Page 13 of The Iron Raven

I frowned. “Him?”

“The thing we were chasing before,” Nyx clarified. Her voice was slightly ragged, as if she was fighting to keep her emotions at bay. I couldn’t tell if it was fear, anger, or both. “It’s some kind of...monster. Not a faery, not a Forgotten. I don’t know what it is, but wherever it goes, it leaves a trail of corruption behind it.”

“Corruption?” I echoed. “What, like the Iron fey?” Meghan’s subjects, though they were peaceful and mostly kept to themselves, still had a faint damaging effect on the Nevernever if they ventured outside of the Iron Realm. This caused some concern to the courts of Summer and Winter, who required that the Iron fey get permission from the court rulers if they wished to set foot in the territories other than the wyldwood. Fortunately, the Iron fey seemed pretty content to remain in the Iron Realm or the real world, where the corrupting influence of their glamour had no effect.

Nyx looked confused, and I remembered that she probably didn’t know anything about the Iron fey or their kingdom, having never seen them before. But Keirran shook his head.

“Not exactly,” he told me. “It’s similar, but an Iron faery poisons the land with the Iron glamour they leave behind. The corruption is weak, but the effects are physical—withered leaves, dead grasses, that sort of thing. This is more of an emotional corruption. You can’t see it, but it can be felt. And the Forgotten, since they have no glamour of their own, feel it more intensely than other fey.”

“Oh, that’s good. And here I thought the lovely atmosphere was making me twitchy.” Glancing behind me, I winced. “Also, not to freak anyone out, but Furball has disappeared.”

Nyx gave me a puzzled look. “What does that mean?”

Keirran sighed and drew his sword. “It means something is coming.”

We had reached the center of town, which was a large open square with a dusty fountain crumbling to pebbles in the middle. I recognized it from the last time I was in Phaed, as well as the two-story, ominous-looking building ahead that, if I remembered correctly, served as an inn or hotel of sorts. Though, now that I thought about it, why would this town even need a hotel? No one came through Phaed except faeries on their way to die. And us, of course. Which was a rather morbid realization, and one that I hoped was not a sign.

As we drew closer to the open square, that feeling of simmering anger grew stronger, deeper, almost pulsing from the ground like it was alive. Abruptly, Nyx staggered, putting a hand on a crooked lamppost to steady herself. I hesitated, and Keirran stepped toward her, his expression tight with concern.

“Nyx. What is it?”

“The square,” she whispered, and pointed with a shaking hand. “The creature. It’s...here.”

I saw it then. Or, rather, Ifeltit. The square was pulsing with negative energy: anger, madness, fear, hate, swirling around in a toxic mist of murky glamour. As I watched, shadowy tendrils began emerging from the ground, writhing about like inky snakes. Dark forms pushed through the surface, clawing their way aboveground, like zombies rising from the grave.

A chill slid up my spine. They were weird, spindly things, their bodies featureless, like a horde of shadows had broken away from their hosts to move about on their own. But their heads were clearly visible; bleached animal skulls crowned with antler-like horns, each one more disturbing than the last. Tendrils of darkness writhed on their backs and shoulders, whipping about in a frenzy as the things pushed their way out of the ground.

I drew my daggers, feeling like someone had dropped a bucket of ice cubes down the back of my shirt. I’d seen a lot of weird crap, but for some reason, these ghouls were on another level of the creepy scale. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, as my stomach took one look at the creatures and recoiled violently. “Okay, what the hell are those? Keirran?”

The Forgotten King shook his head, his face grim as he raised his sword. “I don’t know,” he said, and his voice sounded a bit strained. “But I think...they might be Forgotten.”

“What? How?”

Straightening, the horde of nightmare things turned, empty eye sockets black and cold as they fastened on us. I felt an almost physical hatred radiating from them, waves of icy contempt slapping me in the face. With each pulse, I could feel their thoughts, and they weren’t anything nice.

Intruders. Outsiders. Not like us. Destroy.

Silent as death, the things glided forward.

I gave a yell and leaped backward, dodging the first nightmare thing as it swept in, seeming to float over the ground rather than walk. It didn’t claw or reach for me with its thin, bony talons; rather, the tentacles on its shoulders flailed, lashing out like whips. I sliced at one that came toward me, cutting it in two, and the tendril spasmed like a severed worm as the thing recoiled. That cold, droning voice echoed in my head again.

Hate. Hate. Hate you. Kill.

“These things aren’t really the friendly type, are they?” I quipped, dancing back as the monster hissed and pressed forward, raking with its claws now as well. “I’d hate to see the welcoming committee.”

Keirran dodged a swipe from a tentacle, leaped back to avoid a slashing claw, and ducked around a tree to put distance between himself and his attacker. He was not, I noticed, attacking back or using his weapon in anything but defense. His last words rang in my head, grim and terrible as he realized what these monsters could be.

They might be Forgotten.

Keirran was reluctant to harm his people, reluctant to use his power on the Forgotten he’d sworn to protect. Which was all well and good normally, but now, when said Forgotten were trying to shove their tentacles up our backsides, it was less than ideal.

Nyx, on the other hand, had no such compulsion, especially when it came to protecting her king. She spun and danced around Keirran with that deadly grace I’d seen before, her moonblades flashing in lethal arcs that left silver tracers in the air. One blade sliced through the arm of a creature reaching for Keirran, and the thing hissed, clutching the shadowy stump of a limb.

I dodged an onslaught of flailing, thrashing tentacles, as a pair of skull-head things came at me from two directions. I ducked, but a reaching tentacle brushed the side of my head, and the stab of cold that came with it was instant and breathtaking. It was like being jabbed in the ear with an icicle that went straight into your brain.

For a moment, rage flared. Dancing back, I glared at the thing that had stabbed me, suddenly hating it, wanting to knock its ugly, disturbing head from its shoulders. Two of them followed my retreat, chasing me across the square, and I felt my lips curl in an evil grin.

“All right, ghouls. You wanna play with Robin Goodfellow? Let’s play, then.”

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