by Jim Butcher
There wasn’t any part of her past that even she looked back on with fondness. College was tedious. Her first job, drudgery. Her ex-husband, an asshole. Even opening her own business hadn’t made her happy, because she was saddled with a partner she loathed.
Why was she telling him all this? Because they were out on a date. A first date, during which, from what the Huntsman understood of human rituals, one was supposed to put one’s best self forward, make a good impression. Indeed, this woman was making an impression—and not just with her spot-on impersonation of an incredible bore, though she did pull that off very well. No, as she talked, she told him more. Inadvertent reveals abounded as she nattered on, and the Huntsman gazed into her eyes and saw much more.
So much more.
He glided through her memories, chasing the tendrils of darkness. Tendrils? Ropes, rather. Thick cables that moored her consciousness. Envy and bitterness and paranoia and hatred—the four guy ropes of her innermost self, holding the rest in place.
He followed these cables to a childhood memory shrouded in shadow, relegated to the drawer where humans shove things they’d rather forget and tell themselves something never really happened, not like that, perhaps not at all, but simply as a remembered scene from a novel or movie.
This memory was real, though, whatever the woman might tell herself. He watched it unfold through her eyes, and as she dove into a swimming pool he caught a glimpse of her ten-year-old self reflected in the water. She dove under and stayed as long as she could. When she surfaced, gasping, a young boy called to her. She ignored him. He called again, his voice taking on a whine, and from some distant place a woman yelled for the girl to look after her brother. Except the girl didn’t want to look after him. She was sick and tired of looking after him. It used to be just her and her mother, until her stepfather came, and then the boy, and now everything was different. Everything.
Her brother whined again, said Mommy promised they would play together in the pool. The girl tried to ignore him, but his whining droned like a mosquito in her head.
“You want to play?” she said finally, turning on him, and his chubby face lit up. He was too stupid to even notice how angry she was. Too selfish to care.
“I’ll be a shark,” she said. “You have to get away from me.”
She dove under and pretended to snatch his feet as he kicked. He squealed and laughed and splashed, and the patio door squealed shut, their mother going inside.
The girl kept playing just long enough to be sure their mother wasn’t coming right back out. Then she dove, and this time she grabbed one chubby foot and yanked him under the water.
The Huntsman surfaced from her memories as she was saying, “. . . threatening me? The business is finally successful—due to my hard work—and now he swans in and decides he wants to play a role. What he really wants is to steal it from me.”
Ah, some things never change, do they? the Huntsman thought. If it isn’t your little brother, it’s your ex-husband or your business partner. Everyone else is to blame for your unhappiness. But you show them, don’t you? Such a dull and ordinary exterior hiding such a dark and twisted soul. No one suspects a thing. But I do. There has been a miscarriage of justice here. I will fix that. It is my job to fix that.
They left the café, strolling along the crowded city street, the dog sticking to its master’s opposite side and staying as far from the Huntsman as it could manage. The beast sensed danger there, danger and threat. The woman just kept talking.
“And now he wants me to go to Chicago,” she said. “Have you ever been there? It’s an absolute shithole.”
She didn’t pause for the Huntsman to answer, but on this point, he would have agreed. Even the mention of that city made his temper rise, darkness swirling, and the dog whined, ducking its owner’s absent pat.
Chicago. That was where he’d lost his hound.
No, not lost. She had been stolen from him. The second hound he’d had snatched away. His Cŵn Annwn pack had taken the first when it banished him. Cast him out with neither hound nor steed, claiming the beasts wanted nothing to do with him.
“No?” he’d said. “Bring them to me, and let them choose.”
“Let you infect them, you mean. Destroy them as you have destroyed yourself. You are lucky we let you leave with your life.”
Luck? Is that what this was? Banished from his pack, stripped of his hound, his horse, his brothers. This was not luck. It was a curse. And his crime? He had dared question the boundaries of his duties as a Huntsman. Question the restrictions that kept them from truly fulfilling their calling.
The job of the Cŵn Annwn was the taking of souls. The execution of those who themselves took lives. Yet they were shackled by one incredible restriction: they could claim only the souls of those who killed fae or humans with fae blood. They might look into a human’s eyes and see the blood of a thousand on his hands, yet if none of that blood was fae, the transgressor could not be touched.
We protect the fae. We seek justice for the fae. Humans must seek it for themselves. That is not our place.
It was a constraint that made Cŵn Annwn cry out at night, reliving the horrors they’d seen in human eyes, unable to exact justice for the dead.
Except they could. There was no cosmic force actually stopping them. Just a rule. An old and outdated rule.
So the Huntsman had broken it. Quietly and on his own, without hound or steed, he had cleaned the world of human filth. His pack leader knew it. Knew and turned a blind eye because he understood that the Huntsman acted righteously.
And then . . .
Then came the day when others found out, when his leader feigned shock and horror, banished him and kept his hound.
The Huntsman had found another cŵn, though. A broken hound. A fellow outcast. He’d nursed her to health only to have her stolen from him in Chicago. By a human girl, no less.
No, not entirely a girl. That helped soothe the memory. His hound had been taken by an incarnation of Matilda of the Hunt and given to her consort, Arawn, lord of the Otherworld.
Either way, his hound had been stolen, and the memory still burned.
He needed a new hound. And he was working on that right now. He would take a hound and see justice executed upon this monstrous woman who walked at his side, blathering about her business partner.
“It’s not fair,” he said, and she stopped short and looked at him. “What he’s doing to you, how he’s treating you, it isn’t fair. You built a business, and then he slides in and tries to steal it from under you.”
Like Matilda, stealing his hound after he rescued it. The Huntsman channeled his own outrage into his words, giving them a ring of sincerity that made the woman’s face light up.
“Exactly,” she said. “And I’m sorry to go on about it, but once I get started, I just . . .” She shook her head. “It burns.”
“I understand.” I truly do.
He reached out and squeezed her hand, and when she met his gaze, he called on his own darkness, the inky essence implicit in the concept of justice and judgment. The Cŵn Annwn liked to act as if their actions rose from pure goodness, pure righteousness. That was ridiculous—they were executioners. Darkness personified. What lifted them above their prey was that they harnessed the darkness within themselves to do good. That was the truth his brethren could never accept.
He slid through the shadows of her memory, past the children in the pool and on to a boy in college. A boy who’d spurned her. She watched him from the bushes at night as he drunkenly made his way back to his dorm. When he stumbled and chuckled under his breath, she thought how innocent he seemed, how simple and sweet. Then she remembered how he had taken her by the wrist earlier at a party, squeezing so hard it hurt as he leaned in and hissed, “Stop following me. It didn’t work out, okay? Just let it go.” Humiliating her in front of others—and now he dared to stagger about, laughing at himself, as if he really was such a good and sweet-natured boy?
She squeezed
the knife and ran her thumb along the blade. Blood welled up, and the pain reminded her of his grip on her wrist.
He’d hurt her. Embarrassed her. Rejected her.
He should not get away with that.
The Huntsman stopped the memory there. He tugged it, just a little, bringing it not quite to the front of her mind but pulling forth the emotions instead. The insult. The outrage.
So many people have wronged you. And now you are wronged again by your business partner. Think of what you’d like to do to him. How you’d like to pay him back.
Next to her, the dog whined and danced, but the woman couldn’t hear it, lost in the Huntsman’s dark embrace.
Show me what you have.
Show me the worst that you have.
It came slowly at first, as if the thoughts were forming for the first time. Of course they were not. They’d been there all along. Her fantasies of revenge. How she would steal the business. Ruin his professional reputation.
More, child. Give me more.
He deserves more.
Her mind skated to the edge of the thought and then recoiled. He let it recoil. There was no hurry. It would take time to swell those thoughts into action.
That was what he needed: action. He could not act until she did.
She would, though.
They always did.
It did take time. Weeks. But the Huntsman was patient. This was his sole purpose on earth, the rest mere filler.
He wooed the woman, in his way. Which did not mean he bedded her—he had absolutely no desire to. Yet he’d come to her as a potential lover, and so he had to maintain that fiction. It was easily done by playing the role of the careful lover, the considerate partner, the man who wanted to get to know her first, romance her, court her. Long coffees at outdoor cafés. Long walks in the park. Long dinners with wine, when she’d drink too much and let him wriggle deeper into her mind. That was how he truly wooed her—easing her along the path from thought to deed. From fantasy to action.
He never verbally counseled her to kill her business partner. That would have been uncouth, and completely unnecessary. In words, he only sympathized with her situation, bolstered her sense of outrage, fed her paranoia. Yes, her partner was up to something, and he was worried for her. Had she ever considered to what lengths this man might go to steal her company? Of course, the Huntsman didn’t think he’d actually hurt her, but . . . he worried. That was all. He worried.
Plant the seeds. Nurture them in darkness and fear. Watch them sprout in her psyche. Vague fantasies solidifying. From “I wish he was dead” to “How would I kill him, if I dared?” and then finally “Do I dare?”
Do I dare kill him?
And can I get away with it?
He helped with all of that, his firm verbal support bolstering her confidence and his subtle mental manipulation knocking away obstacles.
Of course you can do this. You’re strong and smart and resourceful.
You’re better than him. You deserve better.
Weeks passed, until finally the moment arrived when he met her for drinks and she didn’t talk about herself, didn’t snivel over her problems. There was no need for that. She had reached a decision. He saw that in her mind, saw how she planned to do it. How she would cross that line, and where he needed to be to witness it.
All she had to do was make the move that would lead to murder. He could not act until she launched the action decisively. Only then could he pass judgment, reap her soul, and secure his hound.
It would happen at the office. Both the woman and her partner were working late, and she would go to tell him she was leaving for the night . . . only to find him dead. She’d decided that sneaking in while he worked alone would be too risky. Too many people in the building. Too many security cameras. Too big a chance that she’d be spotted. Instead, she would be there openly, with her dog at her side, as always. Just another late night at the office.
It was a ridiculous plan. She should have seen that. But the Huntsman had infected her mind and suggested this setup—perfect for his needs—and he’d swept away her doubts. It was audacious and brazen, and therefore no one would suspect a thing. Or so she believed.
He had no trouble sneaking into the building. He’d determined where the cameras were and could avoid them. As for human security, he’d retained the power to trick the eye as he passed through on a wave of shadow.
He found the woman working in her office. When the Huntsman slipped in, her dog lifted its head and whined. The woman glanced over, saw nothing, and patted the dog’s head before returning to her work.
As soon as darkness fell, she made her move. As she started to close the dog in her office, again it whined. The Huntsman tensed, wondering if the dog’s unease might break the spell of his magic, let the woman stop and realize she shouldn’t be doing this with the canine present for fear it might raise an alarm. But the dog was integral to the process. To the binding of his hound. Fortunately, the woman was too preoccupied to notice the beast’s unease and just whispered a sharp “Quiet!” as she closed the office door.
The Huntsman crept ahead into the partner’s space. He watched the woman enter. Saw the blade in her hand. Bore witness as she reached around to slit her partner’s throat.
He watched her.
He did not stop her.
He stood in his corner and sent forth his darkness to bolster her own, and when she slashed that blade, the Huntsman was there, keeping her hand steady.
Then he released her.
He pulled out of her mind as her partner flailed and gurgled, grasping at his slit throat, blood gushing over his desk.
The woman saw then what she had done—and she began to scream.
The Huntsman shot forward, materializing as he clapped his hand over her mouth.
“Shhh,” he said. “Shhh.”
She saw him, and her eyes went wide as her mouth worked.
“You?” she said. “How—?”
He removed his hand from her. “I had to stop you.”
“Stop?” She blinked and looked at the dying man, now convulsing on the floor. “You can save him?”
The Huntsman gave a dismissive wave. He could. Possibly. But he had other priorities.
When he released the woman, she dropped beside her partner. The Huntsman laid his hand on her arm. “It’s too late.”
“I didn’t mean . . .” She leapt to her feet. “You have to help me. I didn’t mean to do this.”
“Of course you did.”
“No, I—”
“You what? You aren’t this sort of person?” He laughed, his lip curling. “Tell that to your brother. To the boy at college.”
She stared, uncomprehending.
“Your brother, in the pool,” he said. “And the boy you stalked with a knife.”
“My . . . ? Yes. I did pull my brother under, and I thought of drowning him, but of course I didn’t. Just like I thought about killing that boy. But I didn’t do anything. I just thought about it.”
“It’s the same thing.”
The look she gave him then—the horror and the incredulity. It was the same look he’d seen on the face of his Cŵn Annwn leader when he’d discovered what the Huntsman had done.
“You forced that man to kill his wife. You used your magic to make him kill her so you could claim his soul.”
“He wanted to do it. He thought about doing it. That’s the same thing.”
“No, it is not!”
His leader rocked forward, as if he wanted to throttle the Huntsman. Then he recoiled, horrified by the impulse. That was their weakness. They enjoyed the Hunt, the taking of souls, and yet they would not let themselves indulge that hunger, even in service of wider justice.
“You knew what I was doing,” the Huntsman said.
“I know you were targeting human killers. If I had ever imagined you were compelling them—”
“He would have killed her eventually,” the Huntsman said. “I took his soul before he gave
his darkness free rein.”
“He did give it rein!” his leader roared. “He murdered his wife.”
“One victim—it could have been more were I not there.”
That’s when the leader had cast him out. Told him if he was not gone within the hour, they would hunt him. Kill him. And somehow they claimed to occupy the moral high ground.
Now this woman stood and stared at him with the same look. As if he was the monster.
“Bring me your dog,” he said.
“What?”
“You want me to fix this? Bring me your dog.”
She hesitated, but then she staggered off down the hall and returned with the beast.
“You won’t hurt him, right?” she said.
“I’m not the killer here. Now lay your hands on his head.”
She did, and the Huntsman channeled his darkest magic, the kind the Cŵn Annwn did not possess, the kind he had discovered in his wanderings. True magic.
He reached into the dumb beast and found what passed for a soul. Then he reached into the woman. When he touched her soul, she gasped.
“I’m saving you,” he said. “You have committed murder, and so your soul is forfeit. But I am going to let you live. I am Cŵn Annwn. To do my job properly, I require a cŵn—a hound.”
His magic held her immobile, but her eyes shifted to her dog.
“No, he won’t do. He’s a mere beast. A cŵn is more, and if I cannot have one, I must create one. Or a reasonable facsimile.”
He closed his eyes and set the dog’s puny soul free. Then he slid the woman’s into its place. The beast gave a start as the woman woke, finding herself trapped in the dog.
A pause, and then she went wild, snapping and twisting in a panic. He grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and smacked her with a psychic wallop that left her howling in pain.
“Enough of that,” he said. “I let you live, and you will be grateful.” He looked into her eyes. “I will teach you to be grateful.”