by Mark Hayden
‘Good. On a count of twenty seconds, open the doors.’
‘You what?’
‘Go!’
He went.
‘Lloyd, put a hole in this wall. As quietly and quickly as possible.’
He didn’t argue, he just got on with it. Kenver had put himself next to Lucy so that he could create a floor-level Silence. Scout was not a happy dog. I raised a Silence of my own and took Scout’s lead from Lucy.
Lloyd had also used Silence, and his prosthetic arm, to simply break the wooden slats, and there was now a hole in the cowshed. My internal count had got to thirteen and I waved the others forward, through the hole and into the byre.
There must have been a much, much bigger herd recently, judging by the space available. Around thirty Frisians were moving quickly away from us, and were already distressed by the screaming and smell of wolf coming through the walls. Once they saw the Merlyn’s Tower Irregulars, they set up a huge bellowing. I dropped the silence and gave my order.
‘Follow the cows and take out the Fae.’
Right on cue, Wesley drew back the roller door. The cows weren’t interested in going out there, so I slipped Scout off the lead. ‘Come by, lad, come by.’
Lloyd cottoned on first and started pushing the herd towards the opening. With a nip on the ankles from Scout, one of the girls pushed two more, and then they were streaming outside, rushing to get through the mayhem as quickly as possible.
It was like being hit by a tsunami. Wolves and Nachtkrieger scattered, allowing Lloyd and Albie to target one of the Fae. Another Nachtkrieger tried to use magick to stop an onrushing cow in defiance of all the laws of momentum. The cow swerved, but the Fae had stopped moving to perform its Work. As the cow charged past, the smallest of the wolves sprang into the air and sank her fangs into its neck.
I took all this in as I raced to the farmhouse. The three Nachtkrieger had been distracted by the stampede, and still hadn’t got inside the house. I got to the wall, raised a Silence, raised the Hammer and fired.
The last time I’d shot a Fae, she’d absorbed the bullet. This one didn’t: its Imprint blew apart, and I switched to the next target. Its eyes met mine. Her eyes met mine. It was the Lady of the Night, and I knew that there was no point shooting, because you can’t shoot the Night. I lowered my weapon and she came towards me.
Her face was beautiful, as beautiful as the Northern Lights flashing over Midwinter in Norway. And those nails, so long, so elegant and so sharp. I prepared to give my whole self to the Night.
Ooof. A lilac missile hit my side and knocked me over, making me drop the Hammer. Lucy.
We landed in a heap and she rolled off as quickly as she could, but not quickly enough to stop the Nachtkrieger picking up my gun.
I backed off, staring at the creature’s clawed feet. Ugh. I was also drawing my new sword and activating the Ancile inside it. To my intense relief, I heard Lucy scrambling away, back towards the cowshed.
I focused on the lower half of the Nachtkrieger. They didn’t have weapons, or none that I’d seen. Perhaps maintaining that shape was too big a drain on their resources. I moved forward a step, then another, then I slashed at the creature’s outstretched arm.
And cut through empty air, just as the real creature raked her four inch talons at my face. I jerked my head away and saved my eye, but the nails sliced from my temple to my jaw. Ow. Fuck.
I pivoted away and heard the farmhouse door start to splinter. Shit. What now?
Lloyd knew I was after the Fae. Long-term. He wouldn’t have stinted on that, so I risked letting my Sight flow into the sword. Gnome, human, Gnome, Gnome, ???, Gnome … Fae. Right at the end of the blade was a sliver of ice-in-iron, a cold-forged steel tip.
‘Come and get me, Lady,’ I said, locking eyes with her and raising the sword to point it at her throat. She started forward as soon as she felt my eyes lock, then flinched back when she felt the magick in the sword. One step. Two steps. Three steps and her back was to the wall. Four steps, five steps and I pushed the sword into her neck. I flicked my wrist, cut her carotid artery and dashed for the door.
Inside was a farmhouse kitchen and a half. Very modern and very chic, with a conservatory to the right rear. A conservatory with bars. A pen. And inside the pen was a small child, a little boy so scared that he couldn’t even scream. Outside the pen, at the end of a long chain, now slack and pooled on the floor, was an old woman. She was about to give her life to stop the Nachtkrieger getting at the child, just as soon as the Fae had dealt with the human standing in her way.
It was a tall, powerful woman, and she knew what she was doing. She didn’t look her enemy in the eye, she jabbed a kitchen knife at the Nachtkrieger, and of course, she missed. The creature grabbed her wrist and flung her across the room to smash into the granite-topped kitchen island. That just left the Mannwolf Elder.
They were too far away for me to reach them. I shouted. I roared defiance and raised my sword. The Nachtkrieger turned around for a second and hissed at me. The old woman took the chance to use magick, pushing the creature with a blast of air and knocking it back a metre. I started to run, and the creature turned back on the old woman, now collapsed with exhaustion. I wasn’t going to make it. But Scout did.
He shot past me and skittered across the tiles, crashing into the Nachtkrieger and wrapping his jaws around its leg. The Fae slashed down, I slashed up, and my sword bit into its arm, snapping the bone. Withdraw. Reverse. Lunge. Dead.
I looked around the room. ‘Where are they? Where are the hostages? Upstairs?’
‘In the barn.’
Shit. Double shit and buggery. I tore out of the house and across the yard, pausing only to pick up my gun.
It started with racing car engines, screeching tyres and the thump of a vehicle hitting a solid object. Everyone stood up and looked towards the door, even if Colleen was the only one who could see it.
Mina started to whisper a prayer, and Tom moved as close as he could get to her. Colleen hefted the machete and flicked her head between Mina and the (closed) door. Then the howling started, and every hair on Tom’s body rose away from his skin. Every sinew inside him wanted to run away, and he pulled on the chains in frustration. Another noise drowned out the wolves: frightened cattle. What the hell? Cows bellowed, wolves howled, wild creatures shrieked, a lone dog barked, and then Tom knew what was happening: Scout was here, and where there was Scout, there was Clarke. To prove the point, a gunshot echoed round the farmyard.
Colleen looked terrified as she suddenly realised that she was as trapped in here as they were. Something inside her snapped and she raised the machete to attack Mina, swinging it down in a great arc.
Mina dropped to her knees to give her the maximum chain length and brought it up between her fists. Because she was so short, she got enough height with the chain to intercept the blade, locking her arms at the elbow. Human steel met Gnomish chain, and the Gnomes won. The machete bounced off the chain, and Colleen had put so much force into the blow that she dropped her weapon. It bounced off the floor to one side, and she reached for it.
‘Noo!’ shouted a little voice. A blur of red landed on the ground and snatched the weapon away. Fiona, a tiny child in a red smock and white leggings scuttled away from Colleen and round the corner. Colleen chased her and swore when the little girl got through the gap in the wall.
That would have been Tom’s moment to be the hero, if he could have pushed those bails over. He pushed his foot against them and roared in frustration, even louder than the cows outside.
‘Well, I’ll just have to do it the old fashioned way.’ Colleen was standing at the entrance to the corridor, legs apart, hands on hips. ‘Right, you little whore, let’s see how strong you are.’
Colleen danced forwards and aimed a punch at Mina, who dodged it and got a kick to the knee for her pains. Colleen jumped on to Mina and grabbed her chains. Mina fought back, elbow to the face, and got a second’s grace. She knuckle-punched Colleen in the templ
e, but missed, hitting her ear. It was painful, but it didn’t stop Colleen forcing Mina down and wrapping the chains around her throat. Mina was going to die, and there was nothing that Tom could do about it.
Mina tried to bring a knee up, and missed. With her last breath, she flailed an arm in the air. Tom was going to close his eyes, until he realised that watching Mina die was the only thing he could do for Conrad.
‘Aauurgh. Urrggh. Feck.’
Not Mina. It was Colleen who was dying. An arrow stuck out of her back. She reared up and the bloody thing had gone all the way through. The great barbed head was sticking out of her left breast. She staggered to her feet on pure adrenaline and looked into the dark. Without a sound, not even a thunk, another arrow sprouted from her gut. This one didn’t go through – it stuck in her spine, and she collapsed in a heap, still gasping to make her shattered lung work.
Still wearing her Army uniform and 2nd Lieutenant’s pip, Karina Kent appeared round the corner.
Mina was coughing and retching, so Tom spoke. ‘Thank you.’
‘No problem,’ said Karina. ‘Let’s just hope the good guys outside win.’
‘What’s happening?’
‘I don’t know. I was late to the party, and I only came in here because I saw the little girl run out.’
‘Ghaaah,’ said Mina. ‘Ganesh opened that door for you.’ She bowed. ‘Thank you, Karina.’
There was a slap of footsteps and little Fiona reappeared, dragging an older sister by the hand. ‘Here they are,’ she said. ‘Oh. The nasty lady’s dead.’
There was an almighty clang and screech of tortured metal as the door blew off, and a roar of, ‘Mina!’ from Conrad Clarke.
‘Here!’
He limped into view, sword in one hand and gun in the other, and blood streaming down the right side of his face. It had already obliterated the name over his breast pocket. He sniffed the air, for a half-second looking like his bloody dog. Well, they do say pets resemble their owners, and vice versa.
‘Lieutenant Kent,’ he said. ‘Your handiwork, I presume?’
‘Sir. But I couldn’t have done it without help from the little girl.’ She pointed to Fiona, now swinging her pigtails and stuffing her left fist into her mouth.
‘She saved my life. They both did,’ added Mina.
‘And mine,’ said Tom quietly.
‘Well done!’ said Clarke in an exaggerated, children’s entertainer voice. Then he bent down and shot Fiona in the head from point blank range.
26 — Keep your Friends Close
How did I know which little girl to shoot? As soon as I saw that Mina was safe, my new Nimue nose told me that there was a Fae in the room. I had a good look round, and the only anomaly in everything was the smaller girl. She was supposed to have saved everyone’s life, and there she was acting like a two-year-old in a beauty pageant instead of a Mannwolf cub. That’s why I leaned down to get a good sniff, and that’s why I shot her: in a second, she could have used the real Fiona as a shield.
When her head exploded with Lux, the Glamour on the real Fiona dissolved, and she jumped back, away from the body. ‘Did you really save Mina’s life?’ I said in a normal voice. ‘If you did, you were very brave.’
Fiona nodded and pointed to a woman in camo leggings and top, currently busy dying. ‘She was mean. She was going to hurt the princess.’ She looked at Mina. ‘You’re a real princess, aren’t you?’
Mina bowed as low as she could. ‘Yes, I am. How did you know?’
‘You’re brown. I’ve never seen a brown person before.’
‘Not all brown people are princesses, but I am, and you will get a special sash to wear now that you’ve saved me.’
‘Good. Is Oma still alive?’
‘Let’s have a look, shall we.’
I was going to saunter outside, until the scream of a car engine made me break into a run, and the crump of an explosion made me hit the deck.
The car that had crashed into the wall had exploded, and the other one had reversed out and was now racing down the lane to the public road. Damn.
It was pretty clear what had happened: whichever Fae had loaned the pack to the Octet had decided to rub out the evidence. One of the many peculiarities of Fae biology is that their DNA unravels once it leaves their living body (except for sperm; let’s not go there), so all the corpses were useless for identifying which line they belonged to. Never mind.
Everyone moved like a well-oiled team, which was quite gratifying to see. None of my party was injured (except me), and no more wolves had perished. In seconds, I had five naked teenagers running around. One rushed to scoop up Fiona, another went inside the farmhouse (with Wesley and Lucy), and two more helped to round up what was left of the Gnomish wives, another of whom had been crushed by the stampede of cows.
The Mannwolf who’d helped Fiona looked up. ‘The farmer! He’s locked in the cottage. The fire could spread.’
Lloyd and Albie took charge of finding the yard cleaning hose, and soon, with magick and water, the fire was under control. Wesley emerged from the farmhouse with the Pack Elder and a red-headed lad who cradled the little boy/cub in his arms.
‘Where’s Lucy?’ I shouted.
‘First aid,’ boomed Wesley. ‘Looks like a broken arm. Is your fiancée safe?’
‘Chained up in the barn with Tom Morton.’
‘I’ll get them out.’ He waggled something shiny. ‘I knew these lock picks would come in handy.’
There was more sorting out and moving round, and then Mina and Tom emerged from the barn, followed by Karina and Wesley. Tom jogged past me with a nod, heading for the farmhouse, and Mina ran up to me.
‘Your face,’ she said. ‘Does it hurt?’ Her voice croaked, and in the fading light, I could see marks around her neck.
‘Yes it bloody well does, love, but we’re alive. We’re all alive.’
She gave me her special smile. ‘Do you mind if I don’t kiss you just yet? Where’s the first aid kit?’
‘That’s Lucy’s job, but it’ll have to wait.’
‘Are you going after the Gnomes now?’
‘No. The cows.’
‘The cows?’
‘Yes. Don’t want them escaping on to the road, do we?’ I whistled, and Scout came running. ‘Lloyd!’
‘Yeah?’
‘You’re in charge for a bit. I need the cowshed fixed first, and then you know what the priority is, don’t you?’
‘Put the kettle on.’
‘Good man.’
Karina came to help me with the cows. Good job, too, because they were pretty spooked. ‘That Irish Gnome’s wife?’ she said, ‘She died in the barn before Lucy could get to her. Not that there was much she could have done. How can I help?’
When we were done, Karina drifted off leaving the farmer and I to settle the herd. He was younger than I expected, early forties, perhaps, and under the enormous stress, much better groomed than your average dairy farmer.
‘What happened?’ I said. ‘How did you get into this mess?’
He moved some straw with his Wellington boot. ‘Someone invited me to the Well of Desire.’
‘How long ago?’
‘A couple of years. I didn’t notice what was happening until too late. By then, I’d swapped the farm for a lifetime’s membership and a bit of cash. I used the cash to refurbish the farmhouse.’
My mind boggled. ‘The whole farm?’
‘It was mortgaged to the hilt.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve been making more money as a tenant than I ever did before. Then he sold it to that lot.’ His gesture encompassed the farm, but it finished out beyond the yard, over the barn and up a slight rise. That’s where the mine was, and where Chris and Kenver were surveying.
‘What did they do?’
‘Moved in, for one thing. Kicked me out of the farmhouse and made me sack the workers. The wives have been taking it in turns to help with milking. I haven’t left the farm in six months. Not since they started digging. What the
hell is going on, Wing Commander?’
I shook my head. ‘Someone will tell you once dawn comes. Until then, this is an active operation. You’re going back to your cottage, and you’re going to stay there.’
‘Has anyone fed the pigs?’
‘What pigs?’
‘As well as digging that bloody hole, they built a flaming pigsty round the back of the barn. Totally unlicensed and unregistered. I had the devil’s job trying to hide the fact it’s here. You’re bleeding again.’
I patted him on the shoulder and commandeered the other cottage. It was a bit musty, but didn’t have any bodies or chains in it. Lucy has a real knack for first aid, and soon patched me up. ‘If you don’t see a doctor soon, it’ll scar,’ she concluded.
‘Not top of my priorities, but thanks.’
‘It’s a good job you didn’t agree to marry him for his looks,’ said Lucy to Mina.
‘Mmm,’ she replied. Traitor.
Mina, Tom, Lucy and I sat at the kitchen table, bringing each other up to date and holding hands (as appropriate). When we’d finished, I started with Karina.
‘You’ve had your uniform tailored,’ said Mina accusingly.
‘Let me guess,’ I added. ‘Princess Birkdale. She’s signed you up, hasn’t she?’ Karina nodded, deeply embarrassed now that the action was over. ‘How did you find us, and why?’
‘I followed you from Birkdale to Middlebarrow. I thought I had no chance when the helicopter arrived. I heard you and the Earthmaster talking.’
‘Aah. That explains why Scout was acting up. He could smell you.’
She gave a real smile. ‘He wanted to play. I was going to give up, and then you came back and drove off. I just followed you, but it took me ages to work out how to get through the displacement. I arrived when you released the cows, so I ducked into the barn.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s it.’
‘Why get involved?’
‘I left location services enabled on my phone. I wanted to help put it right.’
I poured myself a third mug of tea. ‘Which leaves you serving two mistresses: Hannah and Tara Doyle. I won’t stop you walking away, Karina.’