Unchained tdf-3 Read online

  They waited, stock-still, as the breeze fluttered the grass. Fortunately, they were upwind. The creature relaxed, seeming to snuffle at the plants around it. Ashe wished she could use her flashlight without giving them away, or that the creature would move into the beam of a floodlight. Not being able to see what she was hunting was getting on her nerves.

  Reynard pointed to himself, pointed to the stone wall, and made a circling motion with his finger. He was going to move ahead and get ready to open a portal. Ashe gave a thumbs-up. He stood very slowly, silent as a ghost, the gold braid on his coat mere stripes in the darkness. She tensed her muscles, ready to sprint into action the moment she needed to surprise the beast into the Castle.

  Reynard froze. “Where did it go?”

  Good question. The baskets were still, the platform empty. Ashe’s hands felt suddenly cold, clammy, as if her blood were trying to flee her body. She squashed her fear down, swallowing hard. “Shit.”

  She let out a long, frustrated breath and rose to her feet. In the moment it took to exchange hand signals with the captain, the creature had slipped away. Good thing there were only two directions the beast could have gone.

  “Up there.” She pointed to her right. “The only other choice is the front gate. It won’t go that way if it doesn’t like lights and people.”

  Reynard followed her pointing hand. “Where does that path lead?”

  “There’s a sunken garden—it was a quarry once. Steep stairs. Blind corners. Tons o’ fun.”

  Even in the dark, she caught the depth of his frown.

  “Not ideal, I know.”

  He shrugged, his face returning to its usual shuttered expression. “My father wagered I’d meet my death in a foolish hunting accident.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “I dread the thought that for once he was right about me.”

  Ashe wasn’t sure, but thought he might have made a joke. He was damned hard to read. “Follow me.”

  Ashe started up the path at a quick, crouched run. She moved almost silently, weapon drawn and ready, two-handed grip, muzzle pointed skyward. Wouldn’t do to slip and murder the bushes in cold sap.

  Reynard followed without a fuss about who took point. It was a refreshing change after some of the other slayers she’d met. Give a boy a stake and he thought he was Rambo, Doctor Doom, and Lawrence of Arabia rolled into one spray-tanned package.

  “What is that stench?” Reynard said under his breath, the words faint ghosts against the whispering leaves.

  Ashe stopped cold. Bad smells might mean dead bodies. Poison. The musk of unspeakable monsters. She caught a whiff of the offensive scent and relaxed. “It’s the burger stand. They need to clean the grease trap.”

  “That’s food?” The whispered word dripped with doubt.

  “Sort of.”

  “It seems I have not tasted it for too long. It did not seem familiar.”

  Sarcasm dipped in sugary innocence. Not hard to read that time. “I thought Mac changed all that. I thought you guys could eat and drink these days.”

  “That applies only to the new guards.”

  “Not you?”

  Ashe forgot her caution for a split second and glanced behind her. Reynard stood beneath a Garry oak just coming into leaf. A red spotlight illuminated the twisting branches like gnarled, bloody fingers. The strange light made the path seem even darker. She could barely make the captain out, just a faint red sheen reflecting from the buttons of his uniform. It looked like a row of glowing eyes.

  “Our terms of service have not changed.”

  The words were more of a rebuff than an explanation. The old guards didn’t need pansy-assed creature comforts like food. His tone made her suddenly cold, like an unexpected breath against her neck. Unsettled, she turned and started moving forward again.

  “Yeah, well, my daughter loves those burgers,” she said, a little gruffly.

  For a split second, she imagined Eden’s ten- year-old face, the child’s animal delight in ravaging the oh- so-unhealthy treat. She switched off the image, ducking the emotions it brought. Doubt. Anger. Fear of loss. Custody issues were a bitch.

  If Ashe didn’t concentrate, she’d put herself and Reynard in danger.

  To their left was a high wall of rock. To their right was a swath of flowers that rolled away into an expanse of lawn. The wind in the spring grass was a ruffling swish. The beast, if it was nearby, was utterly silent. Ashe searched everywhere, her eyes aching with the strain of looking so hard. A minute or two passed.

  “You have a child?” Now Reynard’s voice was careful, as if he’d been mulling over that idea and couldn’t quite believe it. She could almost hear his good manners choking him.

  “Yeah. So I don’t fit the maternal profile. Live with it.”

  She heard him draw breath, but he didn’t reply. Smart guy.

  The path wound around a sharp bend, turning away from the lawn. Now both sides were hemmed in by steep rising slopes, trees and bushes obstructing their lines of sight. This was the stretch that most worried her. An attacker would have the advantage of surprise and higher ground.

  Reynard caught up until he was more beside than behind her. They stopped talking, all their attention fixed on the night around them. They’d instinctively divided the compass. Reynard watched to the right and behind them, Ashe to the left and in front. Ashe could anticipate his moves and mirrored him, weapons sweeping in deadly symmetry. In other circumstances, they would have danced well together.

  The thought almost made her smile—a deadly, cold smile suitable for a hunt, but a good one nonetheless. It barely made it to her lips before they were leaving the blind passage and relief pushed out every other emotion. And then the moon-washed vista below gave her something new to worry about.

  “There it is,” breathed Reynard, the words hot against her ear.

  Oh! She cringed at what she saw, every muscle screaming to turn away.

  The beast crouched on the top landing of the concrete stairway that led down into the sunken garden. What the moon didn’t show, the safety lights along the steps did. Crouched on all fours, it looked bulky and round and at least as tall as Ashe’s ribs. It had a pretty, soft brown and white coat.

  “Oh, now, that’s just wrong,” she murmured, her words barely audible.

  The twitch-twitch of its nose made Ashe queasy. Or maybe it was the clots of blood around the whiskery muzzle, or the glittering black eyes.

  “It’s a hell bunny,” she croaked. “A bunny ate the concessions clerk.”

  “Indeed,” Reynard replied.

  Monsters were supposed to look like monsters, or tried to fake being human. This was just confusing.

  “I wish you’d warned me. Those floppy ears are awfully cute.” Ashe tilted her head, as if the angle could somehow make the view better. She really hoped it didn’t have a cotton-puff tail. That would just make it harder to blow its head off, if push came to hop.

  “Don’t underestimate it. We tried offering it a carrot,” Reynard whispered, his tone dry as grave dust. “It prefers something less crispy.”

  With that phrase, he warped all her happy Easter memories. She used to love those marshmallow- filled bunnies wrapped in pink foil. She never would again. “Next time, I am so going to bite the head off first.”

  Reynard gave her a puzzled look. “I wouldn’t do that. It has a deadly kick.”

  Ashe closed her eyes, opened them again, forced her thoughts into neat rows. “Okay. We are bunny doom. How do you want to play this?”

  The rabbit suddenly started and bounded down the stairs. The stealth portion of the evening was decidedly over.

  Reynard bounded after it, vaulting over the guardrail and dropping to the stairs. A dangerous move, but it put him yards ahead of Ashe.

  “Cut it off at the water up ahead!” he bellowed.

  Ashe scrambled, leaped off the last few stairs, and sprinted over the lawn, angling to the right of the path. The garden was shaped like a doughnut, a
spire of rock forming a lookout in the center. On the far side of the doughnut glittered a water garden. Ashe could hear a waterfall muttering like a distant conversation.

  Her boots thumped on the grass, skidding as she leaped over a flower bed. Reynard had gone to the left, circling the other way. No blind corners here, but there were too many bushes for her liking. She made it past the lookout and headed for the pond, the colored lights in the flower beds splashing her legs green, then blue.

  She sensed the hell bunny almost as she reached it. A thrill of energy down her skin told her she was far too close. A creature of the dark fey. A day late and a dollar short, everything she’d read about phoukas was coming back to her.

  It reared up from the hydrangeas like a Beatrix Potter nightmare, front paws tucked against its fuzzy chest, nose working. A glob of flesh clung to one whisker, weighting it down.

  Ashe stumbled back three steps, weapon already aimed at Vlad Cottontail. “Where’s that portal?”

  “Nearly ready,” Reynard shouted back.

  She felt a second thrust of energy from his direction, ants skittering over her flesh, biting, stabbing. The power rushed to her head like a slug of whiskey. Ashe gripped the Colt, using her own shredded magic to shove the high out of her brain.

  An orange disk of light began to flare, hanging in space just above the lily pond. The portal spiraled from a bright pinpoint to the size of a hubcap in seconds. She prayed Reynard could get it open fast.

  A charred smell filled the air, as if the wall between Earth and the Castle’s dimension were burning away. Ashe could see the portal growing behind the rabbit, outlining its floppy ears like a bright harvest moon. The beast was shifting its backside the way a cat does before a pounce.

  “Hurry it up!” she yelled.

  “Drive the beast this way!” Reynard answered.

  “Haul ass, Cottontail,” she snarled, sighting down the gun.

  The rabbit bared choppers and snarled right back.

  Crap.

  The demon rabbit seemed to sense the portal, because it hunkered in on itself, glancing from the gun to the ballooning orange glow. It looked angry and miserable. Ashe felt a moment of pity, and then thought of all the tender, juicy kiddies coming all too soon for the Easter egg hunt. Yum, yum.

  “Okay, bud, do it the hard way.” Ashe shot the dirt at its feet.

  It launched straight for her throat. Scary fast.

  Shit! Ashe dropped to the ground, rolling out of its way and back to her knees in time to fire three shots at its head. They went wide. The rabbit flew over her, unable to stop its momentum. She heard Reynard shout, then a shot that wasn’t hers. She rolled for the flower bed. Two more shots bit the earth behind her.

  Ashe panted, hot confusion sparking over her nerves like live voltage. Those shots weren’t from Reynard’s musket. His gun would fire only once, and it wouldn’t sound anything like a high-powered automatic rifle. Neither would anything the local security carried. What the hell?

  She tucked her feet under her, coming out of her crouch an inch at a time. The bushes, so dense when she was hunting, now seemed woefully sparse. Her knees were steady, but she could feel a fine trembling in her muscles from the cocktail of adrenaline and hard running. The night was full of edges, sharp, clear, honed by danger.

  A bullet sang by her ear, another spray of splintered bark. She did a face-plant in the dirt—pure reflex.

  More shots came. The rabbit thundered by, claws barely missing the flesh of her arm. Ashe tracked it with her eyes, her cheek pressed into the soft, damp soil. The beast headed straight for the portal, leaping through the orange whorl. As it arched through the vortex, she saw the powder-puff tail on its vanishing backside.

  She thought she heard someone shout on the other side of the orange glow—maybe Mac and his men playing zookeepers on the other side. Like a spiraling lens, the portal closed, the orange glow shrinking to nothing.

  Then Reynard was in the dirt beside Ashe. The charcoal scent of the portal’s magic clung to him like cologne. He put a hand on her shoulder, a hot, firm touch. “Are you hurt?”

  “Get down!” she barked, dragging him by the collar of his fancy coat.

  The next shot missed his head by a whisker.

  Chapter 2

  She could smell his sweat, the dirt, and the tang of crushed plants. She’d landed in a herbaceous border, destroying the gardeners’ careful work. A mound of thyme was bleeding spice into the night air.

  She could hear the clock tower of the main building chiming eleven. Time to be home watching the late news, not chasing monsters around a tourist trap. Wait—they’d bagged the monster. So why was someone still shooting at them?

  Reynard gripped her arm. “Are you hurt?” he repeated.

  “No.” She turned to look at him, careful not to raise her head too far. “How about you?”

  “No.”

  They lay still for a moment, breathing, listening to the dark spring night.

  “Anyone trying to kill you these days?” she asked.

  “Not outside the Castle.”

  His eyes glittered. It might have been humor. She couldn’t quite tell. He was too closed, too different, like a map with no street names or landmarks. Just a lot of really nice geography.

  Ashe swallowed hard, willing her jackhammer pulse to slow down. “Then the shooter must be after me.”

  “A common occurrence?”

  “Not since I moved to Fairview.” Shit. Shit. This was all supposed to be in the past. She had relocated, given up life on the road, scaled down the hunting to almost nothing—just the odd case. She’d let the word go out that she was retired. Sure, there’d always be some unhappy campers—friends and relatives of the supernatural monsters she’d exterminated—but even they’d grown quiet.

  Quiet enough that Ashe had taken the risk of sending for her daughter.

  Shit.

  Ashe crawled backward, a slithering motion that brought her to the shadow of a thick bush. She rose into a crouch, molding her body to the shape of the greenery, hiding in the dense leaves. She guessed at the angle the bullets had traveled. That put the shooter high up the tall column of rock that formed the lookout in the center of the sunken garden. She knew there was a nearly vertical staircase that led up to the platform at the top, but it wasn’t lit at night. All she could see was the dark spire of stone blotting out the stars.

  Reynard moved to her left side, noiseless as a phantom. Wisps of dark hair framed his face. His neck cloth had come untied. Ashe couldn’t help noticing messy looked good on him.

  He rested on one knee, raising the long musket. “Stay down,” he said quietly. “I’ll take care of this.”

  A sour burn of impatience caught in Ashe’s throat. “There’s no way to make the shot at this distance.”

  “No?” There was that sarcasm again.

  “It’s dark.”

  “I live in a dungeon. I’ve adapted to the dark.” He sighted down the long barrel as confidently as if it had one of the super-duper, high-whatever nightscopes Ashe had seen in the latest mercenaries’ mag.

  They were wasting time. Firing would give away their position. They’d be better off sneaking up on the sniper. “That thing has a range of two feet. A crooked two feet.”

  He sighed lightly, and cranked back the hammer. It was at that moment she saw it had a real, honest-to-Goddess flint secured in the jaws of the mechanism. This thing relied on sparks and naked gunpowder. They’d be lucky if it didn’t blow up.

  “They won’t be expecting us to return fire,” he said evenly.

  “Because it’s not possible! I have a real gun, and I can’t make that shot.”

  Thoroughly ignoring her, Reynard pulled the trigger, jerking as the musket recoiled. It banged like a giant cap gun and smelled like a chemistry set gone wrong. Ashe opened her mouth to protest and got a mouthful of foul-tasting smoke.

  And there was a distant, sharp cry of pain. Reynard had hit his mark.

  “Tha
t’s not possible!” She realized she sounded annoyed.

  He made a noise that was almost a laugh. “Just a touch of a spell. I thought witches were open to magic.”

  “I’m not a witch anymore.”

  He gave her a look, grabbed the musket, and slipped into the darkness. Swearing, Ashe ran to catch up. The entrance to the staircase was on the other side of the tall spire of rock, forcing them to circle its base. The colored lights that illuminated the flower beds dwindled, then stopped as soon as they left the footpath. Ashe tripped, nearly going down on one knee before she bumped into Reynard.

  He steadied her, and she could feel the remnants of magic clinging to Reynard’s long, strong fingers. But there was more than that; she felt power spilling over her like sand in a windstorm, stinging in a thousand tiny bites. Whoever—whatever—had been shooting at them was hurt, and not human.

  She thought again about her daughter, and knew fear.

  Reynard took a step forward. Ashe grabbed his arm. “You had only one shot in your musket. I should go first.”

  He pulled what looked like a very modern Smith & Wesson—it was hard to tell in the dark—from a holster hidden at the small of his back. “I could reload. I also carry a backup. As Mac is so fond of saying, shit happens.”

  The obscenity sounded wrong coming from him. Of course, every assumption she’d made about him so far that night had been off base. Not a good thing when they were supposed to be covering each other’s backs.

  Reynard started up the stairs, showing just how good his night vision was. Ashe brought up the rear. There was an iron railing to her right, but that was her gun hand, so she left it alone. Her skin crawled, not just with power but with vertigo. Normally she didn’t mind heights, but all that changed when she couldn’t see where she was putting her feet. She felt for the steps and counted each one. Good to know how many steps she’d climbed in case she had to reverse course in a hurry. Thinking you were at the bottom of the pitch-dark stairs when you weren’t could be a problem.

  More plants and bushes grew on the rock spire. Leaves brushed her face like slick, green fingers. They reached the landing, where the stairs took a sharp turn. Overhead was a wash of stars, thick and bright because the gardens were outside the city. Above the canopy of trees, the waxing moon gave a thin wash of light. Ashe saw Reynard hold up his left hand, then point. His right hand was curled around his weapon. Ashe grasped her own gun in both hands, reassured by its cold, heavy weight.