Wondrous Strange (14 page)

Creeping silently to the edge of the hunters’ camp, Kelley
watched Mabh stride down the sloping hill to the forest below. Reaching the edge of the trees, the queen waved a hand and conjured an ugly, gaping rift in the wall between the mortal world where the hunters slept, showing glimpses of a dark, forbidding Otherworld realm beyond. Mabh put two fingers to her lips and whistled—soundlessly, to Kelley’s ears. She was answered by a pack of vicious hounds—Black Shuck—who bounded from out of the rift between worlds and into the forest.

Crouched at the edge of the hill’s precipice, Kelley saw Mabh’s hounds drive the hunters’ noble quarry out from beneath the sheltering trees, herding them like cattle. As the Black Shuck snapped at the silvery heels and exquisite hides of the magical animals, Mabh waved her arm again and the shuck drove them through the rift. The sky began to lighten in the east just as the last of the quarry—the white King Stag—leaped through.

“She will hide them in her own lands, the Borderlands, in places where the sight of neither men nor Fae can find them.” Sonny’s voice was grim. He appeared out of the predawn mist at Kelley’s side, watching with her.

“And then what?” she asked, not sure if she really wanted to know. “What will happen now?”

“Mortal beasts are…no longer challenging to the hunters,” Sonny said softly as he unclasped his cloak and draped it over Kelley’s shoulders.

He must have seen her shiver. She didn’t tell him it wasn’t from cold.

“They will seek other prey,” he said.

But as he spoke, the sun was already rising. The hunters were awakening.

Herne and the transformed Faerie greeted the day with bloodlust shining in their eyes. Mounting their horses, they set off at breakneck speed for the forest with a newfound grimness underscoring their elation. Sonny and Kelley mounted their steeds, too, but kept well behind their now-frightening companions.

Searching everywhere for their enchanted quarry but finding none, the spell-ensnared Fae howled with madness and rage at their spoiled pursuits. Thundering to a halt at the ragged edge of the woods, they looked up and saw, atop the hill where they had camped, the Dark Queen standing, still as any statue.

Mabh smiled coldly and put a tall bronze war horn to her lips. Kelley had to drop the reins of her horse and cover her ears as the queen blew three earth-shattering notes, calling the Wild Hunt to war.

Herne and his hunters seemed to go mad at the horn’s terrible sound, tearing up into the sky and brandishing swords suddenly livid with flame. Some of the treetops caught fire as they passed, casting an orange glow on the bellies of low clouds and painting the Faerie with lurid, angry light. The Hunter and his once-beautiful companions, features now twisted with hate, turned malevolent eyes toward the human village that lay just to their west—the village Kelley had observed during the night.

Horrified, she turned desperately toward Sonny, who grabbed the bridle on Kelley’s mount as her horse reared in distress. Kicking his heels into his own mount’s flanks, he wheeled the horses and led Kelley away from the Hunt as fast as their steeds would carry them.

“This can’t be happening,” she gasped, breathless, as they reached the cover of the forest and she hauled her charging horse to a stop, forcing Sonny to circle his mount and return to her side. “They’re not going to kill those villagers? Sonny?”

Sonny could not answer.

“Oh, my God…,” Kelley whispered, twisting in her saddle to look back through the trees as she heard the first shrieks of hunted humans echoing down the wind.

“Mabh turned them from a hunting party into a deathless, death-mad war band,” Sonny spat, his bitterness palpable. “Waking nightly with the rising of the moon to ride out with a singular purpose: to kill.”

“But after that?” Kelley whispered, pleading for a glimmer of hope. “What happens
after
that? It can’t just end there…”

“No.” Sonny had grown very pale, and his voice sounded faint and far-off. He stared, his gaze unfocused, at the scudding clouds. “The High Courts of Faerie will finally be forced to action. They will gather together in council and—in an utterly rare moment of accord between the Seelie and Unseelie kingdoms—Auberon the Winter King and
Titania the Queen of Summer will combine their efforts and cast Herne down from the sky, from the back of his fearsome horse.”

A sheen of sweat on his brow, Sonny pointed up into a sky suddenly full of shifting, thunderstorm hues—where the last, ghostly remnants of the vision he had conjured wavered before Kelley’s eyes. She saw another gaping rift open between the worlds and a great whirlwind of light and sound poured forth. She saw Herne thrown from his charger and watched as he plummeted to the earth far below, a falling comet.

Without his rider, the Roan Horse suddenly became nothing more than a lowly kelpie again. It vanished at a command from Auberon, leaving behind nothing but glittering black jewels that twinkled briefly like stars in the night sky before disappearing themselves.

“And Mabh?” Kelley asked, her throat dry.

“Confined by Auberon and Titania to her own realm, where she remains,” Sonny murmured, “a prisoner in her shadow kingdom to this day.”

Kelley did not find that as comforting a thought as she was perhaps meant to, but there was no time for more questions. Sonny was bent low over the neck of his mount, and he looked dangerously close to slipping from his saddle.

“We have to go,” he said as he reached out, hooking his fingers around her horse’s bridle. He turned his mount
and led them toward a bank of fog that was rising over the moors.

The swirling mists closed around them, and Kelley felt the horse beneath her gradually stiffen and change—reverting back to the wooden carousel horse it had once been, what seemed like so very long ago.

T
he fog dispersed and Herne’s ancient world faded into nothingness. The pictures in Kelley’s mind disappeared and, with them, the silken princess gown. She found herself sitting once more astride a painted carousel pony, bobbing gently up and down as the ride wound to an end. She looked over and saw that Sonny’s eyes were closed, and there was a grayish pallor to his skin.

“Did it work?” she demanded.

His eyes snapped open, and he struggled to focus his gaze on her.

“Sonny?”

“It did. Leaderless, the power of the Hunt itself was diminished, thrown into chaos and confusion. Auberon and Titania were then able to weave an enchantment that would lock them away, forever sleeping in a place that is not in this world, not in the Other.”

“And Herne?”

“Free. Ultimately…,” Sonny said sadly. “But even though he was released from the horrific enchantment, Herne was broken in spirit and body. Despairing of the crimes he had committed as leader of the Wild Hunt, he retreated deep into his forests. After so much time spent in the company of the immortal Faerie, Herne found that he himself was unable to die. But he faded, century after century, until he was no more than a shadow of his former grandeur. And the Hunt has remained locked in enchanted slumber.”

“So…where’s the problem then?” Kelley asked, although she had the uneasy feeling that she already knew the answer.

“As per Mabh’s vile enchantment, they will only stay that way as long as they remain leaderless.”

“Okay…” The uneasy feeling deepened in the pit of her stomach.

“And they will only stay leaderless as long as the Roan Horse remains riderless.”

“But I saw the Roan Horse go
poof
!” Kelley protested.

“It did.” Sonny nodded, the color slowly returning to his
cheeks as he swung himself out of his saddle. “The Roan Horse was destroyed. But the magick that Mabh used to
create
the Roan Horse remains.”

“And…it’s all tangled up in Lucky’s mane. Isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry.”

Bad Lucky
, Kelley thought.

Sonny helped her down off the back of her painted mount, and she found that her knees were shaky. He put a hand on her shoulder to steady her.

“It’s not all bad, Kelley,” he said. “Not yet. The creature is safe as long as he stays in your bathtub. Water is a gateway—if he stays standing in it, he’s not in this world and not in the Other. As long as he stays that way, even if someone
were
to blow Mabh’s war horn, the call of the Wild Hunt can’t touch him.”

“So I have a Faerie water horse stuck in my tub for the rest of eternity?”

“No. Just for the rest of the Nine-Night, until the door to the Otherworld shuts again. Then there would be no way for the Wild Hunt to cross over, and we could try to remove the enchantment.”

“And if the unthinkable happens? If he gets out somehow and he’s still enchanted?”

“Then if someone were to sound Mabh’s war horn, Lucky would transform and become
the
Roan Horse,” Sonny said in a quiet voice. “The Roan Horse seeks out a Rider. Once
it has a Rider, the Wild Hunt wakes. Once the Wild Hunt wakes, they come thundering through the Gate on the backs of their shadowy steeds, and they kill. They are insatiable and they are unstoppable. The whole of this city—the whole of the mortal realm—could conceivably be destroyed.”

Images from one of her recent nightmares flooded back into Kelley’s mind: Manhattan awash in blood and fire; herself staring down at her own hands grasping, white-knuckled, the tangled strands of a fiery mane….

She shuddered and looked up at Sonny. “And is it, then, some kind of lunatic coincidence that the Roan Horse is in
my
tub? And
I
just also happen to be the daughter of a Faerie king?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t believe in coincidence.” Sonny smiled at her wryly. “No—I do think the two things are connected. Because I’m reasonably sure that, insofar as you
are
a daughter of the Faerie king, someone wants you dead. I believe that is why a Black Shuck was set to track you. To lead the Wild Hunt to find you specifically”—his expression darkened—“among whatever other quarry they might find to give them sport.”

Kelley stared at him, her eyes wide. “Isn’t that a little like hunting quail with a cannon? Haven’t these people ever heard the phrase
collateral damage
?”

“I suppose. But for someone like Mabh, for instance,
collateral damage is the fun part. And she
does
hold something of a grudge toward your father. The whole imprisonment after the Wild Hunt thing.”

“Oh, right.” Kelley hugged her elbows, possessed of a sudden deep chill, and muttered, “She sounds delightful. But she’s still locked up?”

“She is confined. Within her own realm, a grim place called the Borderlands. But she has outside agents through whom she can still work her will.” Sonny scowled. “Auberon suspects her of trying to wake the Hunt. If he’s right, she will most likely try to do it on Samhain—when the Gate is open widest.”

Kelley shivered. “You know, New Yorkers take Halloween pretty seriously. There are going to be a lot of hapless partygoers and trick-or-treaters on the streets come the thirty-first. Sounds like a recipe for a whole lot of collateral damage.”

“The Janus Guard will also be out that night,” he said, one hand reaching out to squeeze her shoulder. “Just as we have been and will be for every night of the Nine.”

“Good.”

“Speaking of which—Kelley…” Sonny seemed suddenly exhausted. He turned his face to the west, and she could see the fatigue etched into the lines and planes of his face. “It’s getting late. You need to leave the park. Please. Don’t argue with me this time. Just go. The sun will set soon, and I have to go to work.”

He squared his shoulders as though he expected her to put up a fight.

She did—a little—but only out of actual concern for him. “Shouldn’t you be taking it easy? I mean, you try to hide it with the whole tough-guy-swagger thing and all, but I saw the bandages. You’re really hurt. Aren’t you?”

“It’s not so bad.”

“Wow. You are a terrible liar.”

He frowned fiercely at her.

“You also look like you haven’t slept in a week.” She took a tentative step toward him and put a hand on his chest, looking up into his silver-gray eyes.

He put his hand over the top of hers, and she could feel the rhythm of his heart beating under her palm, through his shirt and the bandages.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

With his other hand, Sonny reached up and brushed a stray auburn curl out of her eyes. “I’m sure.”

He smiled down at her, and she felt her insides melt a little. His whole face changed when he smiled. It was like the sun coming out.

“But,” he continued, “I’ll be even better if you are safe at home and I don’t have to worry about you for tonight.”

“I can take care of myself, Sonny Flannery,” she bristled, halfheartedly.

“Please?” He turned up the wattage on his smile.

“I…okay.” She felt her own lips turn up in a shy, answering smile. “I’ll be good. This
once
.”

“That’s my girl.”

Kelley was silent. Those three words of Sonny’s had managed to render her utterly speechless.

T
hat night proved easy by Janus standards.

By the time Sonny saw Kelley out of the park at East Seventy-second, the shadows had grown long again, and he’d gone to work. He’d only had to draw his sword once and he’d even been able to actually
talk
a bevy of wood sprites into returning back through the rift whence they’d come without any of them so much as lobbing a pinecone at his head.

Maybe they’d felt sorry for him, he thought as he walked up Fifth Avenue after sunrise and passed his reflection in a shop window. He really did look terrible: bone-deep weary,
his eyes circled with shadows like bruises.

He knew that sleep would be the best thing for him, but as the sky brightened over New York and the day began anew, Sonny headed instead in the direction of the address that he’d finally been able to pry out of a reluctant Maddox.

The fire-escape landing outside the fourth-floor apartment could be accessed by two windows. One, the bathroom window, showed Sonny a glimpse of reddish horsehair: a tail swishing back and forth through the gap between the wall and the shower curtain. He heard a gentle, regular rumbling—the kelpie was snoring in his sleep. Sonny briefly thought of doing…something…but the thing was safe for the moment. And he had begun to shy away from any thought of violence toward the creature, for Kelley’s sake.

Kelley
…The other window was hers. The gap in the curtains showed her curled up in her bed, sleeping peacefully. When she shifted in her slumber, the silver-and-green amber pendant she wore slid along the chain around her neck, coming to rest in the graceful, hollowed contour above her collarbone. In the dim light of the room, the little charm seemed almost to glow.

Sonny closed his eyes and reached toward her with his inner senses. With Kelley asleep, it was easier for him to get a read on her….

There she was, like brilliant little sparks in the darkness, her explosive brightness kept in check, Sonny was sure, by the sputtering fuse of the charm around her throat. She was
almost completely hidden.

Swinging himself off the iron stairs and down to the ground, Sonny decided that he wouldn’t be going back to his apartment to rest that morning.

The Avalon Grande proved easy to break and enter, but the fact that it left him even slightly out of breath gave Sonny pause. His Janus training should have made it effortless. His injuries had made it hard.

You’re only human
, he thought. It left a bitter taste in his mouth. Especially now that he knew that Kelley wasn’t.
Which one is really Kelley?
he wondered. The apprentice actress at a tumbledown theater, or that incandescent creature in the alleyway—the one he’d glimpsed when the veil that kept her hidden had slipped?

Sonny was pretty sure that Kelley didn’t have the vaguest idea what she truly was—what she could be. What would happen, he wondered, when she discovered it for herself? Would she change? Become like those same Faerie he had worshipped as a child? He was not so sure that he would want Kelley to become like them.

It had been difficult for Sonny, living in the mortal realm for the past year. Everything seemed just slightly shabby to his Otherworld-accustomed eyes. Still, he found himself, more and more, entertaining the thought that perhaps the Faerie realm—in all its wild, magical splendor—
was not exactly the glorious place his childhood memories made it.

He thought of Kelley drifting through the halls of her father’s shining palace. He pictured her as she might become: a perfect being, but distant. Cold. Aloof. Wanting for nothing but, by the same token, dreaming of nothing…

He pushed the thought away and hid himself in the darkened upper balcony, resting his arms on the worn wood of the pew in front of him and relaxing as the morning stage crew began to trickle in. Kelley hadn’t yet arrived—it was still too early—but Sonny was filled with a warmth of anticipation. Not that he was going to let her know that he was there; he was finally getting the sense that Kelley might not take entirely kindly to his watching out for her. Also, the man playing Oberon had been fairly explicit in his warning to stay away. Not that he posed any kind of threat to a Janus, but Sonny respected the man’s desire to defend Kelley. The shadowy balcony provided an ideal vantage point.

It was also dark and warm. When Sonny woke up hours later, it was only because Bob the boucca was poking him in the shoulder with a wooden prop sword. Sonny sat up with a start, but the ancient Fae put a shushing finger to his lips.

“Heigh-ho, Faerie killer,” Bob whispered, grinning wickedly. “Thought you might be up here.”

“Seven hells…” Sonny glanced around blearily and
scrubbed a hand over his face. Some bodyguard he was! “Does she know I’m here?”

“No. But if you’d kept on snoring like that, she was bound to find out. Didn’t think you’d want that. She fancies herself all kinds of self-sufficient. You may have noticed.”

“She doesn’t know what she’s up against.”

“Do you?”

“I have theories, but…I could use your help.”

“I’m not known for giving it.”

Sonny chose his words carefully. “I think you’re the victim of—what do they call it?—bad press. I think you’re a great deal more helpful that you let on. I know why the leprechaun shut you in a jar, for one thing.” He nodded toward the backstage area, where he could sense that Kelley was in her dressing room. “The charm on Kelley’s necklace. The shamrock. It’s been hiding her, protecting her.”

Bob gave Sonny a long, appraising look. “Technically it’s a four-leaf clover. Shamrocks have only three leaves. But the four-leaf—”

“I know, I know,” Sonny murmured impatiently. “Powerful magic. Strong protection. The leaves represent the Four Gates, the Four Feasts, the Four Courts of Faerie—”

“Also hope, faith, love…and luck. It is powerful in any case, but
that
particular charm is exceptionally potent. The little green finks do good work, I’ll give them that.”

“You
stole
it from a leprechaun?”

“Yes. And, contrary to popular opinion, I make a lousy
thief. He figured out it was me pretty quickly and was waiting for me when I got back.”

“That was a heavy price to pay.”

“You have
no
idea.” Bob’s face scrunched up in misery. His eyes glowed with a sullen green fire. “I hate honey. Can’t stand the stuff.”

“Why did you do it then?”

The most notorious boucca to ever make mischief in the mortal realm stared up at the vaulted ceiling. His voice when he spoke was barely audible.

“I let myself become fond. Of a mortal.”

“Who?” Sonny asked. Something deep within him whispered that he already knew the answer.

“Your mother, Sonny.”

“My…”

Sonny felt as though all of the air in the theater had been sucked out. His chest hurt.

“The sweet and lovely Emmaline Flannery…” Bob sighed. “I made the mistake of passing by her village a second time, not long after Auberon had sent me to fetch you in the first place—”

“You mean
steal
me.”

“Steal you. Yes.”

Sonny’s earlier conversation with Kelley came rushing back to him.

“I didn’t think much of it at the time,” Bob said. “You were just another piddling human bairn to be cradle-took. Not like
I hadn’t done it a dozen times before. More…” The ancient Fae’s timeless features grew contemplative. His pale eyes filled with memory. “But this time…well. After I made the mistake of going back, I couldn’t get the sound of your mother’s cries out of my ears. Hmph—much like the honey now, I suppose.”

Neither of them laughed at the joke.

Bob sighed. “It tore at me. I couldn’t close my own eyes for fear of seeing hers…pretty blue eyes, red with weeping.” The boucca shook his head, memory and regret chasing themselves across his face.

Sonny looked away. His hands, he suddenly noticed, were curled into tight fists.

“Well, time—or what passes for time, at least, in the Faerie realm—moves on,” Bob continued. “You were already toddling about when Auberon went out into the forest one day and brought a wee tiny princess home to Court the next. An heir. But it was not the joyous occasion it might have been, if it had been, say, Titania’s babe as well.”

“Kelley. Whose is she? Who is her mother?”

“Never knew.” Bob lifted a shoulder. “Never asked—not the kind of thing you
would
ask the good king Auberon. Not and still keep your noggin on top of your shoulders.”

“He never said who her mother was?”

“Could have been a lowly wood nymph for all we knew. Auberon’s dalliances were legendary back then, what with him
and Titania always quarreling.”

“Why didn’t he keep the baby hidden, then, I wonder?” Sonny asked.

“Well, that’s the thing about Faerie royalty, boyo,” Bob replied. “They don’t tend to stay inconspicuous for very long. And this tiny thing glowed like a new star. She wouldn’t have stayed hidden—even if Auberon had tried.”

Sonny knew that was the truth from experience. The sight of Kelley, revealed in her glory in the alley, was imprinted on his mind like the afterimage of a flash photograph. “So what happened? How did she wind up hidden in this realm?”

“Because the lord of the Unseelie, in his immeasurable wisdom”—Bob’s voice was heavy with sarcasm—“set
me
to nursemaid the wee thing. Punishment for some sort of passing wickedness on my part, no doubt. Auberon was not noted for a long supply of affection—paternal or otherwise. And he seemed quite content to spend what little he
did
have on you.”

“Why?” Sonny had always wondered. He’d just never asked the question out loud before. “Why me?”

The boucca shrugged. “Who knows? Whimsy? The novelty of raising a son who was not an heir? And you were an amusing pet: fearless, stubborn. He doted on you. All while his own daughter lay shut away in the nursery—wailing in the cradle, night after night, alone.”

“You felt sorry for her.”

“Bah! I tell you, I’d already gone pudding-soft by then!” Bob’s face twisted into an expression of disgust. “It drove me near mad. Cries of the babe mewling in my ears, cries of your mother still howling in my mind…The two things just seemed to add up and make a sudden sense.”

“And so you helped my mother steal the heir to the Unseelie kingdom right out from under the Faerie king’s nose.” Sonny knew that he was staring at the boucca with his jaw hanging open, but by that point he couldn’t help it. “By all the gods, that was brave
madness
!”

“I would have tried for you, but as I say, Auberon barely let you out of his sight. So instead, I stole a charm from a leprechaun, grabbed your mum, and snuck her straight into the palace nursery. Big, cold room full of sharp, pretty things and not even a wee baby rattle in sight. Emmaline takes one look at yon sad little princess and her heart starts to mend right there. I put the clover charm around the baby’s neck to veil her brightness, and that was that. Away we ran!”

Sonny could only gape; the sheer audacity of the thing overwhelmed him.

“Easier than I thought it would be.” Bob grinned sourly. “At least, at first. In, out, off we went…until Auberon got wind of it. There he was shutting the Gates one by one—
clang! clang! clang!
—as we run. I tumbled out the Beltane
Gate, right back in Ireland where we’d started, and over my shoulder I saw Emmaline and the babe caught in between the worlds and just able to leap through the one crack left in the Samhain Gate.”

“A hundred years later in time and an ocean away from her home,” Sonny said quietly, understanding.

“Aye, and
that
was what mucked up Auberon’s spell. Like sticking your foot in a closing door, it jarred the Gate off its hinges a bit, I suppose. There I was, unable to do a damned thing about it, stuck in the past and fending off a hopping-mad leprechaun.” Bob waved a hand in the air. “Unsuccessfully. That about sums it up.”

“And Auberon never tried to find her or his daughter.”

“Oh, he threw all manner of tantrums, I hear. Issued decrees. Heads rolled. Blah-blah-blah. Put on quite a show of paternal grief, considering he’d never paid the poor wee thing an ounce of attention when she’d been under his own roof. It wasn’t about the girl, you see—it was all about his own wounded pride. And, sadly, it also gave him a convenient excuse to tighten his grip on the rule of the Fair Folk.”

Sonny could hardly argue that point.

Bob sighed. “Well. That’s the last time I get sentimental.”

“And yet, I noticed that you
are
still keeping an eye out for the well-being of a certain princess.”

“Rule of the Faerie kingdoms is passed only through the
direct bloodline; you know that.” Bob cast a shrewd glance at Sonny. “Who knows—our girly might just knock the Unseelie throne out from under her dad’s chilly bum one day. And I’d cheerfully take the job of right-hand sprite to the new Unseelie queen if it’s offered.”

Sonny’s mind was reeling with the implications of Bob’s tale.

“I love this scene,” the boucca murmured, leaning over the pew to watch the stage, his eyes glinting with amusement. “I remember the first time I ever saw them do this…. Old Willie himself played Bottom. The man’s timing was flawless.”

Below them, onstage, the Mechanicals were enacting the play within the play. It was a tragicomic story about two lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe, kept apart by their cruel, disapproving parents and forced to whisper their devotion to each other through a crack in the wall that separated their houses. The scene was supposed to be funny, and yet Sonny found himself oddly affected by the lovers’ plight.

The “play” ended with a prolonged, purposefully hilarious death scene from Bottom, who flopped around on the stage like a landed fish, a wobbly rubber prop sword protruding out from under one arm. Then all of the actors froze in place.

For a brief moment, Sonny thought the tableau was just part of the performance, then he heard Bob whisper beside him.

“Oh…
shit
.”

The temperature suddenly plummeted to freezing. The theater echoed with rolling
boom
s like a glacier breaking apart. The double loading doors at the back of the stage flung wide, and a cold, baleful light poured over the threshold. Puck made a sign in the air with the fingers of one hand and clutched the back of Sonny’s neck with the other. Sonny knew that Bob had cast a powerful veil—powerful enough to shield them from the awareness of the Unseelie king.