The Borderkind

CHAPTER 15

T he British ambassador’s residence in Vienna was a late nineteenth-century structure in the classical style, though rather subdued, considering that its architect had also designed the Gothic church that stood only a stone’s throw away. The windows of the first story had an oddly bunkerlike quality that made them spectacularly unattractive, though the enclosed balcony and stone-gabled windows of the second story quite made up for this. Overall, the effect was one of proud austerity. The arched entrance doors were set off center, but so large that they must have opened into some interior garden or courtyard.

In the dark of that Christmas Eve, after midnight, Oliver stood shivering in a shadowed doorway across the street from the embassy, stomping his feet to warm his legs and hugging himself against the cold. This was insane. Kitsune’s plan simply could not work.

Yet if she had failed, where were the shouts? Where were the gunshots? He had to remind himself that the world had changed, that magic did indeed exist. In the political climate of the modern world, it should not have been possible for Kitsune to slip into the building undetected. But with myth, anything was possible. If Oliver had not been convinced of that before, he certainly was now.

“Where are you?” Oliver whispered to the night.

As a fox, Kitsune had slipped across the street and alongside the embassy. On Christmas Eve, this late at night, Vienna slept and waited for morning-for celebration, for bells and elation. No security had been visible outside, and little traffic prowled the streets. Only the lithe creature who was not at all what she seemed.

Silently, the fox quickly scaled the outer wall of the embassy. She had leaped from one stone-gabled window frame to the next, and then the next, and then moved up again. Claws noiseless on the wall, she had climbed like a squirrel to the third floor, where a window stood open just a few inches.

Then Kitsune had disappeared into the ambassador’s residence.

Oliver stood watching the building now, an afterimage lingering ghostlike on his eyes. It was as though he could still see Kitsune slinking up the wall, still see her slipping through the window. The idea that this might have been his last glimpse of her settled more heavily on him with each passing moment. Most of the windows were dark, and those without light remained that way. Nothing seemed to stir within.

His heart should not hurt so much at the thought of losing Kitsune, but it did. It did. Not only because he had grown more than fond of her, but also because without her, he would be alone.

His breath quickened at the thought. Alone. And what then?

Even as the question echoed in his mind, something shifted in the shadows alongside the building. Oliver narrowed his gaze, unsure, and then he saw a deeper darkness there, a figure protruding from a newly opened window. An arm stretched out and a hand beckoned.

A soft laugh escaped Oliver’s lips. He shook his head, amazed, and darted across the street. Alongside the residence he glanced about in search of any sign of security. Only then did he spot, far along at the rear of the building in a pool of light from a streetlamp, a small object on the ground. Narrowing his gaze he saw it was a flashlight, but its owner was nowhere to be seen.

At the window, Kitsune shot him a frustrated look and waved him closer. Oliver took a breath, scanned the windows on that side of the building-all but two of which were dark-and slipped up to the window with all the stealth an ordinary man could manage. From the darkened room Kitsune stared out at him, jade eyes preternaturally bright beneath the copper-red fur of her hood.

Again she beckoned, stepping back into the room. Oliver undid his belt and removed his sword and scabbard, handing them up to her. Then he took one final look around and grabbed hold of the window frame with both hands. With a single swift motion, he boosted himself up and slid the upper half of his body through the open portion of the window. He paused a moment, then reached down for the floor. When his fingers touched carpet it was simple for him to slide the rest of his body into the room.

On the Oriental rug he lay a moment, breath coming too fast, and thought about what he had just done. He’d just broken into the British ambassador’s residence. With a sword. On so many levels, this was a terrible idea. Yet he was past regret and past caution. All that remained was what was necessary.

Oliver sat up and looked at Kitsune. She had her back to him as she slid the window shut and the light from outside lit up a fringe of fur that traced the edges of her body. He caught his breath.

Crazy. No other word for it.

“How the hell did you do this?” he asked.

Part of the answer presented itself in the desk that had been moved aside and which she silently slid back into place. She had cleared the way for Oliver to enter. But he thought of the flashlight at the back of the building and had to wonder.

Kitsune put a finger to her lips, eyes alight with mischief.

“You didn’t…hurt anyone?”

She raised an eyebrow and then moved up beside him. “Of course I hurt people,” the fox-woman whispered in his ear, the scent of her musk strong. “Two guards, one at the rear of the house, so we won’t have any trouble getting out of here, and one guarding the stairs that lead up from these offices to the residential quarters. And I persuaded one of them to provide the code for the alarm, while he was still conscious. I’m a trickster. Such things are not a problem for me. You, on the other hand-we needed the alarm code.

“But I haven’t killed anyone, Oliver, and it would be nice to keep it that way. So, hush.”

He took his sword and scabbard back and slid it onto his belt, knowing it was sheer idiocy but refusing to even consider leaving the weapon behind. It represented more than mere protection. It was a calling card from David Koenig, and from Hunyadi as well. He could not afford to lose it.

Oliver took a long breath, steadying his nerves. “Do you really think this will work?”

Kitsune went to the door of the book-lined office, but paused with one hand on the knob and the other on the polished cherrywood of a bookshelf. She glanced back, brow creased in a deep frown.

“It feels a bit too late for that question. But it should, Oliver. Rules have power. Laws, too. Not just the power they have when they are enforced, but the power of belief. When people accept and respect the rules, that makes them real. According to the laws of your world, though entire nations separate us from the United Kingdom, we’re standing on British soil. The legend says the Dustman visits the bedchambers of British children. And here we are. The Borderkind are territorial. The Dustman will probably sense me here, and when he does, he will come.”

Oliver paused, listening to the hissing of the heat and the shifting tick and pop of the embassy. “And what do we do then? How do we know what kind of creature he is?”

Kitsune smiled. “That part is up to you.”

Without giving Oliver a moment to protest further, she opened the door and poked her head out. The hood hid her face and so he could only assume she made certain the hall was clear before slipping from the room, cloak swirling around her.

After a moment, he followed her, passing through high-ceilinged, ornate drawing rooms filled with portraits of emperors and kings.

Kitsune had been in the ambassador’s residence long minutes before she had found the best point of entry for Oliver. During that time it was obvious she had been upstairs already. The guard was nowhere to be seen, undoubtedly put aside in some corner room where no one would discover him until morning, or until he raised an alarm upon regaining consciousness.

The door at the top of the stairs was unlocked. Kitsune had been very busy indeed. It creaked softly upon opening and she glanced back and gestured him to silence a final time-needlessly-before entering. A light burned in the hall bathroom, perhaps to guide the way for nighttime wanderers, and another in a sitting room at the far end of the corridor. Kitsune ignored this, and so Oliver assumed it was empty.

The fox-woman led the way to a curving staircase that wound up to the third floor. Oliver followed, several of the stairs creaking lightly beneath his step. A carpet runner kept his tread otherwise silent and he was grateful. Nervously, he slid his hand into his pocket and rubbed the seed of the Harvest gods between his thumb and forefinger. It had grown into a habit for him.

From his entry into the embassy until the moment they stood in the open door of the nursery it had been perhaps four minutes, yet each passing second grew longer, and none so long as that in which Oliver first laid eyes upon the little girl who slept in the floral canopy bed. The ambassador’s daughter-he knew only the family’s last name, Hetherton-lay curled in the bed, a plush doll crushed against her, hair spread upon her pillow, burrowed deeply beneath her covers.

Christmas Eve. In a matter of hours, she would wake in search of her presents. His mind busily wove fictions about Santa Claus and his helpers in the event that their entrance roused her. Yet he prayed that did not become necessary.

All of this was so wrong, and nothing more so than sneaking into the room of a little girl-she couldn’t have been more than three-while she slept. The magic that he still felt in his heart at the thought of Christmas Eve only made it that much worse.

Oliver hesitated. The little girl’s breathing seemed so loud. Her expression was soft and innocent, her lips parted in total surrender to sleep.

To the Dustman.

Kitsune snatched up his fingers and drew him into the room. Oliver swallowed hard and stood staring down at the girl as Kit closed the door all but a few inches. Drawing her cloak around herself, Kitsune diminished, becoming a fox in the space between heartbeats. Each time she did this Oliver felt a second of vertigo, as though he might fall into the space left by the sudden absence where she had been.

The fox trotted to a place at the foot of the girl’s bed. Oliver frowned at the lack of any sound from her passing, not even the scratch of claws upon the wooden floor, but he ought not have been surprised. Kitsune rarely made a sound, her feet seeming barely to touch the ground. The fox stood at the foot of the bed and twitched her tail as though it was a beckoning finger. She nodded as if to urge him to join her, and so he did. If the girl did stir, it would be best not to be within her view. Careful not to let his sheathed sword bang against the wood, Oliver lay quietly on the floor, hidden.

Kitsune circled him twice like a dog searching for the perfect spot to lie before the fireplace. At last she settled in front of him, backing up, nuzzling into him as though she were indeed a pet. Oliver’s throat went dry. The strangeness of the moment enveloped him. In the silence of the embassy he lay there. Low and primal, the fox purred in a way that was not at all feline. This was the purr of a lover.

She shifted her head, copper fur brushing against his arm. The fox glanced at him with jade eyes.

There, against him, the magic transformed her again. Fox became woman so suddenly that he started, then held his breath waiting to see if the child had been disturbed. Kitsune gave him half a smile, one corner of her mouth lifting. Her hair hung down from within the hood, a cascade of black velvet. It touched his arm, just as her fur had. The heat from her body had reached him before, but now she felt like a furnace so close to him.

“What about the Dustman?” he whispered, barely vocalizing, afraid to wake the girl, afraid he wouldn’t be able to speak.

“If he could sense me, he will have. He’ll come.”

She edged nearer, her body up against him, every contour felt in sharp relief.

Kitsune reached up to trace his face.

“Oliver,” Kitsune said. “There is magic in you.”

She brought her mouth up to be kissed.

Oliver shivered with lust and fascination. “Kit.”

“Ssshhh,” she whispered.

He drew back to catch her gaze, and then shook his head. No. He could not do this. No man could have been there with Kitsune, in that moment, and not desired her. It would have been so easy to surrender to that. But he owed Julianna more than this.

Julianna had gone searching for him, and according to the news, she had vanished as well. He had done his best not to think about what might have become of her. With every part of him-from muscle to spirit to breath-he felt the longing for Julianna. All he wished for was to hold her in his arms and know that she was safe, not only for her benefit, but for his own selfish needs as well. No one could look inside him the way she could. When he felt despair or fear or doubt, no one could raise him up from that the way Julianna had always been able to.

Thus far, he had not allowed himself to consider the obvious possibility-that the Sandman had taken Julianna as well as Collette. He knew his sister was in the monster’s hands, and so before he could consider the next step, he had to save Collette. Until then, he could only hold Julianna in his heart like a talisman, to keep away despair. In his mind he could still see her there on the end of the jetty, all the way back in the summer before high school began. He kept that image clear in his thoughts, polished and shining.

“Kit, I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Or thought he did. He might not even have spoken the words aloud. Regardless, Kitsune understood well enough. Anger and betrayal flashed in her jade eyes. Her brow furrowed and she glanced away, though she did not move. Her body was still pressed tightly to his.

“I understand,” she whispered. “You must have time.”

But he shook his head. She should not speak. For something was stirring in the room. A sound like a breeze rustling leaves far away reached him and a soft wind blew across the floor, eddying and swirling. It was not the girl that stirred.

Grains of sand danced across the wood floor. It began as a light spray, but soon a fine covering lay upon the floorboards, a dust devil of sand. When it began to rise, to sculpt a form, Oliver went rigid. He knew this was not their enemy, not the creature who had taken Collette, but it was an aspect of the same being. How could they predict what was to come?

The breeze died and a bit of sand scattered upon the floor.

The Dustman had arrived.

On Christmas morning, Sara Halliwell woke with the dawn. Warm sunlight streamed in the windows of her father’s house. She had slept on the sofa in the living room, falling asleep there in front of the fire. Sometime during the long night she had awoken in the dark with only embers glowing in the fireplace and the gleam of Christmas lights outside from other houses in the neighborhood, and she’d been tempted to move to her father’s bed.

But Sara stayed on the sofa instead, too tired and unnerved to move, troubled by the suspicion that sleeping in her father’s bed would constitute some strange admission that she thought him gone forever.

When the light of Christmas morning woke her, she turned over, burrowed into the sofa, and tried to go back to sleep. Her eyes burned and her head felt stuffed with the cotton of exhaustion, but no matter how early it was-surely no later than seven-she could not force herself to go back to sleep. Her neck ached and her mouth felt dry.

How easy it was to remember other Christmas mornings, when she had awakened before dawn and run to her parents’bedroom, jumping up and down upon their mattress and demanding that they rise and escort her to the living room-to the tree and the many beautiful packages that lay beneath.

In those days there would be plastic candles burning with warm orange electric light. Those orange bulbs comforted her. But this morning the house was dark. No Christmas tree, no orange glow in the windows. When she forced herself to rise and look outside, the whole town lay blanketed in crisp new-fallen snow. The blue sky was perfectly clear and the sun shone brightly on the snow, giving the whole world a feeling of unreality, as though the town itself existed inside a snow globe.

Christmas had arrived.

But not in here, Sara thought. Not in this house.

Even with the glare off of the snow, the sunshine could only reach so far and could not dispel the gloom in this house, in her heart.

With no hope of retreating back into sleep, she went to the kitchen and moved slowly through the motions of preparing breakfast. She expected to find very little that was edible in the home of a fiftysomething, divorced police detective and received a pleasant surprise when she discovered four eggs that had not fossilized, as well as a package of bacon and a half-eaten slab of cheddar cheese that had yet to turn green.

Sara fixed a palatable omelette with those remnants. She wished for toast but refused to attempt the crusty bread, even with its edges cut off. Spots of bluish mold had begun to grow on it. One final bit of luck presented itself in an unopened container of cran-apple juice. Not her first choice, but it would do.

“Merry Christmas,” she said, her voice a bitter whisper, and she toasted the empty house with warm cran-apple juice in a Bugs Bunny glass that had been-in the once upon a time of her own childhood-a jelly jar. Why her father had kept it mystified her.

He never throws anything away, she thought, and did not allow herself to wish for another reason, a deeper meaning and connection.

In the kitchen, drowning in silence broken only by the drone of the refrigerator, she stared around the room at the peeling floral wallpaper and the faux-tile linoleum floor and the lazy Susan on the table that carried salt and pepper and napkins-who did he ever have to spin it for? The answer was obvious. No one. The lazy Susan never spun, because there was only ever one person at the table.

The morning slipped by in a fugue of waiting. Sara felt both a terrible restlessness, her every muscle a frightened animal about to bolt, and a crippling malaise of the spirit that turned her into a ghost in her father’s house. She washed her own dishes and the frying pan by hand, then went out into the living room and began to sort through the mail that one of the investigating officers had left in a neat pile on the coffee table. A single postcard-a wish-you-were-here sort of thing from one of his fellow officers with large-breasted girls in bikinis on the back and a Florida postmark on the front-lay atop days’ worth of junk mail, credit card offers, promotions, and bills. Amongst them were precisely five Christmas cards, two of which were from old friends her father hadn’t seen in so long that Sara would not have recognized them on the street. One was from Sheriff Norris or, rather, from his wife, Sophie. The fourth had come from Sara’s mother, and it stunned her-mainly because she had been unaware that her parents still exchanged Christmas cards.

Don’t be an idiot, she chided herself. Mom sent one. Doesn’t mean Dad did. No, Ted Halliwell had never been that kind of father. He loved her, she knew that, but there were never any grand gestures from old Ted. Not even small gestures.

The fifth card had come from Sara herself. She wondered if her father would ever return to open it. It lay on the coffee table like a smoking gun, evidence that this was no nightmare, that he was gone.

The restlessness in her grew worse and somehow so did the fatigue. Sara checked her cell phone several times to see if she had any messages, but there were none. Christmas day, and everyone was off celebrating with their families. She existed in their worlds only peripherally on this day, outside of everything they cared about. Those friends who had been calling since learning of her father’s disappearance would forget about her today, and Sara was surprised to find that she did not begrudge them this freedom. If they needed peace on this one day, out of all of them, who was she to intrude?

For nearly two hours she set about tidying her father’s house. She was far from the neatest or most meticulous girl. When she had girlfriends, she spent nearly all of her time in their beds instead of her own. The sort of girls she was attracted to were almost invariably scared off by her slobbishness before they even had time to fall in love with her, so Sara tried to hide it well.

Yet here she was, cleaning.

But what else could she do?

Shortly before noon she plunked herself down on the couch and blew a stray lock of unwashed hair out of her face. A shower, she thought. God, how nice would that be?

Sunken into the cushions, she found her gaze straying to the stereo system that had been inserted amongst books and plants on a tall shelf against one wall. Any distraction would do, and so she rose and went over and turned the radio on. A static hiss filled the room and Sara glanced stupidly at the speakers for a moment as though they were at fault, then began to turn the dial.

The first channel she could tune clearly played an old Sinatra Christmas song. A shudder went through her and she twisted the knob. The next station had Bruce Springsteen singing “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.” The one after that, a holiday song from Mariah Carey. Sara gave it one final chance and found the jazzy piano that Vince Guaraldi had written and recorded for “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

That last one brought a tear to her eye and made her bite her lip. She swore and punched the power button off, furious at her father for allowing her the bittersweet memories of her childhood and then tainting them with years of awkwardness and misunderstanding.

She stood leaning against the bookshelf, forehead resting against the smooth wood, and was in that very position when, a moment later, she heard the slow, purposeful crunch of tires rolling over snow. Sara glanced out the window to see a police car pull into the driveway and stop.

Jackson Norris climbed out of the driver’s seat.

Relief swept through her, but then she saw the expression on the sheriff’s face and she knew he had not come with good news. His features were as rigid as a mannequin’s, yet sympathetic.

Her blood ran cold as she went to the door and opened it, watching Jackson come up the front walk.

“Sara,” the sheriff said when he saw her there. “ ’Morning.”

Jackson Norris was a competent sheriff for the most part, but Sara had always wondered just how smart the man was. When he declined to wish her “Merry Christmas” or even “good morning,” though, Sara had all the proof she would ever need that the sheriff was no fool. Only a sadist or a fool would have wished her “Merry Christmas” this morning.

She nodded toward him, standing silhouetted in the doorway, blinking from the glare of the sun streaming across the perfectly blue sky. Somewhere else, probably nearby, people were enjoying the perfect Christmas weather. Children would be sledding in the new-fallen snow, fathers would be out shoveling.

As it should be on this day of joy.

“Jackson,” Sara said, nodding to the sheriff. “You have news?”

Down the street a couple walking their dog had stopped to chat with a neighbor who was behind the wheel of a minivan. They were far enough that she couldn’t have heard what was said, but she saw the way they pointed in her direction, expressions full of pity.

She resisted the urge to scream.

The sheriff shifted his weight from one foot to the other, glanced over his shoulder at the whisperers, and nodded toward the home’s interior.

“Maybe we ought to talk inside?”

“Oh,” she said, voice small. Sara shook her head. “I’m sorry. Yes, please come in. I’m just…not myself.”

She stood back to let him pass and closed the door behind him.

“ ’Course you’re not. Don’t worry about it,” the sheriff said. He scratched at the back of his head and glanced around as though expecting someone to be there.

Maybe he’s just not used to being here when Dad’s not home, Sara thought. Or perhaps it might have been that Jackson Norris wasn’t accustomed to making social calls at the Halliwell residence in recent years.

“Can I get you something?” she asked, slipping her hands into the soft cotton pockets in her pajama pants to keep them from fluttering about. “Water? Cran-apple juice? I’d offer you some coffee, but there’s nothing here I’d serve my worst enemy.”

The sheriff managed a wan smile. “No, thanks. I only stopped by for a minute. Wanted to check on you. I can imagine how hard this day is going to be, and I just wanted to remind you that you’re not alone. I’m here if you need me.”

Numb, Sara nodded. “I appreciate it.”

But Jackson Norris wasn’t in any hurry to leave. He frowned.

“What is it, Sheriff? You’ve got a lead on my father? What’s on your mind?”

Jackson shook his head. “No. Nothing on your dad. It could be nothing, honestly, but…well, I thought you should know we’ve had another Oliver Bascombe sighting. If Ted’s disappearance really is connected to the Bascombe case, finding this guy could give us some answers.”

She forced herself not to hope.

“Where is he? Where did they find him?”

The sheriff couldn’t meet her eyes then. “Austria. I know it sounds crazy. First London, then Scotland, now Austria. He’s not technically a suspect in anything, just a ‘person of interest.’ They put a watch on all of his credit cards and got a bunch of hits on his American Express. Figured they had him on the hook then, had all the credit companies freeze his cards. Now that they knew where he was, they didn’t want him going anywhere else. Next time he tried to use his credit card, it didn’t go so well. Bascombe took off, apparently. But the clerk picked out a photo of him, so it wasn’t just some thief trying to use his card. It was the real deal.

“They’re going to track him down, Sara. Get some answers.”

For several moments she breathed in and out through her teeth, a sick twisting in her stomach making her fear she might throw up. With difficulty she nodded and thanked the sheriff for coming, for caring.

“You’ll let me know when they’ve got him?”

“Of course. The very moment,” he assured her.

Then he was gone. Sara stood in the open door and watched him pull out of the driveway and roll off down the street, tires slushing on the road. She stayed there for half a minute, until at last she retreated into her father’s house once more.

Seeking solace, Sara went to the radio again and turned it on. A pleasant version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” was in progress, harmonies lush and lilting.

At the sofa, she sat and held between two fingers the unopened card she’d written to her father. For a time she carried it around, setting it on the mantel or the lamp stand or on top of the television, somewhere he was likely to discover it in his wanderings around the house.

As if it were that large…as if he had just become lost in his own home.

So much remained unsaid between them and she desperately wished for a chance to fix that.

The phone rang, startling her, and she stared at it as though it were some exotic beast. Who would be calling her father’s house on Christmas day that did not already know he had disappeared?

The answering machine picked up the call and she stared across the room, mesmerized by the sound of her own father’s voice in the greeting message.

“You’ve reached the home of Ted Halliwell. Please leave a message.”

Simple as that. Uncomplicated. That was her father. Hearing his voice like that lent her a comfort she would never have imagined. When the beep came, her mother’s voice took over, leaving a message meant for her, exhorting her to pick up, to call her if there was any news.

As though she would have done anything else.

For now, though, she let her mother talk, let the answering machine deal with her. Ignoring her mother, Sara went to the couch and lay back on it, listening to Christmas carols and wondering.

Waiting.

The Perytons swept down from the sky, eleven strong. Jezi-Baba floated down the steps of the pyramid as though gliding on the wind, but the Manticore was faster. It raced down those high stone stairs practically sliding on its belly, hissing death through rows of needle teeth.

The open plain around the pyramid had become a killing field.

Cheval Bayard stood, paralyzed with uncertainty. The giant treelike men that had herded them into this clearing stood at the edge of the woods but did not come any further. The bloodred birds that had soared in circles around the top of the pyramid had settled down on its peak.

“Cheval!”

Flinching, she glanced over to see Chorti lumbering up beside her. The wild man gnashed his metal teeth and bared iron claws. It steeled her resolve, having him there. They had fought side by side against marauders and mercenaries-killers all-first to protect their lives and avenge her husband, and then to safeguard Chorti’s family home. Always they had prevailed. Scarred and bloody, they had stood at each other’s side.

“Fight!” he growled.

She shifted, her bones cracking and stretching as she cast off her human mask and transformed into the kelpy, long horse’s legs unfolding beneath her.

At the pyramid, the Manticore leaped the last half-dozen steps and tore across the clearing toward them. Jezi-Baba cackled and began to sway even as the blue-skinned hag floated in the air…then she shimmered like a ghost and vanished.

The Borderkind tightened into a battle circle, all of them with their backs to the center. She heard Frost and Blue Jay shout, and a blast of fire shot into the air. Li, the Guardian of Fire, had begun the war.

A green blur dashed from the sky. The Grindylow tried to bat it away, but the Peryton sank its claws into him. Grin shouted in pain as the thing carried him up into the sky, blood spattering the ground below. The Grindylow swore loudly, roared in pain, and beat at the Hunter, but then Cheval lost sight of them amidst the angry swarming of the Perytons.

Leicester Grindylow was gone.

Another Peryton dipped from the sky. Cheval launched a kick at it. Her hoof glanced off of its body with a crack of bone, but the Peryton kept flying, baring its long black talons. Its antlers hung heavily upon its head and the sharp prongs lowered.

Chorti thundered across the ground and leaped, barreling into the Hunter as it flew toward her. The Peryton and the wild man rolled in the grass and dirt. The Atlantean beat him with its wings, trying to gouge him with its antlers. Chorti’s metal claws flashed in the sunlight as he struck out, razors scoring antlers and flesh. One of the Hunter’s antlers snapped off and the taut skin of its head tore, gashed to the bone.

Then it shook Chorti off and leaped upward, wings carrying it skyward again.

The defensive circle had shattered. All around Cheval the Borderkind were at war, the Perytons screaming unintelligibly, green-feathered wings blotting out the sun.

As one, Cheval and Chorti moved together, eyes turned to the sky.

“Well done, my friend,” Cheval said.

She spared a glance at him and saw the smile that split his savage features, revealing those shining metal fangs. Proud of himself, pleased by her praise.

The Manticore struck from behind, careening into Chorti and driving him down. The impact drew a cry of pain from the wild man. One of his arms lay trapped beneath him and with the other he flailed behind him, trying to dislodge the weight of the Manticore. But the thing’s ferocious speed was too much.

Half on top of Chorti, weight pressing him down, the Manticore opened its maw so that its nearly human face unhinged. Its jaws snapped open, impossibly wide, and it thrust downward. Rows of razor teeth closed upon the back of Chorti’s head like a sprung trap, and the Manticore bit off the rear of his skull, wrenching away skin, bone, and brain. The beast threw its head back and gulped it all down.

Cheval could only stare as it took a second taste, nesting its muzzle in the open back of her friend’s skull, sucking and gnawing at the viscera there.

All the will and strength went out of her. This simply could not be.

Then it turned on her.

Her flesh seemed to shift of its own accord. Cheval transformed again, taking on the human form that so captivated men and women alike. The river was so close. She could smell it, could practically feel the water enveloping her. If only she might reach it she knew that she would be safe, and some instinct told her that she might distract the Manticore with this change.

It did hesitate and sniff the air.

Cheval quivered in terror, about to bolt.

The Manticore smiled. Its teeth were stained with Chorti’s gore. At the sight, grief closed in around her, oppressive and terrible. In some way, having Chorti at her side had kept her from feeling the loss of her husband as keenly as she would have otherwise. Trusting him, having faith in him, she had never been alone.

Now he was gone.

Cowards run, she thought. Chorti would not have run.

With a harpy’s shriek she ran at the Manticore, about to change once again. In her mind’s eye she could see herself shifting forms, kicking out with her hooves, knocking the beast back and trampling it until its bones were powder.

A shadow blotted out the sun above them. Both Cheval and the Manticore glanced up to see green feathers plummeting toward them.

But the Peryton did not spread its wings, did not swoop in for the kill. It struck the ground with a sickening, wet thump, and only then did Cheval see the figure with which it had been struggling, the hugely muscled creature that had pinned the Peryton’s wings and ridden it down from the sky.

Leicester Grindylow rose from the Peryton’s corpse.

The Manticore turned toward Grin, baring its fangs, about to lunge. In the same breath, Cheval shifted, transforming, and lashed out with her hooves. She struck the Manticore in its side, knocking it sprawling on the ground. Quick to recover, it rose painfully, injured just enough to take away some of its ferocious speed.

The monster was not fast enough. It crouched to lunge at Cheval.

Grin jumped upon it from behind, wrapped his obscenely long, sleek arms around its neck, and twisted, tearing the Manticore’s head from its body.