Three Dogma Night
The Elven Prophecy™ Book Three
Theophilus Monroe
Michael Anderle
This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2021 LMBPN Publishing
Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing
A Michael Anderle Production
LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
LMBPN Publishing
PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy
Las Vegas, NV 89109
Version 1.00, June 2021
ebook ISBN: 978-1-64971-835-8
Print ISBN: 978-1-64971-836-5
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Author Notes - Theophilus Monroe
Author Notes - Michael Anderle
Other Books by Theophilus Monroe
Books By Michael Anderle
Connect with The Authors
The Three Dogma Night Team
Thanks to our Beta Team
John Ashmore, Rachel Beckford, Kelly O’Donnell, John Scafidi
Thanks to our JIT Readers
Veronica Stephan-Miller
Dave Hicks
Debi Sateren
Jackey Hankard-Brodie
Dorothy Lloyd
Jeff Goode
Zacc Pelter
Diane L. Smith
Peter Manis
Angel LaVey
If We’ve missed anyone, please let us know!
Editor
The Skyhunter Editing Team
Prologue
I pivoted on my back foot, narrowly evading the assassin’s dagger.
Focusing my mind, I blasted him in the back with a magically enhanced shove. He flew into the first row of pews. Thankfully, they were made of oak. If we’d broken one, well, I don’t know how I’d explain it. I was already on thin ice with the congregation.
Not bad, I thought. Not that I had a lot of time to bask in well-earned glory for pulling off an evasive maneuver against an assassin who probably had a lifetime’s worth of training and a lot of experience murdering people.
Not a résumé I’d consider career-boosting, but he’d come from New Albion. He wasn’t looking for a job at a Fortune 500 company.
The assassin quickly leaped to his feet. The dumbass looked like a ninja. You know, the kind who appeared as the villains’ lackeys in any number of action flicks from the eighties. I wasn’t sure why he bothered covering his face anyway. I mean, if he killed me, it wouldn’t matter if I saw who he was, and if he failed, which I was holding out hope would be the case, it wasn’t like I knew anyone I could reveal his identity to.
I hadn’t met many elves from New Albion outside of Layla, her father, and a handful of legionnaires. I probably wouldn’t recognize this guy, even if I could see his face.
He leaped up like he hadn’t just about snapped his spine across the back of an oak pew. I mean, I’d hit him with one heck of a magically enhanced wallop, and he’d jumped back up like an acrobat hopped up on Twinkies.
I shook my head.
Why hadn’t Layla taken the shot?
That was the plan. I glanced up at the balcony. She should have been up there somewhere, hiding in the organ pipes.
We’d rehearsed this. Where the hell was she? She’d said she just needed a little space, enough to give her a clean shot. A foot or more of separation between the assailant and me, and she’d take him out with an arrow.
All I needed to do was stay alive.
Easier said than done when throwing down with a professional elven assassin.
That Layla didn’t take him out meant one of two things: either she was tangled up with a second assassin and she never got into position, or this one had gotten to her first, and he took her out before he turned on me.
I shook my head. It couldn’t be that. I mean, would King Brightborn have his daughter killed?
Maybe she just didn’t have the right angle. I had to hope that was the case. I had no way of knowing for sure that she was up there. Could I risk it? It wasn’t likely the assassin would fall for the back-foot pivot maneuver a second time.
And I only had a few moves I could use.
I inhaled again. I might not be able to beat the assassin outright, but I could send him elsewhere thanks to Ensley, the fairy who’d left a little of his portal magic inside me.
I focused on a space about six inches in front of me as the assassin charged again, his dagger glistening green. He came at me quickly, leading the way with his blade. I formed a portal between us, sending the energies required for it from my eyes.
The assassin’s momentum carried him through the gold and green magic gateway.
“Take that, asshole,” I said.
Then I smirked. I’d just called someone an asshole in the church.
Not that I hadn’t wanted to use that word more than once here. When I was in pastor mode, though, I had to watch my language.
I quickly closed the portal. I’d put him on top of the St. Louis Arch. No, not inside the arch. On top of it.
It had been the first thing I thought of.
I’m not a killer. I’d killed once, and even though the elf had it coming, I wasn’t in any hurry to add another body to my conscience.
Of course, if the assassin fell off the arch, I supposed I’d be partly responsible for that. And there’s no way he’d survive the fall. Not unless he had level-five magic like me or knew how to fly.
Not likely. Layla said that before me, there hadn’t been anyone capable of level-five badassery in centuries.
Why not just portal the elf to Antarctica? Or better, back to New Albion?
So far, I hadn’t managed to cast portals that took people more than a few miles away. I knew I could; the ability was there. Ensley was able to use the same kind of magic to create portals that took him all over the world. I had to have a clear mental picture of wher
e I wanted to open a portal—somewhere there wouldn’t be an object, or heaven forbid, a person in the space where it opened on the other side.
But I was still an amateur when it came to magic in general, and even more so with fairy magic.
“Layla!” I called toward the darkened church balcony.
No response.
My stomach churned. Where the hell was she? I hadn’t heard so much as a scream, much less a struggle.
I mean, this was an old building, and the place was well-insulated and sound-proofed. It didn’t mean she wasn’t somewhere on the church grounds.
I took a deep breath as I ran out the front door. What was I worried about? Layla could hold her own even against some of New Albion’s nastiest elf assassins.
Focus, Caspar.
Then it dawned on me. I didn’t need to use magic. I could just turn on the stupid lights. Sometimes the easiest solution is the best one. When you can do magic, there’s a temptation to use it to do everything, even things that are more easily done the conventional way.
I sprinted to the back of the sanctuary, where the light switch panel was located. I’ve been a pastor there for the better part of a decade and still couldn’t remember which switch did what.
The first few I knew, but after that? One of these days, I’d get a label maker and fix the problem.
Flicking them on and off, I eventually turned on the lights over the balcony. I took off up the stairs, skipping every other step on my way up.
“Layla?” I called.
Nothing.
No evidence she’d been there at all. I grabbed my phone from my pocket and called her. It rang. No answer. I sent a text and waited.
No response, not even the three tiny dots that indicated that she was typing.
What the hell had happened? Then it dawned on me. We had our phones hooked up on one of those find your friends and family GPS apps. I opened it, and it showed her icon-sized headshot just outside the door.
I ran back downstairs, nearly twisting my ankle as I jumped down the last five. I blasted through the church doors, almost knocking them off their hinges. My heart raced.
I expected the worst as I looked around.
“Layla!” I shouted.
Then I glanced down. Something caught the sun, and the reflection almost blinded me. On the small patch of grass along the sidewalk leading up to the church was Layla’s phone in its hot-pink case.
Shit.
Chapter One
Four days earlier
I’d never been to a cult meeting before. It’s generally ill-advised for ministers.
I take that back. There are a lot of folks who think AA is a cult.
My former bishop had believed it was. Too bad he hadn’t tried it. It might have saved his career.
I get it, I suppose. A lot of random “God talk” goes on there, and some of the folks live and breathe the program. Their whole world revolves around meetings. What the folks who call it “cult-like” fail to understand, though, is that for a lot of AA members, the alternative to that is drinking again. Joining something people think might be a cult is far preferable to any of the other destinations that untreated alcoholics are destined to reach: jails, institutions for the criminally insane, and the grave.
And if I was honest about it, the Order of the Elven Gate, what non-members colloquially refer to as the “Elf Gate Cult,” wasn’t all that different.
They had learned a grim truth: that the elven legions intended to conquer the world. They’d admitted they were powerless in the situation, so they’d decided to do what they thought they could to prepare themselves to be on the elves’ good side.
Of course, kissing elf ass isn’t exactly my style. I mean, I’m dating one, and I won’t even kiss hers, literally or metaphorically. Just not a butt man.
I expected they’d all swoon when Layla, an elf princess, an elf of elves, walked into their meeting, but they had been distracted. Another kind of elf, a more exotic breed, had shown up.
The drow. They’d come to find me because the magic I was wielding got their attention. They had felt a great disturbance in the force.
That’s my best Obi-Wan impression. Of course, anyone who knows anything realizes that Obi-Wan continues, “…as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”
Hopefully, the drow’s visit wouldn’t be quite that ominous. I mean, with a lot of luck and a ton of help, I’d thwarted the elven legion a couple of times. I wouldn’t stand much of a chance against a world-destroying death star, though.
Yes, I have most of those movies memorized. The original films anyway, the ones that matter—and Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail. “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!” Sorry, I know that quote was random, but I couldn’t control myself.
The Elf Gate Cult had grown, even though I’d prevented the elven invasion at least temporarily. I’d never seen so many people wearing silicone elf ears in one place, not even at the renaissance festival where we’d first met Fred, the larper who played both the King and the Blacksmith (depending on the day of the week). He’d helped us craft a faux Blade of Echoes and was, coincidentally, one of the leaders of the Elf Gate Cult.
“This way,” Jag said.
Jag was my personal trainer. At least, he was while Layla had been off-world. I figured we’d probably stick with the arrangement. People who were romantically involved shouldn’t enter a trainer-client relationship. One of two things was bound to happen. Every session would either end in a fight or with lots and lots of screwing. Not that I’d know that from experience.
I’m a minister, after all. We don’t do that sort of thing. We don’t believe in fighting outside of marriage.
Jag led us through the crowd. I mean, I figured we’d be a big deal. An elf princess and the “chosen one” of the elven prophecy has to be worth some celebrity in a cult that worships elfkind.
“Well, this is underwhelming,” I blurted.
“They don’t all realize who you are,” Jag said. “We don’t have portraits of you in our homes or anything. I mean, if Jesus walked into your church, would anyone recognize him?”
I snorted. “I’m not Jesus. Not even close.”
Jag laughed. “I agree. Jesus wasn’t a pussy.”
I chuckled under my breath. It was an inside joke, or I told myself it was. It helped me not take it personally. In the gym, he was a firm believer in self-deprecation like calling yourself a pussy, a wimp because you’re always speaking to your present. If you don’t want your present self to become a past self, you need to become a badass future you and kick your past self’s ass into nonexistence.
The power of positive thinking and the culture of affirmation was all bullshit from Jag’s perspective. Self-loathing and deprecations unleashed the power to change.
The past you is soft and flabby. The future you is huge and ripped.
The past you eats donuts for breakfast. The future you drinks protein shakes. Even if they taste like lawn, you choke them down. Let the past you complain about the flavor. The future you will thank you for it.
I’m not sure I agree with his philosophy, but strangely, it worked. I mean, I didn’t have six-pack abs, but I’d gotten rid of most of the keg I used to carry around my waist. The love handles were almost gone. I couldn’t flick the band of fat that hung over my waistband and watch the waves ripple across my abdomen anymore. It made standing naked in front of the bathroom mirror a bit less entertaining but much more satisfying.
I couldn’t believe how many people were here, and they were all crowded around the three drow who had come looking for me.
Jag started pushing people to the right or the left. He was a big boy. I’m pretty sure his momma had to shop in the “husky boys” department at Sears when he was growing up. He wasn’t fat, just one of those large-framed men who, with a ton of muscle, wasn’t the kind of person you wanted to make angry. Jag was to this crowd of cultists as Moses had be
en to the Red Sea. He moved forward, and, whether it happened willingly or not, the crowd parted.
I didn’t need to ask who the visitors were. They stood out in the crowd.
Fred was there, talking to them. When he saw us, he pointed at us, and all three of them peered our way.
They had ears like Layla’s, but their skin was a dark purple-gray. Their hair was white, and they wore long robes that were more ornate and colorful than anything I’d ever worn preaching. A brocade pattern embossed in gold covered their robes.
Their clothing resembled traditional Indian dress. I suppose, with darker skin, the drow probably blended better there than in, say, northern Europe or the Baltics. Or even in the United States.
One of them was female and not exceptionally tall, probably about five feet in height. She had an athletic build from what I could tell since her robe was more like a dress, fitting tightly against her body. The two men who accompanied her, however, were at least six-foot-five. They had slender builds, and their arms and legs looked a touch too long for their bodies. They were holding gold boxes decorated with various letters, an elven language I didn’t know.
Three Dogma Night (The Elven Prophecy Book 3) Page 1