Page 60 of Jailer to the Death God
A guttural howl, more like a scream, splits the night. The other hounds join in with booming barks or hissing wails of their own.
“You choose death, then,” I shout. “Like your brother. He attacked what was mine, and he was destroyed. The same fate will greet you, unless you return to my realm in peace and submission.”
More howls, roars, and gibbers from the hounds. With eyes and jaws alight, they charge.
Shadows pour from me, racing along the snowy ground. This is the magic of death—of cold, horror, and weakness. To humans, it may feel like a dismal darkness or a vague threat—or I can intensify it into something soul-sucking, even lethal.
As creatures of Annwn, my hounds are immune to the shadows unless the full force of my will is behind them. To truly destroy one of my beasts, down to its most basic essence, I have to be touching it. I have to fill the creature with shadow and focus on its undoing. If I’m not touching the hounds, the most my shadows can do is slow them and curb their fire.
I’ve tested my shadows since my incarnation, but not against this many creatures from the Unlife. The more magic I release, the stranger I feel—thinner, fragile, frayed. I frown, shaking my head, and push harder.
My shadows coil around three of the hounds and trip them up, tangling around their limbs. But try as I might, I can’t manage to ensnare a fourth hound. I can cover the whole ground with shadow, but as for giving it force, I am—limited.
This shouldn’t be happening. In my own realm, at my full strength, I could hold them all at bay easily while snuffing out their lives one by one.
Fear drives a cold spike into my gut.
If they can get to the Queen and kill her, I will die. And they know it.
I meet two of the hounds head-on. Green light flashes from my palms—life-light, a toxin to creatures from the realm of death. I am its only wielder. It is the antithesis of my being, like Macha’s healing powers as the god of war. A balance to the rest of our magic.
The blasts of life-light sizzle through the hounds’ fur, chewing into their flesh. From the wounds burst translucent, glowing green vines, crawling and coiling around the beasts.
That’s five hounds temporarily eliminated, three more on this side of the coach. The two guards with me are attempting to fight one of the hounds together, but its scorpion tail keeps jabbing their horses. Then the toxic stinger sinks into one guard’s leg and pumps a full dose of toxin into him. His limb begins to glow and swell immediately, the glow continuing to spread upward into his body while his flesh balloons outward, skin stretching tight, like a human lantern lit from within.
When he explodes, the Queen screams. But the second guard manages to lop off the hound’s scorpion tail.
I’m battling two more hounds with my life-light and my shadows, raging against the weakness that’s expanding inside me, the watery sensation in my head. Fuck this curse.
I seize a hound and fill it with my shadows, reducing it to ash. The mutilated scorpion-hound is chewing into the leg of the exploded guard’s horse, feeding its own body so it can grow a new stinger. Already the severed stump of the tail is morphing, elongating.
Gripping another hound by its chicken feet, I begin flooding it with shadow. The guards on the other side of the coach cry out to me, a warning that the last two hounds are making a move.
I need to finish off this hound before I can help them.
Still holding onto the beast I’m killing, I survey the scene.
The Queen has her back to the carriage door, and she’s holding a dagger. I’m not sure where she got it—I didn’t see one strapped to her thigh when I held her upside down on my lap.
The scorpion hound has finished its meal, and it’s stalking toward the guard who chopped its tail. The guard is still mounted, positioned between the beast and the Queen. He brandishes his sword, his ebony features taut with fear. He’s a brave man, to stand his ground after witnessing his companion’s gruesome death.
I stifle the last vestiges of fire inside the hound I’m holding, then glance at the other five hounds, three struggling in their bonds of shadow and two succumbing to the corrosion of life-light.
I need to destroy the scorpion pacing toward the guard and the Queen. And I must get to the other side of the carriage and protect those three soldiers, or all the men who rode with us today will die.
27
My guards are dying. And it’s my fault.
These hounds are trying to get to me, because if they can take my life, they kill Arawn too.
A solitary guard is protecting me—Undale, who was one of my brother’s favorite bodyguards. He urges his horse forward, shouting with panicked bravado. The hound facing him hisses, and its scorpion tail arcs over its own head, jabbing toward its prey. Undale skillfully moves his horse aside, then lunges in, lacerating the hound’s side.
Arawn has just finished reducing another hound to ash. He looks at me, at Undale—then cocks his great masked, antlered head, as if he’s listening to the terrified cries coming from the opposite side of the carriage, where three other guards are fighting for their lives.
“Go!” I shriek at him. “Help them!”
Arawn stands there for a moment, then sends two pulses of green light at the scorpion-hound Undale is fighting. It screeches and writhes, giving Undale the chance to hack at its throat.
