Fire Touched

by Patricia Briggs

  I pulled out my cell and called Mary Jo.

  “We’re on our—” she answered.

  “No. Go to the pack house,” I said. “There are some fae coming for Aiden.”

  Uncle Mike smiled.

  I called the house, but no one picked up. I called Jesse, and it went to her voice mail. I called Warren, Darryl, Ben, and George with the same results.

  I called Adam.

  “Not a good time, Mercy,” he said tightly.

  “Don’t hang up,” I told him. “Did you listen to my message?”

  “No. I’m discussing bugs with Cantrip. We’re—” He would have said more, but I interrupted him.

  “The fae are attacking our home,” I said. “Don’t listen to my message, waste of time.” Don’t worry about me—worry about Jesse, about Aiden and our wolves. “There’s a fae attack at the house,” I repeated. “And no one is answering their phones.”

  “Headed home,” he said, and hung up.

  Uncle Mike’s smile widened and took on a patronizing edge, as if he were a proud father, which he had no right to do.

  “Zee says this is a small group,” I said. I didn’t want to be here; I needed to be home. “They aren’t likely to have all of Faery attack us at our home, right?”

  “This group wants the Fire Touched,” he said, so apparently my question was not what he was forbidden to discuss. “Underhill talks to people in their sleep and whispers at them when they are awake, asking for the Fire Touched. We’ve been searching for a way to make nice with her for a decade or more. We need her to survive—and she’s been fickle and nasty. Some of us figure that if we give her the boy, she’ll be grateful. Truthfully, others of us figure if we give her the boy, she will shut up about him and we might be able to sleep for longer than five minutes at a time. It’s like Chinese water torture or that noise a car makes when your seat belt isn’t fastened.”

  He frowned at me, but it wasn’t a directed frown. “Still, more of us aren’t happy that Underhill can do that.”

  “Do what?” I asked.

  “Talk to us in our heads.”

  I nodded. The sounds from below weren’t getting louder, but the frequency of the crashes was denser. Zee should be finished soon.

  Uncle Mike bent down, picked up the unopened container of Morton salt, and handed it to me.

  “Here,” he said. “I will keep watch on your humans and secure them for you. I so swear. You two should get downstairs with the salt before Zee gets really upset.”

  “We need to release them,” I said, nodding at the hostages. “Get them out of here, where they will be safe.”

  Uncle Mike shook his head. “Once the salt circle is broken, I don’t have enough magic to renew it. They are safer here. Take out the threat, then release them.”

  Pastor White made a wild sound and shook his head. The other man stared at me with old eyes, closed them, then opened them again. He was okay with our plan—which made me very curious about him.

  I met Pastor White’s wild gaze. “Uncle Mike doesn’t lie. He’ll keep you safe—has kept you safe tonight. I’m going to make sure we stop the bad guys before he lets you out of the safe zone.”

  As we trotted down the stairs, Sherwood said, “Salt is protection against fae?”

  I shook my head. “Some fae. Mostly the lesser fae, because it neutralizes magic. Uncle Mike apparently used it as a component in his spell—which fae aren’t supposed to be able to do. Salt neutralizes magic. What Uncle Mike did is the equivalent of using water to start a fire.”

  “So don’t count on it,” he said, as we reached the ground.

  I nodded, stepped around the (broken) wall, and looked out into Armageddon meets Apocalypse.

  I’d learned some things from playing computer games with the pack. “When you first enter a room, look around for your enemy” was one of the golden rules of the Dread Pirate games because the scallywags like to hide behind furniture and doorways and get you from behind. So I ignored the splintered furniture and the brightly colored glass shards that littered the room and looked for the bad guys.

  Enemy number one was flattened beneath a pew. She was unconscious. She was breathing, but judging by the crushing injury to her back, she wasn’t going to be mobile anytime soon.

  Enemy number two was dead. His head was a good twenty feet from his body. Not even the fae could survive that, I didn’t think—certainly he wasn’t going to get up and fight in the next ten minutes.

  Enemy number three was a slender man fighting Zee, both of them armed with swords. There was no enemy number four that I could sense via eyes or nose. Zee fought, a wiry old man who moved like a demon. Not a wasted motion, every strike and parry clean and quicker than humanly possible. There was blood on the thin white t-shirt he wore, and some of it was his.

  The smaller man he fought moved oddly, though it didn’t affect his control of his blade. There was something wrong with his shape—and with his face. As I tried to pin it down, Zee hit him and . . . the part of his body that Zee’s sword would have hit just dissolved in front of the blade, releasing little bits of sparkly light about the size and color of a yellow jacket. I finally got a clear look at his face—and he didn’t have one, just a suggestion of features that moved constantly, as if all that was under his skin were the little bits that had fled the iron of Zee’s weapon.

  Some of those little bits sparkled all the way to Sherwood and me.

  “Ouch,” I said, slapping my forearm.

  Sherwood swore, and started fighting with the ax. I’ve met a few werewolves who had lived when swords and axes were the weapons of choice for humans as well as fae. He moved like a man born with an ax in his hand—and I don’t mean to cut down trees. His ax sang a little as it cut through the air. The little hornetlike fae things dropped to the ground like miniature falling stars, some of them in two pieces. Sherwood put himself in front of me, and very few of the little vicious beasties made it through him.

  Skilled with an ax was our Sherwood. Very skilled—and very fast. His prosthetic leg hindered him occasionally, but it seemed more a matter of annoyance than a real problem because those sparkly lights kept falling.

  Couldn’t fight, he’d claimed. Couldn’t fight my aching rump.

  I closed my fingers on the wings of one of the critters that had made it through his slicing and dicing as it bit my thigh. I had to rock it back and forth to dislodge it so I could bring it up to my face to see what it was.

  Up close, and without the beauty of the fluttering wings, it was utilitarian in design. Or she was. She looked vaguely like a person in shape if not color, complete with arms and legs and miniature breasts. Her eyes were a deep purple that looked almost black against her bright yellow body. Only her mouth completely failed to mimic something human. Instead of lips, there were a pair of chelicerae, gory with my blood.

  I threw her on the ground and watched her blink out of existence the moment her body touched the fake wooden floor, the same way the bits and pieces that Sherwood was leaving behind did.

  I took the container of salt I’d tucked under my arm and pried open the spout. I poured a pinch onto my hand and dribbled it on my wrist. The nasty bugger chewing there made a popping sound, turned gray, and fell to the ground, a dead husk. It did not disappear in a flash of light. Hah.

  I took a spare handful and scattered it on the fae bugs attacking Sherwood, and it sounded like popcorn cooking.

  I took the container and ran a gauntlet of biting fae bugs, one arm crooked above my eyes. The fae that Zee fought scored a hit. It wasn’t a hard hit, but Zee responded by increasing the speed and fury of his attacks. I poured salt in my hand as I jumped on top of an upended pew and scattered the handful of salt on the last of our enemies.

  The salt landed with a crack of noise, and wherever it hit turned gray. He turned on me. Gray powder fell on the ground, and t
he sparkly bugs all returned and landed on him, reabsorbed into his odd body.

  He raised his hands before I threw another handful, and in a voice like smoke he said, “I surrender.”

  Zee snarled but sheathed his sword at my look. Sherwood negotiated his way through the mess of the sanctuary with a little more trouble than a man with two good legs might have, but there was nothing wrong with the speed with which he killed the woman with the crushing injury. He managed to do it before she shot the crossbow I hadn’t noticed when I’d first seen her.

  He cleaned the ax on his pant leg, then continued to pick his way to Zee and me. He looked at our prisoner.

  “What are we going to do with that?” he asked.

  11

  We let him go. It was pretty obvious to anyone who thought about it for two seconds that we weren’t going to be able to keep him prisoner unless Zee wanted to babysit him. Ropes and duct tape don’t work on someone who can dissolve into nasty insectoid thingies whenever he wants to. I especially didn’t want to be around him in a car—I almost died once when my college roommate was driving a bunch of us to the movies and a hornet flew in through an open window.

  Once Zee was sure that all of Mr. I-Am-Really-a-Hive-of-Female-Fae-Bugs was gone, and there were no more fae of any size or shape hanging around downstairs, we went upstairs. All the way, Zee muttered about stupid sprite lords who were weak and stupid—but not bothered as much by cold iron as most other fae.

  “Cockroaches of the fae,” he pronounced. “Can’t hurt much, but they won’t die.”

  Sherwood tossed his ax up in the air and caught it. I thought, by his attitude, that he was surprised at how comfortable he was with the ax.

  Zee was still complaining about the sprite lord when we walked into the room with the hostages.

  “I thought he’d get your dander up,” said Uncle Mike happily.

  “What do you have yourself mixed up in?” Zee asked him in an exasperated tone. “Sprite lords. You’ve sunk to a new low dealing with such as those.”

  Uncle Mike grinned. “Someone has to, Zee. If they’d managed to kill these humans, they would ruin any chance of an alliance with the werewolves. They don’t understand the connection between this pack and the Marrok’s—and I’m not inclined to enlighten them because they are too stupid, as this situation makes quite clear. They are too likely to think about it as an opportunity instead of a danger. Alas, this brave new world that has such idiots in’t.”

  “There is no connection between our pack and the Marrok’s,” I said. “Not anymore.”

  Uncle Mike looked at me like I was an idiot, too. “As you say,” he said blandly.

  “Will you be in trouble for helping us?” I asked. “Are you going to be safe?” I didn’t quite offer him sanctuary—I could see the billboard now: COLUMBIA BASIN PACK WELCOMES DISENFRANCHISED OR ALIENATED FAE.

  Uncle Mike laughed, a warm belly laugh. “If fate favors me, I hope not. There’s no fun in safety, is there?” He waved a hand at the salt circle, and a tickle in my throat I hadn’t been paying much attention to made itself felt by going away. Then he put his foot on the ring and broke the circle. When that was done to his satisfaction, he pulled open the single large window and, after peering left and right, jumped out.

  I ran to the window to make sure he was okay because there was nothing to break his fall, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  Salt circle broken, Sherwood had wasted no time in freeing the prisoners, starting with the hands of both men. The pastor reached up as soon as his fingers were free and ripped the duct tape off his face.

  “How dare you?” he said to me, his voice rough. “This is a house of God. How dare you bring your supernatural evil into God’s house?”

  His first instinct, as evidenced by what he’d said on the phone, had been to protect me. Apparently, he’d gotten over that. The other man took his time peeling the tape away from his mouth.

  “Other way around,” I said in as mild a tone as I could manage. Another day, I’d feel bad about this, but right now, I needed to make sure Pastor White and the man he’d been counseling were safe, then go find out what was happening at home. “That supernatural evil brought me here.” I couldn’t help a bit of temper, and added, “I suppose I could have stayed away, and they’d probably have killed you.”

  “Pastor,” said the other man.

  “Married to a werewolf,” Pastor White said, spittle leaving his mouth with his words he was so upset. “I should have asked you to leave as soon as I found out.”

  “Pastor,” said the other man again, his voice very quiet. Sherwood had freed both men’s hands first and was working on the stranger’s feet. “Pastor White, I think some reflection might be called for.” There was just a hint of something in his voice that made me think that he’d been called to reflect on things by the pastor once too often.

  “This lady just saved both of our lives,” the man continued. “And I think the fae who jumped out the window cured my need for alcohol because I swear to God that this is the first time in twenty years I haven’t had the thirst. Not since that witch cursed me down in Bogotá.” He looked at me. “Josh Harper, ma’am. You must be Mercy Hauptman. Thank you for coming.”

  Bemused, I shook his hand while Pastor White continued to be very unhappy with me, the werewolves, and most everything about this church in a rant that no one listened to, except for Zee.

  That might not be healthy for Pastor White.

  “Fear is a hard thing,” said Sherwood as he finished the last cut to free Pastor White’s feet. He patted the pastor on his knee. “You should give yourself some time to think about that.”

  Impelled by Sherwood’s touch, the pastor surged to his feet. He opened his mouth again, looked at us, closed his mouth tightly, and made haste out of the room and down the stairs. I followed him, and I guess everyone else followed me down because we were all there when the pastor saw the chapel.

  “Who is going to pay for this?” Pastor White whispered. “We’d been saving up for a new roof. It’s taken us two years to raise half the money we need.”

  “You should wait until the morning and call someone to board up the windows,” said Zee.

  “What happened to the bodies?” Sherwood asked. Because neither the woman Sherwood had killed nor the one Zee had beheaded were in the sanctuary.

  “Bodies?” asked Pastor White.

  “We fade when we die,” Zee told Sherwood. “At least, most of us do. There aren’t any bodies.”

  “Look what you’ve done,” said Pastor White. There were tears in his eyes. “This stained glass cannot be replaced. Look at the pews.”

  While he took inventory of the destruction, I tried to call Adam and got a “this customer is not available” message. I tried to contact him through our mating bond, but it was being obstreperous again. I could feel him, but I couldn’t contact him.

  “We need to go,” I said. And I let my actions follow my words.

  —

  As we drove up to the house, the first thing that I noticed was that there were no lights. No house lights, no yard lights, nothing. It wasn’t just our home. The nearest house was a twenty-acre field away, and it was vacant, with a FOR SALE sign out front. I guess living next to a werewolf pack was too exciting for some people. But that didn’t explain the darkness that had swallowed the rest of the homes along our road.

  Or Mary Jo’s car pulled mostly out of the road and empty. About a hundred yards beyond that, a black SUV that was a near match to Adam’s down to the elegant HAUPTMAN SECURITY hand-lettered on the driver’s side was parked—Adam was here.

  I pulled into the crowded driveway and stopped the car. No one was dead, I reassured myself. I’d felt it when Peter died. If someone else in the pack died, I’d know it.

  The three of us got out of the SUV and shut the doors quietly.

  There was
a howl and a crunching noise from the back of the house—at the same time the big glass window in the front room shattered, a dark shape hurtling through it. It smelled of rotting bog and salt and looked a little like a horse—it had four feet and hooves—but its head was more reptilian than equine. Its body was shaggy with fronds that made a slithery sound, like a wet hula skirt. The Fideal screamed when it saw me—long yellow-white teeth flashing for a moment in the still-lit SUV headlights.

  I pulled out my Sig and shot the Fideal in the body twice as it galloped toward us. It reared and screamed again—but not because of the bullets. Sherwood threw the ax and hit it in the head. The ax dislodged from the Fideal’s head and slid down to his shoulder before it bounced off to the grass. The touch of iron left a brown gap in the plantlike hair from the top of the Fideal’s neck and down his chest.

  Zee hopped onto the hood of the nearest car, ran to the top, and launched himself into the air, his sword raised. He seemed to linger in the air—but that couldn’t have been true because his sword flashed down on the Fideal before Sherwood could pick up the ax.

  The Fideal shifted to human shape, a sword in his left hand that met Zee’s black blade with a noise fit to wake the dead. Sparks flew like fireflies and disappeared into the darkness. It wasn’t magic, I don’t think, just a bit of physics.

  I heard Jesse scream, and the distinctive crack of my .444 Marlin rifle as it fired four times in succession. A moment later, there was a flash of fire I could see clearly through the broken window. I left the Fideal for Zee and Sherwood and bolted up the porch stairs. The front door was unlocked, and I opened it with a bang.

  Jesse was on the second floor, at the top of the stairway, the rifle ready to fire. Cookie was pressed against her leg, growling ferociously. Their attention was focused toward the living room.