Halloween I.F. – “Something Rich and Strange” – Day 25

[ Please read the instructions before commenting! ] 

Maybe they could negotiate with her. Knowing that she was tracking them by sound, Star shifted away from the group a little and raised his voice: “Hey! We’ll do everything we can to retrieve your skin if you just let us go. Besides, won’t the Lindwyrm be furious if you hurt an ally?”

Pain blossomed in his leg, and he yanked the bone peg out before he could even remember that it was sometimes better to leave a dagger in the wound to keep it plugged. Well, whatever, he thought to himself as he staggered a few steps to the side, making himself keep moving so he wouldn’t be as good a target. He had bread. That’d probably fix this, right? 

“It’s no good,” she called out in answer. “I’m caught between a rock and a hard place, aren’t I? The demon lord can treat me to something worse than death, the Lindwyrm won’t easily forgive that I’ve gone after your group right after he made a deal, and you all might kill me if I surrendered.” She sounded bitter, miserable, but also unyielding.

An arm wrapped around his waist and pulled him sideways; it was Dandelion, blood dripping down his arm, leaving a silvery smear against Star’s stomach. “What’s going on?” he whispered. “You know where her skin is?”

Another peg came flying; this one bounced off a shield that Viv threw up, frantically trying to split her attention between the truck and her friends. She’d managed to get Caoimhe out of the truck and had clearly turned just in time. 

“I was told that a demon has Éabha’s skin,” Star whispered back to Dandelion. “I assume it’s the one who’s after you.”

“Yes, that one’s after your lord there,” Éabha called from the stacks. “Not that your lord must care about the plight of the host of fairies such as ourselves, hm? I have no choice but to do this, but don’t underestimate me because of it.”

Dandelion made a face against the accusation, but didn’t respond verbally, jerking his head toward the stacks, a clear, What do you want to do?

Star let out a careful, quiet breath and leaned up to murmur into Dandelion’s ear, soft as he could. “Can you lead her astray? Trap her? Maybe we can use her tracking by sound to our advantage.”

A nod at that, almost grim, and Dandelion stood, drawing his sword out of the air like a flower blossoming, unfurling into his hand. He ignored his own trickling blood—what a fortune witches would pay for it, Star thought near-hysterically—and approached the stacks on the balls of his feet, moving cat-silent. 

His voice called out from the wrong side of the stacks: “We could help you. Get your skin. Free you.”

A peg flew off after it, marking her position, and Dandelion lunged forward. The thrust of his sword at the stacks was accompanied with a gust of wind; he cut through several supports, and the iron beams of the shelving collapsed to the side with a horrendous crash. Éabha let out a cry, somewhere in the maze.

It might block their path back—but he had faith in Dandelion not to make that error.

Star forced himself to tear his gaze away from the compelling, beautiful sight of a bloody Dandelion dancing with his sword, voices and sounds echoing around where they ought not to be with the power of his illusions.

His abilities were needed elsewhere, so he ran as quietly as he could over to Viv. She was working on the second truck door, sawing at it with a focused magic light that seemed to be some kind of laser. It broke open just as Star arrived, and he watched with bated breath as she hauled the rolling doors up, only to reveal that that truck was empty.

“One more,” she promised him, soft, and he ran to the third truck before she could even hop off the tail and join him. It stung as he lifted the lock, his fingers blistering and a sense of revulsion washing over him, but he didn’t want to waste any more time to get Adrien out.

The lock popped open, and Viv was there to help detach it from the door and haul that door up too. This one wasn’t empty—but it wasn’t Adrien back there.

It took Star a moment to parse what he was seeing: a bunch of people, barely active, knocked out or drained. They made an odd group; it was a couple of imps, a succubus wearing some kind of cocktail dress, a beithir-nimh, and two thin, undead people who stank of the courts and of the abyss both. These last two Star realized must be sluagh: unforgiven dead who had been claimed by the fairies, then offered up to the demons as tithe. 

But why were they there? They weren’t bound in iron as Caoimhe had been, and they were certainly nobody that would be a reasonable hostage. Plus, almost all of them were demons or tied to demons. His gaze, searching over them, saw a key ring on the belt of one of the imps, and he realized that these must be the remaining warehouse guards.

“What the fuck,” he whispered, the sound almost fully covered by the crashing of the shelves and another wail from Éabha. He made confused eye contact with Viv, then gestured for her to roll the truck door back down. Without knowing for sure why they were there, he wasn’t willing to let them out.

There were no more trucks in the bay, and no sign of Adrien. Viv shoved the rolling door down and tossed another shield up as that sound drew a bone pin their way, then hauled Star close to whisper to him. “Maybe in the offices after all? It was Éabha who said there was nobody else there…”

That didn’t track with using the trucks for the three hostages, but he had no other explanation. They turned to try to sneak past the horrible mess Dandelion was making of the shelves, only to see Miette, of all people to randomly show up, dragging Adrien toward them from the direction of the offices. “A little help here?” Miette called out, then yelped as a bone peg flew their way.

Confused, Star dashed over, going to scoop Adrien out of the cat-sìth’s arms and yelping as the iron bands around Adrien’s wrists almost touched him. There was another huge crash, and he glanced back to see that Dandelion had collapsed another shelving unit; the fallen ones now formed a huge, near-complete circle; if he led Éabha there successfully, one more would surround her in a circle of iron. 

Star buried his face in Adrien’s neck for a moment, huffing; his sweat was a familiar smell, but it was twinged with fear and pain, and he hated it, hated feeling it on his friend, his sometimes-lover, his herd-mate. “Fuck,” Star muttered. “Viv, can you use that laser magic on his handcuffs?”

“I’ll try,” she said, as Star lowered Adrien. 

He rose again to look at Miette, whose tails were lashing, ears pinned as they watched Dandelion circle the disaster he was making, illusions calling out and taunting from different angles. “What the fuck are you doing here?” Star demanded. “Are you with them?”

Miette shook themself, looking back at Star with their pupils barely just slits. “No,” they hissed immediately. “I thought it was super suspicious that sketchy Éabha had left the Lindwyrm’s right after your boss and you all showed up for refuge. I followed her, and overheard a plan to go after Dandelion’s underlings. Did not much like that, so I checked out Adrien’s social media—easy to find a band member’s socials, did you know that?—and joined the party he was at. He was dragged off by a succubus, and then she clapped him in iron. Followed them here and got him out of the truck. I’ve been spending a while taking all the guards out and piling them in there.”

“The guards??” Star asked, glancing back at the truck. Miette had done that?

Tails lashing, Miette said, “Why do you think there weren’t any here?? But then Éabha showed up with the elverpigen, and I had to hide and stay silent. She’s too fucking good at tracking by sound. Then when I heard all the ruckus out here, I figured it was my chance to get Adrien out of here, get free, and be declared a hero and all that.”

As if to punctuate her sentence, another shelving unit came crashing down. A moment later,  Éabha let out a wail. It was so loud and so desperate that Star thought for a moment she’d been pinned under the iron, but as he and Miette came closer, he realized it must simply be a reaction to realizing that she’d been trapped. She sat with her harp, now emptied of pins, surrounded by a ring of bent iron shelving, boxes everywhere; she was bruised and bloodied, and dirt and dust streaked her face and clothing. Dandelion, too, was not unharmed; he had several more injuries and his outfit was liberally spotted with silver, a few pools of powerful blood dotting the area in the semi-circle he’d been moving in while cornering the selkie.

“Just kill me,” Éabha sobbed, voice rough, hugging her harp to herself with a desperate helplessness. “What the demon’ll do to me is worse than death, and it’s not like you’ll win if you take them on.”

“No bartering for your freedom at all?” Dandelion murmured, standing straight despite his injuries.

“And what then? Would you speak for me to the Lindwyrm and ask him to continue hiding and protecting me?” Éabha said grimly. “Just kill me.”

Dandelion glanced aside at Adrien and Caoimhe, laid out on the floor with Viv bent over them, trying to remove their bonds, at Miette with a raised brow, then met Star’s gaze. “Your thoughts?”

It felt bad to kill a crying captive. And even if they were going to, surely they should have some questions for her first…?

[Leave a suggestion in the comments!]

◀ previous | index | next ▶