by Amir Lane
“Get down!” Kieron shouted.
He ran past me, grabbing my arm as he went, and pulled me down behind the sofa. He tugged Audra down, too, to keep her from shooting at Quinn — or whoever he was — again. Trembling, he touched his forehead, chest, and shoulders while muttering a prayer.
“The door!” Audra shouted.
I twisted around and stood, pushing a barrier into my hands with the motion. I took advantage of the momentum to throw the barrier at the door to keep the horse from escaping. He reared up on his hind legs again. As he did, his body shrank into a black bird, much smaller than the horse but large enough to make me panic when it flew at me.
I threw my hands in front of my face just in time for the bird to slam into another barrier. He cawed loudly before turning back into a horse. I looked down at Kieron. He was shaking.
“That isn't Finín,” he said.
“Yeah, no shit!” Audra shouted. “What is he?”
Kieron took a shaky breath.
“He's a púca, and we’re in a lot of trouble.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Oh, we’re in a lot of trouble. Nice understatement,” Audra said. She pulled back the hammer on her gun and stood up. “Pull it down!”
She didn’t need to clarify what she meant. I didn't pull the entire barrier down, and instead opened a hole just large enough for her to fire through. I kept my hands braced against the solid purple shimmer. It was easier to control that way and at this point, I needed every advantage I could give myself. The bang rattled my eardrums. I closed the barrier again as she dropped back to the floor. The bullet whizzed past the horse and buried itself in the wall.
A deep, disembodied chuckle rolled through the apartment. I jerked my head, looking for a speaker until I realized the sound was coming from the horse. The sound filled the entire room and seemed to make my very bones rattle.
“I almost had you, Harper.”
A shudder ran through me. Kieron gripped his own gun in his hand. He breathed slowly and evenly, but the shoulder pressed against my leg trembled.
“What's a púca?” I asked, nudging him with my knee. “What can he do and how can we stop him?”
The horse turned away from us and slammed into the shimmering door. I lurched forward and would have fallen over the sofa if Kieron hadn't caught the bottom of my shirt. The entire barrier rattled. I leaned into the couch for support. I couldn’t keep both myself and the barrier up.
Kieron rubbed a hand over his face. While I was our resident Middle Eastern expert, Kieron knew everything Celtic and Gaelic. If this thing originated in the British Isles, he would know about it.
“Shapeshifter. They feed on negative emotions. If they’re strong enough, they can bring up all your worst memories. Back in the day, they used to call them death omens. Most Black Dogs are púcas.”
“They can turn into people?”
I didn't think there was anything that could actually do that. Not even the stories about ghouls taking on the form of the most recent corpse they’d eaten was true. He shook his head.
“Not normally. Just people they…” Kieron trailed off and let out a pained sound. “People they drive to suicide.
“Now you're catching on. You are not a good detective, are you?” the disembodied Irish voice said with a laugh.
“If you’re not Finín Quinn, then who are you?” I demanded.
He morphed into the bird again and threw himself into the barrier in my hands. It was almost a relief. The bird was much lighter than the horse. I felt the thump against my chest, but it was barely enough to make me flinch. When the barrier didn't so much as crack, he started pecking at it.
“Ow!”
The repeated jabs made bloody spots form beneath my ribs. I pushed against the barrier to throw him back. He beat his wings to keep upright.
“Iain O’Rourke,” the voice said. “Pleasure to finally be able to introduce myself.”
“You work for the Black Birches?”
“I work for whoever pays the best. Happens to have been the Birches for the past few years.”
“They paid you to kill Flor— Finín?” Kieron asked, his voice shaky.
I didn't blame him for being upset but dammit, this wasn't the time. I needed him to be able to back me up. It looked like I was going to have to rely on Audra for now.
“Technically, he killed himself. Ate his own gun. I had a hell of a time getting all that blood and brain out of the walls. He was an easy target. All that guilt. Sort of like you, Harper.”
The image of Angelo pressing his own gun to his own jaw reappeared at the front of my mind. The way his head jerked, the way his skull sprayed outward. I swallowed down bile.
O’Rourke was a horse again. He slammed his hooves into the barrier. Bright red eyes bore into mine. My skin prickled at the sickening sensation of him trying to get into my head, trying to find what made me tick.
Not today.
I dropped the barrier long enough to let O’Rourke drop forward into the space. Using his momentum against him, I used my entire body to throw another barrier into him. Bones crunched from the force of it. O’Rourke’s shriek crackled through the apartment as he hit the floor.
Ariadne had told me once that when a horse’s leg broke, it would often go into shock and have to be put down. It was too much to hope the same would apply to púcas in horse form.
Before I could exhale in relief, he shrank down again to the form of a sleek black cat and bolted toward the hall like a shadow. I swore and threw the barrier along the wall to block his path. The barrier thinned out in the process. There wasn’t an unlimited amount of barrier for me to throw around. If he came down with the full weight of his horse form, it would shatter.
O’Rourke ran at the door again and, a few feet away, turned back into the horse. I had just enough time to move the entire barrier in front of him. He twisted at the last second and slammed his side into it rather than going head-first. I flew back into the wall. Pain radiated through my shoulders and down my spine.
“Fairuz!” Kieron shouted.
A bird again, O'Rourke swooped at me. Audra fired a shot. A burst of purple energy flew from my hand as I covered my face. I didn't think I'd actually hit him until I heard him thump against the far wall. I scrambled to my hands and knees and crawled back to the couch before throwing the barrier around the entire living room. When I peeked over the couch, I couldn't see O'Rourke anymore.
My face stung suddenly, and long paper-cut scratches appeared on my arms. He was a cat again and was trying to claw his way through the barrier. He must have realized I wasn't giving in, because the scratching stopped and that voice came from everywhere again.
“You should have noticed it sooner, Kieron. I was sure you would see it the second I stepped into your office. What kind of detective can't even recognize when someone is pretending to be his best friend?”
He warped into a shape that, just briefly, looked almost like Finín before he dropped into the bird again. He beat his wings near the ceiling. I suspected he was trying to gauge Kieron’s reaction. I never thought there would be a day when he would be the easy target.
“I let you into my home,” Kieron whispered over Iain’s wings.
“Keep it together, big guy,” Audra whispered.
O'Rourke laughed. I’ve never hated the sound of someone’s laugh so much. It made me want to wrap my hands around his throat and squeeze until he couldn’t laugh anymore.
“And I still can't believe you did! A couple more days with you, and you’d have blown your own brains out just like poor ol’ Finín. I would have taken your place, and nobody would know the difference. Not a single person would have noticed you were dead, Kieron. Not your daughter, not your boyfriend, not your nephew.”
Kieron inhaled sharply. The way he trembled, I thought he might have been crying. Was it a train of thought he'd followed before? The possibility scared me. I was hyperaware of his gun and the unsteady way he held it. I had the urge to
take it away from him. That image of Angelo blowing his own brains out flashed before my eyes again, but with Kieron in his place. My skin felt cold.
“I would have noticed,” I told him. “I promise you, I would have noticed.”
“Well,” O'Rourke conceded with a sarcastic lilt to his voice that made me want to punch him, “I suppose that gorgeous piece of faerie ass you're dating would have noticed when you suddenly figured out what to do with him. He can do so much better than you. If he just took your daughter and left, they’d both be better off for it. You know you only ended up with her ‘cause her ma had no other choice. She didn’t even tell you about her. And let’s not even get started on your brother!”
O’Rourke laughed again. I wanted to break his face.
The sharp exhale that Kieron let out was clearly one of anger. His breath quickly evened back to a slow, steady count. I wished now more than ever that I could electrify my barrier so that when O'Rourke pecked at it again, I could electrocute him just hard enough to knock him out.
Or kill him.
Blood seeped through my t-shirt from the pinpoint marks he made in the barrier.
“Fairuz.”
I looked down at Kieron and saw that while he had definitely been crying moments before, he wasn't anymore. His expression was hard, cold, and determined. There was no feeling in his eyes, only a job to be done. For the first time since we’d met, I saw the sniper in him. He held up three fingers. I nodded in understanding.
Two, one.
I dropped the barrier only long enough for Kieron to stand and shoot. O'Rourke, no longer held back by the barrier, lurched forward. Feathers flew in the air as he dropped. He shifted to the cat mid-air. Pride bloomed through my stomach. Kieron had always had the best aim of anyone I knew. Blood was spattered on the floor. The barrier was up again before the ringing in my ears stopped.
“The next one goes through your skull,” Kieron promised.
“Are you still that good a shot? Family life made you soft. Say what you will about your old man, he at least beat that out of you. Was it all for nothing?” O'Rourke asked, mocking in his tone.
Kieron's jaw tightened, but his breath stayed steady as he watched the cat dart from one end of the barrier to the other.
Wait a second!
Why hadn't I thought of it before? The disdain O'Rourke had had for Indira wasn't because he was Pakistani, it was because he was an alkonost.
“Kieron. Kieron, you said he feeds off negative emotions and memories? Wouldn't it be helpful if we knew somebody who specialized in memories?”
Kieron turned to me with wide eyes. I could see the, Why didn't I think of that? in his head.
“Go get him.”
“I can’t leave you,” he said.
“Kieron, you cannot be here.”
I didn’t want to say that he was too much of a liability with how well O’Rourke obviously knew him, and I didn’t have to. Kieron’s jaw twitched, but he nodded.
“Fine. Give me an opening?” he said.
I nodded and slid my foot back.
“Hold on.” He reached up behind his neck and undid the clasp of one of the chains. A dark cross hung from it. He wedged it in between my palm and the barrier. I closed my fist around the warm metal. “Belonged to my grandmum. He's fey. Iron will slow him down.”
I'd always assumed both his crosses were stainless steel. Him wearing an iron cross must have been like me wearing silver rings.
“Thank you,” I said. “Audra, go with him.”
“What?” She scowled up at me. “No, are you crazy?”
“I— Ow! Would you stop doing that?”
O'Rourke was the horse again, slamming into my ribs. I shifted the cross into my left hand and pulled the barrier back into my right before hurling it at him like a baseball. The solid purple energy threw him back into the wall. Cat-O'Rourke dropped to the ground, leaving a human-sized dent in the wall. I pushed the barrier around the room again. It lined the walls, including the door. Bracing my knees on the couch, I draped over the back and wheezed for breath. My ribs were at least bruised, if not cracked.
“Look at you,” Audra said. “He's going to kill you.”
I turned my head to look at her. From the way her lips pulled back over her teeth, I knew I didn't look good.
“If you're here, I have to worry about him attacking you. I need you to get the civilians out of here in case I can't hold him.”
And I didn't entirely trust that O’Rourke hadn’t gotten into Kieron’s head. She stared at me for a long few seconds. My only respite was the fact that O’Rourke seemed to need a few seconds to recover, too. Finally, she nodded. I reached out to the corners of the barrier and pulled them in, closing O'Rourke in. I tried to make it thicker with the smaller size, but the energy was lost and I couldn't get it back. The Arabic calligraphy controlling my barriers spread out over my skin, leaving most of my body burning from an invisible pen.
The smaller barrier left room for Kieron and Audra to run through. It was too small for O'Rourke to turn into a horse, but not too small for him to turn into a goat.
A goat with horns.
Horns that he rammed right into the barrier like knives.
Chapter Eighteen
I clenched my teeth together to keep from crying out as the tips of O'Rourke's horns broke through my barrier. Blood ran down my side. O'Rourke stopped mid-run and fixed his eyes with mine.
“Oh… I see…”
Without him saying anything else, I knew that what he finally saw was that attacking the barrier hurt me physically. Taunting Kieron must have distracted him enough that he hadn’t noticed it before. Which meant that sending Kieron to get Indira, and possibly saving him from whatever hole O'Rourke wanted to drag him down into, was probably going to be the reason I died in this apartment.
Somebody must have heard the commotion and called the cops by now, but I couldn’t hear any sirens over my own blood rushing through my ears.
O'Rourke came right at me. I barely had time to brace myself before his horns hit the barrier again. The wounds weren't as deep this time, but still plenty deep enough to force out a pained sound.
“I can keep this up much longer than you can,” he said, backing up.
It was true. It was nothing short of a miracle that I'd even kept it up this long at all. Sheer stubbornness was the only thing keeping me upright.
“Where's Rowan Oak,” I wheezed.
Distracting him might buy me some time until Indira showed up.
“No idea. I was honestly hoping you or Audra would know.”
“Why does it matter to you?”
“To me?” The goat cocked his head. “It doesn't. My employer wants him dead.”
I remembered what Audra had said about Black Birch gang and the Biarozy clan.
“Rowan's mother,” I said.
“Families are complicated.”
Not every mother was made of warm and fuzzy feelings for her children. Clearly, Rowan's mother wasn't. Otherwise, how could she allow Rowan to be so abused?
How could she want him dead?
“I don't know where he is, and you can go fuck yourself,” I said.
When he came at me this time, I was ready. I dropped the barrier to jump over the couch, tossing the iron cross back into my right hand. I held it between my ring and middle finger like a key. Instead of putting the barrier back up, I pulled my fist back and slammed it right into his stupid goat face.
I was usually very opposed to animal cruelty, including punching goats in the face. But when that goat was a shapeshifting, murdering joy-suck, I thought I could make an exception.
O'Rourke hit the floor. For a second, he looked vaguely human-shaped. That made it easier to kick him in the ribs with the toe of my sneakers. Maybe I wouldn't need Indira’s help after all.
“Iain O'Rourke, you're under arrest for—”
He moved faster than me. As I leaned down to grab his wrists, he shifted. I wasn't entirely sure what happe
ned. One moment he was there, lying on the floor and the next, he wasn't. For some reason, my first instinct was to look up. Was he a bird again? No, there was nothing above me.
The pain came slowly, just like the blood seeping over the horns sticking into my stomach. It was such an odd sight, it took my brain several seconds to catch up to my eyes.
“Oh…”
Realization came first, and then panic. Like a knife wound, his horns were keeping the blood inside me. If he pulled back—
I wasn't sure what his train of thought was. Up until that moment, I had never given much thought to whether or not goats really thought that much at all, even if those goats weren't really goats at all. But as I stared, silently pleading, into his glowing red eyes, I was sure he knew what he was doing. He lowered his head, tearing his horns from me.
This time, he was a bird.
I wrapped my arms around myself, but it did little to stop the blood spurting from the twin holes in my stomach. Ariadne might have been able to tell if he’d punctured anything important, but I had no idea. Stomach, liver, major arteries. There were so many things in the stomach that, if perforated, could cause someone to bleed out in a matter of minutes. I'd seen it all when I'd worked Homicide. Once, I had a victim who'd been stabbed with a pen deep enough to nick a kidney. She'd decided to drive herself to the hospital and died on the road. Luckily, nobody else had been on the road so there was only the one body to deal with. I suspected goat horns to the stomach might kill me a little faster.
The steady beat of wings caught my attention. Before I died, I had a job to finish. I couldn't let O'Rourke get away, especially not after sending Kieron and Audra away. If he got out into the streets, there would be no hope of catching up to him again. Nobody would think anything of a black bird flying through the sky.
If they were still here, you'd at least have help.
I was an idiot. Sue me. It could be the opening line to my obituary.
O'Rourke was heading toward the window. I forced myself to run around the couch with one hand on my stomach. I didn't hear the glass shatter, but I felt a shard stick in my forehead. It was nothing compared to the ache spreading through my hips. I managed, though I wasn't sure how, to throw a barrier into the street, just high enough for O'Rourke to fly right into. Somebody screamed, maybe a civilian down below, maybe me. I ignored it either way.