Black Frost (18 page)

My awareness tunneled down to a narrow focus,
just a circle of vision that centered on the elf who had just
destroyed my life. My ears were filled with a buzzing sound and all
I could think of was my family.

I started to shoot him then, started the slow
squeeze of my right index finger that would send a heavy slug
through his heart.

But just at that moment, something snagged
the barrel, wrapping around it just forward of my left hand. A
black tentacle looped once all the way around – immediately
starting to sizzle. The black strand pulled the muzzle off Greer,
but its grip was slipping as it burned where it touched steel.

The buzzing was gone and my vision expanded
to include the others, including Neeve and her transfigured frost
blade, like some alien whip. Time slowed. Eirwen was moving
backward, pulling her big cat with her. Neeve’s white monster,
Groll was crouching, heavy muscles flexing for a leap in my
direction. The muzzle of my rifle crossed the squat ice goblin’s
form just as he prepared to launch. Without conscious thought my
finger squeezed the trigger, the heavy concussion of the rifle
blasting across the clearing. I felt no recoil, didn’t notice the
roar of the gun, instead concentrating on the results.

Some will tell you that a handgun cartridge
fired from a longer barrel is no match for most rifle rounds. I
gotta say that’s mostly true. But under a hundred yards, the blunt,
beefy .44 bullet, fired at the higher velocity of the carbine
barrel, is rather impressive. The bullet itself weighs four times
as much as a 5.56mm round fired from an M-4 assault rifle.

The steel filled round hit Groll high on his
right chest, punching through his pectoral, probably perforating
his lung (if they were in the same place as ours) and blowing a big
blue-blooded hole out his back. The ape-like monster spun to his
right, even as the tentacle of the frost blade slipped free, still
burning. My reflexes, honed over many years of deer hunting,
automatically levered a new round into the chamber just as my
follow through brought the muzzle to Neeve.

The deadly elf maiden was just slightly off
balance from the release of her whip and now under my muzzle. Her
eyes were equal parts surprised and angry, but I had her dead to
rights and she knew it.

Logic told me to pull the trigger on her, but
an even colder, more calculated thought told me to leave her alive.
Killing her would upset the balance between courts…something I
wanted to keep in place while I went about the business of
retrieving my daughter. Because getting Ashley back was suddenly
the core focus of my entire existence – my sole reason for
being.

With that thought my rage coalesced into a
ball of ice, located where my heart had been a moment before.

I backed to the SUV, my gun covering the
frozen Greer, angry Neeve and shocked Eirwen. Groll had collapsed
to his haunches, growling in pain. He started to get up, but his
mistress stopped him, her angry silver eyes never leaving mine.

The fast walk backwards got me to the car and
I took my eyes off the elves long enough to hop in. My glance back
showed only Greer standing there, Coel by his feet. Nope, that
wasn’t right. Something else was there, flashing through the dark
night air in my direction. As the blur got closer, far too quickly,
I could see it was a group of small creatures flying my way. My
hand grabbed for the door handle, an action that should be the
easiest part of driving, but of course, now, tonight, it had to be
a fumble. Realizing my increasing danger, I finally got hold of the
damn thing and slammed the door shut just as a swarm of venomous
green and tan fairy fliers smacked into the safety glass window
hard enough to rattle the door.

I got the keys out of my pocket, ignoring the
Tinks for the most part as they moved around to the front
windshield and beat themselves against the glass. Shoving the key
into the ignition, I cranked the engine while staring at the little
poisonous monsters outside. My hand hit the windshield wiper switch
by accident, but part of me was thrilled when the wiper blade
caught and crushed one of the Tinks into a foul looking paste.

No more time for play. Shoving the gearshift
into drive, I floored the gas and raced out of the parking lot, not
bothering to keep the FJ Cruiser on the pavement, but cutting
across the dying grass, straight to the road.

Chapter 17

The Tinks held on till the Toyota reached
twenty-five miles an hour, then blew off. I ignored them, my
thoughts centered on the image of Ashley in my parent’s window and
the sick feeling in my stomach.

A white blur streaked from the passenger side
of the car, the rough shape of an ice goblin just recognizable as
it bounded onto the hood of the SUV, its taloned feet tearing into
the steel hood. Apparently, ice goblins weren’t well versed on
cars, as it immediately shrieked in pain, its feet bubbling on the
steel. Losing its footing it smashed into the windshield, the
nightmare skull of teeth and red eyes facing me. Realizing it was
right on top of its target, it pulled back its left hand and
punched the windsheild, the blow knocking a fist sized hole in the
tough safety glass. I fumbled for the rifle while slamming on the
brakes to dislodge it. The end result of that maneuver was the
rifle falling to the floor and the goblin hanging tight to the car.
By luck, my Grandfather’s shotgun also slid forward, the butt
almost under my right hand.

The car had just about stopped, so I didn’t
feel bad letting go of the wheel to use both hands grabbing the old
over/under shotgun. The horror movie face in the windshield was now
tearing the glass with both hands, as the gun spun in my hands.
Shoving its face forward through the opening it had torn in the
glass, the goblin met the steel barrels of Grandpa’s gun. My thumb
pushed the safety off and the bottom barrel fired first as my
finger pulled the front trigger. The steel slingshot balls tore out
of the short tube at over 1300 feet per second and removed half the
goblin’s head. Still it clung to the glass, its remaining red eye
shocked at the sudden turn of events. Pulling the second trigger
removed the other half of the demonic face, taking the body and eye
with it.

My car was half on the road and half on a
front lawn. Flooring the gas and wrestling the wheel to the right
brought me back on the road, freezing night air streaming into the
open windshield. Ears ringing from the gunshots, I glanced around
the village street to see if I had woken the town. I hadn’t really
paid much attention to where I was, but now the street was
recognizable, Tronten Ave, a wide neighborhood street lined with
old Victorian houses and even older maple trees. Lights were coming
on here and there, but it was quickly apparent that the town was
facing its own troubles. Dark figures, some squat, some tall and
lean, slithered through the shadows cast by the leafless limbs of
the big trees.

The elves and goblins gathered around just
two houses on the street, but I had lived in this town for all of
Ashley’s life, and I knew those two seemingly random homes had
young children inside.

The cold, hard part of me that raged to get
to my daughter wanted to ignore the monsters that gathered in the
shadows around those homes, arguing inside me that I should just
get to my Father’s house as fast as possible. But a different part
of my psyche argued right back that Ashley had Bob Moore watching
over her, while these families didn’t even know there was a
problem.

I broke the action of the shotgun, letting
the extractors pop the empty shells over my shoulder, into the back
seat. I dropped two more shells from my jacket pocket into the
chambers and closed the breech. Lining both the shotgun and my
rifle on the seat next to me, I accelerated the SUV down the road.
A green goblin bounded in front of me, clearing half the street in
one leap, its oversized jaws hissing at my oncoming car in warning.
My car wasn’t impressed, but the goblin was when the reinforced
bumper struck its shoulder and knocked it under my knobby offroad
tire.

I highly recommend an FJ Cruiser equipped
with BF Goodrich Mud-Terrain T/A KM2 mud tires for running over
goblins. The combination of power, weight and tire construction is
pretty ideal for crushing blue blooded alien monsters.

Ignoring the sticky blue paste under my car,
I leaned out the driver’s window and unloaded both barrels of the
shotgun, tagging one more goblin and a lone Hunter, who paused to
glare at me. “
Shoot and move, shoot and move”.
My Father’s
words echoed in my head, heard a hundred times in my youth as he
instructed agents. I gassed the car, lurching forward just as
spinning darts struck the window and door panel behind me. Gotta
love modern power windows with the one touch window drop feature.
The passenger window slid obligingly down, making it easy to line
up the rifle as I drove to the opposite side of the road where
figures had paused in their silent assault of the other house.
Leaning sideways, I shot the rifle one-handed, scoring a leg hit on
another Hunter, who didn’t grasp modern firearms effectiveness.
Letting go of the wheel for a moment, I levered a second shell into
the chamber and fired again, hitting nothing, but further alerting
my fellow citizens and maybe keeping a few alien heads down. A
glance in the rearview mirror showed people coming out of their
houses. A fast moving squatty shape flashed in front of one
concerned citizen, its arm swipe leaving his stomach open,
intestines falling in a clump at his feet.

The other vicious denizens of Fairie
scattered into the dark, disappearing like smoke.
Keep
moving
,
get to Ashley!
That’s all I could concentrate
on. The fastest path home popped up in my head as part of me
prioritized at computer fast speeds. Turning onto Masters Street,
another wide, tree lined road, I sped up.

My thoughts centered on Ashley, I didn’t
realize I was driving past the Yelos household till I was almost on
it. The two story brick home where Tom and his wife, Tina, raised
Lindsey and her little brother has a wide, mahogany porch which
currently was dripping with two elven Hunters and at least four
green squatty goblins. The lights upstairs were on, and I could
make out Tom’s brawny silhouette in the center second floor window,
struggling with a goblin. A sparking green hulk, splashed with blue
fluid, was pinned to the lawn by the thick shaft of the spear I had
lent Tom.

The memory of Greer explaining that
both
Ashley and Lindsey had Talent, flashed through my
mind.

The choice was automatic, my actions
immediate. Whipping the wheel sideways, I drove up on the lawn,
just missing Tom’s pickup, slipped the gearshift to neutral, and
bailed from the still moving car, which rolled to a stop in Tina’s
garden bed. Shooting and levering as my feet hit the ground, I put
a heavy bullet through the blonde head of one hunter, then a second
round through a goblin’s chest as it leaped from the porch roof in
my direction. The second hunter spun to me and threw a dart which
snagged my Carhart jacket but failed to stick my still moving body.
I fired twice at him, but he jumped from the roof to the ancient
cedar tree that grew at the corner of the house. I fired the last
three shots at two of the remaining goblins, scoring a grazing
shoulder wound on one, but missing the second, which jinked and
jumped with a wicked speed that just wasn’t fair. Dropping the
empty rifle, I immediately transitioned to my Sig, another set of
muscle memories pounded into me by Dad.

My pistol was still at waist level when I
started to fire at the monster that was almost on me. Dad calls it
a ‘speed rock’ when you draw, lean back and fire from the hip at an
attacker who is so close you can touch him with your other hand. I
got off two shots before the bundle of scaled muscle slammed into
me. Since I was already moving backwards a step, the goblin’s
momentum knocked me away from him as we both hit the ground, its
claws scrabbling at the cold earth. Ground fighting skills kicked
in and my left hiking boot reflexively shoved against its chest as
the wounded hell-ape fought to get at me, its claws sinking into my
calf. The Sig was still in my hand, so I poked the muzzle into the
spike toothed maw that snapped at me and fired five fast shots,
which ended the disagreement.

Standing up painfully on my torn leg, I
looked up at the porch roof. The goblin Tom had been fighting with
was lying on the shingles, sparking green motes and bleeding blue
goo. The head and shoulders of the carcass were oddly misshaped,
flattened somehow. I met Tom’s gaze and we gave each other a nod
that said we were basically okay. He backed into the room and a
moment later the dark form of a wooden dresser was shoved in front
of the broken window, effectively blocking it.

I dropped the partial magazine from my Sig,
replacing it with a fresh one from my belt. Then I picked up the
Winchester and started to thumb cartridges into it. Dad says the
problem with my rifle and most shotguns is that while they shoot
effective rounds (meaning fight stopping), they require too much
manipulation, as in slow, time intensive reloading. I could see his
point. My handgun was fully reloaded in two seconds, but the rifle
took the better part of a minute to get nine rounds into. Slinging
the reloaded rifle over my shoulder, I went to the truck, put it in
park and grabbed the shotgun from the front seat. Reloading it, I
walked over to the pinned goblin, pulled Shaka Zulu from its
decaying chest and continued to the front door. Tom opened it about
the time I reached the top step, a single blue spattered fifteen
pound dumbbell in his right hand. Tom is old school, his weights
are all cast iron, a fact that had just served him well.