Fire Touched (25 page)

Zee snorted. “Only if you don't know Mercy or Adam. Or anyone else involved. As if either of our idiot-heroes would ever turn someone who looks as helpless as Aiden over to the fae.”

“Hey,” I protested softly. I'm not an idiot or a hero. But he had the last part right.

By mutual consent, we left the Explorer and headed into the church. The front porch had been modified with a wheelchair ramp next to the stairs, and both led to a double-door entryway that wasn't original to the house. The changes had been made with an eye to economy rather than harmony.

We could wait for reinforcements, but if the fae thought themselves outgunned, they were likely to kill and run. We had a better chance going in now and hoping the cavalry made it in time to help with the cleanup.

“Mercy,” said Zee in a nearly soundless voice that was hard for me to hear even with my ears, and I stood two feet away. “You go upstairs with your werewolf. Wolf?” Zee met Sherwood's eyes and didn't look away. “You keep her alive. I
think
that it's only Uncle Mike up there with the human hostages, and I
think
that he'll let you get them free.”

“Meanwhile?” asked Sherwood in the same very quiet tone.

Zee smiled wickedly and snapped his hand down—where a narrow, black-bladed sword appeared. “I'll keep the others occupied.”

“Zee?” I said. “Are you okay to fight?” He still wasn't moving right.

Zee nodded. “Against these fools? I could fight them off if I were blindfolded and tied hand and foot.”

I let it go—though I was still worried. The fae speak the truth—as they know it. Just because Zee was an arrogant old fae didn't make him right.

We walked up to the doors with me in front and the others flanking me. I pulled the right-hand door open, and Sherwood reached around me to pull the left so we could enter as one group.

The entryway was a twenty-by-ten room cut off from the rest of the church by a wall with a walkway on either side. There was a kitchenette to our left with a refrigerator, a sink, and a stove. The interior wall had a counter and a half wall that opened into the main room, with a curtain that could be shut or open. It was shut.

On the right was the stairway that led up to the pastor's office, three rooms that were set up as classrooms, and the bathroom. Zee slipped around the wall and into the sanctuary that encompassed the rest of the first floor. Sherwood and I, in that order, headed up the stairs.

Below us, in the sanctuary, there was a huge crash, a wary cry, followed by the clashing sounds of weaponry engaging.

The top of the stairway led to a hall with five closed doors. The door to the immediate right of the stairs was the pastor's office, to the left was the bathroom. Then there were the three classrooms, one left, one right, and one at the end of the hall.

My sense of smell was of limited use for finding Pastor White—his scent was everywhere. The man who'd driven the Explorer was
better. He'd gone into the pastor's office, but I caught his scent farther down the hall—where he'd have had no reason to go.

I tapped my nose and pointed at the classroom door at the end of the hall. Sherwood nodded as a huge crash below us spelled the end of one of the stained-glass windows. My fault. The fae had only come here because of me.

Sherwood took point, the ax in one hand and the big gun in the other. I reached past him to turn the knob, and he elbowed the door in.

The classroom was the largest of the five upstairs rooms. The pastor and a stranger were tied to folding chairs, gagged with duct tape. The floor of the room was covered in a dark brown carpet that showed the triple ring of salt someone had placed around them.

Between them and us stood Uncle Mike, a crossbow in his hand. He'd brought it up—but let the nose point down to the floor as soon as he saw it was me. There were three containers of Morton salt. Two of them were open, but the third still had a seal on the spout.

“Shut that door,” he said. “There's a sprite lord out there, and I don't want his sprites seeing what I have done until Zee's through with them. Stupid louts.”

“What's this about?” I asked.

“I can't tell you,” he said. “All I can tell you is they gave me my orders—to bring these two upstairs and secure them.” He grinned fiercely. “My orders didn't say secure them from whom. As long as those idiots”—he paused as the whole building vibrated—“don't burn the place down, your pastor and this gentleman are safe from most of my kind. Who did you bring with you?” he asked. “Is it Zee?”

“Can't you get across the salt?” I asked.

He shook his head. “This isn't just salt, but salt bonded with magic. I've locked out most fae, including myself. Zee might manage it. One or two of the Gray Lords—but the only one of this group, the one who gave me my orders and is powerful enough to break this, isn't here.” He stared hard at me. There was something he couldn't tell me. He'd said he couldn't tell me why they were here. I'd thought it was obvious—but if it were obvious, Uncle Mike wouldn't have bothered to talk to me about it.

What did they gain from their actions so far? Two hostages—but they were human hostages, near enough to me that I'd respond. But, as Zee pointed out, if they knew anything about Adam or me, they'd never believe that we'd turn Aiden over to them. So what had they gained? They'd called me, let the pastor talk until they were sure I knew who he was, and hung up. And I'd come right over, hadn't I?

I pulled out my cell and called Mary Jo.

“We're on our—” she answered.

“No. Go to the pack house,” I said. “There are some fae coming for Aiden.”

Uncle Mike smiled.

I called the house, but no one picked up. I called Jesse, and it went to her voice mail. I called Warren, Darryl, Ben, and George with the same results.

I called Adam.

“Not a good time, Mercy,” he said tightly.

“Don't hang up,” I told him. “Did you listen to my message?”

“No. I'm discussing bugs with Cantrip. We're—” He would have said more, but I interrupted him.

“The fae are attacking our home,” I said. “Don't listen to my message, waste of time.” Don't worry about me—worry about Jesse,
about Aiden and our wolves. “There's a fae attack at the house,” I repeated. “And no one is answering their phones.”

“Headed home,” he said, and hung up.

Uncle Mike's smile widened and took on a patronizing edge, as if he were a proud father, which he had no right to do.

“Zee says this is a small group,” I said. I didn't want to be here; I needed to be home. “They aren't likely to have all of Faery attack us at our home, right?”

“This group wants the Fire Touched,” he said, so apparently my question was not what he was forbidden to discuss. “Underhill talks to people in their sleep and whispers at them when they are awake, asking for the Fire Touched. We've been searching for a way to make nice with her for a decade or more. We need her to survive—and she's been fickle and nasty. Some of us figure that if we give her the boy, she'll be grateful. Truthfully, others of us figure if we give her the boy, she will shut up about him and we might be able to sleep for longer than five minutes at a time. It's like Chinese water torture or that noise a car makes when your seat belt isn't fastened.”

He frowned at me, but it wasn't a directed frown. “Still, more of us aren't happy that Underhill can
do
that.”

“Do what?” I asked.

“Talk to us in our heads.”

I nodded. The sounds from below weren't getting louder, but the frequency of the crashes was denser. Zee should be finished soon.

Uncle Mike bent down, picked up the unopened container of Morton salt, and handed it to me.

“Here,” he said. “I will keep watch on your humans and secure them for you. I so swear. You two should get downstairs with the salt before Zee gets really upset.”

“We need to release them,” I said, nodding at the hostages. “Get them out of here, where they will be safe.”

Uncle Mike shook his head. “Once the salt circle is broken, I don't have enough magic to renew it. They are safer here. Take out the threat, then release them.”

Pastor White made a wild sound and shook his head. The other man stared at me with old eyes, closed them, then opened them again. He was okay with our plan—which made me very curious about him.

I met Pastor White's wild gaze. “Uncle Mike doesn't lie. He'll keep you safe—has kept you safe tonight. I'm going to make sure we stop the bad guys before he lets you out of the safe zone.”

As we trotted down the stairs, Sherwood said, “Salt is protection against fae?”

I shook my head. “Some fae. Mostly the lesser fae, because it neutralizes magic. Uncle Mike apparently used it as a component in his spell—which fae aren't supposed to be able to do. Salt
neutralizes
magic. What Uncle Mike did is the equivalent of using water to start a fire.”

“So don't count on it,” he said, as we reached the ground.

I nodded, stepped around the (broken) wall, and looked out into Armageddon meets Apocalypse.

I'd learned some things from playing computer games with the pack. “When you first enter a room, look around for your enemy” was one of the golden rules of the Dread Pirate games because the scallywags like to hide behind furniture and doorways and get you from behind. So I ignored the splintered furniture and the brightly colored glass shards that littered the room and looked for the bad guys.

Enemy number one was flattened beneath a pew. She was unconscious. She was breathing, but judging by the crushing injury to her back, she wasn't going to be mobile anytime soon.

Enemy number two was dead. His head was a good twenty feet from his body. Not even the fae could survive that, I didn't think—certainly he wasn't going to get up and fight in the next ten minutes.

Enemy number three was a slender man fighting Zee, both of them armed with swords. There was no enemy number four that I could sense via eyes or nose. Zee fought, a wiry old man who moved like a demon. Not a wasted motion, every strike and parry clean and quicker than humanly possible. There was blood on the thin white t-shirt he wore, and some of it was his.

The smaller man he fought moved oddly, though it didn't affect his control of his blade. There was something wrong with his shape—and with his face. As I tried to pin it down, Zee hit him and . . . the part of his body that Zee's sword would have hit just dissolved in front of the blade, releasing little bits of sparkly light about the size and color of a yellow jacket. I finally got a clear look at his face—and he didn't have one, just a suggestion of features that moved constantly, as if all that was under his skin were the little bits that had fled the iron of Zee's weapon.

Some of those little bits sparkled all the way to Sherwood and me.

“Ouch,” I said, slapping my forearm.

Sherwood swore, and started fighting with the ax. I've met a few werewolves who had lived when swords and axes were the weapons of choice for humans as well as fae. He moved like a man born with an ax in his hand—and I don't mean to cut down trees. His ax sang a little as it cut through the air. The little hornetlike
fae things dropped to the ground like miniature falling stars, some of them in two pieces. Sherwood put himself in front of me, and very few of the little vicious beasties made it through him.

Skilled with an ax was our Sherwood. Very skilled—and very fast. His prosthetic leg hindered him occasionally, but it seemed more a matter of annoyance than a real problem because those sparkly lights kept falling.

Couldn't fight, he'd claimed. Couldn't fight my aching rump.

I closed my fingers on the wings of one of the critters that had made it through his slicing and dicing as it bit my thigh. I had to rock it back and forth to dislodge it so I could bring it up to my face to see what it was.

Up close, and without the beauty of the fluttering wings, it was utilitarian in design. Or she was. She looked vaguely like a person in shape if not color, complete with arms and legs and miniature breasts. Her eyes were a deep purple that looked almost black against her bright yellow body. Only her mouth completely failed to mimic something human. Instead of lips, there were a pair of chelicerae, gory with my blood.

I threw her on the ground and watched her blink out of existence the moment her body touched the fake wooden floor, the same way the bits and pieces that Sherwood was leaving behind did.

I took the container of salt I'd tucked under my arm and pried open the spout. I poured a pinch onto my hand and dribbled it on my wrist. The nasty bugger chewing there made a popping sound, turned gray, and fell to the ground, a dead husk. It did not disappear in a flash of light. Hah.

I took a spare handful and scattered it on the fae bugs attacking Sherwood, and it sounded like popcorn cooking.

I took the container and ran a gauntlet of biting fae bugs, one arm
crooked above my eyes. The fae that Zee fought scored a hit. It wasn't a hard hit, but Zee responded by increasing the speed and fury of his attacks. I poured salt in my hand as I jumped on top of an upended pew and scattered the handful of salt on the last of our enemies.

The salt landed with a crack of noise, and wherever it hit turned gray. He turned on me. Gray powder fell on the ground, and the sparkly bugs all returned and landed on him, reabsorbed into his odd body.

He raised his hands before I threw another handful, and in a voice like smoke he said, “I surrender.”

Zee snarled but sheathed his sword at my look. Sherwood negotiated his way through the mess of the sanctuary with a little more trouble than a man with two good legs might have, but there was nothing wrong with the speed with which he killed the woman with the crushing injury. He managed to do it before she shot the crossbow I hadn't noticed when I'd first seen her.