Dark Duets

by Christopher Golden

  Stacey lunged for the fallen stone knife.

  So did the creature.

  But as they both reached for it—as Stacey curled her fingers around it—a second arrow snapped through the air and struck the creature. This time it hit the chest and transfixed it. If this monster, this Yvag, had a pumping heart like a human, then the broad-bladed arrow must surely have torn it in half.

  The creature looked at Stacey, its burning eyes seeming to lock on her, and its inhuman mouth opened, screeching to the sky in furious terror. Then it abruptly ruptured into a gray-green mist that spattered Stacey and every shocked and now silent person in the circle. Bones and raw meat flopped to the ground.

  The statesman’s body—the fat empty shell—still stood impossibly upright; but it was rotting before her eyes in swift, freakish decomposition. Skin bruised, sagged, the wide eyeballs liquefied and fell back into the skull, and the whole corpse deliquesced inside the suit, collapsing with a wet squelch to the ground. He had been in the press for years, decades she thought. Dead far longer than the driver of the limousine.

  The wall of light suddenly changed from green to red. Furnace heat roared out across the clearing.

  “Push her in!” screamed the woman who had applauded with such vicious irony. Her words broke the others out of their shock. The postman was closest; he made a grab at Stacey.

  A third arrow came out of nowhere and punched through his chest. It stood there, the shaft thrumming from the force of impact.

  The postman juddered to a stop, and he managed to croak a single last word, raised his arm and pointed.

  “No . . .”

  Everyone turned.

  A figure stepped out from behind the border of tall shrubs below them.

  Lean as a wolf, with eyes that were bottomless and dark with incalculable rage. He was dressed in jeans and a vest made of rough doeskin. Belts crossed his hips and from them hung knives of every description. In his hands, though, he held a great yew bow, and a quiver heavy with arrows hung from a strap behind his shoulder.

  Stacey watched as he quickly, deftly drew another arrow, fitting it to the string without effort, as if he’d done this a hundred times. Or a thousand.

  Or ten thousand.

  “Rhymer,” she breathed.

  10

  As Thomas the Rhymer raised the bow, the crowd of skinwalkers howled at him.

  They howled with seething hatred for their ancient enemy.

  They howled in burning rage for this disruption of their ritual.

  They howled in fear of this man.

  And they howled in terror for the consequences of his attack.

  Stacey heard those roars and yells and she understood them. A scream ripped its way out of her own throat.

  Beside her, the postman’s stomach exploded as the red monster within tore free. It dropped into a crouch like a bloody ape, head swiveling back and forth as if seeing with new and more cunning eyes than it had used a moment ago. Those eyes came to rest on Stacey, and the thing’s lip curled back from rows of gore-streaked fangs that were bracketed by wicked tusks. Its muscles tensed for the spring.

  Stacey gave it no time.

  She swung the sharpened stone knife with all her strength, and the razor edge slashed through the Yvag’s throat so deeply that the stone grated on its knobbed spine. Green blood sprayed outward as the creature dropped.

  The postman’s body shriveled to dusty rags in a heartbeat.

  As if the collapse of the empty clothing was a signal, the elves attacked, and though the real hell waited beyond the shimmering veil of light, there was enough of it to be had in that clearing.

  As one they surged forward—a dozen monsters in stolen bodies. The nearest lunged at Stacey; the rest barreled downhill toward Rhymer.

  For his part, Rhymer stood his ground, firing arrow after arrow, filling the air with death—first to kill the hijacked bodies and then to slaughter the Yvag who dwelled within. His jaw was tight, his mouth curled into a sneer of disgust, but Stacey saw that his eyes blazed. With madness? Or was he enjoying this? After all these centuries, was this the only time he was truly alive?

  Then she had no more time to think. A woman dressed in expensive furs and jewels tried to stab her with a diamond-crusted dagger, but Stacey bashed her arm aside and drove the tip of the sharpened stone into her chest. Over and over again, tearing through ermine and powdered flesh and tough bone. As the woman’s chest collapsed, the Yvag inside tried to burst free, thrusting its clawed hands outward to try and snatch the sacred stone from Stacey’s hand. But Stacey bellowed and hammered at the scrabbling fingers, smashing them, shattering bones, battering the emerging Yvag even as it fought through blood and ragged tissue to escape its dying frame. Sagging halfway out, the Yvag and its host collapsed onto the ground.

  The man with the military bearing leaped over the fallen body and drove a savage punch at Stacey that would surely have broken her neck, but an arrow crunched through the balled fist and pinned it to his chest. Before he could react, Stacey finished him with a slash to the throat. His blood sprayed everywhere.

  Bodies fell and clogged the clearing, and Rhymer used those obstacles to advance over the fence. He fired and fired. One bolt struck a skinwalker in the stomach and it fell forward. Its body heaved, then lay still, and Stacey realized that the arrow had found and killed the Yvag within as well.

  Then there was a loud CRACK and Rhymer spun backward, his bow falling from his hand as red blossomed from high on his left shoulder. A figure—the driver of the Bentley—stood with braced legs, aiming a Glock nine millimeter at Rhymer. Only the wild panic of the crowd prevented him from ending it there.

  “Get out of the way, damn you!” cried the driver, and when one of the skinwalkers didn’t move fast enough, he shot it in the head. Rhymer leaped the fence and dodged behind the shrubs again. The driver fired into them, but Rhymer had already bolted for the woods. Furiously, the Yvag plunged after him, bounding over the fence and into the trees.

  A second man bent and rummaged inside the folds of the military man’s empty clothes and straightened with a mad grin on his face and a big .45 Navy Colt in his hand. When he turned toward her, Stacey saw that there was something strange about his eyes. They weren’t like the rest of the skinwalkers.

  They were more like the eyes of the man who had abducted her from the club. They generated a strange and overwhelming attraction. She knew that this could not be the same man, the one Rhymer said was a princeling among them—he had shed his skin and gone into the green light—but the power was similar. It was so normal and natural and warm that it nearly stopped her in her tracks.

  What had Rhymer said about the charisma of these elves?

  To humans that’s just a gift of attraction . . . but for the Yvag it’s one of their most powerful weapons. They can make you lay bare your throat for the knife and thank them while they cut.

  She could feel her hand begin to open. The sacred stone began to slip away from her even as the creature raised his pistol and pointed it at her face.

  She closed her eyes, waiting for the bullet.

  Almost . . . wanting it.

  The shot never came. She opened her eyes to see him lower the pistol.

  The creature sighed. “Alas for everyone that the tithe must be alive and able to scream.”

  “I . . .” she began, but there was nowhere to go with words.

  “Take her,” said the Yvag. He turned away and ran after the others into the woods to hunt for Rhymer. A few moments later there came a burst of shots and a solitary scream of agony.

  Only two skinwalkers remained in the clearing, and they closed in on Stacey. They were as splattered with blood as she was.

  “You will scream for a thousand years,” whispered one of them, a woman with masses of blond curls. “That’s the truth of hell, bitch.”

  “You will become the whore of a hundred thousand demons,” said the other.

  Stacey closed her fist around the sacred stone.
The spell of the princeling had snapped as soon as he turned away.

  She bared her teeth at them.

  “Fuck you,” she said, and sprang from the mound. She cut them to pieces with their own stone knife.

  11

  There was another scream and Stacey ran downhill. As she reached the wire fence, the skinwalker with the Glock came stumbling backward through the shrubs. He hit the fence and fell on his back at Stacey’s feet. His face and throat and chest had been slashed to ribbons. The Yvag—mortally wounded—struggled to tear free from the shriveling body, but Stacey kicked it over and stomped on its head.

  Within the forest, Stacey could see Rhymer moving among the skinwalkers. He held a knife in each hand and stray shafts of sunlight struck sparks from the steel as he wheeled and cut and slashed and stabbed. If the bullet had done him any damage, it was not evident. Two skinwalkers, both of them trailing blood and streamers of torn flesh, crawled out of the forest and into the clearing, making for the wall of light and, perhaps, a chance of escape.

  There was a sudden howl of rage, and heat struck her back like a wave. It sent her reeling, and the stone flew from her hand. She whirled to see that the wall of light had grown brighter and bigger, filling more than half of the clearing now. It was as if the sky were being sliced apart in pursuit of her. The light seemed to expand toward her like the chest of some great dragon.

  A grotesque face peered through, spotted her—a baleful eye that she remembered from last night.

  The princeling, Rhymer had called it.

  It strained to reach for her through the glowing opening, barbed and knobbed fingers gleaming with the sheen of cast iron. Stacey staggered back and wrenched her head away before the princeling’s charisma could conquer her.

  One of the remaining skinwalkers had crawled out from the trees; they stared at each other for a second. Then he jumped for the cutting stone. Stacey kicked him in the face. The stone flew out of his grasp and blood spurted from his nose. She took a step to kick him again, but with both hands cupped over his face he skittered away from her.

  Then someone called her name.

  It spoke in a voice like thunder. The force of it shook the clearing and shivered the trunks of the trees. Birds fell dead from the air, as the rocky ground beneath her cracked.

  Stacey screamed.

  It wasn’t just her name that was called. It was her whole being in two syllables, shouted by the prince of the elves from the mouth of hell.

  The power of it enfolded her again, the charismatic force as clinging as tentacles, dragging her toward the blazing light.

  With everything she had, she fought to pull free, but her captured body betrayed her. As had happened at the club, her mind became compartmentalized, boxed in, trapped.

  “The ritual,” she heard him broadcast to the surviving Yvag. “Bring the other two. Complete it from your side.”

  Another of the skinwalkers ran out of the woods—a solid woman with red hair and dressed in a lemon-yellow tracksuit that was smeared with a bloody handprint. She scrambled over and retrieved the blood-smeared cutting stone, cringing back immediately as if expecting to be kicked, too, but Stacey could no longer work her legs. Although she was screaming inside, not a sound came out. Her eyes flooded with tears at her helplessness. They had her. She understood now how Rhymer had only managed to save a few, how tenacious, unstoppable these monsters were.

  The woman clambered up beside her to push Stacey up the mound and through the opening.

  And then Thomas the Rhymer stepped out from behind the tall standing stone above them.

  He was covered with blood, his shirt torn halfway off his body. His limbs were crisscrossed with cuts and the vicious welts from bites and tearing fingers. But he had recovered his bow and he held it in his red, gleaming fist above which the shaft of an arrow rested.

  “Rhymer . . .” whispered Stacey. With sudden horror she realized that he was pointing the arrow at her. Was that how this would end? If he couldn’t save her from hell, then he would deny the demons the living sacrifice they demanded?

  His eyes were hard and merciless as he stared along the shaft at her.

  Stacey wanted to curse him. To hate him for this. He had used her to find this coven, hadn’t he? To bring the princeling back into this world. Now here he was ready to sacrifice her life. She should hate him with her last breath and thought.

  She said, “Do it.”

  He took careful aim and his arrow fly.

  Stacey closed her eyes.

  The arrow whipped by so closely that she felt it pass, viscerally shared the thud of it into the breastbone of the tracksuited woman beside her. Stacey’s eyes snapped open to see the woman spin around and stumble backward—straight into the wall of light, her arm extended as if to hand the cutting stone to Stacey. At the last, her shaking, dissolving hand flung it to the ground.

  Stacey’s arms were free, but she stood there for a moment, too stunned to know what to do.

  “The stone!” cried Rhymer. “Now, before it’s too late!”

  That was like a bucket of water in the face. Stacey snapped out of her shock and dove for the sacred stone.

  “You dare not!” bellowed the Yvag prince, and Stacey spun around in horror as the monster dragged the tracksuited body aside and stepped halfway from the light, reaching for her, swiping at the air with its claws.

  An arrow thudded into the princeling, but instantly glowed and caught fire, the ashes blowing away in the superheated wind.

  “The stone,” Rhymer cried again.

  But Stacey had it seated in her palm now, her fingers wrapped tightly around it, her body turning—not away from the Yvag prince but toward him. She slashed at him with his sacred stone. The razor-sharp edge of it drew a glowing green line from shoulder to elbow.

  The Yvag’s shriek of pain came like the screech of grinding metal, like a train wreck inches from her face. It picked her up and slammed her back against the shrubs. Even where he stood, Rhymer fell, too, his arrows spilling from their quiver.

  The Yvag prince thrashed in place, like a wasp caught in a spider’s web. As Stacey watched, the green lines of glowing blood spread like a vine into the red of the shimmering wall and somehow seemed to bind him there.

  Or did it?

  The creature threw its twisted body against these new lines of force and step by step the resistance yielded, one line then another snapped, and he emerged. He was almost all the way out now.

  Stacey pushed herself up. Thunder seemed to pound through her head. She pressed a palm against one ear, found that she was bleeding from it. And from her nose. Rhymer, sprawled in the dirt, was coughing, and with each cough a bloody foam rimed his chin.

  Somehow Stacey still had the stone in her hand, but the monster in the fiery gateway was reaching for it. She raised it for one last stab. Maybe she could cut a tendon or . . .

  “Hell and eternal suffering await you,” whispered the prince in a voice that was so inhuman that Stacey did not know how to describe it. Words forced out of a throat that was never meant for human speech.

  She jabbed at the thing’s knobbed fingers and it twitched back, careful to avoid her. They both knew who would win, but the elf did not want to suffer more damage in the midst of its victory.

  “The . . . wall . . .”

  Stacey heard those words distantly, from a million miles away.

  “What—?”

  The elf grabbed her ankle in its steely hand and began to pull her across the ground.

  “Not the . . . Yvag,” croaked Rhymer as he fought to climb shakily to hands and knees. “The wall . . . close it.”

  Stacey twisted back to the Yvag prince. His goblin face leered at her.

  “Too late,” he mocked. “Give in to the suffering that is your destiny.”

  Stacey raised the sacred stone.

  “Fuck you!” she screamed, and stabbed.

  Not at the monstrous hand that held her.

  Not at the grinning impossibi
lity of the black, golden-eyed skull that laughed at her pain.

  She stabbed the shimmering wall of light.

  There was a dazzling explosion that erupted without sound. A ring of bright green light punched out from the glowing red wall.

  “Again!” cried Rhymer. He was crawling toward her, his body broken and bleeding.

  “No!” howled the prince of the elves. He yanked at her foot, tearing her sneaker off.

  Stacey stabbed again, then raked the stone blade from top to bottom.

  Across the line she made the fiery light vanished.

  She stabbed and stabbed.

  Wherever the blade touched, the red wall disappeared.

  The elf prince was still half in this world. One leg, one arm and shoulder, and his misshapen head. He roared at her and slashed her leg with his claws. Her blood seeded the air.

  Then an arrow struck the clawing hand, pinning it to the ground for an instant before dissolving. But a second struck. And a third. Rhymer was on his knees, scooping up fallen arrows, tearing them from rotted corpses, and firing them as fast as he could nock and pull and release. They held him off for seconds, long enough for her to pull her leg out of the prince’s reach.

  The wall collapsed bit by bit. Line by glowing line, shrinking in on the struggling Yvag.

  Rhymer fired a final arrow, and it struck the elf in the left eye and knocked him backward through the fiery wall, out of this world and back into his own or into hell. Which it was, Stacey did not know and did not care. She swept her arm up into the remaining angry hole, and that other place vanished.

  The sneaker torn from her lay on the mound like some failed sacrifice.

  Overhead, clouds scudded across the sky, and birdsong echoed from the woods below. Had the fenced site not looked like an overturned cemetery, it might have been a lovely afternoon.

  She heard Rhymer’s bow thud to the dirt, and as she collapsed onto the rocky ground the sacred stone slipped from her fingers, struck on its edge, and rolled away into the grass. It lay there, looking like any other polished black stone.