Page 61 of Sins of the Fathers
“Six souls,” Gibson told them. “The guards are all dead.”
A deep growl came from the darkness near the cabin. Red eyes gleamed from the shadows, and a misshapen creature emerged, its attention fixed on them. It bared long fangs and slowly advanced. When it came into the dim light from the cabin, Dawson could make out the huge form of a hellhound, bigger than a man, powerfully muscled, lantern-jawed.
Gibson muttered something that sounded like a spell, but the hound kept coming. Tucker opened fire, but nothing slowed the creature.
“Stedda. Arhosa,” Denny shouted the words in what Dawson guessed might be Welsh.
Immediately, the creature sat.
“Dere!” Denny commanded. “Don’t hurt him. I just told him to ‘come.’”
“Are you fucking nuts?” Gibson countered, wide-eyed.
Denny gave the agent a stern look. “This is Cunanoon Mountain. That’s Welsh for ‘hellhound.’ Thecwn annwnare protectors of the Kings in these hills, by order of the fae elders.”
The huge creature padded over to stand in front of Denny. “Bachgen da,”he said. “Such a good boy,” he repeated in English.
A shriek of frustration sounded from the vicinity of the cabin. In response, shadows twisted and writhed from beneath the porch, smelling of sulfur and grave rot.
“What the fuck are those?” Tucker yelped.
“The Sluagh,” Denny said.
“Spirits of the unforgiven dead,” Gibson answered at the same moment. “Probably the real Bushwhacker gang and their accomplices.”
Green ghosts took shape, dozens of them, horribly illuminated by flashes of lightning. They looked like half-rotted corpses, still wearing the tattered remnants of the clothes they died in, hollow-eyed. Violent lives and deaths brought them no peace as restless spirits. Malice contorted their faces as they surged toward Dawson and the others.
“Stop now!” Gibson ordered, one hand raised, palm out, toward the specters. The tone of command in his voice brooked no defiance, and the revenant horde froze.
“Ymosod!” the panicked voice from the cabin’s porch shrilled. Dawson didn’t need to understand the words to know the spirits had been told to attack.
“Not going to fucking happen,” Gibson shouted.
He looked to the damned souls with compassion. “Go in peace. He has no authority over you. Be at rest.” Gibson closed his eyes, and his expression shifted to deep concentration. The green ghosts vanished as if they had melted away with the storm.
Behind them, in the shadows, Denny mixed items in a silver chalice and began to chant an invocation.
“How dare you!” Two figures stood on the porch. One was a slim, elegant man who fit Tucker’s vision. The other was a very ordinary looking woman, and Dawson realized with a shock that she had to be Ophelia Locklear, the witch who had caused so much harm.
“I am Daelin, a prince among the fae. My witch and I will destroy you, and then we will scour this mountain,” he shouted.
A wave of power swept toward them, bending the tall grass in its way—and meeting an immovable barrier in Gibson’s magic.
“Hurry up,” Gibson said through gritted teeth. “I can’t hold him off long.”
Denny shouted the triumphant end to his invocation in a language Dawson didn’t recognize. A white dot of light, bright as a star, opened to become a jagged tear in mid-air in the center of the faerie circle.
“No! No! You can’t!” Daelin screamed, staring at the light in terror.
The hellhound snarled and bounded toward Daelin, pinning him under his massive paws, fanged maw hovering over the man’s throat. The blast of power cut off abruptly.
A shadowy figure appeared from the cabin doorway, and while Ophelia’s attention was on the hellhound, he swung a machete and took her head clean off.
The white light faded, leaving an older man dressed in an immaculate white bespoke suit of exquisite tailoring. A piercing whistle drew the hellhound from its prey, and it came to the stranger’s side like a well-trained guard dog.
“Daelin. You have gone much too far,” the man said in a grave voice, ignoring everyone else.
Daelin tried to scramble away. “Anyon—don’t do this. It’s not what you think—”
