Free Darklight by Lesley Livingston

whipped around her ankles and thighs, stinging and bruising her.
    She ran for all she was worth.
    If she could just get to the edge of the park, flag down a cop, yell for help—something—
    But the park wasn’t going to let her out. Everywhere she turned, tree branches whipped through the air, catching at her hair and clothes. The ground rippled angrily, and grasses grew long, tangling her feet, tripping her as she ran. Kelley threw her arm in front of her face and charged on blindly until her lungs screamed and her brain didn’t even know which way was east or west.
    In a confetti shower of new blossoms, Kelley burst through a wall of flowering branches—a stand of ornamental trees on the fringes of Cherry Hill—and she paused for an instant, glancing back, certain that she’d outrun her pursuer. But suddenly, from behind her, rough-barked, many-fingered hands grasped at her torso and arms, wrapping around her face and silencing her angry cry.
    Overhead the sky rumbled with thunder, and lightning stabbed down into the park. Her mother’s Storm Hags! Nearby, but not near enough, Kelley thought in desperation. Another lightning bolt forked down, farther away now. Although they’d been shadowing her for months, it seemed as if the Hags couldn’t get a lock on her position.
    No backup this time.
    The thought rang in Kelley’s head like an alarm. If she didn’t do something soon, she was going to die. She was helpless in the grip of the Faerie’s charmed tree, and he was going to cut her throat. “D’you still have my knife handy, thief?” he’d asked her, and the question suddenly rolled like thunder through her head.
    She did. She did still have it!
    You bet I do.
    Kelley twisted her arm beneath the imprisoning branches and managed to get her fingers inside the zippered side pocket of her bag that still hung from its strap across her body. Fishing madly, her knuckles brushed the ridged wood of the knife’s carved hilt. She fumbled at it with slippery fingertips.
    It was too late.
    Kelley saw Hooligan-boy’s grin appearing out of the darkness, gleaming at her like the Cheshire Cat from across the paved circle of the Cherry Hill turnaround. He sauntered forward a few steps, dancing his swaggering little jig as he came on. He was toying with her. The knife was in her hand, but the tree held her immobile. Then it began to squeeze.
    There was nothing she could do. Her sight was going dim as the branches choked the breath from her body. Kelley opened her mouth wide, gulping at the air she couldn’t draw into her lungs. She was suffocating.
    Sonny, Kelley whispered in her mind. Sonny, help me. . . .
    The edges of her vision were tinged with a crimson darkness, and all she could hear was the vicious cackling of her Faerie assailant. Her thoughts were becoming muddled with the lack of oxygen. An image of Sonny from one of Kelley’s long-ago dreams, back when he had simply been a handsome, intriguing stranger to her, flared up in her mind: Sonny standing in a forest, his dark hair hanging loose, moonlight glowing in his beautiful silver eyes.
    Sonny, Please! Kelley implored the dream image.
    HELP ME!
    In the vision Sonny’s head snapped up as if she’d shouted at the top of her lungs. The branches of the trees behind him framed his head like a many-tined crown. There was a sudden, blinding burst of forest-green light, and she felt the tree shudder and flinch.
    Kelley was dimly aware that the Faerie had staggered back a step or two, confusion in his venomous gaze. The break in his concentration was only momentary, but his fingers paused in their twisting dance, and Kelley found that she could almost breathe again.
    In that same instant Fennrys burst like a runaway freight train from out of the trees behind Hooligan-boy. His feet were bare and the legs of his jeans were caked with green mud. He hammered the Fae to the ground with a single blow and swept past, launching himself at the tree that imprisoned Kelley. The