The Stag Lord (33 page)

Bann lunged to his feet. “Sreng!”

The Fir Bolg whirled around at the new threat. Bad mistake. At Bann's signal—the same command Cor had taught the dog—Max leaped, cat-like, on Sreng's back, his claws gouging out chunks of meat as his weight drove the creature forward.

Onto Bann's blade.

Surprise widened Sreng's left eye. The other eye had Bann's knife in it. The Knight yanked it free as the Fir Bolg folded to his knees, black blood oozing from his lips. He flopped facedown in the snow.

Chest heaving and his ribs creaking with every breath, Bann stared down. Then, with a curse, he spat on the body. Raising his head, he looked over at the dog waiting a few feet away, tail wagging at their coup. Bann snapped his fingers. Max trotted over.

“
Gle mhaith
, boyo.” He ruffled the dog's ears.

Max wagged harder, wiggling his rump like a novice whore. Then, he stilled and pricked up his ears, nose pointed east.

Shay burst out the trees. Blood and something that looked like smears of hamburger meat stained her hands and vest. She hurried toward him, panting from her sprint up the hill. Seeing her alive and well was like seeing the sun rise, the promise of a new day.

“Bann!”

“I'm all right, thanks to the hound.” He wrapped her in a one-armed embrace that made his ribs protest. She squeezed back, pressing her cheek against his. After a moment, they stepped apart and stood beaming at each other as the others emerged from the trees.

Rory walked over. “What? No hug for me?” Blood covered half his face from a gash on his forehead.

Spotting Sreng's body, Hugh clapped Bann on the shoulder. “He slipped past us while we were fighting the others.” He glanced around. “And the shapeshifter?”

“No sign. But I'm hoping Max can still follow the scent.”

As if hearing his name gave him permission, Max lowered his snout and began casting about, snuffling puffs of snow. After a long minute, he wheeled about and headed westward.

Ignoring the dull pain in his side, Bann jogged after the dog, Shay right behind him, the others behind her. Max paused now and again, biting the snow as if he could taste the scent of his prey. Overhead, the clouds thickened. Heavy flakes pushed each other aside as they fell to earth, trying to be the first one down.

“He may lose the Horned One's trail in this storm,” Hugh called from the back of the line.

Bann nodded absently. A foreboding chilled him even more than the lowering temperatures. The feeling intensified, becoming ice in his bowels when he realized they were tracking in a direct line back to the house.

“They're okay. Cor and Ann.” Shay came up beside him. “The wards, remember?”

“Aye, I do. But…” The skin on his scalped prickled. Instinct whispered to him to move his arse before it was too late.

Bann broke into a sprint. His feet flew over hidden logs and rocks. Ahead, grateful that the two-legged hunters were finally picking up the pace, Max trotted faster, snow dusting his coat and forming a saddle of white on his back.

Chanting the words to the Song between breaths, Bann surged ahead, ignoring Shay's shout to wait, goddammit.

It seemed to the man that he ran forever through a monochromatic landscape that never changed around him. Each tree, each bush, was identical to the next one. Muscles and lungs screamed for relief. He told them to shut up and work harder. After an eternity, he spied a twinkle of lights through the trees. Suddenly, the house loomed up in the storm, a towering bulk.

A feral stench. Then, something hard and cold and sharp punched him in the stomach. The force hurled him backwards into a tree, driving his elbow against the trunk. His knife spun away and disappeared into the snow. Legs folding beneath him, he fell to his knees and looked down.

Antlers. The prongs were buried in his body, leaving the main stem looking like some obscene growth. Black dots swam around the edge of his vision. Unable to breathe from the pain, he braced a hand against the tree and lurched to his feet. He wrapped both hands around the stem. Then, with a cry, he yanked it out. Blood gushed from the multiple holes and flowed down his belly in a hot flood.

A branch snapped. “You should have given me the child,” said a thin, high voice.

Cernunnos.

The manlike creature stood a few yards away, naked, concentration-camp thin, and covered in a layer of fine hair like a deer's pelt. His features were distorted, as if a hand had grabbed the chin and stretched it out, elongating the skull and forcing the enormous eyes so far apart that they seemed able to look backwards at each other. The forehead bulged, making the shapeshifter look like he was wearing a helmet; the ears were elf-pointy. An old scar—a thousand-year-old scar—ran at a diagonal across the creature's chest. An antler, a twin to the one Bann had pulled from his body, dangled from one hand, the prongs sharpened to needle points.

With the blackness closing down his vision, Bann crashed to his knees again. He forced himself to look up as the god raised his weapon and walked toward him.

Shifting from foot to foot, Cor waited by his bedroom window, keeping watch. Every possible scenario of what could happen to his dad kept looping through his skull like a series of horror-movie previews. He wanted to punch himself in the eye to stop the scenes from playing.

Earlier, Ann had offered to play a game with him. He had shut that idea down with a look that would have gotten him a smack from his father or, at the very least, a dressing-down that would have left him breathless. He could hear her moving around her bedroom at the far end of the hall.

He sighed and pressed his nose against the glass. Fog spread out. He exhaled deeper, making a larger patch. With a finger, he drew a stick figure holding what looked like a banana. It faded. Breathing on the pane again, he started to draw a dog when movement in the woods, half-hidden by the falling snow, caught his eye.

Horror beat black wings in his chest as he stared at the two figures.

Before he could even think, he spun around and ran for the stairs, the switchblade in his front pocket banging against his thigh. Stumbling once, he barely saved himself from tumbling arse over teakettle down the steps by a frantic grab of the banister. Dimly, he could hear Ann shouting for him to stop.

He couldn't. That would be like asking his lungs to stop breathing or his heart to stop beating.

He sprinted across the kitchen. Skidding into the door, he clawed at the knob, cursing until it opened. He flung himself across the yard, sprawling twice in the snow. The second time, pain exploded in his right knee when it cracked against the brick border of a flowerbed.

Sobbing between frantic gasps of air, he reached the back gate. His hand grabbed the latch even as his mind screamed at him.
Don't touch it! The wards, remember?
Cor froze, waiting to die. He gritted his teeth as the familiar pain spiked his head.
Like after I've been asleep
.

After a long moment, the pain faded. With shaky fingers, he fumbled with the latch, yanking it back and forth before it would unlock. He tugged, the metal biting him as the gate dragged on the snow. Opening it just wide enough to wiggle through, he plunged into the woods, trying to remember where he'd seen them.

His dad and the horned monster.

He choked back a scream when a dark shape suddenly emerged from the forest.

Max. The dog skidded to a stop with a sharp yip, then whirled around, heading back into the trees. Cor sprinted to catch up. He wrapped his fingers around the dog's collar and let Max half-lead, half-drag him along through the woods.

As they struggled on, hindering each other as much as helping, Cor felt himself grow smaller and smaller with each step, a mouse hesitating on the yellow line a split second before a semi truck smears it across the asphalt. The terror of facing that monster turned his bowels into hot, wet liquid.

Remember, Cormac Boru
, Shay's voice whispered in his skull.
You're a descendent of the High King of Ireland, and Tuatha Dé Danaan to boot. You know what that means
?

“That I'm one tough son of a bitch,” Cor whispered. Slowing, he fumbled for his knife and pulled it out. He thumbed the button; the blade opened with a
snick
.

At that moment, Max hopped over a fallen log. His back struck Cor's hand, sending the knife flying through the air. It disappeared in a snowdrift. Moaning, Cor threw himself down and began digging frantically. Tears blurred his vision as he pawed faster. He gave up when Max snagged his sleeve with his teeth, pulling at him, urging him to follow. To hurry. With a sob, he rose to his feet and ran after the dog.

Cursing at himself, Bann lurched to one foot before falling back down again.
Get up, you bastard. Get up for your son's sake
. He tried again and failed. His limbs felt like lead pipes, stiff and heavy.

Cernunnos stopped a few feet away. Examining the antler in his hand, he spoke. “I find it rather disappointing that the long-son of Boru would not have put up a better fight, as they say.” The shapeshifter chuckled. “Why, you practically impaled yourself. And all those stories about how only a descendent of the High King, armed with an iron weapon, can kill me.” He glanced around. “It appears all those stories were wrong on both counts.” He raised his arm, mad eyes aglow. With a shout of triumph, he brought the weapon down.

A black and tan shape—a shield wall of heart and muscle and fur—threw itself between Bann and the Stag Lord.

In a tangle of arms and legs and fang and horn, they crashed to the ground, the antler buried in Max's chest. With a scream of fury, the Stag Lord kicked clear of the weight and staggered to his feet. He yanked the antler free. Crimson droplets splattered the snow in all directions.

“No!” A wail rent the air.

Horror stabbed another hole in Bann. Cor was running toward them. As he watched, the boy tripped and fell. Sprawled in the snow, Cor fumbled around, then paused, staring down into the drift. With a shout, he leaped to his feet, waving something long and gray and familiar over his head.

Bann's knife.

Cernunnos turned his head at Cor's cry. A mad glee suffused his face. “Why, this is perfect. The child comes to me of his own free will.” He raised his own weapon and started for the boy.

Impossibly, Max lurched to his feet and flung himself at the Stag Lord. His teeth closed around the shapeshifter's throat. Jaws locked, he dragged Cernunnos down with the weight of his dying body. Blood—a god's blood—sprayed out in a fine mist from either side of the dog's muzzle.

Bann swayed to his feet.
Gods, help me
!

And they did.

“Dad!” With an underhand move, Cor tossed the blade toward him.

The knife flew in slow motion, flipping haft over tip in a lazy loop-theloop before landing with a smack in the Knight's palm. His fingers curled around the handle. With a strangled cry, he lunged at Cernunnos. And missed.

Staggering to his feet, the shapeshifter swayed, matching Bann's drunken movements as they circled each other, the gash from Max's fangs like a second smile under his chin. Blood poured down his chest in rivulets.

Keeping himself between Cor and Cernunnos, Bann fought to keep his feet from walking out from under him. Black dots crowded the edge of his vision. He blinked and straightened; the agony in his butchered stomach helped focus him. Gasping the Song, he managed a few words before giving up, unable to breathe and sing at the same time. A corner of his mind noticed the Stag Lord trembling as if it were all he could do to stay upright.

“It appears,” Cernunnos panted, “that all I need do is let you bleed out.”

“I could say the same for ye.”

“Yes, but I will recover eventually. It takes…it takes more than a hound's bite to…to kill one such as me.” He gasped and sank to one knee, then toppled sideways. The antlers tumbled from his fingers.

Kill him!
Bann's mind screamed at him.
Kill the foul creature while he is weakened
. He lurched forward. Between one heartbeat and the next, his body decided it was done for the day. He folded to his knees. As if in a dream, he watched the knife slip from his grasp into the red snow.