side of her spine. With an effort of sheer brute will, she made them flutter-then flutter faster. She could feel her feet lifting off the ground and felt a surge of triumph. But her concentration wavered. The wings crumpled, and Kelley fell forward onto her face in a drift of fallen leaves.
Cursing, she pushed herself up and started to run.
XXXIV
“Herne!” Sonny shouted above the din. “Where is she?”
All around him the Tavern was in shambles, shards of crystal and bits of broken tables littering the marble floors. Pockets of furious fighting between Lost Fae and Mabh’s minions carried on with unabated ferocity. Blood pooled on the tiles, red and pale pinkish liquids mingling with green and yellow splatters.
Sonny reached the side of the embattled Hunter, who swung a huge ax in great space-clearing arcs. “Where is Kelley?” he asked again.
“We lost her in the fight!” Herne raised his voice so that Sonny could hear him. “She ran. Back into the park.” He brought the ax down in a chopping blow that cleaved the head of something lumpy and angrylooking in two. “Go! Find her before Mabh does. Or worse.”
Sonny spun around and raced back out into the courtyard. All of the other Janus had been too occupied with the rampaging king statue to accompany him, except Maddox. Meeting up with him-and Lucky, for the kelpie, it seemed, would not let Sonny too far out of his sight-in the yard, Sonny burst out of the Tavern doors, his companions close behind. In the deserted parking lot, they paused just long enough for Sonny to orient his senses on Kelley’s unique flame.
“That way,” Sonny said, as soon as he could see her in his mind. The fuse on his Firecracker was sparking wildly now, and it would have been impossible for him to miss her.
Sonny turned to run south down the path leading from the parking lot, but before he and Maddox had taken a dozen long strides, an oak tree in front of them suddenly blew apart.
Sonny threw an arm over his face and tackled Maddox out of the way as thousands of needle-sharp splinters peppered them. The air rippled, and an overwhelming scent of decay washed over them. Lucky’s eyes rolled white in his head and his nostrils flared.
A small army of stunted, troll-like fae circled the two Janus and the kelpie, slavering and swinging axes and pikes. Redcaps-named for their gruesome habit of soaking their long caps in the blood of those they’d slain.
“And you thought the piskies were a bitch,” Maddox grunted, sinking into a defensive crouch beside Sonny. A redcap lunged, and Maddox lashed out in a judo kick, almost snapping the head off the creature. The spear it carried flew from its suddenly limp hands, and Maddox snatched it out of the air. Beside him, Sonny drew his bundle of oak, ash, and thorn and whispered his incantation, transforming it to sharp silver. Lucky struck out with his hooves, front and back.
A full-scale battle erupted, bloody minutes flying by. Then, quite unexpectedly, help dropped from the sky. The Fennrys Wolf leaped from out of nowhere into the center of the fray. Tearing two redcaps apart with his bare hands, his eyes black with battle madness, he turned to Sonny and grinned wildly. “Maddox and me will clear a path. Take the damned horse and ride, Sonny-boy. Ride fast.”
Maddox nodded. “Go, Sonn. Go! Find her.”
Sonny flung his leg over Lucky’s back, and the kelpie bounded through the space that Maddox and the Wolf cleared free.
Thank the gods Tyffanwy had taken care to remove all the talismans. Without them, there could be no Roan Horse to call a Rider to, and Sonny could ride Lucky without fear of waking the Hunt. He needed the horse’s speed to find Kelley in time-before Auberon or Mabh got to her first. Lucky pounded over the ground and crested a hill, and Sonny saw the Central Park Carousel silhouetted in the harsh light of the moon.
A single, piercing note shattered the still darkness.
A note from Mabh’s war horn.
Beneath Sonny’s thighs, Lucky bucked and reared, seemingly trying to throw the Janus from his back. Sonny would have been only too glad to oblige, but when he tried to fling himself off, he found that he could no longer move his legs. His knees gripped tight to the horse’s flanks, and his hand was clenched in a frozen fist, grasping Lucky’s mane.
The horn sounded a second note.
Sonny heard rather than saw the charms, then, rattling together just under the bow Tyffanwy had tied in Lucky’s forelock. He reached forward and gave the ribbon a yank. It fell away, revealing three onyx gems concealed in the kelpie’s mane, hidden by a glamour until that very moment. The veil was so sophisticated, so perfect, that it was no surprise both he and Tyff had missed them.
Sonny thrust his free hand into the pocket of his satchel and found the three stones from the path by the Lake. The ones he’d shown Auberon.
They were exactly that: stones. Common pebbles spell-cast to make them look like the onyx gems that had been tied throughout the kelpie’s mane.
Beneath him, the kelpie tossed his head violently. Sonny felt the horse’s muscles bunch and lengthen, his body mass increasing and growing heated, as if stoked from some great internal furnace roaring to life.
One last horrible note split the night air. Beneath Sonny, the kelpie leaped up, and the young Janus felt a second great heat bloom to life-in the place where, only a moment ago, his own broken heart had been.
He never should have taken the chance of climbing onto the kelpie’s back.
He cursed himself bitterly.
It was his last coherent thought.
A great emptiness spread through his chest in the wake of the blazing heat, and there no longer seemed to be any reason for him to fight the consuming fury that washed over him. The fiery stallion beneath him leaped into the air, and the only impulse left to Sonny was to hunt.
And kill.
XXXV
The notes of the war horn tore at Kelley. She put her hands over her ears as she ran and shut her eyes, which made her trip over what lay before her on the gravel pathway-a bloodied, wild-eyed apparition.
It was Bob.
He was gasping for breath and looked as though he might have run the entire way from the theater. He flung out an arm toward Kelley and tried to speak, but it was as if invisible hands clutched at his throat and covered his mouth. Kelley instinctively recognized his affliction for what it was: The boucca wasn’t simply out of breath; he had been enchanted. He struggled in vain to say something, but the words would not come out of his mouth. Flecks of pinkish foam appeared at the corners of his pale green lips.
Suddenly, as if the words of the Bard had a magic of their own, he began to quote his own lines from the play.
Bob pointed behind him with a shaking finger.
Kelley wanted to help the tortured boucca but found herself, instead, compelled to look past where Bob writhed in pain: up the road, to the top of the hill-and the carousel.
