“There weren’t many who bothered to climb the trees and come after me in my treehouse,” he said.
“These guys?” I glanced back. Only one chased, now, but she was running. Faster than I was. Closing the distance.
“I climbed out onto a branch that wouldn’t hold them. They tried and fell. I went out onto another branch…”
He trailed off.
“Evan?”
“Stop trying. Please. I just want to sleep.”
There it was. The cadence that suggested I was talking to the echo, not the consciousness that had somehow remained.
I looked to confirm, but the act of looking meant I ran headlong into a branch. Not a thick one, but something that could scrape against my face.
The glamour was torn away, where I’d covered up the bites from the vermin. A light scrape on the cheek was matched by a smattering of gouges and scratches, just as raw and painful as they’d been when I’d covered them up. One glamour taken away.
Not just that glamour. The branches scraped against my coat, my pants, and the stripes of glamour I’d painted all over myself were snatched away. Very easily. Dangerously so.
Something told me it was by design, not bad luck.
I turned and aimed behind me as I ran, and saw a glimpse of the savage Faerie, one long-nailed hand pressed to the bloodstained strips of cloth that bound her stomach, the other clutching at a branch. She caught a gossamer strip of something, and the stuff flowed over, across, and into her hand and arm like smoke or water.
Was it imagination that she seemed a fraction faster, a little more Faerie and a little less savage and broken?
I raised the shotgun with one hand and fired back at her. The blast knocked her clear off her feet.
I turned my attention forward, trusting my ears to catch the sound of body hitting snow.
Instead, I heard the continued sounds of her footsteps behind me. Not as close, but still there.
I might have wondered if she’d landed on both feet or all fours like a cat, only to resume running, but I didn’t have the luxury.
Two more Faerie were flanking me, running just a matter of feet to my left, shoulder to shoulder with one another. Both men.
I shifted my shotgun to a two-handed grip and winced as another branch whipped my face, punishing me for not paying enough attention. A little less glamour, and a taste of blood where my lip had been cut.
I didn’t remember blood in my mouth when I’d been attacked by the imp’s animals. Was the universe charging me interest? Making the wounds just a little worse?
The distraction interrupted me from aiming at the pair and hitting both with the shotgun. A waste of bullets, maybe, but they were too close for comfort, and I didn’t have a wealth of options when it came to shaking them off.
Instead, I reacted a little too slowly as I moved the shotgun. One hand settled on the barrel, catching it before I could aim it. He pushed it away with a deceptive ease.
His hand was broken, but not bleeding. Where index and middle finger had been shattered rather than broken, reduced to spears of splintered fingerbone, he jabbed the hand at my face, aiming to thrust them into my eyes.
I pulled back, still holding the heavier end of the shotgun in both hands, and my forward momentum was interrupted by the thick branches of a large tree.
I was no longer moving. Not a good thing.
I was cornered with someone pressed up against me, clearly intent on hurting me.
Less good thing. Worse thing.
I pulled the trigger, fully aware I wasn’t about to hit him, much less anything else. The savage Faerie barely reacted.
He reached back, then stabbed at me again with the shattered ruins of his hand.
I caught his hand, more out of fear and reflex than anything clever or skilled. Because putting my hand in front of the stabbing wound was better than leaving my face in the way. The splinter of bone tore through the webbing between two fingers. Blood flowed freely down my hand and into my sleeve.
I felt stabs of pain on my injured hand. Where the blood flow from the cut webbing didn’t obscure it, I could see my hand changing. Once-covered wounds opening up, the holes appearing in my gloves. As if the interest I was paying extended to what I wore and carried, indiscriminate.
“Evan,” I managed.
But Evan was backing away. “I’m lighter than they are. Perch on a branch.”
I wasted precious seconds fighting with the Faerie, struggling to keep those bone points from reaching my eye sockets, while my mind turned over his statement, tried to figure out the trick.
No trick involved. In his ghostly little head, he was retreating to the thinnest branches that wouldn’t support the Faerie’s weight.
The other Faerie arrived, stopping a short distance away. The woman Faerie with the gut wound and a male Faerie with his arms cut up into ribbons.
Others drew a little closer. Ghosts. Everything else. The net closing tighter around me.
“The wolf’s watching me,” Evan said.
Watching us.
“Hope it’s a good… fucking show,” I grunted, pushing against the Faerie’s hand. It was all I could do to avoid losing it and letting myself drop to the ground.
The fabric of the glove gave way, tearing away. Turning to rags. The flesh that was revealed was dirty, stained, riddled with scrapes and wounds. Only a few were from the animals. Some was interest, and a lot of it was…
I felt stabbing pains in my fingers.
Saw his fingers changing, in kind.
Lesson learned. Trying to use glamour was a bad idea, if I was going toe to toe with Faerie. It was like opposing like, and they were too well versed in glamour and trickery to lose this tug-of-war.
He was transferring the wounds to me, along a medium he was very well versed in.
Blood flowed from the wound, a little thicker now.
Drenching chain and locket.
His eyes moved down to our joined hands. There was a glimmer of confusion on his face, or curiosity, or something else entirely, as he noticed the thin chain that criss-crossed my hand, the locket that was pinned to the back of it.
Had I been of sound mind, less paralyzed by the sudden contact, I might have been able to use the distraction. As it was, I fumbled for purchase and failed, my mind filled with steel wool and white noise, putting me on the defensive and keeping me there.
“Comhroinn liom,” the woman rasped.
The male Faerie didn’t respond.
“Comhroinn le linn,” the other male Faerie echoed.
The pain in my fingers intensified, until I felt like it was reaching a crescendo. A critical point where it felt like they would explode or be torn away, leaving only slivers of bone.
This wasn’t the pretend sort of pain that ghosts caused, either.
I groaned, and the groan transformed into a scream as the pain built up.
I raised a foot, kicking at his hand, where he gripped the shotgun. Then, rather stupidly, I swung it at his head like a club. It moved a little faster than it should have, and wind stirred his hair as the barrel hit his ear.