ELEONORE rose from the table, where a small piece of the beast floated in a jar of formaldehyde. The rest of the body had begun to decompose, and she'd had to bury it when she could no longer stand the smell.
"Talk to me," she whispered. She had tried everything. She had called on Adele Moore, Lee Stearns, and Jeremiah. They looked through their books and diaries, and cast their spells, and burned their herbs. She even made the trip down to speak to Elsie, or what was left of her. Her efforts earned her nothing. The collective wisdom of East Laporte had failed.
Whatever the beast was, wherever it came from, it was evil. On that everyone agreed.
Rumors flew about. To the north, Malachai Radish and his family were gone from their trailer, their place torn apart and left open. Malachai was never the sharpest tool in the shed and his truck was missing, so it was possible he just lost his marbles and took off with his wife and his kids without telling anyone. But ElEonore doubted it. Adele heard rumors of the dogs vanishing into the night. And Dena Vaughn found her livestock slaughtered. Something killed the small herd of pygmy goats and painted the hill where they grazed with their entrails.
They were under attack. Dread sat in her chest like a hard clump of ice. Where would it end? What did the creatures want? She had no answers. The only weapon they had was Rose and her flash.
ElEonore rubbed her face. Rose . . . If it wasn't one thing, it was another. The child just couldn't catch a break.
Lord Camarine bothered her. The boy was a genuine article. Flawless manners. Flawless poise. He'd picked up on the faint trace of accent in her speech when she cursed him and replied in refined, aristocratic French. Not something one could easily falsify. And power. Such great power. When she had gone to visit Elsie, she'd seen the damage to the house. The roof was completely gone and most of the wall, too. Amy said he'd done it in one burst. Expected from the one of the Red Legionnaires, of course. They were the Adrianglian weapon of last resort. She'd heard stories about them when she was a little girl. They fought like demons. Some of them weren't even human. What in the world would an earl be doing in such a legion?
The boy looked like a born rake. He would smash Rose's heart to pieces.
ElEonore sighed. In times like these, she wished for Cletus. Not that the old rogue would be any help. He'd grin and tell her to leave the kids alone so they could have their fun. Cletus always reasoned with his heart while she always reasoned with her brain. But still she missed him so badly.
For a while she sat, lost in thought and memories. When she finally shrugged them off, the tea in her cup had gone cold. She touched the teapot. Cold, too. Oh well.
She would have to learn more about this Declan. And if Rose wasn't there to answer the questions, she would just have to ask Georgie.
That reminded her. She better check on the boy.
ElEonore crossed into the sitting room. The daybed lay empty.
"Georgie?" she called.
He didn't answer.
"Georgie?" ElEonore strode through the house, from the kitchen to the bedroom, through it to the other bedroom, past the bathroom, to the storage room. There he was, staring out the window.
She came up to him and petted the pale blond hair. "What are you doing here, all by yourself?"
She glanced through the window and froze. On the edge of the ward, dark beasts prowled. Two, four, six, more, more . . . They bunched together, crawling on one another, piling into a narrow pyramid. ElEonore caught her breath. The ward stones were strong and old, but the higher you reached, the weaker the magic barrier became.
The pyramid was now six beasts high. Eight. Nine. The top hound pressed against the ward and toppled into the yard. It fell inside the ward, flipping in the air to land on all fours, shook itself, and padded toward the house.
Georgie looked at her, his eyes huge and terrified. "They're coming."
JUST before the boundary, a narrow overgrown path veered right from the main road. A small red piece of a car door lay at the bend, and another rested a little down the path just in case Rose failed to get the message. She parked the truck and took her .22 out of her bag. She was so close to the boundary, that whoever left the trail of car parts could duck into the Broken when she got near. In the Broken her flash was useless, but her bullets would fly past the boundary just fine.
Rose locked the truck and headed down the trail. A few moments later the dense brush ended abruptly, and she found herself at the beginning of a pasture. A low hill rose in front of her, at the apex of which towered a massive oak. A few decades ago lightning had hit it, shearing one of the branches on the right side. The story went that some knucklehead ignored the rule about standing under the large isolated trees during a thunderstorm, and when the lightning cleaved off a branch, it fell and crushed his horse. Ever since, the giant of a tree became known as the Dead Horse Oak.
Today the tree seemed even more lopsided than usual. A large oblong thing hung from a thick branch on the right side, swaying slightly. Rose frowned. Now what?
The thing moaned.
She squinted and realized what it was: Emerson, wrapped in white plastic and hung upside down by the seat belts of his car.
He moaned again, weaker. Rose took the safety off her gun, took a deep breath, and advanced toward him, slowly, scanning the surroundings as she came. Her eyes strained to catch the quickest glimpse of danger. Her ears searched for the slightest sound. She heard nothing, only wind, crickets, and the distant small noises of the Wood.
Step. Another. Rose shivered. She was almost there.
Emerson's face was the color of a ripe plum. His eyes looked at her, unfocused, but failed to see.
"It's okay," she told him softly. "It's okay. I've got you."
Blood was probably rushing to his head. She had to get him down.
Emerson's lips moved. "Woo . . ."
"Yes?"
"Woo . . . Wolf."
"Wolf?"
"Wolf!" His voice gained a sudden intensity. "Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!"
Wolf? A wolf didn't wrap him in plastic and hang him off the tree. "Okay, okay," she murmured. "Calm down. I'll get you down."
She reached for the seat belts.
A black shaggy wolf emerged from behind the tree. Huge, as big as a calf, it stared at her with two large golden eyes, its glare cold and vicious, and smart. Too smart. This wasn't an ordinary wolf. This was a changeling.
Every hair on the back of her neck stood on its end. Rose became utterly still. There was no other changeling in East Laporte, except for her brother.
Below the eyes, the black muzzle gaped, revealing enormous ivory fangs.
Rose clutched Emerson, pulling him to herself, and flashed. The white arch of Ataman's defense swept around her, severing the seat belt rope. Emerson fell. Two hundred pounds of dead weight hit her, and she dropped him to the ground.
The wolf snarled. It was a horrible sound, fury and blood-thirst rolled into a savage promise.
"You can't have him," she said.
The wolf snapped. Its teeth rent the air a hair away from her flash.
Panic shot through her. The white arch split into three, each whip of white speeding so fast, they blended into a continuous white barrier around her and Emerson.
The wolf halted, puzzled.
They were trapped. She couldn't keep the three arches moving indefinitely, but to attack him with her flash, she'd have to drop her defense. The gold eyes told her that if she gave him a fraction of a second, he'd tear her to pieces.
Rose slowed down the arches. They became distinct once again.
The wolf panted at her, as if it were laughing, amused by her wimpy efforts to keep it from its prey.
She slowed the arches enough that for a fraction of a second, as each arch passed her, she was unprotected. As the next arch slid to the right, Rose snapped her gun up and fired. The gun spat bullets and thunder.
The wolf dashed to the left, bounded off the oak trunk, and sprinted away, into the Wood. Rose swallowed. At her feet, Emerson whimpered like a child.
"It's gone," she told him in a trembling voice. "It's gone and gone."
She couldn't carry Emerson off the hill. She couldn't even drag him. Her fingers shook. She pulled her cell phone out of the pocket of her jeans. It took her three tries to dial the right number.
"Eric Kaplan, Kaplan Insurance. How may I help you?" the voice on the other end said.
"This is Rose. I'm at Dead Horse Oak. I have your uncle, and I need you to come and get him."
"HURRY, child." MEmEre's voice urged Georgie up the ladder. He squirmed up the steps into the attic and scooted aside, offering her his hand. She climbed up, carrying one of Grandpa's guns. They pulled the ladder up and the trapdoor shut with a slap. MEmEre slid the latch closed.
It wouldn't help. The beasts would find them. They both knew it.
"It will be fine," MEmEre murmured. "It will be fine. We're going to cast a spell . . ."
"They eat magic, MEmEre," George said softly. "They like it."
She stopped. "That's what Rose said."
Porcelain shattered downstairs. Icy alarm shot through Georgie. He jerked. MEmEre's arms closed about him.
Another dish crashed. Something was moving through the kitchen.
"Be very silent, child," MEmEre whispered in his ear. "Quiet like a mouse."
Silence reigned. A long minute passed.
Around them the attic lay dim, empty except for a few boxes. A fine layer of dust covered the floor. Barely any light penetrated through the wooden slits of the closed shutter that guarded a single tiny window.
Georgie felt the hounds' magic. It hovered on the edge of his senses, waiting quietly and patiently, waiting for them to use their power so it could pounce.
The eerie sound of claws scratching at the walls nearly made Georgie jump. He clung to MEmEre. She bit her lip and hugged him closer.
He couldn't let the hounds get her. Not MEmEre.
But if he opened his mind, their magic would get him. Terror squirmed through Georgie.
Claws skittered on the roof. Something bumped downstairs, directly under them. The beasts knew where they hid. Georgie shivered. His teeth chattered, his fingers and toes gone ice-cold.
A hard punch struck the boards to the left. The scratching grew louder. The beasts dug through the roof, trying to break in.
He couldn't let them get MEmEre.
Georgie fought against his fear and forced it down. He leaned back in MEmEre's arms. It was time to find lost things.
He quested outward, searching the vast darkness before him with his mind's eye. The hounds' magic pounced on him in a smothering wave, like a flood of slime armed with a thousand mouths. Georgie choked. Something inside him whimpered. The mouths bit into him with tiny sharp teeth, winding about his legs, spiraling up his body. His mind burned with pain. He quested harder, desperate to be heard before the foul magic drowned him completely. Somewhere impossibly far away, MEmEre called his name. Her voice was full of tears.
He reached out to Rose, but she was too far away. He couldn't get to her. He had to find someone else.
He searched, his mind staggering under the pressure, until he finally saw it, a bright white star shining in the darkness. With the last of his strength, he touched it.
The beastly magic gaped below him, like the mouth of a horrible creature, and gulped him whole.
JACK sat atop the kitchen island and watched Declan search the fridge with a plate in hand. His stomach growled. They'd spent the whole morning in the Wood tracking down the beasts. Declan called them hounds. They couldn't be killed with a gun, he'd said. The bullets went right through them. The only way to kill them was to tear or cut them apart or to fry them with magic.
He'd tracked the scents for hours, but most of them led out of the Wood, not to it. Declan followed him everywhere. Declan was fun in the Wood, Jack decided. He was quiet and he didn't do stupid things. But now they were both tired and hungry. He thought Rose would be home with lunch, but she wasn't here. Instead he and Declan had to raid the fridge.
"It seems we have enough food for a feast. We can even make our own Edger burgers - " Declan dropped the plate. It crashed to the floor with a thud. Jack jumped at the sound.
"Stay here!" Declan barked, his face terrible. "Don't follow me, don't leave the house! Do you understand?"
Jack nodded.
"I'm going to get your brother. Do not leave!"