Everyone jumped and looked in alarm to Matt's balcony doors as they heard a tapping on the glass.
Seeing Elisa standing there gave Matt only a slight hint of relief. He figured maybe she could vouch for Coyote and Puck but he didn't know how to explain them and the supposed swan maiden to her, never mind his worry for why she stood there.
Matt hastened over to the doors and opened one.
"Bluestone are you in trouble?" The deep voice of Goliath had Matt jumping anew.
The detective leaned out and glanced to the left. He felt a fresh thrill of fear as he spied the large form lingering in the shadows. The panic came out of a human instinct he couldn't stop but instead had to take the time to push back. He knew Goliath as a friend but that couldn't stop the primitive natural reaction to shrink back from a mythological creature hiding in the dark, particularly one that stood so tall and formidable as Goliath.
"No," Matt answered quickly. "At least I don't think so." He glanced over to Elisa. "Why are you on my balcony?"
Elisa held up her hands slightly in a dismissive gesture. "The captain called, said there were reports of men attacking people in the hospital with possible gunshots fired and she said you had gone there responding to a call about our friend in the lake. Then a call came through about a wild animal in your apartment block. She thought the two together were a bad coincidence so she asked me to check it out."
Matt cursed out Mrs Sweeney in his head before offering Elisa a sheepish smile. "Alright, well I've a bit to explain but actually, maybe you two can help with some of it."
Matt swung open the door and gestured the pair in.
Elisa and Goliath tensed up simultaneously as they stepped in and took in the grinning Coyote and Puck.
"Puck?" Goliath blurted out the name almost threateningly. "How are you here?"
"Surely it's why not how?" Coyote mused. "Or maybe both is good." He gave a careless shrug and smiled back at the new arrivals.
Elisa frowned as she fixed her brown stare upon the trickster. He still bore the uncanny resemblance to her father he had taken when she had first met him. All the trickster could say about it was that when Elisa's father Peter had left his home town he had taken part of Coyote with him with an implication that Peter had also left part of himself behind.
Elisa's gaze drifted down to the woman in Coyote's grasp who gazed back at her with large, wary blue eyes.
Elisa folded her arms and cast a scolding stare upon Matt. "I have a lot of questions right now."
"Broadway what are you doing here?" Goliath looked to the blue gargoyle as if he might be part of the mess.
Broadway winced slightly under the stern gaze of his leader. "I was just visiting Matt," he said quietly.
"Playing pretend, your belief you suspend. Not much of a cop, more of a cop out, you really should stop, best to be a dropout." Puck threw back his head in a wild laugh.
Coyote gave a low growl and shook his head in frustration. "That barely made sense."
"And it wasn't funny," Matt snapped as he gave the impish figure a glower.
"Matt, why is this woman here in your apartment?" Elisa gestured forward to the woman. "Shouldn't she be in the hospital? And how does she know you Coyote?"
"Those men who attacked at the hospital wanted her," Matt admitted. "I chased them off, winged one with a bullet but it didn't do much good and apparently she's from Avalon." Matt waved his hand outwards to Puck and Coyote. "A swan maiden if these two are to be believed whose swan skin got stolen, which means she's trapped here. It's funny because the Illuminati business makes way more sense than this Avalon stuff yet I'm the crazy one at work and not you."
Elisa offered her partner a sympathetic smile. "You have a pinboard in the office with Yeti references on it, you just need to be more subtle Matt that's all."
"What's a Yeti?" Broadway's eyes went wide with wonderment.
"You missed the crucial point," Puck pointed out with an irate glance at Matt. He turned his sombre stare upon Goliath and Elisa. "This woman's father, a very cross swan king, has overthrown Oberon because he's blaming the fey for his daughter's disappearance."
"And she has some very angry brothers on the hunt for her," Coyote added chirpily.
The woman let out a whimper and shook her head.
Coyote glanced down at her and sighed. "You've got to stop that Riona, it's not going to help you. What you need to do is tell us who took your skin, can you do that?" He gave her a hopeful smile.
The woman pulled away from him and shook her head with a miserable expression as she hugged her torso. When her fingertips pressed too hard into her back she gave a hiss of pain and released herself.
Matt gave her a look of sympathy and stepped over to her. "You probably need some pain relief," he said gently, "and food. I'll sort both." He turned his attention to Coyote and summoned up an expression of anger with a surprising swiftness. The spatula shot out and came dangerously close to swatting Coyote's nose.
Coyote held up his palms defensively as he glanced down at the offending kitchen utensil.
"You need to understand she's suffering some serious trauma," Matt addressed the trickster sternly. "Shock has made her silent, she can't just shrug that off."
"Alright, alright!" Coyote looked up to Matt nervously. "I'm sorry, just stop waving that thing around or I'll claim police brutality."
"You what?" Matt swished the spatula through the air, missing Coyote's face by an inch. "You intruded here, if anything it would be self-defence!"
"How can Oberon have fallen?" Goliath's voice came out deep and loud, not a shout and yet authoritative enough to have everyone looking to him.
Coyote scratched his head with his right hand. "Weren't we passed that part of the conversation?"
"The swan king and his kin are descended from magic cursed mortals," Puck explained in a heated tone. "The magic means they can stay in Avalon, the mortal side makes them immune to iron. They used iron." He folded his arms and surveyed the others with impatience. "Now, are we all clear on that? I only heard about it a few hours ago and I've grasped it, it's not hard."
Coyote started clapping enthusiastically. "Finally, you stopped rhyming!"
Matt gave a low groan as he raised his hand to his brow and shook his head against his palm. "Why is this happening in my apartment? My neighbours are just looking an excuse to toss me after the whole bombing incident."
The detective flinched when he felt a small hand stretching up to his shoulder. He turned to find Riona gazing up at him apologetically. Matt offered her a half-smile in an attempt to ease the guilt out of her gaze.
"I'll try and salvage that dinner." Matt glanced over to the soggy pasta and sighed. "Or we should think about takeaway."
"Pizza," Broadway enthused happily. He licked his lips before bashfulness stole across his face as he realised everyone was looking at him. "Well empty stomachs won't help crises," he pointed out. "What would you like Riona? Um...what do swans usually eat?" Broadway glanced to Riona first before turning his puzzled stare out to the others.
Puck grinned at this. "Hmm I'm sure there's a takeaway for water weeds."
"Swan maiden," Coyote made the distinction. "It's what do swan maidens eat or more properly swan princesses. Her brother Cygnus always made a big show of having fine fish and wines for dinner anytime I visited."
Elisa put her hands upon her hips, summoning up a defensive stance as she readied to attempt some control over the situation. "Matt, what about this attack at the hospital?"
Matt winced slightly at the memory it recalled. "Three men," he admitted, "only well...they seemed a little feral."
"Feral?" Elisa echoed as she raised her dark eyebrows.
"Yeah um...they kind of yelped like dogs and had claws and talked about eating us and well, they called themselves the dogs of the Wild Hunt."
"Uh oh." Although Coyote's turn of phrase came out almost comically when everyone looked his way he had turned pale and nervousness had taken his humour.
Elisa folded her arms and tried to give him a stern stare but his resemblance to her father had her feeling uneasy and struggling to maintain her cop severity. "Alright, who are they?"
"They're of the fey," Coyote admitted, "some of the greatest hunters, they'll go with whoever offers them the greatest challenge."
"Usually Odin," Puck murmured. He raised a thin finger and thumb up under his chin as he looked thoughtful. "Maybe old One-Eye hopes to catch Riona for her father, imagine the boon he could negotiate for."
"Maybe," Coyote muttered, sounding less convinced. "The Wild Hunt has known masters other than he, it's speculation."
"But a good starting point in finding their master," Goliath said in his firm, booming voice. He turned his fierce stare upon Matt. "Bluestone, how dangerous were they? Do you think they'll come again?"
Matt gave a grimacing smile as he shook his head helplessly. "I don't know, I shot one in the arm, it hurt and they retreated but I don't think it did much damage. As for coming again, I have no idea, I suppose they found her at the hospital somehow."
"The threat is thin while the maiden bears no skin," Puck mused merrily. He smiled when Coyote gave him another glower. "Well you said it yourself, she can't travel to Avalon as she is."
"This is on the assumption that the hounds want to take her there, could be they're hunting her for whoever took her skin in the first place," Coyote pointed out. He turned his attention back down to Riona. "You need to tell who that is Riona, how can we help you if we don't know our foe?"
Riona shook her head and looked to the ground.
"Come on," Coyote snapped at her, "I got hurt over this you know! Your brothers did not believe we had no involvement in this and they used iron."
The trickster yanked his top up dramatically and gestured to his exposed torso with one hand. "Look and see what they did to me and let me hear again how pain has shocked you to silence," he said bitingly.
Riona glanced up and a soft gasp escaped her.
Coyote's torso had darkened in places with large, expanding bruises whilst other parts of it had bubbled up and sullied to a painful red, blistered from exposure to heat.
"As if the iron didn't hurt enough, Crassus thought to heat it," Coyote said miserably.
"You need medical attention," Elisa blurted out as she eyed his wounds in horror.
"I have my own relief for it," Coyote growled out as he let the top drop back in place.
"Medicinal aids of pipe and smoke," Puck ventured. He spoke quietly and gave a weak smile, noticeably shaken as he had taken in Coyote's injuries.
"The hands were cold when they held me down and tore at me."
All eyes turned swiftly to Riona as her quiet voice barely made it across the room to him.
She hugged her torso tight and closed her eyes briefly before shaking her head. "Such cold, cruel hands."
Tears spilled down her face as her hands reached up to grasp her skull as she shook it anew. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! Stop hurting, stop hurting, I'm sorry!"
Matt took a step towards her but Elisa held up a hand to him and shook her head. The cop approached the woman cautiously, extending out a hand slowly to her shoulder.
"Hey, it's okay Riona," Elisa addressed her gently. "Whoever did this isn't here. Now, why don't you take a deep breath and we'll sit down and Matt will get you something to drink."
Elisa offered a gentle smile when Riona's wide, blue eyes opened to her. "Come on, you've had a hard time, let's just take a break for a moment."
Coyote watched on silently as Elisa led the startled looking woman over to Matt's used looking couch. His face had turned ashen and fear had filled his brown irises.
Broadway had fallen quiet in sympathy for the woman and he watched in pity as the tears continue to sprinkle her cheeks. "We need to help her Goliath," he said as he gave his superior a pleading look.
Goliath watched on with the stern stare of a leader who could not make decisions based on emotions alone. "We have been involved with the matters of Oberon and Avalon before," he said testily as his gaze fell upon Puck, "and I would not say it ended well."
"Please stop hurting me," Riona groaned. She gave a sound that might have been a sob except it sounded too animalistic to be assigned a human word, coming out low and long like the mournful cry of a wounded bird. "Please."
Coyote winced as he regretted ever bidding her to make sound.