Walking Dead

Billy retained the apologetic look another few seconds. “I’m fine. I shouldn’t be, but I’m fine.”

“That happens a lot around Walker. Go on, Detective.” An unexpected smile slipped over Morrison’s face. “And congratulations.”

Billy’s expression faded from apologetic to shocked, then took a sharp right turn toward thrilled. “Thanks, Captain.” He scrambled to his feet and tore out of Redding’s yard like his tail was on fire.

I pursed my lips. “How’s he going to get to the hospital? You didn’t exactly come in on normal channels.”

Morrison looked pained. “The department’ll pick him up if he’s got enough sense to call it in.” He took his cell phone out and made the call himself, requesting a second squad car for himself. “Walker, do we have any concrete evidence on this guy?”

This guy was Redding, who’d crawled to his dead family and lay still among them. Very still: entirely too still, in fact. I jerked a few steps toward him, then ran the rest of the way, dropping to my knees to put a hand over his chest. Neither heartbeat nor breath stirred, and blue magic flared, instinctively rising to the challenge of forcing life back into a broken body.

I turned my gaze toward Morrison. “I think he’s had a heart attack. Um. Should I…?”

“Can you?”

“Yes.” Tired confidence filled me. “Yes. I can save him. He can stand trial for trying to kill me. For killing Jason Chan, probably. For—”

Suzy quietly said, “There are bodies buried beneath the swimming pool. I can see police officers digging them up. I can see—” She blanched and shivered. “I can see the rituals he tried to bring them back. I can see his anger, his despair. He needed the cauldron. Nothing else had the power, but he kept trying. He has a lot to answer for.”

I rolled my lips in, then nodded. “There’s your evidence, sir, and it’ll go down a whole lot better than attempted murder when I don’t have a scar on me to prove I was attacked. Or we could just…”

Morrison’s silence didn’t last that long: it couldn’t, not when a man’s life was in the balance and every second counted toward brain functionality. But it seemed like a long time indeed before my captain exhaled and said, “Do what you think’s best, Walker. This one’s your call.” He turned away, deliberately leaving me to Redding and my own decision.

I looked down at the four bodies surrounding me. Three broke and shrank as I watched, and the fourth was achingly whole beside them. Whole, and yet what was inside him was more badly distorted than even the rapidly decaying family around him.

I could bring him back. Make him stand trial; make him answer for murders whose resolution might close heartbreaking chapters in strangers’ lives. I could make him face a world in which he’d failed in a mission of such desperate love that it had taken him across centuries and driven him to commit horrendous crimes. I could force him to live with a broken heart, maybe with a broken mind, until death came to his door again. I could make him face the faces of those whose families he’d murdered, and could hope he would pay a price in guilt every day for the rest of his life.

I could not, in any way, see how doing that would make the world a better place.

The bodies below the pool would be identified. Answers would be brought to grieving families. They might be denied the catharsis of a trial, but they would be offered another, even more final solution to their hurt: the man who had done these things to their loved ones was dead.

Archie Redding had died knowing he’d lost. I couldn’t imagine a heavier price for him to pay, and I had no stomach at all to prod him back to a life of nothing but sorrow. I closed my hand, healing magic subsiding within me, and got to my feet with tears sliding down my face.

“S’a good girl.” Gary slipped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me against his chest. A sob broke in my throat and I made a fist against his chest, coughing tears. “S’a good girl,” he said again, into my hair. “Right choice ain’t always easy.”

“Is it ever easy?” My voice shook like a kid’s, and he squeezed me tighter.

“’Course. Looked like divin’ into that cauldron was easy.”

I snorfled against his shoulder and took a step back with a hoarse laugh. “Pretty much, yeah. What happened when I went in?”

“It exploded,” he said with as much satisfaction as I’d felt at blowing up the undead warriors.

I sniffled again, but my smile got stronger. “That’s what I hoped it would do. How come you didn’t get blown up?”

He lifted my rapier, which he’d been holding away as he hugged me. “Guess this sword of yours tapped into the medal I gave you, ’cause it threw up a shield that kept us all from gettin’ perforated.” He said the last word like it was made of candy, rolling it around in his mouth. “Didja see our entrance, darlin’?”

“You mean you, the Wild Hunt and about a million pounds of kick-ass? Yeah. I caught that.” Tears still spilled down my cheeks, but a grin worked its way across my face. I shouldn’t be grinning. All sorts of things had gone badly tonight. I’d almost died. Billy’d almost died. The grin, though, wouldn’t die. “How’d that happen? How’d you pull it off?”

Suzy stepped up, all but digging her toe in the earth. “I Saw the Hunt’s terror. The cauldron was pulling them in, so I called them to me again. I guess blood’s even stronger than death.”

I glanced after Billy, thought of Caroline, and felt my smile go crooked. Happy, but crooked. “Yeah, I think sometimes it is. Good job, Suzy. Good job, everybody.” I stuck the sword in the ground and dragged both of them into enormous hugs so I could mumble, “And thanks for saving my ass tonight. How’d you all get here? I mean, Suzy, if you called the Hunt, I can see them bringing you, but…”

She shrugged, characteristic teenage abrogation of responsibility. “Captain Morrison was there, and he told Grandfather that we needed to get Detective Holliday if any of us were going to come out of this alive.”

I twisted to give Morrison’s shoulders an astonished look. “Cernunnos listened to Morrison? ”

“Well, I had to tell Grandfather he should, but then he did.”

My grin turned, very briefly, into a giggle. Not even the Horned God of the Hunt could stand before the Mighty Morrison. I felt better about, well, everything. “Thank you,” I said again. “Thank you all.”

“S’what the good guys do.” Gary squeezed me until I grunted, then guided Suzy out of the way as cops and forensics experts began pouring in.

Morrison left me to clean up the mess. Fortified by Gary and Suzanne making a coffee run, I stayed on until dawn, when Billy called and invited me over to the hospital.

Technically, Tuesday was the second day of my weekend. I passed supervisor duties over to somebody else, got Petite out of her illegal parking space and drove myself, Gary and Suzanne over to Northwest Hospital to meet the newest Holliday.

Melinda was asleep by the time we got there. Billy was waiting outside the maternity ward, holding a red- faced little bundle whose tiny eyes were squinched shut and showed off long eyelashes to great effect. All of us erupted in a spontaneous awww that made Billy look fit to pop with pride.

“We’re thinking of calling her Joanne.”

“Don’t be silly.” I bent over the baby and kissed the top of her head, marveling at the softness of her hair and skin. “Don’t be silly, Billy. Call her Caroline. She should be Caroline.”

They compromised. I had to ante up a whole lot of well-deserved explanation, but in the end, the name on her birth certificate went down as Caroline Siobhán Holliday.

I thought that was good.