Page 16 of Mountain Man's Muse
The broad jaws gaped as it squealed again, and foul air erupted around its tusk-like teeth. But Josh took thekill itcommand to heart.
Before it killed him.
Suddenly, the thing fell back. Wolly had grabbed it from behind. It whirled, thrashing, and Wolly yelped again, not surprise this time but pain. Josh stabbed with grim precision, to no apparent effect.
“Josh! Take this iron. Strike the eye!”
He half turned toward Adelyn and something was flying toward him. He reached out to grab…the old horseshoe from beside the front door? How was that going to help when his knife hadn’t slowed it?
“Get my gun,” he shouted back.
He lunged at the thing. Imp, she’d said. The imp reared back on one leg, aiming at the fallen Wolly with two sharp appendages.
Josh stabbed the eye with his knife. The imp abandoned Wolly to whirl on him, wrenching the knife from his hands.
Which left him with the horseshoe.
Holding one end in his fist, he lashed out awkwardly. The imp flinched, but not fast enough. He buried the blunt metal in its eye.
With a hissing scream, the bulging orb burst into flame.
Josh stumbled away from the fierce blue fire, his heart pounding. The imp shrieked a rising crescendo of agony. It turned in a half dozen circles through the snow, blazing a mad corkscrew pattern in the darkness.
Shock kept Josh pinned for a moment, then he bolted for the house.
Adelyn stepped out the door with his gun, her face ashen above the comforter tucked around her. “You don’t need this now,” she said. “The iron will end it.”
He racked a round as he ran back to the imp. Her words—no, not her words, the calmness of her tone—rang in his head louder than the gunshots as he emptied half the magazine into the motionless thing.
The silence afterward hung thick with shadows and secrets, and the embedded horseshoe stuck up from the imp’s eyeball like the curve of a question mark.
“Close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades,” he muttered. “Sure wish I had the grenade.”
Wolly hobbled over to shove his nose under Josh’s hand.
Josh smoothed the still-bristling ruff. “You okay, boy?” He did a gentle pat down. No blood, but the dog flinched and turned his head away stoically when Josh touched his shoulder. Hopefully just a bruise, but something to watch. Whatever that thing was…
An imp, Adelyn had said. She’d been surprised at its appearance, but not shocked. She knew what it was. And she knew how to kill it.
So who—or what—was she?
Chapter 7
Adelyn threw on the clothing Josh had put aside for her and joined him outside. The night chill bit sharp as any imp’s claws. Still not as sharp as the glance Josh shot her when she clomped across the yard in an extra pair of his too-big boots.
She couldn’t meet his gaze and focused instead on the dog sniffing suspiciously at the still-smoldering imp. “Is Wolly all right?”
“Just sore, I think.”
“He was brave to charge like that, braver than most humans…” She tried to swallow back the word. Most people refused to believe the fae right before their eyes.
But she knew Josh wasn’t most people.
Sure enough, he turned to face her. “What the fuck is an imp?”
She dragged her gaze up to his. “What do you see?”
“What do you mean, what do I see? A fucking monster with a horseshoe burned through its eyeball. Its one fucking eyeball.”
