Weston Ochse: Reign of Evil

“Not much. Sit down, hold my hand, and keep still.”

Walker was having trouble reconciling her youthful appearance with the authority with which she spoke. He hesitated a moment, then sat in the other chair at the card table. She laid her hands across the table and indicated that Walker should place his on top of them, which he did.

“Now, Mr. Walker—”

“Everyone calls me Walker.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Even Jen sometimes.”

The witch smiled softly. “Probably when she was mad at you. I can see her doing it. You can call me Sassy.” She hesitated a moment when Walker looked at her funny. “It’s my name. Seriously.”

“Ma’am, there is absolutely no way I can call you Sassy.”

Jerry laughed from the couch. “We all told her the same thing.”

She shook her head. “You military men are all so formal. Let’s just get started.”

“What do I do?”

“You be quiet, luv, and let me do all the work.”

Walker closed his eyes and tried not to think about anything, but his thoughts automatically strayed to Jen’s death. He visualized her lying on the cold, hard earth of Stonehenge, her eyes staring deep into his, asking him why he hadn’t been there to help her. His eyes snapped open as he searched for something to look at, some visual input to dampen the accusation in her eyes. He noticed that a few of the Tarot cards had been turned over. In fact, his and the witch’s hands were resting on two cards—a card with a tower being struck by lightning and a card with a kingly figure on a throne with a sword. Of the other cards facing up on the table, all had some sort of sword.

Suddenly his body stiffened as if a jolt of electricity had taken control of him. His vision went blank, then was replaced by an image of a green man standing in the snow, then of a red-robed figure, then of the stones of Stonehenge, then of someone racing through a thick wood. He heard the sound of baying and realized it was coming from himself.

His eyes snapped open and he found the witch staring at him, a look of terror on her face.

Jerry, Trev, and Ian were also on their feet.

The witch let Walker go and stood. She paced back and forth for a moment, then went to a bookshelf.

Walker was breathing heavily. He wiped sweat from his forehead using his jacketed forearm. “What is it?”

Jerry said, “You were howling like a wolf, mate.”

“And growling too,” Trev added.

Walker felt hoarse. He brought a hand to his throat. “For how long?”

“Five minutes at least,” Jerry said.

Walker shook his head. “Impossible. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds.”

“Try six minutes, Walker,” the witch said, coming back to the table with a large book. “We’re lucky you were able to come back at all.”

Ian stepped forward. “What is it? Earlier you mentioned that you might know who was involved in the ceremony.”

“First things first.” She spoke a few words in a guttural German, then put her hand on Walker’s head. She did the same for the other three men, who stood by like this was a normal everyday occurrence.

When she was finished, she explained, “I needed to hide you from any interested eyes.”

“What about you?” Walker asked.

“I’m very well hidden already. I’ve had people chasing me for more than fifty years. Don’t worry about me.”

Walker looked at her. She was definitely a lot older than she appeared.

“So…,” Ian began.

“So something’s returned that the Isles haven’t seen in more than a thousand years. Maybe longer.” She flipped through the book and came to a double-page picture of a woodcut that showed a hunt. On the left was a cart pulled by a team of great stags. To the sides and in front were dogs and misshapen beasts of all sizes caught mid-action. Some were running; some were fighting each other; one even held the body of a baby in its twisted mouth. Standing in the cart with a whip in one hand and a sword in the other was a figure that looked like a demented Santa.

Walker said as much.

“That’s because part of our lovely Yuletide holiday tradition comes from this. Gentlemen, may I present to you the Wild Hunt.”

“The wild what?” Jerry asked, his eyes wide.

Trev punched Jerry in the shoulder. “Hunt. She said ‘hunt.’”

“Glory be. I thought she was describing a date I had last week.”

Ian punched Jerry in his other shoulder.

“The Wild Hunt was first reported in the seventh century, but it could be far older. I’ve read where they believe it to be the last vestiges of the Sidhe, or Tuatha Dé Dannan. Perhaps those who didn’t cross over to the other world with the coming of man. Like the Baen Sidhe, or banshee, they populate much of the mythology of the Isles.” She gave the men a gentle but stern look. “Only this isn’t mythology. It’s real.”

“You’re talking faeries?” Trev asked.

“I knew you’d be interested if there were faeries,” Jerry murmured.

“Like red caps and mermen and boggles?” Ian asked. When Trev and Jerry gave him a funny look he added, “My grandmam used to tell us about them. Wouldn’t let us go outside at night because she was afraid the faeries would come and eat us.”

Walker shook his head in disbelief. “Those don’t sound like the faeries I learned about.”

The witch scoffed, “Walker, dear. Don’t you get it? America has managed to Disneyfy everything that should be scary. Do you really think Tinker Bell was a sweet little pigtailed pixy? The faeries that were left behind—those still on the Isles—were the dregs, the rejects, those too imperfect or too insane to be with the rest.”

“You’re serious,” Walker said.

“As a heart attack. No one really knows where the faeries went to or for what reason. It’s believed that the Sidhe mounds are avenues to small pocket realities where they reside until they feel the need to come out. The Wild Hunt is shared cross-culturally, but primarily in Western Europe and Scandinavia. Many of these areas, now countries, describe the Wild Hunt differently, but there is one universal truth. When it appears, it doesn’t go away until its mission is complete.”

Walker mused for a moment. Where was Laws when he needed him to simplify things? “What does this Wild Hunt do?”

She smiled patiently. “It’s a supernatural hunting party that hunts specific things. What those things are depends on the mission.”

“And what’s its mission?” Ian asked.

She shrugged. “Think of this like a homicide. If you were a detective, what would you want to know? The motive of the criminal, right? Knowing the motive will help you narrow down who it was who committed the crime. If we can figure out the motive of those who brought it back, we may know its mission.”

“Wait a moment,” Jerry said, crossing his arms. “Are you saying that there’s a supernatural wild hunt out there killing people?”

Ian looked at Walker. “Jerry’s new. Only been with us for a month.”

Walker nodded. “I can relate. I fought homunculus the first day on the job.”

“What’s a homunculus?” Jerry asked.

“Little fucking Freddy Krueger–Stretch Armstrong serial-killing mini-golem.”

Jerry blinked. “I don’t know what that means, but it sounds terrible.”

“It is. I’ve made my share of them too,” the witch said. “Making them is even harder than killing them, if you can believe it.” She winked at Walker. “Back to the Wild Hunt. The reason Trev called you, Ian, was because I think I might know who it was who held the ceremony.”

“The one who apparently called forth the Wild Hunt—that ceremony?” Ian asked.

“The very same. So normally, it’s the British Druid Society who puts on the show and performs the ceremony at both solstices. They’re a mundane, fairly lame group of non-magicals who do a lot of pretending.”