An ominous laugh circled around them like a carrion crow. Elric felt like the voice came from within his own head, but he noticed others looking around too.
“You fools,” the terrifying voice said on the howling wind. It sounded like thunder and the distant howl of a fierce gale.
Elric gripped the hilt of his sword and took his place next to Elk.
“You think you have the power to stand against me?” It didn’t sound threatening, though. It was worse than that: it sounded amused. Elric felt a wave of doubt and fear pass over him.
“Filthy elvish mortals, you will die. Those blessed with magic will diminish. And then the Between will belong to me. It is my right. I am its true king.” He laughed again, and the sound made Elric feel sick to his stomach. “You have no hope left.”
“Speak for yourself,” Elric shouted. He still had hope, and he had faith in his sister. She knew what to do. He silently prayed for Wynn to reach the queen in time. “Your plan did not work.”
“Brave words from a little boy.” The Grendel laughed again. “Would you sound so brave if you had to face me?”
A final boom thundered through the air. Screams rose up around him as the clouds that had covered the Nightfell Wood rolled over the countryside. They cast the fairy realm in shadow, and seemed to steal the vibrant colors of the world as they went.
Forked lightning cracked overhead and struck the ground, sending the armies scattering. The shadows wrapped themselves together into a being as dark and as frightening as death. He wore a robe of black, billowing storm clouds that curled around his feet. His body was formed from the deepest darkness of night, and his eyes burned from the dark pit of a black hood with the frantic fire of lightning. He looked as if he were made from dark magic itself. He had lost everything that made a fairy seem human.
He floated forward and drew an obsidian sword that crackled with lightning around it. Elric felt as if he were staring at fear manifested into a single form. Elric shook with it, but he held the hilt of his sword tight. Now was the time for courage. Now was the time for strength.
“Go back to the Shadowfields, where you belong!” Elric shouted at him, trying to keep his voice from shaking.
“I belong here,” the Grendel said. “This is my kingdom. My sister stole it from me long ago. I have come to take it back, and then all of the world will be mine.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTElric
THE QUEEN’S BROTHER? ELRIC STEPPED back in shock. The Grendel was the queen’s brother.
That meant he was just as old—and just as powerful—as the queen. They had no hope of defeating such an ancient fairy.
Elric’s knees shook as he stared down the immortal. He couldn’t see his face, only his burning lightning eyes. Bolstering his courage, he shouted, “There is only one of you, and we are a hundred strong.”
Between the elven boar-riders and the fairies, they had the Grendel outnumbered. But they were dealing with a force of darkness able to reach across the divide between worlds. Their numbers might not matter.
He smiled, a flash of white in a face hidden by shadows. His eyes sparked white-hot with lightning. “Oh,” he said. “I have not come alone.”
The Grendel lifted his arms, and the world seemed to fall into the dark of a winter night. In the depths of the woods, hundreds of burning eyes peered out at them. What little light remained caught on their sharp teeth as an army of fearsome beasts stepped forward out of the shelter of the trees.
Elric recoiled in terror. It was as if some horrible butcher had cut up several fearsome creatures and pieced them back together in terrible ways, then made them all enormous. There were bears covered in scaly armor like a lizard. Great insects with whiplike tails that ended in poisonous stingers, but were the size of oxen. Creatures with the head of a lion on the body of a goat. Giant spiders. Elric’s mind could never have created such a nightmare on its own.
The monsters charged forward in a rush of snarls and grasping claws.
The boar-riders raised their weapons and shouted as they kicked their pigs toward the Grendel’s terrible army.
Their cry seemed to wake the fairies from their stupor as they too ran forward to meet the beasts. Magic swirled around them as they charged into the fray.
Elric stood his ground, sword in hand. An enormous spider scurried forward to meet him, but darkness enveloped the beast as the Grendel appeared before him. Elric brought his sword up out of instinct and it met the Grendel’s obsidian blade as it came crashing down onto his. His fingers went numb as he squeezed his hilt with all his might. Lightning arched around the blades, but Elric held fast.
His arms shook as the Grendel crushed Elric under the strength of his blade. The churning clouds that made up the monster’s robes surrounded Elric, and the darkness swirling around him seemed impossible to overcome.
Elric’s sword glowed with cool, white-blue light but it was no match for the obsidian sword.
The shadows hiding the Grendel’s face deepened, forming layers of shifting substance that weren’t quite flesh and barely hid a grotesque white skull. The shadowy flesh pulled over the long teeth into a grimace. Lightning flashed in the deep pockets of the Grendel’s eyes.
“Fool,” the Grendel said. “You have no hope. You have no power that can defeat me. Prepare to die. And then I will find that half-wit sister of yours. I will enjoy slowly ripping out her spirit, leaving her body as worthless as her mind. Then the queen will meet the same fate as the one she claimed to love.”
The Grendel pressed down on his own hilt, and drove Elric into the
