The Horned Mage: Books 1-5

by Hayden Harper

  “It will?” I asked as she pulled a large stoppered decanter full of some kind of black liquid from the bag she’d retrieved from her office.

  “Certainly,” she said. “The fae realms are a lot more conceptual than our material world and twilights are always best for crossing boundaries. Stand here please.”

  She positioned the five of us in more or less the same position that Sable had had us in last night.

  “Um? This looks kind of familiar,” I said, as she began creating the exact same pattern using the black liquid.

  “It should,” Jadeite said. “Sable made it look like she was casting this spell before but she was using different ingredients and disguising two other spells within it. It’s kind of impressive actually.”

  I snorted. Impressive. Right. “So what’s being used now?”

  “Kraken ink,” Deirdre said.

  Kraken ink? If the however-many-years-old magical snake said so. I was pretty sure that nobody had seen a kraken since the early 1800s based on a documentary I’d seen during Shark Week but I could be wrong. And frankly I didn’t care what the stuff was so long as it got us where we needed to go.

  Unlike Sable, Deirdre positioned herself in the middle of the resulting pattern. I didn’t understand the significance of it but for whatever reason that put me more at ease about this than anything else.

  “Okay, so once we’re there, how do we get them?” I asked. “I mean, we’ll do whatever we have to do, but I’m pretty sure using my hunting spell is out.”

  Jadeite shook her head. “You need something for your magic to track, right? You’ve got plenty.”

  “I do?”

  She nodded, then pointed to herself and Lexus. “Two daughters of the woman you’re looking for who also happens to be carrying your child.” She pointed to me. “And who was taken by three of the individuals who helped conceive you. That should be more than enough for your magic to latch onto, especially in the fae realms.”

  I guess that made a bit of sense. I didn’t actually know much about the fae realms but so long as everyone else did and things there still bled we should be okay. “Ready then.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Deirdre said dryly and set off the spell.

  Light poured from he hands into the ink, lanced out along the lines of the pattern to touch each of us where were stood, forming a star shape before filling out the rest of the lines. The air smelt like summer—hot air and grass and pollen and trees and life.

  “Go!” Someone shouted.

  Go where? I started to move and it didn’t feel so much like I was taking a step forward as the world was shifting to accommodate my feet. I nearly fell over. So did the girls. And then we all stood in a field with grass made of gold—actual, freaking gold—and trees taller than any building in Woodhurst. The air tasted more alive than anything I had ever experienced.

  “Guess we made it,” I said.

  “We did,” said Deirdre. Only she wasn’t Deirdre as I’d seen her before. In her place was coiled that massive snake, thick enough to crush a house. Her head was easily as large as one of my girls in their wolfhound form.

  I lurched back and the world lurched with me and fire, richer and hotter than any I had ever conjured, sprang to life in my hand.

  “Knock that off,” she hissed, flicking out her tongue. “I cannot take human form in this realm. Animal magic don’t work the same here.”

  I took a deep breath and let the flames die down. “Could have warned me.”

  I hadn’t known until that moment that snakes could roll their eyes.

  “We’re here,” Jadeite said. “That’s what’s important. Let’s do this hunting thing and get Mom back.”

  I thought about Reagan, about my child still growing in her womb, about my father and the demons that had helped him spawn me. I thought about them all and drew upon my magic. It leapt to life more eager than I had ever felt before, ripping free of me like a dog slipping out a barely open door to chase the mailman. I swear I heard it howling. And then the air was rent by the howls of my girls as they transformed in pillars of green fire into their wolfhound shapes.

  Lexus with her fur all white, letting her inner emerald glow shine through the brightest.

  Victoria with her mask and saddle pattern making her look like a bandit.

  Sarah, pale save for her dark socks and ears, the gentlest looking of them with soft eyes.

  Jadeite stepped from the flames in a brindle pattern of grays and blacks and whites that, backlit by the glow coming from within her, made her appear to be on fire.

  My magic caught us all, wrapping tight and reach down along another, new connection, as if an extra line had been tied to its net and was going to be dragged along. I felt a fraction of Deirdre’s power then, and it was massive and wet and alive. It was as if we had hooked an undertow and our combined strength had pulled it along with us for the ride.

  And then, as one, the girls let out three mournful howls, and we were off.

  Chapter Seventeen

  We didn’t run or even fly through the world so much as swim through it. The faerie realm shifted with us and for us and against us all at once in what had to be the most disorienting way imaginable. It was like having vertigo without the nausea and still being able to move. Or maybe it was like being on an acid trip—not that I would know, but this couldn’t be too different from what people on drugs experienced. The world just didn’t move right.

  I caught glimpses of places that couldn’t exist as we moved. A castle made of pearls on a cliff overlooking what had to be Happy Burger. A river that wound in a square pattern that made me think of the road around campus. More buildings. More nature. Everything more real than real. If I hadn’t been caught up in the hunt it would have given me a headache.

  It seemed like we covered both more and less ground than we did. How else could I have known that the entire river was square shaped—we went around the entire thing and yet that should have taken us much longer than it seemed to, despite our ludicrous speed. And we were moving fast. I could feel that. Faster than we had ever moved. Desperation and love and fear and rage all mingled together with adrenaline and the magic of this place.

  We wound our way through several enormous rocks that, when I thought about it, were positioned near each other in a way reminiscent of the university buildings, and on the other side of those rocks, a keep. I don’t know why I knew it to be called a keep, I simply understood that it was when I saw it. A keep and a hunting lodge all rolled into one, with a large fence surrounding the outside lands, and a higher stone wall further in with a larger building in the center. If the word keep hadn’t come into my head I would have called it a castle.

  We raced toward the gate, caught up in our hunt and the gate swung open to admit us, as did the doors through the wall. I had a moment to think that was odd and then we were inside. The interior yawned wider than it had any right to, larger than the walls outside should have been able to accommodate. The entry hall quickly led us to a great hall, with tables lining the outside filled with feasting guests. The feasters ranged from the barely human to the utterly alien. They ate bloody meat and silver grapes and listened to an eerie music with no discernible source.

  The walls themselves were decorated with furs and horns and heads—trophies of countless hunts. Many of the trophies could not have come from anything on earth. Just as many had once belonged to a human being. There did not seem to be a distinction between thinking creatures and beasts among them.

  The center of the hall was filled with hay and small hounds of red and white raced around a table positioned in the middle like an island so that everyone could see what was upon it. Reagan was bound to the table, naked. Her arms up above her head, her legs spread to either side. The demons sat upon her, raping her. One was on her chest and face, smothering her, its shadowy face flickering between Lexus’s and Jadeite’s. The other’s face likewise shifted as it plunged itself inside of her, one mo
ment it looked like Crimson, the next it looked like…me.

  Rage filled me unlike anything I have ever felt. That was the mother of my child they were raping for the amusement of these creatures. I roared.

  I hadn’t realized that I could do that but the very air rippled with the vibrations and the music died. The feasters froze, their gazes turning as one to look upon me and my hunt as I burst into their hall. And then they fled, wailing in a silvery language that tinkled like bells. I had never heard it before but never the less I understood what they were saying.

  Flee! The Wyld Hunt is upon us! Flee for your life!

  I let fly my flames, and the green fire exploded upon the keep’s guests like an emerald tidal wave. It crashed into them, sweeping those guests who did not make it to the exits in time into the walls and burning them down to ashes and bone and bits of charred meat. The hay and tables caught fire.

  My girls rushed forward as one, leaping at the table that held Reagan. The demons upon it whirled, exploding in crimson fire and taking on their hellhound forms, black furred and burning eyes. They threw themselves into the girls and they all tumbled to the floor in a cyclone of blood and fire and fur.

  I raced forward, burning away Reagan’s bonds as I reached the table and only then, spotted Graeme. He sat at the end of the hall at the high seat, his table elevated above all the others. Unlike the others, he had not moved from his position when I’d entered. He did so now, face twisted into an expression of ungodly rage, mouth twisted into a fang-filled snarl.

  He ripped a spear from the wall and hurled it at me so hard it cracked the air behind it.

  I threw fire at it, knowing I couldn’t burn it away before it reached me. Something struck the back of my legs and I fell to the ground. The spear passed by me and over the warring hounds and through the doors we’d burst in from. Over me rose Deirdre. It had been her tail that had knocked me from the spear’s path.

  She rose higher and higher until her head grazed the ceiling and struck, fangs bared.

  Graeme ripped free another spear and lunged forward, meeting her strike head on. The impact rolled me over backwards and sent the hounds tumbling. The little hounds were gone, leaving only my girls and the demons in canine shape to battle. Despite having the numbers advantage, it seemed as if the demons were holding their own. I loosed a wave of spellfire over the combatants, healing my girls and—hopefully—hindering our foes, before turning to see the result of the titan’s clash.

  Deirdre’s sheer mass and momentum had crashed Graeme into the wall hard enough to crack the stone but his spear had skewered her mouth. She must have turned at the last minute because it had gone through and out the side of her head, narrowly missing her eye, instead of through her brain. Graeme leveraged the spear to pin her head in place beneath him as he reached for a blade on his belt. Deirdre thrashed at him with her tail but he batted aside her every attack. She had power but pinned as she was, she didn’t have the leverage needed for a powerful strike.

  I threw both hands out before me and let out the largest, most concentrated burst of fire I could. It caught Graeme straight in the chest and knocked him back into the damaged wall. He bellowed in rage rather than agony and fixed his glowing green eyes on me. I was now his prey and he pushed back against my fire, stepping forward into it with a visible effort.

  And the distraction cost him. Deirdre lurched free of him and struck his feet with her tail. He went down. His high table went flying, struck by Deirdre’s coils. She raised high overhead once again, ready to strike at him, and the knife he’d drawn flew from his hands. It caught her in the lower jaw before she could open her mouth and drove up. She collapsed to the ground, writhing and bleeding, her jaws pinned shut by the horned hunter’s blade.

  Graeme returned his attention to me, drawing a freaking sword with a thorny hilt and a gleaming silver blade from somewhere. It seemed to cut the very air it passed through, leaving a momentary void in its wake.

  I hurled a fireball at him. He raised his sword and the flames parted neatly in two around it, continuing on to either side.

  “Oh fuck,” I said.

  “You would dare attack me in my own home,” Graeme demanded. “You dare harm my guests and the sanctity of my keep!”

  I don’t know where the words came from because they weren’t at all the way that I would have said it. “You dare threaten the mother of my child and make a mockery of her honor and the life of my heir?”

  That brought him up short. The glow in his eyes flickered as his conviction wavered.

  A blast of crimson lightning hit him from the side and sent him flying across the hall into the wall. Sable stood in one of the side entrances, her hands held up, red energy crackling between them.

  Graeme rose to his feet, bellowing a sound that made the floor shudder and had haunted the dreams of every prey animal that had ever lived since the dawn of time. But I was not prey. He raced forward, sword up and ready to strike Sable down. Both she and I unleashed our magical attacks, blasting him back. Graeme held his sword before him, slicing through Sable’s red lightning, but doing so meant he had to take my flames.

  He took them. They caught his clothing on fire and then his hair. He continued to bellow as step by step he made his way toward Sable. My mother. With that sword, her magic wasn’t enough to stop him and mine wasn’t strong enough to slay him. Another step and another. He was going to kill her.

  I stopped my spellfire and rushed for him. He was much bigger and much, much stronger than me, but all I had to do was make him miss and keep him busy long enough for that red lightning to hit him. I leapt, arms spread wide to catch him in a tackle—too late.

  He reached Sable an instant before I reached him and with an upwards thrust, plunged his sword up beneath her rib cage and out through the back of her neck. I hit him from the side and grabbed hold of his shoulders, roaring with everything I was worth, and struck him with all my fire.

  The three of us went up in a pillar of green flames that smashed through the roof of the keep and up into the sky. I screamed. He screamed. He wasn’t going down. The sword slid free of my mother’s body and she crumbled away to ash and bone, blood evaporating before it could even hit the ground. And as the blade came free, magic came with it.

  Living, familiar magic. It leapt into me like an old friend and my flames doubled in size, their heat melting the stone of the keep around us. The magic from Eleanor’s land settled into me and didn’t just fuel my magic, as it had done before, but became one with it. My magic thrashed within me to get free, to pour more of itself onto my enemy and strike him down.

  Graeme screamed. Not a battle or hunting cry this time, but the scream of the dying. The scream of someone being burnt alive. He would never threaten me or my children again. He would hunt no one else.

  We fell to the floor together and as his knees struck, his now brittle bones broke. He crumpled to the floor in a broken heap. My fire continued to rage and rage until there was nothing left but the remnants of his skeleton.

  When the fire died down I lurched dizzily to my feet to help my girls…only to discover that they didn’t need my help. Or maybe that had already received it. My flames had bathed the entire hall and their fur now burned with it, green and living. They were covered in blood and ash but what injuries they had suffered were quickly vanishing, healed by my flames and their own accelerated regeneration. There was no sign of the hellhounds. Either they had fled or the girls had killed them.

  Deirdre’s bloody, serpentine face peered out at me from the hall, as if she was afraid to come out. Considering the semi-liquid state of some of the rock around me I wasn’t sure I blamed her. Reagan was with her, sheltered beneath Deirdre’s coils and staring at everything as if she couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t sure I could.

  I staggered forward, intending to check on them both, and the ground rushed up to greet me. I slowed an instant before hitting the floor, and then landed gently and passed out.
/>   Chapter Eighteen

  I awoke naked in an unfamiliar bed.

  I sat up—and fell back down immediately, struck by a wave of dizziness. Thankfully I fell back into a bunch of comfortable pillows. When the room quit spinning I made myself try again and finally recognized where I was, if not the room itself. I was in Reagan’s house. I didn’t recognize the room because I had never been in the master bedroom before. There were little feminine touches everywhere: a few bits of makeup on the nightstand, a distinct floral pattern to the sheers.

  What was I doing in her room?

  I got out of the bed and started to make my way to the living room, when it occurred to me that something to cover up was in order. This wasn’t my home and the girls may or may not be here. I didn’t actually care who saw me—when had that shift occurred?—but it seemed impolite not to at least wrap a blanket around my waist. So that’s exactly what I did.

  Caroline was in the living room, making me immediately glad that I’d covered up, watching a daytime soap opera. Reagan was in the kitchen behind her, doing something with plates. And Eleanor sat in an armchair off to the side, positioned quite elegantly, and holding a mason jar of iced tea, her walking stick resting against the arm of her chair. Yeah, definitely glad that I’d covered up, but now I wished that I had actual clothes.

  Caroline was the first to notice me and her face lit up. “He’s awake!”

  She hopped off the couch and pulled me into a hug. I smiled at her and hugged her back. When she pulled away she patted my torso up and down before nodding to herself. “No holes. Good.”

  “No holes,” Eleanor agreed and took a sip of her tea. “Sit down, young man. We have much to discuss.”

  I was about to do so, more because I was getting dizzy than because she’d told me to, when Reagan came around the corner and pulled me into a hug tighter than anything she had ever given me. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you. My home is your home. Do you understand? You and the girls and Caroline can stay here for as long as you need.”