Wild Hunt (14 page)

W
hen the Fae
had told me to think of home, my brain had instantly conjured an image of my mother’s two storey white-washed house surrounded by honeysuckle and lavender. This was clearly the result of that thought. Although, the path could have brought me a little closer to her house; I was still a good twenty miles out and walking didn’t seem like the best idea.

A car pulled over onto the hard shoulder and I watched it crawl along, the headlights making it impossible to pick anything out. If I was lucky, then it would be someone willing to give me a lift to somewhere with a pay phone. Not that there were many of them left in Ireland; not now that everyone and their mother had a cell phone.

The headlights washed over me and the car suddenly picked up speed. It crunched across the gravel and came to a halt next to the barrier, the passenger door flopping open as the overhead light flickered to life.

I must have looked as surprised as I felt. Nic climbed from the car and wrapped his arms around me, his hold warm, his strong body crushed to mine.

He felt thinner, his clothes hanging from him a little more than I remembered, and when I looked up into his face, the dark circles beneath his eyes tore at my heart.

“Amber.” The woman’s voice snapped me out of my concentrated study of Nic’s face and I peeked past his arm to stare at the woman who had climbed out of the driver’s side.

She looked just as she always had, her curly dark hair piled onto her head, her blue eyes watching me with a closely-guarded expression that even now I couldn’t read.

“Mom,” I said, my voice cracking over the word.

She hurried around the car and dragged me from Nic’s grip and into her own arms, her deep orchid and white musk perfume surrounding me in a bubble of warmth only she could bring.

“I knew we’d find you. Your fella here wasn’t too sure, but I knew better,” she said, her words falling from her and against my neck.

“How? How did you know I’d be here?” I asked, finally pulling free of her grip and staring down into her face. I’d always been a little taller than her and everything was as it had always been.

“You look just like you did the night you went missing,” Nic said, his voice laden with an emotion I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

“That’s because it was yesterday,” I said.

Nic shook his head and ran his hands over his face. “Christ, they said this would happen.”

“Who said what would happen?” I asked, glancing between them both, their worried stares making me more than a little uncomfortable.

“Faerie doesn’t follow the same principles of time that we do, love,” my mother said, pressing her hand to my face. I winced as her hand touched one of the bruises covering my cheeks and anger flashed in her eyes.

“Right, I know that,” I said, my brain refusing to pick up on what they were trying to tell me. I shivered and Nic shrugged out of the leather jacket he wore and wrapped it around me.

“Here, get in the car and I’ll get the heat on,” my mom said, pushing me toward the back seat.

I didn’t argue, just climbed in as Nic followed me and sat with his arms wrapped around me. Now that I’d begun to shiver, I couldn’t stop my teeth from chattering and my body shook. It was probably shock; after everything I’d gone through, I was just surprised I hadn’t gone catatonic as soon as I was safe.

My mother slid in behind the steering wheel and I stared at her in surprise.

“When did you start driving?” I asked, watching her start up the car with the practiced ease of someone who was more than comfortable behind the wheel.

“Shortly after you went to America,” she said, without looking back at me. I could feel the tension in the air and the urge to clear it was only superseded by the fact that my brain refused to work under such conditions.

“What were you trying to tell me? As far as I’m concerned, I was gone for a night—how long was it for you?”

My mother kept her gaze firmly on the road ahead even though the car had yet to even move anymore. Nic stiffened against me, his grip tightening on my arms. “Forty-five days,” he said.

I laughed, the sound manic in the small car as I tried to absorb what he’d just told me. I’d always known time between Faerie and the human realm moved differently, but that was too much. I shook my head in disbelief.

“That’s not possible. Look, I’ve still got the I.V. mark,” I said, gesturing to the small red puncture on the back of my hand from when I’d been in the hospital.

“I wouldn’t lie to you, Amber,” Nic said, sounding weary and exhausted.

“How did you know I would be here? How did you even know I would be in Ireland?” I asked, staring up at him and pressing my body a little closer to him.

“Your mom called, said she had a vision…” he said quietly.

I remembered what those had been like, it was probably where I’d gotten such a ready ability to walk the scenes for the Elite. My mother was what the old coven had called a seer. A useful and nifty trick to have up your sleeve and one that I had envied on more than one occasion in the past.

“I tried to go in after you but I couldn’t pick up on you at all,” she said, the shake in her voice genuine. “If I had known how much danger you were in, Amber, I would never have let you leave when you did,” she said, suddenly turning in her seat to stare back at me.

“You had to—what choice did you have?” I asked.

“I had a choice,” she said cryptically, and I vowed to ask her exactly what it was that she meant by that comment.

I’d always believed the choice to leave had been my own; I’d wanted to train with the Elite, hunt for my father’s killer. Of course, finding out that I was the reason he was dead, well, that had been more than a blast from the past, and one I still hadn’t quite come to terms with.

“You haven’t answered any of my phone calls,” my mother said as she started up the car and let it glide forward over the bumpy gravel.

“I really don’t want to go into all of that right now,” I said, scrubbing my face with my hands in an attempt to avoid looking into the woods and the place that I had come from. I could still feel Fionn—distant, and the feelings I was picking up from him faded in and out—but there was no denying he was seriously pissed that I had gotten away.

“I knew the moment the spell broke,” my mother said from the front seat, and when I didn’t answer her, she caught my eye in the rear-view mirror. “I’m sorry for what I had to do, but there was no other way.”

Biting down on my tongue, I turned away from her and stared out the window. We’d re-joined the flow of traffic, the car moving slowly forward as we inched toward the city. I couldn’t believe I was back in Ireland, the one place I really didn’t want to be; my life wasn’t here anymore. Of course, the one good thing was that Nic sat beside me, his arm wrapped firmly around my shoulder as he allowed me to sink further in against him.

For now, I was safe, and that was all I cared about. Fionn and the trouble he entailed could wait until I’d had a shower and slept for a year … well, a few hours at least.

“
A
mber
.” Nic’s voice filtered through my sleep fogged brain and I jerked awake.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, peering around in the gloom, my heart rate instantly picked up. What if I was back with Fionn, what if he had gotten to me, to Nic and my mother? How would I protect them against him?

“Relax, Amber, it’s just me. We’ve arrived,” Nic said, pinning my arms down my sides.

I stopped fighting him; I hadn’t even been aware of the fight until his fingers had closed around my wrists. Glancing down quickly, I expected to see the manacles still locked around my hands, but they were gone. Where they’d come off I couldn’t remember; all I knew for certain was that I was pretty glad they were. The bruising and raw skin left behind would take time to heal and when I touched my skin, I couldn’t help but wince. They hurt like hell.

“Come inside and get warm,” my mom called from the doorway of the house I remembered growing up in. Nothing about it had changed, or at least not that I could tell from my vantage point in the backseat of the car, anyway.

Nic took my hands and helped me scoot to the edge of the seat before tugging me gently onto my feet. Twilight was rapidly giving way to night time and I knew that within the hour it would pitch black. Almost as dark as Faerie had been, or at least the corner of it I’d been stumbling around in.

Nic kept his arm firmly around my shoulder, tension singing down his arm into my body as he escorted me toward the house. Glancing up at him, I couldn’t help but notice the marks around his neck, and my heart came to a stuttering halt.

“What the hell happened to your neck?” I asked, jerking around to get a better look at him and drawing him to a complete halt.

“It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter,” he said, pushing my hand away so he could turn up the collar of his shirt against what had looked an awful lot like bite marks.

“A vampire bit you—I’d say that matters quite a bit!” I said, folding my arms across my chest.

“It took me by surprise, is all,” he said, his lips forming a grim line as he attempted to turn me around and march me toward the door.

“It looks new; did it happen here?” It was no secret that there were vampires in Ireland. In fact, one of the biggest issues the country had was its abnormally high vampire count against the small human population. Some people had speculated that there was as many as two vampires to every human on the island, a fact I could neither confirm nor deny, but judging by the pretty high crime rate, it didn’t seem unlikely.

“Yes, but like I said, it doesn’t matter.”

“Did you get it when you were out looking for me?” I asked unhappily. The very last thing I ever wanted was Nic getting hurt because of me.

“Look, I found out some new information about the Master of the Hunt and I went to check it out. Unfortunately, it’s also a hot spot for vampires and I got caught unawares. Trust me, it won’t happen again,” he said, drawing a silver cross on a long chain from beneath his shirt. “Now can we please go in before you freeze to death?”

I nodded and moved into the warm glow from the house. Stepping straight into the kitchen, the warmth of the room instantly enveloped me and I couldn’t stop the yawn that escaped.

“I’ve got some soup on; it’ll only take a couple of minutes to heat up,” my mom said, busying herself around the kitchen.

When she glanced at me, I couldn’t help but lift an eyebrow at her in surprise.

“You’ve got soup on?” I asked. “Just how well prepared were you for finding me?”

She grinned back at me and lifted the now empty can of chicken soup from its place on the draining board. “Prepared enough to have bought a couple of cans of your favourite,” she said.

Laughing felt good, and I gave into the urge as it washed over me. It had been a long-running joke before everything had changed; she didn’t like cooking, and as far as she was concerned, the only type of cooking should be the type you could do with a microwave.

I didn’t entirely disagree with her, although there were some things I would attempt to cook from scratch if I had the time or even the inclination.

Sitting at the kitchen table, I stared around at the room, the mixture of red brick and yellow walls (that were really more a gold due to the depth of the colour) made the room warmer than it really was. It had always been one of my favourite places and now that I was back sitting on the chair I’d always sat on when I was younger, it felt as though time itself had stood still. How could the place look just as I remembered? It didn’t seem possible, and yet as Nic followed me into the room, I knew it was.

Bunches of dried herbs hung above the old hearth, a modern cooker sitting where it had once been an open fire. But that had been a long time ago and long before my mother or I had ever lived here. Had the people who had lived here then had the same problem with the Fae as I had now? Or were the Fae still just fairy tales told to keep naughty children in line?

I couldn’t be sure. I’d never bothered to look into the history of it all, and from what I could remember of Ireland, the Fae weren’t really out to the public, not like they were in America.

Everything here was kept quieter, accepted more readily, and people didn’t ask as many questions as they did in America. It was both a blessing and a curse. If you wanted to keep your business to yourself in Ireland, you could do it; however, that didn’t mean everyone wouldn’t talk about you behind your back. In fact, given half a chance, people were more likely to have created a tall tale to accompany whatever half-truth they’d managed to grab onto. Your business would be your own, but the reputation that preceeded you would be whatever one your neighbours deigned to dream up.

“Are you still head of the coven?” I asked, suddenly breaking the silence that filled the room.

Mom stalled, her hands on the bowl she’d been reaching for before I’d spoken. “Not anymore. I stepped down after you left,” she said quietly.

Surprise rocked me where I sat. She’d been head of the coven for a very long time, the grand witch, and with no one with powers to rival hers, it had looked as though she would remain grand witch for a long time after. What could possibly have happened to cause her to step down?

“You’re not meeting with them anymore?” I asked, unable to keep the surprise from my voice.

“No, we had a disagreement and everyone felt it was in our collective best interests if I stepped down and never returned,” she said, and I could hear the hint of an emotion I couldn’t quite place colouring her words.

“So where do you practice?”

“Right here,” she said, giving me a tight smile as she grabbed the saucepan from the cooker and poured the piping hot soup into the bowl she’d dragged out.

I kept quiet as she carried the bowl to the table and then grabbed a loaf of fresh bread from the counter and set it in front of me. The butter sat on the table, golden and soft, and I knew without having to taste it that it would be just as it always had; salty and smooth, the way only a real Irish butter could be.

Nic crossed the room and dropped down into the chair next to mine. He didn’t wait for me to start, simply reached over and grabbed a piece of the already cut bread slathered it in butter and then stuffed it into his mouth. He did it all with a level of comfort that spoke of time spent in my mother’s house and in her company.

Just how long had he been here?

“So, when did you get here?” I asked, pretending I hadn’t just seen him cram an entire slice of bread into his mouth in what should have been a stranger’s house.

“A couple of days after you went….” He trailed off and stared down at his hands splayed across the kitchen table. I could practically feel his emotions. He’d been scared and panicked, a dangerous combination. “After you went missing, your mom contacted Graham. She told him what she knew and asked if it were true, if you had gone missing….”

I nodded and lifted the first spoon of piping hot soup to my lips. Liquid perfection poured down my throat, filling me from the inside with a warmth I’d honestly thought I would never get back after spending time in Fionn’s company.

“Graham told her everything and I hopped on the first flight out of there to here,” he said, reaching over to brush his fingers across my face. Before his hand even touched me, he paused and withdrew, and my heart sank. He could barely even look at me and he didn’t want to touch me—what exactly did he think I would do if he touched me?

“He wanted to come, too, but with everything going on and the case still not solved….” Nic trailed off and I shook my head before spooning more of the soup into my mouth.

“It’s fine, I get it. He’s running the Elite, he can’t just up and walk away….” I paused and sipped at my soup slowly. “Lily…” I said, my heart suddenly hammering in my chest. If I’d been gone for forty-five days…. They didn’t exactly like to keep dangerous prisoners hanging around, and Lily was one of the most dangerous ones that I knew of. Whether they knew just how dangerous she was remained to be seen, but that didn’t change how the system usually worked.

“Jason stayed her execution until he can finish his questioning of her….”

I let out a sigh of relief that left me more than surprised. I’d wanted her caught, wanted her killing of the innocents stopped, and I had known only too well what would happen once they caught her. So why the hell did I feel relieved that they hadn’t executed her yet?

There were so many reasons why I could be relieved. She was my half sister whether I liked it or not, but then again, I didn’t know her and she was dangerous…. Some might even consider her evil for the things she had allowed to happen, for the things she had done herself.

Lily was stronger than I was, her magic more developed than mine could ever hope to be, and yet when I’d visited her, I’d seen a more vulnerable side to her. Had it just been a manipulation?

“You should get some rest,” Mom said, her hand gently brushing against my shoulder. “You’ll be wanting to get back and—”

I cut her off with a shake of my head. “I’m not going anywhere, not yet anyway. Fionn knows where I escaped to, he’s not stupid,” I said.

“Who’s Fionn?” Nic asked, straightening in the chair.

“Master of the Hunt, the one we’ve been searching for,” I answered.

“What does it matter him knowing where you escaped?” she asked, sitting across from me.

“I can’t risk him coming after those I care about. I have to go back and finish this, draw him out so he can be stopped….”

Nic’s hand whipped across the table and closed over mine. “I won’t let you go back to him, not now that I have you here. Safe…” he said, his voice half choked.

“Trust me, if there was another way to do this, I would do it. But I can’t risk him releasing the Hunt again and killing innocent people all because he’s pissed as Hell searching for me.” My words were those of someone braver than I was. The mere thought of going back to him had me breaking out in a clammy sweat that caused the dress to stick to my skin.

“Amber, no,” he said, his grip never loosening. His eyes were filled with panic and fear, and I reached over to him but he recoiled from my touch.

It was enough to kill the fear that curled in my gut. Just what was going on with Nic? Why was he behaving as though I’d stayed away deliberately? He was behaving as though this was my fault.

He released my hand and dropped back into his chair, his expression utterly lost and desperate, and when I opened my mouth to speak, he shook his head and climbed to his feet.

I watched him walk away, slamming out through the door into the cold night air.

“I don’t understand why he’s behaving like this,” I said, staring after him.

“Don’t you?” Mom said, her voice cutting through the confusion of thoughts that wrapped around in my head.

“I really don’t. None of this is my fault and he’s treating me like I had a choice in any of it.”

“Amber, he cares for you, and all of this made him feel utterly helpless. If you had seen him when he arrived here—he was more than frantic, and then as time passed, I could see resignation beginning to set in. He really believed he’d lost you, he was grieving you, and now you’re back, I don’t think he knows how to process it all….” She trailed off.

“And that makes it all right to…” I cut myself off. It was unfair to keep throwing blame around. I couldn’t imagine what I would do if Nic had been gone from me for forty-five days.
Helpless
wouldn’t even be the tip of the iceberg of emotions I would feel.

“He blames himself,” she said quietly, and I suddenly had the feeling that there was more to the statement than just her opinion on Nic’s emotional turmoil.

“He didn’t cause this, Mom,” I said, turning to face her.

She dropped her gaze to her hands as though she couldn’t even meet my eyes. “I know it was wrong to block your memories, to cut you off from your power, but I was afraid….”

“I know, but you should have at least told me what was coming down the line,” I said. “I killed him and I deserved to know the truth of what I was, the monster I was turning into.”

She jerked her gaze up to meet mine and shook her head. “You’re not a monster, Amber, you never were. That man….” She trailed off.

“I know you loved him,” I said.

“Once, perhaps. In the beginning, he was sweet, charming, and he was more than a little good at playing the part of a loving husband, until you were born….” She cast a quick look in my direction but I didn’t say anything, simply waiting for her to continue.

“He was disappointed you were a girl; he’d been so certain you would be a boy but he got over it, loved you fiercely,” she said, staring up at me. I could see the need in her eyes for me to know that I was wanted, that he hadn’t resented me always.

“But not enough to not start another family,” I said, and I could feel the bitter smile that curled my lips.

“It had nothing to do with you, that I swear…. I’m not sure what he was trying to do exactly, but I knew about Lily long before he ever got up the nerve to tell me. He saw my magic as weak; the fact I wouldn’t dabble in anything remotely grey bothered him, he didn’t like me teaching you our ways….”