by Lish McBride
Ezra peeked through the front window. “Mine’s gone. Maybe she got back up, or maybe she crawled somewhere to die. Either way, the coast is clear.” Wordlessly, Ikka came up and grabbed his bad arm. She snapped it expertly back into the socket, causing Ezra to yelp. A fine sheen of sweat appeared, a reaction to the pain, and he panted for a second, but he thanked Ikka nonetheless.
“You okay?” I asked. “Do you need Lock to take off his shirt to distract you from the pain?”
Ezra wiped sweat and blood from his forehead with the back of his arm. “I wouldn’t say no.”
Lock was kneeling, searching the pockets of the dead for ID. “I’m not taking off my shirt.”
“You’re no fun,” I said, stepping over the bound and gagged witches.
We went deeper into the house. The kelpies had surprised the witches in the kitchen. It was a mess of broken cabinets, smashed crockery, and thick black ichor. Spatters of blood could be seen here or there on the floor, but even if you grouped it all together, you could tell it wasn’t enough to kill someone. Or at least I could tell. Growing up Coterie, much like growing up drove, adds fun and interesting skill sets to your résumé.
I didn’t see any kelpies.
“Where do you think they went?” I asked.
Lock pressed a dishtowel to his side. “More important, where’s Thomas?”
22
ONE PERSON’S GLORIOUS NEW DAWN IS ANOTHER PERSON’S HOWLING NIGHT TERROR
WE FOUND THOMAS in the basement. The room was mostly empty except for a large aquarium full of the giant magic-eating snails and a pool. Someone had brought in a large portable swimming pool and set it up. The top was coated in thick green algae, the surface rippling with movement. Something was in there. Thomas was bloodied but upright, huddled in the corner. One witch lay torn open on the floor. The kelpies hadn’t made it out entirely unscathed. One was unconscious, his side and stomach slashed open. He was healing slowly. Another, a female, was heaving by the stairs, trying to shake whatever the witches had thrown at her. Gwenant and Fitz were both bloodied and torn, their faces grim. By all accounts, kelpies were amazing fighters. One was deadly and five were a force of nature, and yet Thomas seemed to have them at an impasse. Thomas was no weak power.
But as I stepped closer, I realized his strength hadn’t been enough. Thomas had been more seriously wounded in the fight than I’d first thought. One arm was sliced so deep, I could see bone. He wheezed when he breathed, blood-tinged saliva dripping from his mouth. He had a punctured lung at the very least. Between that and the blood loss, if Thomas didn’t get medical care soon, his upright days were over.
“You were supposed to capture him alive,” I said. Thomas wouldn’t have much incentive to tell us anything if he was already dying.
Gwenant turned on me, her eyes glowing with rage. “Two of mine are injured and you are complaining? How many have died from the snails? How many of your people have been lost?”
This is why I’m not a diplomat. I hardly ever say the right thing. “Apologies, Gwenant. I simply meant that it will be hard to extract information from him now.”
Thomas laughed, a horrible burbling sound. “Go ahead and ask, firebug. See what tonight has brought you.”
It’s never a good sign when someone confidently taunts you from his deathbed. “We need a cure for the fungus.” I didn’t expect him to respond, but he did.
“I don’t have one.” He cackled like it was a grand joke. “The snails, that was the plan. We were tired of the kelpies and of everything else, tired of sharing our lands with dangerous abominations. Every second that these kinds of creatures exist, they risk exposing us. Do you know what it’s like to live in fear every day? To live among humans, an easily scared population that would have no problem reinstituting witch hunts?” He wheezed, overly excited, and we had to wait until he was able to breathe again. “We couldn’t take it anymore. Living with that fear. But then your friend thought of the snails, and I saw hope. Safety was a few well-placed gastropods away.”
“I’m a firebug,” I said. “I already live like that. Where would I fall on your list, Thomas? Am I a danger to you? What about the dryads? Foxes? Hares? Where does your list end?”
“But that’s the beauty of it.” Thomas’s eyes were bright and pleading, trying to get me to understand. He held pressure on his wound, but I didn’t think it was doing much. “With the snails, we could free you from all of that. Wouldn’t you want that? Freedom? Normalcy?”
The thing is, two months ago I would have been on his offer like Ezra on a whoopie pie. But not now. The kelpies, Lock, Ezra, Katya—what were we if not our powers? What were we without them? They were part of us. My brief moment with the snail had shown me how true that was. Before, convinced that no good could come of my powers, I might have made that sacrifice anyway. Now I knew better—my gift, just like everyone else’s, could save just as much as it could hurt. I was no more a monster than your average human, with the potential for good and evil both living inside me. “No,” I said. “I wouldn’t want that.”
Thomas shook his head, insistent. “Maybe not you, but others—the ones that can’t pass. The ones that live in fear of the more dangerous creatures—”
I cut him off, because I finally got it. “So someone wakes up with a kelpie in their river, or an ogre next door, and here you come, the cavalry, ready to save them.”
“Yes!” he said, ecstatic that I understood at last.
“You don’t get to choose who lives and how,” I said.
His face crumpled and his shoulders sagged, but his eyes went from shining to banked coals. “Oh, but you do? How am I any different from you and your team, huh? You kill whomever you see fit. What makes it okay for the Coterie to do that and not me?”
I didn’t have a quick answer, but Lock did. “Alistair doesn’t send us in unless someone has already caused trouble. You’re striking preemptively. Assuming that dangerous and different means they will eventually commit a crime.”
Sylvie walked up then, her eyes filled with tears, her hands balled at her sides. “I wanted to help people, and you, you…” She squeaked, too angry to finish her sentence. Then she slapped Thomas so hard, the sound echoed. I’d never in my entire life seen Sylvie hit someone.
“Do you know anything about the fungus?” she snarled, face close to Thomas’s. “How do we stop it?”
He smiled, his teeth bloodstained. “No. Kill me. Raise me back from the dead and interrogate my corpse. But I know nothing about stopping the fungus. It was just a happy accident. One of the snails had a parasitic fungus when we got ahold of it. The spells changed it, and once we saw what it could do, why stop it? That way, even if the snails didn’t work, the fungus would finish the job.” Bloody spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth. “By themselves the snails can’t do much. They will drain you, sure, but they get full. It takes a group of them to drain someone dry. But what the snail can’t handle, the fungus can.”
I remembered what Dr. Wesley had said about parasites. The fungus lived on the snail, waiting for it to drain the magic off and make the host easier to inhabit. Then it moved in.
“And in the meantime, you make exposure of our world so much more likely, you dumb bastard,” Ikka snarled. “Do you know how hard it’s been for us to cover up your mess?”
Thomas seemed unconcerned. “Our ends justify our means.”
“He could be lying about the fungus,” Lock said. His hand was red where it held the towel to his side. He was losing a good amount of blood.
I shook my head. “But he’s not. He doesn’t care. He’s dying and he knows he’s unleashed a plague of biblical proportions, and he doesn’t care as long as it takes out the creatures he deems unworthy. But you know what, Thomas? The fungus can’t tell the difference.”
Thomas nodded, his eyes a little glassy. He was fading fast. “Then that’s the price we must pay for peace.”
“You are insane,” I said. “Barking mad.”
“Y
ou just don’t get it.” He sighed. “Too bad. You could have been a good ally.”
Ezra snorted. “Until you decided Ava was too dangerous to leave running about.”
Thomas sagged, sliding down the wall. “Still, I’ll get you, won’t I?” He flicked his hand out, blood flinging from his fingertips into the pool. “Wake up, my darling.” He sang then, a crooning tune with words I couldn’t understand. But even though I couldn’t grasp the exact meaning, I felt the gist of it. He was summoning something. He treated us all to his crazy stare and laughed one more wet, burbling laugh. “Wait until you meet my security system.” The last words came out in a wet wheeze. Then he died.
He dropped to the floor with a thud. After a moment, Lock moved forward and checked for a pulse, shaking his head when he found none.
“Well, that wasn’t ominous and creepy or anything,” I said. “What do you think he meant?” And that’s when the surface of the pool really started to move.
The water churned, and we all took a step back as a head emerged. There are a lot of weird creatures on this planet, things that people don’t know exist, and a lot of them feature elements found in other creatures. The peryton, for example, blend deer and bird. The vodyanoy combine amphibian, human, and sociopath. It’s hard to tell if these blendings are just that—combinations—or if they are simply a new thing that our brains have to piece apart and connect to other creatures so that we can understand what our eyes are seeing.
The creature that crawled out of the pool was like that. The head was reptilian, resembling a crocodile in all its giant-mawed, sharp-toothed glory. It hissed at us as it pulled itself out of the pool. Algae slid off its head, oozing over the yellow slitted eyes. The pebbled skin gave way to thick brown fur and a sturdy body. It fell to the floor with a resounding thud. Instead of a tapered crocodile tail, the creature’s tail was flat, like a beaver’s. We all backed into the wall, hugging the flat surface.
“What is it?” Katya said, her voice a harsh whisper.
“I don’t know,” I answered, “but that thing has got to be—what, fifteen feet? At least?” And a third of it was mouth. My knees wanted to buckle. I wasn’t an expert at such things, but from the size and the thump that accompanied its watery exit, I was estimating our new buddy at around the three-thousand-pound mark. What were the odds that it wanted to be friends with us?
It slid across the floor on thick, stout legs, heading right for Thomas’s body. Its mouth parted, revealing jagged teeth, and it hissed.
A few of us might have made it to the door, but there was no way we would all escape without some of us becoming a late-night nibble. The creature nudged Thomas’s body with its nose, its nostrils flaring. Then it ate Thomas.
Have you ever seen a crocodile eat? Sometimes they rub their snouts on their kill, an almost nuzzling, affectionate gesture. Then they clamp down and roll, twisting, tearing, the meat sliding down their throats with a few well-placed moves. The creature didn’t roll, probably because it was on land, but the rest was pretty similar. I hadn’t liked Thomas, but I liked watching him get torn to pieces even less. He deserved it, but the noises are going to stay with me for a long time.
Gwenant’s eyes rounded, her lips slightly parted. I couldn’t quite tell if she was scared, awed, or delighted. “It’s an afanc.” Everything held in stasis for a moment. The monster feasted and we breathed shallowly and nobody moved a muscle, as if one little twitch would break the spell.
Then someone’s phone started to vibrate. In the quiet of the room, it was incredibly loud. Heads spun, landing on Sylvie. Her face was sheet white. The monster screeched, bellowing in rage, swinging toward her on instinct. She pressed her back against the giant aquarium, her mouth open. She didn’t even try to dodge the freight train of creature coming at her. She was too stunned. My young human friend, who had never even heard of the Coterie until this week.
That might have been the end of Sylvie right there, if it hadn’t been for Fitz. He grabbed hold of the afanc’s tail and yanked. The crocodile teeth snapped so close to Sylvie that it tore a hole in her shirt, but at least she was still in once piece. Sylvie had her head turned, her eyes squeezed shut, so it took her a minute to realize she was still alive.
Fitz couldn’t quite pull the afanc back, but he stalled it with the help of another kelpie who’d joined him. The kelpies were inhumanly strong, but they were losing traction. And the creature was pissed off. It turned, losing interest in Sylvie, its gaze now on Fitz. It barreled toward him, tail swinging out and back legs hurtling into the tank. The tank wobbled. Sylvie, body stiff with fright, was still in danger. She moved, but I didn’t think it would be fast enough. Then Fitz, in all his bloody, naked glory, leapt over the afanc’s snapping jaws. One foot landed right between the creature’s eyes, and Fitz used the resistance to catapult himself right into Sylvie. He curled around her body and took her down to the floor. The aquarium crashed over them, sending shards of glass everywhere.
The noise startled the afanc, and it turned back around only to stop short when it heard a new noise. Gwenant was singing. I’d never heard a kelpie sing. Based on their ability to charm people when they spoke, I imagined their singing voices would be ten times better.
I was wrong.
You couldn’t even quantify how magnificent their voices were in comparison. Gwenant sang, and I was transported to a green meadow. A cool blue river swelled to my left, curling under an old stone bridge. The sun shone on my face, and the air tasted sweet and clean. The hills rolled emerald up into the mountains, and it was all so beautiful, I wanted to cry. As I moved through the mountains, I saw a lake nestled between them. The water stretched out before me, images of snowcapped mountains rippling in the surface.
When the song stopped, we were all on our knees, weeping. Gwenant was humming now, smiling serenely down at the afanc’s head nestled in her lap. As she hummed, she stroked the same spot between his eyes that Fitz had leapt from. “I haven’t seen one of these since I left Wales,” she said. “And this one is simply stunning. For all his faults, Thomas took good care of him.” She cooed, lifting the creature’s face up so she could kiss his nose. The afanc answered with a throaty purr.
“Why didn’t you do that sooner?” Ikka asked.
Gwenant scratched the afanc under its chin. “It’s been so long since I’ve sung that song. Everything was happening so fast—” The afanc nudged her when she stopped scratching, and she laughed. “I sang as soon as I could, hare.”
“Where were we just now?” I asked, wiping my face. My fingers were shaking.
“A lake in Wales. That’s where these lovely ones are from.” She continued to pet the afanc, who’d gone from being the most dangerous thing in the room to an overgrown puppy. I pulled myself up. It was over, done. We didn’t have a cure, but Gwenant had a pet, and we knew there were no ready answers, so we needed to head back.
“Not the best security system.” Ezra watched the scene, unable to take his eyes off the afanc. None of us could.
“Oh, likely it would have eaten you all if I hadn’t been here,” Gwenant said. “Isn’t that right, my darling?” I don’t know what was more disturbing—Gwenant baby-talking the afanc, or that it was happily wagging its tail in response.
Between Gwenant’s singing, fighting for our lives, and a ton of adrenaline, I’d forgotten that the tank we’d busted up held anything. At least, until Sylvie screamed. Snails. The tank had held snails. She was still cradled under Fitz, and he was covered in the wretched things. He wasn’t moving.
We would have to take our chances with the fungus. There was no way we could just leave Fitz there. We didn’t have any salt, but we’d gotten much better at killing those things. Katya and I blasted them with fire and ice. Lock and Ezra ran to Fitz, yanking the snails off him. Ikka and Olive were both sporting collapsible batons and were using them with amazing efficiency.
The last kelpie—I didn’t know his name—limped over and helped us roll Fitz. He was so still, I thought
he might be dead. Sylvie scrambled up, grabbing his hand as she did. She was crying hard now and hiccuping a little. Fitz’s color wasn’t good, and I didn’t like the way his arm hung limply from Sylvie’s grasp.
“He’s got a pulse,” the kelpie said. “Thready and weak, but there. He should see someone. Your doctor, maybe.”
“You don’t want to take him with you?” I asked. “What do kelpies normally do when they get sick?”
Gwenant walked over, her new afanc friend in tow. “We don’t get sick, and if we took him into the water now…” She sighed and pushed Fitz’s hair back from his face. “We should be merciful and feed him to my friend, for a kelpie without water…” She trailed off, her expression a mixture of pity and horror.
“Without water?” I stared at her helplessly, hoping I wasn’t understanding her correctly.
“His magic,” the other kelpie said sadly. “We can’t feel it. The snails ate it. If we put him in the water now, he would drown.” He made a strange hand gesture, and for some reason, I was reminded of when people cross themselves to ward off bad luck. “I would want someone to take mercy on me.”