“What about a death magic spell? Do you have anything that might work on them, that you can cast without Morio around?” I wasn’t sure just how entwined they were on the energy, though I knew Camille had some power on her own in that sphere.
She snorted. “I could try but there are no guarantees.”
“There’s no guarantee with your Moon magic either. In fact, your fuck up ratio seems to be pretty strong with it.” I meant it playfully but it came out a sharp jab. With an exasperated sigh, I apologized. “Sorry, I don’t mean to sound like a bitch.”
“Don’t sweat it. You’re right. The question is, will death magic even work on them? They’re magical beings, children of the Elder Fae. Does that make them Elder Fae in their own right, or are they a hybrid?”
“Well, I can try to drain them of blood.” Menolly frowned. “But I can only attack one at a time. Luckily, their toxic venom won’t do much on me. Delilah, you have Lysanthra? Can she do anything?”
I had still only tapped the surface of my sentient dagger’s powers. We were in tune, and on occasion she surprised me with a new move, but it was haphazard at best.
“I don’t know. Fuck, why didn’t we plan this out better? I feel like we’re right back to playing the Three Stooges.”
“Maybe I can help.” The voice took us by surprise. We turned around and there stood Vanzir. He grinned. “Don’t even say a word, girls. Shade sent me. If he can’t protect the house, nobody can. So just keep your yaps shut about me being here and let’s get to work. I can attack them and they probably can’t do a whole lot to me, not with their actual venom. They can hurt me but, then again, I can hurt them.” Here, he laughed, and it took on an ominous tone.
Vanzir’s powers had shifted since he and Camille had their unwilling tryst and the Moon Mother had stripped them away. They had been returned to him changed, altered in ways that even he didn’t understand. It seemed like we were all going through our metamorphoses and none of us knew where the light at the end of the tunnel was.
“I brought someone else with me,” he added, looking at Camille. “You’re not going to be too thrilled but tough titty.”
She slowly stood. “Who?”
Out of the shadows, from behind Vanzir, stepped a pale-skinned, dark-haired man. He was handsome, but had an otherworldly look about him, angular and harsh and glittering.
Camille let out a groan. “You didn’t.”
The man snorted. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Lady Camille.”
And with that, Bran, the son of Raven Mother and the Black Unicorn, stepped fully into view.
Chapter 17
Menolly stepped between Camille and Bran. “Thank you for coming. We can use the help.”
I couldn’t help but think that when Menolly had to be the diplomatic one, something had gone to hell. But Bran and Camille had developed a hostile relationship, even though they’d been ordered to work together, and from what she’d said after her training sessions out at the Court of the Three Fae Queens, things weren’t getting any better. She couldn’t read Bran, couldn’t read how he felt about the fact that she’d killed his father—even though it was by divine design. And his mother, Raven Mother, had long been after Camille to come join her in the Otherworld Forests of Darkynwyrd.
Bran gave Menolly a short, studied glance, then turned back to Camille. “Aeval bids me to come help you until your men are back from Otherworld. She sent several of her guards to your house tonight and they are patrolling the boundaries. I will stay with you for a few days until you have things settled back to normal.”
“Like hell you will. I doubt you’d enjoy our hospitality.” Camille’s eyes narrowed and she let out a little growl.
“Oh, trust me, I shall. Aeval commands it. Do you wish me to return to Talamh Lonrach Oll and inform Aeval that you decided to defy her wishes?”
A threat was implicit in his voice and I wanted to slap him, but decided that wouldn’t be the best move. This was between Camille and Aeval, and chances were, the Fae Queen would win hands down. I knew it, Bran knew it, and by Camille’s smoldering look, she knew it too.
“Fine. Just don’t get in my way.” She glared at him, relenting. “You willing to kill the children of Elder Fae?”
His nostrils flared, but a thin, razor smile appeared on his lips. “I have no qualms about killing anything or anyone I need to. Why do you think Aeval is putting me in charge of her armies?” And with that, he pulled out an extremely sharp looking short sword. It flared with a pale, shimmering light. I realized it had been charmed in some manner.
Vanzir pulled out the magical stun gun we’d taken off a dead guard during a raid when the Koyanni had been kidnapping werewolves to make Wolf Briar. He’d developed a love for the weapon, and had found alternative ways of recharging it now that the Energy Exchange nightclub had vanished. Especially since Vanzir had been the one to implode it.
I readied Lysanthra and she sang in my hand, crooning to me in a voice only I could hear. Dumbfounded, I turned around and realized she was responding to the energy in Bran’s sword. He simply stared at me, with a sardonic smile on his face.
“You like that energy, do you?” I whispered to my long dagger.
So very much. Like recognizes like, you know. The voice was clear as a bell in my head.
“By chance, you wouldn’t have anything new to show me, would you?”
Perhaps not this night, but soon . . . you never know . . . And the whisper faded away as she glimmered lightly in the night air.
Menolly led the way since she had already scouted ahead. I swung in behind her, then Camille and Bran, and Vanzir at the back. I was spoiling for a fight, and I could tell Camille was too. She seemed pissed out of her mind but she moved silently alongside Bran.
We slid through the undergrowth, as stealthily as we could, and I kept my eye on Menolly’s back. She moved in silence, totally focused. After a few minutes, she held up her hand and I motioned behind me, coming to a halt. A brief pause, then she started again. Another moment and I found myself on the edge of a clearing.
The ground was plush with a layer of mulch, a combination of wet leaves and fir needles and detritus from the autumn foliage that the trees and shrubs had shed. The chill of the night filtered through and I could see my breath in front of me, as the clouds drifted across the moon, blotting out the light at one moment, then baring the silver crescent into the open.
Menolly softly moved to the left, staring out at the group of dreglins who were hunkered over the remains of a body, feasting. With iridescent skin that changed from blue to green and back to blue again, they were sleek and hairless, and totally naked—allowing us to see their sex. I thought they might have scales, but it could have just been a trick of the moonlight. Lean and taut, they were muscled but wiry, and they ate like ravenous animals. Ripping out chunks of the woman’s gut, they dangled the intestines above them, eating them like spaghetti, their faces smeared with blood and bile. It was worse than watching zombies—zombies were killing machines, they ran on autopilot. These creatures were cunning and crafty. Ivana was right, they were dangerous, and even from here I could feel how they delighted in destruction. Jenny Greenteeth had an appetite for flesh, and so did the Dark Dugald, and they’d passed it in spades to their children.
Menolly glanced over at me, and I looked down the line. We were all poised on the edge of the clearing now, and the dreglins hadn’t noticed us, so wrapped up in their gruesome meal they were.
Lysanthra began to vibrate in my hand. She was spoiling for blood and I was about to give it to her. But Menolly would go in first, disrupt them and take down one of them. Vanzir motioned that he’d go in second. Again, he stood a better chance of not being harmed by the dreglins’ toxins.
We waited, then, in an imperceptible flicker, Menolly leaped out into the group. She said nothing, gave no war cry, just went for the throat of the biggest one. As she landed full-frontal on it, she knocked the woman to the ground, taking her down.
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Now, speed was our ally. Vanzir moved in quickly, firing at the nearest dreglin with the stun gun. The energy bolt hit hard and center, and the dreglin was knocked through the air, a good two yards, to land on his back. Vanzir turned the gun on the next one and fired, and I realized he was trying to give us an advantage by getting the drop on them.
I rushed in after him, toward the one he’d shot first. I landed atop the creature, bringing Lysanthra down square, full force. The blade slid neatly through the dreglin’s chest, but to my horror, there was no blood. What? Didn’t these things bleed? Then, as a thin trickle started to flow, he lifted me up and I found myself soaring through the air to land against a stump. I screamed as a sharp rock jammed into my lower back. It didn’t penetrate my jeans or jacket, but I could already tell I’d have a massive bruise there.
I pushed to my feet in time to see Bran take on one of the dreglins as, once again, Vanzir shot the one who I’d been fighting. He went down again, and this time, Vanzir shot it twice more and it stayed down, twitching. But that meant he’d used five—maybe six—bolts and the stun gun only held ten charges.
Camille seemed to be assessing the situation and I could tell she was prepping a spell, trying to stay out of the way. Smart girl—she’d never be able to take on these creatures in a physical fight.
Bran danced toward his quarry with a grace and strength that stunned me, his movements precise, incisive. He was beauty-in-action to watch, and I found myself mesmerized by how fluid he was. Camille was staring at him too, and I had the feeling she had never seen this side of him. I also had the feeling she didn’t like being forced to admire him for any reason.
He darted to the side as a female dreglin—with the breasts to prove it—lunged toward him. Turning in midair, Bran brought his blade to bear and it glimmered with a brilliant purple flame. The sword whistled as he spun, cleanly slicing through the dreglin’s neck like a hot knife through butter.
The woman didn’t stand a chance. One moment she was leaping forward. The next, her body continued on its arc as her head went tumbling to the side. The flame attached to the sword cauterized the wound instantly, and the blood stopped flowing as soon as it had started. Bran stepped to the side as the body lurched forward, then fell, spasming as it hit the ground. The head rolled to the side, eyes wide open, staring up at the night sky.
Menolly’s dreglin went down for the count, and Vanzir had finished off the one on the ground in front of him, so that left two. I launched myself at my attacker again, and Bran moved in from the right. Camille sent a spell reeling toward the last one, but the energy bolt arced up and looped, heading back toward her with a vengeance. She screamed. Bran stopped in midstep, whipped around, and launched himself toward her, taking her down just before the bolt hit.
The spell zoomed past and collided with the tree behind her, sending a shower of sparks and flame up in the side of the trunk. But the wood was too wet and it quickly burned out.
Seeing that she was safe, I turned my attention to my opponent. Blood oozed out of the wound but it was slow and thick, and I realized they had a far different make up than we did.
As I aimed Lysanthra toward the creature, Vanzir shot him from behind. He stumbled, turning to see who had attacked him.
I stared at him, openmouthed. “Dude! You could have missed and hit me. What the hell? Watch out!”
“I could have, but you’ll notice I didn’t.” With a laugh, he shot again and the force knocked the dreglin forward. Menolly dove in for the attack. She landed on the man and, in a flurry of fangs and blood, he was dead.
I hurried back to Camille, but Bran had once again interceded and the last dreglin was sprawled on the ground, headless like her sister. We had killed them all. Correct that: Bran, Vanzir, and Menolly had killed them. Camille and I’d done shit. Feeling oddly irritable, I let out a low growl but then decided that—with or without our help, they were dead and we were all okay, and that’s what mattered.
“Is that all of them?” Vanzir asked.
“Yeah, at least according to Ivana. But that doesn’t guarantee more won’t sneak over here.” I wiped my dagger blade on a rag that I’d stuffed in my pocket before we left home.
“We’ll worry about that when it happens. If it happens.” Camille sighed and turned to Bran. “Thanks. You saved my life. I would have fried myself royal if you hadn’t knocked me out of the way.”
He gave her a long, cool look and a hint of a smile tipped the corner of his lips. But it wasn’t a smile that made me comfortable. It was too cunning, too sly.
“Can’t have Aeval’s pet taking a powder due to her own fireball, can we? She’d have my hide. Then again, my mother would tear her to pieces if the Queen of Shadow and Night harmed me and we’d have a full-scale war on our hands. And once my father grows into his new body and returns to his full glory . . .” His voice drifted off as he let the words hang.
Camille stared at him for a moment, then turned away. Menolly interposed herself between the two, though she said nothing, and Bran abruptly headed back out of the woods without so much as a “good-bye” or “see you later.”
We stood there, looking at the dead bodies, then at each other. The corpses of the dreglins were starting to smoke a little, and as I leaned down, I saw them oozing the pores. They were . . . no, it couldn’t be.
“They’re melting.” I frowned. “We haven’t wandered into Munchkin land, have we?”
“My guess is that toxin releases in their bodies when they’re dead and somehow cause a highly increased rate of decomposition. I’ll bet in half an hour there won’t be anything left but bones, if that.” Vanzir eyed one of the bodies and nudged it with his toe, pulling away quickly as the flesh began to split.
I picked up a stick and poked one of the corpses with it. The flesh had already started to fall away and I grimaced as the branch drove a hole in it and a gush of pus and ooze ran out.
“Okay, then, we just leave them here? No burying, or anything gross like that?” Camille shuddered. “The clouds are moving in, the rain should take care of washing the slime away.”
The dreglins were oozing around the edges, the flesh putrefying as we watched. Skin flaked off, muscles and tendons began to bubble and liquefy, pooling into gelatinous mounds of frothing tissue that foamed over the bones. We stood, watching in an awed silence as the dreglins disintegrated into jellyfish. Only instead of floating through the sea, they oozed back into the earth for good.
As the bones began to follow the flesh, we turned and walked away. At the end of the day, nothing would remain to mark their existence.
• • •
By the time we headed home, it was near midnight. But as I got in my car, my phone rang. I glanced at the Caller ID. Tim.
I fastened my seat belt as I punched the Answer button. “Hey, Tim. What’s up?”
“I cracked her password. Texting it to you after I hang up. But let me tell you, that place is as bad as Cupid’s Arrow. I had a quick peek around the site and there are as many creeps in the Supe world as there are among my kind.” He chuckled. “If you ever break up with Shade, I don’t recommend you dip your toe in that wading pool.”
“I promise. I won’t dip my toe or anything else.” Grinning, I leaned back against the seat. Tim was a comfortable friend and I loved hearing his voice. I heard someone talking to him.
“Oh hey, Jason wants to know how you like the Jeep?”
“Tell him he did a great job, and thanks for the detailing on the door. Nice to have my baby purring like new again.”
“Good. Well, I’m off. I have some late work to get done and Jason wants to go out for coffee—a twenty-four hour Starbucks opened near our house and we can walk there.”
“Okay. Be careful, dude. There are monsters in the dark.”
“I know that all too well since meeting you. But even before you opened up the portals, we had plenty of monsters of our own, honey. Some of them are called bigots.” He signed off and a minute later, a tex
t came through with Violet’s password.
I turned the ignition, then headed for home. The day’s events had started to catch up with me, and by the time I pulled in the driveway, I could barely think. I tumbled into bed and the next thing I knew, I was out like a light.
• • •
Shade was gone when I woke up, he’d left a message that he had some business to attend to and would be back by dinner time. Missing him, horny and lonely, I moped around, but by the time I came down for breakfast, I felt relatively refreshed. A shower had cleaned any residual gunk off me that I had been too tired to pay attention to the night before.
Camille was sitting there with Iris, who had a relieved look on her face. Iris beamed at me.
“It’s so good to get out of the house for a little while. Camille’s been filling me in on everything. I can’t believe how the world falls apart when I decide to take some time off.” She was joking, but turned serious. “Delilah, I’m so sorry about your father.”
I blinked. I hadn’t even begun to visit the pain that I’d locked away inside, and I suspected neither had Camille nor Menolly. Right now was not that time.
“Thanks.” I leaned down and kissed her. “How are you, little mama?”
“Tired. I have a nanny—the Duchess insisted on hiring someone. But I am sore and achy, and my nether regions still feel like I passed a couple of watermelons. Birthing’s not easy and don’t let anybody tell you it is.” She chuckled. “But my Maria and Ukkonen are doing well. They both have extremely healthy lungs and they know how to use them. Bruce is a deer in the headlights, but he’s feeling his way along.”
“And how do you get along with your mother-in-law?” Camille set a cup of herbal tea and a plate of cookies down in front of Iris.
I rummaged through the refrigerator. “Where’s Hanna? No breakfast?”
“Make it yourself. I gave Hanna the day off and she went shopping.” Camille fixed herself an iced latte and sat down at the table with what looked like a leftover plate of spaghetti.