by Eve Langlais
The ravpyrii woman stiffened and stared down at his hand gripping her elbow. Her pupils expanded to black out her eyes, and Avery suspected there was more to her kinks than blood.
“What am I to say to dissuade you?” Dyer asked softly. “There are some of us who still need the night–no, we want it.” She put her hand over Hugo’s. “You should join us.”
Avery tightened her jaw against the instinctive growl of possession at the other woman’s touch on her man.
Her man? She’d just met him! And regardless of what they’d done in that brief time together, or how many body fluids they’d swapped, she didn’t have any claim on him at all, nor he on her.
But she couldn’t stop herself from sneaking a sidelong glance at his face.
His austere features were set into even harsher lines, if that were possible, his eyes narrowed, as if the murmured enticement was a knife in his ribs and he was just being too tough to react. “I have my own place waiting for me.” He pulled away from her.
But Dyer did not remove her hand from his. “Then you should understand what we’ll do to protect ours.”
“How long for you?” he asked.
Avery tilted her head, uncertain what he was asking.
Dyer finally let her hand slide away into a tight fist.”That isn’t something we share with strangers,” she said. “You know that.”
“I come from a time when armies, plagues, starvation, and black magic marched mercilessly over the world. Believe me when I tell you, whatever you hold dear is not worth risking against the forces you will face.”
Blonde though she was, Dyer paled even more. “So you’re asking us to throw away everything we have left?”
“We’re not asking you,” Avery said. “The question goes to Deon Barrows.”
Dyer shook her head, but not in denial, more confusion, and Avery knew she was weakening.
“Just call him,” Avery urged. “Troubles like these are why he gets paid the big bucks.”
The other woman shot her a vicious glare. “You want me to call him? You want to meet trouble such as you have never known in the flesh?”
That didn’t sound promising.
Across the room, a loud, metallic groan interrupted her. Someone yelped, and Dyer turned. “Oh for fuck’s sake, they’re going to kill themselves if I don’t–”
Metal screeched, and the three of them stepped out from the temporary forest to see the black–clad employees scattering like ants.
A half dozen banners embroidered with snowflakes and holly had been hung to straighten from an overhead duct, but the combined weight of the heavy fabric was bending the tube, ripping it out of the wall.
Dyer strode forward. “Get out from underneath there. No, don’t try to–just let it fall–”
Before she could finish, something tumbled out from the breaking end of the pipe.
At first, Avery thought it was a giant dust ball, as big as if an entire clothes dryer had turned to gray lint, but long, spidery legs emerged from the rough sphere. The thing–it was alive–scrabbled for the opening in the wall but couldn’t reach the hole as the pipe crashed toward the ground, the banners streaming out behind it.
The thing leaped aside just as the conduit smashed down in a chiming of broken glass and puff of glitter. The banners settled in a misshapen pile.
Everyone froze uncertainly.
Until the thing shredded its way out from beneath the banners. Its three spiked legs gleamed along the edges like razors, and the heavy fabric was confetti in less than a second. It raced across the floor toward the gingerbread houses.
The shriek of tearing metal had nothing on three dozen screaming wanna–be elves.
“What the–?” Avery cut off her own curse. Hey. If vampires were real, of course giant three–legged spiders couldn’t be far behind, right? Avery strode toward the mayhem, her phone held steady–horizontal, thank you very much–in her hand. CQ’s video feed was gonna go viral.
Dyer was right behind her. “You sent an imp to spy on us?” Her tone was shrill.
“That is not ours,” Hugo snapped.
Avery swiveled her head to stare at him, careful to keep her phone tracking the action. “What’s an imp?”
“A creature of the old phae court.”
“A spy!” Dyer spat again.
“Barrows has enemies, obviously,” Hugo said. “But not us. Not yet anyway.”
The ravpyrii woman whirled on him. “Kill it and he’ll meet with you. Just kill it!”
Avery sucked in a breath. “Hugo, wait! That thing looks dangerous.”
“It is.” He whipped off his leather trench coat and slung it over his arm like a matador’s cape even as he strode forward.
Avery spun toward Dyer. “Aren’t you going to help him?!”
Dyer sped toward the door. “I need to get the humans out. They can’t witness this. Don’t let the imp escape. If it gets to the casino, people will stampede. Hundreds could die.”
The thing–the imp–leaped atop one of the gingerbread houses with a rattling noise. It clung to the plastic gumdrops that decorated the roofline. What had looked fluffy from a distance was actually bristling, serrated scales. One bulbous eye swiveled from the middle of its gray body, tracking the fleeing people around it.
Two younger women had taken shelter against the plastic pretzel fence. One of them caught sight of the creature looming over them. She clutched at her friend and screamed; fair enough, Avery thought. The woman jolted back against the fence, breaking through the plastic, and both of them tumbled through the hole.
As if in answer, the imp drew one of its spiked legs through its scales, emitting a high–pitched wail. The sound pierced through Avery’s skull, and she clamped one hand over her ear, grimacing at the pain. But she couldn’t stop the video rolling. Those nearest the creature fell to their knees, arms around their heads, curling defensively.
Hugo had accelerated to a run, covering the big room in impossible, almost blurring bounds. He hurdled the fallen people, bending in mid–stride to grab something from the pile of confetti the imp had left behind when it fell.
A long metal pole that had held one of the banners glinted in his hand like a spear.
The imp shrieked again, and a crack jagged through the glass of Avery’s phone. The screen went dark.
“Damn it!” Avery shoved the useless phone in her pocket, her hand trembling at the realization that unveiling the other world might not come without bloodshed.
She raced after Dyer, dragging a few shocked bodies upright as she went.
“One of the tigers got out!” Dyer snapped. The bullet–headed security guard stared at her with wide eyes. “Move it!”
A tiger? Was that what everyone would tell themselves? To Avery’s surprise, the security guard didn’t even try to look back as she shoved him and another woman toward the doors. Dyer was ahead of them, herding stunned humans.
She did look back to meet Avery’s stare. “Close the doors. Now.”
“Hugo is still in there,” Avery protested. “And two more at least.”
“Close. The. Doors.”
That was how it always went, Avery realized. People refused to see what wasn’t convenient. Even when they knew better.
The security man beside her grabbed the nearest door and yanked it closed.
Fuck no. She’d lost her mother to this sort of madness. Avery darted through the other door before it slammed shut.
She ran back through the carnage of festivity gone awry, skidding on the scattered fake pine needles and tripping over loops of garland. The fluorescent lights glared down on the broken glass so that everything seemed too bright. She glanced side to side frantically.
A hysterical sob whirled her around. The two young women stumbled toward her, arms wrapped around each other.
She steadied them. “Are you both okay?”
Four eyes blackened with smeared mascara fixed on her. “What was that?”
Avery took that as a conditi
onal yes and hustled them toward the side door. She didn’t trust Dyer’s security not to have locked them in; he’d looked freaked out enough to throw them to the wolves. Or tigers. Or imps. “Go through the second ballroom and out to the hallway. Ms. Dyer is there with everyone else. She’ll explain everything.”
Yeah, let her do that, Avery thought spitefully.
Behind them, the imp shrieked again, and the two girls echoed it with twin reverberations.
Avery winced and pushed them onward. “Go!”
They didn’t linger to ask more questions.
Avery wheeled back to the big room.
Where was Hugo?
There! A miniature version of the ComeTrue casino towered over the far side of the gingerbread village. The imp was perched on the marquee. It had knocked off most of the “Merry Christmas” message, so all that was left read “err h is”. It stabbed downward with one spiked leg. She could think of only one man who’d still be standing underneath the thing when everyone else ran away.
She ran toward him.
Her whole life she’d been fleeing things she couldn’t believe, what people told her couldn’t be real. No more.
At least with both its other legs clinging to its high ground the imp couldn’t make that awful noise. Remembering how Hugo had armed himself, she grabbed a thin metal candy cane as she darted through the gingerbread village. The cane was a bit longer than a walking stick. When she gave it an experimental swing, it answered with a vicious whistle.
Good enough. She snagged an oversized Christmas stocking hanging off one front door and thrust her hand inside. Three big bells jangled merrily at the toe. Not quite as manly as Hugo’s black leather gauntlet, but the thick brocade would offer some protection.
She stumbled out the far side of the village in front of the miniature casino. For a half a second, her brain tried to trick her with a déjà vu. But she had been here before, standing outside the ComeTrue entrance, just an hour or so ago.
She just hadn’t had a clue how everything would change.
The imp had the high ground but couldn’t go anywhere. If it leaped to escape, Hugo was right there.
He brandished his makeshift spear, his black shirt straining across the muscles of his shoulders, and she had another momentary lapse at that glimpse of what he must have looked like seven hundred years ago.
The imp scuttled halfway down the marquee to stab at him, and he parried with the pointed finial at the end of the banner pole. The metal screeched against the imp’s razor–edged leg, and it recoiled.
Despite his masterful stance, his leather coat around his arm hung in tatters. Avery looked at her brocade stocking and swallowed hard.
She was probably an idiot for being here, but at least she wasn’t crazy. Which is all that mattered.
And she could at least serve as a distraction.
She jumped forward, swinging the candy cane with a shrill whistle. “Hey! Imp!”
“Avery!”
Oops, she hadn’t meant to be a distraction to him.
When Hugo jerked toward her–who was the idiot now?–the imp launched from the marquee.
Right at his exposed back.
“Hugh!” She dove for him.
The imp was preternaturally fast, but she was closer. She knocked Hugo out of the way of the imp’s piercing blow. They went down hard, but he was already rolling them clear as the imp stabbed its way across the floor toward them. Each blow from the three legs struck slivers of concrete out of the floor, and Avery’s spine iced at the evidence of its pile driver strength.
On his last roll, Hugo spun her across the floor and she skidded away from him. Her candy cane weapon whirled out of sight.
“Get out of here!” he roared. The imp reared up behind him on two legs, its third poised to impale him.
Like hell.
She yelled back wordlessly and launched herself at the imp from a sprinter’s start. One of her boot heels broke off, and she staggered, swinging hard with the oversized Christmas stocking. The bells on the toe sang out.
She only meant to tangle that dagger leg in a yard of brocade before it descended, but the instant the jingle bells touched the imp, its claw blackened and a curl of oily smoke fouled the air.
The imp fell back on its two remaining legs, scales clattering.
Fear, Avery guessed. Or maybe the phae version of an expletive.
For an instant, she almost pitied it. What was it even doing in this world? Maybe it just wanted to get home…
Then it jumped for her head.
She screamed and went over backward on her ass, her arms braced behind her to break her fall. She was staring at the culmination of all her nightmares, right in the face. Well, the eyeball, since it didn’t have a face. Just one bulging eyeball, sulfur yellow as the pits of hell…
“The bells, Avery! The bells are iron. Swing!”
She lashed out with her stocking shield, as much refusing to give in to her nightmares as reacting to Hugo’s command.
The imp flinched back to avoid the chiming bells.
This was the worst Christmas carol ever.
From behind her, strong hands hauled her away, harsh enough to leave bruises. Hugo wrenched the bells off the toe of her stocking and slammed his spear through the loops where they’d been strung–one, two, three. The bells rang as he launched to his feet.
The imp met him halfway, every scale flaring wide with a sound like a hundred rattlesnakes.
Hugo sprang higher than any human could, reversing his spear in midair to hold it like a stake. The imp rolled its eye to follow his flight–
–And he drove the bells right into the sulfur yellow.
Avery felt more than heard its cry, a subvocal wail that tore through her. She cringed away as greenish goo spurted from the wound. Flecks of the putrescence spattered her upraised arms.
It was a mighty blow, but she dreaded it wasn’t fatal… until she saw the smoke coiling up.
She coughed and backed away faster.
“Avery.” Hugo crouched beside her. “Are you hurt?”
“Ugh,” she said. It was the only answer she could summon up.
He put a hand on her shoulder, gentler than when he’d yanked her away from the imp, halting her flight. “It’s dead,” he said softly. “You’re all right.”
She’d never be all right again, now that she knew not only was the world not flat, it wasn’t just round either, it was inside out and upside down, and her head was spinning like she’d sucked down all the booze in Vegas. “My mom. She… What happened was real. She disappeared right before my eyes. I never thought… I… Oh God. It’s all real.”
He cupped a hand under her chin and turned her face away from the creature. He stared down at her, his black eyes searching. “Are you going to faint?”
She dredged up a scowl. “Fainting is so seven hundred years ago. We don’t do that anymore.”
A smile softened the thin line of his lips. “I’ll make a note.”
“I might puke though,” she warned.
But he shook his head. “I think not.”
“You don’t know me that well.”
“I’ve seen you fight now. Once you see a warrior fight, you know him in a way you know no other.” His smile deepened, bringing out a dimple in his cheek. “Or her.”
A warrior shouldn’t be brought to her knees by one nightmare spider–thing and a broken boot heel. Or a fleeting dimple, for that matter.
Avery lifted her chin out of his grasp and let her gaze drift back to the imp. “Is it really dead?”
He nodded. “Iron is lethal to the phae.”
“How did you know the bells were iron?”
“I didn’t, not until the metal burned the imp. Very little in the sunlit realm is forged of cold iron anymore, which is why the phae can even contemplate a return. I was merely hoping I could do the imp enough damage to incapacitate it with steel.”
“Before it killed you.” Despite her best journalistic intentions,
her voice shook.
“I couldn’t let it escape.”
“I thought you were here to introduce the phae to the world.”
He raised one eyebrow. “We don’t want a war, but we don’t want a panic either. An imp is not the best ambassador for the phae.”
She shuddered. “Yeah, true. Of the two, I’ll take the sexy vampire.”
He was silent a moment, and his dark eyes were suddenly more opaque than usual. “Would you?”
She flushed, heat running through her in a lightning blast. Had to be the lingering shock of the fight. No way could she be enamored with a guy with fangs. Just no.
Although… Technically yes. She was a writer for Conspiracy Quarterly, after all. If she was going to get the story right…
She averted her gaze and found herself staring at the imp instead. More oily smoke fizzled up around the spear in its eyeball, and the green goo was spreading as the corpse collapsed in on itself.
With a shudder she turned away from it too. But when she took a step to retreat, she staggered.
Hugo was at her side, his hand at her elbow. “Easy. I have you.”
He could have her, all of her, right now, on a pile of discarded teddy bears, if her reckless libido had its way. She’d heard danger was an aphrodisiac, but she’d always thought that was just something people said when they didn’t like oysters. Journalism for her had never been about the glory of covering wars and disasters; she’d just wanted answers, to make everything in the world fit into tidy column inches. And now she found herself on the front line of an invasion no one would believe. At least not without her help.
She leaned into Hugo’s supporting hand while she lifted each foot in turn to tug off her boots. She tossed them aside and straightened in her stocking feet. Losing those precious inches made her feel more off balance than losing the heel, but at least she’d be able to run if necessary.
When she straightened, Hugo smoothed back her hair. She hadn’t realized it was hanging in her face. “You’re very quiet,” he said.
“I guess I don’t know what to think. Or who to trust. I’ve read all the fairy tales and I know my mythology, and it’s not like the other side has been particularly friendly with humans most of the time.”
