by Rhys Ford
“I’m not sure I trust you enough to give you a clear shot at my back,” she argued teasingly. The shadow moved again and jerked toward another clump of bushes. “You are too far away from your vehicle to make it safely. Whatever that is, it’s moving too quickly. I don’t know how fast you are, but it’s not something you should risk. If you don’t make it, and they leave the door open for you, it could savage everyone in there. So I’ll stay, and look, it’s much closer now.”
“Cari!” I drew my Glock as the thick bushes rustled. “Close the fucking door!”
It flowed out of the forest line—a feline abomination crafted from magic and rancid flesh. It didn’t have the sleek power of Bannon’s pack, but it was clearly an ainmhi dubh. And its maker was insane or desperate.
I couldn’t bring myself to call it a black dog. This creature was far from the necromantic monsters my father created. I didn’t know how old Tanic was, but I also never heard of anyone else being called the Lord Master of the Wild Hunt. Elfin history stretched back as far as the mountains, lost somewhere in the creation of dirt and air, but there was always Tanic cuid Anbhás. He was the stuff of legends and nightmares, the bringer of death and the creator of cruelty. I wore his face but refused to wear his name, although it followed me—my own personal ainmhi dubh.
I’d shit myself the first time I saw my reflection. There was so much of him in me, I’d fall into the terror of my memories, and it took Dempsey and Jonas a good half an hour and a bathtub full of ice to stop me from screaming. From what little I’d heard from the elfin in Ryder’s court, what he’d done to me was nearly affectionate and loving. I knew that wasn’t true, because the only thing Tanic cuid Anbhás loved was his Wild Hunt, and he took great pride not only in the mastery of controlling them but also in their creation.
The thing coming toward us in a full gallop was fast, a blur of rippling flesh and vomit-inducing stink, and its construction was hideous. It’d been a cat—perhaps a jaguar or maybe even a tiger—but with all of the animals loosed from the safari park and the region’s native creatures, it could’ve been anything. There seemed to be more muscles along its body than there should have been, and its jaw opened up like a pair of mandibles when it roared, exposing a gnarly cluster of sharklike teeth lining its mouth. Its gait was awkward—its knees bending out in a flopping motion—but it sprinted across the beaten-down grasses, and the slippery broken stalks hardly slowed it down.
“Kai! I can cover you!” Cari shouted at me, but I couldn’t turn to look at her. A second later I heard the door hiss and its hydraulics slowly squeak as it lurched closed. “Ryder, you—”
I didn’t hear the rest of it, but good for Ryder. He finally understood when I gave an order I expected it to be followed. That was something Cari and I would have to talk about once I got out of this mess.
If I got out of this mess.
“I guess it’s just you and me, then, Ciméara.” Bannon chuckled.
“For the last time, my name is Kai Gracen.” I planted myself and aimed at the creature’s sloping head. “Try to keep up, lordling.”
The boom of my gun sent a flurry of white birds scattering from the canopy of the forest. My shots plowed into the creature’s head and punctured its skull, but the damned thing wouldn’t drop. It felt like more than magic was fueling its rage and hunger, and I was running out of bullets.
Next to me, Bannon crouched behind the air glide to give herself some cover and rested the muzzle of her gun on the bumper of her vehicle to steady her aim. It seemed profane to be hiding behind a dead woman’s body, but the dead were never around to protest.
The creature hit her. It leapt over her low-slung glide and sent it down into the ground and broke its hover. Bannon never made a sound. Instead she brought up her weapon and emptied her charge into the thing’s belly. She fought to keep her head away from its chomping jaws, but I could smell the sear of her flesh when its spit dripped down onto her face, and the whimper that escaped her mouth made my decision for me.
Guns weren’t going to stop that thing, but a knife probably would.
I loved daggers. I loved them almost as much as I did a finely tuned V-8 engine or the blast of blues music through the speakers in my warehouse. As much as I suffered under the kiss of iron beneath my skin, I loved the hell out of steel. I didn’t really understand it, but I embraced it. I loved what it could do for me, how it could catapult me safely across miles of lava fields with dragons on my tail, or how, wrapped tightly into a string and played through amplifiers, it took my soul places I didn’t think I could fly.
But mostly I loved how it parted flesh. I was often ashamed to admit that. It reminded me too much of my father, and maybe that was something else he gave me besides my face. I didn’t know how much of me was simply an echo of him, and since I never saw a sign of whichever woman he’d taken to create me, I was left with only the imprint of him to fill in.
He loved carving flesh. I knew that intimately, but this was different, or so I told myself. This was mastery of the blade and using it to survive.
And I was damned good at surviving.
I took the abomination at the throat and sliced across its larynx. Most black dogs needed air to pump through their bodies. Even if they were magical creations, their existence and functions were still rooted in basic physiology. That’s what separated Tanic’s creations from lesser hunt masters. He didn’t just animate stitched-together beasts. He understood how they worked and built them from the inside out to create nearly indestructible creatures.
Bannon’s came close—very close—but I could see flaws, even though I didn’t understand how, and once I saw them, they stuck out like a sore thumb. I knew why the black dog I killed earlier had succumbed to my shots. I wouldn’t be able to tell her how to fix it, and I wouldn’t want to, because knowing a weakness was always a benefit, but this one—this cat—wasn’t going to fall from anything other than a well-placed blade.
The cat turned on me and let go of Bannon’s arm. She was a mess, flesh hanging from her wrist and forearm, bleeding strips tangled with the remains of her shirtsleeve. Straddling her legs, I kicked back at her knee and pushed her away from the glide.
“Move,” I ordered curtly as I drew my daggers. The sing of steel out of leather was to be all the warning I would give her. If Bannon didn’t get out of the way, she was probably going to die. “Now.”
I didn’t have time to give her specific instructions, like get out from underfoot or see if you can make it to the transport, while I tried to kill the thing. Short and sweet would have to do. At least she got out of the way, because suddenly she wasn’t beneath my legs, and the monster was on me.
Its bones didn’t seem to be its weakness, so I would have to go in another way. There still was a heart and a brain, but the skull was impenetrable. I could see the divots in its sickly gray skin where my bullets went in—dimpled black craters that marked its flocked, sparse, bleached-out fur. Its canines were massive and dropped below its jaw when its mouth closed, and its claws were glittering black talons with points sharp enough to shred the grasses beneath its feet. Its disgusting odor hit me when it turned. It was so foul I could barely keep my stomach from emptying out the small bite of rations I’d taken to show the little boy we’d rescued that the food was okay to eat.
Growling, it opened its jaws again, its lower bone separated once more into two Y-shaped lengths, and its bright pink tongue flopped down between them. I didn’t understand the purpose of its creator’s design at first, until I realized the thing could clamp down on an appendage and saw it off, using the rows of teeth on all its exposed surfaces to mangle through flesh and bone.
Whatever I did, I had to make sure it couldn’t get hold of me.
The bastard ainmhi dubh leapt and headed straight for me. I waited until the last moment and then ducked under and struck its chest with my shoulder. The damned thing was heavier than I imagined, probably because its creator had thickened its bones. Flying over me, the cat t
ried to adjust in midair, but its back end didn’t swerve like a cat’s would. Whoever made it stripped away the grace of its natural design, leaving it unbalanced and unable to easily change its course. I’d been around long enough to know how a cat could fold itself in two and land on its feet, so I winced when it struck the packed-down grasses with a loud crunch.
“Bannon?” I risked calling out to her, but I couldn’t see where the Unsidhe lord had gone. There was no way she could have gotten to the transport, and with the way the hydraulics were operating, I would’ve heard their screams over anything.
“By the glide.” Her voice trembled in a painful rasp of unadulterated Unsidhe. “I’m bleeding out. I’m trying to wrap it.”
Her words were ones I knew too well, and they invoked an unpleasantness from deep inside of me. I was free of Tanic’s spells, the verbal commands he’d laid down on my bones and blood, but I’d shaken them off over time, as one of his disciples learned a few months back. Still, the nuances of the Unsidhe language dredged up things I couldn’t deal with while I fought a monster.
And there was something so damn familiar about how it smelled.
I didn’t wait for it to attack me again. As it was shaking off its failure, I aimed for its belly and struck. Its claws flashed, and I felt the sting of them on my back. One hooked into my shirt and ripped it, but it also found the scar beneath. Something went awry. The pain that spread through the dragon wings across my back was both incredible and agonizing. I could feel every mote of iron dust left under my flesh, every bit that was roiled into the keloids Tanic had put on me. The rush of something akin to anger surged through my body, and I felt defiled by its bastardized magic.
My back went wet with blood, but I didn’t feel the pain anymore. I was oddly calm despite an inner rage I couldn’t quite place. This ainmhi dubh was wrong in so many ways. I felt that. I knew that. And I didn’t just have to kill it because I needed to survive. It had to die because it was an affront to everything ever made.
Curling around, I landed on my back and slid across the slick ground under the creature. The grasses whipped me about, and the uneven terrain threw my slide off, but it was enough momentum to carry me past the monster’s belly before it could get its jaws into my flesh.
My dagger ripped through its stomach, and the hilt slammed against my palm as my glide took me under its low-hanging belly. Fluids gushed out of the wound, and I rolled to avoid them, well aware that its blood would burn. Scrambling to get out from under its thrashing body, I lost hold of my blade, which left me with only one. The grasses cut at my free hand, their sharp leaves prickly with tiny thorns, and my palms smarted from the contact.
Still, the ainmhi dubh stalked me.
The belly wound was serious, but even though it favored its left side, the creature circled around, red eyes gleaming with furious hunger. Confusion flickered in them momentarily, and then it paced about as though looking for a good angle to strike. I stood, shaking my stinging hand, and kept myself between it and the glide. Bannon was on the other side of the machine and too injured to be any use in a fight. With any luck, the blood beading on my hand would draw the creature’s notice to me and away from her. I knew it could smell us in the air. We were wounded, ripe for its attack. And although I’d proven to be an inhospitable prey, I was the only one it could get to, or at least that’s what I was betting on.
I was wrong.
Whatever its maker put into its back legs, it had to be part kangaroo, because the damned thing took a giant leap and sailed over me. Its wounds gushed, splayed open by the pull of its muscles, but its tiny brain only focused on one thing—the hunt. It didn’t concern itself with survival. It didn’t think beyond its one initiative—to kill.
Maybe it had been sent to kill Unsidhe, or even Bannon specifically, but whatever drove it, it ignored me.
I would’ve been insulted if I didn’t have to kill it before it ate the only chance the Tijuana Dusk Court had to get a high lord who gave a shit about its people.
As stupid as it sounded, I grabbed its tail.
And yanked.
My dagger sliced through its flesh, but it wasn’t like I was going to drop my blade in order to literally catch a tiger by its tail. The ainmhi dubh’s blood stung my hands and blistered my skin, and I felt every single ounce of its weight pulling at my sockets when I wrenched my shoulders to the side and strained to throw it off course. It came down in a crash on the glide, knocking it so far off its stabilizing field the vehicle went crazy, bucking like a wild bronco.
Bannon shouted, staggered up to her feet, and with an erratic flail of her uninjured arm, blasted the creature’s head with everything she had left in her weapon. The ainmhi dubh scrambled over the metal sides of the glide, its back legs raking into the machine’s seat. Screaming, Bannon struck it with the stock of her emptied weapon as I yelled at her to run.
She listened about as well as Cari did.
I couldn’t let go. Wedged up against the glide and with the creature’s tail caught tightly in my hand, I could only reach its back end with my dagger. Blood slickened its fur, and I wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer, so I spun my dagger around my knuckles to change the angle of my grip and plunged it up between the folds of its haunches.
Its meat severed off its bones in chunks and dropped to the ground as wet splats. The force of its back legs lessened, and its scrambling paws began to fling wide, missing Bannon by a mile. Its jaw caught the edge of her cheek and sliced down her face, and she reeled back, still holding her weapon up to strike.
I kept shoving my knife into its belly, not caring where it landed so long as the blade went in deep and I could feel its flesh tearing. Then one thrust got it right. The creature shuddered and coughed, and black blood splattered out of its gaping maw. I twisted my blade, wrenched it back toward me, and felt it glide through something soft.
Then the ainmhi dubh’s belly opened up, and its insides burst free. Its intestines spooled out over the grasses as its body began to seize up.
I let go of its tail and scrambled over the glide to tackle Bannon before she could hit it again. Her injured arm was slack and wet, her blood soaked through the pieces of shirtsleeve she’d used to wrap up her wounds. The skin on her face was bubbled up where the acid had struck it, and her eyes were blind with rage. She fought me, nearly as viciously as she battled the ainmhi dubh, and it was all I could do to hold her down.
The things she called me—they would’ve made my mother weep, if I had one.
“Let me go!” She bit my ear. Literally bit my ear. “I will have your—”
“Bannon, think really hard before threatening me,” I warned as I tried to tug free of her teeth. “And Iesu, now I know how Dempsey felt. Stop biting me.”
The ainmhi dubh’s death was violent. And worse, its magic began to unravel as it died. The stench of its rotted meat worsened, cooked by the acidic juices that surged from its organs. I pried Bannon off of me and got to my feet, aching from head to toe. The doors of the transport worked to open, its screeching hiss something I was sure would get on my nerves before we got home, especially if I couldn’t figure out how to make it stop. Rubbing at my ear, I was mildly pissed off to discover my fingers came away with blood on them.
It seemed to take forever for the ainmhi dubh to die—at least long enough for Bannon to give me a gruff apology and for Ryder to give me a fierce hug, strong enough to crack my ribs. Cari remained at the open doors, which was probably wise, because I was still more than a little ticked off that she hadn’t closed them when I ordered her to.
Once the ainmhi dubh was still, Bannon approached it slowly, grumbling at its crude creation. She bent over, poked at its oddly constructed jaw, and then frowned at something. She motioned with her injured arm for me to join her, and then winced and paled and dropped it back to her side. “Come look at this, Kai, and tell me if you see what I see.”
Ryder strolled behind me, barely giving me room to breathe, but I didn’t mind. I w
as tired and seriously debating letting him drive us back to the barn. Hell, if one of the kids could reach the pedals, I could be convinced to let them do it.
“What?” I tried to see what she was staring at, but it wasn’t clear, not until she wiped away the blood and grass shreds from one of the monster’s thick canines.
The sigils on its teeth matched the ones they’d found on the iron under my skin. There were differences. Some were subtle, while others were unknown to me, yet there was one that stood out, one so familiar that even Ryder sucked in his breath when he saw it.
“That’s Tanic’s symbol,” Ryder whispered. “Or do I have it wrong, Kai?”
“Close, but that one above it, that makes it something else. This is one of Tanic’s symbols. This ainmhi dubh belonged to Valin cuid Anbhás,” I said, and I sighed as I rubbed at the ache between my eyes. “Bannon, it seems as though my brother is somewhere in your court, and if I’m not mistaken, he’s just challenged you for its control.”
Epilogue
“THINK KERRICK’S going to make it back to Elfhaine without any more holes in him?” I asked as I rocked my chair back on its rear legs. “Because I’d lay down money Alexa’ll be happy to drill a few extra, just for shits and giggles.”
“I’m not sure where that expression came from, but I can tell you, having holes put in your body does not make you giggle,” Ryder grunted as he eased into the seat next to me. Hissing, he pressed his hand against his side and rubbed at where his cousin stabbed him. “I don’t know how you can have this happen to you and bounce back up. Even breathing hurts.”
“Whiskey helps,” I replied and lifted my glass. “And what else am I going to do? Lie down on the ground and cry while someone or something is trying to kill everyone? Bleed now, weep later. That’s what Dempsey always says. Took that one to heart. And to the head a couple of times too.”
