No Dominion The Walker Papers - By CE Murphy Page 0,96
carryin’ Jo’s rapier at my side. I wasn’t wearing the mithrail armor anymore, but Horns had never planned on me keeping it anyway. The Hunt was gathered in what looked a lot like my front yard, though moonlight was shining through ‘em and neither the horses nor the hounds were making any kinda audible sound. Everything else was normal, except I couldn’t hardly remember the past couple minutes or make sense of the mess of memory that’d been my life. “There was light, goddamn it, Cernunnos, did Annie go into the damned light?”
“She did.” The whole Hunt was movin’ around us, riders I’d known for half of forever now. The boy was on his gold mare, the two of ‘em the only point of stillness in the yard. Even Cernunnos was moving, his big stallion edgy and eying me like I was something new. Horns himself was looking like the cat that got the canary, green fire burning in his eyes an’ a wicked little smile curving his mouth. “She went into the light, Master Muldoon, and I think we can be assured that was not the fate the Devourer intended for her.”
“Well where the hell does the light come out?” I sounded a lot like Jo, asking crazy questions that couldn’t have answers, but I could barely see through the silver rising in my eyes and the sickness boiling in my belly. I’d spent the past four years remembering my whole life wrong, an’ after all of it I still didn’t know if I’d saved the girl. There wasn’t a goddamned thing that mattered if I hadn’t.
Some of the wickedness left Horns’s face an’ he shook his head. “I could not bring you there even if I wished to. You are not yet ready to take the final ride with me, and when you are I may be able to offer you a different path than the one you might imagine yours to take. Once I led thousands through the darkness, Master Muldoon. Now there are few who call for me in the end, but so long as they burn as brightly as you and your woman have burned, I will never fade from mortal memory.”
“This ain’t about you, Horns. Annie—you mean, Annie—” I ran outta words, my hands going numb on Imelda’s reins.
“There were other spirits who might have helped her through the last days of her sickness. Others with an affinity for the sagebrush which helps to clear the lungs and is sacred to healers. But the stag is more than my creature. It is a part of my essence, and she rejected the others that came and waited for the stag instead. Of course I came for her myself, though I bent time to do it.”
“We ain’t supposed ta be able to mess with the time line that way.” I didn’t have much voice, but Horns heard me clear enough, an’ looked like he thought I was joking.
“You weren’t supposed to steal her a few extra minutes of life, either, Master Muldoon. We waited until the very end for just these reasons, did we not? To risk all, and to strike a blow against the Devourer just far enough out of time that he could not retaliate. She lies beyond your reach now, but that has been true as long as you have known me. You spoke words to her, earlier. A poet’s words, I think, as you prepared to journey into the spirit realms.”
I couldn’t think what he was talking about, not for a long minute or two. All that came outta my mouth was, “You were spyin’ on me?” in a voice that sounded like a sullen kid’s.
“I could hardly allow you to revisit your life without my presence nearby. I had no wish to explain myself to Joanne if something should go wrong. Though lovers be lost, you said to her.”
Air exploded outta me in a sigh. “Yeah. Dylan Thomas. He said—well, he said love was stronger than death, ‘cept he said it better. I guess that’s what poets do.”
“Hold tight to his wisdom, my friend. There is no greater power, and I have known many powers in my time.”
That was a little funny. Just enough funny ta start filling up the hole in my heart. I’d had a long time to mourn Annie already, after all, an’ I was sitting across from a fella who was promising me that in the end, she’d gone into the light. It wasn’t the ending I’d