I hopped back off the side of the gate and onto the end of the driveway, in front of the garage.
The goblin landed where I’d just been. Its fingers had had iron worked into them, twisted into and under flesh, a pair of permanent gauntlets with pointed tips, permanent claws.
Those claws bit into the wood of the gate door.
The thing’s face had nails in it. All inserted vertically, just under the skin. Red, raw spaces between the individual nails, and around the spots where the nail had pierced or scraped skin on the way through. Four nails surrounded each eye socket, a diamond shape, points nailing the eyelids into permanently open positions.
Its mouth was closed, its lipless grin literally ear to ear.
It wore armor, damn it, and it was hard to tell where armor ended and flesh began. Much of it had been inserted through and beneath flesh. I saw bits where muscle was hooked around or over spikes of dark iron.
It looked at my weapon, and the grin somehow got more intense. Not wider, but it looked like it could barely keep its mouth closed.
It drew it’s weapons.
Two bound-goblin weapons. A sword with so many spikes jutting out the side that I doubted it could cut. An axe with a face etched into it, so much decoration I suspected it would get stuck if it was actually swung at something.
The goblin was showing off its stuff. The weapons it was holding weren’t the only weapons it had. More dangled from its waist. A trophy collection.
The weapons, if I had to guess, were what the Hyena might have been if it hadn’t been insistent on taking an inconvenient form. And if it were unbroken. Goblins, quite possibly, of the Hyena’s general caliber.
I looked in the direction of the goblin king.
Was it pencildick or whatever the guy had been called?
The goblin came at me.
Fast, considering the armor it wore.
I backed away. I only barely deflected the serrated sword with the chain and barbed wire around one forearm.
A practitioner beside me kicked me. I bounced against the wall of the neighbor’s house, then twisted aside before the axe could hit me.
The face on the axe screamed on contact with the wall.
Brick shattered violently, with copious amounts of gore, torn intestines spilling from the open wound. The air filled with the iron-rich scent of bloody feces.
Cosmetic effect? Or something else?
On the off chance that it was ‘something else’, I made very sure to stay out of the axe’s way.
“They’re monsters,” I said. “Monster enough their own family wants them dead.”
The goblin stabbed. Wind rushed past me.
I felt blood well from the flesh around my face. It filled my mouth.
I spat.
The goblin looked at it sword, expression eerily neutral with the nails in the skin and around the eyes, then slipped it into a loop of chain at its back. It drew another weapon in the same motion. Another goblin weapon. A knife.
“They want them dead, even knowing the stakes, knowing the fight for the Lordship is happening right now,” I said. “Knowing I have no interest in you, why defend them? More than a few members of the family want blood and justice more than they want the Lordship.”
I backed up further as the goblin advanced.
It stabbed the hood of the car with the dagger, and dragged the blade down the side.
The metal on either side turned rusty, and sagged, more like old leather than car.
Smaller goblins began crawling out of the tear. Being birthed by it, almost. Naked, wet, and covered in blood.
I could see the dagger. A female goblin was engraved on it.
Lovely.
The goblin slashed at the wall of the house, as we reached the midway point of the driveway.
“Diagram,” Evan said.
I’d almost forgotten he was with me.
Yeah. If I kept walking back, I risked walking into the three or four diagrams I’d taken the long route around to circumvent.
I’d really, really wanted to do this subtly. To do it clever, targeting the people I needed to target and then run.
“Or are you defending them because you’re monsters too?” I asked, edging to the right, circling around, hoping to avoid the diagrams.
The tolling of the bell seemed to get louder.
The smaller goblins had finished accumulating. Each slash of the dagger was only good for two or three, it seemed.
They gave the larger goblin familiar a wider berth.
“Monster?” Mason the Benevolent asked, behind me. “Tch.”
I ignored him.
The goblin pointed its dagger.
The smaller goblins moved as a group. Charging me.
In that same moment, I felt the tug of enchantment.
I didn’t even need to look at the living room window to know there were enchantresses there.
The enchantment burdened me. Evan fluttered, a short flight to one side, breaking the snare before it took hold, but it was a pivotal move at a critical time. The smaller goblins pounced on me. Ten to thirty pounds each, clawing at me and my clothes. One reached my face, digging fingers into my mouth, hooking sharp nails over my teeth.
It tasted like butt smelled.
With eerie, easy confidence, the goblin strode forward, sheathing the dagger.
With a two-handed grip, it swung the axe.
I couldn’t react the way I wanted to, burdened by smaller goblins, but I managed to catch the handle with the blade of the Hyena. When that didn’t stop it, I was forced to raise one hand, and press my palm against the flat of the Hyena’s blade.
The goblin was stronger than I was. The axe inched closer.
I felt the snare taking hold again.
The axe blade touched the goblin on my face.
“Urp,” it said.
It screamed as it blew up, into gore amounting about three times its own body mass.
Evan flew by, and the axe slipped free, and the goblin familiar staggered.
It grabbed onto me for balance. It switched around, changing positioning, and lifted me clean off my feet.
Strong. Strong enough, as it happened, to heave me.
I didn’t move far, but I still moved. I landed roughly, staggering backward, fighting to keep my feet.
I knew what I was in for. Why the goblin had thrown me.
The diagram was expanding around me.
I reached out for Evan, and he flew into my hand.
I looked, and I saw the diagram, the shape of it.
I’d spent weeks of my life staring at the books, poring over them. Seeing them out of the corner of my eye, or glancing over covers on my way to finding what I needed. I’d seen them in Rose’s mirrors. I’d seen my fair share of circles, of diagrams.
Only twenty or so minutes ago, I’d seen the diagram that had housed the box. I’d carefully studied and examined the diagram there. I’d used my analysis to hack it, for lack of a better term. Understanding and circumventing it.
The bell tolled twice in the time it took me to catch my feet. In those two tolls, I was forced to draw on instinct borne of that manner of study. To guess, and guess well, and figure out where to put my feet and my body, with Evan’s help to guide my positioning.
Something flew past me in the moment before I came to a stop, and I heard glass crash on the far side of the street. I went utterly still, and watched as the diagram snapped into a completed shape.
Nothing flared to life. Nothing went off.
“Sorry,” I said to Evan, releasing my deathgrip on him.
“S’okay. Watch your step.”
I did. I made my way out of the diagram, staring the Goblin down. The practitioners were all behind it, watching from a distance.