Lonesome Paladin

by S. M. Reine

  The unicorn was so much faster on four spindly legs than Lincoln’s two boots. Its breath huffed on the back of his neck as it chased him. Every time he glanced over his shoulder, he could see brains stuck to its velvety muzzle.

  He lunged behind a rock, and the unicorn’s neck stretched out, putty-like, to let her gaze follow him. The mist swirled under her chin, behind her ears. It dispersed in a sparkling mist that smelled like stomach gases and rotten fruit.

  “Damn, damn, damn!”

  Lincoln grabbed a dangling vine thick enough to support his weight. He summoned his memories of childhood gym class and climbed it even faster than when he’d done it under Coach Jackman’s judgmental eye.

  The falhófnir’s teeth snapped on Lincoln’s pant leg, yanking hard enough to make him lose grip. He slid a couple inches. Peeled leaves off of the vine. They snowed onto the unicorn’s face, and it released him, sneezing.

  Lincoln scrambled into the tree’s uppermost branches.

  “Not today, Satan,” he snarled at the falhófnir.

  But then she took another step—this time with her hoof flat against the tree trunk.

  And she took another step, and another.

  She walked vertically straight up that damn tree, floating as effortlessly as her foggy beard.

  Lincoln realized what was happening too late. He turned to leap into the next tree and a hoof connected with his spine. It was a hammer cracked between two vertebrae. It hurt all the way to his toenails.

  He slid off the branch with a shout, and a lower branch caught him in the belly, knocking the breath out of him.

  Lincoln struck mud dizzy and gasping.

  The falhófnir leaped down.

  Lincoln brought the OPA dagger up, plunging it toward the unicorn’s breast with both fists. The point struck right between her forelegs, where muscle rippled underneath opalescent hide.

  The blade snapped off at the hilt with a betraying chime. The unicorn whinnied with rage, but did not bleed.

  He scrambled to his feet to try to run—and the falhófnir leaped forward too.

  The point of her horn slammed into his chest. Her horn met the warded leather of his jacket and barely pierced it. The material shredded, exposing the stolen wooden cross necklace nestled in the pocket.

  It was a lucky hit. Had she gone a couple inches higher, she’d have found Lincoln’s unprotected collarbone and plunged straight back into his spine.

  The OPA jacket had saved Lincoln for its last time. When the mare pulled back, the coat tore all the way between chest and sleeve.

  Lincoln stumbled away, shaking his arm free before it dislocated. The falhófnir bucked. Tossed his destroyed jacket into the bushes. Cold air blown from the Winter Court swirled around Lincoln, chilling his sweat, making his shirt stick to his chest.

  Another unicorn shrieked. She was only a couple car lengths away, and seemed to have materialized from nothing; she must have been looking for her missing friend.

  Now Lincoln had one broken dagger, two opponents, and no ideas.

  The first unicorn jabbed her head at him again, and he dodged, wrapping an arm around her neck. The powerful muscles worked against his biceps.

  The newcomer lowered her head and charged.

  Lincoln spun the unicorn so that he was guarded by her flank.

  A jolt, twin shrieks, spraying blood.

  Where Lincoln’s knife did nothing, the horn of another unicorn had no trouble penetrating hide. The first unicorn was ripped open wide. Slippery blue intestine bulged out of the cut and then spurted free, drooping to the moss with a spray of blood.

  The way the second unicorn staggered and screamed was all too human. She tried to nose the organs back into place, but it was much too late.

  His captive dropped, and Lincoln couldn’t untangle from her mane in time. The full weight of the unicorn smashed into his legs.

  He hit the ground. The back of his head struck tree.

  The world spun around him, and this time, it had nothing to do with sidhe magic. He’d taken too many bad falls in this fight. He was fading out of consciousness while trapped under the weight of a dead unicorn, and about to be skewered by another.

  Take off another piece of your armor.

  Lincoln was in Hell. He was drenched in hot blood.

  He stood in front of the Lia Fáil—that weird stone by Sophie’s cabin—and a spindly shadow glared down at him from thirty feet up.

  Take off another piece of your armor.

  “No,” Lincoln mumbled. “No. I’ve already given you everything.”

  The forest swirled around him. He tasted meat on his lips, and he wasn’t sure if he was hallucinating another skewer or if he’d bitten through his cheek. The meat was rotten. It was melting into a slurry of hamburger just like Father Davidek.

  He swam free of the vision. Only moments had passed.

  His blood-slicked hands pushed against the unicorn’s spine, trying to wriggle free to no avail.

  The surviving unicorn was rounding on him.

  He wiggled a finger down to his belt and found the hard edge of another dagger—and then the flask beside it.

  Bašmu venom. Sophie was brilliant for bringing it.

  Lincoln uncorked it with his teeth and flung the open vessel into the fanged mouth of the second falhófnir as it rushed him.

  It bit down. Swallowed.

  Kept charging.

  Lincoln screwed his eyes shut and pushed harder at the unicorn one last time.

  He wasn’t free in time. The second struck him too.

  Without biting.

  It fell on him, thrashing, foaming at the mouth. There was no time underneath the bulk of the animal. There was only thudding, scratching, and a sense of being squeezed into the mud underneath. Reeds jabbed at his back. Someone was breathing hard—wheezing—and everything smelled coppery, and Lincoln was lost.

  Take off another piece of your armor. You’ll face justice naked.

  His hips came free. His knees. Left foot. And then…right.

  Lincoln kicked away from the two unicorns, now both dead, and shored up against the trunk of the tree. He was sodden with sparkling blue blood. The unicorns’ manes had melted into the ground. The entire forest was still.

  He let his head fall back against the tree and wheezed out a sigh.

  “Shoulda listened to Sophie,” he said. Words that he hadn’t expected to string together.

  “Lincoln?”

  Speak of the Devil herself.

  “Over here,” Lincoln croaked.

  Sophie stepped around the tree and gasped. “Gods above! What have you done?”

  “They attacked me,” he said.

  “You promised not to go near them!” Her eyes flamed with anger, spine rigid. “You lied to me!”

  “You say that like I owe you honesty.”

  She rolled her hands into fists, gazing down at the falhófnir. “When will you learn, Lincoln? When will you take a path of peace and stop leaping into the abyss?”

  “Says the woman who literally jumped into the Void.”

  Sophie offered a hand to him. “Come on.”

  Lincoln gave her fingers a mistrustful look. “What’s that for?”

  “To help you up,” she said.

  He took Sophie’s hand, warm and smooth and dry. She hauled him upright.

  “We’re not taking out the rest of the herd.” Sophie pushed the backpack into his arms, digging out the bridles as he held it. She ended up with a pile of leather as big as she was. “You shouldn’t have hurt these two.”

  Lincoln slung the bag onto his back. “Did you hear the part where they attacked me?”

  “Who attacked first?” Sophie asked.

  He opened his mouth to answer.

  Then closed it.

  She stormed away from him, toward the Veil. Lincoln choked on frustration as he watched her leave. It wasn’t fair. She had no right to get angry with him. It wasn’t like she was in charge—she was barely more than a tag-alo
ng on a mission that Lincoln had never wanted.

  How dare she have the gall to act so disappointed?

  “Take your prize,” said Elise.

  At this point, Lincoln was unsurprised to see his ex-girlfriend when he turned around. She stood between the bodies of the unicorns. They had fallen together as if mirrored, hooves to hooves, heads stretched toward north and south respectively. The carcasses encircled her.

  He stooped to remove the flask from the mouth of the unicorn. It had gotten wedged behind the molars, so he used a stick to the mouth open to avoid scraping his hand on its vicious incisors. There was only a half-inch of venom remaining at the bottom of the vessel. The rest had gone into its belly.

  “Happy?” Lincoln asked.

  “You’re not done,” said Elise, arms folded.

  The second unicorn had also ripped its horn halfway off in its death throes. Now that long spiral of bone was hinged from its forehead, bloody at the wider base. Lincoln managed to wrench it free the rest of the way. He came up with something as light as one of his daggers, but much longer, and capable of penetrating falhófnir hide.

  “Good,” she said. “Very good.”

  Lincoln lifted the horn into the moonlight. It gleamed pearlescent in his fingers.

  Beyond, Sophie was already halfway back to the clearing.

  “Wait!” Lincoln chased her.

  Sophie sped her pace to avoid him.

  And she tripped over a root.

  The supposed Historian spilled into the crescent-shaped clearing. The bridles flew from her arms. She landed face-first in the mud, and Lincoln’s heart stopped to see the falhófnir lifting their heads at the intrusion.

  Two unicorns had been too much for Lincoln. Sophie had the attention of dozens.

  Still with those long horns eager to impale someone.

  And those big shiny teeth.

  “Sophie!” he hissed warningly. “Get up!”

  She lifted her head. When she saw the herd, she froze, mouth agape, eyes wide.

  The Veil and forest were silent. Anticipatory.

  Lincoln should have run after her. Called out to lure the unicorns his way. Done something. He was consumed by a certain infectious stillness, which extended to the grass, the clouds, even the sliver of ocean he could see downhill, and he wasn’t going to do a damn thing to save this woman who needed his help. He’d be complicit in what happened to her. Damn it all, why couldn’t he move?

  Such a delicate silence should have shattered at the first noise.

  “Hello there,” Sophie finally said to the unicorns.

  The entire herd tensed. They were focusing those predatory gem-eyes on Sophie as if calculating the fastest way to murder her.

  She stood slowly and held her palms out to show they were empty.

  Nothing shattered, nothing exploded.

  “Gods above, you’re a beautiful lot,” she went on softly.

  She was going to end up in a bloody pile of bones, just like the gentry the falhófnir had killed.

  “My name is Sophie Keyes,” she went on. “I’m the Historian. You’ve probably never heard of me, but that’s quite all right. I know of your antecedents. How they used to roam free on Earth. How they only became confined to the faerie planes in the war between Adam and Lilith. How much magic runs through your veins.”

  One of the falhófnir stretched her head forward…and bumped her nose against Sophie’s palm.

  “Yes, hello.” Sophie stroked the unicorn’s nose with trembling fingers. It stared back at her from just inches away, motionless except for the fluttering of its mane. “Look at you. Millions of species may have regenerated in the Middle Worlds after this recent genesis, yet you have become this. What a wonderful stroke of luck that you are so good at it. You are lovely.”

  Another unicorn slid behind Sophie, boxing her in. She remained relaxed and petted the unicorns in turn as they surrounded her. Her ebony hands stroked breasts just like the one that Lincoln had tried to stab, her fingers twining in smoky manes and beards, her cheek brushing against theirs as they lowered their heads to huff her scent.

  She was pure, and the falhófnir were attracted to that purity.

  “Look at this, Mr. Marshall,” Sophie said. She’d picked up one of the bones from the falhófnir’s victims—but it wasn’t a bone at all. It was a long twig that looked as if it had been bound to other twigs. That was the limb of a doppelgänger. The falhófnir had killed a pair of hostile Ard, not the more humanlike gentry.

  The unicorns had fought Lincoln. They’d killed the killers. And now they were putty under Sophie’s gentle hands with no obvious desire for violence. They presented their faces so that she could guide noses into bridles. She planted kisses between their eerie eyes when buckling the straps.

  Lincoln’s fingers went slack on the horn. It tumbled from his lifeless hands, falling amid bloody grass, and he felt as though he were sinking into a bottomless hole when his knees struck beside them.

  I killed them.

  Elise had approved. She’d told him to take a prize from them like they were monsters as much as the bašmu. He’d trusted her, and he’d done evil.

  “Get them out of here,” he said hoarsely. “Guide them down to the estuary and let ‘em free.”

  “Where will you go?” Sophie asked.

  He was going to have to go into the Winter Court. The only path from here was forward. “I’m gonna finish the mission.”

  “Alone?”

  “You don’t have to do this part,” Lincoln said. “Don’t jump into the Void when you can run, Miss Keyes.”

  She frowned at him, but he could tell that she was torn. Sophie didn’t want to leave the Summer Court. She also didn’t want to let Lincoln run off without her.

  Lincoln wasn’t sure he wanted to go alone either.

  “I could wait for you to come back,” he said, surprising himself.

  But Sophie shook her head. “I have to be here, Mr. Marshall. I have to.” Of course. She was still waiting for that Omar guy—a guardian to rescue someone who clearly needed no help surviving the Middle Worlds. “But…will you promise to find me when you return?”

  Lincoln said, “Sure.”

  “I’m not a fan of goodbyes,” Sophie said simply, and she slipped into the forest.

  The unicorns followed behind her, pale shadows that lit up the night. They had barely gotten beyond the first few lines of trees before Lincoln could no longer see or feel them.

  The Veil warped, twisting with Lincoln at its axis.

  “Oh hell,” he said, gripping his head in both hands. It hadn’t occurred to him that sidhe magic would be stronger near the Veil. Stronger even than Storm’s protective magic. The presence of the falhófnir had blocked ley lines and magic alike, but now that Sophie was taking them away, Lincoln was barraged.

  The only way out was through.

  Lincoln tightened the straps on the backpack and plunged toward the crevice.

  He only got halfway to the Veil when he realized someone was coming through the other side.

  Fingers tipped by long nails extended through the gash, as if feeling ahead for a threat. They were followed by a curvy forearm, the swell of a bicep, a bare shoulder.

  The woman who stepped gracefully through was tall, sturdy, and pretty in the way that strippers were pretty. Garish was probably the best word. She was draped in black thorns and carrying an icy wind that sucked the air from Lincoln’s lungs.

  As he watched, the trees shriveled. They frosted. The grass grew crunchy under his feet.

  “You’re not the killer unicorns,” the woman said, her eyes traveling languorously from Lincoln’s feet to his eyes. It felt like he was being pawed by her black-tipped fingernails. “I haven’t been able to pass through the Veil in a week. How the fuck did you slaughter an entire herd that I couldn’t approach?”

  He looked down at the horn in his bloody fist. “I didn’t slaughter all of them. Who the hell are you?”

  One of her pencile
d eyebrows lifted in a look of disbelief. “Obviously, I’m Ofelia. I’m Queen of the Winter Court. The better question is, who the hell are you?”

  CHAPTER 17

  Sophie crashed through the trees with the falhófnir close behind. They were the wind at her back, the dew in her face. Their breath was the crash of ocean against shore.

  There was no doubt in her mind that these were deadly beasts. Sophie had spent too much time in the wilderness to think otherwise. Her upbringing had involved defending her remote farm from natural predators: great cats, vicious serpents, and even demons at times. She’d lost entire flocks of chickens to birds of prey. A wild Chisav had once nearly killed Omar.

  The falhófnir were far more dangerous than anything she’d seen before, and she knew she should have feared them. In a way, that was the appeal. She had never known adrenaline as delicious as that which chased her through the forests of the Summer Court. Once she released the falhófnir, nothing remained except to go home and wait. Wait for Omar. Wait for Tristan. Wait for Lincoln Marshall.

  Until she’d left her cabin, the wait hadn’t seemed so terrible.

  It was different being in the world instead of watching it. Talking to kings and queens, running from river-monsters, stealing from stables under the watchful eyes of guards. She had never felt so alive in the last thirty-two years. Not even once. Not even with Omar.

  So lost in thought was Sophie that she didn’t notice the unicorns had stopped running until the moment they halted. Sophie ran two steps further before the bridles snapped taut and her arms stretched back and she fell into the mud. Again. On the bright side, her shins were already soaked, her boots a ruin. Another spill could do nothing to the shreds of her dignity.

  She peeled out of the mud, staggering into the trees to pet their noses again. “What’s wrong?”

  The falhófnir pranced as if they had come up to the edge of a cliff they were unwilling to jump. They tossed their heads. They pawed at the ground. The sweet smell of pollen that emanated from their ghostly manes had turned sour with distress.

  Why wouldn’t they run?

  “Miss Keyes! It’s okay!”

  She peered over the flank of a falhófnir.

  Lincoln stood higher on the hill, next to a light-skinned woman. Judging by the elaborate style of her gown and the amount of magic that emanated from her flesh, she must have been the Queen of the Winter Court.