“Where the fuck did the bloody bitch go?” Lor snarls. “I want a piece of her.”

“No clue,” I say, and we all look around warily.

That’s when the sidhe-seers start screaming.

FORTY-ONE

“You must whip it, whip it good”

The Hag couldn’t get anywhere with us so she went after weaker prey.

We all freeze-frame or sift. I’m the last one there.

When the feck did I become the slowpoke?

Two sidhe-seers die instantly, guts trailing up into the sky.

After a moment their entrails are dropped back to the snow in a wet glistening tangle.

My jaw locks and I get a muscle cramp in it the size of a walnut. My teeth clamp so hard they hurt.

The Hag isn’t even knitting with them. She didn’t even want them. She just killed and threw them away like trash!

She wants Christian. And it looks like she’s ready to kill every last one of us to get him.

“Get inside!” I shout at the women, trying to herd them back toward the abbey.

Sidhe-seers duck and scatter like a herd of gazelles running from cheetahs. Stupid sheep are supposed to be pack animals and that means, duh, run in a pack!

The Hag swoops and takes two more of my sisters! Blood sprays everywhere and folks are screaming like crazy.

I’m so mad I’m shaking. It’s total chaos. Before, it was just us we had to watch out for. Now the Hag is dive-bombing hundreds of helpless humans and I don’t know who to help first.

Ryodan’s covering Jo, Kat, and a dozen others.

Lor’s protecting a bunch of pretty blondes—figures!

Christian has like fifty women around him. I realize he’s turned on his death-by-sex Fae lure and it’s working like magnet-to-magnets. He’s got a second skin of pretty sidhe-seers. I wonder if he did it on purpose for a shield or if it’s just taking everything he’s got to stay out of her reach and he can’t suppress it. If he did it for a shield, I’ll kill him myself.

How are we going to kill the Hag? None of us can get close enough, past her lethal legs. Not even my sword is any good. I can throw it, but the bitch is faster than a witch on a quidditch broom! Dancer’s idea of trying to snake a cable around her and electrocute her is starting to look like a good one. Too bad we don’t have any cables handy down this end.

“Holy sonic booms!” I exclaim. I may not have a cable but I do have something that’s long and thin, and Indiana Jones sure made good use of it in desperate times.

I yank out my whip, freeze-frame to the outer edge of the crowd for a good shot, and crack it straight up at the Hag!

It flails limply, puddles back down on my head and I get tangled up in it. I can’t even get the stupid thing off me. I swear those black holes in her face regard me with amused contempt. Apparently there’s some skill to cracking a whip and I don’t have time to learn it. It never looked hard on TV.

“Mega!” Dancer yells. I see him in the crowd, jumping up, waving both hands in the air.

I ball it up, knot the cord around the handle for weight, and toss it to him. He catches it, unties it and snaps it at the swooping Hag.

It explodes within a foot of her lethal left leg and sets off a small sonic boom.

She inhales, a horrific, wet, screeching sound, and rockets straight up into the sky. I don’t know if it’s because she can’t believe something got so close to her leg or if her hearing is so sensitive that the sonar explosion gave her a migraine. Whatever—she doesn’t like it one bit.

When she dives again, Dancer goes for her head this time and sets off a sonic boom right next to her ear.

She reels backward and vanishes upward into purple lights.

Me and Dancer beam at each other.

He cracks the whip triumphantly.

But this time it doesn’t crack. It makes no sound at all. Not even a tiny little hiss as it slices through the air.

Because, like, all sound just disappeared.

Figures that when the fog finally rolls in, every last one of us is on the wrong end of the playing field.

FORTY-TWO

“Try to set the night on fire”

I think the reason I didn’t feel panic preceding the Hoar Frost King’s arrival this time is because I was already feeling too much panic for more panic to penetrate. The Crimson Hag butchering sidhe-seers had me so frantic, I forgot why we were even out in the snow to begin with.

Like, to summon the Hoar Frost King.

And he’s here.

And somebody’s got to cut that fecking tether because if we don’t turn the IFP loose, the Hoar Frost King is going to ice the speakers and vanish and it’ll all have been for nothing! Worse still, if it’s as smart as I think, it won’t fall for the same trick twice. The sentience I feel rolling off it is gigantic. This is no simple-minded Unseelie. I don’t know ’cause I haven’t seen them all yet but it could be the most complex one the King ever made. I wonder if he maybe swirled a dash of himself into its beaker.

What happens next feels like it happens in slow-mo though I know it doesn’t take any time at all.

Ryodan and Lor vanish, fast-mo-ing it to the other end of the field. I look from the sidhe-seers to the slit that’s opening, stymied, trying to figure out how to protect the sidhe-seers and cut the tether at the same time. Do I save the women I care about who are standing right next to me or do I save the world? I may be a superhero but I got everyday Joe feelings.

I see Christian and he’s looking at me hard. He says without making any sound at all, You can’t do both, Dani, my love.

I know that, I mouth pissily.

It’s me she’s after.

Your point?

He vanishes.

I can’t find him anywhere for a sec.

Next thing I see is him standing, just standing there in the middle of the field between me and the other end, with his arms spread wide, head tossed back, wearing a “come and get me” expression.

What are you doing? I scream, but not a peep comes out.

The Crimson Hag swoops.

I jerk violently, like I’m the one that got stuck when she guts him.

She doesn’t flay him, though. She pierces him with one leg like he’s a shish kebob and draws him up toward her skirt. As she folds him into her dripping embrace he gives me a look. I can’t make sense of it. I don’t get it. Why did he do that? I don’t get it! Why would anybody do such a stupid thing!

As he vanishes up into the sky, clutched in her hideous legs, I shut it out. Refuse to process what he did. I can leave the sidhe-seers behind now in relative safety. I’ll think about what he did later.