I lowered my gun, but I didn’t put it away. I wasn’t ready to trust Bugs just yet. “The Boneyard.”
He looked me over. “That I could’ve guessed.” He wrinkled his nose. “And smelled.”
“Sorry, but they don’t make deodorant for zombies.” I gave him an extremely truncated version of who Devona and I were and what we were doing here.
“You’d have been better off taking your chances with Lady Talaith. The Wyldwood is never a safe place for outsiders, but it’s even more dangerous now.”
“Why?” Devona asked.
The wererabbit opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off by the sound of horns echoing in the distance. Hunting horns.
“That’s why. Today Lord Amon is conducting the Wild Hunt.”
I sighed. “Of course he is.” Why, I wondered to myself, are these things never easy?
The lyke, whose name turned out to be Arleigh (“It means ‘from the hare’s meadow,’” he said proudly), led us through the forest and to a vast stretch of pasture where cattle grazed contentedly beneath Umbriel’s shadowlight.
“Here in the Wyldwood, we produce most of Nekropolis’s meat and blood-real blood, not that synthetic glop Varvara’s factories have started churning out.” Arleigh said. “Well, animal blood, anyway. Cattle, sheep, goat… Non-preds like me tend the herds. The carnies are too impulsive for the work and usually end up killing and eating the animals themselves.”
“You’re a farmer?” Devona asked.
Arleigh nodded. “Most herbs like me are.”
“So you lykes have a caste system?” I asked. “Doesn’t seem fair.”
Arleigh shrugged his lean, bony shoulders. “It suits my nature, and I enjoy the work. What’s wrong with that?”
I thought of my own work as a “doer of favors.” In reality, I had to admit to myself, I was really still just a cop. My nature, I suppose. “Nothing wrong at all.”
I noticed Devona was frowning, and I wondered if she was thinking about her own work as tender of Lord Galm’s Collection.
“We’re safe along the pastureland,” Arleigh said. “The Hunt’s conducted in the wilder part of the forest, using animals Lord Amon has specially bred at his Lodge.” He lowered his voice. “I’ve heard it said that this year, he’s using animals that have been…augmented.”
“What, you mean through technology?”
He nodded.
“I guess it’s everywhere,” I said. I wondered how long it would be before Waldemar installed flesh computers in the Great Library and Gregor set up his own homepage on the Aethernet.
“Unfortunately,” Arleigh said,” the pastureland doesn’t extend all the way to the Bridge of Forgotten Pleasures.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “The way we need to go is directly through the section of the Wyldwood where the Hunt’s being conducted.”
Arleigh nodded, and I sighed again. Never easy.
Arleigh offered to help us through the Wyldwood and I, distrusting soul that I am, wanted to know why. He puzzled over my question for a few moments before finally smiling apologetically. “The only reason I can give you is because it’s the right thing to do.”
I didn’t buy it, but then twenty years as a cop and two as a zombie had made me a tad cynical. Maybe the lyke was just following his nature again. Whatever his reason for aiding us, we couldn’t afford to turn him down.
Arleigh led us through the Wyldwood’s pasturelands, but even though he assured us we were safe here, I kept my gun out. Just in case. Before long, however, we had to leave the pastureland and return to the forest. Arleigh thought he’d be able to lead us past the Hunt, but I could tell by the nervous way the lyke kept sniffing the air and looking around that he wasn’t as confident as he would’ve liked us to believe.
We periodically heard the hunting horns, sometimes closer, sometimes farther. Arleigh told us not to worry overmuch about the horns, for sound traveled in deceptive ways in the forest.
Eventually, we reached a small clearing, and Arleigh said he needed to stop a moment and get his bearings. He crouched down, his nose shifted back to a rabbit’s, whiskers and all, and he sniffed the ground.
A horn blasted, sounding close by. It was followed by the noise of something large and heavy crashing through the underbrush directly toward us. Arleigh stood, rabbit nose quivering in fear.
“We need to get out of here!” I told him. “Which way?”
But he only stood, transfixed, staring in the direction of whatever was approaching, and trembled. I grabbed his arm and shook him a couple times, but I couldn’t break him out of his terror-induced trance. I figured to hell with him, then.
“C’mon, Devona, we have to-”
Before I could finish my sentence, an animal unlike any I had ever seen before bounded into the clearing. It looked something like a muscular ostrich, only with a thick neck and a large, cruelly hooked beak. No doubt one of the “augmented” animals the Hunt pursued. The bird skidded to a stop upon seeing us. It cocked its head and examined us, probably trying to determine if we were a threat or not.
Evidently, the answer was not, for it let forth an angry squawk and came charging at us, snapping its hook- beak.
I only had five silver bullets left, and I hated to waste them on the lyke’s prey, but I couldn’t let the giant bird attack us either. I aimed for the thing’s throat, but before I could fire, a spear whizzed through the air and sunk into the creature’s back with a meaty-moist thuk! The bird screeched in pain and pitched forward, where it lay writhing in the grass.
A huge wolfman stepped into the clearing, powerfully built, lupine head held high in a regal fashion. Lord Amon, I presumed. He was followed closely by a half dozen other lykes of various predator species, one of which-a humanoid bobcat-carried an antler horn slung over his shoulder by a leather strap. I was impressed by how silent the lykes had been-they hadn’t made a sound.
I didn’t need Arleigh to tell us we had stumbled across the Wild Hunt.
The bird, though bleeding profusely, was still very much alive, squawking and thrashing its powerful legs. The wolfman walked up to the animal and regarded it for a moment. I expected him to finish it off, but instead the wolf-headed humanoid padded over to us. I thought he might do any number of things, all of them involving his teeth and claws and our flesh, but he stopped in front of us and then did something I didn’t anticipate and couldn’t have imagined: he fell to one knee.
“I have downed the bird, my Lord. Would you do me the honor of dispatching it?”
At first, for some crazy reason, I thought the lyke was addressing me. But then Arleigh replied, “You have done well, Rolf. Rise and claim the honor for yourself.” The wererabbit’s voice was no longer high-pitched but low and resonant.
The wolfman stood and grinned. “Thank you, my Lord.” Then he turned and loped toward the bird and, with a single savage bite and twist of his jaws, broke the animal’s neck. He ripped off a hunk of meat, and walked away from the kill to devour it. The other lykes waited until Rolf was eating before rushing to the dead bird, snarling, yipping, and biting as they fought for the best of the remaining meat.
“My people have never been much for table manners,” Arleigh said.
Devona and I turned toward him, but the rabbity man was gone; in his place stood a broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced man in full fox hunting regalia-little black hat, red jacket, white jodhpurs, shiny black boots, even a riding crop held in one black leather-gloved hand. But despite his transformation, the being still possessed the same yellow eyes as Arleigh.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” he said with a touch of British accent. “I am Amon, Lord of the Wyldwood.” He smiled, displaying a mouthful of sharp teeth. “So nice of you to drop by.”
SEVENTEEN
