by Rhys Ford
“This what?” Bell asked. He put his hand on his gun and then moved it away again as the Others tightened their grip on Nora to make her wince. “What do you think you’re going to expose, Keith?”
It didn’t look like Keith would come up with an answer. He opened his mouth and then closed it again without saying anything as his eyes darted around the clearing.
“This,” he spluttered out after a baffled second. He waved both arms wildly at their surroundings as he took a stiff-legged step forward. “All of it. They did all this. They made this, and they killed people. When we bring the… the—”
“Iron Hall,” Ned provided the names, his voice thick and glottal in the loose folds of his throat. “Salt and Secrets. The police.”
Keith nodded along jerkily until Ned finished and then snatched up the thread of his rant again.
“They’ll show the world the truth!” he said triumphantly. Bubbles of spit caked white and stuck in the corners of his mouth. “Everyone will see what soulless, inhuman things these people are. Fuck the Treaty. When we had the chance, we should have finished this. Not given them quarter.”
Conri laughed. It wasn’t intentional—the sound rattled out of his throat—but when Keith turned to glare at him, he ran with it.
“I spent decades in the Otherworld.” Conri carefully undersold his length of service. Lies here could come back and bite you, but the truth structured to deceive was usually fine. He took a step forward and then another before he stopped as the Other pressed his knife to Nora’s throat. A drop of blood dripped down onto the grimy collar of her leather jerkin. She bit her lower lip. Conri stopped and held his ground as though he hadn’t noticed. “Do you know how many times my master sat up late at night to talk over tactics with his allies? Or find weapons to arm their troops? None. To you it was a war, to them it was… inconvenient. Wipe them out? Good luck. You couldn’t even find all the fey.”
“Lock them out, then!” Keith said. “We did… our ancestors, our great-grandparents… they sealed the doors and threw away the keys.”
Before Conri could point out the problem with that, Bell took a step forward to catch Keith’s attention. It was a slow pincer movement, but so far it seemed to be working. This close to Keith, the Others weren’t going to act unless on a specific order from him.
Conri wondered if there was enough left of whoever they’d been to understand what was happening. He squashed that thought quickly as Bell talked.
“That’s actually your problem,” he said, easy and reasonable. “Your great-grandparents. This place was sealed long before the Treaty was signed. Past sins were forgiven across the board.”
Keith shook his head. “Because people didn’t know! Because you—”
A big, rough-knuckled hand pushed Keith out of the way as Ned lumbered forward. He hunched down to get into Bell’s face.
“They stole my sister,” he ground out through thick, angled teeth. “That pretty-boy point came to my town and stole my little sister, and you’re lying if you say that hasn’t violated the Treaty.
He poked a fat pink finger against Bell’s shoulder to make his point. It rocked Bell back on his heels, but he didn’t shift position.
“Did they?” Bell asked. “Is that what Nora told you?”
Confusion visibly flickered over Ned’s face. “That… that’s what happened,” he said. “They took her away. I have to save her.”
From inside the pickup, Thistle stuck his head out the window, dandelion curls matted down and greasy. He had a black eye and one of his ears was swollen, but otherwise he looked okay.
“I told you,” he yelled. “I told you. We didn’t take her. I don’t even like girls. Please, you can’t trust—”
Keith stormed over to the car and grabbed Thistle by the face, his long, grimy fingers dug in around the narrow jaw and sharp cheekbones.
“Shut up,” he said as he shoved Thistle back into the car. “Or I’ll shut you up.”
Ned made an angry sound deep in his chest. “I told you, leave him alone,” he said. “He did what he was told.”
“I did, I did,” Thistle jabbered as he retreated back inside the cab of the pickup. His face was pale and frightened, but he kicked out when Keith grabbed at him and kept going. “I did what I was told. I did what she told me, remember? She sent me to find you. Why would she do that if we weren’t friends?”
“Because she wanted to get rescued,” Keith said impatiently. “Obviously. Come on, Ned. You know Nora’s a smart girl. She knew you’d come for her.”
“Then how come he won’t let her tell you that herself?” Bell asked, as he nodded at Nora. One of the Others had let go of Nora’s arm to clap his hand over her mouth, the blade of the knife poked into the soft skin under her jaw.
“They’ve brainwashed her!” Keith said quickly. He stepped between Ned and his sister, his hands up as he tried to push the heavy boar bulk of Ned back. “Stupid bitch believed everything they told her, and—”
“Don’t call her that,” Ned interrupted him grimly.
Keith swallowed hard and glanced around at the Others. “I… I tried to save her, Ned,” he course corrected. “You know that. I told you, remember? I chased after them to rescue her.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Conri saw Bell move. Barely. He drew and fired in one quick, confident movement. The Other with his hand around Nora’s face stared for a second with the one eye he had left and then went down like a dropped puppet.
Nora gagged and wrenched away from the remaining Other. Her hounds kicked up a fuss at the struggle, their voices thick and garbled as blood scarred their muzzles.
“It’s his fault,” she yelled. “Not Robin’s. His. He chased us down. He shot at us.”
“At them!” Keith screamed at her. “I shot at them!”
“I was with them,” Nora said. “You could have killed me, and you didn’t care. The only reason we’re here is that we were trying to get away—”
The Other managed to get his hand over her mouth and lift her up off her feet. She screamed between his fingers and kicked at his heels. Bell’s gun tracked the Other as he backed off, but Nora was in the way.
“You shot at my sister?” Ned rumbled. Anger made his shoulders hunch and his face settle into heavier, piggier lines. He gave Keith a shove that nearly knocked him off his feet. Maybe Nora thought that all Ned wanted her for was domestic help, but at least for a second, he was nothing but an angry big brother. “You could have killed her!”
“Yeah, well,” Keith said, suddenly calm and his voice thick with venom. “I didn’t, but I wish I had. Then none of this would have happened. If this is anyone’s fault, it’s hers. She was my girlfriend, and she went sniffing after that point like a bitch in heat.”
Ned grabbed Keith by the shirt and hauled him up onto his toes. He shook Keith hard enough to rattle his teeth.
“This is your fault,” Ned growled furiously. “You caused all this.”
The Other made Nora yelp, and Ned snarled as he shoved Keith back.
“You can’t get back without me,” Ned said. “And I’m here for my sister, not you. If those filthy things hurt her, I’ll let you rot here.”
Keith made an exasperated noise as he stepped back. “Why? This is what we talked about! We’re going to end the tyranny of the Treaty. All that has to happen is she doesn’t come back, not right away. We’ll be heroes, Ned. Famous. All those changelings and fey will be sent back here.”
“It’s where they belong,” Ned agreed. The words dragged over his tongue, as if it were the force of habit that made him mouth the agreement. “They aren’t like us anymore.”
Conri barked out a laugh. It sounded more like a dog than him. Maybe that was what the Otherworld had taken this time. He’d have to find out once things were less shitty, maybe binge-watch some old comedies.
“Us?” he said. “Have you looked in a mirror recently, Mr. Kessell?”
The thing was it didn’t feel different. It seemed like i
t should, like you could tell your ears had changed or you’d lost some of the colors in the world, but Conri had never been able to tell. Not until he looked in the mirror and his brain saw what his body had already accepted. Luckily—or unluckily—his master had been a vain man, and it had never taken long before Conri caught a glimpse of himself.
But where would Ned find his reflection out here with his broken mirrors and smashed windscreen?
“A mirror?” Ned said. He looked around in bafflement and snorted out a laugh. “What? I got something in my teeth? We’re in hell. Who cares what I look like?”
Conri showed his teeth in a humorless grin. “Iron Door will,” he said. “If the Treaty’s broken.”
On the other side of the car, Bell gave Conri a quick scowl and mouthed “be careful” at him as he worked his way into position to take the shot. Conri ignored him. He didn’t want Bell to carry killing Keith around with him. Despite the hateful idiocy that spewed out of Keith’s mouth, Conri didn’t want him dead either.
He wasn’t much older than Finn, and it was too easy to imagine Finn in his place. The fey had their bigots too, and it was hard work keeping them and Finn apart.
“You’re mad,” Ned said with the satisfaction of someone who’d solved a problem. “You spent too much time in the Otherworld, and it made you nuts.”
“Prove it,” Conri said. “Look in a mirror.”
Keith butted in. “Where would we find one here?” he said. “What do you care what he looks like anyhow, dog boy?”
“Why do you care that he doesn’t know?”
And maybe Robin was from Mag Mell after all, although he didn’t have the ears of their king, because when he raised his hand, the water answered him. Dew stripped off the red-splattered Cheater’s Roses, and the Jeep groaned and cracked as the radiator burst and spat out stale, old water. It flowed together and extended up from the ground until it was as tall as Ned, the surface flat and reflective as a millpond.
The two boar men stared at each other for a moment. Then Ned shook his head in rejection. He reached out and slapped his hand through the water to dissolve the truth in a spray of bright droplets. Still under Robin’s command, the mirror reformed and stitched Ned’s altered image back together.
“It’s a lie,” Keith said. He stuck his hand into the water and waved it wildly about to try and disrupt the reflection. “They’re lying to you, Ned. You know me, don’t you? You trust me.”
Ned felt his face with both hands, moving his fingers gingerly as he explored the new angles. Then he turned to look at Nora. Her eyes were huge and full of pity over the Other’s grimy fingers as she looked at her brother. She couldn’t nod, but she didn’t need to.
Grief made Ned slump for a second, and Conri felt the slough shrug that off for him. It occurred to him that he might have underestimated this place. Rage took its place as Ned looked up and trained red-rimmed eyes on Keith.
“You did this,” he rasped as he slapped his hand against his broad chest. “All of this. You stupid little bastard.”
He lunged forward. Keith hadn’t expected him to move so fast and yowled as Ned laid hands on him. Conri could have told him, but he had other things to do. He lunged toward the Others before they could react to the attack on Keith and barreled with his full weight into Nora and the Other holding her. She whoofed at the impact, and all three of them went down, tangled on the muddy ground as feet stampeded over them.
In the background, Conri could hear gunshots as Bell picked off the Others and a squealing roar he assumed was Ned. He focused on getting Nora loose.
It wasn’t a dignified fight. It barely qualified as a scuffle. Conri snapped the Other’s fingers so he could pry his hand off Nora’s face, bruises red and puffy around her mouth, and she squirmed out of her stolen jacket to get away. The Other cursed her in a strangled voice as Conri held him down by the throat and a knee rammed into his gut. He felt a sharp jolt of pain as the man punched him in the ribs, but he didn’t give way.
Conri grabbed the Other by the face, hooked his fingers over his teeth, pressed against his tongue, and broke his jaw with a brittle slaughtered-chicken pop.
A broken neck wouldn’t kill everything in the Otherworld, but it would put almost anything out of commission for a while. The Other was no exception.
“I… I didn’t want any of this,” Nora said plaintively as she watched the twitching dead man who looked like her ex. Tears ran down her face. “I just wanted the best story I’d ever have to not be something that almost happened.”
Exhausted, Conri clumsily pushed himself to his feet.
“You got your wish,” he said grimly. “Trust me, this is what that’s like.”
The look Nora gave him suggested that was the worst thing she’d heard, despite everything she’d gone through. Before she could say anything, Robin, knife finally bloody, shoved through the melee.
“Nora!” He threw himself into her arms, clumsy as he tried to embrace her and hang on to the knife, and pressed his face against her scruffy, greasy hair like the cropped strands were the scented braids of Titania. “My beautiful girl.”
Look at that. It was love, after all.
For now, at least.
He left the lovebirds to it and shoved his way toward the pickup. The Others climbed into the back and onto the cab as they reached through broken windows to drag Thistle out. Those who hadn’t, hung off Ned as they tried to carve through the layers of pink flesh and red muscle down to his organs. So far they hadn’t nicked anything vital.
“We need to get out of here,” Conri yelled to Bell as he dragged the Others off the battered truck while it steamed and clicked to itself. He cracked the door and reached in to grab Thistle’s shoulder with a growl to silence him when the panicked fey tried to bite him. “Nora and Robin are clear.”
“I’ve got Annie. Shanko’s in the brawl,” Bell said. “Get Thistle, get out.”
Conri could pick a handcuff lock. It wasn’t hard. Since he’d left everything in his discarded clothes when he shifted, he settled for yanking the handle off the door. The molded plastic dangled from the skinny fey’s thin wrist as he threw himself out of the car and into Conri’s arms.
“I wanna go home,” Thistle sobbed as he buried his head in Conri’s shoulder. His hair was dense and scratchy as his namesake. “I didn’t wanna bring him here, but I was scared.”
It hadn’t been easy to learn to be a dad. Conri’s own had been useless the few years he’d been around. But by this point, the motions were second nature—the pat on the back and the words that didn’t really matter so much as the tone.
Thistle tightened his grip and snotted into Conri’s shoulder. Conri dragged the kid back, and he was heavier than he looked and stronger. Shit. He’d rather watch Bell’s back, but Thistle wasn’t about to let go.
“Okay,” he said. “I got you. Come on.”
He half carried Thistle away from the truck, neck craned around so he could track Bell until he lost sight of him in the scrum, with only the occasional glimpse of black leather as he cut his way toward the foundering Shanko, his bloody hand wrapped in dirty linen as he struggled. The hounds fought against their captors, bodies twisted like smoke around the thorn tethers. In the middle of it, Ned shrugged the Others off his back and slapped them aside as he dragged Keith toward the trees. And the slough held its breath.
Shit.
Conri tried to peel Thistle’s arms from around his neck, but it was too late. He had to watch as Ned lifted Keith up and threw him into the hungry thorns. The vines tightened, pulled, and the Others stopped midstep, midblow, and the likeness to the dead boy faded from their faces. They hunched over, coarse stubble gray and thick as it poked through their reddened skin.
“Shit,” Conri said out loud as he finally managed to set Thistle down. “The king is dead. Long live the king.”
Chapter Twelve
RIBS CRACKED like sticks under the pressure. Bell ignored the instinct to recoil and pushed down again. He
could feel the grit of broken bone against the heels of his hand as he worked.
Twenty-eight.
Twenty-nine.
Thirty.
His shoulders burned worse than they did after a fight as he stopped compressions. It flared and spread over his back like wings as he hunched over Keith to pinch his nose shut and exhale into his mouth.
Again.
Halfway through the second round of compressions, Keith choked himself back to life. Bell felt the stutter of the kid’s assaulted heart against his palm as Keith’s eyes fluttered open and he sucked in a breath down a throat greased with trow ointment.
“He wanted to kill us,” Nora said. There was a hard note in her voice. Despite her own squeamishness about the Others, she evidently had no qualms about her brother doing her dirty work. “You should have let him die.”
She turned and stomped away, her scarred hound limping at her heels. Robin caught up with her and pulled her into a hug, his lips pressed to her temple as he muttered something to her.
“Maybe I should have,” Bell said to himself as he looked down at Keith’s body, mangled and torn even with trow ointment and desperation holding him together. Both arms and one hip were dislocated, bruises wrapped around the abused joints, and there were punctures where the local hollow thorns had slid into veins and arteries to siphon blood. Keith was breathing, but that didn’t mean anything. “He still might. But not here.”
He pushed himself up, his battered body aching, and pitched his voice for someone other than him to hear. “Help me get him loaded into the truck.”
It wasn’t aimed at anyone in particular, but only Conri and Thistle came to help, and that only because the skinny fey was Conri’s shadow. They picked up Keith’s body—limp in unconsciousness and bending in ways that weren’t quite right—and lashed him into the back of the truck.