“Uh, Barrons, we’re in a world of shit,” I muttered.
“Same page, Ms. Lane. Same bloody word.”
—
“Where are Ryodan and the others?” I cried as we soared low over the battle.
Five hundred sidhe-seers were down there. But I didn’t see a single one of the Nine.
My sisters were facing thousands of Fae with more marching directly for them.
The front lawn of the abbey was a scene straight out of one of the Lord of the Rings movies. Amid towering megaliths and silvery fountains, humans battled monsters of every kind imaginable, some flying, some crawling, others stalking. Some beautiful, some hideous. There were those damned death-by-laughter fairies darting around a sidhe-seer’s head! I watched, horrified. She was still laughing as she was killed by a ghastly Unseelie with tubular fronds all over its body.
There was Jada, slicing a circle around her, the alabaster blade of the sword gleaming. But it was only one weapon and there were thousands of Fae down there, flying, slithering.
“They aren’t bloody sifters,” Barrons said and snarled. “They fucking drove. And they sure as bloody hell can’t be taking the road.”
I sometimes forgot the Nine had limitations. They seemed so all-powerful to me. If I knew them, they’d shift not far from the abbey and lope to battle smack in the middle of the Unseelie. “Well, why didn’t you call more Hunters for them?”
“This is the only one that ever comes.”
“Shit,” I cursed, leaning low, peering over the side.
I heard a low growl behind me, followed by the crunching sound of bones shifting, then the Hunter tensed beneath me and shook itself violently. I clung to the crest of its wings with all my strength.
“You are not my enemy,” Barrons roared behind me. “I’ll change and drop.”
You’ll drop and change, the Hunter snarled in my head. It arched its long neck and shot an enormous burst of flame over its shoulder, blasting Barrons right off its back and singeing the hell out of my coat and hair.
“Barrons!” I screamed as he went tumbling off the Hunter’s back, falling toward the lawn, transforming as he went.
The Hunter banked hard and began to circle back around. I stared down, watching Barrons fall. He was fully transformed by the time he hit the ground, horned, fanged, and ferocious.
He surged up, a sleek black shadow, grabbed the nearest Rhino-boy by the throat and ripped off its head with his enormous jaws.
Then his jaws opened even wider, impossibly wide, then the Barrons-beast vanished.
When he reappeared an instant later the Rhino-boy slumped dead to the ground.
Damn. And I still had no idea how he killed Fae.
The black-skinned beast exploded into battle, savagely ripping and clawing and killing, spraying guts and lifeblood everywhere, its crimson eyes glittering with feral glee. Vanishing. Reappearing.
He does not ride again, not-king. Nor do you.
The Hunter soared lower and turned its head, apparently about to dismount me the same way it had gotten rid of Barrons. I raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’ll jump, okay?” I said hastily. “Just go a little lower, I’ll jump. But try not to dump me in the middle. Get me closer to her.” I pointed to Jada.
The Hunter dropped like a rock, and some twenty feet from the ground I braced myself and dove off the damn thing. I wouldn’t hold up so well under the same blast of fire it had turned on Barrons. I lost my automatic halfway down, watched it smash into the ground. I didn’t care. It was the spear that could make a difference in this battle, and it was secure in its holster.
I tried to tuck and roll to minimize the impact, but the objects I was plummeting toward were moving and I landed smack on top of one of the red and black Unseelie guards and took it to the ground beneath me. I slammed a hand into its ridged breastplate, nulling it, then yanked out my spear and drove it into its gut.
Adrenaline was raging through me, smoothing out my edges, perfecting my reflexes. I rolled, leapt to my feet, and began methodically slashing my way through the slithering, lumbering Fae, determined to get Jada’s back. Criminy, how had she been holding them off this long?
All around me sidhe-seers were fighting Fae in a horrifically unmatched battle. We had three weapons: spear, sword, and Barrons, at least until the others of the Nine got here, and sidhe-seers were going down hard and fast.
As I spun, kicking and stabbing, I was painfully aware of the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic gunfire going off. I have a special hatred for digging bullets out of my body without Unseelie flesh in me, and I’m trying really hard to abstain. I whirled, nulled, and was about to stab when the Unseelie I was after went flying backward, knocked off its feet by a concentrated burst of bullets.
“Hey!” I snarled. “Get off my kill!”
“Sorry!” one of the new sidhe-seers, trained by Jada, snarled back as she hurled herself past me, taking a Rhino-boy off its feet. As I watched, she yanked a machete from a sheath on her back and began hacking the Unseelie into pieces. Damn. The sidhe-seers might not have weapons that killed immortals but they were pretty darned good at slicing them up, rendering them ineffective.
I felt an Unseelie behind me, spun, hand out to null, stab, move. Null. Stab. Move. It was beginning to seem the Fae were ridiculously easy to kill. I was fighting better than I ever had before. Not one of them was managing to land a blow on me, as if deflected by an invisible shield. I was astonished by my own amazing prowess, how much better I’d gotten without even practicing.
I plunged into the battle with ferocity, periodically catching a glimpse of the ebony-skinned beast that was Barrons, lunging, powerful muscles bunching, jaws wide, ripping with talons, shredding with fangs. As I worked my way toward Jada, Barrons pushed farther into the crush, and I realized he was shoving sidhe-seers from harm’s way, trying to make them see he was on their side by taking down Fae in front of them.
I began shouting to all the sidhe-seers I passed, knowing the other Nine would soon be joining us: “The black beasts with red eyes are on our side! Don’t attack them! Don’t kill the black beasts. They’re fighting for us!”
Shit. Not even Jada knew their true form. This was a liability. Although they’d definitely come back, we needed them here to fight.
As I closed in on Jada, I tried to keep an eye out for Barrons. I hated knowing he might die tonight. I suddenly realized how much he must hate knowing the same about me. At least I knew he would come back. Not so for him: I didn’t have a get-out-of-jail-free card.
I shook that thought from my head as I plunged my spear into a particularly vile Unseelie with wet, flailing tentacles and shoved and fought my way through the throng to Jada.
Then I narrowed my eyes, staring at the cuff glinting silver on my wrist. The next Unseelie I turned on, I didn’t null or stab. I just stood there and gave him ample opportunity to take a swing at me.
His fist bounced off as if it had hit an invisible shield.
I scowled. It wasn’t my amazing prowess after all.
I had the cuff of Cruce on and it was as good as V’lane had claimed it was. The Unseelie couldn’t touch me. Damn.
Still, that was sweet.
“Watch your sword,” I snapped to Jada as I moved into range. Like my spear, it could do horrible things to me. I wanted her to know exactly where I was at all times.
Her head whipped up and she looked at me, and I sucked in a breath. Oh, yes. She killed. That was what she did. Her emerald eyes were completely empty of all emotion. She was so drenched in guts and blood that her face was camouflaged and the whites of her eyes were blinding in comparison.