by Sierra Dean
The second they’d hit the street, Eion had taken off. Siobhan wished, ruefully, that her people had a death-before-dishonor policy and her father was running off to skewer himself on his own ceremonial knife. She knew better, but it didn’t stop her from wanting him to suffer.
Shane was pacing the empty street in front of the darkened store, gesturing wildly while he hollered into the phone. “What do you mean you don’t know where she is?” He paused, listening to the response. “Jesus Christ, Nolan, I don’t know. No, I don’t think she just fucking vanished, she has responsibilities.” Shane sighed. “No, I don’t think you should call them. Look, I need help. Can you meet me on the corner of Ninety-seventh and First?” Another long pause and Siobhan marveled at how stormy his countenance became as he argued with whoever Nolan was. “Okay, thank you.”
He came and sat next to her on the curb, and she let herself lean into him. Her head still felt like it had been pumped full of helium. The unconscious girl was flopped against Siobhan’s opposite side. They looked like a heap of drunks.
“Who’s Nolan?”
“My partner.”
“Who can’t he find?”
Shane put an arm around her shoulder, his fingers tentatively touching the wound on the back of her scalp. Siobhan hissed. “Sorry,” Shane said. “Just wanted to see if it’s healing.”
“It won’t if you keep poking at it.”
“Sorry.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Who were you asking about?”
“Our…boss.”
“And she’s missing?”
“She seems to have gone AWOL. No big deal.”
Siobhan got a sense from his tone she wasn’t welcome to ask more questions about the matter, so she changed the topic. “And once Nolan picks up the girl?”
Shane smiled and handed her the bow he’d brought out for her, slung across his shoulder so he could still hold the girl. “After that, you and I have a job to do.”
Nolan showed up about fifteen minutes later in a beat-up Oldsmobile, and he wasn’t at all what Siobhan had been expecting. He was tall and muscular, equal to Shane in height but more impressive in bulk, lacking all of the subtle wiry strength Shane had. Nolan had a chocolate-milk complexion and short black hair. It was the wide, toothy smile he gave her that threw Siobhan for a loop. The guy was big enough he looked like he could break her in half, but when he grinned at her like a dope, she knew he was a teddy bear.
“You mus’ be Siobhan,” he said, pronouncing her name shuh-bon. She could hear an accent in his few short words and assumed her butchered name was victim to his way of speaking, not ignorance.
“And you must be Nolan.”
“Guilty’s charged,” he said, blushing faintly. “I guess this mus’ be my date for the night.”
Shane helped Nolan load the girl into his car. “Take her to a hospital. Do you think you can get Brigit’s help, um…making it seem like it’s on the level?”
“Relax, man. I’m jus’ gonna play good-guy hero type. Found her, don’t know nothin’. Jus’ doing what’s right. Shit gets tight, I’ll call Bri.”
“Is Brigit your boss?” Siobhan asked, unable to stop herself.
Nolan snorted. “Well, she’s my boss, know what I mean?”
Siobhan did not.
“Brigit is his girlfriend. Vampire,” Shane explained.
“Ah,” Siobhan said, still not a hundred percent certain she understood why a guy who hunted vampires would be dating one. A lot didn’t add up, but she figured it might take longer to explain than she had time to hear.
“You good?” Nolan asked Shane.
“Yeah, I’ll call you if shit meets fan and we need help. You bring the other thing I needed?”
Nolan nodded and opened the back door. “Never thought we’d need one. Secret’s weapon guy nearly cut off my left nut when I couldn’t cover the whole deposit. Good thing she has a credit account.”
Shane snorted. “Now you have to worry about her taking your left nut.” He reached into the backseat and swung a pump-action shotgun over his shoulder before he pulled out something heavier, bulkier and much meaner looking.
“What the hell is that?” Siobhan asked, dragging herself to her feet.
“AK-47,” Shane replied matter-of-factly. “I didn’t think a handgun was going to cut it with that thing.”
Siobhan peered over his shoulder into the dark interior of the car. “You hiding a grenade launcher or a bazooka in there?”
Nolan chuckled and closed the door. “I can only do so much in fifteen minutes.”
Chapter Fifteen
Tracking the fae turned out to be much easier than Siobhan had expected.
The creature had no sense of subtlety and had left a mess of dented cars and broken shop windows in its wake. Police cars dotted the streets, their blue and red lights bouncing off the tight, high walls and casting shadows that flitted and moved at will. The police officers didn’t seem to notice the heavily armed Siobhan and Shane as they moved off the sidewalk and down an alley, following the wreckage towards the northern entrance to Central Park.
“Why would it go to the park?” Shane asked, edging around a large dumpster that had been yanked away from a wall and pushed onto its side. Somewhere not far from the park a woman screamed loudly and a cacophony of car horns blasted.
They were definitely headed the right way.
“Last time it was out must have been hundreds of years ago. It’s probably drawn to something familiar and none of this…” she pointed to the bright lights and skyscrapers, “…would feel right to it. But that’s just my guess.”
She was as confused as Shane by the creature’s real motivations. If it had escaped with bloodlust in mind, why weren’t they following a trail of corpses? Aside from the screaming and the constant noise letting them know they were on the right track, they’d yet to come across any evidence the monster had hurt anyone. It had gobbled up the druids by the gate like they were bacon-wrapped scallops at a fancy dinner party. Yet here, where people numbered in the millions, it had yet to kill a single one, as far as she could tell.
They passed the park gate and into the dark interior of the tree-filled space, streetlights turning the trees into illuminated stained glass but not casting enough light to push away the night entirely. As they moved farther from the loud noise and brightness of the city streets, the constant throbbing at the back of Siobhan’s head began to wane some, but not enough she could ignore it.
She rotated her shoulders and rolled her neck, trying to shake off the aches threatening to steal all her attention. She needed to focus, and it was hard to do that with a tiny demon hacking away at the inside of her skull. Or doing a jig. Whatever was going on in there, it hurt.
Slinging the bow over her shoulder, she held out a hand to stop Shane’s advance. His heavy motorcycle boots weren’t quiet enough now that the rest of the noise of the city was gone.
“So, Red, what’s the plan?”
Siobhan appreciated the way Shane yielded to her wisdom on matters of fae, but even she wasn’t sure what to do with this particular one. She’d never known a fae who could increase its size exponentially. Or one with four legs and a horse’s head, for that matter. She was in over her head.
But she didn’t need him to know that. Two people drowning didn’t help anyone swim to shore.
“You know those big guns you brought?”
“Yup.”
“Point. Shoot.” She pointed a finger gun at him and pulled the thumb trigger.
“Simple. I like it.”
“First we have to find the damned thing.”
Siobhan stopped walking in front of a broken stone wall and looked down a tunnel of battered, uprooted trees and a fresh path of clawed, damp earth. The damage was so fresh the smell of dirt was heavy in the air and leaves were still falling from where they’d been torn apart.
Shane wrinkled his nose and played with the strap on the shotgun. “Doesn’t look promising, but I g
uess we can check it out.”
“What’s the matter, Hewitt, did you forget your white horse and shining armor at home?”
The hunter snorted. “Seems like the horse had a mind of its own. But I could use that armor if you know where I might get some.”
Siobhan took the bow from her shoulder, plucked one of the arrowheads from her strap and squeezed it to create an arrow. After climbing up onto the crumbling stone wall, she held her weapons in one hand and took the AK-47 from Shane so he could follow her up without shooting either of them in an accidental slip. When they were both safely on pseudo-solid ground, she handed back the gun like it had burned her.
“Don’t like the heavy firepower?”
Siobhan wiped her free palm on her pants. “I don’t like weapons I can’t control.”
“I think you could control it plenty fi—”
The sound of a roar echoed down the path, cutting short whatever witty retort Shane had been about to throw her way.
“They’re playing our song,” he announced.
Or at least that’s what Siobhan thought he said. She was already tearing down the path, bounding over fallen branches and dodging snapped logs that blocked a clear line and threatened to cut her if she got too close.
Shane was behind her, ungraceful but fast. Where she had sidestepped, he stomped directly on the debris, causing sticks to crunch loudly under his big boots. Siobhan climbed up on a rock, and Shane came up behind her, giving them a perfect vantage point over a clearing that hadn’t been there before. Trees were felled in a space about forty feet across that looked like a crop circle. In the center of the clearing was the fae, hauling a tree up from its roots and bashing the ground with it like it was a giant mallet. It was making a pained howling noise and would periodically stop attacking the tree long enough to cover its ears.
Siobhan thought about trolls and how sensitive they were to sound. It was possible this fae was similar and the noises of a modern city like New York were proving to be overwhelming for it. That was the only logical reason she could think of as to why it wasn’t on a rampant killing spree, making up for the seven human lifetimes her family had kept it locked up on the other side. It would take one hell of a distraction to put a monster of its size off a mission for bloodshed.
As it cupped its ears and kicked at the felled tree, Siobhan saw her opening. “Here goes nothing.” She held the bow and without a moment of hesitation let an arrow fly. She was already loading a second arrow when the first struck home, lodging itself in the monster’s exposed neck. It bellowed and jerked its head towards her, black eyes searching the empty space for its attacker. “You might want to get your gun ready,” Siobhan said. “Shit, as you so politely phrased it, is about to hit the fan.”
The second arrow sank into the creature’s skull, a direct shot through the ear. Shane sucked in a breath, and they both watched, expecting the beast to collapse. Instead it ripped the arrow out and hurled it into the air where it bounced as lightly as a toothpick off a still-standing tree.
The fae might have been distracted by sensory overload, but it wasn’t physically weakened.
Siobhan was loading another arrow and Shane readying his machine gun when the monster spotted their location. Though they hadn’t seen any new bodies, it must have eaten something because it was towering over twenty-five feet with forearms almost as big as Shane and legs so thick a lumberjack wouldn’t be able to hack them down.
“We’re supposed to kill this thing?” Shane asked.
“Ideally we just need to bring it down. If we can get it to stay in one place long enough, I can banish it back alive.”
The beast was charging for them, its steps so wide it would be on them in seconds.
“Hey, Red?”
“Yeah?” Siobhan’s bow hand was steady, her sights trained on the creature’s eyes.
“For what it’s worth…”
She glanced at him, a quick shift of her gaze, and he was smiling his dopey, charming grin at her. How the idiot could still seem so adorable an instant before certain death was beyond comprehension. But she sort of wanted to keep him around awhile longer.
“I know,” she replied. “Me too.”
She released the arrow while still looking at Shane, turning her attention back to the monster with enough time to see the metal arrowhead lodge deep into its eye. The fae took a wild, blind swing in their direction, and Shane tackled Siobhan to the ground a second before the top halves of the trees surrounding them were broken off like dry kindling.
There was no more time to say anything. He dragged her to her feet, and they ran through the tree line that skirted the clearing. The fae continued to whack at the earth and trees in an attempt to hit them, but with one eye out of service it kept striking a moment too late or a few feet off target.
Siobhan knew what she had to do.
“I need you to distract it,” she commanded.
Shane pulled her over a fallen tree and said nothing, so she wasn’t sure if he’d heard her. Looking beside her, she expected him to be running at her heels, but he wasn’t. Instead he slowed his pace, pushed her farther ahead of him and ran into the clearing spraying bullets at the creature’s knees. She was fairly certain he was singing something as well, but the sound of his voice was lost beneath the bellowing of their target as it flailed.
He’d definitely heard her, because there was no way on earth the creature would be focused anywhere else but on the tiny, irritatingly loud man pelting it with automatic-weapon fire.
Shane ran, dodging the collapsed trees as best he could but stumbling where he failed to see branches in the darkness. The fae was gaining ground, giving Siobhan a scant amount of time to do what she needed to. She followed the path around the outside of the clearing while tracking Shane and the monster, trying to judge where they’d be a few seconds before they got there.
She spotted a tree several yards ahead and picked up her pace, making a break across the clearing to reach it. Clambering up the low-hanging branches, she steadied herself on one of the arms and pivoted, taking aim at the fae’s remaining good eye. Her previous arrow was still lodged deep in its head, and her next target was a wildly blinking black orb.
She pulled back to fire, and the branch she was perched on snapped.
Siobhan scrambled to hold on to the tree before hitting the ground, latching her legs around the nearest limb, her upper body still moving until her head smacked hard against the trunk. Now she was dangling upside down, supported only by her thighs’ viselike hold on the tree with her back against the trunk. Her precarious situation wasn’t going to stop the monster from getting to Shane, and she didn’t have time to reposition herself.
Without righting herself, she reloaded the arrow that was still clutched in her hand and took aim, unleashing the projectile from her inverted vantage point. Only once she’d fired did she pull herself up onto the limb her legs had been clinging to.
The fae was shrieking when Siobhan jumped from the tree and landed on the edge of the clearing. Shane—whose machine gun must have run out of bullets—was blowing shotgun pellets into the blood-smeared legs of the creature. Now blind in both eyes, the monster was staggering.
“To your left,” Siobhan screamed, seeing the huge felled tree next to Shane.
He bellowed at the fae and vaulted across the trunk. The fae whipped its hands in front of it, giant clawed fingers cutting through the air, narrowly missing Shane’s legs as he got out of the way. The beast continued to move towards Shane, but as Siobhan had hoped, it didn’t see the log and stumbled. Briefly it looked as though it might regain its footing, but with four legs tripping at once, the imbalance proved to be too much, and it was impossible for the fae to stay standing.
Shane was almost crushed beneath the falling body but managed to sidestep in time and only took a hard smack to the ribs from the fae’s knuckles as it attempted to brace its fall.
They still had to move fast. Siobhan didn’t know how long it would be befor
e the fae recuperated, and she wanted it to be banished before that happened. Under normal circumstances she would cut out the thing’s heart, but she knew trying to saw the organ out would take more time than she had. She’d have to make due with the plain old regular blood.
Her ceremonial knife was out, and in the presence of fae blood was already glowing brightly and creating artificial daylight within the clearing.
“Girl,” growled the fae. “What are you going to do?” It sounded almost worried.
“Doing what you should have let me do before it got this far. I have to send you home.” Siobhan cut into one of its tangled red hind legs, whetting her blade’s appetite for blood and making the blue light grow brighter.
“It’s nothing like I remember it.” The creature’s rumbling voice sounded sad, resigned.
“Nothing can stay the same for that long.”
“I have,” it said.
She began to draw a circle around the fae’s body. “I’m sorry.” Though she wasn’t entirely sure what she was apologizing for.
“You’ve sent back hundreds of our kind dead. Why are you not killing me?”
“They left me no choice. You’re leaving me a choice.”
“I wanted to lay your world to ruin.”
The circle was half complete. “Then I’m doing my job. But I can do it without killing you.”
She was only a few feet away from where she’d begun, muttering the Gaelic words she knew by heart.
“I used to be feared. They thought me a god.” The fae’s voice was strained, thick with pain.
Siobhan cut her finger, and as the drop of blood fell, she thrust her knife into the ground, binding the circle. Light flooded outward, but with it came a large clawed hand. In the silence of the vacuum created by her spell, she hadn’t heard the monster cry out. She’d been lulled so thoroughly by the fae’s defeated tone and the sadness in its voice she had believed the monster had given up. Before the banishing could be finished, the creature took its parting shot at Siobhan, running razor-sharp claws over her abdomen even as its body faded out of reality.