Chapter 11
ELEVEN
TESNI
A cold dread is dripping through me.
Beside me, Bee gives a sudden sharp breath, and I hear the faint flex of her grip on her rifle.
I tear my light away from Ramona’s horrified face and Emily tucked up in the car—and I drag it along the car.
There’s something here. Something that strikes pure terror through them.
Not another group.
Gunshots would be firing if it was another group, or someone would at least speak. So it must be something wild, savage—and up here…
There are a lot of animals that could be on that road right now, closing in on us.
Bears.
That’s the one thrumming in my mind, humming in my bones.
At least a mountain lion, I could take out with the shotgun. Maybe. I don’t really know. It just feels like it’s more effective on something like a mountain lion than a bear.
A bear, I shoot, and I get fucked up.
I’ve seen enough movies to know that.
So my heart is hammering as, slowly, I drag the shaky light over the asphalt road, from potholes to stains of blood, and lift it, higher, higher.
The race of my heart is punching in my chest, my throat, my head, my ears. The slickness of my palms slides my grip on the gun.
Beside me, Bee is frozen, tracing the lift of my torchlight to the road.
But I don’t see a mountain lion.
No black bear, grizzly bear, no pack of wolves prowling towards us.
What is see is…
Bizarre.
Like… really fucking strange.
A frown furrows my face—and I can only stare at them as they march down the road.
But what they are… I don’t know.
Not human.
That’s obvious now.
It wasn’t when I first set my eyes upon them, in that first bewildered moment, but now that I see the sheer muscle of them, their heights reaching seven foot or more, the sharp points of their ears, the inhuman glints of their eyes, their armour and weapons.
These men, these males, are not human.
They are warriors, marching down the road.
A sea of them.
Some warriors are on steeds.
Most follow behind, on foot.
Then steeds again.
Then more on foot.
Not all of them look at us, tucked between the cars, as they pass by. Most don’t glance at all. And the ones that do just spare us the quickest, most disinterested look before turning their cheeks to us and marching onwards.
My flesh prickles all over.
How quiet they are, trooping in some sort of formation, sheathed in leather uniforms, boots silent on the road.
I wouldn’t have known they were there at all if it wasn’t for Ramona.
I understand her reaction.
I don’t blubber, I don’t groan the same words over and over. And unlike Emily, I don’t hide in the backseat of an abandoned car.
But I am frozen.
And I can only stare at this sea of leather; black, inky leather, wrapped like a second skin around rippling, slinking muscles.
Some leathers cover their bodies from the neck down, and it appears as though their forms are sculpted from black marble. Others wear vests and chain-link armours so thin, so fine, that I wonder, fleetingly, if they have been woven from spider-silk.
That thought is thrown from my mind when one of the warriors lets his stare linger—before he bares his teeth at me.
The grunt of a fright catches in my throat. Not even enough strength in me to scream.
I should scream. Run.
I know now, in this very moment, what it means to be frozen in fear.
I’m a runner.
I’m a fighter.
I’m a shit-talker.
But not in the face of these… these… others.
My legs buckle. I topple from my crouch, and the ground rushes up to meet me.
I hit the pavement.
The rattle of my bike comes before the handle is digging into my back.
A guttural cry is lured from my trembling lips.
But these others—they don’t attack us.
I expect them to.
I expect a swift death, or a brutal one.
I see it in them. Bloodlust.
Predators. Hunters.
Killers.
It’s etched all over them as they march down the road, their boots silent on the asphalt. So impossibly silent: the shifting of their swords and scabbards; the movement of their leathers coiled tight around slinking muscles.
Some glances drift over us, some linger, others hook.
Running us over with inhuman stares, with eyes that are inky black or sheet white; with eyes stroked down the centre with black lines; with eyes of different colours; with eyes of different textures, some normal like mine, then others that look like coarse canvases under the assault of my torchlight.
Inhuman.
Others.
I almost think the word… aliens.
But those pointed ears; hands resting on the hilts of daggers tucked into belts, hands that wear black nails like claws; those silent snarls, those wide and feral grins lined with teeth sharp enough to tear me apart, tear me to fucking pieces—
Others.
Otherworldly.
Not human, but not exactly aliens either. I’ve read enough books and heard enough old Welsh lore growing up…
I know what they are.
The word is a hum in my mind.
Fae.
An army of fae marching down the road.
But these fae don’t skewer us with their swords, strike us with their daggers, shoot us with their sleek black arrows. They just walk down the road, loads of them, male after male, the occasional female, but all bulked with muscle, or chiselled from stone.
Fae warriors.
My mind can echo that a thousand times, it’s not anywhere closer to sinking in—and I’m still here, planted on the ground, my hands trembling on the shotgun.
It’s chilling.
Just how much they look like us, but how little they resemble us, too.
Like us, but not.
Taller, broader, stronger, fiercer.
The difference between a tiger, a cougar, a lion—and a housecat. Feline, sure, but not at all the fucking same.
I feel every bit the housecat as I watch them pass, marching in absolute silence, bootsteps on asphalt, a whisper, a nothing.
The blackness clings to them, shrouds them, like they belong to it, and my torchlight dares edge into their shield of shadows.
The tears fall down my cheeks without a noise, without a moan or a whimper. My jaw is trembled shut.
I flinch as a hand touches mine.
The shotgun jerks in my grip.
If I had my finger on the trigger…
I would have shot one of them, or in the general direction of them. And that isn’t something I’m stupid enough to do.
Bee thinks the same. Her teary eyes glare into my soul. ‘Don’t shoot.’
I keep my wild, watery gaze on her.
Crouched beside me, she adds pressure to my hand. And she pushes down.
Lowering my shotgun.
Lowering the torchlight.
But she makes no move to flick the switch and deprive us of this one, faint wisp of light, now aimed at the road where leather boots kick through the white gleam.
We are all still, stagnant.
We all watch as the boots kick through the dusty light.
The fae know we are here.
Tucked away in this little pocket of darkness with a single torchlight cascading over the asphalt. They know—and yet they just pass by.
It takes a while.
A long fucking time.
An hour, maybe more, maybe hours and hours, and it’s a whole day that passes, but we can’t tell without the sun and the moon.
So we just sit in the blackness, waiting.
Waiting for one of those creatures to tug out of formation—and slit our throats.
We sit here so long that I find a pattern.
Hooves, a dozen or so, followed by a lot of boots, leather, maybe up to a hundred pairs; then the hooves come again, then the boots, the same number, each time.
That pattern imprints into my brain, etches into my chest where the breath is tacked, and I watch the army march through the light.
Emily hiding in the car, has her hand pressed to her torch, but Ramona, still crumpled with her bike, holding her gun to her chest, has wisps of light escaping between her fingers, and my own torchlight—aimed right at them.
I should turn it off.
But my bones are rigid in my fingers.
Bee’s hand is firm on mine, her head ducked, brow pressed into my shoulder, and she is tense as they pass. I don’t know if it’s fear or strategy that has Bee stiff against me.
Before I can wonder on it, the darkness behind me is disturbed by the clumsy flap of small wings—and the clatter of a rifle.
I throw my head to the side, my glare wide.
Bee’s grip tenses on mine. I feel the rush of air at my cheek as she shouts a whisper, “Ramona! No!”
It doesn’t make a difference.
Doesn’t stop it.
It happens so quick.
Ramona’s fear turns on her.
So long of sitting out here, waiting and waiting for a pause that we can use to escape, to run away, and it’s nowhere closer to happening, something has switched in her, turned her against herself the moment that fat ass fucking moth flies into her face, that one stupid moth that cracks her frozen fear, and sends her into a spiral.
Stupidity makes her its puppet—and she fires the rifle.
The ‘no!’ that rips through me is fast muzzled.
Bee’s hand smacks onto my mouth and crushes my cries, cries that are drowned out by the shots of the rifle blasting in the quiet.
I cringe back into Bee’s chest, the heels of my boots digging into the road, but my eyes don’t shut, and the flashlight swerves up as it catches on my hiked knee…
And I see it.
Bullets striking the fae.
Nine gunshots blast through the air, until nothing but the empty tug, tug, tug of a trigger.
The fae stop.
Boots come to a sudden halt on the road.
The lameness of my torch wisps over them.
It’s a current of stillness rippling down the army.
My heart launches into my throat.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t move.
I can only watch, horrified, as the warriors come to a stop. Not a stumbled boot, not a staggered step.
Just a halt.
Even the hooves of the steeds are rooted to the road. Those steeds…
I drag my watery gaze over them, their hairless, grey skin, their ridged skeletal sides, to the warriors mounted on them.
Most of those fae stare straight ahead.
Some turn their gazes over us.
But one lures in my wide stare.
The one who stares at me.
A fae, chiselled from marble. The iciness of his hair falls into his face, the tips grazing his shaped eyebrows.