FREE PRINCE CRUCE!!!
Meet at Arlington Abbey and help us liberate our champion!
See map below!
“Who would print this?” I exploded.
“No bloody clue,” Barrons said tightly. “Up. Now.”
I scrambled back onto the Hunter and, as Barrons settled behind me, reached for the great beast’s vast, unfathomable mind. Can you help us fight? Call more Hunters?
We do not attend matters of Fae and man.
You’ve been flying me around.
You amuse.
Because it sensed the king in me? I wondered. I order you to help us fight.
Not even you.
Can I offer you something? If bribes were what it wanted, I’d try.
It rumbled deep inside, a chuckle of sorts. You have nothing. We have all.
Well, then just hurry! I urged it. My friends are in danger. Take us to the abbey as quickly as you can get us there!
You do not mean that. It rumbled again and I felt its mirth. You would not survive. But it flapped its enormous leathery sails, churning black ice beneath us, and pumped up and up.
We soared beneath the clouds, where the day was still bright, then through the clouds and above them, sailing higher and higher into blackness and stars and cold, cold sky, then just when I thought my lungs might explode and it was getting dangerously hard to breathe, it tucked its wings close to its body like an eagle preparing to plunge and whispered in my mind with a soft rumble, Hold, not-king.
I shoved my arms beneath its tightly wrapped wings and hugged the bony crest, clutching it, clenched my thighs and pressed my face to its frosty hide. It burned and I drew back sharply, but too late, I left a layer of my cheek on its back. “Ow!”
It suddenly went motionless, hanging in the sky like a dead weight, not moving one leathery scale. I remained just as still, bracing for whatever was about to happen.
Suddenly it rocketed forward so fast I’d have flown right off its back if it hadn’t given me warning. I felt like the Enterprise, entering warp speed.
I tucked my face low (but not too low!) to its hide, as Barrons’s arms tightened around me, and I squeezed my eyes shut against the cutting wind. I could feel the skin of my cheeks dragging back with gravitational force humans were not intended to experience without helmets or space suits.
After a moment I slitted my eyes open and watched stars trail past, like silvery party streamers.
Behind me, Barrons laughed with raw, ferocious exhilaration. I felt the same. Best. Damn. Supercar. Ever.
I sensed the Hunter prodding gently at my mind, making sure I was breathing and alive.
Best safety features, too.
We bulleted through the sky, dropping down and down until at last fields came into view, lush and fantastical from Cruce’s magic. In no time at all we were nearly to the abbey.
“Oh, God, Barrons, look at all the Fae!” Nonsifters crammed the narrow winding road to the abbey, Seelie and Unseelie alike, while more loped and slithered and crawled through meadows, splashed and lumbered across streams. There were humans, too, though not many. I suspected there may have been more but this dark, wild army had fed on them, all pretense at seduction abandoned to the hunger of battle-frenzy. “All for Cruce?” I yelled over my shoulder. “I thought the Seelie despised the dark court!”
“They’re unled,” he shouted into my ear. “The unled are always fickle.”
Once before, I’d seen Seelie and Unseelie gathered en masse. Not in clusters here and there like I’d seen mingling at Chester’s but facing off like mighty armies.
V’lane had been leading the Seelie, while Darroc and I had stood at the front of the Unseelie.
I’d felt the shuddering in the tectonic plates of our planet, even with both sides holding their enormous power in check.
Now there was no division between the courts. Seelie and Unseelie were rushing toward a single place with a single goal.
Our abbey.
To destroy it.
To free Cruce. Break out the most powerful Fae prince in all creation. And they didn’t even know he had all the power of the Sinsar Dubh at his disposal.
“Uh, Barrons, we’re in a world of shit,” I muttered.
“Same page, Ms. Lane. Same bloody word.”
—
“Where are Ryodan and the others?” I cried as we soared low over the battle.
Five hundred sidhe-seers were down there. But I didn’t see a single one of the Nine.
My sisters were facing thousands of Fae with more marching directly for them.
The front lawn of the abbey was a scene straight out of one of the Lord of the Rings movies. Amid towering megaliths and silvery fountains, humans battled monsters of every kind imaginable, some flying, some crawling, others stalking. Some beautiful, some hideous. There were those damned death-by-laughter fairies darting around a sidhe-seer’s head! I watched, horrified. She was still laughing as she was killed by a ghastly Unseelie with tubular fronds all over its body.
There was Jada, slicing a circle around her, the alabaster blade of the sword gleaming. But it was only one weapon and there were thousands of Fae down there, flying, slithering.
“They aren’t bloody sifters,” Barrons said and snarled. “They fucking drove. And they sure as bloody hell can’t be taking the road.”
I sometimes forgot the Nine had limitations. They seemed so all-powerful to me. If I knew them, they’d shift not far from the abbey and lope to battle smack in the middle of the Unseelie. “Well, why didn’t you call more Hunters for them?”
“This is the only one that ever comes.”
“Shit,” I cursed, leaning low, peering over the side.
I heard a low growl behind me, followed by the crunching sound of bones shifting, then the Hunter tensed beneath me and shook itself violently. I clung to the crest of its wings with all my strength.
“You are not my enemy,” Barrons roared behind me. “I’ll change and drop.”
You’ll drop and change, the Hunter snarled in my head. It arched its long neck and shot an enormous burst of flame over its shoulder, blasting Barrons right off its back and singeing the hell out of my coat and hair.
“Barrons!” I screamed as he went tumbling off the Hunter’s back, falling toward the lawn, transforming as he went.
The Hunter banked hard and began to circle back around. I stared down, watching Barrons fall. He was fully transformed by the time he hit the ground, horned, fanged, and ferocious.
He surged up, a sleek black shadow, grabbed the nearest Rhino-boy by the throat and ripped off its head with his enormous jaws.