“I thought Park said they were closer to the river,” Zola said.
I glanced up and one of the pale silver dots drifted back down toward us, until I could make out Aideen’s form.
“That’s true,” Aideen said. “But that bridge is steel and iron. Unless they’re very powerful, or very stupid, I suspect they will be quite predictable.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean they’ll still be in the area, if they haven’t already retreated to Faerie. No mere soldier will risk contact with a bridge that deadly.”
Aideen flexed her wings and rose into the air, rejoining Foster far above us.
“Smart,” Zola said. “We head for the bridge, follow it to the river, and search the grid.”
I sighed and kicked a stone across the parking lot. It wasn’t a long walk to the bridge, but Zola’s plan meant we were going to be out there for a while, unless something decided to ambush us. I frowned at the thought. “So, you think we’ll get ambushed?”
Zola smiled knowingly. “Bored already, boy?”
I chuckled and adjusted the pepperbox holstered under my arm.
The asphalt of the parking lot gave way to an unruly section of long grass and scrub brush. We reached the bridge a short time later and turned right, heading east toward the river. I remembered running Lewis down not far from here when Philip had kidnapped Zola. It seemed like yesterday, but it had been years. Memory felt heavy, and it took me a moment to realize that the weight wasn’t from the memory at all. The dead were close. Very close.
Gravel and dirt made it hard to walk silently, but the roar of the nearby freeway helped mask any sound we would make. What concerned me was that it would also mask the sound of any attack that might be heading our way.
I glanced up but saw no movement. “You see them?”
Zola nodded. “To the south a bit. Ah believe they’re behind this junkyard, or whatever it is.”
Old rusted-out cars flanked the railroad tracks. The lot looked like it might be a body shop, but some of those cars had been there for decades. We passed the junkyard and made our way down the gradual decline that ended at a line of trees just before the river bank. Zola sighed and glanced back the way we had come. She stared at the river for a short time, and then turned to the south.
“This will take all night,” she said. “You take one side of the building, boy. Ah will take the other.”
“I don’t like splitting up,” I said.
“Neither of us are alone, boy. Foster and Aideen are with us.”
Zola vanished between two buildings on the junkyard property. I waited for a short time before moving, and then when no one screamed, I started forward.
I neared the riverbank first as the trees thinned, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever water witch had almost killed Casper. The witch who had killed Casper’s teammates. The more I thought about running into an undine on that bank, the more I thought it might be a terrible idea. I didn’t have one of the stone daggers that could kill a water witch. I didn’t even have an arrowhead. Foster and Aideen might, but I’d be helpless outside of my shield if that river surged forward and struck out at me. That was enough to send me wandering off away from the water, down a path on the opposite side of the junkyard.
A shadow moved in the distance, and my heart leaped, calming only when I realized it was Zola’s hooded form. Our paths crossed time and again as we walked the grid across the junkyard, and eventually moved past it.
The attack site was plain to see once we found it. The earth was disturbed, but that was the least obvious sign. The nearby tree line was scorched—parts of it ash and others charred beyond recognition. The sight gave me pause because it certainly looked like the fire had been spherical, and I remembered that searing orb of death Foster had once conjured.
I raised my voice. “Zola. Here.”
She rounded the nearby building, which I suspected was the office for the salvage yard. She paused for a moment, taking in the sight of the torched copse of trees standing between us.
“Ah did not expect it to be this obvious,” Zola said. “This is not the subtle work of the Fae.”
“You think?” I said, my voice flat.
Foster glided into my line of sight for a moment before settling on my shoulder. “Not subtle?” His eyes rolled from the trunk of the tree off into the scorched canopy. “Someone wanted whoever found this to know it was Fae.” Foster cursed. “They want people to think this was me. And if people think I did this, they’ll think it was one of Nixie’s witches that stabbed the soldiers. That they used the poison blades.”
“And imagine how convincing it will be with your armor strewn across the battlefield,” a voice screamed from our right.
We all turned toward it, and that’s when the attack came from the woods behind us.
For a split second, I thought Stump had come to help us. But the face of the Green Man was twisted in rage, and he was far taller than Stump. The fist I thought might be angling for our attacker was actually coming for me.
I raised my arms and shouted, “Impadda! ” The shield burst into brilliant life a second before the Green Man’s attack connected and a shower of sparks flew into the air. I stumbled backward, barely staying on my feet as the Green Man struck again.
I didn’t think shooting him with the pepperbox would do any good. Maybe it might if I channeled fire through the gun, but I knew how that could end up. That had been what had sent Leviticus into the darkness during the Civil War. Instead, I reached out to the gravemakers, called the dead to me, and raised the Fist of Anubis. My shield flickered and died as my concentration waned before the protective light snapped out of existence. The nauseating rusted flesh surging out of the earth around me replaced the glow of the shield.
The Green Man was already committed to his attack. There was no way for him to slow. No way for him to avoid the attack. The Fist connected with a satisfying crunch, snapping one of the larger branches from his chest and sending a cascade of leaves and debris off into the woods behind him. He fell to one knee while I let the Fist expand, the Hand of Anubis wrapping around the Green Man’s head and pulling him forward, smashing his face into the earth.
Foster’s bellow drew my attention away from my foe. The Green Man rolled to the side, but he did not attack again.
A sword streaked in blood glistened from the back of Foster’s armor, piercing him. To land the strike, Foster’s opponent had had to open his guard. Foster didn’t miss his chance. He lunged forward, impaling the Fae knight much as the fairy had impaled Foster in turn. Only, when Foster struck, his sword cleaved through his opponent’s cuirass and sank into the tree behind him. The blade pinned the knight in place. The fairy struggled, but could not free himself.
I looked around for Zola but couldn’t find her. “You good, Foster?”
“Yes,” he snarled, his dagger sinking into the other fairy’s shoulder.
I ran past Foster and rounded the corner of the short building. Aideen’s sword clanged off the helmet of a dark-touched vampire. Zola was there too, crouched on the ground, a scorched ruin beneath her left hand. I don’t know what, or who, it had been, but Zola had made sure they were no longer a threat.
Aideen closed on the dark-touched vampire and feinted left. It gave me enough time to line up a shot with the pepperbox. I took it, the boom thundering across the battlefield. It didn’t do any real damage to the vampire, but it caused the creature to pause and look, and that was the last thing it ever did. Aideen slid her sword through the thing’s eye socket. It stiffened, and then fell to the ground.
“Are you hurt?” Zola asked.
Aideen shook her head. “No, where’s Foster?”
“He has the fairy knight pinned to a tree,” I said.
“Alive?” Aideen asked.
I shrugged. “Probably not for long.”
Aideen hurried past me. Zola and I followed.
“Who sent you?” Foster growled.
The fairy tried to speak, but Foster cracked the side of his face with an elbow. “If you try to use that incantation again,” Foster said, “I’ll tear you into 1,000 pieces before you burn to death.”
“The Green Man is awake,” Aideen said. “I thought you would have killed him.”
“I may have gotten a little distracted,” I said, glancing at the prone form that was struggling to rise.
“This is good,” Aideen said. “We have no need of the knight.”
“Then I shall remind him of the true power of the Demon Sword,” Foster snarled.
Evening turned to a bloody sunset as Foster wrapped his hands around the knight’s neck. A hellish incantation of fire whirled to life. The grass and the earth burned away as the roaring cyclone of flame and rage scoured the knight from the earth.