The Hunt: A Custodes Noctis Book (10 page)

“Galen?” Something shook him.

“What?”

“You okay?” Rob was frowning at him with concern.

“What?”

“You didn’t answer when I called, you didn’t answer when I got home…”

“You know how I get when I’m playing.”

“I know. It’s just…” Rob sighed. “It’s harder to sense you, lately. Stephen’s headed back to the Abby, said something about becoming a pumpkin. He’ll call tomorrow to let us know what we…”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now, Rob,” Galen interrupted, putting the guitar back in its stand.

“You’re right, it can wait till morning when we’ve both had a little sleep.” Rob disappeared into his room and came back with a bottle of pills. “Do you want one of these?” he asked a little hesitantly.

“I told you I’d take one,” Galen said angrily, then put his head in his hands. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. What were you playing?”

“It’s a piece by Paganini.”

“It sounds like that solo you did the other night with the band.”

“It is.” Galen laughed. “I figured Paganini wouldn’t be around to complain.” The soft chiming of the clock made him look up. “What time was that?”

“It’s eleven-thirty.”

“Oh, what were you talking about all this time? No, don’t tell me, it’s either something I don’t want to talk about right now, or something that will make my head hurt, isn’t it?”

“A little of both, I expect.” Rob grinned. “He knows a lot about the oral tradition in pre-Christian Europe, which is vital in the understanding of the…” Rob trailed off. “I will expound over coffee.” He shook one of the pills out of the bottle.

“Thanks, Brat. I’ll lay down and then take it, I think it hit me pretty fast last night.”

“Me too.” Rob laughed.

Galen headed to his bedroom, changed and laid down. He grabbed the book from the bedside stand. As he settled back in bed, the mists found him again, the hooves pounding through the dark. He swallowed the pill and hoped that Rob was right and it would silence the call for another night.

A soft sound woke Rob, he slipped silently out of bed, slid his sword out of its scabbard and eased the bedroom door open. Moving soundlessly down the hall to the living room, he paused at the entrance to glance in. The room was empty, the first light of dawn casting shadows on the floor. Rob walked to the window and looked out into the parking lot behind the building, it was quiet, nothing moving. The soft rustle came again. Rob stepped quietly down the stairs. He briefly debated calling Galen, but decided he’d wait until he could see what, if anything, was there.

When he reached the curtained doorway into the shop, he stopped and pushed the fabric aside far enough to see into the store. There was something standing in front of the shelf to his left. It was human in shape, but had black shadow around it, extinguishing the light. It must have sensed his presence, it turned as he came into the room, and launched itself at him. Rob had time to swing the sword up before it hit him, driving him to the floor. He felt the blade impact, the creature let out a shriek, one hand pressing against Rob, its claws digging into his flesh. Twisting his sword, he plunged the metal deeper into the thing. It raked its claws over his chest, tearing a deep gash. Rob couldn’t stifle the cry that escaped his lips. He tried to push it off, something about its touch was sending icy shafts into his body, the darkness ripping through him like the thing’s claws through flesh. Rob rolled, pulling his sword out with the same movement. He stood as it raised itself from the floor. Not waking his brother had been a bad idea.

“Yes, it was,” Galen said, stepping into the shop. The thing started to turn when Galen swung the sword in his hands, neatly severing the thing’s head from its shoulders. A black whirlwind rose from the body before it collapsed with a hiss, a dark puddle spreading out on the floor. He looked over at Rob. “But that did work well.”

“I planned it that way,” Rob said with a grin. “I’ll clean up that mess up after I get coffee.”

“You’ll get coffee after I take care of that mess you made of yourself. Let’s go back upstairs.”

Rob trailed after his brother as they went back to the apartment. What he’d seen as the thing died worried him. Whatever the creature was, part of it hadn’t died when the body dropped, it had moved back through the Veil, he’d seen its passage in the split second before it had fallen to the floor. “It was going through the amulets,” Rob said more to himself than Galen.

“What did it want there?” Galen mused.

“I don’t know.” Rob lay down on the couch. The wounds were beginning to sting. Galen laid a hand on his chest and one on his forehead. Rob closed his eyes as the warmth of the healing moved into the wounds, pushing the icy darkness away as the pain from the torn flesh was removed. Galen’s hands were shaking when he pulled them away. Rob opened his eyes and looked at his brother. There was an strange pulse in the usual liquid silver flowing around Galen. “What’s wrong?”

“The wounds were like the ones Greg got the other night. But that thing wasn’t the same as the creatures at the park.”

“No, it wasn’t, although it had some of the same properties. It was pulling light into itself.” Rob sat up. “It ruined my favorite shirt.”

“That’s what happens when you go after things alone.”

“It could have not ruined my shirt, though,” Rob said, pulling at the torn material.

“Why didn’t you come get me?” Anger lit the air around Galen, sparkling like insane fireflies.

“I didn’t think it was anything serious. If I’d known what was there, I would’ve come to get you. I thought you should get a little more sleep.”

“Waking me up is better than getting pulled out of a dream by something sinking its claws into you.” Galen paced into the kitchen and started making coffee. Rob watched him, something was bothering his brother, more than what had just happened.

“I’m sorry,” Rob said quietly.

“Yeah, you should be,” Galen grumbled without turning around. “Go get cleaned up, I’ll meet you in the shop.”

Rob stood and waited for him to say something else, when Galen remained silent, he headed back to the bathroom. The emotion flowing through the bond was a combination of anger and—he took a breath, trying to figure out what was underneath—it hovered just out of range. Whatever it was, Galen had clamped down on it. Rob sighed, turned on the shower to let it heat the room, grabbed his clothes from his bedroom and closed the door.

They needed to talk.

Galen’s departure from the restaurant the night before had surprised him. He’d had no warning of the emotion building in his brother until it hit him full force. As he watched Galen leave, he’d been tempted to follow, but understood his brother needed some time; and it gave him more time to talk to Blake. It had been an interesting conversation, bouncing from the Hunt to the Sagas to Galen’s latest article in the
Journal of Ancient Medicine.
Blake had been talking about reading it without realizing Galen had written it.

It was a mistake people made about his brother. They saw the gentle healer and shopkeeper, or the guitarist for the band, without seeing the scholar. Even people who knew Galen well forgot that facet of his personality. In fact Pete and Sean Miles, Galen’s band mates, chided him more than once for skipping band practice to speak at a conference, teasing him about being among the “intelligent types.” Of course, that kind of teasing occasionally resulted in people discovering the other overlooked part of his brother. Galen was a cool and efficient fighter whether they were facing something like they had this morning or a bar brawl; once he was moving, Galen could sweep the floor clean with seemingly no effort. And when he and Galen fought together, very little could stand against them for long. Rob grinned.

He turned off the shower, got dressed, poured them both a cup of coffee and headed down to the the shop. When he walked into the store, his brother was sitting behind the counter, staring off into space. “Galen?”

“Hey, Brat,” he said, looking over with a smile.

“You cleaned it up?” Rob handed Galen the coffee and leaned against the counter.

“No, it was gone when I got back down here.”

“Do you think something came in while we were upstairs?”

“I don’t know.” Galen took a sip of coffee. “I checked the amulets, nothing’s missing, but it picked up several that were similar to the one the other day.”

“But not the one they went after before?”

“I took it back upstairs. It’s in the drawer in the table by my bed.” Galen sighed.

“I’m sorry,” Rob said again. “I should’ve gotten you up.”

Galen took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “That tendency of yours to act on your own drives me crazy.”

“Galen, I…”

“Especially since I get dragged into it most of the time anyway.”

“You can’t hold last week against me.” Rob chuckled.

“I can and will, Brat.” Galen grinned. “This morning was different, that wasn’t some jerk hitting on Becci.”

“I thought it was just, I don’t know, someone breaking in or something.” Rob shrugged.

“It was some
thing
and that’s the problem.”

“I know, Galen. I won’t say it’ll never happen again, but I will try to be better.”

“Remember that.”

“I will,” Rob said, pausing, wondering how he should start the conversation they needed to have.

“What did you and Blake talk about after I left?” Galen asked, solving the problem for him.

“A little of everything, actually. He has a theory about the alchemical practices of the Fifteenth Century that meshed with that paper you wrote a couple of months ago.” Rob broke off when Galen frowned. “Stephen said…”

“I don’t care what Blake said about my paper,” Galen snapped.

Rob looked at his brother with surprise. Galen insisting on sticking to the priest’s last name indicated a level of animosity his brother rarely reached. “We’ll talk about that later.”

“Good.”

“We talked more about the Hunt. A lot more. About the founding, about why the Keepers embraced something that dark as punishment for their own kind. Stephen has a theory about that as well.”

“I’m sure he does,” Galen remarked sourly. “I do too, you know.”

“You never told me.”

“We haven’t really talked about it before.”

“No, we haven’t,” Rob said quietly. “What do you think?”

“Me?” Galen smiled. “I’ve thought about it a lot after what happened seven years ago. There’s nothing in the Sagas or Chronicles about exactly why Keepers would use something like that as a punishment.”

“But?”

“Think about what it means for a Keeper to deny his role and his place—like the healer of the Gregorius line who refused the Ritual of Swords. He had no son, his brother was lost and the line, as
Custodes Noctis,
ceased to exist. Each time we lose a Keeper, or an entire line, the power is broken further. Even though very few Keepers have denied their role, what it represents is so terrible, the worst punishment that could be found would be employed.” Galen took a deep breath. “After hearing the story of the founding, I think that the first time the Hunt came for a Keeper wasn’t planned, but the living
Custodes Noctis
saw it as a valid tool. Face it, Rob, the magic they used to create the Hunt bordered on dark.”

“More than bordered, Galen,” Rob said, meeting his brother’s eyes.

“What is it?”

“You know we, I mean Keepers, have always wondered about why the
each uisge
are involved with the Hunt. Some Sagas say they were a late addition.”

“But?”

“But Stephen told me they were with the Hunt from the beginning. They’re the ones who now make the choice of who’ll ride as king.”

“The
each uisge?
” Galen asked, horrified. “They were there from the beginning?”

“Yes,” Rob said. He understood Galen’s reaction, he’d had the same one the night before when
 
Blake told him. Rob had suspected that the horse-like Fae, the
each uisge
, had ridden with the Hunt far longer than most Keepers realized, but knowing they’d been there since the founding came as a surprise; finding out that they were the ones that now came for the Keepers was something more than a shock.

“Why? No, it can’t be,” Galen said.

“Can’t be?”

“They used the Fae to found the Hunt, didn’t they? There aren’t many things, human or otherwise, that can access the Between World. The Fae are one of the few.”

“Yeah.”

Galen frowned. “But why would the
each uisge
ride with the Hunt? Before it fell into disfavor?”

“It was part of the deal to help with the creation of the Hunt. The Fae wanted some of their own to ride with them,” Rob explained.

“But why the
each uisge
? They’re the worst of the Fae, closer to animals than anything.”

“I think that’s why, they’re the hardest to control, even by other Fae. Initially it was a way to guarantee a hand in what was happening.”