The Order of Brigid's Cross - The Wild Hunt (Book 1): The Wild Hunt (30 page)

“He won!” Gillian screamed, throwing
herself
into Ian’s arms. “He won.”

“Aye, he did,” Ian said, his eyes shining with unshed tears
as he watched his friend on the field.

“What?” Gillian asked, looking from Ian back to Sean.
“What?”

“He has to go with them,” Ian said. “Even if he wins, he has
to go back with them.”

“What?” Pete roared, rolling his chair out towards the
middle of the field. “There is no way they’re taking him while I’ve got a
breath left in my body.”

“I’ll join you,” Em called, her sword in her hands.

The explosion nearly knocked Em off her feet, and Pete’s
chair rolled back several feet. Once the smoke cleared, Sean was no longer
where he had been standing.

“Where is he?” Em called out, placing her hand over her eyes
to stare out into the dusty field. “Where is he?”

They all moved forward, scanning the field, searching for
Sean.

The Hunt, on the other end of the field, had also moved forward,
their snarling dogs leading the way.

“We have to find him before they do,” Pete said,
accelerating to a speed that made Em jog to keep up.

“There he is,” Gillian shouted and pointed across the field
at about the thirty yard mark on the other side.

“Sean,” Pete called. “Sean, just stay put, we’re coming for
you.”

Sean turned and looked at his friends for a moment, but
then, with a shake of his head, jogged in the other direction towards the Hunt.

“No,” Em screamed, breaking into a run. “No!”

But before she could even reach the fifty-yard line, the
Hunt had swirled around him, and the cloud they created lifted from the ground.

“No!” Em cried, tears running down her cheeks as she still
continued sprinting across the field towards the cloud. “No, give him back.”

Like a funnel cloud, the Hunt spun around the stadium
picking up the remains of the Elk King and his horse, and lifted off into the
sky, finally disappearing from view.

Em dropped to her knees and buried her face in her hands,
her body wracked with sobs.
 
A moment
later, she heard Pete’s chair roll up next to her. He placed his hand on her
shoulder and laid his head on top of hers.
 
Eventually Ian, Gillian and Maria joined them,
wordlessly looking up into the night sky.

“He knew he had to do it,” Ian finally said. “That was the
only way.”

“The hell it was,” Pete
said,
his
voice hoarse with unshed tears. “There’s always another way.”

Em took a deep, shuddering breath and was about to speak
when she froze and looked at Pete. “Something’s wrong.”

All Sean knew was that his arm hurt like hell.
 
He sat up, looked around and could only see
darkness.
What the hell happened to
vibrant colors and air that smelled like champagne?
 
This place smells like a…

He paused, a thrill of hope coursing through his body.
 
A locker room.
 
This place smells like an amazing locker
room.

He tried to stand up, grabbing onto the wooden bench next to
him and pulling himself up.
 
His head
hurt like hell, too.
 
Standing, he looked
around and saw a dim light before him.
 
Using the rest of his strength, he stumbled forward slowly, trying to
get to the light.

This might be a trick
,
he thought.
I might be entering some
faery torture chamber.

He paused for a moment, shook his head and then moaned.
Damn it, that was dumb. I don’t care if it’s
a torture chamber. I just don’t want to sit in the dark anymore.

He felt a waft of fresh air against his face, and suddenly
the terrain seemed to go uphill.
 
Uphill can’t be a bad thing if you’ve been
taken underground
, he reasoned.
Maybe
I’m escaping.

Holding on to the wall next to him, he slowly pulled himself
up the hill, his head throbbing and his vision slightly blurred.
 
When he reached the top of the hill, he
realized he was above ground.
 
He was
breathing fresh air.

He looked around and saw shadows moving in the distance. He
tried to focus and realized that a group of people were coming towards him.
Were they fae?
 
Were they coming to take
him back underground?
 
He looked around
for his sword, but he couldn’t remember where he’d left it.

He tried to run, but he didn’t have enough energy to even
stumble forward anymore.
 
He started to
sink to the ground when he heard the voice.

“Look it’s him! It’s Sean!”

Em?
he
wondered.

“Em?” he called out.

“Sean!” she screamed, running towards him. “Sean.”

She wrapped her arms around him, and he just held on,
feeling her warmth and her strength.
 
Then he realized what her presence meant and pushed her back. “I told
you not to follow me,” he rasped. “I told you not to come.”

“Guess again, Sean, my friend,” Pete said. “Somehow you got
lost on your way to faery.”

“What?” he asked. “What?”

“You’re still here,” Em said, her voice thick with tears.
“At Soldier Field.”

“How the hell did that happen?” Sean asked, and then,
without waiting for an answer, he promptly passed out.

A light was glaring down on him when Sean woke up. He tried
to move, but strong hands held him down. “Just a few more minutes, Sean me
boyo
,” a familiar voice said. “We aren’t quite done with you.”

“Ian,” Sean croaked.

“Aye, it’s me,” he said.

“Where am I?”

“We’re still at Soldier Field in the infirmary,” Ian
explained. “Pete has a doctor friend who does house calls, and he’s seeing to
your arm.”

“My arm?”
Sean asked groggily.

“Aye, the one the Elk King tried to remove from your
person.”

“The Elk King!”
Sean struggled to
sit up as several pairs of hands held him down. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got to
see Hettie. I didn’t go with them. They might come back.”

“We’ll go,” Em said. “I promise we’ll find her. But just
give the doctor enough time to stitch you up.”

Sean nodded and relaxed back against the table. “How bad
am
I Doc?” he asked.

The older man smiled down at Sean and shook his head. “It’s
Ben. Dr. Ben Cronin. Well, you have a mid-shaft fractured humerus,” he
explained. “But it feels like the bone wasn’t broken all the way through, so
you don’t have to worry about any damage to your radial or median nerve.”
 
He took a moment to tie a knot in the final
stitch and then cut off the thread before he continued. “I’m just putting a
splint on it tonight because I want to be able to make sure the cut doesn’t
become infected, and I want to wait until the swelling goes down before we put
it in a cast.
 
But I want you in my
office for an official x-ray in the next day or so.”

“Thanks, Ben,” Sean said. “I’ll be sure to get there.”

Ben secured a splint on Sean’s upper arm with tape and gauze
and reached into his medical bag.
 
“Here’s some pain medication,” he said. “Take two of these before you go
to bed, and don’t try driving while you’re medicating.”

Sean nodded. “I won’t,” he said.

“He won’t,” Pete inserted. “I’m going to play chauffer until
we’re sure he doesn’t have any other repercussions from tonight’s adventure.”

Sean slid off the table and rested against it for a moment
while his head cleared.

“You okay?” Ian asked.

“Yeah, just a little light-headed,” he replied.

“That’s to be expected,” Ben inserted. “You lost quite a bit
of blood. You should be drinking a lot of fluids and resting.
And no alcohol.”

“Well, I guess the celebration is going to have to wait
until after you’ve recovered,” Pete replied.

“Everything has to wait until I’ve seen Hettie,” Sean said.
“Can I go now?”

Ben shook his head. “Yes, you’re free to go.”

“Thanks, Ben,” Pete said. “I owe you.”

Ben shook his head. “Yeah, well count it against all the
ones I owe you,” he said.

Ian helped Sean out the door where Marcus and several of his
gang members were waiting. Marcus’s eyes widened when he saw Sean walking out
of the infirmary.

“Dude, I can’t believe you are still breathing! Dude, that
thing was the ugliest mother I’ve ever seen in my life,” Marcus exclaimed. “Is
that what killed all those other gangs?”

Sean nodded. “Yeah, that was it,” he said. “That’s what
Jamal saw.”

“Dude, that crazy,” Marcus said. “And it
ain’t
coming back, right?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out right now,” Sean said.

Marcus nodded. “Well, if it comes back, it better watch out,
cause
you’ll kick its ass again,” he said. “It better
not show up with my bro O’Reilly here.”

Sean smiled. “Thanks, Marcus. I appreciate your confidence.”

“Hey, no problem,” Marcus replied. “And if you ever need any
back up, you call me. We got your back from now until eternity, man.”

“Thanks again,” Sean said. “I’d trust you with my back, Marcus.”

Marcus got quiet for a moment. “Thanks, man,” he finally
said. “Thanks a lot.”

A few minutes later, a convoy of several cars made its way
to Lower Wacker Drive because no member of the group wanted to take their eyes
off Sean.
 
Pete’s car pulled up first,
and Sean pulled himself out of the passenger’s side and looked around.
 
Hettie was nowhere to be seen.
 
He stumbled forward, and suddenly Em was at
his side, her arm around his waist.

“Remember,” she said, trying for a light tone. “I’m the bat
guy.”

Rolling his eyes, Sean smiled at her. “That’s Batman,
sweetheart,” he replied. “And sometime soon we’ve got to sit down and watch
those movies so you’ll get the reference.”

“I’d like that,” she replied. “Now what do you want to do?”

“I want to walk around the corner, just to see if
Hettie’s
there,” he said.

She helped him walk away from the curb and downhill towards
an abandoned, concrete, loading dock that stuck out about ten feet.
 
“Around here,” Sean said, guiding Em around
the side. “When the weather is bad, she stays here for shelter.”

They turned the corner, and Sean saw
Hettie’s
beloved shopping cart parked in the corner. He slipped from Em’s embrace and,
using the dock for support, walked the rest of the way down to the cart.
 
Examining it closely, Sean could tell the
cart looked the same. No one had stolen any of
Hettie’s
so-called treasures from it, and he felt a faint flicker of relief.
 
The only thing out of place was a linen
envelope resting on the top of the pile.
 
He picked it up and shook his head when he saw it was addressed to
him.
 
Breaking the seal, he pulled out
the notecard, which had been written in delicate handwriting.

My dear Sean,

I don’t know if you
owe me a boon or if, once again, I’m in your debt. I thought about what you
said last night and realized faery was not the place for a noble soul like
yours. You would soon grow bored of our foolishness. So, I decided to play a
wee trick on the Hunt. If you are reading this, I must assume my little trick
worked and I was whisked away to faery and you were sent to someplace safe near
the Soldier Field.
 
You have no need to
worry about your city. The Hunt will not return.
 
The forfeit was paid.

I will miss your
visits and our friendship.
 
I will always
treasure what you taught me about the human race. I cannot promise that I will
not darken your doorstep again. I might miss your nightly visits and your tea
and scones.

Be well, Sean
O’Reilly.

Mab

“Hey, Mom,” Sean said into his cell phone as Pete drove them
to the church. “I just wanted to let you know the case went better than
expected.”

“Oh, well, that’s wonderful,” she replied, and he could hear
the unshed tears in her voice. “I’m so happy to hear it.”

“Yeah, me too,” Sean said. “Ma, I’ve got a couple of things
to tie up still, and I was wondering if Tiny could stay for another day or
two.”

“Ah, well, I suppose I’ll have to go to the market in the
morning for more chicken livers,” she teased, “as your cat has eaten us out of
house and home. But for you, darling, of course he can.”

“Thanks, Ma,” he said. “Give Tiny a hug from me.”

“Aye, I will,” she said. “God bless you, Sean.”

“He already did, Ma,” he replied. “He already did.”

Pete pulled into the church parking lot as Sean hung up with
his mom. “Good, you’re off before we have to go in,” Pete said.

Sean turned to look at his friend. “Yes?”

“Don’t you ‘yes’ me, Sean,” Pete said, his voice laced with
anger. “Why didn’t you tell me about the forfeit?”

“Because I knew you’d do some dumb-ass thing like roll your
wheelchair out to the middle of the field and try to take on the entire Hunt
for me,” he
said,
his voice mild.

“Well, of course I would,” he said. “That’s what friends
do.”

“But, I needed you to be here,” Sean explained. “I needed
you to help the Order, take care of my parents and figure out how to get me the
hell out of faery. I needed you to do what you do best.”

“You could have told me,” Pete grumbled.

Sean sighed. “Okay, the next time I have to battle a
supernatural creature on the fifty yard line at Soldier Field with a sword,
I’ll be sure to let you know about any forfeit I may or may not be required to
make.”

“You are a smart ass,” Pete complained.

Sean shrugged. “Yeah, but you love me anyway.”

Pete turned back to his friend and met his eyes. “Yeah, I do,”
he said seriously. “You are the only brother I’ve ever had. And don’t you
forget that.”

Nodding Sean smiled. “I won’t.”

They got out of the car, and Sean was immediately embraced
and nearly knocked down by an excited Jamal. “You did it!” he cried. “You did
it.
 
You thrashed them.”

“Jamal, you step away from Sean,” Mrs. Gage called. “Can’t
you see that man can barely stand on his own two feet?”

Sean slipped his arm around Jamal’s shoulders and smiled
down at him. “Yeah, I thrashed him,” he said. “And we won’t have to worry about
them anymore.”

Jamal wrapped his arm around Sean’s waist and helped him
into the church. When they walked inside, Sean took a sniff in the air and
smiled. “It smells like someone ordered food,” he said hopefully.

“I took the liberty of getting some pizzas delivered,”
Father Jack said. “I don’t know if it counts for a victory feast, but I thought
you might be hungry.”

“Famished,” Sean replied. “And pizza sounds great right
now.”

In a few minutes, they were all gathered in Father Jack’s
apartment eating pizza and sharing stories about the night’s events.
 
Finally, Jamal leaned back in his chair and
smiled. “And I get to go back to school,” he said.

Mrs. Gage’s smile froze on her face and her slice of pizza
slipped from her hands onto her plate.
 
Her eyes glassed over, and she slowly turned to Sean. “He’s not safe,”
she said, although it wasn’t her voice coming from her mouth, but a deeper and
more ominous one. “There are those who are still looking for the boy, who would
use him to harm the Order. You must keep him safe.”

The room went silent as everyone stared at Mrs. Gage in
astonishment.
 
After a moment, she
blinked and shook her head, as if waking from a dream, and then picked up her
pizza.
 
“How funny,” she remarked,
smiling at everyone in the room. “I don’t remember dropping my pizza. This
surely is a night for surprises.”

Sean nodded slowly. “Yes it is,” he said. “And it looks like
there are more to come.”