Page 16 of The Iron Raven

Rage shot through me, and I threw myself forward, plunging my dagger into one blazing white eye.

With a shriek, the monster convulsed, shaking its head and stumbling back. It hurled the Forgotten away as the tendrils on the creature’s back and shoulders came to life, surging up like maddened snakes. They lashed out, and for a second, I could see nothing but black, shadowy tentacles swarming around me. I dodged one, slashed through two more, and then felt something cold and thin slam into the back of my head. I felt myself falling, saw the ground racing up at me. And then, something weird happened.

Images flared to life. Memories long forgotten flashed through my mind like a strobe light, blips of fleeting emotion and thought. A former best friend turning on me, his eyes cold with hate as he tried to end my life. The unyielding expression of the Summer King as he banished me from the Nevernever for some stupid, imagined offense. The woman I loved rejecting me, choosing instead my most bitter rival, the prince who’d tried to kill me many times over. The face of their son, a constant reminder of what I had lost, what would never be mine.

I didn’t remember landing. I opened my eyes and found myself lying on my back, the last of the images flickering through my head. Glancing up, I saw the monster looming over me, tentacles flailing. Its cold, hostile gaze met mine, and for just a moment, I understood its anger, its hate and loathing for all living things. I got it. People were the worst. Selfish, arrogant, destructive, evil. The ones you cared about would only betray you in the end. Why care for anything, if they were just going to put a knife in your back?

Then the creature’s talons came slamming down, and I barely rolled out of the way as they struck the log behind me, splitting it in two. Grabbing a handful of leaves, I scrambled upright, then flung out a hand with a pulse of magic. Two more Pucks joined the fray, whooping as they lunged toward the monster.

The creature’s tentacles lashed out in all directions and caught the Puck duplicates, popping them into small clouds of smoke and leaves. But it allowed me to get close, beneath the monster’s rib cage where its heart would lie. Smiling viciously, I drew back to stab the evil bastard, but as I did, something flickered through my head: the image of Meghan turning away from me, her gaze only for the figure behind her, a figure in black with an icy sword at his side. I faltered, my anger shifting targets, as the memory burned bright and painful through my mind.

With frightening speed, the monster spun, backhanding me as it did, and it felt like my rib cage imploded. I was hurled away and rolled several feet before I finally came to a painful stop, gasping, my entire chest on fire.

I felt its presence before I saw it, in the way the ground trembled as it loped toward me, in the noxious glamour radiating from its body. Anger, rage, fear, hatred, and loathing. The emotions swirled around me in a choking fog as I rolled onto my back and struggled to sit, feeling like a spear had been jammed through my lungs.

Pushing myself to my elbows, I looked up.

The monster loomed over me, just a lunge away. I felt its hot breath, smelled the sickening odor coming off its twisted hide. A flippant comment about someone needing a breath mint sprang to mind, but I couldn’t quite get my voice to work. The creature stared at me, blank white eyes boring into mine. As I gazed at it, I thought I could feel...something else. Another presence, maybe, peering out at me from the monster’s eyes. Just for a heartbeat, the space of a blink, and then it was gone. But cold spread from my heart and rushed into my veins. I felt like I had been perched at the edge of the abyss, staring into the void...and something had stared back.

“Puck, get down!”

There was a pulse of glamour, and a streak of lightning descended from the clear night sky, striking the thing directly in the skull. It roared, stumbling back as electricity coursed through it, filling the air with the acrid tang of ozone and singed fur.

His face tight, Keirran raised an arm and zotted it again, calling lightning out of the sky like a damn Norse god. But this time, though the monster shuddered as the bolt struck home, its lip curled up in a baleful snarl. Lowering its head, it charged the Forgotten King, ignoring the white-hot strands still raining around it, its thunderous footsteps shaking the ground.

I leaped to my feet, knowing it was probably too late to reach the kid or the monster barreling down on him. Keirran was strong, with the glamour of all three courts at his fingertips, but this thing was either immune to the effects of fey magic or was too angry to die. As I turned myself into a raven and flapped toward the creature once again, I wondered if I were about to watch Meghan and Ash’s son get smeared to paste right in front of me.

Why did I feel almost gleeful at the thought?

Keirran stood his ground, raising an arm and sending a storm of ice daggers into its face. Though most shattered on the monster’s thick antlers, the flurry was enough to make it flinch. Swooping in, I sank my talons into the monster’s flesh and drove my beak into one of those bulging white eyeballs. The one I had already stabbed earlier, I noted. It howled, shaking its head, but it did not slow down or change course.

Darkness rippled under Keirran’s feet, and Nyx rose out of the shadows behind him. Grabbing the Forgotten King around the waist, she vanished back into the ground, and I released my hold on the monster’s face just as it plowed into that spot, churning the earth and smashing through a tree. I dodged a flailing tentacle as it spun, roaring and lashing out at everything around it, snapping branches and churning the ground to mud in its rage.

Wheeling in the air, I saw Nyx emerge a safe distance from the raging monster, Keirran’s arm slung over her shoulders, and glided toward them. Nyx released the Forgotten King, who slumped against a tree trunk, breathing hard, as I swooped in to land on an overhead branch. The female faery’s eyes were concerned as she stared at Keirran, who was pale and trembling with the exertion of using so much magic at once.

“Are you hurt, my king?”

“It’s strong,” Keirran panted. “I blasted it with everything I had and barely slowed it down.” He ran a shaking hand through his hair, then cast a worried look at Nyx, not seeing me in the branches overhead. “Are you all right? I lost you when it went after Puck the second time.”

“I’m fine,” Nyx answered. But her voice was tight, and by the press of Keirran’s lips, he knew she wasn’t as fine as she claimed. “But we need to stop that thing. I don’t know where Goodfellow is, if he’s even conscious, so it might just be us now.”

Keirran nodded, though even he looked exhausted as he pushed himself off the trunk.

The monster had stopped its rampage and was now waiting for us in the circle of destruction it had created. I dug my talons into the branch beneath me. We weren’t in good shape, any of us. I ached, I was pretty sure Nyx was badly injured, and Keirran was barely on his feet. And we hadn’t even put a scratch on the thing. The odds didn’t look great.

In that second, I made a decision. The monster’s attention was solely on Keirran and Nyx. It hadn’t noticed me, a jet-black bird, in the branches of the tree. If I could surprise attack it, strike hard when it wasn’t expecting me, I might be able to take it down. Cut the big bastard’s head clean off from above. Yeah, that sounded doable.

The slightly tricky part was I couldn’t let Keirran or Nyx know the plan, in case the monster noticed and I lost the element of surprise. But that was fine; by the time they realized I was still in the fight, it would be over.

Nyx rose with grim determination, silvery blades appearing in her hands. “Stay back a moment, Your Majesty,” she told Keirran. “Let me engage the creature. I will try to distract it, and then you can finish it off.”

But Keirran gave his head a firm shake and drew his sword. “I’m not letting you fight that thing alone,” he stated. “As it happens, I can swing a sword pretty well, too.” He glanced to where the monster waited and narrowed his eyes. “Besides, glamour doesn’t seem to work on it. Maybe the answer is three feet of steel shoved through its heart.” He paused, a worried, frustrated look going through his eyes as he looked around. “Where is Puck? We could really use his help now. I hope nothing’s happened to him.”

Nyx didn’t say anything to that, but I saw her jaw tighten as if she disagreed with Keirran’s statement. I smiled to myself. Keep watching, nonbeliever. I’ll show you why Robin Goodfellow is famous round these parts.

In the center of the clearing, the monster reared up and bellowed a challenge but didn’t move forward. Lowering its head, it dug long talons into the churned mud and hunched its shoulders, as if bracing itself against something. The tendrils on its back and shoulders flared, coiling like serpents into the air, before they stabbed down, sinking into the earth around it.

Now.

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