Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six)

Atticus to us. He changed my life forever—for the better—and I can never repay the debt I owe him. All I can do is honor his memory by protecting the earth
. I paused, confronted by the impossibility of doing justice to my memories of him, so I simply ended with,
I loved him and will think of him every day, no matter how long I live
.
    I sobbed once and then did my best to weep silently so that Oberon would know it was his turn. He whined, indecisive, before he gave form to his thoughts.
     Oberon said.
    I petted Oberon and stood shakily. I sniffled and looked up at the moon. Its cold light gave me no comfort. It only reminded me of Artemis and Diana. I cast my eyes back down to the ground and shook my head. There had been no vampires waiting for us. Only a sniper, probably in their employ, determined to wipe out the last of the Druids. And even the vampires were being directed by some shadowy figure in Tír na nÓg.
    I really need to run now. I need to get out of here
.
    
    I shifted to a horse and found Scáthmhaide where I’d dropped it. Then I lit out for the Netherlands with Oberon as if we could somehow catch up with what we’d lost, as if the desolation we felt could be left behind and wouldn’t grow inside us with every mile.

Chapter 11

    A pair of horns blast behind me, I am chilled with a premonition of my own death, and I wish for the thousandth time that Atticus were here. Did he find horns to be harbingers of death and sorrow? I cannot ever ask him now.
    Instead of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” I always hear “Taps” at funerals, and somehow the collective sorrow of so many final farewells builds in my mind, a great Jungian unconscious flood of tears and roses thrown on caskets and folded flags given to widows by a pair of crisp white gloves. That horn that plays in the John Williams score after Luke Skywalker finds the smoking ruins of his aunt and uncle—such a mournful sound, full and hollow at the same time, a surfeit of emptiness. And the call to charge never rouses me but rather signals that someone is going to die a violent death soon—or, if it starts a race or contest, it means there can be only one victor.
    The horns that blasted behind me were dim, nasal, and stuffy sounds that nevertheless meant the goddesses were gaining on us, and they weighted down my legs, which were already straining, not from fatigue but from dolor. These were the sounds of horns and hunting that,according to myth, brought Actaeon to Diana as she was bathing. He’d been lost in the woods and thought that by following the sounds of horns he’d be saved. But Diana had turned him into a stag and set her hounds on him instead. Those horns had called him to his death.
    Is she still sounding the same horn all these centuries later?
    And is there anything more horrifying to the hunted than the sound of horns? Even the baying of the hounds is not so terrible; they are animals and following their instinct and training. But the murderous intellect behind the horn, the creature coldly orchestrating my doom—that’s what makes me feel like prey and sets icy wings of fear fluttering inside my throat.
    I probably would have given up already if it weren’t for Oberon. And he is probably thinking the same thing regarding me. In truth, we are running only because Atticus would have wanted us to. I think we are only marginally more scared than we are depressed, and we aren’t running as fast as we had been before. The urgency is gone. I don’t see how I can survive this if Atticus and the Morrigan couldn’t. The powers of a Druid are awesome, but the