“Good!” Jayne said. “Because they’re pissing me off. They’re in my city, and I’ll not be tolerating it. They think I’ll be making it easy for them to hover over my streets? Spy on us? Track down our survivors? We’re showing them otherwise, aren’t we, now? They’re not taking one fecking more of mine!”

He turned back to his group of fifty or so crisply uniformed and helmeted men and issued a quiet command. Four of them broke off, moved down the street, and began setting a massive gun on a tripod. Most of his men were armed with dated-looking semiautomatics, a few with tommy guns—the only ones that seemed to be having any impact on the Hunters. When Jayne shouted “Fire” again, they raised their guns in tight unison and sprayed bullets at two of the Unseelie’s most fearsome.

A smile tugged at my lips.

Jayne was deliberately provoking the Hunters.

Pissing them off because they’d pissed him off.

My smile grew. When I’d reluctantly fed this man Unseelie, I’d never have foreseen this moment. How perfect. How right. We needed him, here in the streets, seeing that those who survived continued to do so. This man would never stop serving his city and his people, even though his pay had been terminated months ago. He was police/protector to the core.

Delighted by the serendipity of it all, I laughed.

Jayne glanced at me sharply, and for a moment his grim expression was tinged by a smile. The admiration must have shown in my eyes, because he said, “It’s what we do, Ms. Lane. We’re the Garda.”

“Feck the Garda,” one of his men shouted. “We’re the Guardians! A new force for a new world!”

“Hear, hear!” the men cried.

I nodded appreciatively. The Guardians. I liked that. “It’s good to see you, too, Jayne,” I murmured. “Especially like this.” What an unexpected boon. The Hunters were pushing at me more insistently now. I sent the only message necessary upward and didn’t need to use one ounce of telepathy to do it.

I raised my spear, shook it threateningly. It shimmered alabaster in the light from my MacHalo. Following suit, Dani thrust her sword into the air.

The Hunters hissed and reared back with such sudden violence that the vortex caused by the flapping of their great dark wings sucked the litter on the streets into the air and lifted the lids off trash cans. Bits of debris stung my face and hands. Lids clanged into the brick buildings, bouncing from wall to wall.

We will hunt you until the end of time, sidhe-seer. We will eradicate your line.

I was pretty sure it already had been, except for me, but couldn’t have replied if I’d wanted to. I was on my knees, clutching my head. It was an awkward feat, wearing a MacHalo and holding a spear.

They’d surprised me.

These Hunters weren’t just bigger. They were something else, too. Weren’t all of them the same? When the Unseelie King had done his experiments and created his dark race, had he made variations on his themes? Were some of the same castes more deadly and powerful than others? The bastards had nearly split my skull with their threat. I hadn’t been prepared for it. I was going to have to regard every Fae I encountered, from this moment on, as a wide-open possibility, unpredictable in any but the most basic ways. It pissed me off. A knife should be a knife. How was I supposed to live in a world where a knife could be a grenade? I was going to have to make no assumptions. Ever. Expect the unexpected.

I might be on my knees outside, but I wasn’t inside. I sought that dark cave where I’d so recently been an animal. Try, you fuckers, I blasted them.

They screamed again. I heard the pain in it, and smiled.

Trash-can lids clattered to the pavement. Debris battered my head and shoulders. The night stilled.

The Hunters were gone.

I lifted my head and watched two winged silhouettes fly past the moon. It was an eerie sight. Even more eerie, the moon had a crimson tint around the edges, like a halo of blood.

Was the juxtaposition of Fae and human realms changing them? Were the dimensions bleeding together, altering each other? What would our world be like in a few more months? A few more years?

I pushed up from my knees to find Jayne staring at my spear.

“Those are the weapons you spoke of at our tea,” he said. “The ones that can kill the Fae.”

I inclined my head. I didn’t like the way he was staring.

“We’ve never tried to bring down one of those devil-dragons.”

“Hunters,” I told him. Ironic and fitting that he’d singled out his Fae equivalent to harass. “They’re enforcers of Fae law. Although they’re Unseelie, they work for both courts, depending on who pays best.”

I saw a flash of amusement in his dark eyes, then it was gone, and he was staring fixedly at my spear.

My fingers tightened around it.

“We know we can’t cage them like the others we capture. They’re too big. But with that spear, we could kill them where they fell.”

“Cage them? You’re caging Unseelie? How?”

“Took us some time to sort it out. When you opened my eyes to what was happening, I opened my mind to the old legends. We Irish are steeped in them. I kept stumbling across lore that said the Old Ones couldn’t abide iron. I decided that if werewolves hated silver and vampires hated holy water and garlic, and those things could harm them, perhaps iron could harm a Fae.”

“Does it?” I asked.

“To some degree. It seems to interfere with their power. Enough of it can trap and hold some of them where they are. The more pure the iron, the better. Steel doesn’t work so well.” He slipped his closefitting helmet from his head and showed me the inside. “We coat them with iron. We lost a few good men before we learned what your so-called Hunters could do.”

“Iron keeps the Hunters from being able to project into your head?” I’d be altering my MacHalo the moment I could get my hands on some!

“Not entirely. It dampens it, makes it survivable. We all heard what you heard. Just not as painful. But we’ve gotten pretty used to them trying to feck with us. We’re wearing iron everywhere. Around our necks, in our pockets. It’s what we make our bullets from.”

“Feckin’ brilliant!” Dani exclaimed. “Mac, we need iron!”

Jayne glanced at my spear, then at Dani’s sword. “Do you know how much good we could do with one of your weapons?” He searched my face. “It’s not like we’re looking to leave you unarmed. The two of you could share the sword.”