by J M Guillen
“I’m starting to see that.” I worried my lip between my teeth and wondered if this had been a mistake. Having only recently made my first one, I was still new at it.
“Answer then!” He straightened, his sharp eyes sought the wood. “After, haste, back the way you came!”
“Um,” I wittily bantered. The idea of saying anything terrified me, as I didn’t know all the rules of Jax’s game. If I got the answer wrong, would he vanish? Would I ever be able to happen upon him again?
Fortunately for me—or more likely not—this particular decision had been taken out of my hands.
With another iteration of that haunting, spectral bay, a bramble-wrought horror leapt from the shadows and landed squarely between Jax and me.
Its shoulder crested far above my head, and it combined all of the worst features of a rabid bison and a feral boar. Viridian eyes gleamed from the depths of its dark form, the entirety of which had been constructed from—
Sticks?
I gaped, certain I was seeing things in the mist-filled twilight.
The creature seemed woven together from all manner of thistle and thorn, a beast with briar and nettle for muscle. It snarled at me, and its elongated jaw widened to show me the spurs and spines it had for teeth.
In the depths of its throat the same hateful verdigris light shone, as if the animal held a lantern of fury within it with eyes and mouth as little more than windows.
It roared. That cry held relentless, spectral dread.
A vapor of gruesome stench boiled off the thing, and I gagged as I inhaled.
“Oh… oh, Jesus!” I heard Baxter’s voice behind me, a positively elemental whimper of terror.
“Craptastic.” I didn’t even take the time to glance behind me, knowing full well if Baxter stood there, at least one other of my friends did as well.
Probably all three.
I’d just entered probable combat with a beastie of unknown stats, and, even worse, faced the swine with three practically helpless “normies.”
And it happened that only I had packed any heat.
“We really didn’t prepare for this.” I paced to my left in an attempt to place myself between Baxter’s voice and the brush-hog.
“Wary then, wanderer…” Jax’s melodic warning came softly. “The Twrch-Umbar keeps no shape.”
“It helps so much when you make sense.”
With my right hand, I pulled the Beretta from my leather jacket pocket.
With my left, I pulled a knife from its strap on the inside of my right arm. With my eye on the dread in front of me, I tossed the knife in front of the elk statue, where I gauged Jax could get to it.
“Take that if you need it.”
“Cold iron?” Jax spat. “Treachery! It bites us yet.”
And with that one line, my thousand thousand hours of poring over fantasy literature actually came in handy. Two dozen tiny facts clicked in my mind.
Weird poetry? Gifts in riddle form? Rambling on about the Twilight and cold iron?
Jax was a fairy.
An honest to God fairy.
“Liz!” Rehl screamed from behind me, as if I didn’t see the thorn-pig’s leap.
Those emerald eyes glowed with a hateful sheen, and it drooled a miasma of putrid mist from between thorn-crafted teeth.
“I know!” I brought up the Beretta, and only remembered at the last moment to flick off the safety. I held my arm stiffly, elbow locked.
All thought shut down.
I squeezed the trigger, and my first shot actually hit, somewhere in the creature’s left shoulder. It screeched at the impact, and wooden detritus shattered.
First, I learned locking my arm might have been a bad move. The Beretta didn’t have an awful kick, just enough to scare me shitless.
The next two shots, instinctive jerks, veered off into the Twilight sky. I could have chosen a better time to find out how badly I sucked with guns.
My ears rang.
None of this stopped the sheer inertia of two thousand pounds of horror-wrought bramble. It bore down on me and two tusks of wicked sharpness slashed for my throat.
Just as two hundred pounds of geek tackled me from the left.
Rehl knocked us both far out of the animal’s way, and we rolled into a heap on the dewy heath.
“Give me that.” He scrabbled about on the ground until he found the dropped Beretta. “No more guns for you! Not until I can give you some shooting lessons.”
“Agreed.” I drew my last two knives from their sheaths, and wished I had brought every blade I owned instead of the gun.
I reached inwardly for the maelstrom of Wind that boiled and burned behind my heart.
Perhaps this would go better than I thought. If Jax were a fairy, it stood to reason the bramble-boar might just be a different fae.
If so, my cold iron knives would be just as devastating as bullets.
Maybe better.
In theory.
Yet, when I turned, the bramble boar had disappeared. Piggy had been fast, terrifically so, yet there was no freaking way it could simply vanish, not that quickly.
“What?” I spun and frantically sought it.
“Where is it?” Baxter crept up next to me, Alicia just behind.
Jax leapt down from atop the statue, a knife in either hand. The handles seemed to be made of horn, and the blades had been knapped from some bluish stone I didn’t recognize.
He crept around the clearing and eyed the ground with vigilant care.
“It lurks yet.” Jax glanced at me. “It moves like dappled brook.”
“What does this thing want?” Rehl swept the clearing, his eyes on the tree line.
“It is feckless. It is empty hunger.” Jax paced around the clearing and continually tapped the ground with one bare foot, as if he checked the forest floor for pit traps. “Musket-shot may only bring rage, not death.”
“Okay.” Rehl sounded uncertain. “So, the gun isn’t as valuable as I hoped.”
“It drinks sweet marrow.” He gazed at Baxter and Alicia. “Also glamour’s shine.” He turned toward me.
“I am pretty glamourous,” I muttered.
“Flee now.” Jax turned away from us, focused again on the ground. “It waits, uncertain of iron’s teeth.”
“That’s not part of the module, buddy.” Rehl glanced at me, the Beretta poised. “What’s the play, Miss Lawson?”
“We need answers, Jax.” In a flash of inspiration, I turned and stared at Baxter and Alicia.
“Ab’riel.” I smiled as I knew full well I’d mangled the Name. “I need you.”
Silvery brilliance blossomed on Alicia’s brow. In that light, I watched as the hazel of her eyes faded into mystique light.
“At your disposal, Liz.” Alicia smiled.
“Remember this for me.” I glanced uneasily at the ground, as the very earth rippled for several feet in front of me.
Jax sprang to one side, nimble as a cat, and snarled at the forest floor.
“Remember?” Alicia asked.
I did not look at her as I spoke. Strangely enough, as I recited the words, some trace of Jax’s lilt—a hint of haunting melody—echoed through me:
“My back unbroken, reaching for the sky,
My roots deep, seeds planted by one long dead,
Leaves turn in golden autumn, turn in verdant spring,
Silent with fragments of deep knowing,
Speaking without sound, rustles in the wind,
Wrought by one who can never taste my fruit.
What am I?”
“Is that a riddle?” Baxter sounded dismayed. “Fuck. That’s some shit.”
“A tree?” I heard Alicia murmur to herself.
“I don’t know!” I yelled. “Riddles aren’t—”
The ground exploded beneath me, a torrent of earth and furious briar.
In an instant, the Twrch-Umbar was on me again, its tusks lunging for my throat.
5
“Oh shit!” I elo
cuted as I hurled myself to one side.
The bramble boar leapt from the earth itself, as easily as a great white shark might leap from the ocean.
“Hey, asshole,” Rehl called from behind me.
As I landed, I heard the Beretta report twice and then twice more.
The boar roared; agony and fury burned in its cry. It dipped its head and swiped at me, and one tusk shredded its way through my jeans and into my thigh.
Crimson fire. I screamed.
“Starveling little kindling cur,” Jax rasped. From behind, he leapt onto the creature’s back and buried one of those curious blades in its side. “Slumber now.”
The beast reared.
I saw my chance.
With the slightest effort, I relaxed into the cacophony of Wind at my core. As it tumbled and sang within my heart, I brought to mind the Seal of A’grimm and prepared to punch the bestial thing squarely in the face.
Yet, at that same instant, the timber swine whirled its head toward me. It sniffed at the air. Those verdant eyes shone, and I felt feckless, gnawing hunger emanate, burning from it.
It drew breath.
A loud thud reverberated in the air, and I felt as if something sharp had been pounded into my skull.
The world radiated with jade flame. A flickery nimbus burst into existence around me. That auric fire burned cold, and sank icy fingers into my depths.
I screamed as agony licked my flesh like thorns. Unable to move, unable to think, I collapsed to my knees and wailed to the empty sky. My muscles tensed, and I felt as if I had developed seizures.
“Liz!” I heard someone yell, impossibly far away.
I couldn’t respond.
I couldn’t breathe.
Ribbons of my mind peeled away from me, every bit as visceral as being skinned alive. Something—something vital—cracked loudly, like the snap of a broken bone.
“Goddamn you!” Rehl, swore, true fury in his words. Several sharp, rapid cracks came as he fired the Beretta.
The Twrch-Umbar roared but sounded more irritated than injured.
Yet the pain immediately faded.
The hateful green shine vanished.
“What?” I gasped and scrambled backward. That had fucking hurt.
“Liz, it’s gone!” Alicia called behind me, but I couldn’t track what she meant.
“No…” I turned from her to the savage thing, uncertain what it had done, what it had taken.
The Twrch-Umbar stood right there!
Jax remained on the brute’s back, as he clung precariously to the single blade he’d embedded in the fae creature’s side. He held his second blade high and, as I watched, he swung, embedding it in the thick neck of knotted wood.
The bramble boar went berserk. It bucked and spun, then wailed that unearthly cry again, as it leapt wildly about. After half an instant, it threw Jax.
He flew high over the top of the timber bison and landed in the dirt.
The Twrch-Umbar rose, its front feet reared high. With one incredibly loud, eldritch bray, it prepared to bring its full weight down on Jax’s head.
“Liz rolled again,” I breathed as I reached internally for the Wind. I had no time to mentally craft any of Simon’s Seals, but I didn’t need to. As I had when the wolf-spiders surrounded my friends, I prepared to hurl the ferocity of the Wind with little more than my will alone.
But…
I felt the tempest, felt it as I had been able to for years now. It boiled and burned within me, an infinity of Wind that sang and capered. It delighted in a maelstrom of unreasoning, unreasonable power.
Yet I couldn’t touch it. Not the same way I had. I felt as my power surged like a great heaving ocean, and I attempted to draw on it through a fucking coffee stirrer.
“Liz!” Alicia called frantically. “The Aegis!”
I didn’t have to glance down at my wrist. Even as I brought my attention to the bracelet Simon had given me, I knew it had cracked when the Twrch-Umbar assaulted me. I felt the truth.
Empty. Dead.
Just a trinket. My eyes grew wide with dismay.
In front of me, an explosion of shadows burst around Jax.
As the beast plunged down on him, I heard a susurrus of whispers, and then—
Jax… wasn’t there.
“Not clever-quick like Jax.” The nimble young man stood to the right of me, although I hadn’t seen him spring there. “Old. Hungry and weak.”
“Maybe.” I stepped back, still disconcerted by the lack of Simon’s power-up. “But still big and angry.”
“Gotta flank this guy.” Rehl spoke quietly and took slow, limping steps to his right. “We’re not bowling pins here.”
“Got it.” I took a knife in each hand and mentally prepared myself. “Let’s keep him away from the unarmed civilians.”
“Believe it or not, I was actually happier when I had the shotgun,” Baxter muttered.
“Oh, but guns apparently can’t kill it,” Rehl, quipped. “Which is just swell.”
“Give me a second, here,” I breathed.
“Understood,” Rehl responded. As soon as he had a clear shot, he fired at the Twrch-Umbar’s side.
Which, of course, drew its attention to him. The swine keened as a small hole burst in the interwoven branches of its body.
Bullets might not be able to kill it, but the brambly thing didn’t seem to enjoy them much.
“That’s it, big guy.” Rehl gave the creature a wide smile. “Look at me.”
Meanwhile, I scrambled for an idea. I’d been no slouch before the Aegis, it’d just given me a nice little stat bump. Without it, I simply needed to be better prepared.
“I got this,” I muttered myself. “No problem.” I focused on the Seal of A’grimm and kept the Wind close to my heart. It thrummed there and built slowly.
“Darkness ever prefers glamour’s true shine.” Jax glanced at me nervously, as if he knew what I was doing.
As if I knew what I was doing.
“You want another?” Rehl fired again and struck the fae on its hindquarter.
It snarled as the bullet tore into it and lumbered around toward him.
I held the sweet wonder of the Wind in my heart and took a cautious step forward.
A second.
As before, the Twrch-Umbar noticed the moment I stepped too close to it with my power unfurled. It stopped still in its tracks and sniffed at the air.
“Wary now,” Jax whispered as he stepped sideways. “Cunning ferocity lurks within.”
As if suddenly able to see where it had been blind before, the beast snapped its head toward me, and those uncanny eyes burned with fierce, verdant fire.
“Liz…” Alicia, who stood just a few steps behind me, warned.
It opened its mouth and drew breath.
Now.
I gritted my teeth and mentally bore down on my imagined Seal of A’grimm. Even as the briar bison drew its breath, I held the Wind in hand. The brilliant blue sigils of the Seal burst into existence around me.
No snark. No sarcastic quip.
With everything I had, I threw the knife and willed the tempest within me to go along with it.
The moment the blade left my hand, it shot out as if fired from a cannon.
My blade tore into the creature’s open mouth. Wooden bits exploded from it like a gout of blood.
The beast screamed and fountains of black flame poured from the wound. It began to leap and stomp about as it howled ever louder.
I winced, my hands involuntarily coming up to cover my ears.
Then the Twrch-Umbar, black flame spouting from its mouth and neck, stampeded toward me.
Before I even had the moment to think, Jax hurled into me from one side, and we tumbled to the ground.
The beast, maddened with pain and fully committed to the charge, stumbled and fell as it missed.
“Truly struck,” Jax muttered from where he had landed. “Iron’s coldness grips its heart well.”
“You think
that’ll kill it?” I turned to Jax.
“Death follows closely.”
“Looks pretty messed up.” Baxter crept over to me. “You nailed him. Now if we can avoid being trampled…” Bax offered a hand to pull me up.
“It’s definitely time to move along.” Rehl stepped near, Alicia in tow.
“Truth, twice told.” Jax spoke while we watched the Twrch-Umbar roll over and over as it madly tried to avoid what seemed like agonizing pain.
It bleated and wailed, undulating cries that echoed through the mists.
“Yeah, let’s go.” I turned toward Alicia. “Jax here says it’s important we go exactly the way we came.”
“Mortal memory oft leads the errant wayward.” Jax nodded.
“Well, it’s good I have an immortal memory.” Alicia smiled. “I remember exactly how we came, Liz.”
“And I remember what we came for.” Baxter gave me a triumphant grin. “Unless you solved the riddle without telling any of us?”
“No.” I fought back a chuckle. I knew Baxter’s nature. The moment I told Alicia the riddle, he’d have begun work on it like a beaver, gnawing away at the problem.
“Well, I have it.” He vacillated. “Ninety percent.”
“More than I have,” Rehl admitted.
“Shall we answer you now?” I gestured toward the dying horror. “Would you care to keep your end of the bargain here, in this meadow?”
“Never think it, not once.” Jax shuddered. “I shall wander with.”
“Then let’s wander.” Rehl stared up at the starry sky and frowned. “I’ve had enough adventure for one night.”
6
We wandered then, this time back the way we came.
Once my heart began to slow, I realized the wondrous situation we were in. With all the strange adventures of the past few days, I’d gotten caught up in the weirdness of the moment. But as we passed through a small glade covered with moss and mushrooms lit by silvered moonlight, I couldn’t shake my earlier realization.
Jax was a fairy.
A fairy.
I’d been Simon’s mentee for several years now, and he’d honestly kept me pretty insulated, after a fashion. I mean, we’d discussed my gift and the various ways I could focus and access it. We’d hunted weird creatures and taken care of haunted schools. Apparently, angels were real.