Hunted by a Night Fae

Chapter 5

I woke as I was placed on my sore and throbbing feet.

"Here you are, girlie."

"Where am I?" I asked. But already I was being pushed away.

"The Wild Hunt, you have passed the test. Now go, before you anger them."

I spun to glimpse my headless captor. A chill slithered down my spine as I glimpsed their wraith-like form. They bowed their body to me so that I saw the dark gaping hole inside the collar of his cloak. I wanted to scream, but then stumbling women forced me to look away. When I looked back they were gone.

My head was thick and foggy, like someone had poured syrup over my thoughts. I tried to make sense of the people pushing in around me.

Some of them were younger than me, and others a bit older, but most of them around my age. All of them looked just as beat up as I did—if not even worse. They were battered and bruised with their clothing ripped and covered in stains of blood.

Memories came back to me. The blood. The screams. Bile rose in my throat. Before I could kneel over and release my insides to the ground, a push came from behind. I stumbled forward.  I looked over my shoulder at where it had come from, then froze.

The culprit was a tall man with a broad bare chest. He had on pants made of what appeared to be mismatched animal hides, which hung low around his waist. He wore an animal skull as a mask, the upper portion of his face completely obscured. Blazing green eyes watched me from behind it. I wasn't sure what kind of creature the skull had at one point belonged to, but it had long crooked horns extending off its head.

"Move," he said, his voice low. It held an unspoken warning.

Obediently, I continued walking, only to jerk to the side as another girl bumped into me. Raising up on my tip-toes, I tried to make out where we were being herded off too.  I caught sight of a large circular clearing up ahead. Wooden fences ringed the area at the end of the path, a series of men in various shapes and sizes pushing us along the path.

Like cattle heading towards their slaughter.

Every muscle in my body protested as I was pushed along with the thickening crowd. Fear and adrenaline coursed through my body, making my heart race. It was the only thing keeping me going.

The moon that shone overhead sat far too close, its violet glow eerie and wrong. The forest around me appeared to move, rising and falling as if taking deep breaths. My skin crawled with awareness that I was being watched.

Other than the women I walked beside, the creatures that stood guard on either side of me were far from human. They were all different shapes and sizes. Some small and stout holding mean-looking weapons carved from wood and tipped with silver. Others were lithe and tall with sharp-clawed hands. Multicolored shades of skin caught in the limited light, shimmering in a way that skin just... couldn't. Their glowing eyes looked forward, as if this was just another standard day for them.

The Wild Hunt. That's what the headless man had said. I remembered the name, but it just wasn't possible that was true. Gran had told me about it, sure. But it was one thing dreaming faerie was real, with its magic and wonders. It was another thing to be transplanted right into one of its horrors.

Maybe I was dreaming. Maybe I was still hallucinating...

I knew better.

My foot caught on a root, and I tripped with a cry. I just barely got my hands out under me before I fell on my face. I hissed in pain at the sharp stab that radiated through my foot.

"You need to get up," said a soft, yet urgent voice. "They will make us walk over you if we must." Hands grasped my arms and helped me to my feet. A small redheaded girl shot a nervous glance at our captors before looking at me. Her green eyes were filled with fear.

"Thank you," I said quickly, tearing my arm from her grasp. Uneasiness made my hands tremble as I pushed onward.

"I was out walking my dog," said the girl who was still walking close behind me. "He disappeared in the trees—but when I pulled on his leash it came right back to me. It had been cut off." She sobbed quietly, though I didn't miss it. "I shouldn't have gone in, but little Oscar was gone and I was panicking. Then there was music. So much music..." Her voice trailed off and I finally noticed it's pronounced lilt as I focused on what she was saying.

"Where are you from," I asked.

"Perth."

I stopped walking. "Scotland?"

She was looking up at me curiously. "You?"

"Surrey... From Canada."

Her green eyes went wide, coming to the same realization I had.

I looked around at the girls getting herded in with us with new eyes. There was a tall boy not far ahead of me who looked like he could have been Korean. To my side was a dark-haired girl I realized was uttering a constant prayer in Spanish. Whoever all of these people were and what purpose we were there to serve, we had been handpicked from all across the world.

There were hundreds of us.

A crowd gathered together at the entrance to the clearing we were all being directed toward. Our progress slowed, the path narrowing so we had to walk single file. The guards were thicker here, glaring down at us, one of them muttering something under his breath. I couldn't understand it, but based on the way he looked at me with hunger in his eyes as I walked by him, I had a feeling he was trying to convince himself not to eat us.

With nowhere else to go, I walked forward.

I felt like ice had been glazed over my body, my body only moving at the whim of some godlike puppeteer who was pulling my strings. I needed to get out of this, but I wasn't sure how.

Soon I got my answer when one girl made a run for it.

The girl was small enough to duck under the lowest barriers of the fence. She slipped through a spot where two guards were standing further apart, just wide enough that they couldn't reach her. She was quick, getting out to the grassy field that sat between the enclosure and the trees. She reached the outer treeline, and it looked like she might make it.

Then an arrow, its origin from somewhere in the dark forest, pierced her right through the chest. Silence resonated as she crumpled to the ground.

No one else tried to escape after that.