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

by Leslie Claire Walker

  The spinning stopped as violently as it had begun. The whoosh of air lulled. The sky rocked and settled on its foundation. Kevin couldn’t see earth—only clouds below. He collapsed over Wind’s neck and fisted his hands in the stallion’s hair, his breath hard and fast.

  The stillness stretched on forever, long enough for Kevin to catch his balance, for his breathing to slow. For the clock to tick past midnight and the dark to fill with ghosts.

  They passed in front of him.

  The King flew at the front of the pack, his bright face paler than the cold glow of the stars, his eyes dark hollows. His black riding clothes and boots rendered him a shadow, black cape billowing behind him. He raised a sword in his gloved right hand, poised to strike. And crimson with blood.

  A dozen spectral hunters, hounds baying at their mounts’ heels, trailed after him, a powerful wedge moving at a speed that could cut down anything—or anyone—in its way. Their faces pinched tight around fierce eyes. Swords at the ready. Unafraid. All but one.

  Franklin Landon rode at the rear of the formation, wearing hunting leathers and fur-lined cloak and boots. He wielded a blade like the rest of them but stretched it as far away from his body as he could, his other arm wound up in his horse’s reins.

  Kevin started to call out. He bit his tongue to stop the sound. And held on for dear life when Wind whipped around and sped to a gallop to catch up. The stallion knew where he belonged.

  A blessing or a curse that the horse pulled up on the far end of the back line, away from Kevin’s dad? They had to blend in. To be part of the Hunt. To arrive in Faery unnoticed.

  Kevin could hardly chance looking down-line at his father’s face, filled with fear. If the man saw him, too, would he raise an alarm? Or would he try to get to Kevin? Just as bad.

  Neither of those things happened. No one noticed that he’d joined them out of thin air. All eyes trained on the King.

  Simone’s glamour worked. She’d made Kevin undetectable. Or so it seemed. But she hadn’t made him an expert horseman. He struggled to stay on Wind’s back. He fought to keep up.

  Thank God the horse knew what to do. Who to follow.

  At the head of the pack, the King arced down through the clouds. The Hunt—and Kevin—streamed after him, full speed ahead.

  Down and down, through water vapor that made it hard for Kevin to draw air into his lungs. Through night sky like velvet. Close enough to land to make out a winding creek and the small twisted beauty of grapevines, a stone house with a tin roof, far from the city.

  And a little girl with blonde curls who couldn’t have been older than seven, out by herself on this one night of all nights after the witching hour, when she shouldn’t be.

  She couldn’t know that. Halloween was for fun—costumes and candy, scary movies with monsters that evaporated when the house lights came up.

  The stories of the Hunt, like so many other old legends, weren’t told anymore. That didn’t change the fact of their existence. Or that screams and tears and pleading held no sway with the King.

  Kevin could have told her so, but the bloodlust that awakened in him as the King scooped her up washed his sight with red.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  KEVIN SAW THE LITTLE GIRL passed back, from warrior to warrior, all the way to the rear of the formation—to his father, who sheathed his blade and fumbled to keep her struggling form from falling off his ghost-horse to her death.

  He licked his lips. If she fell, she’d smash red and mangled into the earth. If she managed to hang on, she’d be theirs―the Fae’s―forever. Maybe she wouldn’t bleed for them. But the King had as many ways to make a person hurt as there were stars in the sky. Everything and everyone the girl had ever known? Gone. Everything she might have been before this moment? Dead and buried. Faery would twist her. Make her into magic. Just the thought of it made his mouth water. Pricked his skin into gooseflesh. Made him want more just like her.

  Only he wanted to be the one carrying her to her doom. Fuck his father. Fuck the order of things. He should be the one.

  If he couldn’t have the kid, he’d take the next one. The King would allow it. He deserved his due. He was one of the Hunt. He breathed in the night. The scorch of electricity. The horses. The swords. The little girl’s fear. He couldn’t get enough.

  That horrified him―the tiny, microscopic part of him that was still Kevin. The rest of him rejoiced.

  The Hunt dove. He dove with them. They swept fields and bayous, city streets nearly deserted but for folks who couldn’t afford or refused shelter: the mentally ill, the homeless. Two of those, the King took. The third hid from the world behind a brick wall. From cold. From wind. From the Hunt.

  He put up a fight.

  The King’s sword cut him first―a bright red slash opened up across his belly. Crimson sprayed on the bricks. The man grabbed at the wound, but his intestines snaked out between his fingers.

  Kevin slid in and slit the man’s throat. It was the least he could do before the rest of the Hunt fell on the bloody mess. Kevin fell with them. Fingernails became claws. Teeth grew into fangs. Only the blood mattered. The smell of it. The copper taste of it.

  They tore the man apart.

  Kevin could barely see by the end of it―not the other members of the Hunt, not his father, not the King. He could hardly feel except in the smallest part of him. Hidden away. A screaming, dying spark of humanity.

  He forgot who he was. The only thing he could see were his own hands, slick and stained. And the dark. And the King. He trained his gaze on the King and refused to lose him in the night. Because they were nearly done here in the Human world and he had never been where the King would take them soon.

  Soon. Kevin said the word out loud. With more longing than he’d ever had.

  The King gave a signal. Deeper into the city they drove, into places Kevin recalled as if from a dream. The lights on the oaks at City Hall, the darkened windows on the skyscrapers twinkling with the reflected shine of the streetlights and the waning moon that rose. Crumpled newspapers and empty take-out containers blew across empty lanes. Rats—and the feral cats that preyed on them—roamed the streets and foraged in dumpsters.

  Over all of it, the Hunt flew. Kevin and Wind moved as a unit, if they’d melded together, leaning into the exhilarating cold, shifting tack and direction on a dime.

  The Hunt slowed, soundless, and turned east. Tall buildings give way to warehouses, flat roofs all the same. Except for the alley where the King called a halt. It stank of magic. And housed a bus that seemed familiar. Kevin couldn’t put his finger on why.

  He watched dispassionately as the King dismounted and tried the door on the bus. When it wouldn’t yield to him, he kicked it and cracked its heavy plastic pane. But it still wouldn’t open.

  The rest of the Hunt grew restless. Kevin began to feel antsy in the saddle. The space on either side of him fogged over. He could hardly make out his companions.

  “Kevin!” the King called. The name echoed off the sides of the warehouses, shook the dirt from the metal and brick and mortar.

  It sounded familiar, too. Like a fading dream.

  The King called again. No one answered.

  “I have your father here,” the King said. “If you want him back, show yourself.”

  Still, no answer.

  The King mounted his horse. “You’ll be sorry, Kevin.”

  Kevin had no doubt. Just like he knew that if they didn’t find someone to take or kill immediately, the Hunt must move on. Otherwise, it would fall apart.

  But the King waited.

  Confusion crept in at the edges of Kevin’s mind and spread, taking with it the last of his ability to think.

  He had no words the relief that flowered in his gut when the King finally bolted from the ground. Wind reared and took off, carrying him into the gloaming, the hush before dawn.

  The horizon heated with the promise of sunrise. Light flashed, and the world turned upside down.

  Kevi
n caught sight of the earth below him—flat prairie with no buildings, no people, nothing at all. And the stars twinkled in all the wrong places, in constellations he didn’t understand. The horizon still burned with first light, but it looked dimmer, like there was a chance it wouldn’t take.

  He made out a tree in front of him, its trunk wider than twenty oaks and as tall as the space between land and sky. Roses bloomed on the trunk. And thorns.

  The ghostly Faery light that shrouded him burned away. He felt his mind peeled open like a piece of fruit, someone else’s consciousness probing for answers. Who are you? How did you get here?

  He’d have told them if he remembered. If he could speak.

  The stallion beneath him neighed once and vanished, leaving him straddling a broom a hundred feet in the air and with nowhere to go but down.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  HE FELL, TUMBLING from the pack, following the curve of the great tree, thorns catching at his clothes and skin, a rain of rose petals in his wake. He felt more than saw two riders turn back for him, too late. One of them, the King. The other? His dad. Who held the stunned little kid in front of him.

  Memories poured into him from wherever they’d gone while he rode. His whole life at hyper-speed, from fragments of himself when he was small, the perfect day with his mom, how she died. His dad crumbling under the weight of it. The party at Rude’s, Amy, the voices in his head, Oscar, Simone, the last look at his friends and the bus where Stacy said they’d stay, connected with him.

  A jolt went through him at the base of his throat—where the holey stone rested that Stacy had tied around his neck—and raced through his body.

  He lost sight of his father. Saw from the corner of his eye the King diving to catch him but not quick enough.

  The ground rose up to meet him. Each individual blade of grass came into focus. Every pebble. Twigs fallen from the tree. He understood belatedly that he wouldn’t survive the impact.

  Somewhere, someone (Stacy’s face flashed in his mind’s eye) stomped on the brakes. He skidded to a stop inches above the ground and hung there, suspended.

  Then he fell. And landed like a feather, if a feather could weigh one-sixty with pebbles embedded in its palms.

  The sight of tall leather riding boots had him looking up to find the Faery King staring at him. “Lead a charmed life, do you, Mr. Landon?”

  “I don’t know if I’d call it that.” Kevin pushed to his feet, catching his breath and picking shards of rock out of the bloody heels of his hands.

  “I disagree,” the King said. “It wasn’t my magic that broke your fall. Would you care to say who beat me to it?”

  “No. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

  “Right you are. You’re a guest now, Mr. Landon, under my protection. Whoever your friend—or friends—are, they no longer hold sway.”

  “What does it mean, that I’m your guest?” Kevin asked. He couldn’t afford to assume anything.

  The King removed his gloves. “If you want to know the rules, talk to Simone.”

  “She’s here,” Kevin said.

  “It’s daylight in your world. Of course she is.”

  Did the King not know what she’d done? She’d said he would be distracted with the Hunt, so maybe not. But once he saw her, he’d put two and two together easy. Then what would he do? Would he hurt her?

  “Are you feeling all right?” the King asked. “You look a little pale. Do you think it might be the man you helped rip limb from limb?”

  It had seemed as natural as breathing. Like he’d been born to do it. Like he’d been born to be a monster.

  He hadn’t been himself. Or able to think. Or to do anything except what the Hunt did, and to go where the Hunt went. He’d been a slave to it—and to the King—exactly what he promised himself he’d never be. He’d lived his own personal nightmare, just like Rude said he would.

  Kevin glanced down at his hands. None of the blood on them was his. None of it. This wasn’t just about him and his nightmare. It was about that man, torn apart on the sidewalk. And the kidnapped little girl. This time when the bile rose in his throat, he couldn’t hold it back. He bent over, sick.

  The King lifted a brow. “Mind you don’t do that in my court.”

  Kevin wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

  “Or that either.” The King glanced over his shoulder. “Heroes in this kingdom have manners, Mr. Landon.”

  “Heroes?”

  “Isn’t that what you want to be?” the King asked. “A savior to your father? Brave enough to risk a ride with the Hunt, to throw away a piece of your humanity in the bargain?”

  This wasn’t about brave. This was about survival. “What does that mean, throwing away a piece of my humanity?”

  “It means you were fully human until you rode with the Hunt. Now there is a bit of you that is Faery.”

  “Like Simone.”

  “She didn’t tell you that would happen, did she, Mr. Landon?”

  Kevin didn’t know what to say.

  “She’s the one who did this to you, isn’t she?”

  “No,” Kevin said.

  “You’re lying.”

  “You’re guessing.”

  The King thinned his lips. “You will not turn. We have a use for you in your human world.”

  The thud of footfalls made Kevin turn to see his dad a few feet away, tromping across the grass. He still had the little girl, holding her hand—no, dragging her by her hand. Because that girl? Catatonic.

  Franklin helped her settle on the ground and let go of her for the moment. She didn’t have it in her to run. Besides, where would she go?

  “I was so afraid,” his father said. And he looked it. Terror had dug deep grooves in his forehead and on his cheeks. His hair had turned completely gray.

  He went to put his arms around Kevin but hesitated, looking to the King for approval first. One nod of permission later, his dad enveloped him in a bear hug.

  During which Kevin distinctly heard the sound of broken glass. Coming from the vicinity of his pocket. Simone’s mirror, broken. He hadn’t even known what to use it for. Just that he was supposed to use it to kick the King’s ass.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  “Are you okay?” his father asked.

  Of all the worst questions in the world to ask because they couldn’t be answered honestly without bludgeoning the person who asked. “I’m not hurt, Dad.”

  His father pulled away and framed Kevin’s face with his hands. “What did you do back there, riding with us?”

  “Not now, Dad.”

  “But how—”

  “Not. Now.”

  “You’d best be quiet,” the King said. “Or else you may give away the crucial advantage over me your son believes he’s got.”

  Kevin found it hard to swallow the King knew what he planned to do when he wasn’t even sure how he would do it. Then again, all-knowing and all-seeing fit that bill.

  He realized every thought he’d had since he’d been here had been easily read. Every contingency he’d thought of. Every friendly face he’d pictured. How could he have forgotten?

  “Even here you’re an asshole,” Kevin said.

  That earned him a royal smile. “We have a long way to walk, thanks to you. We’d best get underway.”

  Kevin could hardly believe the guy would actually walk, as in miles. But he did. They crossed the rest of the flatland and took a winding road through a copse of trees he didn’t recognize and that didn’t seem all that much smaller than the giant with the roses. The further they went, the thicker each grouping became so that it morphed into forest.

  He’d been in one, once before. On a day outing for urban summer camp. But nothing like this.

  It should have been darker because of the canopy of branches and leaves overhead blotting out the sky, but the light never changed. Twilight, Stacy had said. It was always twilight in Faery.

  He checked behind him. His dad followed as best he could, half-walking-with and
half-dragging the girl, whose awareness of where she was and what happened seemed only slightly improved.

  Kevin didn’t like the way it looked when she lost her footing. With the way his father pulled her, her shoulder might come out of the socket any minute. It had to hurt like hell. She acted like she didn’t feel it, but Kevin didn’t believe that.

  He waved to get his dad’s attention. “Can you carry her?”

  That was all it took. As if it’d never occurred to the man. Probably it hadn’t. He wasn’t in much better shape than that girl, God help him.

  They walked on, the top layer of soil deepening underfoot. Their shoes sank into the loam. It crackled and clocked with the crush of fallen, rotting leaves and the scrape of moss-covered stones. Roots buckled up through the dirt, catching Kevin unaware twice. The first time, one tripped him up. The second sent him sprawling.

  Although he heard no outright thoughts proclaiming danger, he heard plenty of whispers in his mind. Someone definitely noticed their passage. It took him a few minutes to time the barely audible voices to the movement of the leaves in the wind, the swaying of branches. The creaking of forest life.

  The trees did the talking.

  The longer they walked, the more Kevin felt the exertion of his ride with the Hunt and the bumps and bruises he’d gotten from the fall. Also, he felt utterly turned around. If he had to leave the same way they’d come in, he’d be out of luck. He didn’t get the woods, much less the creepy, magical woods. His instincts had been honed in the city. Unfortunately, the forest didn’t come with a street grid and freeways.

  But he recognized a bad neighborhood when he saw one.

  The air he’d expected to be darker finally grew thicker and heavier, and the trees looked a little off. Twisted branches. Holes in the trunks that you could practically crawl into—if nothing lived in them, which Kevin felt sure something did.

  The moss that covered the rocks on the ground spread to cover the entire forest floor. Closer to the trees, the stuff glowed a bright, poisonous green.