* * * *
They came.
The Hounds of the Hunt.
They came from all over Briarcliff. Dragged from their beds, out of restaurants, from their jobs and friends. Leaving their cars in the streets and their spouses in their beds. They answered the Call blindly, running down sidewalks and leaping over cars. They came in twos and threes, eyes wild and wild grins splitting their faces as old instincts took over. Their voices filled the night sky, joyous and strange. Leo, closer than the eleven other Alphas, was dragged to his feet by the Call and he raised his voice in harmony. The sounds melding and feeding off of one another.
To me, the Call was like putting my soul in my mouth and unraveling it with just the power of my voice. It shook the world on its axis and as the Alphas burst from the woods to reach Gabriel’s side, I saw them as they truly were.
There were three children that came hand in hand. To my eyes they appeared as some great three headed beast. The song spinning through my thoughts told me that they’d guarded the door of the Underworld before they’d been recruited for the Wild Hunt. When they shifted, their wolves magnified the energy of the others. If left to their own devices they could grow larger than most skyscrapers and consume every star in the sky.
Cerebus.
A lithe young man followed on the heels of the triplets. He was storm, a lightning strike, the tremble of the earth was woven into his skin. His howl rose pure and sweet, something steady for the childish sopranos of the three children to build off of.
A woman was next, her bright red hair a corona around her dark face. She was a word, an utterance, a scream in the dark. She walked in whispers, a thousand different languages rising from her like the wings of some great beast.
And on and on it went. I saw each of them, and the Call let me know them all.
They had been hiding for centuries, and as I looked among them I noticed a common thread. Each of them had a thread of Gabriel’s power woven into them. A piece of him that connected him to each and every one of them.
He’d been protecting them this whole time. Hiding their presence from the Mad Sidhe with a gentler, subtler, version of his gift. As he weakened, died, the threads began to fray. Their shield was falling, and, thanks to the Specter inside of me, I could feel the Mad Sidhe rejoice at the sight of the rest of their lost Hounds.
“No,” I thought at them, the Song making me fierce, protective where I had no desire or right to be. “They’re mine now,” I found myself telling the Sidhe. “One Rider. Many Hounds.”
Halfway across the world, trapped in another dimension, they screamed their denial, their rage, and blood began to drip from my ears in a steady stream.
Leo reached down to place a hand on my shoulder and when I looked at him he was a human torch, a supernova of explosive heat and punishing flame. I thought of the explosion from earlier and shook my head in wonder.
“Go,” he growled, voice drug over burning coals.
“But Gabriel—” I started. He pulled me to my feet.
“We’ll take care of him, Rider,” he told me, the title strangely formal. “But you can’t stay.”
I followed his gaze to see the Hounds forming a circle around us. They watched me, eyes of the brightest green, the deepest blue, the darkest black. I was reminded by all of those eyes that these were no ordinary Weres, and finally, I nodded my consent.
I looked down at Gabriel once more and what I saw nearly stole my breath.
The Call of the Hunt let me see Gabriel for what he truly was. What he would have changed into that day when Agent Liam had cut me in a bid to get a reaction. I saw him as a Hound of imaginable size. He wasn’t made of flesh and bone, but the screaming bodies of the damned. Thousands of men and women formed his arms, his legs, and his muscular torso. His teeth, made of bone, were the size of tree trunks and the earth was left dead and rotting beneath his paws. The gaze of the Hell Hound was a pit. Empty. In its depths, I found purgatory.
Then it whimpered, a purely animal sound, and the vision faded.
Whatever he was, whatever inner demon he fought to control, there was no changing who he was on the inside. Who he chose to be. Hell Hound or Werewolf, to me he was nothing more than Gabriel Evans.
I looked at Leo out of the corner of my eye.
“He lives,” I told the other man, and his lips quirked in a smile.
My words were an order and we both knew it.
He inclined his head.
“Of course, Rider. We’ll make sure of it.”
I nodded, and left the Hounds to work their magic.
“We know what you did there, in the dark.”
—Gabriel Evans