Wild Hunt (7 page)

“What did you say about her not being a monster?” he said, the rage in his voice barely held in check.

It was my fault; I’d asked him to interject, but more than that, Lily had killed the witch to protect me. She’d been about to spill my secret to the world; I’d felt the truth ready to rip through the air like a knife but Lily had stopped her.

Granted, her methods were not my own, but my secret was still safe for now and it was all thanks to Lily.

“
W
hat did she tell you
?” Jason demanded as soon as we were clear of Lily’s cell.

“She told me what the guards are doing to her,” I said, anger making my voice razor sharp.

Jason’s snort of derision only drove my anger on and I turned on him with an angry growl. “You don’t believe it?” I asked.

“I believe I’ve seen her cause them to restrain her. I know she’s a dangerous prisoner, and if anything proves that, it’s today. Even you must see that?” he said.

I couldn’t argue with him on that point; she was dangerous prisoner but that didn’t alter the fact that it wasn’t their place to teach her lessons. They weren’t trying to rehabilitate her—really all they were doing was holding her here until a judgement could be passed down on her.

“She’s genuinely afraid, and you said it yourself, she gave you one interview and that was it, nothing else. Don’t you think it’s possible that part of the reason for that is due to what’s going on here?” I gestured to my surroundings. “Have you seen her neck?” I asked.

“Her neck?” he parroted the words back to me.

“She’s covered in bite marks. How can she possibly have had contact with a vampire? I thought they were all kept separate for their own safety.”

Jason ducked his head and for the first time since I’d met him, he had the good grace to look embarrassed. “Someone made a mistake and let her out for her exercise at the same time as one of the other prisoners….”

“You mean they let her out with a vampire….” The words hung in the air between us. “What the hell is going on in here, Jason? That sounds a little too close to an attempt at population control for me.”

“Mistakes are made. The guard responsible has been dealt with,” he said firmly, his tone brooking no argument. But there was no way I was going to let it go. How could I?

“She could have been killed,” I said, “or turned….”

Jason’s head snapped up and his angry gaze met mine. “Don’t you think I know this?”

“I’m sorry, it’s just I didn’t know it was like this, that it was this bad…. She claims the guards are….” I trailed off, suddenly unsure if I could even get the words out correctly. She hadn’t actually said anything in words but she’d certainly implied it—what if this wasn’t something she wanted me to share with Jason? Swallowing back my doubts, I said, “She says some of the guards force her to do things, sexual things. Her exact words were, ‘no makes them mean’.”

The colour drained from Jason’s face and I couldn’t help but feel a small spark of relief ignite in my chest. He clearly wasn’t a part of the abuse or he wouldn’t look so shocked and disgusted.

“I don’t believe it, they wouldn’t….” He cut off, and I knew that whatever he’d thought of had suddenly caused him to have a change of heart.

“So what can we do about it? Lily is guilty of the crimes she’s committed, but it’s not up to the guards to meet out justice to her,” I said, chewing on my lip.

Now I was beginning to feel like a hypocrite. Why did I care what happened to her? She’d killed people—hell, I’d just watched her kill someone
else,
and yet here I was trying to work out a plan to keep her safe from the very people tasked with keeping the rest of the world safe from her.

My head was beginning to ache and nothing was really making sense anymore.

“Leave it with me, I’ll fix this,” Jason said gruffly as he escorted me back to the main doors. Lifting my gun and badge from the collection box, I settled my clothes, a stalling tactic to stop me from having to look up into his face.

“She really didn’t say anything else to you?” he asked hopefully.

Shaking my head, I bit down on my tongue. “Nope, I think she was just looking for someone to appeal to,” I said.

She had said something else to me, she’d spoken about “Him”, whoever he was. Part of me couldn’t help but wonder if she’d known more than she’d been letting on about the case I was working on. It didn’t seem possible that she could know about it, but then where Lily was concerned, I’d come to expect the impossible or at the very least the improbable.

“The car is waiting for you. Graham called and said he was trying to contact you, that it was important.”

Nodding, I slipped my cell phone out of my pocket and stared helplessly down at the no signal bar.

“Amber,” Jason caught my arm and I jumped, his touch sending an uncomfortable jolt of electricity up my arms. Not the kind they spoke of in romance novels or fairy tales, but the kind that told me to be wary; that fear, where Jason was concerned, would be my friend.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he continued on as though the jolt had affected only me. “If I’d known, I would have done something sooner, but she won’t talk to me,” he said, his voice pained.

It seemed at odds, considering what he was. He was the very thing Shadow Sorcerers were supposed to fear and yet he honestly felt bad for not being able to protect Lily. He’d called her a monster….

“How can I believe that when I heard you yourself call her a monster?” I asked.

With a sigh, he pushed his hand back up through his hair, a total Nic move. “She is a monster. I’m not going to deny it, but then I won’t deny that I, too, am a monster….”

His declaration surprised me and I felt my mouth drop open.

“Don’t look so surprised; you’ve seen what I am, you’ve seen what I become. I can barely control it—it’s this destructive, all-consuming creature living inside me and I can’t get rid of it, and I’m barely holding on by my fingertips….”

“You’re not a monster, Jason,” I said, without thinking.

He hadn’t chosen his life; it had chosen him in the same way mine had chosen me. There wasn’t anything we could do about it but we needed to deal with it as best as possible. In my case, that involved learning as much as I could about what I was, about what I was capable of. For him, it seemed holding on to whatever made him human was vitally important.

Was that why he’d come back?

“Nic will forgive you, but he needs time. You hurt him … hurt all of them,” I said.

Jason shook his head and a bitter smile slid across his face. “You don’t know my brother as well as I do. He won’t forgive me, especially now that he knows how I feel—” Jason cut off and sucked in a deep breath. “My father knew where I was, he knew the truth. It was all a pretence and one I’d prefer Nic continue to believe.”

“Wait, your father knew?” I asked, pushing aside the nervous butterflies that danced in my stomach over what he’d almost said. Nic couldn’t be right; I wouldn’t let him be.

“Yeah, we come from a long line of Saga Venatione. Nic was supposed to join too, but…” Jason said with a shrug. “Your car is here.”

“Why didn’t Nic join?” I asked, my stomach slowly beginning to sink.

“I really don’t know. I guess he just wasn’t in the right place at the right time for it to happen. Although from where I’m standing, I’d much rather be in his shoes and not have what I am fighting against me at every turn.”

“I better go,” I said, turning for the door and swallowing down the bitter bile that crept up the back of my throat.

Nic was supposed to be a Saga Venatione. I’d certainly suspected it; the thought had occurred to me more than once and Graham had mentioned something in passing about Nic’s father, but I hadn’t paid enough attention to it.

What would happen if he did become what Jason was? Would he still love me? Or—and this was the thought that bothered me most—did Nic like me only because of his potential as a Saga Venatione? What if everything was nothing more than an elaborate spell set in motion millennia before?

I practically raced out to the car and hopped into the back seat before Jason could say or ask me anything else. What I needed now was time to think and I wasn’t going to get it here.

A
s soon as
we were out of range of the prison, my phone buzzed to life, the messages pouring in until my inbox was practically full. From the looks of it, they all seemed to be from Graham.

Reading one of the messages, my stomach clenched. There was another crime scene and Graham’s suggestion for me to bring sensible shoes didn’t fill me with joy.

“Can you drop me at National Park instead of the address you picked me up from?” I asked the driver, catching his eye in the mirror. He nodded but didn’t speak as the car swung off the road and started back toward King City from a slightly altered direction.

* * *

T
he drive
back did nothing for my crazy thoughts and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake the worry that Nic was only interested in me because of what he’d read about in one of his books. But how could I confront him about it—what if he didn’t know that he had been destined to be a Saga Venation just like his brother?

The more I thought about it all, the crazier it sounded, and as the car pulled into the parking lot of the National Park, I pushed it aside in favour of focussing on the scene laid out before me.

Thanking the driver, I climbed from the car and was instantly greeted with a wave of reporters. Their shouts and demands to know what exactly was causing such slaughter in King City did nothing for the migraine that was beginning to creep into my head.

Crossing the gravel parking lot as quickly as I could, I ducked beneath the crime scene tape and out of the reach of the reporters. The only good thing was that at least the crime scene was hidden from view by a thick wall of fir trees. I followed one of the tech crews up through a practically invisible path in the centre of them.

The reason for Graham’s suggestion that I bring sensible shoes became all too apparent the moment I felt the ground slope up ahead of me. Glancing up the side of the hill, I searched for any signs of the crime scene I was about to stumble into, but there was nothing but trees to see.

I could hear the low babble of voices but the forest was so dense it made the climb almost impossible, and every time the tech crew I was following faded out of sight, I felt my stomach clench in panic. Getting lost out here really didn’t seem like a good idea, especially with a crazy Fae and the Wild Hunt on the loose.

Grabbing a tree branch, I tried to use it to leverage my body up over a particularly steep incline complete with fallen tree. The branch was wet and sticky with tree sap beneath my grip.

A face, its eyes dark, vacant holes, popped into view and I sucked in a deep breath, my body preparing to scream as the ghost from the cemetery placed her hands on my face. Panic washed over me, my mind suddenly convinced that the branch was soaked in sticky crimson blood.

Releasing my grip, I teetered on the edge of the fallen tree, my arms wind-milling as the ghost watched me. Images of bodies ripped apart flooded my head. Pitching backwards, I hit the ground with enough force to drive the air from my lungs, my legs rolling up over my head as I started a rapid descent back down the hill I’d been climbing.

My training kicked in and I grabbed the first sapling that whizzed past my face, wrapping my arms around it as my body jerked to a sudden halt. The force practically wrenched my arms from their sockets.

Winded, I lay on the forest floor and stared up at the canopy overhead, the dense foliage blocking the sky from my view. The ghost appeared once more, her expression one of desperate pleading as she stared down at me. She reached out toward me, and the urge to take her hand in mine nearly overwhelmed me.

“Amber!” Graham’s shout was enough to startle the woman standing over me and she faded as one bright shaft of sunlight broke through the trees overhead.

Tilting my head back, I searched for her, but she was well and truly gone. I hadn’t imagined her; she’d definitely been here, and the hairs standing on my airs was testament to that. But how she’d gotten here…. Ghosts didn’t travel, at least not on their own. They needed an anchor of some sort; the place where they’d died was usually a good place, the trauma holding them there until something happened to break the cycle, allowing them to finally move on.

But this woman … she was familiar, and yet I couldn’t put my finger on what it was about her that had me thinking I somehow knew her. Seeing her in the cemetery and now here, it couldn’t be a coincidence—there was more to it than that but I was blowed if I knew what in Hell it was.

And, well, I wasn’t going to figure it out lying on my back in the middle of the woods.

P
ushing up onto my feet
, every inch of my body ached as though I’d been run over by a ten-ton truck. Perhaps falling down the side of a hill through dense forestry was the same thing?

“I heard your scream—and what are you doing down there?” Graham said, standing on the opposite side of the fallen tree I’d taken my swan dive from.

“Don’t ask,” I said, dusting myself down and beginning to trudge up to where he stood.

Without saying a word, Graham held his hand out toward me but I could see the faint smile hovering on his lips. Clearly, I had half the forest stuck in my hair. I could already feel some of the twigs I’d gathered on my way down scratching at my scalp.

Ignoring his grip and the grin that widened on his face, I placed my hands on the tree and climbed over it with ease, warily glancing around at my surroundings. The last thing I needed was for the ghost to pop out at me again, but I had a feeling she’d spent all the energy she had filling my head with images that could only be described as killing fields.

“How many this time?” I asked, falling into step next to Graham as he moved up the hill.

“Just the one, but it’s just as messy as the others…” he said.

“One—isn’t that kind of a big drop? Killers usually escalate, don’t they? Or are we thinking this is an old site?”

Graham shook his head and indicated for me to move ahead of him as we approached a gap between two trees that was far too narrow for us both to push through together. “You tell me,” he said, squeezing through the gap after me into a large clearing surrounded by a ring of trees.

“Graham, what is this?” I asked, magic tugging at me as it surged through the ground beneath my feet.

“Victoria reckons it’s some sort of Faerie Ring,” he said gruffly, and I could tell from the tone of his voice that Victoria was obviously holding certain important details back.

The smell of blossoms and copper tickled the back of my nose and I smothered a sneeze as I moved further into the circle. It was a place of power, I was certain of that, but….

The moment I saw it, my stomach dropped into my shoes. The faint fluttering of her gossamer wing against one of the tree branches—or at least what was left of one of her wings. Her face contorted in terror, the taste of her blood on my tongue. The dream I’d had came flooding back to me in a wave of emotion that threatened to drive me to my knees.

As though it could sense my weakness, the power beneath my feet surged up, willing me to come and meet it.

“I said no magic!” Victoria shouted from the other side of the Faerie Ring, her voice sounding distant and muffled beneath the roar of magic in my head.

A hand took mine, the fingers cold to the touch as they wrapped through mine. The second the woman clenched my hand tight, the power subsided, drifting back down into the ground and the tree roots below our feet.

“Better?” the woman asked. Her long pearl and blue hair fell down her back in the longest braid I’d ever set eyes on; her eyes were grey but the iris was swirled with what looked silver and I found myself drifting toward her as though beckoned by a call only I could hear.

“Whoops,” she said, a smile lighting her face so her alabaster skin glowed in the sunlight. The moment she spoke again, her eyes were simply grey, the silver swirls nothing more than an intriguing pattern.

“How did you do that?” I asked, staring down at the ground.

“It’s just one of my many talents,” she said. “You wouldn’t mind if I took my hand back now, would you?” she asked, her smile never wavering.

I jerked back, my hand feeling colder than it had before—but I couldn’t put my finger on why it even would. “What are you?” I asked then. Curiosity killed the cat, or so the saying goes, but I never was big on keeping my questions to myself.

“A harbinger,” she said. There was something in the way she said it that I knew it wasn’t the full truth.

“She’s a banshee,” Victoria said, her voice coming from behind me, her tone suggesting she’d just swallowed an entire bag of lemons.

I felt my eyes widen and I quickly scrambled to get my expression to a more neutral place. I’d heard a lot about banshees when I’d lived in Ireland, especially as both sides of my family were blessed by surnames that started with either a Mac or an O’.

“Changeling,” the stranger said, using the word more as an insult than anything else, and the hairs rose on the back of my neck.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” I asked, hoping that by drawing their attention to other things, perhaps they wouldn’t attempt to kill each other.

“My name is Darcey Thorne. I work as a private investigator and enforcer for the Faerie Courts. I’m here to help with the investigation; the Courts of Faerie both agree that this,” she said, gesturing to the the Faerie Ring, “is not something we want out in the world.”

“I don’t think I’m following you,” Graham cut in. “What exactly are we talking about here?”

“The Wild Hunt have been summoned, used against their will to do unspeakable evils both against the Fae and humans. We cannot let this stand. The Hunt cannot be used in this manner; it is a thing of beauty and power and deserves more respect than what it has been given.” Her tone shifted as she spoke, as though the words were not quite her own but belonged to someone else. Someone with a heck of a lot of power.

“So what is this, then, and why did it try to eat me?” I asked, staring warily down at the ground once more. I could still feel the magic but it was subdued and far more polite.

“This is a Faerie Ring, or as you might understand, a grave marker,” Darcey said, indicating the trees. As she lifted her arm, I caught sight of the long, curved blade at her belt and my heart came to a shuddering halt.

“How do you have the Bone Blade?” I asked, tearing my gaze away from it.

The last I’d known of it, Lily had gotten her hands on it just before she’d decided to hand herself in. But I just couldn’t see her handing it over to a banshee.

“What do you know of Bone Blades?” Darcey snapped, the friendly demeanour fading as she took a threatening step forward.

“One turned up in a case I worked a while ago and I was just surprised to see you with a replica…” I said, trying very hard to hide what I was really thinking from her.

It wasn’t particularly clear whether Fae could read thoughts or not, but considering the one I’d been having issues with spent his time trying to mind-rape me, I wasn’t taking any chances.

She studied me, her grey eyes probing mine. The Fae weren’t that different from vampires. There was the daylight thing but their ability to bespell their victims was way too similar. Was it just a cosmic joke or were vampires and Fae closer than people realised?

“Where is it now?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. I’d known where it was, but after Lily took it there had been nothing more about it and, well, I couldn’t exactly question her about what she’d done with it.

Seconds ticked by and finally Darcey nodded, evidently satisfied with whatever she’d seen in my face and read from my eyes. “If you come across it again, I would appreciate you returning it to me.”

“So are you going to tell me what it is and what exactly it can do?” I asked.

Darcey smiled and let her hand fall to the hilt of the blade. “You might call it an heirloom. Each family of banshees has one, and it gets passed to the eldest as we are the ones bestowed with the full power of a harbinger.”

“Where did it come from?” I asked, the question popping out before I could stop it.

Darcey’s smile widened but her eyes were cold and unforgiving. “There are seven blades in total, one for each family, and they were carved from the bones of the first banshee….”

Her words hung in the silence and I was suddenly glad I wasn’t a member of their family.

“And what might happen if someone was stabbed with one?” I asked, remembering what it felt like, the darkness that had spread within me, consuming every part of me.

“A human would be possessed by what you would know as a spirit, but really it is just the darkness left over from the Fae that have died at the end of the blade. Insanity would follow and the spirits would pass from one host to the next, slowly eating away at them….”

It sounded right and from what I’d felt of the darkness, it had been nothing but rage and despair.

“How many died?” she asked.

“A few—too many, in fact,” I said with a sigh, and Graham nodded in agreement. “But we at least managed to bring a few of them back….” I trailed off as soon as I watched her face change.

“There is no cure … not from the sickness caused by the darkness, so I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” Darcey said.

It was my turn to be confused and I folded my arms across my chest. I didn’t particularly want to explain to her how we cured the others. The number of people who knew my secret already was far more than I had ever counted on. Add to that the fact that I really didn’t know if I could trust her or not and I was pretty certain I didn’t want to just go spilling the beans.

“I was one of those who survived an attack,” Graham interjected, and Darcey instantly turned her attention to him. “I wasn’t possessed but I came as close as I want to get to dying….” He trailed off as Darcey continued to stare at him without a word.

Finally, she reached out toward him and pressed her hands either side of his face, her eyes rolling back into her head. Graham jerked in her grip and I grabbed her arms.

It was impossible to budge her; it didn’t seem to matter how hard I tugged and pulled at her arms, she refused to move, her grip on Graham unwavering.

“Victoria, help,” I said, gritting my teeth.

“She’s not going to hurt him; she will heal him if she can,” Victoria said, her expression blank as she watched Darcey work.

Finally, she released Graham, her arms dropping to her sides as she took a stumbling step backwards and panted as though she’d just run up several flights of stairs. “I am sorry,” she said, addressing Graham.

“Sorry for what?” he asked, rubbing his palms against his face and the place where she’d grabbed him.

“You were not truly one of the possessed, but there is darkness within you nonetheless. I am sorry there is not more I could do…” she trailed off.

“What are you trying to say?” I asked, my voice low and controlled.

Darcey shook her head and smiled kindly at Graham, a smile that sent shivers down my spine. “This is not what I am here for; I am here to help put a stop the ones committing atrocities like this,” she said, and the sadness in her voice was contagious.

As soon as she said it, I felt my chest constrict with pain and sadness, tears welling in my eyes as I fought to battle the grief that threatened to overwhelm me. Graham’s hand on my shoulder and his sudden sobbing told me he was feeling the same thing. Even Victoria’s eyes glistened with the onset of tears.

“Cut the crap, banshee,” Victoria said, the hitch in her voice diminishing the gruff, unfeeling effect she’d been aiming for.

Darcey closed her eyes and the sadness disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. I felt the air around us shiver and my ears popped; the bright sunshine we’d been standing in moments before disappeared. The world appeared colder, harsher, as the light shifted.

The trees were bare around us when just a few moments before they’d been covered in leaves. The ground beneath our feet was scorched and crisp with not one blade of grass standing.

“What happened?” I asked, staring around at the sudden change.

“I lifted the glamour. If we are to work together then you need to see the real crime scene and the not the pretty one you’d all been tricked into.”

“It’s a crime scene, why make it pretty?” I asked. The other scene had been far from pretty, so what made this one so different?

“Because the Fae are vain creatures. The one who did this did not set the glamour—she did,” Darcey pointed to something just behind me.

I turned slowly in the direction she pointed, and now that I knew where it was coming from, the pulse of magic I’d felt from the moment I stepped into the Faerie Ring grew stronger.

I picked her out instantly. She wasn’t scattered the way the other bodies had been but she’d still clearly been mauled by wild animals, her body open and shredded, exposed to the elements of the forest.

But it was her face that brought the tears back to my eyes. She was as beautiful as she had been in my dream, but I could practically taste her terror on the air like a bitter perfume. As I watched her, her expression contorted into one of agony and fear.

“She’s still alive,” I said, the words shocking me as much as everyone else.

Darcey nodded and started to move toward the girl on the ground. The one responsible had allowed the Hunt to rip her asunder but they had left her with just enough life to cling to.

“How?” Graham asked, his face a nasty shade of green.

“The Fae are immortal; there are only certain things that will kill us,” Darcey said. “The Wild Hunt is one such thing, but the one controlling it called it off before it had finished its job…. She will die eventually, but it is cruel to leave her in such agony.”

Darcey crouched next to the girl. Her petrified violet eyes turning up to stare into Darcey’s.

“I don’t want to die,” she whispered, her voice unnatural and wet. It gurgled with every word she spoke.

“You will live on in Mother Earth,” Darcey said, pulling the Bone Blade from her belt and taking it in both hands.

“Please don’t…” she said again, and I took a step forward.

Darcey glanced at me over her shoulder. Her eyes had taken on a storm grey appearance, the silver like tiny flashes of lightning that illuminated them with every breath she took.

Her pear-and-blue-streaked hair shimmered, the blue disappearing as the braid broke and fell around her body in a bright curtain that moved as though it had a life of its own. Her alabaster skin glowed with the inner light of her power and the urge to cower from her washed over me. She was both beautiful and terrible and my heart caught in the back of my throat.