Huntsman's Prey

by Marie Hall

  Huntsman’s Prey

  Rumors abound in Wonderland, of a dark princess named Chrysalis who bears the Moon's curse. Her beauty is beyond compare, and her madness… even greater than her father’s, The Hatter. Death follows wherever she roams, and Danika—fairy godmother of all villains—knows this task is too great for her to handle on her own. She has no choice but to seek out the one they call Huntsman, his mission is simple: Find the creature, and destroy it.

  But nothing is ever so simple in Kingdom. The moment the hunter Aeric steps foot in the mad, twisted realm he's enveloped in a reality that is neither wholly true nor fantasy. The key, the Cheshire explains, to ending the madness is for one to become mad themselves. The Huntsman has one chance to figure out the riddle before the beauty destroys them all…

  Huntsman’s Prey

  Copyright February, 2014 Marie Hall

  Cover Art by Croco Frauke of Croco designs

  Formatted by Author’s HQ

  Edited by Victory Editing

  MarieHallWrites.com

  Kindle Edition

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning, or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Marie Hall, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in the context of reviews.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this e-book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the hard work of all people involved with the creation of this e-book.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Marie Hall. Unauthorized or restricted use in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patent Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2013 by Marie Hall, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States of America

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Acknowledgements

  About Marie Hall

  Marie Hall Books

  Sneak Peek: Rumpel’s Prize

  Dedication

  To all of you who love fairy tales just as much as me…

  The rustling of leaves sounded like the rattling of dry bones. Trees—their trunks twisted and distorted from the magic imbued within the very soil of Wonderland—reached long, gnarly branches out toward Danika.

  The stars shone a brilliant silver, winking from within the navy blue sky. A sickle shaped smile of sharp teeth gleamed from inside shadow and somewhere a voice howled. The haunting sound raised goose bumps on her arms and the fine hairs on the back of her neck.

  She flew within the shelter of a hollow, staring at the ground below littered with the twisted, distorted bodies of sightless carcasses. Hundreds of dead animals, with limbs torn off and throats ripped open. A brutal slaughter that brought tears to her eyes.

  It’d been eighteen years since she’d married off the last of her Bad Five, eighteen years of peace and quiet, eighteen years of being lulled into a false sense that all was well within her world.

  But all was not well. She’d suspected this time was coming, had seen a glimpse of the future first time she’d laid eyes on the child. Danika had tried to deny it, tried to wish it away, to hope that desire could stop reality.

  Her heart bled to hear the sounds of the lonely, constant cries shuddering through the woods. The teeth returned, floating right in front of her face.

  “Cheshire?” Dragonfly wings buzzed softly behind her back.

  A face materialized around the teeth, a ghostly distortion of fur and stripes. Then a body followed suit, until finally, a fluffy tabby stared back at her with eyes the color of an inkwell.

  “Godmother?” His lazy drawl echoed with laughter. “What are you doing in my woods?”

  She scoffed. “Your woods. You wish you fat alley cat. These woods belong to the Hatter.”

  Cheshire did a strange rolling shoulder lift while he licked his paw. Danika shook her head, much as she loved Hatter, his woods were one she rarely visited and dreaded staying inside of for too long. The sensuous curl of white fog wrapped itself around the cat’s body, as if he were readying to vanish into the ether once again.

  She may not like the cat, but she preferred his company to being alone in this warped portion of Kingdom.

  “Have you seen the creature?” she asked quietly, heart thumping loudly as she strained to hear every creak, groan, and whistle surrounding them.

  “Mmmm. I have,” he purred, long and loud and low, the rumbling vibrations of it causing his fur to stir and fluff. “Beautiful madness.”

  “Where is it?” She hugged her arms to her chest, the howls had stopped, which meant it could now be anywhere. She wanted to leave, wanted to leave now.

  “It? You mean she. Do you not?”

  She closed her eyes. To think of it as anything other than an it would make this task impossible. Oh goddess, this wasn’t supposed to happen. Not to Alice and Hatter, they’d gone through so much, this shouldn’t have happened. How she wished she had Miriam’s wise guidance once again, her truest and best friend would have known what to do, how to fix this.

  “I meant exactly what I said. Where did you see it last?” She lifted her chin, voice stern, refusing to allow an ounce of sympathy to leak into her words.

  His smile stretched from ear to ear, full of nothing but sharp, little teeth that made him look frighteningly macabre. An impossibly long tongue licked at the fur around his eyes.

  “Silver girds her loins, fire ripples at her feet.”

  It was never easy trying to decipher Cheshire when he decided to be willfully obtuse.

  “Where is she? It?” She shook her head, realizing her slip of the tongue.

  Cheshire’s smile grew wider. “You should not do what you want to do. There can be another way.”

  Her nostrils flared. “How can you say that to me?” She snapped, anger whipped through her veins, slipped off her tongue. “Do you not think I’ve thought of a million different ideas, a million different ways to change this outcome? All of them… all of them end like this. You’ve seen the carcasses, it will only get worse. I feared this outcome when it was first born, feared her birthday might trigger the darkness.” She threw up her hands with a defeated hitch in her voice. “I can’t save it. It… she’s gone mad.”

  The cat floated into the air, the lower half of its body beginning to slowly fade from sight. “Are we not all a little mad?”

  “Hatter was a little mad. What this… creature has become, it’s more than a little mad. There is no reason, no soul, it’s slipped into darkness. I know what Jericho has said, to believe and hope that she can be saved, but each year I’ve lost my tenuous grip on it until now there is nothing but a wisp o
f it left. So you tell me, cat, you say there can be another way, Jericho says the same, show me then. Prove me wrong.” She closed her eyes as her words trembled thanks to the lump building in her throat. Clearing it quickly, she pinned him with a hard stare. “I saw her, gazed into soulless eyes, how can you save something like that? Tell me.”

  Cheshire simply stared as his features began to grow fuzzy and distorted, looking like a figure within a fun house mirror. “Not to beat a dead horse, godmother, but aren’t we all a little mad? Deal with it as you deal with me, become mad yourself.”

  The cat vanished in a puff of white fog.

  Become mad yourself. That was his best advice? No wonder she never asked the cat for anything. To the right of a her a bush suddenly shook, heavy breathing echoed through the sudden stillness.

  Yanking her wand from the pocket of her vest, Danika tore open a rift in time and flew quickly into it, leaving whatever that was behind. She needed to talk to Alice and Hatter, needed to tell them the truth, and she needed to find the Huntsman.

  But how could you tell someone you loved that in order to save Wonderland they’d have to kill the one thing in the world they loved most?

  Howling.

  Madness.

  Loud sounds and terrible, terrible smells.

  Burning. Burning. Burning.

  Trembling, limbs torn and scratched, Chrysalis crawled toward the silver pool on hands and knees. A wild face stared back.

  A woman with hair like a crow’s feather glimmering in moonlight framing a heart shaped face covered in blood and gore.

  Eyes of cerulean sky and beneath one, what appeared to be an inkblot stain, but was actually a bleeding heart tattoo. A mark she’d been born with. It’d started out on her forehead at birth, when the moon had first kissed her flesh, but it’d moved down through the years until it rested where it was now.

  Skin the color of dusted confectioner’s sugar reached up to graze the mark, her fingertips tingled with the contact.

  Blink. Blink.

  The moonlight burned. Anywhere it touched it made her ache. Her skin was tight, stretched.

  Leaning over the waters edge, she lifted a hand, poising a finger just above the reflection.

  The reflection stared back. It did not lift its hand and now its hair wasn’t black, but a golden shimmering wave of blond so pure it rivaled the glory of the sun. That and the tattoo were the only differences between the two identical faces.

  Blink. Blink. There was madness in reflection’s eyes.

  “You belong to me,” the familiar yet unfamiliar face smirked.

  Chrysalis shook her head, but words stuck in her throat.

  Laughter. It echoed hollowly through the woods. It came out of the reflection’s twisted, cruel lips. “You can think to fight me, Chrysalis, but I am stronger than you, each day you grow weaker and I stronger. We both know how this story ends.”

  Chrysalis shook her head, words rolled through her head like marbles crashing into each other, making her dizzy and panicked.

  The reflection lifted a thin brow. Pretty face. Pretty, pretty face. But the devil was in its eyes.

  “Madness is your heritage. Don’t you know who your father is?” Reflection laughed. “You can never escape it. Give into it, Chrysalis. C’mon, you know you want to.”

  The serpent beguiled, whispered words she wanted to deny but knew in her heart she could not. The devil was growing stronger. Reflection knew it to be so, but still Chrysalis shook her head.

  A low snicker wrapped like a fist around her heart, making it beat harder with a renewed spurt of adrenaline. “That’s fine. But you’ll see. They’ll turn on you. They already have. Soon the reckoning will come. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Time’s slipping away… Oh and, Chrysalis, don’t forget to eat. You must build up your strength.” The hollowness of her laughter gripped Chrysa’s heart like a vice and then an undulation of glittering blue smoke lifted from the surface of the pool, and when it touched Chrysa’s skin the abyss of hunger came with it.

  Then reflection vanished and Chrysalis stared at an empty, inky well of moonlit water.

  The breeze stirred. Heart hammering in her throat, Chrysalis lifted her head and sniffed.

  Darkness wrapped like a silken cocoon of decadence all around her, beckoning her to come, to follow the Piper into oblivion. Reflection was right. It was only a matter of time... why was she fighting this?

  She squeezed her temples, trying in vain to drown out the sing-songy voice whispering in her head how very, very hungry it was. The moon hurt, it hurt so bad. The light of it made the ache in her bones flare to the point of torture. She wanted to cry, but if she started she’d never stop. Better to ignore it.

  A field mouse dressed in a black silk bow and wearing a top hat, walked out from between the blades of grass. It stopped when it spotted her, tiny black eyes going wide, its musky scent of panic coated her nose, her tongue, and made her groan.

  It adjusted its wire-framed spectacles, before swallowing hard.

  The mouse was headed toward the great mouse ball. Once she might have asked to join him.

  She smiled and he screamed.

  Danika, in human form, paced the length of the Hatter and Alice’s quiet cabin. The two were in the back bedroom, discussing (none too quietly) what to do about their daughter.

  Sighing, Danika flitted almost absentmindedly toward the delicious aroma of yeasty baked bread filtering from out of the kitchen. Her stomach growled, Alice’s food was ambrosia and had become her kryptonite.

  She’d had no idea what that word meant first time Gerard’s Betty had uttered it, but the adorably geeky nerd had, with great patience, explained the mythos of a man called Superman, who Danika had to admit sounded deliciously scrumptious. Next time she met with Jericho she’d have to ask him to try on a pair of tights, apparently it was the epitome of male masculinity to wear them. At least so far as Betty was concerned, though Danika had a hard time picturing it.

  Alice’s crying finally stopped.

  Sniffing, Danika wiped her nose and the corners of her eyes. She hated to hear the lass cry, seemed like that was all she did anymore. Ever since Chrysalis ran away Alice had turned into a quiet, sullen woman. The vivacious beauty rarely left her home and Hatter was clearly at the end of his rope. Alice, and now Chrysalis, were the only things holding that poor man’s sanity together.

  Without their strength he’d quickly devolve back into a quarter sane male bordering on permanent lunacy. Danika hadn’t wanted to come and share the news of the bloody massacre she’d come across in the woods, but she’d had no choice.

  The three of them had to game plan a way to stop this soon before the fairy council took steps to end Chrysa themselves. And whatever method they devised to do it, would be ten times worse than what she hoped to concoct.

  The Blue’s hatred of Danika and her boys had grown to legendary proportions, she knew Galeta was just chomping at the bits to dig the dagger in deeper. Hurting Danika through Hatter’s child would definitely do it.

  Danika hadn’t shared with the couple her fears of the council yet, mainly because each time she did she felt like more of the villain than Galeta. Watching the pain filtering through Alice’s eyes, the love of a mother for her daughter, it was akin to a physical blow for Danika. Through the years Danika had grown to love the bad five and their mates as if they were her own. Ever since becoming a godmother she’d only ever developed this type of intense bond rarely.

  So when they hurt, she hurt.

  She’d had every intention of telling Alice and Hatter that the only way to ensure Wonderland’s safety was to put down their daughter. But the moment she’d stepped foot into their home, she knew there had to be another way. Jericho always told her to believe in him, to have more faith in her ability as a godmother, to believe in herself too.

  So that’s what she’d do. She’d figure this out, the cat told her to be mad. Well, how did one do that?

  By going to the source of course. Togeth
er, they must be able to come up with something.

  What she wouldn’t give to feel Jericho’s arms band around her, for just a moment. She sighed, feeling pathetically wimpy.

  Flitting her wings in agitation, she picked up a clockwork monkey that Hatter had acquired at one of Caterpillar’s annual bazaars. The miniature brass chimp squealed and hissed, exposing its sharp, little golden fangs at Danika when she’d tickled its belly. Then it was jumping off her palm and scampering for cover behind a potted carnivorous snapping dragon flower. It howled as the dragon lunged for it.

  In all the years that Alice had lived with the Hatter they’d amassed a wonderful collection of knick-knacks from all around Kingdom. A jinni’s golden lamp filled with the sands of time sat atop a mantle full of Hatter’s clock collection.

  The man was positively obsessed with time.

  A tree of thorns and blood red roses grew from the center of their wooden floors, golden apples dangled from its branches, tempting the unsuspecting to reach out and take one. But the apples bloomed from the seeds of knowledge and one bite was said to turn the eater instantly insane. Only the Hatter and Alice were immune from its deadly charm. Alice swore they made the best apple turnovers, Danika was sure she’d never know.

  Rainbow crystals grew from the ceiling, casting prisms of variegated light around the cozy family room.

  In all, the home was as mad and as beautiful as the couple that inhabited it. She was sure it was a constant thorn in their side that their beloved daughter hadn’t had a chance to get to know it, and them nearly as well as Danika now did.

  Chrysalis had been locked away in one of the Hatter’s many private gardens for almost the length of her short life. That was partly why having her run amok through Wonderland right now was such a problem, the girl did not know her way. And like a caged, wounded animal, anything that startled or frightened her would likely be met with death and destruction.