Black Frost (19 page)

He opened the door and I handed him both the
spear and Grandpa’s shotgun. Then I dug all the remaining steel
filled shotshells out of my coat pocket.

“Stay inside, keep out of sight, shoot
anything that tries to get in. They’re after Lindsey. They’re also
highly allergic to steel and iron,” I explained.

He looked at the spear in his hand and then
looked up, realization dawning in his eyes. “You knew! When you
gave me this spear, you knew!” he accused.

I shook my head. “I suspected, so I needed to
give you something to defend your family with.”

“You could have explained your
suspicions!”

“Yeah right! Hey Tom, I think elves, fairies
and goblins are coming for our kids..use this spear to fight them
off. That would have been believable,” I said with a sarcastic
snort.

He thought about that, then nodded
reluctantly. “Yeah, I guess that wouldn’t have gone over well.”

“I have to go…they want Ashley most of all,”
I said, than continued when his eyes questioned me. “She’s with
Dad, but there’s a whole mess of them headed his way. Stay safe, I
think Dad called some government types to get help on its way, but
I have to go!”

Inside the house I could see Lindsey and her
mother holding each other, eyes wide with fear. I nodded to them
both, holding Lindsey’s eye for a moment before turning to
leave.

“Remember, anything iron is lethal to them,
but they are fast as hell!”

We both paused as the sound of a police siren
cut through the air, then Tom closed and bolted his door.

Then I climbed back into the FJ Cruiser and
left.

***

I was turning onto Grove Street, when a loud
thumping got my attention. It took a second for the deep bass sound
to register but then I realized it was a helicopter, coming fast
over the village. Glancing up through the foliage I just caught the
shape of a military chopper flashing by overhead, hauling ass for
the center of the village. If the government responded quickly
enough, it could save the town, but I somehow didn’t think they
would be of much use to my family.

As I approached my parents’ part of town, I
started to see more movement in the surrounding streets. Shadows
and slinking shapes, all slipping deeper into the cold, dark night.
I glimpsed a squat gobin, the broken body of what might have been
Mrs. Steeker’s tabby cat in its clawed hand. It stopped to stare at
me and I noted with a start that it was neither green or white, but
instead striped with black and red. The yellow eyes were the same
though and after meeting my gaze, it vanished into the gloom.

Lights were on all over now and as I turned
from Grove to Cottage Street, I spotted a police car, lights
flashing, in the driveway of a house further down the street. Shots
rang out and I saw a figure with a light and a gun stumble
backwards, pursued by a goblin shape. The officer kept firing at
the goblin, but never saw the tall lean silhouette that stepped out
the dark and slashed a gleaming silver edge at his head. The
officer’s outline changed shape, a round object flying off his
shoulders and the suddenly shorter body falling to the ground.

My path took me the other direction and I
accelerated an urgent need in the pit of my stomach. Mom and Dad
lived one street over and as I turned the final corner I saw their
house lit up by Dad’s security lights. For a moment I felt a flash
of relief, but then I started to see details and my heart fell to
my feet.

The front picture window was smashed and
several lumps on the lawn appeared to be sparking green light.
Inside the house was mostly dark, but what light there was
flickered intermittently. A long lean shape rose to its feet on the
front porch as I drove straight up. My headlights illuminated a
huge black canine, easily seven feet long, its body hairless, but
gleaming black, its eyes yellow. Huge jaws lined with shearing
teeth held the limp dead form of my Father’s Doberman, Max, and the
front door behind it appeared to be missing.

Chapter 18

The giant black dog growled as I slid out of
the car, like some oversized, furless Irish Wolfhound that had been
dipped in coal tar. Around its neck was a thick leathery collar
that was striped in red and black, and tipped with black thorns.
The hell hound lowered its head, still holding Max in its jaws,
ears back. I shot it. Twice in the head and once in the chest for
good measure, the iron tipped .44’s penetrating the length of its
body, blasting blue ichor across my parents white porch.

Jumping past the shuddering body I clicked on
the light fixed under the barrel of the rifle, as the flickering
lights left the interior shadowy and disorienting like a strobe
light at a dance club.

The front door was torn from its hinges,
thrown sideways against the hallway closet door. Blue blood was
spattered everywhere, the various clumps showing how many of the
Hunt it had taken to get past Bob Moore. I found his Remington
short barreled shotgun, his house gun as he called it, lying on the
living room floor, underneath a floor lamp. The slide was back, the
gun empty, the sidesaddle ammo holder exhausted as well. Then I
found my mother, in the kitchen, where she must have made a last
stand to protect the back door. Her .38 was lying near the broken
door, fallen where she had likely thrown it against the first Fae
through the door. Mom, herself, was backed up against the stove,
her favorite chef’s knife clutched in one hand, a line of blue
viscous fluid staining the steel blade. The angle of her neck and
the bloody handprint on the side of her face told me the cause of
her death but the angry grimace on her face told me
how
she
had died. That and the sparking pile of goo in front of her. She
was beyond my help, but I paused to close her eyes and lower her to
a flatter, more natural position, before continuing my careful
progress into the house. Fairies, elves and goblins had been
unbelievable, but my mother being dead was unreal, despite the
proof I had left in the kitchen behind me.

My father was in the dining room, his legs
trapped under the wreckage of Mom’s beloved harvest table.
Something had broken the stout table in the middle and it had in
turn crushed my Father’s legs. His favorite .45 was still in his
grip, the slide locked back on an empty chamber. Empty magazines,
fat brass cartridge cases and the blue goo outline of at least four
lean bodies indicated the price he had made the Hunt pay for
admission to his party.

A bloody spike protruded from his stomach and
his left arm was severed just below the elbow, most likely when he
had used it to block a blade stroke. I moved closer, crouching, and
his eyes suddenly opened, flickering with effort.

“Dad?” I asked, shocked he was still alive,
sudden hope flaring in my chest.

“
Ian
,” his voice just a whisper.
“
Ash….they’ve got Ash,”

I dropped the rifle and looked around for
something to bind his arm with, but his right hand dropped the
empty pistol and clutched at my sleeve.

“Dad, it’s okay, I’m here, you’ve got to calm
down,” I tried to assure him. Instead, he coughed up blood in a
foamy spray and gasped out one more thing.

“
Ready riggg…”
, then died, in my arms,
along with a big portion of my heart. I sat for a moment, holding
my father, crying for my mother, wanting my daughter back, till I
heard a sound. Just a little sound, a tone really. The barest
beginnings of a whine. Gently laying my father back down, I shined
the light from the rifle around the corner of the dining room, the
beam coming to rest on the wreckage of the grandfather clock at the
entry way to the family room. A brown paw was poking out from under
the detached face of the ancient clock.

Pulling aside the broken wood and gears, I
found Charm breathing weakly, her muzzle stained blue. I cleared
the space around her and checked her over, her tail beating in
short, feeble strokes against the floor.

“Easy girl, it’s okay.”

She whined again, stronger this time, her
brown eyes looking guilty and sad.

“We’ll get her back, Charm,” I told the dog
as well as myself, suddenly reenergized by the little canine’s
fierce will to live. Her breathing improved and her motions got
stronger as I checked her over for wounds. There didn’t seem to be
any, which led me to believe she had been knocked unconscious when
she had been thrown through the clock. After getting her some
water, I left her for a moment to head into the basement to Dad’s
man cave. In contrast to the rest of the house, the finished
basement was pristine, ready to receive company, while the upstairs
was destroyed. Dad’s gun safe was unlocked, but I ignored it for
the smaller gun cabinet next to it. Punching in my and Ashley’s
birth years triggered the lock and the door swung open to give me a
look at what Dad called his ‘ready rig’. Studying it with wide
eyes, I whistled in appreciation. The attack must have come very
suddenly, catching my father with just his .45 and regular house
shotgun. If he had gotten hold of this, the fight might have gone
differently.

Inside the cabinet, hanging from an ingenious
rack was the best equipped assault rig I’d ever seen. Professional
warfighter quality body armor in an olive drab assault vest.
Attached to the front of the vest at chest height was a kydex
holster at a cross angle that held a Glock 21 .45 with additional
thirteen round mags in the four pouches right under it. Three
flashbang grenades were hung on the right side next to multiple
magazine pouches. The flashbangs, likely a leftover from Dad’s
career, had duct tape wrapped around them, which in turn was
studded with small iron nails, making an improvised elf grenade. A
kydex sheath strapped upside down on the right chest held a
handmade bowie of D2 steel that I had crafted for Dad one winter
break between college semesters under Grandpa’s watchful eye. Nine
inches of incredibly tough, razor sharp steel.

Leaning next to the vest rig was Dad’s choice
of long gun, a fully automatic, highly illegal H&K UMP .45
submachine gun. This one had an Aimpoint electronic sight mounted
on top, a twenty-five round mag of iron tipped rounds and a fire
control selector that allowed single, two round burst or full
automatic fire.

Where he had obtained that lethal piece of
hardware, I would likely never know, but I didn’t waste any time in
gearing up with it and its vest. I bound my torn leg with gauze
from the shop first aid kit, then pulled on a pair of tactical
pants from my Father’s stuff, our sizes being identical. Inside the
gun cabinet I found an unopened box holding chainsaw chaps of all
things, like he had just purchased them. Made from Kevlar, they
were designed to bind and seize the cutting teeth of a chainsaw,
preventing the loss of a leg. It looked like a recent addition to
the cabinet, but it made sense. They would, hopefully, protect my
femoral arteries from the teeth of the Fae.

My own boots and then the vest with all its
gear, my own .40 Sig still in its hip holster.. It wasn’t till I
was just about done strapping the vest in place that I found my
Father’s last surprise. Two surprises actually, tucked in round
little pouches that the military had designed just for their like.
Studying the lethal gifts from my hyper prepared parent, I felt
like I had a serious chance of getting my daughter back for the
first time since I entered the house, or if I failed in getting her
back I was going to take a hell of a lot of elves with me.

Charm appeared at the doorway to Dad’s room,
her tail low, but her eyes bright.

“Yeah, just about ready, girl,” I said,
checking the big pouches to assure myself that they held more
submachine gun mags. I grabbed two baby food jars of iron filings
off the workbench and called it done. “Let’s go get Ashley,
Charm,”

Chapter 19

We stepped onto the front porch, Max’s body
lay next to a seven foot smear of goo, and Charm stopped to sniff
him one last time. Shots rang out around town mixed in with screams
of terror punching through the cold air. Dawn wasn’t far off, but I
couldn’t tell if Groton Falls would live to see the new day or
not.

Freezing air blasted my face through the
smashed and spider-webbed windshield, making my skin ache and my
eyes tear up non-stop, as we drove away. My thoughts were focused
on Ashley, the picture in my mind of a horde of black hounds and
red-black striped goblins bounding alongside some alien hellish
steeds that carried Ashley and her elven abductors. My parents
front lawn had been torn and shredded with tracks like nothing I’d
ever seen. But I felt pretty strongly that I would soon get a look
at what made them.

We headed straight back to the farmhouse at
the foot of Bear Mountain, driving down deserted roads past
familiar houses and farms. The silver disc of the moon still hung
in the sky, although it was getting lower by the moment, the sky in
the opposite direction getting brighter as the sun got ready to
make its appearance.

We finally pulled into our own driveway, but
drove straight past the house to the rear of the property, bouncing
the off-road vehicle over the uneven ground. Sliding to a stop at
the base of our little hill-mountain, we slid out of the car.
Rechecking the HK I glanced at Charm who was sniffing the air and
looking up the hillside with perked ears. I clicked my tongue at
her, breaking her intense concentration. She glanced my way than
turned back forward and began to move cautiously up the trail. We
hadn’t gone more than fifteen feet when she growled at the trees in
front of us. Instantly, I dropped into a crouch, the sub gun at my
shoulder, finger on the trigger. Charm rushed forward and flushed
the black-clad Guardian, who flipped acrobatically over her
and
the bush he had been hiding behind, landing lightly on
braced feet with his blade in one hand, while simultaneously
throwing a spike with the other. His aim was dead on, but the
deadly spike bounced off the hardened ballistic plate covering the
center of my chest, and I grimly noted his shocked expression as I
feathered the trigger. The HK was set for two round bursts and my
two fat slugs clocked him in the center of his chest, while the
butt of the HK thumped my shoulder like an old friend. The big .45
bullets did the job they were designed for, mushrooming on contact
and spreading their deadly load of iron as they punched through the
tough, but thinly build alien.