As it cupped its ears and kicked at the felled tree, Siobhan saw her opening. “Here goes nothing.” She held the bow and without a moment of hesitation let an arrow fly. She was already loading a second arrow when the first struck home, lodging itself in the monster’s exposed neck. It bellowed and jerked its head towards her, black eyes searching the empty space for its attacker. “You might want to get your gun ready,” Siobhan said. “Shit, as you so politely phrased it, is about to hit the fan.”
The second arrow sank into the creature’s skull, a direct shot through the ear. Shane sucked in a breath, and they both watched, expecting the beast to collapse. Instead it ripped the arrow out and hurled it into the air where it bounced as lightly as a toothpick off a still-standing tree.
The fae might have been distracted by sensory overload, but it wasn’t physically weakened.
Siobhan was loading another arrow and Shane readying his machine gun when the monster spotted their location. Though they hadn’t seen any new bodies, it must have eaten something because it was towering over twenty-five feet with forearms almost as big as Shane and legs so thick a lumberjack wouldn’t be able to hack them down.
“We’re supposed to kill this thing?” Shane asked.
“Ideally we just need to bring it down. If we can get it to stay in one place long enough, I can banish it back alive.”
The beast was charging for them, its steps so wide it would be on them in seconds.
“Hey, Red?”
“Yeah?” Siobhan’s bow hand was steady, her sights trained on the creature’s eyes.
“For what it’s worth…”
She glanced at him, a quick shift of her gaze, and he was smiling his dopey, charming grin at her. How the idiot could still seem so adorable an instant before certain death was beyond comprehension. But she sort of wanted to keep him around awhile longer.
“I know,” she replied. “Me too.”
She released the arrow while still looking at Shane, turning her attention back to the monster with enough time to see the metal arrowhead lodge deep into its eye. The fae took a wild, blind swing in their direction, and Shane tackled Siobhan to the ground a second before the top halves of the trees surrounding them were broken off like dry kindling.
There was no more time to say anything. He dragged her to her feet, and they ran through the tree line that skirted the clearing. The fae continued to whack at the earth and trees in an attempt to hit them, but with one eye out of service it kept striking a moment too late or a few feet off target.
Siobhan knew what she had to do.
“I need you to distract it,” she commanded.
Shane pulled her over a fallen tree and said nothing, so she wasn’t sure if he’d heard her. Looking beside her, she expected him to be running at her heels, but he wasn’t. Instead he slowed his pace, pushed her farther ahead of him and ran into the clearing spraying bullets at the creature’s knees. She was fairly certain he was singing something as well, but the sound of his voice was lost beneath the bellowing of their target as it flailed.
He’d definitely heard her, because there was no way on earth the creature would be focused anywhere else but on the tiny, irritatingly loud man pelting it with automatic-weapon fire.
Shane ran, dodging the collapsed trees as best he could but stumbling where he failed to see branches in the darkness. The fae was gaining ground, giving Siobhan a scant amount of time to do what she needed to. She followed the path around the outside of the clearing while tracking Shane and the monster, trying to judge where they’d be a few seconds before they got there.
She spotted a tree several yards ahead and picked up her pace, making a break across the clearing to reach it. Clambering up the low-hanging branches, she steadied herself on one of the arms and pivoted, taking aim at the fae’s remaining good eye. Her previous arrow was still lodged deep in its head, and her next target was a wildly blinking black orb.
She pulled back to fire, and the branch she was perched on snapped.
Siobhan scrambled to hold on to the tree before hitting the ground, latching her legs around the nearest limb, her upper body still moving until her head smacked hard against the trunk. Now she was dangling upside down, supported only by her thighs’ viselike hold on the tree with her back against the trunk. Her precarious situation wasn’t going to stop the monster from getting to Shane, and she didn’t have time to reposition herself.
Without righting herself, she reloaded the arrow that was still clutched in her hand and took aim, unleashing the projectile from her inverted vantage point. Only once she’d fired did she pull herself up onto the limb her legs had been clinging to.
The fae was shrieking when Siobhan jumped from the tree and landed on the edge of the clearing. Shane—whose machine gun must have run out of bullets—was blowing shotgun pellets into the blood-smeared legs of the creature. Now blind in both eyes, the monster was staggering.
“To your left,” Siobhan screamed, seeing the huge felled tree next to Shane.
He bellowed at the fae and vaulted across the trunk. The fae whipped its hands in front of it, giant clawed fingers cutting through the air, narrowly missing Shane’s legs as he got out of the way. The beast continued to move towards Shane, but as Siobhan had hoped, it didn’t see the log and stumbled. Briefly it looked as though it might regain its footing, but with four legs tripping at once, the imbalance proved to be too much, and it was impossible for the fae to stay standing.
Shane was almost crushed beneath the falling body but managed to sidestep in time and only took a hard smack to the ribs from the fae’s knuckles as it attempted to brace its fall.
They still had to move fast. Siobhan didn’t know how long it would be befor
e the fae recuperated, and she wanted it to be banished before that happened. Under normal circumstances she would cut out the thing’s heart, but she knew trying to saw the organ out would take more time than she had. She’d have to make due with the plain old regular blood.
Her ceremonial knife was out, and in the presence of fae blood was already glowing brightly and creating artificial daylight within the clearing.