6: Cairo

Clouds closed over the tiny light leading Lucas to my corpse. I felt painless, unhurt, barely awake, my hair streaming behind me in congealed knots. The rest of me was strapped to a tremendous dark stallion as he stampeded through the night air. The animal's muscles churned through jolting turbulence. Were these corrupt valkyries, a band of wretched soul thieves? I wondered as our wingless mounts climbed higher and higher, beyond the clouds, out into the open sky.

Was I alive, dead, teetering on the cusp of some great unknown, fluttering like a leaf caught on the edge of a drain? The back of a fat man, the one wearing the walrus skull, blocked my view of the moon, which seemed to grow bigger and brighter every second. Beside us raced other horses and their riders, leaving tiny trails of embers with every strike of their hooves.

Another strong bounce from the horse and I felt myself slide toward the glow of what looked to be Anchorage. I squeezed my eyes shut as the walrus rider tugged me into a more balanced position. It was easier to shut my eyes and pray death would take me. Whatever the hell I was-hell being a genuine possibility at this very moment in time- I still wasn't keen on heights.

I also couldn't keep my eyes shut. I had to be deep in the throes of death to be seeing a car wreck this bad, so naturally, against all instinct and common sense, I couldn't stop staring.

The walrus rider turned his head, starlight eyes unreadable. "Worry not, girl. Gravity's only unfriendly to the living."  His voice boomed from everywhere and no where inside my skull, thick with the bristle of Nordic explorers.

"Am I dead?"

"That body is."

"Oh," I said in a calm hollow tone as if he'd just informed me birds could fly.  Hearing that didn't bother me, not the way I thought it would've. I mean, not that I was expecting to be around to feel bothered by my demise. Just. . . It all made perfect sense in some frustratingly inexplicable way. I didn't even feel sad about the horror Lucas would lead Mom and Ajax come morning. I just felt neutral about my death, neutral and numb, disturbingly numb.

"Am I going to hell?" I asked.

"I would say so," he rumbled.

"But why aren't we going down? Heaven's up. Hell's—"

"Shut your eyes."

"Why?"

The moon flared, flashed like wildfire in blinding burst of energy. The night burned away from rider and steed alike. Their helms dissolved, their armor vanished, my bindings disintegrated. The horses lost their ghastly sheen, taking on the patterns of natural horses—roans and bays and chestnuts and more—but the riders....

They became human.  Except for the walrus man, the midnight cavalry were themselves tall and muscular, as to be expected from a horde of warriors, but they were no where near the armored giants they'd been.

Worse still, they were naked. Each bore a single tattoo on their right shoulders: a black inked skull of the animal whose helm they wore.

The horses' hooves smashed onto sunburned plains. The shifted momentum from sky to land-based running  sent me, a doe unchained, flying.

I sat up naked in the brittle grass, warmed by green sun. Not sliced or bruised or even scarred—well, my hands were scraped now and my ass hurt, but other than that my body I was a genuine medical miracle.

The riders had stopped and dismounted. A good number of them laughed at me.

I wished they were all still creepy skeleton lords. It's one thing to have soulless flaming pits for eyes focused on your breasts; it somehow feels a lot more judgmental with thirty odd pairs of human ones involved. My hair a sorry curtain to hide behind, I hugged my front against the big buckskin I'd been previously tied to. The horse, for his part, kept reasonably still for having a nervous woman clinging to him.

Bare skin pressed against the length of my body.

"Now you see us for what we are," whispered a silky voice near my ear. This one didn't ring inside my skull. Maybe whatever supernatural magic had stripped them of their armor had also taken their ability to mind-speak.

I pressed my face into the stallion's sweaty flank.  "So what did I see before? Monsters? Because you're still acting like them."

A bony hand pulled its way through my hair. Fingernails teased the back of my neck, drawing my hair back. "Would a monster caress you?" he asked.

I whirled and scratched him.

The man caught my hand before I struck again. Ire flashed in his emerald eyes. The red marks from my nails vanished from his chest in the time it took me to gasp. He was more beautiful than handsome, a delicate composition of lean muscles and long limbs complimented by graceful, pointed facial features.

The walrus rider wrenched me free with a sharp, "Akta, enough!" He moved before me, a human shield of rippling mass of fat and muscle. "We've been blessed with a bountiful harvest. Savor the beauty of the apple before you bite into it."

The first man stared him down a tense moment, then moved on. Inked on his shoulder was a large stag's head.

"Let's get you some clothes, lass," the walrus continued over his shoulder. "You come into the world naked, you leave it the same. Bit unfortunate if you ask me, not that anyone does."

I wasn't sure how benevolent the walrus rider was, but my bearded rescuer (I used that term loosely) had a couple hundred pounds on stag man Akta over there, so I'd try and play nice with my temporary ally.

Okay, not too nice.  He'd just likened me to a piece of fruit and his ilk had run me through with a sword. The thought of my death caught me running my hand over my stomach, wondering how it was possible to feel so little for a literally life-changing event. I was embarrassed by a horde of naked men, but couldn't shed a tear over dying? Was I in shock?

"Your cloak, Cairo," the walrus rider continued, gesturing at another man, the only one who hadn't laughed, the only one more interested in the state of his dress than the shape of my ass. He, at least, was wearing pants.

"I don't want a cloak," I said in a fit of instant jealousy. "I want pants."

The stag leering from a short distance away was lean and muscular, green-eyed with sandy brown hair, and as graceful as his namesake if not several thousand times more vicious.

But this man, Cairo, possessed a masculine allure, that rugged-but-groomed look of a man plucked from a camping advertisement in any given sporting magazine. He moved with the haughty je ne sais quoi of a cat, tan muscle and elegance accented in every step. Steel grey eyes locked on the walrus rider. Before he'd turned around I glimpsed the black ink of a smilodon skull.

"It'll stink like a human," he hissed, completely ignoring me.

I peeped around the Walrus to frown at him. "Says the human."

He looks as if seeing me for the first time and returns the frown. "The result of a curse. I am not-"

I shrugged. "You know what they say, if it looks like a duck, acts like a duck..."

"It's a curse."

"Give her the goddamned pelt, Cairo," the walrus rider grunted. Of all the men, he seemed least murderous, and oddly was the only one out of shape and beyond his early fifties. His beard was orange-red and his head completely bald. Scars covered his body.

Cairo ran a hand through his short, tawny hair. Above us, a winged lizard circled through the sky. "Bring her to the keep resplendent in fur and they'll tear her apart. You dare ruin a maiden before the Hunt?"

The Walrus didn't back down. "The eight ounce filet standing behind me knocked you from your horse. You've offered more in challenge to the men who've tried ta do that."

Cairo brought a finger to his lips and whistled.

The wolf, monstrously huge but no longer a self-contained volcano, bounded to his side. A pack of similar creatures emerged from the grasses. Each carried a small sack of clothes: tunics and breeches the riders slipped on. Cairo's wolf trotted to me. He sniffed my hand and whined.

"You did this to me," I hissed, ignoring the snout trying to get me to pet him. The wolf grumble-yawned and reclined on its haunches.

"I feel the same," Cairo said. His voice held a charming tone and thankfully not one drop of power of me. His body on the other hand, well, I  tried ignoring that. I'd drawn a lot of men in my lifetime; learning anatomy sort of came with being an artist. When you've seen as many naked men as I have, you tend to appreciate the finer forms in life. Afterlife, as it were.

He dressed himself first, told me curtly there weren't extra pants and no, I couldn't trade for his, then unfolded a glistening, white fur cloak. The fur itself was about two inches long and incredibly plush, silky to the touch with a rainbow shine.

"You were gonna wear that?" I asked, laughing. "Gonna roll around with kittens, too?"

Tail thumping the grass, the wolf let out a short bark of what I imagined was laughter.

Cairo draped the cloak over my shoulders. "This is my good Marl you're about to ruin."

"Slay another one." The Walrus twined a finger through his mustache thoughtfully. "And put the lass up on your horse this time. Haven't had one of her blood in centuries. Hunt hasn't begun and Akta's breathing down her neck."

"Quite the horny devil, isn't he?"

The Walrus erupted in laughter. Cairo allowed himself a half-smile that faded as he turned toward the other demons.

I pulled the warm furs around my body and reluctantly followed Cairo to his horse. I would've preferred climbing on solo, but the horse was a beautiful draft cross and didn't have a saddle.  Frowning, I turned toward the man and asked him for a hand. He looked about as enthused as I felt at the thought of my killer touching me.

"What's special about my blood?" I asked him. "Am I here because of it?"

"Yes."

I was settled on the horse and he still had said another word, so I gave his shoulder a little nudge as he moved the cloak carefully out of his way. "This is the part where you expand your answer."

"Have you ever wondered who your father was, Tay Wilson?" he countered. He jumped up behind me, tried very hard not to touch any part of me he didn't have to, and kicked the stallion in gear.

I looked back at him. "You know my name?"

"The best hunters know their prey," Cairo said, fidgeting and clearly not any happier than I was to share a ride.

"So I was being stalked," I muttered. "Assholes."

"There's power in names, Tay Wilson," the walrus rider huffed on his way past us. "You'd do best to remember that; and take care not to call folks the first word to roll off your tongue."

"Oh, it's never the first word. I put some thought into it."

"Some," came Cairo's unimpressed echo. "Haven't heard much thought from you yet."

I elbowed him, twisted around toward the walrus rider. "Hey, what's your name?"

The walrus rider urged his horse on ahead.

"Goo goo g'joob, Mr. Walrus," I muttered. "I'll just add that to my list of inquiries. I'm sure everything will be answered by the hotel concierge."

A hand bobbed the side of my head. "Respect your elders."

I glared at Cairo. "You two are pretty chummy for a couple of sharks. You two got some kinda weird mentor/student relationship going on?"

"Watch your tongue, halfbreed."

An immense, sapphire castle loomed across scorched plains. The green sunlight lent a sinister tint to its twisted towers and long ramparts. I drew the cloak tighter around my shoulders as the horses, flanked by wolves, galloped toward it.