“There goes our chance at hiding,” Bran said. “Hurry! Get to the basement!”
He twisted around, herding Aisling toward the space behind the register, keeping his eyes on the creature through the window. Movement out of the corner of his eyes made his head jerk a little to the left. Another horrible face pressed itself against the glass of the front window that looked out on the road. Lights floated in the distance beyond it, drawing closer, bringing with them shadows of things that shouldn’t exist but did.
We’re surrounded.
The thought made his stomach sink, but despair wasn’t going to save them. Bran raised his right hand and called up his magic. It burned through him, coalescing against his palm in a brilliant golden light because he had nothing to hide here. With his other hand, he drew a witchmark in the air, holding his fingers against the last two points of the glittering lines that meantshield, readying it for any attack. Both creatures at the windows kept banging their clawed hands and strangely shaped heads against glass that wouldn’t break because of the magic that anchored the foundation of his coven’s home.
Then something slammed against the front door, rattling the hinges and making the wood creak badly. The heavy breathing he’d heard while upstairs grew louder, as if whatever had been circling the Shoppe was now on the other side of the door, wanting to get in. He swallowed hard, attention torn between the windows and the door. The creatures had broken through their mother’s witchmarks at the house. Bran knew he had to expect the same here.
A loud thud from behind him made Bran jump. He looked over his shoulder at the register area where Aisling had gone. The door to the basement had been flung open, and she smacked her hand a couple of times against the top of the glass display case, trying to get his attention.
“Get—”
Bran never finished the sentence.
The door bowed in the frame before exploding inward, hinges shattering and the witchmarks with it in a glittering spray of damaged magic that filled the Shoppe. Something large hunkered down in the doorway and began forcing its way inside. The way it crouched spoke of it being tall, cloven feet visible in the glow of approaching lights. Its thick fingers gripped the doorframe andshoved, cracking the wood there as it made space to enter. Glowing threads of green magic crawled away from its fingers, carving through the witchmarks in the wall and strangling the magic there.
Its deer-shaped head came through, followed by broad, furred shoulders, looking nothing like any deer that roamed the forest. The creature’s head tapered outward from the elongated nose into a broad shape, three glowing eyes lined up across its face. Antlers with leaves sprouting from it like branches protruded from its skull, bits of them scraping over the ceiling as it clawed its way into the Shoppe.
It opened its mouth, revealing sharp teeth that would never be found on any deer, and roared. The sound ripped through the air with a ferocity that probably echoed for miles. If anyone heard it, Bran doubted they would come looking for the noise or to help. That’s not what people did in Pelham when they knew the lights were out hunting.
“Get down to the basement!” Bran yelled.
Aisling dropped out of sight, and he cast the witchmark in the direction of the display case, desperately wanting to build a shield betweenhis sister and the creatures after her. Bran thought he was fast enough, that Aisling would get below in time and he could follow, but even as the shield anchored itself to the floor in a glittering wall of light, the creatures at the windows broke through the barrier, helped by way of insidious magic not of this world.
Glass shattered, the screaming nightmares writhing their way into the Shoppe, and Bran swore, heart beating loud enough to make his ears ring. More of the creatures forced their way into the Shoppe behind the first two, the magic in the walls bleeding out faster than he’d ever be able to replenish it. He didn’t know why the witchmarks were being subverted now when they never had before.
Bran backed up toward the display case, wrenching one arm around to expand the shield around his position and connect it to the back wall. He got it up just in time as the creature who’d come through the trifecta stained-glass window lunged at him, knocking over tables with its many spindly legs. It reminded him of a spider—if a spider resembled a demon-like creature that had dragged itself out of the hell that was the wyrding.
It crashed into his shield, clawing at the magic, and Bran reared back, nearly tripping over his own feet. The creature at the door abruptly pulled back, its antlers breaking through the top part of the doorframe as it did so. What streaked through the damaged opening was a flock of things shaped like bats, but nothing about them would ever be mistaken for that animal. These were things that were little more than teeth and wings, more mouth than anything, meant to rend flesh from bone.
Bran wondered which of these creatures had murdered his mother—which one deserved magic shot through whatever passed as their heart, beating or otherwise—but the thought was a fleeting thing, there and gone. He drew a pair of witchmarks in the air using both hands, the last finger curl tying it together with a burning knot of magic. He threw it forward with all the intent he could muster,return to the earthheavy in the making of it. The witchmark slammed into the creature with the crescent moon–shaped horns, throwing it backward through the Shoppe. The creature crashed into a bookcase, destroying the furniture and sending all the antiques to the ground.
The way it screamed and writhed from the attack told him at least some of his magic was working.
Bran was halfway through sketching out another witchmark in the air when a hum vibrated through the air, like an oncoming freight train. He only got one more line twisted into place before a force unlike anything he’d experienced before slammed through the Shoppe and shattered his shield, picking him up off his feet and tossing him backward. He slammed against the back wall near the utility room door, head cracking against wood hard enough that everything spun. In that moment where the world tipped sideways and magic flowed just out of reach, something stepped into the Shoppe.
Its presence was ancient, filling the Shoppe with a malevolence that told Branthiswas a thing humans had once hidden from during the night before their iron cities grew into a bedrock of defense that rarely could be crossed. But out here, in the forest far from a city, where the trees seemed to stretch forever if you looked just right, this was where the wyrding slipped through.
Where the Fae hunted.
And Bran was nothing but prey in that moment, the only witch for miles around, his mother not even buried yet. He struggled to get an elbow underneath him, to get back on his feet as the entire room seemed to lurch with the motion, stomach roiling like he was on a rickety roller coaster. He lifted his head, wincing from the harsh glow of magic gathered around the Fae like a halo.
“I had thought all the witches of Pelham were dead,” the Fae said, ancient voice like the rumble of an earthquake.
He was beautiful in the way all the stories said the Fae were, tall and broad-shouldered, the antlers that protruded from his head adding to his height. His face was perfectly handsome in its symmetry, eyes honey-gold in color and reflecting the light from magic, framed by long brown hair. Bran half wondered if the Fae was the thing that had tried to get through the Shoppe door, but he couldn’t be sure. This Fae didn’t look like a nightmare with its deer head and strange eyes, more like an uncannily beautiful man dressed in elegant dark green pants and a brocade tunic picked through with shining gold thread. A small glass spherehung from a gold necklace, shining from sparks held within its delicate casing.
The iron beads on Bran’s bracelet would keep the Fae from reading his mind and the intent there, whether a lord or not. Only Bran couldn’t count on that right then, not after the Fae had broken through the witchmarks in the Shoppe. Not with the antlers on his head he’d seen on a monster and the insidious magic that pressed against Bran’s own. No, this Fae might be a lord, but they were dangerous, and Bran knew better than to name him, to give him power. He had enough already.
Bran’s attention snapped to the blue flowers tangled like a garland through the Fae’s antlers, and he knew, in that moment, this was the Fae responsible for his mother’s murder.
“You bastard,” Bran ground out, fingers moving against the hardwood floor, magic filling the witchmark with nothing butforce.
Before he could release it, the bat-like creatures dived through the entrance of the basement, and Bran cried out wordlessly, trying to get to his feet, even as his head wanted the rest of him to lie still. He scraped the witchmark off the floor and tossed it in the direction of the Fae who’d come through the door, but like with his shield, the Fae broke that, too.
The backlash was like getting shocked with an electric jolt over and over again. Bran’s teeth clacked together as he forced himself to his feet. He’d barely made it upright before the bat-like creatures returned from below in a swirl of wings and teeth and talons, Aisling held in their many-clawed grips. She struggled, but they held her fast by her clothes and arms and hair. She kicked against them, mouth open in a silent scream as she tried to reach for Bran with desperate fingers, and he would always remember that moment when he couldn’t save her.
“No!” Bran yelled, lunging for her, feet sliding on broken glass and jagged bits of wood and other broken things. But he was too far away, and the creatures were too many. They flew for the door, out into the dangerous night, taking his sister with them.
