Authors: Kelley Armstrong
The demon let out a wail so high pitched it made my ears hurt. Then the girl’s body went slack, head lolling back. Eyes closing.
“Here we go again,” Mom muttered. “Tengu do love drama.”
The girl’s eyelids fluttered. Then they slowly opened. She blinked. Frowned. Looked around at the treetops. Then at the sword.
“What the hell?” the girl said.
She followed the sword up to my mother’s arm, then to my mother, still kneeling on her shoulders.
“What the hell!”
The girl struggled, kicking and hitting and swearing a blue streak. Not exactly the language you’d use if you were trying to impersonate an eleven-year-old. One look at the girl’s ragged clothing, though, and you knew she wasn’t just some random child plucked from the schoolyard. She was a street kid.
This time it was Mom who cast the reveal spell. The girl didn’t flinch, just keep struggling and shouting obscenities.
Mom eased off the girl’s shoulders, lowering her sword and holding the girl by the arm instead. The girl let Mom help her up, then took a swing. Mom lifted her sword and said, “Uh-uh, sweetie.”
“I’m not your sweetie,” the girl snarled. “If you brought me here for some perv, you’ll be sorry. I’ve got friends, you know. They have blades and—”
As she twisted to talk to my mother, she winced. She pulled up her shirt. “What the hell? You cut me! And burned me! You can’t do that. I’ve got rights.”
“Yes, you do,” Mom said, keeping her grip tight on the girl’s arm. “I’m sorry you got hurt. We didn’t mean it. But someone gave you something—drugs or something. You attacked a friend of ours.”
“I didn’t attack any goddamned—”
The girl stopped. She stared down at her blood-speckled shirt. Then she lifted her hands. Her nails were crusted in blood. Her eyes widened and the tough little girl fell away, horror filling her face.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said quickly. “Whoever gave you the drugs is to blame. And our friend is fine. But there are other kids out here. Your friends maybe. They got the same drugs. I’m going to take you someplace safe and—”
The forest erupted as five kids swarmed in, surrounding us. I grabbed the girl and pulled her against me. My fingers flew up in a knockback, but the girl yelped and flung herself away, disrupting my spell.
“Leave me alone,” she said. “These are my—”
One of the kids let out a banshee howl and flew at the girl, his hands curved into claws. I pulled her out of the way just in time and kicked, catching him in the thigh. He crumpled, gnashing his teeth, lips drawn back in a grotesque, inhuman snarl.
The others hovered there, circling us, growling and eyeing the fallen boy, uncertain.
“Mickie,” the girl said. “It’s me, Sara.”
He pushed to his feet, lips still drawn back. His dark eyes flickered, then flashed orange. Sara stumbled back against me. I put my arm around her and held her there.
“It’s okay,” I murmured. “It’s the drugs.” I glanced over at Mom. “Can we dispel them?”
“Not without the ritual.” She hefted her sword. “Or this.”
“You kill the children if you use that,” the boy—Mickie—said.
He was no more than fourteen, with a scarred lip and uneven cornrows. The oldest of them. The others watched him, waiting for a signal.
“Okay,” Mom said to the boy. “So I can’t use the sword. I saw what you did to that guy in the motel. I’m not stupid enough to fight the lot of you. So, if you let my daughter and the little girl go—”
Mickie cut her off with a sneering laugh. “You think the Tengu are fools? You would not give yourself to us so easily. We will not let your daughter go. They say she is valuable, too. You will wait here with us until the necromancer is found. Then you will come with us or we kill all the children. One by one, we kill them.”
The girl started to scream. It took me a moment to realize why. I guess that’s what comes from living my life—I hear a threat and it rolls off me until there’s a good reason to suspect it may be serious.
I put my arm around the girl as Mom pretended to negotiate with the leader.
“He—he said—” Sara’s thin body shook so much she could barely get the words out. “He’s going to kill us. Mickie’s going to kill us.”
“He doesn’t mean it. It’s the drugs. We won’t let anyone hurt you.”
“I want to go,” she whispered. “Please, can you make them let me go?”
“Just hold on.”
“I know how to …” She whispered something I couldn’t catch, her voice too clogged with tears and snuffles.
I bent down. “What’s that?”
“I said I know a way we can …”
She motioned me down so she could whisper in my ear. I leaned over.
“We can—”
She grabbed my hair and sank her teeth into my neck, just above the bandage. I flung her away. She stumbled back. A flap of my skin hung from her teeth. Blood dripped down her chin. Her eyes flashed orange.
I lunged, grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, and threw her toward the others just as the boy behind me charged. Mom slammed him with a knockback that sent him flying sideways. I grabbed his arm and yanked him aside, giving us a clear path out.
When a girl tried to run in front of us, Mom hit her with an energy bolt that dropped her, howling and clasping her stomach. Another raced forward. Mom brandished her sword.
“You don’t think I’ll use this to protect my daughter?” she said. “Try me.”
They stopped. The one behind her crept forward. My hand shot out. A knockback spell hit the kid so hard he sailed into a tree.
“Go, Savannah,” Mom said, her gaze on the kids. “Use your sensing spell to find Jaime, then get out of here.”
“I—”
“Savannah …” She didn’t look over at me, but I felt like I was ten again, when we’d been walking back from dinner, and a group of supernatural thugs stepped into our path. She’d been right to send me away then. But I wasn’t ten now and even with my sporadic spells, I could fight. Hadn’t I just proven that?
“We can take them,” I whispered. “Two are already injured.”
The children shuffled forward.
“Stay where you are!” Mom said, her sword cutting through the air.
The children hissed and snarled, but their gazes followed the sword, and they stopped moving.
“You saw that operative,” Mom whispered back. “That was a supernatural. A trained guard. We’re not—”
One of the boys charged. I launched a knockback. It failed and I was about to jump forward when Mom swung her sword. The boy was still at least five feet away. A warning strike, I thought, but then the tip sliced through his shirt and an orange glow oozed through. Mom deftly skewered the demon and yanked the sword back. The boy collapsed. The Tengu was impaled on Mom’s sword, a glowing miasma of red and orange, rolling on itself, a glimpse of eyes and teeth and claws appearing, then vanishing so fast they seemed a trick of the mind.
The sword sliced the orange and red cloud in two, a shriek rending the air, then fading as the two halves evaporated.
I looked down at the boy, still on the ground. His chest rose and fell. Unconscious. There was a line of blood on his shirt, but a thin one, a flesh wound.
“Anyone else doubt I’ll use the sword?” Mom said.
The children had gone still.
“I need you to get Jaime,” Mom said to me. “There might be more of them out there. She needs help. I’ll be fine.”
She was right. The first Tengu’s scream had brought others running, but that didn’t mean there weren’t more still searching for Jaime.
“Okay,” I murmured.
“Thank you, baby.”
I backed away until I was sure Mom had the mob of demon children under control. Then I loped down the path.
One advantage to being in the forest? I knew my sensing spell was working. In the police station, a negative result could mean either the place was empty or my spell failed. The forest is never empty. I got back plenty of small blips.
It didn’t work every time. In fact, it fizzled more often than it sparked. But as I searched, I stopped casting it every few feet and used the spell judiciously.
I picked up one ping that was larger than a rabbit, but not big enough for Jaime. It could be a deer, but I hadn’t seen any signs of them, so I guessed it was another child. I steered clear. No sense fighting if I didn’t have to.
The Tengu inside Sara said it could detect Jaime’s scent in the woods. That could mean she’d buried herself under leaves, as we’d tried with the sword. But diving into rotting vegetation would definitely be Jaime’s last choice. I had a good idea what she’d done. It was a simple ruse that wouldn’t fool most humans, but the Tengu weren’t accustomed to tracking anyone in our world.
So I walked with my gaze on the treetops. Sure enough, I caught a glimpse of something burnt orange. Jaime’s blouse. I squinted harder. Her face peered out between leafy branches twenty feet
up. She didn’t say anything, just eyed me and reached for the branch above, as if ready to climb higher.
“I’m not possessed,” I said. “Paige had me take an extra dose of anti-possession tea when I was in Miami.”
She came down about halfway, then settled into a Y. “They’re still around. One passed by just a minute ago.”
“Mom’s holding most of them at bay. I can handle the stragglers. She’s the one they really want anyway. As usual.”
“Tell me about it,” Jaime muttered as she lowered herself another branch. “We don’t need anti-possession brews. We need anti-Eve brews.” She paused, sighed, then said, “She’s okay, right?”
“She was last time I saw her, but I’d like to get you someplace safe and go back to help her.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“You’re lucky that ruse worked,” I said. “From what I recall of Tengu folklore, they’re supposed to be avian spirits. Like birds of prey.”
“Which would mean they’d be accustomed to looking for victims on the ground.”
I wasn’t sure how true that was, but it had worked, so I wasn’t arguing.
As she slid down, a nearby shriek sent her tumbling to the ground. I backed her to safety between me and the tree. A ragged girl about thirteen stood on the path. Her mouth opened so wide her jaw cracked as she shrieked again.
“She’s calling the others,” I said. “We need to get out—”
Another girl joined the shriek-fest from the opposite end of the path. I grabbed Jaime, pushed her into the forest, and we ran.
Not my best idea ever, as I realized about ten seconds later. It was boggy ground and we slipped and slid. The Tengu ran as fast and surefooted as antelope. I herded Jaime left and circled back to the path.
We’d just hit it when the thunder of footsteps had me pushing Jaime into the forest again.
“Wait!” she said.
She gestured and I followed her finger to see the blue glow of my mother’s sword. A second later, Mom appeared … mere steps ahead of three Tengu-possessed children.
One of our pursuers burst from the forest. My hand flew out, hitting her with a knockback before the first incantation word left my mouth.
“Head back to the motel,” Mom shouted. “I’ll be right behind you.”
“Is it this way?”
“I sure as hell hope so.”
It wasn’t. Not exactly anyway. After about five minutes, we could see a road ahead. We ran to it and found ourselves about a quarter mile up from the motel. One car passed us as we ran and it didn’t even slow down.
A guy in the motel parking lot did notice us. He was halfway out of his car when we roared around the corner, raced to our rental, and hopped inside—Jaime and me in the front, Mom in the back. He stared at the kids pursuing us, took in their blood-flecked clothing and scratched, bloody faces, hopped back into his pickup, and went in search of more amenable lodgings.
I put the car in reverse just as two kids launched themselves onto the trunk. Another flew onto the hood. The others went for the side windows.
“You know, I think I’ve had this nightmare,” Jaime said, as they banged and howled and plastered their bloodied faces against the glass. “Except with zombies.”
“Close enough,” I muttered. “Hold on.”
I gunned it in reverse. I guess I should have paid more attention in physics class. The one climbing onto the roof
shot over the car, but Sara, still on the trunk, flew backward.
I hit the brakes before I ran her over. I knocked the gearshift into drive, hoping I had enough room to turn. The kid who’d flown from the roof leaped up right in my path. I checked the rearview mirror. Sara had wobbled to her feet, holding onto the trunk for balance. Another boy climbed onto the roof.
“Son of a bitch!” I said. “Why do they have to be children?”
“For the same reason you aren’t hitting reverse and saying to hell with it,” Mom said.
“The kid in front is bigger,” Jaime said. “He can handle the impact better.”
“Great,” I said. “We’ve gone from ‘don’t hurt the kids’ to ‘which one will get hurt the least.’?”
“Ease forward,” Jaime said. “Knock him down carefully.”
“Run him over. But gently,” I muttered and gently pressed the gas.
The kid on the roof started jumping up and down. A girl took a running leap onto the roof and did the same, setting the car rocking.
“Just keep—” Mom began.
Jaime screamed as her window shattered. A boy reached in and grabbed a handful of her hair. Mom caught the kid’s arm and twisted until he howled and let go, but another was already reaching through.
A crash. Something struck the side of my head so hard I saw stars. A brick dropped beside me. Hands reached through the broken driver’s window.
I hit the gas. The hands grabbed the wheel and yanked, and the car shot up over the sidewalk and crashed into the motel. I turned to launch a knockback—or anything else—but the kid suddenly sailed backward. He landed on the asphalt and lay there, not moving.
I looked over at my mother, but she was helping Jaime fight off the kids. One of them went flying. This time, I saw him hover in the air, thrashing, as if something was holding him up. Then his head shot back and he screamed. The scream died midnote and the boy collapsed to the pavement, unconscious.
“Ah, a little deus ex machina,” Mom said as the boy who’d grabbed Jaime’s hair also went flying. “Or angel ex machina.”