Rituals (Cainsville 5)

The two forms shimmered, Gabriel and Gwynn, both of them focused on those hell-birds as he moved back against Ricky, shielding him along with the hound.

The melltithiwyd swooped, and Gabriel went board-stiff, and Ricky could feel the shout build, held in by only the greatest of effort, ready to explode as soon as whatever the dryads planned failed.

Then the ground erupted beneath his feet, toppling Ricky off balance. The dryads had betrayed them. Ricky lunged, but now Gabriel was the one grabbing his arm, holding him steady. He looked down to see that the ground had erupted...in a way.

Every tiny shoot of undergrowth shot up, every tendril of ivy burst from the brick, like something out of a time-lapse video. The flora exploded, filling the passage, leaving only empty pockets where they stood.

The melltithiwyd hit the impenetrable mass of greenery and soared up again, screaming in frustration. Ricky squinted to see their red-black bodies through the vines as they took off into the night.

"They'll be back," Meic said from deep in the foliage.

"They will indeed," Alexios called. "And we'll be waiting."

"With an even bigger surprise," Helia said.

"Are you all right?" Ricky called to the dryads.

"We're fine," she said.

"Hold on," Alexios said. "They're coming back."

"And trust us," Helia said. "We do have this, however unlikely it may seem."

The melltithiwyd struck again. This time, they didn't just hit the green barrier and fly off. They landed on it and began wriggling through gaps.

"Wait for it," Helia shouted.

Beside him, Gabriel pulsed between himself and Gwynn, drawing in breath, ready for that shout. The melltithiwyd wriggled into the barrier, snipping off vines and burrowing through as Helia urged patience.

Ricky tensed, Lloergan, too, all of them beginning to suspect that whatever the dryads were doing, it wasn't working.

"And..." Alexios called.

"Now!" Helia shouted.

The greenery rustled. That's all it seemed to do. It gave a shiver and a shake, and Ricky was ready to grab a melltithiwyd that had appeared right in front of them. Then the vines snapped like bowstrings, drawing tight.

The melltithiwyd shrieked, and a burst of black blood hit Ricky's face. He wiped it away to see the melltithiwyd impaled on long thorns. Off to the left, another had been boa-constricted with thick vine. Yet another had been neatly guillotined by a thinner one.

"Torn between kinda gross and totally cool," he called to the dryads.

"We'll take both!" Helia called back.

The vines retracted, slowly, having not caught every hell-bird in their deadly trap. Lloergan and the other two cwns chomped the ones that came free. Gabriel looked off to the side just as one bird beelined for his head. Ricky grabbed and crushed it, black blood running down his arm.

"More gross than cool?" he said as Gabriel glanced over.

Gabriel shook his head. When another came at him, he swatted it and brought down one big shoe on its dazed body, not a stomp but a simple step, as if it just happened to be underfoot.

"Not nearly as cool," Ricky said.

"Not nearly as messy."

Ricky wiped off the melltithiwyd's blood on nearby leaves, as the plant life retreated. They walked to the dryads, camouflaged again against the twisted tree.

"Thank you," Ricky said to the dryads as they pulled from the tree. "Now, I don't suppose you have any idea where Liv is?"

"I can find her," Gabriel said. The confidence in that twisted at Ricky, just a little. There was no arrogance in the declaration, no one-upmanship, but Ricky still felt the knife-sharp reminder that he'd lost her. That he'd tried his best and lost her to someone who understood her better, connected to her better. Which should have made it easier. But his ego still felt the bruise--the sense that he'd done his best and it hadn't been enough.