No Dominion The Walker Papers - By CE Murphy Page 0,43
of every new year from there on out, an’ that was the peak of his power. Not even the failing faith of the people could take more than that away from him, and it got to where I kinda wished he could gather the flocks enough to make a stronger stand. I couldn’t bring myself to like the fella, but after watching him guide his believers over the great divide a few thousand times, I learned to respect the compassion he showed.
And besides, it was a hell of a thing, riding across the stars with the Hunt. It got hard to remember I still had a fight ahead of me. Never dreamed I’d be coming at it this way, not even in the worst of the war I’d seen. There were minutes where it was easy to think I’d laid down my own burden an’ was enjoying an afterlife like I’d never imagined.
An’ then we rode through a cloudburst one afternoon into a remote stretch of road in California. It was Horns who knocked a pretty girl outta the road just as a truck came thunderin’ outta nowhere and came half an inch from clipping her down. We were gone before she knew what had happened, but I was looking back, twisted in my saddle, to watch Annie Macready yelp and draw her feet back as the truck roared by. “So mundane,” Cernunnos said a couple seconds later, “but equally unquestionable.”
Annie was gone already, left in the rain, but the image of her stuck in my mind. Neat white blouse tucked into a bright yellow skirt, an’ flat shoes on her feet. Blond hair hardly past her collar, but not as done-up as it’d been the night I met her. I had to swallow to get words past the tightness in my throat. “This’s the late forties, Horns. Not so many cars on the road as there are today.”
He said, “And yet,” an’ I muttered. I toldja so wasn’t any better from a god than anybody else. ‘sides, I remembered Annie tellin’ me about that near miss, one night when my car overheated an’ we ended up walking through a rainstorm to the nearest town. Headlights had washed over us a few times, but we’d kept walking insteada hitching. Back then it wasn’t dangerous. We’d just liked keeping company in the rain. I smiled at the memory, then scowled at Cernunnos, who didn’t give a damn about what happy thoughts I might be thinking.
“There was no resistance to my interference. She may not have been under attack at all, Master Muldoon. It may have only been human carelessness that nearly cost her her life today.”
“Then I owe you one.”
“More than one by now, I think.”
Hell of a time to pick a fight, but I shook my head. “I ain’t takin’ that burden on, Horns. I asked for the lift through time, but you made it plenty clear that you’re watching my back because of Jo, not ‘cause I asked you to. You saved my Annie, and I’ll repay that one if I get the chance, but I ain’t starting a tab at this bar.”
I’d seen the look he got a few times before, but usually it was Jo, not me, exasperating him. I guessed I’d made my point, though, ‘cause he went on without belaboring it. “The more effort our enemy has put into destroying her, the more difficult you’ll find it to interfere. Time is not that kind.”
“Yeah.” I thought of Jo, tryin’ ta heal the elf king Lugh and running up against the magic of a little girl from our own time. She’d said the same thing: one big change to the time line made smaller ones pretty much impossible. “So—waitaminnit. You tellin’ me I’m the goddamned Ghost a’Christmas Past? I’m gonna be stuck watching everything go to hell and not be able to fix it?”
Something happened in his expression, something that suggested that if I didn’t know better, I might think Horns was being gentle with me. “I am telling you nothing. It’s rarely wise to predict what capricious humans might achieve. I would not have said an ordinary man, even one held so highly in Joanne Walker’s regard, might have struck the Morrígan a near-fatal blow, nor drawn the Devourer’s attention to himself. I expect this journey with you will prove enlightening.”
“That really why you’re doing it? To understand how we work?”
“I understand already,” Horns said mildly. “But understanding and predicting are not the same. Pace