Blood Horn: Chapter 32

The Wrath of Man Made Monstrous

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CHAPTER 32

Aon Sverd walked south.

To a sunny, mild land.

Over an emerald vineyard.

To a sprawling masseria where a dozen children played.

Eamon and Oscar were silver with age, precious as gold. They sat on a bench near a dusty patch of ground, soil-brown eyes crinkled with laughter. Their wives and children circled them as their grandchildren kicked a ball.

Even from this distance, Aon could hear their joy.

A husky chuckle.

A barked guffaw.

The groans and snorts of a joke gone wrong.

They were happy.

And old.

And had lived well with little hardship, suffering, or pain.

Now, at the end, they slowed, and goodbye was beautiful as it lodged in his throat. He couldn’t tell them. Couldn’t show himself. Not like this. Not changed and cursed again. It was one of the goddess’s rules, and he would obey her always.

With tears in his steel-cut, hellfire eyes, Aon trudged closer. Just one hoofstep. Then two. One more minute to see the blessing of his curse, the gift of his demise.

A rock hit his foreleg.

Not a rock.

A grave.

He lowered his flayed muzzle. His now-pale mane tickled the headstone and smeared it with blood—his blood. The Devil’s Horn between his brows tapped the grave with a dissonant clang. He lifted his snout, and the cutlass with it, to read the inscription.

Qui giace Orsa Biasio. Amata madre. Moglie temuta. Vedova per scelta.

Here lies Orsa Biasio. Beloved mother. Feared wife. Widow by choice.

He choked back a sob. His skinless body spasmed with grief. He was sturdier now, squat and blocky instead of sharp and scrawny. The two halves of who he had been—the Sword and the Horn—merged with this new curse. He was still a weapon inside and out—one must become a weapon to live forever—but he was also a man. The shift was jarring. He had ceded his humanity long ago, yet it lingered in the background, seeping into his gouged face and toenail-crusted hooves, into his knobby spine and feather-soft tail.

“Moccio!” a grandchild shouted.

Aon snapped his head toward the bell-like call. A teenage girl tagged a young boy. He yelped and giggled, then made to chase her, but she was fast. He turned his attention to another, a tiny girl hiding behind Eamon’s back.

“Moccio!” the young boy said as he tagged the second girl. She also giggled, then the chase began again.

Orsa had turned him into a game.

Had given him a legacy.

An immortality unbound by pain.

More tears. More choked sobs. Orsa always melted his armor.

Even in death.

He smiled at her headstone. An equine smile, no longer lined with razor teeth. “Thank you,” he said, his voice crushed glass again. “Thank you, my friend, for everything.”

The goddess appeared in a whirl of dead grass and crumpled leaves. “I kept my word, Aon, and will continue to do so,” she whispered behind him. “Now, we have work to do.”

Work. He had spent decades doing her grotesque work. Sawing through necks. Ripping out throats. Knotting veins and arteries into nooses and cuffs. The Morrigan had yanked his invisible leash toward every would-be mass murderer, and he’d slaughtered them gladly, knowing their blood bought his family’s peace. She would hurt him afterward. Would spike him with knives. Would tear out his heart and lungs with her fangs, then laugh as he died and revived. His pain fed her, and her strength nourished Scotland. She was a cruel master, yet fair, and they had learned to tolerate each other.

The Morrigan wrenched his mental tether. Aon stumbled toward her. The realm split, a slash of stars, a glittering darkness that beckoned him forward. He plodded toward the wound in the world. Night hissed before him, whispering in languages long dead and forgotten.

Before he plunged into the cosmic pool, he glanced over his shoulder one last time.

At Eamon and Oscar.

At their wives.

At their children.

At their grandchildren.

And nodded.

He had done little right in his life, and less good, except for them. The twins would die, but in a gentle way. Their lives had been full, and their deaths would be remembered.

Though Aon was the Devil’s Horn, he was also a symbol of healing, of rebirth, of two orphaned boys lost in the woods who had found him newly revived by a riverside. He remembered their tiny shadows under the flame-blue sky, their tense features twisted beneath the birch canopy, and sighed.

They were no longer those boys.

And he was no longer that beast.

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