Silver and Salt(11)

“Go,” I said, words slow and painful. “Feast as you deserve, honored one.”

He stared at me longer then dipped his head. The kelpie rose to his hooves and cantered into the water. He buried his teeth, sharp and curved, in the flesh of the dead human lying the opposite bank. There was a flash of tangled beard, gaping mouth, and an eyeball pulped by a bullet from Scotch’s rifle before the body was dragged into the water. I wouldn’t have thought it was that deep, but kelpies are versatile and Pie and the body both disappeared under the boiling surface. In a moment or two the water calmed until a geyser, far redder with blood than poisonous green, gushed upwards. Then it fell, splashing back heavily, and beneath the water Pie fed. He’d more than earned it. The desert was hard on him. He dripped water wherever he walked, that was how kelpies were born—in water. They spent their lives leaving it wherever they went, which was good for Scotch and me when springs were few and far between. We had our own water source. But Pie had been meant for Lochs and rivers--the desert pushed him to the far reaches of his endurance. He needed this meal.

“Blind fool. Suicidal half-wit. Careless. Idiotic beyond all measure of the word.” Scotch was kneeling beside me. “How did you last in the courts, much less the Unseelie Court, with strategy such as that?” He used his knife, a human-made knife to cut my shirt open with one subtle slice. We had no blades of our own. Once we’d come from Under-the-Hill to the Earth that was now, all our dwarven and elvish-forged blades had disintegrated. Our rainbow-chased armor turned to dust and blew away. The magic that had made them had been undone by a human magic grimmer and blacker than we could ever comprehend, because it had torn something. It had slashed through reality itself to destroy not only their world but all the others unfortunate enough to be close to theirs. As close as Under-the Hill had been.

“I relied on my unfathomably handsome face.” I tried for a grin, but didn’t make the shadow of a smile. “He was a human. A grubbing in the mud human. A worthless adversary.”

“Excepting these worthless adversaries destroyed their world and ours,” he exhaled. “Ego and vanity, always the downfall of the Dark Court.” He pulled off his gloves and probed the bullet wound in my upper chest with his bare fingers. They felt warm against the icy chill of my skin. He already knew. From the appearance of the wound, he would. I’d seen the same wounds before and the pain—it was far worse than it should’ve been. I didn’t need to see the mercury tainted veins pulsing and striating outward, my black blood flowing far more freely than a normal bullet or blade would cause.

I said it for him. “It’s silver. There is nothing you can do, Ialach. The Wild Hunt will go on without me and I know I am the luckier for it.” Being a cowboy wasn’t as distracting now as it had been. Taunting my comrade with those stupid peasant words now would’ve been cruel. I was cruel—had been cruel. I was Unseelie, born and bred to malice. Yet when I saw true malice when the humans killed their mother, our mother, I knew the Dark Courts knew nothing of genuine cruelty. Nothing but pretenders to the throne were we. I’d saved what remained of my old self for the humans and I’d done things to the ones we’d caught—terrible yet justly deserved things--that kept some of the hungry shadows in me alive.

Ialach deserved none of that though. If I were to die, I’d die speaking as I’d spoken for most of my life. Better he have memories of our past lives than the one we lived now. “You will not die,” he said between clenched teeth. “You bastard. You will not.”

“No?” I felt the stirring of the dark amusement of old. The Seelie were so determined, so noble, so fearless, yes, in the face of death itself. So very Ialach. Still, I liked to think I had corrupted him, if only a little these past ten years. Then more waves of pain came and I shut up, intent on biting off my lower lip before humiliating myself by screaming.

“No,” he said, the determination as palpable as my pain. “When the sun sets for the final time I do not want to be alone. Even your constant ear-shattering imitation of speech is better than that.”

I focused on him to see the pretense of humor creasing the sun-creased skin around his eyes. Actual humor from a nose-in-the-air, death before dishonor, shimmering robes, white horses, constantly with the never-ending…the never-Oberon’s shriveled worthless balls—ending ethereal singing High Court Fey. I had taught him something after all. Or he had taught me something—that you can be enemies so long that you are actually closer than friends. He taught me that word as well. There was no word for friend in the Dark Court—ally, comrade-in-arms, former ally (sorry-is-that—my-dagger-in-your-back)—but not friend. I grinned, tasting my own blood, and asked, “Can you make sure I die with my boots on, pardner?”

Let him remember this moment with a laugh or a groan or, best of all, annoyance, but let it be this moment…not my death. And I was going to die. I had no doubt of that. If we had our magic left to us, I might have had a chance, but we did not. When the world died, we had felt the shake and death rattle of it in Under-the-Hill. Our home might be a step to one side on the human’s reality, but it was also a reflection of the Earth itself. Reflections are the first to go. Our home began to die as well. Those legends and fables returned to our memories as the truth they were. Many of us managed to remember the way and galloped our steeds to the world of man to see what was wrong? What could be done?