Poison Fruit

Garm was the first casualty. He’d padded out of range to investigate the explosion, but a couple of Persephone’s men clambered down the dune to lure him back, shouting and waving. A convoy of ten SUVs was halfway around the rim of the basin, under ineffectual fire from the hunting rifles of members of the Fairfax clan attempting an ambush, when Garm came roaring back and charged the slope, yellow eyes blazing.

The first missile took him square between his glowing eyes, but Garm’s skull must have been made of something denser than bone. It took a second missile to finish him. With a plaintive whine, the hellhound twice the size of a VW Beetle lay down in the sand and breathed his last.

Tears streamed down my face.

Across the basin, a lone figure stepped forth from a stand of cottonwood trees, a crown of antlers silhouetted against the sky. The convoy halted. The Oak King raised a horn to his lips and blew.

It was a wild sound, high and eerie, flung up into the cloudless sky. The sky echoed it back.

Clouds began to gather, dark and dense.

The Wild Hunt had arrived.

Spectral riders on spectral horses, they slanted down from the sky toward the convoy. Their leader had the face of a skull, its eye sockets filled with shadows and unholy glee, a gilded crown fused to his bony head.

The convoy scattered in terror, SUVs jolting west across the sandy terrain, plunging east into the basin. Some vehicles froze, armor-clad men spilling out to run on foot in a blind panic. With a rolling thunder of ghostly hoofbeats and a cacophony of horns, the Wild Hunt gave chase to everything that fled, wheeling and dividing in the sky above them.

“Hold fast!” Persephone shouted, her voice ringing with fury. “They cannot harm you!”

Maybe she was right, although I had my doubts—the Night Hag had killed poor old Irma Claussen with sheer terror—but there were other combatants on the field now. In the basin, a sinkhole opened up beneath an SUV, miring its rear half in the sand. Knotty figures of duegar emerged from hidden burrows, swarming the vehicle. Mikill and the other three frost giants strode forth from Yggdrasil II’s entrance, armed with shields and battle-axes.

Across the basin, the eldritch entered the fray, Stefan and the Outcast leading the charge over the rim on dirt bikes, Gus the ogre and others following on foot. In the dunes to the west, I could hear sporadic gunfire and the yipping and howling of wolves on the hunt. Some of the Fairfaxes must have decided to give chase as wolves.

“Never mind.” Persephone turned her back on the battle to address her mercenary commander. “The sooner we take down the tree, the fewer casualties. Are the drones ready?”

He looked pale and unsure. “Yes, my lady. But—”

Persephone laid one hand on his arm, gazing into his face. “But what?”

The uncertainty in the mercenary commander’s face vanished, giving way to adoration. “Nothing, my lady.”

Drones.

It hadn’t registered when she’d said it before. The equipment the mercenaries had set up along the rim, tubes with tripod legs . . . those were drones. As in remotely controlled unmanned missiles, the kind of things the U.S. military used for terrorist strikes and God knows what else.

“No,” I said in unthinking denial. “Oh, God! Please, no.”

Everyone but Daniel Dufreyne, who arched an eyebrow in my direction, ignored me. The commander barked orders about securing the perimeter, and a contingent of mercenaries peeled off and spread out behind us.

“Launch the bird!” the commander shouted.

One of the tubes spat out a missile, its wings snapping open in midair. It looked more like a child’s toy than a deadly weapon as it soared over the basin toward Yggdrasil II. Even the viewfinder the mercenary used to guide it reminded me of something from a vintage toy store. It was the real deal, though.

“Remember, it’s just like bull’s-eyeing womp rats in your T-16 back home,” the commander joked.

“Roger that,” the mercenary with the viewfinder replied without looking up.

The drone soared over the basin, over the combatants, who paused uncertainly to look up.

It soared straight into Yggdrasil II’s entrance.

“It’s pitch-black in there,” the mercenary operating the drone complained. “I can’t see—”

There was an explosion somewhere in the sands deep beneath us, and Yggdrasil creaked and groaned in anguish.

“No,” I whispered.

The mercenary glanced up from his viewfinder. “Don’t think I got all the way down to the roots.”

“Don’t worry,” the commander said. “You’ll get her on the next try.”

“No!” I flung myself at the mercenary before he could fire a second drone, knocking over his launch tube. Hands dragged me away. “Look at this!” I shouted at Persephone, gesturing at the basin. The Wild Hunt had abandoned the battlefield and was receding toward the west in pursuit of their victims, the sounds of their horns fading as they ran their prey to ground, but battle was raging fiercely below us. The mercenaries who hadn’t fled before the Wild Hunt were scrambling to find solid ground, leaving their mired vehicles and regrouping in tight clusters. They shot at the eldritch with frantic abandon, assault rifles sounding in staccato bursts.

I saw Stefan’s second lieutenant, Rafe, go down in a hail of bullets, his ATV rolling over as his blood spattered the sand; and I saw Rafe reincorporate in the blink of an eye, crawling behind his fallen vehicle and reaching for his weapon while Stefan covered him.