Storykiller (20 page)

“He rambled something about The Scion, along with the required bit about goats. I figured there must be something there. I left him bound in the woods.”

“You think he might know something about what broke in and stole our hair?”

Robin shrugged. “I think anything that’s already attacked you once is worth questioning.”

Tessa nodded vigorously. “I agree. Let’s go get him.” Tessa felt almost giddy at the idea of actual progress being made, mysteries revealed,
something
making sense. She caught Fenris’s eye and paused, “You disagree?”

“No, it’s a good plan, you should do it. I just also think you should find your Advocate as soon as possible.”

“You’re coming,” Tessa said, which surprised him. He raised an eyebrow at her.

“Am I now?”

Tessa could feel Robin protesting inside, ready to burst forth with something. She put up a hand to stay him. “Yes. Until we know what your game is, you’re staying around. For the same reason I keep Snow close, or did you think it was for her magnificent personality?”

A blast of cold air hit the room, and Snow spun on her heel and returned to the dining room, mumbling something that sounded a lot like
‘bitch.’
Fenris ticked his head to the side, which Tessa had seen him do before, as if he was trying to puzzle something out.

“Do you think you can make me stay, Hardcore?” he challenged.

“No. But I think you want something. And if you don’t stay, I’m going to make whatever that is as difficult as possible. You hang around and I’ll see what we can do about getting you whatever it is you want,” she said. Robin blew out a frustrated breath.

“Deal,” Fenris said, smiling a too-charming smile and then all but sticking his tongue out at Robin. Tessa turned to Robin.

“So where is this Troll?”

“In the park, not far from where we encountered the zombies.”

Fenris’s head kicked up. “Zombies?”

Tessa turned to him. “Yes?” she prompted.

“Mmmm,” he said. “Nothing yet,” and lowered his head again.

“Okay, so the four of us will—” Tessa started but Brand cut her off.

“Four?”

“Robin, Fenris, Snow, and me,” Tessa said, looking at her friends, whose faces fell.

“No way. We’re coming,” Brand said, and Micah nodded emphatically next to him.

“I need you guys here.”

“Why?” Brand asked. “So we’ll be all nice and out of the way?”

“Tess, this thing has our hair too. We’re marked. You have to let us help.”

“And I am,” Tessa said. “I need you guys here figuring this out, doing research. We can’t put all our eggs in one basket. Look for wielders of black magic in Fiction, specific spells that use a victim’s hair. Cross reference whatever you find with The Troll from
The Three Billy Goats Gruff
story. Maybe we can find something connected to him with Magic.”

Brand and Micah nodded, disappointed but resigned. “But, the books, I mean—they’re just Stories, Tessa—they’re not going to cross reference, right?” Brand asked.

Fenris raised his head again. “What do you have? Show me.” Tessa walked past him into the kitchen, and everyone followed her to the dining room and the pile of books. Fenris’s eyes searched the piles of books on the table and then he went digging into the bag, pulling out handfuls of large volumes. Finally,
he found one he was looking for.

“Here,” he said, holding it out to Tessa.

“What is it?” she asked, creaking open the old leather binding. The inside was completely handwritten.

“It’s an Advocate journal,” Fenris said. Tessa’s blood went cold and she put it down as if it was poison. He held out another volume, and Micah took it. “Here’s another. There are certainly more, but the journals will be more helpful as they discuss Fiction outside of their original context, how they have behaved once they reached beyond their Stories, and in particular, their behavior in the Mortal world. It should also include known associations, things like that.”

Tessa narrowed her eyes at him. “How do you know so much about Advocates?”

“I’ve been around,” he said, not looking at her but rummaging through the rest of the bag.

Tessa left it alone. For now.

“Okay,” Tessa said, looking at Brand and Micah. “This is great. Can you guys do this?” They looked at one another and then back to Tessa.

“Okay,” they said together.

Tessa looked at the rest of the group. “We leave in five minutes,” she said, walking out of the room. Snow opened her mouth to protest. “You’re coming,” Tessa said, without even pausing. Snow closed her mouth and pouted. Tessa left everyone and went upstairs to change. Halfway through, she heard a light knock on her door, and after getting her shirt on, she opened it to see Robin standing there. Her heart skipped at least one beat. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he said and then stepped inside her room as she moved to the side. “I don’t know about this, Tessa. They’re villains. Fenris especially is dangerous, we’ll be out there with them alone—they could betray us at any moment.”

“They could,” Tessa said, hunting around for a sweatshirt in her pile of clothes still abandoned in suitcases she’d never had a chance to unpack. “But we don’t have much choice. They’re powerful, and I need them. For now, at least. I can’t let anything happen to Micah and Brand. Whatever this curse is, I have to stop it before something horrible happens to them. I need manpower…er…Storypower. Besides, they both have things they want, and for whatever reason, so far at least, that doesn’t seem to include me being dead.”

Robin shook his head, “Tessa, I know you’re new to this, but you can’t trust them.”

Tessa smiled and moved closer to Robin. “And I can trust you? I barely know you. I’ve known you about—” she looked at her watch. “—nine hours.” She couldn’t help but lean closer to him. He breathed her in and touched her cheek, in a surprisingly intimate gesture.

“I know, but it’s different with me.”

“How so?” Tessa asked, searching his face. She did trust him, but she didn’t know why. He
was
barely more than a stranger.

“I’m a hero,” he said.

Tessa laughed, “And so humble!”

“I don’t mean it as a compliment to myself. It’s a fact. It’s in my DNA. It’s what I was written to be. The hero, the good guy, the one who does the right thing, whether unpopular or not. It’s in my design the same way being the bad guy is built into them. Deception and conquering, killing and lying, betrayal and horror, it’s all they know on some level, and it’s destiny, pure and simple,” he said.

Tessa shook her head. “No, I don’t believe that,” she said, backing away from him and looking at the sweatshirt in her hands. “Destiny doesn’t define everything. They can choose. You said yourself that they can fight their Fiction.”

Robin shook his head and reached out, turning her toward him again. “Tessa, you don’t understand, it’s just not that simple. Fighting your Fiction…it’s extremely complicated, and that’s even if they WANT to. I doubt Snow or Fenris even care to,” he said. As he stared into her eyes, Tessa could see that he believed it whole-heartedly. She pulled away again, bristling, annoyed for reasons she didn’t fully understand.

“We don’t know that,” she said, stepping into the hall, stepping back from the moment they had shared.

In the living room, Tessa took a vase and a stack of books off of an old trunk and opened it up to reveal some of the weapons she had picked out yesterday. Robin politely declined.

“I’m good.”

Tessa looked to Snow, who shook her head lightly. She looked at Fenris ,who
smiled widely, his teeth glinting.

“I’ve no need of weapons, luv.” Tessa saw Robin roll his eyes, and she reached for the broadsword
.

“Okay then, I guess that’s it. Everyone ready?” There was a general grumble of agreement from the group, and the quartet headed out.

The walk to the park was a strange, silent one with Robin and Tessa next to one another in front, Tessa with her sword, Robin with a longbow and sheath of arrows, Fenris off to the side, and Snow bringing up the rear, grumbling all the way in her four-inch wedge heel boots.

When they reached the park, Robin led them straight east and then, after ten minutes, veering north. Robin motioned them forward and they moved from the heavily wooded area into a clearing. “He’s not far into the woods, just beyond this clearing,” Robin said, turning to Tessa. As he did so, Fenris, on the far right of the group, growled and stopped.

It was a sound that paralyzed them all.

“What is it?” Tessa whispered. She saw nothing, sensed
almost
nothing. Fenris just pointed. In the dark near the tree line, over a ridge and housed in a totally creepy mist that had rolled in, Tessa saw a huge black dog. Snow, just in front of Tessa, squinted at the animal. “Is that…is that Hecuba?” Tessa asked, unsure whether she was hoping the answer was yes or no. Snow squinted harder.

“No.” she said, and Tessa could tell from her tone that Snow had hoped it was.

“And it’s not you,” Tessa said lightly, looking at Fenris, who looked back at her and shook his head, his playful smile absent. The group looked again at the hulking animal. It was massive and oddly shaped, and Tessa was almost certain she could hear it growling, low and brutal, even at this distance. Snow sucked in a breath.

“There’s more of them,” she said. Tessa was about to object since she saw nothing but then noticed a rustle in the trees. Almost as if shedding camouflage, two more shapes emerged, then six, then twelve, then fifteen, then, well, Tessa couldn’t easily count them anymore.

“Oh my God,” Tessa said. “I hope these aren’t Stories.”

Fenris glanced at Snow. “Can you take them all?” he asked. Tessa looked at Snow, shocked. What was she going to do, scowl at them and offer pointed criticism? She’d mostly just brought Snow to keep an eye on her, it hadn’t occurred to her she’d be an actual asset.

“No,” Snow said solemnly, and turned her head to look back at Fenris. “It’s too many, especially if they run at us. Which they are going to do.”

Fenris nodded in agreement.

Tessa suddenly felt like a very unnecessary third wheel.

“I’ve seen you take that many,” Robin said.

“Not in this climate,” Snow said, her tone definitive.

“How many
can
you take?” Fenris asked.

Snow grimaced, “Depends how fast they are, how strong. Maybe a dozen, perhaps 15 if we’re lucky.” The temperature around them dropped rapidly, and there was a cold, almost electric snap in the air. Tessa noticed that Snow’s hands and eyes were faintly glowing with a pale bluish-
white light.

“That’s not enough,” Robin said. “It will leave too many to deal with at once.”

“So what’s plan B?” Tessa asked, and as she finished, she heard a rumbling growl on her right. She turned to see Fenris, partially shifted into a wolf. His handsome features morphing into something else, his clothes tearing as his shape shifted underneath. She couldn’t tell if he was losing control or just suiting up for battle. “Fenris?”

“They’re going to attack,” he said, his voice so guttural and inhuman that it was almost unintelligible. “Now,” he said, and it was something between a bark and a barely contained shout. As he said it, the entire pack lurched forward as if they were one animal. They weren’t graceful and fluid like real dogs, but they were unnaturally huge, powerful and fast.

Very, very fast.

“Another one,” Brand said, looking up at Micah, who put down the journal she was poring over and picked up a pen. “Baba Yaga,” he said. Micah scrunched up her nose.

“I’m just gonna spell that phonetically.”

“How many is that?” Brand asked, trying to read her scrawling notes upside down.

“Nine,” Micah said, sounding defeated.

“So it’s been an hour and already, we’ve found nine magic wielders that have had ‘adventures’ in the Mortal world. I feel like we could do this for the rest of our lives and not figure this out,” Brand sighed.

“Maybe we should stop and research these nine a little more. See if there’s any connection to The Troll, or to zombies,” Micah said, rubbing her chin with the pen.

“You know they’re not even
really
that attractive,” Brand said, looking with renewed interest at the journal pages in front of him.

“Huh?” Micah asked, looking up. “Who?”

“Who?!
Who!?!
The parade of supermodel-meets-rock-star-meets-professional-athletes that have been in this house all damn day!” he said, throwing up his hands. Micah smiled.

“I thought you said they weren’t that attractive?”

Brand blew out a puff of air. “I was lying.” He fiddled with the corners of the journal pages. “I thought this whole language thing was pretty cool, but now—”

“Now you wish you were a supermodel-meets-rock-star-meets-professional-athlete?”

“Yeah, of course. I mean, how can a guy have healthy self-esteem hanging out with these dudes?” he opined, drawing obsessive circles on the notebook in front of him.

“You sure that’s it? It’s not jealousy of the competition?”