by C. Gockel
Then she grabbed a box much smaller than the others. Peering inside, she found another box, tiny and filled with nails as well as a handful of pierced coins and a length of slender chain to make amulets out of them. She let out the breath she hadn’t known she was holding.
Iron. Finally. We might make it out alive, after all.
She made a dash for the ladder and went back down to Troy. “I found it,” she said, thrusting the little box out to him.
Troy jerked out of his stance and recoiled, his pale skin becoming whiter, if it were possible.
“Never come upon me armed with iron, Lily Boyd.” His eyes were hard as a bottle’s glass and just as brittle. Though he kept his voice steady, there was a steely undercurrent behind her name that made Lily shiver with echoes of fear as the command took root in her soul.
She flinched as if physically struck. “You told me to fetch it,” she stammered.
“I know.” He collected himself, but didn’t relax. “To use as last measure against them.”
“So what should I do?”
“Take your pick, hide it, and keep it on hand.”
Lily moved to the table in part to better sort through the box and in part to be less threatening to Troy. There, she grabbed the chain and hooked one of the coins to each end. She wrapped it around her wrist and closed her fist around the coins, creating a very light, very small, and hopefully very deadly version of a flail. Then, after only a moment’s hesitation, she took out two more coins and hid one in each of her pockets. The last one went into her sock, just in case, and she chose to leave the box of nails alone.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m ready.”
Troy gave her a weary glance and motioned for her to stay a little behind him. Without taking his attention from the windows and front door, he moved toward the kitchen’s unlatched door. He stopped a moment.
“There are several of them,” he said. “Our best hope is to exit the house, cross the yard, and gain enough of an advantage to allow me to shift. They should not be able to keep up with us for long if we make it that far.”
“Two questions. Why aren’t you shifting straight away to make a great, galloping exit, and why aren’t you sounding more confident in the plan?”
“The good doctor has certain protections in place around her home,” he explained, grudgingly. “They greatly impede our magic, and it affects something as deep as a shifting more acutely than other minor works. As far as confidence goes, I assure you I have every bit that is reasonable, given the circumstances.”
“You did magic when you rescued me before,” Lily noted. “Drowned two bogeys, right? Can’t you do that again?”
Troy gave her an angry look. “Do you not think I would do so if I could? That particular work needs time. If you recall, one bogey was caught by surprise and the other did nothing but cower for the longest moment. Believe me when I say the redcaps will not gift us any instant to spare.”
“Okay. Well, then. You lead the way and I follow?”
He nodded, took a deep breath. Then, he froze.
“What’s wrong?” Lily asked. She didn’t dare get much closer to him while she had iron, but he pointed with this chin at the backyard.
Lily got her first good look at a redcap. It was taller than David the gnome, at least three feet plus the hat. It did look like him, though. Or like a garden figurine. Everything seemed to be there: white hair, white beard, small round eyes, blue shirt and pants, pointy leather boots and a red hat. But then it came closer, away from the tree line and under the moonlight, and it was all wrong. The boots were caked in mud. The clothes were ragged, torn, and covered in darker spots that could as well be blueberry juice as they could be blood. Hair and beard were tangled in gnarls with bits of leaves and small sticks poking out of it, and his visible skin was dirty with dust and soil. The eyes were fully white and reflected little sanity. And the worse thing, by far, was the hat. It looked heavy upon its head, dyed by layer upon layer of dried blood. It was dark brown and rusty garnet and even blackened crimson, depending on how old the blood was, and in some places the coating was flaking off. It looked like it needed a fresh dipping.
She swallowed.
“Greetings, Kelpie,” he said. His voice was rich and unpleasant, earthy. It reminded Lily of manure.
“Redcap,” Troy acknowledged him. He exchanged a quick glance with Lily and she saw in his eyes that this, too, was abnormal.
Another fluke. Or something like that.
“You stand far from your domain and your power,” the redcap said. “I sense your attempts to gather whatever strength is available to you, and I smell the acrid stench of foul iron. And yet, we have no quarrel with you.”
“You are not the only one who can sense the gathering of glamour. Yours is not the stance of a friend.”
“Not your friends, but neither are we your enemies. We do serve the same forces and so there is no reason to fight amongst ourselves.”
Troy tensed when the redcap mentioned the forces they served, whatever they were. Lily saw it. His shoulders hunched—his whole body shivered. His eyes fled from the redcap he was talking to and danced about the yard, trying to locate every other redcap and to keep track of all of them at once.
“Take your leave and return unharmed to your pond, Kelpie,” the redcap went on. His mouth twisted in a parody of a smile and his teeth gleamed in the moonlight. “We need only speak with the girl.”
Lily froze. The monster just offered Troy a clear way out of a fight he didn’t think he could win for a little price. Troy’s eyes narrowed when he heard the offer. His hand reached for Lily, but then he hesitated, remembering the iron. His fingers closed into a fist and somehow she found the little gesture of anger to be reassuring.
“Troy?” she dared to ask in a thin voice.
He took a deep breath and turned to fix her with his gaze. “Parley, then,” he said, addressing the redcaps while staring at her. She saw him, cold and hard, and then something feral glimmered in his eyes. It was enough for her to understand, though she herself couldn’t say where the knowledge came from. In that instant, she knew it wasn’t safe—far from it. But she also knew he wouldn’t abandon her, even though he would play the game. She gave him a tiny nod and he turned back to the redcap.
“And then we shall be on our way,” Troy finished.
“Our matters are various and not to be discussed here. Surrender the girl to us, Kelpie, and be gone in peace.”
“No.”
And then Troy was in motion, a dark blur rushing forward. The redcap he’d been talking to staggered and fell with a gurgle before Troy had even cleared the door, and Lily realized he had used the negotiation time to weave his magic and drown his enemy, leaving the path to the forest clear for them to flee.
She broke into a run as fast as she could, following Troy, but each of his long strides forced her to take two and soon he was slipping out of reach. She grit her teeth and kept moving. Troy would need time to shift, and those few seconds would be enough for her to catch up. Then, she would jump on and they would be off.
Troy reached the edge of the forest and then the nightmare began.
Chapter Thirteen
Troy went down and Lily had no time to understand how.
Between one heartbeat and the next, he went from gaining ground to rolling down. The redcap figures they’d been tracking vanished in thin air, mere specters made of smoke and faerie glamour, and as they did, the real creatures were unveiled. They stood in the yard, much too close.
Lily jerked to a stop, contorting her body to the left, and a flash of reddish bronze swept the air where her leg would have been. The redcap who had exploded out of the shadows in front of her didn’t lose his balance and followed up the strike with another, a backhanded arc meant to catch her across her belly.
She let herself fall back on instinct. The weapon missed her, but the price she paid was dear, for now she lay upon the muddy ground and the redcap had every advantage. She couldn�
�t stay down. She needed to be able to move if she wanted to escape. Images from the bogeys tearing into her with their razor-sharp teeth after bringing her down to the living room’s floor flooded her mind, and panic shot a current of raw determination along her spine.
The redcap shifted and swung his little hatchet once more, intent on crippling her. There was a maniacal grin on his face as he aimed for the fleshy meat of her thigh where the blood loss would be greatest and, coupled with the resurfacing memories, it gave Lily the strength to kick out. Her boot produced a satisfying crunch when it crashed against the redcap’s knee and the blow made him lose balance and stumble back.
Lily didn’t wait to see how long the redcap remained staggered or to check if she had aimed well enough to cause a break. She rolled to the side and fought to climb to her feet. She had to run.
Her head wrenched back, held fast by a handful of hair. The angle of her attacker twisted her neck to the side and made her fall again after she had barely pushed to her knees. Another redcap gave her a predatory grin, barely a few inches from her face. His eyes, crazed white engulfing a blue much too pale, focused on her exposed throat.
She screamed.
Fueled by nothing but adrenaline, she swung her arm back and then forward. The iron chain unfolded between her fingers, and the iron coins slipped free. The makeshift weapon lashed across the redcap’s nose and stuck in his eyes.
The hand let her loose, tearing bloody tracks in her scalp in the process, and the creature shrieked. The smell of burnt flesh assaulted her nostrils and the redcap recoiled.
Pop.
She heard the sickening wet noise over the sounds of the brawling, like a lollipop being pulled from one’s mouth. Except it was the iron coin, pulled free of the redcap’s face.
Bringing a roiling, sizzling eyeball with it.
Time stood still. She stared horrified at the burned socket, the blood blackened and dribbling down his cheek, finding the deep paths burned by the chain and running through them like a river down a crevice, eating the flesh up like acid and burning it and making it rot.
The eye shriveled, died, then turned to ash and dust right there where it hung from her hand.
Lily jerked back and struck again. And again. And again, until the redcap stopped eyeing her with the grin of a predator, until he stopped seeing her at all.
Then she stood and she ran.
She jumped over the drowned redcap, skidded around yet another who laid in a pool of blood, his macabre cap discarded a few feet away and his head split open by a powerful blow. She finally found Troy, blood gleaming down his side as he danced in and out of the shadows with two more redcaps around him.
She saw him stumble, saw one of the redcaps jump upon him, wicked sickle already glistening with blood.
“No!” The scream tore free without asking permission. She heard it, the rage and desperation and pain in a single syllable, almost as if she were a bystander outside her own head. Almost as if those hadn’t been her lungs giving air to the heart-wrenching denial.
She reached into her pocket, then hurled a coin through the air. It bounced off the redcap, leaving a blackened, burned trail across his back just as he hit Troy.
The little beast went through him.
He went through him.
Troy’s figure shuddered in the air, mingled with the shadows that had danced around him but a moment before and then scattered with the breeze. Troy, the real Troy, stepped out around the fading illusion and brought a jagged stone to the wounded, dazed redcap’s head. The cap was knocked aside, dyed in blood one last time.
Troy straightened. The hand clutching the rock was covered in blood, the droplets having splayed up to his elbow. A wound did mar his side, a long, shallow cut that oozed slowly and dripped down his leg. The second redcap moved to circle him, wary after what had happened to his partner, but his eyes regarded her with a look of startled curiosity and paid no mind to his opponent.
Lily was suddenly very scared.
Then, in a blink, the curiosity shifted to intensity and the redcap who tried to take Troy unaware gurgled. He didn’t drown, not quite, but he faltered and coughed, water pouring down his chin. Lily struck quick as lightning, following instincts she didn’t know she had. She collided with the gnome, threw herself at him, and managed to land him on the ground. Not stopping to think, she pulled the coin from her other pocket and shoved it into his coughing mouth.
Too pale eyes widened as the iron burned a way down the redcap’s throat and she stood as he began to convulse. She didn’t stop to watch the effects of iron’s touch this time; instead, she ran.
Troy had said to run to the trees beyond the yard to break far enough from the house and the redcaps to allow him to shift into his horse shape. She stuck to the plan.
“Lily Boyd.” His voice cut through her tangled thoughts like a knife, but there was a measure of gentleness behind the sharp command. “Calm down.” She twisted around and lashed out, the iron amulet still wrapped around her wrist. Her back went ramrod straight and her arm froze without her permission as a wave of pain hit her hard in the wake of another command. Never come upon me armed with iron, Lily Boyd. She choked on a sob. “Calm down.” Troy’s tone was a mixture of steel and velvet and his hands gripped her shoulders, his own tension belied under the firmness of fingers that tried to be reassuring. Her mind obeyed him, bypassing the fear and adrenaline coursing in her veins. She managed a small nod.
He took a step back, looked her in the eye. “You acquitted yourself well,” he said. “We must seize this opportunity to leave.”
She nodded again. He waited a split moment, only long enough to ensure she wouldn’t break down in hysterics, and turned his focus inward. Lily fumbled with the chain at her wrist, untangling it and dropping the small weapon to her feet while he shifted. It was taking him long, too long. The darkness that enveloped him pulsed in time with his heavy breathing, skirted over his wounds and became a diluted murk in contact with his blood. She began to shake again. They needed to get away, they couldn’t waste another instant, they had to—
Movement in the shadows caught her frantic gaze. There was a hint of red and bronze and she recognized the hatchet and didn’t stop to think. Her fingers reached into her sock, pulled free the last coin and hurled it through the air.
Her pulse was wobbly and the bit of iron sailed over Troy’s shoulder before glancing off the redcap. The redcap hissed in pain, but Troy screamed in terror. His green eyes flashed in the dark, showing white all around them, and he lost whatever grip he had managed to hold on the shift. The darkness unraveled and he stumbled back and to the side, all composure lost. Then he snarled at her, like a wild, caged animal.
Lily was horrified. After seeing how her own body had reacted to his command not to ever attack him with iron, she had somehow assumed it would be fine, that he would be safe because the binds he had placed upon her wouldn’t allow her to hurt him. She had thrown the coin holding on to that certainty, but she had been wrong. There were, it seemed, ways to circumvent orders. Because she hadn’t wanted to hit him, because she had been so focused on hitting the redcap to save him, the command hadn’t even registered her actions for, technically speaking, she was not coming upon him. And she had nearly missed. She had nearly hit him instead and she fought to get rid of the image of him burning black, dying like the redcaps had.
Loopholes. It was all about loopholes.
Troy pounced, body taut with anger and fear that overrode his natural grace, and Lily flinched, bracing herself.
He never hit her. He fell upon the crawling redcap, who bled and sizzled, but continued forward, dragging an awkwardly bent knee, with revenge in his eyes. Troy wrenched the hatchet from the redcap’s grip and discharged a blow on his head with a cry.
The little weapon stuck in the split bone and Troy shoved to his feet again, reached for Lily, and held her wrist with bruising force as he forced her to stumble along into the trees. He didn’t bother to try to shift ag
ain. He just ran, and it was all Lily could do to keep up as they darted in and out of copses of trees, far from roads and houses and all traces of man.
Troy allowed them to stop when they reached the crest of a small hill where old, ruined stones suggested a vigil tower might have sat once. Lily couldn’t breathe past the pounding of blood in her ears and throat, and it took an inordinate amount of effort to hear him speak over the agony of her burning legs as he shoved her into a corner of the ruin, pressing on her shoulders to make her sit.
“Hide and wait,” he said, the words making barely sense. “I must ensure we have not been followed. There could be more of them. Wait here until I return.”
And he was gone.
Chapter Fourteen
She fought to swallow back a sob that threatened to spill past her lips. It became a lump choking her as silent tears slid down her cheeks. She no longer knew whether she cried of sheer terror or of relief, and the rising bubble of hysteria in her chest didn’t care. The only important thing was to cry in silence because she couldn’t forget about the creatures out there. The vision of them attacking, their crude weapons rusted over with very human blood, and their pointed teeth rotting in their hungry mouths flashed before her eyes every time she blinked. The agonized screams of the redcap she had hit with an iron coin as its flesh blackened and smoked, dissolving as if dipped in acid while it was still alive, echoed in her ears.
The scream of Troy haunted her too. It had been a noise of pure terror as the metal flew past his face, and she had felt him still trembling when he had forced her to run into the forest. Back in the house, when he had used her name, she had resented him. However, after witnessing what the coins could do, she thought she knew why he had done it.
Where is he? She wished he would come back. Of course she understood the need to scout, to make sure they were safe. These creatures, unlike the bogeys, would follow them if they could and Troy wasn’t sure the ruined, broken tower where they had found refuge wouldn’t be a redcap burrow to begin with. Lily hugged herself and sank in her corner, hoping the ancient stones would protect her if anything did come looking.
