entirely of what looked like mud slammed into its rearmost leg.
The mud creature hit the rawhead hard. The power of its impact cracked bones and blew the leg out from beneath the rawhead. The fae giant bellowed a ground-shaking roar. A ton of bloody bones fell, and the mud creature, white teeth flashing, kept after it.
Snarling.
And a nimbus of blue light gathered around its muddy jaws.
I looked up to see more mud creatures rushing up the hill, though the others were bipedal, of various sizes and shapes. The first one to reach me drew a steel sword from a muddy scabbard and went after the rawhead as well, falcata being used with the brutal power strikes normally employed with a freaking ax. Silver eyes flashed in the blobby, mud-covered face.
Thomas.
Maeve snarled and stepped toward me, bringing her right hand out from behind her back. She gripped a tiny little automatic in her fingers, though God only knew where she’d been concealing it. She half lifted it, but before she could shoot, gunshots rang out, sharp and clear. One of them hit the ground maybe three feet away, and Maeve bolted aside, vanishing behind a veil as she went.
The smallest mud figure came to my side, lowering a mud-covered P90. She hooked a little hand beneath one of my arms, her blue eyes reddened and blinking rapidly. With surprising strength, she dragged me back from the rawhead while Thomas and Mouse fought it.
The others hurried up to join Karrin, and while Karrin covered us, muddy Mac got a shoulder underneath me and with a grunt of effort picked me up in a fireman’s carry.
“Come on,” Karrin said. “The cottage.”
While she kept her P90 at the ready and Mac toted me, the other two mud figures, Sarissa and Justine, hurried along beside us. A moment later Mac dumped me gently, more or less, onto the floor of the cottage. Karrin kept her gun pointed at the door.
“Karrin,” I managed to gasp.
Her eyes didn’t waver from the door. “Got tired of waiting on you. I’m here.”
I spit the nail out of my mouth and into my hand. “How?” I asked. Then I eyed them all and said, “Mud. You covered yourselves in mud.”
“Everywhere,” she confirmed. “Nostrils, eyes, ears, everywhere the light could touch. We figured out that if you completely covered something, it could make it through that wall. God, I’m going to shower for a week.”
Oh, that was clever. The defense mechanism wasn’t a thinking being, capable of making judgment calls. It was simply a machine, albeit one made of magic, a combination detector and bug zapper. By covering themselves with mud, they’d tricked it into thinking they were of the island.
Outside the cottage, the rawhead bellowed, and Mouse’s snarling battle bark rang out defiantly.
“This is insane,” Sarissa breathed.
“The stones of the cottage have protections on them,” I said. “Not sure how well they work, but they should help.” I looked back at Karrin. “Where’s Molly?”
“Out there, playing Invisible Girl.”
There was the sound of a heavy impact, and Mouse let out a terrible, pained-sounding yelp.
Then it was quiet.
Karrin’s breathing started coming faster. She resettled her grip on the weapon.
“Oh, God,” Sarissa said. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.”
I would have gotten terrified, too, but I was just too tired for it to stick.
There was no warning, nothing at all. The rawhead shoved its arm into the cottage, seized Karrin by the gun, and hauled her out. The weapon barked several times as she went.
And then it got quiet again.
“We have to run,” Sarissa said in a whisper. “Harry, please, we should run. Open a Way into the Nevernever. Get us out of here.”
“I’ve got a feeling we wouldn’t like the part of the Nevernever this place borders,” I said.
“Oh, Sir Knight,” Maeve called from outside. “Come out, come out, wherever you are, you and everyone with you. Or I’m going to start playing with your friends.”
“Hey, why don’t you come in here, Maeve?” I called back. “We’ll talk about it.”
I waited for an answer. I got one a minute later. Karrin let out a pained, gasping sound.
“Dammit,” I muttered. Then I started to climb to my feet again. “Come on.”
“What?” Sarissa asked. “No. I can’t go out there.”
“You’re about to,” I said quietly. “Mac.”
“We go out,” Mac said, “she’ll kill us.”
“If we don’t, she’ll kill us anyway. Starting with Karrin,” I said. “Maeve likes hurting people. Maybe we can string her along until . . .”
“Until what?” Sarissa asked. “Sunrise? That’s hours