Behind its enormous head, a cloaked figure pulled the reins in hard, turning a skull-masked face toward me, eyes burning like embers beneath an antlered helm. The rider stared, as the agitated horse pawed in the fog. With a flick of the reins, the rider wheeled the horse and cantered away. The rider lifted a sword, a long blade of red flame, and let out a scream that pierced my chest with its vibration. The rider disappeared back into the haze, fading away as the mob raced off into the night.
Dazed, Murdock climbed down from the fire escape where he had landed and slid to the ground. “I feel like I got hit by a truck.”
I crouched in front of him. Taking him by the chin, I shifted his head left and right. Murdock opened his eyes. His skin was abraded, but he didn’t appear seriously injured. I didn’t hurt as much as he did. He had taken the brunt of the hits. Chalk up another debt to him for saving my ass. “I would have said a train. You should get checked for a concussion.”
I moved into the lane, trying to get a good look through the tangled heap of fire escapes. A faint shimmer of blue essence remained, fading as it splashed up the building walls to either side. Light glittered in the distance, but it was a streetlamp. The stretching illusion had vanished, too.
“Damn. There’s going to be hell to pay,” Murdock said.
I glanced back, thinking he was making a boast, then realized where he was looking. The motorcycle lay under a jagged cage of shattered fire escape. The weight of all that heavy metal had bent the handlebars and metal rods, piercing the engine case. I groaned. “Please don’t tell Bar I was on the bike.”
At least Leo laughed. “Please tell me you saw someone riding a horse, ’cause I saw someone riding a horse.”
I helped him to his feet. “It was a dream mare. You saw them in TirNaNog. It must have escaped before the veil dropped and gotten trapped here on Samhain.”
“Who was riding it?” he asked.
“I think it was the King of the Dead.”
He grimaced as he rubbed his neck. “Of course it was.”
“We just bought a big problem, Leo. If that was the King of the Dead, then that blue surge can be only one thing. The Wild Hunt is in Boston, and as far as I know, nothing can stop it.”
21
Briallen wasn’t home when I let myself into her town house the next morning. I was one of the few people she allowed open access to her home. I scared the hell out of the brownie caregiver she had hired to watch over Meryl. Once the poor woman’s claws and teeth retracted, she was quite nice—even apologetic, though the fault was mine. I should have knocked at least.
Meryl rested by the blue fire in the upstairs parlor. By a trick of positioning, she appeared to be staring into the flames when I entered, meditating like a druidess with something on her mind. Her lack of response killed that notion. I kissed her on the top of the head and sat in the armchair opposite, trying not to let melancholy overwhelm me.
“I miss you,” I said.
Our relationship was complicated, one part friends, one part lovers, and one part what-the-hell-is-going-on. I had thought a lot about it since she went into the trance. Meryl provoked and challenged me at every turn, daring me to call her my girlfriend so that she could dismiss the idea. She understood me on a level that only good friends did, but would have slapped me upside the head if I compared her to Joe or Briallen. She knew she was more than that. She had her own life, her own ideas, and her own way of doing things that mattered more than anything I said sometimes. While that frustrated me on occasion, I respected the hell out of her and wouldn’t have it any other way. When push came to shove, though, she dropped all pretense of indifference and became the strongest ally I had ever had. Maybe I didn’t know how to define what we had together because it wasn’t supposed to be defined. Or maybe what we had was a real relationship, and I had never had one before.
I read aloud to her while I waited for Briallen, an old tale about dreams and war. I thought Meryl would appreciate it. She was a Dreamer, and her dreams often had glimpses of the future. In recent months, I had had prescient dreams, too, and she had helped me understand how to interpret them. I wasn’t good at it, or at least didn’t like my dreams’ implications. Too often, my symbols and metaphors pointed to death and destruction around me. Reading about someone else’s dreams made me realize I hadn’t experienced my own in a while. Like so much else in my life, I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad one.
Briallen swept into the room an hour later, a high flush on her cheeks. “It’s a beautiful day. I walked back from the Guildhouse. Did you two go out at all?”
“We’ve been reading. I didn’t want to miss you,” I said.
Briallen put down some books she carried and ran her hand along Meryl’s arm, causing their body signatures to interact. She brushed back hair from my forehead and placed a gentle hand on my temple. Briallen had raised me and had earned a mother’s privilege of not asking permission to touch me. She checked my health whenever she had the opportunity. I closed my eyes as warmth spread from her hand into my head. The dark mass quivered from the touch of her essence. It never reacted to her probing, as if it understood that her touch meant concern.
“It’s shaped like a ball of spikes,” she said.
“It feels like one. All the essence in here makes it curious,” I said.
She glanced at Meryl. “Let’s go downstairs. I’ll make some coffee.”
I touched Meryl on the shoulder as I left. She didn’t react.
Down in the kitchen, Briallen pulled out an old percolator pot and rinsed it at the sink. “I’m glad you’re here. It saves me a phone call.”
I slid onto a stool. “Sounds serious. You never use the phone.”
Amused, she pouted her lips as she put the pot on to boil. “I’ve been talking with Nigel. He has an interesting idea about Meryl. Do you want to argue about it now or wait until the coffee is ready?”
I stared at her, uncertain what to say. She knew my opinion of Nigel. “I hope you have cream and sugar.”
“He wants to simulate her trance state on himself and guide her back. I’ve gone over the spells he’s talking about. I think he has a good idea,” she said.
“So why hasn’t Gillen Yor tried it?” I asked.
“He tried something similar. He can’t resonate the essence correctly,” she said.
I folded my arms, suspicious. “And Nigel can? Why?”
She sighed. “Connor, you are going to ask all the questions I did, and that’s fine. But we have to do something. She can’t stay like this.”
Frustrated, I rubbed my hands over my face. “I don’t understand his interest. It worries me.”
“They’re friends. Isn’t that enough?” she asked.
“Not with Nigel. I was friends with him once.”
She lowered the flame on the stove and set the pot to perk. “You have to remove your personal feelings from this. I’ve gone over the process and the spells. They make sense. I’ll be with them the entire time. We can do it in my sanctum.”
“I don’t trust him,” I said.
She leaned across the kitchen island and held my hand. “Don’t think I don’t know Nigel Martin, Connor. He has a reason for doing this that has nothing to do with friendship. Whatever that is, it’s a side issue for the moment. If his idea works, Meryl is more than capable of dealing with him. She’s told me so herself whenever I’ve expressed my own doubts about their friendship.”
Meryl never mentioned that to me. “You have?”
She poured out the coffee. “Of course. I’ve known Nigel a lot longer than you—either of you, I think. I don’t believe he’s malicious, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t capricious, and it doesn’t mean I’m not cautious around him. He serves the Wheel of the World in a different way than I do. I’m not so foolish to think mine is the only way.”
I smirked. “ ‘And you shouldn’t either,’ she pretended not to say.”