C.E. Murphy - Walking Dead

“You’re the strongest of us.” Somehow Melinda managed to be reassuring, placating and teasing all at once. “Besides, I could have come up with something equally impressive-sounding if Gary’d chosen somewhere else. Youth to age, if he’d taken the south, man to wife if Billy and I were facing each other. Want me to go on?”

A blush curdled my cheeks. “That’s okay, thanks. What now?”

“We may as well sit down. This can take a while.” Melinda did as she suggested, tugging a pillow beneath herself. Gary and Billy followed suit, but I froze halfway into my own crouch.

Light shimmered at the heart of Melinda’s power circle before she even began speaking, so faint I called up the Sight in hopes of seeing more clearly. For long seconds nothing resolved, only scattered bits of brilliance, like the last rays of sunset on the water. Without really thinking, I knelt and put my fingertips on the chalk outline. Magic sparked as if I’d touched a live wire, a gentle shock that pulled silver-blue power from me. It bolted around the circle, hiccuping with recognition as it touched first Gary and Billy, then whisked around to greet Melinda and meet itself.

Silver shot up, crashing into the ceiling. I looked up for the first time, finding another circle inscribed above us, capturing the magic that poured out of me. A nattering little part of my mind thought I should be afraid: spilling power like that was usually a bad sign. This time, though, it felt more like healing; like it had when I’d tried to breathe life back into Cernunnos’s forest, or like when I shared a bit of my own strength with Gary to shore up his weakened heart. Encouraged, I leaned in to it, pressing my fingers against the concrete.

Magic cracked, an audible sound of thunder, and slammed through the quartered cross. Hints of color that 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, gwyld. Follow me if you can.”

He winked out, leaving only a glimmer of starlight behind.

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.