One thing I’d learned in the last few days was that a body gets used to different degrees of pain. For example, my head still throbbed, but I’d more or less forgotten about it while concentrating on the return to Babylon. The very bad popping in my knee was excruciating, but letting it distract me from the matter at hand was suicidal, so I didn’t.
Getting a sword in the gut for the second or third time in a week was not something you could get used to. I was too surprised to scream; instead I opened my mouth and a pathetic little bloody cough came out. Above me, smiling brilliantly, Cernunnos asked, "Do you yield?"
Interesting question to ask a shish-kabob. He leaned on the sword a little more, turning it slightly. I opened my mouth to scream again and didn’t even manage the pathetic cough that time. "Do you yield?" Cernunnos asked again. Pleasantly, even.
My vision faded out, into blood, and back in again with the peripheries stained red. The rest of the Hunt was gathered around us when I could see again. I felt like a particularly novel and newly discovered bug, skewered on an examining table.
"I…" I croaked. Cernunnos, still smiling brilliantly, leaned closer to hear me.
"I’ll see you in hell first," I whispered, and did the most amazingly stupid thing I could think of. I released the coil of energy inside me.
It blasted out in every direction, most of its force screaming in a multicolored ball up the sword to smash into Cernunnos. There was one delightful moment of complete surprise on his face before he flew back, ass over teakettle. I heard a dull thud as he crashed into one of the Joshua Spires, and another one as he hit the earth a moment later. His sword made a dull tink against the stones as it landed somewhere between us.
Unexpectedly, all my pain went away. I stood up slowly, my vision turning to swirls of red and blue: infrared and ultraviolet. Detail faded to impressions, splotches of heat and cool. Energy still boiled out of me. It felt exhilarating, utter freedom from constraint, self-imposed or otherwise. I felt as if nothing could possibly stop me. A tiny part of me knew it was a false high, but for the moment I hung on and looked around.
Babylon, behind the mist of obscurity I’d put up around it, was healing. I could see within the Joshua Spires, like I’d been able to see through the city buildings. Men and women formed circles around and inside the spires. I could see power rising from them, flowing out over the mythical city. Where their power touched damage, it healed. Only the bodies the Hunt had left behind remained still and unliving as the shamans worked together to heal their gathering place.
They dared focus on the healing because they trusted me to deal with the Hunt. I could feel that, too. Not supreme confidence, but quiet expectation, the belief that it was safe to pay attention to other tasks. Only the line of soldiers whom I’d seen first still stood linked across the street, watching me. I lifted a hand toward them, meaning to smile, but the sight of my own hand drove all other thought from my mind.
There was no hand, nor wrist or elbow or, as I looked down at myself, any of the other usual flesh and blood extremities that came with being human. I was human-shaped, with fingers and breasts and hips and feet, but it was like someone had taken all the coverings off and left me with nothing more than the spirit that filled those parts. No wonder I’d stopped hurting. There wasn’t anything physical left to hurt.
Color swam over what wasn’t my skin, like oil held in by surface tension. Rainbows gleamed and swirled and mixed and were reborn. It was ridiculously beautiful. For a second or two I just stared down at myself, lost in the random patterns of spirit unbound by flesh.
A small sound roused me, and I looked up, toward Cernunnos. Other than the groan, he hadn’t moved since I threw him into the spire. I discovered I was holding him down, just as he’d held me earlier, with the force of my power. The green of his strength met the silver rainbow of mine, pushing against it enough to prevent him from being crushed, but not enough to let him escape. I cocked my head and walked forward.
The host moved back from me, not precisely a retreat, but certainly a respectful and cautious distance. Their features were lost in the reddish haze as they looked away from me to their captured leader. I crouched beside Cernunnos, watching his power push against mine. It wasn’t, maybe, fair. I still felt the good will of my friends reaching out to me, pouring in to me, and he had only his own power.
Then again, he was a god. "Do you yield?" I asked, nearly as politely as he had. It seemed like a good protocol, although I knew he’d say no, just like I had.
The problem was, neither of us would ever yield. We could keep fighting until together we destroyed Babylon. At some distant point one of us would destroy the other. The only thing I had on my side was that if Cernunnos actually killed me, he’d have no one to take the Rider’s place. Suzanne Quinley’s place. Of course, it would leave him free to terrorize Babylon. I had fewer constraints, except I didn’t know if the Hunt could be led back into my world, or their own, if Cernunnos himself was dead. I preferred not to find out.
Cernunnos growled, feral eyes full of rage. "I do not yield," he snarled.
"No," I said, "I didn’t think you would."
I tested the depth of the power I was tapped in to, not taking my eyes off the god. The power ran deep, but not deep enough: I could feel the bottom of it, like I was reaching through a streambed when I needed a river. I mumbled a prayer and reached for the rest of the people surrounding my physical body, the ones who didn’t know how to offer, but who hadn’t left the room when I’d explained what I needed.
And my hold on Cernunnos slipped. He roared and sprang forward, knocking me down. My damaged and too-solid flesh came back as I crashed into the cobblestones, the god’s taloned nails at my throat. My head hit the stones, and for another moment the gray veil around us wavered again, Babylon visible during that breath. Pain did bad things to my vision, narrowing it down to pinpricks. Cernunnos lifted one hand from my throat, extending it beyond where I could see. Then silver glittered, as he drew the broadsword into my line of vision. For one exciting moment I comprehended just how very long I was going to be dead. I brought my hands up to stop the sword, a futile gesture.
Then I remembered what else Gary had brought to the station.
The surprise on Cernunnos’s face was almost worth the near-death experience, as his broadsword bore down and clanged into the flat of my rapier. I held it extended at an awkward angle that barely prevented him from slicing my throat open, but it was all I needed. I gathered my strength with a shout and shoved him off me, rolling to my feet.
That’s when I found out, for the second time in two days, how much it hurt to stand up with a two inch hole sliced through your insides. I nearly fell over again right there, content to have done with it, but Cernunnos smiled, a bright flash of triumph. The idea of letting him win pissed me off enough to keep me on my feet. Bleeding and swaying, with an arm wrapped around my abdomen, but on my feet. It’s the small victories, I tell you.
It didn’t seem fair that he wasn’t actually hurt, while I was bleeding and staggering all over the place. He came at me carelessly, an easy overhead stroke that expected nothing in response. Without any particular conscious intent on my own part, the rapier came up, catching the broadsword a second time. Metal rang out again, pure clean tone of a bell, and the god once more looked surprised. Hell, I was surprised, too. I wouldn’t have bet on being able to parry a toothpick, much less the heavy blade Cernunnos carried. I could feel the rapier, though, as if it came from the same source the coil of energy within me did. The slender sword’s strength was from more than just the metal it was forged with. It was filled with my will and the power lent to me by my friends, and its very presence was a response to my need.
Since I didn’t have any world-class fencing skills, I kicked Cernunnos in the nuts again. I didn’t have to know how to use a sword to do that, and he was standing there like he was asking for it, so it seemed justified. Shock and rage filled his green eyes all over again as he doubled. I guess there must be rules that people fighting gods usually followed. Next time, maybe somebody would give me a primer. Since nobody had this time, though, I kicked him in the head while he was doubled, and knocked his sword away as he fell gracelessly to the ground. It was the perfect moment to bear down upon my enemy and smite him in a gladiator-inspired hour of triumph. Too bad I was digging the rapier into the ground for support and afraid that if I moved I’d collapse on top of him.
Instead, I did what I’d been trying to do before.
I took all my own power, and the offered strength from my friends, and reached just a little farther and took what the others who had stayed didn’t know how to offer. Fear surged through a few of the new links, and those I let go as quickly as I could. The last thing I wanted to do was leave scars in my friends’ minds.
The remaining power I wove into a net, visualizing all the colors spinning together, shoring up weaknesses and sharing strengths. They bled together and knotted, becoming heavy in my hands. When I looked down I almost couldn’t tell where the net began and I left off. My skin had disappeared again, leaving me nothing but a network of power and strength, silver-blue oil-slick rainbows.
I wanted to stay like this forever. I could feel everything in Babylon: the healing, the fear, the confidence that I would make good my promise and take Cernunnos and his riders away from this place. Beyond that, between the blackness of the stars, I could feel other life, a tremendously deep hum that spread from one end of eternity to the other. It was the void that bound all the worlds, and I knew I could step out into it, explore it, with just the impulse to do so.
But Cernunnos was rolling to his feet, graceful again, though seeming tremendously slow. His broad shoulders shifted, weight coming forward, and I could feel his intent as clearly as if it were my own. Reaching his sword was first: after that he would turn on me and crush me like the mortal fool I was. I flung the net of power out from splayed fingers, not at where Cernunnos was, but at where he’d be.
He and the net came together in glorious slow motion, the vivid green of his power smashing into the woven silver tendrils of mine. Mine collapsed, not under his assault, but as it should, just like any perfectly ordinary net, tangling around him. He stumbled and crashed to the cobblestones, rolling as he struggled to get free. He thrashed his head, antlers ripping the net apart, but it wove back together as I clung to the idea of it.
"You won’t yield, I know that," I whispered. "So I’ll drag you back, just like you’d have had to have done to me." I pulled the rapier out of the stones with a whimper and forced myself upright without it. I was breathing through my teeth, every motion a jab of pain through my middle, but I felt absurdly attached to the need to do this without the pretense of physical support. I pulled the net in to myself, hand over fist, tightening it around Cernunnos until he was caught in an embrace tight as a lover’s.
I dragged him across the cobblestones, taking stumbling, half-running steps, afraid that if I stopped I would never be able to start again. I used my shoddy momentum and the borrowed strength of my friends to fling him over the haunches of his magnificent stallion. Then, with all the grace and arrogance I could manage, I swung up onto the stallion’s back myself. The sword hole running through me screamed. Cernunnos screamed.
The stallion held very still, his ears pinned back and tail snapping with disapproval, his teeth bared. I leaned forward, because sitting up hurt too much, and put my forehead against the crest of his mane. "Just bring me home, beautiful," I whispered into the liquid silver hair. I stroked his neck, and lifted my head very slowly. Cernunnos’s fury was palpable, a living green thing that drove spikes out at me as he tried to free himself from the net. My head swam suddenly, blood loss and exhaustion crashing over me. I stretched one hand forward, whispering, "By candlelight, and back again."
The candle flickered into being, a light to guide me out of Babylon with the Wild Hunt riding behind me.
I opened my eyes to a different sort of chaos. Three or four of the cops had collapsed and lay where they’d fallen. My shoulders slumped in dismay; I’d been trying not to hurt anyone. Voices were lifted all around, not quite shouting as paramedics swept in to examine the people who’d fallen.
Most of the group were still standing around me, with expressions ranging from surprise to fear. I could barely bring myself to look from one face to another, afraid to learn what people thought of me now. Billy looked tired but not frightened. That was something. Gary watched me with curious respect. He wasn’t beating the drum anymore.
And the Hunt swarmed around the mortals in the room, half-visible, like ghosts. I wasn’t the only one who could see them: Jen and Billy kept flinching as enormous horses and hounds slid through them.
Cernunnos, looking nearly as bad as I felt, was mounted on his stallion, forthright fury in the beautiful eyes. "I won, my lord master of the Hunt," I croaked. Gary sat up straighter, looking to see to whom I was speaking.
"You won," the god growled, "but this is not over yet, little shaman." I wasn’t sure if I heard the words in my mind or my ears. The ease of speech in Babylon was already slipping from me.
I grinned very wearily. My body hurt from the fight, but the ache in my head had died away some. I couldn’t remember if I’d managed to heal myself while in Babylon, but maybe being a conduit for the kind of power I’d been using had some kind of positive effect. It was equally possible that I was horribly deluding myself, but I didn’t want to think too hard about it, for fear of making the pain start again. "Not quite yet," I said to Cernunnos. "Who do you think will make it to your son first, me or you?"
"For the sake of thy world and thy soul," Cernunnos said through fixed teeth, "thou hast best hope it is thyself. I would not wager on it, little shaman."
"Not so little," I protested. By now nearly everyone was staring at me, the bustle of moments earlier dissipated into expectant waiting. "I defeated a god in fair combat." Was I out of my mind? Throwing his loss into his face? I wasn’t that good.
No: as I said the words, Cernunnos became a solid thing, every bit as real as the cops who’d been more prosaically visible all along. Thor the Thunder God said, "Holy shit," and everyone still on their feet backed up against the walls.
Cernunnos filled the room. Had it not had the garage’s high roof, he’d never have fit. As it was, he took up all the air again, just as he had at the diner, his emerald eyes burning with anger so hot I thought I would burn. "Defeated, Siobhán Walkingstick," he said in his velvet voice. I wondered if everyone else could understand him. "Defeated, but not dead. Your soul will be mine to collect before the midnight hour, gwyld."
Gwyld. It was the word Marie had used. It meant shaman, or wise man, in Gaelic. That knowledge came to me, so I knew I was hearing Cernunnos in my mind again, his gift for breaching languages as strong a thing as Babylon had.
"Open the doors," I whispered, turning my head toward Billy. "Open the garage doors. Let them go without the steel and concrete to harm them."
The big cop frowned down at me. "You sure, Joanie?"
"I’m sure." I didn’t dare take my eyes off Cernunnos. "He’s not—they’re not—meant to be bound by people like us. Let the Hunt go. Tonight they’ll be sent back home, anyway."
There was, for a moment, respect in Cernunnos’s alien eyes. "You are a fool, gwyld," he said.
"Everybody’s got problems," I said with a tiny shrug. "Tonight, my lord master of the Hunt."
"Tonight." Cernunnos turned his massive stallion in the small confines of the room. He ducked as he left through the door. The host followed him, the sound of hooves ringing loud on the concrete floor as they faded away, leaving a silent and awestruck police force behind.