Wondrous Strange

a warmth that had been absent prior to that moment. She watched as he absorbed her gift fully into himself. The brightness faded; his eyes grew dark again.

“Okay,” she said finally, her voice flat, muted. “How do I stop them?”

The king looked down on her, once more as distant as a marble statue. “I cannot tell you how. But I have given you the means by which you might accomplish the task. The rest, you’ll just have to figure out for yourself.”

“What?”

“Good luck, child.” Auberon turned to go.

Kelley was seething. “You’re a real son of a bitch. You know that?”

“I can be,” Auberon said, as he looked at her with something like regret in his eyes. “Unfortunately, you are the daughter of one. Remember that.”

He touched her cheek and then spun on his heel and stalked into the night, turning himself into a falcon as he went. Wings spread wide, the king flew away with Mabh’s war horn clutched in his taloned grasp.

Not knowing what else to do, Kelley turned back to Bob, where he lay upon the ground, limp and unmoving. The charm may have kept the boucca from further hurt, but he was still desperately injured.

“Bob…” She shook him until he groaned. “Bob-Puck! Wake up! The Hunt. They’re awake and they’re hunting humans.”

Above her now, she could see the Hunt. They plunged and dipped crazily through the sky, howling with cruel laughter as one of the Faerie hunters chased down a woman dressed in a torn and bloodied Cleopatra costume, plucking her from the ground to drag her through the air by her feet. “They’re hurting them!”

“Aye,” Bob said, sounding a bit delirious. “Don’t worry-they’re just playing. They’ll get around to killing them soon enough.”

“I’d like to avoid that eventuality if at all possible, Bob. What do I do?”

“You must reach Sonny. You’re the only one who can.”

“He’s two hundred feet in the air!”

Bob giggled a bit and his head lolled back. “You’re a Faerie. Use your wings…”

“Auberon took them!” Kelley almost screamed with frustration.

“Oh…” His voice was reduced to a whisper as his strength ebbed. “Then you must find another way. You have a lot of power…”

“Had, Bob.”

“Still…do…”

“What are you talking about?” she pleaded desperately. “Auberon took it from me; I gave it back!”

“Thou marvell’st at my words?” the boucca gasped, his eyes closing.

“No-Bob!-no more Shakespeare!” Kelley shook him again, trying to jar him out of the poetic lapse. Now was not the time.

“But hold thee still,” he murmured, those same cryptic lines he’d used to warn her in the dressing room. “Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill…”

Then Bob the boucca passed out from pain.

Sonny, where are you when I need you?

It was a stupid question. All Kelley had to do was look into the sky and see him blazing across the treetops like a comet, the band of killer Fae hot on his heels as they pursued screaming humans about the park.

Kelley turned inward, searching for an answer. When she closed her eyes, she found herself once more in the vision she’d had in rehearsal so long ago, a place she now recognized as Herne’s forest-the spring glade where Mabh had enchanted the kelpie. In her mind she looked across the clearing and saw Sonny standing once again in the shadows of the woods. He smiled at her, that sad curving of his beautiful lips, and lifted his hands, palms wide. The white branches of the birch trees at his back glowed dimly in the light that shone from Sonny’s hands, arching over his head like the antlers of a stag.

The white King Stag…

That was it.

Kelley’s eyes snapped open, and she gasped at the revelation. The Faerie king could take away his power from her blood…but Kelley was willing to bet that he couldn’t take away Mabh’s. Mabh, the Autumn Queen, who ruled the Borderlands. She, who had created the Wild Hunt in the first place, who’d twisted the Faerie hunters, stolen away and hidden their prey…

Mabh, Queen of Air and Darkness. Her mother.

Auberon had told her not to forget that, but she’d shied away from the fact.

Bob had told her too. Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.

Fight fire with fire. That was what they had been trying to tell her.

Ignoring as best she could the chaos all around her, Kelley closed her eyes again and searched even deeper inside of herself-looking for the dark, dangerous spark of her mother’s power.

There.

She touched something in her mind: twisting, serpentine energy. It was buried so deep that she never would have found it if Auberon hadn’t taken away the blinding brilliance of her Unseelie gift. Kelley’s mind recoiled from that initial touch, even though she knew she was going to have to use that dark gift. Draw upon it. Embrace it.

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.