by Alicia Wolfe
Chapter 10
“So what’s Voris Cemetery?” I said, once we were back in Lady Kay and flying through the steel canyons of the city.
Davril stared straight ahead. “A cemetery for witches and wizards.”
Something cold traced fingers up my spine. “Why would Marko expect to go there?” I thought about it a moment, then answered my own question. “Because his employers were going to send him there.”
“Exactly. Whoever’s behind this is sending people to a secret, supposedly haunted graveyard of magic-users.”
“Tonight.”
His jaw bunched again. He let a long beat go by. “We know there’s a mole at the palace. We can’t afford to return there to give a report. We have to go straight to the cemetery and stake it out.”
“You and me…on a stakeout?”
“In a haunted cemetery with mysterious and magical villains en route, yes.”
I hid a grin. “Sounds like a party.”
“You have a strange definition of party, Jade McClaren.”
“Maybe I do.” I glanced sideways at him. I couldn’t help but remember him in action, taking down two trolls in two days—the way he’d leapt at the monsters, sword swinging, eyes like lasers, every muscle bunched…
“What is it?” he said.
“Nothing.” I cleared my throat. “So why is there a cemetery for wizards and witches, and why the hell are the bad guys going there?”
“To the second question, I have no idea. But, as to the first, magic users know their body parts and various belongings, like magic rings, totems, and so forth, will be highly sought after by the…criminal element interested in magical artifacts and ingredients for spells.” He jerked his gaze to me, then snapped it forward again.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“You probably don’t.” He swerved (too sharply) to the right, then gunned the gas, shooting us forward, slamming me against the seat.
“Hey!” I said.
He eased off. “Sorry. I forget you’re still half human.”
“Then remember that the other half of me is a dragon.”
A dark look passed across his face so briefly I almost thought I’d imagined it. “I will,” he said, and his hands gripped the wheel a bit too tightly. What the hell? Was he some sort of dragon-hater? I’d have to feel him out on this issue when he was calmer.
“Anyway, you were saying?” I said.
“Well, the wizards and witches don’t want criminals tampering with their graves, so they put their graveyards in secret destinations and place a great number of wards, haunts, and magical guardians on them. I’m surprised your sister Ruby didn’t tell you about it.”
“I don’t think she knew. Knows,” I made myself add. “She pretty much had to pick up the whole witch thing on her own.” I hesitated. “Haunted, you say?”
“That’s right. It will be dangerous, Jade. Are you sure you wish to come? I’ll give you this last chance to back out.”
What were my options, though? To go back to the jail cell and face punishment? “Screw that. Besides, I can’t let you go in alone, especially not if we can’t trust the other knights in the palace.”
“I doubt it was another knight who informed our enemies that we wished to interview Maria, but…” He sighed. “I admit, I can’t discount the possibility, either.”
“That sucks.”
He made several more twists and turns, and my gut tumbled with each one. Gradually, we moved into a darker and more decrepit area. Greasy smoke belched out of grime-encrusted chimneys, and strange things with rust-colored wings flapped down the alleys. We were far from the graceful skyscrapers of downtown now, and the denizens of the area went about their business furtively and, I was sure, fully armed. In other words, I felt right at home.
Well, almost. This place looked even scarier than Gypsy Land.
“We’re in the Shadows, aren’t we?” I crossed my arms over my chest as if that would protect me.
“That’s right.”
“Great.” The Shadows were where the most outlaw magic-users and buyers went to operate. There were said to be homunculi factories and dark-side witch schools, among other sordid things. Not the place for a first date. Which this was emphatically not.
Davril brought Lady Kay low and parked her along the street.
“You’re not afraid of her getting tagged or ripped off?” I said.
One side of Davril’s mouth curled up. “I’d like to see them try.”
His humor—so rare!—was infectious, and I laughed. “Me, too.”
We climbed out, and I nearly gagged at the sour smell wafting up from a nearby sewer grate.
“What died in there?” I said. “Never mind. I probably don’t want to know.”
“Probably not.”
The sun shone brightly overhead, seeming as if it came from another plane of existence altogether. There was certainly nothing bright or shiny down in the Shadows. It seemed cloaked in a perpetual gloom. It also seemed colder than it was outside of the Shadows, and I couldn’t resist a shudder.
My belly growled suddenly, and a flash of embarrassment made me cringe as Davril looked over.
“It’s about lunchtime,” I said. “And we do have the rest of the day. The bad guys aren’t supposed to show up for hours. Hell, we have time for lunch, then a movie, then dinner, too.”
Davril’s face was hard. “I’m in charge here, Jade. I set the schedule.” Then he relented. “That said, I understand it is mealtime for you mortals.”
“What, Fae don’t have to eat? Bullshit. I saw you scarfing it down last night.”
“I was not…scarfing it down. I was eating properly. You were scarfing it down. You acted like a wild goblin.”
“Well, sorry, I didn’t know I was being scrutinized.” Suddenly, a picture floated into my brain, of me seated at the dinner table in the Queen’s dining hall, my face lathered with bits of food as I chomped down on succulent quail I had gripped in my bare, greasy hands. More grease and chunks of quail dripped down my dress front. I wasn’t that bad, I told myself. But I couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that I had been from Davril’s point of view.
Something caught my eye, and I pointed.
“A pizza place?” Davril asked doubtfully.
I grinned. “You’ll love it. Pizza’s my favorite.”
I tugged him inside, where it was much warmer, and the smell of grease and pizza sauce instantly made my mouth water. I ordered a slice of the Meatlover’s Special, while Davril ordered a salad. He paid. I hadn’t even known the place sold salads, but I wasn’t surprised when it came served beneath a gallon of creamy ranch sauce. Davril poked at it skeptically as we sat down at the window counter right before the neon sign which read Pizza by the S ice. The L was missing.
“If you don’t like your ranch, I’ll help,” I said, and dunked my slice into his salad. It came away with a dollop of ranch on the tip. I shoved it into my mouth and munched on it greedily. “Mmm.”
He was watching me eat, and I shifted in my seat.
“What?” I mumbled around my next bite.
He blinked. “Nothing.”
He returned his attention to his salad. Experimentally, he prodded it with his fork, then took a bite, careful to shake off the ranch. “I’ve had better,” he said with obvious diplomacy after he’d swallowed. The very obviousness of his diplomacy made it somewhat less diplomatic.
“Well, sor-ry,” I said. “If I’d known you wanted salad, I would have suggested a salad place.”
“Would it have less of this…dressing there?”
“Probably. You could put as much or as little of it on your salad as you’d like, and they’d have various kinds of dressing, too. Not all of it would be ranch.”
“Ranch?”
“Yeah. That white stuff. I love grabbing a salad and sandwich at salad restaurants. Maybe we can find one of those for dinner.”
“We are not going out to dinner, too.”
>
“I wouldn’t call this going out,” I said. “I mean, it’s just a pizza place, although it’s pretty damned good. Going out is like with tablecloths and stuff.”
“Well, we’re not doing it.”
“Why not?” I said around another mouthful. God, the pizza was good. I was coming back here for lunch tomorrow. I might have to move in.
“Because we need to arrive at the cemetery early and survey it,” he said, careful to keep his voice low, not that the guy behind the counter, currently taking another order, was going to listen in on us. “We need to grow familiar with it before our enemies arrive, so we know the lay of the land. And any potential traps, magical or otherwise.”
“Do we have to?” I whined, then flashed a smile I was sure was wall-to-wall cheese and half-eaten pepperoni. “Just kidding. I just wanted to see your reaction.”
“Why do you insist on needling me?”
“You’re so dour; one of us has to try to keep our spirits up. It’s funny, because Ruby is always telling me how dour and broody I am. But then I get around you, and you make me look like a bunny on crack.” That image made me giggle, and I put a hand over my mouth in case I started spraying pizza chunks.
Instead of being amused, Davril looked away. The expression on his face was sad, somehow, but I sensed it wasn’t a sadness that had anything to do with me. It was always there. It always had been there, ever since I’d first met him. I just hadn’t noticed it, or I’d attributed the expression to other causes. But it was true, I instinctively knew. Some tragedy had impacted Davril heavily in his past, and he wore its echoes with him always.
There was much more to him than I knew. Suddenly, I wanted to know all about him. Just who was he? A badass Fae Knight, check. A handsome, troll-slaying hero, check. A broody, self-righteous prick, check. But there was more. Much more.
I crammed the last bite of pizza into my mouth. “Well, if we’re not going out for dinner, I’m getting seconds,” I garbled around the bite.
Davril sighed.
Ten minutes later, we were back on the streets. We meandered down a couple of blocks, and I tried to hide my belches. That pizza had been good, but it was kicking back on me. The sunlight on my skin, however muted by the general weirdness of the Shadows, felt warm, unseasonably so, and I was basking in it. I had begun to think Davril didn’t know where we were going, which would have actually been refreshing—it would have shown him to have some faults—but then he turned down an alley and seemed to expect me to follow. Warily, I did.
As the alley’s shadow engulfed me, the temperature plunged twenty degrees, and I shivered, no longer warm at all.
“What the hell?” I said.
“We’re nearing a magical barrier of a very specific kind,” he said. “You may experience some discomfort.”
“Good to know. You should consider being an airline hostess if that whole Fae Knight shtick goes south.”
I had come abreast him, just in time to see his grimly amused expression.
“Good to know,” he said, imitating my tone. Again, I was strangely glad to see his sense of humor.
We pressed deeper into the shadow, coming to a cross-alley. The gloom thickened around us. We were now surrounded by some sort of weird smoke that sparked and hummed with magical energy. Davril waved a hand, and the sparks glowed more fiercely.
Grabbing my hand, he guided me deeper into the cloud. I coughed and waved it out of my face, then slapped my hair as one of the sparks buzzed through it, thinking for a mad moment that it would catch my hair on fire. Thankfully, it didn’t. At last the smoke thinned, then dissipated altogether, and Davril and I found ourselves standing before the immense Gothic gate of what appeared to be a vast cemetery stretching away into the gloom. The smoke had vanished, but an acrid fog rolled over the low hills the cemetery had been built on.
At seeing the hills and the size of it all, I said, “Where are we? Is this another portal, like with Maria’s oasis?”
“Not exactly. This is more like a bubble dimension.”
“Those old witches and wizards went through a lot of trouble not to be disturbed.”
“That they did. They didn’t want random people stumbling across their places of rest and spreading word of its location. They knew that if it happened, their bodies and tombs would receive no rest. Grave robbers have no respect.” Again, he shot me an inscrutable look.
I held up my hands, palms out. “Hey, I never robbed any graves.” Because I never knew about places like this! The tombs in here were probably worth a goldmine. Hell, two or three goldmines. It was all I could do not to rub my hands together greedily. But as soon as this business with Davril and the Fae Queen was done and Ruby was safe, well…
He seemed to read my expression. “Don’t even think about it.”
I rolled my eyes. “Let’s get on with this, shall we? I sacrificed dinner for this.”
“I would not be so flip if I were you. We’re after the ones who killed your friend and, presumably, abducted your sister for reasons unknown.”
I could have corrected him—I was quite sure Skull-Face had nothing to do with Troll-Maker—but I bit my tongue. Besides, the mention of Jason sobered me. Davril was right. If I wanted to avenge Jason and steal back the antler, I needed to put my game face on. This wasn’t a date. This was possibly the post important assignment I’d ever taken on, and Ruby’s life hung in the balance.
I straightened my spine and gave him a salute. “Shall we go in, then?” I gestured at the grand, rather spooky gateway. Think Halloween on steroids. This world might exist in a bubble dimension, but it had stars and a sky. Currently a yellow moon glared down at us. With a start, I realized it was a different time here than it was outside. Hell, for all I knew, this bubble of reality didn’t have a sun. It might be night here permanently.
Davril shook his head. “The gateway will be warded very strongly.” He pointed to the wall of high, sharpened iron stakes that went all the way around the graveyard, disappearing into the mist to either side. “We go over the hard way.”
I wanted to roll my eyes again, but my game face wouldn’t allow it. “Then let’s do it,” I said, starting toward the wall. He laid a hand on my shoulder.
“Wait.”
I looked back at him. “What?”
He stepped forward and held out his palm, closing his eyes as he did, and I realized he was sensing, or at least trying to sense, any magical traps ahead. At last he flicked his fingers in a curt gesture, and the air sort of shimmered around the wall directly ahead.
“There,” he said. “I’ve created a window, but we must be quick.”
As if to illustrate his point, he leapt onto the wall, grabbing two of the iron poles, and began pulling himself upward. I admired the play of his muscles under his shirt and pants for a moment (just a moment) then followed him up. He made it look easy, but my own muscles had been honed by years of catburlgaring, and I had shifter strength to draw on, too. He didn’t get too far ahead of me. We eased over the sharp tips of the posts, then descended quickly down the other side and dropped to the ground.
Not speaking, he moved off, threading his way between two mausoleums, and I followed. An eerie stillness lay over everything. I understood why he didn’t talk. In total silence, we navigated our way between tombs and mausoleums, moving deeper into the cemetery—no, he was circling its perimeter. I was about to ask why when he did move deeper in…and began a circuit of this layer, too.
He’s scoping out the joint. Moving in ever-narrowing circles. It was clever, I had to give him that. I wanted to tell him he would have made a good burglar, but we were still being quiet. Also, I didn’t think he would be pleased at the idea.
As we went, the mist enfolded us. At times, I lost sight of Davril even though he was just a few feet ahead. Seeing this, he started to move slower, and I tried to move in tandem with him. Since we were bunched in tight in the narrow lanes between mausoleums, occasionally our shoulders or sides would brush against each oth
er. He was very warm.
He stopped suddenly and crouched low, and I did the same.
“What is it?” I whispered.
He pointed. I narrowed my eyes to see some wispy objects, only half solid—if that—gliding through a break in the fog ahead. The apparitions sailed right through the stone wall of a vine-encrusted tomb as if it had been made of air and vanished from sight.
“Ghosts,” Davril said, keeping his voice low.
The fine hairs rose along the nape of my neck. “Ghosts? You mean, of the dead wizards and witches?”
“Maybe. Or slaves or vassals of theirs.”
“Slaves?”
“Some wizards had slaves, yes, and some of those slaves were sacrificed when their masters died so their spirits could serve as guardians for their tombs. This could be some of them. Let’s go back another way.”
I nodded.
We retreated, then cut down a narrow channel. Overhead, the moon passed behind thick black clouds. Gargoyles leered down at us from the corners of mausoleums, and obscene statues loomed from grim, lichen-infested courtyards. This place was seriously creepy. It occurred to me that, since it was eternal night here (at least as far as I could tell) it would be difficult to determine when nightfall in the real world was. I pulled out my phone, but of course there was no signal. The Twilight Zone was for landlines only.
I started to open my mouth to mention this, but just then a great shadow eclipsed the moon. A strange and foul smell wafted to us.
I glanced up just in time to see a many-legged horror drop right down on us.
Chapter 11
“Watch out!” I cried, trying to shove Davril out of the way. Instead of going, though, he ripped out his sword. It glowed white in the dimness of the nightmarish alley.
The horror fell on him.
Giant and many-legged, it resembled something like an enormous spider, but with too many legs and too many red, multi-faceted eyes.
Davril slashed at it, gashing its abdomen, and then the weight of it drove him to the ground. I had leapt to the side, but I picked myself up and looked for a way to help him. God, but I wished I had a weapon! Well, I did have a knife, but it was a puny thing to use against this bastard.