I dropped down to my knees, throwing my arms over my head to try and protect my face from the glass that never touched me. A wall of olive toned flesh stood between me and the razor sharp projectiles. Nice had used his body to take the brunt of the impact. His teeth were gritted against the pain I knew he must be feeling. The thin cotton covering his back wasn't nearly the protection that my leather coat would have been.
"The bullets will work but your steel knives would do better if you know how to use them," Nices voice had gone gravelly with the pain but I could see him pushing it aside and getting ready for the confrontation waiting at the top of the stairs. I had to move almost three feet of thick pewter coils of hair aside to even be able to see what was happening.
A strange Wolf in animal form landed directly behind Nice, only to have his face driven that much further into hardwood by the weight of Naughty riding his back with his hands on the back of its head. He dug both hands in under the fur of that thickly muscled jaw, his arms strained as he twisted back and to the side. The Wolf beneath him snarled and struggled but it was only moments before the hollow snap of his neck breaking echoed through the hall.
The sound of metal and glass striking hardwood had barely faded and the intruder Wolf, who was easily two hundred pounds, was already dead. The twins had acted before I even knew there was a threat, to remove it and protect me. It made me somewhat reevaluate my ability to combat the power that had completely subjugated them for some indeterminate amount of time that, I was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion, was going to make my so-called longevity seem like a joke. It hadn't quite managed to slip my mind that the first language they'd spoken had been a rough form of Latin.
The soft sound of a ravens wings interrupted the temporary silence of moments before. All three of us turned at the sound, almost as if it were louder and more important than it should be. The first clue I had that magic might be involved. Yeah, I should probably have clued in sooner but there were a lot of thoughts going through my head right now, not the least of which was noting that despite the commotion the person blocking my door hadn't moved to intervene. Three guesses what his job was and the first two don't count. We'd just need to pick from doors number two through five for our escape. The many entrances and exit routes had been one of the reasons I had loved this house so much. I am not paranoid, it's not paranoia if it proves necessary.
The giant black bird stared menacingly down on us, waiting at the top of the stairs as the ominous sound of the packs approach filtered in through the gaping hole in the side of my house that I was trying really hard not to think about. A howl split the night and a rusty caw answered. Ok, so maybe not so much waiting at the top of the stairs as actively drawing the enemy to my doorstep. I turned to look up at Nice, not even knowing what I needed but thinking that somehow we could strategize a plan. What I got was stark unrelenting terror. The kind that incapacitates you in the face of its cause, which in this case appeared to be an eighteen inch raven perched on a jagged shard of purple glass still clinging to the window frame.
For the first time I intentionally opened the link between all of us. I had sort of made note of how it had felt when Naughtys emotions had engulfed me and then were so quickly cut off. I got a brief confusing doubled glimpse of a cat-eyed woman in a sheer black himation standing over us before horror and agony overwhelmed every sense but hearing as her cruel laugh echoed in our ears. I could feel all the bones and muscles along the sides of our bodies shatter to dust then get ground against each other in an unnatural fusion. I screamed and fought the memory.
Between Naughty pushing and me pulling I was out in fractions of a millisecond. Nice was still frozen even internally. It took me a few moments to come back into myself, to feel my own flesh and realize that it wasn't my body that had been so tortured. Then I thought about what I'd just seen. A toga are you fucking kidding me. The information revealed by that briefest glimpse into what had happened to them caused chills to start at my center and work their way out to my extremities. I wanted to freeze in the face of the knowledge that the evil being I had fought, who was now in my house, was at least two thousand years old. And so were the twins. Well that'll show me to feel overwhelmed before I have all the information.
My now shaking hands reached up to cradle Nices face as another series of howls and excited yips filled the air seeming to snap him out of his stupor. Somewhat.
"Hey," his eyes looked at me but were still seeing through the horror of his memories, "Hey..." I hesitated in no way willing to call him Nice out loud. He blinked and came back to me, his eyes filling with the sweet personality that had prompted the pseudonym in the first place, a small smile flashing briefly.
"I like that you think of me as the nice one," he ducked his chin slightly and lowered his eyelashes over his golden gaze. I tried not to let mortification actually kill me. At least the heat of my embarrassed blush chased some of the chills away. I studiously avoided looking anywhere in Naughtys general direction.
"So what do we do? Run? Fight? What? I'll follow your lead. If you think we can take them we'll fight," I won't lie, every instinct I had was to run, but I didn't know how she'd found us this time and I couldn't afford for her to follow us to my other places. I was in their heads as they considered the possibilities, many more than I would have thought of.
"Do you think you could incapacitate her? She's how they can find us with no scent trail to follow. We can fight off the first leads but if the whole pack gets here they'll just surround the house and attack in turns till they die or we do," Naughtys voice was deeper than normal. I didn't know if he'd been hurt in the fight or if he was repressing laughter at my pseudonym for him and his brother.
You will need to attack her psychically. Before, you followed our link to her, now you will need to find whatever marker she put on you in your last battle. I startled at that, I hadn't noticed anything but it's not like I'm an expert in metaphysics. I trusted that the Bronze Age warriors might have better strategies than me, who'd spent the majority of her life avoiding conflict and confrontation.
Nice placed his warm calloused hand at the top of my sternum, his long fingers curled over my collar bone and around my neck. It felt a little like the beginnings of a choke hold but it was the only place on my chest not covered in breasts and I appreciated his courtesy for what is was.
