by Kelly Meding
"Astrid wants those herbs for the Frosts, doesn't she?" Wyatt asked.
"I have no doubt." I tapped my fingers against the dash. "Shit, Wyatt, what if something goes wrong?"
"You genuinely care?"
"Of course I do." From anyone but Wyatt, that question would have come across as condescending. He was truly curious. "They aren't my parents in the sense that I was raised by them, but they raised this body. They genuinely loved their daughter. I have a sense of connection, and I don't want to see them hurt."
"I understand that."
I stroked the smooth leather pouch, too aware of the dangerous herbs inside it. "Astrid has to know I'd ask what this does, and she'll know I won't like it."
"Maybe she expected you to balk, and this is her way of giving you a push."
"A push where?"
"A push into doing something about the Frosts."
"Why are they my responsibility? I didn't ask to get resurrected into their daughter. I didn't ask them to come here looking for her, and I certainly didn't ask for O'Reilly to introduce me to them. Nor did I ask for Vale to fucking kidnap them and put them right into the middle of this mess."
Wyatt held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I know all of that, Evy. In some ways, your being inside of their daughter is my fault."
"How do you figure?"
"I initiated the resurrection spell."
"Yeah, well, you had no idea I'd resurrect into a body that had a connection to the Break, rather than the dead Hunter you'd prepared for me." That particular wrinkle had been a bonus for us, because me resurrecting somewhere other than in the expected place had put the first wrinkle into Tovin's plan for bringing a demon across the Break—the magical barrier between this world and the one where dark creatures had been banished long ago.
Breaks existed all over the city, and humans went about their days unaware of them. But if a human is born over a Break, they have a connection to it which often leads to a Gift of some sort. Wyatt was Gifted. He could summon inanimate, inorganic materials into his hand from a decent distance—a Gift he was still learning to control post-Lupa infection. My new Gift was the ability to transport from one location to another. I could go through solid objects, but it hurt like a motherfucker, so I didn't like doing that. The talent had saved my life more than once these last six months, and it had been another fantastic foil to Tovin's plan.
Did I mention my other handy ability to rapidly heal? That came courtesy of the resurrection spell. I'd have been dead ten times over without it.
"You don't get to take responsibility for this," I said. "There's no one person at fault for this mess."
Wyatt grunted. "Seems to me the entire mess can be traced directly back to Tovin's first manipulations."
"Maybe. Then we'll blame the elf. No more self-blame. Understood?"
He leaned in closer, eyes narrowing. "Have I told you lately you're really hot when you give me orders?"
"Not lately, no." The gleam in his eyes was all too familiar, and we had work yet to do. "Down boy."
He grinned, and my heart skipped.
Then my phone screeched with a general alert text, Wyatt's following an instant later. I checked the message.
Kismet: Backup ASAP. Union Street Salvage.
"That's only a few blocks from here," Wyatt said.
"I'll call it in."
He made the turn. We'd both lived in this city our entire lives, and we knew every single street and side road.
Gina Kismet led Quad Four, and they were on patrol this morning. She worked alongside Shelby, an Ursia who shifted into a big-ass polar bear, and Kyle, a Cania dingo-shifter. The other person on their team had been Tybalt, and they'd yet to replace him in what were typically quads of two humans and two Therians. The problem was we didn't have any more trained humans to fold into the quad, and Astrid liked to keep the human-to-Therian ratio balanced because it fostered tolerance or something like that.
All I cared about was the team needed backup.
I let Ops know that we were responding to the call. The salvage yard was easy to find, its massive acreage surrounded by a metal fence topped with razor wire. The east side hadn't been my stomping grounds as a Hunter, but I'd heard a few stories about tracking Halfies through the salvage yard for hours on end.
Lucky for us the place was owned and operated by a family of Prosi who were human-friendly and pro-Watchtower. A big, fenced-in area full of places to climb, jump and swing on seemed pretty fitting for people who shifted in lemurs and bushbabies.
The entrance was off the corner of Union Street and a dirt road to nowhere, marking the end of city limits. Union itself trailed off into undeveloped land that eventually became part of the forested mountains surrounding the city. A rain-soaked, rail-thin man in denim coveralls held open a chain-link rolling fence for us without even asking for ID, then promptly shut it with himself on the outside.
Prosi weren't known for their amazing fighting skills.
Past a dingy trailer marked Office, dirt trails ran off in three different directions. Wyatt stuck his head out the window and sniffed. How he could smell anything over the stink of oil fuel and engine grease was beyond me, but eventually he took the center road. We trundled past hundreds of different kinds of cars, trucks, vans, motorcycles, and heaps of other metals. Salvaged parts of refrigerators, ovens, and all kinds of machinery was piled in no discernible way, but I guessed it made sense to the owners.
A goblin male darted out in front of the car and leapt onto the hood an instant before we'd have smashed into it. Wyatt hit the brakes, but the fucking thing grabbed onto the windshield wipers. It peered in at us, its red eyes glimmering with bloodlust. Oily black skin glistened in the rain. Most of the goblin warriors I'd fought wore loincloths. This fucker was totally naked and there was no hiding how much it was enjoying the fight.
I fought back the very real urge to vomit. Months had passed, and I had a completely different body than the one tortured to death by goblins, but some things never left you.
The goblin hissed, showing off rows of razor teeth.
Wyatt stuck his left hand out the open window and shot the thing in the head. Gore splattered the car hood.
"Guess we found the fight," I said.
We ditched the car. I hadn't left the Watchtower with anything on me except a serrated knife in my boot, so I grabbed a few more toys out of the trunk—two Glocks, a machete, and some extra rounds. Wyatt stuck with his single pistol, probably intending to bi-shift at some point so he could do more damage.
A roaring sound that could only be angry bear-Shelby rattled the tin roofing near the car. We bolted in that direction, splashing through mud puddles on our way to the main event. A goblin sailed overhead, its mangled body dead before it smashed into something out of sight.
It's going to be that kind of fight.
The odds were three to several dozen, so I jumped in the machete and cleaved through the shoulder of the nearest goblin. It screeched and yanked away, bleeding fuchsia all over itself as it stumbled into a friend. Bear-Shelby was going to town near a roofless school bus, batting at the goblins like he was playing a life-sized game of whack-a-mole.
Kyle hadn't shifted, so he and Kismet were going hand-to-hand. Both were bleeding, but I couldn't stop and assess injuries. The machete helped me thin out the horde a bit. Behind me, Wyatt roared. A hulking shadow and the squeal of several goblins told me he'd bi-shifted. Since he wasn't full Lupa, he couldn't shift completely into a wolf. He could, however, get taller, more muscular, grown insane claws on both hands, and reshape his face into something genuinely grotesque on a human being.
He was truly a monster in that form—nothing sexy about it. But he was also a formidable fighter, and we needed that in our corner.
"They keep coming," Kismet yelled over the battle roar and the rain.
I could see that. For every two I dropped, three more seemed to take their places. "From where?"
"No idea."
One of them jumped onto my back from behind. Short arms circled my neck while clawed fingers sunk into my shoulders. Teeth scraped at the my left ear and cut my scalp.
Oh hell no.
I slammed backward into the nearest hard surface. The goblin wheezed and its arms loosened. Another hard smash and it let go. I pivoted and kicked it right in the groin. It squealed, and then died when I ran it through with the machete.
Two more hit me from the side, and we all went tumbling into a puddle. Too close for the blade, I dropped it in favor of smashing their skulls together. Teeth broke and blood spurted. The awful stink of seawater rose over the other scents around me. My gut twisted. I used to take great pleasure in killing monsters like this. Once it had been fun.
Now it was a fucking responsibility.
"Gina!"
I rolled onto my knees, fingers curling around the hilt of my abandoned machete. Kyle and Kismet were separated by a cluster of goblins that seemed to be doing their best to herd Kismet away from the battle. She punched, kicked, and slashed at them with a shiny pair of butterfly swords she'd been training to use, but the goblins were overwhelming her.
Goblin warriors were only about four feet tall, but they were strong, they were dumb, and they fucked anything with a hole, including corpses. I'd experienced the agony of a goblin's hooked penis, and I'd seen too many other mutilated human victims, both male and female.
I launched at them. On my third stride, I went sideways into a car door with a wall of goblins pressing down on me. Teeth snapped at my arms and face, scraping skin and drawing blood that the rain washed away. The stench of them filled my nose. Clawed fingers ripped at my shirt.
Bitter fury rose up like bile and came out on a long scream. I swung hard with the machete. Goblin squeals were my reward, so I did it again. Blood splattered. One of them grabbed my hair and yanked my head back, exposing my throat. Sharp teeth flashed.
Wyatt snarled and smacked the goblin away. He batted a few more hard enough to snap their necks. I hacked off various body parts on my way out of the pileup. My shirt was torn, my throat and arms stung from a lot of small wounds, and I could still feel their hands on my body.
None of that fucking mattered, because Kismet was gone.
Kyle yelped. Wyatt charged off to help him.
I ran in the direction I'd seen the goblins herding Kismet, overtaking them only a few yards down a narrow path between piles of broken bricks and cement blocks. They'd apparently given up on persuasion and had lifted her up into the air like some kind of offering to the gods. She was struggling like a champ and cussing them left and right.
"Hey, shitheads!"
Some of them turned and hissed. None of them attacked, which was what I'd hoped for, so I took the party to them. No fucking way were they carting Kismet off to become their latest plaything.
I went in low, aiming for kneecaps so I didn't accidentally take a chunk out of my friend. Bones shattered. Flesh tore. Blood spurted. I moved without cataloguing any of it, aware only of my enemies and the need to beat them. My arms ached but it didn't matter.
Palms slapped down on both of my ears, and everything went gray. My equilibrium shattered all to hell, and I fell to my knees with a jolt up my spine.
Fucker boxed my ears.
I blinked hard through the rain, aware of lots of small legs carrying my enemies away from me. I fumbled for one of the Glocks, fell flat to my chest in the mud, and opened fire. Bullets struck flesh. Goblins screamed. Faltered. Fell.
The goblin who'd boxed my ears clamped its mouth down on my wrist. Fire lashed up my arm, right to my shoulder. I transferred the gun to my left hand, and then shot the thing between the eyes. Seawater blood splattered me in the face. Teeth scored my arm as the body fell, leaving pencil-thick gouges down the length of it.
Dizzy and nauseated, I hauled ass to my feet. Pocketed the gun for now and scooped the machete back up.
Somewhere behind me a big cat cried out in anger. More backup.
"A little help!" I shouted.
I followed small rivers of fuchsia past the piles of bricks, deeper into the salvage yard. The cars and whatnot got rustier and dirtier the farther back I trailed the goblins. Small trees and bushes had come to life inside some of the husks. I couldn't exactly be stealthy about tracking them with my wet boots squishing into mud with every step, so I went for speed instead.
Kismet screamed.
"Gina!"
A goblin jumped from the shell of an old pickup truck, mouth open, hands extended. I took its fucking head off before it could blink, and I kept running.
The horde had stopped where the ground dipped down to the perimeter fence. A dozen small trees had grown up near the fence, and piles of old shingles had gone to rot nearby. I couldn't see Kismet for their moving bodies, so I pulled both guns and opened fire on anything that wasn't human.
Two, six, twelve, twenty of them fell dead, and the final few ran toward the trees. I hit one on the back, and down it went. The other two I let go.
Kismet sat up from beneath the pile of bodies, her skin smeared in gore. Red blood mixed with fuchsia in a graphic war paint that was all the more hideous due to the fact that her shirt was gone. She stared at me with wide eyes, one hand stanching blood from someplace on her neck. I picked a path over the bodies and squatted in front of her.
"You with me?" I asked.
"Yeah." She shook herself all over. "Jesus Christ. Did that really happen?"
"Almost happened." I helped her stand up. "You hurt anywhere?"
"Superficial."
She was bleeding from at least a dozen cuts and standing there topless, but her jeans seemed intact so I wasn't going to question her on her definition of the word superficial. She finally seemed to notice the topless thing and wrapped her arms around her breasts.
A lioness leapt into the mess from somewhere above us. She sniffed at us, then followed her nose down toward the trees and fence. The small dark patch on her left shoulder was the only way I knew that was Lynn Neil.
"Evy?" Wyatt had undone his bi-shift, which left his shirt sleeves stretched out and torn in a few places. He took one look at Kismet and slipped his shirt off. "What the hell happened?"
"The goblins were trying to take Gina with them," I said.
His dark gaze went deadly.
"Evy was pretty badass with that machete," Kismet said as she tugged on the too big shirt. "You've been practicing."
"They weren't taking you." I wouldn't wish that kind of fate on my worst enemy, let alone allow it to happen to a friend.
"Why did they want me, though?"
"Something tells me they would have happily carted off anyone who was human."
"What happened?" Wyatt asked.
"We were doing a simple patrol of the area when we got a call about a possible goblin sighting out here,” Gine said, “so we checked it out. We were attacked, and we called for backup. You guys came. End of story."
"Why does this whole thing feel like a setup?" I asked.
"Because it is," Kyle said.
He approached with naked Shelby behind him—clothing became problematic when it came to shapeshifting—and flanked by humans Carly and Oliver. They were part of a quad with Lynn and an Equi named Nestor, who was the only person MIA.
"How do you know it was a setup?" Kismet asked.
"The goblins left us a present a few rows back. Nestor's guarding it."
The only presents goblins ever left behind were dead bodies.
"Where's Lynn?" Carly asked.
I jacked a thumb over my shoulder. "Sniffing down around the fence. It's where the goblins were heading. We'll check out the present if you guys want to investigate that." It wasn't a question so much as a polite order, and no one contradicted me.
Wyatt hovered close to Kismet on the walk back. Shelby seemed to know where Nestor was, so Kyle and I followed him, the other pair behind us. Wyatt and Kismet had been friends for more than ten years, and they had this brother/sister
love between them. He knew she was freaked out by what had just happened—as freaked out as Kismet ever got around other people—and he was doing his silent supportive thing.
Nestor was a tall fellow, with a long face and dark hair—both things typical of his Clan. He was a zebra shifter and somewhat new to the Watchtower. He stood with his arms crossed, at attention in front of an old VW bus. "It's gory," he said.
Definitely new. "My entire adult life has been one gorefest after another," I said. "Bring it on."
He stepped aside.
I smelled it first—the ripe odors of blood and meat left in the sun too long. The interior of the bus had been stripped of all furnishings, leaving a shell that was coated in blood. Some of it had been washed off by the rain through the windows and puddled on the floor with the various parts of someone's body. Male, female, I wasn't sure. The pieces were too small. My stomach churned, and I stepped back before I got sick all over Nestor.
Wyatt stuck his head in the open door. "Male, not freshly killed. I suspect the dismemberment happened post-mortem."
I wasn't about to ask how he knew that.
"There's a note." He turned around clutching a wet sheet of paper, his expression grim.
"What's it say?" Kismet asked when I didn't.
His black eyes flashed silver. "Stone or more. Which will die?"
"Fuck me." My gut rolled. The goblins knew I was alive.
Chapter Three
21:05
"Nessa, again?" Kismet asked.
"Has to be," I replied.
Goblin societies are matriarchal, one female queen born for every thousand or so males. Each queen has her own horde of male warriors, which could number up into the hundreds, and for the most part they lived in the sewers beneath the city. Several months ago, I'd very happily killed the queen who'd tortured me to death. Recently though, another queen decided she didn't like me doing that, and she had upped her horde's visibility in the city. Dead bodies were piling up.
We had another John Doe to thank Nessa for.