There.
A tree that sat on the edge of the hill. It grew at an angle, curved like a bow, the branches reaching toward Hillsglade House.
Far enough away.
I ran, changing direction. My footsteps fell on the wood where the base of the tree had grown away from the slope.
“Green,” I said. “Off.”
She grabbed a branch, unwinding herself from my midsection.
Where her tail stripped flesh, left to right, I was almost spun, a footstep veering off in almost the complete wrong direction.
But my arm hooked a branch. Box of matches in one hand, lighter in the other, I still managed to scale the tree, resting occupied hands on branches that stuck out.
Twigs, here and there, broke off. They snagged in my hair, and they snagged in the vacant spaces of my arms and chest. Rather than make the climbing hard, it almost facilitated it.
I reached the point where the tree started bending on the general direction of the house. My eyes met Green Eyes’, where she was holding onto a branch, climbing up by virtue of arm strength alone.
The leaping man prowled below. Waiting for us to come down, or waiting for us to reach a point where the branches didn’t obscure us and he could leap onto us. Getting us on the way down.
With the tip of the lighter, I prodded the box open.
Placing it in a crook in the tree, I set the cardboard alight.
One match was combustible. A tiny sort of ignition and explosion, but combustible all the same. Fifty match-heads in an enclosed space? A hundred? A hundred and fifty?
I reached out for her hand.
She grabbed it, and swung, the branch I rested on bowing and protesting with the sudden addition of weight, as she returned to a piggyback position behind me.
It was a long way down, landing on a snow-covered slope.
But, as the long-necked woman had suggested, fire was a bigger danger.
I leaped.
For four or five long seconds, I got to enjoy the sensation of flight.
Then a small bird named Evan flew through me, between the branches that made up my midsection, and buoyed me up for a moment. I experienced the briefest moment of weightlessness, an arrest in downward momentum.
When that sensation passed, I fell the rest of the way. It was a heavy landing, intervention aside.
Wood cracked and splintered. Green Eyes and I came apart, rolling down the slope. We came to a stop at the base of the hill, not far from the wall around the property, topped by its spiked railing.
Above us, in the tree, we could see the flare of light, the starting fire, and the orange droplets that were burning matches, falling free, dancing off branches on their way down. As fireworks went, it was pretty measly.
“You have a mark on your cheek,” Green Eyes said.
“Hm?”
“Where I kissed you. The birds are all close together, three tiny eyes, at the corner of your real eye.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I like it,” she said.
“Why?” Evan asked. He’d perched on the railing. “Also, we’re not home free yet.”
I raised myself up.
There were Others coming down the slope. One or two had stopped to look up at the tree and the dots of orange that were dropping from the matchbox.
The woman with the sling, however, was too far in the lead.
I raised a hand, pointing.
She turned her head to look, then stopped.
At the fire in the tree, then at the house. The fire behind the house was already sending up smoke, the flames lighting the smoke here and there, framing the house just a little.
As the long-necked woman had said, they’d promised to leave the house intact. They knew the stakes.
The woman’s eyes narrowed.
But she turned. She headed for the tree.
Reckless? Maybe. But I knew there was a djinn on the premises. There were powers at play.
There was no chance, I was sure, that the locals would plan an attack on the house and not have measures in place to stop a fire or avert disaster.
The tree was far enough away the fire could be stopped, but close enough it couldn’t be ignored.
Or not ignored by most.
The snake-necked women were approaching. So was the leaping man, and a woman in old-fashioned clothing.
I’d tried. Not to avoid bloodshed, but to use my head, when my emotions were riding high.
Maybe there was a time for bloodshed, all the same.
“My name is Blake Thorburn,” I said. “If you fight me, I will retaliate, and I will most likely destroy you.”
The leaping man leaped.
Evan flew between me and him. I rolled, the man veered off course. He landed a foot to my left.
I staked him with the Hyena in the process of getting to my feet.
“Stand down, and I have no grievance with you,” I said. “I’m only interested in killing monsters.”
“How do you define a monster?” the woman in old-fashioned clothing asked, in a cutesy, ‘Miss America’ voice.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But if you have the sense to stand down, to back away from a fight that hurts both of us, and probably ends one of us, I can leave you alone for the time being.”
“Oh,” she said. She flashed me a winning smile. “I don’t have that much sense.”
She reached behind her back, drawing a beater of a Tommy-gun.
But I was faster. Lighter than lightweight.
The Hyena speared her heart.
I pulled it free, then slashed at the hand that held the gun for good measure.
She faded out. From color to black and white. The ‘film’ turned spotty, burning up, with holes appearing in her, inky black tar bubbling where her insides were revealed.
I turned my attention to the long-necked women.
“I’ll offer a deal,” I said.
“A deal?” she asked.
“Go talk to Johannes. Tell him not to worry about the fire. I’m using it to draw the others out. It’s information you can use to barter for another stay in Johannes’ domain.”
I saw her eyebrow quirk.
“No risk involved,” I said.
“Unless he thinks I disappointed him.”
“You’re not a fighter, right?” I asked. “You did what you were supposed to. I accomplished what I wanted.”
She glanced up at the tree. An Other was cutting away burning branches, but more of the tree was catching fire.
A moment passed. They changed tacks, not trying to cut away what burned, but cut away the branches that could give the fire access to the house.
“We should go,” Green Eyes said.
“Yes,” Ane said. “We should.”
“Then-”
“Give me plausible deniability,” she said. “Kill the body.”
That said, she vacated her host. Her head pulled free, flying, with only organs trailing beneath it.
Her underlings, whatever they were, followed behind her, as they left the property.
There were Others who’d noticed the fire, or noticed the activity.
Green Eyes was right.
We needed to go.
Green Eyes and I went over the fence, towards the city proper.
I saw activity. People standing outside houses.
Virtually every Other that counted was at the House.
These were Practitioners. Worried, watching, eminently distracted.
I held the Hyena in a firm grip.
Easy pickings. Killing more monsters.