Black Frost (20 page)

Charm’s canine sensors routed the next
Guardian, who was rushing to join our party on silent feet. He was
coming from behind us, but the tough little dog pegged his
presence, barking loudly, and I spun, dropping to one knee and
tapping the trigger twice. Three of the four rounds hit him, in the
right leg, stomach and upper left shoulder just as he entered the
path. Two down. I swapped the partial mag for a full one and we
headed further up the hill.

A quarter mile from the top, a white form
bounded onto the trail in front of us. Bringing my gun on target, I
was suddenly bowled over from the side by what felt like rubber
covered steel. The second ice goblin had flanked us, fooling even
Charm’s senses. Black tipped needle claws raked down my left arm as
we spun to the ground. In ground fighting, being on your back with
the opponent above you is not always a bad spot…if your opponent is
human. Wrapping my legs around a four foot bundle of muscle, razor
claws and flesh shredding teeth did not seem like a winning tactic.
Keeping my legs up, boots pointed at the goblin, I struggled to get
to my Glock. I wouldn’t have made it, but Charm chose that moment
to fasten her own rather formidable jaws between the goblin’s
legs.

All thoughts of finishing me fled from the
creature’s face as my dog savaged his groin. That gave me just
enough time to fumble the big pistol free and blast the goblin with
three point-blank shots to the face. Sitting up I unloaded four
more into the onrushing form of the first goblin, then got knocked
flat as its momentum carried it over and past me.

The goblin that had run me down was thrashing
around in agony, his fellow goblin dead from steel tipped lead on
the brain. Suddenly it flipped back to its feet, mortally wounded,
but still a deadly monster and it fastened its hate filled eyes on
me. I double tapped its head, not wanting to wait for it to die on
its own, as it looked pretty serious about taking me with it.

I reloaded the Glock, then wiped up the blood
on my arm with a disinfectant towel from the professional first aid
kit I found in one of the vests many pouches. I slapped a
pre-medicated, self-adhesive bandage on the worst of the gashes,
more to block the smell of blood than anything. Reloaded and ready,
I looked at Charm who was waiting impatiently for me to get my act
together. “Be a lot faster if you could do it on your own, huh?” I
asked her, getting a face lick in response, along with a whine to
get moving.

The trail up the hillside was torn and
muddied, the tracks a monster-movie mixture of clawed feet and
paws. My left leg hurt, my right forearm was throbbing and the
gashes in my left arm stung like hell. But I decided the pain was
good, a reminder that I was still very much in the game. From what
Greer had said, I was thinking the portal between our Earth and
Fairie was at the very top of the hill, probably in or near the
cracked granite summit. Climbing the muddy trail, I noticed how
light the sky was getting, the sun getting ready to come up on my
right side.

When we got to about a hundred yards from the
top, the woods fell away, the summit became mostly bushes and
grass. Dawn was just about fully on us, the light strong enough to
see well. And what I saw ahead made me stop and tuck back behind
one of the last young pine trees on the slope.

The granite top of Bear Mountain was visible,
the crack at the back of it not. Eight to ten shapes waited
quietly, most facing our way, alerted by my gunshots . Dad’s vest
had an eight power monocular in one of the utility pockets. I used
it to study the group occupying the mountaintop.

Three wore the black of the Guardians, and
they watched the surrounding area with careful focus. The rest were
black and red, either wearing it as clothing in the case of the
elves or, in the goblins situation, having fur or skin that was
banded in those colors. I realized now that the goblin I had seen
in near Dad’s had those same colors. The monocular gave me enough
detail to decide that the goblins’ fur was stained or dyed, and
after a moment, it was apparent that some had scaly skin rather
than fur. Two of the nightmare hounds were lying on the ground near
the feet of elven Hunt members, red and black collars at their
necks. This had to be the tail end of the Hunt, and its members
appeared to be outcasts from both Courts, which would explain some
goblins being scaled and some furred. The careful, almost
disdainful way the Guardians avoided looking at the scarlet and
ebony horde told a story about the politics involved. The Hunt
members were acting belligerent and cocky, the Guardians
professional and aloof. Neither group liked the other, but open
battle was apparently out. The Guardians all had their bows in
hand, short seashell-colored arrows nocked in place. At least two
of them were looking in my direction, the earlier gunshots giving
them plenty of warning.

Charm pressed against my leg, trembling, but
I didn’t think she was afraid, just eager to get to Ashley, no
matter who or what she had to go through.

Time was running out and I wasn’t going to
get Ashley back standing here. Unhooking two of Dad’s modified
flashbangs, I straightened the pins, then set them on the ground at
my feet. After checking my submachine gun over, I pulled a handful
of the homemade caltrops out, and placed them at my feet. Looking
everything over I took a deep breath and decided we were as ready
as we were going to get.

I pulled the pin on the first elf grenade,
transferred it to my left hand then pulled the remaining pin with
my left hand index finger. An armed flashbang in each hand, I took
a deep breath then straight armed first one, then the other, up
over my tree and into the middle of the mess of aliens. Crouching
down and grabbing Charm, I shielded her ears as best I could. The
two blasts came a second apart, the concussive waves pressing on my
skin, hair and clothes. Charm jumped in the shelter of my body, but
that was it. She was pretty used to shotguns, having sat through
our family skeet blasting episodes.

Jumping to my feet with the HK, I took in the
scene at the summit in a glance, while tossing the pile of caltrops
out onto the trail in front of us. All of the Fae were shocked,
although more than half were screaming in pain from the toxic iron
brads that had peppered them. Greer had told me that his people had
much more sensitive hearing than humans, it made sense then that
the stunning blast from two concussion grenades would have even
more impact on elves than humans. Two of the Guardians had dropped
their bows, one holding his bleeding ears, the other rolling on the
ground, beating his hands on the burning iron wounds in his legs,
butt and back.

The remaining Guardian still had his bow, but
looked disoriented. I shot him, two quick pulls of the trigger
which was set for semi-automatic. The most alert of the elves in
the Hunt group got the next four rounds, dropping them before they
could get their bows into action. It was a good theory, but the
reality was that the goblins and hounds were tougher than the
elves. The two dogs and three goblins rushed my way. Startled at
their speed, I rushed my shots, missing the first hound, but
hitting the second, as well as one of the goblins. Thumbing the
selector to full auto I fired the remaining rounds in the magazine
in three quick bursts, killing one of the two remaining goblins
outright, but only wounding the second.

Then the surviving hound was on me. Seven
feet long, it had to weigh over two hundred pounds. Its elongated
jaws gleamed with razor edged slashing teeth; weapons designed to
remove flesh from running prey. Somehow its feet missed the field
of caltrops as it sprang in one giant bound that covered fifteen
feet. My HK was empty and my transition to my hip holstered Sig was
too slow. But once more my dog wasn’t.

Charm tops out at sixty pounds, less than a
third the weight of the monster that was hurtling toward me like a
toothy freight train, and in a straight fight she was just too
small. But the hound was focused on me, and Charm’s leap was
perfectly timed, her reflexes honed by hours of Frisbee catch. Her
blocky jaws slammed shut on the monster dog’s throat just before
the two of them knocked me ass over teakettle.

Scrambling to my feet and yanking the Sig
from its holster, I concentrated on the remaining goblin, who was
having a really bad day. My last burst from the HK had wounded a
leg, the same leg that came down on an iron caltrop as it landed
from a bound. The leg gave out even as its foot started to sizzle
from the twisted piece of sharp iron embedded in its sole. Five
rounds of .40 caliber steel-filled lead ended its pain.

Twisting back to the dog fight, I found the
hell hound on its feet, its head thrashing from side to side trying
to dislodge the brindled bundle that was choking its life out. The
hound had been bred to hunt and kill by masters of the biological
arts. Had it been a fight in the open it would have gone much
differently. But Charm was the end result of generations of pit
fighters who had survived by ignoring pain and physical abuse,
while keeping their jaws locked on their opponent and she had found
her advantage in a split second of distraction. The fairy hound was
shaking her from side to side like a toy doll, but she hung on with
a fierce tenacity and her suffocating bite was having a noticeable
effect on the monster, its movements slowing and losing power. The
huge black dog fell over, its front claws raking at my dog and
digging awful furrows in her flesh, but still she hung on. Not
wanting her ripped to shreds, I rushed over and ended the battle
with a bullet to the head of the hound. Charm watched me, still
fastened to its throat, her eyes accusing me of stealing her
victory.

“Good girl, Charm, you did great!” I said to
the little dog who had once again saved my life. That’s when I felt
the sharp pain in my lower back, but before I could twist to look
at it I locked up. Every joint and limb froze in place, leaving me
to fall face first onto the hell hound. I bounced on impact and
came back down with my head looking at the hilltop – and the last
of the elves who was nocking a second arrow into his bow.
Paralyzed, every muscle rigid, there was nothing to do but watch
him kill me. All I could think was that I had failed my daughter.
My parents sacrifice was for nothing, I had failed to get her
back.

He had a cruel grin on his face, pointed
teeth exposed, as he pulled the short bow to full draw. His eyes
met mine and I could see the moment he made the mental decision to
release. I could also see the white furred form of a giant
wolverine burst from the cluster of small pines behind him. Coel
lunged on his back legs, his brutally powerful front legs open in a
claw- bristling embrace that crushed the elf back against him and
brought the long vulnerable neck in range of his jaws. Regular
wolverines have enormously powerful jaws for cracking bone and
getting the marrow inside. Coel’s were another order of magnitude
stronger, his single bite making a loud snap like a tree limb
breaking. The elf’s head fell sideways, held in place by a loose
flap of skin, his arrow and bow smacking together and falling
uselessly to the ground. The giant white wolverine landed on his
front paws, the broken, dead elf hanging from the remains of his
neck in jaws that would make a hyena proud. Coel shook the elf once
than dropped it in a boneless heap. He looked my way, then his head
tracked something outside my vision.

Chapter 20

Black clad legs and feet moved gracefully to
my side then squatted to reveal Greer’s calm features.

“Looking a bit locked up, ehh?” he said,
evenly. His long, mocha colored hand pulled a small, flat box from
a pocket of his dragonskin shirt; slim fingers twitching it open
and deftly selecting a long bonelike needle from inside.

“This will take a few seconds to reach full
effect,” he said as he jabbed it into my back near the arrow which
he also pulled from my flesh, the pain from both sharp.

He waited, crouched on his heels, looking
around the clearing at the dead and dying Fae.

“You realize that we’ve haven’t lost this
many elves and goblins in a Gathering in five hundred years?” he
asked conversationally.

“Listen, I have some things to say to you and
now is as good a time as any,” he went on. “In all likelihood,
you’ll want to kill me when you get up, but for now I’ve got your
attention.”

He took a deep breath, stood and started to
pace around the clearing. “I didn’t understand, but how could I
really? We are very different people, yours and mine. So my
decisions, even now, are logical by the values of my culture. Save
your life, your daughter wasn’t going to be harmed, everything’s
good. But it isn’t is it? Not to your kind of thinking? You would
rather give your life to protect your daughter than both live, if
the lives lived were unknowable and different. If you stayed on
Earth and she was taken to Fairie, as it were. So, while I don’t
truly understand it, I get it. And therefore, I fouled up.”

Feeling was coming back to my limbs, a
frustrating pins and needles feeling like you get when your foot
goes to sleep. I still couldn’t move much, but my body parts were
at least twitching when I tried.

Greer watched me for a moment, then strode
out of my vision toward Charm. I heard her whine, which frightened
me enough to make a monumental effort. The resulting body twitch
was enough to turn my head, bringing Greer and my dog into view. He
glanced my way. “You should let the counter-toxin do its job. You
could hurt something if you force it too much now,” he said,
opening a pouch on his hip and pulling out a tiny jar. Opening the
little container, he scooped a brownish cream onto on finger and
began to spread it in Charms gashes and scrapes. She finally let go
of the dead hell hound’s throat and turned her head to sniff the
salve, but then lay back down.