Dreamseeker's Road (31 page)

Trouble was, it could well become the real thing, if the Hunt broke through the World Walls as the Faery woman feared. David found himself straining his hearing in quest of far direr and more ancient sounds than howling guitars and gibbering synthesizers.

Instead, he heard someone yell, “Hey, look at Roy and Dale!”—and found himself blushing furiously, given that he was wearing jogging shorts, sneaks, and a T-shirt, not rawhide, a Stetson, and jeans. Of course, he was astride a handsome jet black mare with a wild-eyed guy in cammos hanging on behind, and a sharp-looking redheaded wench pacing a white stallion alongside—but horses weren't costumes, quite, even if they did earn more stares as they clop-clopped around the corner toward the heart of the Dance. A city cop stared too, eyes going hard and narrow before he puffed his cheeks and strode toward them, ticket book in hand. Just as he was about to speak, the horsewoman wheeled around and galloped back up Jackson the way they'd come. Not until they'd turned left onto Washington did she slow. Liz's mount clattered to a halt beside her. Two blocks from ground zero, the street was essentially deserted.

Get down
, the Faery ordered.
I am
too conspicuous.

“But…”

Down!

David scowled, but Liz was already climbing off the white with graceful expertise. Aikin slid down with a muffled “oof' and a scratch of gravel that meant he'd stumbled. David dismounted slowly—and could barely stand when he reached the ground. His thighs and calves were cramping into knots, never mind the raw patches lining them, that made him wish for a barrel-sized ice cube to wrap his legs around. Aikin braced him as he staggered, and then that unheard voice found his mind:

Hurry! In here!

David glanced around and saw the mare duck into the shadowed recess between two buildings across the street from the Georgian Hotel. He followed stiffly, with Aikin's aid. Liz was still staring at the stallion.

He can care for himself,
the horse-woman said.
Now hurry!

Liz shrugged and joined them, twining her hand with David's as they entered that blot of darkness. David didn't watch the transformation this time—mostly for fear of what he might see, though to give their erstwhile mount credit, she'd provided admirable aid in situations not rightly her concern. As it was, the air pulsed briefly with energy, while the sound of skin and muscle stretching and joints realigning somehow overrode the roar of music. A swishing followed, then a long relieved sigh. “I infinitely prefer this shape,” came a woman's lilting murmur.

David could resist no longer. A sideways glance showed the same figure he'd seen thrice before, save that the black, gray, and green robe-dress-thing had been exchanged for baggy black pants, a thigh-length khaki tunic, and a silvery vest. Glamour, probably; clothes didn't change when you shifted shape.

“I can cast a glamour on you, if you like,” the woman offered. “I could give you…costumes.”

“Thanks but no thanks.” Aikin muttered. “I've had enough shape-changing lately, even bogus type.”

“Yeah,” Liz echoed, “unless you can make us invisible to the Hunt.”

The woman shook her head. “Nothing can do that. Our only hope is to survive the night. He will not pursue past dawn.”

“Or in a crowd?”

“That might slow him or force him to change his methods; it will not stop him.”

“So what do we do?” Aikin persisted. “We can't get home without bummin' rides, and if we do, we're isolated—but the clubs close at midnight…”

“At which point we crash in my dorm room,” Liz broke in. “Or in Myra's studio. Whichever.”

“And in the meantime, hang out in the crowd as long as we can: safety in numbers, and all?” Aikin wondered.

“Sounds like a plan,” David acknowledged, then paused and regarded the Faery. “I'm not tryin' to be rude or anything, but…you don't have to hang around any longer. You've fulfilled as much of the deal as we can reasonably expect. 'Course you're
welcome
to stay,” he added.

“I am as safe here as in Faerie, for the nonce,” the woman replied. “And I am curious to see how events…resolve.”

“Well, whatever happens,” Aikin growled, “we'd best not get caught in here.”

“No,” David agreed—and froze. A sound had sliced through the duller rumble of music: a familiar sound, sharp as broken glass, deep as a sword wound in unprotected flesh.

The horn.

—From the darkness behind them!

“Run!”
David yelled, tugging Liz along as he sprint-limped toward the sidewalk. Behind them, the baying of hounds and the flapping of cloaks joined that eerie winding—and soon enough, the thudding of hooves on something hard to describe that shifted abruptly to a sharper clatter on pavement. A glance dared over his shoulder showed something he'd as soon not have seen: a slit of gray/gold light where the blank wall at the end of the recess had been, through which a tide of darkness poured, that resolved into black hounds, black horses, and black-armored riders with eyes of fire and gore.

In spite of his raw and cramping legs, David ran. He heard Liz stifle a scream, Aikin not suppress a curse—and words in an unintelligible tongue from the Faery. He wished he had time to puzzle her out: why she'd thrown in with them when she could surely have escaped some other way, why she seemed to have no Power in this place which was neither hers nor the realm of the Hunt…

The clamor diminished as they reached the sidewalk and pounded left up Washington toward civilization. The horn squalled again, but muffled; and the noises of pursuit went muddled and unclear. David sensed that the Hunt was mustering itself in the gloom: regrouping for one final race to the kill.

“Faster,” he panted. “Fast as you can.”

A bank flashed by to the left; City Hall loomed ahead on the right. They turned left down College, toward where the Allhallows madness maelstromed most thickly.

Faster, and the sounds of pursuit diminished—or were drowned by guitars and drums from the street band at College and Clayton. Closer, and David had to slow, though every sense was on red alert. Closer… People began to brush past; he caught snatches of conversation, the scent of beer and whiskey riding the breeze…

Closer—and rounding the corner from Clayton they came: careening full tilt straight toward them, having circled the block to cut them off.

“Shit!” David groaned, as he dashed into the barricaded street. The Hunt was between them and the heart of the crowd.

Somehow they made the other side, angling back uphill past the parking garage where the Palace Theater had been. Not so many people there, but a bunch of clubs farther down. If they could get to one…the Atomic Cafe, say…

As they made one last push before the corner, David glimpsed their reflections in the plate glass windows of the unleased space on the garage's ground floor. They looked harried if intact, but behind came…not horses and riders and hounds, but a seething clot of night, like black fog or dirty steam.
So even the Wild Hunt fears to be seen
too
clearly in the Lands of Men,
David noted.

As if that made any difference.

And by then they'd gained the corner and whipped around it. Half a block now, and they'd make the Atomic, and please God let there not be a cover, and let no one's ID get questioned.

A quarter block, and the darkness gained the corner behind.

Not much farther—but the gloom was arching around beside them—which meant it could have caught them had it desired.

—Beside them…and
past
them, in part.

Too late David grasped their plan.

They were being herded.

Herded toward where yet another alley gaped.

And they had no choice: brick walls one way; shadowy darkness the other, through which lights flared, revelers showed as silhouettes, and music went oddly muffled.

And which they dared not enter.

“Do something!” Liz snapped at the Faery.

“I cannot. He is an older power than I, and greater. And this night is his.”

And then Aikin stumbled on a curb, and the Hunt closed in.

An instant later, so did the walls. And this alley, David knew from his freshman prowling days, had no exit.

Just three walls—three
blank
walls, save for a door at one side (locked, presumably), dirty pavement, a bad smell, muffled music, a muddy sky…and an end plugged by the Hunt, which, as it passed the throat of the alley, regained more-tangible form. Eyes first: red eyes; then heads of hounds and horses, and more knowing eyes under waving hair and helms…

A black horse paced forward, slowly, deliberately. The black-armored man astride it was antlered and carried a spear, and his cloak billowed, though there was no wind. Another man flanked him to the right but back a way, face blunt and grim, auburn hair wildly limed. Bare-chested he was, his torso showing an intricacy of swirling blue tattoos. He was also barefoot, and his loose trousers were red-and-black checked. He carried a thick-bladed sword.

To the left…

David swallowed hard as he gazed on that figure; for however awful the Huntsman was, with his relentless blackness, there was still some sense of thought behind his eyes.

This woman was madness incarnate—white-skinned, red-haired madness; that hair flying wild around her head in tangled masses that at times seemed to resolve into serpents—or battle flags—or gore-soaked limbs. Her arms were bare, and her night-colored gown was slit to her belly. By her perfect features, by the angle of her jaw, cheekbones, and chin, she was clearly one of the Sidhe.

Gone mad.

For blood patterned her arms and breast, as though she'd smeared it there like a child working designs in fingerpaint. Her hands were ensanguined to the wrists, and her lips leaked gore. When her gaze, which darted everywhere like a fly above a corpse, finally lit on David, she laughed.

Gibbered, rather say.

Whether there was sense to those utterances or not, they conjured images of vast battlefields strewn with corpses of every race and nation: chain mail and plate, bare skin and armored, elaborate uniforms and nondescript fatigues. Swords and shields, knives and axes and maces; blades straight or curved, single edged or bi or tri; rifles and mortars and tanks. Banners of silk and linen and hemp, bright-dyed or faded. And everywhere severed limbs and smashed skulls and piles of steaming viscera, over which dark birds whirled and speculated, and atop which more than one lit to feast. And surely one of those birds had the same eyes as the crazy woman; surely one of those slain was the very likeness of David-the-Elder.

Somehow David tore his gaze away. Liz's fingers tightened in his hand, as she drew close against him. A stronger hand clamped hard upon his shoulder. “This is a crock,” Aikin muttered.

“Kill them! Split their skulls, shatter their bones!” the red-haired woman shrieked, kicking her horse forward. “Show me their hearts where they beat in their chests! Carve the blood eagle thrice and let it fly. Float their brains in cups of blood, with their eyeballs as ornaments!”

“I will do what I will!” the Huntsman snapped—and moved closer.

David backed up. His companions did the same. One step, two, and they were halfway down the alley. Four yards separated them from the Hunt, then three. The Huntsman lowered his spear, pointing it first at David, then at Liz, then at Aikin, where it paused. “No one eludes me,” that dark figure spat, with a grim laugh. “Yet had you but kept your earlier shape you would have been safe; for I hunt no one twice in
the same body
.”

The tip wavered. No more than a yard separated it from Aikin's chest. But just when David feared to see it thrust home, it moved again, to where the Faery woman stood at Liz's right.

Another step, and the spear tapped her breast above her heart.

The woman never flinched. “You would not dare!” she hissed.

“I hunt whom and what I please when it pleases me,” the Huntsman replied. “And though I know that you are other than you seem, still, I own no one master: human, god, nor Faery.”

“Not even the sister of one who travels with you?” the woman shot back, gazing at the gibbering Huntress, who was leaning over her mount's head like a gargoyle atop a charnel house.

David's breath caught, not only at the challenge, which hinted both at hope and betrayal, but because the gesture had brought the madwoman's face into range of the alley's sole illumination. And somehow that single dim bulb washed the blood from her lips, cheeks, and chin, and showed her features whole: the features, he realized with sick despair, of the Morrigu.

Which confused him more than ever, for their Faery companion had also worn those features—he thought. At which point something began to nag at him: something that would probably have been clear had not panic overridden it.

—Panic, and the words of the Huntsman, when, after a pause during which the spear point did not waver, he shook his head and spoke:

“Kinship will not save you, not when you walk the Tracks
this
night unguarded. For have you not heard that this night is mine?”

“Not even if by so doing you incur not only Lugh's wrath, but that of the Queen of Ys
?” a new female voice cried, from behind them. “
I
stand with the mortals and their…friend.”

David jumped half out of his skin, then twisted around—to see, stepping from the alley's single door, another Faery woman. The very one, surely, whom he'd spotted the previous night at the 40 Watt: the
second
one, whom his friend Mark claimed to have seen in the library. Now, though dressed in student togs—a white silk shirt above black jeans—she stood revealed as some great lady among the Daoine Sidhe.

But what was all that about the Queen of Ys
?

Who was the Queen of Ys?

The Huntsman paused, as though considering. Then: “The Queen of Ys, you say?”