Obviously they hadn’t waited for his report. Obviously. According to the guy in recon, they had guessed that there was at least one Oddity in that area for at least fifty years. The fact that the Oddity was a civilian, mostly harmless family, would not be factored in for the procedure of the team.

  The Intervention/Strike Force arrives in a black SUV that drinks sunlight and gives back nothing. Government plates.

  Washed faces. Not washed as in clean, but washed as in washed out. Perception filtered. So that the features don't quite stick.

  Muscles tucked into khakis and “tactical” polos.

  Teeth clenched behind polite smiles.

  They walk like they’ve cleared buildings before. Like they’ve had the training beaten into their bones and never really unlearned it. Like the want violence. To these people deaths of civilians aren’t a tragedy meant to be prevented at all costs, but instead an enjoyable palate cleanser.

  There are five of them.

  No patches.

  No names.

  The kind of men who list “honorable discharge” on their profiles and mean lethal but legally boring. Hired hands. Dogs. The sort of people who know too much, who did too much. They can’t be lead back to civilian life, so they were laterally promoted. In short, they’re not here to talk. They’re here to assess. Possibly dispose, but that would be an unfortunate and isolated incident. Nothing more. They find the section of road that leads to the land, but they don’t have a family member with them, so their first attempt at reaching the property ends with them crashing into a tree.

  But they do find it. They park just off the gravel road that leads to the Cross property.

  The Crosses don’t own the land in the modern sense. They didn’t inherit it like dynasties or divvy it up with title deeds and bloodline bickering. It’s more like the way lichen belong to the tree or the rock they are on. The way curses belong to names no one remembers how to pronounce.

  In other words, they’re not old money.

  They’re just old.

  Old like hearthfire, like stories and bone runes, like paintings on cave walls. Old like before the hills had names, before the Tuatha Dé Danann were pushed into the emerald hills of the island. Back when gods still walked barefoot and drunk across dew-wet fields. and mortals knew better than to look them in the eye.

  Back then, the Crosses weren’t Crosses.

  They were An Fhuil Iarainn. The Iron Blood. That wasn’t their name. Even though back then they still had theirs- A true one. Not a name for taxes or marriage records. A deep name. The kind whispered into newborn mouths before the world had laws. A name that made the stones recognize them when they stepped barefoot across riverbeds. A name that gave them place - An Fhuil Iarainn. It wasn’t what they called themselves. However, it was others called them, once the singing stopped and the knives came out.

  Back when names meant binding. When speaking someone’s full title was to summon them, or damn yourself.

  There’s always something about fairies and iron.

  In every folklore, every half-remembered whisper behind a pub, every old woman’s mutter when a child vanishes on a hill, they’ll tell you: iron keeps the fair ones out.

  Not fair as in beautiful.

  Fair as in not us.

  Fair as in not made right.

  Fair as in other.

  The Good Neighbors, the Kindly Ones, the Shining Folk, the Fair Folk—and everyone who knows better calls them anything but what they really are, because names bind. And they listen.

  Tinkerbell is a horror movie.

  Iron? Iron wounds. Iron burns. Iron breaks their glamour, their lies, their forms. Where silver might seduce and salt might ward, iron ends things.

  It’s not just symbolic. It’s molecular. Something about iron disrupts the old magic, the first magic. The kind that came before language, before religion, before humans ever shaped fire. Something about the cold permanence of it, the way it cuts without trickery. The Fair Folk are illusion and shifting truths, and iron doesn’t care what you are pretending to be. It remembers what’s real.

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  That’s why horseshoes above doors. That’s why iron nails in cribs. That’s why you never walked into a ring of mushrooms without something cold in your pocket, something forged, something honest.

  So imagine what it meant when there was a family called An Fhuil Iarainn.

  The Iron Blooded.

  That made them dangerous.

  To the Others.

  To the Fair Folk.

  So of course, a deal happened.

  A trick.

  A punishment.

  Of course, the Fair Folk tried to undo them not by killing them, but by taking the one thing more permanent than anything else.

  The Crosses aren’t iron anymore.

  Not like they were. More like an amalgam, now.

  The blood thins. The old protections fade. But traces remain. That’s why Kellan ’s breath makes glamoured things flinch. That’s why a house on their land listens when they speak.

  They were the ones who stayed when the Others fled.

  Not aligned. Not conquered. Just unmoving.

  The Inquisition doesn’t like families that can speak to wolves. Colonial governments don’t like people who leave no footprints in snow. Tax men don’t like houses that don’t appear on maps.

  People like Kellan don’t come from power. His lineage isn’t written in stock portfolios or ivory towers.

  His blood sings in the woods.

  One of them gets out first, stretches like he’s not uncomfortable being watched. Or unaware that he is in fact being watched. Because they are all being watched. Even if they don’t realize it yet.

  They couldn’t shake the feeling that the Cross family wasn’t just off the grid, they were outside the map entirely.

  The plan is simple.

  Knock.

  Ask a few questions.

  Watch who sweats.

  Identify the hierarchy.

  Extract information quietly, quickly.

  Everyone leaves intact.

  The last point is negotiable.

  The leader steps up to the front door of the old and weathered house. Its practically a ruin already. No windows, no roof. More mold than wood. He knocks.

  No one answers the door.

  Not the house.

  Not the barn.

  Not the workshop with the stained glass windows and the carved iron lock that doesn't have a keyhole. “Why is the workshop so much more put together than any of the other buildings? That doesn’t make sense. This doesn’t feel right. We should just leave.” “Shut it rookie.”

  They knock.

  They call.

  They circle.

  They knock harder.

  Then the radio crackles.

  They had split up. Beginners mistake. To cover more of the grounds.

  One of them had wandered into the underbrush, just before the tree line. And now he was deeper into the trees, where the Cross property ends and the other space begins. The others try to radio him.

  The radio doesn’t catch words. Just static. Then humming. Then silence.

  The man doesn’t come back.

  They search.

  Ten minutes. No sign.

  Twenty minutes. No footprints.

  Thirty minutes. No struggle.

  After an hour they find something.

  His earpiece, still buzzing, still warm, sitting in the dirt like it decided to stop being part of anything.

  Then one of the others sees a woman. “Holy fuck there's someone!” He shouts.

  She’s standing at the edge of the property. Between trees and firewood.

  Not armed.

  Not smiling.

  Long black dress. Bare feet. Face shadowed by a wide-brimmed hat. Even though the trees don’t cast shade.

  They have decided that they are done pretending to be foliage. Why should a shadows presence or absence be decided by something like the sun after all.

  She says nothing. Doesn’t move.

  When they step toward her, she vanishes.

  In the Mission control center, an operator receives a request for reinforcements. She ignores the request because she has bigger things to worry about at the moment.

  When the men step toward the woman, she vanishes.

  She doesn’t run.

  She doesn’t flee.

  Doesn’t ask what they are doing here.

  Doesn’t plead, doesn’t beg, doesn’t bargain.

  Just stops being there.

  She just simply isn’t there anymore.

  The men regroup.

  They attempt to regroup.

  They regroup.

  There is Three now.

  One more missing. He went to check the SUV.

  The tires are slashed. The radio’s melted. Not broken. Melted. Maybe it tried to receive a gamma-ray burst.

  The leader ex-CIA, ex-quiet wars, currently … not that anymore.

  He’s got medals that were never publicly awarded, he takes out his long-range radio and reports a stall. A delay. His earpiece just produces fuzz.

  “...they’re not here,” he radios. “The house is empty.”

  Granny is sitting on the porch.

  She wasn’t there five seconds ago.

  She’s peeling an apple with a knife, the curl of red skin coiling down onto the floorboards like a ribbon.

  The guy draws faster than most people blink.

  But her hand doesn’t even stop moving.

  She doesn’t look at him.

  She just says, “You dogs didn’t ask for an invitation.”

  His grip tightens.

  One of his men chokes, stumbling back, grabbing at his throat. Not from a hit. Not from poison.

  Like something forgot to let him breathe.

  The leader fires a shot. The bullet makes it half-way to the porch and the woman sitting there until it falls to the ground.

  He drops his gun.

  It clangs on the ground.

  Granny smiles. Not wide. Not cruel. Just a small grandmotherly smile. Under different circumstances, she might offer them a slice of pie. That sort of smile.

  “This isn’t your road,” she says. “This isn’t your business.”

  One of them finally finds his voice. “We’re just here to ask questions.”

  She tilts her head.

  “Are you?”

  Another curl of apple skin hits the porch. Thwap. The knife gleams.

  “I think you were here to take something. And I think maybe you thought you were the wolves.”

  She looks up now. One eye is glowing green, the other milky white.

  “This is Cross land. Private property. You are dogs right? You understand territory. Borders.”

  The leader is sweating.

  But he nods.

  He knows when he’s made the kind of mistake you don’t repeat.

  The kind that echoes.

  They leave one tire shredded. One man gone. One radio warped into slag.

  No police. No report.

  Just silence.

  They do not return.

  "They sent more dogs. One got lost. I was promised no more issues."