The Hunter's Prey (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 5) (7 page)

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” I said.

“Not gentle,” said one of them.

“Not men,” another said and laughed uncleverly.

I breathed and felt the languid allure from their noxious pheromones. It was easy enough to ignore. “Well done and good job on the hunt, Brothers Romanoff,” I said.

One of them squinted.

Another blinked.

“We’ve met before, witch?” the tallest of them asked. He dressed as they all did, wearing a leather vest with a white t-shirt and tight black jeans.

“We haven’t yet met, but hello.” I smiled and turned to look at each of the brothers that surrounded me. All of them stood a good ten feet away from me. “But I of course recognize you and know of your reputation. The mighty Romanoff brothers. The scoundrel vampires of Russia.”

In truth, they were some lesser relatives of the czar who had become vampires when the Czarist regime fell. These brothers had gone on killing sprees across Russia, murdering peasants in the shadow of Stalin's even greater persecution. I knew not which parts of their bloody history was fact and which legend, but if even a tiny fraction of what I had heard about them was true, then they did not deserve to walk away from this fallow faerie glen.

One of them grumbled. “Mother Russia. Back then a vampire could do what he wanted. Take what is his birth-right without being bothered. Humans these days always have cameras on them. They always try to catch us on film. As soon as they do? There are a dozen hunters after us. Humans hunting us.” He shook his head in disgust.

“Everything has gotten harder,” another said.

“Damn this modern age, so hard on you monsters,” I said.

“And that’s not even the worst of it,” said another. “With the drugs kids are doing these days, and the pain pills and anti-depressants people are on, we have to be careful all the time about what kind of blood we drink.”

“Oh dear,” I said.

“Quiet,” hissed the tallest one. Their eldest and leader, I guessed. “Focus, brothers. She may seem lovely and willing to listen. She may have a distracting pulse in her jugular, but we are on a hunt. The hunt. And we are the first to the prey. Our time to win has finally come.”

Around me, the vampires hissed and showed off their pointy teeth.

“So easy to find,” one of them said.

“Did you put the tracker on me?” I asked, placing a hand over my heart.

The brothers looked confused.

“We are fast. We followed,” one answered.

Which meant whatever monster was tracking me with the thing would be along soon.

“It is strange to see that you are hunting for that hedge witch Agnes Stonehouse. How far the Romanoffs have fallen, to serve a peasant. How sad.”

Hisses surrounded me.

“If you knew the rivers of blood we have made.”

“Thick blood. Chunky blood. We have drank so deeply.”

“Don’t listen to her. Prey need not speak. The mother need not talk. We can take her tongue, surely.”

Interesting. “I’m no one’s mother,” I said. “And Agnes ordered you to take me to her unharmed.”

Brows furrowed. They hissed some more.

“The hunted is always a mother,” one said.

“Whose mother?” I asked.

“We don’t know. We don’t care. They get strangled, sucked, eaten, mangled. Doesn’t matter whose mother.”

“But you're strange. You’re a witch. And she wants you living.”

“Time to go. We take her and fly back,” one brother said.

“Hungry though. And she’s old,” replied another.

Suddenly, they all stood a couple of feet closer and the circle around me tightened. I had seen none of them move. Old vampires were freakishly fast.

“She wants me brought in alive,” I reminded them. “A pity that. I would make a lovely meal, with my old and magical blood.” I licked my lips. “Like the finest wine.”

They licked their lips.

Just as human men, vampires grew stupid when their desires heightened.

I smiled at all of them and raised my hand.

Ball bearings, a bobby pin, a piece of knotted rope, and a diamond with spiked edges: the spells sat in the palm of my hands like promises. “You have found me first, that is true,” I said. “But you must obey your master. You will take me to another and not take one sip of my hot, ancient, and half-noble blood.”

They all licked their bee-stung lips and were suddenly closer still.

“Just a sip, perhaps,” said one. His eyes reddened. His teeth poked out of his mouth and made him lisp.

“Just a taste. We’re good at stopping.”

“Sometimes.”

They pulsed closer, and I could reach out and touch any one of them now. Instead, I spun and threw my spells. Exploding balls. A living flame. An itching spell. Three ear-piercing shriekers and a dread knot. I spoke the Welsh words that would activate each of the seven of them, a hurried mumble under my breath.

The vampires stumbled back as the spells sprang to life. The only one with any strength was the exploding balls. They blew off one of the vampire brother’s pretty faces, and a moment later he dissolved into an inky cloud that fell to the ground.

The others jumped to their feet: itchy, hot, and filled with dread, as well as raging that I had just killed their brother.

“I could use some back up any time now,” I said to the air.

In response, the plain rock sitting ten feet away shivered and turned into a wizard.

“Over here, bloody lads,” Merlin called out. He leveled his wand at one of them and muttered.

That one exploded.

Three brothers attacked me and two flew toward Merlin.

I threw pure and horrid magic at the vampires, drawing it up from the faerie ground and pouring it straight at them. It wasn’t spell-making, but something more primal. The magic inked through the air and struck one hard. He was dead within seconds. But the other two moved too fast. One of them struck me in the head. The other barreled into me from behind.

I fell to my knees and pulled up more magic, flinging it in a deadly arc that surrounded me. It cast a dark clouded circle around my form and I couldn’t see beyond it.

I felt two things batter into my magical circle.

I heard screams. And then whimpering. And then silence. I waited for a tense moment, and then dropped the magic and let the dark clouds sink into the ground. Where it had been, three smoldering ruins of dead vampires remained.

Satisfying, that.

I turned toward Merlin.

He sat in silence as well, near some smoldering wreckages of dead vampires, though he did not wear any kind of smug expression.

Instead, he pressed both of his hands to his side where blood leaked out around his fingers, staining his shirt and pants.

I ran to him.

“Show me.”

“Merely a flesh wound,” he said through clenched teeth.

“We are all and only flesh. Show me, love,” I whispered, for all my breath had left me.

He carefully removed his hands, and I saw the white of rib bones and the raw meat of his insides. Without help it would bleed out, or with luck, fester and grow infected. Our mortality would let it pus and swell, dragging Merlin's life away with some paltry wound. But I would not let that happen. I took a smooth peridot stone out of my pocket. It wasn't much of a healing spell, but it was all I had. I placed it in my palm and pressed my hand over the wound.

Merlin winced, but didn’t move away from me.

“
Gwella, gwella, gwella,
” I murmured, twining strands of different kinds of healing magic from within me and pouring them into the stone and then into Merlin. I closed my eyes, “
Gwella, gwella, gwella.”
I braided strength and resilience into a figure of eight and added it to the flow of healing energies. Beneath my hands, I slowly began to feel his bones knit back together as the skin around the meaty wound pulled in and tightened.

Merlin kept his eyes clenched shut. He groaned and swore with every layer of healing I put into him. I kept at it even after his wound was fully sewn back together. I flowed great strands of white healing light into his side, for what if some small amount of dirt or vampire effluvium lurked within? It might yet still fell him and that could not happen. It must not happen. I doubled and then tripled the magic into him, even as I felt my breath slowing and my pulse growing fainter. I had to do this well and fully. Merlin needed to be in the world, in my world, hale and hearty.

Strong hands wrapped around mine and pulled them away from his side.

“Stop, witch. That’s more than enough. Stop.” Merlin wrapped his fingers around mine. “You need your strength today. I’ll give some of it back.”

I sat back on my knees, feeling wan and weak, but didn’t let it show. “How do you feel?”

“Fully revived,” he said. His hands tremored. His left eye ticked shut.

Even with all the magic, he would still hurt. Exhaustion would ache through him.

I closed my eyes and breathed in the warm air. I smelled new magics on the wind, still far away but headed in our direction. My heart throbbed with the spider nestled within.

Merlin started rubbing his hands together and gathering some of the healing magic I’d put into him. He began to shape a bright ball between his hands, readying it to give it back to me. I slipped my hand into my pocket and palmed a gold doubloon.

“For you,” Merlin said, offering up the orb of magic.

“Thank you,” I said and reached for it. But instead of grabbing it, I gripped onto his wrist. “
Mynd adref
,” I murmured. The gold doubloon flared in my hand and pulsed its magic into Merlin.

Merlin’s eyes grew, his mouth dropped open, and he looked like he was going to start yelling at me as his body began to fade.

“You need to rest. Yell at me all you want later.” I stared at him as he grew more and more transparent. I focused on him and thought of his penthouse apartment. It would be safe there: far away from me. I kept the image of his home in my mind’s eye until he finally disappeared. Even after he was gone, I held the image of him whole and unharmed in my mind’s eye for a long moment. I wouldn’t let him get hurt again today. At least I’d accomplished that. None would hunt him now that he wasn’t beside me.

Now that I was alone. I stared up at the sky, turning blue again now that the vampires no longer commanded it to storm.

I strode toward the boots that lay in the trampled grass and looked all the world like nothing special. I knelt down, feeling the ache of exhaustion in my legs and arms as I carefully laced up the too-big boots, mindful of making no small step with them, else it might thrust me forward before I was ready.

Then I took a step.

10

Seven Leagues and Seven Leagues

The world blurred as I strode forward in the seven league boots, taking a couple of long steps. Nothing good would come of lingering in the faerie glen. Then I stopped and stood on a lonely stretch of beach filled with greying pebbles and salt-bleached driftwood. What now? Where should I go to be safe?

Safe.

I looked down at my hand and studied the ancient ring on my left pointer finger. It was a ring I had bespelled while preparing to go into the underworld and rescue Lila. Wound through the ring was a tricky kind of spell that I had spent over a week crafting. It was a spell that could turn into any other kind of spell quickly. I was quite proud of its creation, and I didn’t want to use it unless necessity called for it. I wanted to save it for Lila. It was my best “use this in dire and strange times” spell.

The wind shifted and I smelled again the scent of magic not my own. Of hunters, gaining ground and quickly coming for me. I would do my sweet Lila no good if I did not figure out how to survive this day.

“
Diogelwch
,” I said with a sigh, promising myself that I would make more and better spells for Lila as I touched the ring. Safety, I told it
.
Yellow lights sparked around the ring and a moment later I felt a directional pull on my finger. I aimed my boots in its direction, and ran. The boots and the ring combined their magic and led me forward to what I could only hope would be safety.

I saw a field full of cows. A ferry landing. A rocky beach. A street bloated with big box stores. A neighborhood full of lovely houses. And then, with my next step, I came to a door, inches away from my face.

Safety?

Without moving my feet, I glanced up and down the block. I was back in Seattle. Fremont, by the look of the hilly street and the wild colored houses with lawns full of blown-glass gazing balls. But where was I, really? I had never been on this street before. My mind felt stuffed with cotton from all the magic I’d used on Merlin. Perhaps I had forgotten this place.

“
Diogelwch
?” I whispered under my breath. My ringed hand shot out and rapped upon the door without my volition.

“Coming,” a woman's voice cried out, and a moment later the door swung open. She was a plump and pleasant looking woman with crow's feet around her eyes and a generous smile. Above and behind her head was a plaque that read in cross-stitch,
Witches, You are Welcome
in this House.