I dodged his clumsy blows, then his horse got between us. Goon roared and grabbed a thick branch from the ruined hedge, swinging it like a madman. His horse shied badly, stumbling over the soft ground. Its pained whinny broke through the madness consuming me, and I caught its reins, tugging it gently from Goon’s path. “Seriously? That’s how you’re gonna play it? Attack your own horse to get to me?”
“Irish filth,” Goon spat, lunging for the reins. “Your lot course hares on my land all the time. Go back to your fucking caravan.”
I laughed, sidestepping his inelegant attempts to reclaim his horse. Like I gave a toss if he thought me a Traveller. He was halfway right, and I was damn fucking proud. “Try again, old man. Hurt this horse, I dare you.”
Goon’s wingmen rode up on us. One dismounted, and I braced myself for a tag team attack, but the red coat grabbed Goon, tearing the heavy stick from his hand and chucking it away.
“Are you fucking mad? That horse is worth twenty grand at stud. Leave this little prick. The rest of the hunt will ride right over him.”
The main pack of riders had escaped my attention. For the first time since we’d set foot on the Buckinghamshire land, I had no clue where the fleeing fox, the hound pack, or the sabs on ground were, either. I didn’t even know where my partner was. Silence hit me; no baying hounds or pounding hooves. A distant horn sounded and I realised with a start that while I’d been brawling with Goon, the hunt had moved on, taking everyone—takingRae—with it.
Fuck.I dropped the horse’s reins and set off at a sprint, pumping my already exhausted limbs. My bandana cut into my face, making it hard to catch the cold air. My lungs burned, my chest tight. Throwing my last caution to the wind, I ripped it over my head and tossed it aside.
A rider charged me, knocking me off balance with a glancing blow. I stumbled, my ankle twisting, but somehow stayed on my feet. Veering left, I made for a kissing gate that led to a field with hedges too high for horses to jump. Another rider came at me. A crop whipped through the air and struck my shoulder, painting my skin with fire.
I laughed again, manic and wild. Call me a freak, but that kind of pain did it for me. In different circumstances, I’d have been begging for more.I wonder—
Unbidden, Rae’s face flashed into my mind. I’d seen him with the hounds, running rings around them while his partner got down in the dirt. For a brief moment, I’d been lost in the graceful way his long, lithe body ate up the ground. He moved like he wrote, a brutal poetry, and for blissful seconds, there’d been only him.
Then Goon had ridden into my eyeline, and now we were here. The crop struck me again, catching my thigh. Filthy pain bit into my skin, and sunk into my muscle. Dead leg spread through me. The kissing gate was a few strides away, but it was too far.
My knees began to buckle. I braced myself to tuck and roll, jockey style, in the hope I wouldn’t break every bone in my body, but then an angel appeared in the shape of the slight Welsh girl I’d been partnered with. She climbed the gate, leaving enough room for me to career past her, and hurled a bucket of wet shit in Goon’s face.
Safely in the next field, I grabbed her hand. We ran away laughing.
***
Her name was Petra. She had raven hair, alabaster skin, and the dirtiest laugh I’d ever heard.
Leg throbbing, I followed her through woodland too dense for horses until we came to an old shack close to the main road.
“Our rally point,” she said. “There’s zero phone signal round here—the rich twats in the villages keep blocking the mast proposals—so one way or another, we’ll all end up here.”
Fair enough. We’d lost sight and sound of the hunt, so we sat in the open door of the shack, keeping a sharp ear out for approaching footsteps.
Petra shivered and huddled against the wall. “Your crew’s pretty intense. I recognise the other two, but I haven’t seen you before. I usually hang with the monitors, though. That’s probably why.”
“Nah, I’m new. I’ve only been out with Rae a couple of times, never the whole gang.”
“Seriously? I thought you were the boss.”
“Nope. Just a loud mouth.”
Petra giggled, teeth chattering as adrenaline faded, leaving cold and hunger in its place. “A pretty good loud mouth, then. Fred’s our lead man. He’s okay, but he flaps. We’d never have got here in time without you.”
“In time for what?”
She shrugged. “For whatever went down.”
A shiver of my own passed through me, but not from the arctic chill blasting through the shack. Instead, uncertainty had a party with my already frayed nerves and I got up, limping to the doorway to scan the horizon for the hundredth time. The hills and fields were quiet and at barely three-thirty, we were losing light. Wondering turned to fretting. If Sprig and Rae lost their partners, they wouldn’t know to come here, and I had the keys to the van.
I pulled out my phone. As Petra had warned, I had no coverage, and barely any battery. Anxiety clawed at my chest. The day faded away and a murky dusk crept in.
“They’ll be here,” Petra promised, but I didn’t believe her.
I stayed rooted to my spot, chewing my lip, until footsteps and voices drew me up straight.
Petra stood and appeared at my side. She let out a birdcall and an answer came a moment before four figures emerged from the trees. I recognised Rae from the set of his shoulders alone, slumped and desolate. I’d never seen him defeated before, but Iknew him.
