Darklight (6 page)

Sonny,
Kelley whispered in her mind.
Sonny, help me. . . .

The edges of her vision were tinged with a crimson darkness, and all she could hear was the vicious cackling of her Faerie assailant. Her thoughts were becoming muddled with the lack of oxygen. An image of Sonny from one of Kelley’s long-ago dreams, back when he had simply been a handsome, intriguing stranger to her, flared up in her mind: Sonny standing in a forest, his dark hair hanging loose, moonlight glowing in his beautiful silver eyes.

Sonny, Please!
Kelley implored the dream image.

HELP ME!

In the vision Sonny’s head snapped up as if she’d shouted at the top of her lungs. The branches of the trees behind him framed his head like a many-tined crown. There was a sudden, blinding burst of forest-green light, and she felt the tree shudder and flinch.

Kelley was dimly aware that the Faerie had staggered back a step or two, confusion in his venomous gaze. The break in his concentration was only momentary, but his fingers paused in their twisting dance, and Kelley found that she could almost breathe again.

In that same instant Fennrys burst like a runaway freight train from out of the trees behind Hooligan-boy. His feet were bare and the legs of his jeans were caked with green mud. He hammered the Fae to the ground with a single blow and swept past, launching himself at the tree that imprisoned Kelley. The branches pinning her cracked asunder as, with a primal yell, Fennrys one-handedly tore the possessed tree literally limb from limb.

Her upper body freed, Kelley fell forward into Fennrys’s arms, gasping for breath. It felt as though her rib cage had gone through a trash compactor, but glorious air surged into her lungs.

“Sonny,” she gasped, disoriented.

“No, sorry.” Fenn’s smile was pained. “Just little old me.”

“Fenn—behind you!”

Hooligan-boy had climbed to his feet and lashed out again in another roundhouse kick. The blow caught Fennrys on the shoulder, dislocating it with a horrifying sound. The Wolf hollered in agony and rolled out of the way, scrambling awkwardly across the grass. The enraged Faerie followed, fists balled and raised to strike, but his knuckles grazed only air. Fennrys was ready for him this time, and his good arm flew wide in a punch that caught the Faerie a cracking blow to the jaw and sent him sprawling. He hit the ground heavily and lay there stunned for a moment, a tangle of arms and legs, as Fennrys dropped to one knee, overcome by the pain of his injuries.

The tree holding Kelley tightened the grip of its remaining limbs, branches snaking back up over her torso, pinning her to the rough bark. Kelley wriggled one arm free and, clutching the knife from her purse, lifted the blade high and jammed it to the hilt into the tree branch wrapped around her chest. The tree recoiled violently, with a sound like screaming; thick, reddish sap gushed from a wound that splashed upward onto Kelley’s skin—warm as blood.

The tree sap tingled where it touched her, and the four-leaf-clover charm flared hot against her breastbone. She looked down—the charm was coated in crimson sap. Beneath the sticky wetness, the four-leaf clover glowed brilliantly, cycling through vibrant shades of green.

The ground beneath Kelley’s feet felt suddenly electrified, and the power that was locked inside of her surged outward from her core, down into the tips of her fingers like a river through a burst dam. Dark light blazed: a color like rage—not purple, not quite red—flooded the clearing, melding with the green light of the charm.

“No!” Hooligan-boy shrieked and threw a hand over his face as if the light burned. “No, no,
no
!”

The malicious tree retreated completely and Kelley dragged herself free. She sliced at the air with her hand, and the darkness crackled and split, gaping wide in a rift that shimmered and spat sparks. Kelley wrapped her arms around Fennrys’s muscled torso and launched them through her makeshift gateway, willing it closed behind them as the screams of the thwarted Faerie echoed in her ears.

O
n the banks of a wide, tumbling river, Sonny upended his leather satchel, dumping a small pile of laundry and a few cakes of tallow soap out onto the ground.

Ah, the glamorous life of a Janus Guard, he thought.

If he’d acquiesced to Auberon’s wishes and stayed in the Winter Palace, such menial tasks wouldn’t have been a concern. Even in the small cottage where he stayed, Sonny had a complement of helper sprites—tiny, winged fae that tended his hearth—but he was strangely loath to impose his housekeeping chores on them. Perhaps because he was feeling a little too much like a slave himself.

He knelt at the water’s edge, just downstream from where a roaring waterfall cascaded down the face of a high cliff, filling the air with mist and fractured rainbows. From the corner of his eye he caught glimpses of the shining bodies of one or two of the river folk, leaping like salmon in the water. A swim before chores seemed like a good idea and so he took off his boots and stripped off his ratty linen shirt. Clad only in breeches, Sonny stepped down from the grassy shore, wading out toward the middle of the stream where the water was deeper. The cold water felt good to his sore muscles. He leaned back, closing his eyes, and drifted on the surface of the river.

Sonny, Please!

Kelley’s voice rang out like a bell in his mind, and made his head snap up.

HELP ME!

He treaded water, glancing wildly around. He felt a sharp, terrible pain in his chest—as though his heart were on fire—and a sudden wash of brilliant green light left him momentarily blind.

She’s here!
something deep in his brain screamed at him.
Kelley’s here!

Sonny sensed the familiar firecracker-spark of her presence—flaring star bright in his mind’s eye.

Suddenly the waterfall exploded outward with a noise like thunder, and a body—or was it
two
bodies, tightly intertwined—burst forth, hitting the surface of the water with a resounding impact.

Sonny caught a glimpse of fiery auburn hair and he dove, swimming frantically upstream against the river’s flow. Opening his eyes underwater, he thought he could see her—bright hair and alabaster skin—where she floated near the river bottom, motionless and pale.

Kelley!
Sonny swam as fast as he could.
Oh, Firecracker—no!

He reached out a hand, and his fingertips brushed her wrist. The current was carrying her away from him. Sonny kicked desperately, closing the distance before she was swept out of reach. He got an arm around her waist and started to swim for the surface, dragging her behind him. Suddenly Kelley twisted in his grip, struggling violently against him and screaming—the muted sound billowing out of her in clouds of bubbles. Their heads broke the surface together and Kelley coughed and sputtered, fighting Sonny’s hold on her as if her life depended on it.

“Kelley!” Sonny grappled with her flailing limbs, trying to turn her around so that she could see it was him. “Kelley—it’s me! It’s Sonny . . .”

Her head swiveled around and her eyes went wide at the sight of him. She threw her arms around him, almost dragging them back down.

“It’s okay,” he murmured into the tangled, wet mass of her hair. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”

Kelley rasped out a word, the sound catching in her throat.

“What?” Sonny asked. “Kelley, what are you—”

“Fenn . . .” She coughed, pulling away from Sonny and trying to swim back out into the middle of the river.

Fenn,
Sonny thought as he turned and saw that there
had
been someone.
Fennrys?

A body was floating spread-eagled in the middle of the river, pulled downstream by the swift current. Floating facedown.
The impact must have stunned him, Sonny thought. He’s going to drown.
He reached out a hand and grabbed Kelley hard by the shoulder.

“I’ll go. You get to shore,” he said, and pushed her in the direction of the strand.

“But—”

“
Go,
Kelley!” he ordered. “Wait for me onshore.”

Sonny dove back into the water.

Swimming with powerful strokes, Sonny shut down every thought that wasn’t directly focused on the task at hand. At least he tried to—tried very hard not to think about the fact that he was attempting to save a man whom he had very recently observed embracing Kelley in the mirror of Mabh’s scrying pool. And he tried not to imagine what kind of circumstances had led to them tumbling through a rift into the Otherworld, arms and legs tangled around one another. . . .

Sonny surfaced briefly and got his bearings. Fennrys’s seemingly lifeless form was only another ten yards in front of him. Sonny kicked off again and swam until he thought his lungs would burst. With almost the last strength left in his tired arms, he reached out a hand and snagged Fennrys’s jacket collar. Managing to get an arm under the Fenn’s torso, Sonny struggled to flip him over in the water. Finally he succeeded, noticing with a sinking heart that the Wolf’s lips were blue. Sonny was running on fumes. And Fennrys was deadweight. They rounded a sharp bend in the watercourse, and even though the river narrowed and they were now less than twenty feet from shore, Sonny didn’t have the strength left to fight the current’s tow. He needed to get Fennrys to shore. And he couldn’t.

That’s when he saw Kelley, perched on a rock that jutted out into the water ahead of where Sonny and Fennrys floated. She must have cut across the spit of land that formed the inside curve of the river. It looked as though she was holding some kind of lumpy, uneven rope looped between her hands. She threw it to him just in time before he and Fennrys swept on past, and it was only when Sonny grabbed hold that he realized Kelley had knotted together the sleeves of all the shirts he’d left lying in a heap on the bank of the river. His laundry had become his lifeline!

“Hold on!” Kelley shouted, trying to brace against the sharp tug of Sonny and Fennrys’s weight. She managed to tie her end to a stout tree and reeled the two men in to shore like fish. Together she and Sonny dragged the unconscious Janus up onto the ground, where Kelley elbowed Sonny aside and dropped to her knees. “Out of the way—I know how to do artificial respiration,” she said.

Sonny wasn’t entirely sure what exactly “artificial respiration” was, but it seemed to have something to do with kissing drowned men. Under other circumstances, he would have protested vehemently. As it was, he got out of the way and watched as Kelley desperately tried to breathe life back into Fennrys’s inert body.

The minutes seemed to crawl by as she worked with fierce concentration, counting and blowing air into the Wolf’s lungs. Sonny was about to tell her to stop. That it was hopeless. And then Fennrys’s entire body arched off the ground, jerking spasmodically as he began to cough raggedly. Sonny helped Kelley roll him over onto his side, and river water poured out of his mouth and nose.

“That was fun,” Fennrys gasped weakly when he could finally speak. “Let’s not ever do it again.”

T
ogether Sonny and Kelley helped Fennrys to his feet.

“I owe you one for the save, Irish,” Fennrys said, his voice gravelly.

“Thank Kelley.” Sonny shrugged. “She hauled us both out.”

“Oh, don’t thank me,” Kelley said airily. “I was just gonna let you float downstream, Fenn. I thought you were dead.”

“I wasn’t dead,” Fennrys snorted, one arm hanging at an unnatural angle from his shoulder, and his hand hanging even more unnaturally from that. “I was swimming.”

Kelley looked at him. “You floated around the bend facedown. It really didn’t look like you were swimming.”

“It’s just a little awkward doing a front crawl when your arm’s half off, that’s all.” Fennrys winced. “But you know. Thanks anyway.”

“No trouble at all.” Kelley laughed, giddy with the sheer fact that Fennrys was still alive.

Sonny looked back and forth, seeming slightly bemused by the après-crisis banter. The joking drifted away as he and Kelley found themselves staring at each other. Fennrys cleared his throat in the silence and, when neither of the pair turned to look at him, wandered a few feet away as if to observe some particularly fascinating pattern in the bark of a tree.

“So . . .” After all the excitement, Kelley suddenly felt awkward and almost shy as she looked up into Sonny’s face. “Um . . . Hi?”

“Hi, yourself,” Sonny said, gently brushing a damp auburn curl off her forehead. Then he wrapped his arms around her in a fierce embrace. It was the best feeling she’d ever had. She was back in Sonny’s arms.

After a long moment that wasn’t nearly long enough for Kelley, he pulled back. “I thought I told you to wait for me.”

“You mean here or back home?”

“Both.”

“You might have noticed I’m not very good at taking instructions.”

“I did notice that.” He kissed her and smiled. “But in this case, I think I’m glad.”

Kelley couldn’t take her eyes off Sonny as they walked back to get the rest of his gear and her shoes—which she’d kicked off before her mad rescue dash. His dark hair was loose, longer than she remembered, and falling in his face. He was too thin. There were dark circles under his silver-gray eyes and a fresh, barely healed scar running from the plane of his cheekbone up into his hairline. He was pale. His torso was marked in places with bruises, fresh and faded, and more than a few scars, including the pale, parallel claw marks that he’d received rescuing her from a Black Shuck almost six months earlier. Sonny’s hand was bandaged and his clothing worn and tattered. There were dark, rust-colored stains on his breeches (and—she’d noticed while furiously tying them together—on almost all of his shirts). In spite of all that, Kelley caught her breath at how beautiful he was.

She was still staring as they both bent down to retrieve their respective footwear. When Sonny looked up from tying the leather laces of his boots around his calves, he reddened a bit at her unblinking scrutiny. Trying in vain to smooth the wrinkles in the shirt he’d thrown on, he grimaced and said apologetically, “Today was supposed to be washday.”

“I figured.” Kelley grinned. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to throw your whole schedule out of whack.”

“No!” Sonny protested, moving like lightning to kneel down and take her face in his hands. He kissed her smiling mouth and said, “It’s no problem! I mean . . . I . . .”

She was laughing now.

“That was a joke, right?”

“Mm-hmm.” She leaned forward and kissed him again.

He sat back on his haunches and chuckled. “I’ve been by myself a little too much lately, I think.”

“Not anymore,” Kelley said softly. She was in the Otherworld with Sonny.

“If you two lovebirds are done cooing, can we please go somewhere and set my bloody arm?”

And Fennrys.

Kelley’s reply was preempted by a sharp whinny. She spun around to see a roan horse galloping out from the trees.

“Lucky!” she shouted. The creature pulled up and pranced excitedly before her, front hooves pawing at the ground. Laughing with happiness, Kelley flung her arms around the kelpie and buried her face in his mane. Lucky nuzzled her shoulder and head-butted at her in delight.

Beside Sonny, Fennrys gestured with his good arm. “Isn’t that . . . ?”

“The Roan Horse, Harbinger of the Wild Hunt and Fearsome Bringer of Doom? Yeah.” Sonny nodded. “Used to be.”

“Thought so.” Lucky kicked up his back hooves like a frolicking colt, and Fennrys snorted in disgust. “Evil really needs to step up its game.”

Sonny smiled grimly. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d been the one riding him when the war horn blew.”

Or the one watching it happen,
thought Kelley, a shiver traveling up her spine at the memory. Both Lucky and Sonny had fallen under an age-old curse, originally woven by Queen Mabh as a means of exacting a terrible revenge on a mortal prince named Herne the Hunter. Mabh and Herne had once been passionately in love, but Herne had slighted the Faerie queen, and in fury she had cursed him and his companions to ravage the human realm in the guise of the Wild Hunt. Auberon and Titania had managed to throw down the Hunt that first time, and Herne had faded into legend.

Kelley herself had managed to stop the Hunt a second time. She was so glad to discover that Lucky had survived the encounter.

“So tell me,” Sonny asked, “what on earth happened to you two, anyway?”

As Kelley began to explain, she led Lucky over to a small boulder, helping Fennrys to mount up. She told Sonny everything that happened before she and Fennrys had tumbled through the rift. Everything except dancing the night away with the other Janus.

Sonny listened carefully, asking questions at intervals: “What did the Faerie that attacked you look like?”

“Super creepy. Ripped jeans, weird tattoos, bad hair. And, come to think of it, really nice boots . . .”

“Where?”

“On his feet.”

Sonny winced and rubbed his temples. “Where were you
attacked
, Kelley?”

“Okay, see . . . that was a joke.”

“Where?”
Sonny asked again.

Kelley sighed reluctantly. “In Central Park. I mean—hey—where else, right? It is, after all, my favorite place to be attacked.” The sarcasm in her voice was a gentle admonition, designed to make Sonny feel suitably overreactive about his concerns. She could take care of herself.

And, if necessary, she could take care of him, too.