“Faerie is at war,” the sorceress said. “Civil war. I’d thought Ceridwen and her concubine were dead, but they’d slipped away, and every spell I’ve cast has been unable to locate them. If they were dead, I’d have found their remains.”
“Thanks for sharing the good news,” Clay replied.
The sorceress sneered at him. He noticed there were small black flowers in her hair, and on the flesh of her throat. They were not decorative—they’d grown there.
“Not good news for us,” the sorceress said. “I’ve been commanded to return to Faerie with their heads and hearts, or not return at all.”
Eve spit blood onto the floor, exasperated. “What part of ‘they’re not home’ didn’t you get?”
The sorceress smiled. “Ah, well. Perhaps if I hurt you enough, they’ll hear you screaming in the psychic ether and come to your rescue. Filthy leech.”
Clay chuckled softly. He lowered his head. “Oh, honey, you shouldn’t have. She hates being called that.”
Eve hissed loudly, crouching lower.
Clay could see where this was heading. He turned and reached out a huge gorilla hand and yanked the sword out of her back. It wasn’t doing anyone any good where it was, and he had a better use for it.
The sorceress shouted something in one of the thousand languages of Faerie. The archers stepped forward and loosed their arrows. Clay leaped from the first floor to the second, grabbed hold of the balustrade, and hurled himself over. On the second-floor walkway, still a mountain gorilla, he began to swing that sword, hacking down one archer after another until the sword shattered on the skull of a huge fairy warrior.
He heard Eve snarling below. Heard bones breaking and flesh rending.
The massive fairy took the broken sword from his hand, twisted it, and shoved the broken blade into his chest. Clay stumbled, shattered the balustrade, and plummeted toward the floor. Halfway down he shifted into a falcon, his wound healing in the same instant. Poison might kill him someday. Magic might. But not a sad-ass broken sword.
He flew at the sorceress, talons reaching for her eyes. She lifted a hand in defense and that black-green lightning struck him, whipping him across the room in a smoking tumble of broken wings and burnt feathers.
Clay hit a wall, fell to the ground, and shifted into his most comfortable form. The first one he’d ever taken. Pointed ears, long red hair with a white streak down the middle, monstrous fangs with a pair of wicked tusks jutting up from the lower jaw. In many ways, he considered this his true face, rather than the human one he so often wore.
Weary, weakened, he stood to face the fairy soldiers.
The head of a fairy girl rolled across the floor. Most of this group didn’t have wings, but some did, and as Eve dragged the headless corpse toward him, Clay saw the gossamer wings on its back, torn to shreds.
“You need to leave our home,” Eve said, glaring around at the intruders, daring the next one to come at them. “We’ll defend our friends and this place until the last day of the Earth.”
The sorceress nodded, almost as if in admiration. “Then perhaps today is that day.”
Tree Bitch is starting to piss me off, Eve thought, watching as the fairy sorceress lifted both her arms, long, twig-like fingers twitching, calling forth what remained of her soldiers from the shadows of the second-floor balcony that surrounded them.
Eve sensed Clay sidling up alongside her.
“You good?” she asked him.
“Doing fine,” Clay answered in a throaty growl.
“Good,” Eve said. “Wanna see if we can kill all these fairy fucks in reasonable amount of time?”
“All depends on what you consider reasonable,” Clay said, surging forward as the rest of the fairy soldiers dropped down into the grand foyer. His body shifted to something large and hairy. For a second she thought it might be a Sasquatch, but then decided it was some sort of prehistoric bear. Its claws were spectacularly vicious, eviscerating with a swipe, cutting through fairy armor as if it were papier-mâché.
Not wanting to be shown up, Eve flexed her own talons.
The blow to the side of her head knocked her to the hardwood floor.
The biggest fairy she’d ever seen was reaching for her, sausage-link fingers wrapping around her throat as he yanked her up from the ground. His other catcher’s mitt-sized hand clamped over her face and began to squeeze. The bones of her skull began to creak in protest and Eve figured that maybe it would be in her best interest to kill Baby Huey before he smudged her mascara.
The Mother of Vampires extended her jaw and snapped her teeth around the big bastard’s middle two fingers with a joyously sickening crunch.
She guessed it must’ve hurt pretty badly, based on the way Jumbo yanked his injured paw back with a high-pitched squeal. He released her throat, allowing her to drop to the floor. Spitting pieces of fairy finger from her mouth, Eve moved before the big guy could collect himself, scuttling up the front of his armored body insect-like and looking him dead in his yellow-tinged eyes.
“Such a girly scream from such a big guy,” she purred as she grabbed hold of his lower jaw, wrenched it away from his face, and tossed it aside. “The less heard of that the better.”
The fairy stumbled back with his arms flailing and dropped to the floor, leaving a trail of fairy blood in his wake as he crawled away into the shadows.
Clay, wearing the shape of a saber-toothed cat, roared and bit and slashed at the last of the bedraggled fairy soldiers. Eve fixed her gaze upon the sorceress, who leaned over the balustrade, looking not the least bit amused by how her warriors were faring. A nasty corona of green glowed around her hands, crackling magical energy on the verge of being released.
“Clay, heads up!” Eve screamed, diving into the fray, grabbing one of the soldiers by his breast plate, and swinging him around.
The blast of magical energy tore through the screaming soldier, reducing his body to burning flesh and charred bone. Clay’s body morphed as it came toward her, a reptilian something whose body was adorned with thick armored plating. He got between her and the cascade of magical energy, grunting in pain as the bolts of fairy sorcery tore away chunks of his armored flesh.
“We’re gone,” Clay roared through vocal cords not designed for human speech, sweeping her up in his arms and attempting to flee from the room.
Jagged spears of magical fury rained down from above, sections of floor exploding around them.
“Why delay the inevitable?” the sorceress asked, words dripping with arrogance.
She’d left the safety of the second-floor balcony. With her remaining soldiers by her side, she advanced toward them.
Eve squirmed out of Clay’s saurian arms, not about to run from a fight. A spear of magical force struck her square in the chest, hurling her backward. She slid across the floor and out into the entry corridor, where she lay unable to move. She could hear Clay trying to fight them, but the air filled with the scent of burning flesh and hair and she guessed that he was doing about as well as she was right now.
She found herself chuckling as she fought to throw off the shroud of unconsciousness that was attempting to enwrap her. Is this really how it ends? Eve wondered. Getting our immortal asses handed to us by a few cranked up fairy folk?
“You ought’a be ashamed.”
She heard the words she was thinking spoken aloud in a voice oh so familiar and incredibly unpleasant.
Eve opened her eyes to the sight of a hobgoblin’s twisted face.
“What the fuck?” Eve managed.
“Exactly what I was thinkin,” said the hobgoblin. His name was Squire, and he was an asshole…but also one of her closest friends.
“Where the hell have you—”
“Shhh,” Squire said, placing a filthy-smelling finger against her lips. She slapped his hand away.
Squire motioned with his knobby chin to the room behind them. “We’ll have time for that as soon as you take care of our current predicamen
t.”
Clay was on his last legs for sure, the magic savagely ripping into the countless forms his body was changing into, his shifting beginning to slow down.
The magic was taking its toll.
“Got any ideas?” Eve asked, pushing herself up from the floor.
“As a matter of fact I do,” Squire said. He’d turned his squat body around and was reaching into a patch of shadow for something, searching the Shadowpaths—the dark dimensions his kind were able to enter and navigate.
Eve continued to watch the dining room and what was transpiring there. She imagined Clay didn’t have much time left.
Squire drew something out of the shadows, grinned his ugly grin, and handed it over. “Here you go.”
“What the hell is this?”
“What are you, stupid? It’s an automatic rifle.”
“I know it’s a fucking rifle, but why the hell are you giving it to me? Where’s the magick sword, or cursed dagger, or holy fucking hand grenade?”
“That’s just as good,” he said, motioning for her to go and use it.
“I don’t . . .” Eve began, hefting the lightweight weapon.
“That’s the AK 12, the latest and greatest from the Russian AK-pattern assault rifles,” Squire explained. “One of the deadliest pieces of automatic weaponry currently available. In the three-round burst setting it spits up to a thousand rounds per minute. Turns body meat to steak tartare in a matter of seconds.”
“Against fairy magic?”
“This is your advantage,” Squire told her.
“How do you figure that?”
“Say you’re a fairy nutjob having a last stand in the home of one of the most powerful sorcerers in existence, using your magic against a shapeshifter and the mother of all vampires.”
“Summarize, please,” Eve said, finding the safety on the weapon and turning it off.
“Always bring a gun to a knife fight. Hocus Pocus in there won’t know what hit her.”
“Hope you’re right,” Eve said, striding back to the grand foyer.
Clay had taken on the shape of an enormous mythical serpent, his body taking up most of the foyer space, blocking her advance from view. He didn’t look good, the scales of his serpentine form blistered and blackened from the ravages of fairy magic.
“Down in front!” Eve roared, hoping the ancient shapeshifter got her meaning.
The serpent twitched and began to diminish, Clay realigning his shape at her request.
The fairy sorceress stood in the middle of the destroyed foyer with her remaining troops. The look of cruel arrogance on her alien features abruptly shifting to surprise.
“Abra-ka-fucking-dabra, bitch,” Eve announced, pulling the trigger on the AK-12 just as the sorceress’ arms began to rise, her lips twitching with the start of an incantation.
Squire had been right about the weapon’s effectiveness. The bullets tore through fairy armor in quick bursts, thick blood-like tree sap spewing from the ravaged flesh to spatter the walls.
Some of the soldiers fool-heartedly advanced, and Eve mowed them down with a quick spray while others retreated, diving into patches of shimmering air that were gateways back whence they’d come.
But they weren’t Eve’s concern.
The fairy sorceress writhed upon the floor, still alive despite the traumatic damage so many bullets had done to her body.
Eve stood over the woman, looking down upon her ravaged form.
“Bet that hurts a lot,” she said, watching as the sorceress tried to speak, her mouth filled with blood and bile.
“Shhhhhh,” Eve told her, squatting down to cover her lips with a finger. “Time to die.”
The fairy’s body grew still and the stink of rotting vegetation filled Eve’s nostrils. The sorceress was dead.
“That’s one way of doing it,” Clay said.
She turned to see him sitting on the floor in his true form looking a little worse for wear.
“Thought you could use a hand,” Eve said, resting the AK-12 against her shoulder.
“Didn’t know Versace was designing automatic weaponry now,” Clay growled. “Looks good on you.”
“Why thank you,” she said. “It was either this or the grenade launcher from the spring collection.”
They had both begun to laugh when…
“Ahem,” Squire cleared his throat.
They looked toward the entryway to see that Squire was no longer alone.
“A little help here,” the hobgoblin said, helping the injured, older man into the grand foyer.
“Doyle,” Clay said, jumping to his feet and going to the sorcerer.
“Hold onto ‘im,” Squire said, leaving Mr. Doyle with Clay and disappearing back into an expanding patch of shadow beside a broken Victorian settee.
Doyle looked as if he’d aged a decade. Bloody, bruised, and unkempt—a week’s worth of stubble on his chin—he seemed as if he’d rather fall than lie down. His left leg had been broken and set with thick tree limbs and torn, gossamer fabric. He hung onto Clay as if to save himself from drowning.
“What the hell happened to you?” Eve demanded.
He waved the question away. He looked as if he might vomit at any moment, but he blinked and breathed deeply, seeming to muster whatever little strength he had.
“Time is of the essence,” Doyle rasped, exhausted.
“What’s going on?” Clay asked. “I assume it has something to do with the reception we had waiting for us.”
Squire began to emerge from the shadows and they could see that once again he was not alone. He was dragging Ceridwen’s lifeless body from the darkness into the light of the brownstone. Lady Ceridwen was a powerful elemental sorceress in her own right, and the niece of the king of Faerie—or one of them, before this civil war.
“What the fuck?” Eve said, helping Squire to extract Ceridwen from the Shadowpath. The elemental was covered in blood, her breathing shallow. She was barely alive.
“We must return her to Faerie if she is to survive,” Doyle informed them, managing to rally himself, pulling away from Clay’s support as he swayed where he stood. “And then begin the evacuation preparations.”
“Evacuation?” Clay asked.
Mr. Doyle fixed the shapeshifter in a piercing stare.
“The Demogorgon,” he said, a tinge of fear evident in how the name was spoken. “It’s closer than we believed.”
Doyle stumbled away from them, going to stand in the middle of the grand foyer amidst the destruction and piles of dead fairy soldiers.
“It has begun to feed upon the magical realms first,” Doyle said, turning back to them. “These dimensions exist side by side with our own. The walls between them are substantial, but once the Demogorgon has consumed all magic there, it will break through.”
“Faerie,” Eve said. “It’s attacking Faerie.”
“Indeed,” Doyle replied. “There will be no saving the fairy realm now. All we can do is move as quickly as possible to relocate its people. We’ll have to bring them here, to the earthly realm.”
“There goes the fucking neighborhood,” Eve said, holding Ceridwen’s still, cold hand.
“The moment has arrived, my friends,” Doyle said, managing to pull himself up, to stand a little taller. “The beginning of the end.”
Christopher Golden is the New York Times bestselling author of such novels as ARARAT, DEAD RINGERS, SNOWBLIND, TIN MEN, THE MYTH HUNTERS, THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN, WILDWOOD ROAD, STRANGEWOOD, THE FERRYMAN, and OF SAINTS AND SHADOWS. He has also written books for teens and young adults, including POISON INK, SOULLESS, and the thriller series BODY OF EVIDENCE, honored by the New York Public Library and chosen as one of YALSA's Best Books for Young Readers.
Golden co-wrote the illustrated novel BALTIMORE, OR, THE STEADFAST TIN SOLDIER AND THE VAMPIRE with Mike Mignola, which became the launching pad for the cult favorite comics series BALTIMORE. As an editor, he has worked on the short story anthologies SEIZE THE NIGHT, THE NEW DEAD, a
nd THE MONSTER'S CORNER, among others, and has also written and co-written comic books, video games, screenplays, a BBC radio play, the online animated series GHOSTS OF ALBION (with Amber Benson), and a network television pilot.
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Table of Contents
"... and Christopher Golden." -- Introduction by Tim Lebbon
A HOLE IN THE WORLD -- with Tim Lebbon
MECHANISMS -- with Mike Mignola
BLOOD FOR BLOOD -- with Charlaine Harris
THE NUCKELAVEE: A Hellboy story – with Mike Mignola
IN THEIR PRESENCE – with James A. Moore
GHOSTS OF ALBION: ILLUSIONS – with Amber Benson
JOE GOLEM AND THE COPPER GIRL – with Mike Mignola
FAULT LINES – with Tim Lebbon
WELLNESS CHECK – with Thomas E. Sniegoski
Don't Go Alone Page 23
