Cold Days

Chapter Forty-four

The reasonable thing to do would have been to whimper or flinch or just freak out and look for the nearest exit. But instead of doing any of those things, I felt a chill settle over my brain, and a very cold, calm part of me studied the situation objectively.

“Join, hide, or die,” I said. I heard the faint echo of the Wild Hunt’s screech in my voice.

“Excuse me?” Cat Sith said.

“You have excellent hearing,” I said. “But I will repeat myself. Join. Hide. Or die. You know the laws of the Hunt.”

“I do know them, wizard. And once I have slain you, the Hunt will be mine to do with as I please.”

“The real Cat Sith wouldn’t be having this conversation with me, you know. He’d have killed me by now.”

A blow struck the back of my head, sharp, painful, but not debilitating. “I am Cat Sith. The one. The only.”

I turned my head slightly and said, “So why do I still have a spine?”

And I threw an elbow at the weight on my back. I connected with something, hard, and slammed it off me. It hit the other wall of the bridge, and I flung myself to my feet in time to see the large, lean form of Cat Sith thrash his tail and bound at me.

I ducked him, moving forward under his leap, and spun, and it left the two of us facing each other across the full length of the bridge.

“Slow,” I said. “I’ve seen him move. Cat Sith is faster than that.”

A hideous growling sound came from the form of the malk. “I am he.”

“Get me a Coke,” I snarled.

“What?”

“You heard me, Mittens. Get me a freaking Coke and do it now.”

Sith remained in place, as if locked to the floor, though his whole body was quivering, his claws sheathing and unsheathing in rhythm. But he didn’t fly at me, ripping and tearing, either.

“You see,” I said, “Cat Sith is a creature of Faerie, and he swore an oath to Queen Mab to obey her commands. She commanded him to obey mine. And I just gave you a command, kitty. Did Mab release you from her command? Did she suspend the duties of her vassal?”

Sith snarled again, his eyes getting wider and rounder, his tail thrashing around wildly.

“They got to you, didn’t they?” I said. “They jumped you back at the Botanic Gardens while you were covering my exit. Freaking Sharkface was watching the whole thing and he got you.”

Sith began quivering so hard that he was jitterbugging back and forth in place on the floor, his head twitching, his fur standing on end and then abruptly lying flat again.

“Fight it, Sith,” I urged him quietly. “It doesn’t have to win. Fight it.”

For a second, I thought I saw something of Cat Sith’s smug, contemptuous self-assurance on the malk’s face. And then it was gone. Just gone. Everything went away, and the malk stood for a second with its head down. Then it lifted its head and the motion was subtly wrong, something that simply didn’t have the grace I’d seen in the elder malk before. It faced me for a moment and then it spoke, its voice absent of anything like personality. “A pity. I would have been more useful to them as an active, covert asset.”

I shuddered at the utter absence in that voice. I wasn’t talking to Sith anymore.

I was speaking with the adversary.

“Like Mab wouldn’t have figured it out,” I said. “Like she did when you infected Lea.”

“Further conversation is not useful to our design,” Not-Sith said, and then the malk’s form flew at me in a blur.

It was a testament to the power of the Winter Knight’s mantle and the Wild Hunt’s energy that I survived that first leap at all. Sith struck straight at my throat. I got my arms in the way. The black shadow mask of the Hunt over my arms and chest blew apart into splinters, dispersing some of the impact energy of the malk’s spectacular leap, and instead of pulping me against the wall behind me, he just pounded me into it with tooth-rattling force.

Sith bounced off me, which was what I had hoped would happen. In my line of work, I’ve dealt with more than one critter that is faster than fast. When they’ve got their feet underneath them, it’s the next-best thing to impossible to land anything on them—but when they’re in the air, they’re moving at the speed gravity and air resistance dictate, like everybody else. For that one portion of a second, Sith was an object moving through space, not a blindingly fast killing machine. Someone who didn’t know that wouldn’t have known to be ready for it.

But I did. And I was.

The blast of raw force I summoned wasn’t my very best punch—but it was the best I was going to get out here over the lake. It slammed into the creature that had been Cat Sith and plowed it out through the Plexiglas window. The plastic didn’t break. It came entirely out of its housing, and the malk and a slab of Plexiglas the size of a door went whirling out into the madness of the night. Sith flew out over the bow of the tugboat and plunged down into the water through the open spaces of the pipe-steel rig between it and the barge.

I stared hard after the departed malk for a few seconds, to be sure he wasn’t going to bounce right back into my face somehow. As I did, I watched in the other half of the bridge’s forward window while the shadow mask of the Hunt slithered back up over my arms and face. I gave it to a three count, nodded, and then went to the tug’s wheel. I snapped the plastic ties securing it with a pair of fast jerks, then started rolling the wheel as far as it would go to the right. There was a big lever that looked like a throttle, and when I pushed it forward, the boat’s engines started to roar with effort.

The barge groaned as the tug changed the direction in which it applied force, and the barge’s back end began slowly slewing out and to the left. That drew shouts of consternation from the deck of the barge. I didn’t feel like getting shot in the face, so I knelt down, out of sight, while I pulled the secondhand belt off of my old jeans and used it to secure the wheel in position. Then I recovered the Winchester and backed out of the bridge, hurrying away from it as quietly as I could.

What I’d done was a delaying tactic at best. It wouldn’t turn the barge around—but it would set it to spinning in place, and maybe cost the enemy time to turn it around if they took control of it again. But that was exactly what the Hunt needed to sink her—time. The longer the barge played sit-and-spin, the better. So I found a nice quiet patch of shadow where I could see the stairs leading up to the tug’s bridge, and where I could stand behind a very large steel pipe. I rested the Winchester on the top bend of the pipe, sighted on the doorway, and waited.

It didn’t take long for the first couple of crewmen to arrive. I wasn’t sure whether they came up from belowdecks or somehow swarmed over from the barge, but two men in dark clothing, carrying pistols at the ready, came hurrying along and started up the stairs.

I’m not a great shot. But when you’re resting a rifle on a solid surface, one that is perfectly still (at least relative to all the solid surfaces around it), and when the range is about forty feet, you don’t have to be an expert. You just have to take a breath, let it out, and squeeze.

The Winchester cracked with thunder, and the first man arched into a bow of agony just as he reached the top of the stairs. That ended up working in my favor. He fell back into the second man, just as the second guy spun and raised his pistol. The first man fell into the second, sending his first shot wild, and knocked him about halfway over. The second man couldn’t hold the gun with both hands, but he kept pulling the trigger as fast as he could.

At forty feet, terrified, in the dark, unsure of his target’s exact location, and sprawled out with the deadweight of another man flopping against him, the poor bastard didn’t have a chance. He got off seven or eight rounds, none of them coming anywhere close. I worked the action on the Winchester, took a breath, let half out, and squeezed the trigger.

It wasn’t until the flash of light from the shot illuminated him that I recognized Ace, his expression panicked, his gun aimed at a point ten feet to my left. The light flashed and burned his face into my retina for a moment as the dark returned.

And the tugboat was silent again.

It didn’t take long for the Erlking to finish his work. Maybe three minutes later, a chorus of hideous screams went up from the lake’s surface, and the Hunt howled its triumph and circled into the sky, horns blaring, hounds baying. I saw green fire burning fiercely from the spot the Hunt had started carving, and then the barge started to list toward that side as the water poured into her. Barges aren’t warships, or even maritime vessels. If they have belowdecks spaces at all, they generally aren’t fitted with flood compartments and sealable doors. They sure as hell don’t have automatic systems. They’re just soup bowls. Poke a hole in the bottom, and a bowl isn’t gonna hold much soup.

I didn’t feel like getting Titanicked, so I hustled over to the spot where I’d boarded the tug. There was a roar from the shadow-tiger mask around the Harley, and Murphy swept up alongside the boat. I leapt down onto the back of the bike in a single smooth motion, which I felt was cool, and landed with way too much of my weight on my genitals, which I felt was not.

“Go, go, go,” I gasped in a pained falsetto, and Murphy peeled away from the doomed ships.

Within moments, the Hunt had fallen into formation around me again, and the Erlking was laughing maniacally, whirling his sword over his head. The shadow mask over one leg and a section of his ribs had been torn away, and I could see wounds beneath—but already the shadows were stretching over them again. “I love nights like this!” he bellowed. “I love Halloween!”

“Yeah, it’s pretty badass,” I said in my wobbling, creaky voice.

“Sir Knight,” he said, “that was passably done, but from here I believe it shall take more experience and expertise than you possess to continue the Hunt. Do I have your leave to resume command and pursue these Outsider vermin in a more appropriate fashion?” he asked me.

“Uh,” I squeaked. “You aren’t going to come after me with it, are you?”

He broke into laughter that could have been heard for miles. He was smiling so hard, it went right through the shadow mask, turning his face into a crazed jack-o’-lantern of soot and fire. “Not this night. I give you my word. Have I your leave?”

Rather than answer the Erlking in my Mickey Mouse voice, I gave him the thumbs-up.

The Lord of the Goblins threw back his head and let out another screech, and his steed began to gain altitude. The rest of the Hunt followed him.

“Uh, Harry?” Karrin said.

“Yeah?”

“This is a motorcycle.”

It didn’t register for a second, and then I blinked.

We were cruising down the surface of Lake Michigan, and it was chock-full of monstery goodness—and we had just left the Wild Hunt.

“Oh, crap,” I said. “Head for the island! Go, go, go!”

Murphy leaned hard into a turn and opened up the throttle. I looked over my shoulder at the Erlking, wheeling in the skies above the lake, spiraling higher and higher, the Hunt following after. We went by a couple of Zodiacs so fast that their occupants didn’t have time to shoot at us before we were gone.

Then the motorcycle slowed.

“What are you doing?” I screamed.

“We can’t hit the beach at this speed,” Karrin shouted back. “We’ll pancake ourselves into those trees!”

“I don’t really feel like taking a swim tonight!”

“Don’t be such a pussy,” Karrin snapped. She leaned the bike into another turn, one that angled our direction to run parallel to the shore, and cut out the accelerator.

I felt the Harley slowing, and for a second I thought I felt it beginning to sink.

Then the Erlking cried out again and dived, his horse sprinting straight down, trailing the fire of the Hunt from its hooves. The rest of the hounds and riders followed in formation, and their horns and cries rebounded around the night.

Then, maybe a second before they hit the water, the Hunt changed.

Suddenly the Erlking wasn’t mounted on a horse, but on a freaking killer whale, its deadly-looking black-and-white coloration stark in the night. Behind him, the other steeds shifted, too, their riders screeching with excitement. The hounds changed as well. Their canine bodies compressed into the long, lean, powerful shape of large sharks.

Then the whole lot of them hit the water in a geyser of spray, and the Harley promptly fell into the water of the lake—

—and onto sand just under its surface. The bike slowed dramatically, pushing me up against Karrin, nearly pushing her over the handlebars, but she locked her arms straight and held, drawing the bike up onto the shore of the island. She rode the brake until we’d come to a halt, about five feet short of hitting one of the big old trees on the island.

“See?” Karrin said.

“You were right,” I said.

She looked back up at me, her eyes twinkling. “You are so hot right now.”

I burst out into a hiccuping laugh that felt like it could have veered off into manic or depressive at any second, the pressure and terror of this entire stupid, ugly day finally getting to me—but it didn’t. There were no enemy ships right on hand, and no one had launched grenades at the island since the Wild Hunt’s attack had begun. There might have been Outsiders in the water, but apparently the Hunt was occupying their total attention. For the moment, we were alone, and Karrin started laughing, too. We laughed like that for several moments. We each tried to speak, to say something about the day, but it kept getting choked off by the half-hysterical laughter.

“Grenades,” I said. “As if a date has to have—”

“. . . look on Molly’s face . . .”

“. . . know he’s a dog but I swear that . . .”

“Santa Claus smackdown!” Murphy gasped finally, and it set us both into gales of laughter that had no wind to support them, until finally we were just sitting with her small warm form leaning her back against my chest, in the darkness.

Then she turned her head, slowly, and looked up at me. Her eyes were very blue. Her mouth was very close.

Then I noticed something.

The second barge, whose tug Murphy had torched with her grenade, was moving.

I stood up and climbed off the bike, my eyes widening. “Oh, crap,” I said.

From there, I could see that Sharkface stood calmly on the surface of the lake at the rear of the barge, his cloak twining and writhing all around him. His arms stretched forward in what was clearly a gesture of command. The waters at the rear of the barge boiled with Outsiders, most of them at least partly out of the water, and it took me only a second to work out what was happening.

They were doing an Evinrude impersonation, slamming their combined mass and preternatural strength against the rear of the barge. The burning tug was still a massive column of smoke and flame in front of the barge, but the barge was definitely moving—and it was close to shore.

Eerie green and scarlet light flashed in the depths of the lake, soundless and random. Sharkface had been smart. When the Hunt entered the water, he must have sent the lion’s share of his Outsiders against them—while he and a few others came back up to the surface to ruin the crap out of my potential romantic moment.

“Oh, stars and stones,” I breathed. “If they get that boat to shore . . .”

“The Harley can’t get us there,” Karrin said. “Not through this terrain and brush.”

“You can’t keep up with me here,” I said.

Murphy gritted her teeth at that, but nodded. “Go,” she said. “I’ll come as fast as I can.”

And then I thought to myself that if I kept on waiting for things to quiet down and be more appropriate and safer before I took action, I was never going to get anywhere in life.

So I slipped a hand behind her head, leaned down, and kissed her on the mouth, hard. She didn’t stiffen. She wasn’t surprised. She leaned into it, and her mouth tasted like strawberries.

I gave it two heartbeats, three, four. Then we both drew away at the same time. Her eyes were slightly wide, her cheeks high with color.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I told her.

Then I turned and sprinted toward the stretch of shore at which Sharkface had pointed the last barge.