"I need to change," he said. "It will only take a moment. Then we'll ride again."
I must have grinned at that, wide enough to make him chuckle.
"We'll have to get you a horse," he said. "It's better from the front seat. And a hunt is better still. That's what--" He stopped himself.
"That's what...?" I prompted as he started walking away.
He shook his head. "I was about to start what would sound like a sales pitch, and this really isn't the time."
"That's what Matilda does," I said. "If she chooses the Cwn Annwn. She rides with you. Like in the legend."
"Yes." He paused. "Which does not mean you couldn't if you chose the fae. But I suppose I shouldn't say that." A shake of his head. "I'll change. That will make it easier to get close. But it's still me. Don't be alarmed."
I didn't quite know what he meant by that until he led his horse behind an outbuilding, and when he returned, I didn't see Ioan--I truly saw the Hunt.
I'd seen Ioan as a Huntsman in Todd's memory. Ioan would have been the one who talked to him, but even if I'd logically made the connection, I hadn't viscerally made it. Now Ioan rode from behind that building and I took a step back, an ancient fear igniting in my gut, one I hadn't felt seeing Huntsmen in visions. There, I'd known they were visions. I'd known I was safe.
The beautiful roan stallion was gone. Instead, Ioan rode a creature woven from dream and nightmare, jet-black, with flame licking through its fetlocks and mane. Its eyes were red-hot coals.
Ioan himself was a hooded figure atop that creature, his polished boots gleaming in the moonlight, dark jodhpurs blending with the black of his horse. A dark green cape concealed the rest of him, even his face lost in the darkness of the hood, leaving only the glow of red eyes.
When I stepped away, he leaned over the horse's back and reached out one gloved hand.
"It's still me, Liv," he said, yet his voice had changed, too, a sonorous tone that came from impossibly deep within his hood.
As I took another slow step back, I tried to stop myself, knowing I was being foolish, but everything in my gut said to run, run now--the Hunt was here, and if you saw it, you would die.
"What have you done?" he asked.
That gave me pause. "What?"
"Exactly. What? You only need fear the Hunt if you've done something that deserves judgment. What have you done?"
I wanted to say, "Nothing," but it was like when I was a kid and my father would say, "Livy, I need to speak to you," and every bad thing I'd ever done flashed to mind. That was exactly what happened now.
"No," Ioan said. "No, and no, and no and..." He sputtered a laugh. "Definitely not."
I stopped mentally chronicling my past transgressions--fast--and Ioan chuckled.
"That's my point, Liv. You have done nothing to remotely deserve your fear. It's ingrained. That's all. Now climb up behind me. If you enjoyed the ride before..." His eyes glittered and I swore I saw his teeth glitter, deep in that darkness. "You ain't seen nothing yet."
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
As unnerving at it was to have the leader of the Wild Hunt quote rock lyrics--even classic rock lyrics--Ioan was right. When the horse took off again, we flew. Not actual flight--that would have been almost disappointing. This was rocketing at speeds so fast we seemed to burst out of our world entirely, flashing through other dimensions like an old-time casino dealer shuffling cards too fast for the eye to follow.
I saw lights unlike any I'd seen before. I heard sounds I shouldn't hear, sounds I couldn't recognize, sounds that made me strain for more, and sounds that made me burrow against Ioan's back, my shoulders hunching as if they could stopper my ears. I caught the smell of fire and then fire-that-was-not-fire, if that makes any sense. Smells I wanted to hold on to forever and smells I wanted to cast out in a sneeze.
Then the horse stopped, and I clung to Ioan's cape, part of me wanting him to keep going, to please keep going, and yet part of me saying that was enough, thank you very much. Enough for now. Not enough for forever. Sensory overload that my brain needed to detangle or I might find myself in a place very much like the one towering in front of me.
The abandoned asylum.
Hello, my old friend.
My old enemy.
We dismounted in the overgrown cemetery. A hidden cemetery, a convenient burial ground for inconvenient patients, those who died without family to pay for a proper gravestone. Tucked away in this plot, markers nestled into the earth, allowed to submerge beneath the weeds and vines, probably before the place even shut down.
Shut down...