The whatsit went down, and I had to hope that it wasn't bright enough to play possum: The Carpenter children were screaming.
I whirled around, readying the rod again, and didn't have a clear shot. One of the white-furred creatures was running hard after Daniel, Molly's oldest brother. He'd begun to fill out, and he ran with his fingers locked on the back of the coats of little Harry and Hope, the youngest children, carrying them like luggage.
He gained the door with the creature not ten feet behind him, its wicked-looking horns lowered as it charged. Daniel went through the door and kicked it shut with his foot, never slowing down, and the creature slammed into it head-on.
I hadn't realized that Michael had installed all-steel, wood-paneled security doors on his home, just as I had on mine. The creature probably would have pulverized a wooden door. Instead it slammed its head into the steel door, horns leading the way, and drove a foot-deep dent into it.
And then it lurched away, letting out a burbling shriek of pain. Smoke rose from its horns, and it staggered back, swatting at them with its three-fingered, clawed hands. There weren't many things that reacted to the touch of steel like that.
The other two whatsits had divided their attention. One was pursuing Charity, who was carrying little Amanda and running like hell for the workshop Michael had converted from a freestanding garage. The other was charging Molly, who had pushed Alicia and Matthew behind her.
There wasn't time enough to help both groups, and even less to waste over the moral dilemma of a difficult choice.
I turned the rod on the beastie chasing Charity and let it have it. The blast hit it in the small of its back and knocked it from its hooves. It flew sideways, slamming into the wall of the workshop, and Charity dashed through the door with her daughter.
I turned my blasting rod back to the other creature, but I already knew that I wouldn't be in time. The creature lowered its horns and closed on Molly and her siblings before I could line up for another shot.
"Molly!" I screamed.
My apprentice seized Alicia's and Matthew's hands, gasped out a word, and all three of them abruptly vanished.
The creature's charge carried it past the space they'd been in, though something I couldn't see struck its hoof and sent it staggering. It wheeled around at full speed, kicking up snow as it did, and I felt a sudden, fierce surge of exaltation and pride. The grasshopper might not be able to put up a decent shield, but she could do veils like they were going out of style, and she'd kept her focus and her wits about her.
The creature slowed, head sweeping, and then it saw the snow being disturbed by invisible feet, moving toward the house. It bawled out another unworldly cry and went after them, and I didn't dare risk another blast of flame-not with the Carpenters' house in the line of fire. So instead I lifted my right hand, triggered one of the triple-layered rings on it with my will, and sent a burst of raw force at the whatsit.
The unseen energy struck it in the knees, throwing its legs out from under it with such strength that its head slammed into the snow. The disturbance in the snow rushed around toward the front door of the house. Molly must have realized that the deformation of the security door would make it difficult, if not impossible, to open, and once again I felt fierce approval.
But it faded rather rapidly when the whatsit that had been playing possum behind me slammed into the small of my back like a sulfur-and-rotten-egg-driven locomotive.
The horns hit hard and it hurt like hell, but the defensive magic on my long black leather duster kept them from impaling me. The impact knocked the wind out of me, snapped my head back sharply, and flung me to the snow. Everything got confusing for a second, and then I realized that it was standing over me, ripping at the back of my neck with its claws. I hunched my shoulders and rolled, only to be kicked in the nose by a cloven hoof, and an utterly gratuitous amount of pain came with a side order of whirling stars.
I kept trying to get away, but my motions were sluggish, and the whatsit was faster than me.
Charity stepped out of the workshop with a steel-hafted ball-peen hammer in her left hand, and a heavy-duty contractor's nail gun in her right.
She lifted the nail gun from ten feet away and started pulling the trigger as she walked forward. It made phut-phut-phut sounds, and the already seared whatsit started screaming in pain. It leapt up wildly, twisting in agonized gyrations in midair, and fell to the snow, thrashing. I saw heavy nails sticking up out of its back, and the smoking wounds were bleeding green-white fire.
It tried to run, but I managed to kick its hooves out from under it before it could regain its footing.
Charity whirled the hammer in a vertical stroke, letting out a sharp cry as she did, and the steel head of the tool smashed open the whatsit's skull. The wound erupted with greyish matter and more green-white fire, and the creature twitched once before it went still, its body being consumed by the eerie flame.
I stood up, blasting rod still in hand, and found the remaining beasties wounded but mobile, their yellow, rectangular-pupiled eyes glaring in hate and hunger.
I ditched the blasting rod and picked up a steel-headed snow shovel that had been left lying next to one of the children's snow forts. Charity raised her nail gun, and we began walking toward them.
Whatever these things were, they didn't have the stomach for a fight against mortals armed with cold steel. They shuddered as if they had been a single being, then turned and bounded away into the night.
I stood there, panting and peering around me. I had to spit blood out of my mouth every few breaths. My nose felt like someone had superglued a couple of live coals to it. Little silver wires of pain ran all through my neck, from the whiplash of getting hit from behind, and the small of my back felt like one enormous bruise.
"Are you all right?" Charity asked.
"Faeries," I muttered. "Why did it have to be faeries?"
Chapter Two
"W ell," Charity said, "it's broken."
"You think?" I asked. The light touch of her fingers on my nose was less than pleasant, but I didn't twitch or make any sounds of discomfort while she examined me. It's a guy thing.
"At least it isn't out of place," Michael said, knocking snow off of his boots. "Getting it set back is the sort of thing you don't mind forgetting."
"Find anything?" I asked him.
The big man nodded his head and set a sheathed broadsword in a corner against the wall. Michael was only a couple of inches shorter than me, and a lot more muscular. He had dark hair and a short beard, both of them peppered with silver, and wore blue jeans, work boots, and a blue-and-white flannel shirt. "That corpse is still there. It's mostly a burned mess, but it didn't dissolve."
"Yeah," I said. "Faeries aren't wholly beings of the spirit world. They leave corpses behind."
Michael grunted. "Other than that there were footprints, but that's about it. No sign that these goat-things were still around." He glanced into the dining room, where the Carpenter children were gathered at the table, talking excitedly and munching the pizza their father had been out picking up when the attack occurred. "The neighbors think the light show must have come from a blown transformer."
"That's as good an excuse as any," I said.
"I thank God no one was hurt," he said. For him it wasn't just an expression. He meant it literally. It came of being a devout Catholic, and maybe from toting around a holy sword with one of the nails from the Crucifixion wrought into the blade. He shook himself and gave me a short smile. "And you, of course, Harry."
"Thank Daniel, Molly, and Charity," I said. "I just kept our visitors busy. Your family's who got the little ones to safety. And Charity did all the actual smiting."
Michael's eyebrows went up, and he turned his gaze on his wife. "Did she now?"
Charity's cheeks turned pink. She briskly swept up the various tissues and cloths I'd bloodied, and carried them out of the room to be burned in the lit fireplace in the living room. In my business, you don't ever want samples of your blood, your hair, or your fingernail clippings lying around for someone else to find. I gave Michael the rundown of the fight while she was gone.
"My nail gun?" he asked, grinning, as Charity came back into the kitchen. "How did you know it was a faerie?"
"I didn't," she said. "I just grabbed what was at hand."
"We got lucky," I said.
Michael arched an eyebrow at me.
I scowled at him. "Not every good thing that happens is divine intervention, Michael."
"True," Michael said, "but I prefer to give Him the credit unless I have a good reason to believe otherwise. It seems more polite than the other way around."
Charity came to stand at her husband's side. Though they were both smiling and speaking lightly about the attack, I noticed that they were holding hands very tightly, and Charity's eyes kept drifting over toward the children, as if to reassure herself that they were still there and safe.
I suddenly felt like an intruder.
"Well," I said, rising, "looks like I've got a new project."
Michael nodded. "Do you know the motive for the attack?"
"That's the project," I said. I pulled my duster on, wincing as the motion made me move my stiffening neck. "I think they were after me. The attack on the kids was a diversion to give the one in the tree a shot at my back."