Soul Hunt

by Margaret Ronald

  And more, more from between every pair of trees, till even this scrap of otherworld that mirrored the Common groaned with the pressure of so many figures, mythic and folkloric and plain fictional, who claimed a space here. Who claimed a piece of me in return for the power I’d called on.

  “You are ready?” one of them, or maybe all of them, said. I drew a deep breath, then started to work my hand free of Nate’s.

  He let go first. “I fought to get her soul back,” he said, and for a moment I thought he was talking to me and referring to someone else. “I gave up my birthright to save her. Does anyone here deny it?”

  The assembled Hunters remained silent. I thought I saw the one-eyed one smile for a moment, but it was gone with the swiftness of a falling blade.

  Nate took another breath, his word puffing into clouds in the air. “Then that gives me a claim here tonight as well. More, what she did, she did to save me, and so I share in her blame as well. Does anyone here deny it?”

  “Nate,” I said, “what are you doing? Don’t—”

  You’re the one who was our prey, said one of the Hounds. The one who escaped. That happens rarely. It licked its chops with a long, black-spotted tongue.

  He has a claim, another said—I thought it might be the one who’d seemed most glad to see me, but it was hard to tell.

  “Then listen.” Nate looked down at me, and though he swallowed before speaking, his voice was steady. “She had the power to get out of this. And she didn’t. Does that count for nothing?”

  The assembled Hunters didn’t move. The Hounds milled about us, unhappy. The Hunt must run.

  “But after her?”

  You’d offer another quarry? the closest one rumbled. “That’s none of my choice,” Nate said evenly, meeting its gaze.

  To my shock, the Hound was the first to look away. “Nate, what are you doing?”

  “Where she goes, I go,” he said simply.

  “What?” I stumbled away from him, as if insanity might be catching. “Nate, you can’t be serious, you can’t—” Any other circumstances, and I’d have been touched; there was even a silly, selfish part of me that leaped to its feet and danced. But not here, not now, and not Nate!

  “Evie,” he said, and the way he said my name made me catch my words short. “Do you trust me?”

  Of all the questions to ask me … but that was one thing I’d learned. I did trust him. I had to trust him to do what was right for him. But oh, Katie, I couldn’t take him away … “I do,” I said. “But—”

  “Then trust me.” He held out his hand.

  I let out my breath shakily and took his hand. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll do this the way we did before. I held them off once, I can do it again. You, run.”

  “You will both run,” said one of the Hunters—the hatchet-faced man with a spear, wearing clothes that were one step up from pelts stitched together. “And we will decide.” He raised a horn to his lips, a cracked, curled thing the color of sour milk. All around us, the Hunters of the Wild Hunt raised their own horns, steel or jeweled or curved ramshorn, and the air shuddered and turned silver.

  “Oh, hell,” I said. “It was worth it.” Nate nodded. The call, the Horn’s cry, went out in a chorus like the note that summoned Creation, and I took off, Nate’s hand in mine. Around us, the Gabriel Hounds milled, charged, ran behind us—

  —and around us, and all about us—

  —and with us.

  The Hunt raged about us and swallowed us up, and though we ran, we did not run as the quarry. We ran as hunters, as hounds and huntsmen among them, as part of the Hunt itself.

  It was gift and punishment both; to lose my autonomy in this flight, to be used as I had used the Horn, to be part of the great chaos of which this was only one manifestation.

  I raised my hands and let out a yell, and it came out as a halloo of a hound, a cry comparable to any my great ancestor might have made in whatever form. Nate snarled, and the Hounds roared in return, not bad for once-prey, now part of our timeless company. Horsemen—or maybe it was one horseman, or maybe we rode horses that were made of nothing but the chill force of the northern wind—charged about us, in silence or clamor, in both, the many Hunts all taking their turn, as they had not for so long. More than the Horn had been freed when I returned it.

  There was no time in this Hunt. Only the endless Midwinter night, the sky thick with snow, brilliant with stars, endlessly dark with only the moon to light it. We charged after a stag as pale as a ghost, after a flock of sheep unlucky enough to have found their way out on this of all nights, after a drunken band of students who would find one another huddled in haystacks in the morning and swear never to speak of this, after a golden glowing ball that made the hair on the backs of my arms sizzle.

  We were fury and joy and chaos incarnate, and we were none of these. Nate and I ran, humans caught up in the Hunt, and if I had had any space to think I would have thought that yes, he knows this, this is the part of his curse that was no curse at all. This was the joy of letting go.

  But I had no word for that. Instead I caught him as we ran and pressed a cold and passionate kiss against his lips, and we were off again, two of us, woman and man, hound and hunter, running through till the end of time.

  Dawn came sudden and soon, the first lights of the new half of the year leaking in around the edges of the Hounds’ silver road. I barely recognized the trees of the Common till we were in the midst of them, and Nate didn’t seem to pay any attention as he slumped against one. I sank to my knees, oblivious to the Gabriel Hounds whispering canine farewells as they nosed about me, and my skin steamed where it touched the fallen snow.

  One of the Hunters remained: the great shape back in the trees, the man crowned with a king stag’s horns. “This is what we claim, and what we give,” he said, the words not so much heard as written into the space behind my eyes. “For the presumption of using the Horn, and the deed of returning it. That you run with us, once and every Midwinter, from now until the end.”

  I stared at him through the trees, seeing only snow, only winter, exhilarated and terrified. But what had been a shape was now only a shadow, and the Common, and the first noises of early traffic on Beacon Street.

  Nate crawled over to me, leaving a long track of dirt smeared against the snow, and sagged at my side. He tried to speak, but shook his head and leaned against me instead. “Nate,” I said finally, and saying a human word—saying a name, a name that did not immediately call its bearer—felt unbearably strange. “Nate, did you know? That they would—”

  He nodded, then shook his head. “I guessed. And I hoped.” He struggled to his feet, snow sliding off him in great damp chunks. “But this—now till the end? What end? What does that—Evie, are we—”

  “I don’t know.” I drew another breath, and it came out in a laugh—a joyous laugh, for the sheer glee of being alive, for the world of wonders. For midwinters to come. “I don’t know.”

  Acknowledgements

  Although I’d envisioned it since finishing Spiral Hunt, Soul Hunt proved very difficult to write. The very end of the book had always been set in my mind, though it shifted time and place and circumstance, and once I’d set everything up at the end of Wild Hunt, in theory all I had to do was write my way there. I’m ashamed to admit that I thought it would be an easy task.

  Most of the credit for bringing the reality closer to the idea (or, when the idea was lousy to begin with, scrapping that entirely) can go to the members of BRAWL. The draft they critiqued bore only a superficial resemblance to the novel I’d originally dreamed up, and even then it was still a mess. They saw where I wanted to go, showed me how I’d set my path wrong, and cleared the way for me. Thanks as always to my agent Shana Cohen and my editor Kate Nintzel, both of whom were very patient with the time it took to wrangle this book into shape.

  A few notes on sources: Venetia, Meda, and the other “flinty kind of women” as Dar Williams puts it, were inspired in no small part by the New England
women I’ve known over the years.

  The Quabbin Reservoir is a beautiful and strange place, particularly when you remember that there are indeed four towns beneath it. There are more stories to be told there, I’m certain.

  To my knowledge, there are no tunnels under the harbor from Georges Island. As for the one leading from Lovells Island, it led in a different direction entirely, and it has long since collapsed.

  Last of all, I’d like to thank my husband, who encouraged me through the first stages of the book, hiked beside the Quabbin with me, listened to each new plot twist and then each new reason why that wouldn’t work, and then patiently sat me down in front of the computer again. Without him, there would be no book, and likely no author either.

  Midwinter

  Nate let out his breath. The encroaching frost was gone, but the air remained chill and dry, tasting of old leaves and fire. “Evie—”

  “That gives me two months,” I said, and started across the plaza. The circle scuffed underfoot; any trace of blood was long gone, as was the mark on my throat.

  Inside, though, my brain was screaming midwinter! Midwinter! I’m not ready to be torn apart by the Gabriel Hounds.

  I’m not ready to die.

  About the Author

  MARGARET RONALD learned to read on a blend of The Adventures of Tintin, Greek mythology, and Bloom County compilations. Her vocabulary never quite recovered. The author of two previous Evie Scelan novels, Spiral Hunt and Wild Hunt, Margaret has also written stories for Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Baen’s Universe, and Fantasy Magazine.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  By Margaret Ronald

  The Evie Scelan Novels

  SPIRAL HUNT

  WILD HUNT

  SOUL HUNT

  Praise for Margaret Ronald’s first Evie Scelan novel,

  SPIRAL HUNT

  “I loved, loved, loved this book. I picked it up before bed and couldn’t put it down. Fantastic, moving, thrilling—deeply thoughtful—and beautifully crafted … This was one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.”

  —New York Times best-selling author Marjorie M. Liu

  “Ronald plays with the supernatural as though it’s a variation of the Irish hard men who ran mobs at the turn of the last century in places like Boston and New York City … Ronald has done a terrific job with the Celtic mystical matter here, blending folklore with things she’s made up so that it all feels whole and complete. Strong characterization combines with a plot that’s fast-paced and keeps the reader guessing, and what else do you need for an entertaining summer’s read?”

  —Charles de Lint, Fantasy & Science Fiction

  “A fun adventure, a promising start to a new series and a solid first novel.”

  —Locus

  “I found Margaret Ronald’s Spiral Hunt refreshing for a number of reasons. Evie Scelan’s supernatural ability is a great engine for driving a plot, in that it makes Scelan herself the object of desire for many, and it also gives her a good deal of power … Scelan suffers betrayals and false trails and a great deal of peril with wit and courage, which makes for an engaging narrative. One thing in particular that I found very attractive about this book is that Ronald concentrates entirely on Celtic mythology while building her world. For a book set in Boston, this makes a good deal of sense—obviously, the Fair Folk emigrated at the same time that Boston’s other Irish arrived—and it also provides a pleasing sense of cohesiveness to the worldbuilding.”

  —Elizabeth Bear, Realms of Fantasy

  If you haven’t read the first installment in the Evie

  Scelan series, here is an excerpt from

  Spiral Hunt

  One

  No one ever calls in the middle of the night if they have good news. You’d think I’d remember that and not answer the phone after, say, midnight. But I’m as trained as any of Pavlov’s dogs, and so when the phone shrilled I picked it up before coming fully awake. “This is Scelan,” I mumbled into the receiver.

  “Evie?” That woke me up. Since high school, only close friends have called me Evie. The man on the other end of the phone cleared his throat. “This is—Okay, you remember Castle Island? I kept branches in my car. Green ones, still living. Organic matter. Right?”

  “I don’t know what you’re—” I stopped, memories of an ill-spent summer in South Boston flooding back around me like smoke from a bonfire. “Jesus. Frank?”

  “Don’t say it! Christ, I forgot how stupid you could be about some things.”

  Definitely Frank. Jerk. “Thanks very much. What the hell happened to you, Frank? I thought you were—” Not dead, I thought; but as good as, when it came to this town.

  He didn’t even hear the question. “I haven’t—I’m pretty sure this line is okay, but I can’t say the same for yours, and I know they’ll be watching; they didn’t expect me to get away.”

  “Frank. Slow down.” I reached for the light, flailed a moment, then sat up. My legs had gotten tangled up in a big knot of sheets. “Why are you calling me?” I asked.

  “I’ve got good reason—” The phone line squealed as a booming voice interrupted him, laughing and shouting guttural words that definitely weren’t English. I held the phone away from my ear until Frank’s voice returned. “Shut up! Look, Evie, I know we didn’t part on the best of terms—”

  “You called me a stupid bitch and said I deserved whatever they had for me. And then you disappeared.”

  “Yeah, well, I know what I did wrong last time. I’m not staying around here—it’s gone too far for that, and I can’t …” He paused, and the booming voice muttered again, incomprehensibly. “Shut up! I’m getting out. Really getting out this time.”

  “Yeah. Sure.” When half of your business contacts are addicts, it gives you a certain perspective on anyone who says he’s quit. Frank had quit before, sure, but he’d been a lot younger and less steeped in the undercurrent of Boston. And I’d helped to bring that crashing down, naive as I was. “Look, Frank, if you’re calling me in hopes of a quick screw for old time’s sake, forget it. I can’t help you get out of the city other than the mundane ways, and you know those are watched.”

  “I know. Danu’s tits, I know.” He fell silent, and memory dredged forth an image so strong I could see what he must be doing: rubbing one hand over his face as if to clear the slate of his emotions. Of course, he’d be older now, but the gesture was one I unwillingly knew well. “Look, Evie, I know you probably hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you, Frank.” It was more complicated than that, and everything had happened so long ago that it didn’t matter now. Which made me wonder why I still mattered to him. “I just didn’t expect to hear from you again.”

  He hesitated. “Yeah. Well. I don’t need help or anything, but I had to let you know that I was going. I can make it out this time.”

  “Don’t boast about it. Just get out.” I tugged the sheets back into some semblance of order, then sighed, remembering bonfires and the smell of crushed greenery. “Good luck.”

  “Luck has no part in this.”

  I nearly dropped the phone. It was the booming voice again—but now that I was a little more awake, I recognized it. It was Frank’s voice: the same slight lisp from a broken tooth, the same timbre, only pushed down to the bottom of his range—but somehow I knew it was no longer Frank speaking.

  “He speaks to you to say farewell. I speak to you to warn you, for I may have damned you with my words.” The phone felt unnaturally warm, warmer than my hands could make it. For a second I smelled a trace of something like dust and dry stone, there and gone so fast it left only the memory of recognition.

  Impossible. Even I couldn’t catch a scent over the tenuous connection a phone provided. But the hairs on the back of my neck tingled, and my breath quickened, as it did when I got the scent before a hunt.

  The speaker took a deep, ragged breath. “But even if I have, I own no s
hame, for you are needed and by one greater than I.”

  “Frank?” I said.

  “Hound,” said the voice, and ice ran down my back. Frank had never known I was called that. “Hound, watch for a collar. The hunt comes …”

  Nothing more. I held on to the phone long after the dial tone of a broken connection crooned in my ear.

  “Frank, you son of a bitch,” I said at last. “Couldn’t you have stayed dead?”

  Two

  One of my clients called just as I was on my way out the door the next morning: the little old lady who’d asked me to find her aunt’s old recipe book. It had been in a junk store in Jamaica Plain, at the bottom of three cases of similar books, most of which were meant for the Dumpster. I’d taken on the job thinking it could be some quick work to go toward my rent, and forgotten the first rule of bargaining: don’t argue with a nice little old lady.

  “Yes, I understand your point of view,” I said as I unlocked my bike, cell phone jammed between chin and shoulder. “But the fact remains that you did sign the contract for expert retrieval and recovery systems—”

  A spate of squawking on the other end managed to convey that I charged too much, was a heartless monster for taking advantage of a senior citizen, and must have had some kickback deal with the junk-store owner in order to find her book so quickly. I rubbed at my temples, thinking that I should have taken my time finding the damn thing after all. “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I’ll have to call you back. I have another client on the line.”