The Wild Hunt

by Thomas Galvin

  “So, if you have pictures, and the book’s so dangerous, why didn’t you just burn it or something?”

  “I can’t. Literally, I can’t. Magic stuff is notoriously hard to destroy. They could have burned down this entire house and the book wouldn’t be any worse off.”

  In the kitchen, Ethel stood holding a small commemorative plate, looking lost. It was understandable. The kitchen was an absolute shambles. There wasn’t a single item in place; all of the silverware was scattered on the ground or, in a couple of cases, embedded in the walls, most of the dishes had been shattered, the cabinets were empty, the furniture was smashed … it looked like a tornado had gone through. I put a gentle hand on her shoulder, but she turned away.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

  She didn’t look up at me, just kept staring at the little plate in her hand. “You keep saying that, like it’s going to fix everything. Why did you come here?”

  “Grandmother,” Miranda began, but I held out my hand. Ethel needed to get this out.

  Ethel turned to look at me. Tears were running down her cheeks. “Why did you bring them here? Why did you let them do this to my home? I’ve lived here my entire life. My parents lived here their entire lives. Why did you do this?”

  “Grandma, I told you why he’s here, why he…” Miranda said.

  “I know what he is,” Ethel spat. She turned away from us and looked down at her plate. She stood there a moment, then walked silently out of the room.

  I watched her go, pain welling up inside my chest. Getting hit by a car was rough, but it was nothing compared to Ethel’s weary sadness.

  “The DuBois women are tough,” Miranda said. “We’ll be okay. She’ll be okay.”

  “I hope so.” Ethel was from that generation of people who had seen plenty of bad and learned to deal with it through quiet resolve. Her few questions in the kitchen had, for her, probably been the equivalent of shouting and throwing things. Her life had turned upside down when I walked into it, and it was easy to latch on to me as a focal point of her problems. Hell, I blamed myself. I knew, logically, that I had to be there, that Miranda would die if I wasn’t there, but it didn’t make me feel any less guilty.

  “Mister Lyndsey?”

  Great. Now what? I turned around to see a frail old woman, dressed in a maroon skirt suite, clutching a maroon hand bag, and wearing her sliver hair in a bun, standing in the back doorway.

  “I’m sorry, have we met?” I asked.

  “Oh, no dear, not yet. Jesus told me I’d find you here, and he asked me to stop by. Do you have a moment?”

  My stomach rolled. Miranda looked back and forth between the two of us. “Mrs. Lockhart?”

  “Hello, dear.” The woman looked around the kitchen. “My, my. It appears I’m a bit late.”

  “Late?” Miranda asked. “Mrs. Lockhart, what are you doing here?”

  The woman smiled primly. “I have a message for our young warrior here. A message from the Mashiach.”

  My stomach rolled again. Crazy old ladies stopping by to tell you that Jesus loves you is one thing, but when she calls out the Mashiach by his actual title, that was cause for alarm. The Mashiach and I didn’t exactly part on friendly terms, and I wasn’t at all comfortable with him taking an interest in my activities. “What did he say, Mrs. Lockhart?” I asked cautiously.

  “Please, call me Francine. He says that he loves you and he misses you, Caden.”

  I blinked. “That’s it?”

  “Oh, well, no, of course not. The Lord doesn’t waste a vision on something anyone could learn if they’d just open the Good Book. He actually sent me here to give you this.” She reached into her purse and took out a dagger, drew it from its sheath, and held it out to me. I took an involuntary step back.

  The dagger was a Tolkien fan’s wet dream. The sheath was leather and gold. The handle was carved from what looked like rosewood, separated from the blade by a hand guard that looked like a golden crescent moon. The blade itself was brazen and had a sweeping, leaf-point shape. Delicate silver inlays formed a beautiful filigree down the length of the blade, and the edge was trimmed in gold. I could feel the Æther emanating from it.

  “This is an Exorcist’s Dagger,” Francine said. “It was tempered in a sacred flame and quenched in holy water, and the handle contains a relic of Saint Benedict, the Patron of exorcists.” She stopped and thought for a moment. “Well, technically the Archangel Michael is their Patron, but getting a piece of his finger bone would be much more difficult.”

  I stared at the artifact. I could tell that it was the real thing, but why would the Mashiach give it to me? “Thanks, but what am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Kill demons, of course,” Francine said. “The Lord showed me a bit of the pickle you’ve gotten yourself into. Those fiends you did battle with are just burning with the fires of hell. The Mashiach wants to help even the odds a bit. Demons are hard to kill, Caden, you know that. But this, this makes it easy.”

  I clenched my jaw. “Easy? You think sticking a knife in someone is easy? You think watching an innocent person die is easy?”

  “They aren’t innocent, Caden. They brought this on themselves. They asked for it.”

  “They aren’t even possessed,” I said. “Not yet.”

  “Oh. Well, the dagger will still work. Whatever magic is protecting them, whatever would-be god is watching over them, this dagger will put an end to their evil.”

  I fought to keep my anger in check. “This is why I left the Mashiach, you know. Making it even easier to kill the people he refuses to help isn’t exactly the best way to get me back on the team.”

  Francine looked down and sighed. “He said you’d say that.” She took the dagger, placed it back in its sheath, and slipped it back into her purse. “Caden, the Lord isn’t evil. We don’t always understand his ways, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. It just means we’re too small to understand.”

  My jaw muscles twitched. Francine reached back into her purse and drew out a small piece of paper. “When you change your mind, you call me. I’ll just hold onto this until then.”

  “What was that about?” Miranda asked when the old woman was gone.

  I leaned against the wall. “He was just trying to spook me.”

  “He who?”

  “The Mashiach.”

  Miranda raised an eyebrow. “And that’s supposed to be Jesus?”

  “That’s the title he started using when his followers raised him from the dead.”

  “And you think he sent a little old lady to give you a knife because he wanted to scare you.”

  I headed back toward my room, Miranda trailing after me. “I used to work for him. We had a falling out, but he didn’t take the breakup well, and he’s been kinda stalkery ever since.”

  “And again,” Miranda said carefully, “this is Jesus we’re talking about.”

  I started tossing things into my duffel bag. Miranda sat on the edge of the bed. “My fiancée didn’t just die, Miranda. A demon murdered her. Killed her right in front of me.” Miranda gasped, but I kept going. “I went into a tailspin. The guy who pulled me out is named Richard Vines. He’s an Apostle.”

  “A what now?”

  “An Apostle. There’s been an unbroken succession for the last two thousand years. Matthias was chosen to replace Judas, and so on and so on, down through the centuries. Richard convinced me to join the team. I became a Saint, one of the seventy-two people the Mashiach uses to fight his enemies.”

  Miranda shifted uncomfortably. “So you’re like super religious?”

  “I was, for a while.”

  “What happened?”

  I looked at her, harder than I intended. “More people died, and I decided I wanted to try saving lives for a change.”

  Miranda studied me. I added the last of my supplies to my bag. “I need to find the Asatru before they get a chance to use that book,” I said. “The sun will be setting soon. My bet is they’ll try to summon W
otan as soon as the moon rises.”

  “How are you going to find them?”

  “I’m heading back to Warren’s house.”

  “You think they went back there?”

  “Not a chance. But I need to collect some items for another spell.”

  “Oh.” Miranda looked at the floor and turned her toe on the floor. “So, um, can I come?”

  ***

  I parked a block away from Warren’s house and left the engine running. Miranda looked annoyed. “I take it I’m staying here?”

  “No, I figured I’d have someone who just learned their first spell twenty-four hours ago wander into a house owned by a dead mage and occupied by five girls with Viking hell-angels for familiar spirits.”

  “But you said they weren’t going to be here.”

  “I said I don’t think they’re going to be here. Big difference. But,” I grabbed a canister of salt from my duffel bag, “you can throw up another ward. Just in case.”

  Miranda considered it for a moment. “Deal.”

  I handed her the salt and got out of the Jeep. “Pour a circle around the car, but leave yourself enough room to stand inside.” I stepped a couple of feet away and watched her prepare. “Okay, just like you practiced.”

  Miranda crouched down and placed her fingertips in the salt, then closed her eyes. A few seconds later green fire raced around the Jeep. Miranda looked up at me expectantly. I reached toward the barrier and the air shimmered with unseen force. “Nice.”

  “Okay, now what?”

  “Can you drive stick?”

  “Kinda.”

  “Close enough. Get in the driver’s seat. If I come running out of the house and I look like something’s trying to kill me, get the hell out of here. The ward will break as soon as you try to cross the barrier.”

  “What about you?”

  “I never actually run away. When it looks like I’m retreating, I’m actually just leading my enemy into a clever trap.”

  Miranda cocked an eyebrow at me. “What trap?”

  “I’ll figure that out later,” I said. “I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes.”

  Miranda got into the Jeep and watched me walk away, chewing on her lip the whole time.

  I walked past the house first. There were no cars in the driveway (or the garage), and nothing burst through the windows hungry for the taste of my blood, so that was a good sign. I got up close and walked around the property, looking in the windows and reaching out with my senses, searching for people or wards but encountering nothing. Finally I summoned the Æther and focused it around me, weaving a barrier of protection.

  The Thieves’ Key shimmered as I slipped it into the back door’s lock. I walked through the first floor cautiously, just in case I had missed something, but no monsters jumped out of the closet to eat me. I headed up the main staircase and there, laying in the middle of the hallway, was my prize. Thank God Ashlyn was a slob.

  I stopped by the bathroom and grabbed another item, just in case, then headed back outside.

  Miranda was white-knuckling the steering wheel, and it didn’t look like she’d even blinked since I went into the house. She slid into the passenger’s seat when I got to the Jeep, but I stood outside and pantomimed knocking on a door.

  “Crap, sorry.” Miranda started to climb out, but I stopped her.

  “You can break the ward from in there,” I said. “Just will it to happen.”

  “Okay.” She pursed her lips and closed her eyes. A moment later the salt flashed with emerald fire and I felt the ward disintegrate.

  I hopped in the Jeep and handed Miranda the things I had collected. “Good work.”

  “Thanks. And my prize is … a toothbrush? And a comb?”

  “Ashlyn is powerful right now. You remember when that car hit me?”

  “Nope. That was a completely trivial event that had completely slipped my mind.”

  I gave her a side-eye, then continued. “Well, she got hit by a truck earlier today, and she didn’t just survive it, she totaled the freaking thing. She might actually be stronger than me right now.”

  “So we’re screwed.”

  “Nope. She’s stronger than me, but she’s inexperienced.” I held up the toothbrush. “Leaving these around was a critical mistake, a mistake an experienced mage wouldn’t make.”

  “So you’re, what, going to curse her with gingivitis?”

  “Not quite. I still plan on tracking her down and punching things real hard until I win, but this is how I’m going to track her down.”

  “With a toothbrush and a comb.”

  “Yep. Her toothbrush has her saliva on it, and her brush has strands of hair caught in the teeth.”

  “Well of course it does. It’s not like she’s going to clean it out every morning.”

  “I would. This hair was a part of her, and that means it has the same energy she does. So spells that I cast on the hair could, possibly, affect Ashlyn herself. It’s called sympathetic magic.”

  “So you are going to curse her?”

  “No. To curse someone you need a more powerful token, usually a few drops of their blood. Also, I don’t know how old the hair is. The energy signature fades over time. And furthermore, whatever spell she used to turn into a one-woman wrecking machine has probably changed her. If the hair came from before the spell was cast, the bond wouldn’t be as strong.”

  “And what about the toothbrush?”

  “I actually walked in on her using that this morning, so I know it’s fresh. That means it still has energy, and it still has the right kind of energy.”

  “So you’re going to curse her.”

  “God, you’d make a fantastic voodoo priestess. No, I’m still not going to curse her. I’m just going to find her. The spell I’m going to cast will use the energy from her saliva–”

  “Gross.”

  “–to hone in on the energy from the rest of her body.”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out a thin chain. “Different metals affect magic in different ways. Silver tends to disrupt it, which makes it a good weapon against demons and vampires and stuff.”

  “Wait, vampires are real?”

  “Yep.”

  “What are they like?”

  “A lot of them write poetry. It’s kind of sad. Anyway, silver disrupts magic. Gold tends to magnify it, so you’ll see a lot of focus items made from or coated with gold.”

  “Focus items?”

  “Magic wands and stuff. Things that help a mage focus their energies on a particular spell.”

  “Okay, silver disrupts magic, gold amplifies it. So that dagger that Mrs. Lockhart had? The one that was supposed to kill demons? The silver in the blade is like poison to them, and the gold holds on to whatever, um, enchantments have been cast on the blade?”

  “That’s right.”

  Miranda looked at the chain. “And what about that?”

  “This is iron. Iron is nice and neutral. It doesn’t break up magic like silver, and it doesn’t make it …” I searched for the right word, “flickery, like gold can. It just kind of sits there, a passive container.”

  “I thought faeries were allergic to iron?”

  “Propaganda. Feeding your enemies false information about your weaknesses is fantastic strategy.” I tied the chain around the toothbrush and dangled it like a pendant, then closed my eyes. I felt the energy surrounding the toothbrush, let it imprint itself in my mind. Then I pictured a compass, my mandala for this particular spell, and bid the energy to go home. “Sic ’er,” I whispered.

  The toothbrush shimmered with golden light that quickly turned green, then pulled against the chain, raising up like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, and pointed more or less to the East.

  Miranda blinked. “Damn, that’s cool. Can you teach me how to do that?”

  “Not right now. This is a delicate spell and this might be the only chance I have to track down the Asatru before they set Wotan free. I’ll show you how after I save t
he world, though.”

  “All right. So we just kind of follow the toothbrush?”

  “Nope. I follow the toothbrush, after I drop you off at the bed and breakfast.”

  Miranda glowered at me. “I want to help.”

  “I know. But you can’t go running headlong into a fight that’s several stories over your head. Humility goes a long way in magic.”

  I tied the chain to my rear view mirror and drove away. When I turned around and headed back toward the bed and breakfast, the toothbrush pointed behind us sullenly.

  We pulled into the DuBois’ driveway a few minutes later. Miranda opened the door and put one foot on the ground, then looked back at me. “Be safe.”

  I smiled at her. “Always.”

  “Liar.” She gave me a faint smile, tinged with worry and frustration, and went inside.

  I took a deep breath and let it out in a hiss. I needed a clear mind, and thinking about pretty red heads with sparkling green eyes was a good way to get killed. I took a moment to remember why I was there, what the Asatru were going to do, what would happen to Mirrormont and to Miranda if I didn’t stop them. I took a moment to get angry, then started to drive.

  The toothbrush lead me down familiar roads, and a few minutes later I pulled into the parking lot behind Green River Community College. The sun was setting as I reached the campus. Four cars, including the land yacht that ran me over earlier, were parked behind Warren’s office building. I shut the Jeep’s engine off, stepped out into the cold, and headed toward the forest.

  The toothbrush led me through the woods surrounding the campus to a small glen about half a mile from Warren’s office building. Cold electricity hummed in the air, distant fire light pierced the darkness, and a drumbeat hammered the night.

  The Æther swirled around me, driven by the passion of the Asatru’s ritual. The energy should have been muted without the ley lines running past the DuBois’ house, but whatever magic had evoked the Valkyries had strengthened the Asatru’s spellcraft as well. The Æther practically crackled against my armor, and I hadn’t even reached the ritual site.

  The drumbeats died as I drew nearer, replaced with solemn Germanic chanting. The men would sound off, their voices booming in the night, and the women would respond, an eerie, lilting noise.