Most of the harpies had taken off and were flapping around above us like the bunch of confused vultures they were. Without their Mistress guiding them, they were clueless fucking birdbrains. The only one still following their directive was the leader, the grotesque bird-woman who was straddling Reece's pale form while licking blood off the side of his face.
Not wasting my breath on words, I threw myself forward and ploughed a fist into the side of her face. Fucking harpies were stupid bitches though, and she simply held on to Reece's body with her claws and took the punch like she were a sand bag.
“Let him go,” I demanded, standing over Arlo's prone form even as I formed little daggers of ice in my palms and stabbed them into the harpy's torso.
Those bitches were insanely hard to kill, they needed to be totally decapitated and I didn't want to risk hurting Reece when he wasn't able to get out of the way. Not to mention, I seriously doubted my ice would be sharp enough to sever a harpies head.
Whatever Medbh had hit the guys with had to have been strong to keep them down this long, but I could only hope it sapped a good chunk of her borrowed magic and she wouldn't have much left to fight Ciarah.
“Kill!” Fionn yelled from the ground below us. “Catch!”
Glancing down to our club president, I held out my hand and snatched the heavy iron sword he tossed up to me.
“Très bon, this will do nicely,” I nodded, and the harpy squawked something. Her eyes widened at the sharp blade in my hand, and I saw a moment of indecision cross her ugly fucking face.
She was either going to use Reece's body as a shield or …
“Yes,” I grinned as she took the other route, dropping Reece and frantically flapping her wings to try and get high enough that I couldn't reach her.
Like I said, harpies were stupid bitches.
Pushing off the roof of the crypt, I jumped and caught her by the scaly ankle, yanking her back down to the concrete surface with me. Her talons raked deep gouges down my arm, but I ignored them.
Throwing the vile creature down on her back, I wasted no time on pleasantries before slamming Fionn's ancient blade down across her scrawny neck.
Rancid fluid sprayed out across the roof. It was the harpy's version of blood, but instead of metallic scented redness, it was black and putrid, as thick as oil. The other harpies screamed their rage as both Reece and I were bathed in the foul-smelling liquid.
As soon as this was all over, we'd both have to get some seriously powerful shots.
Harpy blood was almost as pungent and diseased as harpy pussy.
Their male counterparts … were even worse.
Thankfully there were none here. Male harpies were weak as hell, but the diseases they carried were magical in nature and virtually impossible to get rid of.
Reece muttered something in French that I couldn't hear as he struggled to his feet, bloody as hell and covered in enough wounds that I knew for a fact he was going to need about a dozen shots to get over the rush of harpy bacteria.
“Beck moi tchew,” Reece snarled, his glamour cracked to pieces, gold skin glimmering under the moonlight—even with the blood and the harpy fluid. With a single wave of his hand, he sent sex magic coursing through the sea of harpies. The screams they let out … were sickening, like they were being ripped apart from the inside out.
I had no idea what he was doing to them, but whatever it was, it kept them away from Arlo long enough for me to turn him over.
He wasn't breathing.
“Fuck,” I cursed as I felt that first flicker in the ripple of the Wild Hunt's magic that said he'd just stopped breathing, that he was dying. We'd already lost at least five members, maybe more. I wasn't the Veil Keeper so it was hard to say for sure, but I could feel those losses to our numbers like knives to the gut. “Arlo, you caca boudin,” I growled, calling him a shit sausage and praying like hell to the Veil-damned Keeper that he was going to wake up and start insulting me right back.
He didn't move.
In fact, he was so mutilated below the belt that I wasn't sure he could.
It looked like the harpies had … torn his cock off. It was hard to tell with the mess of blood and rent flesh. Putting my hands on either side of his face, I closed my eyes.
“Watch my back, Reece,” I growled and then I dropped into Arlo's body to heal him.
His injuries were … extensive.
“Merde,” I cursed, and then I sunk so deeply into him that I forgot I had a voice, a body. I became the magic, curling into my brother's body like mist rolling over the bayou. All the places he was injured burned like bright flames in the distance, beckoning me.
When I'd healed Ciarah that first night, I'd seen a lot.
There were twice as many now. Three times.
Starting in the worst place—Arlo's mutilated genitals—I healed him, funneling my magic into his body and realizing as I did so that I didn't have enough to save him. Not without giving something else up.
Damn it, Arlo, I snarled inside my own head, knowing what I was going to have to do.
The Veil Keeper had just returned, something my people had been waiting on for hundreds of years. At the tender age—at least for a fae—of thirty-five, I perhaps didn't understand all of their elation or what treasures waited on the opposite side of the Veil, but I knew I was witnessing a monumental occasion, something that would live on in legend for centuries or even millennia to come.
And I wasn't going to get to see it.
Gathering up every ounce of power I had, I thrust it into Arlo's body and heard him gasp ... just before my own heart seized violently in my chest and my breathing stopped.
“You fucking idiot!” Arlo was screaming as I tilted to one side, and he caught me just before I plunged off the edge of the crypt to the cemetery ground. “What have you done?!”
You'd have done the same for me, I thought as my eyes slid closed and I felt my spirit disconnecting from my body with a sharp rending, like I was tumbling over the edge of a cliff. As the Veil Keeper was literally the keeper of all faerie souls, I found myself drawn right to her.
As soon as Ciarah judged my soul, if she found me worthy, I'd be reborn into the body of another fae, all my memories wiped clean. There was some comfort in that, knowing that perhaps I'd get to see Ciarah's rise to power in another form.
But there was nothing I could do but accept my fate, my consciousness whipped through the air by forces much greater than my own power.
A sea of ghostly faces surrounded Le Gardien as she fought with Medbh, a faerie queen I recognized from the stories of older fae. She was known as the False Queen, taking kingdoms without rulers and making them her own.
It seemed she'd also tried to take over the Veil Keeper's rule.
She was pisse-froid—literally piss-cold.
My spirit came to rest in a horde around the Veil Keeper's, blocked from reaching her by Medbh's magic.
“We need to help,” I said, and several of the other ghostly faces turned toward me.
I could talk.
I could move.
The others could see and hear me.
For all intents and purposes, I found myself in the form of a … ghost? A lost spirit?