They had done it . . . destroyed it all as if it was a toy they’d tired of, didn’t much care about any more. Broken and tossed under the bed to not be thought of again.
Maybe it was partly our fault. We’d forgotten they existed more or less. We weren’t watching for them, weren’t prepared. They were nothing more than stories, legends, nonsense tales to tell little ones to put them to sleep. Long ago when we knew they actually existed, saw them, made trades that never turned out quite right, I think we learned their bite was worse than their bark, no matter how innocent they could make themselves seem. We’d learned that playing games with them was the quickest way to get into trouble. So we forgot about them—the reality of them. We made ourselves forget and I think even the stories themselves would’ve disappeared in time.
But we didn’t have time. Without us any more, they played with themselves, and not in that good way you’re thinking. Well, not in the good way I was thinking. While we forgot them, they continued to play their lethal games: one side against another, alliances constantly shifting, greed for power growing, greed for gold, jewels, fruits of the earth, greed for the air itself. For the stark differences they claimed, good versus evil, righteous versus unholy; in the end they were all the same. Vicious, feral creatures who finally turned paradise into hell. There were only two good things about that. The first was that they managed to kill nearly all of themselves in the process. The second was we got to kill the ones that were left. Revenge wouldn’t bring back the world, but it was better than nothing. It was a damn sight better than sitting around waiting to die. We spent the final days wiping out the last of those freaks one by one. It was a hobby. Everyone needed one. Even now. Especially now.
“At the last outpost, the guy slinging the brew said two more riders went crazy and killed themselves. Third crew to eat their guns this month.” I shrugged. “Can’t figure why they’re in such a hurry to get where we’re going anyway. Gutless maggots. Yellow-bellied chicken shits through and through.”
Scotch took off his cowboy hat, showing the yellow-blonde hair he sawed short every few weeks with his knife, and smacked me hard with it. “Seven, if you do not stop speaking that way, I will end you. I’ve told you a thousand times it makes me question my own sanity.” Our mounts bumped shoulders without complaint with the motion.
I grinned. “That’s why I do it.” We weren’t from around here, far from it, but we went where the work took us. This past year that had been Arizona, Nevada, Mexico—up and down, round and round. Those bastards could hide like nobody’s business. They were getting smarter, and tracking them was getting harder. If I could entertain myself by talking like a gen-u-ine cowboy and drive my partner nuts in the bargain, well, hell, that’s what I was going to do.
He grumbled, but put his hat back on. It wasn’t to soak up the sweat. It wasn’t hot. It was never hot any more. Never warm. It was always winter now, but the rays of the sun, small and bloody as it had become, would sear flesh the same as that cook-fire and rabbit I’d been thinking of earlier, especially if you were fair-skinned. I wasn’t. My skin was dark enough that the sun didn’t bother me much. My hair was darker still and I kept its twisted strands tied back in a long tail. It was easier than combing it every day or cutting it once a month. There wasn’t a lot of time for personal hygiene on the hunt, whether it was here on the western trail or up north in the cities. If you had water and soap, you were lucky. If you wanted to feel warm water again, you’d have to heat it yourself.
When the Earth had stopped, nearly everything else had stopped with it. I didn’t know how or what they did. Some hideous last magic, the kind of magic that if you had seen would’ve no doubt burned the eyes from your face, peeled the skin from your flesh, and driven you to a gibbering madness that would infect everyone you then cast your blind screaming gaze on.
I shook my head. That was the best part of pretending to be a cowboy. Not having to think thoughts like those. No matter how it had happened, what grisly magic was unleashed, nothing worked. Cars didn’t run. Houses didn’t heat. Lights stayed dark and forever would. I didn’t much care about the cars, although they would’ve made the chases shorter. But a warm bath to soak away months of dust and the ache of the trail, I’d have given Scotch’s right arm for that. His left too, if that’s what it took.
I patted Pie’s neck and wiped a damp hand on my pants. At least the guns still worked. I’d cut one of the son of a bitch’s throats if I had to—and I had, but just the touch of them made your flesh revolt. Unnatural. Unclean. Murderers of the world. We passed what had once been a cactus. It should’ve died in ten years of cold but it hadn’t. It had twisted and warped, turned black and wept a slime that slowly ate through the ground around it with a sizzling stench.
I looked away. We were in Hell. I’d never believed in Hell, but that’s where we were. Clearing my throat, I asked my partner, “You remember your first dance? With a girl?” I grinned lazily as the mounts plodded on. “Maybe I’m jumping the gun. Maybe it was a right purty sheep, flowers in her wool?”
Scotch scowled. His face wasn’t made for it. It didn’t stop him from trying, but with a straight nose, clean jaw-line, eyes the same color the sky had once been, a scowl just didn’t take. It made him look noble and probably prettier than the girl he’d danced with. Which I promptly told him. It was a better insult than the sheep one.
The scowl disappeared and he laughed. I didn’t hear him do that much. I didn’t do it much myself, not and mean it. These days who did? “I will never know why I didn’t kill you ages ago,” he snorted.
“Because you’re not good enough,” I said smugly. “You were never able to take me down.” It wasn’t as if we hadn’t gone at it over the long years. Boys will be boys and all that crap. “Not even in racing. Your nag never saw anything but the ass-end of Pie.” Pie, hearing his name, lifted his head and rolled an eye back at me. I gave his dark neck another pat. Despite the grime of the trail, his coat gleamed as black as a ripe blackberry. Not that there were blackberries now, only the memory of the sweetness of a sun-warmed one bursting on your tongue.
“Nag? Shall we see about that?” Scotch caught me off guard as his mount took off like . . . how’d they say it? Oh, yeah, like his head was on fire and his tail was catchin’.
Or more like the unreal slide of ice and snow in the beauty of a frozen waterfall falling down a mountain. His coat was as white as Pie’s was black, or it had been. He hadn’t fared as well against the dirt and grime as Pie had, but I remembered what he’d looked like before we pulled this assignment and ended up in this nightmare mess of a desert. He’d been winter incarnate. But now he was a dirty bat-out-of-hell that I sent Pie after with one loud yee-haw.
“I heard that, you bastard,” Scotch’s irritated words trailed behind him. I corrected my earlier thought. Everyone needed two hobbies. Dispatching murderers and irritating their partners.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one that heard. Someone had been waiting for us and our race was over seconds after it had begun. Scotch was galloping his horse past a rusty-red outcropping of rock when the monster took him down. The cat leaped over and tackled him out of the saddle and to the ground in a movement so fast and fluid I barely saw it. Pinning Scotch to the ground, it saw me coming and lifted its head to unleash a growl that put the rumble of thunder to shame.
But it hadn’t seen me coming after all. It had heard me. It had no eyes, not ones it could use to see. Skin was seamed shut in ugly ribbons of red flesh where eyes should’ve been. Its ears were larger than they should’ve been, as were its widely splayed nostrils that sampled the air while spraying pink tinged mucus. It wasn’t a monster, no matter how it looked. It was just another victim.
I hurt for it, something that should’ve been a glory of nature, hurt to my core. And while I knew it had to eat, same as we all did, I couldn’t let it eat my partner. I hit it clean-center with a shot between those two absent eyes. I almost felt guilty, but it was fortunate to be out of th
is world and hopefully on to a better one. Then again, it might just be dead and there was nothing more—nothing clean and pure. The dark magic could’ve destroyed that too, but if that were true, I still thought it was better off. I vaulted off Pie and helped roll the big cat, heavy as I was at least, off Scotch. My partner had puncture marks in his upper chest with a small amount of blood soaking through his faded green shirt, but other than that and having the wind knocked out of him, he seemed all right.
He coughed and wheezed, pulling in air, as I pulled him up to a sitting position. “I . . . still . . . won,” he panted.
“Yeah, if the race lasted four seconds and the finish line was being eaten by a big-ass desert cat, you won. What do you want for a prize? Pie can give you a big sloppy kiss. He likes the blonde mares,” I drawled.
“Braying . . . ass,” he hissed and glared.
“Nah, he’s not so much for those.” I waited a minute then when he could curse me without running out of air and his eyes rolling back in his head, I heaved him up to his feet. “You all right? You want to go ahead and make camp? We’ve been on this one son of a bitch for a week now. Another day won’t hurt.”
He shook his head. “No. It’s not bad, and I’m tired of this one. He’s run too far, too long. I want him dead, Seven. He’s already killed two huntsmen. Let’s make certain he doesn’t kill any more.”
“You got it,” I affirmed. He was right. They’d killed the world; I didn’t want to see one of them kill a single fucking thing else and certainly not us . . . the ones who couldn’t put things right, but could make them pay. Vengeance was all we had, and it only made me want it even more.
Once up, swaying, but up, he looked at the dead cat, maimed—changed, then shoved fingers into his hair. “Why? Why didn’t they stay legends and fables where they belonged? Why did they have to be real? Why did they do this? Why would they destroy everything? Just . . . why?”
No one would ever know, and thinking about it would only make you as crazy as the riders that were the talk of the outpost, the ones who’d eaten their guns. They’d probably thought why one time too many.
I shook my head silently, for once not having a smart-ass comment. I urged him toward his mount then helped him back up in the saddle. Once there he sat straight, and if he was in pain, he hid it well. From the beginning, after all the confusion, the mourning, the despair, when we’d finally found a mission, coordinated, been partnered up, and sent to avenge what we couldn’t save, I’d told myself I’d make do with what I was paired with. Turned out Scotch was the best partner I could’ve hoped for. He’d never let me down. Not once. Now I did know what to say. I asked, “Did I ever call you a wuss? Wimp? Pussy?”
He took his hat I handed him and settled it into place. “Only every other day and in about a hundred more imaginative ways.”
My lips quirked as I smacked his mount on the flank. “Good. Don’t want you forgetting that.”
Then we were back on the trail. Ignoring his rolled eyes, I studied the ground from my saddle for sign of our quarry’s passing. I spotted them easily. It wasn’t as if the one we were after was trying to cover his tracks any longer. He was probably too far gone for that. Two huntsmen had almost ridden him into the ground before he killed them. He’d be exhausted and desperate. Desperate wasn’t good, not with two kills under his belt, but exhausted was, and we’d use it.
After another couple of miles, Pie lifted his head and blew softly through his nostrils. He knew better than to warn our prey. “He smells water,” I said softly. “There must be a spring up ahead. That’s where the bastard’s going. He must’ve run out of water.” And monsters or not, they needed water the same as any other creature.
We picked up the pace to a slow gallop. We passed a horse ridden to death, its tongue as dry and lifeless as the sand it lolled across. Another victim. Maybe that made me pick up the pace a little, pulling ahead of Scotch. Or maybe it was that I was so damn tired of them. Slaughterers, nightmares made flesh, evil . . . evil in a way that even I had never known the meaning of. I’d put down so many of them, but at that moment I wanted this one dead more than all the others put together. He’d killed two of our comrades, rode an innocent animal to an agonizing death, ruined all that I could see and ever would see. Even the stars at night were blinking out one by one. For all that, this one meant more than all the others put together. I wanted it. I needed it.
When you want it, it sharpens you, makes you better.
When you need it, it makes you sloppy.
I was sloppy.
Pie and I crested a gentle swell and I saw the water. It was a putrid shade of green, glimmering in a red-rimmed basin, with stunted, oddly twisted shrubs clustered here and there around it. I heard slurping and saw a tree with silvery leprous bark and long blade shaped leaves. The tree had grown in the painfully sharp shape of a bow bent beyond endurance until its leaves trailed in the water, drinking with a passionate thirst. What I didn’t see was the son of a bitch with the gun.
Not until it was too late.
I felt the bullet hit me in the chest. They say it feels like being kicked by a mule. Yeah, that’s what they say. It didn’t. It was a hundred times worse. There was the free-fall as I was thrown from the saddle and the hard thump as I hit the ground. All I could see then was sky. I longed for the forever-gone blue or the black of night with the thousand and one stars . . . not the random handful that remained these days, but gray was all there was. The gray of nothing. The gray of indifference. The gray that would slowly eat this world’s remains and move on to eat the whole of reality for all I knew.
I heard Pie lie down next to me with a grunt, blocking me from further fire. It’d be nice to say I’d known Pie since he was a frisky colt, but Pie had known me when I’d been the shaky legged newborn. He’d no doubt thought I was a nuisance the same as I’d once thought about Scotch. I hope he’d changed his mind like I’d changed mine.
Scotch’s rifle fired, the shots so quick that the sound blended into one massive crack. I heard a scream; I was glad of that. I wanted to hear that murdering freak shriek until his throat bled, that and more, and much more—so much more, but I settled for the scream and then a second one followed by a splash. I managed to turn my head towards the spring and saw Pie’s lambent gold eyes staring into mine. The cat’s-eye pupils dilated. “Hungry,” he muttered, the words pushed harshly through the long throat. “Eat. Now. Hungry.”
“Go,” I said, words slow and painful. “Feast as you deserve, honored one.”
He stared at me a moment longer then dipped his head. The kelpie rose to his hooves and cantered into the water. He buried his teeth, sharp and curved, in the flesh of the dead human lying on the opposite bank. There was a flash of tangled beard, gaping mouth, and an eyeball pulped by a bullet from Scotch’s rifle before the body was dragged into the water. I wouldn’t have thought it was that deep, but kelpies are versatile and Pie and the body both disappeared under the boiling surface. In a moment or two the water calmed until a geyser, far redder with blood than poisonous green, gushed upward. Then it fell, splashing back heavily, and beneath the water Pie fed. He’d more than earned it. The desert was hard on him. He dripped water wherever he walked. That was how kelpies were born—in water. They spent their lives leaving it wherever they went, which was good for Scotch and me when springs were few and far between. We had our own water source. But Pie had been meant for lochs and rivers—the desert pushed him to the far reaches of his endurance. He needed this meal.
“Blind fool. Suicidal half-wit. Careless. Idiotic beyond all measure of the word.” Scotch was kneeling beside me. “How did you last in the courts, much less the Unseelie Court, with strategy such as that?” He used his human-made knife to cut my shirt open with one subtle slice. We had no blades of our own. Once we’d come from Under-the-Hill to the human’s Earth—the Earth that was now, all our dwarven and elvish-forged blades had disintegrated. Our rainbow-chased armor turned to dust and blew away. The magic that had m
ade them had been undone by a human magic grimmer and blacker than we could ever comprehend.
“I relied on my unfathomably handsome face.” I tried for a grin, but didn’t make the shadow of a smile. “He was a human. A grubbing-in-the-mud human. A worthless adversary.”
“Excepting these worthless adversaries destroyed their world and ours,” he exhaled. “Ego and vanity, always the downfall of the Dark Court.” He pulled off his gloves and probed the bullet wound in my upper chest with his bare fingers. They felt warm against the icy chill of my skin. He already knew. From the appearance of the wound, he would. I’d seen the same wounds before and the pain—it was far worse than it should’ve been. I didn’t need to see the mercury tainted veins pulsing and striating outward, my black blood flowing far more freely than a normal bullet or blade would cause.
I said it for him. “It’s silver. There is nothing you can do, Ialach. The Wild Hunt will go on without me and I know I am the luckier for it.” Being a cowboy wasn’t as distracting now as it had been. Taunting my comrade with those stupid peasant words now would’ve been cruel. I was cruel—had been cruel. I was Unseelie, born and bred to malice. Yet when I saw true malice when the humans killed their mother, our mother, I knew the Dark Courts knew nothing of genuine cruelty. Nothing but pretenders to the throne were we. I’d saved what remained of my old self for the humans and I’d done things to the ones we’d caught—terrible yet justly deserved things—that kept some of the hungry shadows in me alive.
Ialach deserved none of that, though. If I were to die, I’d die speaking as I’d spoken for most of my life. Better he have memories of our past lives than the one we lived now. “You will not die,” he said between clenched teeth. “You bastard. You will not.”
“No?” I felt the stirring of the dark amusement of old. The Seelie were so determined, so noble, so fearless, yes, in the face of death itself. So very Ialach. Still, I liked to think I had corrupted him, if only a little, these past ten years. Then more waves of pain came and I shut up, intent on biting off my lower lip before humiliating myself by screaming.
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