Frost glanced round once to see that there were no Kirata nearby. The house was burning entirely now and his companions were emerging, in the midst of battle with the tiger-men. For the moment it was just the winter man and the Falconer.
“I was careful not to do very much damage to your vital organs,” Frost said, tilting his head to study the twitches of the dying Hunter. “It will take you hours to expire this way. With your constitution, even blood loss will not kill you for some time. And it will be agony. Now that I’ve pierced your flesh, I can save you that agony, just freeze your blood and kill you instantly. But you must tell me who it is that sent you. Who has set the Hunters after the Borderkind?”
All that issued from the Falconer’s beak was a weak cry.
The winter man elongated the ice daggers that were the fingers of his left hand and he tore at one of the Hunter’s wings. The fury in the Falconer’s eyes was soul-deep, but it was meaningless. He was beaten. Dying.
“I know you can speak if you wish to. Speak now. A name. And I will take the ice away.”
The hatred in the Hunter’s eyes only deepened, its chest rising and falling in hitching gasps, fresh blood streaming down the ice spikes with each breath. But there was more than hate in the Falconer’s eyes. They glistened with agony.
“Ty’Lis,” it hissed.
Frost frowned so deeply that the ice of his face cracked. “The Atlantean? Impossible.”
The Falconer uttered another sound that was almost laughter.
With a sneer, the winter man touched the bloody point of one of the ice spikes, his influence traveling down into the snow below, and another stalagmite thrust upward from the ground, the thinnest and sharpest of all. An enormous needle of ice, it punched through the Falconer’s abdomen and pushed all the way up through his heart, at last emerging with a crack of bone through the back of his head.
Ice formed over the Falconer’s eyes and even the blood the Hunter had already shed froze solid.
The laughter ended.
But Frost still heard its echo.
Oliver coughed, eyes watering, his skin tight across his face from the searing heat of the burning cottage. He followed Kitsune out the ruined door, Blue Jay close behind, leaving the corpse of David Koenig to burn. The screams of a dying Kirata came from the conflagration that had been the old professor’s living room, but two others were following Blue Jay’s exodus, and still more were gathered outside the cottage as they emerged.
The fox darted ahead and leaped at the nearest of the tigers, but Kitsune had also breathed in that smoke and she was slowed by it. The Kirata caught her and threw her to the ground. Oliver held his breath an instant until he saw her roll and spring to her feet, and then Kitsune was not just rising, she was changing. In an eyeblink the fox grew into a woman, her fur becoming a copper-red cloak blowing in the snowstorm, billowing behind her. Her jade eyes flashed and she curled her fingers into claws as she leaped at the Kirata’s back, digging furrows in its fur, drawing blood.
Snow whipped into Oliver’s eyes but he saw the tiger-man raise a massive hand to snatch at Kitsune, to tear her off its back.
Both hands on the grip, Oliver swung the king’s blade and it struck flesh like a hatchet into wood, cleaving muscle and bone. The Kirata roared and staggered away, tripping over its own severed arm, blood fountaining from the stump. The hot blood sprayed through the falling snow.
Kitsune dropped to the ground, fur spattered with blood Oliver hoped was not hers.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Her head hung, hidden beneath her hood, and her body shook as she caught her breath. When she glanced up at him, the ferocity in her eyes chilled him.
A cry of pain tore through the storm from the direction of the burning cottage. Kitsune’s eyes narrowed.
“Blue Jay,” she said.
Oliver spun, sword in hand, the copper tang of blood in the air, and saw the trickster under assault by the Kirata. Blue Jay swung his right arm, attempting to begin that strange dance that would create the blurry, ephemeral wings that he used in combat. Claws raked his back and he cried out again, staggered. Blood ran and blue feathers appeared as though from nowhere and drifted to the snow as the Kirata moved in.
They had him. Tiger-men grappled with him from either side, each taking an arm, and a third took up a fistful of his black hair. It opened its jaws with a satisfied snarl, fangs glistening, black lips curling back, and drew his head forward, about to snap its jaws down and bite the top of Blue Jay’s head off.
Kitsune dropped to the ground, fur cloak rustling and diminishing, and then she was racing through the storm. Oliver ran toward the Kirata, blade raised high, but ice had formed inside him that made him feel as though he himself was the winter man. There was no way to reach Blue Jay in time.
A great shadow passed overhead and a gust of wind buffeted the burning cottage, fanning the flames higher. The blaze roared, joined by the hollow slap of wings upon the air. Thunder rumbled and lightning lanced from the sky, incinerating the Kirata whose jaws were about to close upon Blue Jay. It fell to the ground, body charred and crisp.
The Black Dragon of Storms snaked down from the gray heart of the squall and alighted upon the snow. Gong Gong had reached a height of twenty feet or more, oil-black body weaving and ready to strike. With one hand he grabbed a Kirata and thrust it alive into the flaming ruin of Professor Koenig’s cottage. Then, wings pinned back, his upper body shot forward like a striking snake, and his jaws closed on the head of a tiger, tearing off the Kirata’s head, the same fate his kin had planned for Blue Jay.
One final Kirata remained. The fear in its expression was almost pitiable and then it turned to flee. Gong Gong slapped a massive hand down and pinned it to the ground.
Oliver lowered his sword and came to a halt, staring at the dragon, an atavistic terror running through him. Gong Gong’s body whip-cracked the air and thunder rolled and he found himself more terrified of the dragon than any of his enemies. So consumed was he with the sight of the Borderkind revealed in his true, monstrous form that he barely noticed Kitsune going to Blue Jay’s aid.
Gong Gong toyed with the last of the Kirata like a cat with a trapped rodent. Fascinated and horrified, Oliver could only stare.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, something moved. How long the figure had been standing there— so very still— just beside the burning cottage, he had no idea. The heat from the conflagration must have been searing, the smoke stinging the eyes, sparks flying, but the figure had clearly been there for a time, very still. Somehow, this Hunter had the ability to remain unseen if he wished.
But Oliver saw him now, and knew him at once, for he had seen the ram-headed creature once before in the streets of the village outside Perinthia. Marra wore a robe the color of stone. His horns were as black as Gong Gong’s flesh.
He held a longbow, an arrow already nocked, and as he stepped forward he drew back the string. The point of the arrow glistened wetly and seemed to glow with a sickly green luminescence.
“I have been waiting for you to hold still a moment,” Marra said.
And loosed the arrow.
At the sound of Marra’s voice, the Black Dragon of Storms turned to look and the arrow plunged into his right eye. A spray of blood and yellow fluid came from the socket. Gong Gong reared back, wings fluttering, long body twisting, and then he collapsed, without a single sound, into the snow. There was no thunder. No lightning. The Black Dragon of Storms did not so much as twitch. Gong Gong had proven himself not only loyal but perhaps the strongest amongst them. And now he was dead.
He began to shrink, slowly at first but then more quickly, until he was little more than the dead husk of a thing no larger than a dog.
Blue Jay was up, racing toward Marra. “Bastard!” he screamed, arms out to either side in spite of his wounds, preparing to attack. Red fur glowed in the light of the fire as Kitsune dashed along beside him, the fox on the hunt.
Marra raised the bow and an arrow simply appeared, pointed at Blue Jay’s heart.
Oliver raised the sword again and started to run. Perhaps thirty feet separated him from Marra. The Hunter paid no attention to him at all, did not even seem to notice him, and Oliver changed his course, curving out to his right in hopes that he could take the demonic creature by surprise.
Blue Jay began to spin, those almost ghostly wings appearing only as he sped up. Marra released the arrow and it whistled through the air. One of those barely visible wings blurred reality for a moment and the arrow snapped in half. But Marra was ready with another and loosed it so quickly that Blue Jay could not stop it. The arrow punched through the blurred air where one of those ephemeral spirit-wings was outlined, and Blue Jay roared in pain and spun away, the almost spectral wings disappearing as he went to his knees in the snow.
“The dragon poison on these might not kill you, Myth— but then, I won’t need poison for the likes of you,” Marra sneered.
Oliver trembled with fury and disgust. He knew the denigration that word signified on the other side of the Veil. He raised the sword as he ran, but his footsteps in the snow were audible even over the roar of the fire.
Marra turned, brought the bow around to sight his next arrow at Oliver. His body was humanoid, but the horns and face of the ram gave him the appearance of some sort of devil. And his eyes were filled with joyful malice.
“A human?” Marra asked. And then he chuckled. “So fragile.”
His fingers tensed on the bowstring.
The fox leaped up from the snow, transforming in midair. Kitsune grabbed Marra by the horns and twisted. The Hunter cried out and the arrow flew wild.
Oliver plunged the sword into Marra’s chest, felt it grind against bone, and as the ram-headed Hunter spasmed and struggled to bring his head around to stare in astonishment and pain, Oliver put all of his weight behind it and drove the blade in farther, then clutched the grip tightly in both hands and pulled upward, tearing flesh and cutting viscera.
Kitsune stared at him in surprise as Marra’s corpse slid off the sword. Oliver looked up, shaken, and then he backed away from the dead thing. The fire popped and blazed a dozen feet away. Gong Gong’s tiny corpse lay in the snow in the midst of a large depression in the shape of a magnificent creature: the Black Dragon of Storms.
Blue Jay struggled to his feet. He clutched his side, face etched with pain. The Kirata had clawed him and he bled, but the wound causing him the most pain was invisible. Whatever damage Marra’s arrow had done had been spiritual, yet it had hurt Blue Jay more deeply than the claws of the tigers.
“Are you all right?” Oliver asked him, gaze still shifting around, searching for undiscovered enemies.
Blue Jay took a long breath through his nose, but then he nodded. “I will be.” He glanced at the fox-woman. “Kitsune?”
Blood was matted on her fur cloak and speckled her hands and face, but she seemed unharmed. “Tired,” she said. “And I feel . . .” Her expression twisted with sorrow. “I feel like something is broken in me. So many of us are dead. And to know that Jenny betrayed us . . . is difficult to bear.”
Oliver ignored the blood. He dropped the sword and scabbard into the snow and took Kitsune in his arms, felt her trembling beneath the fur cloak. He held her against him and she lay her head on his shoulder, clinging there, snowflakes drifting down around them both.
Blue Jay met Oliver’s gaze and nodded once, as though acknowledging him as a comrade for the first time.
“What now?” the trickster asked.
A gust of wind far colder than the storm whipped around them, and then the voice of the winter man whispered nearby.
“Now?” Frost said.
They all turned to see him kneeling by the charred remains of the dragon. Icicle hair swung as he tilted his head to regard them. Cold mist rose from those blue-white eyes. His sharp features were carved with hate.
“Oliver must find his sister. And he must beg a reprieve from the monarchs of the Two Kingdoms. We will see that he does not embark on his journey unprepared.” The winter man stared at Oliver a moment, then looked at the other Borderkind. “But we have other duties now. I cannot be certain he is the one who conspires against us or if he serves some greater master, but I know now the name of the filth who set the Hunters after us.
“Whatever answers there are for any of us, whatever futures we may have, we can only find on the other side of the Veil. Until we have those answers, those resolutions, we are through with this world.”
The others were silent.
Oliver held Kitsune in his arms and stared at the winter man, feeling the truth in his words. Whatever the future held for him, and for his sister, and for the woman he hoped to return to someday, he could only find it beyond the Veil.
He looked at Frost and nodded once, slowly. The winter man did the same, then turned and began walking away from the village, searching for a patch of land not owned by anyone, a public space where they might walk between the worlds, searching for vengeance and destiny.
Since the moment of his birth, Oliver Bascombe had been trying to prove himself worthy. Now, in a handful of days, his life had been irrevocably altered and it was not his father’s regard or his self-esteem that hung in the balance, but his life.
He would be worthy, or he would die.
EPILOGUE
Julianna and Halliwell had flown to Edinburgh and driven straight through to Mallaig. Only the cooperation of local law enforcement and her access to discretionary funds from Bascombe & Cox enabled them to get a boat out in the Hebridean Sea during the snowstorm. The price was ridiculous— two thousand British pounds to get a scruffy, dough-faced bartender to set aside his apron for the day and venture out into a storm when his girlfriend thought he was insane to even consider running the boat out to Canna Island in the snow.
But two thousand pounds silenced the girlfriend and the part-time bartender/part-time fisherman’s nerves.
Now Julianna sat inside the cabin, exhausted, her temperament as brittle as ice. She had not slept well since Oliver’s disappearance and his father’s murder. Her thoughts were nearly always of her fiancé and of Collette, who had always been a friend. Sometimes they had been thoughts of rage, other times of sorrow, self-pity, or fear. Sleep had been difficult to come by. And the past twenty-four hours had allowed her only a few brief naps on an uncomfortable plane ride. She had tried to nod off in the car, but had kept bobbing her head, sleep evasive, feeling sick to her stomach she was so tired.