Autumn Whispers

with it.” I meant it playfully but it came out a sharp jab. With an exasperated sigh, I apologized. “Sorry, I don’t mean to sound like a bitch.”

“Don’t sweat it. You’re right. The question is, will death magic even work on them? They’re magical beings, children of the Elder Fae. Does that make them Elder Fae in their own right, or are they a hybrid?”

“Well, I can try to drain them of blood.” Menolly frowned. “But I can only attack one at a time. Luckily, their toxic venom won’t do much on me. Delilah, you have Lysanthra? Can she do anything?”

I had still only tapped the surface of my sentient dagger’s powers. We were in tune, and on occasion she surprised me with a new move, but it was haphazard at best.

“I don’t know. Fuck, why didn’t we plan this out better? I feel like we’re right back to playing the Three Stooges.”

“Maybe I can help.” The voice took us by surprise. We turned around and there stood Vanzir. He grinned. “Don’t even say a word, girls. Shade sent me. If he can’t protect the house, nobody can. So just keep your yaps shut about me being here and let’s get to work. I can attack them and they probably can’t do a whole lot to me, not with their actual venom. They can hurt me but, then again, I can hurt them.” Here, he laughed, and it took on an ominous tone.

Vanzir’s powers had shifted since he and Camille had their unwilling tryst and the Moon Mother had stripped them away. They had been returned to him changed, altered in ways that even he didn’t understand. It seemed like we were all going through our metamorphoses and none of us knew where the light at the end of the tunnel was.

“I brought someone else with me,” he added, looking at Camille. “You’re not going to be too thrilled but tough titty.”

She slowly stood. “Who?”

Out of the shadows, from behind Vanzir, stepped a pale-skinned, dark-haired man. He was handsome, but had an otherworldly look about him, angular and harsh and glittering.

Camille let out a groan. “You didn’t.”

The man snorted. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Lady Camille.”

And with that, Bran, the son of Raven Mother and the Black Unicorn, stepped fully into view.

Chapter 17

Menolly stepped between Camille and Bran. “Thank you for coming. We can use the help.”

I couldn’t help but think that when Menolly had to be the diplomatic one, something had gone to hell. But Bran and Camille had developed a hostile relationship, even though they’d been ordered to work together, and from what she’d said after her training sessions out at the Court of the Three Fae Queens, things weren’t getting any better. She couldn’t read Bran, couldn’t read how he felt about the fact that she’d killed his father—even though it was by divine design. And his mother, Raven Mother, had long been after Camille to come join her in the Otherworld Forests of Darkynwyrd.

Bran gave Menolly a short, studied glance, then turned back to Camille. “Aeval bids me to come help you until your men are back from Otherworld. She sent several of her guards to your house tonight and they are patrolling the boundaries. I will stay with you for a few days until you have things settled back to normal.”

“Like hell you will. I doubt you’d enjoy our hospitality.” Camille’s eyes narrowed and she let out a little growl.

“Oh, trust me, I shall. Aeval commands it. Do you wish me to return to Talamh Lonrach Oll and inform Aeval that you decided to defy her wishes?”

A threat was implicit in his voice and I wanted to slap him, but decided that wouldn’t be the best move. This was between Camille and Aeval, and chances were, the Fae Queen would win hands down. I knew it, Bran knew it, and by Camille’s smoldering look, she knew it too.

“Fine. Just don’t get in my way.” She glared at him, relenting. “You willing to kill the children of Elder Fae?”

His nostrils flared, but a thin, razor smile appeared on his lips. “I have no qualms about killing anything or anyone I need to. Why do you think Aeval is putting me in charge of her armies?” And with that, he pulled out an extremely sharp looking short sword. It flared with a pale, shimmering light. I realized it had been charmed in some manner.

Vanzir pulled out the magical stun gun we’d taken off a dead guard during a raid when the Koyanni had been kidnapping werewolves to make Wolf Briar. He’d developed a love for the weapon, and had found alternative ways of recharging it now that the Energy Exchange nightclub had vanished. Especially since Vanzir had been the one to implode it.

I readied Lysanthra and she sang in my hand, crooning to me in a voice only I could hear. Dumbfounded, I turned around and realized she was responding to the energy in Bran’s sword. He simply stared at me, with a sardonic smile on his face.

“You like that energy, do you?” I whispered to my long dagger.

So very much. Like recognizes like, you know. The voice was clear as a bell in my head.

“By chance, you wouldn’t have anything new to show me, would you?”

Perhaps not this night, but soon . . . you never know . . . And the whisper faded away as she glimmered lightly in the night air.

Menolly led the way since she had already scouted ahead. I swung in behind her, then Camille and Bran, and Vanzir at the back. I was spoiling for a fight, and I could tell Camille was too. She seemed pissed out of her mind but she moved silently alongside Bran.

We slid through the undergrowth, as stealthily as we could, and I kept my eye on Menolly’s back. She moved in silence, totally focused. After a few minutes, she held up her hand and I motioned behind me, coming to a halt. A brief pause, then she started again. Another moment and I found myself on the edge of a clearing.

The ground was plush with a layer of mulch, a combination of wet leaves and fir needles and detritus from the autumn foliage that the trees and shrubs had shed. The chill of the night filtered through and I could see my breath in front of me, as the clouds drifted across the moon, blotting out the light at one moment, then baring the silver crescent into the open.

Menolly softly moved to the left, staring out at the group of dreglins who were hunkered over the remains of a body, feasting. With iridescent skin that changed from blue to green and back to blue again, they were sleek and hairless, and totally naked—allowing us to see their sex. I thought they might have scales, but it could have just been a trick of the moonlight. Lean and taut, they were muscled but wiry, and they ate like ravenous animals. Ripping out chunks of the woman’s gut, they dangled the intestines above them, eating them like spaghetti, their faces smeared with blood and bile. It was worse than watching zombies—zombies were killing machines, they ran on autopilot. These creatures were cunning and crafty. Ivana was right, they were dangerous, and even from here I could feel how they delighted in destruction. Jenny Greenteeth had an appetite for flesh, and so did the Dark Dugald, and they’d passed it in spades to their children.

Menolly glanced over at me, and I looked down the line. We were all poised on the edge of the clearing now, and the dreglins hadn’t noticed us, so wrapped up in their gruesome meal they were.

Lysanthra began to vibrate in my hand. She was spoiling for blood and I was about to give it to her. But Menolly would go in first, disrupt them and take down one of them. Vanzir motioned that he’d go in second. Again, he stood a better chance of not being harmed by the dreglins’ toxins.

We waited, then, in an imperceptible flicker, Menolly leaped out into the group. She said nothing, gave no war cry, just went for the throat of the biggest one. As she landed full-frontal on it, she knocked the woman to the ground, taking her down.

Now, speed was our ally. Vanzir moved in quickly, firing at the nearest dreglin with the stun gun. The energy bolt hit hard and center, and the dreglin was knocked through the air, a good two yards, to land on his back. Vanzir turned the gun on the next one and fired, and I realized he was trying to give us an advantage by