“Hungry,” Yissevel bellows. “Exceptions must be made.”
I flutter my wings faster but I can only fly so high. The ceilings in this bone dwelling aren’t tall enough for me to rise out of his reach.
“Get the fuck out of here!” Seven yells, motioning for me to fly toward the door. True anger rattles his voice.
I try to flee, but Yissevel is on me, sniffing the air and reaching for me. As I drop to fly through the open door, a boney hand closes around me, crushing my wings.
“Let me go!” I scream.
“Pretty teeth. Pretty bones,” it says, its rank breath blowing back my hair as it brings me toward its mouth.
“Put her down, Yissevel,” Seven warns. His voice is charged with luck, and it rattles the bones over our heads.
Yissevel’s milky gray eyes shift, but he doesn’t even pause. He holds me as the claws of his opposite hand reach toward my chest. “Heart first. Then spleen. Then the bones in between,” he singsongs.
Just like he did to the others, only I’m alive to experience it.Fuck! I turn my face away.
Gold flashes through the air and plunks against the bones of the roof. Yissevel has just enough time to swivel his eyes up before the ceiling collapses on his head. I scream as he drops me, my crushed wings unable to recover fast enough to carry my falling weight.
Seven catches me in his arms with an oomph, barely an inch outside the collapse of bones. He sets me on my feet, then holds out his hand. A gold coin falls from the sky into it. I’ve never seen a coin like this. I watch him flip it over his knuckles and between his fingers. There’s a woman on one side, a dragonfly on the other, and it looks positively ancient.
He pushes me toward the exit before I have time to ask him about it, and I don’t hesitate to move. He’s right behind me… until suddenly he’s not. Seven’s being dragged across the carpet of teeth. Behind him the pile of bones rattles and falls away from Yissevel who rises, pissed off but otherwise unhurt. Seven dangles by one leg over Yissevel’s mouth. The coin flies from his hand, hitting the creature in one eye. Yissevel roars and drops Seven but catches him in his opposite hand. The gold rolls under the pile of bones.
I nock my last arrow and aim it at Yissevel’s heart. I don’t let it fly, however, because the ground has started to quake. Seven. He’s sweating buckets, luck coiling off him and between us like the massive invisible dragon I picture it to be. He has limited options; there’s nothing around us but fallen bones. My skin tingles with the intensity of the power flowing off him.
Yissevel sways on his feet. He snaps at Seven with his teeth, but he can’t steady himself enough to get the leprechaun into his mouth.
The ground cracks to my left, bringing down one wall of Yissevel’s lair. It only serves to enrage him more.
Leprechaun or not, there’s no way Seven can keep this up. I take a deep breath and stretch my wings. They’re sore, but when I flap them, I lift off the ground. Once in the air, the earthquake can’t shake my bones and I level my arrow, aiming at Yissevel’s heart.
“Make it count, Sophead. I’m almost out of juice!” Seven yells, his eyes two emerald green spotlights in the dim interior.
I close one eye and release my held breath. The arrow flies. It slips between Yissevel’s ribs and pierces the throbbing sinew there. Seven drops like a stone from the creature’s hand and crumples into the piles of bones, but my aim was true. Yissevel topples, blows out a breath, and moves no more.
Only after I’m sure the unseelie monster is dead do I land and pull my arrow from his side. I wipe it on the creature’s garb before sliding it back into my quiver. I might need it for the journey home. The earth has stopped quaking.Seven. I run to him. His shirt is soaked with sweat, and he’s lying perfectly still, face pallid.
“Are you hurt?” I ask.
He nods. “Ankle.” A shard of bone from the collapsed wall protrudes from the flesh just below his calf. I reach for it, but he stops me, “No!” He swallows hard. “I used too much luck. I’m negative. If you remove that now, I’ll bleed out.”
“You let yourself go negative?” I say disbelievingly.
“Gods, Sophia. It wasn’t intentional. I was trying to save our hides and heal your wings at the same time.”
I remember my crushed wings, incapable of flight when Yissevel had dropped me. I was able to carry my weight at just the right time. Not my doing. “Hold still.”
He gives me a wary look.
I reach into my bag for Kiko and press her jade belly into his hand. He takes a deep breath. Slowly, color returns to his cheeks. I dig out the first aid kit and find the bandages. He sits up and yanks the bone from his leg. Lucky him, it wasn’t in as deep as I’d feared. I press a piece of gauze to the wound to stymie the blood and then start to wrap it.
“Who do you think was using Yissevel? It sounded like it was a leprechaun.”
Seven frowns. “I’m not sure, but I intend to find out.” His voice sounds funny. I glance in his direction, my mind fighting my heart on what to do next.
“Yissevel thought you were him at first.”
“Because a leprechaun was behind this.”
