45. Ivy
Ivy
The full moon hangs high in the sky. I stand at the island's highest hill and can see everything. The main town square with its shops and flame-powered lampposts. My cottage on the bluff. Laz's, Dolly's, and Layla's houses.
A campfire burns on a distant beach with what looks like the centaur tribe gathered around it.
They seem to be dancing, though it's hard to tell from this height.
The lighthouse beam swings across the water and the island, and as it cuts through the woods, the black outlines of figures catch my eye.
"Conall." I turn to where he's speaking with Laz. He breaks away and comes to me immediately.
"What is it, mate?" he asks, sliding his arms around me.
The endearment sinks deep like a sip of hot tea.
The warmth of his broad chest at my back seeps into my skin, easing my already frayed nerves.
Laz stays a few paces back, book open in his hands, moonlight glinting off his spectacles as he finds the passage he needs.
Amy, Dolly, Ada, Layla, and Nick have come for moral support.
"In the trees. I thought I saw figures." Laz looks up and casts a spell, a drop of blood, and a memorized incantation, sending a beam of light sweeping between the trunks just beyond the clearing.
"Nothing," Laz says, and the dismissal grates. Conall, however, keeps his eyes on the tree line, scanning each side as if the figures might have shifted.
He slips his right hand into mine and squeezes, then presses his lips to my forehead, warm against the cool night air.
"I'll keep a close watch," he promises, taking my concern seriously. It gives me room to breathe every time, being reminded that I'm never dismissed by him.
Laz comes to me holding a curved knife with ancient runes carved into the hilt and blade.
"As we discussed, I'll need to slice your palm open, and you'll bleed onto the top of the hill while reading this.
" He points to the spell to reset the wards exactly as they were before my aunt's meddling.
It's written in black ink. On the page directly beside it is the spell to complete what my aunt started and finish reforming the wards the way she believed they should be.
Nick Claw's words come back to me. About the monsters who couldn't come, the attack. About the children.
Laz's words pile on top. About the dangers of letting in unknown monsters. About the incident that made them tighten the wards. About safety.
Both points ring sharp and true.
I hold out one hand for Laz while the other grasps firmly to Conall's.
Conall holds my gaze until the sharp sting of the blade makes me wince.
Then he takes my chin between his clawed fingers and tilts my face up so he can brush his lips across mine.
It's warm and comforting, sending heat through my center and straight between my legs.
My blood begins to drip. As it does, pulses of light stream out in every direction within the island.
They're white now, but Laz told me this would happen.
Once they fully turn red, I'm to start the incantation.
Laz and Conall are supposed to stay with me.
As hulking figures emerge from the trees, from the ground, and fly toward us from the sky, I can tell that it won't be possible.
"Fuck," Amy whispers.
"I thought you cast a protection charm?" Conall growls at Laz, whose brow is furrowed, frown pulled down as he flips through the pages of his spellbook.
"I did,” he says. “The blood triggering the start of a new spell must have canceled it out."
Popping and snapping ring through the air as Conall's hand twists in mine, becoming larger and furrier and knife-like claws elongating. His snout comes down to press against my forehead without bumping my outstretched hand, still bleeding onto the grass.
Stay, his hound's voice echoes through my mind. I nod.
"Not like I have a choice," I say, gesturing to my bleeding hand.
He bounds toward the nearest beast. It's hunched and hairy with glowing red eyes.
Conall grabs it by the middle between his jaws, shakes it, and crunches down.
The thing falls limp. But there are far too many others.
Walking skeletons, oversized cyclopes, pale women floating above the ground with ever-screaming jaws.
Huge snakes and dead-looking horses clopping toward us at an uneven gait.
And those are just the things close enough to see.
More appear with tiny light-filled pops around the edges of the clearing.
"What is happening?" Amy picks up a stick and backs up to where I'm standing, brandishing it like a baseball bat.
Laz grits his teeth. "Completing the spell must temporarily take the wards all the way down until we reset them the way we want. Fuck!"
"How did you not know that?" Ada hisses.
Laz snaps the book shut. "I am working with half-information from books I can only half-read. The fact that I even found the right spell is a shot in the dark."
That last part stirs something in me.
"How did you find it?" I ask, still holding my hand out, still bleeding, still watching Conall fight a skeleton and a two-headed bear at once.
Laz answers distractedly, still searching his book. "There was this light. I thought I might have, by accident, conjured a seeking charm that actually worked. I wasn't sure."
A light. Like the one that had led me to the cottage basement and my aunt's journal.
A wolf shifter with dark red hair and coal-black eyes pounces toward me before Laz says something strange in Latin, and a small bubble of protection springs up, blocking it off. It smashes against the bubble, and the whole thing ripples. Laz looks worried, and I know it won't hold. The creatures
Sure enough, two large swipes of its claws and the bubble pops like soap.
A scream tears through the air, high and piercing enough to hurt my eardrums. Dolly stands a few feet off, completely on her own.
None of the creatures are anywhere near her yet, but with that sound, she's certainly drawn their attention.
The red wolf turns from me, lowers its head, eyes fixed on Dolly, rivulets of drool hitting the ground.
Just as it's about to pounce, a streak of black passes Dolly and collides with the wolf shifter with such force that it's knocked clean off its feet.
There's a scuffle in the dirt before they right themselves.
But the thing that attacked is ready, and its mouth clamps around the red wolf shifter, teeth driving down, neck snapping. It goes limp.
The black thing turns, and I freeze, heart thundering, lungs seizing.
Its body is tall and stretched, skin so tight it shows every bone.
Twisted deer antlers protrude from its head.
Too-long limbs make its proportions morbid in the moonlight.
Its sunken eyes stare past me. I turn and find it's looking at Dolly.
Her gaze is wide but shining with trust.
"Protect my friend, Puppy," she says quietly.
I turn back. That is not a puppy, but I'm not questioning Dolly's logic.
Puppy turns and slices apart a snake the size of my old car before it can get any closer to me.
It turns back, overlong fingers hooking around the skirt of Dolly's pink dress to pull her forward.
He squishes Dolly next to me. She smells of bubble gum and cherry blossoms. One of his long, knife-like fingers punctures the ground in front of my blood patch and then pulls, tracing a circle around us.
He points to Dolly and then to the circle. His meaning is clear. Stay. She nods.
Puppy returns to the fray, joining Conall as he fights a big humanoid that I can only assume is a cyclops from its single eye.
Laz is lobbing small lightning bolts. Conall and Puppy are fighting viciously.
Amy's hitting the smaller things that get through with her tree branch, mostly little men as tall as my forearm with red caps and sharp teeth, and angry-looking spindly pixies with black wings.
Conall backs up and stands just in front of me, back muscles rippling. Puppy comes back after killing a few more feral monsters. I'm still bleeding onto the ground. The thin ribbons of light are pink, but Laz showed me the color it should be. As red as my blood.
Dolly has an arm around my shoulder. "You're doing great," she murmurs, and I catch her pink eyes, wide and sincere.
Conall and Puppy look back at us. Conall's hound eyes drag over me, clearly distressed at the blood pooling at my feet.
I'm starting to feel dizzy, the edges of my vision blurring.
Puppy looks to Dolly, an expression crossing its gaunt face.
It could be called possessive, but I have the distinct feeling it's more like obsessive.
More monsters come, and both are pulled back into the fight.
Ada is flying, those beautiful translucent wings flapping fast as she lobs balls of what look like sparkles at oversized mutant bats. But it must be far more than sparkles because they scream and their skin bubbles.
Layla is reading.
"What the fuck, Layla?" Amy calls out as her bat sweeps away a particularly angry-looking sprite.
Layla sits cross-legged on the ground. Her cat eyes slice across the page in front of her as she mouths the words.
Whether she's reading them aloud is anyone's guess.
The growling, hissing, barking, and screaming from the fights has risen to such a pitch that I couldn't hear her either way.
She finishes and raises one delicate hand to the sky.
A beam of light shoots from the book straight up like a beacon.
Many of the flying creatures become distracted and look away.
Several fly directly into the beam. A screaming, bare-breasted woman with the wings, feet, and back of a bird disintegrates the moment she touches it.
When it cuts off, the book snaps shut.
"Did you just make a giant bug zapper?" Ada shouts down as she mangles another flying creature with her death sparkles.
"No," Layla says, standing. Her joints begin popping, and I recognize that she's shifting into her true form—the way Conall does when he lets his hound out. "I put out a call for help."
Her mouth transforms. Layla is much bigger in her true form, her head atop the body of a lion, massive wings erupting from her back. She lifts from the ground and joins Ada against the onslaught from the sky.
Huge sounds rise up, like the roars of mighty beasts. Conall sees them at the same time I do. Massive forms. Bigger than anything so far.
Conall reduces, becoming the man, and turns to face me.
"Freckles, I want you to get out of here.
Run down to the dock. If Colt, the ferry driver, is there, he'll take you across on the ferry.
If he's not, steal the damn ferry. If you get off this island, they might not realize until you're already across.
I'll distract them. We're still magically connected, so it'll confuse them. "
My mind can't process what he's asking. Leave him? No. It takes me a moment to realize I'm already shaking my head.
He breathes and takes a careful step toward me, gathers my uninjured hand in both of his, and presses his forehead to mine.
"Ivy, please," he begs softly. "There's no way we can fight off this many.
They sense the barrier is about to be restored by the magic and the blood, and they're trying to stop it.
There's only one way to do that, and it's to stop you.
To stop your heart." To kill me. I understand what he's saying.
I just can't accept what he's asking me to do about it.
"I'm not leaving you," I whisper.
It's his turn to shake his head. "No, you hate me, remember. I'm so annoying, mean, and stubborn. Don't stay for me. Please, Freckles. Please." His voice is a harsh sawing breath pushed through the agony in his chest. I can feel the pain in every word because it's my pain too.
"You hate me, remember?" I ask. "I'm stubborn and infuriating, and my aunt's protection bond is holding you back. You deserve a life. You've been waiting. Leave me here. Go get it."
I see the exact spark I was looking for. His eyes go dark and dangerous. His claw-tipped fingers find my chin and hold tight, tilting my face up so I have no choice but to look at him.
"I would rather die than leave you, mate,” he says. “I never hated you. But fuck if I didn't hate how much I loved you from the start."
I can't help the small sound that climbs up my throat or the way my hands pull him closer. His mouth finds mine, and it's rough and desperate, and there's nothing gentle about it. It’s just pure truth.
When we pull apart, I've made my decision. "Then we don't leave each other. Ever."
My eyes search his, making sure he sees all the truth in my words. He nods, still worried but knowing he needs me and I need him. Conall turns, placing his body firmly in front of mine as we watch the largest monsters this island has ever seen descend.