by Jamie Davis
Quinn waited until the two Fae enforcers passed each other again, then darted forward. She stabbed up under the body armor with her Bowie while she cupped her hand over the man’s mouth. His muffled scream died as she stabbed again, then she lowered his limp body to the floor.
Behind her, the nearly decapitated body of the other enforcer lay next to Avery. Quinn double-checked to make sure there were no other guards and then ran to the bar.
Juni tended to Paddy there. He sat on the floor with his back to the bar while his daughter dabbed his bruised and battered face with a cloth.
“Was it Gemma and the Fae?” Quinn asked from the doorway.
“It was,” Paddy said. “They killed the cook when he tried to help me and told me they’d be coming back to finish the job on me.”
“They’ve gone down to the Hunter tunnels to open a portal to the netherworld. If they come back, everyone dies. We need help until Clark and Naomi get back.”
Paddy gestured at the small group of waitresses and the remaining patrons who’d stayed to help. “You’re welcome to ask them, but don’t be surprised if no one takes you up on the offer. You’re the fighters here.”
Quinn raised her voice. “I need everyone’s attention. Is there anyone here willing to join me in taking the fight to the ones who did this? There’s just two of us for now, and we could use some help.”
The few of the patrons and one of the regular waitresses glanced her way for a second but turned aside as soon as her eyes met theirs. Quinn knew she shouldn’t have expected them to step up. They were ordinary folks who didn’t have any training. Still, she had hoped one or two would volunteer. All were nonviolent shifter types, not werewolves or vampires, the most powerful of the supernaturals. Quinn shook her head.
Avery tugged at her arm. “Come on. We can’t wait any longer. We have to get down there. There’s no telling how close they are to opening the gateway.”
Quinn nodded and turned away from the bar.
Juni called, “I’ll come.”
“Juni girl, no,” Paddy said. “We’re leprechauns, not fighters.”
“We have magic, Da. I might not be much of a fighter, but I can help them. I have to help them.”
Paddy held his daughter’s gaze and then nodded.
Juni smiled, joining Quinn by the door.
“I’ll get you a weapon,” Quinn said. “What would you prefer?”
“Oh, I’m good.” She snapped her fingers, and a gnarled, polished length of wood appeared in her hand. The stout stick ended in a rounded knob. “I’ve got a shillelagh.”
“You know how to use that thing?” Avery asked.
“It’s a club. Ya hit ‘em with the big end, don’t ya?”
Quinn nodded. “That’s about it. Stay behind us, and try to keep anyone from sneaking up on us.”
“I’m hoping I can lend a hand with some trickery. That’s what my kind are best at.”
“Do what you can, then. Anything that keeps them from overwhelming Avery and me. We have no idea how many there are.”
“Over twenty, based on what my da said.”
Avery shook her head. “This will be tough.”
“I’ve taken on similar odds down there before. Plus, if we can stall and keep them from overwhelming us all at once, I’m hoping we’ll get more help.”
“What kind of help? You just said we can’t wait for your mom and Clark.”
Quinn shrugged. “I’m not sure. I get the feeling we’re not alone in this fight. I can’t say how, but there has to be some help, or we’ve already lost.”
Avery said, “Let’s see where the help we know about is, at least.” She tapped her earpiece. “Clark, Naomi, can you hear me?”
The comm circuit opened. A motor buzzed in the background. Naomi answered. “Avery, did you get back? Where’s Quinn?”
“I’m here. Where are you?”
“We just met Ariel. We’re in her boat heading across the harbor.”
“How much longer ‘til you arrive?”
Clark jumped in. “If she’s going where I think she is, we will be there in about five minutes. This boat is fast.”
Quinn thought about how much time they had. It would be close, especially if they had the numbers Paddy said they did. “Head straight in when you get here. You should hear fighting. We will try to stop their ritual, then work to delay them as long as we can. Hopefully, you two can hit them from the rear.”
“You can’t wait for us to get there?” Naomi asked.
“No time, Mom. We’ve no idea how close they are to opening the portal or what they’ve done to our friends. Just get here as fast as you can.”
“We will,” Naomi replied. “Be careful, Quinn.”
“I’ll do the best I can, but I can’t let them get that gateway to the netherworld open.”
Quinn cut the comm signal and checked the time. Five minutes was forever in a fight like the one to come. A glance at Avery told Quinn she was thinking the same thing.
“You ready?”
Avery nodded. “Let’s get down there.”
“Juni, what can you do? I’m not familiar with leprechaun magic.”
“It sounds like you need a distraction. We’re not great in a standup fight when we defend our gold. Instead, we distract and disorient. I can probably get a few of the guards to chase me if that’ll help.”
Quinn nodded. “That would be good. What will you do if they catch up with you?”
“They won’t catch me. I might be able to take a few from behind while they’re lookin’, though.” She patted the bulbous end of her shillelagh.
“Okay, do that. I’ll go first so I can sneak up on anyone they might have left guarding the tunnels. Once we get closer, I’ll give you targets for your tricks.”
Juni smiled and nodded, and the three of them started down the stairs. Quinn and Avery dipped into the shadows again. Juni snapped her fingers, and her outline blurred as she too disappeared.
They’d almost reached the bottom of the stairs when Sylvie flew out of the darkness and swirled in a circle around Quinn’s head. The dragon always seemed to be able to see Quinn, even when she was hidden in the shadows.
“Eeeep, eeeep, eeeep, eeeep!”
A flurry of images flashed through Quinn’s mind. They went by too fast for her to register, though.
“Sylvie, slow down. Show me what you’re saying one thing at a time.”
Sylvie stopped circling and hovered in front of Quinn’s face. Her emerald eyes bored into Quinn’s.
The first thing Quinn saw was Taylor in shreds of clothing, bound and unconscious on the floor. Beside her lay a similarly bound and bloody Tadpole.
Quinn’s lips pressed together in a grim line as she looked at the scene. “What else?”
A motion sequence played this time, showing the six girls attacking. Then it shifted to them sitting bound in a circle as Gemma slashed them one by one and left them bleeding on the floor.
Avery gasped. “I’ll tear that woman’s evil heart out.”
“You getting this too?” Quinn asked.
Avery nodded. She’d gone white with rage. “She’ll kill them. That bleeding will drain them if it’s not stopped.”
“We don’t know that they’ll die,” Quinn countered. “That’s why we have to hurry.”
She turned to leave but stopped when Juni grabbed her arm.
“I have another quick trick that might give you an advantage when you get there. It’ll make it look like there are eight of ya instead of just two.”
“How’s it work?”
“I’ll snap my fingers before you show yourselves to them, and you’ll appear from different directions at once. Your voice’ll come from the projections, too. They won’t know which are real.” She shrugged. “It might make them split up at first. As long as I can see them, I can make them run away, Maybe some will give chase.”
Quinn nodded. “It’s worth giving it a shot. Okay, one last thing. Sylvie, I need you to find the place where Clark an
d Naomi are landing. It has to be down in the maze of tunnels. Go find them and bring them as fast as you can, okay?”
“Eeeep!”
The dragon flew into the darkness, and Quinn turned to Juni. “Stay behind us and do whatever else you can to start, then lead those who follow our doubles as far as you can. And be careful. This is going to get ugly.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
The trio started down the tunnel toward the central chamber. Chanting drifted up the corridor.
As Quinn walked closer to the Hunter ceremonial room, her amulet grew ice-cold. She held up a hand, stopping the others. They crouched in the shadows by the entrance.
Quinn could just make out Juni’s blurred outline. “You’re up.”
Juni’s broad grin appeared in the middle of the blur, and fingers snapped. “You girls are ready. Good luck.”
Quinn and Avery walked the last steps to the bend in the tunnel. They were just a few feet from the chamber’s entrance. A squad of Fae enforcers stood with their backs to her, watching the ritual in the center of the room.
She craned her neck and stared at the entrance opposite hers. Her face stared back at her. Avery stood beside the replica Quinn.
She couldn’t make out the other exit, the one leading to the training room and armory, but she assumed there were duplicates there.
Quinn sucked in a deep breath and bellowed, “Stop!”
Gemma threw her hands in the air as the spellcasters in the center of the room fell silent and looked around for who had called out.
“What now?” Gemma groaned. She twisted her head until she spotted the duplicates of Quinn and Avery directly across from their true hiding place. “Oh, it’s you two. Just in time to provide more blood for the rites.”
“The only additional blood spilled today will be yours and your followers’.”
Avery nodded. “We’ll add a splash of Fae blood, too. It’ll brighten things up a bit.” She brandished her sword.
Gemma twisted her head around as Quinn’s voice came from all three entrances at once.
“Get them, you idiots,” Filippa yelled. “They can’t all be projections.”
The four Fae enforcers in the group just ahead of them turned around, realizing the voices were right behind them. Quinn and Avery killed the first two before they reacted.
The remaining two brought up their swords and charged, trying to take advantage of the tight quarters in the tunnel entrance.
Quinn ducked aside and under an incoming sword, then lunged forward to sink her Bowie into the enforcer’s throat.
Beside her, Avery finished the last guard. Juni laughed and ran past them, blurring into invisibility again. Across the chamber, the two nearest duplicates ran down the far passage. At least four of the closest demon-kinder raced after them.
The remaining demon-kinder around the chamber’s perimeter jumped into action. Two came up the tunnel toward Quinn and Avery.
Quinn raised her Bowie and parried the incoming blow with a clash of steel on steel. Beside her, Avery lunged. The woman she targeted bounced backward, avoiding the attack with ease.
She dodged away from Avery’s katana, but that put her in range of Quinn’s follow-through. A quick strike buried the Bowie in the demon-kinder’s side, and the Huntress twisted the knife as she yanked it free. Thick black ichor flowed from the wide-open wound.
Avery’s long blade flashed past Quinn’s face, parrying the incoming sword strike from Quinn’s original foe just in time to keep it from decapitating her.
Quinn reversed her grip on the Bowie and slashed backward, drawing the blade across the sword wielder's throat with enough force to cut three-quarters of the way through her neck.
Gemma’s head turned when she heard the sound of blade on blade. She shouted, “This way, you fools. The others are fakes. The real intruders are back there.” Her arm extended, pointing out the real Quinn and Avery.
Quinn shrugged as she stepped over the two twitching bodies on the floor. “Juni bought us a little time to narrow the odds.”
“What say we divide and conquer? First one to Gemma or the princesses gets extra points.”
“Deal,” Quinn shouted. She darted forward to take on the rush of demon-kinder coming from the left.
Avery turned to take on those coming around the room on the right.
To call the fighting desperate didn’t come close to describing the struggle over the next minute and a half. Initially, Quinn and Avery carried their surprise forward, downing several more scattered attackers each.
Then the resistance coalesced into a solid mass of the demon-possessed women facing them.
They forced Quinn to back up so quickly, she almost tripped backward over the body of a woman she’d killed a few seconds before. Now she backpedaled while parrying a dizzying array of bladed weapons that sought to take her.
Avery cried out behind her, but Quinn couldn’t spare any attention for her girlfriend. It was all she could do to bat away the flurry of incoming attacks. Quinn searched for some way to break away and regain the initiative.
Quinn dialed down her remaining stamina, putting most of it toward a speed boost to match the unnatural quickness of the Hunter-trained demon-kinder. With the last of her reserves gone, Quinn wondered how much longer she could hold out.
An opening appeared in the attacks, and she executed a desperate lunge at the exposed torso of a tall raven-haired woman. The Bowie sank to the hilt in the woman’s gut, causing what should have been a fatal wound.
As Quinn tried to yank her blade free, the woman’s hands came down, gripping Quinn’s wrist and keeping the blade in place, Quinn with it.
Her moment of hesitation exposed her for a tad too long. Other attackers’ blades came down at her from different directions.
Quinn twisted aside and avoided the first incoming swipe at her midsection. That opened her up to the other two attackers, and she let out a surprised grunt as the first sword slid past her ribs and into her chest.
The second blade pierced her shoulder and pinned her to the stone floor.
The woman Quinn had struck fell back, and the Bowie slid free to clatter on the floor.
Quinn tried to reach for it with her working right hand.
A swift kick from one of the three remaining demon-kinder sent the blade spinning across the stone floor.
Quinn lay back and stared upward, awaiting her fate.
Two sword blades went up, ready to deliver their killing strikes. Quinn winced, waiting for them to fall.
“Stop!” Filippa yelled. “Bring them both here while they still live. Their blood is more valuable for our rite.”
Rough hands pulled Quinn to her feet, twisting her exhausted arms behind her back and marching her stumbling body over to where Gemma and the two princesses stood.
Two demon-kinder held a struggling Juni in the second corridor. Four others dragged Avery over and dropped her on the floor beside Quinn.
At first, Quinn thought Avery was dead. She let out a small sigh of relief as the other Huntress groaned when she hit the stone floor. Avery had blood all over one side of her face from a horrible gash to her forehead. Other wounds seeped blood into her shirt and pants.
“I told you they’d come,” Gemma said to Filippa and Aurora. “They’d have to come back and defend their home.”
Quinn sneered. “What, does that make you a genius, to predict I’d come home? Wow, your self-esteem bar is seriously low.”
“Quiet, girl. I didn’t get to kill either of you before, but I will finish the job this time.”
Quinn smiled. “I’d give up and run now if I were you all. We’ve killed half your demon-possessed guards and most of the Dark Fae goons you brought along. When the rest of the clan arrives, they’ll make short work of you.”
Aurora tilted her head back and laughed. “Girl, you still believe you’ve assembled something special here. Our presence in this place of power tells us all otherwise. There is no clan. Your collection of misfits
failed to stop us, and we’ve started the rites. They’ll be even easier to perform, thanks to the extra power of your blood to fuel them.”
Filippa nodded. “We tricked you into holding the six girls for us here where we needed them. Once we’ve drained the blood from those six future Huntresses, we’ll move on to the two of you.” Filippa glanced at the bound girls in the center of the chamber. “I find it strangely appropriate we got to use them for this purpose. They would have been the ones to rebuild the old Hunter clans if Gemma hadn’t gotten to them first.”
“You’re lying,” Quinn snapped. “Avery rescued them.”
Gemma nodded. “An unfortunate setback in the short term. However, I found them first. If Avery hadn’t intervened, I would have possessed their souls too.” Gemma glanced at Filippa. “I thought I’d lost them and their unique hold on power until Her Highness reminded me where Avery would take them for safe-keeping. It made us move up our plans a little, but nothing we couldn’t account for.”
Quinn stared at the six listless girls, still bleeding out their lives in the center of the room. They were the future Huntresses? She realized they were all orphans, just like she had been for so long. The symmetry of it struck a chord inside her like a bell ringing. Now they were here in this sacred place with her. Was this foreordained, and did it offer a slight glimmer of hope?
She searched the room, looking for a tiny sign that might show this was a plan of the light. Her eyes scanned the stones marking the tombs of the past clan chiefs. They’d helped before, but not this time, it seemed.
There was nothing.
Wait.
A tiny flash of crimson light on the floor beside Brea.
Quinn stared at the center of the room until she spotted what had caught her eye. Next to each of the girls were the almost imperceptible flashes of ruby brilliance from the dripping blood. It flashed each time a droplet of the girls’ blood struck the chamber’s floor.
Was there still power there, something she could use? She had to get over there.
Quinn sagged in the arms of those who held her. It was only partly an act. The gash in her chest still bled, and she was having trouble breathing. She’d probably die from her wounds without medical attention or healing.
