Winter Fae

by Debra Dunbar

  She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t plan on being blown up or set on fire.”

  “Me either.” The chime sounded, from the front as Dustin expected. “Showtime, babe.”

  A shot sounded from the woods, showering them with wood splinters as the bullet slammed into the door jamb right next to Dustin’s head. Gwylla yelped and scurried behind the row of potted plants as Dustin yanked the front door off its hinges to use as a shield. Inside was looking better and better.

  A hail of bullets exploded the planters, sending dirt and terra cotta fragments all over the porch. More punched through the solid wooden door, two of them tearing through Dustin’s arm and shoulder. He waited for the shift, for the agonizing burn of magic and felt nothing.

  “Regular bullets,” he shouted to Gwylla. They were still deadly to her, but at least she didn’t have to waste time worrying about him. Clearly the strategy was to wear him down, or injure him to the point where someone could move in with the magical bullets and finish him off.

  There was a faint thump on the roof, and Gwylla looked upward, her eyes blazing. “Oh, no you don’t.”

  Her fingers spread outward, and Dustin felt the air around him drop fifty degrees. There was a shout, a crash, and a man dressed all in black slid off the roof to land heavily in front of the steps, his clothes covered in frost.

  She’d iced the roof. Good girl. “Cover me.”

  Gwylla formed a wall of ice and he ran, quickly snapping the neck of the fallen human and dragging him onto the porch amid a barrage of gunshots and flying ice chips. Then he quickly set the door against the porch railing and grabbed the dead guy’s gun. He couldn’t shoot worth shit, but these guys didn’t know that. Maybe he’d actually get lucky and hit one of them.

  “On the right,” Gwylla announced, diving to the ground as another round of bullets riddled the front of the house. Dustin turned, emptying the magazine on the guy. He went down, but the werewolf took two more to the chest. This was starting to really hurt, and he was getting shot faster than he could heal. Two hunters were down, but there were four more, and if he took another dozen bullets, he’d most likely be down for the count.

  But it was more important to protect Gwylla. She wouldn’t recover from these bullets, and she was the one who needed to be strong enough to fight Jerk Face at dawn. So he pulled the magazine from the rifle and dug through the dead guy’s pouch for another.

  “Do you want to get that gun?” Gwylla asked.

  “Let me see if I can kill another one of them first.” He really didn’t want her to exhaust herself, and two were still in the woods, the other two circling to the back entrance. Dustin heard a scream and felt another wave of cold. He lifted an eyebrow at Gwylla.

  “He touched the doorknob.” She smiled with satisfaction. “And now he is stuck to it and going into cardiac arrest with hypothermia.”

  “You’re amazing,” he told her, propping the gun back on the door-shield and eyeing the woods.

  There was the sound of breaking glass from the rear of the house and Gwylla winced. “He used the stock of his rifle to break the window. Good news is the rifle is now useless. Bad news is there is a bad guy in the house.”

  If he was just closer, he could get these two in the woods, while Gwylla dealt with the one in the house. “Can you teleport me to the woods? Or do you have to come with me?”

  “I have to be with you.” She reached up and put a hand on his shoulder. “The guy in the house is less a worry than the two out there with guns.”

  She was right. He nodded. And again he felt the pressure and vertigo as she teleported the pair of them. He staggered a bit when they materialized, but even with his poor aim, it was pretty easy to kill two men by unloading an entire magazine of bullets into their backs.

  One left. “Stay here.” Dustin tossed the rifle aside and picked the two up from the fallen humans, then ran full speed across the field toward the house. A figure appeared in the front doorway, knife in hand. Then he saw Dustin and dropped the knife, grabbing the nearest firearm. It was the shotgun—the one with shells loaded with iron nail fragments.

  This is going to seriously hurt. He was already injured. The four gunshot wounds were no longer bleeding, but the torn muscles hadn’t quite healed yet, and two still had bullets lodged in them. Gritting his teeth, Dustin forced his body faster, cringing when he heard the shotgun blast and felt himself peppered with tiny iron fragments. The hunter shot the second shell, then the third.

  He’d been hit with buckshot a few times in his life. It always sucked, but other than having to pick hundreds of tiny pieces of metal out of his body, there were worse things in life.

  The human racked the weapon, but Dustin was on him before he could fire again, slamming the man against the wall of the house. The guy lifted the gun, trying to use it as a wedge to push Dustin away, but the werewolf head-butted him, then grabbed his head and twisted.

  Then he slid to the porch floor along with the dead human. It was an hour until dawn, by the look of the sky. Hopefully they wouldn’t have to deal with any more human hunters tonight. And hopefully Gwylla was strong enough to face Jerk Face, because he wasn’t sure he would be much help.

  “Dustin!”

  He heard her voice close by, smelled her cool, floral, minty scent, felt her soft hands on his skin. Then heard her shriek as she pulled her hands away.

  “I can’t get the metal out. It burns.”

  Yeah, because it was hundreds of chopped up iron nails. “I’ll get it. Eventually. Sorry, until I manage to get it all out, I’m not going to look all that pretty. And my priority right now is trying to get the two bullets out of my shoulder so I can heal properly.”

  She picked up the dead man’s knife, handling it gingerly. “Where? If I cut you deep enough, can you remove the bullets yourself? And will you be able to heal before dawn?”

  That was the big question. “Let’s just leave them for now.”

  “You’ll heal all the way around them, won’t you? It will hurt ten times as much having to dig them out of your body after you heal.”

  “Yeah, but they’re wedged in the bone. I’m not sure I can get them out by myself without tearing the crap out of my shoulder muscles. If I wait, I’ll just have someone at the pack do it for me. Honestly, it will cause less damage that way.”

  She eyed him sadly. “I wish I could do this. I wish I didn’t have this problem with your metals. I could touch metal just fine in Hel, or even in Aerie. This is…this really puts me at a disadvantage.”

  “Yeah, but luckily it puts Jerk Face at a disadvantage as well.”

  “Who will be here in an hour,” she commented, looking at the sky.

  Which meant there was no time for them to rest. Dustin struggled to his feet. Grabbing the dead humans, he pushed them off the porch into a pile in front of the steps, then he tried to put the door back on its hinges, giving up when he saw how bent they were.

  Reloading the shotgun, and inventorying his pile of weaponry, Dustin sat on the porch steps beside Gwylla and waited.

  They didn’t have to wait long. Just as the sky began to lighten, an elf walked out of the woods and toward the house. Dustin took aim with the shotgun and pulled the trigger. Unlike with the toaster, this time Talligie was prepared. He waved a hand and the metal fragments halted a few feet from him, dropping to the ground. Dustin kept at it, figuring that if he got lucky, one or two might get through, if not, at least he was keeping the elf busy and hopefully tiring him.

  Before he could reload, the elf launched a fireball at the house. Gwylla countered with a wall of ice, and the two began an exchange of magical attacks that left the grass in front of the house as well as sections of the front porch both wet and singed. All the while, the elf continued to counter Dustin’s bullets and even the slingshot hammers. Slowly the elf advanced on the house, his fire weapons starting to overpower Gwylla’s ice. She reached out a hand, and vines sprung from the ground, tangling around the elf’s legs, only to blacken and
crumble within seconds. One of the fireballs hit the house, exploding and sending flames onto the porch. Gwylla cried out, frantically extinguishing the little fires while Dustin began throwing everything he could find at the elf. This wasn’t going to work. Talligie was far more powerful than he’d thought. He had nothing to counter fire, or magic. He was only a werewolf. The only abilities he had were strength and speed. And souped-up healing.

  Healing. Out of the three of them, he was the one who could take the most physical damage and survive. That was pretty much his superpower, and it would have to do.

  Looking down at the pile of metal by his side, Dustin grabbed a hammer and nails and looked down at his hand. This was going to hurt like a mo-fo.

  “Distract him,” he told Gwylla and got to work, gritting his teeth as he drove the nails through his left hand.

  After a quick horrified glance at what he was doing, Gwylla turned back to the elf. “Io shilla thettah tenslgna missilltah ossa wikath anath.”

  Even through the pain of driving nails into his hand, Dustin felt the impact of her words. Suddenly he saw the thread of their bond, the silvery light that stretched between him and the sidhe. He also saw a line of red light that connected her to the elf.

  “Ossa wikath anath,” she repeated. And the red light began to crumble.

  Talligie fell to his knees and screamed. Fire streamed from his hands, hitting the porch and the front of the house with a wave of heat. This time the flames took hold. Dustin felt his skin blister, smelled the burning of his clothes. Wincing he hammered one more nail into his hand.

  “Ossa wikath anath,” Gwylla screamed, and the red line connecting her and Talligie snapped.

  It was now or never. Dustin jumped up and launched himself off the porch and onto the fallen elf. Talligie grinned in triumph, reaching his hands around Dustin’s neck as he slammed into him and setting him on fire. It hurt like nothing had ever hurt in his entire life. Even the magic bullets rotting through his flesh hadn’t compared to the agony of being burned alive. Dustin heard Gwylla scream his name, and focused, raising his left hand and smashing it with all of his strength into the elf’s face.

  Talligie shrieked, his hands leaving Dustin’s neck to claw frantically at his face. The werewolf pushed the elf backward on the ground, using his weight to hold him down as he continued to press his hand into Talligie’s face. The iron nails sank into the elf’s flesh, smoldering with a sickening sweet smell. Dustin felt flesh melting into goo around his hand and pushed harder. Talligie stopped struggling, his hands falling limply to the side. Still, Dustin kept pushing until his hand hit the dirt, and all that was left of the elf’s head was a sticky puddle of goo.

  Then he stood and looked down at the headless elf for a few seconds before turning around. Gwylla was on the porch steps, the entire house soaking wet, but no longer on fire. She was staring at him with a mixture of horror and admiration on her face.

  “You, wolf-man…do not let anyone ever tell you that you are not my equal. You are a match for me in every way.”

  He nodded and grinned, feeling the blistered skin of his face crack and ooze. A wave of agony swept over him, and Gwylla blurred. “Complementary powers,” he slurred. “Wonder Twins, right?” Then he felt his knees buckle. Everything went white and then black as his face hit the dirt.

  Chapter 19

  Gwylla was pretty sure she was going to die.

  First, there was the fact that the metal hollowed-out bird-like contraption she was flying in was metal. She could feel it buzzing around her, too close to her skin to ignore. If this conveyance lurched and she fell a few inches to the side, she’d be burned. Badly. Painfully. And she would scar. Would Dustin still find her attractive if she had ugly scars all down one side of her body? Although, it hardly seemed fair to worry about her scars when Dustin was still healing some truly horrific injuries.

  She’d barely had the strength to get him inside the house. Then she’d put on a pair of leather gloves that she found in a closet and used one of the tools Dustin had on the porch to pull every one of those horrible metal nails from his hand. Not that yanking those nails helped with the burns all over his body, or the metal embedded in his skin, or those two bullets still lodged in his shoulder. Concerned that if she expended the energy to help heal him, she wouldn’t be strong enough to fight off any other attacks, Gwylla had cut the clothes from his body with some plastic-handled scissors, and covered him with a burn salve that she’d found under the bathroom cabinet.

  Then she’d sat on the floor of the kitchen, amid broken glass and bits of burned wood and curtains, cradled Dustin’s head in her lap and cried. A few hours later he’d woken, and she’d given him water, even cooking the horrible meat in the microwave so he could eat. He looked horrible. His burns had faded to bright red skin and blisters, and his hair was singed to the point where she thought he might need to shave his head and just let it grow in.

  She hadn’t left him until the helicopter landed out front, and then it was to stand on the front porch, her jaw set, ready to freeze anyone who came to hurt them. But there were two werewolves in the big metal insect-shaped thing, not humans with weapons. They’d taken Dustin into one of the bedrooms and dug the bullets and metal fragments out of him, and when he’d come out, he looked even worse, with bloody bandages on his shoulder, and small scabs all over his skin.

  Those were probably healed, although she couldn’t tell since he now had clothes on. His skin still looked like he had a horrible sunburn, and his hair was still singed, but he’d never looked more beautiful to her. This wolf-man had driven nails into his hand and thrown himself at Talligie, risking death to kill him. She’d thought no one but her or perhaps an angel could kill the high elf, but a werewolf had done it. And not just any werewolf, but her werewolf. Her wolf-man. Never again would she ever underestimate him.

  Dustin reached out and took her hand. His still had little hard bits of skin from where the nails had been, but she was sure they would be gone by tomorrow. Then he tried to say something, but it got lost in the noise of the machine and the wind outside of the machine. She had something covering the lower part of her ears, but it did little to muffle the deafening sound, and she couldn’t get the talking- part of it to work properly. So she just smiled like an idiot at Dustin and prayed to the Lady that they’d land soon. Safely. And that she’d never again have to put herself in a metal box of death in the sky.

  The helicopter dove downward and Gwylla squeezed her eyes shut, gripping Dustin’s hand so hard that she was sure her fingernails had broken the skin. There was a lurch, then the conveyance held still. Dustin tugged on her hand and she opened her eyes to see the wing-blades slowing. They were on the ground and all around them were large wood and brick buildings, a line of metal transportation devices in front of several.

  All this metal. How could she ever be comfortable here? She should have walked right back into the mountains where there was no metal to burn her. If she never saw another rifle or hammer or steak knife again, it would be too soon. She should have gone back to her sanctuary.

  But she couldn’t. Dustin was hers now, and she was his. It wasn’t just the bond that would make her ache with longing if she was apart from him, it was her heart.

  Dustin slid the ear-protectors off her head.

  “We can get out now,” he told her.

  “But the wing-blades are still rotating.” It wasn’t safe. It clearly wasn’t safe. She was torn between fear of the metal box she sat in and the metal spinning overhead.

  “This is as slow as they are going to get,” he replied. “Cam needs to take off after we get out, and it’s a waste of time and fuel to completely power down. Just duck once we get out so you aren’t decapitated.”

  He was teasing. She knew he was teasing, but he’d just voiced her very real fear. The metal all around her was hindering her abilities, blocking the flow of magic through her. Under normal circumstances she could bend the reality just a bit and either halt the propel
lers, move herself at supersonic speeds, or teleport the short distance it would take to clear the deadly objects. But in a box of metal, even metal she was not touching, she’d not be able to do any of those things. In reality, she’d be lucky if she didn’t throw up before clearing those wing-blades.

  “Now.” Dustin opened the door and tugged at her, his head bent low. And she went, not because she was suddenly brave when it came to these guillotine blades spinning above her head, but because the longer Dustin stood there, holding her hand and bending himself over, the more he risked being decapitated himself.

  And she could never put Dustin at risk, especially over fear for her personal safety. This was his world. If he said duck and run, then she’d duck and run.

  But she was never so grateful as when that stupid bird-insect conveyance left in a tornado of wind and flew into the distance.

  Dustin held her hand, then he slowly tugged her forward. “Come on. I can’t wait for you to see my house. I promise I will throw away anything metal. I’ll make it completely safe for you. I’ll even decorate it how you want, in any colors you want.” He pulled her close. “Anything to make you want to stay with me.”

  “I want to stay with you. Although…how long until you will be able to stay with me at my sanctuary?”

  He looked over to a huge log building. “I’ll need to talk to Jake, my Alpha, about a schedule. It’s going to be tough, Gwylla. I have a job here. They need me, and this is my pack. I can’t just take off every other week to go with you.”

  What did he mean? Did that mean she would only see him now and then? Whenever his Alpha said he could visit?”

  Dustin wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tight. “I want my home to be your sanctuary, Gwylla,” he whispered into her hair. “I want my pack to be your pack. I want you to have friends here, to think of my pack as your family. I know you love your sanctuary and I would never keep you from it, but I truly hope you come to love it here just as much.”