that.” Out of context, it sounded borderline hubristic. “I’ve tasted the blood of the king-queen—don’t ask—the problem won’t be finding him. It’ll be stopping him.”
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Sofia. She was still glowing. “Take me with you. He’s still a vampire, shouldn’t I—that is, shouldn’t it…”
It would work. It would definitely work. If I could get a glowing child across a battlefield full of faery monstrosities and then beat up a guy who even with his vampirism toned down was still an extremely talented wizard with a heart full of borrowed faery magic while I still had one broken arm. Fuck it, worth a shot.
“One minute.” I ducked inside. Sure, I’d dropped the iron dagger in the snow but the one nice thing about fighting faeries is that iron was much easier to get hold of than silver or metal blessed by fully paid up exorcists. And Safernoc was the kind of place stuffed with real actual fireplaces with real actual pokers.
Emerging a few moments later, I found Tara and Sofia standing side-by-side waiting for me.
“I’m coming too,” said the blonde, naked one.
“Somebody’s going to need to protect the house.” The wind was definitely getting louder, and the wolves were definitely getting bolder.
“The pack will handle it. I’m not sending the two of you out there alone.”
I didn’t make the obvious point that if the two of us were out there we wouldn’t be alone, because neither one of us really counted. Sofia had one trick and she could barely control it, and I was down a limb. “Fine. Come on.”
“You’re not giving the orders here, Kate Kane.” Tara gave me a stern look. “Sofia, kill the light, we’ll need to take them by surprise if this is to work at all. When I turn, climb on my back”—another glance, somewhat less stern this time—“not you, Kate. You’re going to lead us to Douglas.” She let out an inhuman howling which seemed to communicate something to the wolf-pack, which immediately fell back into a defensive circle. Then she shifted, and Sofia went dark, and we ran like fuck.
The moment the sunlight was gone the blizzard slammed in on us. Wind-beasts and mirror-wolves fell on our little group of defenders and at the same time Tara sprang forward to punch us a path through into the grounds. Suddenly realising how very cold, very tired, and very much in pain I was, I reached just a little for my mother’s strength and found it coming easily. Surprisingly easily given that I was holding iron. There was something about the taste of another faery lord’s blood in my mouth that excited my mother in a way I couldn’t help but find worrying.
We pushed forward with surprising speed, and despite the snow and the wind and the cold I could taste the prince of wands and his new otherworldly patron as if he was in front of me. The poker swiped through the blizzard-things and crashed down on the skull of a wolf that tried to take me from the flank. I let instinct take over, let the Deepwild take over. Running at the head of a pack of hounds was right and natural and what I sought to kill I would kill.
I was conscious of Tara beside me, the weight of a teenage seeress clinging to her back having surprisingly little effect on her ability to bring down anything that stood in her way. My mother’s influence took a moment to admire the power and the wildness of her.
We pressed on.
The Prince of Wands stood at the heart of a maelstrom of ice and winds and darkness, the two wolves who had been guarding him still resting alert by his side. Their heads whipped around as we approached and they bounded forward to intercept us. Sofia slid to the ground as Tara crashed into one of them, and I did my best to handle the other, trusting my mother’s instinct to strike and hunt and catch and kill.
Turning with a grandiosity that made me want to ram a poker through his head, which was convenient because that’s exactly what I was intending to do, Sebastian Douglas swept his arm in a wide arc and blue fire erupted in a circle around us. Fuck. I’d forgotten that little trick. With a burst of strength from the Deepwild, I kicked my wolf away and advanced on him. He raised his hand and I felt that wall of weaponised