Red Hood's Revenge

little better than ghosts themselves. And Roudette herself, soon to follow her grandmother.
    Roudette clenched her jaws as Naghesh rolled her over. The troll’s thick fingers pushed Roudette’s hair out of her face, tracing the lines of her face. “ ’Twas a potent curse that created the Wild Hunt. It will take time to prepare her.”
    “We may not have as much time as we expected.” Zestan’s wings snapped out, startling Roudette into alertness. Zestan circled Talia. “Your little army is not unexpected. I sent my ghosts to patrol the desert the moment Naghesh captured you. But you found a way to sneak your friends into the palace, haven’t you? Who among them has the strength to banish my hunters? Was it the witch? She must be powerful indeed.”
    “How?” Roudette croaked. No magic known to man could turn away the Wild Hunt, and the hunters feared nothing, not even death. Roudette had spent her life fighting the fey, striking the Wild Hunt when they crossed paths. Never had she accomplished anything save to kill the occasional hunter. Yet if Zestan was telling the truth, Snow and Danielle had sent the entire Hunt away. Roudette had underestimated them.
    “Prepare a fairy ring,” said Zestan. “I don’t know what they’ve done, but we may need to use Sleeping Beauty sooner than planned.”
    With that the peri swept from the room, shadows peeling from the wall to cloak her in darkness. Naghesh dragged Roudette into the center of the library. She kicked an old table aside, clearing space for her fairy ring. She set her staff against the wall and picked up a book. Half the yellowed pages fell like leaves. With a touch of her finger, she set the book alight and held it as green fire enveloped the pages.
    “That should work.” She dropped the book and stamped out the flames, then began collecting others, laying them out in a circle. She had only set out half of the ring when she straightened, her warty face compressing into a scowl. “Who’s there?”
    Roudette spotted them at the same time as Naghesh: two lizards the color of sand, about the length of her arm, crawling along the wall.
    “How kind of Zestan to send me a snack.” Naghesh reached for one, but a spark leaped from the lizard to her fingertips. She jumped back, sucking her fingers.
    The lizards dropped to the ground, bodies shifting and growing. “Why do trolls always try to eat us?” Snow asked as the scales of her face melted away. “Are we really that tasty?”
    Danielle drew her sword and attacked in a single motion, slicing upward and nearly catching Naghesh’s chin with her blade.
    “You’re the ones, eh?” Naghesh lunged for her staff, but Danielle was faster, swinging her sword against the staff hard enough to crack the wood. A steel snowflake sank into Naghesh’s shoulder.
    She grunted and pulled the snowflake loose. Dark blood dripped down her arm. “Very well, then,” she muttered.
    Roudette tried to warn them, but she couldn’t form the words. Talia attacked Snow from behind, unleashing a flurry of punches too fast for Roudette to follow. Roudette doubted Snow even knew what had happened. Talia backed away, allowing Snow to slump to the ground.
    “Talia, it’s us,” Danielle said.
    “Magnificent, isn’t she?” Naghesh asked, stepping back to allow Talia to reach Danielle. “As close to fairy as any human has ever come.”
    Danielle kept her sword pointed at Talia, who circled to one side.
    Roudette closed her eyes. Grandmother give me strength. She reached around her leg. The tip of the hunter’s arrow was sticky with Roudette’s blood. She tried to pull it free, but it refused to move. That left only one option.
    She unfastened her cape and yanked it over the arrow in her side. Every movement left her dizzy with pain, but she managed to pull it around so the fur faced outward. She grabbed the edges and tugged the cape tight, trying to trigger its magic.
    She reached up to draw the hood over her head, and her body began to change. She screamed as her bones ground against the wood of the hunter’s arrows.
    Naghesh hauled her upright and ripped the cape away in the middle of her transformation. The pain nearly made her pass out as her body slipped back into its normal shape.
    Naghesh tore the cape free, wrenching the arrow in Roudette’s side. “Zestan wanted to keep this. Me, I think we’d be better off dropping it into the deepest ocean.” She bundled the cape into a ball and tossed it aside, out of