Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond(94)
Author: Kim Harrison

Idiot, Trent thought, his chest hurting as he clenched at the dirt, trying to put the world back together, but he couldn’t even stand up. Nothing was responding. His charm had backfired right at him. He had nothing, no magic, no weapons. Nothing.

"Damn, you made me break my bike," the man said, bending over his knees, clearly trying to catch his breath. "That really pisses me off."

"Sorry," Trent managed. "I was aiming for your face. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to just leave?"

The man looked up from his leg, bleeding and caked with dirt and bark, and shook his head. Grimacing, he unclipped his bike helmet and took it off. "Get up. Ellasbeth wants to talk to you before she peels your skin off and drops you into the ocean."

Trent held up a finger for a moment. With a muffled groan, he got a leg under him, and from there, got to a kneel. Panting, he squinted in the sun at the man. Things were starting to work again, and his resolve strengthened. He didn’t have his magic. Big deal. He wasn’t helpless. "You’re going to have to kill me," he rasped, meaning it.

The big man shook his head. "I get paid more if you’re alive. We can do broken and bleeding, though."

The sound of the knife pulling from a sheath was chilling, the cold steel hissing softly before the last ting of release. It glinted in the dappled shade, and seeing it, Trent went still. His eyes flicked everywhere, and he tensed, even as he settled himself deeper into the mold and earth, becoming one with it, easing his seared thoughts until nothing remained but the knife and the man wielding it. Not again. Restraint. Show some Goddess-blessed restraint. I am not an animal.

"Hey! Dewdrop!" Jenks shrilled as the man moved toward Trent, knife bared, and Trent’s air sucked in as the pixy dove down.

"Jenks!" Trent shouted as the man moved faster than Trent would have believed was possible, knocking Jenks aside. The pixy screamed a curse as he spiraled into the bracken.

The man grabbed Trent’s shirt front, the smell of him cascading through Trent: sweat, anger, testosterone, satisfaction. It plinked through him like little drops of fire, igniting his anger. He was a Kalamack. This was the space he defended, the companion he protected. He would prevail.

The knife arched toward him. Trent watched it, still rising to meet it from his kneel. Leaning sideways, he grabbed the man’s free hand, yanking him off balance and stepping behind him. Dancing almost, he struck at the man’s grip on the knife, hitting the nerve complex perfectly and swiveling his wrist to catch the knife as it fell.

The man’s eyes widened, but it was too late, and with a spinning grace, Trent tossed the knife to shift its grip, and smoothly ran it under the man’s ear, falling back six feet as the man’s heart pounded once with no restriction . . . and his life’s blood surged free.

"Holy Tinker’s damn!" Jenks exclaimed.

The large man before him clamped his hands to his neck, bright crimson blood coating them in his second heartbeat.

Damn it, Trent thought, grimacing as the man gaped at him, and with a third heartbeat, his body was depleted of enough blood to maintain the pressure to feed his mind. Disgusted with himself, Trent tossed the knife to land before the kneeling man. A fourth heartbeat, and he fell forward to hide it.

"You . . ." Jenks stammered from a fallen log, his wing bent and leaking dust. "Tink loves a duck, you’re good!" But Trent was anything but pleased. He’d done it again. What the hell was he turning into? Maybe Rachel was right.

"Hey!" Jenks said as he jumped from the log, and Trent put a finger to his lips, his brow furrowing as he realized too late it was covered in blood. Frowning, he patted the man down, searching his pockets until he found a two-way radio.

"Target . . . -nated," he said, pitching his voice low and breaking his words to simulate a bad connection. "Hurt and requ- pick up at-. Coordi-," he finished, then dropped it, using his foot to smash the radio until the back came off and the radio broke into three pieces. Jaw clenched, he stomped on it a few more times just for the hell of it. Adrenaline surged through him, ugly but exhilarating. I do not enjoy this. But the feeling of perfect grace and movement-finding an absolute end to the dance-had left him with a calm that was only now dissipating.

His hands were sticky: avoiding Jenks’s eyes, he found a wipe in his belt pack and cleaned his fingers. The flies were starting to gather already, and Trent backed into the shade, sitting on the low log beside the pixy, and listened to the wind in the trees as he found himself.

Damn it all to the Turn and back, he hadn’t wanted to kill the man. Okay, he had, but not like this. The more he tried to not be his father, the more he became him. The man was dead, and he didn’t care, didn’t wish it were otherwise but for a mild feeling of having failed to find a better way.

"That was slick!" Jenks said as he clambered up beside him, his wings moving fitfully. "I don’t know what I’m more impressed with, that you just bought yourself an hour, or . . . that."

Trent stared into space beyond the body in the patch of sun. Why didn’t he feel anything? Had he become the task of keeping his species alive so deeply that his own soul had been swallowed up by it? Was it too late?

"Rachel is right," Jenks said, his voice holding both encouragement and unexpected understanding. "You are a murdering bastard. If you were small enough, I’d bang knuckles with you. Hell, if you were small enough, I’d put you on my own lines."

Trent’s breath slipped from him in a sigh as he thought of Rachel. Why did the woman hold him to such a narrow line of behavior? It wasn’t like the people she lived with didn’t end lives when the need demanded it. She knew it, and yet if he killed someone to save his life, she labeled him a failure. Maybe it’s because I label myself as one, he thought, then grimaced at the pixy, blinking at the expression of pity and understanding on Jenks’s face. He had to get better at magic-killing people was starting to wear on him.

"You okay?" the pixy asked, his mood serious, and Trent nodded, his breath hissing in as he tried to touch a line and found himself burned.

"Mostly," he said as he stood, knees shaking. They had to get moving. The Withons might have a helicopter.

"You leaving him here? It’s a lot of evidence."

Trent looked back at the body, knowing the knife with his fingerprints was somewhere under him, not to mention his prints on the bike and the man, and his footprints. Jenks stood, waiting. The pixy’s nonchalance should have soothed him, but it only bracketed his own realization that something in him was on the verge of dying. Rachel suffered every time she was remotely responsible for anyone’s death. She agonized over it, tortured herself until she found the knowledge that made her strong enough that ultimate force could be avoided. He just kept killing people until it had gotten easy.