“Why are you here?” Adele asked softly. “Why did you choose to be the one?”
“I have my reasons,” Declan said.
This wasn’t going to get them anywhere. “There is a changeling,” Rose said, ignoring Declan’s sharp glance. His hand abruptly left hers. “Casshorn has some sort of hold over him. His name’s William.”
“Is he the one who hung Emerson on Dead Horse Oak?” Emily Paw asked.
Rose nodded. “Declan and William were friends, and he wants to save him.”
“An army buddy, I bet.” Tom Buckwell nodded. “Figures. It’s good for us. Makes it nice and personal, so you’ll fight harder. You got a plan?”
“I can take Casshorn in a one-on-one physical fight,” Declan said. “But he knows this. I need to separate him from the hounds. Since the device produces the hounds continuously, one at a time, the only way to get Casshorn alone is to rapidly destroy a large number of his beasts. Unfortunately, he seems to be directing their actions. He may not be fully human, but he would recognize a trap. I would know more if I could survey his position and see what sort of odds we were facing.”
Jeremiah rose. “I think we’ve heard enough. We need to confer. Let’s let the young ones get some air.”
AS the wooden door shut behind her and Declan, Rose blinked against the sunlight and sank on the porch. “Well, that went as well as it could.”
“You told them about William,” he said.
“Yes, I did. Words like ‘duty’ don’t mean much to them. They understand friendship and family. They wouldn’t touch you because you’re powerful and they’re afraid of retribution from the Weird. They can’t hurt the hounds, because they absorb magic. But they could hurt William. With things the way they are, if they saw a strange changeling, they might act first and ask questions later. They’re all cursers, Declan. You saw what Jeremiah did to that bird, and you know what my grandmother tried to do to you.”
She faced the weighty look in his eyes. “I know it’s a private thing between you and him. But it was best they knew. They might not hurt him now.”
“Why the sudden love for William?”
“Are you jealous?” She narrowed her eyes.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I worry about William, because he’s important to you,” she said. “Because I feel that until the two of you settle things between yourselves, it will eat at you. And if William’s truly helping Casshorn . . . You’ll have to kill him, won’t you?”
“Yes,” Declan said.
He would have to kill his best friend. Rose looked away, at the trees, at the grass, at her hands. Her stomach churned. It had all gone so wrong somehow, and so fast, and fixing it seemed impossible. Two weeks ago, life was a normal drudgery, and seemingly overnight, her stable world became the place where demonic creatures hunted small boys so they could eat them and the man she loved had to pick between his survival and the life of his best friend.
She was caught in an ugly dream and couldn’t wake up, and the fear that clung to her every second was worst of all. She was scared for the boys and Grandma and terribly frightened for Declan, so badly it hurt inside, as if her bones ached. If she let herself dream just a little, she glimpsed a hint of fragile happiness that might even be hers, if not forever, then for a little while, and it was about to be ripped away from her. She was so sick of being scared. “You said you were a Marshal. Is this what you do?” she asked. “This is what your job is like?”
Declan nodded.
“And it’s always like this?”
“This is probably the worst,” he said. “But yes, there are always choices I don’t want to make. It’s my duty as Marshal. A lot is riding on my back right now. If I fail to kill Casshorn, people will die, the Duke of the Southern Provinces will be dishonored and possibly have to step down, your town will be wiped out, and I’ll lose you. And I don’t even know if I have you.”
Rose chewed on that. Did “I don’t even know if I have you” mean “I don’t even know if you like me” or did it mean “I don’t even know if I’ll win the challenges and get to own you”?
“You won’t lose me just because you’ve failed,” she said.
“If I fail, I’ll be dead,” Declan said.
Suddenly she was angry. All that worry and fear mixed in her, and him talking so calmly about dying squeezed it together into pure fury. She was furious at Casshorn for putting them all through it. “Oh no, you won’t.”
His eyebrows crept up.
“You’ll survive this,” she told him. “I’ll be right there to make sure you’ll make it out alive, even if I have to drag your bloody body out of the Wood on my back. I still have a challenge left, and I will stump you with it. You won’t rob me of my victory, Lord Camarine.”
A light sparked in his eyes. “I’ll have to postpone my dying then.”
“You do that,” she told him. “I don’t know what will become of this thing between you and me, but no brainsick blueblood crackpot is going to take away my chance to find out.”
“Have you made up your mind, then?” he asked.
“About what? About surrendering to your manly charms?”
“Yes.”
“Not yet,” she said. “I’m still thinking about it.”
“Is there anything I can do to persuade you?” He leaned forward, a dangerously focused expression on his face. His green eyes turned warm and wicked, and she froze, snared in his stare.
“I can’t think of anything,” she murmured.
He was close, entirely too close, only a couple of inches away. She saw his lips, curving in a sly smile, a network of thin scars by his left eye, his long eyelashes . . .
“Are you sure, Miss Drayton?” he asked, his voice low and husky.
“I’m sure,” she whispered, and then he closed the distance between them.
His hand cupped the back of her head, and he kissed her. She opened her mouth, tasted iced tea and Declan. He smelled of sweat, mixed with light sandalwood musk and sun-kissed skin. She would recognize his scent anywhere, just as she would recognize the strength in the arms around her. He held her as if daring the world to come over and make an issue of it. She let herself sink into that embrace, sliding her hands up the hard muscles of his chest to his neck and to his short hair. He pulled her closer, kissing harder, hungrier, and she licked the inside of his mouth and molded herself to him. Declan growled, a very male possessive sound that sent a thrill from her neck down her spine.
The floor behind them creaked. They broke apart a fraction of a second before the door swung open. Rose stared straight ahead, trying to catch her breath.
“Well, it took some doing, but they decided to help you,” Grandma’s voice said behind her. “We have a plan, or some semblance of one. Tom’s coming out to explain it to you. He’s all excited at playing soldier again. What exactly happened to the two of you? You look like you got into my pantry and ate all of my jam.”
“We’re fine,” Rose managed, stealing a glance at Declan. He looked halfway between shell-shocked and frustrated.
“All right then.” Éléonore’s tone plainly said she wasn’t sure what they were selling, but she sure as hell wasn’t buying it. She lingered for another long breath, shook her head, and went inside.
“We need a barn,” Declan said.
“What?”
“A barn,” he said, with the gravity of a commander planning an attack. “We need a barn or one of those storage areas for the Broken vehicles.”
“A garage?”
He gave her a short nod. “A private, relatively remote location, with thick walls to dampen the sound and preferably a sturdy door I could bolt from the inside, keeping your grandmother, your brothers, and all other painfully annoying spectators out . . .”
Rose began to laugh. A make-out bunker . . .
“I’m glad you find our dilemma hilarious,” he said dryly.
Tom Buckwell emerged onto the porch then and squeezed his giant body be
tween the two of them. “Here’s the deal. Attacking Casshorn head-on is straight out, because he’s got too many hounds with him, right?”
“Right,” Rose said.
“To get to Casshorn, you need to nuke the hounds. To nuke the hounds, you have to separate them from Casshorn or attack him at his lair. This is what guys in the Broken call a catch-22. Here’s how I’m going to make your day . . . you do have ranks in the Weird, don’t you?”
“We do,” Declan said.
“What was yours?”
“Legionnaire First Class.”
“What is that? Is that like an officer?”
“No,” Declan said.
“An NCO, then.” Tom grinned. “I was a Staff Sergeant myself. Suppose I call you ‘Sergeant,’ would you go with that?”
“That will be fine,” Declan said.
“Good then, Sahgent.”
Rose rolled her eyes. Funny how “sergeant” became “sahgent” all of a sudden, and Tom had morphed from a surly bear into Declan’s best buddy, all smiles and camaraderie. It was a classic Edge tactic. She’d seen it employed with outsiders before. The six elders didn’t know Declan, they had no way of verifying the information he’d given them, and they were afraid of him. So Tom Buckwell had chosen to play a “friend,” hoping to establish common ground, get into Declan’s confidence, and stab him in the back if necessary. With some men, it might have worked, but Declan had good instincts and Buckwell was laying the none-too-bright we’re-all-just-army-buddies on too thick.
“Casshorn might be a goner, but he was human to begin with, so he’s still vulnerable there. We build a trap, and the elders will curse his arse into sleep. No matter how inhuman he is, the six of us aren’t without skill. We’ll hold him at least for a few hours. Meanwhile you and Rose here lead the hounds into the trap, kill them off, and then go after Casshorn. Good plan, yeah?”
“Great plan,” Declan said. “What kind of a trap?”
“Haven’t thought that far yet,” Tom said.
“How are you going to curse him?” Rose asked. Sleep would be the obvious choice: unlike pain curses, it was subtle. Casshorn wouldn’t even know anything was wrong. He’d simply get tired and fall asleep. “To cast sleep, we need a thing of his. Hair. Piece of clothing.”
“Haven’t thought that far yet,” Tom said.
Some plan. Rose sighed. Over half a millennium of experience between the six of them, and this was what they came up with.
“Trap first,” Declan said. “Without the trap, we have no plan. Bullets don’t work against the hounds. They go straight through their bodies. Dismemberment works. Flash does, too, but we have only two flashers. Fire, but they know to steer clear of it.”
“So it has to be something subtle. Can we poison them?” Tom asked.
Declan shook his head. “I doubt it. I know that the first time it was found, they had tried hemlock and arsenic on hounds with no result. Ideally, we need a slow-acting trap, something that would kill them slowly or in a gradual fashion so as not to alarm Casshorn out of his sleep.”
“Like drowning?” Tom asked. “Lure the hounds out into a lake and drown them one by one?”
“Possibly. Unfortunately, they can hold their breath for a long time, and they’re good swimmers.”
Silence fell. Leanne wandered over and came to sit in a rocking chair.
“Too bad we couldn’t electrocute the hound like that troll,” Declan said.
“Oh, now that is a capital idea, Sahgent.” Tom nodded. “Except we don’t know if electricity works against then.”
“It does,” Leanne said. “Before Karen Roe left for the Broken, she told me she killed a hound with electricity. Ta sered it to death.”
“How do you Taser something to death?” Tom’s eyebrows rose.
“Her mom got it into her head that Karen’s house would get broken into and bought her one of those expensive gun-looking Tasers,” Leanne said. “You pop a cartridge in and fire, then you disconnect the cartridge and reload. She’s kind of hard to buy for, so every Christmas or so the family would get her some of those cartridge packs. They’re like sixty bucks for two. She shot the beast once, but it didn’t croak, so she just kept reloading the cartridges and shooting it until it stopped wiggling. She said the damn hound cost her over two hundred bucks.”
“Well, we can’t take time to Taser them, and I just don’t see how we’d be able to stick each one of them with a live wire. They’d overrun us,” Tom said.
“Why don’t you just put the two together? Drop a live wire into a lake and electrocute the lot of them until they drown?” Rose asked.
The men looked up, and she found herself on the receiving end of two stares, one green, one brown.
“What?”
“That’s a good plan,” Declan said.
“It might work,” Tom said.
Declan glanced at him. “Is there a large enough lake nearby?”
“Laporte Pond,” Tom said.
Declan got up. “I need to see it.”
Tom nodded. “It’s perfect. It will take us a good hour to get there on foot, though, so if we want to go today, best to do it now. I need to check on my daughters anyhow, make sure they cleared out. Holly, I’m not worried about, but Nicki meanders like molasses in January. She was supposed to be out this morning, but I bet she’s still there, squatting on her bags like a mother hen.”
“I’ll come, too,” Rose said. “If you’re going to curse Casshorn, I’ll have to pick up a couple of things from Grandma’s. The boys are reasonably safe here for the time being.”
Leanne sighed. “That’s all good, but how are you going to make the hounds go into the water?”
Declan’s face was unreadable. “We’ll use bait.”
“Like what?” Leanne frowned.
“One of us,” Rose said. “The hounds are attracted to magic. He means me or him, Leanne. One of us will be bait.”
TWENTY-TWO
ROSE hugged herself and peered at the placid, tea-colored water of Laporte Pond. Twelve hundred feet long and close to five hundred feet across at the widest spot, the pond sat in a depression just west of town. Tall grayish cypresses flanked it like guards, their bloated trunks blocking the shore completely except for the far west end. A broken, dilapidated dock jutted sadly from the center of the pond.
Next to her, Declan crouched and dipped his fingers into the water. Tom Buckwell gave him a wide berth. Declan wasn’t buying all his “Aw, shucks, Sahgent” nonsense, and she suspected Buckwell realized that as well, because he watched Declan the way one would watch a large predatory animal.
“There used to be a rowboat,” she explained. “You could take it to the dock and fish. The boat sank about two years ago, and nobody bothered to get another one. And you can’t really swim in it—too much algae.”
Declan pivoted on his feet and glanced up to where twin power lines were etched against the sky.
“We’re stealing power from the Broken,” Tom explained. “Used to be there was no way to run a power line into the Edge. But about fifty years ago, the boundary crawled out farther into the Broken, about forty feet or so. Nobody knows what caused it, but when it was done crawling, we found a power pole in the Edge and the line was live. We got together and made a deal with the local co-op that owned the pole. We pay them a shitload of money, and they don’t ask what’s draining their power.”
Declan looked at the dock. Rose followed his gaze. The dock wasn’t very big. Twelve by twelve feet. Old tires hitched to its sides bobbed in the water. Either she or Declan would be on that dock, flashing to get the hounds’ attention. She’d been thinking about it for the last two hours, and the more she thought about it, the more certain she became that she should be the one. She could do it. Get on the dock. Electrify the pond. Flash a few times to attract the hounds and watch them pile into the deadly water. Simple enough. How hard could it be, right?
She pictured herself on the dock, surrounded by hounds. And what if electricity d
idn’t work on them? Alarm squirmed through her. No, it was a mistake to think like that. She raised her chin up a bit. It would be fine. Even if the electricity didn’t kill them, it would be fine. She had more than enough flash to deal with them.
If she stood on the dock instead of Declan, he would be safe. He could go after Casshorn while she dealt with the hounds. Casshorn would be asleep, and Declan would have an easier time dealing with him. If she could just occupy the hounds, he might come out of the fight alive.
Rose hugged herself tighter and glanced at Declan. He was looking at her.
“A man who knows what he’s doing could hold that dock for a long time,” Tom was saying. “I figure we cut the line there.” He pointed at a break between two cypresses. I know some fellows in town who work at a tire-retreading plant. We can get some bias tire tread—the stuff comes in rolls—and roll it out on that dock to insulate it and keep you from slipping into the water, ’cause if the beasts get to the dock, you’ll be standing in some slimy gore. We’ll get you some rubber-soled boots, and you’ll be good to go.”
“There is no need for him to be on the dock,” Rose said. “I can do it. I’ll be fine. My flash is almost as powerful as his.”
Tom made a low grumbling noise into his beard.
“Casshorn will be asleep,” she said. “His hounds will be occupied. It’s the perfect time for Declan to go after them.”
“No,” Declan said.
“Declan, this makes total sense,” she said.
“No.”
Tom shrugged. “If he says no, it’s a no. It’s his show.”
“Why the hell not?” She crossed her arms. “It’s a good idea. You won’t get another clean shot at him like that, Declan!”
He simply rose. “I’ll escort you to your house.”
Tom furrowed his eyebrows at them. “Well, you sort it out between yourselves. I’ll swing by my daughters’ places and pick you up at your house in about an hour. Two, if I have to drag Nicki out of the Edge kicking and screaming.”
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