Kelly Meding - Requiem for the Dead

The nasty little monsters deserved it. So I did my very best to protect my friends and kill every last one of the goblins.

A flash of golden fur caught my attention. Kyle, in his true dingo form, ran head-first into the back of a goblin and sent the creature flying into the side of a light pole. A glance to my left found Tybalt in the street, his face perfectly blank as he swung his prosthetic attachment at the goblins, eviscerating two with one solid stroke.

Paul shouted, then cursed, his voice practically in my ear. I turned. A goblin had latched onto Paul's back like a child getting piggy-backed, and its teeth were deep in Paul's shoulder. One of Paul's butterfly knives was already lodged in the goblin's side, and Paul couldn't seem to get a good shot with the other.

"Knees," I shouted.

He dropped immediately. I yanked the butterfly knife out of the goblin's side, then slammed it into the base of its neck. Severed the spine. It went limp. I pulled its teeth out of Paul's shoulder, and the body slumped to the street. Paul looked up at me, panting and pale-faced, his eyes glazed with pain.

"Thank me later," I said.

Kismet moved in to help protect Paul and Autumn, while I jumped back into the slaughter. My skin was smeared with goblin blood, and I was a sweaty, sticky mess, but I still managed to laugh when I stabbed another goblin in the eye. I think it was a slightly hysterical laugh. No one here would blame me for it.

The goblin bodies were piling up. Half a dozen took off for an alley. Dingo Kyle raced after them. We quickly cut down the last few standing targets, until all that was left was the carnage.

Wyatt stood apart from the group, his bi-shifted body heaving from exertion and battle lust. His eyes were perfectly silver, his canine teeth flashing in the streetlight. He looked very much like an ancient predatory beast—and like he could do this for hours yet. Personally, I was exhausted. He started growling. Jaguar Marcus hissed.

Oh hell no.

I moved to Wyatt's side and yanked his chin down so he was looking at me instead of over me. Our height difference in this state was a pain in the ass, but I'd be damned if I'd let him lose it. Ever. A small red pupil appeared in his silver eyes. Good, he was seeing me.

"Eyes on me, Truman," I said. "Fight's over. All that's left here are friends."

He blinked hard. It took a minute, but he worked himself down from the bi-shift and back to his regular self. "Are you hurt?" he asked as soon as his teeth were back to normal.

"For a change, no. You?"

"No."

We rejoined our people, who'd gathered around Autumn and Paul. Both looked a little shocky from their respective injuries. Tybalt had sacrificed his shirt as a bandage for Paul, whose own shirt was soaked with blood.

"—out of nowhere," Autumn was saying. "I didn't even smell them until after I'd been pushed."

"Pushed?" I repeated, since I'd missed the start of the story.

She nodded at the roof of a three-story building across the street. "Pushed. I damaged my arm in the fall. Think I dislocated my shoulder. Paul got down to me fast, and by then the goblins were swarming us."

"So no idea where they came up from?" Tybalt asked.

"No, just from the alley there."

The alley Kyle had gone down and not returned from. Kismet was missing, too. Before I could ask, Marcus (who'd shifted back) said, "Gina went for the car."

Kyle also appeared, limping out of the shadows of the alley. He shifted, as well, and winced as he put weight on his right ankle. "They disappeared into a storm drain behind the theater," he said. "It was too narrow to get down, and it reeked of goblin."

"Good thing you didn't try to squeeze in then," I said. "If it's a nest, you'd have been puppy chow."

He grunted. "I also found two human bodies in the alley."

Of course you did. I sighed in my head as Wyatt, Tybalt, and I followed him. The bodies were out in the open, unhidden, their skin and clothing flayed and torn. Eyes wide open. Both women, probably early twenties, but their faces were too damaged to be sure. They hadn't been dead long, maybe an hour.

One woman's leg had KEL scratched into it. Looked like our people interrupted another love note from Nessa.

"After we get the goblins cleaned up, we'll call the police," Wyatt said.

Despite the horrific way they died, those girls' families deserved to know they were dead. They deserved a chance to grieve.

Don't the Frosts deserve that chance too?

I shoved the voice of reason away. I had too many other things to worry about tonight, and the Frosts were nowhere near the top of my list.

Kismet returned with the SUV. Autumn and Paul needed to get back to the Watchtower for medical attention, while some of us stayed behind on cleanup duty. Wyatt was on the phone with someone at the Watchtower, reporting our activities of the last thirty minutes or so and requesting help with cleanup. The last thing we needed to do was leave a pile of goblin parts for the city police to find, and we only had about three hours before people started waking up around here.

Kyle was helping Kismet settle Autumn and Paul into the backseat. Autumn's phone kept buzzing, but she didn't seem in any hurry to pick up. I moved forward to answer the phone for her.

A warm body hit mine, and then I hit the bloody pavement. My right thigh shrieked with heat and pain. Something warm and wet spread over the small of my back. Wyatt was yelling my name from far away, so he wasn't the person flattening me. Bleeding on me.

Crap.

"The roof over there," Kyle yelled.

Sniper. Another fucking sniper.

The body on top of me rolled, and I turned my head to look into Marcus's pained copper eyes. I sat up way too fast, because agony seared down my right leg, blurred my vision, and I may have let out a little scream. Wyatt was suddenly behind me, holding me up, and I fell back against him.

Kismet knelt next to Marcus and pressed her hands against his right side, below his ribs.

"What the hell?" I asked.

"Saw a laser sight," Marcus said, voice strained. "Reacted."

"I didn't hear the shot," Wyatt said.

"Me, either."

Wyatt had somehow worked off his belt and was wrapping it around my upper thigh. I finally saw the hole. I'd been shot in the leg.

"How bad?" I said.

"Could have been worse." Marcus flinched when Kismet increased pressure. "Damn, woman, that hurts."

"It'll hurt worse if you bleed out," Kismet retorted.

"It's not that serious."

"You have two holes in your body, Marcus, it's serious enough."

Wyatt finished cinching his tourniquet, and I hissed through clenched teeth. "Evy only has one. The bullet's still in there."

"Oh goodie, evidence," I said.

"I meant you can't start healing until it's removed."

"Right." I knew that. The pain was messing with my head. "Did we get the shooter?"

"Tybalt and Kyle went after them."

"Who were they trying to kill? Me or Marcus?" I kind of knew the answer but still had to ask the question. He'd jumped in front of a bullet for me. I still got shot, sure, but that didn't negate the gesture.

"The sight was on the back of your head, Evy," Marcus replied.

"Great."

"Could it have been the goblins?" Kismet floated the idea while she helped Marcus lay down in the back of the SUV.

Wyatt went a little overprotective and carried me to the front passenger seat. He even fastened my seatbelt, which I found both irritating and adorable. "I doubt it," he replied. "They don't have the coordination or body type to handle rifles like that."

"A Queen could have hired someone."

"Or it's another of Vale's cousins," I said, "and completely unrelated to the goblins."

No one had an answer to that.

Kismet drove us back to the Watchtower, and halfway there we got an update on the sniper. No sign once they got to the roof. Kyle said he smelled Bengal.