back against the web, this assault not intended for me but terrifying nonetheless.
“Gah!” He reached up to grab the doll as it swung its chubby little arms down. The needles dug into his face, and I rolled over, my stomach swimming.
“There are other ways to crack a nut, Ivy House,” I said, seeing a little creature running up behind me, one of the Halloween dolls that had given me nightmares. It passed under my thankfully suspended cage. “There are other ways to crack a nut. Use the other ways!”
The man screamed, flinging the doll off his head. The magic around me faltered.
“No, no, keep me in here until they’re gone,” I said, not trusting Ivy House to give me control of those dolls. I didn’t want to wander around in the mist with an unseen army of dolls. Talk about my worst nightmare. “How’d they even get here so fast?”
A barking cough sounded out of the dense white to our right. Another to our left. Needles sprayed, silver glimmering in the dim light. They dug into the mage’s clothes and embedded in his skin.
He sprayed out jets of magic, one zipping past me, and another coming head-on.
I screamed and magically pushed outward at my cage, bowing then breaking it, falling to the ground. But I didn’t escape quickly enough to dodge the spell. I threw up my hands—the spell-blocking equivalent of flapping my arms to fly.
A skeleton jumped in the way just in time, the magic hitting it and exploding the bones outward. I stared for a solid moment, unable to understand what had just happened.
Dirt moved in the trees to my right, hard to see through the rolling, tumbling mist, but I thought I saw something jutting up out of the ground. Then I was sure of it when a torso interrupted my field of vision.
“Oh my God,” I breathed out as a lumbering stack of bones approached from the left, teetering toward the mage. The other skeleton rose from its unmarked grave, stepped up onto the dirt, and headed toward the man.
“Of all the options at your disposal…” I said as the first skeleton bent over the flailing man and dug bony fingers into his eyes. His screaming wilted me in place. “All the options, like spears and darts and gas… All that, and you chose to unleash the biggest nightmares you have? This is a joke on me, isn’t it? You think my fears are stupid. Well, your humor is terrible, Ivy House.”
The jubilant feeling soaking into me was the house’s mirth, rubbing it in.
“We’ll see who’s laughing when I set you on fire,” I grumbled, hopping to my feet.
Through our now-open connection, I felt Austin rouse and then his sudden gush of terror. Incredible pain bled through as he struggled to stand. He knew I’d been taken, and he intended to come to me even though he was hurt.
“Keep him there, Ivy House—we don’t need him making himself worse,” I said.
I felt the door swing shut, something I probably could’ve done myself if I wasn’t so completely distracted by the little doll bodies competing with animated skeletons to swarm the enemy. Boy had he been wrong in his assessment of this house.
Frustration ran through Austin. A moment later, I felt something weird and wondered if the magical connection had gone haywire. But then I felt his huge body slam into the front door, bursting it to bits. He’d shifted into his polar bear form. So much for Ivy House keeping Austin put.
A doll ran by me, laughing like a mad thing.
I hadn’t known they could speak. That was disturbing news.
The doll took a running jump at the mage, who was fighting with the two skeletons, his magic slapping into them uselessly. The doll’s weapon lodged into the man’s back, and it hung there for a moment, dangling.
The mage’s scream cut right through me. I’d thought horror movies were my thing but this was taking it to a whole new level. The word shocking couldn’t fully describe it, especially when the doll grabbed another knife from a holster on its frilly dress. It pulled it out and stabbed it into the sinking man, trying to climb him like a mountaineer.
“Nope.” I popped up, adrenaline fueling me, about-faced, and ran like hell. Ivy House had this covered, clearly, and someone else could grab the mage’s body if they wanted it. This whole scene was a nightmare, and I didn’t want any part of it.