A couple days later when everyone has either apologized for whatever they did, caught up on stories, or both, she goes walking on the beach with Malachy while Logan is at school. It is only a few minutes' walk from the walls, which Mal is very emphatic about keeping in vision.

"I took the night shift," he explains.

"Oh, no prob--" She slips on a loose patch and waves off Mal's arm. "No problem. Also, thanks for the effort."

"What effort?" He frowns. "Are you not expecting that people try to catch you when you slip?"

"Uh..." Whether Alima says yes or no, they are both going to be wrong, so instead she looks out to the sea.

The beach is rocky and windswept, graying with the shift in weather. It doesn't look much like the beaches of northern California; there are no gray-green shrubs clawing into the rock, and the grass is soft and filmy instead of tall and sharp. But the fog, the blue-velvet sky, the sweep of the distant cliffs? She feels like San Francisco could hide in the horizon, with no one any wiser.

She wishes it would, just a little.

"I'm sorry you found out about Owen like that," he tells her. "We try to get him to stop, but... we're not sure if he knows what it sounds like. Even for one of the old-walkers, he's stubborn."

"Mm." She takes out her iPhone, taps it once or twice to focus the camera. "Well, I've run into my share of bitter minorities, so it's not like I was completely thrown off." The Cliffs of Moher are framed in her phone, and she posts it on Facebook with the comment: Ireland: San Francisco with less traffic.

Mal laughs and shoves her. "Do you ever just look at things?"

"Occasionally," she retorts--and then their laughter curls up and hides.

They can both see the Hunter now: Wings of bone unfurl atop a blooming red cloak, searing on the other side of the cliffs. He isn't looking at them yet, but they do not know what he's waiting for.

Malachy finds her hand with one of his own, reaches into his leather jacket with another. "Head west for the gates when the trail’s up," he whispers, moving his head just enough.

"Ogma said he could pass the walls?"

"Not right away," he says, but they both know this is small comfort. His knife is out.

The Hunter lowers his head, almost like the elk his mask was taken from--there is no way they can miss a movement with those giant antlers, even one like the sink of his chin. The sockets burn even from across the cliffs, and Alima can already feel the cold sink into her marrow.

The stretch of seawater will not stop him, even as vast as it is. Alima knows this instinctively--vampires cannot cross running water, because it goes somewhere from somewhere. Rivers have boundaries, and waterfalls; even moats and channels are boundaries. But this is not a vampire searching for a meal, and the sea has no boundaries.

So Malachy starts walking them back, iron knife black in the mist. His hand is burning around hers. “Don’t run from anything immortal, unless you know you can make it,” he whispers to her. “Tell me when you can.”

They make it about two-thirds up the trail when unseen dogs bay through the mist, and Malachy has to keep her from bolting. “Don’t run! Don’t run! That’s what he wants!”

She swallows, sends a thread of magic out for any dogs or decoys; there is nothing around them, so she struggles to stay at a walk.

“Tell me when,” Mal repeats to her, edgy from the silence. “Tell me--”

The Hunter’s men burst out of the waves. Mal slips from Alima’s grasp--she hears him saying words, but can’t understand it. Not with hoofbeats pounding in the black of her terror.

“Don’t run! DON’T RUN!” He knows despite his screaming that she can’t stop now. Nobody can stop, not once they know that the Wild Hunt is bearing down on them. But he can still keep her with him, and so he grabs her hand again.

Alima is screaming now, raw and terrified like a little girl. He wonders if her throat hurts, if she even knows that noise is coming from her mouth.

The gates grow larger, but not as fast as the Wild Hunt does.

Don’t let go, Malachy wills, as much to himself as to Alima. Trip, stumble, I’ll carry you. But don’t let go, don’t let go--

The Hunter’s men rake Mal away, like so much dust from a rag.

“What?!” He struggles back up; his shoulder is out, and the only thing he can do for a moment is keep bleating, “WHAT? NO!”

She is so very small in the crush of men, churning with the futile strength of ice-water. She has no iron and her clothes are right-side out. Only the salt she swallowed is keeping them at a distance, and the running has already worked it halfway through her system.

Mal steels his shoulder to keep it from moving too much, heaves his knife into someone with his good arm. He gets batted back to the ground, even if his opponent is bleeding.

The Hunter laughs, an eerie hollow tone through the bone of his mask. “Don’t worry, boyo, they won’t touch her.”

“You can’t do anything! She’s--”

“Not your guest, or wife, or lover,” he explains patiently, like a teacher. (But even the worst teachers do not wear their kills for masks.) “You’re not bound to protect her, you just want to. You're no mage, no cunning-man. And you’re no old-walker, even if God’s men took the old ways and wrapped them in flimsy little excuses. So aside from the knife? I don’t give a shit.”

“No,” comes a voice like dark earth. “But I do.”

A man comes out from a pillar of stone. He seems familiar, but strange at the same time.

"Ogma?" Mal asks.

"I am."

It's too dark to tell Ogma's face clearly, and Mal's too much of a wreck. Either way, Ogma lifts him back to his feet and touches his shoulder. It is back in its socket like nothing happened. This does not help his confusion--Ogma O'Luain is trained in first-aid healing.

If I were one of the old-walkers, would I be able to sense gods from men? he wonders.

“You know me,” Ogma says to the Hunter. “You know I am old.”

“Age means nothing for the Folk,” the Hunter dismisses, but warily.

A chuckle, low-slung like a crouching cat. “You hesitated. But just a little.”

Mal sees Alima reach out to Ogma--did he just walk up through the crowd of Folk?--but while the old man takes her shoulder, he guides her over to Mal instead.

“I marked her,” the Hunter informs them. “I can track her through man’s walls, through iron, through salt. Save her as much as you want. Even gods can’t be everywhere.”

“And that means? Neither. Can. You.” Ogma’s voice turns vicious and primal, like obsidian arrows.

The Hunter is shocked at being outwitted--some of the cold drains out of Mal’s bones. A spurt of air through his elk-skull must be surprise before he vanishes against his will, with the Wild Hunt scrambling after him.

Mal’s knife is still in a vice-grip, and his fingers are burning from the blood of the Folk.

“Be careful with that,” Ogma says, but Mal is still unclear on which Ogma this is. “Clean your knife--not on your jacket!--and go home.”

“Should I drive her back home?” He wonders if he’s calm or just in shock. “Are you my Ogma, the cunning-man? If you’re the god, why did you--”

“You can’t drive like that.” The old man shakes his head, and does not answer his other questions. “Go home.”

So they do, shuffling through the dark and clutching each other like lifelines.

---
After Mal presses his hand to the door and they’re shuttled into the living room, Logan is there.

“Mal, what happened to your arm?” He asks. “Are you hurt?”

“Fine,” Mal tells him. It is neither a lie nor the truth; there was only enough Folk blood to blister, but he is still not fine.

“Was it the Folk?”

“Fine.” He tries to respond when Logan comes up and hugs him, and he manages to get an arm around him. Logan is warm, as most children are, and he feels a little less numb now. “We’re okay. We’re okay. We got help.” He grips Logan tighter.

“From who?” Logan asks into his shirt.

“Ogma,” he says, and starts to laugh helplessly as his brother’s warmth seeps through his shirt. “Ogma. Back to sleep, Logan, we’re both in one piece.”

Logan goes to sleep, but not before he turns the heater on full blast.

Mal grabs a blanket from the closet, drops onto the couch where Alima is quiet. He holds her with his good hand, and she slips out of her peacoat to get him closer.

“It’s cold,” she says desperately--the first thing since their flight from the Wild Hunt. Her voice is hoarse and timid. “It’s cold.” Tears spill down her face. She shakes like she’s sick, but she does not sob. She might be too scared.

"I know." He wipes her face off with his sleeve, even if more tears trail after them, and feels better when she wraps around under his shoulders. “You can talk if you want. He won't hear you.”

She doesn't, but she relaxes into his chest.

He wonders if he should take her back to Ogma-the-mortal's place. But Ogma-the-stranger said to go home, and they are. It would take a while for the Hunter to pass the town walls, so at least he can figure out what to do in the next three or four hours.

The heater is breaking through the numbness, but the light is too thin and blank. Mal hobbles to the altar, where pictures of the family are clustered, and looks at the candles. Not the red one, because the Hunter's blood-red cloak is still billowing in his head. Not the green one, too lush and summery.

White. White is always a good neutral color. He strikes a match and holds it to the wick, trying not to shake too much; after a moment or two it takes, and he brings the holder over to the table by the couch.

Mal gets back under the blanket, and they watch the candle flame flicker against the table wood. Alima's hair is more tangle than braid by now--but the smell of sweetgrass spreads.

Next Chapter: X: manhunt