by Perry, D. R.
There weren’t any drafts at all, but that didn’t matter. The main chamber was big enough for me to open my wings, so I beat my wings, building my own wind beneath them. I hadn’t accounted for the extra weight. Moving us out of there turned out to be a bigger feat of physical strength than I’d expected. It took longer than I would have liked, but our feet lifted off the floor.
The Grims started toward us, but one advantage to lifting both of us was the amount of downdraft I’d kicked up. The gale buffeted the Grims, making them misjudge their leaps and pounces.
One of them snagged the hem of Tony’s coat in its teeth. Tony kicked it in the nose, sending the Grim falling back down to the stone floor. It made no sound as it landed, no smack of flesh on the rock, not even a whimper or whine. That was the creepy thing about the Umbral hounds. They were sentient but not exactly a living force. Shadows never were.
Once I’d flown us out of the hole, things got easier. The king’s side of the Under had plenty of currents in its skies for me to work with. Soon, we soared over trees and even a few other clearings. My wings and back burned with the strain, so I landed us on the shore of what looked like an ocean.
“Well, that’s the weirdest water I’ve ever seen.” Tony stepped back before the next wave broke against the drab sand. “Whoever heard of a beach like this?”
“Goblins, apparently.” I dipped one toe in the water, then pulled it back. The purple water was freezing cold. It stained the sand it had touched black, although farther up, it was slate gray. “At least it’s not blue and pink like cotton candy.”
“It is out that way.” Tony jerked his chin toward the east. “Queen’s demesne is a different scene.”
“No more rhymes now. I mean it.”
“Sorry, I’m all out of peanuts.”
I couldn’t take any more. At that point, I couldn’t bring myself to care about my botched arrival in the Under or pissing off a Faerie monarch or even that somewhere in the mortal realm, Gino Gitano was trying to get here and wanted me dead. Tony was alive, and I was with him. I did the only thing I could.
I laughed.
Chapter Eight
Tony
Olivia’s laugh sounded like the bells at the little chapel I used to go to with Dad before he got tired of pretending at his religion. I’d hidden there many times, once I learned to shift, pretending to be some kind of church cat. Whenever I needed to get out of the path of one of Dad’s rages, it’d been my haven, the only place I felt safe. But there was something else in Olivia’s laugh besides comfort and a sense of safety.
She bent my heart like a prism bends light, transforming it in ways even a shifter like me wasn’t accustomed to. I couldn’t handle something that intense, so I stood and turned, facing away from her to gaze out at the dark western horizon. I realized I’d avoided asking her direct questions ever since she’d gotten there. After Olivia had laughed, that didn’t feel right anymore.
I’d spent most of my life either looking over my shoulder or wondering when the other shoe would drop. I barely ever looked ahead. For me, nothing was a “glass half-full or half-empty” proposition. I’m the kind of guy who wonders whether the liquid is water or sulfuric acid. It sounds Emo, but Olivia Adler’s laughter broke my feelings into pieces and refracted from them until I feared what they might become. I did the only thing I could in that situation.
I turned around and cleared my throat.
“Hmm?” Olivia tilted her head, peering up at me. Her silvery-white hair tumbled around her bare shoulders. Maybe it was just my weird opinion, but no other woman I knew could look like she’d been in a salon instead of dragging my mangy carcass out of a Grim’s den.
“So, we’ve got to get to the king’s hunting lodge?” Being able to just flat-out ask a simple question felt like drinking ice water on a midsummer day.
“Yeah.” Olivia nodded. “At least, I have to. You don’t.”
“But I will.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “You’ve got an honest-to-goodness Quest, like one of the king’s knights. So, you should also have someone helping you.”
“The king sent Gee to help me.” Olivia fixed me with a defiant stare.
“Well, he’s sidelined.” I stared right back. “You’re stuck with the not-really-dead guy.”
“I can live with that.” Olivia blinked, breaking the stare and my challenge of her reluctance to accept my help. She stood up and brushed black sand off her dress. “We have no idea where the hunting lodge is, so I’ll shift to owl form and scout it out. After that, I’ll get back in this form, and you can turn into a cat. It’s easier to carry you that way.”
“Okay. Sounds like a solid plan.” I nodded. Olivia wouldn’t be able to fly any distance dragging me along while I was this size.
“Um, would you mind turning around?” A delicate shade of pink touched her cheekbones as she lifted an empty satchel off her shoulder.
“Oh!” My face heated despite the cool breeze. She’d have to take her clothes off to shift. “Um, right.” I turned around, treating my eyes to the dark western horizon again. I tried meditation to empty my mind of the images it conjured. My imagination didn’t want to cooperate. I decided to let my mind wander where it wanted to go. And that’s why I didn’t react the first time I heard it.
“Tony!” Olivia’s voice sounded strained and desperate, something that went along with the pictures in my head. “Tony.” The second time, she said my name with a hint of despair. That got my real-time attention. I turned around to see what was wrong.
“Holy mother of cats—”
Olivia Adler, the woman of my dreams, stood on the beach in the altogether, and I was utterly undone. Had I thought she’d looked angelic falling from the sky with a wounded Gnome in her arms? I’d been wrong. Here was the real angel. She moved her hands to cover herself, and my perception shifted to imagine her as Botticelli’s Venus rising from the sea.
If I’d been honorable like Boy Scout Bobby the bear shifter, I’d have looked away. If I’d been chivalrous like my bestie, Sir Fred Redford of the queen’s court, I’d have handed over my trench coat without staring. And if I’d been a rogue like Blaine Harcourt, I might have taken her right there on the beach. But I was and always will be Tony Gitano, paranoid neighborhood cat-man. My reactions consisted of flight and fright. Fright won. I froze.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t even blink. It was as if the sight of her had turned me into a pillar of salt. I sure felt sinful enough to be one at that moment. And then, Olivia moved her hands, putting them on her hips. My heart made a mad dash like a last-ditch sprinter. I expected a slap in the face at best and a nasty left hook at worst. I got neither.
“We’ve got a problem, Tony.” Olivia rolled her shoulders. Her wings flapped, kicking up sand from the dry dunes behind me. After that, they folded over her, hiding the view. “I can’t shift. And I don’t know if it’s this place or just me.”
I tried to say something. Anything. I knew the problem, of course. Olivia was a magical shifter of some unknown variety, just like me. But all I could do was open and close my mouth. I wondered if this was how fish shifters would act if they existed.
“Have you tried shifting since you got here?” A tiny crease formed between Olivia’s eyebrows.
“No.” I sighed. “Actually, I don’t know, but probably not. Supposedly, I’ve been here a whole week, and I only remember less than half of this day.”
“Hoo, boy.” Usually, she’d make me laugh or at least smirk with that utterance, but her tone tumbled like a waterfall. Tears did the same, from those wide amber eyes of hers. It was just too much.
“Forget about it.” I took a step forward, patting one side of her wing. I blinked at how insubstantial that limb of bone and feathers felt under my hand. Fragile. Had they really carried the both of us through the air? I owed her, even if it wasn’t in the faerie “three questions” sense. “Look, I’ll try now, though. For you.”
She blinked then swallowed. Olivia’s tears hadn
’t dried up. Humidity levels on a beach went against the chances of that, even in the Under. But she’d stopped adding to them, at least.
I took a deep breath and concentrated on calling my cat form. Other shifters, guys like Bobby and Josh, or even gals like Jeannie and Beth, treated their animal forms almost like another person or maybe a character they’d have played on TV. I didn’t. Those others loved being magical, having another body to inhabit once in a while. Maybe they found it empowering. My cat form felt good-for-nothing, embarrassing, and puny, just like Dad always told me. I used it primarily to hide.
Turning into a relatively little kitty cat shortly after my voice cracked had been a major disappointment for my parental unit. I’d always thought I was the reason Dad had bumped Mom off. Never mind that she'd died before I could remember her. All the same, my fluffy Maine Coon form had caused me no end of pain and trouble. Magic was fascinating, Faerie intriguing, and Psychic powers a nifty curiosity. Being a regular shifter had always felt like a bum deal.
Anyway, I didn’t bother disrobing. My literally little friend wouldn’t do anything to my clothes besides leave behind tufts of shed fur, not even enough for a hairball. I called on that puny cat form, cursing it inside my head the entire time as usual. But this time, it didn’t come. I twitched my tail and flicked my ears.
“You too, huh?” Olivia shook her head. “And that whole shifting and flying thing was my plan B, too. I’m all out of options.”
“Well, what about just walking up the beach instead?” I shrugged. “You never know, maybe the king likes oceanfront property.”
“The trouble with that is, we’re out in the open.” Olivia looked over my shoulder, her eyes moving left, then right. She lowered her voice. “I’m not sure if you noticed, but we’re being watched. What if they follow us?”
“Maybe they’re watching because two half-shifted people are on a beach, and one of them is, um, well...” I waved a hand at her and looked down at my shoes.
“Oh.” She kept looking at the tree line. I wasn’t sure whether she was that afraid or meant to avoid looking me in the eye. “Well, I’m not sure about that. Your father kind of said he’d try to get my Quest done before I could. What if it’s him?”
“Oh, really?” I smacked my fist against my other hand. Then, I reached down and grabbed the burlap bundle. “Well, I’ve got just the thing for that. A long-range weapon.”
“You did not bring a gun into the Under.” She shook her head, eyes wide.
“No way I’d go and do something like that.” I unwrapped the fabric, revealing the weapon. “It’s magical, and I found it here. Problem is, I have no idea how to use this thing.”
“Ooh!” Olivia’s mouth went as round as her eyes. “Archery was my extracurricular all through middle and high school. Give it here.”
I handed the bow over. Olivia bounced up and down a little, flapping her wings as she examined the length of greenish wood and its accessories. She bent and strung it in seconds. I blinked, even more impressed with watching her handle a lethal weapon in the nude than when she’d just been standing there. I still couldn’t look away.
“Um, you might want to get dressed at some point.” I tried to keep my eyes on the bow, but that cause was lost before it even started. I covered my eyes instead.
“Hoo, boy!”
I heard a rustle of fabric, waited for the sound to stop before taking my hands away.
“Thanks, Tony.” Olivia ran her hands over the carved wood of the now bent short bow. “This is the nicest bow I’ve ever seen. Feels like it was made just for me. Where did it come from?”
I’d have snarked back at almost anyone else asking a question like that. But Olivia didn’t make the words sound doubtful or accusatory like I’d somehow lied to her or stolen the thing. Even though technically speaking, I had sort of borrowed it.
“The Gnomehill. The whole reason I was even there in the first place was to fetch the thing.”
“Oh! Are you on a Quest, too?”
“I’m not really sure?” I shrugged. “It’s just that this…um, well, it turns out that someone was with me when I woke up.”
“Really?” She raised an eyebrow. “Who?”
“I guess I have a godmother I never knew about. She said the bow was the only way forward for me.” I shrugged. “Apparently, it’s my bane, so I shouldn’t be using it myself, anyway.”
“So, your faerie godmother said you needed to get this.” Olivia nocked an arrow to the bow and sighted along it. “But why?”
“Well, I guess it’s going to be useful in, um, eliminating someone from Richard Hopewell’s camp.” Somehow, admitting that was almost harder than watching her stand there naked.
She kept the bow ready, then headed up the beach like I’d suggested. “Your dad.”
I blinked, expecting a question instead of a statement. “Well, yeah.”
“Good.” Her smile reminded me of ice. She eased the string back, removing the arrow from it.
“He must have done more than threaten you, then.”
“Unfortunately for him, yes.” Olivia examined the arrow. Its tip was wood, carved to a point, and etched with vaguely Cyrillic symbols.
“So he’s the one who put a hole in Gee-Nome?” I glanced down at her dress, the dark blue stains there reminding me of the Gnome’s injuries.
“I think so. If he didn’t, it was one of his people.” Olivia put the arrow away, then slung the quiver over her shoulder. Somehow, the strap adjusted to her wings. I thought about how the winged woman on the tapestry had worn it. This looked almost the same.
“You know I’m one of his people, too.”
“No.” She shook her head and looked me right in the eyes. “You might be his son, but you’re not one of his people.”
But Olivia was wrong about that. I’d done things, stained my hands with my father’s dirty deeds. It’d been under what a lawyer might call extreme duress. All the same, I wasn’t sure Olivia’s faith in me could wash any of that clean. Before I could challenge her assumption, something caught my eye at the tree-line. I turned my head and stopped in my tracks.
The sky above had purpled like a bruise the entire time I’d been in the Under. With the shadow of the trees, it turned into that sick yellow-green that comes a week later. Maybe that was why the light off in the distance looked so intriguing. Or maybe it just reminded me of a laser pointer. I’m a cat shifter, so I can’t help myself sometimes. Maybe the partial shift and the Faerie realm’s magic brought more of my feline instincts to the surface.
Anyway, I headed in that direction. That’s a lie. I leaped and bounded in a straight line. The only thing that slowed me down was the dried-out dunes at the head of the beach. The sand dragged at my shoes, but my feet didn’t care. They kept on going.
“Tony, come back!”
I tried to stop, but my legs moved anyway. My mind and heart wanted me to stop, but my body just wouldn’t.
I did the only thing I could do in that situation.
I quoted another movie.
Chapter Nine
Olivia
“Somebody stop me!” Tony’s voice tightened to near-breaking. I’d packed up my pride when it came to Tony Gitano and his zany reactions, but I would not abide him running away from me in abject terror. Not after he'd seen me naked.
I leaped into the air, flapping my wings. I wanted speed, not altitude. Luckily for me, the beach was windy in my favor, so it wasn’t too difficult. On the way, I glimpsed what had caught Tony’s attention. A will-o'-the-wisp.
I landed scant feet short of the tree line and spun on my heel, pointing the bow upward. It tingled with magic energy as I stood in Tony’s way. We collided and tumbled to the sandy hardpan that marks the landward edge of any shoreline.
As I fell, I loosed my arrow. I heard it hiss through the underbrush.
“Oh, nooooooooooooo!” After that came a strung-out squeak like air slowly releasing from a balloon’s neck.
I turned my hea
d, peering through bushes with freshly tattered leaves. With a will-o'-the-wisp around, that was hardly a good idea. I breathed a sigh overdue enough to inspire a library hold. My arrow had pinned the wisp to a tree. It looked as deflated as a wet poodle and more dismayed than a dairy-allergic kid at an ice cream social.
“Thanks.” Tony stood over me, one flat palm stretched toward my free arm.
“No, thanks to you.” I let him help me up, so I didn’t have to drop my mysterious new weapon.
“You’re a hoot, you know that?” He smirked.
“Hoo, boy. You know, I’ve never ever heard a joke like that before in my entire life, Tony.” I rolled my eyes. Just to make things fair, I dropped him a wink. “Be right back, have to get that arrow.” I started off toward the tree where something that looked like a deflated and glittery blueberry hung against pale birch bark.
“It’s dangerous, getting that close to a Will-o'-the-wisp, Olivia.”
“I know.” I shrugged, looking down as I tried to navigate crackly underbrush in flip-flops and a progressively snagged maxi-dress. “But there’s something about this weapon’s magic. It feels different from other magipsychic devices. And I’m not going to risk leaving an arrow behind where anyone can find it. I don’t want to give whoever’s watching us any literal ammunition.”
I turned my head halfway over my shoulder, glaring off into the trees toward the south, where I sensed the presence of something breathing. Tony flicked an ear in that direction, his tail twitching. His nostrils flared, and his whiskers shook. He mouthed a word, something with an “o” between two consonants. I wasn’t sure what he’d meant, but as long as he hadn’t scented his father, I didn’t much care.
I jerked my chin at the item I’d pinned to the tree, which was definitely not a Will-o'-the-wisp. That Unseelie creature had already made their escape. Somebody had tied a shiny blue ribbon on it, and that’s what my shot had snagged. That was all right by me. I had no idea what to do with a captive Wisp, anyway.