Green Eyes made a face. “Remember that cistern I just mentioned?”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I learned my lesson. The goblins threw some back in the water, after fishing them out and doing things to them.”
“Doing things?”
“Glass shoved into the skin, twists of metal, rusty razor wire jammed down the throat. Worse. Not stuff you want to bite into.”
“Ah,” I said. The arm was too broken to salvage. I turned my attention to the lower spine.
“When you get hungry enough, you’ll eat anything. I kept going back. They had a net, with fishhooks and other things at the places where it was knotted. I think they made it out of hair. Now I smell goblin stink and I lose my appetite.”
“Gosh,” Evan said. “Making you lose your appetite? Goblins are amazing.”
“Shush, you,” she said.
“Gosh,” he said, for emphasis.
“Save your energy for healing, so you can come out and I can swat you.”
“Gosh.”
I pulled the section of spine free. “Evan, I might not be around forever. I’d work on making friends with Green Eyes, just in case. And heads up, coming in.”
“Coming in?”
I maneuvered the spine in through the gap in my side that I’d originally opened to access the spirits within me.
“Oh,” he said. “And pshh. Green Eyes and I are buddies, right?”
“Yeah,” Green Eyes said. “We’re buddies. You promised me chicken nuggets and that’s almost as good as saying I can eat you after you die. I kind of want to see how you do it. Get the nuggets.”
“Exactly. See?” Evan asked. He mocked a laugh, speaking in a monotone. “Ha ha. Nuggets. So funny, now that I get the joke.”
I waited, holding the spine in position while the wood worked its way around it, much like roots might grow around stones.
I let go.
“You’ve been grouchier,” Green Eyes said. “Ever since you ducked in there.”
“I wanna fly!” Evan said. “Flying is great, then that goblin butt had to go and shoot me. I’m useless.”
“You’re not useless,” I said. “You think I would’ve walked away from the end of that fight with the goblin without your company?”
“Eh.”
“Okay. In the interest of giving you something to do… I want you to visualize.”
“Visualizing.”
“We’re near the faerie house. It’s at eleven o’clock. Hillsglade is at two o’clock, maybe five blocks to the northeast. I know you mostly looked from overhead, but can you remember the layout of the city? I know Rose had you scouting Behaim houses, and we need to find some Behaims.”
Evan squirmed his way free of my body, poking his head out at the collarbone. He still had a red gouge running along the back of his head, feathers sticking up around the wound. “Um. This is the street with the bad Christmas decorations? There’s a Rudolph with a hole in it?”
“Over there,” I pointed. “A bit worse for wear after the goblins passed by.”
“Ew. Is that a real-”
“Which way, Evan? This detour cost us time, but I don’t think Green Eyes would have left me alone if I missed the chance to shore myself up.”
“Nope,” Green Eyes commented. She hadn’t moved from her resting position atop the snowbank.
“That way,” he said, pointing due West.
Seeing me stand and brush snow off me, the satyrs seemed to recognize that I was ready to move, and headed over to join us.
“We’re going to Hillsglade House, then we’re heading that way. Next part of the plan is to work against the Behaims. Go communicate with Jeremy. Tell him what we’re doing. Sandra’s done, but if we’re going to balance the scales and get things so we can all deal with Johannes, we’re going to need to hit the Behaims where it hurts. We don’t have long, so… let’s do what we can. We’ll meet you over there, if all goes well.”
The two satyrs nodded.
They made good time, running off.
“Trust me,” I said. I picked up the body, and draped it across my shoulders.
Couldn’t leave it for people to find. Not outside a random house.
Who was cleaning up? At a certain point, things had crossed a line. This wasn’t a mess that could be cleaned up before dawn, even with a concerted effort. Even if every genie, practitioner and even goblin chipped in to help.
Corpses. Monsters. The most prominent house in the entire town, Hillsglade House, had broken windows, bodies, and debris littering the area around it.
“Um,” Evan said. “So, you said Hillsglade House? Isn’t that the wrong way?”
The bell continued tolling.
I noticed movement. A dark figure at the periphery, shrouded by the general blur of darkness, stalking me much as I’d stalked the Duchamps.
Evan and Green Eyes’ heads turned at roughly the same moment mine did.
Problem was, they were focusing on other imminent threats. I, standing to Green Eyes’ left, looked right. Green Eyes and Evan looked left.
Evan noticed, looking between me, Green Eyes, and the two directions.
“Aw, crap,” he said.
“Surrounded,” Green Eyes observed.
I kept moving, as the Others approached from our left and right. Crossing the street at a brisk pace.
By the time I had entered the street opposite, they had reached the corners of the intersection. They started walking along the sidewalk, thirty meters back.
“We know those guys,” Evan said.
Why did that fill me with more concern than if they were utter strangers?
An Other dropped out of the sky, landing in front of me.
Not a bogeyman, to all appearances. Where a bogeyman generally looked like something had been exaggerated, twisted, cut away and patched up until something had come together, in an extreme or in a single way, this thing looked like an artist’s work, and it was colorful, clean. The feathers were more ornamental than functional, like a headdress from one of the First Nations, but they extended to wings, as well as a general mane. His face was covered by a stylized wooden mask with a beak, painted gold and white.
If it weren’t for the taloned bird-feet that extended from knee down, I might have pegged him as an archetypical angel that just so happened to have red-and-gold feathers.
His hands, as he drew his wings back to reveal his torso, complete with a painted wooden breastplate, were taloned as well.
He drew a short sword from his belt.
“This one isn’t familiar,” I remarked.
“Along for the ride,” one of the Others spoke, behind me.
I turned, moving to one side to keep the feathered Other in my field of view as I did so.
The faceless woman and her companion, who had a head like a burn victim, lips and nose burned away, teeth and eyeballs exposed, almost too white. His face was almost exaggerated with the burn, his flesh red and raw where it wasn’t black. The Revenant. The dead man that had returned.
“And now I’m hungry again,” Green Eyes said.
There were more Others approaching.
“I don’t have time for this,” I said.
“I know,” the Revenant responded. He was surprisingly articulate for someone without lips. “Why do you think we’re here?”
“Revenge?” I asked. Our last encounter had ended with Alexis and Eva setting his head on fire. He’d been trying to kill my extended family members and friends.