A paramedic ran toward me, running his hands over me to find out where the blood was coming from.
“Not me,” I said impatiently. “Shay. Shay! Phoenix is bleeding out! Icarus is with him, but we don’t have much time. He needs help.”
“Stay with the victim,” Shay commanded one of his recruits. “Everyone else with me. Paramedics, bring whatever you can to help.”
I ran, forgetting about letting them catch up with me. I was halfway to Phoenix before I turned around and realised how far everyone was behind me. But they could still see me. Phoenix was mumbling incoherent words to Icarus as I knelt by the
fae
prince’s head. I licked my jacket sleeve and did my best to wipe the blood from Phoenix’s mouth before anyone saw what I had done.
Icarus whined, and I wasn’t sure if it was in protest or because he sensed the life leaving Phoenix’s body.
“It’s okay,” I said, more to reassure myself than the werewolf. “We’re going to be fine. They’ll help him, and he’ll be fine.”
The werewolf nudged me away from Phoenix’s prone body with a low growl. I surreptitiously glanced at Phoenix’s still-red mouth.
“I didn’t hurt him,” I said. “I wouldn’t hurt him. I was trying to help.”
But Icarus refused to let me near Phoenix again, even when the others reached us. The paramedics surrounded Phoenix, working quickly to staunch the blood flow.
“What happened?” Shay asked as Icarus sat next to me.
At least the werewolf didn’t want to eat me.
“There’s something out there,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. The werewolves haven’t been killing anyone, Shay. This thing is fast and lethal. It could cause even more havoc now that we’ve interrupted its feed.”
“What did Phoenix say about it?” he asked.
I glanced at Phoenix and shivered as the paramedics prepared to take him back to the ambulance then on to the supernatural clinic. “He didn’t have a clue what it was. It’s smaller than the werewolves, and its hair is longer. It stood on its hind legs until it had to run. It’s ugly, and it has some serious fangs and claws. But it’s definitely not native to Ireland if Phoenix doesn’t know about it.”
Shay nodded. “I see. I’m going to head over to the hospital. Do you want to come with me?”
I inwardly recoiled at the idea of Phoenix waking up, knowing what I’d done to him. “Uh, no. I should probably try to get Icarus back to the werewolf zone without causing a national incident.”
“All right.” Shay hesitated. “Are you okay?”
“I didn’t get hurt. Only… Phoenix. Is that woman okay?”
“She was a little hysterical, but her injuries aren’t life threatening. She’ll be fine as soon as we catch whatever her attacker is.”
“I’ll get Carl to help me with some research. Maybe something from Eddie’s shop will help us figure it out.”
“Well, you’re the only one awake who can recognise its image, so I suppose that’s for the best.”
“Let me know how Phoenix gets on,” I called as he started to walk away.
He turned around to smile at me. “Looks like it was lucky for him you were here, eh?”
Shivering, I beckoned Icarus away from the scene. I expected him to get into the back, but he transformed into his more-human form and sat silently in the passenger seat. He might have been more vulnerable, but he still looked powerful and intimidating. His body was covered in bulky muscle threaded with pulsing veins, and his gaze was intent and piercing, full of purpose. He sat still but alert, poised for action at a second’s notice. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to be expected to drive properly with a naked werewolf staring at me, but I tried anyway. Icarus didn’t say a word until we were a good distance away.
Then he suddenly lifted my arm and inspected my cut wrist. The wound had quickly stopped bleeding after I’d fed Phoenix, but the smell of it must have been bothering the werewolf. He held my gaze as he drew his dry tongue across the wound. I shivered at the look in his eye.
“Wrong,” he said in an unexpectedly clear voice. And then he opened the door and jumped out, transforming into a wolf in mid-air. He bounded over a wall and out of sight before I could even think to slow down. I stopped the truck to close the door and laid my head on the steering wheel in a panic.
Phoenix is going to kill me this time.
Chapter Seventeen
Lucia was home, and as her father was in hospital, she stayed away from the cul-de-sac. Surprisingly, Val didn’t join her as often as I’d expected, choosing instead to help me with research.
“He’s awake,” Val said abruptly when I enquired about Phoenix. “But he’s weak. They’re keeping him in. One of his relatives offered their blood, and he’s doing as well as can be hoped.”
My cheeks reddened. “Oh.”
“Why do you look guilty?” she asked in a curious tone. “You’ve been antsy for the last two days.”
I bit my lip. “It’s kind of my fault he got hurt. He pushed me out of the way of the creature’s path, and he got in the way instead.”
“That’s what happens,” she said. “How is that your fault?”
I shrugged, unwilling to share with anyone what I had done next. Going home in just a bra and a jacket, covered in other people’s blood, had been bad enough. Panicked and incessant questions had followed, and I had distracted everyone only because I had details of the as-yet-undiscernible creature. Nobody on the Senate knew what it was, and I had provided the same description numerous times, one that Phoenix had likely seconded as soon as he awoke. The heat was off the werewolves for the present, but that didn’t mean it was over.
“A shifter spat on me in the hospital,” Val said. “They truly hate us now.”
“Maybe you should keep away from there then.”
“It’s not my favourite place anyway,” she said, but I could tell the lack of respect hurt at least a part of her. She was proud, and if a shifter didn’t fear her enough to be afraid to spit on her, then something was very wrong.
She and Carl were sitting in my living room, reading through a stack of books he had borrowed from Eddie’s shop. After two days of pure research, we hadn’t found a single clue to what the creature was.
“If it’s not from Ireland, then there may be no old records of one ever being here before,” Carl had guessed. “Many of Eddie’s books are focused on Irish literature only.” That had given me the idea to raid Baba Yaga’s collection, and Peter had promised to drop a box over on his way home.
Val slammed a book shut. “This is useless. I have no idea what I’m even looking for here.”
“Just…” I shook my head. “Anything hairy or clawed. That’s a wide-enough net, I think.”
“That covers half of everything that’s ever stepped foot in the country,” she complained. “What if this thing is a new creation?”
“Then I don’t know!” I shouted. “We’ll just have to wait for another army to fight against, I suppose.”
“Calm down,” Carl murmured, barely looking up from his book. “Val, go take a break. You deserve it.”
Muttering under her breath, the half-hellhound left for next door, where Anka was cooking dinner for everyone.
“Okay,” Carl said. “What the hell is your problem? What are you worried about?”
I picked at my thumbnail. “Nothing.”
“Liar, liar.”
“Shut up.” I sighed and shook my head. “I’m just worried about Phoenix is all.”
“He’s fine. He needs some rest. Then he’ll be back on his feet, and you two can take Icarus and go hunt this furry arsehole down.”
I shifted uncomfortably. That was the last thing I wanted to do.
“Okay.” He dragged out the word. “That’s obviously not the problem. What happened that you haven’t told me about?”
“Like I’m supposed to tell you everything?”
He got up and sat next to me on the sofa. He held my gaze. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I may have done something silly. A bit stupid. Maybe a little dangerous.”
He looked confused for a second. Then his expression cleared, and he covered his laughter by clamping his hand over his mouth. When he recovered, he lowered his voice. “Holy shit, Ava. Did you get it on with Prince Ice-cold?”
“Fuck, Carl!” I thumped his shoulder. “How did you… it was just a brief kiss, and that’s not what I meant anyway.”
“So that wasn’t the mistake?” He grinned and leaned back. “Interesting.”
God, this is embarrassing.
“Just forget that for a minute. Okay? When he got hurt, he was bleeding out. I was on my own, and I panicked. I was trying to stop the bleeding, but he was going to die before anyone got there to help me.”
His face drained of colour. He grabbed my arms and pushed up the sleeves. One thin pink scar remained. “You didn’t,” he whispered. “You fed him with your own blood?”
“I know! I know that’s completely stupid, but I panicked! He’s going to kill me, Carl. Icarus came back and realised what I did, and he wouldn’t even let me touch Phoenix after that. This is bad, isn’t it?”
“When you drank fae blood, you ended up looking like you had been electric shocked for weeks. And when you gave me your blood, I…” He shook his head. “That’s a big deal, Ava. Massive. What if changes him?”
“What if it doesn’t?” I hissed. “Listen, fae blood is way more powerful than mine, and we don’t even know if mine actually does anything.”
“A witch drank your blood to give her the strength to perform a powerful spell, Ava!”
“Well, what was I supposed to do? He was dying! I had to at least try to stop that from happening.”
“I know,” he said softly. “Calm down. You did the best you could at the time. Do you think it helped him?”
“I’ve no idea.” Something struck me. “But, wait—Val said that Phoenix got a blood transfusion from another fae. That would sort of cancel my blood out, right? And, I mean, it was only a little bit. It’s not like I gave him much. Just enough to keep him going long enough for the paramedics to get there.” That might not have been strictly true. I had been dizzy and exhausted until the following evening.
“Does he know what you did?”
“He opened his eyes, but I don’t know if he was really aware. I mean, he might not care.”
He gave me a knowing look. “Are we both talking about the same thing?”
Voices at the front door sent us inching apart and trying to look innocent. Peter arrived with a box of books, and Esther had walked him in.
“Anka says dinner is ready,” Esther said.
“And here are some books,” Peter said. “Breslin had already prepared a box of the ones he said were most likely to help.” He dumped the box on the floor. “I’m starving. Let’s eat.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said. “I’m just going to start looking through the new books. You all go on, though.”
Peter and Esther left. As Carl prepared to follow, I whispered. “You won’t tell anyone, right?”
He looked back and grinned. “About you making out with your friend’s daddy? I’ll think about it.”
I hadn’t even considered Lorcan’s reaction. I covered my burning cheeks until he left. Carl could be such an arsehole sometimes. And he was always too quick to read me. I really hoped that had nothing to do with him drinking my blood that time. I didn’t think I could quite cope with Phoenix being that familiar with me.
When they left, I knelt on the floor beside the box and starting sorting the books. I flipped through a couple of pages of one before getting engrossed. It appeared to be a bestiary. It looked handwritten and ancient, but the words were as dark as fresh ink, probably due to magic of some sort. The leather cover didn’t even have a title, so I started at the index. All kinds of creatures were in there, some I had felt sure had been made up in Hollywood. And it was more like a list of the most vicious creatures that had ever existed in the world. Somebody should really have come up with an international database already. Just typing “hair and claws” into a search field and hoping for the best would have been so much easier than poring over an index.
I leaned back against my coffee table as I read, fascinated by a creature with five hearts that all needed to be pierced before the thing would just die already. I wondered if there had been hunters who did nothing but travel around, trying to figure out the weak spots of dangerous creatures.
I flipped through page after page of terrible creatures, each one uglier and scarier than the last. When I read about a two-headed monster that had a habit of playing dead, only to come back to life, I felt like closing the book, going to bed, and covering my head with my duvet. But I kept going because I needed to know about everything out there to ever have a chance of being one step ahead. One creature was almost an exact physical description of someone I felt sure had recently returned from exile, but I tried not to think about that too closely.
And then I found it. I yelped as the creature’s face stared up at me from the page. The artist had done a great job, but without colour, those eerie golden eyes had been difficult to recreate. At the top of the page, in swirling letters, was the word
Wendigo
.
A wendigo was in Ireland, causing deaths that were being blamed on werewolves. A paragraph on the page had been crossed out. Apparently, people had once thought the wendigo were a slighter cousin of the werewolves, but the truth was worse. Each wendigo had once been human, and nobody knew how many existed. The humans had accepted demons into their bodies, but in order to prove they were worthy, they had to become cannibals. They had to eat their own families to prove themselves before the demon would give them their full power. But the wendigo were aimless without a master, and if the demon died, the wendigo remained monsters that ravaged the countryside until death. Their weak spot was a small space at the base of their spines. Tiny words were written next to the picture: The wendigo are considered one of the darkest, most dangerous creatures in the human realm. Extermination advised.
What the hell does that mean?
I wondered if Mrs. Yaga had written that and if she had been the one to face a wendigo and figure out its weak spot. A part of me was desperate to go to the Eleven for help, but I would seem weak if I kept running to them.
I read the page again, trying to memorise the information. The front door opened, and I called out excitedly, “Carl? I think I found it! It’s called a wendigo, and it’s a—”
“A wendigo?” Phoenix asked. “What’s that?”
I dropped the book with a fright and gazed up at Phoenix. He towered over me, making me feel small. I crawled backward before getting to my feet.
He looked puzzled, then his expression hardened. “Well?” he barked. “Show me what you found.”
I picked up the book and handed it to him before stepping back.
Ignoring me, he sank into my sofa with a wince.
“I thought you were in hospital.”
He held up the book. “There’s a wendigo running around that needs to be dealt with. Rest can wait until we’re safe.”
“Do you know anything about it?”
“Nothing,” he said as he skimmed over the words. “Have you read this? It’s interesting.”
“Do you think that happened here? That a demon offered a human his power, I mean. He would have to eat his family. We’d hear about something like that by now, right?”
“Perhaps it was already fully a wendigo when it arrived,” he said slowly. “It doesn’t really matter. This says it can never be satisfied. There could be other bodies that haven’t been found.” He looked up at me. “And more cattle we haven’t heard about yet. Why is it even here? Surely a far more densely populated country would be a better hunting ground.”
“Maybe it was in danger. Somebody wrote that the wendigo should be exterminated. Maybe this one managed to get away from the exterminator.”
He tapped his chin. “It says here that they can’t exist in packs. They will kill each other. It could have been running from a more powerful wendigo.”
“And they don’t need to breed because a demon makes them. So is this about the book? Could another demon have come through the book a year ago?”
He flinched. “It’s possible, but would it have done this?”
“And where has it been for the last year?” I said glumly.
“There’s a theory,” he said, “that the reason we haven’t noticed much activity from these demons is that they’re recovering from the abrupt change.”
“Gathering power?” I swallowed a sudden rush of fear. “That’s not very comforting.”
He shrugged. “It’s just a theory. Of course, this creature could have existed for years, roaming from one country to another. It could simply be coincidence that it’s here right now.”
“So,” I said when he continued to read, “how are you feeling?”
“Sore. We need to get back out there and hunt this wendigo down. This creature’s hunting ground is not so large right now, and that gives us an advantage.”
“What, you, me, and Icarus?”
“And Shay’s recruits. We can send each pair out with a werewolf now that we’ve proved a wendigo is the true culprit. I’ve already filtered out enough information to the press to reassure the public that the werewolves are still their saviours.”
I smiled. “And if they stop this threat, then nobody can argue.”
“Least of all a paragon with an agenda,” he agreed.
I decided he couldn’t remember what had happened and relaxed. “It’s so fast, though. Think a lone werewolf will take it down?”
“No, not alone. But if a werewolf can antagonise the wendigo and keep it in battle for long enough, one of the recruits might get a chance to sink a sword into the base of its spine. We’re relying on an ancient book, but at the very least, the wendigo will be badly wounded.”