"Is he dead?" Oberon asked.

A small black hole. No vital signs. That should have done it, but it was having to answer Oberon, saying it aloud, that broke me.

“Yes,” I cried, my voice quavering. “He’s gone. I can’t do anything.” And then we both howled. We howled the way people do when they don’t care about speaking anymore because the words don’t exist that can properly convey their emotions. Only ragged, broken, discordant noises could come close. And there are always tears and snot and gasping too, gasping because there isn’t enough wind to cry all that they feel in a single breath.

For what else was there to do? CPR wouldn’t help with a head wound. I couldn’t make his heart beat if his brain wasn’t f**king there. Druidry only gave me the power to heal, not resurrect.

He’d died before he finished falling. The little black hole in the side of his head swelled until it filled my vision—a distortion brought on by my tears. Knowing I’d already avenged him gave me no satisfaction.

I had him for only a few weeks. I’d thought we would be happy together forever. And I think I might have said that out loud, to his body, in a sort of high-pitched, incoherent keening that approximated speech but wasn’t intelligible. Twelve years of longing and being with him every day—closer to thirteen if you counted the year of flirting at Rúla Búla before I began my training—thirteen years of repression and stupid surrogate boyfriends so that I would be a stronger Druid, but only a few weeks of openly loving each other, ended by a small black hole in the side of his head. No chance to tell him goodbye or let him know one more time how grateful I was to be bound to the earth. No chance to let him tease me and then tease him back harder. No chance to cuss at him in Old Irish because he said it made him feel young again, or put on strawberry lip gloss and watch him go dizzy. He’d always had a thing about that for some reason.

I don’t precisely know how long we cried over Atticus, but the moon was high in the sky, probably close to midnight, and my throat was raw before I remembered that Artemis and Diana were still after us. We’d probably cried away much of our lead.

Oberon, I said, we have to go.

"No. I’m not leaving him."

We have to. The huntresses are coming.

"I don’t care."

Atticus would care. You know that. He would want us to run and thwart them. We will bury him and say our farewells, and then we will honor him by sticking it to the Olympians.

"How are we going to do that?"

By making it to England. Surviving will piss them off and make Atticus proud.

"But I don’t want to go to England. They’re not Irish. And he’s my friend."

I know, Oberon, but staying here and letting the Olympians kill us won’t make him happy. Us either, for that matter.

Oberon ignored my wisdom and asked, "Where is he now? In Tír na nÓg? Mag Mell? Can we go see him there?"

I didn’t know where he was. Normally the Morrigan would escort spirits to their final resting place, but she was dead now. Perhaps Manannan Mac Lir would know. Maybe Atticus and the Morrigan were together somewhere.

I’m not sure where he is, Oberon, but I’m sure we can’t see him. The dead and the living can inhabit the same planes in the Summer Lands, but they do not mix.

"Wherever he is, I want to go there too."

No, Oberon. I need you to stay with me. Please? Let’s send him off properly.

"But we don’t have any whiskey. We can’t have a wake without whiskey."

We will have whiskey as soon as we find a liquor store.

Fragarach was lying a short distance away, so I retrieved it and placed it on the ground in front of him. I didn’t roll him over or anything like that. I couldn’t bear to see the other side of his head. The small black hole would haunt me forever as it was; I didn’t want to see anything worse.

I closed my eyes, pressing tears down my cheeks, and used my Latin headspace to contact the local elemental, Saxony.

Harmony came the reply. Atticus and Fragarach sank into the earth, and the turf nearby sort of stretched and closed over him, adjusting itself to make it appear as if nothing had ever happened there. No blood. No marker to indicate that the finest Druid to ever walk the earth ended his walk in this nameless field.

My voice wasn’t up to speaking aloud, so I spoke mentally to Oberon. Here lies Siodhachan Ó Suileabháin, I said, known as Atticus to us. He changed my life forever—for the better—and I can never repay the debt I owe him. All I can do is honor his memory by protecting the earth. I paused, confronted by the impossibility of doing justice to my memories of him, so I simply ended with, I loved him and will think of him every day, no matter how long I live.

I sobbed once and then did my best to weep silently so that Oberon would know it was his turn. He whined, indecisive, before he gave form to his thoughts.

"Atticus was the best human being ever," Oberon said. "And I’m not just saying that because he gave me sausages. He taught me language, for one thing, so I could enjoy movies while he was at work. He told me stories in the bath and took me hunting and for jogs around the neighborhood. And once in a while, if I kept bothering him about it, he would give me some time with a really hot poodle bitch. And you know what else? He gave the best belly rubs, because he knew what it was like. He was a hound too. The best part about hanging out with Atticus was when we went running together as hounds. We felt the wind on our noses and ran until we found a field of clover, and then we’d flop on our backs and wriggle around in it and take a nap in the sun. He knew how to be a hound’s best friend. I loved him. I don’t think I’ll ever wag my tail again. That’s all."

I petted Oberon and stood shakily. I sniffled and looked up at the moon. Its cold light gave me no comfort. It only reminded me of Artemis and Diana. I cast my eyes back down to the ground and shook my head. There had been no vampires waiting for us. Only a sniper, probably in their employ, determined to wipe out the last of the Druids. And even the vampires were being directed by some shadowy figure in Tír na nÓg.

I really need to run now. I need to get out of here.

"I’m with you."

I shifted to a horse and found Scáthmhaide where I’d dropped it. Then I lit out for the Netherlands with Oberon as if we could somehow catch up with what we’d lost, as if the desolation we felt could be left behind and wouldn’t grow inside us with every mile.

Chapter 11

A pair of horns blast behind me, I am chilled with a premonition of my own death, and I wish for the thousandth time that Atticus were here. Did he find horns to be harbingers of death and sorrow? I cannot ever ask him now.

Instead of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” I always hear “Taps” at funerals, and somehow the collective sorrow of so many final farewells builds in my mind, a great Jungian unconscious flood of tears and roses thrown on caskets and folded flags given to widows by a pair of crisp white gloves. That horn that plays in the John Williams score after Luke Skywalker finds the smoking ruins of his aunt and uncle—such a mournful sound, full and hollow at the same time, a surfeit of emptiness. And the call to charge never rouses me but rather signals that someone is going to die a violent death soon—or, if it starts a race or contest, it means there can be only one victor.

The horns that blasted behind me were dim, nasal, and stuffy sounds that nevertheless meant the goddesses were gaining on us, and they weighted down my legs, which were already straining, not from fatigue but from dolor. These were the sounds of horns and hunting that, according to myth, brought Actaeon to Diana as she was bathing. He’d been lost in the woods and thought that by following the sounds of horns he’d be saved. But Diana had turned him into a stag and set her hounds on him instead. Those horns had called him to his death.

Is she still sounding the same horn all these centuries later?

And is there anything more horrifying to the hunted than the sound of horns? Even the baying of the hounds is not so terrible; they are animals and following their instinct and training. But the murderous intellect behind the horn, the creature coldly orchestrating my doom—that’s what makes me feel like prey and sets icy wings of fear fluttering inside my throat.

I probably would have given up already if it weren’t for Oberon. And he is probably thinking the same thing regarding me. In truth, we are running only because Atticus would have wanted us to. I think we are only marginally more scared than we are depressed, and we aren’t running as fast as we had been before. The urgency is gone. I don’t see how I can survive this if Atticus and the Morrigan couldn’t. The powers of a Druid are awesome, but the powers arrayed against me are too numerous and in a different league. I’m not going to quit, but I feel like I’m on a soccer team losing 3–0 with ten minutes left on the clock. While winning in that scenario is still theoretically possible, I don’t see a way to make it happen all by myself and I half-wish that the end would hurry up and get here, banishing the dread of its approach.

We crossed the border into the Netherlands, and the elemental directed me to turn sharply to the southwest to avoid the bulk of cities by the sea. We’d have had to turn south at some point anyway to reach the French coast.

It’s odd, sometimes, how a border can seemingly change the character of the land. The German landscape had been sharp, clean, and precise, whereas the Dutch, even at night, had a bit of a gauzy filter over it, as if the ghost of Rembrandt had pulled his brush across it to soften the edges just a little bit. The colors I saw in my night vision, too, appeared subtly textured and mixed by the master, not so stark as they had been in Germany. Or perhaps it was no different at all, and only my melancholia made it so.

Noting the change of direction, Oberon said in a subdued tone, "Hey, Clever Girl?"

"Yes?"

He let some time pass, and all we heard was the pounding of my hooves and the pads of his paws on the earth. They beat out a rhythm of cycling thought, the percussive notes repeating Atticus over and over if you were inclined to hear it that way, and we were. Then he said, "Do you know how far we still have to go?"

"Not precisely. Why?"

"Do you think we’ll make it there before the huntresses catch up to us?"

The horns sounded again. Perhaps my imagination magnified the sound a bit.

"I’m not sure, Oberon. I hope we do."

"I hope so too. But I’m wondering how realistic it is. I’ve been thinking that if I have to go out, I’d like to go out fighting instead of running. I want to face the Predator. I don’t want to “get to the choppah!” with Arnold. You remember those guys? Well, they weren’t real guys. What I mean is, did you ever see that movie?"

"You mean Predator? Yeah, I’ve seen it."

"Really? It’s no wonder Atticus thought you were perfect."

"He thought…?" I felt as if my eyes should be flooding with tears, but horses don’t cry the same way humans do. Oberon continued, not waiting for me to finish.

"There was that one character who decided to take off his guns and meet the Predator with just a knife. I forget what his name was, but I’ll never forget what he did. Everybody was crapping their pants and scrambling for the choppah, but he was like, hell with that, homies, I’m not running from my problems. I’m going to face them, even if they kill me, but first I’m going to slowly cut open my own chest and make some crazy eyes. And then the Predator did kill him—and pretty fast too—but I always respected his decision to take that stand. He was like, f**k the choppah, Arnold! Oh. Will you excuse my language?"

"You’re excused."

"Thank you. So that was his attitude, except he never said a word. You just knew what he was thinking. And now I’m kind of thinking the same thing. When the goddesses first appeared and shot those arrows at us, I was so startled that I peed, and I feel ashamed of that now."

"You don’t have to be, Oberon."

"I think I do. I think I have had a longer and better life than any hound has ever had, and I shouldn’t fear death. Am I right, Granuaile? I’m not very good at time, but I’m pretty old for a wolfhound, aren’t I?"

"The oldest ever," I told him. "You’re legendary."

"Well, I don’t feel legendary. But I do feel old. So old that I probably shouldn’t be here. I have had more than my fair share of sausage and bacon and steak. And I don’t feel like running anymore. I feel like stopping here and putting up the fight that Atticus never got a chance to put up himself."

Oberon abruptly quit running, and I had to stop too. We were in the middle of a large barley field.

"You go on, Clever Girl. Get to the choppah." He turned to face the northeast and growled. "We’ll see who pees first this time."

My instinct for self-preservation spoke up. It told me I could survive this. I could drop Scáthmhaide, abandon Oberon, and turn into a peregrine falcon. I could fly straight across the channel to England, find a tethered tree, and shift away to safety. They couldn’t have pandemonium going on over there too, I thought. Somewhere in the New World, maybe even back in Arizona, I’d bind my amulet to my aura the way Atticus did, and then the playing field would be a bit more even.

Except I’d never be able to live with the guilt. And I’d never have the stomach to fight again if I didn’t fight now.

"Oberon, this isn’t the place to take a stand."

"You can’t talk me out of this. I’m doing it."

"I’m not trying to talk you out of it. I’m with you one hundred percent. Fuck the choppah, okay?"