weren’t mine danced in the silver and blue: fuchsia and orange, rose-pink and yellow, and a deeper silver that was somehow different from my own, carrying more weight and confidence with it. The effect was a gorgeous cascade that made auroras pale by comparison.
And something at the heart of it was desperately trying to break through. The nattering voice at the back of my head cried another warning, but something familiar rippled through the encroaching presence: the cool touch of mist, the scent of rich earth, a soft crystalline laughter from an unearthly throat. I breathed, “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
Power spiked, almost all of it my own, but bits and pieces fed in by my friends. Their trust burgeoned in me, and I lent that to the blazing circle, offering a safe refuge for the traveler.
The boy Rider appeared, pale and disheveled and without his mare. Without the Hunt, for that matter, and, as I frowned at him more carefully, it started to look like he was without mass or physical presence, either. He whispered, “We bring death where we ride, and now death itself has called us to it. Follow me,
He winked out, leaving only a glimmer of starlight behind.
CHAPTER 25
Magic wiped itself clean behind him, all the power dropping back to the earth with the ripple of a digital system creating a visual representation of music playing. It hissed into nothingness, and silence wrapped around me as my friends turned curious gazes my way.
Gary broke it, saying, “Ain’t seen him in a while.”
Billy, released from silence, said, “Who—what—was that?”
“Rider of the Wild Hunt,” Gary said when it was clear I wasn’t going to answer. “Cernunnos’s son. Jo here rescued him from oblivion, or somethin’ like it, back in January. What’s he doin’ here, Jo?”
I didn’t answer. I was afraid to blink, much less speak, because I wasn’t sure the whisper of starlight the Rider had left would remain visible if I did. Instead, I got to my feet and was halfway to the door before Melinda snapped, “Where do you think you’re going?” in a dangerous mommy-voice.
I winced and my eyes closed. To my relief, starlight remained streaked behind my eyelids, lingering when I opened them again. “Just to save the Riders. I’ll be right back.”
“Not by yourself you’re not.” Steel came into Gary’s voice, answering my question as to where the other silver in the aurora of power had been birthed from.
“Yeah, actually, I am.” I kept my voice to a whisper, still afraid I’d blow away my trace vision of the Rider.
I called magic, bent light around myself, and disappeared in front of their eyes.
It was a dirty trick, and under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have been sure I could do it. I’d never rendered myself invisible with a bunch of people actively looking on, and part of my brain thought I shouldn’t be able to. Fortunately, my need was far greater than my uncertainty just then. The Rider’s trail was fading, and I wasn’t going to get out of that particular discussion with anything less than a melodramatic exit.
My friends’ voices erupted in astonishment as I ran as quietly as I could for the stairs, taking them two at a time. I stopped at the head to grab the key off the top of the door frame—that was where the Hollidays habitually kept keys, though I bet by tomorrow afternoon they’d be in new hiding places—and locked my friends in the basement. Between Gary and Billy I figured the door would last about thirty seconds, a minute if I was lucky, but that was time in which Petite’s big old engine could warm up and I could get the hell out of Dodge. Or Aurora, as the case actually was.
They hadn’t made it to the front door by the time I pulled out of the driveway. I let my magic go, not wanting to find out what would happen if a cop saw a car driving itself, and focused on the Sight harder than I ever had in my life.
The starlight trail didn’t, of course, lead tidily down streets and highways. It barely made a trail at all, really: it was more of a gut feeling, certainty buried under my breastbone and charging me to make a left here, a right there. I could’ve navigated with my eyes closed and I’d still have “seen” just as clearly where I was meant to go.
It was a long enough drive that regret had a chance to raise its ugly head. None of my friends would happily accept “Suzy’s premonition had a bunch of people in it, so I figured I’d change the scenario by leaving you behind” as an excuse for me running out. As it happened, that was exactly the reason for my daring escape—the more I changed the details of Suzy’s premonition, the more likely it was the whole scenario would change—but my friends wouldn’t think it was very convincing. Neither would Billy be any too happy with “your wife is about to give birth, stay home with her, you idiot,” which was every bit as valid a motivation for abandoning him.
Oh, well. They could only kill me if I survived.
The starlight pull turned to sharp white agony through my diaphragm, cutting my breath away. I pulled Petite into an illegal parking space in front of somebody’s driveway and doubled over, hands cold on the steering wheel, then shoved myself straight and stared blindly down the block. I didn’t know where I was, except half a city from where I’d been. The Sight glowed with trees overhanging the blue-black mark of the street, and moonlight cut through branches to turn them even more ghostly in magic vision.
Moonlight. Suzy’d said there’d been moonlight when I went into the cauldron. That was a good sign, for some perverse value of good; it meant things were aligning properly for me to find it. On the other hand, if I could’ve pulled a cloud cover over and sent the details of the premonition that much more askew, I’d have been happy to. I’d have to see if quick-fixing the weather was supposed to be in a shaman’s repertoire.
Later. Later, assuming there
Cernunnos had to be in there somewhere. Maybe not one of these houses specifically, but it’d been the boy who’d come to me, not the god. If the boy had been removed from the Hunt, if he was dead, as the sudden cessation of starlight from him suggested he might be, then Cernunnos was no longer bound to the mortal wheel of life and death. I’d nearly blinded myself looking on him with the Sight once. I wasn’t sure what he’d look like unbound, but I bet I’d be able to see it blazing, no matter where he was in the city.
I’d gotten out of Petite and left her several steps behind without noticing it. My keys were in my hand, suggesting I’d locked her up safely, and either I’d be dead or I’d move her before anybody tried leaving the driveway I’d blocked. That, or a never-around-when-you-need-one cop would impound her while I was out fighting bad guys.
None of which really mattered. This was classic Joanne Walker-style dilly-dallying. I took a deep breath, held it until determined air sluiced away the rest of the cramps in my belly, and asked the Sight to find me a god.
Most of the world faded away. The black bands of human-built streets became translucent, then clear, and the purposeful rigid forms of buildings melted into mist and disappeared. Even natural things like trees and moonlight became cut-away simulacra of themselves, then bleached away. Only living things were left, sparks of brilliance that turned to dust as the Sight discarded them as insufficient to be a god. The smallest things went first, bugs and birds and squirrels. Their disappearance reminded me too much of the undead critters I’d fought, and for a few seconds my concentration wavered as I hoped there were no graveyards nearby.
If I lost my focus there would be zombies all over the damn place. My hands turned to firsts and I leaned into my efforts, looking at a world growing increasingly dark, in hopes of finding a single point of radiance.
Cernunnos’s wildfire green hit me between the eyes, and the cauldron’s black mass took me down for the count.
All the blood in my body had come to live in my head. My skull was so swollen with it my eyes felt puffy and my nose was stuffed. I was pretty sure it was blood and not, say, a sudden-onset head cold, because of the throbbing in my temples and the general ferocious itching of my face. I’d dangled upside down often enough as a
