Last Car to Annwn Station (11 page)

She looked down at her wounds. Her coat was soaked with blood, completely ruined, but she could find no evidence that she was still bleeding. Mae unbuttoned her coat and shrugged out of it, being slow and careful in case she ripped or tore something.

The bullet had gone in through her stomach; that was obvious by the location of all the blood. Shivering from the cold and frightened expectation, Mae lifted the bottom of her dark blue sweater. The wound looked bad but was no longer bleeding. She checked her arm where the hound had bitten her, pulling back the sleeve. One of the creature’s long canines had punctured her arm, but as with the bullet wound, there was no active bleeding. This did nothing to set Mae’s mind at ease about her situation.

“Hello, Maeve Kathleen Malveaux.”

Mae turned and looked into the eyes of Death. He was dressed in a tailored business suit, complete with a deep maroon tie.

She scrambled to her feet, causing the hounds to come to attention as well. “Death.”

“Welcome to Annwn, Maeve.”

Her ponytail had come loose at some point, and she brushed the hair out of her eyes with a blood-covered hand. “No one calls me Maeve. I’m just Mae.”

“As you wish.”

She looked around. “So, this is Annwn.” Mae paused and frowned. She turned back to Death. “Would you care to explain why I’m in the mythological Welsh afterlife?”

“The hounds brought you here. With their pack leader dead and their Master incapacitated, they had no direction. They looked deep into their memories for guidance and brought you to this place.”

“Then—am I dead?”

Death looked down at her. “Not yet.”

Mae looked around and sighed. The landscape was all frozen winter. Snow fell and drifted on the breeze, trees were barren and sagging with large icicles. There were no signs of life, or at least of anything animated. “This looks like a miserable place to spend eternity.”

“It was not always so, Mae. Once, this was a place of eternal youth, free of disease. Once, this was a place of abundance where the dead were rewarded with a pleasing and painless afterlife. It was a splendid place for the souls of the departed to rest while awaiting rebirth.”

“What happened?”

“The death of Bebhinn.”

Death began to walk forward, toward the frozen trees. Mae fell into step next to him. Around them the hounds spread out, flanking Mae and her companion. As they drew nearer the frozen forest, Mae could see how each tree was thick with ice, encased in a silver embrace.

Mae frowned. “I thought Bebhinn was Irish.”

“Perhaps she was Irish or Welsh. Perhaps she was a goddess of the Underworld and of pleasure. Perhaps she was a giantess, or the queen of the fae, or even a mortal Viking princess. Those are imposed labels. They are not important. What
is
important is that she was a daughter.”

Mae searched her memory. It had been years since the two mythology classes she took in college. Even longer since she had heard the stories her father told her as a child. Still, she was willing to hazard a guess.

“Arawn had a daughter? Bebhinn was the king of the Underword’s child?”

Death smiled down at her as they walked through the icy landscape. “Not Arawn, but the later Lord of Annwn, Gwynn ap Nudd.”

Mae nodded. She remembered a bit about Gwynn ap Nudd. Master of the Wild Hunt, king of the Tylwyth Teg, as the Welsh fae were called. At some point he became ruler of the Underworld, though Mae did not know the circumstances. She had not realized he was also a father. She gestured at the world around her. “Is this caused by his grief?”

“Indirectly. He fell into grief and began to let his duties go. Like the Tylwyth Teg fae of which he was lord, Gwynn was prone to melancholy. His grief weakened the Fair Ones, making them vulnerable to outside manipulation. Without their Lord and Champion, they were at risk of being subjugated by stronger forces.”

Mae and Death entered the frozen forest, crossing through the tree line. Mae looked closely at the hanging icicles. They were creatures. There were small, brown men and tiny, golden-haired women. Winged creatures hung like Christmas ornaments from the white branches. There were others on the ground, at the base of the trees—white cattle and hunched, hag-like women, encased in clear boulders of ice. Mae looked closer. There were human figures scattered among the fantastical creatures.

“Like Hodgins?” she asked.

Death nodded. “The children of the mortal world took advantage of the son of Nudd’s weakness, promising to retrieve his child’s spirit and return her to his forest. They corrupted him with their lies and bound him to their will. He was the first to fall.”

Mae looked up at Death in confusion. “But if Bebhinn was dead, wouldn’t her spirit dwell in Annwn anyway?”

Death gave Mae a sad look. “Remember Mae, for the departed to reach the realm of Annwn, Gwynn ap Nudd was forced to ride out with his hounds and collect the spirit.”

“He couldn’t collect his own daughter,” Mae whispered.

“To do so would have been to admit the death of his only child.”

“But—but she would be reborn again, right?”

“Yes, Mae. Bebhinn would have, as any spirit in Annwn, been reborn to another life after a time. But she would have no longer been Bebhinn. Her father could not allow her uniqueness to be lost. Like any parent, when faced with the death of his child, he could not give her up willingly.”

They stopped in front of a large oak tree. Encased in the clear ice was a figure upon a rough-hewn throne that seemed to grow from the tree itself. Mae walked closer, placing a hand on the ice. It was a man wearing antlers, or at least an antlered helmet. His clothing was the rough leathers and furs of a hunter. A bow and spear was near his right hand, a horn around his neck. At his feet lay two frozen white hounds, creatures twice the size of any C
n Annwn Mae had encountered.

She looked through the ice at the man’s face. His cheeks were shrunken, his hair unkempt. His open eyes were fields of stars at midnight

Mae turned to Death, who stood a few feet away, watching her carefully. Several things clicked together in her mind. Gwynn ap Nudd, Thantos, Anubis, the Valkyries, the archangel Gabriel, Charon, the grim reaper.

Death.

They were incarnations of the same concept, a being who collected souls and carried them to the appropriate afterlife.

“I’m sorry,” Mae said. “What happened to her?”

Death stared at her for several moments. Mae waited patiently.

“I do not know. I suspect Bebhinn’s essence roams lost, and shall do so until her father rides out and brings her home to Annwn.”

Mae shook her head. It was a sad tale, though she was not sure how it pertained to her situation. She decided to bring the conversation back to the human mages and the hounds. That, she felt, was where the answers to her questions lay.

“You said Gwynn was the first to fall. I see all these others imprisoned in ice. What’s happening to this place?”

Death walked closer to Mae, standing so close she could feel him, though their bodies did not touch.

“William Jefferson Hodgins and his allies have bound the son of Nudd to their will. They are draining his power, draining the spark of his existence from his physical form and his domain for their own ends. As they siphon off more and more of the magic of Annwn, the landscape changes, becomes the opposite of what it should be. The creatures that dwell here are as trapped as their master. But the power, the magic, is not limitless, and the mortal mages have nearly exhausted the energies of this place, so they have begun to seek elsewhere for power.”

“Are they trying to take over another spirit world?”

Death smiled. It was the kind of smile you did not want aimed in your direction. “No. This was a unique set of circumstances. They shall not catch another of us in this manner. Instead they send the hounds out to hunt down any of the Tylwyth Teg fae who still dwell in mortal. When they find an enclave of the Fair Ones, they move into their area and begin capturing them, bringing them here to drain their small magics and life forces. A large enough group of Tylwyth Teg can take years to hunt down.”

“The mortal mages, Hodgins and his people, are they using the magic to live forever? To gain wealth? To take over the world? I mean, what exactly are they doing with all that power? And how long has this been going on?”

“These mages have been creating havoc for centuries. As for what they do with the power they steal, it is the same that any mortal does with power, be it magical, physical or political. They extend their lives. They force their desires and their influence on anything weaker than they.”

Death paused and stepped even closer to Mae. She took an involuntary step backward. “They cannot, however, live forever. They are able to extend their mortal span past the norm, but in the end, they are still mortal. Accidents, sudden violence, any number of things can cause their demise.” Death flashed Mae a wicked little smile. “I admit to taking an unseemly bit of pleasure when I come for one of them.”

Mae nodded. It was all making sense to her, and if she could get back to the mortal world, she would be better armed to fight her opponent. Assuming that she was even still alive. There was one more thing she needed to know.

“Why am I still here? I understand that this is the default place the hounds bring their prey, but I’m not a faerie creature. I don’t have any magic for these mortal mages to strip.”

Death smiled at her. It was not a sinister smile, or a sad smile. It was the kind of smile that said, “I know something you don’t.” It was the kind of smile that made Mae wonder if she had missed something important during the conversation. It was the kind of smile that made her realize she might not have asked the right question, and time was up.

“I swear to you, Maeve Kathleen Malveaux, you are indeed in the correct place. It is time for you to begin the next part of your journey.”

Mae opened her mouth to protest. Before the words could spill over her lips, Death reached out with his right hand and gently, tenderly, brushed his fingers across her cheek.

Mae’s perceptions of the world around her turned bright, too bright to bear, for what might have been a heartbeat. There was a sudden explosion of sounds and smells and sights and tactile sensations and tastes on her tongue.

She felt her body rising from the ground, being lifted up by two strong hands. Mae thought she might have laughed.

There was a sharp pain in her chest.

Maeve Kathleen Malveaux’s senses were plunged into a world of freezing cold and darkness.

Jill sighed as she rode the elevator down. Her intention to leave work early had evaporated through no fault of her own. At least she had not been held late.

She struggled through the snow to the train platform, but found herself facing not the light rail train, but a bus with the number fifty-five on its front parked on the street next to the tracks. She climbed aboard and settled into a seat near the front.

The bus stopped at Nicollet, a block before Hennepin Avenue, the driver telling people there was a “problem” at Fifth Street Station and that they should catch their transfers at Seventh. Jill disembarked with the rest of the passengers and struggled through the snow to Hennepin.

The light rail train sat at Fifth Street Station, surrounded by police cars. The street was closed past Hennepin and the police were waving people away from the scene. Jill quickened her pace, crossing Hennepin at Seventh just as her bus pulled up to the covered stop.