by M. D. Massey
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” I turned to address Hemi, Guts, and Sabine. Jack was sitting off to the side sulking again, so I ignored him. “Listen, guys, we can’t just go charging through that field after her or we’ll be toast. We need to come up with a plan to draw her out. Here’s what we’re going to do…”
11
Minutes later, we stood along the edge of the grassy field. Everyone but Jack had kitted out for battle, including Sabine, who had removed her boots and shifted into her half-goat form.
“I can move a lot faster this way,” she explained.
I wisely said nothing in response, keeping my eyes on the farmhouse and fields ahead. A quick glance at Jack proved he’d learned his lesson, as he made a show of looking at anyone and anything but Sabine.
“It’s time,” I said, and we spread out along the edge of the field. I held the Spear of Lugh, while the others bore lit torches made of straw and twigs. On my signal, we each caught a section of grass on fire in front of us.
I figured that the Rye Mother would have a means of turning the fire against us, either by commanding the wind to blow in our direction or by calling rain down from the skies. That’s why I had Crowley call in his pet wyvern. The creature was too young to fly, but not too young to kick up a hell of a wind storm with his massive wings. After lighting the field on fire, we stepped back while the big wyrm did exactly that. We soon had an acre of the grassy field ablaze.
The smoke from the grass fire obscured our view of the farmhouse, but that was what I wanted. I doubted the feldgeisters under the Rye Mother’s command would want to face down so massive a blaze. Based on that assumption, I intended to use the smoke to sneak up to the farmhouse and face the Rye Mother at close quarters. I figured if I could take her out quickly, the rest of her brood would disperse.
Unfortunately, I miscalculated.
I was using the binos to spy on the farmhouse through the smoke when I saw them, dozens of large green birds that resembled crows or ravens. However, these birds had bodies made of twigs, and feathers made of leaves and long, broad blades of grass.
“Weizenvogel—great,” I muttered, as an entire flock of them emerged from the smoke above the fields and headed straight for us. They were wheat birds, an avian type of feldgeister. “Incoming!”
The birds climbed high before banking and swooping in, attacking us with sharp nutshell beaks and claws made of thorn. They weren’t able to do much damage alone, but the birds posed a serious threat by attacking in numbers. I spun Lugh’s Spear furiously, striking them whenever they came close. The heat of the flaming spear head invariably caused them to burst into flames. Soon, the birds began avoiding me and focused their attacks on my team.
Jack had transformed back into his wisp form and had no troubles avoiding the birds’ attacks. Guts had given up on trying to attack them with his weapons, and instead had taken to grabbing them out of the air and biting their heads off—a tactic which seemed to keep the little bastards from healing. He was scratched and bloodied and missing an eye, but he was also a troll, and I knew he’d grow it back before the day was done.
Sabine danced around on those cloven feet of hers, swinging the fae blade I’d loaned her like a champ. She hadn’t been kidding when she’d said she knew how to use a blade, and many a feathered feldgeister lost a wing to her sword. They fell to the earth, where she stomped them to shreds before they could regenerate.
Hemi was a glory to behold. The big Maori warrior’s tattoos glowed a bright whitish-blue color, and he spun his whalebone spear overhead and around his body in dizzying patterns. Whenever a bird came close, it met the tip or the butt of his spear and burst into shreds from the impact. Despite taking out birds by the handful, the spear never slowed or lost momentum for the next attack. Each time he killed one of the creatures, Hemi made a terrifying face in the direction of the farmhouse, as if to let the Rye Mother know he was coming for her.
I looked around for Crowley, but he was nowhere to be found. Finally, I spotted him some distance away, mounted atop Ollie and doing battle with the largest hog I’d ever seen. It was easily the size of a truck, with long wooden tusks sticking out of its leaf-covered snout.
A korneber, or corn boar. The Rye Mother was pulling out all the stops.
Like the rye wolves I’d encountered back in Austin, the boar possessed magical powers that the birds did not. Thick vines and stalks of corn grew from the ground at Ollie’s feet, pinning his legs in place. I immediately recognized what the creature intended to do. Its plan was to immobilize the wyvern and then charge past, gutting him with those huge wooden tusks.
“Uh-uh, not today, porky,” I muttered as I hefted Lugh’s Spear. “Let’s see what Lugh’s favorite toy can do.”
The Spear practically leapt from my hand as I threw it at the korneber, closing the distance in the blink of an eye. One moment, the boar was snorting and clawing at the ground. The next, it faltered as Lugh’s mighty weapon burned a clean hole through its body.
In a flash, the Spear turned course and flew straight back through the corn boar, making another hole in its head. The creature stumbled, then fell and burst into flames. Lugh’s Spear returned to my hand, the shaft slapping into my palm hard enough to sting.
“Man, I’ve missed having a magical flying spear.” Until recently, I’d had a less-powerful version of Lugh’s weapon—one I’d had crafted by a fae who’d owed me a favor. I’d fashioned it after the original that I currently held, and it had served me well until the Dark Druid had snapped it in two like a twig.
“I’d like to see him do that to you,” I said, marveling at the weapon in my hand. I swear, the thing twitched and nuzzled my calloused hand in response, startling me so much that I nearly dropped it.
Hemi’s voice snapped me back to the task at hand.
“Um, Colin? When you’re done playing with your shaft, you might want to deal with the big mean-looking fella over there.”
I followed the direction of his gaze and saw someone emerge from the smoke and fire at the edge of the field to our left. He was a large man, easily seven feet tall, wearing a black cloak and hat. He carried a huge black walking stick over his shoulder, and he was headed straight for me.
Well, hell. There goes my last pair of boots.
Other feldgeisters were already running at the party from both flanks—hounds, cats, deer, and even a donkey. It was sheer mayhem. Somehow, they’d managed to avoid the fire, and now tried to drive us into the flames ahead.
I couldn’t worry about that at the moment, because I was pretty certain I knew who the man in black was… and he was no joke.
I shifted on the fly as I jogged across the field. I swatted away wheat birds and the odd feldgeister hound as I ran. The hounds were like smaller versions of the rye wolves, but thankfully, they lacked their larger brothers’ magical powers. I mowed them down like grass, which was basically what they were.
The man in black wouldn’t fall as easily as the hounds had—of that I was certain. I halted a few meters from him, blocking his way. I planted the butt of the Spear to the side, holding it at arm’s length to avoid being burned by the flames.
“The Hafermann, I presume.”
“Some have called me that,” he replied. His voice was deep and raspy, like dried corn husks rubbing against one another in a cold autumn wind.
The Hafermann, or “oat man,” was yet another nightmarish harvest demon that was one of the Germanic fae. Like his female counterpart, the Rye Mother, he was said to be fond of stealing children. Whether the Rye Mother had brought him in as muscle or if he was part of her operation was of no consequence to me. He’d meet his fate here as well.
The Hafermann was a strange character as feldgeisters went. He dressed in black from head to toe, from his dusty leather shoes and worn woolen slacks to his collarless dress shirt. A long black overcoat completed the whole ensemble. The feldgeister’s hands were calloused like a farmer’s, but his skin was gray and sallow, and his cheeks su
nk into a lean, hungry face. His eyes were the creepiest of all—large black circles edged by a jaundiced yellow sclera devoid of blood vessels.
Those black and yellow eyes were full of hate as he returned my stare. “You’ve chosen the wrong enemies, druid. Time was when your kind paid tribute to mine, giving us offerings of younglings and virgins. We could’ve been allies, as in the old days. But instead, you attacked us unprovoked.”
I laughed. “Look here, ‘American Gothic.’ I couldn’t give a shit what druids did two thousand years ago. Times have changed, and humans today tend to look poorly on harvest deities who demand blood sacrifices in exchange for a bumper crop. News flash: we don’t need supernatural agricultural intervention anymore. I mean, have you even heard of hydroponics? And besides being a relic of times long gone, your provocation is inherent in your actions. You hurt kids, and that’s something I can’t let stand.”
He chuckled in that raspy dried-leaves voice of his. “My kind are eternal, while you are merely a handful of dust and spit gathered for a few insignificant moments in time. Tomorrow, I’ll grind your bones to a meal, and your rotting flesh will return to the earth. And when you’re gone, we will still be here, preying on your children and irrigating the fields with their blood.”
He spat thick yellow phlegm at my feet, and I watched as it turned into fat yellow grub worms that slowly burrowed into the earth. “You are nothing to us, druid. Nothing. Even in this form you borrow, your presence worries us little. The Fomorians are long gone, yet we are still here.”
I tapped the fingers and thumb of my free hand together and rolled my eyes. “Talk, talk, talk. All you washed-up deities seem to do is yammer. For Pete’s sake, man, have some balls and swing that big stick, or shut the hell up and run away.”
The Hafermann swung his club off his shoulder. I bristled when I realized it was studded with hundreds of tiny human teeth. “You’re as insolent as you are foolish. For that remark, I will make you suffer.”
“You first,” I hissed, as I lunged forward and thrust the spear at his face.
I had to hand it to the old guy, he was quick and strong. The old man leaned away from the spear thrust and batted my attack away with his club, with enough force to snap the spear from my hands. I sidestepped to avoid an overhand swing that would have hurt had it connected. I willed Lugh’s Spear back into my hands and rolled away, bouncing to my feet.
The Hafermann pressed the attack, using his club like a sword. He attacked in combinations that I barely had time to block. Each time his club struck the Spear, the shock from the impact made my hands tingle. Fortunately, the Spear was more than up to the task of blocking his attacks, and none made it past my defenses.
I swung the spear tip at him, attempting to cut him in half with the blade. He danced away, twirling his club like a cop walking the beat as he nodded in appreciation of my performance.
“You fight well, druid. But I grow tired of you already.”
He tapped the butt of his stick on the ground, and the soil trembled beneath us. A split-second later, a large crack appeared in the earth at his feet. It traced a line on the ground that widened drastically as it zigzagged toward me. In an instant, the fissure in the earth opened wide beneath me, and I tumbled into darkness.
I fell head over heels into the deep crevice the Hafermann had conjured. While the spell was impressive, the ground had split unevenly. The odd ledge and protruding stone slowed my fall as I bounced off them. Roughly twenty feet down, I managed to lodge the Spear into a nearby crack, stopping my descent.
“That was close,” I muttered as I dangled from the Spear.
No sooner had I spoken than the ground rumbled and the gap above me began to close.
“Well, that figures.”
At the rate the gap was closing, I’d be crushed and buried before I managed to climb out. I briefly considered using the Eye’s powers to melt an exit, but didn’t relish the idea of facing down the Hafermann blind. He was hell with that stick, and would make mincemeat of me in short order if I couldn’t see his attacks coming.
The ground shook around me, shaking the Spear as the gap closed more. My left hand slipped, and I used the spring in the shaft to help me rebound up to grab it again.
“Bingo.”
I quickly muscled myself up until my hips were against the shaft, then drove my right hand into another crevice for stability. I gingerly climbed up onto the Spear, hoping like hell that the point didn’t ignite and melt the earth around it while I was standing on it. Stomping to test it for stability, I bounced once, twice. Then I dropped into a squat, letting my weight bend the shaft until it sprang back with elastic energy.
Using the Spear as my springboard, I leapt out of the crevice. Secure in his victory, the Hafermann was already walking back to the farmhouse across the now smoldering fields. As I landed, I called the Spear to me. It flew up from the rapidly closing fissure.
“Sayonara, motherfucker!” I yelled as I hurled the spear with all my might.
The Hafermann turned at the sound of my voice, but too late. Lugh’s famed weapon tore through the air at him. The Spear burned a neat, fist-sized hole through the feldgeister’s torso, just as it had with the korneber. I called it back to my hand and threw it again and again, willing the Spear to zip back and forth through the korndämon’s body.
By the sixth pass, his torso was nothing but embers, held together by thin strands of grass and twigs. Those soon burst into flames, and his body, head, arms, and legs tumbled into a heap in the dirt. I ran to his remains and thrust the Spear into them, holding it there until the heat and flame from the spearhead had burned his body to ash.
Nearby movement caused me to look up from my task, just in time to dodge a swipe from a long, bony hand with iron-clawed fingers. I rolled away and bounced to my feet as the Rye Mother pressed her attack. The harmless-looking country grandmother was gone, and in her place stood a terrible figure.
She was shorter than I was in my half-Fomorian form, but broad-shouldered and wide-hipped. Her arms were long and muscular, although her ribs showed through her thin gray skin under flat, pendulous breasts that leaked venom on her prodigious, distended belly. Powerful legs held her upright on clawed feet that, while humanoid, were reminiscent of the taloned lower appendages of a bird of prey.
The Rye Mother wore no clothing, and I thanked all that was good in the world that her pubic region was concealed by the overhang of her gut. The last thing I needed to see on her was a vagina dentata or some similar grotesquery, because I was already going to have nightmares for months over seeing those nasty, poisonous grandma tits flapping in the wind.
She spat saliva as she cursed at me, backing me up with lashes from a long, stiff whip that sparked lightning when it struck the ground. Her voice was a screech, rising and falling in crescendos that worked in counterpoint to each crack of her whip.
“You just couldn’t leave it alone, could you, druid? I was perfectly willing to retire to Underhill for a few decades, and bide my time until yours had passed. But no, you had to track me down, from earth to another dimension, you self-righteous little prick. All over a few worthless street urchins.”
I dodged each crack of her whip as I backpedaled, but she was relentless. In truth, she was much more practiced at combat with that whip than I was with a spear. I tried and tried to gain enough distance to launch my weapon at her, but she matched me step for step, moving surprisingly fast for someone of her bulk.
She soon had me jumping and diving all over the place. After a minute of that, I grew tired of playing defense and tried to grab her whip. Big mistake. Not only did the whip peel the flesh from my hand, but latching onto it was like getting hit by the world’s strongest taser. A sound like a thunderclap exploded from where I’d gripped the end of her whip, and I flew in one direction while my fingers went in another, and the Spear flew in a third.
At that same moment, I began shifting back into my human form. Despite all the practice I’d had recently, I
still couldn’t stay in my Fomorian form for longer than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time. Apparently, the timer was up on my current transformation.
I landed in a human, half-naked heap, glancing up in time to see the Rye Mother towering over me, her whip held high in preparation for a finishing blow.
12
I rolled up on an elbow, cradling my injured hand. It was times like these when I wished I hadn’t gained control over my “warp spasm.” If my Hyde-side had been in control, he’d have overpowered her through sheer viciousness, regardless of the cost in pain and injury.
But the rational me wasn’t like him. Despite being in a much more resilient body, I was still me. Pain still hurt, and injuries affected my ability to fight.
I wondered for a moment if I should start experimenting with letting my darker nature come out to play—if I lived, of course.
The Rye Mother’s whip cracked in front of my face, bringing me back to the present. She snapped it all around me, forcing me to crawl backward while protecting my injured hand. Not only was I bleeding like a stuck pig, but I was short three fingers. Until they grew back, my hand was useless.
I realized my mistake too late; I’d severely underestimated the Rye Mother’s physical abilities. Weaponless and diminished by my injury, I racked my brain for a way out of my current predicament and came up empty. I couldn’t access the Eye’s magic, I couldn’t cast a decent spell without two whole, uninjured hands, and I’d lost my tactical belt with my weapons on it when I’d shifted. I still had my Craneskin Bag, but I was too busy crawling away with an injured hand to grab anything of use from it.
I tried calling the Spear back to me, but it wouldn’t respond. Apparently, I had to have it in my line of sight to make it return to my hand. Fan-fucking-tastic.
The Rye Mother taunted me as she cracked her whip, stinging and cutting me with every swing. “Let me tell you what I’m going to do with the earth children you tried to rescue, druid. Some will fill my belly. Others will be traded to various unseelie fae for favors and goods. And the rest will go to Fuamnach, to build her army and support her conquests.”