Harvest of Changelings Read Online Free Page A

yanked them out and turned as the Fomorii snarled, in one fluid motion. The air and the light in the door shimmered and for a very brief moment he saw what looked like a very fine spider web crack in a windshield. Both Fomorii cracked their whips and hissing fireballs the size of basketballs flew through the shimmering air that now seemed to fill the room. Valeria matched the fireballs with her own lightning bolts, exploding them like fireworks. The air in the door shook again, vibrating, and broken, bits of shattered light cascading to the floor. The first Fomorii steeped into the room, the darkness coming with him, a living, silent, foulsmelling storm cloud. It ate the light, breaking it into firefly-sized pieces. With the nails tight in his hand, wishing they were longer, Ben ran straight for the monster and stabbed at him, slashing open one scaly, black arm.

    The darkness froze. The second Fomorii froze. The wounded one screamed and moaned and then it began to melt, its crest drooping and oozing, the scales blurring, everything blurring into a dark, vile, smelly mess on the floor. The second Fomorii ran and Ben could hear another shattering of the air. The darkness vanished at the shattering and there was only the grey-blue dawn light. Ben could see the sky and a few stars out the window. The only other lights in the room were the baby and Valeria. She looked at him and he looked at her, the nails still in his hand. At Ben’s feet were tiny bits of darkness, like black soot on the floor.
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    We never really talked about what happened. I wish we had. Jack tried to make me talk to her, but I couldn’t.
    â€œYou haven’t talked about it at all? Ben, you fought off the Forces of Evil and saved your woman and your child and you can’t talk to her about it? Ben!”
    â€œYou don’t understand. I had nails, iron nails, in my jacket pocket in our bedroom, the room our son was born in. Yes, those nails saved her and Malachi, but I got them to protect myself against her. Remember?”
    â€œShe must have said something,” Jack muttered, as he carefully mixed the gravy and mashed potatoes on his plate together. We were in the Kuntry Kitchen for our regular Friday lunch.
    â€œShe told me why the Fomorii came. They were assassins.” And I told him the rest: that she was not just one of the Twelve on the Dodecagon. She was the Prime Mover, the head, the focal point. If they got her, the tide of the war would change. That they even got through was a sign she was desperately needed back home.
    â€œTell her I told you to get those nails. Geez, Ben, she’s leaving. You gotta talk to her.”
    I shook my head and asked Danielle, our waitress, for more sweet iced tea. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
    Valeria and I never mentioned the nails.
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    Valeria left April 30, Beltaine Eve.
    â€œAre you just going to draw a pentagram on the floor at midnight and step through it?” Ben asked a few days before. He wasn’t angry; he was just sad; they both were. They were in the bedroom and Valeria had just put Malachi to bed. They stood by the crib and watched as he dreamed, his breathing slow, easy, the sheet rising, falling, his fists by his face. The floor was still speckled with the black soot. Ben had tried every cleanser he could think of—Murphy’s Oil
Soap, Pinesol, Formula 409—nothing had worked. Valeria had finally made him stop: the soot had bonded with the wood. He would have to replace the entire floor, she had told him, and destroy the wood. She had given him instructions how. Floors made of oak, holly, elder, thorn, ash, hawthorn, and apple wood were going to take some doing.
    â€œNo, I have to go to the nearest gate,” Valeria said and made some imperceptible adjustment to Malachi’s covers. “I’ll take a taxi. Let’s go in the living room or we will wake him up.”
    â€œTake a taxi? You can fly, or teleport, can’t