“I don’t want this pathetic offering,” the monster said, pointing a claw in the direction of the unconscious girl.
“You’ve been fed, it’s time to go back,” Siobhan told it.
Eion and Shane stood side by side watching as the petite warrior negotiated with the monster four times her height.
“No,” it replied.
“I’ll reopen the gate, and you
will
go through it.” Her voice quavered the slightest bit, and Shane heard the uncertainty in it. So did the fae.
“Girl, do you know how long I’ve been on the other side
waiting
to be called through? Others like this oaf were smarter. They made the opening too small to get through when they called to me and made their offerings. Seems like time has done nothing to improve the wisdom of your people.”
Siobhan, who had opened the gate without knowing the monster had already been called to it, looked abashed. She’d told Shane she just wanted something to scare the druids. Neither of them could have known that what they would unleash would be so much worse.
“I—” She began to speak, but the monster lashed out, backhanding her with shocking speed. Siobhan flew across the circle and smacked into a tree, making a loud
crack
sound. Her bow clattered to the ground, and she tumbled after it, flopping limply into the duff.
“I will not be
bound
,” screamed the fae.
It didn’t wait for anyone to chat with it again. Charging in the direction Shane and Siobhan had entered from, the monster vanished into the darkness. Eion stood, mouth agape, watching the empty space where the creature had last been. Shane didn’t waste time staring at the woods. He skirted the stone table and skidded to a stop beside Siobhan.
“Red. Hey, Red.” He tapped her face with a light slap.
No response.
He lifted her head, and his fingers felt warm and tacky with blood. “Hey, sweetheart, you wanna wake up for me?” he asked hopefully.
She groaned, giving his heart a leap. “What happened?”
“You saved the girl.”
Siobhan gave a weak smile, her eyes fluttering open. Her gaze swept the area behind him, and a frown settled over her lips. “Where did…?” She glanced at her father’s transfixed figure. “Did he banish it?” she asked.
“Um…”
“
Did he banish it
?” she demanded, sitting bolt upright before wobbling slightly from her head wound.
“Not so much.”
“Then where is it?”
Eion turned around, looking at his daughter cradled in Shane’s arms. “We’ve made a terrible mistake,” he mumbled.
Siobhan gazed at Shane wide-eyed. “What does
that
mean?”
When Eion didn’t speak, Shane ventured a response. “You know how it’s bad when a troll gets through the gate and out into the streets?”
Her skin went whiter than usual, taking on a green-gray pallor. “Yes.”
“This is about a thousand times worse.”
Chapter Fourteen
They couldn’t leave the girl, but Siobhan didn’t want to trust her father. Considering he’d kidnapped the girl so he could kill her, Siobhan figured the distrust had been earned.
Outside the Bath & Body Works, Shane set the unconscious girl on the sidewalk and pulled out his cellphone. They’d dressed the girl the best they could given how torn up her clothing had been once her kidnappers had taken them off her. One of the dead druids had a robe that wasn’t too shredded, and they’d wrapped it around her damaged clothes to keep her protected from the elements. She was still out cold.
The second they’d hit the street, Eion had taken off. Siobhan wished, ruefully, that her people had a death-before-dishonor policy and her father was running off to skewer himself on his own ceremonial knife. She knew better, but it didn’t stop her from wanting him to suffer.
Shane was pacing the empty street in front of the darkened store, gesturing wildly while he hollered into the phone. “What do you mean you don’t know where she is?” He paused, listening to the response. “Jesus Christ, Nolan, I don’t know.
No
, I don’t think she just fucking vanished, she has responsibilities.” Shane sighed. “
No
, I don’t think you should call them. Look, I need help. Can you meet me on the corner of Ninety-seventh and First?” Another long pause and Siobhan marveled at how stormy his countenance became as he argued with whoever Nolan was. “Okay, thank you.”
He came and sat next to her on the curb, and she let herself lean into him. Her head still felt like it had been pumped full of helium. The unconscious girl was flopped against Siobhan’s opposite side. They looked like a heap of drunks.
“Who’s Nolan?”
“My partner.”
“Who can’t he find?”
Shane put an arm around her shoulder, his fingers tentatively touching the wound on the back of her scalp. Siobhan hissed. “Sorry,” Shane said. “Just wanted to see if it’s healing.”
“It won’t if you keep poking at it.”
“Sorry.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Who were you asking about?”
“Our…boss.”
“And she’s missing?”
“She seems to have gone AWOL. No big deal.”
Siobhan got a sense from his tone she wasn’t welcome to ask more questions about the matter, so she changed the topic. “And once Nolan picks up the girl?”
Shane smiled and handed her the bow he’d brought out for her, slung across his shoulder so he could still hold the girl. “After that, you and I have a job to do.”
Nolan showed up about fifteen minutes later in a beat-up Oldsmobile, and he wasn’t at all what Siobhan had been expecting. He was tall and muscular, equal to Shane in height but more impressive in bulk, lacking all of the subtle wiry strength Shane had. Nolan had a chocolate-milk complexion and short black hair. It was the wide, toothy smile he gave her that threw Siobhan for a loop. The guy was big enough he looked like he could break her in half, but when he grinned at her like a dope, she knew he was a teddy bear.
“You mus’ be Siobhan,” he said, pronouncing her name
shuh-bon
. She could hear an accent in his few short words and assumed her butchered name was victim to his way of speaking, not ignorance.
“And you must be Nolan.”
“Guilty’s charged,” he said, blushing faintly. “I guess this mus’ be my date for the night.”
Shane helped Nolan load the girl into his car. “Take her to a hospital. Do you think you can get Brigit’s help, um…making it seem like it’s on the level?”
“Relax, man. I’m jus’ gonna play good-guy hero type. Found her, don’t know nothin’. Jus’ doing what’s right. Shit gets tight, I’ll call Bri.”
“Is Brigit your boss?” Siobhan asked, unable to stop herself.
Nolan snorted. “Well, she’s
my
boss, know what I mean?”
Siobhan did not.
“Brigit is his girlfriend. Vampire,” Shane explained.
“Ah,” Siobhan said, still not a hundred percent certain she understood why a guy who hunted vampires would be dating one. A lot didn’t add up, but she figured it might take longer to explain than she had time to hear.
“You good?” Nolan asked Shane.
“Yeah, I’ll call you if shit meets fan and we need help. You bring the other thing I needed?”
Nolan nodded and opened the back door. “Never thought we’d need one. Secret’s weapon guy nearly cut off my left nut when I couldn’t cover the whole deposit. Good thing she has a credit account.”
Shane snorted. “Now you have to worry about
her
taking your left nut.” He reached into the backseat and swung a pump-action shotgun over his shoulder before he pulled out something heavier, bulkier and much meaner looking.
“What the hell is that?” Siobhan asked, dragging herself to her feet.
“AK-47,” Shane replied matter-of-factly. “I didn’t think a handgun was going to cut it with that thing.”
Siobhan peered over his shoulder into the dark interior of the car. “You hiding a grenade launcher or a bazooka in there?”
Nolan chuckled and closed the door. “I can only do so much in fifteen minutes.”
Chapter Fifteen
Tracking the fae turned out to be much easier than Siobhan had expected.
The creature had no sense of subtlety and had left a mess of dented cars and broken shop windows in its wake. Police cars dotted the streets, their blue and red lights bouncing off the tight, high walls and casting shadows that flitted and moved at will. The police officers didn’t seem to notice the heavily armed Siobhan and Shane as they moved off the sidewalk and down an alley, following the wreckage towards the northern entrance to Central Park.
“Why would it go to the park?” Shane asked, edging around a large dumpster that had been yanked away from a wall and pushed onto its side. Somewhere not far from the park a woman screamed loudly and a cacophony of car horns blasted.
They were definitely headed the right way.
“Last time it was out must have been hundreds of years ago. It’s probably drawn to something familiar and none of this…” she pointed to the bright lights and skyscrapers, “…would feel right to it. But that’s just my guess.”
She was as confused as Shane by the creature’s real motivations. If it had escaped with bloodlust in mind, why weren’t they following a trail of corpses? Aside from the screaming and the constant noise letting them know they were on the right track, they’d yet to come across any evidence the monster had hurt anyone. It had gobbled up the druids by the gate like they were bacon-wrapped scallops at a fancy dinner party. Yet here, where people numbered in the millions, it had yet to kill a single one, as far as she could tell.
They passed the park gate and into the dark interior of the tree-filled space, streetlights turning the trees into illuminated stained glass but not casting enough light to push away the night entirely. As they moved farther from the loud noise and brightness of the city streets, the constant throbbing at the back of Siobhan’s head began to wane some, but not enough she could ignore it.
She rotated her shoulders and rolled her neck, trying to shake off the aches threatening to steal all her attention. She needed to focus, and it was hard to do that with a tiny demon hacking away at the inside of her skull. Or doing a jig. Whatever was going on in there, it
hurt
.
Slinging the bow over her shoulder, she held out a hand to stop Shane’s advance. His heavy motorcycle boots weren’t quiet enough now that the rest of the noise of the city was gone.
“So, Red, what’s the plan?”
Siobhan appreciated the way Shane yielded to her wisdom on matters of fae, but even she wasn’t sure what to do with this particular one. She’d never known a fae who could increase its size exponentially. Or one with four legs and a horse’s head, for that matter. She was in over her head.
But she didn’t need him to know that. Two people drowning didn’t help anyone swim to shore.
“You know those big guns you brought?”
“Yup.”
“Point. Shoot.” She pointed a finger gun at him and pulled the thumb trigger.
“Simple. I like it.”
“First we have to find the damned thing.”
Siobhan stopped walking in front of a broken stone wall and looked down a tunnel of battered, uprooted trees and a fresh path of clawed, damp earth. The damage was so fresh the smell of dirt was heavy in the air and leaves were still falling from where they’d been torn apart.
Shane wrinkled his nose and played with the strap on the shotgun. “Doesn’t look promising, but I guess we can check it out.”
“What’s the matter, Hewitt, did you forget your white horse and shining armor at home?”
The hunter snorted. “Seems like the horse had a mind of its own. But I could use that armor if you know where I might get some.”
Siobhan took the bow from her shoulder, plucked one of the arrowheads from her strap and squeezed it to create an arrow. After climbing up onto the crumbling stone wall, she held her weapons in one hand and took the AK-47 from Shane so he could follow her up without shooting either of them in an accidental slip. When they were both safely on pseudo-solid ground, she handed back the gun like it had burned her.
“Don’t like the heavy firepower?”
Siobhan wiped her free palm on her pants. “I don’t like weapons I can’t control.”
“I think you could control it plenty fi—”
The sound of a roar echoed down the path, cutting short whatever witty retort Shane had been about to throw her way.
“They’re playing our song,” he announced.
Or at least that’s what Siobhan thought he said. She was already tearing down the path, bounding over fallen branches and dodging snapped logs that blocked a clear line and threatened to cut her if she got too close.
Shane was behind her, ungraceful but fast. Where she had sidestepped, he stomped directly on the debris, causing sticks to crunch loudly under his big boots. Siobhan climbed up on a rock, and Shane came up behind her, giving them a perfect vantage point over a clearing that hadn’t been there before. Trees were felled in a space about forty feet across that looked like a crop circle. In the center of the clearing was the fae, hauling a tree up from its roots and bashing the ground with it like it was a giant mallet. It was making a pained howling noise and would periodically stop attacking the tree long enough to cover its ears.