by Tim Waggoner
“But the lykes will still be able to catch our scent, whether we’re traveling on the Way or not,” Devona said.
“Off the Way, we can move through the trees, and that will help mask our scent somewhat,” I suggested. “Plus, my zombie…uh, ambience will seem more like rotting carrion in the woods, where there’s less chance of lykes seeing me and realizing the smell is coming from a walking dead man. If they think I’m just the remnants of another lyke’s kill, they’ll leave us alone and go off in search of fresh prey.”
In the end we compromised. We’d travel overland but stick as close to the Obsidian Way as possible, so we could return to it if necessary.
We crossed the Bridge of Silent Screams, left the Obsidian Way, and entered the dense tangle of forest that was the Wyldwood. We picked our way carefully through the underbrush, searching for a path and trying not to make too much noise lest we attract the attention of any lykes that might be nearby. Lykes were chaotic enough outside their Dominion, but here they were totally wild, killing on sight any who dared attempt to cross their land. Like I said, Devona and I made our way very carefully.
Despite the thickness of the forest, we could still see well enough. Some strange quality of Umbriel’s shadowy light? Or maybe Lord Amon’s magic was responsible. Whichever, I was grateful. Otherwise, I would have been totally dependent on Devona’s vampire vision to lead me-and I don’t like being dependent.
Still, being able to see didn’t help us navigate. I’d been a city boy all my life and death, and Devona had spent most of her existence within the Cathedral and the surrounding environs of Gothtown. Neither of us was exactly a skilled outdoorsman. In order to make sure we didn’t stray too far from the Obsidian Way, Devona had to climb trees a number of times to check the position of Umbriel and get a fix on our location. She went up with an easy grace and came down the same way, and watching her, admiring her strength and beauty, I felt a strange tightness in my chest. I told myself it was probably the result of the numerous injuries I’d sustained since taking on Devona’s case, but I knew better.
After one such check, Devona climbed down from a large oak, a deep scowl on her face and said, “As near as I can tell, we’ve been going in circles-and I couldn’t see any sign of the Way.”
“Maybe there’s some sort of enchantment on this Dominion that makes navigating difficult.” I said this to make Devona feel better, but in truth I figured we two city kids had simply lost our way. I would’ve killed for a compass, but I’m not certain one would work in Nekropolis’s dimension. I thought for a moment, trying to get my dead brain to cough up what little woodlore it knew. “Maybe we should start marking trees as we go, so at least we don’t-”
Devona put a finger to her lips to shush me, and then she touched her ear. I listened, but I didn’t hear anything. Devona’s half-vampire hearing was far superior to mine, though, so I listened again, and this time I heard it: a soft rustling of leaves, not very far away and coming closer.
A lyke? I mouthed. The Wyldwood was home to many ordinary animals as well, all prey beasts for the lykes to hunt. Hopefully, what we heard was only a deer and not a savage shapeshifter come to gut us and feast on our entrails.
Devona shrugged then sniffed the air. At first she frowned, and then nodded, but she didn’t seem all that certain. I wondered why, but knew now wasn’t the time to ask. Something was coming, and whatever it was, I doubted it was the Welcome Wagon. I wished I’d given in to Devona earlier and stuck to the Obsidian Way like she’d wanted, but it was too late for regrets now. We headed off through the brush in the opposite direction of the rustling, trying to be as silent as we could, but being two city dwellers, I sure we failed miserably.
The rustling became a crashing as something loud bounded toward us. I pulled my 9mm out and rested my finger easily on the trigger. I only had five silver bullets left-not nearly enough to get us through the Wyldwood, but I couldn’t worry about that now. Whatever it was came around our left and then approached from in front, slowing as it neared.
I aimed my weapon at the spot in the brush where I judged the lyke would appear and waited.
A few seconds later the leaves parted and I tightened my finger on the trigger. But then I paused as a six-foot white rabbit with yellow eyes stepped out of the underbrush.
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “You’re late for a very important date.”
The hare scowled. “Funny. But if she’s Alice, then who the hell are you?” The voice was masculine, if a bit on the high side.
“I’m the guy who’s got a gun full of silver bullets pointed at your chest. Please tell me you’re not a carnivorous bunny.”
The rabbit’s large amber eyes fixed on my pistol, but his voice remained steady enough. “Who ever heard of such a thing?”
“This is Nekropolis, pal. A meat-eating rabbit would actually be rather mundane here.”
“Good point. But no, I’m not a predator.” He opened his mouth and displayed flat rabbit teeth. And then his form blurred and shifted until before us stood a thin, but still rabbity looking young man his mid-twenties, with an unruly shock of white hair and wearing nothing but a pair of overalls.
“Where did the pants come from?” I asked, curious. “I mean, you weren’t wearing them before, and now here they are.”
He shook his head as if I’d just asked the stupidest question imaginable. “Magic. A far better question is where did you two come from?”
I lowered my gun, but I didn’t put it away. I wasn’t ready to trust Bugs just yet. “The Boneyard.”
He looked me over. “That I could’ve guessed.” He wrinkled his nose. “And smelled.”
“Sorry, but they don’t make deodorant for zombies.” I gave him an extremely truncated version of who Devona and I were and what we were doing here.
“You’d have been better off taking your chances with Lady Talaith. The Wyldwood is never a safe place for outsiders, but it’s even more dangerous now.”
“Why?” Devona asked.
The wererabbit opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off by the sound of horns echoing in the distance. Hunting horns.
“That’s why. Today Lord Amon is conducting the Wild Hunt.”
I sighed. “Of course he is.” Why, I wondered to myself, are these things never easy?
The lyke, whose name turned out to be Arleigh (“It means ‘from the hare’s meadow,’” he said proudly), led us through the forest and to a vast stretch of pasture where cattle grazed contentedly beneath Umbriel’s shadowlight.
“Here in the Wyldwood, we produce most of Nekropolis’s meat and blood-real blood, not that synthetic glop Varvara’s factories have started churning out.” Arleigh said. “Well, animal blood, anyway. Cattle, sheep, goat…Non-preds like me tend the herds. The carnies are too impulsive for the work and usually end up killing and eating the animals themselves.”
“You’re a farmer?” Devona asked.
Arleigh nodded. “Most herbs like me are.”
“So you lykes have a caste system?” I asked. “Doesn’t seem fair.”
Arleigh shrugged his lean, bony shoulders. “It suits my nature, and I enjoy the work. What’s wrong with that?”
I thought of my own work as a “doer of favors.” In reality, I had to admit to myself, I was really still just a cop. My nature, I suppose. “Nothing wrong at all.”
I noticed Devona was frowning, and I wondered if she was thinking about her own work as tender of Lord Galm’s Collection.
“We’re safe along the pastureland,” Arleigh said. “The Hunt’s conducted in the wilder part of the forest, using animals Lord Amon has specially bred at his Lodge.” He lowered his voice. “I’ve heard it said that this year, he’s using animals that have been…augmented.”
“What, you mean through technology?”
He nodded.
“I guess it’s everywhere,” I said. I wondered how long it would be before Waldemar installed flesh computers in the Great Library and Gregor set up his own
homepage on the Aethernet.
“Unfortunately,” Arleigh said,” the pastureland doesn’t extend all the way to the Bridge of Forgotten Pleasures.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “The way we need to go is directly through the section of the Wyldwood where the Hunt’s being conducted.”
Arleigh nodded, and I sighed again. Never easy.
Arleigh offered to help us through the Wyldwood and I, distrusting soul that I am, wanted to know why. He puzzled over my question for a few moments before finally smiling apologetically. “The only reason I can give you is because it’s the right thing to do.”
I didn’t buy it, but then twenty years as a cop and two as a zombie had made me a tad cynical. Maybe the lyke was just following his nature again. Whatever his reason for aiding us, we couldn’t afford to turn him down.
Arleigh led us through the Wyldwood’s pasturelands, but even though he assured us we were safe here, I kept my gun out. Just in case. Before long, however, we had to leave the pastureland and return to the forest. Arleigh thought he’d be able to lead us past the Hunt, but I could tell by the nervous way the lyke kept sniffing the air and looking around that he wasn’t as confident as he would’ve liked us to believe.
We periodically heard the hunting horns, sometimes closer, sometimes farther. Arleigh told us not to worry overmuch about the horns, for sound traveled in deceptive ways in the forest.
Eventually, we reached a small clearing, and Arleigh said he needed to stop a moment and get his bearings. He crouched down, his nose shifted back to a rabbit’s, whiskers and all, and he sniffed the ground.
A horn blasted, sounding close by. It was followed by the noise of something large and heavy crashing through the underbrush directly toward us. Arleigh stood, rabbit nose quivering in fear.
“We need to get out of here!” I told him. “Which way?”
But he only stood, transfixed, staring in the direction of whatever was approaching, and trembled. I grabbed his arm and shook him a couple times, but I couldn’t break him out of his terror-induced trance. I figured to hell with him, then.
“C’mon, Devona, we have to-”
Before I could finish my sentence, an animal unlike any I had ever seen before bounded into the clearing. It looked something like a muscular ostrich, only with a thick neck and a large, cruelly hooked beak. No doubt one of the “augmented” animals the Hunt pursued. The bird skidded to a stop upon seeing us. It cocked its head and examined us, probably trying to determine if we were a threat or not.
Evidently, the answer was not, for it let forth an angry squawk and came charging at us, snapping its hook-beak.
I only had five silver bullets left, and I hated to waste them on the lyke’s prey, but I couldn’t let the giant bird attack us either. I aimed for the thing’s throat, but before I could fire, a spear whizzed through the air and sunk into the creature’s back with a meaty-moist thuk! The bird screeched in pain and pitched forward, where it lay writhing in the grass.
A huge wolfman stepped into the clearing, powerfully built, lupine head held high in a regal fashion. Lord Amon, I presumed. He was followed closely by a half dozen other lykes of various predator species, one of which-a humanoid bobcat-carried an antler horn slung over his shoulder by a leather strap. I was impressed by how silent the lykes had been-they hadn’t made a sound.
I didn’t need Arleigh to tell us we had stumbled across the Wild Hunt.
The bird, though bleeding profusely, was still very much alive, squawking and thrashing its powerful legs. The wolfman walked up to the animal and regarded it for a moment. I expected him to finish it off, but instead the wolf-headed humanoid padded over to us. I thought he might do any number of things, all of them involving his teeth and claws and our flesh, but he stopped in front of us and then did something I didn’t anticipate and couldn’t have imagined: he fell to one knee.
“I have downed the bird, my Lord. Would you do me the honor of dispatching it?”
At first, for some crazy reason, I thought the lyke was addressing me. But then Arleigh replied, “You have done well, Rolf. Rise and claim the honor for yourself.” The wererabbit’s voice was no longer high-pitched but low and resonant.
The wolfman stood and grinned. “Thank you, my Lord.” Then he turned and loped toward the bird and, with a single savage bite and twist of his jaws, broke the animal’s neck. He ripped off a hunk of meat, and walked away from the kill to devour it. The other lykes waited until Rolf was eating before rushing to the dead bird, snarling, yipping, and biting as they fought for the best of the remaining meat.
“My people have never been much for table manners,” Arleigh said.
Devona and I turned toward him, but the rabbity man was gone; in his place stood a broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced man in full fox hunting regalia-little black hat, red jacket, white jodhpurs, shiny black boots, even a riding crop held in one black leather-gloved hand. But despite his transformation, the being still possessed the same yellow eyes as Arleigh.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” he said with a touch of British accent. “I am Amon, Lord of the Wyldwood.” He smiled, displaying a mouthful of sharp teeth. “So nice of you to drop by.”
SEVENTEEN
“Forgive my little deception, but once I became aware of you, I thought it best to investigate. And the guise of Arleigh seemed a perfect way to do so.”
“And what did you learn?” I asked. It appeared Amon wasn’t limited to one wildform as were his subjects-which made sense seeing as how he was King of the Shapeshifters. Still, I was more than a little angry at myself for being fooled so easily. The yellow eyes should have been a tip-off. Who’d ever seen a rabbit with yellow eyes?
“What I needed to know: that you’re not a threat sent by one of my fellow Lords. This time of year, we Darklords tend to be busy with certain preparations. So busy that we’re more vulnerable than usual to each others’ machinations.” He smiled. “I myself have set in motion several plots against my peers over the centuries, most of them around the anniversary of the Descension. Unfortunately, none bore much fruit. We tend to be too evenly matched. Still, the fun is in the game, is it not?”
“I’m not a Darklord, so I wouldn’t know,” I said. Devona gave me a warning look, but I ignored her. The English gentleman act was getting on my nerves. “And speaking of preparations, shouldn’t you be conserving your energy for the Renewal Ceremony? I’m surprised you’re out hunting instead of meditating or something.”
The English fox hunter guise melted away to be replaced by that of a khaki-clothed big-game hunter, complete with elephant gun. The English accent disappeared, too, to be replaced by gravely American. “We each prepare in our own way. Galm meditates, Talaith engages in rites with her people, Edrigu communes with the spirit world, and Varvara throws a lavish party. I have been marshaling my power for weeks now. Today I prepare my mind and soul by engaging in the activity which is at the very core of my being-the Hunt.”
I nodded to the ravaged corpse of the huge bird. “It didn’t look like you were doing much hunting to me.”
Amon ignored the dig. “My sons and daughters always accompany me. This was Rolf’s kill.”
I looked at the lykes of varied species scattered about the clearing, all of whom were hunkered down, greedily devouring their shares of meat. “Nice family,” I said dryly.
Frank Buck gave way to a yellow-eyed Daniel Boone, dressed in the requisite buckskin clothing and coonskin cap, complete with Kentucky accent. “What they lack in manners, they make up for in enthusiasm.”
“You’re a busy monster, so let’s cut to the chase,” I said. “What do you intend to do with us?”
“The story we told Arleigh-told you-is true,” Devona added. “We’re just trying to get back to the Sprawl. We’re on an errand of great concern to my father, Lord Galm.”
“I believe you,” Amon said. “Though you provided few details, I could sense what you told me was indeed the truth.”
I wondered how A
mon could be so sure of that. Because of his heightened shapeshifter senses, which functioned as an organic lie detector? Or maybe through other abilities he possessed as a Darklord? Whichever, he did seem to believe us, which was the important thing.
Devona started to talk but Amon, who had become a tall, lean, spear-wielding African tribesman, silenced her with a gesture. “Details are unnecessary. Regardless of whether your errand is of major or minor importance, if your failure to complete it will inconvenience Galm, that’s reason enough for me to keep you from continuing your journey.”
I still held my 9mm at my side. I wondered if silver would prove effective against Amon, who was obviously much more than an ordinary lyke. The way things were going, it looked like I’d find out soon enough.
“But I have another reason to detain you. Two, actually. And their names are Honani and Thokk.”
I groaned inwardly and was uncomfortably aware of the soul jar containing Honani’s spirit-which now seemed suddenly very heavy-still resting in my jacket pocket.
“Mr. Richter, you are responsible for Honani’s body being taken over by another, and for the grievous injuries inflicted on his sister when she tried to seek justice.”
“Vengeance,” I corrected.
Amon, now a Native American brave, shrugged. “A mere difference in terminology. Honani and Thokk turned to science to alter their natural abilities. As such, they are outcasts among my people.”
I gestured toward the nearly picked clean carcass of Big Bird. “You don’t seem completely adverse to science.”
“It has its uses,” Amon admitted. “Provided it isn’t taken too far. Still, even though mixbloods possess corrupted genes, they are shapeshifers and thus still family. You have transgressed against two of my subjects. As Lord of the Wyldwood, I have a responsibility to my people to see that justice is done.” He smiled. “Or, if you prefer, vengeance.”