Lost and Found: A Tale of the Tylwyth Teg

Chapter 25 - Premonitions and Provisions

Niall leaned against one of the three fire trucks at the Burton Drive station, as Anne's White Chocolate Raspberry/Blueberry cookies were attacked by the Station 10 regulars. Final Score: Firemen 48, Cookies 0. Many had been up half the night, battling small fires that seemed to start up one right after another. And always, the men & women reported sounds of childish laughter.

Niall's shirt was hanging on the back of the chair he now sat in, and his chest muscles were straining against his sweat-soaked athletic tee. If I were a straight woman, I'd be trying to convince him to remove that tee shirt. But I'm not straight, and neither is Niall. He spread out a collection of photos in front of me showing animal corpses, and in one – the mutilated corpse of a homeless hitchhiker.

It was the fact that it was still clothed which enabled me to see that it once had been human. The corpse consisted of a shell of desiccated skin; the entire contents had been scraped out by something clawed. The front of its skull was missing, as were the ribs and sternum. Organs and muscles, blood vessels and cartilage were missing. The animals varied, from dogs that had been reported missing to rabbits and raccoons.

"You can't tell me that who or whatever did this is sane. And probably gave up their humanity a long time ago. The hikers who found them are staying in a motel nearby," said Niall quietly. "Do you want to..."

"No," I answered. A chill began at the base of my spine and found its way to my chest. "Let them be. And you're right about the killers. They're not really human. Maybe they never were."

This magnitude of slaughter was new. It had been deliberately cruel, with no effort to hide the carnage. A message, then. I looked at the pictures again and stopped at the one with the hitchhiker. The longer I stared, the clearer the image became.

Like a cinematic fade-in, Gwyneth appeared standing over the body. Her gnarled hands had claws at least five inches long, shaped like scimitars, and pieces of heart and lungs dripped from one. The other was raised, index finger extended and pointing, her stare aimed right at the camera. At Cambria, and its Tylweth Teg colony. At me, and Lils, and our friends and allies.

Her eyes held a clear, palpable threat. A warning that we were at war, and we should be prepared. The sheer agony of the sort of death and chaos that only magic and Gwyneth's army could inflict hit me. And jump-started my journalist's instincts.

"Niall, we're going to have a war on our hands." He looked at me, startled by my words and no doubt by my seriousness.

"O-kay. Not what I'd expected," he said after a minute, and pushed his hair out of his eyes. "But I saw what I saw. So did the crews who answered the call last night. There's no denying that there's someone or something out there that enjoys slaughter. And that poor soul...man, woman – we can't even tell – didn't deserve to die that way."

"Get what supplies you need, as soon as you can, to combat..." and I paused. I tried to think of a clever, non-specific way to say magic, but realized that the sooner he and the firefighters accepted what we were faced with, the quicker their reactions would be. "We may be facing creatures that breathe fire..."

"You have got to be shittin' us!" said one of the crew. "Niall, this woman's a little cray-cray!"

"Can you look at that poor soul who got gutted and tell me that everything's normal? His chest was ripped apart." Niall stared his co-worker into silence.

"Yeah, yeah," another one said, "Some cult psychos are roaming the woods. The police'll catch 'em!"

"That's just what our foe is hoping for – that we'll just ignore what we see, what's going on around us. Then they'll..." and it hit me. I had an idea of what Gwyneth's next move might be. Something she tried decades ago and failed. She was going to do something big. Fear is the crowbar that tyrants use to pick apart their enemy's morale.