Soul of Fire

Chapter 12

Nalith stared at her, those blue eyes hypnotic as a snake’s. “You cannot draw.”

“No.” Jan had no trouble admitting it. She had a reasonable number of skills and strengths, but she’d never been artsy in that regard. Her casualness about that fact seemed to confuse the preter, however.

It was two days after Martin’s acceptance into the court. Jan had been summoned to the main room; now the queen was standing in front of her easel, one of the brownies off to her left, not quite hovering, and Jan sat on the footstool she had been directed to when she’d come downstairs, and tried to stay very still.

Jan had determined that none of the court were morning people. She would occasionally see some sprites drifting across the yard in the dawn when she woke up, but they never seemed to come into the house proper, and the gnomes were still banished to their corner campsite. Jan tried not to look in that direction if she could help it. Simply knowing they were there had made it difficult to sleep the past two nights. And Tyler still turned away from her when he came to bed, his body language as stiff and unwelcoming as it had been when he’d first come back, so there was no comfort there, to take or to give.

Ty knew the preters were back. She didn’t know if he’d somehow felt portals opening or he’d been keeping track of time better than she had, but he knew. And he knew how they’d have done it: using enthralled humans to hold the connection. Knew that he would have been one of them if Jan hadn’t come for him instead. So she had taken to waking with the dawn, leaving him to battle his own demons. It might not have been the right decision, but it was the only one they could manage and still do their job.

Each morning there was the ever-ready pot of coffee and fresh muffins, and a curt, we-have-to-work-together-but-I-don’t-like-you-either nod to whatever brownie was working there, before Jan headed into the main room. No matter how early she woke up, the queen was always there first, dressed and alert, already at her easel.

Today the conversation had taken an immediate left turn, with her question about drawing. “You do not seem to care, this lack in yourself.”

Jan thought about her answer before giving it. She didn’t want to set the preter off, but she saw no reason to lie, either.

“Art is a gift. Pretty much everything we do is a gift. Some make music, some draw, some sing, some dance, some act...and some people’s gifts aren’t creative. Not that way, anyway. I have a friend, he’s an amazing cook. Give him turnips and a bag of flour, and he’ll make something amazing. He can’t sing a note, though. Believe me, he really can’t sing.” Jan lost herself in the telling, almost forgetting for a moment who she spoke to, that this was not a friend, not even a casual acquaintance you could exchange memories with, without constantly weighing what you were giving away, what you were gaining.

“You have an eye for color, for shape,” the preter said, still stuck on her original thought, like a terrier with a rat. “But you cannot perform it.”

“Nope.” She could design the hell out of someone else’s work, though. Jan shrugged, then looked at the preter, unable to help herself. “And it bothers you that it doesn’t bother me? Why?”

They hadn’t been getting anywhere on figuring out Nalith’s weak spot, pussyfooting around and hoping to eavesdrop or trip over a clue. It had been two days since Martin had won his place in the court, four or maybe five since they had left the Farm; the days and nights had blurred together until visiting the witch, sleeping in the truck seemed like memories from last year or stories someone else had told her. And there was no point in waiting on rescue. Martin had left her phone with the truck, the idiot, so she couldn’t even check to see if the messages she’d told him to send had gone through. It didn’t matter. The deadline had passed. AJ had bigger things to worry about than rescuing them.

At this point, Jan figured she had very little to lose by trying a direct approach.

“I care not what you do or think,” Nalith said, oblivious to everything that had gone through Jan’s mind. Her head was cocked, but she was staring at the canvas in front of her, not Jan. The piece she had been working on when Jan had arrived had long been abandoned, one of a series of pieces stored in the basement, away from her sight but still cared for in case she called for them later. Now it was a charcoal sketch. It was, Jan thought, supposed to be a tree, maybe the one outside in the front lawn, towering, with half the leaves fallen. But she knew that only as a guess: the preter was no better at drawing than Jan. Even Kerry had tried to tell Nalith that, only to receive a punishing slap and a banishment from her presence for his honesty. He had been sulking outside on the back deck ever since then.

“Why are you here?” Jan asked, deciding to go for broke. “What do you want?”

The preter’s entire body stiffened, but she did not look at Jan. “What?”

“Why are you here?” Jan knew that Nalith had smelled preter on Tyler, or something, when they’d first arrived, but not how much she had been able to tell from that. Tyler had not spent any time in Nalith’s presence alone to spill any secrets. From what she could tell, he was avoiding getting within reach.

“Tyler and I...we’ve met your kind before. He’s been enthralled.” Offer some truth to hide the rest of it? “We know that your kind has no particular love for our kind and certainly not for supernaturals.” Careful, Jan. Enough to be real, enough to distract her... “Your kind comes here and takes what they want, you amuse yourselves and then go back...so why are you here? Why do you stay?”

Why, she thought but did not ask, is your old court so angry with you and so desperate to take you back—by force?

“You are questioning me?” Nalith sounded as though a chair or rug had just challenged her, less offended than astonished at the improbability.

“My lady, no. Merely trying to understand. You...have a goal. We cannot assist you if we do not have a clear picture of your goal.”

Utter and absolute bullshit, honed by too many years of working with clients who expected her to read their minds and deliver whatever was in their minds without actually describing it. You weren’t supposed to call the clients idiots. Not to their faces, anyway.

And especially not when this particular client would have no hesitation about knocking you into tomorrow.

“Blunt speech, little human.”

Jan braced for a blow, but Nalith merely considered her, those odd blue eyes narrowing as she thought. “You would know my mind, little human? You would think to understand me?”

“I would try, my lady. To serve you better.” The words made Jan’s teeth hurt and bile churn in her chest, but she said them easily, without obvious emotion.

The preter put her charcoal stick down and brushed one finger across the easel, smearing the work slightly. “My kind live, move, and breathe in magic. It surrounds us, shapes us. We are magic, inherent. You naturals, this realm, whatever you have here you gained from us, stole from us, piece by piece.”

That was news to Jan—and she wasn’t sure that the witch Elizabeth would agree entirely, although she supposed it would depend on what you called magic. Maybe it was true for the supers, and shape-shifting and portals between realms were just physics and biology after all.

“But for all that,” Nalith went on, “for all the glory and beauty of our court, there came a time when I looked out into our world, and...”

Jan waited.

“I did not understand it, the feeling that came to me. Not then, not for some time. I was bored.” She said the word as though it were a foreign, unfamiliar language and shook her head, the first time Jan had seen her make that gesture. “Nothing moved. Nothing changed.”

“So...change things?”

This time, the slap did come, but it barely rocked Jan; the preter had put little effort into the blow. “My world does not change.”

Preters hate change, AJ had said. Jan’s mind whirled, trying to fit this new fact into what she had already known, figuring how—if—it changed the shape of the puzzle they had already pieced together. Preters hated change...or couldn’t change? Was there a difference, or did one rise from the other?

And what did it mean that Nalith...what? What did the preter mean by bored? And how did this tie into her being here, to...to drawing or the way she gulped down PBS’s Great Performance, and every concert Wes could find on DVD or pay-per-view?

“Humans, you change. Constantly. You create things to drive away your boredom.”

Oh. Jan exhaled. Pieces clicked together a little better, but she still wasn’t seeing a complete picture. Her cheek burned from the slap, but she had to risk it. Keep her talking, pray nobody else came in to distract her, try to get more intel... “Create, my lady?”

“Distractions, interruptions in the sameness of every day. We englamour, enhance, but underneath, it remains the same. Our food, our entertainment, our songs, our views. It began to drive me mad. I could no longer bear it, needed to find a different view, a different anything.”

And that had meant fleeing her court. Jan tried to find a way to push, but she didn’t need to: Nalith kept talking.

“The humans we brought to us, they had that...but it faded, always faded. As though the very air around us stifled their ability, prevented us. Always, we had to find new sources of entertainment, new performers. It was as it had always been, the way it always would be...until something changed. Not in us, not in you, but in the ways between. But I could not see where, could not understand how to make use of it. And then, a storm appeared in the sky, and the way opened, suddenly, unexpectedly. I saw the chance and took it.”

Her expression tightened, as though remembering something unpleasant. “I thought... But each thing I put my hand to... I can see, but I cannot do.”

There was a layer of irritation, of annoyance, in the preter’s voice, a frustration that both despaired and refused to give up. Despite herself, despite knowing how dangerous preters were, Jan felt a moment’s real twinge of pity.

“I have never failed.”

Jan bit her lip, willing the laughter to stay silent in her throat. Do what was needed, do what would get them information. Do not tell the selfish elf to get the fuck over herself.

“But you do not understand,” Nalith said, dismissively. “You see colors wisely, yes, but you cannot create, cannot perform even as your leman does. I waste my breath even speaking to you.”

Brief moment of pity over, Jan tasted blood as she bit down harder, reminding herself again that she needed to manage this egomaniac, not alienate her. She had come through a gate on impulse, had started all this out of a selfish whim....

“My lady, what do you most desire?”

The preter’s words burned under Jan’s skin all day, until she was able to round up her companions in as unobtrusive a manner as she could manage and get them outside, where fewer ears might overhear. “She has no idea what she’s doing here.”

“What do you mean, no idea?”

“I mean, she’s here on a whim, winging it, improvising, not a fucking clue.”

Martin snorted, running his fingers through his hair as if he was contemplating tearing it out by the roots. “Jan, preters don’t do things on a whim.”

“Yeah, because all your great gathered wisdom tells you this. Oh, no, wait, you’re just as clueless as us humans when it comes to figuring them out, right?”

Martin glared at her but had no comeback. She was right. She knew that she was right. Everything the supers knew was generations out of date, gathered as much from legends as history. AJ had been a cub the last time preters were overtly visiting this world, and he’d admitted that he was winging a lot of it, although he’d used better-sounding terms.

“What did she say to you?” Tyler was sitting on the railing, balanced like a cat, seemingly without effort. She had the urge to poke him just to see if he would fall. Had he been that poised before he’d been taken? She couldn’t remember.

“I told you already,” she said to Martin. “She felt a twitch or an itch or something and followed it here. That she was bored and wants us to somehow make her boo-boo all better. Only, she doesn’t know what hurts, and we’re supposed to magically gift her with a bandage.”

Jan heard her voice rise and tried to modulate it, keeping the sarcastic tone but at a lesser volume, even as Martin made shushing gestures with his hand. Jan made a face at him, to say “Yes, I know, shut up,” even as her gaze went through the window to check the scene inside.

Nalith was in the side parlor, meeting with the brownies Jan thought of as her majordomos, the same one who had talked to her on the porch and one other. They were going over a map spread out on the table, the two supers making a case for something, and Nalith listening, neither agreeing nor arguing.

They had been there all evening. Jan and the others had eaten dinner around sunset, filling their plates at the stove and taking them into the dining room. They ate with the other humans and a few of the supers who would join them; most of the others ate later, and Jan was careful not to poke her nose into the kitchen to see if they were given the same food or something else.

Nalith ate alone. Once or twice she had commanded that Tyler sing to her while she ate, but more often she preferred solitude, sitting at the main dining room in lonely splendor. Tonight, though, the two brownies had gone in to join her—not eating, just carrying the maps and waiting until she gestured to them to clear her plates and unroll the sheets of paper. They looked like blueprints and maps, but Jan hadn’t been able to see clearly enough to tell of what.

“She wouldn’t deign to notice what we do,” Jan said even as she knew that that was a lie. Nalith noticed everything, even if she didn’t seem to care. Nalith wasn’t the only one they had to worry about. Ears were everywhere, and none of them friendly.

“She’s been drawn here,” Tyler said, finally contributing to the conversation. “I know that much. Something called her, and she can’t go back. She’ll die inside if she goes back.”

Jan paused, then nodded thoughtfully. That fit with what Nalith hadn’t said, as much as with what she had. Not that she had taken the route between realms, but that she had been impelled to do so.

“So what?” Martin said. “So what if she has no clue and wants something bright and shiny she didn’t have there? Why do we care?”

He, clearly, didn’t.

Martin kept his voice low, speaking directly to Jan. “Have you forgotten what she is? What’s at risk?”

“No,” Jan said, stung. “I haven’t. It’s only that...” That what? What was digging at her, the splinter in her shoe, the buzz in her ear, that made what had seemed so clear and easy before, now so crowded and complicated? The flash of pity she’d had earlier was back, only it didn’t feel like pity anymore. But what, then?

“Huh. ‘Bring us your huddled masses yearning to be free....’”

“What?” Martin and Tyler both looked at her as if she had lost her mind. Maybe she had.

“She’s looking for something here. Something she couldn’t find at home. Drawn, Tyler had said, and she could see that, clear as if there was a thread pulling in the preter’s chest, leading her, half-unwilling and helpless before it. If Ty’s right and she’d die if she went back... She’s cruel, and selfish, and pretty much horrible in all those ways, but do we really have the right to send her back somewhere she ran from, or use her as a potential hostage, knowing they’ll only take her back?”

“Are you shitting me? Seriously, Janny, have you lost your mind? Did she englamour you?” Martin had backed away from her as if she’d suddenly started emitting toxic fumes, and him without a gas mask.

“Jan has always been kind.” Tyler said it as if it was a bad thing, the sort of thing that you apologized for.

“I’m not— No, Martin, relax. It’s not... It’s about being decent,” she said defensively. “About being, I don’t know, human. Humane. Not being like preters, all selfish and...I don’t know.”

She’d had a point when she’d started talking. Or not a point maybe but a thought, something important. She couldn’t remember what it was now. She had been the one to urge them to come here; why was she arguing against it now? Jan wondered if she would even know if she had been englamoured. She touched her pocket, only then realizing that she’d forgotten to switch the sachet and carved horse into her pocket that morning. Still, surely Martin, if not Tyler, would be able to tell? Or was that what he was telling her, and she couldn’t hear him?

“If we can’t stop them, there won’t be a point to being humane,” Martin said. “We’ll be cattle, all of us, subject to their whim. All because you felt sorry for a preter queen, who would as soon knock you across the room as look at you.”

Jan raised her hand to the side of her face, where a bruise had risen, purple shadows against her skin. She’d almost forgotten about that.

“Jan.” Tyler took her hand in his, his skin cool against her own. “Jan.” His voice, the touch of his hand, grounded her, but the not-pity lingered, the sense of something-not-right pressing on her brain.

“Janny, don’t do this.” Martin’s deep brown eyes flickered with those odd golden lights again, reminding her that he wasn’t just a slightly odd-looking human. But the sincerity and worry in his voice were entirely real, and all for her. “She likes pretty things, shiny things. But there’s a reason she can’t draw a picture, can’t sing a song, can’t do all the things that she’s gathered you humans for. There’s a reason why they’ve always taken humans—to entertain them. Because they can’t do it themselves. Kindness now, pity now, and you doom us all to a lifetime as slaves, subject to their whim. Nalith seems kind now, but how will she treat us once she’s bored, once ennui or whatever kicks in?”

Jan shook her head. That hadn’t been what she’d meant...except it had been, too, she guessed. Nalith wanted something she couldn’t have, wasn’t able to have, and when she realized that...

“You’re right. I know you’re right. But I don’t like this,” she said. “There should be some other way.”

“Should but isn’t,” Martin said.

“So, how do we do this?” she asked. “How the hell do you bind a preter queen? Because I haven’t found any weakness in her, other than not being able to draw her way out of a wet paper bag.”

“That’s exactly how. The same way they bind humans,” Tyler said, his voice bleak, his hand releasing her own. “With her own obsessions.”

The deadline had ticked by, leaving everyone on the Farm on edge, expecting something and not knowing what. Shifts and schedules fell by the wayside; everyone was working full-out in the hopes of a breakthrough. AJ had considered issuing some sort of sedative in order to make sure they slept, but he decided it was probably a bad idea.

Midafternoon, two days after the deadline had passed, a scream nearly shattered every eardrum within a square mile, cutting through the stone and timber structure of the Farm like tissue paper. Half the supers dived under tables as though expecting a bomb to hit, while the others did various things with their bodies, expanding wings or pulling up feathers, and in one rather notable case, suddenly being covered with six-inch quills bristling like a porcupine’s back. Glory, her hands over her ears in a vain attempt to block out the painful noise, managed to ask, “What the hell was that?”

“Bansidhe,” someone yelled back at her, barely audible over the noise. And then it was cut off, the echoes still painful inside her brain.

“Ban-what?” she asked, even as her memory and research caught up with her. A Celtic spirit, supposed to foretell death. “Oh. That’s not good.”

“Double plus ungood,” Beth said, sliding to a stop in front of her, feathers fluttering in distress and excitement. “Basement, you.”

“But—”

“You’re useless in a fight, Glory. Get into the basement, and stay there!”

It hurt, but Beth was right. Glory followed several other supers down the stone-cut stairs into the basement. It was really more of a root cellar, with a solid wooden door between them and the kitchen. It was dark, lit only by the electric lantern one of them carried, but there were blankets and boxes down here among the food supplies, plus what looked like cases of bottled water; someone had thought about the potential need for a bolt-hole, previously. Glory wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or worse.

The door slammed above them, and the noise of activity was suddenly cut off, leaving only the sound of six pairs of lungs, breathing.

“So not good,” Glory said. Nobody down there with her disagreed.

“Leave everything where it is!” AJ yelled, projecting his growl to carry over the chaos. “If they get through, it won’t matter worth a damn what they learn. Leave the barn, forget about everything else, defend the main house!” He strode through the old farmhouse, fighting the urge, the need, to change. Just a few minutes more, he promised that urge. A few minutes more to make sure everything was in place, everyone was ready. At his left, Meredith paced, already in her four-legged form, teeth bared at the yet-invisible intruders who dared threaten her pack.

“Team A, to the roof,” he ordered, trusting that his words would be carried through the crowd. “Team B, go to ground. Come on, you bastards, we trained for this. Get to it!”

They weren’t lupin, this motley assortment who had come to his call, heeded his warnings about the preternatural threat. But they were fierce and determined, and they knew what was at stake. Now was the time to trust them to do their job and for him to do his.

Lupin were guided by the moon’s seasons but not bound by them. And he fought better on four legs rather than two. Lifting his face to the ceiling, AJ imagined the moon silver in the sky, hidden now by sunlight, then he let go of his control, opened all of his senses to the magic that hummed inside him, and changed.

It wasn’t as fast or easy as what he’d seen the kelpie go through, but it didn’t hurt, either; more like a fast, surprise orgasm running through his body, twisting him into knots and then pulling him loose almost as quickly. Blood fizzed and his senses roared, and he felt himself drop to all fours, the rightness of this position matching the rightness of his two-legged form. A lupin was neither man nor wolf but both equally, and neither.

He snarled and heard his beta echo it as they leaped through the now-open front door and out to defend their chosen pack.

According to plan, the outbuildings should have been emptied and left open. Let the enemy attack those spots if they felt the need; infestations could be dealt with later. Everything of importance was in the house, and it was the house they would defend. The bansidhe’s warning had given them enough time to get into place.

AJ hoped that the creature had survived, that it wasn’t down in pale blue shreds along the border of the property, but that was all the time he had to give to that thought before the first wave came out of the tree line, flowing toward them in a disturbingly organized fashion.

His mind told him that the sky was pale blue, the trees still holding on to the last of their red-and-gold leaves. His wolf-form eyes saw things not so much in color as motion, the heavy fur on the back of his neck bristling protectively even as his muscles tensed in readiness.

“Got your back, boss” he heard coming from his right, even as Meredith paced at his left, and then something swooped low over his head, cackling madly and soaring up into the sky, three others following. He raised his muzzle and snarled at the owl-headed splyushka even as they banked and headed back to the house, taking up aerial cover the way they were supposed to.

When the warehouse had been attacked, the gnomes had tried for a circle-and-press tactic. That had ended badly for them—they had done damage but left themselves too open to counterattack. This time they spread out and kept moving, dashing from tree to rock to fence post, arms and legs elongating and contracting again as needed. It made AJ slightly queasy to watch, but he kept looking, trying to remain aware of the wider field of battle, never letting his gaze rest too long in one place. There was a second line of attackers waiting—he could scent them, the acrid-sweet smell filling his nostrils and making his blood rage with the need to bite, tear, rend. He reined it in. Emotion served thought, not the other way around.

“Left field covered.” A report came in, one of the wisps swifting by, barely visible in the morning breeze. “Ready to engage.”

“Wait for it...wait for it....” one of the supers to his left muttered, and there was a burst of nervous laughter. Meredith growled, but AJ let them be. Battle nerves were better dealt with by quips, not silence.

A scream and roar came from the north side of the house; a brawl under way, and AJ had his mouth around raw, too-damp skin, his teeth cutting through flesh and down to bone, tearing the elongated arm off his assailant.

A lupin pack hunted shoulder to tail, minding each others’ flanks, instinctively protecting blind spots. This makeshift pack could not function that way; they had adjusted for it. Overhead, the splyushka swirled and dived, less to do damage than to provide distraction, although occasionally AJ saw a gnome snatched up and then dropped from a height, bits of them torn off by heavy claws and dripping down on the combatants.

The smell made him want to throw up; this was not fresh meat, but something tainted, disruptive. Whatever the turncoats had been into, it had rendered them unfit to eat. He spat the arm out and surged forward.

They would take this place over his dead body, and they would pay fiercely for it.

Noise didn’t carry through the heavy door and stone walls of the basement. Glory sat on a case of water, her arms wrapped around her, and tried very hard not to panic.

The supers who had come down with her weren’t ones she knew. They looked to be two different types, three of them frail boned with narrow heads and long, almost luminescent hair flowing down their backs, the other two normal-ish, but with skin that was dark and rough, like a tree trunk. All five huddled together, occasionally saying something in a soft voice to each other, occasionally glancing in her direction.

“You can’t fight?” one of them asked finally.

“Not usefully,” Glory admitted. “Not against whatever’s out there.”

“Turncoats,” one of the delicate ones said. “Gnomes. They eat flesh, any flesh they can get. AJ says they threw their lot in with the preternaturals to earn the right to eat whatever they want.” She—he, it?—gave a delicate little shudder, hair trembling with the move.

“Huh,” Glory said. That didn’t match up with the mental image she had of gnomes, which was admittedly formed more by picture books she’d seen in passing than any actual study, but the apprehension in AJ’s voice earlier had been real enough for her to accept the super’s words as truth. “So, we just sit here and wait for them to hack it out overhead?”

“We can’t fight, either,” a different super said. “We look and we hear and we heal, but we don’t fight.” It smiled a little wistfully. “Not usefully.”

“My name’s Glory,” she said, suddenly needing that connection.

“Apple,” the super said and nodded to her companion. “That’s Oak.”

Dryads. At any other time and place, Glory might have been fascinated. Just then, she only nodded at Oak, getting a solemn nod in return.

The three others just huddled together more tightly and didn’t speak.

“You live in Europe?” Apple asked, scooting a little closer to Glory.

“London,” she said. “England.”

“I’ve never left Connecticut,” Apple admitted.

“You never wanted to,” Oak said. “Neither have I. We’re not meant to wander.”

“Neither am I,” Glory admitted. “If it were up to me, I’d still be in my flat in London, doing the things I always do, happy in my routine. But when a strange man arrives in your bedroom and tells you you’re needed...it’s sort of hard to say no.”

“They say the Huntsman came for you?” Apple sounded as if she had a bad case of hero worship when she said the name.

“That’s what AJ called him, yeah. You know him?”

Apple shook her head, but Oak nodded. “He married an Oak. He comes around sometimes. Human, but old, very old. Older than AJ, maybe. He outwitted AJ once, so he must be wise, too.”

“Outwitted AJ?” That sounded like a story she needed to hear. Mentally comparing the dark-eyed, growl-voiced man who had welcomed her to the Farm with the much older human man who had sent her here, Glory decided that she’d probably put even odds on the pair of them.

“They fought over Oak,” the first Oak said. “She was going to visit her mother-tree and got caught up in a lupin hunt. They were going to eat her and the mother-tree, too. The Huntsman was there, saved Oak, and they fell in love—”

“Wait. Wait a minute.” Glory put her hand up to stop the dryad. “Are you seriously telling me that AJ was the wolf in ‘Little Red Riding Hood’?”

The dryads both stared at her blankly.

“Right. Never mind.” It didn’t matter, and it wasn’t any crazier than anything else she had seen or learned in the past month. What was it Jan had said—after a while, it all becomes a normal crazy? Yeah. “So, yeah, the Huntsman came and told me Jan needed me. So, I got on a plane, came here, only she’s gone and, well, you know the rest.”

Somehow, exchanging life stories seemed perfectly natural, as though she were at a tech cocktail party trying to find simpatico mates, rather than sitting in a dark cellar with non-humans while some kind of fight raged on overhead. It was so quiet, their voices carrying through the still air without any effort, that Glory was reminded of the one storm she’d ever been through, off the coast of North Wales, after the winds had died down and the rain was as steady as your own breathing.

“Did you know Jan?” She had never actually met the other woman in person, only through email and video calls, and there hadn’t been time to talk to any of her other team members about anything other than the problem at hand.

Galilia was up there in the fight. And Alon, Beth and Joey, and... Glory closed her eyes, pressing the heels of her palms into her eyelids, trying to make those thoughts shut up.

“We never met her,” the dryads said, but one of the other three raised its face and said, “I did,” in a pale, wispy voice that perfectly matched her appearance. “I helped treat Tyler when he had nightmares. She would come sometimes to sit with him.”

“Wraiths are healers,” Apple said. “Not because they like making people better. They feed on sorrow and pain.”

“We are as we are,” the wraith that had spoken said. It wasn’t defensive, merely a statement of fact.

“If you help someone, no matter your reason, you still helped them. And if you can do it and take care of yourself at the same time...that’s aces in my book.” Glory still hadn’t forgiven Tyler for thinking with his dick and getting Jan—and her!—into this mess in the first place, but that was shit to deal with another time.

“Yes. We are all merely our natures.”

“Oh, hey, that’s not what I said,” Glory objected. “Nobody’s only their nature, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to say, ‘Hey, let me help someone who needs pain siphoned off,’ rather than just wandering around until you found someone. And AJ wouldn’t have become friends with the Huntsman—one of them would have killed the other.”

The wraith frowned, her head tilting to the side and pale eyes narrowing. Glory noted with fascination that she didn’t have eyelids to close; her eyes actually narrowed. “They are predators, both. Each respected the other’s strengths, renegotiated their territory. That is within their nature. We...we are lazy.”

There was a snort from one of the dryads at that.

“We will seek the easiest source of sustenance. A willing source requires less effort to feed from. That is our nature. And it is the nature of those in pain to willingly give it up to another.”

“That’s the most passive-aggressive excuse I’ve ever heard. Are you seriously saying that none of you have any self-empowerment at all?”

“We are bound to our trees,” Oak said. “We sway or fall to the winds. Where is there empowerment in that?”

“You’re not with your trees now,” Glory said. “You came here to the Farm, I presume to help stand against the preters, rather than just waiting to see what wind would prevail. So, why not see how far you can take it?”

Rather than the immediate reaction Glory would have expected, there was silence. All five of them seemed to be considering her words. The wraiths were dubious, she thought—their expressions were subtle and hard to read. Apple seemed uncertain. Oak, though, she had a faint smile on her face, as though she liked what she was thinking.

Oaks were a hard wood, Glory remembered. Apparently, that carried through to their dryads. But while they seemed content to wait, passive, Glory couldn’t. She got up off her crate and started to pace the confines of the cellar, stepping out of the warm glow of the lantern, poking her nose into the shadows. The cellar was dry enough and warm enough, all things considered. It would have been filled with dried fruits and root vegetables, she supposed, back when the house was first built and it was actually in use by humans. Or maybe they had used it to store cider or...

She circled back through the light and out into the shadows again, skirting the narrow wooden staircase. The urge to go up the steps, to see what was happening, itched in her, but she beat it down.

And that image triggered another, sending her back into the center again, looking intently.

“We need something to use as a weapon,” she said.

“A what?”

“In case...well, you know. In case someone comes down here.” Every horror movie she had ever unwillingly watched reappeared in her brain, all the ways something could pop out and take off your head or stab you in the gut.

They stared at her, not uncomprehendingly, but with an odd sort of pity or grim humor.

“If they come down here, we’re dead,” Apple said.

Glory snorted and kept looking for something she could use as a club.

“Fall back.” AJ’s muzzle was sore, and his gums itched from the gnome-blood caked around his teeth, but his gaze was still alert and his thoughts were clear. Meredith, still at his side, made an interrogative whine, not questioning but requiring more explicit instructions.

“They’ve paused, when they should be pressing us. That means they’re about to try something else. If the house falls, we need to be ready to evacuate. You have to get the human and her team out of here.”

She might have argued, but here and now, he was alpha, and his word ruled. She ducked her head and loped away.

One of the kiyakii slid into position where she had been, covering his flank. AJ nodded his thanks, then refocused his attention on the field in front of him. There were more gnome bodies there than anything else, ripped apart until they could no longer re-form and regroup. But nearly a third of the defenders had paid the cost, and he could only assume that it was the same where he could not see. He scanned the field, seeing numbers, not faces, not names. He couldn’t think about the friends who had doubtless gone down. There would be time to mourn individuals when this was done. If they lived long enough to mourn. The line had not broken, but it was ragged and weary. If the turncoats had aid...

So far, the others he had scented had hung back, not taken part in the battle. But they would; he knew that. It was how he would have played it out, sending in the shock troops first, then the smarter, savvier fighters to mop up—and search the buildings.

Preters, in his den.

AJ bared his muzzle in a defiant grin, even though the enemy was too far away to see. They might find the scent, but there were other scents laid down, too, trails leading to dead ends and pitfalls, tangled in with the truth. He, AJ, could untangle them, but no one else.

“They’re moving forward,” one of the splyushka told him, fluttering down to land a few feet away. It was young; its hard, narrow mouth clacked nervously, and its feathers fluttered, but it stood its ground. Feathered, yes, but not flighty. AJ felt a surge of pride.

“Then let’s shove them back,” he said.

The sharp, cracking noise was a shock, after what seemed like hours of muffled silence. Glory got to her feet, the two-foot-long piece of planking she had found clutched in her hands like a baseball bat. Odds were it would splinter the moment she brought it down on anything hard; at least she’d have that one chance.

Oak stood up when she heard the sound, and reached down to scoop up some of the dirt from the hard-packed floor, cupping it in her hands. Glory nodded approval.

“You blind ’em and I’ll bash ’em,” she said in a low whisper and then glanced at the remaining four. “And you guys just sit there. Or you can run, if you get a chance.”

The door swung open, and there was the sound of surprisingly heavy steps on the stairs. Glory tensed, but the voice that came out of the dark was a familiar one.

“Come on.”

“Elsa?” Apple practically flew up the stairs. “Did we win?”

“No.” The jötunndotter wasn’t any grimmer than usual, but the exhaustion in her voice came through clearly. “But we haven’t lost yet, either. Gloriana, you need to go.”

“What?” First she had to hide, then she had to run.... Her pacifistic tendencies be damned, caution boiled over into frustration, and she gripped the piece of wood more tightly. “I want to—”

There was a yelp and a growl at the top of the stairs, then the sound of something heavy being knocked over. Elsa swore in some language Glory didn’t know, and suddenly Apple was falling back down the stairs as though she’d been pushed, landing on her backside with an expression of shock on her round face.

And then something leaped from the shadows of the stairway, something not-Elsa, moving too fast to be the troll, too fast and too sleek, arms reaching, elongated fingers grabbing at the air, and Glory didn’t think, didn’t ask, but stepped forward and rather than swinging with her makeshift weapon, stabbed straight ahead with it, the broken tip meeting a sudden resistance, then giving way, sliding into something, the weight on the end heavy enough to bring Glory’s arms down in shock.

She pulled back, and something came back with the club, something that looked like an oversize frog with a human head and smelled like... She gagged and dropped the wood, backing away.

“Gnome,” one of the wraiths said, its voice even more fading away.

“And more coming.” Elsa took another step down, dropping another gnome to the ground, its neck clearly broken. “No humans can be taken here, not with the knowledge you have. You need to get out another way. Apple. Take her.”

“What?” Apple was still on the dirt floor, although she had scuttled back away from the two gnome bodies.

“I’ll do it.” Oak raised her hand to volunteer. “Come, human. See how the other half grows.”

“What?” Glory had a moment, much like when she woke up to a strange man in her bedroom watching her, that something was about to happen that she wasn’t expecting, that she wasn’t going to like, and she was about to say no when Oak took her by the hand and put the other one over her mouth, and they stepped into the dirt wall.

There was no air, only pressure on all sides, and the stink of wet dirt and mold and cold against her skin, pressure building in her lungs and against her bones, fingers stretching, toes stretching, seeking nourishment, air water food survival, and then there was air in her lungs and Glory inhaled and coughed, almost dropping to her knees in relief. Oak’s hands fell away, and she opened her eyes...and then wished that she hadn’t. They were away from the main building, within reach of the tree line, but around them were torn and bloodied bodies, all still, all dead. Most of them looked like the gnomes that had attacked them, but in the face of so much death, Glory couldn’t bring herself to be pleased.

And not all of them were gnomes. Her mind tried to sort them out, looking, against its will, for a familiar face, something that might identify the bodies as someone she had known.

“Don’t look,” the dryad said, her voice stricken with pain. “Don’t look. Come.”

“I can’t....”

“I know. But you must come.”

Glory closed her eyes and thought about Jan, who had gone into another world because she had to. About Tyler, who had escaped what sounded like an utter horror of brainwashing, taking it one step at a time. Because the only way to survive and not lose your mind was to go forward, not back.

“All right.” She lifted her gaze from the ground, shaking off the dirt that still clung to her skin—don’t think about it, don’t think about what you’ve done—and walked on, heading for the trees.

“Gone.” It was a faint whisper, but a familiar one. One of the wraiths. He had told them to go to the basement; they would be more useful after the battle, if there was anyone to succor. Gone where? Who had gone? Where? There was no clarification, and AJ snarled, picking his way through the bodies, his gaze never wavering from his goal.

It stood there in the middle of the field, standing as if it didn’t even notice the corpses around it. It probably didn’t. Between one step and the next, AJ changed, spine elongating, fur sloughing off, claws retracting and pads forming into fingers. He stood in front of the preter, skin naked in the cold air, and did not flinch.

“You are not welcome here,” he told it. “Your pawns are dead, your game revealed, and the next move will put you into check. Concede and retreat.”

The preter probably didn’t have a clue about chess, but since AJ didn’t expect they would give in, either, it didn’t matter. His tone sent the message.

“We have no grief with you, creature,” the preter said. Its voice was smooth and sweet, its expression composed of a mix of curiosity and compassion. It was an excellent presentation, but AJ was old, bitter, and not falling for it.

“No grief, no,” he agreed. “You barely notice us, save to swat us out of your way. But the obstruction bit back this time, didn’t it? And we have more teeth and claw, waiting for you. Concede and retreat.”

“Where are the humans?”

AJ held himself perfectly still, save a slight cock of his head, as though he were wondering if he’d heard correctly. “Humans?”

“The humans. They belong to us. Give them back, and we will leave your enclave be.”

So that was what this was all about. AJ wasn’t sure if he should be insulted or not.

“The human male was won from your court, by means your consort agreed to. There is no claim to him, nor the woman.”

AJ mostly didn’t care about humans. He would have handed the male over without blinking if he thought it would win them anything. But the thought of giving them Jan made a growl form in his chest. She had become pack, and he would not give her up.

He couldn’t, anyway. They weren’t on the Farm. But this preter didn’t seem to know that. Good.

“You will give the humans to us. Or you will all die.”

AJ had heard more impressive threats before. He didn’t discount this one for being issued in a bland monotone, though. Far from it.

There was only one human on the Farm. The Huntsman, who was his friend, had sent him Glory, who was Jan’s friend. That meant that she, too, was pack.

“I am lupin,” AJ said, smiling. “You have forgotten what that means. Let me teach you.”

The woods were thicker than Glory had thought, not just a border line but an actual thicket, the trees taller and wider than any she’d ever been close to.

“I’m to take you to the Center,” Oak said. “But I’ve never gone from here. It’s going to take me a minute to find my bearings.”

“All right,” Glory said. She wasn’t really in a position to say anything else. She had no idea what the Center was, but anywhere was better than here. Leaning against one of the trees, she watched the dryad turn slowly, her eyes closed. There was noise coming from behind them, where she thought the farmhouse was, but within the copse it was almost silent, just the occasional creak or rustle to indicate that they weren’t alone. Glory, used to the noises of a major city, would have been nervous—all right, she would have been terrified, after everything that had happened—but instead all she felt was a numb sort of calmness. It was less shock, she decided, than a weird sense of the inevitable. She was in shock, and no fucking wonder. She’d never seen anything die in front of her before. Not even a pet. She had only ever killed spiders before, and even then reluctantly. The fact that those things back in the basement had been trying to kill her, that she had only been defending herself...it made no difference, she realized. They were still dead, and she couldn’t be pleased.

Pacifists get killed in wartime, her dad used to say. But so did warriors.

She had known when she’d gotten that frantic phone call from Jan and heard about what had really happened to Tyler, when she’d agreed to help rather than hanging up or trying to get her friend sectioned, that life was never going to be the same. She just wondered now if there was going to be a life at all, however changed.

“All right. This way.” Oak still had her eyes closed, but she was facing Glory, and the expression on her face was calm, almost happy, if she was reading it right. She might not have been; supernaturals were a few degrees off the norm to her still.

“Where are we going?”

“I told you. To the Center.”

“Oh.” All right, then.

When Oak held out her hand, Glory took it, even as there was a larger, louder rustle in the trees and a smooth, even-toned voice, dripping with malice, said, “There you are, human.”