Page 1 of To Run with the Wild Hunt

Mistakes Were Made

Alexis Sharpe

Ithought the most dangerous thing I'd encounter in the Irish countryside was a Londoner on vacation.

I was wrong.

I pressed one hand to my side as I skidded down the wet, grassy slope, the stitch in my side screaming with pain and every harsh breath tearing at my throat. The rolling hills spread out in every direction, endless green painted silver by the light of the moon, but I didn't have time to enjoy the scenery. I had to run, had to get away—couldn't die like this.

The voices of the hounds howled somewhere behind me, but I didn't dare to look back. There were no seconds to waste searching the horizon for the man I'd seen pointing his spear at me; no footsteps I could afford to misplace while throwing terrified glances over my shoulder at the black beasts and red eyes.

I shouldn't have parked my fucking car a full mile away from the manor I'd been robbing, but there were cameras along the drive and I hadn't expected to be cut off from my getaway vehicle by the fucking Wild Hunt.

And a curvy girl like me really wasn't made for running.

The wire fence caught me at the hips and sent me flipping over it, tail over teakettle, my body ricocheting down the slope. I didn't have time to rest, and I staggered up to my feet before my vision cleared. The night seemed to be getting brighter to all my senses. The stars burned with dangerous clarity and the scents of the earth were broad and inviting beneath the sharp smell of fear-sweat, but I didn't have time to ponder the mystery. I veered to the right, splashing down the rill, some tiny piece of my mind remembering that you could throw animals off the trail with water.

It was useless. My scent didn't matter to them. They were running me down like a deer on the open plain, chasing me until my lungs collapsed and I died with blood bubbling out of my nostrils.

Something about that thought – running me down like a deer – stuck in my thoughts as the night grew lighter and my feet found the ground more easily. I couldn't shake it any more than I could shake the image of the antlered figure silhouetted against the sky, but I couldn't think, couldn't think, had to keep running.

My ankle twisted underneath me, a rock slipping out from underfoot in the treacherous wet, and I went down again, my hand catching my weight with a shock of pain. I scrambled to get my foot under me, planting my hands on the ground with the space between my middle and ring fingers splayed wide. Then I caught a look at my foot, and horror slashed into me like broken glass.

I'd been wearing shoes when I'd left the manor, nice leather-soled sneak-shoes that made no sound, but I wasn't wearing them now. Where my very human feet had been were now something that would have suited a faun from Narnia, halfway between a woman's foot and a deer's.

A hound's howl belled out into the darkness, followed by several more, the hungry pack singing for their dinner. I was up and running again before I could think to do anything else, my fucking hooves sinking into the wet soil.

But I wasn't a deer, and I refused to be nothing more than a doe. The same gritted teeth that had gotten me out of the trailer park I'd grown up in and into the homes of the rich and powerful would get me out of this. I forced my eyes to start looking, and that made my mind start thinking, and moments later I caught sight of an outbuilding. Running wasn't fleeing when you had a destination. I aimed for the straight lines of a shadow cast by humanity, dredged up my last spark of endurance, and sprinted up the slick grass of the hill for the hope of safety.

Behind me, the hounds bayed again, closer now. I couldn't risk a look behind me—had to stay focused, to keep running, to make it. But I didn't need to look over my shoulder to see what ran for me, the image burned into my mind with painful clarity from that first terrible sight.

Black hounds, leaping forward, galloping across the open ground with the beautiful coursing run of a sighthound.

Red eyes gleaming like rubies, and white teeth catching the moonlight in red mouths.

The dark shape of a man mounted on a massive black horse, a rack of antlers reaching up from his skull, the bone of his face white in the night. His broad shoulders and bare chest silhouetted against the stars, the strength of his thighs holding him in place as his stallion reared, the animal's hooves clawing at the sky.

The silver gleam of a spear pointed at my heart.

The thudding of my heart almost drowned out the thudding of the racing footfalls of the hounds, and I reached the building only in time to snatch the pitchfork off the wall before they were on me. The first hit me in the back, flinging me to the ground, but I still had the damned protective tube for the Pollock painting I'd stolen, and its teeth grabbed that instead of my neck. The others weren't far behind, though, and I screamed with pain as jaws grabbed hold of my legs, the fangs piercing through my clothing as if it wasn't there.

I wasn't a runner and an Irish wolfhound weighs as much as a man, but I did have significant arm strength from climbing, and the effects of adrenaline can't be understated. I jackknifed my elbow into the hound's leg hard enough that the animal went down, its weight falling to the side, and that brief moment of reprieve was enough to duck out of the tube's strap and get onto my back, throwing another beast onto the ground as I flung my leg over. They came into the gap at me, but I had the pitchfork in front of me and hooves to kick with, and when the animals hit the steel tines their flesh sizzled.

A sharp whistle pierced the air, and with sudden, eerie silence, the hounds released me and stepped back, their snarls still ringing in my ears. The iron stench of blood soaked into the air, but I didn't dare to try to check my wounds. I hauled myself up to my feet, holding myself up with the butt end of the pitchfork as my leg buckled, and looked into the eyes of the master of the hunt.

I couldn't see more than a glint in the dark eye-holes of the skull as his horse shifted under him, restive. Up close, he was obviously a man, or something like a man, with a powerful build and the body of a mercenary, the sort of man who looked like he could win any fight he stepped into. The sort of man who could fight all day and fuck all night, tireless and brutal and bold.

The antlers were his, growing through dark hair. The bone on his face was a mask made of a human skull, and he had sharp-tipped ears like a storybook elf. His skeletal right arm gleamed silver in the moonlight, moving with the same ease as the one made of flesh and blood.

He wasn't human. He was something far, far wilder than a mere man.

He spoke in a deep, melodic voice, words I didn't understand with long, curving vowel sounds and clipped or back-of-the-throat consonants—but I didn't need to understand the words to understand the sneering tone.

"I'm afraid I'm an American," I said, the words rasping with my harsh breathing as my hands trembled from the pain and exhaustion. "Never learned Gaelic."

One of the hounds snapped in my direction, and the man barked a sharp word. It sulked away, and he turned his head towards me to fix me with his baleful, shadowed gaze. I couldn't see his eyes in the darkness of the skull, but I could almost feel them, the strength of that liminal connection pulling at me like the tide.

He spoke again, the same words in the same language, but this time magic whispered the meaning into my ears. With a voice like the growl of his dogs, the Hunter said, "Either run with the Hunt or flee before it, mortal. Put down your iron and choose."

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