Page 67 of Welcome to Blackbird Hollow
“Hold,” Wyatt tells me, throwing out his free hand to grip my shoulder. My heart leaps into my throat, every vein in my body pounding as I watch the little one toddle toward the Hunt. The child can’t be more than three or four, their face filled with guileless joy beneath the hooded bear-cub onesie.
“No fuckin’ way,” Fallon says over the radio.
I’m pretty sure Wyatt and I both stop breathing as we search the street below us, looking for the source of Fallon’s comment.
One of the Sector agents, a bland-looking woman in her thirties with mousy hair and a dark suit, leaves the shadows of the awning and walks to the end of the sidewalk. My hand grows clammy against the rifle’s trigger, my blood pounding so hard I feel faint. Even though the child wanders closer to the Wild Hunt, the Sector woman stays perfectly still. In the moonlight, I see her cross her arms, eyes narrowed.
“Oh my fucking god,” I spit. “She’swatching. To see what happens when someone gets taken.”
Wyatt grunts his agreement as Fern whines. “Stand down, girl,” he says to her, his voice heavy.
My mind runs ragged and wild, and I’m pushing up out of the camp chair before I realize what I’m doing. But the salt cartridges in my rifle won’t do shit against the Hunt. I should’ve let Fallon give me real bullets. It’s not like she didn’t offer. I just didn’t trust myself.
“Wyatt,” I hiss between my teeth as a gleaming white horse turns away from the Hunt’s pack, its cloaked rider reining it toward the child. A hand reaches out, beckoning with too-long fingers. The sound of the little kid’s giggle—enticed by a glamour, I’m sure—sinks into my blood like lead. My gaze jumps to the Sector woman, who’s walked a few more steps into the street, nothing but clinical interest on her face.
“I can’t get a clean shot. I’ve gotta go down,” comes Fallon’s voice over the radio. I look toward Wyatt in horror, terrified that I’m going to watch the Wild Hunt steal Fallonandthe little one. But then his brow furrows, and I think I know him well enough to know he’s just made a decision by the particular set of his jaw.
A second later, he turns the muzzle of his rifle away from the Hunt and shoots the Sector woman in the leg. She screams and drops to the ground, her limbs thrashing like a deer struck by a car. My ears pound and I bite down on my tongue so hard that I taste blood.
The Hunt moves like a tide. No longer flowing along the ley line, waves of Them break off and swarm the Sector woman. I realize with a start that even though I’m looking straight at Them, I canseeThem for what They truly are.
Crowns of bone glint in the lamplight, stained with old blood. Severed fingers decorate the long, tangled manes of desiccated horses that shouldn’t even be standing, let alone carrying a rider. The cloaked figure on the gleaming white horse throws Their hood back, revealing one of the most impossibly beautiful faces I’ve ever seen. They smile, showing Their teeth, mother-of-pearl sharpened into a thousand knives.
There are other things, too. Things I don’t have language for, things that my mind won’t let me look at for more than a moment or two.
So I happily glance away, blocking out the tortured screams of the Sector woman as the Hunt drags her away. Instead, I search for the rounded ears of the little one’s bear costume. Relief surges through me when I find them being shepherded out of the street by an ivory-skinned woman with two long, dark braids. The fringe on her leather jacket sways as she takes the child by the arm, pulling them gently toward the sidewalk. There, Fallon’s waiting on the ground level of the Archer Inn. She takes the child into her arms before disappearing behind the faesbane-dressed doors.
I collapse against Wyatt, Fern shoving her wet nose into my cold hands as I bury my face into his shoulder. “Fuck,” I whisper, my mind a tangle of horror and relief.
“Hopefully that’s as exciting as things get tonight,” he says, though there’s something guarded in his tone. “I didn’t—look, I hope you don’t…”
I pull away to glance at him, my adrenaline running so high that for a long moment, I have difficulty understanding his words, let alone the look on his face. Until, all at once, I do,thinking about our conversation all those days ago—days that feel more like a lifetime.
“You did the right thing,” I tell him, reaching up to brush a lock of dark hair out of his face.
He smiles at me, the curve of his mouth just as dangerous as the Wild Hunt in the streets below. “I don’t have any question about that,” he says, raising one brow. The confidence in his expression falters. “Only if you?—”
“You did the right thing,” I repeat, my fingers trailing to his collarbone. “And it didn’t bother me at all.” I pause, trying to actually take stock of my feelings, and apparently decide to blurt out, “It was pretty hot, honestly.”
His smile returns, and slick heat floods me. I lean in, my hand taking a fistful of his jacket, before the radio crackles again.
“Do you guys see Willa?” comes Fallon’s voice—panicked, for once.
Wyatt and I both whip back around to the street, leaning over the roof’s edge. The witch who shepherded the kid to Fallon is still in the street. Her body faces the safety of her coven, who have gathered on the porch, but her head is turned toward the Hunt. Her eyes are narrowed, her lips moving ever so slightly, like she’s reciting a spell.
“Wanda, can you come in for me?” Wyatt asks. In my peripheral vision, I can see his hands shaking on the radio.
I hear Wanda’s rich voice, completely calm and heavy with authority, but all I see is Willa as she turns to fully face the Hunt. I’m no expert, but I don’t think she’s in a thrall—her face is still hers, none of that moon-eyed glassiness Wyatt warned me about. She bites down on the inside of her cheek just as a motorcycle pulls over, idling. The rider pulls Their helmet off, revealing long, tumbling silver hair. In the lamplight, I see an impossibly beautiful and fiercely masculine face turn toward Willa, Their jawline sharp as a knife. My breath catches.
They—he, maybe—calls out to Willa. She stares at him, unafraid, her gaze moving slowly from the crown of his head to his heavy boots resting on either side of the motorcycle. I’m no lip-reader, but it’s almost like all the adrenaline crystallizes my hearing and my vision.
“Oh,” I swear Willa says. “So it’s time?”
The Fey on the motorcycle grins at her. It’s unabashedly flirtatious, the corners of his mouth curving into an expression that would be more at home in a romantasy novel than in the feral, hungry tides of the Hunt.
“Yes,” he growls—actuallygrowls—the single word a deep, dark rumble from the back of his throat.
Willa’s clearly nervous, but in the back of my mind, I realize that she’s dressed like…like she’s going somewhere. Her leather jacket’s zipped closed with a bandana tied around her neck, and she’s wearing black cowboy boots instead of the usual work or hiking shoes I see around town. Well-worn deerskin gloves are tucked into her back pocket like she’s got a job to do. Almost as if she’s seen the Hunt before. Almost like she’s been waiting for this night—but in a much different way than the rest of us.
