Wondrous Strange

  “Sorr—Er, go on. Please.”

  “And then shows up again, as if by magic, when I am running errands in the park—” Kelley stopped abruptly and held a finger up to his chest. “Well, I do not accept a bland, measly, unembellished, unexplained ‘sorry about scaring the hell out of you’ apology from that guy.” She turned away again and continued her swift progress down the path. “As a matter of fact, I’m not even going to accept the shiny, impressive, embellished, explained apology from that guy. Not without knowing who, exactly, that guy is. Your choice.”

  After she had gone several more yards, he put a hand on her arm and pulled her to a stop. “Sonny.”

  Kelley looked up.

  He shook his head, smiling a little, and tapped his chest. “My name is Sonny.” He paused, his expression turning just a bit cautious. “Sonny Flannery.”

  “Kelley,” she said slowly. “Kelley Winslow.”

  “And you’re an actress.” The tone of his voice made it almost a question, as though she was really something else entirely and he just wasn’t sure what.

  “Yes…,” she answered hesitantly. “You saw me at the theater, right?”

  “Right.”

  “About that,…Sonny.” It felt funny suddenly knowing his name. “Seeing as how you know way more about me than I know about you, how about returning the favor?”

  His brow clouded. “There is nothing the least bit interesting about me.”

  Kelley laughed. “I’m pretty sure that’s not true!”

  Sonny remained silent.

  “Okay. So…do you go to school? College? Work? What do you do?”

  “I’m a…a guard.” He shrugged, feet scuffing through fallen leaves. “Of sorts.”

  “Like, security?” Kelley asked.

  Sonny hesitated for a moment and then nodded. “Like security…I suppose.”

  “Fine. So you’re a night watchman.”

  His mouth quirked. “Yes.”

  “Nothing wrong with that.” Kelley turned to continue their stroll again, and Sonny fell into step beside her. She remembered Tyff’s theory that Sonny was some sort of junior PI or something, hired by her crazy aunt to keep an eye on her. It made a certain kind of sense—especially if he worked for a security firm. She tried to picture him wearing an ill-fitting rent-a-cop uniform with scratchy gray polyester pants and decided, just for the sake of her own imagination, that he worked plainclothes.

  They took the path that led east around Bethesda Fountain and down through a leafy stone archway, skirting the north side of Conservatory Water. Usually there was a smattering of toy-boat hobbyists, sailing remote-controlled yachts on the shallow pond, but it was deserted so late in the day. Kelley hugged her elbows.

  “It’s going to be chilly again tonight,” she said.

  Sonny froze in his tracks as if she’d uttered some kind of curse or spell. He turned his face from her, shoulders stiffening. Kelley was startled by his sudden change.

  “Damn it,” he muttered under his breath.

  She looked around but couldn’t, for the life of her, figure out what was wrong. Everything seemed utterly still and silent in the park.

  In the distance, a dog howled.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Sonny said, his voice harsh, as he looked off in the direction from which the sound had come. He seemed a thousand miles distant. Closed off. Hard.

  The abruptness of Sonny’s mood shift caught Kelley off guard and swung her sharply back into defensive mode. Had she offended him somehow? How?

  Still, she tried to keep her tone light. “You know, the last time I checked, this was a public park. I”—she pointed to herself—“am public.”

  The dog howled again, closer this time. Kelley knew it was a dog because she was standing in the middle of one of the largest cities in North America. If she’d been back at home in the Catskills, she would have said it was a coyote.

  Sonny turned to her, his gray eyes dark. He pointed very deliberately to the west. “The sun is going down.”

  Kelley crossed her arms. “It does that, I’ve noticed.”

  He suddenly seemed years older. He frightened her. “I’m glad. Now you should go before you get yourself into any more trouble. Like you did the other night.”

  “What? That was not my fault!” Kelley was flabbergasted enough not to bother questioning how he knew about her near drowning. “How was that somehow my fault?”

  “Whose fault was it then?”

  She glared at him pointedly.

  “What?” he yelped, jarred for an instant from his menacing attitude. “You can’t possibly think to blame me for…I’m not even sure what you’re blaming me for.”

  Kelley was irate. “Okay. You see, if you hadn’t been all Mr. Chivalry in the first place—with the romantic gesture and the rose and the lilty voice and the eyes and everything—then I never would have hung around here long enough to have found Lucky and he wouldn’t be standing in my bathtub and I”—Kelley dug through her bag and pulled out the slightly rumpled pink sheets she was supposed to be posting—“wouldn’t have had to come back here with these stupid fliers. Which means we wouldn’t have run into each other again, and I’m starting to think that would be a really good thing!”

  “‘Lucky’?” Sonny looked lost.

  “He’s a horse.” Kelley shook the handful of fliers at him angrily.

  “Of course.”

  “Don’t start that.”

  “I’m not starting anything. Wait…” Sonny’s eyes went wide. “Do you mean to say you have a horse in your bathtub?”

  “Don’t look at me like that. Animal Control didn’t believe me either.”

  “Is there water in the tub?”

  “Yes!” Kelley blurted, surprised. “How did you know? Every time I try to pull the plug and drain the bath, he nips at me and manages to turn on the taps with his nose. I think he’s a circus horse or something. But I worry he’ll get hoof rot!”

  “He’ll be fine. I mean, as far as his hooves are concerned, anyway…. You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into!”

  Kelley snorted and shook her head, refusing to indulge any more of this kind of crap. She turned sharply on her heel, heading north up the path.

  Sonny shot out a hand and grabbed her, stopping them both in the shadow of the park’s famous Alice in Wonderland statue. “You can’t go that way.”

  “I can go any way I damned well please!” Kelley erupted, shaking loose. What was with this guy?

  Sonny huffed. “Why? Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Do you see anyone else here?” He flung out an arm.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Kelley was mystified and angry, although she had to admit that they did seem to be the only living souls around.

  “Most of your kind avoid this place like it’s plague ridden at times like this!” Sonny snarled. “Why did I have to get the one nutcase mortal who thinks it’s somehow fun to fling herself repeatedly into the midst of dire peril?”

  Kelley stared at him, openmouthed in her astonishment. “I’m not even going to pretend I know what you’re talking about.” She stabbed a finger at her chest. “And I am clearly not the ‘nutcase mortal’—Wait a minute! What the hell does that even mean?”

  “What—nutcase?”

  “No! Mortal!”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am!”

  Sonny shrugged and muttered, “It’s getting harder and harder to tell.”

  Kelley took a deep breath and said, “Okay. Okay, I’m going home now.” She took a few steps and then turned back. “Do I even need to tell you not to follow me again?”

  “No.” Sonny wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve. He looked upset and relieved at the same time. “I promised the first time I wouldn’t, and I haven’t.”

  “So what is this then?” Kelley cried. It made no sense to her—she barely knew him—but this hurt her. “What is this constantly running into you? C
oincidence? It’s a big park, Mr. Flannery. It’s a big city! And yet, somehow, you just happen to find me here. Just like you managed to track me down at the Avalon—”

  “That was planned. I told you; I went looking for you. And this was not coincidence because there is no such thing as coincidence,” he said bitterly. “This is your stubbornness and my sheer, bloody-minded bad luck. The Fates have it in for me. What did I ever do to them?”

  “Why do you hate me?” Kelley’s voice was very quiet in the still air. “I don’t even know you!”

  And there it was. That look. The look from her dreams, the one that broke her heart. Sonny’s face became open, wounded, his expression wide with longing and a strange anguish.

  “Oh, Kelley,” he said. “I am so very far from hating you that I think it would be a great deal safer if I did. For both of us—Get down!”

  Suddenly he launched himself in a running dive through the air, knocking Kelley off the path toward the Wonderland statue. Her head bounced off the cap of the Caterpillar’s mushroom, and all the breath was driven from her lungs. Kelley fell to the ground, gasping, head swimming from hitting solid bronze.

  The howling creature charging out of the night’s thin air had barely missed her—thanks to Sonny’s shove. The enormous thing spun with an agility that belied its size and sprang at Sonny, slamming him to the earth about ten feet away from her with such force that Kelley was sure his spine must be broken.

  Sonny lay on the gravel path, unmoving, as the rabid thing swung its buffalo-sized head in her direction, fastening red eyes upon her. Its slavering jaws opened impossibly wide.

  Kelley stared in utter disbelief at its huge, hairy paws. They didn’t seem to be touching the ground….

  Through a fog of paralyzing terror, Kelley heard Sonny shout something that sounded like, “Turn, hell-hound!”

  She thought to herself, That’s the wrong play.…

  That’s from Macbeth, not Midsummer….

  I’m in the wrong play….

  As the beast lunged at her, the dull ache in her head suddenly flared into blinding agony.

  XVI

  F rom outside his immediate sphere of concentration, Sonny saw that Kelley had blacked out, and was grateful for that. He didn’t want her to see what happened next—whatever the outcome.

  As the creature lunged for Kelley, Sonny leaped and locked his arms around its massive torso. He threw his weight sideways, rolling with the wolflike animal, taking it as far away as possible from the unconscious girl. The roll ended with Sonny on his back. He threw his forearms up in front of his face as the thing snapped at his trachea.

  Its fetid breath poured over him like swamp fog, its sharp-toothed jaws straining to close on his flesh. With his arms crossed in a defensive shield, Sonny reached for both of the creature’s ragged ears. He grabbed, pulling hard in opposing directions. The thing yelped in a disturbingly doglike fashion and flung itself onto its back. Sonny leaped to his feet and aimed a kick at the thing’s ribs. It grunted in pain and lurched to its feet, where it hovered several inches above the ground and gathered itself, swinging its head to and fro. Backing up on its raised hindquarters, it hunched in preparation for another attack, growling hideously deep in its throat.

  Before Sonny had a chance to draw a weapon, it leaped again. Arching its heavy body in midair, it twisted past Sonny and went again for Kelley. Sonny flung himself in another tackle, one-armed, grabbing frantically with his free hand at the small of his back, where he carried a sharp dagger in a sheath on his belt. The move left the right side of his chest unprotected for an instant, and Sonny felt the bloom of searing pain.

  Losing his bearing, he collapsed. Face pressed to the ground, he heard the sound of running feet and more snarling. Dimly he heard fighting and then silence.

  After a moment, Sonny was able to raise his head.

  Maddox stood above him, holding out a hand to help him stand. A heavy mace dangled from a thong at his other wrist.

  “Bellamy and Camina must have sensed you needed help at just about the same time I did, I guess,” he said, gesturing down the deserted path. “They’ve gone after—”

  Sonny cut him short. “You didn’t kill it? Did you?”

  Maddox wiped his brow. “Nah—wounded maybe, not sure…”

  “Where did it go?”

  “Yonder. I’ll go help them. You can stay with—”

  “No! It has to be me.”

  Maddox’s head snapped up at the tone of Sonny’s voice. “That was a Black Shuck! It didn’t tag you, did it?”

  Sonny pulled aside his coat and watched as his friend’s eyes went wide with alarm. He looked down and saw the dark red lines of blood through the slashes in his T-shirt. He could feel the poison of the shuck’s claws seeping, a terrible numbing cold growing slowly, spreading up toward his shoulder.

  “Go,” Maddox urged him, near panicked. “Go! I’ll take care of the girl.”

  “Get her home. Find out where that is.”

  “Don’t worry about that right now—”

  “She has a horse in her bathtub, Madd,” Sonny said urgently.

  “Ah.” Maddox blinked, understanding. “Well then.”

  “Be careful, Maddox. That shuck? It had a purpose and it didn’t come after me. It went straight for her. Ignored me like I was a stone. It was tracking her.”

  “Seven hells. Tracking her for whom?”

  “Dunno…”

  Sonny staggered a bit and almost fell to one knee. Maddox put out a hand to steady him. In the distance, they heard baying.

  “Go now, Sonny,” Maddox said. “I’ll try to signal Bell and Camina—tell them to hold off on killing the damned thing. But even still, you’ve only got till midnight if they don’t take it out first.”

  Sonny nodded and took one last glance at where Kelley lay on the ground. Then he pushed all thoughts of pain from his mind and took off at a run down the path, hoping desperately that he would not be too late.

  The Black Shuck had given the Janus twins one hell of a merry chase up and down the park. When Sonny finally found them, Camina and Bellamy had the thing cornered on the terrace of Belvedere Castle. By that time Sonny was a lurching apparition, heaving himself up the worn stone steps with the very last of his strength. Camina was about to send a slender spear hurtling down the thing’s gaping maw.

  “Camina!” Sonny managed to rasp. “I need it. I need the kill….”

  “Oh, Sonny!” She took in his appearance with one swift glance. “Bell, hold up!” She turned and called to Sonny over her shoulder, “You’d better hurry. You won’t be able to kill in another moment, from the look of you.”

  His sword was out in his hand already and he brushed past the other two Janus, not even bothering to feint or dodge. The mental image of Kelley, unconscious and at the mercy of the beast that now stood snarling in front of him, was all he needed. He took two steps, slashed upward with the silver sword, and then down again. The demon dog’s head slumped to one side, its body to the other.

  In the few seconds before the gruesome thing began to fade from existence, Sonny went around to its long, shaggy tail and, with the edge of his bloodied blade, sheared off a length of the coarse black hair. He held out the handful of wiry strands to Camina and sank to his knees on the hard stone, his head drooping.

  “Could you…?” he mumbled, the fire of the shuck’s poison burning in his veins.

  Camina knelt in front of him, and Sonny watched through a fog as she went to work with swift, capable fingers. Soon she was tying a ribbon of braided dog hair around his wrist with an intricate knot.

  “‘Hair o’ the dog that bit ye,’” she said, lifting his face gently. “You’ll be all right now.”

  Slowly, Sonny’s vision began to clear. He stood dizzily and thanked the twins for their help, wishing he could go home to bed. But the night wasn’t over yet, and there was still the rest of the Gate to be guarded until sunrise. As Camina and Bellamy prepared to return to their patrol, S
onny raised a weak hand, forestalling them.

  “Be careful,” he said. “Very careful. Auberon thinks that someone may be trying to wake the Hunt.”

  XVII

  K elley heard the whispered murmurings of a hushed and hurried conversation. Sonny. And someone else. Then someone was shaking her gently, calling her name.

  She blinked and struggled to sit up. A huge pair of hands grasping her shoulders helped, and she found herself staring up into the open, guileless face of a man maybe twenty years old with ginger-sandy hair and a nice smile.

  “Hullo,” he said. “I’m Maddox. Friend of Sonny’s.”

  “What are you doing here?” Kelley asked, deeply confused. What had happened? She must have hit her head when that thing…

  “I was on my way to meet your man Sonny,” he said, squatting beside her. “I saw that stray dog attack you both and came running.”

  “That was a…dog?”

  “Bull mastiff by the look of it—big one—and rabid as a bat, most like. Nothing to worry about now, though. The proper authorities are on it, lass.” He stood and held out both hands to help her up. “Now c’mon, let’s get you out to the street and hail a cab. I’ll take you home.”

  “Where’s Sonny?” Kelley thought she must have hit her head harder than she’d realized. Everything seemed fuzzy and confused.

  Maddox laughed—a low, pleasant rumbling sound deep in his broad chest. “Off chasing the dog. He’ll keep an eye on it until the dogcatcher shows. Make sure it doesn’t hurt anyone.”

  “What if it hurts him?” She glanced around a little wildly, a fluttering panic crowding up her throat.

  “Now, now,” Maddox soothed. “Ol’ Sonn—he knows how to take care of himself. Don’t fret. Come on, lass. Here, let me help.”

  Maddox tilted her face up so that he could stare directly into her eyes, and Kelley suddenly felt all of her questions and fears slip into the background.

  Let me help you, Lady, she thought she heard him say, although she was fairly convinced his lips hadn’t moved.

  “What did you call me?”