Of course, that was the moment three Fae warriors descended on them. Albigard snarled and shoved Len backward. His hand lifted, fingers curling like an orchestra conductor, and one of the attackers yelped as the ever-present vines surrounding them tangled around his ankles. Another one hurled a ball of crackling flames at Albigard’s face. He lifted his sword faster than Len’s eyes could follow. The magical attack crackled against the iron blade and dispersed.
The two who were still free descended on Albigard with weapons clashing and whirling, tag-teaming him. Meanwhile, the third assailant was struggling to free his limbs from the entangling vines, which had his sword-arm wrapped up now, as well.
Fae are tough, Rans had said. Not much can kill them permanently except iron through the heart. Or, well, beheading.
Len waited until the vicious battle moved a few yards away and darted in, putting his full weight behind a vicious roundhouse right to the trapped Fae’s jaw. When the man sagged, disoriented, he yanked the sword from his vine-wrapped grip and slammed the hilt into the Fae’s temple, felling him. He crashed to the ground and lay still.
Since Len had no idea how to use the thing for either defense or offense, he hurled the blade into the impenetrable brush nearby, where it at least wouldn’t end up in one of their attacker’s hands. While he was confident that he hadn’t accidentally killed his victim by bashing him in the side of the head, he hoped like hell that Fae healing ability also meant he hadn’t just caused the man a permanent brain injury.
It was clear Albigard did not share Len’s qualms when it came to the invaders’ ultimate wellbeing. Blood spurted from the neck of one of his opponents, and the man fell with a horrible gurgling sound. Len tried to brace for it, but no fresh blast of death energy hit him this time.
Apparently, a sliced throat did not equal beheading.
The remaining invader ducked under Albigard’s guard, and Len heard his companion grunt as the Seelie’s flashing blade caught him across the thigh. Albigard used the momentum of his stumble to slam into her with his full weight. They went down in a tangle. Magic flared between them like crackling electricity, and when Albigard rolled away with a groan, the Seelie lay unmoving on the ground.
Len hurried to Albigard’s side and grabbed him by the wrist, hauling him upright. Albigard staggered to his feet, sword still in hand. Behind them, shouts and running footsteps warned that the skirmish hadn’t gone unnoticed by the rest of the attacking forces.
“Can you walk?” Len asked tightly, reminding himself firmly that the Fae had walked away from a spectacular car crash in a vehicle with no airbags or modern crumple zones. A sword slash across the thigh was nothing.
”Yes, I—” Albigard breathed in sharply, cutting himself off, and whirled to face in the other direction.
Len whipped his head around, fully expecting to see more armed Fae swarming toward them from the direction of the trees. Instead, his stomach twisted with queasiness, as clammy sweat broke out across his skin.
“No,” he breathed, recognizing the unmistakable sensation for exactly what it was. Sick denial drained the blood from his face, as rolling, greasy black smoke emerged from the dense tangle of woods. “No!”
Albigard stared at the oily vapor as though mesmerized, heedless of the half-dozen attackers bearing down on them from the other direction. With a wordless, animal noise, Len slammed into the Fae’s body and bore him to the ground, caging him beneath arms and legs as a litany of no, no, no, it’s not fair, this can’t be happening echoed through his mind.
Choking black smoke poured over them. Len’s heart pounded against his ribs like a wild animal trying to escape a cage.
“You can’t have him!” he snarled—irrationally, as though the Wild fucking Hunt cared one whit about Len’s words.
He clung to Albigard’s prone body for endless moments until the Hunt flowed away, leaving clear air and the first hint of dawn lighting the forest. Terrified of what he would find, Len tried to detect any hint of movement or life beneath him, past his own thundering heartbeat and heaving chest.
“Don’t be dead,” he begged. “Please, not again, not again—”
A hand closed around his upper arm, clad in a creaking leather gauntlet. Len gasped, nearly choking on it.
Albigard eased him back, and Len swallowed a noise that might have been a sob.
“I am well,” said the Fae, his bloodless complexion belying the words somewhat. As though aware of how that sounded, he added, “For a given definition, at any rate. Let me up.”
Len wasn’t entirely sure his legs were going to follow his instructions to that degree, but he managed to roll off Albigard’s body and make it to a kneeling position in the thick grass. His head swam, but his eyes fell on a pile of dark shapes about a dozen yards away. Farther away, the shouts and curses of battle from the main camp had turned into screams of terror. Len’s stomach heaved.
The pair of them managed to get to their feet, leaning on each other heavily. “Should we try to run?” Len asked, well aware that his brain was too muddled for reasonable decision-making.
Albigard paused. “If it were after me, it would not have moved away while I still lived. And running from the Hunt has never served us well.”
Len nodded, dry-mouthed. They stumbled toward the camp, half holding each other up. The Fae warriors who had been charging toward them lay twisted on the ground, wearing the familiar expressions of fixed horror that Len had already seen far too many times on victims of the Hunt.
As they reached the site of the main battle, the sun breached the treetops, spilling light over a scene that stole Len’s breath.
Dead attackers lay on the ground where they had fallen, while the Forsaken stood by with weapons hanging lax from their hands. All of them were turned in one direction, eyes fixed on the quiescent pall of oily black smoke that hung there. It lay draped across the landscape on the far side of the camp, floating motionless and unthreatening in the early morning illumination.
SIXTEEN
“WHAT... THE HELL... is happening?” Len asked blankly, staring at the unlikely tableau. He ignored the brief look of irritation Albigard shot him, presumably in response to the invocation of the demon realm.
They continued closer. A few of the bodies lying on the ground were, in fact, Forsaken—but they were burned or bloody, victims of the battle rather than the Hunt, Len would have bet. His eyes fell on movement as the cat-sidhe rose from examining one of the dead Fae invaders. The shape-shifter’s green gaze flickered over Len and Albigard as they approached, acknowledging their survival with a short, satisfied nod.
No one answered Len’s rather plaintive question, probably because no one else had a clue what was going on either.
“Perhaps I will ask the Hunt to explain,” said the sidhe.
There was an audible intake of breath as the shape-shifter turned and walked directly toward the dark mass. Len twitched toward them, but Albigard’s hand closed around his forearm, aborting the movement.
“Let the sidhe do as they wish,” he murmured, a look of speculation settling over his pale features.
Len chewed at his lip ring as the sidhe strode up to the edge of the Hunt’s darkness and paused. The shape-shifter lifted one hand, and a tentative curl of black smoke reached out to coil around it. Breath caught in Len’s chest.
The sidhe stood motionless for what felt like several minutes. Albigard maintained his grip on Len’s arm, his tension clear in the grasp of his fingers.
Eventually, the Hunt’s vaporous appendage retracted into the main mass of the cloud. The cat-sidhe stared at the deadly Fae monster, head tilted in silent contemplation. One of the Forsaken stepped forward, and Len recognized Nezri. Danon joined her, his broad chest dripping red from an ugly slash across his left pectoral muscle.
“Well?” Nezri demanded, voicing the question echoing in everyone’s thoughts.
The sidhe let out a long breath and turned their back on the Hunt to address the survivors.
&
nbsp; “The Wild Hunt no longer serves the Fae Court,” they said, without preamble.
Silence fell around the clearing. After a long moment, Albigard broke it.
“Then who... or what... does it serve?”
“It serves Dhuinne.”
Len blinked.
“As in... it serves the Fae realm directly?” he asked, tentative.
“Indeed,” the cat-sidhe said. “It now acts in the best interest of Dhuinne, whatever that may entail.”
Danon shifted warily. “And how are we supposed to know what it thinks is in Dhuinne’s best interest?”
The cat-sidhe met Len and Albigard’s eyes in turn. One dark eyebrow arched. “I daresay we will have to use our best judgment.”
Albigard’s grip tightened on Len’s arm for a second, and then he very deliberately let go. “We must go to the Court,” he said. “Today.”
“That’s suicide,” Danon said.
Albigard flicked an abbreviated gesture at the carnage in the camp... at the Hunt. “Is it really, though?” he asked.
Nezri crossed her arms, frowning. “There’s no reason to assume that just because it killed these guards, it’s going to follow you to the Court like your tame guard dog.”
The sidhe tapped a finger to their lip, thoughtful. “And yet... our intention is to demand the recall of the Unseelie from Earth, in order to heal the imbalance in Dhuinne’s magic. Is there anything more directly relevant to Dhuinne’s survival at present?”
Nezri drew breath to speak, only to hesitate.
“Did any of the attacking forces escape?” Albigard asked.
Danon answered. “Some of them portaled away to safety when they saw what was happening.”
Len followed that train of thought to its likely conclusion. “So, it’s a pretty good guess they ran straight back to the Court to report on what happened, right?”
“To the Court... or perhaps to Oren,” Albigard replied grimly.
Len snorted. “I bet they’ll start taking the Hunt seriously now,” he muttered. Then he glanced around the camp, and a sudden jolt of worry hit him. “Hang on—the children. Where are they?”
But Nezri turned and addressed the sidhe. “Do you deem it safe now, Elder?”
The cat-sidhe nodded. “I do.”
Nezri and Danon locked eyes, and Nezri spoke words Len didn’t understand. A vortex of air in an open area near the center of the camp shimmered like heat haze in the morning sun, before seeming to collapse on itself. Inside, the children huddled, unharmed. Len let out a heartfelt sigh of relief.
Leesa had a toddler resting on her hip, with an older boy’s hand held in hers. She looked around with wide eyes that grew even wider when they landed on the Wild Hunt. Several adults hurried forward to sweep the children up and take them away, murmuring comfort and explanations.
Others began seeing to the wounded, though Danon waved away Aesulna’s attempt to look at the slice across his chest. Len counted three figures wearing the ragged clothing of the Forsaken among the dead scattered on the ground. Several people clustered around them. Some were weeping.
As much as it sickened him, given the scale of the attack, Len knew it could have been much worse.
“I will travel to the city, once all of the wounded have been seen to,” Albigard declared evenly. His eyes sought out the cat-sidhe’s. “Will you accompany me, Elder?”
“Of course I will, a leanbh,” said the shape-shifter. “Was there ever any doubt?”
Albigard’s gaze slid to Len, an unspoken question.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” he said ironically, because if Albigard thought Len was letting him out of his sight anytime in the next century, he was smoking crack.
Nezri and Danon exchanged looks.
“If you are confronting the Court, you will need a show of power,” Nezri said. “As much as you can muster. We will accompany you as well, along with anyone else from the camp who cares to lend their strength to the cause of saving Dhuinne from its own leaders.”
“Count me in,” Aesulna said tartly, looking up from the injured Fae she was hovering over.
“Do we have any sort of strategy beyond marching up to the Court and demanding they listen to us?” Len asked. “Because no offense, but that seems a bit... vague?”
Albigard quirked an eyebrow. “If the Wild Hunt deigns to accompany us, I doubt any additional strategy will be required.”
Len asked the obvious follow-up question. “And if it doesn’t?”
The Fae’s expression turned wry. “Then I don’t believe additional strategy will help.”
“Right.” Len blew out a breath and gave him a pointed onceover. “How about we at least hold off until you look less like you’re about to fall over.” He hesitated. “And until I feel less like I’m about to fall over.”
Aesulna snorted.
“I did say, ‘once all the wounded have been seen to,’” Albigard pointed out mildly.
“So you did,” Len replied. He turned to survey the scene. “Let’s get on with that, shall we?”
* * *
It was the ass-end of mid-morning before the camp members finished dealing with all the dead bodies, in addition to the living ones. The more superficial wounds like the slice on Albigard’s thigh and the gash on Danon’s chest were largely healed, thanks to a combination of magical medicine and innate Fae toughness. The more serious injuries were at least stabilized, and would heal soon enough.
Len reflected—not for the first time in recent days—that sleeping for a week solid sounded an awful lot like heaven. Unfortunately, that wasn’t in the cards. Though he did feel like imminent collapse was no longer a concern, thankfully. The shock of thinking he’d lost Albigard to the Hunt for a second time had faded a bit, and the icy blast of fresh Fae death animus had settled into place.
Even so, after so long spent with his old, familiar collection of specters, he was finding this current revolving door of necromantic energy... disconcerting.
He knew nothing whatsoever about the dead Seelie warrior whose animus now swirled around him like a chilly cloud, beyond the fact that she’d been enthusiastically attempting to kill Albigard when he’d succeeded in killing her instead. The Unseelie attacker Len had knocked out with the hilt of his own sword had only died later, when the Hunt rolled over him.
At some point, Len would have to decide what he felt about that, if anything.
None of the invading Fae who’d remained behind had survived. No one was quite sure how many had portaled away to safety—only that some of them had. Albigard seemed to think that would work in their favor. Len had pretty much given up on the whole optimism gig these days, but nevertheless hoped he was right about that.
The big question remained—would the Hunt tag along with them when they traveled to the city to confront the Court, or wander off and leave them to their own devices? So far, it had shown no inclination to leave. It was still hovering in exactly the same place where it had come to rest after the battle.
When Nezri and Aesulna proclaimed the members of the camp as ready as they could be, the cat-sidhe approached the edge of the sinuous black cloud and extended a hand. As before, the Hunt reciprocated, reaching out to touch. Len didn’t panic this time, but his nerves still thrummed with misgivings.
Albigard joined him, standing next to his shoulder.
“Do you think they can actually communicate like that?” Len asked. The cat-sidhe certainly seemed to think so, but Len was still struggling with the idea of a terrifying cloud of death and awfulness being sentient in the first place.
Albigard shrugged, his leather armor creaking with the small movement. “Both the sidhe and the Wild Hunt are ancient aspects of Dhuinne.”
Len shot him a sidelong glance. “I can’t help noticing, you’re staking an awful lot on the idea that the Hunt’s on our side now.”
“Yes,” Albigard agreed simply.
The cat-sidhe pulled back, and the Hunt did the same.
“It is time to pr
oceed,” said the shape-shifter. “Let all who intend to join us stand ready.”
Perhaps two-dozen Forsaken took up arms and fell into ragged formation behind Len and Albigard. The Hunt twisted restlessly as the sidhe joined the group.
“Where will you transport us?” Nezri asked. “The portal zone behind the Court building?”
The cat-sidhe let out a little huff. “Hardly. We will enter the chamber itself. One does like to make an emphatic statement in situations such as this.”
Albigard frowned. “The Court’s meeting gallery is heavily protected. Can you do that?”
The cat-sidhe gave him a patient look. “What have I told you about wards crafted by Seelie and Unseelie, youngling?”
With that, the shape-shifter lifted one delicate hand and made an intricate gesture with curled fingers. Len squared his shoulders as a portal large enough for three people to enter abreast burned itself into the air. Albigard exchanged a glance with him, and they strode through in the cat-sidhe’s wake.
SEVENTEEN
LEN FORCED himself not to sway or stumble as the familiar sense of disorientation hit him, and then he was in the Court chamber with its thick moss and overgrown, flowering vines covering the walls and benches.
Chaos erupted as spectators and members of the Court surged to their feet. The first cry of, ‘Guards!’ was quickly echoed by others, as the Forsaken marched through the portal after the cat-sidhe, Albigard, and Len. Scanning the echoing space with a quick sweep of his eyes, Len got the impression that they’d barged in on some kind of high-level meeting. A good twenty or more Unseelie in their glittering finery occupied the space beneath the dais, where Len and Albigard had stood like criminals on trial not so long ago. All of them had whirled in surprise at the appearance of the portal, but they weren’t running away as many of the spectators had done.
Len’s attention caught on a familiar head of copper-blonde hair topping a haughty, sharp-featured face.
Teague.
What the hell was Albigard’s wayward protégé doing here, when he should be on Earth?
Forsaken Fae: The Complete Series, Books 1-3 (Last Vampire World) Page 47