by M. D. Massey
With all fae, there were only a few weaknesses one could exploit to defeat them. One option was cutting them off from their magic by severing their connection to the Underrealms. I didn’t have the juice to do that without a lot of time and preparation, so I’d have to go with option number two: cold iron.
I drew a hand-forged knife from the small of my back. It wasn’t much of a knife, just a small hunting blade that I kept on me. Past experience had taught me it always paid to be prepared when dealing with the fae. As the aughisky snapped at me, I twisted and dove under its gnashing jaws, slashing it across the throat as deeply as I could. The water began to cloud with black fluid as the wound leaked blood all around us, but the water horse was undeterred. It continued to snap and bite at me, refusing to let the child go.
My lungs burned and my limbs were getting heavier by the moment. If I didn’t surface soon, I was going to become the main course, and this poor boy would be an after-dinner snack. Desperate, I reversed the blade in my hand, offering my other arm up as a sacrifice. As I suspected, the horse bit down on my forearm, sinking its teeth deep into my flesh. The pain nearly made me cry out, but I resisted the urge, knowing I’d only fill my lungs with water and assure my own death in the process. Instead, I swung with all my might, stabbing the knife through the aughisky’s eye and into its brain.
The creature spasmed and then went limp. The boy’s body drifted away from its back as the water horse sank deeper into the silty creek bottom below. I grabbed the kid around the waist and swam toward the surface for all I was worth, gasping for air when I broke through the water.
I vaguely heard Sabine yelling for someone to help me, then other voices joined in. I held the boy’s head above water as I stroked for shore, and before I knew it the lifeguards were pulling both of us out of the water. I shrugged one of them off as she attempted to look at my arm.
“I’m fine—help the boy,” I said, more gruffly than I’d intended. She looked unconvinced. “It was an alligator, but it barely nicked me. Please, just see to the kid.”
She relented, with an admonishment for me to wait for the paramedics so they could look at my arm. She joined the other lifeguards in delivering CPR to the child. I sat off to the side, numb as I watched them work on the boy until the paramedics arrived. They hooked him up to a cardiac monitor and continued chest compressions after suctioning him, giving him oxygen using a mask attached to a bag that they squeezed to inflate his lungs. The boy’s mother was a wreck, and understandably so; she barely spared me a glance as she followed the medics into the back of the ambulance.
I hadn’t tried to save the kid because I wanted any recognition. I just hoped and prayed the boy would be alright. As I watched the ambulance lights trail off into the distance, Sabine wrapped my arm in a piece of red and white-checkered tablecloth, the same one we’d been sitting on earlier. I allowed her to bandage me up, hoping like hell that the alligator story would satisfy the local authorities and news crews.
“Fracking fae,” I muttered, realizing too late that I was sitting right next to one. “Not you, I mean—shit, I’m sorry, Sabine.”
She looked down at her hands, which were covered in my blood. “I know what you meant. Don’t worry about it. I hate them most of the time, too.”
“Still, I’m sorry. Me and my big mouth.”
I glanced away from the scene for a moment, and blinked in shock. Sabine had dropped her see-me-not spell. She still had her anti-glamour in place, but the fact that she was exposed in public? I didn’t know what to say.
When she noticed me staring, she crossed her arms and pulled her cardigan around her, making a small gesture with her left hand. And like that, she was practically invisible again.
“Thanks for putting yourself out there like that. I know it must’ve made you feel like you were exposed.”
She shrugged. “Couldn’t let you drown, McCool. If I did, who would I get to take your place? Not too many people are willing to look like they’re talking to themselves in public, you know.”
I chuckled, but my laughter died as I recalled how the kid had looked as they’d loaded him up. He had been so pale, so fragile—and his mother had cried hysterically, calling—no, wailing—for her baby. I didn’t think I’d ever forget that moment.
Sabine smiled sadly and pulled me down to give me a peck on the cheek. “He might make it, you know. And if he does, it’ll be because of you.”
“I hope so.” I looked at the makeshift pressure bandage she’d devised, which had already soaked through with blood. After refusing care several times, the lifeguards had finally left me alone. “Guess I’d better go get Finn to stitch this up. My healing magic sucks.”
A smile briefly flashed across her face. “Some druid you are. Call me later, to let me know how it looks after Finnegas gets through with you, alright?”
I gestured at our picnic spread, now in disarray. “Sorry about ruining our meal.”
“Hush, and go get your arm taken care of before the news crews show up. Unless you want to be on TV looking like that.”
“Point taken. I’ll call you later.” I left her to clean up the mess and jogged to my scooter, leaving the parking lot just as the first news van arrived.
Chapter Four
“Crap, Colin, you didn’t tell me I’d be freezing my ass off out here. Next time, warn a fae girl so she can dress appropriately.”
Sabine and I sat in the shadows of a mausoleum, taking cover from the chilly wind while we staked out the area for ghouls and the odd nosferatu, at Luther’s behest. He’d asked me to help him prevent an undead outbreak, knowing the Circle would blame the vamps for it whether it was their fault or not. An uneasy truce had existed for decades between the Circle and the coven, and Luther preferred to keep it intact. Certain factions within the Circle wanted to keep the peace, while others looked for any excuse to go to war with the vamps. If I took care of the issue before the Circle got wind, it would save Luther many political headaches, and possibly prevent a war.
As for why Sabine was here, she’d volunteered. To make up for the picnic I’d offered to take her out to eat, but instead she’d asked to come along with me tonight. Mostly it was to keep me company, but she also did it out of curiosity regarding what I did as a hunter. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, as she only wore jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers.
I smiled apologetically. “I honestly didn’t think it’d be this cold. I mean, it’s October in Austin. Usually everyone is still in shorts.”
Neither of us had checked the weather before we’d headed out, and a cold front had unexpectedly moved in minutes before. A frigid north wind blew out of the trees behind us, bringing a damp mist that would soon drench Sabine’s cotton shirt and jeans, increasing her misery.
I pulled off my overcoat, my arm throbbing slightly. Finn had sewn me up and given me a healing draught to speed my recovery, but it would be a few days before I fully recovered from the aughisky’s bite.
I handed her the coat. “Here, take this. I’m used to the cold—and besides, if it gets too bad I’ll just trigger a body heat cantrip.”
She draped it over her shoulders, wrapping it around her body like a blanket. The coat was a replacement for the Army trench that had gotten shredded during my fight with the fachen. That had been Dad’s old coat, and I’d hated to lose it, but it had been in tatters and completely beyond repair. This one was a similar, updated version I’d picked up at a surplus store. I hadn’t had time to ward it, but it was waterproof, so it’d keep the cold and damp off her just fine.
“Better?” She nodded. I pulled a thermos of coffee out of my Craneskin Bag and poured her a cup. She took it and breathed the steam in, then sipped the warm black liquid and sniffed.
“You know what? Being a hunter sucks. And it’s boring as hell, too.”
She passed the cup to me, and I sipped a little and handed it back. It was Luther’s special blend; I’d been getting my coffee for free since I’d agreed to take this job.
So, I figured I’d go for the good stuff while it lasted. Real Blue Mountain and Kona. Yum.
I nodded. “Yeah, but you can’t complain about the coffee.”
“You got that right.” Without warning, she grabbed my arm. “Shit, I think I just saw something moving over there.”
Sabine pointed to our left, at a row of gravestones that marked some of the oldest graves in Austin. City Cemetery, also known as Oakwood Cemetery, was founded in 1839 and boasted forty acres of Texas history. Not only was it the oldest city-owned cemetery in town; it was also the spookiest. And as it turned out, Sabine was a bit of a scaredy cat.
I arched an eyebrow and gave her a playful nudge.
“Sure you’re not just jumping at shadows?”
We’d been out here for hours, and besides a stray cat, a momma opossum and her babies, and a homeless guy I’d given a hoagie to, we’d seen exactly jack squat. It was getting close to dawn so I figured we were unlikely to spot any undead, and frankly I’d been about to pack it in before Sabine had gotten spooked.
“No, man, I’m serious! Look, behind that creepy statue of the angel over there—see that? There’s something rooting around, digging in the ground.”
Admittedly, Sabine’s eyes were better than mine—what with her being half-fae and all. Even with my enhanced hunter senses, she could pick up things that I couldn’t. I cocked an ear but couldn’t hear anything over the howl of the wind. I triggered a night vision cantrip, but the thick granite gravestones and statuary blocked my view.
I shrugged. “Okay, I’ll go check it out. Stay here—I’ll be right back.”
“That’s a whole lot of nope right there. Uh-uh, mister, no way you’re leaving me here by myself. I’m coming with you.”
“Suit yourself, but if it is a ghoul I’ll need you to stay behind me and watch my back. And if things go south for some reason—”
“I know, I know—hide and stay that way. Got it.”
I hated reading her the riot act, but Sabine was half-glaistig, so her powers were mostly related to glamour and causing excessive lactation in cows and goats. She was hella smart and fun to have around, but in a fight she wouldn’t be much use.
“Alright, stay close.”
I rolled up from the ground and onto the balls of my feet in a smooth, silent motion. Sabine sprang up lightly, her alacrity revealing her fae blood. Fae were spooky when they did things that showed their true nature. Most of the time they hid it well. But when you saw the real fae, with all their alien beauty and unnaturally graceful movement, it was more than a bit unnerving. I motioned for her to follow and stuck to the shadows as I crept over to the area in question.
As we approached, the sounds of digging and grunting became more clear. My view was still obscured by gravestones, so I couldn’t make out whether it was a human grave robber, a stray dog, or coyote rooting around. Or, a ghoul looking for an easy meal. We were in an older part of the cemetery, but some of these plots were family-owned, and there were still fresh graves to be found here. A ghoul might find something to feed on, even here.
The wind shifted, and Sabine’s suspicions were confirmed; the stench of rotting human flesh, feces, and fresh blood was unmistakable. We were in the presence of one or more of the lower undead.
There were several types of undead. Higher vampires, like Luther and his kind, were closer to humankind but still alien in their heightened physical abilities and predatory tendencies. Most of them who survived the first few months after they were turned could control their urges and blend into society. Nosferatu, on the other hand, were a much more feral type of vampire, and physically dissimilar to humans. For the most part, nos-types weren’t going to blend into anything, except in low light and wearing baggy clothes. They were instinct-driven predators, motivated to hunt by nature and unable to control their lust for blood. Nosferatu tended to exist on the edges of society, preying on the weak and isolated so they stayed off the radar of law enforcement. They were the most common species hunted by the Cold Iron Circle, and many a hunter cut their teeth by taking out a nos.
As for the other undead, you had liches—undead magic-users who had performed one too many necromantic rituals. They were extremely powerful and, thankfully, rare. Then you had revenants, who were just one step under vamps. Revs were half-vamps, humans that a vamp had attempted to turn but it just didn’t take. Tons of things could go wrong in trying to turn a human into a vamp; from what I understood, the master had to keep them just on the edge of death as the vyrus took hold, and then they had to stop their heart at the exact moment when the vyrus had spread throughout their system. Only at that precise moment would it be able to shift their metabolism and transform their physiology. If death came too soon, you got a rev—a kind of dumber, much weaker vamp.
Then you had zombies and ghouls. Zombies were slow-moving reanimated corpses. Unlike the popular movie versions of zombies, you couldn’t create them with a drug or lab-grown infection. Zombism was exclusively a supernatural phenomenon. Zombies were either created by higher undead, when the vyrus took a weak hold in a kill and reanimated the once living, or through necromancy. Either way, it was spread when a zombie or ghoul bit a human without killing them. Within hours or maybe a day at most, the human would become ill and die, and then reanimate as a zombie or ghoul. The difference was in how much vyrus they got; ghouls were like zombies on steroids, having enough vyrus to make them stronger and quicker than your average Zed.
Zombism could spread like wildfire if left unchecked. One zombie could cause an outbreak, and that would require the Cold Iron Circle to come out in force. That almost always meant innocent lives would be ruined. The Circle was known to be ruthless in quashing outbreaks, and they’d kill anyone they even suspected of being infected. It was a side of the Circle that I didn’t care for, and I sometimes had a difficult time reconciling the fact that one of my dear friends was a Circle hunter.
Besides that, if we had an outbreak the Circle would surely blame it on the vamps. It was imperative that I locked this shit down, and fast.
I grabbed Sabine and pulled her behind a tombstone. “You were right,” I whispered. “From the smell of it, we have the undead out here. Do me a favor and stay out of sight while I deal with stinky over there.”
She nodded. “I’ll crank up the juice on my glamour—it’ll never even know I’m here.”
“Alright. But stay close, just in case there are more out here. They’ll still be able to locate you by smell and hearing.”
Before she could protest, I pulled a short sword from my Craneskin Bag. Gripping the sword firmly, I stalked around the gravestones to take out the ghoul before it discovered us.
I peeked around the monolithic grave marker to see what I was dealing with. There were two of them—ghouls from the way they were moving, digging up one of the deceased who’d been recently interred. The artificial turf was in shreds, and they were at least four feet deep, tossing wet clods of earth out in a frantic effort to reach their goal.
One of them was taller and male—thin with dark hair, and dressed in what had once been a nice suit and tie. I imagined he’d been a stock broker or banker in his previous life. He looked fairly fresh, but absolutely like a walking corpse. The stench coming off him and his partner was palpable. The other one looked a bit rougher around the edges. I couldn’t see much of her at first, then her head and shoulders popped up to reveal a heavy-set black woman with hair cropped close to her head. She had a large bangle earring in one ear, and the other ear was missing, along with much of the skin and flesh on the right side of her jaw. Perhaps she’d been undead for a while—at least that meant she wouldn’t be quite as fast as the male ghoul.
Sabine did as I requested and remained hidden within her see-me-not glamour. I ducked back behind the grave marker to check her position, and to make certain she wouldn’t accidentally be caught in the fray once I started dispatching the gruesome twosome. With a thumbs up from her, I headed toward the ghouls.
Unfortun
ately, her glamour didn’t mask noise. Before I made it to the ghouls, she tripped over a stone plot marker and fell, knocking over a tin flower pot with a clatter.
The sounds of digging stopped immediately and the ghouls began growling and moaning. I edged one eyeball around the monolith to see what they were doing. The male stood up and began searching the area surrounding the grave. The female climbed out of the grave in a crouch, her face close to the ground like a bloodhound, sniffing the air with twitchy, grotesque movements. She must have smelled something, because she began creeping toward where Sabine had fallen.
Shit.
Chapter Five
I didn’t want to risk this ghoul sniffing Sabine out. I’d never seen her in a scrape, so I had no idea how she’d react. Plus, she wasn’t armed. Well, not in the strict sense, anyway; glaistigs had limited powers of polymorphism. I’d never seen her in any other form but her current one, but it was quite possible that she could transform into a hideous and more deadly version of herself. I didn’t particularly care to see that transformation, nor did I want her in a position to have to reveal it, so I dove into action.
I sprang from hiding and closed the distance between the monolith and the open grave in a few swift strides, drawing the short sword as I ran and chanting under my breath to ready a flashbulb cantrip. The female ghoul snarled and skittered away at the sound of my footsteps, but she wasn’t my immediate target. I assumed that the larger, fresher ghoul would be more dangerous, so I loped up and decapitated him before he had time to climb out of the grave. His head bounced once and tumbled into the grave. I kicked his torso as I leapt over him to ensure his body followed suit. Following through with my momentum, I cleared the hole they’d dug and landed on the other side.
As I landed, I slipped on something wet and squishy and lost my footing. I soon found myself teetering on the edge of the grave, waving my arms in circles to regain my balance. No dice. I fell backward, slowly at first, then more rapidly as gravity took over. I landed at the muddy bottom of the grave on top of ghoul number one. The fall knocked the wind out of me and I bashed my head on a rock, the sum total effect leaving me dazed, diaphragm spasming in an effort to resume spontaneous breathing.
