Page 32 of Ryld's Shadows
“All units in the South Central Park vicinity, please respond.”
Flax snatched up the radio handset, keeping one eye on the street as he drove. “Officer Wolfheart. West Fifty-seventh, approaching Seventh Avenue.”
The dispatcher’s soothing voice came back immediately, “Officer Wolfheart, proceed to disturbance, west of the Boggle Habitat. Possible spell beast attack, multiple injuries reported. Meet Officers Kensington and Aello on scene.”
Flax signed off and switched his siren and lights on, weaving through the early evening traffic as fast as he could. He didn’t have far to go and soon screeched up to the curb by the park to race off on foot. A reasonable person would think thatwest of the Boggle Habitatwould be too vague to find the disturbance, but Flax knew better. An officer just had to head in the opposite direction of people running away and follow the screams.
As possible alleged disturbances went, the screams were in the moderate range on Flax’sHow Bad Is This Onemeter. Didn’t mean he ran any slower.
As he barreled around a bend in the path, he spotted what had upset the parkgoers and it was all kinds of weird.
One elf, violet haired, young aelfe, lay on the ground staring wide-eyed at the sky. There was blood on his throat. Hard to tell if he was breathing from a distance. Elf number two, blond, young aelfe, was trying to crawl away into the bushes, knife clutched in one hand. What Flax had mistaken for red pants at first were actually legs covered in blood.
Half-goblin, and Flax recognized Hank immediately, also on his back, possibly unconscious. Flax was willing to bet the knife sticking out of his shoulder matched the one in crawling-away elf’s hand. Crouched beside Hank… Well, that’s where the weird went over the top. Ryld hunkered there, clutching Hank’s hand, but his eyes were pits of black, and Flax had to wonder how aware he was of his surroundings. Pacing around the pair, back and forth in a protective circle, were four…what?
Flax had never seen anything like them. Wolves. Big ones. But their outlines were blurred, shifting, bits and pieces drifting off and coming back together and they were just the outlines of wolves. Made of blackness. These had to be the shadow beasts Flax had heard so much about.
“Dispatch, I’m on scene. Is Medical on the way?”
“Should be reaching you now, Officer Wolfheart.”
Sure enough, the thud of large wings became audible over the residue of screams. Hal the griffin and his medevac team with… Flax squinted in the gathering dusk. Yep. Kai was riding on Parnassus’ back, and Flax had never thought the day would come when he’d be relieved to see the nosy drow.
He jogged over to meet them, taking a wide arc around the circling wolves. “Hal! I haven’t had time to assess anyone yet, but I don’t want anyone trying to go near those shadow beasts. Injured elf there—” He pointed toward the bushes. “And there.”
“I have eyes, Wolfheart,” Hal snapped at him, but Hal rarely spoke gently in an emergency. “Sin, you take the one still moving. Feza, the one on his back.”
Incubus and tengu glided toward their assignments while Flax turned to Kai. “Hey. Um. You know how to deal with these shadow thingies, right? Please say yes.”
“Your faith in me is touching,” Kai began at his driest, though his expression was too concerned for it to be biting sarcasm. “I can, yes. But it takes considerable energy to deal with one, and there are four.” His white eyes narrowed. “And they are behaving in a most peculiar way.”
“Are they? They’re protecting Ryld, right? I don’t know what happened here, but since Cress is involved, I’ve got a really fucking good guess. The shadows usually go after whatever’s freaking Ryld out?”
“They do, indeed. However, in the past, they’ve simply gone on to independent rampages instead of setting up a security cordon.”
“Huh. Okay.” Flax rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. Matt and Aello had set themselves on the path to either side of the site, warning parkgoers away. The medics were doing their thing. “What do you need from me?”
Kai set his suit jacket and tie, both neatly folded, on a nearby rock. “If you would keep them from tearing me to pieces, that would be much appreciated. Once I begin to banish them, they may turn on me.”
“What works best? Fire strikes? ‘Cause they’re shadows?”
“Normally, I would say yes. But we’re in a park, Wolfheart. Unless you have someone to act as fire suppression, I would suggest wind.”
“Hey! I’m very precise! But okay, I get your point. No setting the park on fire.” Flax cracked his knuckles and followed in Kai’s wake as he approached the circling shadows. He hoped this wouldn’t take long. Hank looked bad, and the medics really needed to be able to reach him soon.
For a moment, Kai just stared at them, tracking their movements, but Flax nearly lost his balance when the drow suddenly pulled power up from the earth. Huge honking piles of it. The snarl was probably concentration instead of anger, the growing ball of black mage lightning creating eerie shadows on Kai’s face.Drow are scary. Even the ones you know won’t hurt you.
Kai drew his arm back and hurled the crackling ball at the nearest shadow wolf. It hit center mass, sending up sparks of black and green. The shadow condensed, its mass hurtling around in a shrieking whirlwind before it collapsed, the last of it dissipating on the ground in bits of tattered black fog.
While Flax didn’t want Kai to be right, of course hewas, and the remaining three shadows stopped their pacing and turned toward him, not quite snarling, but instead creating a bone-aching hum in the air around them. Maybe if the process required less power, Kai could’ve taken them all on his own, but he needed time to gather that much magic into his hands. He struck a second one with mage lightning before the remaining two leaped at him.
“No drow dessert for you!” Flax shouted as he sent off one wind strike after another. The blasts didn’t knock the shadow wolves aside. No, that would be too easy. They did make it harder for the wolves to hold their shapes, though, and gave Kai room to scramble aside, both hands on the ground to pull power as fast as possible.
Flax had to stop and recharge, too, damn it. The wolves immediately reformed and leaped at Kai together. With a bat-shrill scream, Kai loosed a successful strike on the right-hand one, its whirlwind dissolution knocking him back as the final wolf fastened its jaws around his forearm.
How a shadow could have teeth, Flax couldn’t imagine, but there they were, tearing at Kai’s arm.
Just a little fire strike. Just to distract it.Flax hurled the fireball and hit the shadow wolf on its shadowy ass. It was enough to make the shadow whirl toward him and gave Kai the precious second he needed to banish it back into unformed shadow.
