by Helen Adams
“Melrakki has regular contact with my Clan.” She sounded proud, and for good reason. If you could get a faerie to behave he’d make an excellent spy.
“Daphne,” Raz whispered, “Melrakki is a vaengrjarl name.”
“Is it?” I replied, feigning ignorance. “I had no idea.”
“We need to talk about this –”
“Later,” I said.
From their interactions I’d already guessed that Mel was – somehow – related to Lukas, and now Raz had worked it out too. The fact that she was a kitsune raised interesting questions. But there were more important issues to deal with right now.
To Daisy I said, “If you know what’s going on, let’s not waste time.”
“I can’t help you.”
There was that fucking brick wall again. My heart sank, and with it my hopes for rescuing Alice.
“Why not?” I demanded, sagging.
“Because we’re at war.”
“You’re always at war!”
She nodded, acknowledging the point. “This is more than just a border skirmish. This is…” She hesitated. “Invasion.”
I blinked. Daisy never hesitated.
“By who?”
“Clan Gooseberry and Clan Rosehip have banded together. They’re petitioning support from Dandelion, Rowan and Tulip.”
“Holy shit!”
“That’s significant?” Lee asked over Raz’s groan. Like me, Raz understood the importance.
“Briar’s the biggest Clan in town. Biggest by lots.” I held my arms wide apart. “Gooseberry and Rosehip aren’t even half as big. The other three are just drops in the ocean. But if they all club together…”
“Briar gets wiped out.” Raz was grim.
“If we could help you, we would,” I told Daisy. I forced a polite smile. “But we kind of have this problem…”
“There is something that Briar can do to help,” she said. “I must remain here with the bulk of my warriors. But I can spare a few.”
Hope flared through my stomach. It wasn’t the horde I wanted, but at this point I’d take whatever I could get.
“How many?”
Daisy whistled. The swirling crowd dropped away, melting back into whatever hidey-holes or guard positions they’d emerged from. Even Daisy was gone.
But she’d left some behind.
I stepped away from our tight huddle and slowly revolved. I counted thirty faeries. Most of them were brown warriors, but the rest…
“Fuck me!” Two juvenile queens, a War Leader, and…
“What’s that tiny purple one?” Lee asked.
“Rare. Special. Daisy’s not sure that her Clan’s going to survive the invasion,” I explained. “She’s hedging her bets.”
“Huh?”
“If Briar falls it can be rebuilt with what you see here. She’s left us two young queens.” I pointed to the two scarlet-furred faeries, who’d landed on the fence a few feet away and were busy grooming themselves. They waved. “The black one is a War Leader. He’s like a… a general or something.”
“And the purple one?”
“The purple one,” I said, holding my palm out for the little dot – just two inches high – to land, “is a Gloaming.”
“Isn’t that another word for dusk?”
The tiny Gloaming sat cross-legged on my palm and watched with calm black eyes, waiting for me to finish my explanations. Not even fully-grown and already wise beyond his years.
“Their magic… it’s different to everything you’re ever likely to see. It’s not primal – it’s not that old – but it’s different. They take the title ‘Gloaming’ because they draw their power from the place between day and night.”
The two junior queens flitted over to us, closely followed by the War Leader. Lee – at last – stopped asking questions.
“Right,” I said, grinning. “Let’s go kill some shit.”
TWENTY-THREE
We got in the van and my shock troops piled in around us. In such close proximity it was impossible to miss their unique scent – Eau de Rotting Cat – and I fought down the urge to puke.
The brown warriors settled into a tight huddle on the front passenger seat, while the two queens – Poppy and Periwinkle – perched on the driver’s headrest. Stag, their War Leader, made himself comfortable between them. Lee and I sat in the back with the Gloaming. Chant stayed on my palm, eyes closed in meditation; my skin tingled everywhere his fur touched – magic, I hoped, and not fleas. Both Lorl and Ques watched from the comfort of my lap.
“So what’s the plan?” Periwinkle asked, raising her voice to be heard over the babble of noise from the front. Another rule of dealing with faeries on mass – they could not keep their fucking gobs shut.
“Knock it off!” Poppy belted out to the writhing mass of fighters. “The human’s trying to drive!”
I glanced at Raz’s profile. He did look rather tense. The faeries let out mutinous squeaks.
“Don’t make me come down there,” Poppy warned, waving tiny fists. “If I have to leave this spot somebody’s getting eaten!”
Blissful silence settled across the van. Faeries were a no-nonsense, no-bullshit, do-this-or-I pick-you-out-of-my-teeth kind of people. Like vaengrjarl, but without the ego.
“The plan,” I told the two queens, “is to cause as much havoc as possible. We’re going up against a splitter called Mina, ex-berserker. She’s had training from a warlock but I couldn’t say how much. Enough to create golems. Enough to make trolls work for her.”
“Can we kill her?” Poppy asked.
“No-oo.” I dragged the word out. “I need you to distract her. If she’s busy keeping faeries off her face she can’t control whatever she’s created.”
“We can do distractions,” Periwinkle nodded, rubbing her hands together in anticipation.
On my outstretched hand, Chant opened his eyes. I’d expected to see the usual solid black orbs but now they were milky white, threaded with blue veins. Fuck me, that was creepy.
“She’s expecting you,” Chant said. His voice was deep, gruff, totally belying his size. “She looks excited.”
“Are you… are you seeing the future?” Lee asked, hushed.
Chant’s mouth curved into a smile, revealing rows of sharp, silvery teeth.
“Anyone with a little talent can see the future,” he said. “I can see the present.”
Raz guided the van into Crabtree’s small car park. The last time I’d been here Mina had thrown a couple of golems at me, and I was expecting the same again – and worse.
The car park was empty. Not so surprising for a Wednesday afternoon, but something didn’t feel right. Energy zipped up and down my spine.
“You feel it?” Raz asked, turning in his seat.
“Mina put a hex on this place. No one else will come here until the spell wears off.” Chant was matter of fact, even though the same magic that made my spine go hinky had put a parting in his fur.
“That’s good.” I didn’t want anyone to get caught up in this shit.
“Hexes are real?” Lee asked.
“Real and dangerous,” Raz explained. “It’s witch magic, black witches. Warlocks can’t do hexes.”
“Which means,” I said, following the logic, “that it wasn’t just Kristjan trying to turn her into a weapon. One of the players is a witch.”
Lee squinted at the fabric-covered ceiling of the van as we got out. “I get that,” he said. “Makes sense. But who gave them the order?
“What?”
“Two people don’t just independently decide to do something like that. Who’s calling the shots?”
I unsheathed Baby and tossed the duffel into the van. Raz did the same. I closed my eyes for a moment, wishing Lee had kept his mouth shut.
As much as I hated him, I thought he was right. And that scared me more than Mina ever could.
Poppy, Periwinkle and Stag exited the van, followed by a stream of brown-furred bodies. I was desperate to suck down t
he fresher air, but they whirled around my head, laughing and squabbling among themselves. I didn’t want to imagine the political fallout if I accidentally inhaled a faerie. I especially didn’t want to imagine the fallout to my health.
A black blur smashed into the heaving ball – Stag, the War Leader. I heard squeaks and squeals and then the whirling mass fell into an arrow formation behind me. I took a deep, grateful breath.
When we were all out of the van Chant flapped his grey moth wings and hovered in front of us.
“Are you ready?” he asked. I nodded.
His eyes took on that creepy milk-white sheen again. He held his paws out. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
White mist spewed through his claws. Appearing from nowhere, it billowed out and obscured everything, filling the air with a damp, muffling chill. The magic felt odd. As if I hadn’t cleaned my teeth for three days. Not exactly uncomfortable but… not quite right.
I peered through the mist. It made me uneasy.
“Can’t see much,” I muttered.
“You’ll see what you need to see.” Chant fluttered back to my shoulder, serene. “Trust me on this.”
“So let’s rock,” I said with a shrug. “Raz, you’re with Lee, he doesn’t know these woods –”
“No,” Raz interrupted. “We stay together. Mina would rather pick us off one by one, so what’s say we don’t give her that opportunity?”
We entered the woods and picked up the main path, a broad trail of packed earth that wound between the trees. I walked beside Raz. Lee brought up the rear, and for once he was silent. Had he run out of questions? Yeah, and there were pigs flying above the enchanted mist. He was an Army guy; he must have been trained to keep quiet in combat situations.
Either that or he was just staring at my arse.
The faerie spell still felt wrong, like putting on damp clothes, but it didn’t faze the taufrkyn a bit. Lorl even curled up on my shoulder and went to sleep. I wished that I could relax like that, but I was wound like a yo-yo.
My shock troops rose in one swirling ball and seemed to explode, brown-furred warriors zipping off in every direction. Periwinkle and Stag landed on Raz’s free shoulder while Poppy perched on top of his head. He took it well, pointedly ignoring my teasing grin.
Ques, from his other shoulder, reached out to stroke the faerie’s fur. The young queen responded with a cat’s pleasure to being petted, back arching. If anyone else had tried that she would have bitten their fingers off.
“Where’ve the others gone?” I asked her.
“Scouting. They’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I made a satisfied sound, glad that I’d been able to get the faeries on board. They didn’t play well with others, but the word of their ruler was law – what Daisy said went. And Daisy had ordered them to help me. It helped to have friends in low places.
We moved in slow formation. It was eerie walking through the woods with everything so muffled; sounds that should have been distinct – twigs and leaves cracking underfoot, birds screaming out a defence of their territory, even the distant hum of the motorway – it all sounded as if the world had been wrapped in cotton wool.
I held my sword ready, scanning the path and trees ahead. I didn’t know what Mina had planned for us. But I was ready… and so was Baby. We had a score to settle.
The first scouts began trickling back. Chant’s mist was still in place, but I saw the faeries beyond with crystal clarity, as if I was looking at them on a bright summer’s day. I grimaced. The magic still made me think of walking around with my shoelaces untied. Not… quite… right.
The scouts held a whispered conference with Stag, though the whispers gave way to shouts and eventually a fistfight. I watched with little amusement as the War Leader broke it up.
“The woods are crawling with trolls,” he told me after ten seconds of intense scuffle. “We’ll be on the first group in a minute.”
“Can we avoid them?”
“Can you avoid the air you breathe?”
Great, sarcasm from someone four inches high. My day was perfect.
Stag and the two junior queens took off, probably to join the safety of their scouting warriors. Ques let out a whine of disappointment as they left. Chant remained on my shoulder, fur warm against my neck.
I woke Lorl. Her black eyes shone as they looked into mine.
“Go high,” I told her, scratching her ears. She crooned. “Stay out of danger.”
Lorl nodded. She let out a commanding trill and took off, dragonfly wings flapping as she spiralled high into the mist. Ques followed and after a few seconds they were out of sight.
The attack came thirty seconds later. Three trolls ran directly at us – I saw them so clearly it was as if the fog wasn’t there – while one charged in from the side. The fog would hamper their movements, but not ours.
We stepped apart to give ourselves room to swing, trusting – hoping – that Lee could take care of the flank attack. Neither of us could spare him any attention.
Raz moved like molten silk, those gorgeous shamshirs flowing with barely a whisper. He blocked the left-most troll’s clumsy axe-blow, blade whistling through the air to expose the troll’s guts. His other sword decapitated the middle target with a single elegant sweep.
The troll on the right was too confident. He barrelled toward me, stupid grin revealing sharpened fangs, his only weapon a length of pipe. Something tugged at my jacket collar. Chant gripped the fabric with all four paws so that he wouldn’t fall off.
I swung Baby and she sheared through flesh and bone, hacking off the troll’s hands at the wrists. Hands and pipe dropped, clawed fingers still clenched around the metal. He screamed – a high, ear-splitting shriek of pain and fear, like a pig being slaughtered – and I danced out of the way of his spraying blood.
I darted behind him and rammed Baby through his torso, blade erupting through his chest. The troll jerked and twitched. I shoved him and he dropped, sliding off my gore-streaked sword.
A quick glance showed me that Lee – fists up, breathing hard and ready for more – had made short, brutal work of the troll who’d tried to flank us. I’d had a taste of his combat skills during our run-in with the bull; he’d only been a berserker for one day, but it had already improved his strength and speed. The troll was beaten, bloody and unmoving.
My ex-boyfriend was hot as hell. I shouldn’t be turned on by him right now, by the way sweat gleamed on his face, the way muscles rippled under his T-shirt – even the way blood, either his or the troll’s, had splashed his clothes. Blood spotted his neck, the underside of his chin and jaw, even his cheeks. Christ! I had a problem.
To hide my confusion, praying that Lee hadn’t seen the desire on my stupid fucking face, I turned to wipe my falchion on a dead troll’s leathers.
“No!” Chant screamed in my ear.
Too late – the world shifted ninety degrees and lurched to the left.
As everything shifted so too did my stomach. I opened my mouth and vomited in helpless response, tasting acid bile on my tongue and in my throat. I couldn’t see, couldn’t feel – where were my feet –?
Then everything righted itself.
I wiped a trembling hand across my mouth, spitting out puke-flecked saliva. My feet were on the ground – leaf-litter, branches, twigs – and I was gripping Baby’s hilt so hard that my fingers creaked.
Raz was gone. Lee was gone. The troll corpses were gone… no, no, it was me, I was gone. This wasn’t the same part of the woods.
“What the fuck was that?”
“That was a… snare,” Chant said, voice wavering. He trembled, paws tightening on my collar. “With a spring.”
“Again with the what the fuck?”
“Mina put a trap on that troll, alright?” he explained. “It caught us. Flung us across the woods.”
More fucking witch magic! “Where are the others?”
“Back where we left them, if they haven’t been caught by similar traps.�
��
“I have to find them –”
A pair of hands closed around my neck from behind, and squeezed.
I dropped Baby and reached back. I felt wrists, thin and rough. Inhuman. Chant lost his balance and toppled off my shoulder, dusty wings stretching to stop his descent. He zipped into the trees and out of sight.
I heaved, turning my spiralling panic into strength; I pulled harder, teeth clenching, muscles bunching all over my torso and arms. I was desperate for air. My vision blurred around the edges, chest tight and hurting.
The fingers at my throat broke away and I hauled in a ragged breath, panic giving way to rage that fuelled my response – a hard spinning kick that caught my attacker square in the face. I took vicious satisfaction from the way its spindly arms pin-wheeled for balance. The thing went down hard. Still taking rough breaths I approached, grabbing Baby as I went, and levelled the falchion at its throat.
“What the fuck are you?” I demanded.
I didn’t bother asking why it had tried to kill me. The most likely explanation was that it was working for Mina. And if it wasn’t, well, plenty of things wanted to kill us, just because we existed.
“The all-powerful berserker doesn’t know everything?” The voice was female, sibilant, and chuckling: - it was a she. Bitch.
“I’m only human. Unlike you.” I pressed Baby’s tip more snugly against her throat. “Don’t make me ask again.”
“Work it out.”
Arrogant bitch.
Even stretched out on the leaf litter she was taller than me. Skinnier, too, and I’m not talking model thin; I’d seen corpses with more meat on their bones. She was a walking bag of limbs covered in skin.
Rough, bark-like skin. Hang on. Long fingers, alien-shaped head, massive eyes. They were scarlet like a leaf in autumn. Split pupils, just like a cat’s. A skullcap of moss. No nose, thin mouth. No clothes. Dark green nipples marked flat breasts and a v-shaped patch of moss between her fleshless legs.
“Dryad. Fuck.”
“She shoots, she scores,” the creature laughed. It sounded like leaves rustling in the wind.
Dryads were parasites. They infected trees, eating the heartwood and hijacking their reproductive systems to propagate their own species.