Wondrous Strange

  Sounds of the Black Shuck approaching grew closer.

  Kelley pushed every ounce of strength she had into the protective veil she barely knew how to create. She looked down to see herself and Bob fade back into nothingness just as the Wild Hunt surged forth into the night.

  Singing in their terrible joy, the hunters climbed into the sky to join their leader, the Rider on the Roan Horse. They were joined by a pack of thundering Black Shuck that burst through the trees and leaped into the air, snapping at the horses’ heels.

  Kelley turned her attention back to Sonny. A gust of wind whipped his dark hair madly around his beautiful, remote face as his silver gaze raked the space where he had seen her cowering with Bob only a moment before. Kelley whispered his name, but Sonny looked through her with unseeing eyes. Brow clouding with anger, he whirled his sword about his head and hauled savagely on the reins of his fiery steed.

  Together they climbed a spiral path higher and higher into the storm, the Wild Hunt following in their wake.

  This was all her fault. Even if she hadn’t ever known who—what—she was, it was because of her that this was happening.

  As the Hunt galloped off over the treetops and out of sight, Kelley let the veil drop. She was trembling in every limb with the effort of having maintained it for even that short time. Huddled in her lap, Bob was still gulping for air, unable to speak. Fishing the clover charm from her purse, Kelley clasped it around his neck. His gasping cries stopped almost immediately as the protective aura of the talisman enveloped him, and he looked up at Kelley with gratitude.

  “What happened to you?” she asked, her voice catching in her throat at the sight of him once again.

  “Auberon…” Bob coughed—a sickly, broken sound. “He came to the theater looking for you. Took it badly when I wouldn’t tell him where you were…. I came here to warn you. We were wrong. The Hunt…it wasn’t Mabh. It was Auberon. Had to be. He doesn’t want you back—he wants you gone. Dead.”

  “But he’s my father,” she whispered.

  Bob attempted a sardonic grin that just came off as pained. “It’s not like he sent you birthday presents, Kelley.”

  “Thanks to you, Goodfellow, I didn’t have an address.”

  The sound of the Faerie king’s voice made Kelley jump. She turned to see him stoop to retrieve something that lay in the grass beside the empty carousel house. When he straightened, Kelley saw that Auberon clutched a tall bronze war horn in his fist.

  She rose to her feet and stood protectively over Bob. Without the shield of the charm she’d worn all her life, Kelley could feel her power humming in her veins, even drained as she was. The air seemed charged, electric, where it touched her skin.

  “Impressive,” he said as he walked down the hill toward Kelley, his glance sweeping over her, lingering on her luminous silver wings. He stopped in front of her and smiled coldly. “Well—the apple does not fall far, it seems.”

  “I’m nothing like you,” Kelley snarled. “I will be nothing like you.”

  “What will you be then? It is quite apparent, from where I stand, that you no longer belong to this world.”

  In the distance, they could hear the cries of humans in the park as the Wild Hunt—and all the other dangerous fae—rampaged through the night.

  “Or what will be left of this world. After they are finished with it.”

  Kelley felt herself falter.

  “Of course, all of this can be remedied. But only I can remedy it.” Her father’s voice softened. “Forsake your claim, girl. Give up the Unseelie power that resides within you. Do that, and I will grant you the means to stop the Wild Hunt. With my help, you can keep this world safe and rescue Sonny Flannery from the fate of the Rider.” He pointed to the sky with the horn. “Save the man you love, Daughter.”

  “I’d really rather you didn’t call me that,” she ground out between clenched teeth. As strong as she was now that her Faerie gift was unleashed, Kelley knew she was still far too inexperienced. She didn’t even know how to fly yet. There was no way she could even come anywhere close to stopping the Hunt. Not without help.

  “Do we have a bargain?” her father asked.

  “What the hell do you think?”

  “I’m afraid I need to hear you say it,” he murmured coldly.

  “Yes, damn you.” Kelley stifled a sob. “Give me what I need to stop the Wild Hunt. So that I can save Sonny.” She looked up into her father’s cold, dark eyes. “Do that, and I will let you take the Unseelie power from my blood,” she whispered.

  “Agreed,” Auberon said as he stepped toward her.

  “Wait.” In the distance, Kelley could see one of Mabh’s Storm Hags throwing thunderbolts at a careening carriage. She remembered what Herne had told her. “I also want something else in return.”

  “That is?”

  “While I go take care of the Wild Hunt, Dad,” she growled, “I want you to get ‘Mom’ and her psycho Bitch Brigade the hell out of my park. And this time make sure she never comes back.”

  “With pleasure, my dear.” Auberon smiled magnanimously and spread his hands wide. “With very great pleasure.”

  Auberon placed a hand on her head and whispered a word. Suddenly it was like the song of Kelley’s power went from a tune played on a pennywhistle to a full-blown orchestral score. She lit up the park.

  Then, just as suddenly, there was silence. Darkness.

  Kelley fell to her knees, hollow and empty. Too empty even to weep.

  Her father stood before her, his icy skin glowing with her light and his eyes filled with a warmth that had been absent prior to that moment. She watched as he absorbed her gift fully into himself. The brightness faded; his eyes grew dark again.

  “Okay,” she said finally, her voice flat, muted. “How do I stop them?”

  The king looked down on her, once more as distant as a marble statue. “I cannot tell you how. But I have given you the means by which you might accomplish the task. The rest, you’ll just have to figure out for yourself.”

  “What?”

  “Good luck, child.” Auberon turned to go.

  Kelley was seething. “You’re a real son of a bitch. You know that?”

  “I can be,” Auberon said, as he looked at her with something like regret in his eyes. “Unfortunately, you are the daughter of one. Remember that.”

  He touched her cheek and then spun on his heel and stalked into the night, turning himself into a falcon as he went. Wings spread wide, the king flew away with Mabh’s war horn clutched in his taloned grasp.

  Not knowing what else to do, Kelley turned back to Bob, where he lay upon the ground, limp and unmoving. The charm may have kept the boucca from further hurt, but he was still desperately injured.

  “Bob…” She shook him until he groaned. “Bob—Puck! Wake up! The Hunt. They’re awake and they’re hunting humans.”

  Above her now, she could see the Hunt. They plunged and dipped crazily through the sky, howling with cruel laughter as one of the Faerie hunters chased down a woman dressed in a torn and bloodied Cleopatra costume, plucking her from the ground to drag her through the air by her feet. “They’re hurting them!”

  “Aye,” Bob said, sounding a bit delirious. “Don’t worry—they’re just playing. They’ll get around to killing them soon enough.”

  “I’d like to avoid that eventuality if at all possible, Bob. What do I do?”

  “You must reach Sonny. You’re the only one who can.”

  “He’s two hundred feet in the air!”

  Bob giggled a bit and his head lolled back. “You’re a Faerie. Use your wings….”

  “Auberon took them!” Kelley almost screamed with frustration.

  “Oh…” His voice was reduced to a whisper as his strength ebbed. “Then you must find another way. You have a lot of power….”

  “Had, Bob.”

  “Still…do….”

  “What are you talking about?” she pleaded desperately. “Auberon took it from me;
I gave it back!”

  “Thou marvell’st at my words?” the boucca gasped, his eyes closing.

  “No—Bob!—no more Shakespeare!” Kelley shook him again, trying to jar him out of the poetic lapse. Now was not the time.

  “But hold thee still,” he murmured, those same cryptic lines he’d used to warn her in the dressing room. “Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill….”

  Then Bob the boucca passed out from pain.

  Sonny, where are you when I need you?

  It was a stupid question. All Kelley had to do was look into the sky and see him blazing across the treetops like a comet, the band of killer Fae hot on his heels as they pursued screaming humans about the park.

  Kelley turned inward, searching for an answer. When she closed her eyes, she found herself once more in the vision she’d had in rehearsal so long ago, a place she now recognized as Herne’s forest—the spring glade where Mabh had enchanted the kelpie. In her mind she looked across the clearing and saw Sonny standing once again in the shadows of the woods. He smiled at her, that sad curving of his beautiful lips, and lifted his hands, palms wide. The white branches of the birch trees at his back glowed dimly in the light that shone from Sonny’s hands, arching over his head like the antlers of a stag.

  The white King Stag…

  That was it.

  Kelley’s eyes snapped open, and she gasped at the revelation. The Faerie king could take away his power from her blood…but Kelley was willing to bet that he couldn’t take away Mabh’s. Mabh, the Autumn Queen, who ruled the Borderlands. She, who had created the Wild Hunt in the first place, who’d twisted the Faerie hunters, stolen away and hidden their prey…

  Mabh, Queen of Air and Darkness. Her mother.

  Auberon had told her not to forget that, but she’d shied away from the fact.

  Bob had told her too. Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.

  Fight fire with fire. That was what they had been trying to tell her.

  Ignoring as best she could the chaos all around her, Kelley closed her eyes again and searched even deeper inside of herself—looking for the dark, dangerous spark of her mother’s power.

  There.

  She touched something in her mind: twisting, serpentine energy. It was buried so deep that she never would have found it if Auberon hadn’t taken away the blinding brilliance of her Unseelie gift. Kelley’s mind recoiled from that initial touch, even though she knew she was going to have to use that dark gift. Draw upon it. Embrace it.

  She clenched her fists and, concentrating fiercely, reached again. The power of Mabh’s shadowy throne wrapped around her, suffocating, overwhelming. She was drowning again, just like the night she’d rescued Lucky. Until suddenly, like a key turning in a lock, something clicked. A door opened inside her, and Kelley was flooded with strength and fury. Mabh’s power coursed through her veins like acid. She was deathly cold and on fire at the same time.

  Stretching out her hands before her, Kelley tore through the veil between worlds as if it were flimsy silk, opening a rift right into the heart of Queen Mabh’s realm.

  Without giving herself a chance to think about it, she threw herself forward into the abyss.

  The assault on her senses proved almost more than she could bear. The stench of the swampy terrain was overpowering, and the dank air clung to her bare arms like wet gauze. She had crossed over into some kind of nightmare. Above her, black, skeletal tree branches clawed at the gloomy air, and tiny insect-like sprites darted around her head, hissing and chittering at her in outrage. Kelley ignored them, fighting through the fetid ooze of a bog toward an outcropping of mossy high ground.

  She reached the bank and her fingers dug into the spongy loam as she hauled herself up out of the brackish water. Something unseen slithered past her ankle, and Kelley squealed and snatched her feet clear of the muck, breathing heavily from exertion and fear.

  She stood on shaking legs and surveyed her gloomy surroundings. Fog, thick and luminescent, carpeted the swampy ground. The forest seemed to be watching her with unseen, malevolent eyes, as if she was an intruder.

  She wasn’t.

  As horrid as the place was, Kelley sensed a disturbing familiarity. It was almost a feeling of homecoming—if home was a haunted house. Part of her belonged here, and that frightened her more than anything.

  In the near distance, she heard the baying of hounds. More Black Shuck—and they were coming toward her.

  Mindless terror seized her, and Kelley ran for her life, heedless of the thorny branches that tore at her skin and the sinkholes that threatened to trip her with every step. The howling of the shuck grew louder and she could hear them crashing through the undergrowth, almost at her heels. Desperate, Kelley threw her arms up in front of her face and charged through a thicket of brambles, tumbling out into a clearing where a high, full moon dripped silver on the weedy grass.

  The shuck were only moments behind her.

  She tried to gather her mother’s power, to call up another veil, to do something—anything—but fear made it impossible to concentrate. She closed her eyes and thought of Sonny. He was there, in her mind, under the trees. Over his shoulder, Kelley saw a flash of silvery white.

  She seized upon that whiteness with her mind and drew it to her.

  In that instant three enormous hellhounds burst into the clearing. Slavering and crimson eyed, they circled her, a quarry run to ground. And Kelley knew that they wouldn’t bother to wait for any hunter to come and finish her off. The lead shuck’s massive black muscles bunched, and it leaped at her, snarling in rage.

  Kelley shut her eyes tight and braced for death.

  There was the sound of bone-crushing impact, and the snarl turned to a yowl of pain. Kelley’s eyes flew wide-open—in time to see the magnificent white King Stag throw the limp body of the first shuck into a tree with its massive antlers. The other two hounds didn’t hesitate but lunged for the stag’s exposed flank. The stag bellowed and bucked, shaking loose one dog and goring it with its deadly antlers. But the last shuck clung to the stag’s shoulders with its wicked claws, and blood flowed, silver, down the white hide as the stag’s front legs buckled.

  Kelley leaped to her feet and screamed defiance.

  A flash of darkling energy exploded out from where she stood and lit up the grove with a burst of indigo light. The shuck recoiled and fell to the ground, where it died beneath the hammering hooves of the enraged King Stag.

  The stag turned its head toward Kelley. Its gleaming silver hooves were sullied with the black blood of the shuck, but it was still the most regal creature Kelley had ever seen.

  The great beast pawed the ground and snorted, eyes blazing with white fire.

  Kelley reached out a hand and waited as it approached her, fear a tiny tight knot in her stomach. If the stag did not accept her, all it had to do was swing its head and the dagger-sharp points of its antler crown would gore her.

  The stag nuzzled her hand, nostrils quivering. Then it dipped its great head and bowed to her, bending back one long, graceful foreleg so that Kelley could mount up on its back.

  She almost wept.

  Climbing up, Kelley wound her fists tightly in its thick, pale mane. She hung on for dear life as her noble steed leaped into the sky. It bucked and plunged, waiting impatiently as she reached out with her power and tore another rift between the realms, then galloped through the hole in the thin air, back toward the mortal realm and the Wild Hunt.

  As they emerged in the skies over Central Park, Kelley heard the Faerie hunters roar with unbridled joy at the sight of the white King Stag.

  Here was quarry. Here was prey worthy of the Hunt. As she’d hoped they would, the hunters abandoned the terrified mortals below and spun their mounts on their haunches, entering the chase. The Black Shuck accompanying them howled madly and shot after her in pursuit.

  Higher and higher Kelley led them, away from the world of mortals, so far that when she looked down she could see ragged clouds
below. As the muscles of the Faerie animal beneath her gathered and released and gathered again, hooves pounding through the pale air as though it were a mossy forest track, Kelley felt a thrill of exhilaration like nothing she had ever known, greater even than when she rode with Herne’s hunters.

  Close behind, the Roan Horse and its Rider were gaining on her. An arrow grazed her cheek, and Kelley knew she was running out of time. As Lucky and Sonny pulled almost parallel, Kelley drew her bare feet up underneath her, bracing them upon the stag’s broad back and balancing in a precarious crouch. She took a deep breath.

  This is going to hurt.

  Kelley opened up a rift in the King Stag’s path. She hauled on the stag’s silver mane, momentarily sending the creature veering to the right, and threw herself at the Rider—knocking him flying off the back of the Roan Horse.

  Arcing through the air, the last thing Kelley saw before she started to fall was Lucky gather and leap through the rift, still leading the Wild Hunt and their hounds as they charged madly after the stag. The hunting party plunged after the Roan Horse before he transformed back into a kelpie—right through the gaping hole in the sky, back into Queen Mabh’s realm.

  Good, she thought. Mabh made them; Mabh can damn well deal with them.

  She sealed the rift with a thought and whispered, “Goodbye, Lucky.”

  Then Kelley and Sonny fell.

  They dropped like a stone through the night, plummeting back to earth.

  Tumbling end over end, Kelley searched desperately inside herself for the strength that would save them—for the power of her mother’s magick. But the fearsome strength that had raged through her only moments earlier was gone, reduced to barely a trickle. Kelley was too new to this. Too tired. They were falling, and she knew there was nothing she could do to stop it. A sob of frustration stuck in her throat—it wasn’t supposed to end this way.