CHILD of the HUNT

by Christopher Golden

  “Buffy!” he called. “Oz!”

  Silence.

  He moved forward slowly, searching for the path, refusing to be distracted by wondering about the others. Refusing to be distracted by the feeling of eyes on him, watching with predator’s eyes. He didn’t smell anything nearby, nothing but the trees. Angel wondered if the darkness itself were watching him from where it slithered in and out of tree branches above his head.

  With a shudder, Angel pushed his way through a low spread of branches, and glanced ahead, trying to orient himself. Without Oz to lead the way, Angel simply had to follow his instincts. They’d always worked for him before, and this time was no different. It wasn’t long before he knew he was on the trail of the dark faerie again.

  Alert to any movement around him, he moved as silently as his sense of urgency would allow. Though the dark faerie were a problem, mainly because of their numbers, he had no other recourse. It might already be too late to save Giles and Willow and Xander, but he had to try. And there was still no telling what had become of Oz and Buffy.

  But as surely as he had found the path, Angel felt it was all going to come together when they finally found the Erl King and the Wild Hunt.

  His mind was on that and focused on looking for any little things that might jump from the trees to attack him, when he heard a growl from the deep woods off to his right. Angel crouched and grabbed a long tree branch, splintered and sharp on one end. He stared into the trees, the forest dark even to his eyes.

  “Come out, whatever you are!” he snarled.

  The growl came again, followed by a single word.

  “Relax.” Oz stepped out of the trees, but Angel only knew him because of his voice. And the fact that he didn’t know any other werewolves.

  “New look for you,” Angel noted. “But it isn’t your time of the month, is it?”

  “I stopped myself halfway. Even brought myself part of the way back. It helps to be able to talk. Don’t know why it’s happening, though. It must be this place,” Oz said, his voice a low rumble. “There’s magic in the air,” he added, a whimsical note in his growl.

  “Yeah,” Angel agreed. “It’s Disneyland.”

  In silence, they fell into step together, following the trail of the dark faerie. It occurred to Angel what an odd team they made, but he decided not to mention it. He didn’t know Oz that well, and he might be sensitive about the whole werewolf thing. Angel had had plenty of time to get used to being a vampire. Oz had been a werewolf for less than a year.

  “You hear something?” Oz asked.

  Angel listened, and was about to say no, when a howl split the darkness like lightning. Angel strained to figure out the direction it had come from, but it seemed to echo, bouncing off the night, off the trees.

  Then it didn’t matter where it had come from. Because the howl was replaced by a chorus of growling and barking and baying that was all around them. For the second time in minutes, they were surrounded. This time, by six huge black hounds whose eyes burned with fire. Smoke rose from their mouths as they panted eagerly and growled deep in their throats.

  “There are too many,” Oz snarled.

  Angel tensed. “Kill them quick.”

  The hounds lunged as one, moving in, jaws snapping, nostrils blazing.

  “If they can be . . .” Oz began.

  Angel didn’t hear the rest. The dogs were upon them. He launched himself forward, and kicked with all his strength up into the throat of the hound closest to him. The thing yelped, flying backward, and rolled into the trees.

  “They can be hurt!” Angel shouted over the growling, though he had no idea if Oz would hear him.

  Powerful jaws clamped onto his left arm, razor fangs sinking deep into his flesh. He was already ravaged, flesh torn over every part of his body from several run-ins with the dark faerie. But this was something else. Angel let out a cry of agony, and turned in time to see a third hound leaping for him. Even as the other hung from his arm, worrying the flesh with its teeth, he grabbed the newcomer, mid-leap, around the throat. He roared in pain and fury, choking it, then threw it against a tree. He was gratified by the sounds of bones snapping.

  Angel grabbed the snout of the beast whose jaws were locked onto his forearm. He pulled, trying to tear it off him, and the pain was horrible. Teeth scraped bone. It wasn’t working.

  He heard Oz growling and turned to see that he’d changed a bit more, become more of the wolf, and was even now gutting a black hound with his claws. Fire blazed up from the belly of the beast.

  Then he knew the things could die.

  Lifting the thing by the same arm it was tearing up, Angel used his free hand to choke it, driving his fingers deep into the flesh of its throat. Its grip weakened, but it still did not give up. He bared his fangs, hissing in pain, and gave in almost completely to the vampire inside. Angel dipped his head and sank his own teeth into the dog’s throat.

  Fire spurted from its veins and burned his mouth and tongue, shot down his throat. The hellhound let go. With both hands, he brought it down over his knee, shattering its back.

  Even as he let it go, one of the others bit into his right leg. He didn’t waste any time, but used both hands to tear its jaws away. Then another was there, snapping at him, and then he couldn’t focus on one long enough to kill it.

  “Oz, can I get a hand?” he rasped through his scorched throat.

  Oz only growled. Angel risked a glance over and saw that the werewolf was busy with two huge hounds of his own. Two down, four to go, and from Angel’s perspective, the home team was losing ground fast. He batted one of the hounds away, but the other had leaped high, snapping for his throat. Angel turned, lost his balance, and went down.

  The hounds were on him, then. He felt teeth through his jacket, and the tug of its bite, as he lost a bit of flesh to the animal.

  “Get off!” Angel snarled, and threw one of them aside.

  It was back too quickly. He cursed under his breath. Things were not going well.

  He looked into the fiery eyes of the hounds as he held them back, barely. He felt the blaze of their breath on his face, singeing his eyebrows and hair. Angel knew he had to think of something fast.

  Without warning, a spurt of water splashed across the hounds, and they howled in pain. A second splash, part of which dappled Angel’s face, and he knew what had hurt them.

  Holy water. It burned his face in several spots like acid.

  But the hounds were running off into the woods. Oz, bloodied but a bit more human looking than before, was just climbing to his knees several feet away. A hand clamped to his savaged arm—he’d have to wrap that up good, get it to heal faster—Angel looked into the darkness of the trees on the other side, eyebrows raised.

  “Man, Buffy, you sure know how to make an entrance,” he said.

  “Please,” Cordelia said, stepping out of the dark. “I dress way better than her.”

  Buffy had picked up the trail of the dark faerie several minutes after they’d run off. She was hurting pretty badly, and still bleeding in several places from superficial wounds she’d received from the nasty little creatures. She wished that she hadn’t been separated from Angel and Oz. Angel, at least, could take care of himself. But Willow would kill her if she let anything happen to Oz.

  Still, he’d seemed to have access to his lycanthropic senses in these woods, so Buffy had to just move on and hope that they’d all be reunited as they kept on after the dark faerie.

  As she moved through the woods, and the pain from her wounds began to numb, she started to think about the actual danger the faerie represented. She had no real weapons and would probably have to face the savage little things as well as the Huntsmen, and the Erl King himself. Buffy was realistic. Those were absurd odds.

  She glanced around and saw a thick branch that had been broken off a nearby oak tree. After snapping off the smaller branches that jutted from it, she broke several feet off one end. When she was done, she held five feet of thick oak
in her hand. It would serve as both spear and fighting staff, if necessary. Not much of a weapon, but in her hands, capable of doing a great deal of damage.

  The path left by the dark faerie had grown erratic. Almost as if there were more of them, or they were more spread out. It had changed somehow, but she followed it anyway. She’d run out of other options. In truth, she had begun to lose hope when she heard a rustling in the woods ahead.

  As quietly as she was able, she quickened her pace, the length of wood at the ready. The darkness was thick in the trees, almost as though it had been painted onto the air itself. Eyes narrowed, she peered ahead, trying to see what had made the rustling noise.

  Suddenly the sound of hooves trampling underbrush shook the ground. Buffy turned the broken end of the branch up, held it as a spear, waited for the Wild Hunt. A face appeared from the darkness, a Huntsman, astride a short home. It looked fierce and barely human, and it reared back and Buffy drew back the spear.

  And froze, staring in astonishment.

  This was not the Wild Hunt, but a single creature. Not horse and rider, but one being. A centaur? she thought. Half man and half horse, it reared up and struck her down with its forelegs. A heavy hoof slammed her shoulder and Buffy fell hard to the ground, crying out.

  “You’ll not have my hide, Huntsman!” the centaur said in a high-pitched, angry voice as it pranced threateningly close again.

  “Wait!” Buffy cried, holding up a hand. “I’m not one of them. I’m not part of the Hunt!”

  The centaur reared back again, but then let its hooves drop to the forest floor again. It backed up several paces, all four hooves on the ground, and Buffy got a good look at it for the first time. A horse, yes. But from the point where the horse’s neck would rise grew the upper torso, arms, and head of a man. It scratched its head with one hand, and Buffy almost laughed, so normal was the action.

  “No, you don’t look like one of them, do you?” it said to itself. “What are you, then?”

  “Just human,” she said, standing painfully, keeping her distance.

  It had brown hair and eyes, and a great deal of hair on its chest, and thick, muscular arms most human guys would have killed for. Buffy blinked, then shook her head in wonder. She’d seen a lot of things since she became the Slayer, weird things. But most of them had been horrible, evil things. It was a relief to see, for once, something beyond the natural world that was not trying to destroy humanity.

  The centaur studied Buffy as it shifted its weight, then gave a stamp with its right rear leg. “No,” it said. “Not just human. Something a bit more, but I can’t quite put my hoof down on it.”

  Buffy raised her eyebrows. “So, you’re not part of the Wild Hunt? Then what are you doing here? Sunnydale isn’t exactly known for its mythological creatures. At least, it isn’t in the tourist brochure.”

  “You speak very strangely, girl, but you presume correctly. I am not of the Hunt. Rather, I am trying to stay ahead of them and out of the way. I don’t want my head hung on the wall of the Lodge, like so many of my brothers and sisters.” It stamped the earth again, took a step back and a rear hoof pawed the dirt.

  “But how did you get here?” Buffy asked. “I don’t understand.”

  The centaur smiled, shaking its head the way a horse shakes its mane. “It isn’t for you to understand,” it told her. “The Wild Hunt rides the night, as the first forest, the dark magic place of times past, rolls out across the wood along with them. There are a great many strange and wonderful creatures in this wood tonight, you can be sure. Things running from the Hunt. But we cannot pass outside the edges of the magic. We cannot leave the forest.

  “And you? What do you want here, more than human girl?” it asked.

  “The Hunt has taken my friends. I want to get them back. And make sure the Erl King leaves here,” she said truthfully.

  The centaur laughed, deep in its belly.

  “One girl against the Wild Hunt?” it asked.

  Far away, the sound of a horn tore through the night, set things flying in the trees above, set things moving in the darkness around them. Buffy glanced around, thought she saw several other strange things, but couldn’t focus on any of them.

  When she looked back at the centaur, there was fear on its face.

  “You want to find them, there they are,” it said, nodding to indicate the sound of the horn. “They camp in a clearing due north of here. But if you want to catch them, you’d better hurry. That horn means they’ve one more Hunt tonight.”

  Then it ran off, crashing through low branches without another word, to hide from the Erl King and his Huntsmen. Buffy watched it go in fascination and awe, and with a little bit of sadness as well. So much of her life of late had been dark and cruel magic, demons and spells, that it was a little piece of bliss for her to know that there was a simple and innocent side to magic as well.

  After the centaur was gone, she wondered if she would ever see anything like it again. Wondered if anyone, even Giles, would believe her. Of course, she couldn’t ever tell him about it if he didn’t live through the night. Buffy set off due north, determined to stop this last Hunt, for old friends and new acquaintances alike.

  But she decided that, no matter what happened, she’d keep this little meeting in the woods to herself.

  Nobody was going to buy it. Not even for a minute.

  She thought about what the centaur had said, about the Lodge, and grew angry. Buffy didn’t know what Hern the Hunter looked like, but if he’d harmed any of her friends, or hurt Roland, who’d already suffered so much . . . well, there was a big spot on her bedroom wall where the Erl King’s head was going to hang.

  Chapter 14

  FOR A MOMENT GILES SAW THE ENTIRE SCENE AROUND him as some horrible tableau—the Erl King triumphant, his poor, strange son in his tattered and ruined motley costume, defeated, as Giles and the others stood helplessly by. Then he closed ranks with the others as they were herded toward the large bamboo cage. Firelight flickered on the faces inside it, and he was reminded of Buffy’s thirsty man in the stocks at the Faire: cracked lips, dull eyes, and so much suffering.

  Dear Lord, that Faire seemed another world away. Another lifetime ago.

  An eerie hunting horn sounded, and Giles slowed his pace and turned to see what would happen—what it signified.

  “Move!” a dead-eyed Huntsman grunted, and shoved the Watcher from behind.

  Giles stumbled and went down hard to his knees. With his wrists tied painfully behind his back, there was little he could do in retaliation, even if he thought it was a viable option. Which, for the moment, it most certainly was not.

  “Stop that at once!” Roland snapped at the Huntsman. “Get him up.”

  The Hunstman grunted and grabbed Giles’s arm, nearly breaking it. Giles bit his lip to keep from crying out.

  His captor looked—and smelled—like a dead man.

  The Hunters were of two breeds. Perhaps a dozen of them were tall and thin, olive-skinned elfin creatures with dark hair and eyes, thin lips, and angular features. They had never been human, that was clear. The other Huntsmen had obviously been human, once upon a time. Their eyes glowed with scarlet malice. They were all different, one from the other. Men and women of various races, from vastly differing periods in history—from barbarians to samurai to modern day.

  The man who towered over Giles had a long, filthy, shaggy beard and matted hair, but there were others who were clean-shaven, and Giles had seen a woman who was completely bald, with ugly tattoos marking her skull and talismans dangling from piercings all over her face and ears.

  The Hunter looked at Roland and his eyes blazed a bright crimson a moment before he turned back to Giles. He leaned over and lifted Giles, one-handed, by his bound wrists, back to his feet. Giles couldn’t stop himself from letting out a small cry of pain as the rope bit into his flesh.

  This time, Roland said nothing, but he walked next to them until they came to a large bamboo cage inside which Willow
and Xander stood with Jamie Anderson’s son, Brian.

  “Giles, are you all right?” Willow asked.

  “Considering the circumstances? We’re all still alive,” he replied.

  The Huntsman locked the cage behind Giles, glared at Roland again, and then moved away. Brian Anderson started to ask Giles something, but Giles shushed him and watched the Huntsman move off. Roland stood just outside the cage, his face both bitter and sad, and quite inhuman in the flickering of the firelight.

  “Thank you for your intervention,” Giles said cautiously.

  Roland opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again as he was interrupted.

  “Not that I’m not supremely grateful, pal,” Xander said, moving against the bars of the cage to get as close as he could to Roland. “It’s just, okay we’re alive, but we’re still here. And from what I gather, your horny pappy over there has no intention of letting us go.”

  The sadness on the boy’s face was difficult to watch, and Giles glanced away a moment. He only looked back when Roland began to speak.

  “You are to serve the Hunt,” Roland explained, and looked at Willow and Xander particularly. “I’m . . . I truly am sorry. You and Buffy helped me without even being asked, came to my rescue when I had already started to believe I didn’t deserve to be rescued.”

  “Okay, but now we need to be rescued,” Xander pointed out, anger and desperation in his voice.

  Giles shot a harsh glance at him. “You do have a talent for stating the obvious.”

  Willow wrapped her fingers around the bamboo bars, her face smeared with dirt and a streak of dried blood from a cut on her cheek. Brian Anderson had never seen Roland before, but he also came close to the edge of the cage. His hair was completely white now, his clothes tattered, spattered with blood Giles hoped was not the boy’s own. We are all quite pitiful, Giles thought, himself included.