Magic Tides (Kate Daniels: Wilmington Years #1)(31)

“Wow, kid,” the bouda gasped. “I thought Keelan’s stories were just bullshit, but your dad is a beast!”

Beast lord. Heh.

“Why isn’t he killing them though?”

It was obvious. “It’s worse,” I said.

“What’s worse?”

“Living with it. They will remember this, being beaten and mauled. Being so scared that they couldn’t even run away. They will never be the same again.”

“Killing them is cleaner.”

“Some of them are not here by choice. Some of them were forced. There is no way to tell who is who. Those who’ll survive get a chance to change their lives and be better. If they don’t, we can always kill them later.”

She squinted at me. “How old are you again?”

“Eight.”

“That’s a hard eight, kid. Still, they have the right idea.” She nodded at Mr. Paul and his archers, who were shooting into the crowd.

“They are entitled. Those people took Darin, Mr. Paul’s nephew. They have a blood claim.”

She shook her head at me.

Several feet away from Dad, Mr. Keelan was wading into the crowd swinging his sword back and forth in front of him like it was a giant club. People ran at him, but he was beating them back with the flat side of the blade. His pack was taking down anyone who tried to get behind him.

It was almost over now. They weren’t a mob anymore. They were just a herd of people panicking. All of them were scared, some were bleeding badly, and running in every direction to get away from the monsters mauling them. Many were heading back the way they’d come.

A deep bellow tore over the sound of the battle.

At the forest tunnel, trees shuddered, shaking their branches. Something was coming, Something big, moving toward us down the road through the tree tunnel we’d carved out of the woods.

The humans stopped running.

Dad raised his head and looked in that direction.

A stench washed over me. Sour, musky, and wrong somehow.

“That can’t be good,” Ms. Jynx murmured.

Another bellow. Closer now.

Closer.

The trees shuddered, and a nightmare from old stories stomped out of the forest.

It had to be ten feet tall and held an axe as big as Mr. Keelan’s sword over its horned head.

“Holy fuck,” Ms. Jynx gasped. “An actual goddamned minotaur!”



NO, three minotaurs. Two massive monsters, slightly smaller than the first but with axes of their own, lumbered out to stand next to their leader.

One of the humans ran toward the largest creature, and it cut him in half with one swing of its axe.

“Kill them,” it roared. “Kill the cat, kill the dogs, kill the humans behind the walls! Kill them all!”

Dad changed into warrior form and dashed toward the minotaurs.

Grandfather told me about minotaurs. They were not shapeshifters. They were chimeras, and they came from Crete.

A series of deep grunts sounded from behind us.

Ms. Jynx whirled around.

A section of the back wall, the one facing the sea and still under repair, exploded. Stones and mortar came flying toward us, and two big, ugly shapeshifters appeared in the ragged gap. They squeezed into the hole. Jagged, broken portions of the ruined wall tore at their shaggy hides. Wereboars in warrior form. Their eyes were small and red, their tusks huge and yellow.

They forced their way in and paused, pawing the ground with their hoofed feet, trying to gouge it.

Mr. Paul and his wife turned and fired.

Two arrows sprouted in the larger werehog’s chest. The other one looked at them, grunted, and swiped the shafts away with his huge hand.

A layer of muscle, then fat, then quills. The arrows didn’t penetrate. They should have penetrated, but they hadn’t.

The werehogs sighted the gate. If they opened it, things would get complicated.

The female bouda unsheathed two daggers. “Stay on the wall.” She leaped down into the courtyard and landed between the wereboars and the gate.

The wereboars snorted.

My babysitter pointed at the intruders with her daggers. “Hey, piggies! I’m here to carve some bacon off your fat asses.”

“Stupid bouda bitch,” one of them grunted. “Snuck up behind you. Now we stomp you. Crush your bones. Fuck you. Eat you. Shit you out.”

Paul’s family shot another two bolts at the boars.

The wereboars snorted some more, ripped the bolts out, and started toward the bouda.

Ms. Jynx flicked her daggers and shifted. A werehyena spilled out, her eyes glowing with ruby fire.

The wereboars charged.

She spun around them like a whirlwind, slicing so fast. Cut, cut, cut, cut…

The wereboars squealed and roared, swiping at her, but she was too quick. Blood flew. The wereboar swung its massive fists at her but couldn’t touch her as she darted in and out of its reach.

So, that was how renders fought. Yeah, I want to do that.

Ms. Jynx’s opponent tried to pull her into a clench, but she ducked and stabbed up into its snout. The wereboar screamed in rage.

She was carving into them, but their wounds closed almost as fast as she cut them. Faster than I healed. Faster than Dad.

The smaller wereboar lunged at her, forcing his way through the barrage of her strikes, trying to lock her into a bear hug, while the other wereboar closed in on her from behind. She had nowhere to go. They smashed into each other, trying to pin her between them. At the last moment, she dropped down into a crouch, and the two boars collided, while she drove her daggers up, into their groins. Stab, stab, stab, so fast.