Trueheart (Portland After Dark Book 1)

by Mel Sterling

  Even his brain felt weak and sick. Tess would not run, and he could not make her. She was a human who had looked upon—was still looking upon—the Wild Hunt. How did she not turn away? What gave her the strength? He didn't think it was entirely due to the eerie emanations he could feel coming from the things in the grocery tote. Some of it was surely due to Tess's spirit and heart. He'd never met anyone like her among the fae and had only glancing acquaintances with strong women before he became the Queen's lover as a young man.

  She caught him looking at her and gave him a smile that didn't quite erase the fear in her eyes.

  "You could still run, Tess."

  "How many times are you going to say that?" She leaned in for a brief kiss and he obliged, liking the way her hand tightened on his.

  "Until you're safe."

  "We. Until we're safe." She reached in her pocket for the nail he had put there and gripped it in her fist.

  Hunter and his pack drew closer. It was slow going over the bridge, despite the thousands of pixies destroyed or enslaved to protect the Hunt from the iron. Hunter continually forced his mount forward, with savage kicks to its skeletal belly and flogging with the butt of his staff. The hounds of his pack cringed and groaned at every step. Thomas could see their breath on the chill air as they panted.

  Each step the Wild Hunt took brought him and Tess closer to disaster. There was nowhere to run, and chancing the river was not really an option. His mind circled like a rat in a trap. Their one hope, now, was the very thing he had most wanted to abandon: the bag of the Queen's trinkets. If it came down to it, Thomas thought perhaps he would throw one of the things at the Wild Hunt and see what happened. Maybe it would bring the Queen down upon them, though he doubted even she would interfere with Hunter's choice of prey. The Wild Hunt was governed by laws deeper and older than the Unseelie court's contorted bureaucracy, laws set forth in the time when all magic was wild and only the unstoppable forces of nature held sway. Prey was prey, when it was chosen for the right reasons. The Wild Hunt might be only a vestige of that wild magic, but its rules were immutable.

  Thomas was about to die.

  There was no changing that, not now.

  The Hunt had only another few yards to go, but it was over the Willamette's primary channel, and the current was deep and strong. He saw its pull affecting the pack. The kelpies drifted toward the sides of the roadway, looking longingly into the darkly glimmering water below without touching the bridge railing. The bogles bared their teeth in angry denial of the river's force. Hunter's mount spun in place until he drove it forward once more.

  There was really only one thing left to do. He leaned to his left, where Tess's shoulder still pressed firmly against him, providing as much strength and support as she could, and spoke quietly into her ear.

  "I'm sorry, Tess. Forgive me."

  Her breasts rose and fell on a long, harsh breath. She had heard him, but her gaze did not leave the Hunt, and she brought up the hand holding the iron nail so that it rested near her collarbone, her arm pressed close as if she were cold, or as if something inside her ached.

  A moment later, as the Hunt took the last strides on the pixie carpet, she pulled free of Thomas's hand and stepped in front of him, her palm out for all the world as if she were stopping traffic on a neighborhood street.

  "No!" he shouted, but she took a step forward, the tips of her boots not quite touching the twitching, leafy bodies of the pixies.

  "I command you to stop," Tess said. Thomas heard the tremor in her voice.

  Hunter reined in his mount. Its head tossed, and bloody froth dripped at Tess's feet. Maybe Thomas was imagining things, but did it seem as if Hunter's antlered mask was not held as firmly aloft as it had been? The iron had to be affecting him as well. Thomas tried to step forward and instead went to one knee. Without looking Tess stepped back again, staying in front of him. A part of him wanted to laugh; Tess clearly thought her command had stayed Hunter, when it was the edge of the blanket of pixies that had halted him. Hunter was merely gathering his force for the final strike. The greater part of Thomas wondered at Tess's determination and bravery in the face of what was probably the most frightening moment of her life.

  "Out of my way, human woman." Hunter urged his mount forward once more. Tess faded back a half step, then squared her shoulders.

  "No. You will not take him."

  "He is the prey of the Hunt. Mine by right, by law and custom and might."

  "You talk like a crazy person. He's not your prey, not yours to take or kill or—whatever you think you're going to do to him. Take your...your creatures..." Tess's lip curled in distaste as she scanned the pack. "Take them and leave us in peace."

  Thomas swallowed. Tess had no idea what she was saying. He struggled to his feet again, fighting the need to grasp her shoulder to help him upright. The iron felt heavy in his lungs now, leaving no room for air. He heard himself wheeze.

  Hunter's laugh was the sound of stone rubbed on stone, the deep rumble of an earthquake. His staff leveled at Tess, a prismatic tangle of the hunt magic blooming at its tip like an unnatural torch. Tess quailed, coming into contact with Thomas's chest. Hunter's red eyes looked around at his pack. "Circle them," he said, gesturing with his staff.

  The pack ranged themselves at the hem of pixie bodies, but went no further. The bogles hissed and twisted in terror and fear. Circling their prey meant stepping out onto the iron of the bridge, and Thomas saw the wisdom of Tess's inspired idea. The combination of iron and running water was having an impact.

  There were reasons the fae hated the humans, and reasons the humans had crowded out the fae in so many parts of the world. Human means, indeed. She had taken his own concepts a step farther, learning from him, and adding her own ingenuity.

  Yet he didn't dare hope, at least not for himself.

  Hunter remained facing them as the pack slowly edged onto the iron of the bridge to obey his command. Thomas coughed, then he cleared his throat.

  "I'll come with you, Hunter, but let her go free."

  "Still trying to bargain, Thomas? You have nothing left that I want."

  "He may not, but I do." Tess interjected, and Thomas felt his heart burst in terror.

  "T—" he stopped himself before he spoke her truename in their hearing. "Silence!"

  Hunter's red eyes were intent on Tess. "Let her speak." His voice had lost that sharp, stony edge, and instead transmitted all the seductive power of any kelpie intent upon its victim.

  Thomas tried again. "This is Allantide. If the Hunt returns without its prey, our Queen will be angered."

  "There is no law specifying what we must hunt." The antlered head tilted, as if scenting the air around Tess. Thomas put an arm around her middle, and felt the writhing of the mossy bag of trinkets even through his coat. The bag was weighty against his arm, with an electric pulsing that concerned him. He wondered how much longer the bag would contain its contents, and what would happen when the Queen's markers spilled out onto the iron deck.

  "But once the prey has been chosen, the Hunt cannot change its mind. You cannot take her, you must take me."

  Hunter snarled. It was the law, and they both knew it.

  "If you can," Tess said boldly. Thomas groaned to himself. "But I warn you, you must go through me to get to Thomas." She broke free of the circle of his arm and held up the bag with one hand. "This is what you want, not him. And...and..." Thomas could feel her casting about for the right words to make her human bargain. "You will have to wait until dawn to find out what's in here. I promise you, it will mean more to you than killing Thomas ever will."

  Hunter laughed again, returning to the honey-sweet tones. "You little know what a thorn in my side he has been, and how much pleasure I will take in carving his flesh to feed my pack and my Queen."

  "And yourself, no doubt." Tess sidled closer. "Let me give you a hint of what's in this sack."

  "I will have more than a hint," Hunter said, and Thomas would have sworn the
mask was smiling. "I will have the bag itself." Hunter's staff tilted down and the hunt magic unfurled over Tess and the bag like a seining net cast by a fisherman in a Willamette slough, but this fish was far more valuable. Thomas stretched out a hand too late to pull her out of its reach, but he needn't have bothered. The snare blazed like dry summer grass alongside the highway. A moment later it drifted harmlessly, brittle and smoking, to the bridge deck.

  Hunter's snare hadn't worked amidst the iron of the Hawthorne Bridge.

  Tess looked startled, but only momentarily, and then the hand with the iron nail was out, stabbing down, glancing off Hunter's silver-armored thigh and burying deep into the mutable flesh of his mount.

  "Shit," Tess hissed. "Missed."

  But the beast's flesh sizzled like bacon on a hot pan where the nail entered its flesh.

  While Hunter was staring, astonished, at Tess's treachery and the failure of his magic, Thomas caught the back of her coat and dragged her away from Hunter and his jerking, thrashing mount. Hunter sprang away from the beast. Crazed, it bolted forward, coming into contact with the iron deck and spinning a savage dance of pain and destruction. The horse bared its teeth, biting at the smoking nail in its side, missing, rearing, neighing with a noise like a locomotive whistle.

  "Now you have angered me." Hunter yanked a stone knife from a sheath at his boot and came toward them, ignoring his horse, which had staggered back onto the carpet of pixie corpses and was sinking to its knees, its neck stretched far in distress. "I will have that bag, and I will have you!"

  "I call you to Court, by the will of our Queen and the Law of the ages!" Thomas summoned all the air he could take into his lungs and roared. "You have declared your intention to abandon the Rule of the Hunt."

  For a moment there was nothing but silence and the slow, muscular voice of the Willamette, heedless of the deadly drama playing out on the bridge above the current. Everyone stood poised, waiting.

  A bogle was the first to flinch, stepping back from the naked iron to the blanketed deck of the bridge, its querulous gaze twitching from Hunter's fury as it moved, signaling its intention. Hunter leveled his staff at the bogle and a bolt of smeary magic, distorted by the iron around it, flew like slow fire toward the bogle. The snare was easily sidestepped.

  Hunter's rage at this fresh failure was spectacular, but when Tess's mocking laughter sounded, the red eyes behind the mask became incandescent with fury. Thomas's first impulse was to beg her to be silent, but with rage came opportunity: sooner or later, Hunter would make another mistake, and perhaps it would be the opening they needed to get them safely to dawn, and a chance to live another day.

  "Kill him," Hunter said to his pack. His gauntleted hands went to a coil of cording slung at his hip and made a loop in its end.

  "He has claimed the protection of the Court," objected a redcap, licking its lips.

  "He is our rightful prey, and we are the Wild Hunt. Kill him!"

  The pack began creeping back the way they had come. Only Hunter's red glare and the habit of long obedience halted them.

  "The Queen...the Law..." whined a bogle, and the rest of the hounds took up the refrain.

  Hunter snarled, "All of you. Dead by cockcrow, by my own hands, unless you do as you're bidden."

  "You're losing control of your own pack, cowardly dogs that they are," Thomas taunted, but the effort was too great. Once again he slipped to his knees. Tess went with him, her arms tight around him, keeping him from direct contact with the bridge. The cough that wracked him now brought up blood. Tess stroked his face, tears spilling over her lashes.

  "Hold on," she whispered. "Oh, Thomas, hold on!"

  At last it was Hunter himself who came to them. Thomas had no strength to fight, but Tess would not let go of him. The stag mask panted clouds of steam as Hunter stood on the bare iron. A second burst of hunt magic fizzled uselessly from the staff. With a growl Hunter spun a loop of cording over the two of them and cinched it tight. Tess grunted with pain as Hunter jerked on the cord and dragged them, Tess uppermost, onto the pixie carpet, but she did not let go of Thomas, nor the sack of trinkets.

  "You could have saved yourself, human woman," Hunter said to Tess. "But you had to interfere, and now you will be subject to Unseelie law. You will be judged, and you will die."

  "Bring it. I'm not impressed so far. You won't even show your face." Tess's fierce grip hurt Thomas's ribs, but he was rapidly becoming too fogged to respond, and when Hunter towed them onto the crumbling leafy carpet, could only feel relieved that the concentration of iron seemed to lessen.

  Hunter looked to where his mount steamed and smoked, falling apart into the bits and pieces that glamour had once knitted whole, then turned his back on its uselessness. He flicked a hand at a kelpie and gestured toward Thomas and Tess. "If you will not kill them, you will bear their burden." He dragged the two of them, still bound, across the broad back of the kelpie, and forced the creature to its feet.

  They left the Hawthorne Bridge, picking up speed as they neared the shore, racing into the moonlit night and the blue shadows of the empty Portland streets.

  Headed for Forest Park.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  TESS CLUNG TO THOMAS FOR dear life—both of their lives—as the Hunt clattered off the bridge. Though she tried to jump or fall away from the kelpie, she was unable to pry her body from its wet, broad back, where she sat sideways, with Thomas slumped astride behind her. The cord still bound them tightly, and Hunter held one end of it as he straddled a second kelpie a few feet away.

  "I can't get free!"

  Thomas coughed, and she was relieved to hear it didn't sound as harsh or deep as before. "That's kelpie magic. It's how they take women to their deaths. Once you're on one, it's over." His arms tightened around her, and she fought a manic impulse to giggle from sheer over-stimulation.

  The Hunt rocketed onto Naito Parkway, turning north. As they emerged from the toxic iron-shadow of the bridge, they shivered into glamour. There was a moment of vertiginous perception when Tess saw the fae creatures becoming the prowling posse of black vehicles, but then the illusion stabilized and she only had to cope with the jolting and the terror, which was more than enough. With the loss of Hunter's mount, the dire lead SUV was no longer, but she could see Hunter in a black sedan only feet away, with the cord stretching between like a spider thread, glimmering in the streetlights, invisible in the shadows of buildings. His antlers were gone—of course, he has to fit into a car—and in their place was an elaborate tangle of braids and dreadlocks, animal tails and dried reeds and grasses, worn much like a crown.

  The speed of the Hunt was breathtaking, as terrifying on horseback as it would have been in a car doing eighty on a city street, taking turns without slowing and heedless of other traffic.

  Of which, thankfully, there was none. The power of the Hunt was chilling, and she struggled afresh, still to no avail.

  The Burnside Bridge loomed out of the darkness, and soon Tess saw the market, filled with hundreds of milling people, glamours fringed and shattered and flaring bright and then dark. Her heart jolted into her throat at the memory of the fae surrounding her in the market. Was it only the day before? It seemed forever ago, a memory distorted by months and years.

  The Hunt plunged into the crowd, driving into a sea of bodies. Every instant Tess's rational brain expected to see someone's broken, bloody body flying up over the hood of the sedan she was riding in. Except that it wasn't a sedan, though sometimes it was. The ever-shifting glamour was making her ill. The wild grasping and clawing of the crowd terrified her. She struggled to draw a deep breath and could only drag in half of one before a gulping gasp burst from her. Her only consolation was that she seemed to be beyond tears.

  Thomas's arms tightened around her, helping, but only a little.

  The crowd magically parted like a zipper, bare inches in front of them, as they progressed. She could hear the hungry cries, see their strange whirling dances, leaving bright after-ima
ges on her vision like fireworks at midnight.

  And she smelled bluebells and freshly turned earth. She glanced to the side, where a group of toothy, moth-winged streetfolk danced around one of the Portland water bubblers. Bark had grown up its concrete pedestal so that it looked more like a stump with a birdbath topping it than a city water fountain. Bluebells and ivy radiated out from it, consuming the pavement.

  The fae rejoiced in their Queen's triumph. The Hunt bayed along with it, and Tess saw Hunter slide a knowing glance toward the bag she was carrying. She could not hold it any tighter, but she tried.

  Then the hunt was through the crowd and the dancers blurred behind them, their noise quickly growing faint with distance. Naito Parkway became Front Avenue as they blazed into the industrial district near the river. Ahead of her, through the glamour, the city shimmered like a mirage. There was a dark fog rising that, for a moment, she feared was another cloud of pixies, but then the kelpie lurched to the left and Tess knew a moment of exquisite terror.

  Then she realized they were skirting the edge of the dark fog where the railroad tracks sent spurs everywhere through the district. The fog showed where there was more iron. Suddenly Tess understood what the city must do to the fae, with its iron skeletons and muscles and arteries. Metal everywhere.

  The Hunt landed on Nicolai Street with a sickening lurch—but no corresponding crumpling of vehicles—and swept northwest. The black fog diminished, and they chased through a quieter district of smaller warehouses and brick buildings, the occasional blue-collar cafe and pub. The Willamette was still only a block or two away.

  "Will we be drowned by the kelpies?" Her eyes opened wide and she only just kept her head from striking Thomas's chin as they bounced like untethered sacks of meal. How they could bounce so hard and not fall off could only be magic.

  "No," said Thomas. "Not drowned. Worse. They're taking us to Forest Park."