A screech makes me jump, and I turn at the sharp cry of a horse. My horse bucks against the claws digging into the saddle and her hide. Hans slashes at the creature, making it jump back and growl. Hans follows its retreat, keeping himself between the Bamshee and me as more creatures pour over the walls like slithering serpents.

Crocodiles nor wolves can climb… but these things can?

Heck no.

I almost leap after Hans… but glance back at the house.

Heads peek out the front door, from the house cook to Mom and Jenny. And Jack and Jill. What in the slippery hemlock do they think they're doing?

“Get in the house!” My desperate yell barely rises above the clamor of sword ringing on sharp scales and the desperate squeals of my horse and the roars and odd clicking grunts of the Bamshee.

Claws reach around the corner of Hans’ estate and scratch the beautiful white exterior, about ten feet from the door. The ugly maw, that’s almost wolf-ish in nature and dribbles with saliva, follows the claws. Poisonous acid drips from the tongue, hissing when it lands on grass and dirt alike. The rest of its body appears, shaped like an alligator or something reptilian with short, bristly green fur that’ll poke you. Ask me how I know.

Something hisses behind me. I drop and roll, coming back upright and stabbing where I was standing. The knife glances off the hard scales of the creature and it tries to take my head off with it’s claws as I turn, twirling my swords. Another comes behind me, its warm breath gusting down my neck and its stench battling with the one before me.

I duck at the whisper of whistling wind, and the creature lands on all fours a few feet in front of me. I back toward the house as the two stalk me with lips pulled back to show their yellowed fangs and oddly shaped ears flat against their heads.

Jenny yells. The one who came around the house is a mere horse length from the door, snapping his rapid fangs and uttering a guttural, moaning growl.

Mom grabs a knife from beneath her bodice and throws at the creature’s neck. It glances off, leaving a tiny cut.

I duck and roll as one tries to bite my head off. It gets smacked upside the head by another trying to claw me. The first one pushes the second... and then one tackles the other and they go down in a mishmash of misshapen arms and legs.

Huh. Didn’t know you could turn them against each other.

I dive at the one stalking Mom. I grab its tail and stab the soft underside.

It squeals and spins, flinging me from my tenuous hold and into Mom.

An oomph escapes my lips as we come to a bone-rattling stop against the house. The air whooshes from my lungs on impact as the one I stabbed retreats, watching us with pain and anger clear in its weirdly slit golden eyes. These seem more... reserved than the one we fought in the woods.

“Did you stab that thing in the butt?” Jack asks, poking his head out the door with a kitchen knife in his hand, eyebrows lowered but with mischief in his sparkling green eyes.

“That’s our sister!” Jill says, pumping a fist from where she sits on a settee just inside the door.

A Bamshee screams in a muted roar from somewhere in the yard where Hans is.

I wheeze in the breath that was knocked from me, crouching and stepping in front of the door in case the creature gets any ideas.

I gesture for them to get back in the house with sharp motions, annoyance threading through me. Jack looks at me with big eyes, blinking innocently. I glare at him, and he puffs out his chest.

The creature takes my moment of distraction as invitation, snapping at my neck and roaring in my face. I kick it in the side, ducking beneath it's jaws. This one is barely bigger than me. It moans when I slice its eye, tripping over its tail as it stumbles back.

Jack deflates when Mom raises a single brow. “But Momma—”

“No buts. Protect your sister. Jill, keep your brother from mischief,” Mom says, throwing a blade at the one still stumbling back as a battle rages in the courtyard between Hans, his knights, and the Bamshee.

Jenny is stark white, but she’s a knight’s wife and knows the drill. She and the cook grab Jack’s arms and Jill follows while Mom and I guard the door, knives glittering in our hands. I shut the door behind me and hear one of them lock it. Good.

“Eyes and armpits,” I say, meeting Mom’s gaze. She nods, mouth set in a grim line, and takes her silken night skirt and slits it down the middle with her sharp blade so she can move. A grin splits my face and it's matched by hers. It feels good to fight with her again.

She sends another knife into a Bamshee, barely missing the eye, but it sticks into its nostril and the thing gives a strangled howl as it paws at its nose, almost doing more damage than good.

Hans is faring well. He and his knights surround the ten or so creatures with alligator-ish legs and wolven heads. They are smaller than the Bamshee we faced a while back, making it easier to get closer to the armpits and eyes to take them down. Hans stabs one and blocks a swipe on his arm, spinning to drive his blade deep into the eye of one sneaking at his back. Another of his guards blocks a biting head from tearing of Hans' arm.

Three of creatures dart around Hans and a few other guards, coming straight for the house. Hans curses.

I leap forward to meet them. I use my momentum and slide beneath the legs of one, stabbing up at it's, erm, derriere, rolling to my feet on the other side. One swipes at my head, the claws clearing my face by a hair’s breadth when I lean back.

The stench makes bile rise in my throat, but I shove it back. Stinky here is worse than most. The third one leaps at me, and I duck. Stinky’s eyes widen right before it's taken to the ground.

Mom sends a knife at the first one I stabbed in the derriere, distracting it before it could slice me open. It drops to the ground with a knife in its eye.

“Thanks!” I yell, backing up as the first two get up from the ground and come toward me on all fours with an oddly lumbering gait and flicking slit tongues out to taste the air even as their grey noses twitch. These things are ugly.

Another shadow enters the yard and heads straight toward the place where I typically hide my normal clothes and my red cloak… and the orb!

“Going for the hedges!” I yell, and Mom nods, trying to throw a blade at the shadow, but the blade sinks into the ground about a horse length short of the creature.

Somehow the creatures backed me against one of the sheds. I use a shutter on the side to boost myself up and clamp onto the edge of the roof, and while the two creatures bent on my destruction attempt to climb after me, I backflip from the shed.

They release a guttural growl and try to swipe at me. I stumble when I land, spinning in the direction of the hedges, hardly noticing two thumps and a squeal of pain behind me. I hope they fell over each other. They aren’t the sharpest knife in the blacksmith’s keep.

The shadowy figure already has its head in my space in the hedge, and I barrel in a full-tilt run, leaping on its back and making it rear upright when I stab my knife into its back and my blade sinks into its flesh. I almost freeze in surprise. It squeals, trying to buck me off, and I lean over to see something glistening in its mouth.

“Oh, no you don’t,” I hiss, climbing up to its head and pushing it to the ground. This one is a little more feminine in the head and more elegant in her body instead of the blocky bulkiness of the others.

When I get to her head, she actually collapses beneath me.

I straddle her and pry her mouth open, almost slicing my hand on the shark-like teeth, gripping the orb and about losing my hand. I try to stab her eye, but she shakes me off and I roll into my hedge, brandishing the orb like a trophy even as the acid burns my skin. I hiss, frantically wiping it off on my shirt while fighting the thickets for freedom. Hopefully I don't die from acid poisoning if I survive. She growls deep in her throat, her eyes watching me.

But what I see there isn't anger or loathing as I expected. No. It's... fear. Desperation. Agony.

Before I can puzzle that out, she leaps for me. I duck my head and try to roll away, but the hedge has me. My head's about to be ripped from my body. Whelp, no need to worry about poison when you ain't got a head.

A shadow bashes the creature in the head, making her body morph in odd ways like a jigsaw puzzle and she collapses to the ground. Hans steps between me and the female. She shakes her head, roaring in his face. He bashes her on the head with his shield.

“What is that thing?” he asks, not looking over his shoulder as I roll and twist and fight my way from the brambles of the thicket. I think I understand more and more what Ran hates about these things as I jerk my arm from its imprisonment, leaving behind chunks of skin but savoring sweet freedom.

“It’s something I took from Underground Guilds. Some kind of orb. They were fighting over it and it seemed important—” I grunt the last word as I throw a kick at the female's face, making her stumble back. The bad thing is that a male takes her place and he’s much too large for me to kick in the face.

“So what, you decided to hide it in my courtyard until you figured out why it is important?”

I shrug, the Bamshee pushing us further and further back until we reach the wall on the other side of the hedge. “More… or less.”

“Guardian, what were you thinking?” Hans grunts, blocking with his sword and jabbing with his shield to prevent a Bamshee from biting me. The Bamshee chows down on his shield, and the hot breath rolls over both of us and makes me gag.

“I didn’t know... it was so... daggum... IMPORTANT!” The Bamshee have pushed us further into the hedge, and the wall surrounding Hans’ courtyard rises at our backs as the lead creature snaps his way through the brambles. I slice at the Bamshee, but my knife only glances against its scales. It pushes its shoulders through and pins Hans against the wall, the shield the only thing keeping Hans from being Bamshee fodder.

I push off the wall behind me, using it as a springboard as I come down on the Bamshee’s head with my sword hilt. It screeches. I grab its slimy ear before plunging my knife into its eye. I ride the thing to the ground, straddling the too-thick neck.

Hans rises from against the wall, poking at the dead Bamshee with his sword. Its tongue lolls from its mouth, turning blue.

“You should’ve told me about it.”

“It slipped my mind, ok? It looked like a little ball thingy.”

“A ball thingy? A ball thingy? I can’t believe the fate of the worlds rests in your hands. You’re liable to blow us all to the stars.” He rubs a gory hand down his beard.

“How was I supposed to know the ball would draw the Bamshee here? It looked like a silvery ball!”

More Bamshee force their way in, their growls and snapping jaws making their way around the one I killed. They use the path the first one blazed and widen it to accommodate two across. Great.

I jump over a claw, stabbing a Bamshee in the mouth as it tries to eat my hand and lean back to miss a set of claws swiping for my head.

Another set of claws takes my feet out from under me and a Bamshee leans over, sniffing my forehead with the slit, reptile-like nostrils.

A bright white creature crests the wall, and her upside down figure and glowing red eyes makes my heart soar. Ran howls as she jumps straight down, leaping on top of the Bamshee on top of me, smashing both me and the huge creature to the ground. The air is squeezed from my lungs as something pops, casting stars across my vision.

Not again. I moan in silent agony as blood pours from the Bamshee as Ran bites the back of its head where the spine meets the brain. It goes still.

On top of me.

These things are really getting on my nerves.

You mean ribs? Ran says, snuffling sounds coming as she uses her nose to push the Bamshee off.

I gasp in a stinking breath of air, clawing my way from beneath the blasted creature to choke and sputter in the cool night air tinged with the stench of Bamshee and the metallic scent of blood.

I wipe blood from my eyes and mouth, gagging but able to keep my stomach where it belongs. Barely.

“Why does this always happen to me?” I moan, beating the ground as I feel my side and the wiggly rib. Same blasted rib. I’m tempted to beg someone to take it out and be done with it. It doesn’t feel terrible yet because of the adrenaline running through my veins, but it won’t be long before the pain grows to near unbearable throbbing.

Ran licks my face, and for once I welcome her monster sized saliva. It's better than the monster sized blood streaking my face.

Hans’ reinforcements arrive, boxing in the three remaining Bamshee. Seeing as these were not much bigger than Hans, they were easier to kill.

The female escaped, and I doubt it will be the last I see of her. She seemed to be the ringleader while the others distracted us.

Which means these creatures aren’t only bloodthirsty. They’re smart. And that sends chills up the back of my neck. I pick up the ball thingy from where I dropped it when the Bamshee dropped on me. It’s time to find out why this is so daggum important.