Homecoming (A Finn McCoy Paranormal Thriller #1)

  ***

  “Now!” McCoy shouted, and he and Amanda dumped the poppets onto the dew-covered ground. As soon as they were free of the bags, the little dolls began to shake and squirm as if the earth beneath them were trembling violently.

  “Time for some magic,” McCoy said.

  “I really can’t take much more,” Deidre said as she stared at the dolls. “I’ve seen more in the past few hours than I ever wanted to.”

  “Stay focused,” John told her, but he was also watching the poppets with an uneasy eye.

  As the Sluagh charged closer, the poppets’ movements increased dramatically. They began to mutate, their brittle little bodies growing and elongating. Grass and straw was replaced with skin and fur. The heads, featureless except for two black stones which served as eyes, began to grow snouts and mouths with tiny, razor-sharp teeth. By the time the Sluagh had crossed half the distance to the group, the poppets had morphed into creatures which resembled small but extremely vicious and pissed-off baboons.

  “I dreamt about this,” Baracheck said. His voice sounded faraway, and his eyes had a vacant look as he gazed upon the things he had come to know as grass monkeys. “I saw them changing in my sleep.”

  “Earth to Dave,” McCoy said urgently. “You need to get back here, right now. There’s no guarantee that Cynthia will be able to protect you during this.”

  Baracheck shook his head as if coming out of a deep slumber. He looked at McCoy and nodded.

  Almost as a single entity, the poppet/monkeys charged the oncoming Sluagh onslaught. The front of the Sluagh line slowed as the fairies recognized the fray’s new combatants; they had not been prepared to face this ancient magic. Some of them actually stopped, but the majority of the horde kept coming, albeit with considerably less enthusiasm as before.

  “How did you do that?” John asked McCoy. “How did you make them change?”

  “I didn’t. The magic was in the poppets themselves. Whoever made them put it there.”

  “Dalton said she was Native American,” Baracheck said as he watched the spectacle with amazement. “Cherokee, I think.”

  “That would make sense,” McCoy agreed. “Native American magic is based on elemental nature. They probably started making these things centuries ago.”

  Cynthia saw the monkeys coming, but it was too late to do anything about it. For a brief moment, she remembered playing with a similar doll as a child. But her mother had thrown it away, and the Sluagh had come for her soon after. When they had taken her from her room, her mother had been there, but she had done nothing to try to save Cynthia. She had just sat there on the bed, as still as a mannequin, and done nothing.

  Her dear father had tried to save her, but he had been too late. He had never given up on her, though. He had scoured the woods and forests all these years, searching for her, never giving up hope.

  Was this how she was going to repay him?

  Cynthia faltered, then slowed, then came to a stop. She stood looking at her father, saw the age in his face, the way his posture stooped more than she remembered, and she wondered what she was doing. Throughout all she’d been through, there had been someone who had never stopped loving her and whose only wish was to have her back in his life. She could have gone to him many times, but she’d been so blinded by hatred that she had failed to see the only avenue that mattered, that made any sense at all.

  Suddenly, with the force of an avalanche, Cynthia wanted her Daddy. She wanted the madness to be over, wanted nothing except to be held in his protective arms, to let him stroke her hair and tell her everything was going to be all right.

  But now she had put him in danger. She needed to get to him, to stand beside him and protect him from any member of the horde which might try to attack him.

  “Daddy!” she yelled, and took off at a sprint just as the Sluagh and the magical poppets collided in a frenzied mass of shrill cries and gnashing teeth.