When the Stars Threw Down Their Spears: The Goblin Wars, Book Three (28 page)

Teagan kept waiting for the alarm to sound, for the school to go into lockdown, for Officer Fiorella to come around the corner. But nothing happened. The halls were almost empty.

Fortunately, the news crews had gotten all the interviews they needed that morning and had packed up and gone off to find something more exciting to film than the front of a high school. Jing’s Mustang chirped as he unlocked it from halfway across the lot, and Teagan and Abby were in by the time he got there.

“Things like Kyle are after your baby brother?” he asked.

“Yes,” Teagan said. “We just need to get there. Have you texted Leo, Abby?” Teagan asked.

“Rafe doesn’t have numbers in his phone. He keeps all the numbers in his brain or something. What an idiot.”

“Get me there, Jing,” Teagan said. “Please get me there, fast.”

Jing was a better driver than Raynor, and that was saying a lot. The Mustang moved through traffic at twice the speed of the cars around it, weaving from lane to lane, somehow avoiding every red light.

“Timing,” Jing explained. “I know the light cycles and adjust my speed for them.” He slowed when they reached the residential streets, but not much.

“That looks like trouble,” he said before they reached the Wylltson house. Teagan leaned forward. Even from here she could see that the front door was hanging open.

“No. No, no, no!” Teagan didn’t bother waiting for him to park.

She jumped out of the still-moving car and ran for the steps. Jing must have abandoned it in the street, because he and Abby were both right behind her when she reached the front door. Jing grabbed her shirttail.

“Slow down. We don’t know what we’re walking into.”

Aiden’s toys were scattered all over the floor, but that was normal. Finn was standing in the kitchen door. He had blood on his hands, and that
wasn’t
normal. His face was an emotionless mask.

“You all right, man?” Jing asked. “You hurt?”

“Mamieo,” Finn said.

Abby started for the kitchen, but Jing caught her. Teagan pushed past him. Finn had covered Mamieo’s face and torso with an apron. Taking in the amount of blood on the walls and floor, Teagan was glad he had. The back door was hanging open, and her brother’s whip was lying in the middle of the room.

“Aiden?” Teagan said.

Finn shook his head. “Can’t find him. The phooka’s gone as well.”

“Where’s Choirboy?” Abby asked when Teagan went back into the living room.

“We don’t know.” Teagan took the stairs two at a time, with Abby and Jing right behind her. Neither Aiden nor Roisin were in their rooms. There was no sign of Grendal, either. When they’d finished searching the upstairs, Teagan went back to Aiden’s room one last time and checked under his bed.

“Nothing?” Abby asked. Teagan shook her head.

“The only blood is in the kitchen.” Jing put his arm around Abby. “The boy could be all right.”

Teagan shook her head again. The shadows had shown Ms. Skinner just what the Dump Dogs were going to do to her brother. And now they had him.

She checked the closet where Aiden had once hidden from Ms. Skinner anyway, then went down the maid’s stairs all the way to the basement. It wasn’t just the silence that told her he wasn’t here. There was no trickle of bioelectricity in the room. No life.

When she came up into the kitchen again, Finn was kneeling beside his grandmother, holding her wrinkled hand to his lips.

“Most of the blood’s hers.” Finn adjusted the apron. “But not all of it. Mamieo found her knife. She got it out plenty fast.” He rubbed his thumb across the back of the wrinkled hand.

“Where—” Teagan caught herself, but he knew what she’d been about to ask.

“I’d stepped out to walk around the neighborhood.” Finn’s voice was as emotionless as his face. “Just stepped out to look around. Raynor was here when I left. Where’s he gone, then?”

“I called him,” Teagan said. “There was a shadow man at the school. He took it away.” Saoirse had tricked her into calling the angel away so that her brothers could . . . do this. Skinner had fought the shadow man to try to stop the Dump Dogs. And Teagan hadn’t figured it out. Not in time. “It’s my fault, Finn. Not yours.”

“It’s the fault of the goblins who did it.” Finn laid Mamieo’s hand gently across her chest. “And the one who set them on us. We can’t go back and undo things that are done. Not me with my walk or you with your calling the angel away. I’m just trying to think where to look for the boyo, Roisin, and her cat friend. When’s Raynor getting back?”

“I don’t know. It’s bad, Finn. The gate is open.”

“Your da is keeping the shadows in?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, my god.” Abby had made it past Jing into the kitchen. She was throwing up in the sink when Teagan stepped onto the back porch. Joe might have been any other shrub, motionless in the corner. Fast asleep.

The soft dirt was crisscrossed with Gil’s tracks, and smaller tracks as well. Aiden. He’d come out the back door. Dog prints overlaid the little-boy prints. The Dump Dogs had come out the back door after him.

Teagan followed Aiden’s footprints until they ended in the middle of the yard. One small sneaker lay in the dirt. Something had hit her brother hard enough to knock his shoe off. The dog prints went on toward the gaping back gate. Teagan followed them, but the alley was empty.

She went back to the yard and sank to her knees beside the shoe . . . and felt the electric tickle of life behind her. Not three lives—Finn on the porch, Abby and Jing still in the kitchen.Five. No, six. Six lives, and one was as small as a bug.

Teagan scrambled to her feet and ran to the garden box.

“What are you doing, girl?” Finn asked as she pulled it open.

Gil and Aiden were huddled nose to nose, their arms around each other and their eyes squeezed shut. Lucy was tangled in Aiden’s hair. Finn lifted them all out.

“Didn’t you hear us out here?” Teagan asked.

“We thought you were the bad guys,” Aiden whispered. “Is Mamieo all right?”

Teagan picked him up and hugged him tight.

“Is she all right?”

“No,” she said. “She’s not.”

“She saved me, Tea.” Aiden started crying. “They came in as soon as Raynor disappeared. I had my whip, but it wouldn’t work.”

“Shhh,” Teagan said, but Aiden wouldn’t shhh.

“Mamieo found her knife really fast. She cut one of them, and she said, ‘Run, boyo!’”

“The Scary One fought them,” Gil said. “I saw one bite her, but she bit it back. She kept fighting so the boyo could get away, but he’s not fast enough. So I caught him and put him in the box.”

“Gil.” Finn turned to the phooka. “You saved the boyo?”

“
Men
don’t eat children,” Gil said. “You can trust them, because they
choose
.”

Twenty-six

T
EAGAN
glanced at the back gate. If the Dump Dogs hadn’t found Aiden, why had they gone?

“Choirboy!” Abby came out the back door and scooped Aiden out of Teagan’s arms.

“Mamieo’s not okay, Abby,” Aiden said.

“I know, baby boy.” She pulled him close. “But she’d want you to be okay, right? She—”

A
cat-sídhe
screamed from the front of the house.

Abby clutched Aiden. “What was
that?
”

“Grendal,” Aiden whispered. “Is he crying because of Mamieo?”

“Let’s go,” Teagan said as the
cat-sídhe
screamed again. “We need to get out of here and find Dad.”

“I’ll bring Choirboy.” Abby let Aiden hide his face in her hair, while Lucy flitted around them, chirping.

“Don’t let the boyo see.” Finn went up the steps.

“He’s not looking.” Abby followed Teagan. “You close your eyes, too, pig-boy,” she told Gil. “You can hold my shirt while we go through the kitchen.”

“He knows what
dead
looks like, Abby,” Aiden said. “He’s a phooka.”

Abby heard the
cat-sídhe
. She was talking to Gil. Teagan had to ask her about that as soon as she had time to think. Jing clearly didn’t see or hear Gil or Lucy, but he towered protectively over Abby, locking the back door once they were inside.

Abby stooped and picked up Aiden’s whip as they went through the kitchen, keeping the little boy’s face buried in her shoulder as she did.

“You’re gonna want the whip, right?”

“No, I’m not.” Aiden’s voice was very small. “It doesn’t work.”

When they reached the living room, Teagan followed Finn to the window and looked out. It
had
been Grendal screaming.

Saoirse, Lollan, and Bairre were between the house and Jing’s car. Saoirse was holding Grendal up by his tail. He looked barely conscious, as if she’d slammed him against the light post. And he wasn’t crying out anymore.

Lollan and Bairre were in their four-legged form. They were hyena-like, but larger and more powerful. These were the creatures that Mamieo had faced with her little dagger. They hadn’t gotten past her—not while there was breath left in her body. Even from this distance, Teagan could see the blood on their muzzles and guess why they’d run to find Saoirse instead of sniffing out Aiden’s hiding place. One had a rib-deep wound on his side and the other had a gash across his face. Mamieo’s knife had taken an eye.

“That’s what happened to your grandmother?” Jing asked.

“Yes,” Teagan said. “Those are goblins. We’ve got to get past them. If we wait for the police, we’ll be separated. The goblins will be able to take us one by one.”

“Nobody’s taking Choirboy,” Abby said fiercely.

“We need the car,” Finn said. “But if I can’t handle this, you all go out the back and run. Get Aiden to his da at Rosehill. That’s where the angel will go if he doesn’t find us here. Watch over them, Jing.”

“I’ll do my best. You have anything I could use as a club, Tea? I don’t do knives.”

“Can you use this?” Abby held up the whip.

“Not like the lawyer-man did. But I might be able to strangle one with it.”

“My old softball bat’s in the closet,” Teagan said, and followed Finn out the door.

“Get back inside, Tea.” Finn spoke softly, and she was glad he couldn’t feel her fear the way she felt every fiber of his body getting ready for his final fight. “You’ve got to take care of Aiden, girl.”

“No.” She was afraid of the Dump Dogs. But she was more afraid of what would happen to Finn. “Let’s try to talk with them.”

“After what they did to Mamieo?”

“We’ve got to stall. Give the angel time to get here.”

Teagan knew she wasn’t shaking on the outside as she walked down the steps. But she was on the inside, and crying out more desperately than the Burr Oak had.
Send help, send help, send help
.
Let Raynor get back in time
.

“Where’s Roisin?” Teagan asked Saoirse, amazed at how calm her voice sounded. The stench of carrion was very strong. It was probably coming from the coat Saoirse was still wearing.

“I told you, she’s a special friend of Bairre’s.”

The Dog with the damaged face whined and licked blood from its chops. Teagan saw Mrs. Santini’s little Metro coming down the street. It slowed to get past Jing’s car. Things were getting worse.

“Roisin unlocked the front door for us,” Saoirse said. “All we had to do was promise to bring Grendal back safely.” The girl swung the dangling
cat-sídhe
back and forth. He wasn’t dead. Teagan could feel the life in him—but it was a very small spark. “To take care of him. She thinks she’s smart enough to play goblin games with us. We promised we’d bring him back safely. We never said he’d stay safe after he got here. There’s more than one way to
take care
of someone, isn’t there?”

Teagan felt hot, sour bile rise in her throat. Roisin had been with the Dump Dogs when she was on the phone. She’d known what they’d done to Mamieo. And she’d been laughing.

She heard a car door slam, and from the corner of her eye she could see Lennie getting out of the car and Mrs. Santini waddling toward them, a blue and yellow plastic toy in her hand.

It felt as if a cold fist was squeezing Teagan’s heart. It was so painful, she was tempted to look over her shoulder to make sure no shadow man was standing behind her, reaching into her chest. There was nothing she could do to stop what was about to happen, but she had to try.

She felt Saoirse tense, preparing to toss Grendal into the air, and Bairre and Lollan’s muscles bunch as they got ready to jump for him and tear him to pieces.

Teagan moved a fraction of a second before the goblin girl did. It gave her just enough of a head start to get her arm between Lollan’s leap and the flying
cat-sídhe
. She felt the Dump Dog’s fangs slide like razorblades along her arm, and then she was falling, curling her body around Grendal to keep the dogs off of him. Finn had moved almost as fast as she had; she saw the flash of Mamieo’s blade in his hand, and heard Bairre cry out.

Lollan turned toward her—and then he collapsed, his body a mass of jerking static. The jolt of electricity that surged through the thin wires running from Mrs. Santini’s toy gun to the Dump Dog was enough to scramble his neural transmissions.

Teagan struggled to her feet, Grendal in her arms.

Jing had come out the door, the softball bat in his hand.

“I don’t know who the hell you are,” Mrs. Santini said to Saoirse, “but this is a Taser X3. That means I got two more shots. Control your animals, or you’re going down next. Then I’ll ask my big friend here to beat the hell out of you while you can’t move.”

Saoirse snarled at Jing, but she moved away.

Mrs. Santini released the trigger, and Lollan staggered to his feet, yelping as the barbs at the ends of the wires pulled out of his hide.

“Come on.” Saoirse turned and ran. Bairre and Lollan followed her.

“We got leash laws, lady,” Mrs. Santini yelled after her. “You don’t like it, stay out of my neighborhood!”

Blood was running down Teagan’s arm and dripping from her elbow. Finn pulled off his bandanna and twisted it into a rope.

“Put the
cat-sídhe
down for a minute,” he said.