Death's Mistress (9 page)

I made it through the maze courtesy of the hailstorm, which shattered several of the bigger clumps of ice right in front of me. I pulled more shards out of my legs, cursing the damn skirt, and hauled myself through the gap. And into what felt like a war zone.

The three stories of the house were fast becoming one as hailstones punched hole after hole in the floors and ceilings. I dodged down the second-floor hallway, throwing open the doors that hadn’t already burst off their hinges because of the wind. It snatched up papers and clothes and threw them about, and set the overhead light fixtures swaying. All the movement made it hard to tell, but I didn’t think Claire was in any of the rooms.

There was no one on the second floor, so I headed for the third, but the stairs were almost gone. I grabbed an old clothespress that had fallen on its side and dragged it over. Tilting it against the wall, I climbed up the inner shelves like a ladder. It was getting hard to breathe, and my numb fingers and feet felt like they were encased in mittens. But I made it, hauling myself over the side of the stairwell and into a frozen wasteland.

The third floor of the house was in pieces. At least I don’t have to worry about the roof anymore, I thought dully, staring up at several holes the size of cars showing black sky and swirling snow. Everything was ice—from the floor to what was left of the ceiling to the walls. Icicles dripped from the old light fixture overhead like crystals, beards of ice hung off the stair banister, and frost as deep as my hand coated everything. It was one unbroken white expanse that glittered in the beam of the flashlight.

The storm cut out as I stood there, abrupt enough to leave my ears ringing. One last gust tore through the house with a rattling sigh, and then nothing. No more hailstones, no more crashing china or tinkling glass, no more wind. Everything was totally, eerily silent.

For some reason, that did not make me feel better.

“Claire?” My voice was barely a croak, and there was no response.

The brittle ice crunched underfoot as I pushed on, needing to be sure. I headed for the bathroom because it was nearest. The tub was full, as if someone had been about to take a bath. A toy airplane was trapped half in, half out of the ice that had formed over the surface. I pushed on into my room, but it was the same story: bed and dresser frozen lumps, buried under knee-deep snow.

Something hit me and I looked up, my breath ghosting in the air, and saw dark sky. There was a huge hole in the ceiling, spanning maybe a fourth of the room. That explained the mass of white. But it wasn’t snow that was running down my neck.

The unnatural snowstorm was over, but the rain must have been the real deal, because it had resumed as if nothing had ever happened. The white blanket coating my room was already starting to turn into slush. Rain-drops pitted the piled drifts and pattered against my cold, stiff hair as I forged my way across to the closet.

I shoved my feet into a pair of boots, the closet door having kept most of the snow out, and grabbed as many weapons as I could strap on. The problem was that most of mine were designed to fight the residents of this world in their various forms; the fey were still largely an unknown quantity. But I had what I had.

Getting downstairs was a lot easier than going up, with multiple holes to choose from. I dropped through one to the second floor, hitting the slick surface with soles that could grip it for a change. I’d barely gotten back to my feet when there was movement to one side—a brief pale flicker—and I whirled, gun up. It was Gessa.

She put a finger to her lips and beckoned. I moved forward as quietly as possible to join her. She was standing over a large area of missing flooring, looking down. We were partway down the hall, facing the main entrance to the house from the front. It was almost never used; the door stuck and the house kept a mountain of furniture in the vestibule, which it seemed to like just where it was. We’d all given up the fight long ago and used either the kitchen or back entrance.

But someone was headed in the front door.

Or make that some
thing
.

The large windows in front of the house showed a yard blurred and streaked by sheeting rain. But I’d been wrong about it being natural. I watched with perfect shock emptying my mind as the droplets just outside the overhang of the roof began to bend, to congeal, to protrude to form the image of a man’s head.

The outline was sharp, etched precisely against the dark street. It was crystalline clear except for the drops leeching off the roof, which were stained with tar. They eased down the phantom face, giving it the appearance of the weathering on an old statue. They didn’t do anything to make it less impressive.

Or less terrifying.

Water dripping down the face and neck thickened, slowly forming a set of powerful shoulders, muscled arms and a strong torso. The figure itself was quicksilvered with moonlight, but I could still see the yard beyond it—the pale outline of the driveway, the dark brushstrokes of the trees, the glimmer of falling rain. Behind it, the thunderheads were mounting, higher and darker, the lightning that played inside them making them more beautiful and more ominous.

I cursed softly. I hate unfamiliar magic. The known kind is bad enough, with mages inventing new ways to kill me all the time. But at least I have a halfway-decent chance of using my own store of magical mayhem to counter it. Any I’ve never seen before always makes my head hurt.

“What the hell is that?” I whispered.

“Manlíkan.” Gessa clutched a small battle-ax, like a child’s toy, in both hands. “Light Fey make.”

“But what
is
it?”

Her small face scrunched up as she fought to find the words. She was a relatively new arrival, and her English was a work in progress. But since my troll vocabulary stood at roughly twelve words, half of them curses, it was going to have to do.

“Svarestri control elements. Use power.” She stuck the ax under her arm and made a weird sort of motion with her hands. “Make warrior.”

“Make warrior out of what?”

“Power. Elements.” She did the same sort of wrapping motion, and I swallowed, hoping I was misunderstanding her. But I didn’t think so.

The cascade had dripped lower, solidifying into a firm backside, muscular legs and feet that left watery prints on the hall floor as it came inside. The figure had glided through the wards as if they didn’t exist. They were obviously reading it as water, and therefore considered it harmless.

“They wrap their power around an element and form a doppelgänger out of it?” I whispered.

Gessa just looked at me.

“A double? They make a double?”

She nodded. “Make warrior.”

Wonderful.

Cold, halogen white headlights crept across the floor from some neighbor arriving home later than usual. The pattern of leaded glass in the front door stretched to engulf the creature, highlighting the almost transparent body. It was amazingly detailed, the lights picking out the muscles in the thing’s chest, the crease at his elbow, the dip of his naval—and the pale face, utterly cold and ominously silent as it gazed around.

The light on the floor narrowed to a wedge and slid up the wall as the car passed down the street, leaving the hall in shadows and me with a problem. I’d never seen anything remotely like that thing. Worse, I didn’t know how to kill it.

I decided some experimentation was in order, pulled a gun and pumped half a dozen rounds into the thing. The sound was deafening in the silent house, and the smell acrid. But that was the only way I knew I’d fired. The bullets tore through the insubstantial body like rocks through a pond, exiting the other side to embed themselves in the wall of the foyer. The creature looked up, those eerie colorless eyes tracking across the ceiling until they met mine.

So much for that idea.

“How do we kill it?” I whispered, staring into nothingness that somehow stared back, a gleam of something feral below the ice.

Gessa shrugged. “Not alive.”

I’d already figured that out. It didn’t smell like a person or even an animal; more like wet stone—faintly organic with the acidity of waterlogged leaves. But the hand that had turned the doorknob had been lively enough. “How do we stop it, then?”

“Cold iron,” she said, holding up her tiny weapon.

Okay, snap out of it, Dory
, I thought harshly. I should have thought of that. The fey had a serious aversion to iron in all forms. Unfortunately, my knives were blackened steel and my bullets were lead and silver. And I’d just seen how much good they did.

I glanced around, hoping for inspiration. The edge of the fireplace in Claire’s old room was just visible through the open door. And sure enough, there was a cast- iron poker half buried under melting snow. I grabbed it and came back out, in time to see things go from bad to catastrophic.

Claire had come out of the door leading to the living room. She’d lost her glasses somewhere, and in the low light, she didn’t see the transparent form of the Manlíkan standing beside the wall. The faded stripes of the wallpaper were only slightly distorted by its watery body as it slowly raised a hand.

And then Gessa jumped, screeching, right through the hole, her little ax raised. It hit the creature at the top of the head and sliced straight downward, the “body” disintegrating behind it in a wave. Claire whirled, one hand forming a huge paw that, fortunately, slashed through the air above Gessa’s diminutive height.

I jumped down beside her, and barely avoided getting sideswiped myself. “Claire! It’s me!”

She grabbed me—with the hand still covered in scales like battle armor. It felt like it could rip through my bones with a flick of the wrist, causing me to go very still. Until those talons clasped onto my arm and she shook me. “Tell me you have them!”

“Have who?” I asked, my stomach falling.

“The children!” she said frantically. “I lost them in the storm, and they aren’t in the living room or the library or the basement—” She stopped, looking at something out the window. A single glance showed me what I’d expected—a dozen or more fey standing in the front yard, pale smudges against the night.

I’d assumed they’d have to be close to work a spell like that, but standing right out there in the open was unexpected. And not good. It spoke of an utter confidence that I really didn’t like.

Claire started for them, her face livid, but I jerked her back. “They don’t have them, Claire! They wouldn’t still be attacking if they did!”

“They can’t attack!” she snarled. “The storm didn’t bring the wards down, and they can’t get in. And they don’t have the power, even combined, to pull that stunt twice. But if the storm chased the kids out of the house—”

She flinched and looked down at the puddle on the floor left from the Manlíkan’s demise. A crystal clear hand had formed out of the rainwater and latched onto her ankle. “What is
that
?” she screeched, shaking her foot.

I drove the fire iron through the wrist, and it collapsed. For the moment. “Gessa called it a Manlíkan; I don’t know—”

The puddle suddenly erupted, flowing upward this time, like a waterfall in reverse. The thing was only half formed, but one of its powerful legs reached out and kicked me hard enough to send me flying back into what remained of the stairs. A splintered railing stabbed my thigh, a bright, sharp pain that was worse when I tore it out.

It was bad—I needed to bind it up—but there was no time. Two more of the things came through the door, one making straight for me. I slashed at it with the poker, but it dodged and I barely managed to take off an arm. And when it righted itself, what grew back in place of the missing appendage was a long, icy shard as sharp as a spear that it used to stab at me.

I dodged as Gessa hacked at the first creature’s legs, cutting them off whenever they tried to re-form. Claire slammed and locked the front door, before disappearing into the kitchen. She was back a moment later, a cast-iron skillet in one hand and a large lid from a stew pot in the other. She sent the latter Frisbee-style at another creature, which had just slid in under the door. It sliced cleanly through the middle of him, causing a wave to splash against the wall as he disintegrated.

The icy spear trying to skewer me slammed into the wall, punching all the way through to the living room before pulling back out and shattering on the step where I’d just been standing. It re- formed almost at once, the snow piled around providing plenty of new material, and it was wickedly fast. I parried several dozen blows, a glittering savagery that drove me slowly back up the potholed staircase. I’m better than good with a blade weapon or a reasonable facsimile, but I could barely even see the thing.

That wasn’t helped by the light situation—or the lack of it. The dim glow from moonlight sifting down through the wreckage, the pale wash from the streetlight out front and a golden beam from some lantern left burning in the living room weren’t enough. The transparent quality of everything but the frozen arm combined with the low light to make it almost impossible to track when in motion. And it was rarely in anything else.

I hacked and slashed at it, dodging quicksilver strikes, and managed to connect here and there—more by luck than anything else. But every time one of my blows sheared off a piece, it grew right back. And coming into direct contact, I soon found, was not a good idea.

The foot I planted in that strange chest, trying to shove the creature back down the stairs, just kept on going. My leg plunged into the icy interior up to the knee, causing a slight splash of droplets out the other side. And then the body solidified around it, trapping me and slinging me into the wall.

I hit with a bone- shattering thump that almost jarred the poker from my hand. I somehow kept a grip and slashed out with it, and I must have gotten lucky and hit the head this time, because when I managed to focus my eyes again, there was nothing there but a cascade down the steps, making rivulets through the muddy sludge. Gessa, however, wasn’t so lucky.

She was directly beneath me, battling a creature three times her size, which had latched onto her fist. It flowed up and around her like a watery shroud, completely enveloping her small body. Within seconds, it had covered her face, leaving me staring at her through rippling bands of water.