Destined

Laurel swallowed.

“Believe it or not, that’s probably the best we could hope for,” Shar said grimly. “Our other choice is to wait here,” he continued. “The circle will hold as long as it’s unbroken, but make no mistake, it is a fragile thing. One wrong step and Yuki is unleashed on us all. The only way to guarantee our safety is to put a knife in Yuki right now.”

“What? No!” Laurel couldn’t keep the panic from her voice.

“You’re starting to see the problem,” Shar said, his voice just a touch softer. “Yuki is clearly dangerous, but I don’t think she’s done anything worthy of death. Not yet, anyway. But no matter what we do, at some point it will almost certainly come down to us, or her. The only hope I have is that Klea does need Yuki, and that she will come to rescue her. And if we can just last long enough – if we can find some way to neutralise Klea here—”

“Then we confirm our suspicions, the gate stays safe, and nobody has to die,” Laurel finished in a near monotone. She didn’t like it, but she didn’t have any better ideas. They were only three faeries and two humans trying to stand against Klea and whatever forces she had at her disposal. What would they face? A dozen trolls? A hundred? More faeries?

“Do you understand now?”

Laurel nodded, half wishing she didn’t. She had to grudgingly admit that Shar’s plan was, in all likelihood, the best one. For now. Without a word, she turned and left the room, Shar close behind.

“So . . . how does this work?” she asked, surveying the apartment and trying her best not to look directly at Yuki.

“We just sit. Or stand. Whatever you want,” Tamani said. “Shar and I watch the door and the windows. I try to ask her questions, but that generally goes nowhere.” He shrugged, the gesture seeming to be directed at Shar more than Laurel. “It’s pretty boring, to tell the truth.”

Yuki snorted, but none of them acknowledged her.

An electronic ding! sounded from Tamani’s bedroom, followed by a murmured exclamation from Shar.

“Beastly, frost-blighted—”

Laurel smirked; Shar detested mobile phones, and every time one went off, he swore at it. Quite creatively, most of the time. His dark mutterings were swallowed by the bedroom as he went to retrieve his “human trinket” from where he had almost certainly accidentally-misplaced-it-on-purpose.

A knock sounded at the door and Tamani sprang to his feet. “Chelsea probably forgot her keys again.”

Shar stepped out of the bedroom carrying his phone. “It says Silve’s name. What does “text two” mean?”

Tamani pressed his eye to the peephole.

“It means you have two messages—” Laurel began.

But Shar’s wide eyes were fixed on the back window of the apartment. “Don’t!” he shouted, turning back to Tamani.

With a crack of gunfire, the door exploded.

The blast threw Tamani to the floor and shattered the security chain with a metallic zing. As Laurel spun from the stinging spray of debris, she saw the back of the apartment burst apart. Window glass and drywall skittered across the floor as the most massive troll Laurel had ever seen came crashing through – a lower troll, like the one she’d seen chained in Barnes’s hideout. The misshapen, pale monstrosity thrashed about in an attempt to dislodge Aaron, who clung to the knives he’d embedded in its shoulders. The struggling pair rolled further into the kitchen, disappearing from sight.

As she turned back to Tamani, Laurel was horrified to see a bouquet of roses arcing through the air from the front door, shedding crimson petals like drops of blood as it floated almost leisurely toward Yuki’s prison. The instant stretched to eternity as Laurel realised that in about half a second the roses were going to breach the salt circle, Yuki was going to be free, and if Shar was to be believed, there was a good chance she would kill them all.

A diamond-bladed knife cut through the air, pinning the paper-wrapped bouquet to the wall not an arm’s length from the salt barrier that was keeping them all alive. Shar was already pulling another blade from a sheath at his waist as Yuki screamed in frustration and Laurel turned to the wrecked front door and the figure framed in it.

“Callista!” Shar exclaimed as Klea raised her face into the light.

A shadow of recognition passed over Klea’s face and she looked at Shar, though her guns were pointed squarely at Tamani and Laurel. “Captain! Serendipitous.”

“I watched you die fifty years ago,” Shar said, disbelief heavy in his words. And then, “You’re Klea.”

“Shar!” Aaron stumbled in from the kitchen, flecked with debris and covered in troll blood. His left arm hung limp at his side. “There’s more on the way; we tried to hold them back—”

Horror froze his features as his eyes lit on Yuki’s rumpled blossom. “Goddess of Earth and Sky. Is that—?”

But the troll lunged at him from behind, and the two went crashing through another wall.

“I told you to cut that damn thing off,” Klea snapped at Yuki. The gun in Klea’s hand shook – almost certainly with anger rather than fear – but Laurel didn’t dare move. “Now look what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

Klea raised a defensive hand as Shar whipped another knife through the air. The blade knocked away one of her guns with a clang, but she turned the other at Shar and fired. Its sharp retort echoed in Laurel’s ears and Shar staggered back, clutching his shoulder and slumping against the wall.

Seizing the moment, Tamani sprang at Klea, but she sidestepped his lunge and caught his wrist in her free hand, flipping him in the air and slamming him to the floor.

“Tam!” Shar’s voice was strained as he struggled to stand.

But Tamani was already back on his feet, a long silver knife in his hand; Laurel hadn’t even seen him draw it. Klea lunged at him with liquid speed, her movements so graceful they might have been a dance. She wove through Tamani’s swipes untouched, then whipped the butt of her pistol across his face, leaving a ragged gash along his cheek. She landed another blow against his wrist and Tamani’s knife seemed to leap into her hand as if of its own volition.

Tamani retreated two steps, evading most of Klea’s jabs, but with nothing to parry her blows his shirt was soon a mess of ribbons, wet with sap from the shallow cuts accumulating on his arms and chest.

As Laurel looked for an opportunity to dive for Klea’s dropped gun, something at the corner of her vision fluttered on ruby wings. With a sick twisting in her core she realised a petal had fallen from the skewered bouquet – drifting like a – feather, its circuitous route was a ballet of twists and twirls in the breeze that wafted through the apartment. In moments it would enter the circle and then, under Yuki’s power, the soft, innocent bit of flower would become a deadly weapon.

And Laurel was too far away – she’d never reach it in time.

“Shar!” she called, but he was between Klea and Tamani, wielding a chair as an improvised shield.

“Get her out of here!” Shar shouted, a kick from Klea twisting the chair from his grip. ’Now!”

The world spun before Laurel’s eyes as Tamani’s arm clenched around her waist – rolling her straight to the destroyed wall – and then they were falling. A scream escaped her lips but was cut off as they hit the ground and the air was pushed out of her chest. They tumbled together along the ground and when they came to a stop, for a moment it was all Laurel could do to look up breathlessly at the hole Aaron’s troll had made in the wall, three metres above them.

“Come on,” Tamani said, pulling Laurel to her feet before her head had completely stopped spinning. She followed him almost blindly, her hand tight in his as he wound around the back of the apartment building.

They paused when the squeal of splintering wood filled the air, accompanied by a sudden rush of wind. “Circle’s broken,” Tamani growled. The sound continued as they rounded the corner of the building, where Tamani immediately back-stepped, flattening Laurel against the wall. “It’s crawling with trolls out front,” he whispered, his mouth so close to her ear his lips brushed her skin. “We can’t get to my car; we’re going to have to run. You ready?”

Laurel nodded, the sound of snarling trolls reaching her ears over the deafening storm of splintering wood. Tamani gripped her hand tighter and pulled her along with him. She tried to look back, but Tamani stopped her with a finger on her chin and pointed her gaze forwards again. “Don’t,” he said softly, sprinting across the open ground, slowing only slightly once they reached the relative safety of the trees.

“Will Shar be all right?” Laurel asked, her voice shaking as they ran through woods. Tamani was loping ungracefully, helping her along with one hand, the other clutched at his side.

“He’ll handle Klea,” said Tamani. “We need to get you to safety.”

“Why did he call her Callista?” Laurel asked through heaving breaths. Nothing that had happened in the last few minutes made any sense to her.

“That’s the name he knew her by,” Tamani answered. “Callista’s practically a legend among sentries. She was an Academy-trained Mixer. Exiled before you even sprouted. She was supposed to have died in a fire. On Shar’s watch, back in Japan.”

“But she faked it?”

“Apparently. Must have done a good job, too. Shar was thorough.”

“What was she exiled for?” Laurel gasped.

Tamani’s words were shaky as he picked his way through the trees and Laurel struggled to catch them. “Shar once told me she experimented with unnatural magic, faerie poisons . . . botanical weapons, basically.”