Alpha Omega 03 - Fair Game

Lizzie’s mother. But she said it without venom. Then she said, “Okay, I know that’s not fair. He knows you’re safe with us, honey. And he probably was worried he’d kill Heuter if he had to look at him, running around free as a bird. And much as I wish he could do that, it would cause more problems than it solved. He always missed the days when he could kill anyone who bothered him.”
    Anna put her hand on Charles’s arm. “Do you hear that?” she asked so urgently that everyone turned to look at her.
    Charles didn’t hear anything over the crowds of people, honking cars, and carriage-horse hooves.
    Anna glanced around, standing on her toes to see over people’s heads. There was still a crowd on the steps and hordes of reporters because serial killer plus senator’s son equaled Big Story. Charles looked around, too—and then realized that he couldn’t see any carriage horses.
    He never saw when they appeared, or where they came from, but suddenly they were just there. After a few minutes, other people saw them, too, and fell silent. Traffic stopped. Les Heuter and his reporter were still wrapped up in his statement full of lies for the national news, but Senator Heuter was facing the street and put his hand on his son’s shoulder.
    Fifty-nine black horses stood motionless on the roadway in front of the courthouse. They were tall and slender, like thoroughbred racehorses, except their manes and tails were fuller—absurdly so. Silver chains were woven through their manes, and on the chains were silver bells.
    Charles knew horses. There was no way fifty-nine horses would stand still, with neither a flick of an ear nor a twitch of their tails.
    Their saddles were white—old-fashioned saddles with high cantles and pommels, almost like a western saddle without a horn. The saddle blankets were silver. None of them wore bridles.
    Every horse bore a rider dressed in black with silver trim, as motionless as their horses. Their pants were loose-fitting, made of some lightweight fabric; their shirts were tunics embroidered with silver thread, the pattern of the stitching different for each rider. This one had flowers, this one stars, the other ivy leaves. Charles knew that therewas magic at work because he could not discern a single face, though none of them wore a mask.
    Just when the spell of their arrival started to thin, when people in the crowd started to whisper, they parted. The horses backed up and around to form two lines facing each other, and through this passage a white horse cantered slowly. As with the other horses, he wore no bridle—but this horse had no saddle, either. Just black chains strung through his mane and tail, covered in silver bells that jingled sweetly in time to the horse’s steady movement.
    On the horse was a man dressed in silver and white. In his right hand he held a silver short sword, in his left a sprig of a plant, blue green leaves, and small yellow blooms. Rue.
    The white horse stopped at the foot of the stairs and Charles noticed two things. First, the horse had bright blue eyes that caught his and studied him coolly before the horse moved on to stare at Lizzie. Second, that the horse’s rider was Lizzie’s father.
    “I told them,” he said in a clear, carrying voice, “that they should not give someone as old and powerful as I a daughter to love. That it would end badly.”
    His horse shifted, raising one front leg and pawing at the air before replacing it exactly where it had been.
    “Now we shall all live with the consequences.”
    The white horse rose on his hind legs, not rearing. This was a precise, slow levade, as balanced and graceful as any ballet movement.
    “What was done today was not justice. This man raped and tortured my daughter. When he was finished, he would have killed her. But you all see us as monsters—so frightened of the dark that you cannot see truly your own monsters among you. Very well. You have made it clear that we and our children are not citizens of this country, that we are separate. And that we will receive a separate justice that has little todo with the lovely lady who holds the balanced scales—and has everything to do with your fear.”
    The horse came down to rest on all four feet again.
    “You have made your choice. And we will all live with the consequences. Most of us. Most of us will live with the consequences.”
    The white horse started forward again, up the cement stairs. His silver-shod hooves clicked as he