to handle, like, a million of them?”
I snorted. “You liked those movies, too, huh?”
Her reply was a smile, one touched with sadness.
“Yeah,” I said. “I was thinking of you when I saw them, too.” I shook my head. “And no. This is a case of folklore getting it wrong. These guys are killers. They’re sneaky and they’re smart and they’re ruthless. Like ninjas. From Krypton. Look what they did.”
Susan stared at the downed Red Court strike team for a moment. I watched the wheels turn in her head as she processed what had happened to the vampires and the Ick, in a handful of seconds, in complete darkness and in total silence.
“Um. I guess we’d better make nice, then, huh?” Susan asked. She slipped her club around behind her back and put on her old reporter’s smile, the one she used to disarm hostile interviewees.
And then I had a thought.
A horrible, horrible thought.
I turned slowly around. I looked at the wall I’d been standing against.
And then I looked up.
It wasn’t a wall, exactly. It was a dais. A big one. Atop it sat a great stone throne.
And upon the throne sat a figure in black armor, covered from head to toe. He was huge, nine feet tall at least, and had a lean, athletic look to him despite the armor. His helm covered his head and veiled his face with darkness, and great, savagely pointed antlers rose up from the helmet, though whether they were adornment or appendage I couldn’t say. Within the visor of that helmet was a pair of steady red eyes, eyes that matched the thousands of others in the hall.
He leaned forward, the Lord of the Goblins of Faerie, leader of the Wild Hunt, nightmare of story and legend and peer of the Queen of Air and Darkness, Mab herself.
“Well,” murmured the Erlking. “Well, well, well. Isn’t this interesting .”
36
I stared up at the Erlking, and with my typical pithy brilliance said, “Uh-oh.”
The Erlking chuckled, a deep sound. It echoed around the hall, resonating from the stone, amplified into subtle music. If I’d had any doubts that I was standing at the heart of the Erlking’s power, that laugh and the way the hall had responded in harmony took care of them for me. “It seems, my kin, that we have guests.”
More chuckles rose up from a thousand throats, and evil red eyes crinkled with amusement.
“I confess,” the Erlking said, “that this is a . . . unique event. We are unaccustomed to visitors here. I trust you will be patient whilst I blow the dust from the old courtesies.”
Again, the goblins laughed. The sound seemed to press directly against whatever nerve raised the hairs on my arms.
The Erlking rose, smooth and silent despite his armor and his mass, and descended from the dais. He walked around to loom over us, and I took note of the huge sword at his side, its pommel and hilt bristling with sharp metal protrusions that looked like thorns. He studied us for a moment and then did two things I hadn’t really expected.
First, he took off his helmet. The horns were, evidently, fixed to the dark metal. I braced myself to view something horrible but . . . the Lord of Goblins was nothing like what I had expected.
Upon his face, the hideous asymmetries of the goblins of his hall were all reflected and somehow transformed. Though he, too, shared the irregular batch of features, upon him their fundamental repulsiveness was muted into a kind of roguish distinction. His crooked nose seemed something that might have been earned rather than gifted. Old, faint scars marred his face, but only added further grace notes to his appearance. Standing there before the Erlking, I felt as if I were looking at something handcrafted by a true master, perhaps carved from a piece of twisted drift-wood, given its own odd beauty, and then patiently refined and polished into something made lovely by its sheer, unique singularity.
There was power in that face, too, in his simple presence. You could feel it in the air around him, the tension and focus of a pure predator, and one who rarely failed to bring down his prey.
The second thing he did was to bow with inhuman elegance, take Susan’s hand, and bend to brush his lips across the backs of her fingers. She stared at him with wide eyes that were more startled than actually afraid, and she kept her smile going the whole time.
“Lady huntress,”