Queen of Swords and Silence

by Carrow Brown

  I jutted my chin toward Silence. “Did you get anything from him?”

  “Names, intel, and some base locations. This guy’s low ranking, but you’re right. They’re organized and funded by someone with deep pockets.”

  Everything around me spun, and I braced myself against the closest crate and to focus on my breathing. When the room stopped spinning, I asked, “What about the location of those taken?”

  The man shook his head. “He doesn’t know that. They compartmentalize on purpose since they know minds can be invaded.”

  I snorted. “Then he’s not of use to us anymore. Drop him.”

  The man’s lips pulled back into a wicked grin. “With pleasure.” He turned the blade in his hand and then buried it in his gut. He grinned wide, dragging the blade upwards with a gurgle. Blood poured from his mouth while he fell to one side.

  The Hunter was dead before he hit the ground.

  I went over and collected Silence from the corpse. Satisfaction filled my mind as I handled the slippery hilt.

  Keeping the cover of the containers, I peeked out to see ravens marching toward the fallen foemen. Some were already atop their meals, pecking at the cooling flesh. Overhead, several more perched on crates, their faintly glowing eyes taking in the building.

  Lifting my eyes upward, I spotted one, much larger than the others with a lone glowing blue eye, staring me down. “You see nothing,” I grumbled, shrinking back into the shadows. Not that my words would have any impact. If Muninn wanted to tell Odin something, he would. Or at least remember it. I could only hope he hadn’t been sent to locate me.

  Groaning, I limped to the original container I’d shoved my things in. Shouldering my bag, I opened the hangar door—and took a bullet right to my shoulder. That part of my body went numb and I staggered back with a grunt. This time when I went behind the wall, bullets punched through where I would’ve been if I had remained standing. I moved back into the warehouse, peering toward the door.

  Apparently, the snipers were still there. And they’d upped the caliber of bullet.

  Geez, are they trying to one-shot an elephant with those rounds? A moment passed before Silence added, You’re about to lose it.

  “I know!” I snapped. Taking deep breaths, I tried to center myself. “I need to get away from here. Away from people.”

  My gaze went back outside to the water. If I was fast enough, I could dive into it and make an escape that way. I was injured. Thinking was hard, and I was so hungry. Regret filled me at the lost opportunity I’d had. So many I could’ve eaten, but I wasted it.

  A brief image in my head flashed from my dream. Barrels and barrels of wine and a voice saying, “Then it will all go to waste!”

  “Silence, I’m not going to make it,” I panted. “I need you to drive and get me out of here. How long can you do it?”

  With you like this? Maybe ten minutes.

  “Get me away from cities,” I managed. I wanted to eat. Breathe in through nose and mouth. Much death. All damn dead meat. I looked at one body. That one was alive. Prone.

  Easy prey.

  My prey.

  I moved toward it, driven by my hunger, but felt my body stop. Faintly I could feel it, the thing. Silence. He turned me away from the prey. I screamed at it, trying to break free of him. Then we were running. Not to the body, but to the door. Light bright. Didn’t like the light.

  My claw picked up an empty husk from the ground. Held it up as I ran. Felt it jerk and part of it burst with a shower of gore.

  Very high-caliber rounds, Silence said as we leaped through the air. I think it must be love.

  Darkness. Cold water all around. I wanted to swim to the surface, but Silence moved us down to the bottom. I didn’t want to flee! I don’t flee! A glowing face in the water appeared and then a body. It reached for me, but I didn’t want to go with it. There was easy prey here.

  It wrapped around me, rolling me as the currents pulled and turned me. I saw images. Things. Places. And then nothing.

  Only the cold dark sweeping me away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Rosemary’s Baby

  Igasped, sucking in lungfuls of chill air. My hands dug into the frozen earth around me, my head whipping around as I tried to figure out where I was. I found myself in a frost-dusted forest with the moon’s shimmering light overhead. My eyes caught a light and I looked down. Blood covered my entire body.

  At my feet were corpses and parts discombobulated in various stages of mutilation—an arm hanging from a tree, a head twisted backward on the neck it belonged to, and another body by my feet little more than bones. Very little remained below the neck of my apparent victims. I’d been pretty hungry.

  “Fuck,” I whispered. “Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck!”

  Silence spoke, sounding bored, Oh, you’re back. Finally.

  I grunted, rubbing my hands against my face. It only smeared the viscous, sticky blood around. “Yeah, I am here. What happened this time? Where am I?”

  How would I know where we are? You surfaced, had some fun, and stuffed yourself. Without me, I’d like to add. You ran around and killed everyone without using me! You didn’t even turn me into a fork when you ate them!

  “Silence, you’re not helping right now.”

  Silence sent a ripple of agitation through me before saying, You smelled Badb before, so maybe Ireland? I think she’s still close by.

  “Ireland?” I muttered. “For fuck’s sake.” I breathed in and did scent Badb in the air. Rising, I patted over my form with my massive claws. My clothes were gone with the exception of the belt holding Silence to my waist. Even my high-endurance sports shirt hadn’t survived my episode.

  I like the corpse nest you made. You were sleeping in it like Rosemary’s Baby.

  “Stop that!” Closing my eyes, I willed myself back into human shape. Rather than the jerky movements and bone-popping experience, I melted back into my fleshy form in a moment. I sighed, stretching my head one way and then the other. “Where’s my stuff?”

  You ripped off your remaining clothes and buried your bag on the beach. Even Monster-Ghost is protective of the highly coveted booze.

  “Great,” I muttered. “Well, if Badb can flounce around the country naked and not attract attention, maybe I can, too.”

  Taking a few steps, a flashing light through the trees halted my progress. Moving low to the ground, I peeked around the trunk of a tree to see a car flipped over—on fire—and surrounded by police officers. Farther down the road leading down to a seaside village were more flashing lights around two houses. Squinting, I picked out what appeared to be a camera crew.

  I sighed. “Or not. I’ll just find Badb.”

  Turning, I took a deep breath and found the goddess’s scent with ease. I stuck to the shadows and kept a watchful eye on the surroundings as I followed Badb’s scent deeper into the forest. Inwardly, I grimaced; it would only be a matter of time before the police decided to do a sweep of the area.

  Boy, would they have a ton of paperwork to do when they found the bodies.

  Minutes later, I stood on a road with a van parked on the edge with its engine running. One of the doors opened and the goddess popped out. Unlike last time, she was dressed in a pair of jeans, boots, and a t-shirt. The shirt had a picture of a cartoon rabbit running around with chainsaws in its paws with the wording “my spirit animal” under it.

  “This time I got you a good dinner!” she exclaimed with arms flourishing at her sides. She grinned at me and then frowned. Coming closer, she spoke in a stage whisper, “Do you know you’re naked?”

  Is it really naked if you are covered in blood?

  I snorted. “I’m skyclad. My friend said it’s fashionable.”

  Badb gave me a loony grin. “Clever.” She tilted her head, listening to the sirens in the distance. “Well, we should go. We can hose you off at home.”

  “I need to get my bag. I left it—”

  “David is getting it,” she cut in, her voice mat
ter-of-fact. “I saw him in a vision digging around there when I returned home, so I told him to do so.” She beckoned me with a hand. “Come, come.”

  I followed her to the van and climbed into the back where a familiar blue tarp covered the flooring. Badb closed the door behind me once I made myself as comfortable as one could when lying on tarp and ignored the thought of how much more comfortable the corpse nest had been.

  “Where am I?” I asked once the van started moving. “I know Ireland, but which part?”

  “Killiney,” Badb said. Her voice became serious as she continued, “I foresaw a great calamity in Louisiana, but I couldn’t determine the source. I thought it might have been you, seeing how no threat presented itself. I asked the Misi-Ziibi elemental to bring you here if you fell into its waters. Not cheap, but worth it considering the alternative.”

  I grunted and kept myself low. “A handful of people instead of a city.”

  Badb chirped, “Indeed! Calamity abated!”

  It wasn’t long before the van slowed and the passenger side opened and closed.

  “There are police everywhere,” David’s voice said. “Something happened.”

  “Ghost showed up hungry,” Badb replied in a motherly tone. “Monsters will be monsters.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In the back, all fat and happy!”

  Did she just call you fat? Rude!

  I heard sounds of movement and David’s head popped over the back seat. His eyes looked me over and I knew I was a sight. Naked, covered in blood, gore, dirt, and I probably had a bit of food still stuck in my teeth. Take me, baby. Take me now.

  “I woke up this way,” I said, lounging across the back of the van, as best I could. “How long as it been since I last saw you?”

  “Two days. Do you want your bag?”

  “Not yet.” I yawned and rubbed my face.

  Badb called from the front, “Does widdle baby need nappy time?”

  “Food coma!” I growled but rolled onto my side. Widdle baby did want a nap, but the kind of nap a lion wanted after filling up on wildebeest. The movement of the van helped lull me into a doze. One moment I closed my eyes and in the next, the back of the van jerked open. Macha looked down at me with a grandmotherly sternness. I debated ignoring her and going back to sleep, but Badb appeared and took my hand.

  “You have to get up and be a Disney Princess now,” she said, pulling me out of the vehicle.

  Disney Princess?

  “Disney Princess?” I asked at the same time as Silence.

  She gave me an I-know-something-you-don’t smile and tugged on my arm once more. “The van needs to be cleaned since we dragged all the unmentionables into it.”

  I followed her as she led me toward the back of the cottage where Anann waited, holding a hose gushing water.

  I scoffed. “What am I? A dirty dog?”

  Anann jabbed a finger in my direction. “You’re not setting foot in the house. Look at you! You know blood is impossible to get out of fabric.”

  Silence sneered, Like they would let us in anyway.

  “I find seltzer water and lemon juice works great.”

  Anann jerked her hand toward the stool in time with every word. “Sit. On. The. Stool.”

  With grumbling acceptance, I resigned myself to a hose-down. Anann only gave me a basic water down as Macha hobbled toward me with a basket she set down on a nearby table. “How many bullets are still in you?”

  I turned and tensed my muscles, feeling out the hard shards. They didn’t sting, but they did grind up against bones in a way I’d rather they didn’t. “I don’t know. A lot?” I leaned away from her. “Why?”

  She pulled out a pair of long needled nose plyers and a box cutter. “Because we’re going to have to get those out.

  “Whoa, whoa.” I stood and took a step away from her. “Are you serious?”

  “How else will they be removed? We can’t take you to a hospital since they’ll likely ask how your body healed over them, leaving no scars, and why you decided to live with bullets inside you. Also… this is Ireland, remember?”

  “What does that have to do with any of this?”

  She extended the blade of the box cutter and waved it toward me. “Firearms are illegal here, dearie. Did you forget that?”

  “No, I didn’t forget. I just skipped the staff meeting that probably covered it.”

  Macha pointed at the stool next to her. “Sit. The sooner we finish this, the better. Macha knows best.”

  With much bemoaning, I complied and made myself as comfortable as possible. Macha took to removing all the small barbs and hooks still embedded in my flesh from the warehouse fight first. The pile of silver barbs was as tall as my pinky when she worked the last out.

  “So much silver. Did they think you a lycanthrope?”

  “Yeah. The strategy itself wasn’t bad.”

  A chair scraped next to me as David took a seat. “How did it go down?”

  Grateful for the distraction from Macha slicing into my back, I explained the trip to Louisiana, the confrontation, chase, and the fight by the river.

  “And then I blacked out and woke up here.”

  David sat across from me, and I enjoyed seeing the concern in his eyes. “I thought a badass like you wouldn’t underestimate anything.”

  I glared. “It’s not a habit I’m into.” A sharp pain exploded in my back as Macha dug in the pliers. “Could you not be a butcher with my back, please?”

  Macha tsked. “Then stop healing. It’s hard to pull out the bullets when your flesh heals around the pliers.”

  “Sorry.” I winced as she yanked out another bullet. “It’s not something I can control.”

  It went on for what felt like forever and by the time she finished, we were both panting. Macha from the effort and me from enduring the pain.

  “If it is all right, I’d like to wash up in peace for a moment.”

  Macha patted my shoulder. “Of course, dearie.” She limped to David and tugged on his shirt. “Come along. You need to pack your bag anyway.”

  Pack his bag? Are they kicking him out?

  I waited until they were inside before responding. “It’s not a concern right now.”

  I sprayed the frigid water from the hose over my body, washing away the fresh blood from Macha’s surgery. The caked-on blood and grit didn’t make it easy, and I went through two washes before the water ran clear. My mind turned over the events and I nitpicked everything I could. The Hunters worried me. In the past, their attempts were laughable due to their misconceptions of mythics’ weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

  Now they’d shown themselves to be formidable.

  Or had we’d grown weaker over time?

  “This is really getting above me.”

  Then let’s pass it on to someone else. No one said you had to do this alone. You’ve got the intel you needed.

  “I should….”

  But you’re not going to. Why?

  “I don’t know, Silence. Something is nagging at me. I feel like I am looking at a puzzle with just a few key pieces missing. Let me think.”

  I picked up the folded clothes left for me, sat on a lawn chair, and let the facts come to me.

  Fact one, the Hunters had legit intel. Someone was working with them and telling them what worked and what didn’t. Seven had given targets, but I knew he and Jim would never give out the weaknesses of any mythic. Not if they wanted to keep living. So they were getting it elsewhere. Patrick? Maybe Floyd. But why? What did he get out of it?

  “Maybe Badb can help with that.”

  You want to gamble on her cryptic explanations of the future? What if the price she asks is too high?

  I reached for the clothes and pulled them on. “A risk worth taking. There is a lot riding on this right now. It’s better than wandering in the dark.”

  Fact two, the job and the Hunters’ abductions were linked together. There were too many coincidences for me to consider otherwise. My pr
imal instinct warned something else was going on. So, I needed to move forward assuming the abductions were a smoke screen for that. But what? Had I seen the true objective and overlooked it?

  Motion to my left caught my eye. A squirrel stepped out from the underbrush of the forest to inspect the house.

  Inside my brain Silence started a Discovery Channel narrative. And here we have the local species Sciurus vulgaris, commonly known as the red squirrel, prowling about in the winter countryside for food. But he is not the only animal hunting for winter goodies.

  A gray tabby prowled on silent paws toward the squirrel. Its bright eyes fixed on the critter as it darted this way and that over the snow dusted yard. Part of me felt bad for the squirrel, but nature was a brutal bitch sometimes. The cat wiggled its butt as it readied to leap onto the unsuspecting squirrel. Before the feline pounced, the squirrel turned to face the cat, its fuzzy tail thrashing behind it. The two animals stared at each other and I waited for the squirrel to make a quick escape into the trees. Instead, it leaped for the cat with a high-pitched squeak and chased the cat back into the underbrush. The cat’s howl of protest announced his dislike of the switched roles.

  “What’s the world coming to when squirrels chase cats?”

  Hard to say, Silence said.

  A feline howl pierced the air, followed by thrashing in the woods. Minutes ticked by before the squirrel hopped out of the woods once more. Its beady little eyes fixed on me, and it scampered closer and crawled up the leg of the stool.

  “Oh, I get it now.” I leaned closer to the critter. “I’m a Disney Princess because I get to hang out with a squirrel. That’s kind of cool.”

  It looked up at me, his whiskers constantly twitching as it said, “If you’re a Disney Princess, I’m a moose.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Animal Companion

  In my experience, when animals started talking, it was either the result of a total mental breakdown or they really were talking. Sure, I’d experienced some recent head trauma, so it was easy to chalk it up to the former, but I knew better.