The Wild Hunt

by Thomas Galvin

  “Crap,” Miranda muttered. “Okay, how do I fix that?”

  I thought for a moment. “It felt like the ward was designed to protect you, like you cast it in order to make yourself feel strong. Cast it again, but this time focus on how strong the ward is, not just the girl inside the barrier.”

  Miranda scrunched up her face and sat back down. “Okay.” She closed her eyes and touched the ring of salt surrounding her. Jade energy ran across its surface, and I felt the Æther condense into a shell around her. “Try me.”

  I threw magic at her ward, the same spell I had used to shatter it a moment ago. The ward exploded into a towering, emerald inferno, reaching fifteen, maybe twenty feet into the sky. My spell wasn’t just stopped, it was consumed, like Miranda’s ward had simply burned it up.

  “Well damn,” I said.

  Miranda opened her eyes. “Did it work?”

  I laughed. “Um, yeah, you could say that it worked. You’re sure you’ve never done this before?”

  She grinned. “I’ve always been a fast learner. So what’s next? Can you teach me to throw fireballs now?”

  “One thing at a time. I want to make sure you’re able to defend yourself before we worry about being able to blow stuff up.”

  “You’re no fun.”

  “Neither are third degree burns or city-wide devastation.”

  She stuck her tongue out at me. “So back to Holda. How does she plan to get people to believe in her? I mean, people don’t want to talk about religion in the first place, and when you start going off about Odin’s trophy bride–”

  “Wotan, no Odin. The difference is important. Wotan was more of a regional god. Odin is his bigger, angrier cousin. Odin would be a damn sight harder to deal with that Wotan.”

  “Okay, but still, people aren’t exactly going to line up to worship the German Goddess of Winter and Sewing.”

  I tossed another spell her way. A small bead of sweat formed on Miranda’s brow, but she was able to keep the ward stable. “She doesn’t need worshipers,” I said. “It would be nice, but she only really needs people to believe. And for that, fear is just as good as love.”

  “So she’s going to sneak up behind people and yell ‘boo?’”

  “No, she’s probably going to–”

  I was cut off by the thundering sound of an explosion. The whump of it shook the leaves over our heads. I swore and Miranda cursed, and we ran out of the forest, back toward the bed and breakfast. When we reached the road, we could see a pillar of black smoke rising into the air, roughly in the direction of Downtown Mirrormont.

  “You were saying?” Miranda asked.

  I stared at the dark plume. “If anything happens, if anything goes wrong, get back inside the clearing and set up a ward. I’ve prepared spells there to deal with Holda and Wotan.”

  “Got it,” Miranda said. “So … should we go see what blew up?”

  I threw my keys to her. “Drive. I need to get ready.”

  Miranda tried to hide her excitement, but a grin threatened to break out on her face. She was still new to this, still thought of this as an adventure, not a life-and-death battle.

  The Jeep’s engine growled as we raced down Mirrormont’s suburban streets. Virtually every lawn was covered with people who had left their homes to stare at the cloud of smoke, and a host of cars had pulled over, too. A couple of people even had their cell phones out, taking pictures.

  A blaring siren screamed behind us, accompanied by flashing emergency lights. Miranda pulled over to let the five–no, six–fire engines rush by. “Follow them,” I said.

  Miranda was holding the steering wheel so hard her knuckles were white. “What do you think happened?”

  My cell phone buzzed in my pocket. I unlocked it and read the message. “Local news says it’s a gas main explosion.”

  “And what do you think really happened?”

  “I think Holda is throwing a coming out party. Other than that, we’ll see what’s going on when we get there.”

  A cop waved the fire engines past a barricade, then scowled at us and gestured for us to pull off the road. We ditched the Jeep in front of a convenience store. I practically dove out the door. Miranda hit the ground running and followed me as I took off down the sidewalk, parallel to the police line.

  “How are we going to get through?” she asked.

  “They don’t have enough men to create a real perimeter. They’re going to be too busy dealing with whatever Holda did to worry too much about us. This way.” I ran onto someone’s lawn and hopped their fence. I turned to offer Miranda a hand, but she scrambled over without even slowing down. We cut through the back yard and hopped the hedges, emerging on the other side of the police line.

  “Oh my God,” Miranda whispered.

  The sign for the First Presbyterian church was a wreck. The glass was broken, several of the stick-on letters had been knocked free, and flames licked at the wood. But compared to the church itself, the sign got off easy. The church was gone, nothing but a smoking crater. A handful of cars sat in its parking lot. The heat from the blast had melted the pavement, and the wheels were sunk three inches into the ground. Across the street, a synagogue had been similarly reduced to rubble.

  Emergency trucks poured water onto the fires, and white steam mixed with the black smoke. Further down the road, the police had created a second cordon around Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. The cops had parked their cars so the sides faced the building, offering them covered positions from which to aim their shotguns, rifles, and revolvers.

  I walked toward the church’s front doors. Miranda hesitated, then followed a few steps behind. I intended to walk right past the police, but stopped when a voice called out, “Miranda DuBois, what in the Sam Hill are you doing here?”

  I turned around. A cop, about fifty years old with bright white hair, woolly eyebrows, and a walrus mustache, was glaring at Miranda. “I, uh,” she stammered.

  “She’s with me,” I said.

  The cop wheeled on me. “And who the hell are you?” His name badge said “Skerrit,” and his jacket was embroidered with the word “Sheriff.”

  The door to the church burst open before I could answer. Sandra, dressed in gossamer white and missing her Goth eyeliner, strode out, dragging a terrified woman in a choir robe behind her. The police tightened up on their weapons, training them on the witch. Sandra gave them an acidic smile.

  Sheriff Skerrit grabbed a bull horn and leaned across the top of his car. “All right, little lady, why don’t you let her go, and then we can talk demands.”

  “Demands?” Sandra asked. “What do you have that I could possibly want?”

  Skerrit looked at the cop standing next to him. “The hell?” He turned back toward Sandra. “Maybe you aren’t clear on how this works, little lady, but when someone takes hostages, it’s customary to issue demands, and then the cops negotiate, and then you release the hostages, and then everybody goes home.”

  Sandra looked at him with wide yes. “Oh, I’m so sorry, but you’re completely mistaken. These people aren’t our hostages.”

  “Oh shit,” I said and started forward again. Skerrit grabbed my coat sleeve, and I yanked hard to get away from him.

  “Then why don’t you just let them go, little lady?” Skerrit said through his bullhorn.

  “They’re our sacrifices,” Sandra finished. She grabbed the choir singer by the robe and lifted her into the air with one hand, then drew a gleaming golden knife from her belt.

  “No!” the sheriff and I shouted simultaneously.

  I pushed past the cops and gathered my magic, but I was too late. Sandra rammed the dagger into the woman’s gut, spilling blood and entrails on the church steps. Sandra hoisted the dead singer overhead and hurled her toward the police line. The corpse landed in the road a few feet in front of us.

  The cops opened fire, sending a hailstorm of bullets flying toward the witch. Sandra laughed and waved her hand. The air swirled around her and the bul
lets arced away, slamming into the ground and walls. She walked forward, unconcerned, weaving a spell with her fingers. The sound and stink of gunfire were overwhelming.

  And useless. Sandra wasn’t even nervous. She pointed at the sheriff’s car and it started to shake. Skerrit jumped back, eyes wide. The car leapt into the air, spun once, and then rocketed toward the police line. The cops screamed. Some of the more enterprising deputies opened fire on the vehicle.

  I ran forward, gathering magic around my fist, and got right under the car. Somewhere in the back of my head I recognized Miranda screaming my name, but I didn’t have time to acknowledge her. The car plummeted toward us, two thousand pounds of blunt force.

  I planted my feet and punched it.

  Magic flared, swirling around my hand and exploding into shining blue-white force. The car crumpled. Steam exploded from the radiator. The windows shattered and glittering crystal cascaded down around me. The car hung in midair for a moment, then crashed to the ground. The tumult echoed off the nearby buildings.

  Everyone stared at me, even Sandra. The witch broke into a slow clap. “Well done, Champion. You’re going to make Holda proud.”

  “I’m going to make Holda dead. Or at least non-corporeal. I’m not sure exactly how that works. Anyway,” I threw a blast of light toward her. Sandra shrieked as the light simultaneously threw her away and burned her. She tumbled along the ground, her dress tearing on the asphalt. When she came back to her feet, the air shimmered around her, revealing the image of the Valkyrie that was fueling her power.

  The cops looked at each other, and about half of them turned their weapons on me. “Really, guys?” I asked, then waved my hand at them. Magic force rippled through the air, knocking the guns from their grasp.

  Sandra let out a blood-chilling bellow. Her black death cloud gathered around her, inky black tendrils reaching out toward us, writhing and slapping the ground hard enough to crack the asphalt.

  “Get back!” I shouted and threw up a fast ward. The barrier I created was convex, wrapping away from me and the cops and around Sandra, hemming her in. Black smoke piled up in front of us, blocking Sandra from view. One of the cops opened fire, but his bullets smacked against my ward. The air rippled and the bullet fell to the asphalt.

  The cops stared with wide eyes and open mouths. I threw more energy into the ward, enclosing Sandra entirely. When the circle closed, blue fire raced around its perimeter. The stygian fog roiled inside, becoming thicker and more violent. Sweat broke out on my brow.

  The sheriff held his shotgun by the pump and jerked it up and down, loading another shell. “We got ’er now boys!” The cops let out with a rallying cry and opened fire, emptying their weapons at the black mist.

  Again the air shimmered as the missiles assaulted my ward. The bullets didn’t get anywhere near Sandra, but each impact took a little more of my energy, and a pin prick of pain started to form between my eyes.

  I wasn’t hurt, at least not badly, but I was distracted–distracted enough to let Sandra’s death cloud break through my ward.

  Hurricane force winds assailed us as the obsidian smog escaped its prison. One tendril smashed into me like a wrecking ball. I slammed into a cop car hard enough to push it back three feet.

  Another tentacle lashed out, grabbing one of the cops. He fired his gun wildly, but the evil vapor was unconcerned. It wrapped around him, crushing the air from his lungs. His skin went white, the blood vessels in his eyes burst, and black veins appeared on his skin. The tentacle pulled him off his feet and sucked him into the swirling black cloud.

  More appendages whipped toward us, grabbing anyone in their path. Inside the heart of the storm I could hear men screaming and Sandra laughing.

  One of the tendrils grabbed for Miranda.

  Miranda stared at it, a deer caught in headlights. I screamed her name. Her head whipped toward me, then back toward the grasping cloud. She closed her eyes. The tendril slammed into her.

  Emerald fire erupted all around her. The tendril sizzled and burned, repelled by Miranda’s ward. More black smoke piled up around her, trying to crash through the magical barrier through main force, but Miranda stood quietly, calmly in the midst of the maelstrom, eyes closed, focused, bending the Æther to her will.

  She hadn’t even cast a circle. She hadn’t even used salt.

  But I could fangirl later. I got back to my feet and brushed pieces of cop car off my jacket, then summoned my own share of the Æther. I had to tailor the spell carefully, which isn’t my strong point, but there were innocent people in the heart of the black cloud and my usual smash-and-grab style would kill them. Instead of physical force, I wove a spell that canceled out the Æther Sandra employed against us. I opened my hand and light cut through the air.

  Through the air and through the fog. The dark tendrils shrieked as my spell tore them asunder. The black smoke quickly dissipated as Sandra’s control over it shattered. The swirling cloud around Sandra herself lashed and roiled, trying to repair the damage my spell was causing, but the darkness was unable to overcome the light. The cloud of death evaporated, leaving a pile of cops gasping on the ground and Sandra standing in the middle of the street, exposed.

  Now it was time for physical force. I sent another lance of brilliant light, diamonds tinged with sapphires, streaking toward Sandra. It struck her in the stomach and kept going, passing through her like a hot knife through an evil Norse witch’s butter.

  Sandra looked down at herself and mouthed the word, “Oh.”

  You could see right through her. My spell hand punched a neat hole through her belly, leaving a cauterized wound. Sandra just stood there.

  “You fall down now,” I said.

  She did, collapsing into a heap on the pavement. Green energy flared around her body and the Valkyrie rose up from her corpse, shrieking. The cops slammed their hands over their ears and turned away from the hideous creature. It spread its arms and raked the air with its claws, then rushed toward me. Another blast of light reduced the creature to ash.

  I put a gentle hand on Miranda’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  She grinned, her emerald eyes sparkling. “I did good, didn’t I?”

  “Honestly? That was kind of incredible. Especially for, what, twenty minute’s practice?”

  “Thanks, I–holy shit! Did you do that?”

  I glanced over my shoulder, at Sandra’s still smoldering corpse. “Yeah. She made me angry.”

  “Note to self.” Miranda looked at the cops, still gagging on the pavement. “Are they going to be all right?”

  The cops didn’t look happy, but they didn’t seem like they were in immediate danger, either. Their color was returning, and the black veins had disappeared from their skin. “I think so? Why don’t you see if you can do anything for them. And get on one of their radios, tell them to get some paramedics down here.”

  Miranda nodded. “Where are you going?”

  I turned toward the church. “I’m going to go kill Holda.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The church wasn’t warded. That either meant Holda didn’t expect me to show up, that she didn’t consider me a threat, or that she actually wanted me there. That last option was the real worry. I don’t need my ego stroked, and being underestimated is one of the things that’s kept me alive this long, but Holda had designs on me–and my magic–and I wasn’t eager to see how she planned to hook me.

  I heaved the heavy wooden door open. The hinges hadn’t been oiled in a decade and the door groaned, ruining any chance I had at surprise. Of course the light show outside had probably done that already. I stepped into the vestibule, a tiny area lit only by the sunlight streaming through stained glass windows. The whole place smelled like incense. Catholic churches always freaked me out. Churches in general made me uncomfortable, but I was raised Protestant, and all the pomp and circumstance in the Roman church bothered me on a cultural level.

  The vestibule was empty and separated from the rest of the church by
a set of frosted glass doors. I could hear someone weeping softly on the other side. I closed my eyes and reached out with my senses. Holda lit up my mind like a bonfire, a brilliant and terrible psychic manifestation. Her presence was so overwhelming that I could barely feel the Valkyries surrounding her, and their human captives were like fireflies at high noon, lost beside the blinding light.

  I gathered the Æther around me, reinforcing my wards, then threw my hands toward the doors, letting loose a blast of blue-white light. The doors shattered, along with the frames that held them, and a good portion of the wall, too. I ran through the newly-created opening and cut to the left, taking stock of the room as I moved. The choir, who must have been rehearsing for Christmas Eve mass, were huddled in front of the altar. Most of them were crying, and a couple of them had that million-mile post-traumatic-stress stare. The three remaining witches stood guard over them, Strawberry Shortcake and Italian Princess on either side of the altar and Swedish Bikini at the end of the center aisle.

  Holda held court over them all. She had dragged the priest’s big ass chair to the center of the dais and sat, once again, with her legs dangling over the armrest, her bare feet kicking in the air. The tabernacle, the big gold case that holds all the magic crackers, had been torn open, its contents scattered on the floor. The altar itself had been swept clean. A naked man was laid out on top of it, his head toward the pews, his mouth and eyes wide open, screaming silently. His chest had been ripped open and his ribs pointed toward the sky like a macabre candelabra. His heart and lungs and been torn out and piled on a golden censer smoking in front of the altar.

  The people inside–the human people–screamed and dove for cover as I burst into the room. The witches, spurred on by the spirits of the Valkyries, issued a shrieking war cry. The air filled with an electric charge as the witches summoned their own magic to attack me. Two jets of emerald fire sizzled past me, one missing my right shoulder by two feet and the other clearing my head by inches. The fire blasted holes in the floor and banister behind me. I counterattacked as I ran, light blazing from my hand and smashing Swedish Bikini into the back wall.