As he rounded a corner, he saw two beasts bearing down on him. Then he turned to see two more coming from behind.
The clawed hands each grabbed a chunk or a limb before Ruadhri was torn completely apart, his head carried off by one rider, his torso by another.
Knocks looked down at Ewan, taking a deep, relaxed breath. “You don’t want to kill me yourself?”
“No,” said Colby. “You’ve damned yourself. They’re here for you now.”
Knocks looked up at Colby, smiling. He could hear the thundering hooves rumbling toward him. The ground shook, the heavens wept. For Knocks, it was all so perfect. “I was born in the rain, you know. On a morning a lot like this.”
“Enjoy dying in it, you son of a bitch,” said Colby, backing away, giving the hunt a wide berth.
Knocks nodded, looking up at the sky. “The legacy of a storm is not in the measure of its rainfall or the sound of its thunder, it is in the devastation it leaves behind. I’ve had a good run.” He cast his arms out wide, smiling broadly at Colby. “I wonder if my hand will be waiting for me in Hell.” He turned his head, staring at the oncoming stampede, thinking about the last lesson his mother ever taught him.
The front-most hoof of Tiffany Thatcher’s goat tore a hole in his head, splattering his brains across the pavement, each remaining hoof trampling his torso in half. The Wild Hunt roared past Colby without giving him a look, each carrying off a piece of Knocks with it. Once they all had passed, there wasn’t a spot of Knocks left in this world to remember him by—not so much as a single drop of his blood staining the pavement.
The riders continued on, but their hounds came to a stop, raising their heads into the air, letting out a soul-chilling howl, turning and racing off to catch up with their masters once more. And as quickly as they had entered this world, the hunt was gone, closing the gate behind them, leaving only the waning rumble of rolling thunder to signal their departure.
Colby kneeled down beside Ewan, the red puddle beneath him grown wide, thinned by the rain. There was little life left to leak out of him. Ewan stared up at the sky, unable to focus his eyes on anything.
“Ewan,” said Colby, putting his hand on his shoulder.
“You can’t see me,” said Ewan with a weak smile.
“Yes I can,” said Colby.
“No you can’t. I’m invisible.”
“You’re not invisi . . . ,” he said, then the memory caught up with him. Tears trickled down Colby’s face. Beneath him, Ewan died.
Colby could feel the swift tendrils of Hell closing in. Cold. Black. Angry.
“You can’t have him,” he said. Then he put a second hand on Ewan, evaporating every last bit of dreamstuff, sending it off into the city. No flower petals dropped to the ground; no smell lingered in the air; only his cap remained, staining the rainwater around it. “Go find her.”
Colby looked up, the streets swollen with fairies, approaching cautiously.
He turned to Yashar. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”
“There’s little left to say.”
“After a thousand cursed wishes, I guess you get used to this sort of thing, huh?”
“No,” said Yashar. “You never get used to it.”
“Nor should you,” said Bertrand, flapping above them. He looked down upon Colby with a bitter sadness. “You unleashed Hell. You shouldn’t have done that.”
“We were losing,” said Colby. “I had to do something.”
“No,” Bertrand said. “We weren’t losing. We lost. Hell got everything it wanted today. What did you get?”
“Wait, I was just doing what you said was right.”
“You were damning yourself?”
“Yeah, for all the right reasons.”
“That may be,” said Bertrand. “But that doesn’t make us friends, compadre. The truly damned have few friends, especially among the angels. I may understand why you did it, but we’re done, you and I.” Bertrand raised a hand, delicately examining the shaft sticking out of his eye. He shook his head, disappointed. “You were on the right side of this for so long.”
Flapping his wings harder, he flew off, drifting drunkenly into the rain.
Slowly the fairies closed in.
Colby looked up. “What?” he asked loudly of them. “What do you want?”
Amassed before him was a full half of the Limestone Kingdom, Sidhe and salgfraulein, pixie and troll. Overseeing them was the remainder of the Five Stone Council, Meinrad taking the lead.
Colby clenched his fists.
“There will be no need for that,” said Meinrad, his voice deep and booming.
“Not if