“Come here,” he said as he brought out from the bag a pot the size of two fists. “I want you to hold on to the coal pot,” he said, handing it to the excited pixy.
“Got it,” he said, wings clattering, and Jenks reached up, snagging his foot when he started to flit away.
“Keep it lit, Jumoke,” he said, yanking him back down so hard Jumoke lost his balance and had to scramble to find it again. “Give it sips of air, nothing more. If it goes out from too much or too little air, I’m going to have to ask Ivy for a light, and that would be embarrassing.”
“Uh, guys?” Bis interrupted, claws scraping as he slid to a stop beside them.
“Just a minute, Bis,” Jenks said, turning back to Jumoke. “When I ask, take the top off, okay? Not before. The coal won’t last long given full air.” His voice was severe, but Jumoke was holding the small pot with the right amount of care now, and Jenks was satisfied.
“Go wait with your mother!” Vincet shouted across the way, and his two boys darted away to leave a heavy dust trail. But Vi… Vi didn’t look so good.
“Jenks?” Bis said, clawed feet shifting, but Jenks’s attention was riveted to Vi. Her dust didn’t look right, and as he watched, her eyes rolled back and her wings collapsed. And her aura—went silver.
Shit.
“Vi!” Vincet shouted, scooping up the girl as she fell into convulsions. “The dryad’s taking her!” he exclaimed, eyes wide in horror as he held his daughter. “She wasn’t even asleep! Blow it up! Blow it up now!”
“Sorry,” Bis said, ears pinned as he looked sheepish. “I tried to tell you.”
Feeling betrayed, Jenks looked at the moon. It wasn’t anywhere near its zenith! Reaching behind him, he fumbled for one of his arrows tied with dandelion fluff at the tip. Wings clattering, he turned to Jumoke, finding him … gone.
“What the hell?” he stammered, rising up to scan the area, but there wasn’t a single twinkle of dust anywhere. He was gone! “Jumoke!”
Vincet flew to him with Vi in his arms, his wings clattering and desperation falling from him like the dust he was shedding. “He’s hurting her!” Vincet shouted, Vi’s skin red and her dust white-hot. “Blow it up! Free him!”
“I can’t! Jumoke has the firepot!” Jenks hovered, poised and scanning. Bis waited on the sidewalk, tail lashing, but Jumoke was gone. Ivy was gone. By the dogwood, Noel was a faint glow gathering the two boys and pulling them underground. They were safe. Where the hell is Jumoke!
“Jumoke!” Jenks shouted, exasperated, and Bis took to the air with two heavy wing beats to find him. They didn’t have time for this, but as Jenks started off in the other direction, he jerked to a halt in midair. Something smelled like honey and sun-warmed gold.
Tink’s dildo, the warrior woman was back.
“You will not!” echoed a vehement voice off the nearby townhouses, and there she was, standing on the sidewalk beside her statue, her bare feet spread wide and her robes shifting. Her expression was frantic, and upon seeing the bow in his hands, she flung her hand out.
“Look out!” Bis shouted, leaping for him.
A blast of honey-smelling air hit them. Tumbling into the air, Jenks felt his heart pound, but he fought with his instinct, folding his wings against him and tightening into a ball as he flew out of control. Holy crap, he was heading right for the trees!
“Gotcha!” came Bis’s faint exhalation, and the wind shifted as the gargoyle caught him, pulling him close.
Jenks’s eyes opened to see the world dip and swoop. In Bis’s other hand were Vincet and Vi. Vincet looked terrified, but Vi’s expression held a shocking amount of hatred. It was Sylvan. That’s why Daryl had appeared! The stupid dryad. Couldn’t he have waited a few more minutes?
With a sharp drop and a wrench that hurt Jenks’s neck, Bis dropped to the ground beside the sidewalk next to a large rock. The wind died. Daryl was coughing with her hand to her chest, shaking as she tried to catch her breath in the pollution-stained air.
Jenks unwedged himself from Bis’s grip and flitted down to feel small beside him. Taking to the air was too chancy, and he could hit the statue from here.
“Why didn’t you shoot it!” Vincet yelled at him, angry as he struggled with Vi, they, too, firmly on the earth.
Where the hell is Jumoke! Jenks thought, still not sure what end was up yet.
“I warned you,” Daryl wheezed, pulling herself straight again. She wiped her mouth, then hesitated, shocked at the sheen of blood glinting in the lamplight. Gathering her resolve, she hid it, shouting, “You will die before I allow Sylvan to perpetrate his abuse on another!”
“You’re a whiny little nymph!” Vi shouted as she struggled to be free. “The gods are dead, and actors play their rules! You’re alone! Give up! The world’s too ugly for your kind!”
“That’s the trouble with you dryads. You talk too much,” Daryl said. Eyes narrowed, she raised her sword. The nearby light flickered and went out. The one behind it went black, too, and like dominos, the townhouses across the park went dark. A distant chorus of complaint rose, joined by the beeping of smoke detectors.
Bis shifted his wings, his back to the rock. “I got a bad feeling about this!” he squeaked.
“Hey! Golden girl!” Ivy shouted from behind them, and Jenks rose up, wings flashing red when he saw the silver dusting of Jumoke with her. “Pick on someone your own size!” she added as she strode forward, boots clacking aggressively.
“Dad!” Jumoke exclaimed as he darted to him.
“Where have you been?” Jenks shouted, his relief coming out as anger. “We can’t blow up the statue without that pot!”
Jumoke’s wings drooped as he landed beside him, pot hugged to his middle. “I’m sorry. I was getting Ivy. I saw Daryl, and I just…” The boy’s face screwed up. “I’m sorry, Dad. I shouldn’t have left.”
“Blow it up!” Vincet exclaimed, jerking when Vi got her arm free and smacked his face. He caught her wrist, and Sylvan howled. The white-hot dust spilling from Vi was turning the moss black, burned.
“Let me out!” she said, her childlike voice sounding wrong. “Before that bitch stops you!”
“Ivy’s in the way,” Jenks said tightly. Giving both Jumoke and Vincet a look to stay grounded, Jenks darted after her, coming to a halt at her shoulder as his partner stopped eight feet back from Daryl. The spicy scent of vampire spun through him, seeming to shift his own dust a darker tint. Ivy was pissed. Hell, even her aura was sparkling.
Seeing them together, Daryl dropped her sword, flushed as she looked at Ivy’s tight clothes and anger. “You’re aligned with the pixy? Who are you? A goddess?”
“Ooo! Ooo!” Jenks said, looping the bow over his shoulder so he could have both hands free for his own sword. “I’ve heard this one before. Just say yes, Ivy.”
Ivy was eyeing Daryl with the same evaluation. “Worse,” she said softly, and Jenks shuddered. “I’m heir to madness. Vessel of perversion. Your nightmare should you cross me.”
Daryl’s chin lifted, trembling. “Indeed. We might be sisters then, for I’m the same.”
Ivy hunched slightly, eyeing the woman almost hungrily. “You hurt my friends.” A long hand went out, beckoning. Her lips drew back in a horrible smile, and she let her small but sharp canines show. “Can you hurt me?”
The nymph blinked as the moonlight hit them, then she tightened her sword grip.
The air seemed to hesitate, and when Bis’s nails scraped, Ivy jerked, jumping at her.
Jenks shot straight up, yelling, “Get her away from the statue so I can blow it up!”
“You can’t!” Daryl cried out, moving impossibly fast as she dodged out of Ivy’s attack. Her sword was swinging toward Ivy’s back, and Jenks yelled a warning.
Ivy dropped. Daryl’s sword point missed, but just. Rolling backward, Ivy tried to knock Daryl down, but the nymph jumped straight up. Ivy was standing when she landed, and the two women hesitated, looking at each other in surprise and what might
be respect.
“Blow it up, Jenks!” Ivy called out. “I’ll get out of the way!”
Jenks’s mouth dropped open. Holy shit. Ivy didn’t know if she could take her or not.
Darting back to the rock for protection, he sheathed his sword and pulled an arrow from his quiver. “Everyone get behind the rock!” he shouted. “Jumoke, the firepot!”
Leathery wings shaking, Bis scrambled behind the rock. Vincet fought his child as he dragged her to safety, the freedom-hungry dryad screaming. Vi was only a year old. Her tiny body couldn’t take this. She was dusting heavily, glowing like a demon as the energy of the ley line ran through her. Vincet’s own tears turned to dust as he fought to keep her from attacking Daryl—but he looked up at Jenks with hope.
“Here, Dad!” Jumoke shouted, taking off the lid. The scraping of the lid was loud, and Jenks buried the tip of the arrow in it. Immediately the wad of dandelion fluff ignited. Matalina was the real archer, he thought as he took aim and the arrow arched away. Fortunately, all he had do to was hit the statue. “Fire in the hold!” he shouted. “Everyone down!”
“No!” Daryl screamed, stretching her hand out. A flash of wind came at him, and he went tumbling backward, but a pained cry echoed, and the force immediately died.
When he found air again under his wings, his arrow was lost and the statue untouched. Daryl was writhing on the cement, downed by Ivy in the instant the nymph lost her concentration. Ivy herself looked winded, holding her arm where the nymph’s sword had scored on her.
“Rhenoranian, help me!” Daryl said, coughing as she got to her knees, undeterred.
Expression pinched, Ivy strode forward, but Daryl groaned, kneeling as she shoved the air at her with both hands.
“Watch out!” Bis cried as Ivy was flung back to land in the flower bed beside Sylvan’s statue as if having been pulled by a string. Frustrated, Jenks lowered his next arrow, not yet lit.
“Let me be your strength, Rhenoranian!” Daryl said, staggering to her feet. “Let me be your vessel!” She turned to Jenks, and his wings went cold. “Let me be your vengeance!”
Worried, Jenks darted up, then down. He couldn’t see the ley line she was pulling on, but the force of it made his wings tingle. Daryl pointed at him with a new confidence, and then Ivy’s scream echoed against the dark windows across the street. Motions blurring, the battle began again. Twelve feet up, Jenks watched, useless bow in hand and knowing he wouldn’t be able to shoot until Ivy downed the nymph. Daryl kept pushing Ivy back to the statue.
Moving faster than seemed possible, Daryl ducked Ivy’s crescent kick, only to fall when Ivy continued the spin and knocked her feet out from under her.
The nymph hit the ground, coughing. Ivy jumped into the air, elbow poised and clearly ready to slam it into Daryl’s throat as she fell to hit the dirt beside her.
Daryl saw it coming and pulled her sword up to protect her throat. Ivy screamed, knowing she couldn’t move enough to avoid being cut. The blade nicked Daryl’s face, too, upon impact, but it protected her throat. Ivy was hurt more.
The small success seemed to galvanize the nymph, who staggered to her feet when Ivy rolled away holding her numb elbow. Swinging her blade in a wide arc, she waited—grimacing.
Like a mad thing, Ivy rushed her, plowing her foot right into her solar plexus between the gaps of the blade.
Daryl bent, and Ivy lashed out with a front kick, snapping the nymph’s head back.
And still the woman wouldn’t go down, falling back as she tried to find her breath.
“Now, Jenks!” Ivy called out, and Jenks dropped down to the rock and the firepot.
One hand to her middle, Daryl groaned, staggering to a stand. “Help me, Rhenoranian!” she screamed, shaking hand outstretched.
The wind came from everywhere. The black roared. It beat at the trees. Jenks tumbled, fighting it.
“Stop!” Ivy shouted, and when Jenks squinted, he saw she had yanked the nymph up and was pinning her to the tree across from her statue. “Stop, or I will fucking kill you!”
“Let me go, or I will pierce your liver,” the nymph said, her teeth gritted.
“Oh, shit,” Jenks whispered, seeing the glint of metal at Ivy’s side.
Screaming down from the hills, the wind circled them like wolves. A small spot of stillness grew, surrounded by a wall of gray and black fury. The lights of Cincinnati vanished as if behind water. Even the ever-present thumps of industry were gone, overpowered by the chugging of the wind.
But here, in Daryl’s sacred grove, the moon shone down in perfect stillness.
Jenks glanced to Jumoke peeping up from behind the rock as the torn leaves drifted down, gesturing for him to stay. Vi had stopped struggling. Her breath rasped like oven air, and her wings were starting to smolder by the acrid smell now pinching his nose.
Ivy still pinned Daryl to the tree, her arm against her throat. One in white, one in black, one in silk, the other in leather, both unmoving apart from their lungs heaving.
Slowly Jenks started to drop toward the firepot.
“Why do you stand against me?” Daryl whispered. “It’s honor that gives your limbs the strength to best me.” She took a careful breath. “It glows in you, and you hurt from it.”
Ivy flinched when Daryl touched her jaw. “I’m not hurt,” she said quickly.
“Sylvan went against the gods’ law,” the nymph was saying, her cracked lip starting to bleed. “Taught himself to exist in cold stone, then used the knowledge not to live, but to kill for enjoyment. Why do you free him? I don’t understand.”
“She lies!” Vi shouted, elbowing Vincet. “She’s touched! Break the statue! Now!”
Sylvan was in jail? Not imprisoned by a jealous lover? Jenks hesitated, his wings going cold as Vincet struggled to hold her wildly struggling body. Had they had almost let him free? A murderer?
“The demons imprisoned him in stone,” Daryl said, her fingers opening. The knife dropped to the grass, and Ivy flinched. “His heart remains as cold, even now when the fire of the demon’s blood burns through him. I begged for the honor to guard him as it was my sisters he murdered. I fought for the right, learned to kill, to be heartless, only to fail here when it counts. If you free Sylvan, kill me as well, for I’m too cowardly to live when honorable people give such filth freedom.”
Around them, the wind died to let the clamor from the townhouses and city beat upon them once more. The lights were on again, and people were talking loudly. “You’re not a coward,” Ivy said softly, and Daryl’s eyes met hers, widening at something only the nymph could see.
Abruptly Ivy let go of her and stepped back, frightened. Holding her arms to herself, she looked for Jenks, now hovering right over the rock, Jumoke below him with the firepot. “We need to reassess this,” she said, white-faced.
“No!” Vi exclaimed, exploding into motion and hitting her father right between the legs.
“Ooooh,” Jenks said with a wince, then yelped when she scrambled up the rock as if she didn’t have wings, snatching his bow and yanking an arrow from his quiver.
“Jumoke!” Bis shouted as the little girl jumped at the boy, screaming wildly. Jenks’s son took to the air, frightened, but she crashed right into him. The coal pot hit the grass. The lid popped off and coals scattered, flashing orange with the new breath of air.
Screaming in victory, Vi ran for them, burying the tip of an arrow against one. It flared to life even as she pulled the bow back, arrow notched.
“Get her!” Jenks shouted as he tackled her about the knees.
He hit her hard, and they slid across the grass, his arms scraping. Taking a breath, he looked up to see the flaming arrow was arching true to its target.
“Drop!” he shouted, trying to cover Vi from the coming blast. Panic iced his wings as he saw Jumoke still hovering in midair, shocked into immobility. He’d never reach him in time.
Then Bis raised his hand, cupping it before him.
The night turned white and
orange, and an explosion pulsed against his ears and echoed up through the ground into him. Hunching down, Jenks tried to bury himself in the grass, feeling the blast push the blood from his wings for an instant. Jumoke fell to the ground in front of him.
“Why didn’t you drop!” Jenks shouted, his own voice sounding muffled from his stunned ears as he got off Vi and went to his son, bewildered on the ground. “Jumoke, are you okay?”
Panicking, he pulled his son up. Frantic, he felt Jumoke’s face, then ran his hands down his wings, looking for tears. Jumoke yelped, wiggling to get out from under Jenks’s hands.
“Oh, that was everlastingly cool,” the boy said, grinning from under his dark hair.
Jenks smacked his shoulder in relief. He was okay. “What’s wrong with you!” he shouted, glad his hearing was coming back. “I told you to drop!”
Bis’s thick skin on his brow was furrowed in worry, but Jenks didn’t think it was from the cut he was looking at on the back of his hand. In the distance, a car alarm was going off. “Um, Jenks?” he said in question.
A quick glance told him Vincet was okay. Vi was in his arms looking stunned but herself. Sylvan no longer possessed her, which meant he was probably free. Great, just freaking great. He only wanted to help, and he freed a murderer. Rachel and Ivy were not going to be happy.
Ivy.
Alarmed, Jenks darted up. Chunks of marble the size of apples and melons littered the sidewalk. A few pieces were embedded in the tree that Ivy had pinned Daryl against, and the scent of cracked rock pervaded. Vincet’s home and Daryl’s statue looked untouched. But no Ivy. No Daryl, either.
“Ivy!” Jenks shouted, realizing he was about to fall from exhaustion. Damn it, he’d let his sugar drop. Immediately he found a sweetball in his pocket and sucked on it. The sugar hit him fast, and his wings sped up. Across the street, people were starting to come out of their homes, aiming flashlights at the park. They had to get out of here.
“Ivy!” he shouted again. “You okay?”
Bis poked his head up from behind the rock, his ears pricked as he looked at the tree, and Jenks wasn’t surprised when Daryl stumbled out from behind it. Ivy levered herself up from the ground, having found a dip to take shelter in. They both picked their way carefully to the sidewalk, taking in the damage with a numb acceptance.
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