by Annie Bellet
“Guess I missed that one,” I said. Wheels in my brain started turning as an idea began to form, as ephemeral as the dissipating smoke from my dead computer. “We should figure out why the guys were calling us, and then you can tell me more.”
We never got the chance to do either. Brie rushed through the door into the mostly dark shop, cell phone in hand.
“They are under attack,” she said. “We have to get to the Henhouse.”
Clinging to the oh-shit handle in Harper’s car as we barreled down the road toward the Henhouse, I finally understood the phrase “hell for leather.” Brie was crammed into the back seat behind me, hanging on as well. All she knew was that Rosie had called her, saying there were demons trying to get to the unicorn, and telling her to go find me.
Harper pulled a turn worthy of an action movie as we hit the driveway for the B&B and bounced down the slick gravel driveway. The floodlights were ablaze around the paddocks and barn as we pulled up. The barn doors were closed, but the hayloft door was wide open, figures backlit against it. As I sprang out of the car before the engine had even died, I heard the panicked scream of horses followed by the crack of a rifle.
Rosie and Junebug stood side by side in the open doorway of the loft, rifles in hand, shooting into the seething mass of bodies around the paddocks. Max, in his wolf shape, and Levi, in wolverine shape, guarded the barn doors from the demons. I couldn’t see Ezee.
“Demon dogs” was a more accurate description. The creatures were about the size of Great Danes, but heavier, with muscles that bulged beneath mottled grey skin. They had single eyes in the middle of their thick heads and single horns curving out between ratty, floppy ears. The horn was nothing like the unicorn’s, more like an elongated rhino horn, pitch black in color and shiny as though wet, glinting in the light from the barn. Long, spikelike teeth gleamed in their widely gaping mouths and their claws would’ve made a velociraptor feel inadequate.
In other words, the demons were ugly and scary as hell.
I charged right toward them, trying to count as I went, magic singing in my veins as I threw a bolt of force into one demon, drawing the attention of three others who peeled away from trying to approach the barn door and charged at me. The bolt sizzled with purple fire as it threw the dog off its feet, but the creature rolled with the blow and joined its buddies in charging me.
Time for more firepower.
A large red fox streaked past me, snapping at a dog as she went, distracting the creatures from their charge as she flew by them.
“Harper,” I yelled. “Reflex save.”
She understood, and dodged at a ninety-degree angle, using her superior speed and smaller size to advantage.
I threw the fireball, pushing every frustrated, pent-up bit of anger I had into it. Which was a lot, apparently. I couldn’t fry the annoying witches, I couldn’t take back sending Tess away and being a terrible person, but damnit, I could throw down some serious burning pain on these reeking, evil monsters. It was nice to have something I could fight. Finally.
The ball of fire blew into the middle of the charging pack, changing growls and snarls to screams of pain as the dogs split in different directions. Two in the middle collapsed, burning and writhing. I cleared a path to my friends in front of the bar with a second fireball, trying to keep the range and size tight. Brie sprinted up beside me, a freaking long sword in her hands that blazed with white fire. I gawked as she twisted and spun, stabbing one of the dogs through its eye.
“Go for the eye,” she gasped as we ran.
I did just that as another ugly monster sprang at me. I was too close to the barn now to risk another fireball. I aimed at it with a bolt of purple force. My bolt slammed into that red, evil eye, and the monster fell, not even twitching as it died.
“Go for the eyes, Boo!” I yelled, euphoric with the power running through me as I reached my friends.
Putting the barn door to my back, I surveyed the battlefield. The stalls were closed off from the paddocks by heavy metal doors, unlike the more decorative wooden door behind me. Junebug and Rosie were doing a good job of shooting the eyes out of anything that came over the fence into the small space of the paddocks. The demon dogs seemed intent on getting into the barn, but the women with rifles and the steel doors helped create a funnel toward Levi, Max, and now Brie, Harper, and myself. The pack decided the bodies looked easier to go through than the metal, but they hung back now, gathering in a dark half-circle at the edge of the light. More bodies were visible in the treeline.
“How many of them are there?” I asked, throwing another bolt at another glowing red eye. My bolts weren’t quite quick enough at this distance and the monster dodged it with preternatural speed.
Beside me, Levi shifted to human, his breathing ragged and his lips still peeled back from his teeth in a snarl.
“At least two dozen,” he said. “They got one of the horses, and Ezee is injured. He’s inside. And he’ll be okay,” he added as I glanced at him, concerned.
“The fuck are these things?” I said.
“Fomoire hounds,” Brie answered. “Creatures of filth and evil. They are here to finish the unicorn, I think.” Her hair had come loose and spilled in deep red waves down her back and over her shoulders and her green eyes glowed as though lit from within. I’d never seen anyone look so badass in a flour-dusted apron before.
“Great, so we kill them.” I rolled my shoulders, gathering more magic. I knew it was partially the adrenaline, but I felt ready to take on a couple dozen uglies. The air was filled with the scent of churned earth, gunsmoke, and burning flesh. An undercurrent of rot teased at my nose and I snorted, pushing it all away.
The uglies charged, this time with their heads down, horns in front. This made it hard to pick out eyes, but easier to fireball. I was glad for the recent rains as I threw a small orb of flame that expanded and grew with my will and power as it zipped over the ground to smash into the monsters.
At least three went down in flames, but more filled in to take their place. They moved across the open ground between the woods and the barn in a roiling black wave. My euphoria died down as I realized how many there were, but I pulled on more magic, willing another ball of fire into my outstretched hands, determined to take as many down as I could before they reached us. No way were these things going to finish Lir. I hadn’t saved the unicorn just to let him die.
My next fireball was the last I could manage as the first line of hounds reached us. Wolverine-Levi barreled into one, his powerful jaws snapping its leg. Brie waded into the fray, her blade a white-hot streak as it sliced through grey flesh and slashed across red eyes. I refocused my magic, visualizing it as a beam of searing light, one hand now clutching my talisman as I dragged on more and more power, ignoring the sweat pouring into my eyes.
Purple fire streamed from my hand in a thin line, cutting into the eye of a hound as it tried to snap at and then gore the quick red fox leaping past. Harper didn’t try to inflict much damage, just kept dodging and distracting, her sharp teeth snapping at tendons. Wolverine-Levi screamed in pain as one hound got its claws into him and I smashed my light beam into the monster, clearing it off my friend.
Levi scrambled back beside me, snarling. His shoulder was scored with bleeding claw-marks.
“Keep back,” I hissed at him as I passed my beam across two more hounds, forcing them to retreat.
He shook his bearlike head and his muscles bunched as he prepared to leap once more into the fray. Harper and Max took down another hound between them, tearing into its hamstrings and flank, and Brie was a killing machine with her sword, but it seemed for every hound we felled, two came to take its place. We were hemmed in on three sides and I was running low on juice.
My head throbbed and I lost concentration, barely managing to avoid a black horn as it swept toward me. I sprang back, my shoulders slamming into the barn door, and threw my hands out, shoving magic at the creature with very little thought beyond “get it away from me.”
The hound went flying backward like a boulder hurled by a giant, tumbling through the ranks of its companions. The effort left me weak and red dots swam in my vision. I had spent too much power, too quickly.
The hounds retreated for a moment, the ones I’d knocked down climbing to their feet. They closed ranks, still at least a dozen or more of them left, and stalked toward us, walking over the smoldering and whimpering bodies of their fallen kin. Beside me, wolverine-Levi crouched, shoulder still welling with blood. Harper and Max faced toward our open left side while Brie, her apron covered more in gore than flour now, faced slightly right, her sword still blazing, but her breathing audible and strained.
Even the horses in the barn were quiet now, and the rifles had stopped firing. I hoped that Junebug and Rosie were all right, but couldn’t risk trying to look up and see.
One of the hounds in the front of the regrouping pack died to a rifle shot and I sagged in relief. They were still up there, and still had ammo. It was something.
We straightened up, ready for the next assault. The last assault. I wasn’t so sure if we didn’t take them out now that we’d be able to survive another wave. I shoved that sobering and awful thought away and dragged on the last reserves of my magic, feeling like I was scouring a soup bowl with my fingers for leftovers. Feeling like I was the soup bowl.
Beyond the hounds, the trees started to shake. Eerie howls picked up and the hounds seemed strengthened by it. A fresh wave of bodies burst forth from the trees, howling in greeting to their companions. Once again we were outnumbered by way too many to one.
“Fuck my life,” I muttered. I had to manage at least two more fireballs for us to even stand a chance. It would probably knock me unconscious, but I had to try.
As I gathered power into my hands, bright green light poured out of the forest, and I realized the new hounds hadn’t been howling in greeting, but in warning.
You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a red-haired giant wielding a cudgel burst forth from a huge old oak tree on the back of a twelve-foot white tiger. Trust me.
Yosemite sprang from tiger-Alek’s back in a cinematic leap worthy of Legolas and smashed apart the skull of a hound, his cudgel crushing through horn and bone as though they were rotten wood. Tiger-Alek’s massive jaws ripped a monster’s head clear from its body. One his huge paws, claws extended like a fistfull of katanas, swept aside another monster.
Brie cried out something in Old Irish and charged the pack. I threw my last fireball, the energy crackling out from my hands and fizzling pathetically into the front rank of creatures, doing not much more than singeing skin and angering them. Bending, I yanked Samir’s dagger free from its ankle sheath and pushed what little power I could still summon into a half-shield in front of me. I knew the dagger was powerful, but it had come from Samir, and I was loath to use it. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that jazz.
Yosemite smashed another hound and started yelling, his voice booming across the field as he chanted. Vines and roots exploded from the grass, snatching at the hounds and dragging them down. The ones that ran for the trees found branches that lashed out, the forest around the barn beating any monster that came in reach to death with whomping blows as saplings bent and snapped in their fury.
Wolverine-Levi and I found ourselves fighting side by side again, keeping the barn as much to our backs as we could as three of the hounds decided we looked like less trouble than the bellowing giant, the woman with the flaming sword, or the dire tiger. I slashed with the dagger, painfully aware I had little idea how to fight without magic. My shield held, sparking purple as a hound slammed into it. Pain lanced up my leg as I barely dodged a clawed swipe. I prayed it was only a fleshwound and stumbled back.
My stumble left Levi’s side open and a hound sprang in past me, horn aimed right at the wolverine’s unprotected side. He twisted, trying to avoid the blow and a second hound’s jaws closed on his leg with a sickening crunch. Levi went down and the first hound sprang onto him, its jaws wide and aimed at my friend’s unprotected head. I screamed and threw my shield as though it were a physical thing, trying to turn the killing jaws aside.
Time seemed to slow, then scramble, then speed up again, as my vision stuttered and a blast of air took me almost off my feet. It was as though reality had become a faulty VHS tape recording.
Instead of closing on Levi’s head, the hound’s jaws snapped shut on Tess’s abdomen as she materialized between the wolverine and the hound. She buried a large hunting knife in its burning red eye with a scream.
Adrenaline and power flowed into me, and I threw the dead hound off Tess and Levi. Levi struggled to rise, but Tess collapsed, blood spurting from the gaping wound in her stomach. The second hound sprang for Tess, and I threw every last shred of magic inside me at it.
“NO!” My voice was raw, the word clawing its way from my throat with the roar of blood my ears.
The hound exploded. Chunks of fetid, warm flesh rained down on me as I stumbled to Tess’s side and crouched there, holding the dagger, waiting for the next attack.
It didn’t come. The hounds broke and ran, tiger-Alek and Max giving chase as far as the glowing woods. It sounded from the shrieks that the trees did the rest of the killing work. I dropped Samir’s dagger and yanked off my filthy teeshirt, pressing it to Tess’s stomach.
“I’ll live,” she whispered.
“I know,” I said. “Because you are a motherfucking sorceress, and so am I.”
I held her gaze, willing her to stay with me as people came up around us, talking. My head swam in a lake of pain, and darkness pressed in on the sides of my vision. I was vaguely aware of Alek and Yosemite moving up beside me. I let them transfer Tess to a horse blanket and convey her to the house, reluctantly letting go of the blood-soaked teeshirt.
Harper slid herself under one of my arms, and I was surprised that Vivian, the vet, appeared and inserted herself under the other. She had a hunting rifle slung over one shoulder and a grim look on her face. I thought she said something to me, but my brain wasn’t up for processing language anymore. Barely conscious, I managed to stumble with their help up to the house. I looked around as we went, making sure I saw each friend. Ezee, in human form, was limping with his twin, who was also back in human form. It wasn’t clear who was holding up whom, but they were breathing, conscious, and alive. I didn’t see Max until I looked back and caught sight of movement up in the hayloft. Max waved tiredly to me from his perch. Behind him, I could just barely make out Brie’s figure, now holding a rifle instead of a sword.
Rosie and Junebug were on the porch, blankets in hand as we climbed the steps. Rosie said something to Harper and then darkness ate my brain.
I woke up on the couch in the main living room of the Henhouse to the soft murmur of voices and the smell of vanilla and spice. I was wrapped in a quilt with my head resting on a warm, muscled thigh. I knew that thigh, that warm energy, that scent. Alek.
“Hey,” I said, struggling to unwrap myself as I turned my head and looked up at him, squinting into the light from the lamp beyond his shoulder.
“You all right?” he asked. He helped me sit up.
“Yeah.” If I hadn’t been, the concern and love emanating from his ice-blue eyes would have fixed any ill, I was sure. I poked at the yellow-green bruise and thin pink line on my leg which was all that remained of where the Fomoire hound had slashed at me.
“Good to see you again, Jade,” said a rough, almost gravelly male voice and I looked over to see Aurelio, the alpha of the Bitterroot pack, sitting cross-legged on the floor. His shaggy black hair with its shock of bright white was loose over his bare shoulders and I swear he was wearing the same green sweats I’d last seen him in, a month earlier.
“Wish we could meet when things aren’t trying to kill us, eh?” I said. “I thought you were leaving the area.”
“I tried,” Aurelio said with a grim smile. “Seems my pack is still needed. The forest is unquiet.”
I
looked around the living room. Judging from how healed my wound was, I’d been out at an hour or so. Max was wrapped in a quilt similar to the one around my almost naked torso and fast asleep in one of the oversize chairs. Harper and Rosie sat at the dining room table, their heads together as they spoke in voices too low for me to understand.
“Ezee is with Levi and Junebug upstairs,” Alek said. “They are hurt, but nothing a few days of rest and Rosie’s cooking can’t cure.”
Memories flooded back and I stared down at the dried blood rimming my fingernails. “Tess?” She was a sorceress, like me. She’d live through a wound like that, but it wouldn’t be fun.
Alek jerked his chin toward the hall and the room where Harper had convalesced last month after nearly being turned into furry BBQ by Haruki the assassin. “Vivian is with her, seeing what she can do to get the bleeding to stop and close the wound.”
“She’ll heal, like I always do,” I said. I stood up, wrapping the quilt around my body like a towel and tucking in the corner, since I had nothing but my bra covering my chest. Alek caught my hand and raised a pale eyebrow at me.
“I’m getting some water,” I said. “And maybe finding a shirt.”
I walked to the kitchen, not wanting to go see Tess yet. She’d come back. Part of me was relieved, in no small part because she’d probably saved Levi’s life by appearing when she had. Part of me was afraid.
It was no coincidence that all this was happening now. I couldn’t afford to be that naïve or optimistic. She’d shown up at precisely the right time, hadn’t she? I hated myself a bit for being so suspicious. I clenched my hands into fists and went to wash her damn blood off them.
Harper and Rosie both looked at me but I shook my head in a “later” gesture and they let me pass without conversation. The kitchen was occupied, however. Brie and Yosemite stood there, arguing in Old Irish, keeping their voices low, but clearly not so concerned that anyone would hear them. I paused in the doorway, but they did little more than glance my way before resuming their conversation. Ciaran must not have told them I spoke Irish, or if he had, they assumed he’d meant only the modern language, not all its iterations.