And with that, before Giselle could object, she charged out of the bushes, heading for the cottage, already pulling her ax off her back.
Oh no—Giselle lurched to her feet to try and stop her, but it was too late.
Giselle followed, skin crawling with fear, both revolvers in her hands, although she couldn’t remember pulling them from the holsters. Rosa might be used to fighting things like some sort of lady-Siegfried, but she wasn’t! And she couldn’t imagine what good her Air Magic could do here; she certainly couldn’t call on any of the Lesser Elementals for help, and if she called, would a Greater One even answer?
But she couldn’t leave Rosa to face that monster alone. So she ran as fast as she could, trying to catch up, hoping she wouldn’t stumble over something in the yard and fall flat on her face. She was going hot and cold in turns, and she was very, very afraid.
The two of them charged around the side of the cottage, and the light from the windows on that side cheerfully illuminated the row of rusty iron cages there, six of them, each cage holding a child standing inside. The girl they had seen before was just now shoving a chunk of bread and cheese through the bars of the nearest as they came around the corner. Tears streamed down her poor little face. The children inside the cages, howling and weeping, had backed themselves as far away from the fronts of their prisons as they could, as the Blood Witch cackled and reached her long, skinny arm through the bars for the first one.
The girl didn’t hear their feet thudding on the ground as she and Rosa raced toward them. But the Blood Witch did.
The creature whirled to face them, and Giselle was reminded of nothing so much as a poisonous, four-limbed spider with a witch’s face. She nearly turned and fled at the sight of the thing; if she had been alone, she probably would have. She was absolutely frigid with terror now, but there was no way she was going to leave Rosa to face this monster by herself.
The Blood Witch shrieked at the sight of them, sounding like nothing so much as a cross between a steam whistle and an angry fishwife, and before Rosa could get in the line of fire, Giselle holstered her left-hand revolver, took careful aim and emptied her right-hand revolver at the creature, using a trick that Cody had shown her and fanning the hammer instead of pulling the trigger.
It shrieked again, and even though Giselle was fairly sure at least half of the bullets had struck it, it didn’t act as if it had been wounded at all. Rosa closed with it, but it somehow leapt over her head and came down behind her, moving faster than anything Giselle had ever seen in her life. She grabbed and emptied the second gun into its back, with as little effect.
Giselle felt her throat closing up in panic. If bullets did nothing, how were they ever going to stop this thing, or even hold it off long enough for Pieter to reach them in time?
Rosa whirled just as the thing charged her; it had a knife as long as Giselle’s arm in one of its skeletal hands, a cleaver in the other. Rosa parried the first with her ax, and dodged under the wild blow from the second, then danced backward out of reach.
Giselle pulled the bag of salt off her belt and threw it as hard as she could at the monster’s head. The bag hit the side of the creature’s head and split open, sending salt spilling all over the Blood Witch’s head and shoulders.
That had some effect. The salt actually sizzled where it struck the monster’s skin. The horrid thing screamed, and turned to see what had burned it. But turning sent the salt flying into its eyes and it screamed again, shaking its head in pain.
That gave Rosa the chance to charge it from behind, cutting through the air with her ax. The thing turned instantly, and stopped the cut only just in time, leaping backward in Giselle’s direction.
She backpedalled as fast as she could, and spied another ax buried in a stump beside the woodpile. It didn’t look like much, but it was better than two guns that had no effect at all! She dropped her revolvers, ran to the ax and wrenched it