All the blood was rushing to his head, which the monstrous creature repeatedly slammed into the rock. Sonny tried to protect himself with his arms, but the ogre continued to hurl him about. Sonny cursed himself, bouncing painfully off another rock. He was about to be mashed to a pulp by an ogre, and Kelley would probably never even know what fate had ultimately befallen him.
Not that she’d even care.
“Carys, please!” Sonny heard Neerya pleading from her hiding place. “Help him!”
He hoped the naiad could plead his case effectively before his skull cracked like an egg on the wall of the cavern, but it didn’t seem likely. This was going to be a really stupid way to die.
Chapter IV
Wings spread wide, the kestrel drifted east with the wet, stinging rain. Far below her, the sparkle and sharp edges of the city gave way to a wide, winding ribbon of dusky blue-gray. The wind had carried her out over the East River, far from Sonny’s penthouse. Far from the park and Tyff’s Upper East Side apartment and everything familiar and comforting. Weary, chilled, barely held aloft by unfamiliar wings, the Faerie falcon peered sideways, looking downward, seeking a safe place to land. But all she saw was water. She was lost.
Just as she was about to falter, the kestrel spotted a tawny, swift-moving blur skimming the surface of the river below. Another bird. An owl. It glided on wide wings, silent as a ghost. Staying behind and above, trailing in the owl’s flight path, she followed it toward the dark, humped shape of an island that suddenly loomed up in front of them. Her kestrel’s eyes could make out human-built structures, but their angles were softened, the outlines blurred as though a charcoal drawing had been smudged by an enormous hand. And no lights. She could see the dark spaces where windows divided the brick walls, but her instincts told her that the place was long deserted. A huge old crane support, once used for offloading coal from barges but now reduced to its bare scaffolding, stood like a massive gate at the end of a rotted pier. The tawny owl flew between its uprights and on toward the buildings beyond.
Suddenly, every one of the kestrel’s nerve endings was screaming at her to turn back.
A powerful air of foreboding hung about the entire place, but, exhausted and frightened, she had no choice and so followed reluctantly in the owl’s wake. Once above the island, the kestrel wheeled through the air, seeking a place to rest and hide. She circled a crumbling smokestack, but her instincts told her that she would be better hidden by the foliage below. The owl had floated silently down toward the center of the tiny island, where the long-forgotten buildings squatted among overgrown trees.
The kestrel decided she would not venture so far inland, to the places where the thick-stemmed vines crept inexorably up the crumbling walls and nightshade twisted elegantly around rusting window bars. . . . Instead, she banked and flew toward a clearing—the desolate remains of what had once been a tennis court. It was edged with a tangled thicket of spiky hawthorn that had thrust up through the asphalt. The dense branches promised refuge—she was just small enough to duck inside the brake, past the razor-sharp thorns. Once hunched safely in the crook of a branch, she tucked her head under her wing and drifted into uneasy, exhausted sleep as the late day darkened around her.
When she awoke, the rain had abated. The deep night held her firmly in its grasp.
The kestrel panicked briefly. Dream! Not a dream! But the feeling passed quickly, and she blinked and cocked her head from side to side, taking in her surroundings. Sights and smells and sounds washed over her; tangible things—things she could make sense of.
She was aware of the fact that this was not the way she usually felt—not the way she usually was. But she was also aware—and again, this was a vague, instinctual, animal awareness—that she felt better this way. Less angry. Less sorrowful. Less human.
You were never really human anyway. . . . The kestrel shook her head. The silent-sounds coming from inside her skull were distracting. They were not real. Not relevant.
Her falcon eyesight was keen in the darkness, as was her hearing. Keen enough to discern the clattering of horse’s hooves on the rotted planking beneath the coal-dock arch and the sound, moments later, of wheels spinning on the gravel of the road beyond. A large black shape moved swiftly past her hiding place—she only caught a glimpse of it before it disappeared into the trees beyond—but it gave her an unaccountable shiver. In the distance, there was a sudden surge of light. And sound. Music. Then everything went eerily silent again. It was as if a door had opened somewhere and then abruptly shut.
Nervous, the kestrel ruffled her wings.
Time passed while she sat, hunched on the branch and shivering. The scent of the coming morning seasoned the air. Close by, she could hear the murmur of the river. All around her, bare branches and young leaves rattled and rustled in the breeze that followed the storm, whispering tree secrets to one another. . . .
When the air grew still, the trees continued to murmur and sigh. She turned her feathered head and listened. There was excitement among the trees. Their whispers were almost shouts now. At least, to her.
All around where the kestrel perched, leaves and shoots suddenly began to burst open and unfurl—eager . . . grasping . . . their growth rate accelerated, unnatural—spreading out under the moonlight as if it were a blazing noonday sun.
The kestrel shifted on the branch, clutching tightly with her taloned feet. She could feel the sap, like blood flowing through veins, pulsing through the hawthorn stems. The leaves on her branch rustled, too, ignoring the creature that huddled in their midst. To them—to this tree—she was just a bird. But she was a bird who faintly remembered other trees. Angry trees. Green and growing things harnessed by a malevolent will that sought to harm her.
She remembered the Green Magick.
She listened fiercely now.
Elm and oak creaked and groaned at one another. Vines and creepers hissed in voices like snakes. “Soon,” they all seemed to say. And, “Ours . . .”
Other voices joined the rising cacophony, from every corner of the island, sibilant and thrumming; they filled the black air.
“He lives yet.”
“There is need.”
“Find the Green Magick. . . . Find its Bearer. . . .”
The rustling grew to a roaring.
“Take the Magick from the Bearer’s veins. Water the ground with blood. . . .”
Every instinct screamed danger at her, and before she even knew what she was doing, she found herself tumbling through the air again, wings beating frantically, carrying her back across the river toward Manhattan.
Away from the strange island with its ghostly sights.
Away from its hungry, whispering trees.
* * *
Fennrys found her in the park, huddled in the predawn darkness beneath a yew tree in a grove in the Shakespeare Garden . . . in the place where she had seen Sonny for the very first time.
Kelley had shifted back into her human shape again after she had made her way to that familiar grove. Or, rather, her Fae shape.
Whatever, she thought.
She didn’t know how she’d done it, but at least she was “Kelley” again. The wild magick that had transformed her so unexpectedly was tucked away once more, stashed somewhere deep down inside, where it would remain. At least . . . until the next time she lost control.
Thank goodness my clothes transformed along with me, she thought, grateful for small mercies.
When Fennrys stepped out of the shadows and headed straight toward her, Kelley was somehow unsurprised. Hunting, tracking—it was as natural as breathing to him.
Silently, Fennrys held out Kelley’s clover charm, dangling from the fingers of one hand. His other arm he held protectively against his chest; the torn sleeve of his shirt was stained brown with dried blood, and his wrist was bandaged.
The bloodstains gave Kelley a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She could remember vividly the sensation of her hooked talons rending Fenn’s clothing and flesh.
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“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Not your fault.”
Kelley shook her head. “It was. I did that.”
“And you were thinking rationally at the time, I’m sure,” Fennrys said, his mouth quirked in a mocking grin. “All those big, complicated Kelley thoughts suddenly crammed into that tiny wee bird brain.”
“I . . . okay.” Kelley smiled reluctantly as Fenn sank down beside her. He had a point. “You’re right. I have no idea what I was thinking. I don’t even know what happened. I don’t know how I did that, Fenn.”
“You’re the heir to two thrones of Faerie, Kelley. There’s very little you can’t do.” He gestured with the dangling necklace again. It glimmered in the moonlight and she reached for it this time, slipping the silver chain around her throat and fastening the catch. Instantly, she felt the surging tide of magicks in her blood quieting, receding into the equivalent of background noise. She hugged her knees to her chest and rested her forehead on her arms, breathing the wet air slowly.
Fennrys laid his good arm tentatively across her shoulders. Coming from Fenn, the unaccustomed comforting gesture made Kelley realize just how sorry a state she must appear to be in.
“You’ve had quite a little adventure,” he said, almost as if he’d read her thoughts. “Haven’t you?”
“I guess so. . . .”
“Where did you go?” he asked.
Kelley squeezed her eyes shut, sifting through the jumbled, fragmented impressions left behind in her brain. “I’m not sure. I don’t really remember specifics—not in any sort of way I can make sense of. It’s all . . . like you said.”
“How’s that?”
“Bird-brainy. Kind of like a nightmare. I’m not even sure where I was or what I saw, really.”
She shivered at the memory of fleeting, whispered voices and half-glimpsed sights. Half of what she “remembered” she was sure was just her own temporarily addled mind mashing up the last few days into a strange, incomprehensible dream/memory soup.
“How did you know where to find me?” she asked. “I don’t even know how I wound up here.”
“Birds are creatures of habit with strong homing instincts,” he said matter-of-factly. As if he spoke of the migratory patterns of actual birds and not of a Faerie girl in a feathered guise tumbling around in the skies over Manhattan. “They’ll always find their way back to somewhere safe. Familiar. This park calls to you. So I figured you’d wind up somewhere near here eventually—even if it was only because you were being true to your kestrel nature.”
“Up until now, I didn’t even know I had one.”
“Yeah, well. Welcome to the life of a High Fae.” Fennrys patted her shoulder. “Although I gotta say, even with your pedigree, shape-shifting is pretty elevated stuff, you know.”
“Oh. Yay, me,” Kelley cheered without enthusiasm. She imagined that, under other circumstances, she might’ve been tickled pink by her newfound talent.
Fennrys seemed to think it was impressive, at any rate. “You should be proud of your abilities,” he said.
Kelley shrugged. “I guess. I remember my . . . I remember seeing Mabh turn herself into a raven once. And Auberon . . .” She thought about her father, his tall, regal shape blurring like smoke and a falcon taking flight in his place, soaring off through the Samhain night with Mabh’s infernal bronze war horn clutched in his talons. That was the night when he’d stripped Kelley’s Unseelie powers from her and called the Wild Hunt to action with the war horn. “My father can become a falcon, too. A big one . . .”
“I wouldn’t know,” Fennrys said. “We’re not exactly pals.”
Kelley turned her face so that she could look at him. “But you work for him.”
“You know the deal, Kelley.” Fennrys frowned down at her.
But—she noticed—he didn’t move his arm from around her shoulders.
“Your dear old dad didn’t give me much choice. I’m not saying he was wrong about making me a Janus Guard. Obviously, I have a talent for it. And a taste. It suits me and I have no regrets, but, in reality, I don’t—well, I didn’t—have a viable option.”
“And do you now?”
“Uh, no . . . no.” Then Fennrys did slide his arm away. His brow creased even more deeply and he adjusted the bandage around his other wrist. “That’s not really what I meant. Just that—it would have been nice to have been asked, you know? Instead of told what my destiny was. But that’s not really the lot of changelings, is it? You folk don’t really give much thought to the wishes and desires of us mere mortals.”
“I’m not like that, Fenn. I’m not like them.”
Fenn was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Really?”
Kelley stiffened in anger at the sudden shift in the tone of his voice. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
The Wolf sat toying with the edge of his bandage for a moment and then raised his eyes to meet hers. His voice was very quiet as he said, “I mean you and that Siren. Whatsername. Tinkering about in Sonny’s mind. Because that’s what you were doing, wasn’t it?”
“No.”
Fenn stared at her.
“Yes. But it’s not like that. And as far as the whole ‘mere mortal’ thing goes, Sonny isn’t. Not exactly.”
“Yah.” Fenn snorted. “I sorta noticed that when he blasted me through a hundred feet of thin air and a rather thick plate-glass window.”
“He didn’t mean to.”
“Of course he did.”
“Fenn—you’re wrong. You said yourself once that it’s not in Sonny’s nature to be vicious. That he doesn’t have the capacity to be cruel.”
“And you said that you thought he might have changed,” Fennrys countered. “I think, upon reflection, that you might have had a valid point. It doesn’t matter. Whatever Irish was doing in that theater . . . from what I saw, he was being true to his nature, Kelley. Wasn’t he?”
Kelley didn’t answer.
Fenn’s words held more than a grain of truth. Back in the theater—before the attack, before the Avalon burned—Kelley had stumbled upon a conversation that she was not meant to hear. A conversation between her mother and Herne the Hunter.
What Kelley had learned was that Sonny was no regular mortal taken by the Fae on a whim. Sonny was, in fact, possessed of a truly immense power. Within him resided the legacy of the Greenman: a pure, potent magick passed on to Herne as the Greenman lay dying. And then passed on from Herne to his child begotten of a mortal woman—to Sonny Flannery. By a cruel trick of Fate, Mabh’s own dark power had also been transmitted through Herne to Sonny. It made Sonny incredibly powerful but also rendered him extremely susceptible to having that power corrupted. It made him vulnerable. It also made him hunted. The Greenman had been killed because someone had sought his power, and Kelley was desperately afraid that whoever was responsible for the old god’s murder was still searching for the lost magick that was hidden in Sonny’s blood—to steal it, or to use it for evil.
And so it had to stay hidden.
That was why Kelley had done what she had: she had made Chloe the Siren restore the charm that she’d stolen from Sonny’s mind. It had been put there by Herne and Auberon, disguised as a lullaby, when Sonny was a baby, and it had shielded him. Protected him. The powerful magick of the veiling spell had hidden the knowledge of Sonny’s true nature from the world, kept it secret even from Sonny himself. Replacing the lullaby had locked away Sonny’s power—and his awareness of it—once more. It made him safe. Made him human.
Made him less than what he truly is, Kelley thought. No . . . I . . .
“Yes,” she said finally.
You did that to him. Just as your father before you did it to him.
She had done it for Sonny’s protection. Kelley had hidden away his secret and then she had made him leave her. That had been for his protection, too. In those few, panicked hours after the attack on the theater . . . after Sonny’s horrific transformation into a vengeful almost-god . .
.
What else was she supposed to have done?
Fenn’s keen gaze sharpened. “He doesn’t know what he is, does he? Whatever he became in the theater—it was as much of a surprise to him as to the rest of us.”
Kelley nodded miserably.
“And now?” Fennrys tilted his head, and his eyes narrowed as he stared at her. “What did you do to poor old Irish, Kelley?”
I put the genie back in the bottle. “I hid him.”
“Hid him. From who?”
“Everyone. Even himself. What he is . . . it’s too dangerous.”
“I see. And what about me?” Fenn asked quietly. “I seem to know something I’m not supposed to. You gonna try and erase my mind, too, Princess?”
“It’s not like that.” Kelley glanced at him sharply. “And I trust you, Fennrys.”
“But you don’t trust Sonny,” he mused. “Well now. There’s awkward for you.”
Kelley thought about that. She did trust Sonny, didn’t she? She loved him more than anything or anyone in the world. So why not tell him about his heritage? Again, the image of Sonny hovering in the air above the Avalon’s burning stage—savagely tormenting that leprechaun like a cat playing with a wounded mouse before the kill—came unbidden to her mind. . . .
When Kelley remained silent, Fennrys laughed mirthlessly. She glared at him, not knowing what to say. In the far distance, they heard the sounds of thrashing and inhuman squeals. Fenn tensed, but the sounds died away to nothing and they didn’t see what had made them. Kelley knew, though, that it was probably another denizen of Faerie, making mischief and wreaking a bit of havoc in the middle of her city.
When Kelley refused to say anything further, Fennrys rose and held out a hand. She took it, reluctantly, and he helped her to her feet. They stood there for a long moment, Fenn’s hand wrapped around hers, until finally Kelley shifted uncomfortably and he let her go, turning away.