Charmed I'm Sure (3 page)

I laughed. “I'd rather trade kisses with an open flame.”

“Perhaps I can arrange that.” Her voice wasn't quite as playful anymore. I wasn't showing any sign of being affected by her voice or beauty, and she was not pleased. She began to casually slide a magazine into the Thompson, a box magazine rather than one of the drum-shaped ones so prominent in old gangster movies. She was holding the Tommy Gun upright and taking her time, and why not? My own bullets could hurt her but not harm her, not really.

 So I stopped, aimed, and emptied the Ruger, concentrating my fire at the Thompson. Normally I would never go for a shot like that, but her weapon presented a clear target. Even though my bullets couldn't hurt her, their impact still tore the machine gun out of her hands. I charged her then, dropping the Ruger and pulling the hawthorn stake from its make-do sheath in my jacket. I lost a precious second, then another as I tore the stake free; a small irregularity in the wood's surface had caught on the fabric of my jacket's interior lining and caused it to bunch.

Those seconds cost me. I'm fast, but so was she, and the clearing was large.

She wasted no time on surprise or shock. Her body was already shifting, lifting, taking to the air in an explosion of white feathers that covered her retreat in much the same way that an ink cloud covers the escape of a squid. It took me completely by surprise. I had never heard of any folktale or fable suggesting any ability like this, but supernatural creatures evolve just like everything else. Perhaps her human mass was greater than that of the shape she was changing to, and that extra matter had to go somewhere.

I hurled myself through the obscuring storm of feathers blind, leaping forward and slashing the hawthorn stake through the air, but I missed her. As the feathers around my face settled and drifted to the ground, I could see a form veering up and toward the cover of the nearest trees: a large swan.

Cursing, I dropped the stake and slid my compound bow off my shoulders. Given a few seconds I could have put an arrow through her heart or her head, but I didn't have a few seconds. I pointed my toes at the direction she was headed and fell forward into my stance while snagging an arrow with my middle and index fingers—no time for string walking or sighting down the juncture of the razor-sharp fins of the arrow tip, no time for anything but instinctive aiming. I nocked the arrow while I was still pointing my chin in front of her moving body and drew in one fluid motion—the only thing I managed to do flawlessly—anchoring the back end of the arrow to a high point on my cheekbone before releasing.

The carbon arrow sliced through the leaves of several tree branches and hit the swan somewhere around its right haunch. She screamed a most un-birdlike scream as she lurched farther into the trees. I could hear her wings continue to flap, but their beat was uneven. Her kind cannot be harmed by most of the naturally occurring elements from our world, but space-age synthetics are difficult for them to process.

She would have healing magic of some kind, but I had bought us some time.

Time Eric was determined to waste.

When I looked over, Eric was scrambling to his feet and pointing the Thompson at me. The white-hot rage that had been waiting beneath the surface to erupt was ascendant now, and his earlier feeling of powerlessness was being washed away by a tidal surge of adrenaline. There was a bleeding gash near his upper right thigh that I had not seen clearly before, and he was swaying.

“WHAT THE HELL! WHAT THE HELL? WHO THE FU—”

Did I mention that I move very fast? My bow swung to the right. My body darted to the left. I was outside the range of the Thompson's barrel an instant before Eric pulled the trigger. The top of my bow collided with the tip of the machine gun barrel as he tried to move it to track me, and then I was inside his firing zone. Some of the hand-to-hand training that had been drilled into his muscle memory remained, but he was worn out and freaked out and didn't keep his head.

I dropped my bow and grabbed the stock of his machine gun and briefly tugged it, just for a moment. He instinctively started to pull back, and I immediately switched directions and added my weight to his, pushing the weapon in the same direction that he was tugging and smashing the butt into his jaw. He staggered back, and I kicked the heel of his wounded right leg out from underneath him and tore the machine gun out of his hands as he was falling onto his back.

He found himself half-conscious and staring at the Thompson. Again.

I spoke in the clipped tones of a drill instructor, hoping that would help the words reach him. “Soldier up, you box-kicker! That thing is still on our 360, and if I die because you can't pull it together, I'm going to take it personally.”

He looked like he was about to cry or scream in rage. “I can't…what…”

“I have to bind that wound in your leg,” I said. “Can I trust you not to do anything stupid while I patch you up?”

He sank his head to the ground, which I took to be a yes. I put the Tommy Gun down and removed a bandage roll from a pouch on my belt. I didn't have time to stitch him up. The blood was not coming from his femoral artery, but the gash was deep and he had lost a lot of it all the same. I crouched down and bound the wound as best I could.

“That thing…” he gasped.

“It's called a wila,” I told him, confident that I had the Fae's number now. “She's fast, she's strong, and she can change shape. And she's not going to let us leave these woods alive, so we have to get moving.”

“Who—”

“That thing killed my brother just like she killed your friend,” I lied. Claiming to be avenging a loved one is one of the easier ways to get someone to trust you quickly, especially if they've just lost friends or family themselves.

“But—”

“Shut up and focus, Marine.” I willed him to understand what I was saying, tried to project every ounce of intensity and urgency that I had into my voice. “It doesn't matter if this is possible or not. It's happening, and I can't carry both you and our weapons. You have to trust me if you want to survive. And I have to trust you.”

I was done binding his wound. I offered the Thompson to him. “Will you help me kill this thing or not?”

Eric took the weapon immediately.

“Good,” I said, and went back and collected my various weapons, re-anchoring the less cumbersome ones and reloading as needed before retrieving the pike.

“Follow me if you can.” I took off toward the logging trail, using the pike as an over-sized walking stick. “It's up to you.”

Eric followed, but he wasn't in good shape. He'd already run himself to the edge of his limits while suffering from blood loss, and he was an emotional and physical wreck. It still didn't take very long for him to start gasping questions.

“Where are we going?”

“To the river,” I said. “She can follow our scent trail, and she sees in infrared. We have to conceal our smell and lower our body temperature. Also, her voice is hypnotic. If she starts talking and you find yourself getting hazy, scream your head off. Fire that gun. Plug your ears. Do whatever you have to do to drown her voice out.”

“What about you?”

“I'll manage,” I said tersely.

“Is she…is she a demon?” he asked, and his voice quivered.

“I don't know,” I said. Wila, or vila, or wili, or veela, are the source of a lot of stories. They're a kind of cross between a wood nymph and a succubus. I don't know if they stay young by taking life energy from the act of sex or adoration, or if they're immortal and just like to screw, but they usually keep a lover around, and they go through a lot of them. Nymph is where the word
nympho
came from.

In the old stories, wila rode on the backs of reindeer and hunted rejected lovers with bows and arrows. Apparently they'd upgraded to Harleys and automatic weapons. Either way, seeking out and destroying lovers they hadn't made a psychic connection with was apparently still a tradition or instinct that drove them.

We made it to the riverbank in a ragged, disorganized fashion and Eric collapsed. I quickly stripped down to my boxers and smeared cold river mud over my body. Then I dragged Eric out to a fallen tree whose trunk extended some twenty feet into the river. I settled him onto a rough nest of branches and left him there some nine inches above the surface of the water, the Thompson on his chest.

These were the best conditions I was going to get. Elemental alliances are important among such creatures, and the magic of the wila is aligned to the earth. There are stories of wila changing into falcons and eagles and swans and snakes and horses and wolves, but I have never heard any story where a wila changed into an animal that could breathe underwater.

I was gambling my life on that distinction.

I had taken away the wila's distance weapon, and if I was right, as long as I was standing in the water she would have to come at me openly no matter what form she took. My bow slung over my bare shoulder again, a quiver with four arrows still fastened to its stock, I refastened the belt that held my holstered pistol and sheathed knife, then picked up the stake and pike.

I was too loaded down. I would have preferred to leave the bow and pistol on shore, but then the wila could have tracked them by scent and used them against me.

There was a cleft rock jutting out of the water at a level somewhere between my navel and nipples, and I went out to it and shoved the hawthorn stake into the rock's crack. Moving a few yards inward until the water was slightly below my knees, I placed the hawthorn pike on the surface of the river and stepped on it, submerging it. I then withdrew the knife from its sheath.

I don't know how long I waited there. Not long. Her voice, when it came from the shadows of the trees on the riverbank, was still beautiful.

“What are you?”

“Would you believe room service?” I asked. My voice was oddly relaxed, almost gentle now that one or both of us would be dead soon.

“There are no rooms here,” she said tartly. “And you didn't bring me anything. In fact, you took something that belonged to me and tried to kill me.”

“I didn't say I was very good at it,” I pointed out.

“What are you really?” she insisted.

“I am a man,” I answered, then shivered. It was the cold of the water, of course. Something, not her, compelled me to add an honest: “I think.”

“Back in the clearing, you burned as brightly as a wolf walker.” The voice came from a different part of the woods now. “But I never dreamed of your coming, not once, and my voice does not call you. Those are the hallmarks of a knight.”

It was true. The geas that compels knights of my old order to hunt creatures of shadow also prevents any other mind magic from taking root in the soil of our psyches. Seers cannot see us. Enthrallers cannot compel us. Cursers cannot curse us.

“And that knife you are holding,” the voice continued. “It is silver steel, is it not? A knight's weapon.”

Silver steel is an alloy with a silver quotient just high enough to affect creatures who are susceptible to such things. Fae and their brood are not among them.

“Perhaps I am your sins come calling,” I said.

A sigh. “It was Dustin who brought you here, wasn't it? I knew I should have killed him. But he was such a wonderful lover for so long. And it amused me to think of him bumbling his way back into his former life, the old dear, haunted by half-remembered dreams, never fully alive again.”

Eric chose that moment to fire his Thompson at the direction of the voice. He did an impressive job of raking the area considering how badly his hands were shaking, but then, it was a weapon, and he was a Marine.

When he was done, the voice continued from another section of wood as if nothing had happened. “If I have violated your territory, I apologize. You did not mark your surroundings, and I meant no disrespect by hunting here.”

“This is not a matter for wolves,” I answered. “I am a knight.”

“Wha…whu…whuh you talkin'…about?” Eric managed.

We both ignored him.

“If you are a knight, your geas will keep you from harming me.” The voice betrayed a hint of impatience. “You are only allowed to hunt those of us who violate the Pax, and I am removing all evidence of my existence. Dustin was an indulgence, I admit, but he won't be able to tell anyone anything, and I am disposing of all other witnesses.”

“This is not a matter for knights,” I said. “I am a wolf.”

There was silence then. “What is this really about?”

“This is about a man's torn feet,” I said. “This is about a boy hanging on a tree.”

“I don't believe you.” The voice held absolute conviction.

“Or perhaps this is about the fact that my name is John Charming,” I told her. “Perhaps my family has protected humanity from things such as you for more than a thousand years. Perhaps, sometimes, on nights like this, I remember who I really am.”

The voice began to thicken, to deepen. I could not see her, but I had a sense of shadows growing larger. There was something in the voice that could have been laughter, or disbelief, or fear. “You are telling me that a Charming still lives, and he is a werewolf?”

“I did say perhaps,” I reminded her.

She came charging out of the woods in the form of a bear. I threw the knife at her just to get it out of my hands, and she didn't even pause or bother to roar as it sank into her flank. My foot released the hawthorn pike, and when the wood bobbed to the surface, I stuck the top of my foot under it and kicked it up out of the water. We were both moving faster than humanly possible, and I snatched the branch out of the air and whirled it, planting one sharpened end into the river mud and the other upward as she was throwing her weight down upon me.