by Tom Deitz
But if he was going to act from a position of strength, he’d damned well better be at it! Which meant, first off, that he needed to set himself at a higher level than his adversaries. Already he was probing the darkness, seeking stairs, a ladder—anything that would raise him above the Huntman’s head.
Instead, he saw two bright lights, close-set among the shadows beside a shattered ramp—and nearly cried out, thinking the hounds already upon him.
Only…the hounds had red eye-shine and this did not—at which point whatever it was vented a lowpitched whistle-trill, stepped into what passed for light, and stood revealed as the troublesome enfield.
If a creature could look alarmed, that one did, for every muscle in its body trembled, and every hair was erect, with a species of anticipatory fear he’d never observed in an animal. The belling of the hounds was growing louder, too; and with each attenuated howl, its ears flared and flicked, while it wrinkled its dainty nose to taste the breezes.
“Death rides on ’em, kid,” he told it dully. “Mine, if not yours.”
The enfield blinked at him, tilted its head as though considering his remark, and trotted warily across the broken flagstones to where he sprawled on all fours, too tired to rise.
The horn blared again, closer yet, and the enfield started. It was shaking even worse, Aikin noted, as was he. And if the beasts of Faerie feared the Hunt, what hope had a mortal boy?
The Hunt was still approaching, too, as a glance over his shoulder revealed. The vanguard of hounds had reached the place he’d hidden and were nosing about there; it was only a matter of time now, surely, until they found his spoor.
Yet the pack seemed confounded, with several of its number questing north and south. Stupid—for surely he’d been visible when they breasted the rise. Surely those who drove the pack had seen him. But perhaps that didn’t matter; perhaps it was watching the hounds that pleasured the Hunt, not the quarry, even when sighted. Perhaps it was the quest and not the kill.
Perhaps pigs farted Frank Zappa tunes in Bob Jones University whorehouses.
The enfield barked sharply—a new sound for it, and so loud he feared the hounds would hear and hasten the inevitable. He glared at it, startled and angry—this was, after all, its fault; had it not leapt from the trail, he’d not have been prompted to pursue it. To his surprise, it glared back—and bared its teeth, black eyes wide and glittering. A low growl issued from its throat and he was certain it was about to attack. Can’t trust a canine, he grumbled to himself. Not when the chips are down.
But the growl wasn’t for him, he saw in an instant. For without him noticing it, one of the hounds had made its way to his sanctum. His heart flip-flopped when he got a good look at it: far larger than he’d expected—hundred forty-fifty pounds easy—and effectively blocking the exit. Moonlight slashed across its coat, but did not reflect off hide or hair, as though the beast’s very substance drank it down as it would soon enough drink his life. He scrambled backward—tried to—but as he moved, so did the enfield. It shot across the cobbles faster than he could have believed, and just as the hound opened its mouth to bell forth the alarm that would bring the whole Hunt down upon him, vulpine fangs found its throat. The dog vented a rattling gasp, followed by a whimper of pain—and collapsed, blood pulsing from savaged arteries. It steamed in the clammy air, smelling less like blood than hot metal.
Not until its legs had stopped twitching, however, did the enfield release its hold. But there was something odd about the way it was looking at him now: grinning in its foxy way, so that he could see the darkness that stained its fangs, the matted wetness around its mouth. A strange light woke in its eyes that reminded him too much of intelligence. And then, with a low growl, it sprang again—at him!
“Shit!” he spat—and tried to knock it away, even as he scrambled to evade it, caught an elbow on an uneven paving stone, and tumbled sideways, to slam hard into the floor.
Somehow the enfield twisted around his awkward blow, and leapt straight toward his face. He raised his free arm to block—and screamed, as pain flooded his wrist. Vision became a blur of varying shades of darkness sparked with red; sound was scrapes and rattles, harsh breathing and strangled curses. The stench of blood thickened the air.
Abruptly the enfield released his arm—it had brought blood but done no real damage, so far as he could tell—and retreated. He kicked at it savagely, only to hear it whimper; its rage returned to calm. Indeed, it was blinking wide eyes at him, and as he tried to determine what to do next, it rubbed against his legs, then sat down, and calmly licked the blood from its muzzle.
Blood…
His blood, at least in part, for his forearm was red with the stuff.
But he had no thought to spare for that, for the enfield was acting odder than ever. In fact, it seemed to be…growing, expanding in all directions, as its proportions blurred and shifted. Its head was larger, but the ears were shrinking. Its tail had lost both mass and hair, and was now scarcely a nubbin. Far more skin showed than fur all over, and what hair was present was darkening. The hind legs changed articulation; forelegs gained meaty arms where had been thin-scaled talons.
It was becoming human! The enfield, crouched still on all fours in front of him, was turning into a man!
In fact, he realized, as it twisted onto its side, it was turning into…
Into him!
There on the shattered flagstones of that abandoned tower, the enfield had become his identical twin! Naked, for certain, but—minus assorted scars and snippets—definitely all Aikin.
“What?” he cried in alarm, as his twin rose unsteadily to its feet. It looked frightened—(Did he look that scared?)—and more frightened yet, when the horn sounded closer yet and a tide of yips and barks rolled up from the adjoining valley. A glance that way showed the dogs halfway to the tower, with the Hunt but a short way behind.
“What…?” Aikin asked again, but his twin shook its head and pointed to its mouth, then shook its head once more.
“Can’t talk?” Aikin whispered harshly. “But why…?”
In reply, his alter self dashed to the dead hound’s body, thrust a hand into the blood at the torn throat, and brought it to its lips, then pointed at him, and repeated the charade.
“You want me to do that?” Aikin managed. “Why? There’s no time for games!”
Not hardly: in less than a minute the hounds would arrive.
And there was nowhere to hide! Not now.
His twin looked truly desperate, and was repeating its pantomine ever more frantically.
“Fuck it,” Aikin sighed finally. “What’ve I got to lose?” And with that he scrambled toward the body, knelt beside it, and crammed three fingers into the neck wound. Not pausing to think what he did, nor give himself time to dread, he closed his eyes and stuck the fingers into his mouth.
The blood tasted awful—and then he didn’t taste it at all, as pain seized him and doubled him over where he crouched, while his blood took fire, his bones dissolved, and his muscles, his organs—his very brain were torn asunder. It was like being drunker than he’d ever been and more hung over, all at once, with a five-hour cudgeling thrown in. His senses had all gone wild, were showing him sensations he’d never suspected, and denying him familiar ones. He could no longer kneel, but had to lie flat, to stretch his paws along the floor—
—paws?
He had paws?
Black paws that reflected no moonlight.
He had become a hound!
He was also damned uncomfortable, because heavy wet things were encumbering him in unlikely places. Clothes, something more distant than it ought to be provided. Things to be escaped from, another aspect advised.
He did, struggling out of the restricting fabric like a moth from a cocoon. Other hands were on him then, helping him: that boy that looked like him, covering his own nakedness with borrowed disguise.
And then a rattle of claws against the bare stone of the hill outside signaled the arrival of th
e pack. A hound peered in, sniffed uncertainly, and opened its mouth.
And as that first thunderous “yo-yo-yo…!” roared into the cold night air, Aikin-That-Was-Not-Aikin bolted. Aikin-Who-Was-The-Hound watched in amazement as his own body deftly leapt the corpse of the dead dog and fled into the open air.
“Yo-yo-yo!” the hound cried again, but by that time Not-Aikin was running.
But to Real-Aikin’s surprise, the Hunt did not give chase. Rather, the pack waited, sides heaving, tongues lolling, nostrils tasting the air, as though they knew this quarry was worth a long pursuit, and sport was better continued than curtailed. After all, how often did Himself get to hunt mortal men on the fringe of Faerie?
Himself…? Real-Aikin wondered where that term had come from. But as he sought an answer, something else captured him unawares, and he too found himself moving. Instinct, something told his human aspect: animal reflex reacting to its conditioning and taking charge. And perhaps he ought to let it; certainly it wouldn’t do for Himself to suspect anything.
Before Aikin knew it, he was belling: sending deep, clear notes into the cold, wild air. The hound nearest him—a bitch nearly into season, his nose informed him—stared at him, startled, but he dashed in beside her. And then quickly lost himself amid the swirl and jostle of the others.
No one was chasing the boy…yet. Himself did not want them to. And already the boy—who was very fast for one of his kind—was a good way off and still running, angling south toward the circle of low stones that crowned the next hill down. Probably Himself would let him get almost there and wind the horn again.
Or maybe sooner…
It was sooner; for with one smooth, inexorable motion, the antlered man towering above him raised his horn to his lips and blew.
And what a note: what a perfect sound to set a hound’s blood pumping and his heart to racing, and the taste of boy-blood-to-be washing across his tongue as he tasted the storm-laden air. A cold drizzle began to fall in earnest, cooling his fur, but his blood was hot and eager for the kill.
And kill he would, as first the hound to his left, and then the one to his right set off down the hill toward that frightened boy. Aikin-That-Was went with them, and the faster he moved and the closer he got, the more Hound-That-Is took over.
Aikin-That-Was was terrified. Hound-That-Is rather liked it. For Hound-That-Is truly was a very mighty Hunter.
Chapter XIV: Sight for Sore Eyes
(The Straight Tracks—no time)
“I got him into this; I’ve gotta get him out.”
And that was the bottom line, wasn’t it? In and out. Yin and yang. Black and white.
It was noon, David noted dully. And that was a between time—and sure enough, here he was: hung up between. It was true Halloween now, and that marked the gate between the light half of the year and the dark; between summer and winter—between life and death. He was in the woods, but surrounded, just out of sight, by town. The trees hereabouts were rooted in the red clay and rich loam of middle Georgia, but his feet stood on a glowing strip of sod that was born of some other place, some other time, probably even some other chemistry and physics. And Liz was gripping his right hand, with her human flesh and bone—the slender body he had loved, and the brilliant mind that no one had fully tasted; while before him, dressed in robes of gray, green, and black, no longer looking even vaguely mortal, stood the nameless Faery woman who had—perhaps—pronounced Aikin Daniels’s doom.
“The Wild Hunt,” Liz breathed—and all that betweenness collapsed into a clot of cold hard dread that threatened to freeze David’s soul. “I have to go,” he told her. “You know I have no choice.”
“And you know I don’t either,” she echoed, with a grim smile.
David exhaled wearily. For a moment he forgot the Faery woman, forgot everything as he gazed upon his lady. God, but he didn’t deserve a woman like this… “That’s probably just as well,” he sighed at last, with a frivolity he didn’t feel and doubted she believed. “Given the luck I’ve had lately, I’d better keep you where I can see you. All I need’s to chase down Aik and Alec and find out you’ve gone haring off to an Otherworld. I—”
The Faery woman’s horse stamped impatiently. David shrugged to conclude what didn’t need conclusion, then stared at the beast, wondering if its impatient exhalation really had contained tiny flames. Liz patted its nose.
The Faery woman had remained silent since her pronouncement about the Hunt, but her mouth had gone hard, her brow wrinkled, as though she wrestled with some difficult decision. Eventually she exhaled deeply, and when she spoke, her voice held no trace of human slang, syntax, or accent, was fully that of someone born and bred in a World where language was among the highest arts. “I would not have it repeated,” she intoned, with the formality of one taking vows, “—in Tir-Nan-Og or Erenn or Annwyn, either—that one of my ancient lineage showed herself less valiant than a pair of new-grown mortals. Yet when haste is truly needed, human feet are slow.”
And with that, she closed her eyes and drew herself up very straight, her jaw set, her whole tall body as tense as a soldier facing certain death—like those at the end of Gallipoli.
“God damn,” David gasped abruptly—for his eyes were burning and tingling more violently than the use of Power had ever prompted. He clamped them shut—had no choice—and the burning of tears was cool compared to the flames the Sight had woken there. “Goddamn!” he gulped again, and Liz drew him close, folding him in her arms as pain made him shudder shamelessly. He wondered dimly why she wasn’t affected: she’d certainly seen the Faery woman as clearly as he—and the horse and the glowing Track.
But he alone had the Sight, and maybe that made the difference. Or perhaps the woman was exacting her price for his earlier assault—he’d never yet met a denizen of Faerie who’d let a mortal best him unscathed. Even his friends there kept score, and would remind him of even the tiniest slights long after he’d forgotten them. Immortals had long memories. Immortals could wait forever.
But he had his own pride, his own curiosity. And so it was that he fought through pain and tears and watched blearily but defiantly as the Faery woman changed. One moment she wore the face he knew, the next she showed many features at once, most of them female, most—but not all of them—human. She stabilized briefly in a particularly striking shape, as though she had settled on it—and David started, for there was something familiar about that visage. But before he could drag the memories from beneath his veil of pain, that entire form vanished, replaced with a larger, four-legged one: a huge black horse.
David swallowed hard, blinking back tears as the burning subsided to a tingle. He wiped them on the back of his hand. Liz passed him a bandanna, which he lavishly applied.
Those who watch what they should not, pay for that watching, came a thought into his mind—which, while alarming in its own right, was still better than watching equine lips shape human phrases. The white horse whickered, as though reminding them it was still present.
Woman on stallion; man on mare, came that thought again. Thus is balance maintained.
“Whitey here’s a boy,” Liz observed, with a trace of disappointment. “Looks like you get to ride your shape-shifting friend.” David blinked at her, puzzled by the hard edge in her voice, and saw resigned disapproval darken her emerald eyes. “I’d rather ride with you,” she grumbled. “But this isn’t the time to argue.” I could shift you all, came the mare-woman’s thought, unbidden.
“We’re fine,” David growled. “Let’s travel.” He clamped Liz in one long, strong embrace, and gave her a leg up on the white, which, he noted, sported reins but no saddle. Fortunately Liz was a first-class rider, with no qualms about riding bareback.
He, on the other hand, was wearing skimpy running shorts and nothing else save a fanny pack, socks, sneakers—and a T-shirt, when he fished it from his waistband and snugged it on. Nor had he been on a horse in over a year. Blister time for sure, he concluded warily, as he reached for the black
mare’s mane with one hand and her shoulder with the other.
And froze.
That pain-blurred glimpse of the shape-shifting was still playing through his mind, as wonders of that sort tended to do; and while he’d been dealing with mundane logistics, part of him had been worrying at those images like a tongue probing a popcorn husk lodged between two teeth. Something hadn’t been quite right: one of those half-seen faces had struck a familiar chord, sending recognition chiming through his mind—without the name and history that ought to accompany it.
And then he did recall—and his hands slid off the mare. He wasn’t certain—had observed those features for but the briefest instant when they’d seemed poised to stabilize into finality—but it seemed to him—seemed, he acknowledged—that the woman had almost chosen the face of the Morrigu.
The Morrigu…
The Crow of Battles. The Reveler Among the Slain. The woman—if that term applied to such a being—who gloried in death when women’s ancient role was to bring forth life. Who, in the guise of an angel, had worked David-the-Elder’s doom.
The woman upon whom he had sworn to be avenged.
Gritting his teeth so hard he feared they would splinter, he grabbed the mane again, and climbed upon what could well be his enemy.
Chapter XV: Blood on the Tracks
(The Straight Tracks—no place, no time)
Fear smelled good. Then again, everything smelled good, Aikin-That-Was concluded—smelled interesting, anyway—when one was a hound. Funny how he’d never noticed that rich flood of odors before, or suspected their absence. It was like being born blind then suddenly being gifted with sight at a fireworks display; like regaining one’s hearing amidst a symphony. And he could scarce contain his wonder, as he leapt along with his pack-mates. Faery men—horse—dog: each had a distinctive overodor; but beneath it, each individual smelled different, in a way he could note once and remember, as an earlier self had catalogued faces. And those scents spoke of other things too: of food eaten, and the condition of bodies; of the sweat of exertion on the Lords of the Hunt; their frequency of bathing; and their choice of metal armor, leather trappings, garments, and perfume.