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The Janus Guard.

Awesome!
Kelley thought, almost shouting with joy. Adrenaline and Faerie magick coursed through her veins. She was spoiling for an all-out fight. She heard a command barked in a deep, sonorous voice—that would be Aaneel, the leader of the Guard—and Kelley saw the figures fan out, moving with precision and purpose.

Tiny, pretty Cait, ponytail swinging, slashed a slim-bladed rapier through the air. Selene targeted shadows with a compact bow from the vantage point of perching on a low tree-branch. Kelley saw Camina and Bellamy, twin sister and brother, working in lethal tandem. Maddox’s tall, lanky shape moved with surprising speed and grace as he chased down a creature that darted through the undergrowth, growling like a bobcat. In the distance, someone was singing as they fought—Godwyn, Kelley thought, as the fiercely cheerful sound floated in the night air.

Kelley climbed halfway up the steep bank to join in the fight. There was a sudden roar of warning. She turned sharply as another nyxxie leaped for her like a vicious, human-shaped barracuda—all razor-sharp teeth and sinewy body. The creature knocked her back into the water, grappling and twisting. The foaming waters of the Gill carried them both swiftly downstream, away from the sounds of fighting.

She punched the nyxxie hard in the stomach and floundered away to try to reach dry ground. Finally she gained solid footing on the rock, and space enough to gather her wits. Kelley stretched out her arm. Her fingertips crackled with eldritch energies as she wound up and threw a handful of raw, unformed magick like a fastball at the surface of the stream. The water erupted in a boiling geyser, and when the roiling subsided, the nyxxie floated motionless, stunned by the blast, its seaweed-black hair spread wide on the surface of water.

Kelley’s breath came in gasps, her muscles ached from landing on the rocks, and lacerations on her leg from the nyxx claws stung fiercely. But she knew she was grinning from ear to ear. She hadn’t felt this truly alive in months. She clambered along the rocks back upstream. The Janus had spread out, and in the darkness Kelley could just make out where running fights with the nightmare creatures of Faerie—spiny things and twisty things and shadowy-slippery, menacing things—carried on unabated.

A full-scale battle raged. She realized that the roar of warning had come to her from a Janus Guard called the Fennrys Wolf—he’d hurled himself into the Gill to take on the rest of the nyxx, who thrashed and flailed in the water where she’d first been attacked like piranha scenting blood. All of their attention was on Fennrys. It gave Kelley time. She concentrated again on reaching past the thunderous gallop of her pulse to the place where her mother’s power lay coiled and waiting for her to call upon it.

She felt the dark, sparkling lattices of her wings furl outward from her shoulders as firecracker sparks showered everywhere. Suddenly thunderclouds boiled in the skies above her, and fat, pelting raindrops began to splatter on the shore and surface of the stream.

Kelley hadn’t actually known how she would
use
her power to help Fennrys out of his dire situation—she wasn’t well-versed enough to even know what she
could do
—but that mattered little. Her Faerie magick had taken on a shape and purpose of its own making—and called for backup!

Kelley glanced upward as a deafening whine and hiss assaulted her ears. The sky directly above her head tumbled with black and purple thunderheads and three Cailleach—her mother’s fearsome Storm Hags—suddenly appeared in a burst of lightning and thunder. The Hags were Mabh’s most dangerous and powerful minions; they did Mabh’s bidding.
And apparently . . . mine!
Kelley thought, startled.

The Cailleach were like the living embodiment of unpleasant weather—in this case, three whip-twisty funnel clouds. Kelley yelled over the howling wind for Fennrys to duck and cover. The embattled Janus took one glance over his shoulder and dove for shelter behind a rock in the middle of the stream.

The nyxx weren’t so lucky.

The Cailleach swirled together into one massive, tornadolike formation, plucked the whole tangled pack of thrashing fae out of the Gill, and spun away with them over the treetops, spitting lightning randomly about the park as they went.

The silence left behind in their wake was deafening.

Kelley stood staring after the retreating storm as the Fennrys Wolf waded ashore.

“Evening,” he said, wringing out his shirt, one side of his mouth quirking upward in a shadow of his trademark mocking sneer.

“Hi, Fennrys.”

“That was interesting.” Fennrys nodded at the retreating tempest, now far in the distance, heading toward Harlem Meer at the far north end of Central Park.

“I guess so,” Kelley murmured, still a bit stunned by it all. “I didn’t know they could do that. I didn’t know
I
could do that.” She turned to Fennrys, her excitement in the aftermath of the fight building with the release of tension. “Call them like that. I mean—ever since November, they’ve been kind of hanging around, you know? But at a distance. Which I was cool with because, frankly, they creep me out. But . . . calling them just now? Okay—
that
was neat. And useful!” She was babbling, she knew—animated to the point of almost giddy. “And we won!” Impulsively she threw her arms around Fennrys’s soggy neck in a victory hug.

“Yes,” he said.

Kelley felt his shoulders stiffen as Fennrys hesitated for a moment before awkwardly returning her embrace. The Wolf wasn’t what anyone would mistake for easygoing or affectionate, and if it hadn’t been for her exhilaration, Kelley would never have even presumed to hug him.

“Yes,” he said again, as he lifted Kelley’s arms away and settled her back on her feet. “We did. But, if I were you, I’d be more careful where I chose to take midnight strolls. This place is dangerous after dark.”

“That’s what
he
said.” Kelley looked around at the mess they’d made. There were broken tree branches everywhere and long slashes of claw marks marring the stream banks.

“That’s what who said?” Fennrys asked.

“Some poor guy who tried to mug me.” Kelley frowned. “He ran this way. I bet the nyxx ate him.”

“Well, that’ll teach him the error of his ways, now, won’t it?”

“Fennrys!”

He grinned coldly in the face of her admonishment and waved a hand at their surroundings. “Should have taken his own advice, if you ask me. Ever since all that craziness during the Nine-Night, we’ve been seeing a lot more activity from renegade Lost Fae. The Gate blowing wide open like it did on Samhain Eve has emboldened them somewhat.”

“I guess that explains why all of you guys are in the park tonight.”

Fennrys nodded. “Aaneel says that, on top of the Lost Ones getting uppity, there are hairline cracks showing up in places throughout the Samhain Gate. None big enough for even a sprite to get through yet, but still.”

“I guess that’s kind of my fault. . . .”

“I didn’t say that. I just said you should be careful. You especially.”

“Thanks, Fenn.”

“Just a bit of advice. Take it or leave it.”

“No . . .” Kelley smiled sheepishly. She knew she should have taken more care. “I meant about rescuing me just now.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Right!”

“No, seriously. Don’t mention it.” Fennrys shook out his dark-blond hair and ran a hand through it, pushing it back from his forehead. “If anyone knew I was rescuing damsels, it would ruin my reputation.”

Kelley wasn’t sure whether he was serious or not. “Well, thanks anyway.”

“You’re welcome, m’lady.” He bent low in a courtly bow, and Kelley tried to get a sense of whether or not he was mocking her.

“C’mon,” he said and offered her an elbow. “Let’s go make sure the others weren’t eaten or killed.”

“See . . . this kinda thing?” Maddox said, breathing hard and leaning over, hands on his knees, as Kelley and Fennrys approached. “
This
is the kind of thing I was always nattering on about when I said things like ‘Be careful, Kelley’ and ‘Maybe don’t walk through Central Park alone at night, Kelley.’”

“I dunno, Maddox,” Kelley said wanly, limping rather noticeably now that the adrenaline had worn off. “Fennrys seemed to enjoy the exercise.”

Beside her the Wolf just grinned, sauntering away.

“Is it true what Fennrys told me about the cracks showing up in the Gate, Madd?” Kelley asked, digging her clover charm out of her pocket and fastening the chain around her neck once more.

“Yup.”

“And Lost Ones are attacking people?”

“Well.” Maddox shrugged. “Yeah. I mean—only
some
of them. Here and there. Like tonight.”

Maddox always got a little evasive whenever the subject of the Lost Fae was broached. It was because of Chloe, Kelley knew. The Lost were Faerie in the mortal world. Either they had been trapped there when Auberon had first shut the Gate, or they considered perpetual confinement to the realms of Faerie to be imprisonment and had decided to “defect”—escaping through the Samhain Gate and quitting the Otherworld forever.

Chloe was one of the Lost. She was also a Siren. An
ex
-Siren, if Maddox was to be believed. She had saved Kelley’s life when Kelley had almost drowned in the fall. In the process of doing so, Chloe had learned that Kelley was the lost Faerie princess stolen by a mortal woman from Auberon’s Court almost a hundred years earlier.

Until that time, growing up in the Catskills under the watchful gaze of her “aunt” Emma, Kelley had never had the slightest inkling that she was anything other than human. But Chloe, being a Siren, had not been able to resist stealing the memory of a piece of music from Kelley’s mind while she was unconscious, as payment for the rescue. A cheap price to pay to a Siren—they usually took every scrap of song that a mind could hold, and that would invariably cause irreparable damage. Death, most often. It was how they got their fearsome reputation in legends down through the ages. Chloe had long ago sworn off such behavior but had, it seemed, fallen off the wagon back in October when she’d rescued Kelley.

The theft had done Kelley no harm whatsoever, but that was because Kelley wasn’t human—a secret that lay open to the Siren once she was inside Kelley’s head. Chloe had gone on to barter the information she’d gleaned from Kelley’s mind, trading the knowledge for another piece of music: she’d burrowed deep into Sonny’s memories and stolen a lullaby, the only memory he’d possessed of his human mother.

As far as Kelley was concerned, Chloe was no better than a vampire. But Maddox had feelings for her, so Kelley usually avoided the subject.

“Let’s get you the hell out of this park,” Maddox said, ignoring Kelley’s uncomfortable silence and putting a lanky arm around her shoulders. He was Sonny’s best friend and had become almost like an older brother to her in Sonny’s absence, especially in those first few months when Kelley had visited the park more frequently.

In the darkness they heard Fennrys snarling gleefully—he must have found something hanging around that was still worth hurting.

“C’mon.” Maddox nudged her into a walk. “I’m sure the others can mop up the rest of this mess without my help.”

Kelley nodded absently, just as sure as Maddox that the other Janus had handled the renegade Fae easily. They were all extremely good at what they did.

“I wonder how Sonny’s doing,” Kelley suddenly thought. Out loud. She could feel her cheeks redden a bit as Maddox looked at her, amused.

“I’m sure old Sonn is just fine,” he said blithely. “While the rest of us are stuck here in the mortal realm, scrabbling around in the underbrush risking life and limb, Sonny’s probably taking it dead easy, drinking Faerie wine and eating wild raspberries!”

S
onny Flannery swore an ancient, exceptionally foul oath and threw himself violently sideways—right into an enormous tangle of wild raspberry bushes studded with two-inch thorns as sharp as fish-hooks. The move may have lacked elegance, but it saved him from certain decapitation.

The hunter Fae that had almost swiped Sonny’s head off bellowed in anger at the thwart. He’d obviously been pretty sure of a kill, and had it been any other adversary, he probably would have succeeded. But Sonny Flannery was a quarry of a different sort.

More hunter than hunted, even now.

The Wild Hunter had caught him unaware, yet Sonny had to admit that after months spent hacking through treacherous undergrowth, following trails of burned-out faerie woodland and the scattered bodies of dead lesser fae, relentless in his pursuit of the marauding remnants of the Wild Hunt,
this
contest looked to be more entertaining than most. Aside from the thorn bush—
that
was painful—Sonny was perversely enjoying the fact that this particular warrior Fae had sought to find Sonny before Sonny found him.

It is a deal more challenging to have the tables turned,
he thought, struggling desperately to dislodge himself from the grasping branches before the hunter could wheel his mount and charge again.
At least this way, I won’t feel quite so much like hating myself for what I have to do.

The contest seemed like it might be almost even this time. This opponent, a worthy adversary. Still, Sonny had no intention of losing.

As the hunter’s horse thundered to a stop, Sonny tore free his riding cloak from the bushes. Leaping to his feet, he ran for an open space between trees hung with Spanish moss. It was only then he realized that, in freeing himself from the thorns, he’d left behind the leather satchel that had hung from a strap across his body. It dangled uselessly from a thorny branch out of reach—full of the weapons of which Sonny was in dire need. The hunter wheeled his mount and charged again, straight for where Sonny stood unprotected.

Sonny threw himself to the side, throwing up his arm to protect his head as he hit the ground. The sudden hopelessness of his situation crashed like a wave in his mind—the hunter and his next pass would likely end the game once and for all.

But then a piercing whinny rang through the air, and Sonny lifted his head to see a kelpie—a faerie horse with a fiery red coat—come galloping furiously through a hawthorn brake, to shoulder aside the hunter’s deadly charge.

“Lucky!” Sonny shouted in frantic relief, recognizing the creature he’d not seen since a certain Faerie princess had knocked him flying from that animal’s back high above New York’s Central Park what seemed like so many months earlier. Sonny leaped to his feet as Lucky whirled nimbly, but as the kelpie came to a halt directly in front of him, the creature reared suddenly, lashing out with his deadly hooves in the direction of Sonny’s head.

Sonny hit the dirt just before the first kick would have smashed in his skull. “What in hell—,” he cursed, but rolling onto his back, he saw that Lucky hadn’t been striking out at him. Looming large above where he lay on the weedy ground, Sonny saw that the Fae hunter’s mount—a thing of smoke and mist capable of landing surprisingly solid blows—rose up on its hind legs, right behind him.

The two creatures danced above where Sonny sprawled on the ground, dueling fiercely with their flashing front hooves. Keeping his seat with ease upon the back of his heaving steed, the Fae hunter laughed wildly and swung his sword at the prone form of the Janus. Sonny pulled his arms against his chest and dodged first one way and then the other.

Above him, the two faerie beasts pummeled the air and each other, raining down punishing blows. Sonny tucked into a shoulder roll as Lucky somehow managed to avoid mashing him into a fine red paste. He scrambled for the raspberry bushes—and the satchel that held, among other things, a compact crossbow and a quiver of iron bolts. Sonny had commissioned the gear from a mortal blacksmith in thrall to Auberon, the king of the Unseelie Fae. He was glad he had. Sonny’s weapon of choice had always been the enchanted silver blade that the king had bestowed upon him along with his Janus status, but relying on the sword alone meant that he had to get close enough to his target to strike a blow. That hadn’t usually been a problem for Sonny. But the Wild Hunt was not usual quarry. The bow had been commissioned as a backup plan.

It had come in handy more than once.

With Lucky flailing and rearing madly in his efforts to protect the Janus, Sonny plunged his hand into the bag and withdrew the crossbow and arrow case, dancing away before he was crushed by the dueling horses. With swift, fluid motions—the fruit of endless hours of practice—he cocked the bow, loaded the bolt, and in one sweeping movement, raised, aimed, and fired.

The short, thick arrow took the hunter in the shoulder, and the impact knocked him from his shadowy horse. He hit the ground heavily, but was up on his feet with a quickness that made the motion almost a blur. Sonny noted that from the point of his shoulder where the arrow had lodged, the Fae’s wraithlike appearance was changing. Solidifying. His mount—spooked by the fall of his rider—reared and, screaming, pounded away into the distance.

With grim determination, Sonny cocked and reloaded the bow.

The second bolt slammed into the Faerie hunter’s thigh, and he roared with unbridled rage, falling heavily to one knee. Sonny pulled a bundle of three short tree branches bound with a red cord from the satchel and, with a whispered incantation, transformed them into the silver-bladed sword that was his signature weapon. He approached the hunter, easily parrying the pain-clumsy, one-handed blows the Fae directed at him and knocking the blade from the hunter’s hand. His opponent was almost entirely corporeal now—the effects of the iron stuck in his flesh spreading rapidly. Still it was a surprise when, with a ragged, defiant battle cry, he launched himself in a tackle around Sonny’s waist and slammed him to the ground, breaking his grip on his own sword, which flew out of reach.

This is new,
Sonny thought, struggling to keep the strong, graceful hands of the hunter from closing off his windpipe. Most High Fae, unlike some of the more beastly inhabitants of the Otherworld, would have considered grappling with an opponent—even in the desperate moments at the end of a fight—as beneath them. But not this one. The only thing that was beneath
him,
in that moment, was Sonny. The Fae pinned him to the ground with the knee of his uninjured leg and, rearing back with a short dagger clawed from a sheath at his belt, made to slash the Janus’s throat open.

In the last instant, Sonny raised his left arm in a block—hand open and fingers spread wide—and braced for the flash of pain as the knife sliced a long, deep gash in his palm. Blood splashed crimson on the Faerie hunter’s surprised face, blinding him momentarily and causing him to drop the knife. Without even trying to dislodge the Wild Hunter, Sonny reached out his bleeding hand and grasped the black talisman shaped like a stag’s head that hung, glittering, from a silken cord around the Faerie’s throat.

Words of an incantation hissed from between Sonny’s teeth. He plucked up the hunter’s fallen blade and cut the talisman free from the hunter’s throat. The Fae’s expression turned from surprise to alarm. And then, as his gaze met and locked with Sonny’s, to wonder. His beautiful golden eyes, suddenly bereft of battle madness, searched Sonny’s face, and he began to laugh softly—a quiet chuckle that faltered as he fell away from the young Janus, to lie gasping on his side on the ground.

“I
see
. . . .,” he murmured. “Oh, now I see. . . .”

“See what?” Sonny panted, turning to face his adversary in these, his quarry’s final moments. “What do you see?”

“I do not feel so bad now,” the hunter wheezed, heaving to pull the breath into his laboring lungs. “Having. . . having lost to such a one as you. It was a good chase, was it not, noble lord?”

“Noble lord?” Sonny pulled back, startled, the bloodied charm slick in the tight knot of his fist.
The Fae must have fallen into a kind of delirium,
he thought. However, the hunter’s expression remained clear-eyed and keen. “Why would you call me by such a name?” Sonny demanded. “I am not a lord. Certainly not noble.”

The hunter opened his mouth to speak, but it was too late. He was already going—in another moment, there would be little left of Mabh’s monstrous creation but smoke and mist and a haunting cry that drifted away on the wind.

Sonny averted his gaze so that he would not have to watch as yet another Wild Hunter faded to nothingness.

“Another one for the fire,” Sonny said as he slammed his hand down on the oak table and sank wearily onto a bench. Gofannon the blacksmith—a mountain of muscle in a scorched leather apron—rumbled a greeting that sounded half composed of ash and smoke. He thrust a bar of raw iron into the heart of the forge and threw his heavy tongs down on the hearth as though they weighed no more than a pair of knitting needles.

When Sonny withdrew his hand, a glittering black stag-head jewel lay upon the worn wooden surface. Gofannon eyed the stone as if it were a poisonous viper. He drew a dirty oilcloth rag from the pocket of his apron and picked the stone up in it. Moving swiftly for all his bulk, he stepped back over to the fire and tossed both rag and gem into the forge. Then he went and worked the bellows, pumping air until the flames burned almost white.

“You’ll ruin the iron.” Sonny nodded his head at where the metal bar had begun to misshape in the extreme heat.

“Plenty more where that came from,” Gofannon grunted between his exertions. When he returned to sit with Sonny, he was carrying a small wooden box that he had fetched from a cabinet hanging on the rough stone wall, along with a clean rag, a dish, and a pitcher. “Give me your hand,” he said, pouring water from the pitcher into the dish and dampening the rag.

Sonny’s hand was wrapped in a strip of fabric torn from the hem of his riding cloak, the cloth stained through and stiff with blood. He laid his forearm on the table and waited silently while the blacksmith unwrapped the makeshift bandage.

Sonny tried to ignore the big smith’s muttered expressions of consternation as—once he’d cleaned the dried blood away—Gofannon traced the thin white lines of close to two dozen other scars that ran across the breadth of Sonny’s palm, in addition to the fresh, angry-red seam of his latest wound.

“How much longer is this going to go on, then?” Gofannon asked, his voice carefully neutral.

“There are twenty-seven hunters, all told,” Sonny said, staring at his palm as if the scars could tell his future.

“Then you must be close to the end, judging by this.”

“Three left. I think. They all start to blur together. In my mind
and
on my hand. . .”

The act of eliminating the Wild Hunt, Sonny soon discovered upon his return to the Otherworld with Auberon, was bound up in dangerous magick. His appointed task was not quite as simple as hunting their scattered numbers down, one by one. Not only were the hunters dangerous in and of themselves, but it was only blood magick that allowed Sonny to release a hunter from Queen Mabh’s curse once he’d caught up with them. His own blood.

The smith’s brows knit fiercely as he tended to the wound on Sonny’s hand. “When you first told me of this task the king has charged you with. . . I should have counseled you against it.”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference, Gof. It wasn’t something Auberon would have let me refuse. And besides, the waking of the Hunt was partly my fault. It’s only right that I be the one to clean up this mess.”

“Still. Blood magick is bad business, Sonny. Dangerous.”

“Aye,” Sonny agreed dryly. “And frequently painful, I can attest.”

The gash on Sonny’s hand cleaned, Gofannon twisted the stopper out of a squat, opaque green jar that he produced out of the box. He slathered a thick coating of pungent ointment onto the not-yet-healed wound and unrolled a length of linen bandage, wrapping it around the Janus’s hand. “Faerie magick is a plague, Sonny. A sickness. Passion fuels it, and that is its very peril—because the more you use it, the more it uses you. I know whereof I speak, believe me. Even the simplest of spells can wound your soul, but blood magick is the absolute worst for it.”

Sonny didn’t need a lecture on the dangers of blood magick. Faerie magick, sourced in thought and emotion, was perilous enough—especially when the heart overruled the head. But blood magick had its roots in a deeper place. It came from the very core of a person’s soul. It was easily corruptible and, as such, was almost never used to create—only destroy.

“It’ll hook its claws into you, Sonny. Be cautious. Be wise.”

Sage counsel, Sonny thought. Especially from Gofannon, who in centuries past had made a bargain with Auberon that had been neither cautious nor wise. Sonny had never learned the details, but he knew that the end result had been the smith’s eternal servitude to the Faerie king. The fact that he kept an abundance of iron strewn about his forge was Gofannon’s single rebellion—the hated metal was poisonous to Faeriekind—and yet Auberon had found a way to make even
that
serve his ends.

“I remember when I made that,” Gofannon said, reaching out to tap the iron medallion that hung from a braided leather cord around Sonny’s throat. “I’ve put more magick into those Janus charms than I ever thought I had in me.”

“Blood magick?” Sonny asked, gently sardonic.

“Some,” the smith acknowledged. “Not
mine,
though. Still, magick is magick, and it takes its price. Those iron trinkets took more than most.”

Sonny fingered the intricate design on the face of the medallion, thinking how he could not remember the feel of
not
wearing it. Even though the changelings that made up the Janus Guard had been drawn from all Four Courts to serve the Winter King, Auberon had made sure to mark them as his own from the time he had enlisted them. No other Fae would dare even attempt to remove their medallions—and the fact that they were made of iron just served to emphasize that pointed fact.