“Let me go!” I snarled, and tore away, into a blizzard of static and pain and noise.
That suddenly cut out, all at once, as soon as I crossed the threshold. It left me gasping and staring around: at Aiden, huddled against a wall, blue eyes wide and terrified; at Stinky, standing protectively in front of him, a toy sword clutched in his fist; at Gessa, slumped on the floor, unmoving.
And at Ymsi, blood smeared and dazed looking, standing over the small troll.
Who was still in the trundle, his eyes closed, his face almost peaceful.
Except for the dagger sticking out of his heart.
Chapter Eighteen
The assassin was quick, but I was quicker. Tearing loose from my twin and soaring into the air, right on its tail. And then following as it fled the house and headed for its avatar, the one who couldn’t pass through the wards like it could, a dark figure I spied waiting beside a car down the street for its master to return.
But its master couldn’t risk that, not when we were still too close to the house, and to the dangerous creatures inside. Like the fey king, who had just caught my twin before she hit the floor. Or the two-natured one, who had run into the room to kneel by the troll girl, and start snapping orders. Or the sobbing man-child, currently weighed down under a mass of Light Fey, debilitated more by what had just happened than by anything they were doing.
Because the force required to commandeer a mind against its own wishes was damaging, both to the host and to the attacker, leaving them weakened and vulnerable.
Like the murderer was now.
So, no, it couldn’t go back.
It also couldn’t communicate with its avatar, not in free flight, which is limiting in almost every way. I could return and warn those in the house, could send someone after him. But that would take time, and I would lose the more dangerous enemy in the process.
The one that flitted ahead of me, just out of reach, not faster than me but more experienced, and far more panicked.
It knew it was weakened, knew a hunter like itself was on its trail, knew it had to get away—
But it hadn’t expected this. No, no, it had not. It had known about the boy, the one they called Soini, and had sent the terrible static to hurt and sideline him. But it had not known there was another of us.
It had not known about me.
It did now.
And it had made no preparations for this. Without its avatar, it had only free flight, and that would not spare it long. Will you risk it? I wondered. Risk the great void, the nothingness of a scattered consciousness, the death that is more than death? Because the body could come back, in so many ways, but the mind . . .
Once lost it was lost forever, and no, it wasn’t willing to risk that. Was terrified of it. So terrified that it wasn’t waiting for the designated avatar to realize that something had gone wrong and catch up to it.
Instead, it was taking another.
A bird suddenly burst out of a tree, startled out of its nightly rest by the demands of a strange mind. Wild of eye and swift of wing, it almost flew through me. And then darted off, eating up the sky and rapidly increasing the distance between us.
So, it was a race. And one I wouldn’t win, because I didn’t have the enemy’s experience on my side. I could take avatars by force as well, but it was exhausting, a constant battle. My strength would fail, and fail quickly, and I would lose my prey.
I needed a willing host.
So I woke Dory as I never had, as I never could, before now. And sent images, feelings, the uncertainty that gripped me. Allowing her to make the choice.
A split second later, she was sitting up, staring about. And then bolting out of the king’s arms and down the stairs, grabbing something from a pegboard before bursting through the kitchen door. The king was on her heels, asking questions she ignored. She ran instead for a vehicle parked alongside the house and jumped in, the king beside her. And then the car was roaring down the road, barely missing the shadowy avatar that she didn’t care about any more than I did.
We were after bigger prey.
So, it was a race, then.
I found a bird of my own, a falcon, and with its help soared up into the crisp cool air of a rain-strewn evening, the moon bright overhead, even in the midst of boiling clouds.
And tore after the enemy.
It wasn’t easy. The creature might have been weakened, but it was experienced, breathtakingly so. It led me through a bewildering succession of avatars, grabbing a new one whenever the old tired and slowed, as easily as a human would change clothes. First several birds, then a deer, then a woman in a car who veered and swerved all over the road for a moment before the murderer released her. Because, when you take complete control, the avatar’s mind can’t help you.
And my prey did not know how to drive.
But there were things I didn’t know, too. Like how to make the four legs of a deer work together, instead of landing in a tangle on the ground. Flying had been easier, not because I knew how to do that, but because I’d instinctively fallen back on old patterns. Instead of trying to take full control, I had suggested to the bird mind that easy prey lay ahead.
I tried that again, but deer are not predators, and their food is everywhere. And planting the suggestion that a hunter was coming only panicked the poor thing. Which untangled its limbs and scampered away in the wrong direction. But I couldn’t yet join my twin in the car, not while keeping track of an enemy that was ignoring roads, eschewing bridges, and traveling overland. We were out of the city and moving quickly, as my twin was not, being caught in traffic behind me.
Until she suddenly wrenched the car off the road, traversed a shallow ditch, bumped across a patch of open ground behind a gas station, and tore through a fence. And somehow skirted the traffic snarl, slinging out onto the bigger road below us. And then did something that caused the car to shoot ahead.
* * *
*
“—say something!” Caedmon said, grabbing for the wheel, why I didn’t know. Like a fey could drive better than me.
“Cut it out!” I told him. “You’re going to make us crash!”
“You appear to be doing that well enough on your own! Have you gone mad?”
“Years ago! And the wheel only steers. It doesn’t make it go!”
“Then what does?”
“This,” I said, and floored it.
I was really wishing I’d grabbed my car, but it had been parked in front of the one Claire had recently bought. Because, while she might be a princess in Faerie, she didn’t rate that level of scratch here on Earth, where her bank account had only ponied up enough for a beater convertible. One with a top that was a pain in the ass even when you weren’t flying down the road at something like a hundred miles an hour!
I struggled with the thing, which was flapping around like it was trying to take off, while Caedmon peppered me with questions despite having his long legs braced and one hand gripping the side of the car like it might just fuse there. Whatever dealings he’d had on Earth, it didn’t look like they’d involved high-speed car chases.
Ones made even more fun when the damned top decided to detach altogether.
Damn it!
“Was it supposed to do that?” Caedmon asked, looking worried.
And that was before maybe a hundred deer decided to jump out in front of us.
“Shiiiiit!” I yelled, the wind in my face, and white tails flashing on all sides. I just knew we were about to crash and flip end over end. And without a top on the car, that was—
Not going to happen, because Caedmon, looking a little pale, had done something that caused the deer to jump clean across us. We plowed through the middle of a herd of what appeared to be every deer in New York State—a tunnel of brown and white bodies and leaping legs—without hitting one, and burst out the other side. Only to have another car peel off the side of the road after us, red lights flashing and siren blaring.
And wasn’t that just all I needed?
“I believe he wants us to stop,” Caedmon said, turning around.