Shadowlands (59 page)

“We will wish to be there early, so let us make what plans we can.” Alejandro looked around the table, waiting until all of us, including Wolf, had nodded. Elaine, looking pale but otherwise calm, was now sitting at the head of the dining table with Nik beside her. Alejandro had given her a stiff brandy, which she’d managed to sip at.

“I’ve got an idea, something Moon and I talked about,” she said now. “You know the Hunt calls us ‘scentless ones’? What if a group of us hid in the construction area?” She turned to Nik. “It would be like what you told me about the train station. They might not even know we’re there. Maybe we can’t kill a Hound, but Alejandro says they
can
be injured. If we arm ourselves as well as we can, at the very
least we can distract them—you know, drop things on them, trip wires, that kind of thing.”

“Some of us have got guns—not many, mostly long guns for hunting, but some,” Nik said. “But what about the Basilisk Warriors? Are they for us or against us? We don’t know what happened to Sunset on Water, so how do they fit in?”

“If they are against us, we need worry only about those actually present,” Alejandro pointed out. “Blowing the Horn will not summon
them
.” He grinned suddenly, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “And guns will kill a Rider, if he is hit in the right place.” He tapped his forehead.

I’d been trying to avoid looking directly at him, so it took me several minutes to notice that Wolf wasn’t with us, though I knew he hadn’t Moved anywhere. Alejandro saw me trying to glance into the living room without drawing attention to myself, and made a slight motion of his head toward the back door. Sure enough, I found Wolf on the patio, leaning against the table, with his arms folded in front of him.

“They’re figuring we should be in the Gardens before the sun sets, get ourselves set up,” I said, using the shortened version of the place’s name that Nik and Elaine had been using. Wolf nodded but didn’t speak.

I sat down on the edge of the deck. “I’m sorry, Wolf,” I said. It wasn’t much, and I knew it was a lot less than he needed, but I had to say something. Apparently, it was the wrong thing, or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered what I’d said. The next thing I knew I was pinned up against the side gate, Wolf with his teeth bared, and his hand around my throat. His left hand.

I told myself it was the suddenness of it, and the speed, that started me shaking. Not fear. He was so angry [the Chimera’s lashing tail] that I could barely see anything else. But he wasn’t going to change what I knew about Fox, not even if he ripped my throat out.

“You are wrong about my brother,” he said, his voice hard.

“I wish I was,” I said. I wished my mouth wasn’t so dry. “You think you always persuaded your brother, but you didn’t. It’s easy to think you’ve won someone over, when they agree to something they decided to do anyway. Do you understand me? It’s not just that you won’t persuade him now, you never have. He just let you think so.
You didn’t talk him into becoming a Hound. [It wasn’t the Hunt, that’s not what Fox was joining, but nothing clearer came.] He jumped at the chance. Fox wanted what you had, what he hated you for having. Always. You’re punishing yourself for nothing.” I waited, but he didn’t speak, didn’t move. It was like being held by a warm, breathing statue.

“Fox has always acted in his own self-interest,” I said. Part of what I was saying I was getting from Wolf, part I’d gotten from his brother, that time on the street. “Even wanting you back, it’s so he can be Pack Leader instead of you,
over
you. To show you up, command you.” I swallowed. “I wish I was wrong,” I said again. “I wish I could give you your brother back. Maybe some other time, some other place, I’d lie to you just to make you feel better, but there’s too much at stake right now.”

“I could kill you,” he said, his breath warm on my face.

“Not today,” I said.

That startled him, and his grip on me loosened. I’d still have bruises.

“Not today?” he repeated. “But one day?”

“One day you’ll do something that could get me killed,” I said. “You won’t kill me yourself, but you’ll put me where I might be killed.”

This time he stepped back completely, and the jumbled flow of information I was getting from him stopped. He shook his head in short, slow arcs. “No. You cannot know these things.”

“I wish I didn’t,” I said. I’d have to be careful of him now, and that saddened me. I’d have to watch what situations he put me in. Unless what I was reading was the present situation? I almost smiled. Nothing seemed more likely than that what we were planning to do would lead to the death of one of us.

“Alejandro and Nik are the ones who know the inside of Maple Leaf Gardens best,” I said. “But you know the Hunt. Come in and give your opinion.”

Nik looked up from the surface of the table when Wolf and I came in. His eyes went from me to Wolf and back again, and the corners of his eyebrows drew down, but he didn’t say anything out loud. I took the chair at the far end, and Wolf stayed nearer the door. I tried to give Nik a reassuring smile.

Alejandro had fetched a large pad of paper, the kind I’d seen used on a flip chart, from one of the storage boxes in the basement. I couldn’t remember seeing it before, so I wasn’t surprised to learn, when I snagged a corner of paper between my thumb and index finger, that it was part of the tidy pile of things the previous owners had left. Apparently, they’d replaced it with a smart board.

Nik had been sketching out the inside of the Gardens with Elaine looking over his shoulder.

“This is a good big cleared space right here,” he said, tapping a spot on the paper. “We’ve counted about thirteen Hounds, so we’d get them all in there for sure. Wolf?”

His voice came rumbling. “Thirteen is too few. Fives of five? I cannot be sure. The numbers have changed, over time.” I risked glancing up and saw him frowning, his gray eyes narrowed, as if he was trying very hard to remember something that was just on the tip of his tongue. Had anything I’d seen be useful now?

“Twenty-seven? No. Maybe twenty-nine?” I said. I could hear people breathing in the silence that followed. Maybe I could even hear their heartbeats. “More have been killed since the Basilisk called them than in the whole of the previous Cycle.” I looked around. “They’re not all here, of course; some are in the Lands.”

“But if the Horn blows, they will all come,” Wolf said. “That is what Ice Tor told us.”

Crap. I’d forgotten that. Master of space and time. Great.

“How can there be so many?” Alejandro wondered. “The Songs speak of single Hounds.” He looked at Wolf. “Fives of five, you said.”

“There have been more,” Wolf said. “But even a Five of Hounds is not always together. Perhaps that gives the impression of smaller numbers.”

“People who have met the Hunt and lived have only met the one they killed,” I said. “Anyone who meets more than one generally doesn’t survive.” I thought about Nighthawk and shivered.

“So, the only Songs that tell of the Hunt convey the idea that there were not so very many,” Wolf said.

“But it
is
too many. Twenty-nine?” Alejandro was shaking his head, upper lip between his teeth. “Even if the others arrive in time, we will be only four. Three swords, a wrist knife, and a dagger? Even
if we have killed Hounds before? Even with the Outsiders to distract and injure them?” I could hear the despair in his voice. Then he looked up. “We must approach the High Prince. We would not be asking for a long-term commitment of Riders, but a short, surgical strike. I am sorry.” Wolf had flinched at Alejandro’s words. “Wild Riders,” he continued, slightly less animated. “They all bear
gra’if
, and even a few would make all the difference.”

“Isn’t it their job?” I asked.

“It is not so simple,” Wolf said. “It is not the way it was before the Cycle turned, and the Wild Riders were exactly as their name describes them. They are pledged to the High Prince now.”

“Then she must give her permission,” Alejandro got to his feet. “Come. We will find the precise spot to take our stand, and I will go for reinforcements.”

Walks Under the Moon brought her left wrist up just in time to jam her
gra’if
armguard into the mouth of the Hound pushing her to the ground. It yelped, and for a moment Moon thought it would change to something from which an armguard—
gra’if
or not—could not protect her, but the female grabbed the thing by the scruff of its neck and pulled it away.

Moon was not fooled. She already knew that the ones shaped like Riders—such as the one holding on to her right wrist—were no different from the others, the doglike ones, the twisted ones. There were three holding her, two that looked Moonward and one Starward. They were all too thin, the sinews standing out in their hands, and they all smelled wrong somehow, of dust, dried blood, and putrefaction.

The chair was set upright once again, and Moon grimaced as she was pulled back to her feet and shoved into it. The Starward one holding her wrist—Rider-shaped or no—pushed its nose into the curve where her neck met her shoulder and inhaled noisily.

“You can’t blame Hook,” it said, clearly speaking to the female. “She absolutely
reeks
of
dra’aj
. It’s like she’s been dipped in friggin’ chocolate.”

“Keep a civil tongue,” the female said. This one appeared to be in charge; at least, the other three obeyed her.

“I wish I could understand you,” Moon said. “It seems you are speaking to one another, but all I hear are growls and barks.”

Moon’s head was yanked back by the hair, as the female was suddenly beside her. “Don’t think you can make us angry enough to kill you, Rider bitch. You wouldn’t even know how to begin insulting us.” The female grinned, showing pointed teeth. “I can see from your eyes that you understand me.”

Moon pressed her lips together, tight. Her eyes might give her away, but she had no intention of saying another word.

Something licked the inside of her ankle and despite herself she stiffened and tried to pull away. She already knew that with them clinging to her, she could not Move away from her captors. She would have taken the chance, but once they knew that she would try it, they kept distracting her—licking her, sniffing her, pinching her limbs–till she lacked the necessary concentration to Move at all. If she had been at home, in the Lands, where there were so many places she knew better than the inside of her own head, she could have managed it. But here? What would be the point in Moving to Elaine’s home, or Wolf’s, if it meant the Hunt would come with her?

“She smells so ripe.” This was the one who’d been sniffing her neck. “Are you sure we can’t eat her?”

Moon swallowed, trying not to show any reaction—not because she was pretending not to understand, but because she knew she would lose by it if she showed them any fear.

Let them not guess about the child.

“Pack Leader says we keep her safe,” the female said. There was a little growl in her voice, but she sounded as though she were laughing.

The Moonward Hound holding Moon’s left ankle tickled her foot. “Pack Leader’s not here,” he said.

The female cuffed him across the back of the head, but again, Moon had the feeling it was done almost affectionately. “Good thing, too, or you’d have paid for that remark.”

“What we mean is,” this was the one holding her right ankle, the one who’d tried to bite her, and whom she’d beaten with her
gra’if
armguard. “We’re
your
Five, River.
You
decide for us.”

“And Fox decides for me, Hook,” the one called River said.

“But you’re his favorite, everyone knows that. He listens to you.”

“Make your point, Hook.”

Moon jumped as the one holding her left hand twisted her thumb enough to make her squeak.

“She’s got so much
dra’aj
, like as much as three or four Fives of humans. And while we’re here, guarding her, we can’t feed.”

“Go on.”

“So just a little taste,” the Moonward one said. “Just, like, a human’s worth.”

“Each,” cut in the other Moonward.

“Yeah, each. That still leaves her more than half, so she’d still be safe.” He grinned and, leaning in, licked Moon on the cheek—and pulled away howling when she struck him on the ear with her
gra’if
.

Very likely she would be safe, if they actually could control themselves enough to take only some of her
dra’aj
—something Moon very much doubted—but she would lose the child, and what would become of Lightborn’s
dra’aj
then?

River leaned her hip against the Hound on the left and trailed her fingers through Moon’s hair. “Well, it’s true we can’t hunt.”

You could go out one at a time.
Moon was very proud she had not said that aloud. The temptation to save herself, to buy time for herself and Lightborn’s child, time with the lives of others, was so very great. But she could not save herself at the risk of others, not even humans. Not if she expected to face her sister again.

Stop it,
she thought. So long as she thought she might live through this, her hope gave the Hunt leverage over her. She took that advantage away from them if she was not afraid to die. What was it Max and her sister had said once? “The way of the warrior is death.” It was some old human philosophy. The idea was that you knew you were going to die, so you stopped being afraid of it, and once you had stopped being afraid, no one could use that fear against you. No one could make you do something you would despise yourself for, merely to live.