by Ron C. Nieto
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.
C H A P T E R XIII
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 cou
ghed, 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 again. 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.
C H A P T E R XIV
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.
She really wanted Troy to come back. If she were honest with herself, she had to admit the only moments she had felt safe were by his side. And the deep silence all around her made it very difficult to lie to herself.
Troy’s dangerous, too. I don’t know exactly what a kelpie is, but he’s as dark as the rest of them.
The rational part of her complained about trusting complete strangers, dangerous ones. Her fingers closed around her pendant, though. Three roses, one wilted and two in bloom. She squeezed until she felt the cold edges of the jewelry cutting into her palm—and she frowned. There was something off about those edges, and she lifted the pendant to catch the light. Two wilted roses, one in bloom.
What? She remembered it was the other way around. Could she have been mistaken? Was she seeing things right now? What was even real? Not even the solid, tangible things could be trusted anymore, it seemed.
There wasn’t much rationality in her life anymore. All the down-to-earth advice of her father’s would not help her. Her mother’s practical attitude would not save her. In this world, only the whimsical tales she had heard from her grandma held any meaning, had any power. And this world—she thought with a shudder—is the real one.
But her grandma had trusted Troy to protect her. She had said as much, implicitly, when she had given Lily the necklace. And so Lily would trust her grandma and her own gut and count on him. He had already saved her from the bogeys and he hadn’t left her when faced with the redcaps. He would come through again for her this time.
Thud-thud, thud-thud, thud-thud.
She caught the faint noise of hooves hitting the packed earth, barely audible. The pace was slow but steady. It didn’t hint at wounds, suspicion, or the need for escaping. Relief flooded her and she scrambled to her feet. The night was fair for a Scottish summer, but still the moonlight was faintly clouded and she had to use her hands to find her way over the fallen stones. Slowly, she extricated herself from the moss-covered tower and made her way toward the sound, weaving among h
ip-high vegetation.
Then, the hooves stopped moving.
“Troy?” she called, her voice barely more than a breath. She knew she should not be calling for him, attracting attention, but something had made the back of her neck prickle. And why had he shifted now?
Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud.
The steps came again, halting, somewhere down the hill. Lily could almost guess indecision in the pattern. Crouching down, just in case, she moved to the edge of the hill and looked down.
It wasn’t Troy.
The creature was big as a drafting horse, all bulging muscle and taut tendons. From her vantage point, some ten yards away, Lily could see them shift and tense, for there was no skin to hide them. From its back sprouted a gruesome rider like a mockery of a centaur, and its glistening blood fell in dark rivulets to mingle with the horse’s. The monster didn’t need a bite or bridle to guide his nightmarish mount and its arms hung free, almost to touch the ground. Its eyes were pits of darkness in contrast with the fiery red burning in the horse’s single orb, and both unnerving stares were fixed in the same direction.
Hers.
She wanted to scream. To curl up and wait for someone to come and tell her she that there were no monsters hidden under her bed. Instead, slowly, very slowly, she began to retrace her steps, walking away from the edge and seeking the meager protection offered by the ruinous tower and the vegetation.
The thing below stirred and flexed its fingers, the claws ticking together a staccato. Then, it started to move.
Thud-thud, thud-thud, thud-thud. It looked for the path up the hill and each step seemed to sound closer.
Lily bit her knuckles to keep from making any sound and kept moving. Deep down, she realized the ruins wouldn’t keep her safe and she couldn’t outrun a horse, but futile or not, action offered a tenuous grip for her sanity.
