while longer. It won’t make a difference, in the end.
We like
you,
said a third, and the look it gave me might have been called puppy-dog eyes if it had been on anything smaller than a tiger and not so capable of crushing my skull in its jaws.
You gave us your blood. You make a good Hound. We are honored to be carried by you.
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s an honor to know you think so.” I glanced out at the assembled masked horde. “But that’s not going to make a difference, is it? If they ask you to tear out my throat, you’ll do it.”
With glee. The answer came quickly, without hesitation or shame. But we would sing your name after your death, and your blood would be a taste we carried into the end of days.
“Well, that’s comforting. I suppose.” They said that you didn’t truly die until everyone who remembered you was dead. Did it count if what they remembered was how good you tasted?
You don’t have to give it up, the first insisted again.
“I know,” I murmured. Even though I feared them, I knew them for kin, along that strange alignment that made me a Hound like them. And they were right.
I needed to hunt. But I wouldn’t use them for it. Even if it meant I would be hunting blind from now on.
I tossed the Horn out across the plaza. It curved over their heads, then hung at the apex of the arc, unmoving. For a moment the air around it seemed glassy, like a reflection, and then with a sound like glass breaking and a scent of burnt mercury so powerful it broke through my fog, the Horn shattered.
Nate looked away with a curse, blinking fast, and I caught my breath, unwilling to acknowledge even to myself how much I wanted to snatch it back. Not least because I was now certain I was alone in my head.
When I opened my eyes again, the Hounds were gone, and the assembled revelers were stirring, someeven muttering to each other. “This has been used,” a man in a hockey mask said, his voice shifting from chorus to chord and back, like a soundtrack coming out of synchronization. “You dared to use this.”
“I did,” I said, meeting his empty gaze. “And I did so without permission or leave.”
“She did it for me,” Nate broke in. “On my account.”
The mask shifted to face him, and his words cut off in a hiss of indrawn breath. I knew what he was feeling now: the pressure of attention from a couple of hundred entities, some of whom were dead, some who were still vital, all in natural conflict and artificial concord in this one moment. “It doesn’t matter why I did it,” I said, feeling the shudders run through him. “It was my decision alone.”
“Only because you were trying to help me,” Nate managed, a note of exasperation still clear under the strain. He shook himself, a gesture that didn’t quite match with his human bones, and stood with his feet braced. “She had to do it.”
One of the children—a boy in a pirate’s costume, with a big jeweled eyepatch pasted onto the mask—cocked his head to the side. “You,” he murmured, as if amused. “Little wolf, little madman. You will not go ignored.”
“Dammit,” I muttered, but I held on to him, propping him up as much as giving comfort. “You just can’t stay out of it, can you?”
He shook his head, and I didn’t have to look at him to know he was grinning, baring his teeth in a grimace that was as much defiance as amusement.
The assembled horde regarded me again. “No one may call on our hunt without our leave,” a woman in a cat mask said.
“And you called on all of us,” said a man in what looked like Japanese formal armor.
“And we have your name,” added a third—this one a bronze-skinned man bare to the waist, wearing a feather mask more suited to Mardi Gras. “All of us have a claim on you now, Hound. Crippled and halvedas you are, we still have that claim, and we intend to call it due.”
I nodded, but inside my stomach froze up. This wasn’t just a matter of offending one spirit. I’d
We like
you,
said a third, and the look it gave me might have been called puppy-dog eyes if it had been on anything smaller than a tiger and not so capable of crushing my skull in its jaws.
You gave us your blood. You make a good Hound. We are honored to be carried by you.
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s an honor to know you think so.” I glanced out at the assembled masked horde. “But that’s not going to make a difference, is it? If they ask you to tear out my throat, you’ll do it.”
With glee. The answer came quickly, without hesitation or shame. But we would sing your name after your death, and your blood would be a taste we carried into the end of days.
“Well, that’s comforting. I suppose.” They said that you didn’t truly die until everyone who remembered you was dead. Did it count if what they remembered was how good you tasted?
You don’t have to give it up, the first insisted again.
“I know,” I murmured. Even though I feared them, I knew them for kin, along that strange alignment that made me a Hound like them. And they were right.
I needed to hunt. But I wouldn’t use them for it. Even if it meant I would be hunting blind from now on.
I tossed the Horn out across the plaza. It curved over their heads, then hung at the apex of the arc, unmoving. For a moment the air around it seemed glassy, like a reflection, and then with a sound like glass breaking and a scent of burnt mercury so powerful it broke through my fog, the Horn shattered.
Nate looked away with a curse, blinking fast, and I caught my breath, unwilling to acknowledge even to myself how much I wanted to snatch it back. Not least because I was now certain I was alone in my head.
When I opened my eyes again, the Hounds were gone, and the assembled revelers were stirring, someeven muttering to each other. “This has been used,” a man in a hockey mask said, his voice shifting from chorus to chord and back, like a soundtrack coming out of synchronization. “You dared to use this.”
“I did,” I said, meeting his empty gaze. “And I did so without permission or leave.”
“She did it for me,” Nate broke in. “On my account.”
The mask shifted to face him, and his words cut off in a hiss of indrawn breath. I knew what he was feeling now: the pressure of attention from a couple of hundred entities, some of whom were dead, some who were still vital, all in natural conflict and artificial concord in this one moment. “It doesn’t matter why I did it,” I said, feeling the shudders run through him. “It was my decision alone.”
“Only because you were trying to help me,” Nate managed, a note of exasperation still clear under the strain. He shook himself, a gesture that didn’t quite match with his human bones, and stood with his feet braced. “She had to do it.”
One of the children—a boy in a pirate’s costume, with a big jeweled eyepatch pasted onto the mask—cocked his head to the side. “You,” he murmured, as if amused. “Little wolf, little madman. You will not go ignored.”
“Dammit,” I muttered, but I held on to him, propping him up as much as giving comfort. “You just can’t stay out of it, can you?”
He shook his head, and I didn’t have to look at him to know he was grinning, baring his teeth in a grimace that was as much defiance as amusement.
The assembled horde regarded me again. “No one may call on our hunt without our leave,” a woman in a cat mask said.
“And you called on all of us,” said a man in what looked like Japanese formal armor.
“And we have your name,” added a third—this one a bronze-skinned man bare to the waist, wearing a feather mask more suited to Mardi Gras. “All of us have a claim on you now, Hound. Crippled and halvedas you are, we still have that claim, and we intend to call it due.”
I nodded, but inside my stomach froze up. This wasn’t just a matter of offending one spirit. I’d
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