I woke up with a blade of grass tickling the inside of my nose and the green-eyed god of the Hunt standing above me with an expression of bemusement. “A patch,” he said, while I tried twitching my nose enough to dislodge the grass and go back to sleep. “A patch of earth, this courtyard and nothing more, but vitality begets vitality, shaman. Tir na nOg is healing, and from perhaps more than the maker’s pull.”
I said, “Yay me,” without really hearing him, and pulled the offending blade of grass out of the ground, throwing it away before rolling on my stomach. A new piece of grass stuck itself in my nose. I whimpered and rolled over further, rubbing my face like a tired baby. Cernunnos kept looking at me with bemusement. I could feel it. After a while what he’d said started to sink home, and I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to sort it out. “You mean it worked. You’re okay now.”
“I am,” Cernunnos said dryly, “as you say, ‘okay.’ And the mists are parting, shaman. The time to ride approaches.”
I’d gotten an upgrade. I was no longer a
Cernunnos nodded. “All Hallow’s Eve approaches, and we have souls to collect.”
“Well, I can’t go with you. I’ve got to…well, I mean, I guess I have to go with you to get home, but I can’t ride with you. I have to, like—” I waved a hand “—save the world.”
It had to be a godly knack, the ability to do something as mundane as offer a hand up and make the entire gesture ironic. Cernunnos did just that, pulling me to my feet. The bone crown was finally beginning to distort his temples, and I forgot about whining in favor of smiling at the oncoming change. “You really are getting better.”
“I am, and I owe thee a—”
I put my fingers over his mouth. “Stop that. The theeing and thouing. You’re right. It gets right under my skin.” And in a good way, but I didn’t want to say that out loud. “Stick with being normal. As normal as you can be, anyway.”
His lips curved under my touch and he took my hand away, folding my fingers over his own. “As you wish. I owe you a debt of thanks, a greater debt than can be easily repaid.” He examined my hand over his, then lifted his gaze again with a flick of his ashy eyebrows. “You made a choice in riding with us to this place.”
I’d already managed to forget that. Now, reminded, I pulled back, but the god held my hand more tightly. “That choice is unmade, for what you’ve done here. It will come again at the end of all your days, but you have no bargain to settle with me. Your soul is your own,
“Oh.” I managed to keep my feet, but I also managed, in one two-letter word, to stagger with relief. Amusement lit Cernunnos’s eyes, and I dragged a crooked nervous smile up. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome.” He passed me back my belongings—including the rapier—and tipped his head. The Hunt drifted out of the mists, once more at full strength and beauty. “Now, Siobhán Walkingstick, shall we ride?”
I’d ridden with the Hunt quite a few times by now, what with dashing here and there and back again to Tir na nOg and Babylon, and being chased down highways, which may not have strictly been riding with them, but which I counted for effect’s sake. Name dropper and drama queen, that was me:
It was just barely possible I’d been watching too many rockumentaries on MTV. I needed to get out more. Anyway, none of that mattered, because I couldn’t imagine sipping bitter dredges at the memory of this thing lost. If I ever looked back on that last ride with Cernunnos with anything other than exhilaration, the truth was, I was already dead and just hadn’t noticed yet.
The goddamn sky split open under our horses’ hooves. There was nothing for their feet to impact against, but I felt every step like a bolt through my body, the air itself breaking and rumbling under the Hunt’s weight. Wind tore tears from my eyes and froze in icy streaks along my temples. Speed flattened my hair against my head, and my ears, my face, my
My throat ached from howls of joy, and I could barely hear myself in the cacophony. Everyone and everything around me let loose the same cries; hounds, Riders and rooks alike, warbling raw calls mixed with long baying tones and the deeper shouts of men. The same feral grins split everyone’s faces, from the lord of the Hunt to the bearded king and the blond archer. As the youngest, as the Rider of the pale mare, I was meant to have the lead, but we jostled and crashed against one another, a mob of enthusiasm all trying to reach my world and three months of freedom first. There was a solemn duty to be done during those months, yes, but in the moment, that was unimportant. For now, it was about the first breath of earthy air, the first glimpse of a sky studded with familiar starlight. It was chaos made manifest, that factor of the universe which could never be predicted, and it was, without any question, how the Hunt was meant to make the journey from their world to mine.
We burst through the cloud cover, thundering down toward the cemetery from which Cernunnos had taken me. For an instant I saw it as an immortal might, patches of green grass and gray granite memorializing the dead. It was both fascinating and meaningless to one who wouldn’t die: gods might understand ritual, but the connotation of permanent loss gave it all an unfathomable air.
Suzanne Quinley and the boy Rider sat together on a stone bench, two distant points of life bound together by blood. Matilda no longer haunted them, nor could I see any sign of her in the graveyard; Cernunnos had delivered on his promise.
The boy stood as we roared down toward them. Suzanne followed suit more slowly, and for all that I was certain my vision wasn’t clear enough to see it, I still saw the boy offer her a sympathetic smile. He murmured something I didn’t catch under the pounding hooves, then turned away and locked gazes with me.
I bent low over the mare’s mane, thrusting my arm out as we approached the two children. With absolute flawless grace and even more perfect timing, the boy reached for me in turn.
Our arms slammed together, fingers gripping with every ounce of strength we had available. I clenched my stomach and heaved, guiding the boy onto the mare’s back behind me. In very nearly the same motion, I dove off her other side, flinging myself under racing hooves and paws.
The Hunt angled skyward and careened over me, never breaking stride. I rolled through dirt and grass and came up against a gravestone, hooting with laughter. Suzy tore over to me, attention ricocheting between me and the disappearing Hunt. “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!”
“That was the coolest thing I’ve ever done!” I scrambled to my feet, feeling like a superhero and in search of a handsome man to kiss. There weren’t any around, so I snatched Suzy up and swung her around in circles until I stumbled from dizziness. Her legs tangled with mine at the sudden cessation of momentum, and we went down in a heap of elbows and knees and laughter.
“You were gone forever!” She whacked my shoulder and rolled away, gasping at the sky. “They’re already gone!”
“I don’t think they’re constrained by details like the conservation of mass and energy.” I dropped my elbow over my eyes, still grinning, then peeled it away again. “How long was I gone? The sun hasn’t gone down—” I pushed up, looking for the horizon. Distant clouds were turning gold, harbinger of a perfect Halloween sunset of red and orange. “Oh, hell.” Gaiety fled, I fumbled my phone out of my jeans pocket and punched in Billy’s number. I hated cell phones, but I’d hate having to race through Seattle at rush hour to bear bad news even more.
“Yeah, Joanie, what is it? Where are you?”
“I’m at the Crown Hill Cemetery. You think you can pull off the impossible in the next half hour?”
“You’re at…” I could hear all the questions he wanted to ask and discarded as not strictly relevant just then. “Depends on the impossible. What do you need?”
“Can you call up Sonny’s friend Patrick and ask him to get some local priests to go around and bless the
