Tempestuous

by Lesley Livingston

  You fool, he thought, shaking his head to clear the sudden red mist that had descended upon him. That’s Kelley up there fighting for her life. Not prey.

  The kestrel banked sharply, suddenly—surprising the heavier, less maneuverable owl, who hurtled into a stand of saplings. The kestrel shot toward the cover of the deeper woods. Safe for the moment.

  “Go, Firecracker!” Sonny shouted hoarsely in her wake, the effort sending a fresh wash of blood spilling from his wounds to seep into the ground.

  Suddenly, the clover charm at his throat burned like a magnesium flare, sending liquid fire coursing through his veins. Sonny couldn’t stifle the cry of agony that tore from his mouth. At the sound, the forest floor all around him surged like a tidal wave. Trees groaned, reaching black branches into the skies. Sonny stared up and squinted, wondering for a moment if his vision was ebbing along with his strength. The sky directly above him began to waver like a desert mirage—a product of thirst and madness—and Sonny assumed that his mind had finally broken.

  But then he saw the faint edges of a roughly circular, crackling band of light appear, spreading outward, growing, clawing downward through the night.

  A rift. A huge rift descended on the island. Big enough to swallow it whole. The circle drifted down, and North Brother Island vanished from the middle of the East River, as if it had never existed there at all.

  Chapter XXX

  The kestrel emerged from the other side of the forest, where only a narrow strip of rocky beach separated the trees from the East River. Shifting back from her kestrel form, Kelley wobbled and almost fell to her knees. But she’d done it. She’d actually—willfully—transformed into a falcon . . . and then back again.

  In her hand, she still clutched the torn, blood-spattered scrap of paper she’d found on the ground outside the hospital pavilion after she left Fennrys to free Lucky. She glanced down at it and felt the same rush of emotion that had finally, once and for all, allowed her to successfully harness her magick.

  HIPPOLYTA: How chance Moonshine is gone before Thisbe comes back and finds her lover?

  Reenter Thisbe

  THESEUS: She will find him by starlight. Here she comes; and her passion ends the play.

  The page was torn away after that line. Kelley’s fingers trembled, and the remnant of her play script shivered like a leaf in autumn. The script had been the one thing she had given Sonny.

  As she gathered herself, preparing for the thing she had to do next, a wash of shifting light suddenly illuminated the beach, and Kelley glanced up, her mouth falling open at the sight of the Otherworldly rift appearing in the sky, slowly growing out, an expanding circle of light that sank downward over the whole of North Brother Island. All around her, the trees and rocks and buildings of the island began to wink out of existence.

  Kelley felt herself shimmering along with the island. She closed her eyes and waited for the gut-churning ride to end.

  The Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir was the largest body of water in Central Park, a serene lake covering over a hundred acres, surrounded by a one-and-a-half-mile path that was a favorite of New York joggers. It was also, Kelley now realized, ideally situated within the magick-ridden park to provide a new home for Gwynn’s relocated island. The wavering effects of the rift travel dissipated, and the shores of the Reservoir shimmered into view, ringed by the distant silhouettes of office buildings and apartment towers.

  Kelley looked around. The island had been transported completely intact . . . but it was different than it had been. The hulking scaffold of the coal-dock gate, thirty yards down the beach from where she stood, now appeared to be constructed of the woven branches of white birch trees. It was a majestic entrance to the new seat of the Faerie world here on Earth.

  The Samhain Gate wasn’t just full of cracks anymore. It’d had its doors blown clean off.

  Fair Folk of every description were coming through the shimmering portal—running and bounding and fluttering through—and even from a distance, Kelley could hear their joyous singing. She could hear other sounds, too—howls and snarls and mad cackling. There were a lot of Faerie who had long awaited such a day—the day when the Gate to the mortal realm stood wide and unprotected—and they were taking advantage of it.

  The roads leading up from the shore were no longer covered with decaying mulch and overgrowth, but paved with gleaming cobbles and moss, lined with lushly flowering hedgerows of roses and bougainvillea. The hospital pavilion stood opulent as a palace—with facades of carved marble and shining pink granite, and windows of sparkling colored glass. Kelley saw the outline of what had once been the broken finger of a smokestack, now a shimmering bronze spire, topped with a gleaming, pulsing light, like a beacon in the darkness.

  Looking at the water, Kelley saw that the surface of the reservoir had grown ruffled with weedy, creeping growth. Ropy tendrils of reeds and lily pads and thick scummy blooms of algae turned the dark water swampy.

  The island was stretching out greedy green fingers toward the park.

  Frantic, Kelley looked up into the night sky and sent out a silent summons. Within moments, three familiar cloud-shapes descended to hover before her, resolving themselves into her Storm Hags.

  “I think we could really use a bout of unseasonable weather, ladies,” Kelley said, holding out her hand. The space above her upturned palm flared with cold silver light. Drawing at last on her Winter power, she created the image of a bitter ice storm in miniature.

  The Storm Hags squealed and hissed in glee as Kelley told them what she wanted them to do. They each thrust a gnarled hand into the icy spell, augmenting their own powers with hers, and then tore off in three separate directions to spread a killing frost over Gwynn’s unnatural flora—to try to keep it in check until their mistress could finish what she had started.

  Kelley knelt on the beach, now thickly carpeted with foliage. She cleared her mind and opened herself to the flow of her emotions, channeling them . . . molding them like clay with her will. She concentrated on the torn half-page, spattered with drops of Sonny’s blood, gently rolling it into a tube—a long, spiraled trumpet shape. In her mind, Kelley stretched that shape out, etching detail and function, calling into being the tall, bronze horn that her mother had used to summon the Hunter.

  Kelley had held the instrument in her hands only once before, but she remembered how it felt, how it sounded—the earth-shattering notes it had produced on the night when Sonny had first transformed into the terrifying Rider on the Roan Horse. She remembered how it had felt when she’d snapped the instrument in two over her knee, destroying it so that no one could ever again call upon the awful power of Mabh’s horn.

  Kelley’s horn, she whispered silently in her mind. This time it’s my horn, Sonny. Please hear that. Please understand. . . .

  The magick flowed out of her, and she felt the sudden weight of cold metal in her hands. Kelley stood and put the horn to her lips. The triple-note clarion call rang through the air, leaving deathly silence in its wake.

  Too exhausted to transform back into a falcon, Kelley ran, stumbling, through the island’s forest back toward the clearing where she had been forced to leave Sonny in his prison of thorns.

  When she got there, she saw that the cage had been blown apart.

  As she stood before the shattered remains, a tawny owl glided out of the shadows. Kelley stiffened in alarm as the bird shape blurred, transformed, and Titania stepped into the clearing opposite her. She stared, aghast, at the horn in Kelley’s hands. Looking at the shredded cage, Titania said, “You stupid girl! What have you done?”

  Kelley let the war horn fall from her fingertips into the weeds at her feet. Staring up into the sky, she felt the stirrings of dread. She’d thought that, this time, it would be different. Her horn. Her Hunter. But Kelley feared that maybe she really was just too much her mother’s daughter.

  What have I done?

  In the sky above, Lucky—no, not Lucky—the Roan Horse of the Wild Hunt ho
vered in the air like a crimson fireball, Sonny Flannery astride his back, clothed in a shimmering coat of chain mail and a horned helmet.

  The last three remaining Wild Hunters rode by his side.

  Kelley felt her heart constrict painfully as Sonny hauled on the mane of the Roan Horse and sent the fiery charger plunging over the treetops, toward Gwynn’s newly created Faerie palace, drawing a flaming sword as he went.

  “You would doom us all,” Titania cried to Kelley.

  Kelley snorted indignantly. “Only because you would first, Your Highness.”

  “Insolent wretch!” the queen spat furiously, unfurling wings that were more glorious than anything Kelley had ever seen. Anger blazed in Titania’s lovely face, and her wings flamed with all the colors of a sunrise.

  Kelley unfurled her own wings in a flash of diamond-and-amethyst brilliance. Together, Faerie queen and Faerie princess lit up the grove, bright as day. Kelley thoroughly expected that they would square off and fight—and that she would stand about as much chance as a snowball in a microwave. But Titania did not hurl sun-fire at her as Kelley expected. Instead, she hesitated, her gaze locked, not on Kelley’s face, but on her wings.

  “Your wings . . . ,” the Summer Queen said, her voice tangled with emotion. “I thought . . . in the theater . . . I thought I was imagining things. How . . . ?”

  “Gwynn failed,” Kelley said defiantly, “in his bid to kill my father. He failed, and Auberon gave me my Unseelie wings back—which he never would have taken in the first place if it hadn’t been for your stupid, stupid evil-villain plans, I might add. Your Highness.”

  “Gwynn . . .” Titania seemed to have gotten hung up on that initial detail. “He told me only that Auberon was ill . . . a tragedy for the Courts and all the more reason for us to push forward with our designs before someone else could usurp his power. I wanted to go to him, but the Winter Court is so guarded—and Gwynn told me there was nothing I could do to save him. That he would be dead by now . . .” Tears spilled down her cheeks.

  “I’m sure Gwynn thought he would be. And I guess he just neglected to mention that he was the reason Auberon was sick.” Kelley shook her head, almost pitying the queen. She seemed like a lost little girl all of a sudden. “Did it never occur to you to call him on that?”

  Titania’s mouth opened in vague astonishment. “Of course not,” she said. “We Fair Folk do not—”

  “Don’t!” Kelley cut her off before she could say the words. “Just . . . don’t.”

  If one more person told her that Faerie didn’t lie, she was going to lose it. And what did it matter anyway? Titania was a lost cause. Gwynn had been manipulating her for so long that the queen’s wits and will were virtual strangers to her. It reminded Kelley of how Shakespeare had portrayed her—enspelled, manipulated, and not, ultimately, all that unforgiving of the fact.

  A roaring sound came from the direction the Wild Hunt had gone. Glancing at each other, Kelley and the queen both took to their wings to see what terrible thing had made that noise.

  In the sky above the palace’s courtyard, the Wild Hunters tore through the air, fiery swords blazing. Down below, the denizens of Faerie—called by Gwynn to attend his new court in the mortal realm—ran screaming, fleeing for their lives, as the war band chased them down. The tops of the trees surrounding the yard burned furiously, set alight by the hunters to drive their prey out into the open.

  In the shadow of the palace, Kelley saw a gaggle of Titania’s mortal thralls—the party girls and boys—terrified and hunched together, trying to escape from the mayhem. She saw Bob standing before them, his hands twisting through the air as he struggled to draw on his depleted magick to weave a veil to hide the unfortunate creatures.

  Kelley also saw Carys, charging out from beneath the canopy of burning trees, along with a tall gangly Fae, and Bryan and Beni from the Janus Guard. They split up and began herding straggling thralls and some of the newly arrived Fae to safety.

  One of the hunters spotted them and plunged toward the two Lost Fae. Kelley dived, shouting Carys’s name. Carys glanced over her shoulder and hit the dirt, leaving the hunter free to snatch one of the shrieking thralls into the air, tossing him like a rag doll into the burning forest before joining his companions as they raced toward Gwynn’s palace. Kelley dived beneath the flames and pulled the singed, shaken boy out of the trees by his wrists, turning him over to Carys for safekeeping.

  The Wild Hunt was above the palace now. They clattered over the rooftop, shattering the glass skylights and marble statues, sending them crashing into the courtyard.

  Finally, that drew the Lord of Dreams forth.

  Fury darkening his brow, Gwynn strode out the front doors of his palace and into the open, Hooligan-boy following close behind like a leashed hound. The King of Spring threw his arms wide, black cloak billowing out behind him as he knelt, laying his palms flat to the earth.

  Kelley had once seen the leprechaun send an enchantment down into the ground in Central Park. This was the opposite.

  Gwynn drew the Green Magick out of North Brother Island like he was sucking it up a straw. The veins of his hands and arms pulsed dark green under his pale skin—skin that began to darken with swirling patterns, like knotted, writhing tattoos. The air filled with sound and fury as Gwynn’s red-eyed birds gathered and descended toward their master in a cloud of inky feathers.

  From where she hovered just above the burning trees, Kelley watched, horrified, as dozens of birds converged on the spot where Gwynn knelt, melting together like shadows in the air, coalescing in two giant, winglike shapes behind him.

  “No!” Hooligan-boy howled. “It must stay in the earth—you can’t control it!”

  But the Lord of Dreams ignored him, siphoning the Green Magick up out of the enchanted soil. Gwynn himself began to grow and change, his outline shifting, blurring, melding with his demon birds . . . unfurling, stretching, re-forming into the shape of a fearsome, black-winged dragon.

  A freaking dragon.

  With a hundred-foot wingspan.

  In the middle of Central Park.

  Chapter XXXI

  The Rider on the Roan Horse pulled his mount into a rearing turn as the dragon in the courtyard beat its wings, sending out buffeting gales. Its dark hide glowed with green iridescence. Its eyes blazed with emerald fire.

  Worthy prey, the Rider thought.

  Certainly something you don’t see every day, said a voice in the back of his head.

  “No!” The leprechaun in the courtyard pulled an iron knife from a sheath at his belt, holding it tightly by its ebony handle. He looked like a child’s doll standing next to the great beast. “It is not for you alone . . . you promised we would share the magick!” he howled, and charged at the enormous creature. “You promised me Green Fire!”

  Gwynn the Dragon King kept that promise. He turned. Opening his massive jaws, he spat forth a roaring column of acid-green flame that consumed the leprechaun, killing him instantly.

  Tremendous sport! the Rider thought. He sent his steed plunging toward the scaly monster, his blade flashing fire.

  Kelley turned to Titania, who hovered in the air beside her. The queen’s honeyed complexion had gone ashen at the sight of the transformed Faerie king. “You really want to sit on a throne beside a giant lizard, Highness? Seriously?”

  The Summer Queen shook her head, mute.

  Suddenly, Kelley heard her mother’s voice in her head. Daughter . . .

  And then her father’s. Kelley . . .

  Twin streaks of light, comet tails of silver and violet, streaked toward Kelley and Titania from the island’s Gateway, and Auberon and Mabh joined them in the sky. Her mother looked as though she was back to her vibrant, wild-eyed, fabulous self. Auberon was still pale . . . but then, he was always pale. The planes of his face may have stood out more sharply, but Kelley was surprisingly relieved to see him looking as well as he did. The king gave her a small smile as he held out his hand for the Summer Queen to ta
ke.

  “Lady,” he said, with a hint of warmth in his voice, “we have dealt with great threats to the realm before. Shall we do so again?”

  Over Auberon’s shoulder, Kelley saw Mabh roll her eyes.

  “My lord.” Titania took Auberon’s offered hand, her eyes shining as she gazed at him. “We shall.”

  “Oh, get a room,” Kelley muttered as they soared away together.

  Mabh heard the comment and threw back her head in a burst of laughter. Then she, too, streaked toward where the Dragon King beat the air with enormous wings that sent forth great gusts of wind, flattening trees and extinguishing the Wild Hunt’s flames.

  But despite Auberon’s bravado, it swiftly became apparent that Gwynn could not be cast down from the sky with their combined efforts. Driven back, maybe. Nowhere near defeated.

  He was also not the only threat facing them.

  From out of nowhere, one of the Wild Hunters came tearing through the night to knock Kelley out of the sky. She landed heavily in an ornamental rose hedge and, crawling free, realized that it hadn’t been just any hunter who’d attacked her.

  It had been Sonny.

  The beautiful Faerie girl tumbled through the air and crashed to the ground in an explosion of leaves and petals. She would make a handsome trophy kill.

  No! the voice in his mind protested, louder now. She’s not to be hurt!

  The Rider snarled and shook his head. Beneath his knees, the Roan Horse sensed his confusion and whinnied, bucking angrily.

  Kelley!

  Above them, the rulers of Faerie fought gallantly to subdue the dragon. The Rider would let them worry it and wear it down, like hounds after a stag, and then he and his hunters would finish the dragon off.

  In the meantime, he would have his pretty quarry.

  The Rider charged at the shining girl again, but suddenly a tall blond warrior ran in front of her, knocking the Faerie girl aside as the Rider charged harmlessly past.