been dead a hundred years. I can’t do anything for you. I’m sorry.” I wasn’t, very, but some bizarre form of deep-seated societal training made me say it.

“All I need is a little more of your power.” She took a weak step toward me, thin body straining with effort. “Please?”

I considered it for about a nanosecond, then shot a look at Cernunnos. He was a god of death. He should know something about this sort of situation. “What happens if I do what she asks?”

To my surprise, he turned a palm up and offered an answer with the gesture. “You feed a wrongness in the worlds. Make no mistake, little gwyld, you and she cannot both survive. Give her what she requires, and you wipe away the years granted to you.”

“Right.” My voice shot up and broke on the single word. “How do I get rid of it? I can’t fight it with magic.”

“Ah.” Fine lines appeared around the corners of his eyes, evidence of a wicked smile that barely touched his mouth. “Perhaps I can help you.”

On a scale of one to ten, that was up there around vampires in its reassurance factor. My heart tried making a break for it, then, stymied by my ribs, decided squeezing down into an invisible knot would do the trick. I thumped a fist against my breastbone and coughed out a pathetic little burp before getting enough voice together to ask, “At what cost?”

“A bargain,” Cernunnos offered. “You’ve done so well with those in the past. You cannot fight this creature, not here, not anywhere, but I can. Ride with me, Joanne Walker. Ride with the Hunt a third and final time, and I will take you so far from this place that your magic will stretch and thin, and leave nothing for your undead child to live on.”

“And what do you get out of this?”

“You’ll bear my mark.” His eyes were brilliant, compelling green, and his smile full of delight. “You will become a part of the Hunt, and when your final day comes, you will choose to ride with me through eternity.”

“I thought…” I wet my lips and tried again. “I thought I already did. Bear your mark.”

“Marked for me is not the same as bearing my mark. Many mortal souls are marked for me, and I carry those souls beyond this world and into the next. Make no mistake, I shall come for thee and I shall have thee in such a way at the end of thy days, but this thing I offer now, Siobhán Walkingstick, is a thing all of its own.”

I closed my eyes and murmured, “You’re talking in my head again, aren’t you? Thank you.” He was a god. I probably couldn’t stop him from flinging my name around if he wanted, but the echoing depth of his voice suggested he’d changed from spoken speech to silent. It was a gift, and I was inclined to consider it in his offer. I opened my eyes to look at him again, repeating his words in my mind. “‘I’ll choose to ride with you through eternity.’ You mean I’d have a choice. Even if I ride with you now, when I die I’ll have a choice. I could just go through the Dead Zone and on to whatever happens next. Reincarnation, if that’s what’s on the plate.”

“You’ll make the choice now, in exchange for this monster’s destruction.” Smooth voice, soft voice, speaking perfect reason. I put my face in my hands, then looked up over my fingertips.

“I can’t. I can’t make the choice now. I could lie to you, but I won’t do that. I don’t know who I’m going to be when that day comes around, my lord master of the Hunt. I might need to come back around to this world more than I need to keep my promise to you. So I can’t make the promise. I don’t know how I’m going to get rid of this Matilda-thing, but I’m not going to lie to you to do it.”

“Wise little gwyld.” Cernunnos lifted a hand to trace the scar on my cheek. “But think on thy words, Joanne Walker. Dost thou know for certain that I mean the end of this mortal existence as thy final day? I would have all of you that I could, and yet even I cannot stand against the makers of the worlds.”

I stared at him, heart sick and small in my chest. “What do I miss out on? If I say yes, am I walking away from…from Heaven? From some kind of end-days party that everybody else is going to be at? Do I miss out on eternity with…” Morrison, was how that sentence finished, but I just let it fade away.

To my surprise, amusement quirked the corner of Cernunnos’s mouth. “I am neither born of your world nor of your flesh, little shaman. I have no answer for you.” He inclined his head, eyes lidding to hide some of the fire in his gaze. “Choose.”

I looked back at Matilda. At Suzanne and the boy Rider, and the Hunt and the world around and beyond them. The Sight washed over my vision, turning the world to a quiet haze of waiting, as though I’d stepped a little out of time. Matilda was a black streak in that, a wrongness, as Cernunnos had said; the boy Rider was more brilliant even than Suzanne.

And the god, the god himself, I finally dared turn my Sight on, and found him blazing with restraint and quiescence. There were no easy words for his colors; they were raw and hard edged, mixing and spilling together and over and under, raw chaos and primal life clinging to a slender alien form.

I put my hand in his, and joined the Hunt.

CHAPTER 18

The boy Rider lent me his mare again. I put my palm under her nose, an apology for not having apples or carrots. She huffed over it before dipping her head in agreement to let me ride her. I hadn’t asked the first two times, and didn’t know why it seemed important now. Maybe because three was a magic number. Once astride, I looked back to the graveyard and to Suzanne standing alone with the young Rider, and at Matilda staring them both down. “Are they going to be all right?”

I’d asked Cernunnos, but it was the boy who gave me another of his father’s feral smiles. “I invite it to test me.”

Maybe on a rational level, that wasn’t the answer I should’ve been looking for, but on a purely emotional one, it was perfect. I guessed that, like Cernunnos, he was coming in to the height of his power. If Matilda wanted to tangle with him, I was pretty sure she’d be digging her own grave. She might not stay in it, but I had very little doubt the green-eyed boy would put her there, and hard.

In fact, I kinda wanted to stay and watch. Cernunnos swung up on his silver stallion, though, and the Hunt fell into place, hounds slinking under horse bellies and gray-beaked rooks winging overhead. “Where are we going?”

He lifted his hands, reins held loose in them, and made fists that wove and touched together and bumped