I just needed to collect three even more important items — Warner, Kandy, and Kett. And to release a sure-to-be-extremely-pissed-off guardian.
I shuddered at that thought. No matter that Reggie had been in my head, using me as her weapon at the time, Haoxin was going to be seriously aggravated over how I’d used an instrument of assassination on her. I knew Warner would forgive me. Even though I’d tried to strangle him. And Kandy and Kett as well — though it might take a few years for the vampire to actually speak to me again. But that was what love was, right? Being there for each other in our darkest hours?
The guardian of North America, though? I had serious doubts about her ability to view the mind-control/gemstone situation with any compassion.
I stepped into the hall, crossing toward the stairs. The undead turtle was waiting for me at the top. I scooped it up without thinking too much about it, though I had to sheath my knife to do so. The turtle blinked up at me, tasting of toasted marshmallows and strawberry. Mory’s magic, animating the undead creature. My mother’s magic, likely embedded in the dime charm around its neck.
“Hey Mory,” I whispered, peering into the tiny camera on the turtle’s back. “Need a lift down the stairs?”
The turtle didn’t answer. But then, I wasn’t brain-damaged enough to really expect that it would. Well, not after checking first, at least.
Tucking the turtle under my left arm, I started down the stairs. And then realized somewhat belatedly that wandering around a huge stadium on a countdown wasn’t going to get me anywhere quickly. Add in a seething head wound and a twisted maze that I vaguely remembered watching the elves building, and I was going to get lost in a hurry. Lost, then sealed back in with a dozen elves looking for me after the distraction of repairing the wards had passed. After they realized that I hadn’t torn through their defenses in an attempt to escape, but to rescue my friends.
Not good.
But … I was a freaking dowser, wasn’t I?
And I was attempting to rescue people who radiated potent magic just by breathing. How hard could that magic be to find?
Now … if only I could remember the tenor … or taste … of Warner’s magic —
An intense panic seized me without warning, constricting my chest. I lost hold of my katana. The weapon tumbled down the stairs as I hunched over, clutching the turtle and struggling to breathe.
I should have been able to remember.
I should have been able to … taste.
But my head … my head hurt.
The turtle shifted in my grasp. I was holding it too tightly. I didn’t want to hurt Mory’s pet. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. Anyone I loved … ever again.
I pressed a steadying hand against the wall to my right, instantly feeling the magic of the elves’ wards … shifting … seeking …
Right.
I inhaled deeply.
I could also feel magic. Even if I couldn’t taste it, even if I couldn’t remember a specific tenor.
I just had to keep moving. I half walked, half stumbled down the rest of the stairs, pausing to set down the turtle and pick up my katana on the lower level.
I’d bled all over the dead turtle.
“Sorry, Ed,” I muttered, wiping my blood across the turtle’s hard shell and fortifying the charm around its neck with the residual magic in that blood by instinct. “Keep out of sight. But … you need to get back through the wards soon. Say hi to Mory for me. Tell her … tell her I’m coming. I just have to find Warner, Kandy, and Kett.”
The turtle shuffled away, keeping tight to the edge of the white-walled hall. This area looked a lot like the beginning of the elves’ interior maze — or at least one of the entrances to that maze.
Warner … Kandy … Kett …
I transferred my katana to my right hand, then dipped my left hand into my satchel, immediately finding the hilt of Warner’s knife. The blade reacted pissily to my touch. It didn’t like me. Before I’d given it to Warner and tied it to his magic, I had tried to destroy the blood magic I’d used to create the knife. But denying all the death and destruction tied up in that blade was futile. The circumstances that had created it had already occurred. All I could deal with was the aftermath.
“Well, that was awfully insightful,” I muttered to myself. “Maybe I should cut into my own brain more often. Trim out the fat.” I laughed. And even though the idea wasn’t particularly funny and the act of laughing pained me, it also settled me.
I raised Warner’s knife before me. Then, in all seriousness, I said, “Take me to your master.” Another fit of inappropriate giggles followed that insane command.
Then the knife tugged me left, in the opposite direction the turtle was taking.
“Jesus Christ.” I hadn’t thought that would work. I mean, I was a dowser, and the knife was tied to Warner, but …
Never mind. Questioning magic was a foolish thing to do.
And even though I was definitely a fool, I was on a serious time limit.
Warner’s knife led me deeper into the white-walled maze that radiated out from the gateway situated at the very center of the stadium. I happened upon two more elves, patrolling separately. But even if they’d attempted to quell me together, I wouldn’t have had any trouble knocking them out and continuing on. As I traversed the twisted hallways, spiraling closer and closer to the center of the maze, I could feel the energy of the dimensional rift I’d opened under Reggie’s command.
It was up and running. Without me operating it.
So had the gemstone that Alivia brought fixed it completely? Or had I inadvertently fixed it enough that it could now be ignited by someone else? It didn’t feel as though legions of elves were flooding through into the stadium … yet. But my dowser senses were compromised.
More importantly, though, the gateway being in operation meant that at least one of the people I was looking for was fueling it.
With their life force.
I shoved away that unhelpful thought. I’d find whoever I could, arming them with the extra weapons I carried. Then together, we would take out the gate, freeing whoever was fueling it.
That was a plan. And with my head aching more and more, having a primary focus was less panic inducing than worrying about Reggie managing to pull off her invasion plan while I was stumbling around in a freaking maze.
I paused at a three-way fork in the hall. Magic glistened from the twelve-foot-high, eighteen-inch-thick walls surrounding me, but the three-foot-wide section I stood in was still open to the soaring, domed roof of the stadium. I considered climbing up to see where I was and where the knife was leading me, but dismissed the idea as too risky. Any elves on the upper tier would have no problem spotting a human scrambling around in a bra and bloody jeans with a green T-shirt tied around her head.
The elves had moved quickly, implementing a plan that they — that Reggie — had been concocting ever since they’d broken out of Pulou’s prison.
A sudden wave of terror rolled over me so intensely that I gasped, stumbling over my own feet. I’d been so focused on breaking out and rescuing Warner, Kandy, and Kett that I didn’t know … I had no idea who else the elves had harmed. Gran … my mother …
No …
No.
Traveler had said something about the witches trapping the elves in the stadium. And I’d seen Ed. And the appearance of the sketch had to mean that Rochelle was okay.
I got myself under control. Now that I was surrounded by the magic embedded in the maze, I couldn’t feel the exterior wards. For all I knew, my twenty minutes had been up twenty minutes before. When the distraction of fixing the boundary magic I’d torn asunder passed, then the elves’ focus would turn to corralling me.
But I wasn’t going to be contained again.
And faced with as many elves as I’d allowed to pass through the gateway in the previous days — faced with dozens of them — I would die.
Then the people I loved would eventually perish fueling the gateway. I did
n’t think even Kett could survive having his life force siphoned from him day after day.
“Warner … Kandy … Kett … Haoxin …” I whispered, turning the names of those loved ones into a mantra. Well, plus one guardian, who might well try to kill me after I freed her. “Warner … Kandy … Kett … Haoxin.”
Warner’s knife tugged me to the left again. Away from the center of the stadium and the gateway. I followed the ornery weapon’s instructions dutifully, taking two more turns before finding myself in another recently constructed corridor with four evenly spaced steel doors leading from it. Three of the doors were closed. The nearest was standing open.
The hall appeared to dead-end. And, unfortunately, each of the steel-fortified, magically sealed, and most likely triple-locked doors appeared to be guarded by two elves.
So, yeah.
Six elves.
In a fairly narrow hallway. Which meant my katana was near useless.
Spotting me, the two nearest elves shouted, alerting the others to my rather abrupt and ill-conceived arrival. They lunged toward me, manifesting short, broad knives on the fly.
Keeping Warner’s knife in my left hand, I dropped my still-sheathed katana, calling my knife into my right hand. Ducking under the first elf’s attempt to decapitate me, I spun right and slit the throat of the second elf. Then I smoothly sidestepped as he stumbled forward and went down, hindering the first elf even as he attempted to spin back and reengage me.
I took off the top of the first elf’s head with Warner’s knife, staring in stunned horror as he crumbled, top down, into a fine crystal. Jesus. The knife was freaking sharp. And utterly wicked. And it was suddenly feeling exceedingly gleeful to be wielded by me.
Also, the elf I’d just murdered should have ducked.
Strong arms wrapped around me from behind, pinning my arms to my sides and lifting me off my feet. I slammed my head back, catching my unseen captor in the chin.
Something snapped, likely his jaw. He grunted.
Black dots swam before my eyes. Pain streaked through my skull, coalescing around the wound in my forehead. Slamming my head into his face had been a bad move on my part. For a moment, it was all I could do to ride out the pain and disorientation while hanging limply in the warrior elf’s arms.
Another elf pushed past us, leaping over the disintegrating corpse sprawled across the hall and darting around the second elf — most likely going for reinforcements. The second elf was still breathing, but he was focused on clutching his slowly healing throat.
The agony ravaging my brain settled into a deep throb in the middle of my forehead. I kicked backward, attempting to take out my captor’s knee but managing only to wiggle my foot.
Okay, apparently I was more incapacitated than I thought. The pain was draining. Or maybe it was the continual blood loss.
The elf holding me was shouting something. I didn’t catch the words. He placed me on my knees, still facing away from him while holding a blade across my neck. Then he tried to disarm me.
Bad idea.
The elf hissed as the magic of Warner’s knife seared his skin. Only the sentinel or the maker of the blade, namely me, could touch it without retribution.
Speaking of blades, I’d lost hold of my jade knife, but I could feel it back in its sheath. I must have actually blacked out for a few seconds.
Another elf joined the one who’d originally grabbed me. Together, they yanked my arms back, slamming my face into the ground. I lost my vision for another beat, only regaining my sight when I felt something cool, hard, and teeming with magic snapping around my wrists.
They’d cuffed me.
Jesus. There was blood all over the concrete floor that my cheek was currently harshly pressed against.
Seriously. What the hell good was magical healing if I couldn’t dig into my own freaking brain with my own freaking knife?
Something hit the reinforced steel door to my right. The entire wall shook with the blow.
Another hit.
And another.
Someone was trying to break out, to break free from the prison cells.
“Jade!”
His bellow was muted but unmistakable.
Warner.
Warner was just beyond that door. Inches away.
And he knew I was near.
The elves scrambled to their feet, slipping in my blood while they fanned out to face the new threat about to come through the door. Conveniently, this took their attention off me.
I gathered my magic. I unleashed my alchemy, pouring it over the cuffs binding my wrists, claiming them for my own.
Then, slamming a kick to the ankle of the elf nearest to me — only because I couldn’t reach his knee while lying on the floor — I cracked through the cuffs, freed my hands, and made it up onto my knees. Calling my jade knife forth, I stabbed the elf I’d kicked as he tried to break his fall, pinning his hand to the floor. Then I slugged him with the hilt of Warner’s knife.
He went all the way down, clearing the way for the neighboring elf to attack me.
Still holding the blade backward, I caught the overhand strike headed my way with the edge of Warner’s knife, slicing the elf’s crystal blood-blade in two. I stabbed him in the gut with my jade knife as he stumbled forward a step.
The magic of his blade crumbled into a fine powder as he fell to his knees.
I hadn’t even made it to my feet yet.
I staggered upward, punching the elf still kneeling before me in the forehead. His gemstone cracked and he fell, unconscious but not dead.
See?
Even brain-damaged, I tried to not murder indiscriminately.
Still sealed inside his cell, Warner slammed his shoulder into the door again. Or maybe he was kicking it. But though the steel door buckled outward, the locks and the magic sealing it still held.
“Jade!”
I faced off against the two remaining elves, grinning through the blood streaming down my face as I shouted, “I’m here, Warner!” I didn’t know if my fiance could hear me through the warded walls and door, but he could clearly feel my magic.
Okay, it was actually the proximity of the instruments of assassination that he could feel.
Which reminded me …
Thinking I was distracted, the two elves lunged. Holding my jade knife awkwardly, I ran three fingers across my necklace, teasing two of the silver centipedes from the gold chain — then flicking them in the faces of the elves as they charged me.
I raised both knives before me, ready to fight if necessary.
It wasn’t.
Churning with deadly metallurgy, the centipedes latched onto the elves, hitting one on the cheek and one on the forehead. The warrior elves screamed in unison, attempting to claw one of the only three ways to kill a guardian dragon from their faces.
Apparently, the silver metallurgy that powered the centipedes wasn’t picky about who it felled. Or maybe because I had claimed the weapon, imbuing it with my alchemy when I added it to my necklace, the centipedes simply did my bidding now — attacking whoever or whatever I wanted to destroy.
I knew it was best not to think about that tangle of possibilities. Not right at that moment, anyway.
I didn’t bother to watch the elves fall. Didn’t bother to watch the centipedes drilling into their brains.
I turned to the dented steel door that was all that separated me from Warner. Starting at the top right, I sliced through the magic that sealed it with my jade knife. Halfway down the edge of one side, the taste of chocolate and cherry — smoky and sweet — rolled across my tongue, filling my senses. Momentarily frozen in the grief of all that I’d almost lost, I pressed my ear to the door, sobbing in relief.
“Warner … Warner!”
“I’m here, Jade.” His words were husky and soothing, filtering through the long slice I’d made in the magic sealing the door.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m going to get —”
“Stop!” Magic reverberated up the hall
, slamming into me and knocking me back a few steps from the door.
Reggie.
The power housed in the gemstone in my pocket flared. In response, even while slipping in my own blood and stumbling around the limbs of the fallen elves, I instinctively smothered it with my own. I found my footing, raised my weapons — my jade knife and Warner’s blade — and looked down the hall.
Reggie, still dragging her stupid green cloak around with her, was standing at the far end of that hall, maybe twenty feet away. At least a dozen elves were arrayed beside and behind her. The warrior elves were all taller and broader than the sickly looking telepath, and sheathed in the white armor that was a manifestation of their blood. No pesky, tripping-hazard cloaks for the warriors.
It was a pretty picture.
Reggie and her artfully arrayed warriors, intending to be intimidating. Instagram worthy, really.
Too bad I didn’t have a camera.
The only thing between us, other than unconscious or decomposing elves, was my katana. It was lying at the edge of the hall. I reached for its magic, calling it to me. It settled over my back. Then I tugged my satchel forward on my left hip, tucking Warner’s knife back into its magical depths.
“I said stop!” Reggie snarled. “Drop your weapons.”
This time, the magic she threw my way didn’t even buffet me. I flicked the pitiful power away with my jade knife, holding up my left hand in the shape of an L at my forehead. Which probably would have been a more effective insult if I hadn’t had a blood-soaked T-shirt tied around my head.
“Reggie. I was just coming to get you.” The words came out more slurred than the sassy tone I was aiming for. “Give me a second would you? I have a feeling my fiance would like to say hello as well.”
As if he agreed, Warner kicked his door again, snapping one of the locks at the edge I’d partially sliced open. A couple of more kicks and he’d be free.
I took two measured steps back, clearing the area so the door wouldn’t hit me when Warner freed himself.
I was still unsteady on my feet, and oddly cold suddenly. Shivering but trying to hide it. That might have been a side effect of wandering around in a bra. It could also have been the blood loss. But I only needed to hold the elves off for a few more minutes …
Gemstones, Elves, and Other Insidious Magic (Dowser 9) Page 4