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With their arrows still nocked and ready to shoot, they approached the front door. When Basil wanted to go in first, Isa bumped him back with her shoulder.
At his glare, she said in a hushed voice, “Life debt, remember?”
He tightened his jaw, nodded, and stepped back. Isa pressed herself to the wall next to the door, her bow with the nocked arrow raised and pointed toward the opening of the front door. With her foot inching forward, she pushed the door open farther.
The loud creak of the old hinges made them both cringe.
Great. If anyone was there, they’d sure know someone was sneaking up on them now.
Isa apparently figured as much, for she rushed inside, her weapon at the ready. Basil followed her a second later. His eyes adjusted to the gloom within a heartbeat, and he took in the dilapidated state of the room.
Roots had grown through cracks in the wooden floor, vines crept in from holes in the ceiling and the walls, old furniture lay overturned, coated with dust. No one had lived here for quite some time now. Basil exhaled, lowered his bow halfway.
Isa checked all nooks and crannies, keeping her arrow ready to shoot, despite all signs pointing to them being alone. “Basil,” she said quietly, her gaze on something on the floor.
He joined her, examined what she’d uncovered with her foot. A wooden doll, recognizable as a toy, even though it had been assaulted by time and neglect.
His pulsed raced. “She was here.”
“It could be another child’s.”
“And how likely is that?”
She inclined her head, conceded his point. “It’s been many years since a child lived here, though. Since anyone lived here.”
He huffed out a breath. “Yeah.”
A scratching sound came from the other room.
They both whirled around with their arrows ready to fly, aimed at the door. His pulse a fast drumbeat in his ears, Basil followed Isa as she approached the other room. Before she ever made it there, the door burst open with a bang—and a swarm of flying creatures poured out.
Isa’s arrows swished as fast as the flutter of the fae’s wings, downing half a dozen of them. “Kill them!” she yelled at Basil. “They’re flesh-eating.”
The fuck?
But he was already jumping into action, firing one arrow after another, each one finding its bloody aim. The fae creatures screeched, the air filled with the click of their teeth and the sound of their beating wings.
Pain seared his left arm as one of the little monsters latched on to him. Basil grabbed the tiny fucker with his right hand, yanked him off, threw him on the ground and stomped on him. The fae crunched satisfyingly under his boot.
More of the bitey bastards swarmed him, and soon he was fighting them off at close range with daggers drawn and blades whirring. Isa was locked in a similar struggle, her bow at her feet.
An irate scream from Isa, and then the earth rumbled. A second later, a boulder the size of a desk smashed through the wall to their right, slammed through the swarm of fae creatures, and flattened them against the opposite wall. The few remaining flesh-eating creeps screeched and fled.
Basil blinked, looked from the rock missile embedded in the wall to the panting fae female who snatched up her bow. “Remind me to never piss you off.”
One side of her mouth tipped up in a knee-weakening half-smile. “At least when there’s stone nearby.”
He wanted to reply when a faint noise drew his attention to the ceiling directly above her—where a huge beam was coming loose from the impact of the rock she’d thrown.
“Watch out!” he yelled and launched himself at her.
He pushed her out of the way and against the wall a mere second before the massive beam crashed into the floor. Isa’s breath hitched, her hands clutching the fabric of his shirt, and her mouth opened on a gasp as she stared over his shoulder. He turned his head and followed her gaze.
The beam had rammed through the floor exactly where Isa was standing a moment before.
She uttered a frustrated sound.
“What?” Basil asked, facing her again.
