Hunt: An Urban Faery Tale (The Faery Chronicles Book 1)

by Leslie Claire Walker

  Rude would bring Oscar, for whatever the both of them together were worth, in case of trouble. And Stacy would be there, paying attention and bringing a key that she said would get him to a rendezvous point with the Wild Hunt.

  Going into Faery meant facing his worst nightmares. There was a chance he could lose himself in them. The sense of who he was, of why he was there. If a costume, no matter how lovingly sewed, would up the ante on that, he couldn’t take the chance. Besides, when it came down to brass tacks he didn’t think he could fool anybody with fancy clothes and a fancy glamour. Simone had a nice idea and he didn’t doubt she could do what she said, but still.

  The more he thought about it, the more clear things got.

  He’d have to eighty-six the idea of disguising himself to look like a member of the Hunt. He would have to go as himself. It was more honest anyway. Whether he got his father back whole in mind and body, whether he came back whole himself—he would have to do that on his own. No one else could help him there. It scared the ever loving shit out of him. And it was last-minute. But it was important―the most important thing.

  Not everybody thought so.

  Stacy rolled her eyes.

  Rude chewed his pasta, but he obviously had something to say. Kevin could see it building up behind his eyes. Like an explosive.

  Amy’s mouth fell open. “Are you out of your mind?”

  No point denying it outright. “Maybe.”

  “I worked all night on this costume.”

  “I promise you I’ll wear it,” Kevin said. “When I get back.”

  “You won’t come back.”

  “You’re scared,” he said. “I know how you feel.”

  “No, you don’t.” Amy held his gaze. “You’re going. You’ll actually be able to do something to help yourself.”

  He started to point out the holes in that theory, then though better of it.

  “I won’t be able to do anything at all. Just wait,” she said.

  Rude stepped in. “You sure about this?”

  Kevin nodded.

  “I want you to have my luck.”

  A little late for that. “I already used the rock.”

  “No, dude. I want to give you all the luck I can.”

  “The charm Oscar gave you?”

  “Gimme your hand.” Rude made with the high five.

  Kevin could use all the help he could get. He still had to get a tear to fall from the eye of the Faery King.

  Grabbing hold of Rude’s hand felt like wrapping his fingers around lightning. His hair stood on end. All of it. For a heartbeat. Then the electricity vanished and left him feeling slightly singed on the inside.

  He coughed and looked around. If he’d glowed blue or something like that―if everybody had seen―but no. Everyone still ignored him.

  Rude tried not to laugh. He mostly succeeded. “Don’t use that all at once, dude.”

  Kevin’s voice seized in his throat. He had to push the words out. “No worries.”

  Amy bit her lip. “Be careful.”

  “More than that,” Stacy said. “Don’t underestimate the King.”

  Rude had Kevin’s hands-down personal favorite. “Dude. Don’t die.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  SCOTT, WHO LIKE Mr. Nance had fallen off the Faery King’s radar, drove Kevin downtown. Simone wanted him there an hour early. It would take that long to prep him for the spells she planned to weave, and they had to be ready to go on time.

  When they pulled into the alley, it didn’t look any different tonight than last. But as they got out of the Mustang, Kevin could tell things had changed. The air had thickened with the same electrical charge it’d had the night he’d met Simone. It smelled like ozone and breathed like water on the verge of freezing.

  The bus glowed from the inside, not just from the candles lit along the aisle or the twinkle lights newly strung in the windows. It was the kind of glow that reminded him of the King.

  If the King had figured out what was going down, or if he’d just picked right now to pay a visit to Simone, all their plans had imploded before they even got underway.

  Scott had already started to close the driver’s door and lock up. He didn’t have a clue anything was wrong.

  “Get back in there and haul ass,” Kevin said.

  Scott went still. “I thought I was supposed to stay at least until the others got here.”

  “Not if you value your life.”

  “What about yours?” Scott asked.

  “I’m already on the chopping block.”

  “I won’t leave you here.”

  Kevin saw in Scott’s eyes the same emotion he’d had on Monday when he made the excuse about his father and military school and kicked Kevin to the curb: fear. And underneath that, resolve.

  “Look,” Kevin said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen here. It could get bad. You stay, you take your chances.”

  “Fine,” Scott said.

  “No, it’s not. It could be the King in there.”

  Scott blanched, but he didn’t budge.

  Kevin didn’t have time to argue anymore. “You want to be a hero, go ahead,” he said.

  Scott thinned his lips. “I’m trying to be your friend.”

  The easy shot, the cheap shot—the thing designed to make Scott go away—rolled right off his tongue. “You weren’t when it mattered before.”

  Scott took it exactly the way Kevin intended. And he did exactly what Kevin wanted. He got back in the car. Turned the key in the ignition.

  Then he folded his arms and fucking sat there. Not going anywhere. Too bad, so sad.

  He mouthed words that Kevin could read clear under the glare of the streetlamp.

  I’m your friend when it matters now.

  Kevin stared at him, wanting like hell in that moment to hop in and go away from everything he knew he’d find on the bus. But he turned on his heel and walked up the step.

  The door opened. Brightness blinded him. He put up a hand to shield his eyes. Through the lattice of his fingers, he made out the source of his fear.

  Simone.

  She shone from within, with a light that pulsed like a speeding heartbeat.

  “Hurry,” she said. And made room for him.

  Kevin clambered inside, followed her back, tripping over his own feet and a broom braced in the aisle.

  “Do you remember when I told you my name?” she asked, her voice a faraway echo. “Do you remember what you traded me for that privilege?”

  How could he forget? “You asked for one night of my life.”

  She met his gaze. “This is it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” he asked. “And can you turn down the light some? I can’t see you.”

  “That’s just it, Kevin. I can’t.”

  She arrived at the rear of the bus and reached behind her. He grabbed hold of her hand. It felt insubstantial. If he squeezed hard enough, it might pop. Her skin—all the warmth had fled from it.

  He’d felt something like that before. When the Faery King touched him. That same coolness in spite of all the light. The same translucent, delicate, wild power.

  Panic rooted in his gut and spread. “What’s wrong with you, Simone?”

  She froze. “You said my name.”

  He’d gone out of his way not to use it before, not even to her face when they were alone. He had an awful feeling that the time he could see her at all was almost done.

  “I didn’t know how much I would like hearing it with the sound of your voice,” she said.

  “Simone, please.”

  She squeezed past him, quick-stepped to the center of the bus, and searched for something on one of the seats. “I worked all day on a spell to camouflage you among the Hunt. I tried everything I knew. All the spells I’ve learned in seven years with the Fae. Do you know what? Nothing worked.”

  The panic clawed up Kevin’s throat. “I’m screwed?”

  “No, Kevin. You’re going
to do what I haven’t been able to—rip the King a new one and get your life back.”

  “How?”

  She pulled a small, silver mirror out of the seat, wiped the glass clean on her dress, and walked back to him. “With this.”

  “A magic mirror?”

  “Nope. A plain one.” She placed it in his palm and folded his fingers over it. “Put that in your pocket.”

  He did. “Simone, would you please tell me what’s happening? What are you talking about? Why do you look like that?”

  “I found a way to cast the spell you need,” she said. “The thing is, to touch a human so that he can survive a ride with the Hunt, so that he can walk into realm of Faery and back out again without going batshit—you have to be a Faery. Not half. Full. Every molecule.”

  It dawned on him why the light that poured from her reminded him of the King. “What did you do?”

  “What I had to,” she said. “I gave in. I stopped fighting my destiny.”

  “No, Simone.”

  “All those nights playing with the band, just being here and hanging out with people like you—I loved all of it, but in the end they couldn’t stop the inevitable. I don’t belong in this world anymore.”

  “You make more sense to me than almost everyone else I know.” She’d been Beth Nance once upon a time. She’d broken out, become who she wanted to be. She had mojo.

  He understood her. And she understood him. He didn’t want her to go. Because that’s what this meant. Once she completed the transformation to be fully Faery, she wouldn’t be showing up again. Not here in the alley, not in the club. Nowhere.

  Tenderly, she brushed the hair off his brow. “Every day, the balance tipped for me. More Faery, less human. I didn’t have that much longer before I lost what little humanity I had left.”

  “But how could you just let it go?”

  “The same way you’re about to do something that no other human being would dare try. It’s your choice. This is mine,” she said. “If I have to lose, it should at least mean something. This way, it does. This way, I go out with a bang.”

  “There’s no undoing this, is there?”

  “Afraid not.”

  He didn’t want that to be true. He didn’t want it to be irrevocable. “How much time?”

  “Until it happens?” she asked. “Enough to cast the spell, maybe a few minutes more.”

  Not fair. “Will I see you again?”

  “Probably,” she said. “If you don’t get killed tonight, I think probably.”

  But she wouldn’t be the same. Nothing would ever be the same again.

  He sucked it up as best he could. “What do I have to do?”

  “Kick his ass, Kevin. You promised me this one night of your life, and that’s what I want you to do with it,” she said. “You do it for your dad and for yourself, and for me.”

  He nodded.

  “Solemn word, Kevin.”

  “I swear.”

  “Once you join the Hunt, the King won’t know you’re there until it’s too late,” she said. “He’ll be…distracted.”

  “By what?”

  “You’ll see,” she said. “This spell will wear off when you enter Faery. You dig?”

  “Yes.”

  “One more thing, Kevin. This business you have with the King—get it done before the clock goes around to midnight again. You have twenty-four hours to get free and get back. If you miss that window, you’ll be stuck in Faery until next Halloween.”

  He stared at her. “That would have been really good to know before. Especially since I don’t have a plan.”

  “It would only have freaked you out,” she said.

  “How do you think I feel now?”

  Simone looked him over. “You can do this, Kevin.”

  He charged his voice with way more bravado than he felt. “I can.”

  “You’ll figure it out when you get there. You’ll know. I promise.”

  He hoped to hell she was right.

  She held his gaze until she seemed satisfied with what she saw. “All right. Let’s get it done.”

  She began to sing. Not the same as at the club. Not a pulse-quickening come-on—a sledgehammer. It cracked him open. He fell to his knees before he could draw breath.

  His own light poured out of his chest and into her hands. Where hers was cool and brilliant, his shone earthy and warm. Human.

  Her voice heated that human light, melted it until it flowed like liquid glass. Then she gave it back to him.

  Simone sang it into every pore, every cell. Into blood and bone and muscle, over skin. To shield. Her song lived in that light. It lived in him.

  She grew brighter and brighter—burning from the inside, what remained of her going up in Faery fire.

  He caught his breath. He tried to speak but no words would come.

  She kissed his hands, one by one, and his brow. And she kissed him full on the lips, to bless.

  With the last of her humanity, she threw a bolt of light at the broom. It flashed incandescent and Kevin shut his eyes too late. When he looked again, the world had turned photo-negative. Still, clearly, where the broom had been the ghost of a saddled stallion dug at the black rubber tread of the aisle with his spectral hoof.

  It was over so fast. The magic was done.

  And Simone was gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  KEVIN SLID INTO the nearest seat, shivering with cold and shuddering with grief. He couldn’t feel the vinyl beneath him, or the floor of the bus underfoot. The blankets he wrapped himself in didn’t warm him. Cotton and flannel might do well with human skin, but right now his bore a greater resemblance to the gray mist form of the stallion.

  How did you warm a ghost?

  He stayed where he sat, with the horse pacing the aisle. His name was Wind. Not that he’d told Kevin. Kevin just knew, like he knew the others were about to arrive a few minutes before they showed. He let them onto the bus; it was his place now.

  Amy first. She hesitated before she hugged him, but only a little.

  Rude and Scott carried Oscar between them, the seer’s arms slung around their shoulders. He still looked like shit. But he had enough spark in him to bitch the whole time they steered him toward a seat.

  Stacy brought up the tail end. She noticed before the others, and asked the question he didn’t want to hear out loud.

  “She crossed over, didn’t she?”

  Kevin nodded.

  Stacy placed a hand over her throat, where she wore a stone strung on red ribbon. “Her passing echoes in here. The whole place is coated in light.”

  “I can’t see it,” Kevin said. “So I’ll have to take your word for it.”

  Stacy’s mouth curved into a sad smile. “I’m sorry.”

  He was, too, more than he could say. “She did it for me. To give me the chance to get through this.”

  Oscar’s jaw dropped a little with awe. “That’s a lot of power she gave you.”

  Kevin swallowed hard. “Let’s hope I use it well.”

  “We’ll be here to back you up,” the seer said. “Scott’s going to keep watch. The rest of us—me and Rude and Stacy and Amy—we’re going to keep an eye on you.”

  “We’ll stay here, on the bus.” Stacy, who’d been keeping an eye on him probably longer than he realized, stepped forward. “We’ll be connected to each other, and we’ll be connected to you with this.” She untied the ribbon from around her neck and brought the rock to him.

  “How long?” he asked. “I mean, will you be able to reach into Faery?”

  “We don’t know. But if we can help you there, we will.”

  He looked closely at the stone. The hole near the center hadn’t been drilled. It looked like it’d been worn away by water.

  “It’s a holey stone,” Stacy said. “A Faery rock. I found it on the beach at Galveston, right where the water meets the sand. That’s kind of an in-between place. Just like the one where you’re going is in between life and death, in
between day and night. It’s always twilight there.”

  He hadn’t known.

  “This is also your key, Kevin. Wrap your hand around and make a wish to join the Hunt. The stone will take you there.” She tied it around his neck. In spite of his ghostly appearance, it stayed on solid.

  “I knew you were under there somewhere,” Amy said.

  He twined his spectral fingers with hers. “Is it time?” he asked.

  “Good to go, dude.” Rude took hold of the stallion’s reins. The horse tolerated it, barely.

  Kevin followed them out, Amy at his side.

  “You’ll be back later,” she said, like she was trying to convince herself. “You still owe me a date.”

  “Then I’d better make it a good one.” He pulled her close one more time. When she drew away, her lips brushed him the same way Simone’s had, with the same kind of blessing.

  Rude gave him the reins. “Leave no trace, dude.”

  Kevin mounted up, the horse shifting under his weight. He let himself have one last look at his friends. They had his back as much as they could. He held on tight to that.

  He took the stone in hand, and wished.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  THE STONE RIPPED KEVIN and the stallion out of the alley. Hurled them through the sky, spinning fast and faster. Stars wheeled above, earth and steel and glass and concrete and ribbons of water below.

  Air roared in his ears. Buffeted his clothes, his skin. His eyes teared and streamed. He gave up white-knuckling the reins and wrapped his arms around Wind’s neck, grabbing on with all the strength in his body.

  Pressure built in Kevin’s head until he thought it would explode. His gorge rose. He held it down with sheer will. His muscles strained, the air sneaking in between his hands and Wind’s body, fighting to toss him off the stallion.

  Once it gained an advantage, Kevin couldn’t stop it. It peeled his hands away first, finger by finger. Then his arms, one by one. He dug his knees into Wind’s sides. Expected to be thrown free and fall God only knew where. Any agonizing second.