Cold Days

shimmer, and strange, twisted sounds writhed all around us. Then there was a reverberating crash that sounded like something between thunder and the discharge of a blaster. The air split in front of the two of them like a curtain, and as the Hunt hurtled through it, the stars washed out to their normal silver hue again.

“Well-done, I guess!” I shouted—and then I noticed that Kringle was no longer there, though the Erlking still raced along. Over the next few moments he slowed enough to pace Karrin and me. “Hey, where’d Bowl-Full-of-Jelly go?”

“Kringle was our stepping-stone out of the rapids of the stream,” he called back. “To lift us out, he had to remain behind. He will rejoin us farther down the shore.”

“Harry,” Karrin said.

“How much farther down the shore?”

The Erlking shrugged with his uninjured arm. “Time may hold no terror for us immortals, Sir Knight, but it is a massive force, all but beyond even our control. It will take as long as it takes.”

“Harry!” Karrin snapped.

I turned my eyes front and felt them widen.

We had arrived at Demonreach—and the island was under attack.

The first thing I saw was the curtain wall around the island’s shoreline. It was nothing but a flicker of opalescent light, like a dense aurora borealis, stretching from the water’s edge up into the October sky. It cast an eerie glow over the trees of the island, steeping them in menacing black shadow, and its reflection in the waters of the lake was three or four times bigger and more colorful than it should have been.

As the Hunt rushed closer, I could make out other details, too. There was a small fleet of boats surrounding the island—it looked like something out of WWII’s Pacific theater. Some of the boats were modest recreational models, several at least the size of the Water Beetle, and three looked like tugboat-barge units, the kind that could ferry twenty loaded train cars around the lake.

I could see motion in the waters around the shore. Things were swarming up out of the lake, hideous and fascinating—hundreds of them. They smashed into Demonreach’s curtain wall. Light pulsed in liquid concentric circles where they touched it, and shrieks of alien agony stretched the air toward a breaking point. The waters within twenty feet of the shore bubbled and thrashed in a demonic frenzy.

I felt a pulse of power stir in the air, and a bolt of sickly green energy lashed across the waters and slammed into the curtain wall. The entire wall dimmed for a second, but then resurged as the island resisted the attack. I tracked the bolt back to the barge and saw a figure in a weird, writhing cloak standing on the deck, facing the island—Sharkface.

As I watched, I saw a Zodiac boat carrying a team of eight men in dark clothing rush in toward the shore. The man in the nose of the boat lifted something to his shoulder, there was a loud foomp, and a fire blossomed in the brush, burning with an eye-searing chemical brilliance. Then the Zodiac whirled and rushed back out again, as if to escape a counterstrike—or maybe they just didn’t want to stay anywhere close to waters full of piranhalike frenzied Outsiders while sitting in a rubber boat. Half a dozen other boats were doing the same thing, and several other similar craft were sitting still, full of armed men waiting silently for the chance to land onshore.

I stared in shock. The recent rain meant that the island wasn’t likely to burst into flame anytime soon, but I had utterly underestimated the scope of tonight’s conflict, ye gods and little fishes. This wasn’t just a ritual spell.

This was an all-out amphibious assault, my very own miniature war.

“Erlking,” I said. “Can you veil the Hunt, please?”

The Erlking glanced at me, and then back at the Hunt, and suddenly the cold, weirdly flat-sounding dimness of a veil against both sight and sound gathered around us like a cloud.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “The ritual would still need a platform, and that would take time and work to set up—at least a day. It would show. They haven’t even gotten onto the island y—” Then the truth hit me in a flash. “The barges,” I said. “They set up a ritual platform on one of the barges. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“The waters of the lake would diminish the power they could draw from the ley lines running beneath it,” the Erlking said.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s why they’re assaulting the shore. They’re going to force a breach and then run the barge aground on the island. That’ll put them in direct contact with the ley line.”

“There are many Outsiders here, Sir Knight,” he noted. “More than enough to do battle with the Hunt, if we become bogged down in their numbers. They will react to us as one beast, once they know the danger we pose to them. Have a care for where we enter the fray.”

“We’d better make the first punch count,” I said. “Three barges. Which one has the platform?”

“Why assume there’s only one?” Karrin asked. “If it was me, I’d set the spell upon all three of them, for redundancy.”

“They might have set the spell up on all three of them for redundancy,” I said.

She drove one of her elbows back against my stomach, lightly.

“We start this by sinking a barge,” I decided. Then I blinked and looked at the Erlking. “Can we sink a barge?”

The shadow-masked Erlking tilted his head slightly to one side, his burning eyes narrowed. “Wizard, please.”

“Right,” I said. “Sorry. Eeny, meeny, miney, moe, catch a Sharkface by the toe.” I pointed at the barge in the middle, where I’d seen the Outsider a moment ago. “That one. And once it’s down, we’ll split into two groups. You’ll lead half the Hunt for the barge on the far side, and I’ll take my half to the nearer one. If we can nix any possibility of the ritual happening, maybe they’ll call it a night and go home.”

“That seems unlikely,” said the Erlking. He slowly flexed the arm I’d shot him in, and I could sense that, while it was not comfortable, the lord of the goblins was already functionally recovered from the injury.

“Never know until you try,” I said. I looked back at the Hunt and pointed toward the center barge. I repeated my instructions to them, and soot black hands drew dozens of shadowy weapons.

I leaned into Karrin a little and said, next to her ear, “You ready for this?”

“Only a lunatic is ready for this,” she said. I could hear her smile as she spoke. Then she turned her head and, before I could react, planted a kiss right on my mouth.

I almost fell off the Harley.

She drew her head back, flashed me a wicked little smile, and said, “For luck. Star Wars– style.”

“You are so hot right now,” I told her. I lifted my Winchester overhead, then dropped it to point forward, and the Hunt surged ahead at its full, insane speed, silent and unseen and inevitable.

“Go right past its rear end,” I told Murphy.

“You mean its stern?”

“Yes, that,” I said, rolling my eyes. And then I began to gather in my will.

It was hard, a slow strain, like trying to breathe through layers of heavy cloth. It was like holding a fistful of sand—every bit of energy I drew in wanted to slip away from me, and the harder I tried to hold it, the more trickled through my fingers.

So I gritted my teeth, accepted that I wasn’t going to have a lot of energy to work with, and tried to hold it loosely, gently, as we closed in on the barge. We were the first to pass it, and as we did I flung out my hand, crying out, “Forzare!” Raw will leapt through the air, shattering our concealing veil. The energy was focused into the shape of a cone, needle-pointed at the top, and widening gradually to about six inches across—an invisible lance. I couldn’t have done any more with the limited energy I had at my disposal. It hit the hull of the barge with a clang and a shriek of tearing metal, and then we were past it, and Karrin was tugging the Harley into a tight, leaning turn.

I checked over my shoulder and saw the Erlking, his sword in hand, lean over the saddle and strike. There was a hissing sound, and a howl of screeching steel, and, starting at the hole I’d punched in the barge’s hull, a straight line of red-hot metal appeared where his sword had simply sheared through it. Behind him, the next riders struck, their weapons carving steel like soft pine, slashing at the weakened section and tearing the original hole I’d made wider and wider.