“He abandoned us, didn’t he?” I asked shrilly.
Aidan yanked the door open, and we stumbled outside the office. “Yep.”
I tried to find a spot on the floor that wasn’t covered by the darkness or the black tendrils. It wasn’t easy. There was none. “I thought Fae were supposed to enjoy hunting these things.”
Aidan answered with a bark of a laugh, grabbed my arm, and began running.
Fae, not so cool after all.
A growl bounced off the walls, and the inky darkness underneath us began to stick to the soles of my sneakers.
Muttering another curse, Aidan spun to face the darkest part of the corridor and shoved me behind him.
“We can’t outrun it. We’ll have to fight it,” he said stoically.
“How?” I asked, not so stoically.
“I’ll deal with it.”
“I’ll help!”
“How?” he asked, adding a good measure of mocking.
“Don’t be a jerk,” I told him. “Just tell me what to do.”
My reasonable tone must’ve surprised him, because he gave me a short, measuring glance over his shoulder. “Stay behind me, close enough that the binding doesn’t impede my movements. Always keep me between yourself and the hound.”
“Okay.” I could do that. Maybe. I realized my fingers were shaking and curled my hands into tight fists. I could do this, I told myself. Field experience. Collaborating with a member of the Institute. Things that would look excellent on my resume if we survived this. “How are you going to fight it?”
Aidan brought out his tiny folded blade. I let out a nervous giggle—it looked so incongruous in his big hand.
“Silence,” he said.
I clamped a hand over my mouth. My fingers were like ice. My whole body felt cold, my skin clammy. The scratch of claws against the floor bristled every hair on my body. The growl grew into a deafening rumble.
The hound leaped out of the darkness, straight at us. No warning, no slow stalking. It was pissed and wanted its meal.
Aidan and I dove out of the way. With an economy of movement startling for someone so solid, he kicked the hound and sent it toward the opposite wall. The hound rolled and lost no time in launching itself at us again.
Aidan took the full force, dodging the furious clamping of the hound’s jaws, and going down from the force of it. I moved back but not fast enough. One of the hound’s lashing legs struck me, and I stumbled to the floor. I scrambled away. Aidan grunted, and the hound’s furious growl whipped my ears. I moved faster.
And came up against an invisible wall. I threw myself back, afraid I had messed up Aidan’s chances, and forced myself to my feet. Aidan and the hound were still duking it out on the floor, with Aidan mostly simply surviving not being chomped on or being torn to shreds. His jacket and jeans already sported a few tears.
I stared in despair. I had never felt so useless in my life. Not when my mom waved off the monthly money I insisted on giving her the time I couldn’t land a job for a few weeks. Not when her best friend had broken her heart. Not even that morning after I got the seventh rejection.
Aidan and the hound rolled away. I followed. Aidan would soon tire, and then he’d be Taco Tuesdays. Not good at all. Bracing myself, I went to kick the beast’s side, but Aidan and the hound rolled again, tripping me. I went down, barely avoiding Aidan’s legs but earning a kick from the hound on my thigh. Pain shot up my leg, blinding me for a second. Gasping, I moved out of reach of the melee, and my hand bumped something—a phone. Aidan must’ve lost it during the fight. I held on to it with trembling fingers and watched Aidan get a leg between him and the beast and kick the hound away.
The hound rolled to its feet, and so did Aidan, if a bit slower. His breathing was ragged, sweat dampened his dark hair to his head, and his hands clenched the air. He had lost the small knife, but I couldn’t look for it because I was unable to tear my gaze from the hound. It growled again, deeper, drilling the sound all the way into my bones.
It took a step forward. Aidan moved to stand in front of me. I stood and backed some to give him space. Aidan’s knees were bent, his back curved, ready to take the next hit.
The hound moved sideways, studying his opponent. Aidan moved along with it, keeping the distance. I followed, keeping him between us, as he had asked me to. It would be no good if the hound went for me—I had no chance against it. I wouldn’t even last long enough to be a distraction for Aidan to do something. What we needed was a weapon.
I hoped whoever had made the Eye had been in a magnanimous mood.
I shoved my hand inside my neckline and fished for the ball.
The hound charged without warning.
Aidan went right; I went left. The hound flew by us then halted, unaffected by physics, and spun around, its attention snapping to me. Smart creature.
But by then I had the Eye in my hand. I concentrated on its weight, imagined the warmth of my Fae power seeping through my fingers, and channeled it into the ball. I felt the answering humming in the artifact, the click somewhere in my chest, the sudden rush of exhilaration and adrenaline I felt whenever anything Fae remotely reacted to my touch. The hound bared its teeth. The veins in the Eye began to turn a bright green.
“No,” Aidan barked, slamming my hand and sending the ball flying. I fumbled after it, managing to grab it before it fell to the floor. “You don’t know what it does.”
“Can’t be worse than dying,” I snapped.
“It could be,” he answered grimly. “Stay out of this.” He backed his words by taking a fistful of my sweatshirt and holding me away from him. He had something in his left hand. At first, I thought it was the tiny knife after all, but then I saw it was wider and longer, like a piece of thick bone. Like the hilt of a weapon. It began to glow, and my jaw dropped.
Golden light escaped between Aidan’s fingers, weaving threads of bright gold and pure white along the grip and then stretching away, coalescing into an elegant, long sword. Fae runes shimmered along the blade, there a second, sunk into the weapon the next. I had seen illustrations, a couple of replicas, even an old hilt in Kane’s shop once, but they had nothing on the real thing. A Fae sword, just the right length for Aidan’s arm, and wickedly sharp. Bony white in Aidan’s grip—all magical Fae sword hilts were made from Fae creatures’ bones—with a slightly curving blade of crystal-like material. Fae swords were made to slash, to bleed, to cut their enemies into a million bits.
And they always claimed a payment for their use. For some, it only took a slash to take something away, others wouldn’t unless they touched flesh. I looked at Aidan with sudden concern. How big was the payment that he hadn’t used it until now? A heavy knot of gratitude formed in my chest at the realization that he’d rather use his weapon than allow me to use the eyeball without knowing what it would take from me.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
The hound didn’t like the sight of the weapon. It let out a small whine and shuffled on its claws.
“Never do that again,” he warned, using his grip on my sweatshirt to give me a good shake. “Never be that stupid.”
My gratitude waned a little.
The hound attacked.
I found myself shoved once again. Free of me, Aidan turned and swung the sword in an upward arc.
It slashed the Fae beast across one of its front legs. A spatter of black droplets hit the ceiling, barely visible over the spill of darkness. It only made the hound madder. It lurched again, snapping its teeth and forcing Aidan a step back, then retreated smartly when Aidan swung forward. Back and forth they went, the hound staying right out of reach and not trying to take a real bite.
It was playing with Aidan, trying to tire him into exhaustion. Its muscles gleamed under the dim lights, the wound doing nothing to slow its movements. In my hand, the Eye’s veins still shone a bright green, and I sensed the magic coiled inside, ready to be released.
“Get ready,” I told Aidan in a low voice as he moved back again and nearly crashed into me. He didn’t answer. Only so many times you could yell at someone for using unknown Fae magic, I supposed. Good thing that wasn’t my plan.
The next time the hound’s hind legs bunched to propel him into another fake bite, I popped from behind Aidan and threw the Fae eyeball. Nailed the hound right on its nose.
Damn right.
The hound yelped and recoiled. Aidan blurred, and his sword crossed the hound’s side in a flash of white. He pressed his advantage, slashing again. I hurried along with him. The hound whined and attempted to retreat, but Aidan was there, aiming for its neck. Black blood spattered the floor and Aidan’s boots and jeans in a tiny storm of thuds. Wet, gargling pants left the hound as its legs gave out and it fell heavily on its side. I turned away, too sick to my stomach to see the rest, and busied myself looking for the eyeball.
It had rolled to a stop a couple of steps away. My hands shook as I picked it up and cleaned it with my sweatshirt. It left black smears on the green fabric. Bile rose, leaving a burning path through my throat. From now on, I’d definitely stick to simply finding artifacts then making a run for it. Nothing glamorous about this bit of the business.
Almost in a daze, I realized the lights were returning to full power, the walls gone back to their cheery muted gray. A glance down told me the floor was also free of darkness and black ivy.
“Well, that’s that,” Aidan said in a grim tone.
Afraid of what I would find, I made myself turn to look at him. He was scowling at the floor, hands on his hips, the sword gone, the handle hidden in one of his pockets. The corridor was pristine. No pool of black blood, no spatter, no hound remains.
“So it’s true they disappear after death?” I asked in a whisper. I looked at my sweatshirt. The black smear was still there. So was the spatter on Aidan’s clothes.
Aidan grunted. “It didn’t die. It returned to Fae land.”
That made me feel somewhat better, but also a lot more alarmed. My head snapped side to side as I checked both ends of the corridor. “Is it going to come back again?”
“Probably.”
“What the—”
“But not for a long while.” And I’ll swear to my dying breath Aidan let out a low, malevolent ehehehe before continuing. “It’ll need a long time to heal itself, even in Fae land.” He turned on his heels and stalked away. “Nice throw.”
Then he cursed loudly as he stumbled into the invisible wall of the binding—I was too shocked by the compliment to move along with him.
He indicated the corridor ahead of him with a curt flick of his hand. “Can we, please?”
Ah, much better. I closed the distance separating us and patted his arm. “You scared me. I thought you got soft on me there for a moment.”
Aidan gave me a bland look. “Believe me, you’ll never find me soft when the occasion requires it.”
Yeah, I’d walked into that one.