Winter – Chapter 35 – 03

 I notched another arrow and picked my target carefully.  There were some camazotzi that seemed to have different markings on them—painted on their chests, on their faces, their wings—and I hoped against hope that meant they were in positions of authority.

Maybe if we kill enough of them, they’ll cut in run.

It was a longshot, but it was one that we didn’t have any choice but to take.

I felt her eyes on me before her power touched me, just as I released an arrow into the fray.  I twisted, gaze snapping to meet Menhit’s.  Her lips peeled back in a cruel smile.

“Huntress,” she breathed, though I could hear her words clear as day.  “Seer.”

I calmly pulled an arrow out of my quiver and readied myself.  “Call off your hounds,” I told her.  “And we can talk like civilized adults.”

“My hounds are all that is keeping me alive right now,” she said, lips twisting in another cold smile.  “We’ve done this dance before, you and I.”

“Strange, I don’t remember.”  I didn’t loose my arrow on her, but on another of the painted camazotzi.  The tide was ebbing, but slowly.  The more we fired on them, though, the more they lost the will to keep on coming.  “And it doesn’t feel like dancing.”

“Someday it will,” she promised.  “Someday it will.”

What’s your game, bitch?  What the hell do you want from us that makes you willing to get into bed with the Hecate if only to double-cross her later?  She’d set the camazotzi on Phelan.  Typically, that meant either he was a key to our defense or that he knew something.

Or she just hated him, like Vammatar and her ilk.

That’s always a distinct possibility.  He’s had a lot of time to make a lot of enemies with his meddling and mischief.

Puck indeed.

“Who the hell are you talking to?”  Matt yelled at me.

I shook my head hard.  “The bitch on the ground!”

“Less negotiating, more shooting,” he called back.  “I don’t think you’re going to talk her into calling off the attack.”

Not going to stop me from trying.

The camazotzi were climbing on top of each other, the fallen insulating them the copper ring.  When they touched the walls, most fell back, howling in pain, but they were starting to get too close.

Too damned close.

“Yes,” Menhit hissed, “listen to him, Seer.  Send more dead across.  More blood to foul the ground, to make the earth cry.  More and more.”

I choked on sudden sickness, staring at her.  My fingers fell away from the bowstring, arrow clattering against my knees and then falling harmlessly on the far side of the wall.  Matt and Thom were both shouting at me.  The world spun.

I’d heard those words before.

No you haven’t, Marin.  But someone else has.

I saw something twitch out of the corner of my eye, down on the ground in front of me, a split second before the memory came.

“We can’t keep going on like this, Mum,” the voice of a child said, a child wise beyond her tender years.  Her small fingers tightened around my hand.  “The earth is crying.  There’s been too much blood.”

“I know,” I murmured to her softly, drawing her against my hip, swathed in my hunting leathers.  “But it’s not a thing that’s in my power to control.”

She turned her impossibly blue eyes to mine.  “Find a way, Mum, or else we’re done for.  The survivors, the Imbolg, the Fianna…we’ll all be done for.”

Thom caught me before I hit the ground, my vision dimming.  I sagged into his chest, gasping raggedly.

“Hell,” I breathed. “Oh bloody hell.  I know why she’s here.”  I think I know why she’s here.  I’m afraid I know why she’s here.

“Seers!” Cariocecus’s ragged voice called, sounding weary beyond measure but damnably, certainly alive.  “This is two you’ll owe me.”

Menhit screamed and Cariocecus shouted and then for one aching moment, everything was silent.

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