“Why would the Horned God help her at all?” I asked.
Hailey shook her head. “The spell I found in the grimoire, the one she’d left to resurrect her, it called on the Horned God.”
I bit my lip. “So do you think she was bound to him all this time? Even though she returned from hell with the devil inside her?”
“It’s possible,” Hailey said. “Perhaps the Horned God never left her. I mean, we assume that she couldn’t serve both the Horned God and Lucifer, but why do we make that assumption?”
I shrugged. “It just seems like the earth gods and goddesses wouldn’t want much to do with a fallen angel who was determined to spoil whatever the god they’d rebelled against had made.”
“Well, whatever the case, she wants us to know that she’s working with the Horned God. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have attached this note to Fred’s stake.”
I nodded. “Clearly this was meant to be a threat of some kind. We should consult the Morrigan.”
“I agree,” Hailey said.
“Fuck!” Julie exclaimed. “I just built a portal to the nether, and I can’t figure out how to get back to the real world.”
“Get off the stupid game, Julie. You get back to the real world by setting down the controller and taking your eyes off the television.”
“Sorry about that,” Fred said. “Minecraft is addicting. I shouldn’t have…”
“No, you shouldn’t have.”
Technically, the three aspects of the Morrigan—Macha, Anand, and Babd—were within Julie, Hailey, and myself at all times. They were a part of us. They never left us. But they didn’t possess us. It wasn’t like they were there monitoring our every action or activity. Rather, it was like each of us had an open line to our respective person of the triple goddess and could tap into it when we desired. We could speak with our individual aspects of the Morrigan at any time, but if we wanted to access her power we had to be together, united, and also acting in accordance with the Morrigan’s wishes. In other words, it was a cooperative agreement. You don’t harness the power of a goddess like the Morrigan like some kind of deity you can control or possess. You work with the Morrigan. But you never dare put her to work for you. It just doesn’t work that way.
Julie, Hailey, and I joined hands. There wasn’t exactly an instruction manual for consulting the Morrigan, but this was an issue that required we consult the triple-goddess in her fullness. Particularly since it involved another deity. Fred, meanwhile, took Julie’s controller, swapped discs, and was enthralled by some kind of first-person, shoot-em-up game. Whatever would keep him distracted and out of our hair.
When it came to matters involving the old gods, Hailey took the lead. “Morrigan, Morrigan, three times three. Hear the words we ask of thee.”
Her energies passed between us and coalesced in a swirl of purple magic that formed a cone around us. She hadn’t appeared to us before. We’d heard her voice. Or, at least we’d heard the voice of the Morrigan’s individual aspects. But never together. Now, though, a single figure appeared. Her skin was deep purple, her hair long and black. She was strikingly beautiful. Her ears came to a point, like one might expect of an elf if such creatures existed. But many of her features were exaggerated as such. Her eyes were illuminated with a fire that seemed to burn within her skull. She was tall—a good foot taller than me—and she wore a kind of armor, an ancient form of armor that one might assume would be associated with a goddess known for battle and war.
“Sisters,” the Morrigan said, “you call upon me as one, and as one I stand to hear your plea.”
“Great Morrigan!” I said. “We have reason to believe our adversary, the one who was before united to Lucifer, has now called upon the Horned God. And we have reason to believe that she has resurrected two vampires. One was my sire, and the other… the closest thing I suppose I ever had to a lover.”
“The spirits she has evoked are not themselves. Do not be deceived by their appearance. They’ve been called to join Cernunnos, the Horned God, in the wild hunt.”
“The wild hunt?” I asked.
“Cernunnos may be called to the hunt, along with spirts who might be given him to join him, in pursuit of powerful warriors and displaced spirits of the dead.”
I bit my lip. I suppose Hailey and I might be the warriors he pursued. And Julie was a materialized deceased spirit. “So he’s been called to hunt us?”
“It is customary to announce the hunt with an initial kill.”
“They stabbed another vampire and left him at our door,” Hailey said.
“Then you have one day to flee. Cernunnos grants his prey a single day’s head start before he and his fellow spirits begin the wild hunt.”
“But why is he hunting us?” I asked.
“That is a question to ask the one who called for the hunt.”
I rolled my eyes. Of course he was hunting us, because Moll was trying to get us out of the way. I didn’t know if she still had a way to recover her union with Lucifer, or if she had the other demons at her command at all, but it was clear at the very least that eliminating us was her priority. “How do we defeat the hunter?”
“You do not defeat the hunter,” the Morrigan said. “You can only evade him.”
“And when will he quit?” I asked.
“The hunt may persist until the beginning of spring.”
“It’s December,” I said.
“You must evade the hunter for nine weeks. During such time the hunting party might grow, accumulating the spirits of others of similar kind to his hunting party.”
“Other vampires? The Horned God is gathering other vampires to hunt us? What will happen to them after the hunt?”
“They will all be given the opportunity to either be reborn through the cauldron or pass into the Otherworld.”
“So they are either resurrected somehow, or they die. If they choose resurrection, how will they return?”
“Through the cauldron of the witch who herself evoked the hunt.”
I sighed. It was clear what Moll was doing: she was using the Horned God and the wild hunt to gather all the vampires. The longer the hunt went on, the more hunters we’d have to evade. Then, they’d be given an ultimatum: either be reborn on her terms or die. What would her terms be? They’d likely emerge from the cauldron with a demon inside them. That was her agenda before—to take over the world through demon-vamps. And while her first effort was thwarted, it appeared that this was her plan B.
“Great Morrigan,” Hailey said, “can you lend us your power that we might thwart the hunt?”
“We cannot stop the hunt,” the Morrigan replied. “But my cauldron still boils for all who hear the raven’s call.”
“But is there something we can do to evade the hunters?” Julie asked.
“Run,” the Morrigan said. “All my powers, for each part that I am, remain with you. Use these powers as you must to evade your pursuers. Run, and do not delay.”
Chapter Six
I folded my arms and sat on the couch.
“So the Morrigan tells us to run our asses off, and you just drop yours on the couch?” Hailey asked.