The Unicorn Hunter (10 page)

She lay in the bed, blankets wrapped tight around her, her eyes searching the empty gloom of her room for something to do while her brain panicked, her ears pricked for another telltale noise. She was almost wondering if she had imagined the sound of the door being opened, if she should risk getting out of bed to see if there really was anyone prowling through the sitting room on soft feet, when she heard the softest scratching.

Her mind raced through its memory banks, frantically trying to match the sound to anything it had on file. It was so soft, so tiny a sound, it could only be …

… hair! Stiffened with lime, combed into high spikes on the head of a creature that was too tall for the low cottage ceiling. It must have brushed against the plaster as she turned her head to look from one door to the other, wondering which one to open.

Maddy lay in her bed, as clear and light and frozen with terror as an icicle. Her breath caught in her throat and blocked any screams or cries for help. Her eyes widened as she watched the doorknob of her bedroom door turn slowly, the stiff mechanism chuckling sleepily.

The blade came in first. The silver sword gleamed softly in the pale moonlight that filtered through her thin bedroom curtains, before the door was pushed wider and the faerie ducked her head to make her way into Maddy's tiny bedroom. There was the soft scratching noise again, as her stiffened Mohican rippled against the door frame. Her blood-red eyes burned in her bone-white tattooed face and her huge wings filled the door behind her, ice-frosted and transparent. They snapped shut like a flower as Fachtna stepped all the way into the room, the hollow bones and gossamer skin folding in on themselves to avoid injury in the tight space.

She grinned, baring her shark's teeth, and prowled toward the bed, every muscle tense and her eyes waiting for the slightest movement. But as Maddy lay motionless, her grin grew wider.

‘Such a little thing you are,' she crooned as she slid on to the bed, her bony knees pressing deep pits in the soft mattress. ‘I won't be needing this.' She lifted her sword blade to her lips and kissed it, its keen edge piercing the white skin above her mouth. Bright blood welled up in the cut, trembled and then burst its banks to roll slowly down her chin. She laid the sword on the quilt and leaned forward, her blood splashing on to Maddy's face. She heard a hiss as Fachtna drew a short, curved dagger from her belt. Fachtna pressed the point of the blade against the hollow of Maddy's throat, enough to make the skin dimple, but not enough to break it. She lowered her face until her hooked nose was almost touching Maddy's and her blood-red gaze was all Maddy could see.

‘You're no Hound, girl,' she sneered.

Maddy shook with fear and struggled to push the scream in her throat out into the room, but her mouth was locked shut.

‘You're a rabbit. And I'm going to cook you and eat you, just like a rabbit. But first I'm going to slit you open from throat to groin and I'm going to pull your intestines out and wind them round and round my dagger like spaghetti. Ready?'

Fachtna's wings flared open and rattled as she pressed down hard with the knife …

Maddy screamed and sat bolt upright in her bed. Her blood thundered in her ears and her pyjama top was glued to her back with cold sweat. She gulped in lungfuls of air that turned her panicking brain as light as a bubble, while her eyes roved around the room and assured her that everything was normal. There was all her stuff piled haphazardly on shelves next to her bed, the curtains drawn tight against the night, and there was
nobody
standing between the bed and the door, grinning at her.

It was just a dream
, she thought, as she hunched over in the twisted sheets and slowed her hammering heart.
It was just a bad dream. Fachtna wouldn't know what spaghetti was!

A nervous giggle escaped her lips before she clamped them shut. She listened for any sounds coming from her grandparents' room. Surely they had heard her yelling? But all was quiet and still, the ponderous ticking of the clock in the living room just outside her bedroom door the only sound in the sleeping cottage.

She slipped out of the warm bed and peeled her sweat-soaked pyjamas away from her body. Her skin goose-pimpled in the chill predawn air as she grabbed jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a hooded sweatshirt from the chair beneath her window. She dragged them on and gently eased the door of her wardrobe open.
Three jackets hung inside: her school jacket, a fake leather bomber she had begged Granny to buy her and a denim one. All of them hung lopsided on the hangers and out of habit she flicked her fingers against the pockets closest to her. Each time her fingertips hit dull metal, and she smiled. Faeries hated iron and all of the Sighted kept a piece of iron on them at all times. Granda had his iron cuff and he had once given Maddy a little iron crucifix to hang around her neck, but Maddy had wanted something with a bit of bite for when the sun sank and the faeries were stronger. So she had persuaded Granda to have three dull iron knives made for her and then she had raided Granny's sewing box and carefully unpicked the stitching in one pocket of each jacket, slipped a knife into the lining and stitched a thin band of Velcro into the rent so the weapon could be easily grabbed if she got into trouble. It had taken her hours and patience she didn't know she had; the lining of each pocket was spotted with rusty bloodstains where she had stabbed her clumsy fingers over and over with a needle. But it was worth it. She never left the house now without feeling for that comforting weight on her right hip.

She shrugged on her favourite, the fake leather bomber jacket, and slipped out into the living room. She peered around the curtain at the sky. It was still too
dark to go anywhere; faeries were stronger in the dark, and dawn was only a faint silver smudge on the horizon. Stepping outside now, with the veil between the worlds so fragile, would be suicidal. She sighed through her nose and settled into Granny's chair by the fire. It was a bony, comfortless thing, a thin wooden frame with foam pads tied to it. It was horribly old-fashioned, but Granny refused to part with it.

Maddy leaned her head back against it and forced her eyes wide open in the dim room, fighting sleep. Her head rang with tiredness and her stomach roiled, but the adrenalin the nightmare had woken in her still crackled like wildfire through her veins. There was no way she was going to get any decent sleep before the alarm went off for school and experience taught her she functioned better on no sleep at all than with a couple of hours of fretful dozing.

Granda hadn't been too impressed last night when he realized a Tuatha de Dannan had made a house call. He had come in from work and immediately sniffed the air, which did have a tang of ozone to it, like the aftereffects of a lightning strike. He lost it completely when Maddy told him it had been Meabh.

‘There's a reason why she rules alone!' he had yelled, banging the table with the flat of his hand. ‘She's had two husbands and both of them have died on the battlefield!
Rumour has it she helped along the blades that did the deed. Do you know how hard it is to kill a Tuatha de Dannan, never mind a monarch? But Meabh seems to have managed to do it twice. Out of all of them, she's the most treacherous, the most bloodthirsty …'

‘What on earth are you shouting about?' asked Granny, as she bustled in from the kitchen, looking cross.

Granda had stared at her for a moment with his mouth open, probably trying to think up a good lie in a nanosecond.

‘It's OK, Granny, we're not shouting at all,' said Maddy in a soothing voice.

‘Yes, you were. I just heard you,' said Granny, looking confused.

‘No, you didn't hear anything, anything at all,' Maddy had said, still in a low, singsong tone. ‘You're not going to hear anything either, are you? Me and Granda are just having a nice, relaxed conversation.'

Granny had relaxed, her face went slack and her eyes glazed over. ‘No, you're right, love. I didn't hear anything. I'll just get dinner ready.'

Granda had peered suspiciously after her before looking over at Maddy. ‘Glamoured?' he asked.

‘To the eyeballs,' said Maddy. ‘Meabh did it when she was here and it seems to be taking a bit of time to wear
off. She believes anything you say at the moment, which could be handy.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?' asked Granda.

‘Well, it's a shame it's not parents' evening.'

‘Don't be a smart mouth,' he had growled. ‘You're playing a dangerous game, Maddy. Clever as it was, the Tuatha will find a way around that little trick you played on them at the Blarney Castle and then they'll come looking for you again. When they catch up with you they won't be happy, and what are we going to do to stop them taking their anger out on you? The Tuatha and the rest of the faeries are not something out of a Walt Disney film, singing silly songs all day while making daisy chains. They like the fear and pain and death of others, and you are just drawing them on to you.'

‘Oh, that's right, blame me!' yelled Maddy. ‘How is this my fault? What, because I did the right thing and went off to Tír na nÓg after Stephen when he was kidnapped last year? Because I'm not saying sorry for that!'

‘Nobody is asking you to …' said Granda.

‘Oh no, nobody is
asking
me to,' said Maddy. ‘But you were all thinking it when that unicorn turned up and then all the courts came trooping in. “If it wasn't for Maddy, we'd be tucked up safe in our beds.” What all of you Sighted should be thinking about is how to keep us
all safe from them instead of scurrying around wearing ugly iron jewellery and hoping that they don't touch any of you when another kid goes missing.'

Granda had looked at her for a long moment, an angry pulse beating in his jaw. ‘So I scurry, do I?' he had asked in a low, dangerously quiet voice.

Nervous, Maddy had crossed her arms over her chest. ‘I didn't say you personally.'

‘You didn't have to,' said Granda. ‘I told you the reasons why no one ever goes after the children who disappear into the mound, and the adults too. They're gone, and drawing the wrath of the Tuatha down on the Unsighted in Blarney, like your granny, would be a terrible thing to do.'

‘Only they're not gone, are they?' said Maddy. ‘I proved that when I got Stephen back.'

Granda snorted with contempt. ‘You got Stephen back because they let him go, remember? It was a trap all along, Maddy, and it nearly closed shut on you for good.'

The scar on Maddy's shoulder burned as she remembered the fear and the smell of her own blood in her nostrils. She heard Liadan's voice in her head, soft and evil as a snake's hiss.
Look into my eyes and I can give you your life back.

Maddy had given herself a shake. ‘I still proved my point,' she said. ‘We can get people back.'

‘No, you didn't!' yelled Granda. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? You got lucky. And so now what are you saying – that because you got Stephen out, you're going to find whoever hurt the unicorn?'

‘I never said that,' said Maddy. ‘Going after Stephen was the right thing to do, the thing that all you adults should have done. This unicorn stuff has got nothing to do with me—'

‘Then what are we arguing about?!' yelled Granda in exasperation.

‘We're arguing about the fact that I GET BLAMED FOR EVERYTHING!' Maddy yelled back. ‘It is NOT my fault someone hurt a unicorn and it's NOT my fault that Meabh decided to turn up on our front doorstep, so why am I being yelled at like it is?!'

‘Stop being such a baby! I TOLD you not to go after Stephen; I made myself very clear on why it was a bad idea,' said Granda. ‘I told you not to draw attention to us when the courts were meeting. You ignored me both times and now I find Meabh has been in my house. You should have known better than to let her stop for a minute under this roof, or to get into any kind of conversation with her.'

‘What was I supposed to do?!' said Maddy. ‘Granny let her in – she gave her food and drink. Doesn't that give her guest rights? I couldn't have thrown her out!'

‘But you could have called me,' said Granda. ‘You could have called me and got me to come home and
I
could have dealt with her. Instead you sat down and had a conversation with her. God only knows what she thinks you've promised.'

Maddy had flushed with guilt. She hadn't told Granda about Meabh's demand of allegiance in return for protection. ‘I'm not thick …'

‘Maybe not, but you do a good impression of it!' barked Granda.

They had stopped yelling for a moment and glared at each other, both panting with rage. Then Granda had taken a deep breath and tried very hard to speak in a calm voice.

‘This is the way it's going to be,' he said. ‘You have ignored everything I ever said to you about dealing with faeries. And whether it's down to you or not, the fact is that there have never been so many faeries around Blarney, certainly not in my lifetime. And Tuatha walking among us, threatening war, prophesying another famine …' He shook his head. ‘This is a bad business and they seem to want you in the middle of it. I'm calling your Aunt Fionnula in the morning and you are going to stay with her in Cork city …' Maddy began to interrupt but Granda had held up his hand, his eyes flashing with anger. ‘You'll be safe in the city,
surrounded by iron. This crisis will pass and the Tuatha will be drawn back beneath their hollow hills. When everything is back to normal, you can come home.'

‘You know Aunt Fionnula hates me,' said Maddy.

‘This isn't a punishment, Maddy. She's the only one in the family who lives in the city,' said Granda. ‘You might actually get to know each other better.'

‘You can't—' protested Maddy.

‘There's a lot of things I can do, Maddy,' said Granda, hitting the table so hard that Maddy had jumped in fright. ‘The only person around here who tells me I'm weak is you. But by God, you're going to learn! I admit it, Granny and I have spoiled you, we've been too soft. We didn't want to go too hard on you after you lost your parents. But now it's time to buck your ideas up. You
will
go and stay with Fionnula, whether you like it or not. You will be polite and you will make the effort to get along with her. And if doing so chokes you, then remember you brought it on yourself because you refused to listen to someone older and wiser! When all this dies down, you can come back. And maybe by then you'll have learned a bit more respect for me.'