Jack, the giant-killer (13 page)

“Don’t
you
start again,” Kate told him before he could get a word out.

Arkan held his hands open in front of him. “I want to go with you,” he said. “I want to help.”

“Is that what your boss told you to say?”

Arkan shook his head. “I haven’t left the

Gruagagh’s yard since you went in. I’ve been thinking about all you’ve said and I…I’m ashamed…

His voice trailed off and he looked so

uncomfortable that Kate took pity on him. She wasn’t really sure why she did what she did, because she only half-trusted him, but perhaps it had something to do with what the Gruagagh had said to
her
about heroes. She didn’t feel particularly heroic, but it took some doing to admit you were wrong—she knew that from the times she’d had to do it herself. If Arkan Garty was willing to help, then she should be willing to give him the chance.

“Come on, then,” she said. “Time’s running out.”

Arkan fell in step beside her and they hurried on down the park, making for her apartment.

“What do they call you?” he asked as they reached the spot where Belmont met the Rideau River. That was a polite way of putting it, Kate thought, remembering what Jacky had told her about faerie and their speaking names.

“Kate,” she said. “Kate Crackernuts,” she added with a smile. She had to be nuts. “Welcome to my nightmare.”

“What?”

The rock and roll reference was lost on him, Kate realized, but she didn’t try to explain it. How did you explain Alice Cooper to someone from Faerie?

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just something that Jacky and I say to each other when the going gets weird, and tonight, Arkan, let me tell you, the going’s definitely gotten weird.”

The foxish head nodded beside her. The gloom of twilight gave Kate the eerie feeling that she was hurrying through the dusk with a werefox. Definitely a weird night. And it was just starting. Hang in there, Jacky, she thought. The cavalry’s on the way. All two of us.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

« ^ »

Jacky was hanging in there—just.

When the bogans snatched her, she’d literally gone numb with panic. She saw first Finn, then Kate go down, and then the bogans’ rush took them out of the park into a mad dizzying run through Ottawa South’s streets.

Don’t they
see
? she remembered thinking as the bogans swarmed by a man walking his dog, children playing in a schoolyard, two workmen taking a coffee break. But there was Faerie and her own world, she realized, and only with a redcap could you see into the former from the latter. A redcap or… She’d dropped both cap and jacket when the bogans grabbed her, but she still
saw
.

Touched, she thought. Touched by Faerie and I’ll maybe always
see
now. I’ve gone fey. The bogan gripped her so tightly, and the heavy reek of his body odour was so strong, their speed so dizzying while she bounced against the creature’s rock-hard skin… it all combined into a frightening whorl that spun inside her until Jacky did something she’d never done before. She fainted dead away. When she finally came out of her faint, sick and feverish with its aftereffects, there was cold concrete under her and a pool of bogan faces spinning slowly around her, slowing down like a merry-go-round running out of steam until she could make out each hellish face with a clarity she wished wasn’t hers.

She almost passed out again, but knew she couldn’t afford to. She had to get OutOfHere RightAway. As the dizzying feeling came over her again, she bit down on her lower lip and forced her eyes to stay open. Her stomach churned, but she remained conscious. The creatures that surrounded her weren’t all bogans, or at least they weren’t all like the things that she and Kate had fought back in her apartment. Some were twins to those ugly squat creatures, but there were others… Something like a naked woman,

emaciated and grey-skinned, her ribs protruding and the skin drawn tight across her features, snuffled close to Jacky’s head. Pale eyes regarded her with a hungry gaze. When the creature leaned close and licked at Jacky’s cheek, she choked on a scream and whipped her head aside. The bogans laughed at that.

“Don’t like you much, Maghert, hot damn!”

The grey woman-like thing hissed. “Give usss a tassste.”

A bogan gripped Jacky’s head and held it while Maghert rasped her tongue across Jacky’s cheek. Jacky moaned and that made the bogans laugh some more. Thick fingers poked at her stomach, squeezed her thighs, jabbed at her breasts.

“Plump enough to spit her, sure,” one of the bogans said. “Don’t need to stew this one, no, hot damn!”

Twig-thin creatures capered and danced just beyond the circle of bogans. The grey-skinned hag’s tongue felt like it was licking the side of her face raw. There was a trollish, slopebacked creature, its body festooned with shells that clattered as it bent close, a gap-toothed leer splitting its face. Jacky tried to curl herself into a ball, but the bogans just pulled her straight, poking and prodding. Saliva spilled from their mouths when they laughed. Their reek made the air unbreathable.

“I like mine raw,” a rumbling voice announced to a new chorus of rough laughter.

A bogan pulled Maghert away from her, cuffing the hag across the head. “Leave a bit for the rest, you old whore,” he muttered.

One of the tiny twig-thin creatures sidled close and began to pluck at her hand. “Just a finger,” it moaned before it too was cuffed aside.

“Leave her be!” the large bogan who’d pulled the hag away roared, taking command. “Leave her alone, or I’ll spike the lot of you, just watch if I don’t, hot damn!”

A chorus of protests arose.

“Greedy!”

“Spike you, arsebreath, hot damn!”

“We’ll stew
you
, Skraker!”

“She’s for the Big Man,” Skraker growled. He stood over Jacky, like a cougar straddling its prey, and slowly faced down the crowd of angry creatures.

“She’s for the Boss and maybe he’ll share her and maybe he won’t.”

“We’re hungry now!” a bogan protested.

“Give her to usss,” Maghert whispered, creeping closer again.

Skraker leapt forward and began batting the creatures indiscriminately with his big fists until they all backed off. He spared Jacky a glance. When he saw she was still breathing, he paced back and forth across the concrete floor, glaring at his companions until they broke off into small groups of twos and threes and fell to arguing amongst themselves. Then he sat down near Jacky to keep guard.

The smell of her made his stomach rumble, but he knew better than to go against the wishes of the Big Men. Human prey was rare. Take too many, and the men were out hunting you, pretty damn fast. So the few humans that fell into the clutches of the Unseelie Court went first to the Big Men. But there were always scraps. And it was those that followed orders that got the scraps, hot damn.

For a long time after the creatures had stopped pawing at her, Jacky lay still, hardly daring to breathe. The sheer horror of her predicament had unnerved her to the point where it was all she could do to keep herself from fainting dead away again. The touch of the hag’s tongue, all those hands and fingers, squeezing and prodding, and the talk of spits and stews… She shuddered.

She’d thought the worst thing that could happen would be to fall into the clutches of the Wild Hunt. Now she knew better. Anything to do with the Unseelie Court was a horror. She felt weak and sick, hardly able to lift her head. But slowly, as she was left alone, the terror was pushed back. She realized that she had to plan, she had to
do
something to get away. There would be no rescues. And now, with this firsthand experience, she understood the reluctance small hobs like Finn had about confronting the Host. Think, she told herself. Remember all those fairy tales you read as a kid. If these things are real, then whatever the good guys used to destroy them probably worked too. Except they all had magic swords, or talking cats, or handsome princes to rescue them. All she had was herself. A very scared self. Against twenty or more monsters. She started to shiver again, then pinched herself hard. The pain was enough to help her focus on trying to think of something, instead of just curling up and dying.

She sat up, very slowly, stiffening when the big bogan nearby turned quickly around, nostrils flaring. Jacky thought her heart would stop as he stared hungrily at her. She lifted a hand to her face and wiped away the drying, sticky saliva that was there. Her stomach did a flip as she frantically wiped it off her hands. The bogan grinned.

“Try and run,” he said, “and I’ll take off one of your legs, the Big Man be damned!”

“I… I…” Jacky began, but she couldn’t get

anything out except for that one syllable, and it sounded like the kind of squeak a mouse made.

“Bet you taste good,” the bogan muttered as he turned away from her. “Hot damn!”

Her sitting up had brought a circle of the other creatures around them that quickly dispersed when the bogan guarding her snarled at them.

She had to wait, Jacky told herself. Wait for the right moment. They’d left her with her sneakers and the hob magics stitched into them. If she could just get a little bit of a head start, they’d never be able to catch her… would they? But the waiting was hard. Time dragged, the way it always did when she was waiting for something. And then there was the bogan sitting so close to her, its body odour traversing the distance between them in sickly waves. And the other creatures that were snuffling about—the hag and the little feral twig creatures, the trollish thing with the clattering shells, and the other bogans. Not to mention the knowledge that one of the Big Men was on his way…

To try to keep her mind away from all of that, she studied her surroundings. This was the Civic Centre, she realized. An indoor rink that was also used for concerts. She’d gone to a zillion rock shows here. Was this the Ottawa home of the Host? Were they into rock and roll? When she looked at the creatures around her, she didn’t think they’d be out of place in a heavy metal band’s video.

An image popped into her mind of the bogans tying her to a spit while an announcer’s voice spoke overtop,

“And now, new from the Unseelie Court, here’s

‘Eating Out With Jacky’…” And there was the hag, singing lead, with bogans on guitars and that big thing with the shells on drums, looking like some psychotic’s version of a Muppet…

She shuddered and knew that she couldn’t wait for the right moment. She had to make it for herself. If she stayed here much longer, she was just going to wither away. It was bad enough that she kept feeling faint. If she kept that up, the next time she woke up it might well be in a stew.

She got ready to get up and run for it and damn the torpedoes. It was time for

GoJackyGoJackyGoJackyGo. But then there came a commotion at the far end of the arena and all her resolve drained away in a rush. This was it. The Big Man was here for his dinner. Except it wasn’t the giant. It was more bogans and they were dragging in a new captive.

Oh, God—they’ve got Kate, she thought, then knew a moment’s relief when she saw that the short brown curls on the Host’s new victim belonged to a man. At least she thought it was a man. She squinted, trying to get a better look, realizing at the same time that she was passing up her best chance of GettingOutOfHere. The new captive seemed to be wearing some kind of feathered boa. Then wonder snared her completely and she couldn’t move.

It was a man all right, only he didn’t have a man’s arms. In place of them he had two big black wings. They didn’t give him the majesty of any angel, as she might have thought if someone had described a winged man to her. Instead the wings hung awkwardly from his shoulders, the feathers drooping. A kind of rough brown tunic covered his torso.

As his captors dragged him closer and the creatures already present began to howl, one of those old fairy tales she’d been trying to remember came back to her. It was the one about the seven brothers who were turned into swans. At the end of the story, after their sister had woven nettle shirts for each of them, they all turned back into men. All except the youngest. He was left with a swan’s wing because his sister hadn’t had time to finish one sleeve of his shirt.

This swan man was like that, she thought. Except his sister hadn’t finished off either one of his sleeves. Then she had no more time to think, for the noise of the creatures became deafening as they howled and those howls rebounded from the lofty ceilings.

“Royal blood!”

“HotdamnhotdamnHOTDAMN!”

“Oh, give usss, give USSSSS!”

The bogan guarding Jacky lunged to his feet. He caught hold of one of Jacky’s arms and hauled her up, dragging her with him as he went to meet the newcomers. With his free fist he batted away at the shuffling creatures that were trying to get at the swan man.

“Back off, shitheads!” he roared. “BACK OFF!”

When he reached the newcomers, he threw Jacky at the swan man and turned to beat off the snarling, howling crowd of creatures. Jacky fell to her knees, feeling the painful jar of the concrete floor all the way up to her jaw at the impact. Her face struck the swan man’s arm—wing?—and she choked on the feathers. A bogan hand grabbed the short spikes of her hair and pulled her head roughly back.

“Hey, Skraker!” the new bogan leader said. “This thing of yours is trying to eat our boy.”

Jacky’s captor turned with an evil grin. “I’ll eat you, arse-breath, if you don’t give me a hand with these shitheads.”

Jacky and the new captive were unceremoniously hauled off to one side where the bogan remained on guard, while the rest waded into the excited creatures that were trying to get through Skraker. There was more of the Host here now, Jacky realized. A lot more. Their numbers seemed to have tripled. The fact of her doom pressed down on her like a heavy weight once more and she leaned back against the wall, fighting back tears. The noise in the arena made it impossible to think. The squabbling creatures, each more horrible than the next, just brought home her helplessness. It was a good ten minutes before some semblance of order returned. Skraker came back to stand guard over Jacky, talking with the leader of the new patrol of bogans. They both kept an eye on the ever-growing crowd of the Unseelie Court.