C.E. Murphy - Walking Dead

Behind her—behind them both—stood the Hunt, waiting restlessly for their master to finish his business. Men, each and every one, from the thick-shouldered bearded king whose name I knew and would never dare speak, to the slim blond archer whose longbow had driven arrows through Petite’s sturdy steel body. I wondered if there were no women because women committed fewer crimes that would condemn them to an eternal ride, or if they were simply better at not getting caught.

The boy Rider flicked an eyebrow, and I stopped wondering about the sociological makeup of a mythical host of riders in order to face its leader in single combat. “Mano a mano,” I said aloud, remembering.

Eager rage contorted Cernunnos’s features, and we came together like goddamn Titans clashing. I saw silver peel off the edge of my rapier, a sizzling thread that fell to the ground and was smashed beneath dancing hooves. My arm wobbled with the hit, and for some reason I laughed, utterly thrilled with pitting myself against a god. I wheeled my mare around with nothing more than a lean and charged Cernunnos again, standing in the stirrups to add to my already considerable advantage in reach. He was my height, maybe even a little better than, but the sword he carried was much shorter than the rapier, and I sucked in my gut to make his passing slash a miss. He rode by, and for the first time I could remember, I twisted and shot a bolt of deep blue magic from my fingertips.

It surged out of me like a tidal wave, more draining than fighting Matilda had been. I learned two things right then: one, using my power as a weapon would probably kill me, and two, even when I was thinking in terms of weaponry, the magic itself was hard to corrupt. Light crashed into Cernunnos, knocking him from his horse, but he didn’t get up again. I brought the mare around and slid from her back, sword at a god’s throat.

“Do you yield?” Power danced over my skin, blue and silver threads weaving to make a net. I could drag him all over the world if I needed to, but there was a hell of a lot of appeal in just sitting on his chest and pinning his arms down with my knees, if he seemed inclined to continue fighting.

Green fire spat through his eyes. “You’ve changed since we last met, little shaman.”

My mouth said, “So have you,” and my mind only caught up with that a few seconds later. Surprise washed through my magic, loosening it a little, and I stepped back a few inches. “You have changed, my lord master of the Hunt. Your horns are gone.”

Not just gone. He’d said they grew with his power, erupting fully on the last day before he returned to Tir na nOg, the world from which he came. I expected them to be nothing more than subtle patterns against his temple now, so early in his ride. But nothing at all graced his forehead, no distortion or stretching of bone and skin. I crouched and slid my fingertips against his temple, taking victory as an excuse for intimacy, and found no rough malformation through touch, either. “Cernunnos, what happened to you? You’re all wrong.” Magic stirred under my skin, searching for a way to put a wild thing back together.

“We were called too early from our place beyond the stars, little shaman. This is why I came in such anger, and took you as my enemy.” His wildfire gaze went to Suzanne and came back to me. “You can be a fool, Sio—”

I put my fingers over his lips. “You can call me Joanne.”

Silence went on far longer than was strictly warranted. I removed my fingers, and the silence kept going, very loudly. Eventually the Horned God said, “You are a fool. Joanne Walk—”

“—er.”

Another one of those silences happened. “C’mon,” I said. “I don’t go bandying your true name about. Leave mine in peace.”

Green fire flashed again. “You do not know my true name.”

“Totally beside the point. You’re a fool, Joanne Walker. What comes next?”

The third time he drew out the silence I began to think he’d never break it again. I’d have given a great deal to know what was going on behind his brilliant gaze, but I couldn’t read it any more than I could read a rock.

Actually, okay, truthfully, I could probably read quite a bit from a rock, if I turned the Sight on it. But looking at Suzy had damn near burned my eyes out, and I wasn’t in a hurry to see Cernunnos in any more primal a visage than the one he presented by choice. “You’re a fool, gwyld, but had we come through at our rightful hour, I wouldn’t take you for one great enough to threaten a child of my blood. My weakness is to your benefit. Had I been at full strength…”

Gwyld. I hadn’t heard that word in a while. Not since the last time I’d encountered the likes of a death god, in fact. It meant wise man or shaman in Irish, and therefore technically applied to me, though I wasn’t very wise. “If you’d been at full strength you wouldn’t have tried riding me down, and I wouldn’t have been able to kick your ass nearly that easily.” I stood up and offered Cernunnos a hand. To my eternal astonishment, he looked at it, then accepted it and let me pull him to his feet.

I’d mostly only touched him when we were trying to kill each other. He was tall and hit like a load of bricks, so I didn’t expect his body weight to be negligible. I gave him a quick surprised nod, but he knotted his hand around mine and stepped in very close, gaze hot on mine. “I trust you would not have ‘kicked my ass’ at all, Siobhán Walkingstick.”

I swallowed, trying to remember why it was I usually thought breathing was important. He smelled of the forest in autumn, rich and crackling and clean, and I thought he would taste of cold fresh water from the stream. A smile curved his mouth and he let me go, though his eyes on mine kept me as arrested as his hands might’ve. I was okay with that. I could happily drown in his blazing gaze. I even felt a stupid little smile start working its way into place.

A light of satisfaction flashed in Cernunnos’s eyes. “Granddaughter,” he said then, and released me by looking toward Suzanne. My breath left me in a rush and I squeaked, reaching for the mare to lean against. She ignored me, ambling toward the boy Rider and Suzanne, then stood with her head between their shoulders, snuffling for treats. I was abandoned all around.

“Granddaughter,” Cernunnos said again. “Why have you called me before my time?”

“And how,” the boy Rider said dryly, but hushed himself when the god’s glare fell on him.

Suzy ducked her head so hair curtained her face. I wanted to step forward and pull it back so I could see the three of them together, the two part-mortal descendants of the god, rude copies of his narrow elegance, and yet both fragile by human terms. She whispered, “I was scared,” and looked up apologetically.

“Frightened enough to tear down walls between the worlds?” Cernunnos did what I wanted to, brushing her hair back with a light touch. His hair was ash with starlight, and hers wheat-pale, but they were of a kind. My heart twisted to see them together, a strange family torn apart by worlds and time. “What could unnerve the child of a god so badly?”

“That.” Suzanne pointed beyond him, beyond me, to the thing I’d forgotten about. I turned, dismayed, to find Matilda Whitehead far less a thing of death, and much more a simulacrum of a living girl.

She might have been pretty, if her idea of herself was true. Not happy, but then, I wouldn’t be happy if I was a hundred-plus years dead, either. She had a solemn face with large eyes, and dark hair tied in a neat braid and decorated with a fat, colorless bow. She was still far too thin, but no longer cadaverous; another few bursts of magic on my part, and she might work her way up to healthy, though she’d never be plump.