Four redcaps walked slowly out of the alley. One of them reached with a single hand, picking Ewan up off the vomit-puddled pavement. It held him upright, clenched a clawed fist, and gave him a solid shot to the gut, knocking the wind clean out of him. Ewan flailed, gasping for air, unable to fathom what was happening.
The blonde watched Ewan coldly. She shook her head and her features fell away. Her hair shortened as if shaken off, her slight chin blunted, hardening with stubble. Her eye cocked to one side and her nose swelled until it broke. Within seconds the waif was gone and only Knocks remained.
Ewan stared, horrified, at the creature before him. It was a cruel mockery—a backwoods, inbred, swamp-baby reflection of himself, like something that had been thrown out into the street and run under a bus. His mind fractured. Images he could not understand surfaced into his thoughts. He’d seen this man before as a boy, but couldn’t place where. It wasn’t that they looked similar; he knew him, right down to the tilt of his eye and the patches of hair missing from his head.
A fist cracked into the back of Ewan’s skull, sprawling him. Two ribs splintered beneath the force of a cast-iron boot. A claw raked down his back, cutting deep into his flesh, tearing out a chunk of his shoulder. Ewan screamed, but a hand immediately muffled him. Fists rained down. Boots kicked up. One redcap picked him entirely off the ground, raising him two and a half feet above it before throwing him farther down the alley. Ewan crashed to the ground, layers of skin scraping off as he skidded across pavement, cartwheeling into a Dumpster with a clang.
Ewan pushed himself to his feet, confused, struggling against the pain, the terror. Through the agony of his broken ribs and the dull throbbing in his cheekbone he felt sheer, unbridled terror. Never before had he been more afraid for his life.
Knocks and the four redcaps boldly strolled down the alley, savoring the fear, confident Ewan wouldn’t be getting away. Ewan looked down the alley behind him, saw only shadow. Then, glancing back, he saw Nora, a fifth redcap grabbing her behind the Dumpster. The redcap pawed at her like a drunken stepfather, smelling her hair and flicking his tongue as she wriggled against his groping.
“She betrayed you, Ewan,” said Knocks, walking ever closer. “She’s not who she says she is.”
“What’s going on?” asked Ewan with a whimper. He reached up, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, smearing blood and snot across his face.
“You are going to die for what you’ve done,” said Knocks. “That’s what’s going on.”
“I haven’t done anything!” he cried. His voice was shrill, like a child being punished in someone else’s stead. There was no man to his shriek, just teary, crying, terrified boy.
“Oh yes, you have. But the Fading has choked the memories out. Before we’re done here, I’ll have beaten them back into you. You’ll remember. You’ll remember everything.”
Ewan fell to his knees. Images cycled, bits of someone else’s childhood rattling around his brain like coins in a tin cup. He looked up at Nora. She had stopped struggling and instead looked at him with tears in her eyes. Their gazes locked and Ewan couldn’t tell if she felt love or pity. “What’s happening?” he mouthed to her silently.
“Tell him what’s happening,” said Knocks. “He wants to know.”
“No,” said Nora, shaking her head, warm tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Tell him, Mallaidh,” said Knocks. “Tell him what you are. Tell him why he’s going to die.”
She shook her head harder. “No!”
“Nora?” begged Ewan. “What’s he talking about? What aren’t you telling me?”
“You hear that, Nora? He wants to know what you’re not telling him.”
“Shut up!” she yelled.
“Only one of us here is lying, Mallaidh,” said Knocks. “Tell him who you are. Show him what you really are.”
“No!”
“Tell him!”
The redcap holding Mallaidh twisted her arm, almost snapping it off.
She screamed, her glamour falling away.
Her hair lengthened, light blond curls sprouting from the dark roots, tumbling down to her shoulders. Her cheekbones softened; her chin narrowed; her skin became three shades more radiant. Her eyes glowed blue in the dark. Nora passed away before Ewan’s eyes, the mask falling off, leaving behind something far too beautiful to be human.
“What is this?” asked Ewan. “What the hell is all this?”
“A family reunion,” said Knocks. He swung his leg, kicking Ewan across the chin so hard it picked him up off his knees, knocking him on his back. “You see, this is the girl of your dreams. I know this because we are the same, you and I. In many ways. She was my dream girl, once. But you took her. And the night I lost her was the same night your mother took mine.” Knocks leaned over Ewan, a bit of drool dripping onto Ewan’s chin. “You owe me more than you can imagine, Ewan. I aim to collect. And this time, your boyfriend isn’t here to save you.”
Knocks looked up at his redcap accomplices, waving to the one holding Mallaidh. “Dietrich, let her go.” The redcap nodded, loosening his grip. She elbowed him off her, bolted toward Ewan, but was halted by Knocks’s outstretched hand. “Go near him and you both die. Right here, right now. Leave and you live.”
“But I—,” she began.
“But nothing,” said Knocks, refusing eye contact. “You leave or I’ll let my friends here have their way with your corpse.” The words languished in the air like rotting flesh. Dietrich smiled broadly.
Mallaidh shivered, staring gravely at Ewan. His eyes were hollow, confused and loveless. She turned and ran, never once looking back, her sobs trailing into the night, flecks of glamour trickling off, leaving a brief glistening comet’s tail behind as she faded into the dark. In an instant, she was gone.
“Now, how best to kill you?” Knocks stroked his chin, pacing the length of the alley. “Pick him up.”
Time slowed, Ewan’s mind wandering blindly through a thousand memories—things he remembered, but wasn’t sure how. They were someone else’s thoughts, someone else’s dreams, though they swam around in his head as if they were his own. And as a redcap reached down, slinging Ewan’s flopping, broken body over its arm, Ewan reached out and snatched the bloody red cap from atop his head. The redcap went limp, bowing under the weight of the grown man atop it, and the two fell to the ground.
Ewan rolled the cap around in his hand, wondering what to do with it, for what seemed like the better part of an hour. In truth, he’d raised it to his own skull before the body had hit the pavement. He didn’t know why; he just did it. Strength surged through every fiber of his being. His wounds no longer ached; his shattered bones no longer stung against the inside of his flesh. He felt whole. Powerful. Invincible. Most of all, he was pissed, angrier than he’d ever been. The other redcaps scampered fleetly toward him, but it was too late. Ewan had donned the hat of a redcap.
He rose to his feet. He picked the redcap up off the ground by the scruff of his neck, then slammed him headfirst into the brick wall beside them. His head popped like a rotten tomato, spraying the wall, catching Ewan in the back splatter. As the redcap’s blood hit the cap, Ewan felt stronger still.
He spun around and swung a wild haymaker into an oncoming redcap. His fist connected with a crack of thunder, shattering the redcap’s jaw, sending him backward through the alley, across the street, and, with the force of a truck, into a brick storefront.
With time moving more slowly than he’d ever known it, Ewan kicked squarely the chest of another redcap running toward him, its rib cage turning to powder. It flew backward into Dietrich, picking him up off the ground, carrying them both into the street.
Only Knocks and Otto remained standing. Redcap blood dripped off Ewan’s fist; he smeared it across the bit of cap covering his brow. Ewan grew stronger still. Knocks could tell by the look in his eye that there was littl
e chance of surviving this. Something had gone horribly wrong and once again the stolen child of Tiffany and Jared Thatcher had somehow gained the upper hand.
It was time for a strategic retreat.
“Run!” shouted Knocks as he turned the corner, scrambling for his life. The redcap followed in kind. Dietrich rose to his feet, offered his companion a meaty, taloned hand, picking him off the ground. They too ran. And before Ewan could reach the end of the alley, the final broken redcap across the street was limping away with the rest of them.
Ewan’s head pounded, his heart raced, memories nearly a decade and a half old echoing in pieces through his thoughts. He still couldn’t put it together; there was no way to be sure if what he was remembering were even memories at all. It was all so horrific. His nightmares of little men had been plucked from his brain and brought into the real world to beat the life out of him.
But how did he know to take their hat? And what the fuck was Nora? He looked to the sky, trying to find answers in the stars; he begged, but no answers came. Only one name stuck out. The name of a little boy he remembered once turning a redcap into rose petals; who chased off devils with a poem about lightning; who had once pulled him off an altar and walked him through the forest, away from a legion of monsters.
Colby Stevens.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
THE TRUTH, AT LAST
The text message read simply: In trouble. Don’t know what’s happening. Coming over. That’s all Colby needed to know. This was a day Colby had long feared, feeling woefully unprepared for it. Though he had questions, he dreaded the answers. What had happened? What did he remember?
Bambambambambam! The knock came, quick and furious, screaming open the door now! Colby didn’t hesitate; he didn’t need to look through the peephole. He could feel the rush of energy rippling on the other side. Ewan was a torrent of wild emotion and raw dreamstuff. The door opened, Ewan bursting through, frazzled, uninvited.
He was a mess. His forehead was a dried, caked smear of red, his hair a greasy, blood-soaked matte. Ewan squinted, one eye swollen shut, the other merely blackened a deep purple. He paced around, his hands fidgeting nervously with the soft red cap, fingers stained red from rolling it around in them for so long. Spatters of blood crisscrossed his shirt. Fresh blood still leaked slowly out of his nose.
Ewan looked at Colby. “How long?”
“How long what?”
“How long have you known? How long have you remembered what happened to us as kids?”
“I never forgot,” said Colby. “I’ve always known.”
He double-bolted the door, closed his eyes, and mumbled to himself, barring the door with further protections.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
Colby, still concentrating, didn’t bother to look up. “No. I didn’t.”
“Well, why the fuck not?”
A pause. Then . . . “It wasn’t my place,” he said.
“Wasn’t your place? Who made me forget?”
“You did. I mean, it just happens. What the hell happened tonight?”
“Someone tried to kill me.”
“Okay, let’s take this very slowly. Who tried to kill you tonight?”
Ewan shook his head. “I don’t know. My brother, my cousin. I don’t know who the fuck it was. He said we were family and he looked just like me. Only . . . like a fucked-up fun-house-mirror version. The monster you keep in the attic, you know?”
“What?” None of this sounded familiar.
“He had this army of little, bearded men with claws for hands and metal boots.”
“And red caps, like that one?” asked Colby.
“Yeah.”
“That’s gotta be Knocks,” said Colby.
“What?”
“Knocks. Your changeling. I mean, a changeling. I . . . I completely forgot about him. The changeling the fairies replaced you with when you were born. They’re not supposed to live this long.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“They typically die in childhood. Yours is still around.”
“Why’s he trying to kill me?”
“Hell if I know. What have you done recently to get his . . .” Colby trailed off. “Coyote.” His face fell immediately into his hands. He sighed deeply, massaging his temples with his thumb and middle finger. Without looking up from his hand, he began again. “Is there anything else weird I should know about? Anything at all?”
“I have a girlfriend,” Ewan stated plainly.
“Weird, not irregular.”
“She’s one of them.”
Colby looked up. Shit.
“She was there. They made her change.”
Colby’s expression weakened. This was getting worse. “What does she look like?”
Ewan reached into his pocket, pulling from it a wadded-up sketch of the little girl. It was bloodstained and tattered, but still recognizable. “Like her,” he said. “But all grown up.”
Colby sighed deeply. “Oh, for the love of all that’s holy, Ewan.” He began to pace. “Lives in the Hill Country with her uncle.” Ewan stood in place, baffled.
“What? You act as if I should have known this.” He grew angry, got mean, a caged dog barking savagely at the very end of his chain. “And frankly, I probably should have.”
“I didn’t make you forget. It was for the best. They were never supposed to come after you. That was the deal. I left them alone, they left you alone. That. Was. The deal.”
“You left them alone? So what is your deal, anyway? You’ve always been weird, always kept your secrets.” He straightened up and gave Colby a stern look. “What are you?”
Colby didn’t know how to answer that. He shrugged. “I don’t really know. Wizard might be a good way to explain it, I guess. That’s what I wished for and this is what I got.”
“Wished?” Ewan thought long and hard, trying to wrestle a memory from the tide of his thoughts. He brought one to the surface, his face mellowing. “You had a genie.”
“Yeah.”
“Why can’t I remember this stuff? I mean, I should remember this.”
“Because magic is a motherfucker.”
“What?”
“The Fading,” said Colby, shaking his head. “Children taken by fairies forget. It’s not unheard of for the memories to return, but the brain is funny. Trying to remember something that happened to you twenty years ago is hard enough when you’ve had twenty years to remember and reflect upon it. When you haven’t, it’s like seeing images from a movie you don’t remember watching but recognize anyway. You’ll never remember it all. Just pieces.”
“And we were . . . ?” Ewan motioned a finger back and forth between himself and Colby.
“We were friends.”
“So I was taken by fairies?”
“When you were an infant, yeah.”
“Why?”
“So they could turn you into a fairy and sacrifice you in place of one of their own.”
“Well, how did you end up out there?”
Colby shrugged. “I met a djinn. I made a wish.”
“For what?”
“To see the world. All the magical things there were.”
“So you just wanted to see monsters?”
Colby shrugged. “I was eight. It seemed cool at the time.” Ewan grimaced. “You know, I was just a tourist until I met you. It was saving you that drove me to make my second wish. To become . . . what I am now.”
“Why’d you do it?” asked Ewan.
“Because I promised you that I would.”
“So you’re saying it’s my fault?”
“It’s our fault. It’s their fault. It’s Yashar’s fault. It’s no one’s fault. It is what it is and now we’re left to deal with it.”
“So all this time, you knew.�
�
Colby nodded. “Yeah.”
“And all those times you came to visit me when I was a kid? All the times you checked up on me at my apartment and asked me stupid questions? You’ve been . . . ?”
“Looking out for you.”
“Why?”
“I told you, I promised you that I would.”
“I don’t know whether to hug you or beat the living shit out of you.”
“When you figure it out, will you give me a few seconds’ warning, either way?”
“Yeah. I owe you that much.”
“Speaking of beatings, where’d you get the cool hat?”
“Took it from one of those things.”
“Took it?” asked Colby.
“Snatched it right off his head and then put him through a wall.”
“But he’s okay, though, right? I mean, he got up?”
“Oh, hell no. His head is pulp on the pavement. The rest got away, though.”
“Oh,” said Colby gravely. “Oh, this is bad.”
“What, did you expect me to let him live?”
“I . . . I don’t know what I expected. But killing one of them only makes this worse. Much, much worse.”
Ewan jabbed his finger into Colby’s chest several times, punctuating each word with it. “Hey! They! Came after! Me!”
“Doesn’t matter. They’ll be back for blood, in force.”
“So what are we gonna do?”
“We?” asked Colby.
“Yeah, we. Unless you have some awesome spell that can fix this all up? You know, use your magic words and make this all go away.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Well, whatever it is you say. You do know spells, right?”
“No. Magic isn’t about rituals and words. You don’t just speak a phrase in Latin and then bam! weird shit happens.”
“Then how does it work?”
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