Wondrous Strange (21 page)

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.

She felt Sonny’s arms and legs twisting about her and she realized that Sonny—mortal, human Sonny—was trying to turn them around in the air so that when they hit the ground, he would bear the brunt of the impact. With his arms wrapped tightly around her, Sonny cradled Kelley against his chest. She looked into his storm-gray eyes and saw that he stared serenely back at her, happy. Content to die if there was the smallest chance it could save her.

“No!” She struggled madly in the vise of his embrace. “Sonny—no…”

Behind Sonny’s head, far below, she could see the blackness of the unforgiving ground rushing up to meet them.

She remembered when they had danced. He had called her his Firecracker.

Kelley squeezed her eyes shut, tears of effort freezing on
her cheeks, and called upon that image. At first, there was nothing—just a terrible emptiness—and then she felt her skin start to tingle. Electric sparks, drawn from the charged and stormy air around her, raced up and down her arms and legs. The wind screamed in her ears; bone-crushing impact with the earth was only moments away. Kelley gripped the front of Sonny’s shirt and opened her eyes to see him smiling gently back at her.

“You dumb-ass,” she muttered through clenched teeth. “You can’t break my fall.” She imagined her spine as if it were a lit fuse and—straining with an effort so intense it felt as though she would split her own muscles and flesh—she willed the firecracker to explode.

Her shoulder blades burned with sudden, dark fire, and Kelley’s cry of triumph ripped through the sky.

“Not when I can fly!”

The ground beneath them—mere inches away—blazed with sudden purple fire as Kelley’s wings unfurled, delicate as gossamer, yet strong enough to catch at the air and sweep her and Sonny back up into the sky.

She could see out of the corner of her eye as she flew that her wings were no longer silver. Those lacy, lustrous things were gone—taken by her father.
These
wings unfurled behind her as though she were an exotic butterfly, dark and sparkling, like an indigo starburst. The world around her shone amethyst, bathed in the deep violet light of her newfound wings.

Kelley was a Faerie princess.

In defiance of the Faerie king, she had taken up her destiny on
her
terms.

An expression of something that was almost awe suffused the features of Sonny’s face, and Kelley kissed him quickly before he had time to say anything. She felt his arms tighten around her as they spiraled up, borne aloft on wings that were dark as the night, bright as a new star.

S
onny’s boots touched lightly down on the solid ground. They crunched in the frosty grass, and so he knew he wasn’t dreaming. But the nightmare, it seemed, was over. He released Kelley from the crush of his embrace and gazed down at her lovely face. She dimmed the radiance that flowed from her, and the darkling wings flickered and faded from view. Putting a finger under her chin, he raised her face to his, bestowing another lingering kiss on her lips. Tyff’s beautiful dress was tattered and stained, and Kelley’s legs and arms were covered in mud and scratches. But her cheeks were flushed from the wind and her green
eyes sparkled. Sonny had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

Over her shoulder he saw the wooden carousel horses back in their proper places, painted eyes empty of fury, saddles vacant.

The sound of languid applause reached their ears, and they turned sharply to see Auberon standing on the path.

“Well done, Daughter,” he said. “I was not certain that you would find the strength necessary to defeat the Hunt.”

Sonny put out a protective arm, but Kelley stepped in front of him and walked proudly over to meet her father halfway. She held out a hand for the war horn that the Faerie king still held.

“Of course.” Auberon’s lips twitched, and he handed it to her.

Grasping the long bronze horn in both hands, Kelley snapped it in two over her knee and threw the broken pieces to the ground. Then, wordlessly, she turned her back on her father and returned to where Sonny waited.

In the distance, they could still hear sirens.

Sonny opened his arms. Kelley walked into his embrace and looked up at him. Her gaze was still a little wild, and Sonny couldn’t help but shiver at what he saw there now.

“Are you afraid of me?” she asked quietly.

“No,” he said without hesitation. “Afraid
for
you, maybe.”

Mabh’s power was a fearsome thing to have to master, but Kelley didn’t need to hear that just then. Tears rimmed her
eyes, shining and unshed, and Sonny held her in his arms and kissed her. “My Firecracker…my heart.”

“If you are quite finished here, my Janus, I require your presence in the realm.”

He didn’t need to turn to see that Auberon still stood behind them.

Kelley made a strangled sound of denial.

“You can require whatever you like,” Sonny said coldly. “But I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Mabh has been driven back to the Faerie lands but she won’t stay hidden there long,” Auberon said impatiently. “She will return to threaten not only my realm, but this one as well, unless she is contained again. You will help me accomplish that.”

“No.” Sonny gripped Kelley tightly. “I do not work for those who have betrayed my trust.”

“Is that what you think I have done?” Auberon’s voice was polite. Inquisitive.

“I know it.” It hurt Sonny deeply to say such a thing. “You were as a father to me….”

“And you were as a dutiful son. So you will be again,” Auberon said, and his eyes went absolutely black. There was a sharp pain in Sonny’s chest, right beneath his iron medallion, and he clutched at it, unable to breathe.

“Stop it!” Kelley screamed. “No! You can’t take him with you!”

“Of course I can,” Auberon said flatly.

“We had a
deal
!”

“Which in no way included Sonny remaining in this realm if you were successful in restoring him unto himself.” The king lifted a shoulder in eloquent disdain. “He is a member of my Court. He must obey.”

Sonny fell to his knees.

“Besides. I need him to undo his mistake.” The lord of the Unseelie stepped toward him, holding Sonny’s gaze with his own. “Is that not right, Sonny? It was, after all, your error that set Mabh free. So is it your obligation to help me mend that situation.”

“No,” Kelley said furiously.

“And it was
your
request of me, Daughter, that I see to it Mabh stays away from this place. You didn’t specify how.”

A neat trap
, Sonny thought. Faerie tricks.

“No!” Kelley screamed at her father, but Sonny knew in his heart that Auberon was right. Mabh was free again because of
him
. And there was something else that Auberon hadn’t said: Kelley remained in danger because of it. It was up to Sonny to put things right.

The fiery pain in his chest ceased abruptly as he made his decision.

“Kelley.” He climbed to his feet and grabbed her by the shoulders to make her look at him. “Kelley…” He shook her a little, and the tears dashed down her cheeks. “I won’t be gone forever. But he’s right. I need to do this thing.”

“But—”

“Shh…” He pulled her in tight to his chest and whispered into her hair. “Just like Pyramus and Thisbe in your play—I will find the hole in the wall. I will find a way back through.”

“You know that story ends horribly, right?” she said, choking on a sob.

“Ah, my heart. What did Shakespeare know?” Sonny hugged her tighter. “He probably would have rewritten that bit if he’d thought about it. I
will
come back to you. I promise.”

As Auberon stepped toward them, Sonny felt Kelley stiffen with cold rage. She pushed away from him and turned to her father, her green eyes flashing dangerously.

“Do I even need to tell you how unhappy I will be if anything bad happens to him?”

“No, Daughter,” Auberon said softly. “You do not.” The king gestured with one hand like a blade, and a crackling gateway opened into the Otherworld. “Come, Sonny. It is time to go.”

Kelley met Sonny in one last embrace, and they kissed each other as if, in that moment, they were the only two people in all the worlds. Then he turned and stepped through the rift. Auberon lingered for another moment, looking back at Kelley, and Sonny heard him say, “You really do have your mother’s eyes.”