CHILD of the HUNT

by Christopher Golden

  Buffy rushed at her.

  Connie raised the sword.

  “Your mother misses you,” Buffy said loudly.

  The girl’s eyes went wide, the sword faltered, and Buffy grabbed her leg and flipped her off the horse’s back. She leaped into the saddle just in time to escape the hounds. She saw Connie’s wide eyes staring at her, and Buffy felt horrible for manipulating her. But too many lives depended on her success to worry about it overmuch.

  She dug her heels into the horse’s flanks, and to her surprise, it began to move, following her commands. Buffy raised her sword, and rode directly at the knot of Hunters who had been about to attack her. Dark faerie ran around under the horse’s feet, trying to get to her, but the horse ignored them, even stamping on one of them.

  “Roland!” Buffy screamed. “Where are you?”

  She spared a moment to wonder if the others had succeeded in escaping. With every fiber of her being, she prayed they had.

  A Huntsman on foot tried to block her path. Buffy bent low over the horse and rode the man down, trampling him under the beast’s hooves. Two more on horseback galloped directly in front of her and Buffy rode right at them.

  “Roland!” she cried.

  Buffy reined her horse to one side, so both Hunters were to her right. Her sword flashed out, and the nearest Hunter’s head flew from his shoulders, neatly decapitated in a splash of thick black gas. Quickly, she turned to face the other.

  Her horse reared. Buffy was nearly thrown from its back, but managed just barely to hold on. When she looked up again, the Erl King was bearing down on her. He was a horrible sight, flames burning in his eyes and nostrils, horns crusted with gore . . . and he was huge.

  Buffy raised her sword and spurred her horse on toward him. In her heart, she said goodbye to her mother.

  The Erl King turned his horse at the last moment, and barked something in a guttural language. Buffy’s horse stopped too fast, almost slammed into the King’s horse. Buffy rocked forward.

  With a backhand, Hern the Hunter knocked her from the saddle.

  Buffy hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of her. Her head spun from the force of the Erl King’s blow, and she tasted blood in her mouth. She thought she might have swallowed a tooth. She wondered if her nose was broken. Disoriented, she looked up at Hern as he dismounted, and approached her, sword in hand. The others crowded around behind him.

  Then Roland pushed through them.

  “Father, no!” he said. “She rescued me. From the warlocks. She was the one who saved me.”

  The Erl King stared at him, spoke sternly: “I saved you, Roland.”

  “Yes, Father, but . . . Buffy’s my friend,” he said. “Please!”

  “Buffy?” the Erl King said, and a laugh bubbled up inside his chest. Fire spouted from his eyes as he turned to look at her.

  “What kind of a name is Buffy?” he asked, his voice like stones scraping together.

  She stared at him defiantly. “What kind of a name is Hern?”

  Buffy wanted to close her eyes, to wait for the death she knew was coming. But she didn’t. She only glared at him. Then, as it seemed death was not going to be immediate, she climbed painfully to her feet, her wounds finally beginning to catch up with her, the ache and burn of the many cuts and bites and bruises sapping her strength. Still, better to die standing, with some dignity, she thought.

  “You aren’t an ordinary girl,” the Erl King said. “What are you, then?”

  “I’m the Chosen One,” she said simply. “The Slayer.”

  The Erl King actually took a step back. The fire dimmed in his eyes. Buffy knew it wasn’t fear, but she had no idea what it was. Then Hern the Hunter did the most unexpected, most extraordinary thing Buffy could ever have imagined. He lifted his sword, point down, both hands on the hilt, and drove it into the ground between them.

  And he knelt on one knee.

  “You honor us with your presence, Chosen One,” he said. “You are not the first Slayer to walk among us. The Hunt also strikes down the soulless vampire wherever he slinks through filthy alleys to steal his nightly bit of life. They are abominations. We have much in common, you see. Though this will not stop me from taking your life any more than my son’s misguided pleas. Instead, however, I ask you this.

  “Ride with us. Grace the Wild Hunt by becoming one of us. The girl Treasure was to be Roland’s bride, but you . . . you are the Slayer. Wed my son, join the Hunt, and one day, you will be its queen.”

  Buffy opened her mouth to say something obnoxious and insulting. Then she closed it again, and thought a moment. This wasn’t the time. This needed to be played a different way.

  “I’m honored by your request,” she said. “But I’m the Slayer. There are duties that go along with that, that I can’t just walk away from.”

  Hern the Hunter barked orders in that guttural language, and the crowd of Huntsmen split again. Beyond the circle, several Huntsmen and a horde of dark faerie surrounded Giles, Xander, Willow, and Brian. They looked even worse than before.

  “I’m sorry, Buffy,” Giles said. “We almost made it, but the faerie caught on . . . they gave us away.”

  Buffy hung her head.

  “Join us and they will live,” the Erl King said. “Refuse me, and I will kill them. Slowly. They will die cursing your name.” He locked gazes with her. “Join us.”

  She stared at him, not looking at her friends. She didn’t want to see them. It would make her choice all the more agonizing.

  “Set them free. When I know they’re safe, I’ll join you,” she said.

  “Buffy, it isn’t worth it!” Xander shouted. “Please, don’t.”

  “Run him through!” the Erl King thundered, and pointed a long, taloned finger toward her friends.

  Instantly a mounted Hunter bore down on Xander. He held a sword, and he angled it toward Xander’s heart.

  “No!” Buffy shouted. “Stop!”

  “Halt!” the Erl King commanded, but not before the Hunter’s sword had pierced Xander’s left arm. Xander cried out in pain and fell to his knees. Willow ran to him and threw her arms around him.

  “Buffy, don’t,” Xander panted, eyes wide and imploring. “Don’t.”

  Tears spilled down Willow’s face as she draped her body over Xander, trying to protect him. “Buffy, don’t.”

  His own eyes welling, Buffy’s Watcher raised his chin. “Buffy,” he said, “don’t.”

  Buffy ignored them all. If I look at them, look in their eyes, I will never have the strength to go through with this, she thought.

  The Huntsman on horseback wheeled his mount around and waited for the Erl King’s orders. The king raised his arm. The Huntsman raised his sword.

  The Erl King looked hard at Buffy. “So, Chosen One. Do you consent?”

  She tried to speak, but her throat closed up.

  The king lowered his arm, and the Huntsman trotted toward her friends with his sword extended. Xander’s blood dripped from the tip.

  “Yes!” she shouted. “Yes, I consent!”

  “No,” Xander groaned. “Oh, Buffy.”

  “You will be loyal always to the Erl King’s commands. You will become Roland’s bride,” Hern growled.

  “Yes.”

  “Swear it by the light of Hecate’s moon, under the lost eye of Odin,” the Erl King demanded.

  “Buffy, don’t do it!” Giles snapped. “It’s a magical oath. It can never be broken.”

  “I swear by the light of Hecate’s moon, under the lost eye of Odin, that I will be loyal always to the Erl King’s commands,” Buffy said.

  “Set them free!” the Erl King announced happily, fire snorting from his nostrils, blood smeared across his widely grinning teeth.

  Willow began to sob loudly. Giles swore. Xander was silent. Still, Buffy would not look at them.

  She had never been any good at saying goodbye.

  Chapter 15

  AS BRIAN ANDERSON AND HIS NEW FRIENDS WERE taken t
o the edge of the clearing, the Erl King grabbed the reins of Buffy’s horse and led her away. She did not look back.

  Brian could relate. Looking back hurt something fierce. Mr. Giles had taken off his tie and wrapped it tightly around Xander’s arm. Xander had said something about a field dressing, nodding, insisting that he felt fine. He insisted that the sword had only grazed him, and that he had cried out more from surprise than pain. Brian wasn’t sure of that. On the other hand, Xander didn’t look great, but he didn’t look like he was going to die.

  It was almost as though Brian and the other three were invisible to the Hunt now. The hounds didn’t growl at them. Hunters rode by as if they were trees. Even the dark faerie ignored them. Brian was free. He could go back to his father now.

  Buffy had given up everything for her friends, and he had just been fortunate enough to be along for the ride. He was free.

  But he couldn’t leave yet.

  “Brian, we must go now,” Giles whispered. “We’ve got to find a way to save Buffy and we can’t do it here.”

  “Just . . . hold on,” Brian said, staring at Connie DeMarco, the girl he knew as Treasure.

  She wouldn’t look at him.

  Brian cupped his hands to his face and called out to her. “Treasure! Come with us, please!”

  Treasure did not turn.

  “Treasure!”

  “Brian,” Xander said, his expression dead serious. “I know it’s hard, but you’ve gotta let her go, man. There’s probably a time limit on our ticket out of here, and I, for one, do not want Buffy’s sacrifice to be in vain. We need to get the hell out of Dodge.”

  Brian stared hard at Treasure. He hadn’t realized until that moment that he had come to love her, in his way. Not as a boyfriend, but maybe as a close friend.

  Was this the same kind of pain he’d caused his father?

  How did you make up for a wound like this?

  Connie DeMarco kept her back to Shock, and she wept human tears. She was still human, still alive. She knew that. But she also knew that wouldn’t be the case for very long.

  There was nothing she wanted more than to go back to the world with Shock . . . with Brian. Connie missed her mom terribly. She wished now that she had never run away. It was a horribly immature thing to do. Sure, her mom could be a raving bitch sometimes, and they didn’t ever seem to be able to understand each other. And her dad, hell, he was just a mean old bastard. But she could’ve tried harder to get Mom to see him for what he was. Tried to really talk to her.

  Now it was too late.

  Her mother would never forgive her for what she’d done, for riding with the Hunt. She hadn’t taken a life yet, not really. But she had stood by while the others did so. She was a part of it. Even if her mother said she forgave her, Connie didn’t think she could ever forgive herself. She belonged here, now. She was one of them.

  If she wasn’t going to be Roland’s bride, she would be just another Huntsman. They would be her family.

  She cried all through Brian’s attempts to get her to look at him, to talk to him. After a while, her tears dried up, though she continued to cry. A small bit of dark mist floated in front of her face, and Treasure stared at it. It might have just floated by, of course.

  But she had to wonder if it had come from inside her. From her tears.

  The horn blew. She hefted the sword she’d received, and then sheathed it. Treasure mounted her horse, and prepared to go on the Hunt again. She understood something at last. She was already dying, just by being here. Just by wanting to be part of the Hunt. It was killing her.

  She was becoming something else. Becoming a Hunter.

  Though it was difficult, through her tears, to admit it, Treasure liked it. Her father had hit her sometimes, called her a tramp. Her mother, in their worst fights, had always told her she was a waste. That she’d amount to nothing.

  Treasure was something now.

  Treasure was something horrible.

  Willow wiped the tears from her eyes as she followed Xander through the trees and away from the clearing. Despite his arm, he was keeping a steady pace with Giles and Brian Anderson. Soon they would reach Route 17.

  She kept trying to slow down, but every time Giles and Xander would urge her on. Finally she just stopped.

  Xander went on a few more strides before he noticed she wasn’t keeping up.

  “Come on, Will,” he said anxiously.

  “We can’t,” Willow said. “We can’t leave her like this.”

  Xander stared at her. Giles moved to her, put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Of course not,” he said softly. “We’re not going anywhere without Buffy.”

  “But that oath,” Willow argued. “You said . . .”

  “I know what I said,” Giles snapped, then shook his head in tacit apology. “I only wish we had time to research a way to break that oath. I’m afraid we’re going to have to improvise.”

  “Improvising is good,” Willow said encouragingly.

  “Guys, this is not the place to stop,” Xander said. “Let’s put some distance between us and tiny little ears.”

  Finally Willow understood. The dark faerie might well be following them. Or there might be other things in the forest. Xander wanted to get some distance before they began to plan.

  “Agreed, Xander,” Giles said. “But not too much distance. There probably isn’t much time before the last Hunt begins.”

  They began moving again, and Willow felt a bit better. Not about the odds, and not about their chances. But she knew that if they’d left there without at least trying to rescue Buffy, no matter the cost, she would never be able to forgive herself.

  A short while later they came to a broad path that led south. Willow had been trying to gauge their location, and she thought that, more than likely, the path would take them out to Route 17. If they wanted to go that way. But they weren’t. They were staying.

  “Brian,” Willow said quietly. “We’re stopping now. You should probably go on.”

  “Yes, Brian. You really should go,” Giles agreed.

  Brian stood fast. “Buffy saved my life too.”

  Willow thought about Brian’s father, about him trying to kill himself. Drunk. Wallowing in despair. She didn’t want to think about what her own parents would do if she went missing, or Xander’s. But Buffy was their friend, and she had come to rescue them. Not only tonight, but time and again. They had to go back. Brian didn’t.

  Obviously, they were all thinking the same thing, but Xander spoke up first.

  “Your dad’s waiting for you, man. Get out of here,” he said, holding his wounded arm close to his abdomen, obviously trying not to let anyone see just how badly hurt he was.

  Brian looked at them in turn, saving Giles for last. Finally he just said, “Thank you,” and turned away down the path.

  “Brian?” Willow asked.

  He stopped, turned to regard her.

  “If we never come back, try to explain to our parents, okay? And tell my mom and dad . . .” Her voice trailed off then, and she bit her lip, eyes moist.

  But Brian understood. He nodded. “I’ll tell them,” he said, and looked at Xander. “For both of you.”

  They watched him until he took a turn in the path, then the living darkness in the trees blocked him from sight.

  “Right,” Giles said, taking his glasses off and rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Let’s think. What do we know?”

  “That Buffy swore an oath to Hecate which is unbreakable and just about now Papa’s calling a wedding consultant,” Xander said, “and don’t tell me not to make jokes because it’s what I do.”

  “Hecate is the queen of the witches,” Giles said. “Perhaps there’s a parallel here to the Holda Hunt legend. But then, we don’t really have a comfortable fit, seeing as our Lord of the Hunt is male . . .”

  “What about the Odin thing? She had to swear on his eye.”

  He slipped his glasses back on. “It’s a common ritual, swearing on
a body part. In some cultures, one swears by one’s thigh. According to myth, Odin lost an eye on a quest for wisdom. It likely has to do with the severity of the oath.”

  “Look, all this talk is nice,” Xander said, “but it isn’t getting us anywhere. I figure the only thing we can do is get back to the clearing, watch the path they take on the way out, then wait for them on the way back. If we can ambush Horny the Hunter, take him out, maybe we can throw the rest of them off enough for us to get away.”

  “That isn’t much of a plan,” Willow said hesitantly.

  “It isn’t a plan at all,” Giles sniffed. “Particularly when one considers the hounds and the dark faerie. Many of them have been killed, but there are still a great many to deal with. Too many. The faerie alone could kill us if we tried to escape with Buffy.”

  “So we take the faerie out of the game too,” Xander declared.

  “How do you propose we do that, exactly?” Giles asked.

  The answer came, not from Xander, but from the deep shadows of the woods beyond the path.

  From the darkness, a dead faerie flew through the air and landed, twisted and limp as a rag doll.

  “We might have an idea or two about that,” a voice said.

  Angel stepped onto the path, followed by Cordelia. Willow’s heart quickened as she peered into the shadows for a third new arrival.

  “Oz?” she asked.

  “I’m here,” he said, his voice a growl.

  “Oh, Oz,” she whispered, as he emerged from the dark woods. He was slightly stooped, his clothing in tatters. Where she could see his skin, there was fur. His ears were pointed and his jaw and nose thrust out unnaturally. When he spoke, his lips curled back to reveal needle sharp yellow fangs.

  She said his name again, and moved toward him tentatively.

  “It’s cool,” Oz said. “It’s actually sort of like a V.R. computer game. Only, y’know, with consequences.”

  “That’s called life, by the way,” Xander pointed out.

  A silence descended upon them, as Willow went cautiously to Oz and then they embraced. Xander and Cordelia joined hands briefly and their eyes met.