Another grinding nod.
“Are the trolls taking sides?”
He growled and stopped moving. The silence stretched out for half a minute. A car honked above us, but Smedge remained frozen in place—a concrete statue of half a man, protruding from beneath a bridge.
So even the trolls, notorious for walking the center line of any interspecies conflict, were taking sides. Sides in a battle that no one had told us human beings about, and that sounded more and more like a power play on someone’s part. Power plays were not uncommon from goblins. Bloods hated us, but rarely made direct attacks. Sprites were either working with or against them, and trolls were lined up to pick teams.
“We have to find out who else is taking sides,” I said. “Could the Fey Council have anything to do with this?”
Wyatt ran his fingers through his short, black hair. “I don’t know, but none of the Triads were talking about it as of yesterday. It could be rogues pulling all the strings.”
“Maybe. Amalie may lead the sprites, but she still answers to the other Fey rulers. Gnomes, faeries, pixies, dryads, and sylphs need to be consulted before a Fey decision is handed down.”
Wyatt stared.
I frowned. “What? I pay attention when you talk. Mostly. But why was Amalie there during my rescue?”
“Because one of her sprite guards found you and led us there.”
I had forgotten about the Volkswagen-sized stone head in front of me. Smedge settled deeper into the concrete foundation, creating a heavy rumble beneath our feet. Trolls possess notoriously short attention spans, and our audience was almost over.
“No safety where? Here?” Wyatt asked.
It was all the encouragement I needed. “Thank you, Smedge.”
“I will.”
With a sound like fracturing wood, Smedge withdrew into the underside of the bridge until nothing remained but smooth concrete. We slipped back out through the fence’s hole, but I faltered halfway across the street, attacked by the niggling sense of being watched. Wyatt stopped and looked at me.
A howl, inhuman and nearby, shattered the rumble of traffic. It bounced beneath the bridge, echoing long after its source had stopped. A hulking shape bounded into the center of the road on all fours, one hundred feet from our position. It came to a graceful stop and arched its back, slowly standing upright, its back legs curved and grotesque. They wobbled with the effort, but the creature maintained its balance. Thin, black fur covered its legs and torso, but its chest of roped muscle was bare, smooth, shiny, and white-skinned. Its similarly colored arms were just as well muscled, with long claws on its front paws and deep elbow joints perfect for running on four feet. A long, black-tipped nose jutted out above a too-wide mouth. Shimmering yellow eyes blazed with fury and the sheer love of the hunt. Pointed ears turned toward us, listening, covered with the same black hair that extended across its head and down its neck.
It opened its mouth, baring double rows of razor teeth and pointed canines. I watched the monster flex its jaw, a steel trap ready for the kill. My stomach knotted. I’d never seen anything like it, let alone fought one, and it truly was a hellhound from my nightmares. I saw the earmarks of at least two species in it. It had to be Wyatt’s rumored hybrid.
In my periphery, Wyatt’s left hand crept across his waist toward the shoulder holster. The hound’s eyes shifted to Wyatt, and it snarled. The hair along its neck bristled.
“Don’t,” I said, barely moving my lips. If the thing had vampire reflexes to go with its teeth, it could be on him and tearing his throat out before Wyatt could pull the trigger. “When I say so, get in the car.”
“Evy—”
“Argue, and he eats you for lunch.”
“Fine, but I can’t resurrect you twice.”
“You won’t have to.”
The butterfly knife would take too long to retrieve and open. The hound shifted its eyes back to me. It drew a lazy tongue across its fangs. The creature’s intense gaze sent a worm of fear down my spine. Adrenaline surged. Every sense felt sharper, keener. It growled again. I tensed and rose up on the balls of my feet.
“Now!”
Wyatt pivoted and raced for the car. I bolted three steps to the right, using my body as a barrier between him and the hound, and dropped down into a one-kneed crouch. My fingers found the serrated knife’s handle, wrapped around it, and pulled.
Falling back to four legs, the hound moved, in a blur of fur and teeth and stink as I raised my left arm in a vain attempt to shield myself. The creature bit and held tight, rending skin and muscle to the bone. Blood spurted into my eyes, coloring the world crimson. An agonized scream died in my throat as the horrific wound went instantly numb. I lunged forward with my right hand and buried the serrated knife in the hound’s soft belly. I pulled upward, slicing its abdomen like a fisherman gutting his catch.
Gunshots popped. One, two, three, four in a row. The hound screamed, inhuman and guttural. Thick, swampy blood poured down my arms, into my mouth. It tasted like ash. The teeth released my arm. Bladelike claws swiped across my exposed thigh as the hound fell, shredding skin. Its sheer bulk toppled me. I hit the pavement on my back, buried beneath blood and fur and muscle.
My thigh and arm shrieked, the hound’s blood like acid on the open wounds.
“Evy?” Wyatt shouted.
“It’s dead,” I said, screaming to be heard beneath my prison. “Get this fucking thing off me!”
A lot of tugging from him and pushing from me levered the hound’s corpse—already decaying—enough for me to slide out. I crabbed backward, getting clear of it. No amount of sputtering or deep breathing would dislodge the nauseating stench of its blood from my nose. Head to toe, I was covered in a slimy mixture of my own blood and its, painting me red and black.
I spat into the road, desperate to keep from upchucking all over the street. Wyatt squatted in front of me, eyes wide. He wasn’t hurt—small favors.
He lifted my left arm up by the elbow, avoiding the gaping flesh. I looked away, sickened by the sight of it. White hot pain lanced through the shredded muscle and bruised bone. My head spun. I wanted to lie down.
“Hell, Evy,” he said. “That’s going to need more than just stitches.”
“Do you have something to wrap it in? We need to get off the road before another one shows up.”
He stood and looked at the car. I didn’t care if he used a blanket or a greasy rag, as long as I didn’t have to look at that arm. He bolted to the car and yanked open the rear door. He rummaged in the backseat until he found what he wanted. The shoulder holster came off, and he tossed it inside. He returned to me with a bottle of water and nothing else.
He crouched down as he unscrewed the bottle cap. “Hold your arm out and try not to punch me when I do this.”
I did as asked, hissing through clenched teeth when he poured the water over my arm. The pain was indescribable, but it washed away the hound blood irritant until only my red, human blood oozed from the torn flesh. Wyatt put the half-empty bottle down and began unbuttoning his shirt.
“You just got that,” was my meager protest.
“I’ll get another.”
I decided to focus on his abdominal bruises while he ripped the shirt down the middle. Something thin and hard had made those, and they were too precise to have been an accident. I battled away the pain-induced mental image of a faerie one-third his size whacking Wyatt with a pencil. Really not funny. The makeshift bandage from earlier was still there, relatively unbloody. One half of the shirt went around my arm, and I hissed as he cinched it tight. The dark material darkened further. My vision blurred.
He wrapped the other half around my thigh. It hurt less. Those twin gashes were superficial, less serious. Strong arms curled beneath my armpits and lifted. I tried to stand, slipped, and fell back against his chest. He grunted—probably because I stank to high hell. I stepped on his feet three times on the trip back to the car.
