No Dominion The Walker Papers - By CE Murphy Page 0,37
reminded myself of that every minute, an’ breathed deep, an’ once in a while felt a crazy grin stretch my face. I was on the wrong end of time fighting a battle for the future, an’ I might die any time but if I did, it was a damned fine way to go out.
The riders of the Hunt spread out from each other, all of ‘em finding a stretch of battlefield to call their own, but all of ‘em had the same look of ferocious glee smeared across their faces. It wasn’t so much joy in killing as it was joy in living on the edge.
Of all of ‘em, Cernunnos was the only one without that smile. He was fighting his way back to the front, heading for the one enemy combatant that mattered. I turned Imelda to follow him, focusing hard on staying alive. More’n once I knew it was the chain mail under my shirt keeping me that way. The sword was easier to use than I expected, my arm not getting tired the way it should. I turned the Sight on the blade and saw a dull blue glow, like even through the distance an’ the years, Jo’s magic was holding on.
It wasn’t more’n half a second I’d taken my eyes off the fight, but it was enough. A whistle caught my attention an’ I looked up to see a thing about eleven feet tall and branchy like an evil Ent swinging a massive tree club at my thick skull.
A bolt of lightning stopped it. Stopped it and everything else within five yards, too. I couldn’t see anything for a couple seconds, the world whited out from standing too close to the light, but the stink of burned flesh rose up, and when my vision cleared it was just me and Imelda in a smoking black circle.
Me and Imelda and Brigid.
I hadn’t even seen her coming. She was only just now touching down, the gold mare carrying her and her alone. There were sparks flying off her hands, bits of lightning left over, an’ for a couple seconds my heart took a break from beating. Joanne pulled down a lotta mojo, but she’d never thrown lightning, an’ I didn’t know if somebody human could do that at all. Made me real aware that Brigid wasn’t human, even if she mostly looked it. Her horse stopped over the tree creature’s ruin, Brigid with her head bowed, breath coming hard and blood dripping from her sword. She lifted her eyes, as much fire in ‘em as in Cernunnos’s, and she saluted me in greeting. I straightened up as tall as I could, feelin’ more weight from that salute than anything I’d given or received in Korea. She looked pleased.
Then the respite was over and the fight was on us again. She was right-handed an’ I was a lefty, so we covered each other’s backs and hacked down everything from normal-looking people to stone-footed giants that rose right up outta the earth itself. The rapier never lost its edge, not even when it slammed into granite so hard it sent shakes up my arm. One of the giants finally came up right between us, knocking our horses away from each other. I didn’t see her again after that.
All at once I was fighting behind Cernunnos, though. I got a look at him, and wanted to take another. He wasn’t even pretending to be human anymore. That crown of antlers had burst through, ivory wrapping around a skull distorted way outta shape. Not quite a full-on stag, but something so close to it that the blazing green eyes were disturbing in its face. So was the way his gums pulled back from teeth that shouldn’t be sharp, but were. His neck an’ shoulders were thicker, and his arms brawnier. He was using the short silver sword like a machete, hackin’ down everything within reach. There were too damned many of ‘em, that was all. Just enough to keep him away from the Morrígan, an’ I didn’t think that was luck on her part.
I started feeling a grin like the rest of the Hunt was wearing stretch over my own face. I brought Imelda around so we could flank the Master’s right-hand doll. Nobody was looking out for the old man on the grey mare. I slipped through the spaces up to the Morrígan as easy as I’d seen the pooka doing earlier.