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The fireworks continued through their set, unfortunately to the same loop of country song—the only thing worse than manifesting a bad song was that you didn’t know it well enough to at least play it all the way through. Earworm syndrome.
“The Star-Spangled Banner” had to have been played, too—why wasn’tthatbooming through the valley? At least I knew all the words to that. I toyed with disconnecting the soundtrack from the spell but thought I might disrupt the whole thing.
Men scattered, pulling off their helmets and wiping their eyes. The cavalry horses were crying out, rearing and bucking—that was definitely an unintended consequence.
Apologies, horses. Both armies began to withdraw, trumpets sounding orderly calls to retreat that only highlighted the great disorder. I laughed to see the nobles hightailing it away from the battlefield, surprised to hear Larch chortling along with me.
Both armies seemed to be closing up shop for the night, so I let the fireworks end when their half-hour cycle was up. I’d made the fruit flies all male, so they wouldn’t breed, and made them old enough that they should die off in the next few hours. Pleased with myself, I let Larch help me down from the stool and slipped my heels back on.
“What now?” I asked. “Do we send a message back? Wait for Puck to come fetch us?”
Larch opened his mouth to reply, but he clamped his mouth shut, gaze locked past me in frozen alarm. The hawk mantled and I wheeled around to see the Black Dog, like a piece of night forest with white-bladed teeth, charging at full speed toward us.
Chapter 20
In Which We Celebrate the First Pyrrhic Victory
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No!
The scream welled up in my throat, though it had no time to make it past my lips.
No! It wasn’t an accident this time. It was a job. I was made to do it. Not like the birds,notlike the birds!
I glimpsed what I thought was Larch moving to throw himself in front of me, but all I saw were the slavering jaws coming for me, for my blood. The mirrored glass coat of the Dog reflected night against the crepuscular shadows.
I saw my death in it.
I braced myself, mind racing for some image, some spell to stop it, but before I formed something cohesive from the shrieking birds of my thoughts, even as the Dog leaped for me, a thudding pain dropped me to the ground.
Remnants of the fireworks sprang around the dark edges of my vision, bright pinpoints sparkling against blood red. I heard Larch screaming in thin wails, as Loden had. I couldn’t see through my eyelids. Sounds were muffled, distant.
Of their own accord it seemed, my eyelids fluttered open to show me the unnatural ultramarine of the sky, wheeling with streaks of bright sunset.
My stomach quailed and a headache throbbed between my eyes, piercing deeper with each of Larch’s cries. And someone else’s screams, too. At first I thought the hoarse shouts of battle still echoed in my head, those few that drifted up to us on the warm air currents. When I realized these were just beyond me, very immediate, their loudness penetrating the veil of my confusion, it galvanized me.
Like a cat out of bath water, I sprang up and landed curled in a crouch before I finished the thought that I should move.
It took a moment to make sense of what I saw. My visual cortex struggled to right the images, to make sense of the flailing limbs. Instead of seeing Larch convulse as the Black Dog gutted him, I saw men on the ground, Larch pinning one with a spearlike thing through the neck. The Black Dog tore the throat out of another man as I watched, the blood arcing in a violet stream against the graying sage of the mosses and white rocks. I heard the skirl of the hawk, circling above.
The Dog stood on the chest of the man he’d just killed, and I caught my breath remembering the great weight of him. That vicious dark muzzle lowered and he sniffed the man’s congealing face.
My stomach wrenched. Fear flowed through me, my blood turned to mercury, thin and hot. I tucked my feet up, ready to stand, to run, to do something. One shoe was gone. Magic—I needed a spell against the Dog.
Even as I thought it, the Dog raised his head, a hound scenting prey, and looked over his glossy shoulder.
At me.
Blood dripping from his muzzle, the Dog’s lambent amber eyes glared at me. Daring me. He licked his glossy muzzle and delicately stepped off the corpse, padding toward me like a panther.
“No magic, Lady Gwynn, please,” Larch whispered, still clutching the spear that impaled the other body. As the Dog stalked toward me, I glimpsed another bloodied corpse just beyond the others. “Trust me. No magic.”
“He’ll kill me,” I said.
“No. He’s protecting you.”
I strangled a sob as the Dog stopped in front of me. I could smell blood and meat on his hot breath as he panted gently. My breast throbbed, each healing tooth mark a pinpoint resounding with my adrenaline-fueled heartbeat. The prey in me wanted to run, to break cover, to heart-poundingly try for some safety even while I knew I couldn’t escape him.
