The smaller man he fought moved oddly, though it didn’t affect his control of his blade. There was something wrong with his shape—and with his face. As I tried to pin it down, Zee hit him and . . . the part of his body that Zee’s sword would have hit just dissolved in front of the blade, releasing little bits of sparkly light about the size and color of a yellow jacket. I finally got a clear look at his face—and he didn’t have one, just a suggestion of features that moved constantly, as if all that was under his skin were the little bits that had fled the iron of Zee’s weapon.

Some of those little bits sparkled all the way to Sherwood and me.

“Ouch,” I said, slapping my forearm.

Sherwood swore, and started fighting with the ax. I’ve met a few werewolves who had lived when swords and axes were the weapons of choice for humans as well as fae. He moved like a man born with an ax in his hand—and I don’t mean to cut down trees. His ax sang a little as it cut through the air. The little hornetlike fae things dropped to the ground like miniature falling stars, some of them in two pieces. Sherwood put himself in front of me, and very few of the little vicious beasties made it through him.

Skilled with an ax was our Sherwood. Very skilled—and very fast. His prosthetic leg hindered him occasionally, but it seemed more a matter of annoyance than a real problem because those sparkly lights kept falling.

Couldn’t fight, he’d claimed. Couldn’t fight my aching rump.

I closed my fingers on the wings of one of the critters that had made it through his slicing and dicing as it bit my thigh. I had to rock it back and forth to dislodge it so I could bring it up to my face to see what it was.

Up close, and without the beauty of the fluttering wings, it was utilitarian in design. Or she was. She looked vaguely like a person in shape if not color, complete with arms and legs and miniature breasts. Her eyes were a deep purple that looked almost black against her bright yellow body. Only her mouth completely failed to mimic something human. Instead of lips, there were a pair of chelicerae, gory with my blood.

I threw her on the ground and watched her blink out of existence the moment her body touched the fake wooden floor, the same way the bits and pieces that Sherwood was leaving behind did.