I didn’t have high hopes for that. It wasn’t the fastest black dog I’d ever faced, but it skittered and moved in jerky quick leaps. Even as partially blind and deaf as it appeared, it could still scent me out. How could it not? I was chumming the air like a severed swordfish head being dragged behind a speedboat hoping to draw out a sea serpent. Only the rocks couldn’t smell me coming.
Keeping one eye on the ainmhi dubh and another on the ground was difficult—impossible really. I hit more rocks than I avoided, mostly small ones, but a good-sized boulder caught me in the knee, and the cursed bug probably felt the swear words pouring past my gritted teeth. It turned slowly, its head bobbing up and down, then stepped tentatively toward me, one of its many wiggling pointy legs landing smack dab in the middle of a blood pool.
Its scream shook the cavern, startling a cloud of sunrise bats, their translucent wings singing out waves of cut-glass discordance as they swarmed through the long space, sweeping up toward the hole in the ceiling. The fireflies fled before the burnt orange and dusk yellow airborne mammals, the pixies swirling outward, ignoring the giant weaving centipede to cling to the ivy-covered jagged crevices at the outer areas of the caves. If I’d not been bleeding out iron and blood, I’d have stopped to soak in the sight of their flashing bodies tucked into the darker blue illuminated plants—a seascape sculpted from light and sweeping shapes—but I had a death to attend.
I just wasn’t sure if it was going to be me or the ainmhi dubh.
The centipede began thrashing, its leg smoking where it touched my blood. It tipped to the side, sliding through more drops, and then tumbled forward when it slid over a larger pool, the first joint of its segmented front leg buckling under. The leg’s chiton cracked along the tip, spiderwebbing up over the initial bend, then continuing up to the pale stretch of its tibia.
Unable to find this new threat, the ainmhi dubh stumbled about, snapping its powerful mandibles in the air, hoping to strike out at whatever was breaking it apart.
“Got to be the iron.” Bracing myself for what I was about to do, I took a long hard breath, glad Dempsey had pounded into my head the importance of keeping my knives and brain sharp. “Okay, you demented foul bastard, here’s hoping this works.”
I took my blade and sliced open my hand, going as deep as I dared, and sent a prayer to every god I laid down tribute to that my wild idea would work.
Already swollen to the point of splitting my skin, my hand didn’t take too kindly to being carved apart like a Thanksgiving turkey. I dropped down to one knee, taking the rocky hit to my joint with a graceless tumble. Another slice down and the flesh gave, soaking my skin and threading down my wrist when I raised my hand up.
“Okay, time to play tag, asshole,” I growled at the ainmhi dubh. “Just like your daddy did to me.”
Its belly was low enough for me to smear a wide swath of my blood across its carapace. A few missteps forward brought me right up against the damned thing, and from there, I painted whatever I could reach. Some of it was splatters from my throbbing hand, while most of it was long smudges of poisoned blood across anything I could reach. I’d dropped my knife as I went, but at the moment, it didn’t matter. The creature convulsed and shook, trying to fight off the acidic reaction of its creation and the iron-infused blood I was using to break down its hard armor.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Cari kneeling over Kenny, her back to me and the ainmhi dubh. Some small part of my Stalker training reminded me to kick her ass for turning away from the greater threat in the area, but mostly, I was focused on getting as much blood on the creature as I could. It was smoking and crackling with each pass I made, unable to back away from me as its limbs slipped through my blood, compromising its already breaking legs.
Oddly enough, my hand was feeling better and some of the pain eased off, or at least the iron-fueled bits. I was suddenly very aware of the slices I’d made into my own flesh, and the too-sharp-edged agony was practically a relief. My stomach no longer felt like I was about to have it crawl up over my tongue, and the ainmhi dubh was beginning to smolder, its belly and chest starting to show thick black cracks through its chiton. It smelled, probably worse than any black dog I’d ever encountered, but nothing a good shot of whiskey couldn’t take care of.
“Let’s do this.” I fumbled at my shoulder holster to get my other Glock out, still unsteady but stronger than I’d felt when Valin left me on top of Kenny. Raising my gun, I sighted on the widest smear I’d left on the creature’s body and pulled the trigger, sending a hot screaming round right into its chest.
It fought its death in a pitched fit, pieces of its chiton falling off in crumbling chunks. I had to stumble to avoid the small sea of acid gushing out of its widening wounds, but I kept firing, taking advantage of its shattered defenses. It seemed to hiss and writhe for an eternity. Then Cari grabbed my waist, pulling me away from the damned thing before I could empty another magazine into it.
“Come on, we’ve got to get clear of this thing.” She shoved at my side, ignoring my hiss of pain. “Kenny’s dead. Probably was dead as soon as Valin touched him. The bastard turned his blood into something corrosive. No way anyone but an elfin could have survived that. Sure as hell not him. Let’s go.”
“Got to make sure that thing’s dead first,” I argued, ejecting the empty mag and reaching for another tucked into my rig. Slamming in the new magazine, I balanced myself against Cari. “Can’t let it go. It’s an ainmhi dubh in the middle of the city. It survives this and lots of people are going to die. Do the job, Cari. Do it until we die.”
She left me to stand on my own and pulled out her weapon. The little girl with her curly hair in pigtails hardened away until only the hibiki-Stalker remained. Sighting on the ainmhi dubh, she braced herself into a shooting stance. “You go high, Gracen. I’ll go low.”
“Watch your feet. Blood’s going to eat you just like the rest,” I warned her and began firing, aiming for the lengthening cracks.
I couldn’t think about Kenny, or even what Dempsey might or might not have sent him. Whatever he knew about the original contract to extract me from Tanic was lost, and the only thing that mattered at the moment was killing the monster my brother left behind.
The ainmhi dubh’s mandibles fell, severed from its head by a few of my shots. Its head reared back, and I took the opening it offered, sending the last of my magazine into the gaping empty mouth and straight into its fevered, rotten brain—or whatever was left of it after Valin corrupted it. Thrashing, it went down hard, and it nearly wiped Cari and me out as it fell. Its carapace began to fall off the soft bits hidden beneath it. There wasn’t much there, mostly goo and acid, but there was enough to make us run.
Firing again, I hit something vital, because without warning, its head exploded and we were pelted by a hail of searing heat and insect shards. The sounds it began making were frightening, the anger and magic fueling its existence slowly unraveling, leaving behind only the creature Valin warped. Its color bled out from under its fragmented exoskeleton, turning it ashen as it began to empty its fluids over where we stood.
“Go on,” I scolded her when she hitched her arm around my waist. “That hits me, I’ll survive it. You won’t.”