Kim Harrison - Unbound

“Get her!” Jenks shouted as he tackled her about the knees.

He hit her hard, and they slid across the grass, his arms scraping. Taking a breath, he looked up to see the flaming arrow was arching true to its target.

“Drop!” he shouted, trying to cover Vi from the coming blast. Panic iced his wings as he saw Jumoke still hovering in midair, shocked into immobility. He’d never reach him in time.

Then Bis raised his hand, cupping it before him.

The night turned white and orange, and an explosion pulsed against his ears and echoed up through the ground into him. Hunching down, Jenks tried to bury himself in the grass, feeling the blast push the blood from his wings for an instant. Jumoke fell to the ground in front of him.

“Why didn’t you drop!” Jenks shouted, his own voice sounding muffled from his stunned ears as he got off Vi and went to his son, bewildered on the ground. “Jumoke, are you okay?”

Panicking, he pulled his son up. Frantic, he felt Jumoke’s face, then ran his hands down his wings, looking for tears. Jumoke yelped, wiggling to get out from under Jenks’s hands.

“Oh, that was everlastingly cool,” the boy said, grinning from under his dark hair.

Jenks smacked his shoulder in relief. He was okay. “What’s wrong with you!” he shouted, glad his hearing was coming back. “I told you to drop!”

Bis’s thick skin on his brow was furrowed in worry, but Jenks didn’t think it was from the cut he was looking at on the back of his hand. In the distance, a car alarm was going off. “Um, Jenks?” he said in question.

A quick glance told him Vincet was okay. Vi was in his arms looking stunned but herself. Sylvan no longer possessed her, which meant he was probably free. Great, just freaking great. He only wanted to help, and he freed a murderer. Rachel and Ivy were not going to be happy.

Ivy.

Alarmed, Jenks darted up. Chunks of marble the size of apples and melons littered the sidewalk. A few pieces were embedded in the tree that Ivy had pinned Daryl against, and the scent of cracked rock pervaded. Vincet’s home and Daryl’s statue looked untouched. But no Ivy. No Daryl, either.

“Ivy!” Jenks shouted, realizing he was about to fall from exhaustion. Damn it, he’d let his sugar drop. Immediately he found a sweetball in his pocket and sucked on it. The sugar hit him fast, and his wings sped up. Across the street, people were starting to come out of their homes, aiming flashlights at the park. They had to get out of here.

“Ivy!” he shouted again. “You okay?”

Bis poked his head up from behind the rock, his ears pricked as he looked at the tree, and Jenks wasn’t surprised when Daryl stumbled out from behind it. Ivy levered herself up from the ground, having found a dip to take shelter in. They both picked their way carefully to the sidewalk, taking in the damage with a numb acceptance.

“He’s free,” Daryl whispered, her smooth features bunching in distress.

A crack of noise made them all jump. It was the snap of breaking stone, and the sharp sound echoed off the town homes across the street. As they watched, a huge slab of broken rock slid from Sylvan’s statue, falling to crush the flowers.

“I didn’t do it, Papa!” Jumoke exclaimed, eyes wide as he darted close. “It wasn’t me!”

“It was me,” a new voice said, sly and wispy.

Startled, Jenks turned in the air even as Daryl caught her breath only to start coughing. Ivy held her back from attacking him, but her lips were pressed in anger. A thin figure was standing in the moonlight, his feet on the moss beside the dogwood tree. It looked like Sylvan’s statue. Moving as if it might be hurt, the shadowy figure edged out into the moonlight, drawing back as one bare foot touched the concrete. It was Sylvan. It had to be.

“You lied to me,” Jenks said, loosening his sword.

“I’m free!” the dryad exclaimed, and he leaped lightly onto the concrete, exuberant as his robes furled.

The glow of Vincet’s dust was a sickly yellow as he hovered beside Jenks, his broken sword in hand. The dryad probably didn’t know it, but it was a real threat.

“Is Vi okay?” Jenks asked, and Vincet nodded.

“But I fear we have let loose a demon.”

“You are trash, Sylvan!” Daryl shouted, sagging in Ivy’s arms as she wheezed. “I will not rest until you are dead !”

Sylvan stopped his twirling. Looking at Jenks as if seeing him for the first time, the dryad smiled, his gaze alighting briefly on Vincet, Jumoke, and finally Bis, all fronting him. “Daryl is a crazy bitch,” he said softly, pulling himself to a dignified stance. “I didn’t lie.” Glancing at the people coming across the park from the town homes, he added, almost as an afterthought, “Not much, anyway.”

“Now!” Ivy shouted, springing into action. Jenks darted forward, sword in hand.

“No, wait!” Bis exclaimed, but Ivy was already pinwheeling to a stop. The spot of air where Sylvan had been, was gone.

“Where did he go!” Ivy asked, turning back to them.

Bis shook himself, resettling his wings as he looked at the people coming closer. “Into the line,” he said, clearly unnerved. His ears were pinned and his tail was lashed about his feet. “He shouldn’t be able to do that,” he added, meeting Jenks’s gaze.

Daryl slumped on the bench to look totally undignified and out of character. “It’s why he was imprisoned in stone,” she said, pushing a chip of his statue off to clatter on the cement. “Now I’ll never find him.”

Jenks stifled a shiver as he met Ivy’s eyes. Tink’s contractual hell, he’d made a big mistake. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “We can worry about Sylvan later.”

“Right behind you.” Bis flew to their satchel, ducking behind Daryl’s robes and coming out with it and the grimy, dented bowl. A bobbing flashlight across the grass caught his eyes, and they glowed red. Seeing it, someone called out. More lights angled their way.

“Jenks, I’m taking Daryl to the hospital,” Ivy said. “Can you get home from here okay?”

Jenks looked at Daryl, struggling to breathe, and he nodded. “See you there.”

Daryl was complaining she wasn’t going to go to the butchers and leechers when Vincet dropped down to him. “Thank you, Jenks,” he said, his expression solemn in the dim light. “You saved my family.”

Wincing, Jenks looked to Vincet’s front door where his wife and sons were silhouetted in the warm glow of a fire. “You’re welcome. I don’t think Sylvan will be back.”

“Tomorrow,” Vincet said, shaking his hand. “I’ll come tomorrow. Thank you. I can’t ever do enough.”

Jenks managed a smile as he thought of Vi. She’d be fine, now. “Just be nice to some pixy buck who needs it,” he said. “And build me an office.”

Vincet’s head was bobbing as he drifted back, but it was clear he wanted to return to his home. “Yes. Anything. Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Jenks agreed, then darted up when a flashlight found him, bathing him in a bright white light. “Sorry about the mess!” he shouted.

Vincet went one way, Ivy and Daryl another, and in an instant, even their dust was gone. He waited until he heard the soft sound of Ivy’s muffled engine before he turned his back on the demolished grove and rose higher. Like a switch, the sounds of chaos went faint and the air turned chill. An uncomfortable mix of success and failure took him. And as Jenks quickly caught up to Jumoke and the slower-flying gargoyle winging his way back across the Ohio River, he had a bad feeling that this was far from over.

Hands on his hips, Jenks hovered a good five inches above the damp moss, newly transplanted from somewhere half across the Hollows. He gazed in satisfaction at the freshly scrubbed, upside-down flowerpot buried halfway into the soft soil. The sun was high, but here, under the shelter of an overgrown lilac, it was cool. It had taken almost a week working the four hours before the sun rose, but Vincet had finally called his office done.