by Rhys Ford
That was one thing I didn’t miss. I could go for the rest of my life without having to pick gummy residue from the back of my legs or my clothes.
There were slight differences between the riders, and after the third pass, I noticed the little things, like a splash of green paint on the bumper of one ATV and the red marker line scribbled over a SoCalGov ID number on the upper right arm of the other’s armor. Green Paint was a better driver, but Red Marker was a hell of a shot, hindered only by the erratic weave he used to avoid getting hit. The ATVs were old and had steering systems like an old Harley—one of the dream bikes I hoped to own one day. Steering an ATV with one hand and shooting with the other meant the rider’s dominant hand had a gun in it, so guiding the heavy bike around was a bitch.
Weaving about was one thing, but finesse driving was out. I hoped that would be an advantage when I stood firm as they came back around, the muzzles of their guns aimed at the children.
It wasn’t that I didn’t hear anything. The ATVs were still loud and needed a good tune-up, but the sound was muted as I focused on my aim. I let off both shots, one after another. The weapons kicked up slightly, but the motion was so much a part of my everyday life that I didn’t pay much mind. I only needed one to find its mark, yet a blink and a half later, two black holes appeared on Red Marker’s ATV’s gas tank, and things went to shit.
I had no idea what they were using to fuel those ATVs, but whatever it was, it was incendiary. What should have been a small explosion turned practically nuclear, and the blast threw us all back. The gas tank blew straight up into the air, its seat following close on. A billow of smoke poured out from its engulfed frame, and I lost sight of the driver. I was hoping to give Ryder enough time to get the kids into the transport, but the explosion took us all off our feet when the blast wave hit the clearing.
My roll into the rocks was a short one. Gravel bit into my back, and my elbow scraped across the dirt, but it wasn’t bad. I couldn’t see Cari, but I had to assume she was okay. The other ATV was caught in the chaos and tumbled past me, but its driver was nowhere to be found. A tire went bouncing by and nearly struck my head, and a burning piece of pipe struck Ryder’s outstretched arm as he still tightly gripped the young girl’s wrists.
The black plume lingered and hugged the ground. The wind pushed the smoke between us and then died, only to whisper a halfhearted gust across the north end of the clearing. At least knee-deep, the thick smoke masked almost everything. I had clear visibility only when the plume grew patchy and thin. The top of the transport poked up out of the acrid screen, and despite the rattle in my skull, it didn’t appear as though Kerrick was still up there. Choking on the smoke I’d sucked down, I staggered to my feet to help Ryder, grateful that the wind had begun to pick up again and carry the stinging veil out of the clearing.
Or least I was before the grasses began to rustle again.
This time there were no engines. The rumbling wasn’t mechanical. The growls I heard were vicious and mean, more of a predatory warning than anything else. I scrambled to find my guns, but my Glocks were lost in the flattened grasses, and I had yards of matted leaves and stalks to dig through. I found one right away, but the other wasn’t going to do me any good.
The bitter smoke shifted, thinning for a bit, and revealed a pack of black dogs slowly stalking out of the grasses at the forest line, their slinking forms rippling shadows against the roiling plumes.
I didn’t have any doubt that whoever created the pack was the same hunt master who’d stitched together the dog I’d killed back at the exit of the quadrant. All of their bodies were squat and muscular, and thick rolls of power moved beneath their taut black-dappled blue skin. Their heads were broad and flat, their long muzzles wide enough to hold teeth that could rip apart a man’s thigh without much effort. I counted five dogs and then mentally added up the amount of ammo my gun probably had left. If the bandolier and shotgun I’d left by the transport hadn’t been knocked under the vehicle in the explosion, I would probably be able to kill one before the others fell on me.
But it might buy the others time, I argued as I calculated the distance.
“Kai,” Ryder hissed through the dissipating smoke. “We’ve got the kids.”
His voice was low, but the lead dog perked up and scanned the clearing. The shifting smoke probably made it difficult for the dogs to see, and the smell of burning gas would mask our scents, but not for long. I finally spotted Cari crouched near Ryder, her arms full of two now very silent and still young elfin. I couldn’t tell if they were breathing or not, and her face was a mask, devoid of emotion, despite the trail of blood that dribbled down her forehead and into her eyes.
“Move.” I jerked my head toward the transport. “Lock it down and go.”
“No,” Cari spat back, her words sizzling like water on hot steel. “We’re not leaving you behind.”
It was her voice, the temper in her tone that did us in. Carrying over the clearing, the sound of her anger pricked the black dogs’ keen hunting instincts, and they were on us before I could take another breath.
There had been times when I was fairly sure I was going to die. And every time, when I found myself standing in the remains of the fight, I thanked luck, the gods, and my weapons for seeing me through. This time I was pretty fricking sure I was damned near out of all of those things, so I had to give Ryder, Cari, and those kids enough time and cover to make it to the transport.
I hit the big one first. I’d like to say I surprised it, but I’m pretty sure it saw me coming. I’m also pretty sure it laughed. Armed only with a half-full Glock and a long dagger, I was going to be a very tasty meal. But it would buy them time. They didn’t have a lot of distance to cover, and those were small kids. Cari and Ryder could get them inside. Kerrick was on his own, and hopefully he would be smart enough to take cover under the transport as soon as he caught a whiff of the black dogs’ rancid scent.
The ainmhi dubh met me halfway. Its open maw was a hot box of foul gases and sharp teeth, and its narrow eyes were laser focused on me, its broad paws scraping back the grasses to expose the loamy soil beneath. It hit my right side, its body hard and unforgiving. I stabbed its shoulder with my knife and dug the blade down into its flesh, hoping to find anything vital. Instead the meat tore under the sharp edge, and the knife sliced out of its leg.
It whirled about, and a torrent of black blood splashed over my bare hand and singed it. Thickly muscled, its momentum was hindered by its lack of agility, its body too massive to fold in tight turns. I heard the hiss of the transport’s main door closing and then the screams of the other ainmhi dubh as they pounded the metal hull of the centipede and raked at its plated exterior with their claws.
I was alone, and I was going to die alone. Thoughts and emotions rushed through me in those few seconds I had left. I wouldn’t see my nieces grow up. I wouldn’t know who would win the back-and-forth war of sexual tension Ryder and I had been fighting since we first met. I wouldn’t know who would take care of Newt, but I was fairly certain it would be Dalia or even the Sidhe lordling, who’d spent afternoons trying to coax the cat into liking him. I would never get my Mustang back on the road.
Then I gave a short laugh, amused beyond belief at the irony of Dempsey outliving me.
The ainmhi dubh found me in the smoke and lunged, its mouth stretched open wide enough to clip my head clean off if it could only get the right angle. Two feet away from me, it launched up off the ground, spittle flying and its partially severed flesh flapping as it arched toward me.
Shoving the Glock out in front of me, I angled it as best I could and emptied my clip into its throat.
Whoever its hunt master was, they didn’t have Tanic’s skills. The monster was nearly a perfect killing machine, but apparently its creator didn’t thicken the bone-mass plate inside of the ainmhi dubh’s mouth.
My bullets tore its skull apart. Bone chips and brains blew out in a geyser of gore, expelled through a hole nearly the size of my
fist. Its momentum continued forward, the creature’s body not quite understanding its brain was no longer there. Then its gait faltered, and its back legs stumbled and then gave out and slammed its rear to the ground. A few more twitches of its shoulders and the ainmhi dubh was on me.
Shoving at it when it approached took it off its course, but my arms ached from the effort of turning its heavy weight. My gun was empty, and the shots were loud. They reverberated against the sides of the transport, practically calling the other black dogs to me. I reached for one of my clips, ejected the spent one from my Glock, and turned to face the rest of the pack, only to discover Ryder hadn’t shut himself inside with Cari and the kids.
The damned idiot was standing at the front of the transport, armed with my discarded shotgun and my bandolier slung over his shoulder. He gave me a tense cocky grin and lifted the weapon up, ready to pull the trigger.
“Aim for their mouths,” I told him as I circled into the clearing a bit to separate the black dogs’ attention. We didn’t have a chance in hell of surviving. But at least I wasn’t alone—even if he was a fucking idiot for standing with me.
The dogs paced, their shoulders low and their ears flat against their heads. Their leader’s corpse lay twitching a few feet away from me, probably confusing them, but instinct would always win out. As soon as they got themselves sorted, the rest of them would attack. We could only hope to get in a few good shots.
I almost didn’t see Kerrick come up behind Ryder. When I spotted his slender form slipping out of the wispy smoke at the end of the clearing, a sense of relief overcame me. He had a weapon that could do a lot of damage if he could get his charged arrows into their throats, but he wasn’t holding his bow.
Kerrick was armed with a long dagger, and he plunged it into Ryder’s ribs as soon as he got close.
I didn’t remember running across the clearing. I didn’t remember anything from when I saw that blade slice through Ryder’s side, and then the gush of hot blood that poured out of the wound sank in and I no longer saw anything but my next target.
Kerrick was beneath me a second later. I slammed into his face with my fists, the punches weighted by the steel gun in my grip. It felt good to break his skin under my knuckles, to hear the crunch of a bone break with my next strike, and when my arm finally grew tired, I held my gun to his head and stared down at his bloodied face.
My one hand shook as I pressed my Glock into his forehead, my rage turning the edges of my vision a brilliant red, and I drew one of my hunting knives, a long wicked thing I used to skin black dogs after a kill. I didn’t care that my back was to the ainmhi dubh. I didn’t give a shit if the black dogs ate the transport and made themselves peanut butter and elfin-children sandwiches. The only thing I desperately needed was to taste Kerrick’s blood on the flat of my blade after I was done carving his bones out of his flesh.
I made the first cut. A long shallow slice over his chest where I knew his collarbone lay beneath. I would take that out first and then work my way down his ribs, maybe even stopping to see what it would feel like to have his spine in my hand before I yanked it free. Nothing else mattered.
Or at least it didn’t until Ryder closed his hand over my shoulder.
“Kai, I’m fine. I turned, and he didn’t hit anything vital. Please, stop,” he whispered. I smelled his blood, the rich scent of his body pouring out between his clenched fingers where he pressed his hand across his wound. “Don’t kill him. Do not. You are better than that.”
“No, I’m not,” I said, looking up at him. I had one knee on the ground and the other one pressed into Kerrick’s chest. His hands looked broken, and the dagger he’d been holding lay in pieces by his knee. The Sidhe lord’s face was a mess of broken bones and blood, his eyes turning purple, his lashes slowly swallowed up in bruised swells. “I want him dead. He stabbed you. Yes, I know it’s wrong, but he’s going to keep coming after you. What’s to stop him from doing this again? If he dies here, I don’t have to worry about him. I don’t have to worry for you. I’m pissed off as fucking hell, and your cousin has proven to be as much of a monster as those black dogs. So give me one good damn reason—other than the fact that it’s morally wrong—to let the son of a bitch live.”
“Yes, Ryder, Clan Sebac, High Lord of the Southern Rise Court, answer him. Give him one good reason to let your enemy live,” a feminine voice called out across the clearing, and we both looked up, startled at the arrival of a slender, gorgeous Unsidhe woman dressed in tight riding leathers and stroking the heads of the black dog pack writhing in submission at her feet. “I would like to hear what answer you could give Ciméara cuid Anbhás to make him stay his hand.”
Twenty-Three
THE UNSIDHE woman stood a few inches shorter than me, but her presence dominated the clearing. There was no question about who the ainmhi dubh belonged to. Their subservience was awe inspiring, or it would have been if I hadn’t seen Tanic with his dogs. Her face was hard—all bones and cruel mouth—and framed with a wealth of deep-ocean-blue loose curls. Silver shimmered in the waves that cascaded past her shoulders and down her back. Her hammered-gold eyes narrowed, her black lashes curving up at the corners into sweeping wings. The ebony leathers she wore left little to the imagination as they followed the curves of her hips and breasts. And the stretch of her long legs would have made a blind man weep if you didn’t pay attention to the edge of cruelty lurking in her gaze.
An air cycle sat parked at the edge of the forest line, a sleek and silent machine most people only dreamed about owning. Hers was banged up and pitted along the bumpers, probably from ainmhi dubh spit. If I were into that kind of bike, I would’ve cried. As it was I was just happy I had a full clip in my gun and probably more than enough time to shoot her and Kerrick so we could go home.
“You know who we are, but I haven’t heard of you. Or at least, haven’t heard of an Unsidhe lord like you,” Ryder said in that softly arrogant lordling tone I hated so much.
We were both covered with dirt and blood—his more recent than mine—but he held himself as though he were greeting guests back at Balboa. It was hard to ignore me sitting on top of his cousin, my gun pressed into Kerrick’s forehead, and blood was seeping from a cut to Ryder’s side, but he forged on and performed a cursory bow.
“So, if you would introduce yourself, as I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of meeting before.”
“It isn’t often I stray this far north,” she replied. “But then you have also never been this far south in the few months you have been in the region. Is there a particular reason you’ve wandered so far from your nest? Meeting with the Penault, perhaps? The one you’ve left alive is out there still. I’m sure of it. I can send my dogs to get him. Do I need to? Will he tell me a different story from the one you will tell me?”
As though called into the conversation, a moaning sound came from the grasses, and the ainmhi dubh stiffened as one, their ears perked up into sharp peaks and their haunches firmly anchored to the ground. They sniffed at the air, and their gleaming crimson eyes followed the woman’s movement as she strolled toward the black dogs’ pack leader.
“We came at the request of a dead friend,” Ryder explained. “We came to pick up the Unsidhe woman looking for a new life. The Penault murdered her. Killed her as she was trying to protect the children she brought with her. Do you have so many elfin in your court that you can slaughter them at your leisure?”
“Children who are not hers, and they are a distraction my people do not need. As for the woman, I knew of her. It’s why I followed—mostly to ensure she succeeded. One of the other houses in the area smuggled her out so she could take the children away. Someone has a very loose mouth, so it seems everyone knew of her flight north, including human hunters who kill us for sport and the Penault, who didn’t want to lose their pets.”
She crouched next to the black dog and bent one knee to the ground while she kept the other up—a good position in case she needed to run. I couldn’t read he
r face. It was an impenetrable mask, but there seemed a bit of softening to the set of her firm mouth when she ran her slender fingers across the ainmhi dubh’s blown-out skull.
“Oh my dearest, what has he done to you?”
“He tried to eat my face,” I said. “We had a difference of opinion on the matter, and he wasn’t willing to listen. If you sent them after the kids, then he deserved what he got.”
“I sent my pack to deal with the Penault. That house has been a thorn in my side for years now. I wanted the Sidhe children gone, but they are considered valuable, a bit of coin to a desperate house. I felt it was time to step in. My ainmhi dubh must’ve seen you as the bigger threat, and that is why he attacked. That’s two of my dogs that you’ve killed, Ciméara.” Her hard gaze found me through the dissipating smoke and locked on my face. Standing slowly, she dusted off her hand and then canted her head to study me. “You like killing ainmhi dubh. I would appreciate it if you left mine alone.”
“I would leave them alone if they didn’t try to kill me,” I replied, and then I tilted my gun up when Kerrick shifted beneath my knee. He was struggling to get free, and I was just no longer in the mood to deal with any of his bullshit. “Stay down, asshole. It’s not like I forgot you were there.”
“Lady, hear me out. We can help each other,” Kerrick called out to her. “I will rule the Southern Rise Court. We can come to a deal, share our resources. You only have to—”
Gods, I should have stabbed him.
“I do not have to do anything, especially bargain with a man lying on his back with a gun pointed at his head.” She took a step forward but stopped when the dogs flowed across the clearing and put themselves between her and us. Glancing at the transport, she smiled, and I followed her gaze. Cari was staring out at us through the windows of the main doors, cradling a child to her chest. “Ah, there are the children. I am somewhat surprised they got this far. The Penault is known for having good hunters. But perhaps they are not as good as you, Ciméara.”