by Jayne Faith
There was a soft sound of rustling behind me, and Gretchen yelped. I whirled around, drawing Mort and sending magic into the blade. She’d pulled her own power, and it seemed to crackle in the air.
“Something grazed my arm,” she said, her voice high and tight.
There was nothing there. Jasper moved off the path, looking into the woods off to the side. I happened to tip my gaze up, and on a branch about five feet overhead, a pair of solid green eyes with no pupils or whites met mine.
“Hello, there,” I called softly to the enchanting little creature.
She hugged the branch with her arms and legs, swinging upside-down and peering at us. There was a deep scar along one of her arms. It looked like a scratch in the thin bark of a very young tree.
“What is it?” Gretchen whispered.
I sheathed Mort. “A dryad. They’re creatures of Faerie, but they’re not like us. They’re part plant. Release your magic so you don’t scare her.”
Gretchen did as I asked but remained tense by my side.
“We mean no harm,” Jasper said, his voice pitched much higher than usual. “We’re looking for Melusine.”
The dryad’s green eyes went large and round at the Old One’s name. She swung herself back up to the branch and scuttled higher in the tree until she was out of sight.
“That was helpful,” I muttered.
Gretchen was running her hands up and down her upper arms as if she had a sudden chill. “Mind if I stay in the middle?” she asked. She had the decency to look a little embarrassed by her skittishness.
I gestured for her to walk in front of me, and I took one last look up in the tree. Not seeing any sign of the little woodland Fae, I fell into step behind Gretchen.
“Who is this Melusine, anyway?” Gretchen asked.
“She’s a Fae witch, and she’s been around longer than these trees,” I said.
“Why are you seeking her?”
“We need her to verify someone’s lineage.”
Gretchen shook her head. “Isn’t there an easier way?”
Jasper glanced over his shoulder, meeting my eyes for a brief second. “No, not in Faerie.”
We walked in silence for a minute, and I swore the forest grew even darker. It suddenly occurred to me that we might not finish our quest in daylight. There was nothing particularly foreboding about the woods, but I didn’t relish the idea of being out here all night.
“What brought you to the Mercenary Guild?” I asked Gretchen, hoping to keep her distracted from the fact that we were probably going to be tramping through the forest for a while. “Lots of other things a mid-level witch could be doing.”
“When I was a girl, I dreamed of fighting great battles,” she said, her tone bemused. “I suppose when I got older the Mercenary Guild was the closest thing I could find to that.”
It was an interesting thing for a human with magical aptitude to say. “Are you trained with weapons?” I asked.
“Not really,” she said. “It was the influence of my godmother when I was a child. She’s kind of a legend back in my world.”
“What’s her name?” Jasper asked idly.
“Ella Grey.”
My mouth fell open in surprise, and my shoes scuffed to a halt. “Your godmother is Ella Grey?” the words came out much louder than I’d intended.
Gretchen stopped and turned, her mouth quirking in a smile. “You’ve heard of her?”
“Trust me, Ella Grey is a legend on both sides of the hedge.”
Ella Grey was the human who’d prevented the Cataclysm from becoming the annihilation of the entire world of magic. We hadn’t escaped unharmed, and there’d been a period of chaos afterward that still echoed through Faerie and the Earthly realm alike. But if not for Ella Grey, it would have been so much worse.
If not for the Cataclysm, I probably wouldn’t exist. New Gargoyles certainly wouldn’t exist.
I glanced ahead at Gretchen with new respect.
“She’s still around,” Gretchen said. “But I don’t see her much. She likes her solitude. She usually spends the holidays with us. Me, my parents, and my siblings, that is.”
“What about Loki?” Jasper asked.
“Her hellhound-labradoodle is still around, too,” Gretchen said.
We continued on for a while, and after a steep climb up to a ridge, we stopped for a moment to catch our breath.
Gretchen paced a little and then heaved an impatient sigh. “This is obviously going to take a while,” she said. “We need to switch over to my job. I’m on a deadline, but you might need a week to find this Melusine, for all you seem to know about her.”
“We’ll do your thing soon,” I said, not willing to offer anything specific. I was getting a little antsy, though. It was really going to cost me if I failed this job.
Gretchen looked ready to press me, but Jasper cut her off by putting two fingers to his lips and blowing to make an ear-splitting, two-toned call.
A moment later, a raven swooped down to his shoulder and made soft bird sounds in his ear. He gave a little nod, and the bird took flight.
“Gretchen’s right. The raven says there’s a doorway past this ridge,” he said. “If you want, you can take it into the Duergar realm. I don’t know the sigils for this doorway, so you won’t be able to return to it, but you can go to the one we used to enter this kingdom. I’ll send one of the Great Ravens to get you and bring you to where I am.”
Gretchen frowned at him. “Wait, you’re not coming with us into the Duergar place?”
He shook his head. “One of us needs to keep on the path to Melusine. Petra is the one who’s bound to help you with your assignment, so that leaves me to continue on.”
“Just seems like it would help if we had a prince with us,” she said, obviously apprehensive.
“Yeah, but he’s not part of the contract,” I said wryly.
She shot me a glare.
“I’ll go as far as the doorway,” Jasper said. “I need to angle off in that general direction, anyway.”
We all turned the way he indicated, which was off the trail we’d been following. We had to weave around trees to keep our direction true, but there wasn’t much underbrush to get in our way.
“Did the raven happen to say how far to Melusine, by chance?” I asked, trying to keep a neutral tone. I didn’t want to sound like a whiner, but Melusine hunting was turning out to be a lot more tedious than I’d hoped. “Or maybe they could scout ahead more, or . . . something?”
Jasper’s eyes sparked with amusement at my impatience. It was hard not to stare at them. Blue rings demarcated his outer irises, the blue bleeding into gold that transitioned into grass-green around the pupil. Even back in the dim light of the ravine, the colors had been so clearly visible, glowing as if lit from within.
“It doesn’t work that way,” he said. “The exact location of Melusine’s hideout changes. We’ll keep getting closer with the help of the ravens, but we won’t actually reach it unless she wants us to.”
“Awesome,” I grumbled. “So, we could spend days in this forest inching closer and closer but may never catch up with her.”
“That’s about right,” Jasper said. He seemed unconcerned, but I couldn’t put any stock in it because he was naturally mild-mannered.
“How do you get Melusine to agree to see you?” Gretchen asked.
Jasper quirked one brow. “Hope she’s in a good mood and likes the look of us.”
Gretchen gave a little laugh, a light, lilting sound that seemed at odds with her sometimes dour mood.
“Seriously, it’s a good question,” I said. “What can we do to up our odds?”
“I wish I knew,” he said.
This entire venture was a good illustration of why Faerie drove me batshit crazy at times. Things were often so changeable, unclear, and reliant on the whims of moody old Fae.
All of a sudden, there was a flurry of ravens above and the air filled with the sound of their calls. Even I could tell they
were trying to warn us of something. Before I could ask Jasper, something sharp jabbed into the back of my hand. I flicked at it, thinking it was a bug trying to take a bite, but instead came away with a miniature barbed arrow in my fingers. A drop of blood leaked from where it had pierced my skin.
“Ow!” Gretchen hollered, pulling arrows from her shoulder and thigh. “What the hell?”
“Use your magic to form a shield,” I barked at her.
I drew my own magic and sent it out over my skin, and a moment later I was covered by thin plates of stone armor. Calling on his own stone blood, Jasper had done the same.
Little arrows stuck in my clothes but stopped at my armor.
“Sprites,” Jasper said grimly. “Head toward the doorway!”
“What the hell are sprites doing here?” I yelled as I followed his advice. Gretchen was right on my heels. “This isn’t sprite habitat!”
“Probably Melusine,” he said.
If she was sending creatures to attack us, it didn’t bode well for our chances at an audience with her.
Unseen creatures with their nasty little bows sent a hail of needle-like arrows at us, seemingly from every angle. Sprites were counterparts to dryads, except part-bird instead of part-plant. They lived in the English Faerie territories, often near the coast where the winds were constant. They were crack shots with bows and arrows, and they were going to take us down by way of a thousand tiny pricks if we didn’t find cover. My armor protected me from neck to wrists and ankles, but my head was exposed except for a few decorative tendrils of armor over my face, and the sprites were trying to turn my scalp into a pincushion.
I winced every time an arrow hit me in the head, my eyes tensed in a squint as I ran. If one of them hit my eyeball, I’d really be screwed.
Up ahead I spotted a tree shorter than the rest, with a bifurcation in its trunk that formed a natural arch. It had to be the doorway. Arches were always a dead giveaway.
I pointed at it. “That’s where we’re going,” I called to Gretchen.
She’d stopped yipping since she’d formed a shield of magic to protect herself. It was barely visible to me as I glanced at her, appearing as a rainbow soap bubble that moved with her. As we ran, she broadened the shield to surround me and Jasper, too.
Thank Oberon, it was such sweet relief.
We reached the tree and stopped, all of us breathing hard.
“We can’t just leave you here unprotected,” I said to Jasper. “Those little shits will toothpick you to death.”
“I can handle it,” he said. “The two of you should go. Be back at the doorway in the stone circle two hours from now. I don’t want to keep Melusine waiting if I happen to find her and she wants to receive us.”
I reached into one of my scabbard pockets and pulled out the pouch containing the glass vial of blood. I held it out to Jasper.
“On the off chance she does want to see you and I’m not back, this is Nicole’s blood,” I said.
He blinked at the pouch, and then his eyes met mine. “But you need to be there to witness her proclamation of lineage.”
“It’s okay. I trust you,” I said.
His hand slowly closed around the pouch, his fingers touching the back of my hand.
His gaze seemed to intensify, and for some stupid reason, my eyes flicked down to his lips. The lower one was slightly fuller than the upper, and he had a perfectly formed cupid’s bow. I’d have bet he was a phenomenal kisser.
I cleared my throat and tore my eyes away from his mouth.
“I’ll be back,” I said and then turned to Gretchen. “Hold onto me while we step into the doorway.”
She held the shield intact, giving Jasper a few more seconds of protection, while I drew the sigils and whispered the words that would take us into the Duergar kingdom. I only knew the sigils for three doorways there, and two of them were much too close to the palace and King Periclase. The one I chose was located in a very old pub, the Aberdeen Inn, owned by a Ghillie Dubh named Morven. He was a Fae almost as old as the Old Ones, and a rare solitary one, independent of any court. I’d gone to him a handful of times when I really needed information. He was a man who knew things, but he always demanded a price, and it wasn’t a price everyone could pay.
Gretchen had moved even with me, with her hand resting on my upper arm, ready to step through the doorway. She dropped her shield. Just as the netherwhere beckoned with its chilly fingers, something slammed into us from the back with such violent force I flew clear off my feet, toppling forward at an awkward angle.
Gretchen grappled at my arm, jerking it forward into the doorway and nearly out of the socket, but then she pitched into the arch. At the same time, my forehead conked against the edge of the arch with a sickening crack. The last thing I sensed was Gretchen’s hand breaking contact with my arm. She’d gone through the doorway without me.
Chapter 7
WHEN I AWOKE, I was lying down, and Jasper’s remarkable eyes filled my field of vision. His face was pinched with worry.
I jerked up to sitting, nearly crashing my forehead into his nose. My pulse jumped and then sped.
I blinked rapidly, looking around what looked like a tiny room with walls of woven branches. “Where’s Gretchen?”
“She went through the doorway,” Jasper said. “I tossed you over my shoulder and tried to go in after her, but it wouldn’t accept us.”
I reached up to touch the middle of my forehead and gritted my teeth when my fingers brushed a fresh goose egg.
“Why wouldn’t it let us through? It doesn’t matter. We have to go after her,” I said. “We’ve got to find another doorway. She’s a human. She can’t wander around in Faerie alone.”
I shifted over to my hip, and that was when I saw the dryad. By the scar on her arm, it was the same one we’d scared earlier.
My gaze swung over to Jasper. “What happened to the sprites?”
“The dryads drove them off.”
I looked over at the dryad again, my brows raised. “You did that?”
She was tucked into a corner of the room, knees pulled up against her chest and her solid-green eyes wide. She nodded.
“That was very brave,” I said.
“They are one with the trees, whereas the sprites were invaders,” Jasper said.
I crouched, balancing on my toes. The roof of the little room was too low for me to stand.
My head was pounding nauseatingly. “We need to go.” I started duck-walking over to the rough-woven burlap flap.
“We do,” Jasper agreed. He didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry, though.
I pushed the flap aside and bit back a squeak. We were about thirty feet up, well into the tree canopy. The little room was a sort of treehouse. Or maybe it was the actual house of the dryad.
It was going to take us a half hour to get down.
“How the hell did you manage to get me all the way up here?” I asked. A sprite attack here would be inconvenient. The woods seemed peaceful, now, though. I was poised to lower myself down to a branch just below.
“A Great Raven dropped us on top of the canopy, and then I climbed down with you,” he said. I looked up, and his lips quirked in a small grin. “Wrong way. We need to get to the top.” He pointed up.
It was a little easier going than I’d expected. Before long, we breached the canopy. We clung to the thin upper branches as Jasper took out a little whistle and blew into it. It seemed to send a ripple outward, and a moment later a couple of huge, dark birds appeared on the horizon.
Jasper’s gaze was glued to their approach.
“They can’t land up here,” he said. “They’re going to grab us in their talons. Just keep still, and you probably won’t get dropped.”
I looked at him dubiously. “Probably?”
“Well, they’ve never dropped me, but there are no guarantees,” he said mildly. “You’ll be taken back to the circle of stones so you can go after Gretchen, and I’ll continue on after Melusine. Two hours from
now, I’ll send a bird to pick you up, and you’ll join me wherever I am. Hold your arms out straight from your sides.”
I didn’t have time to reply, as a bird with an almost impossibly huge wingspan swooped down. I stuck my arms out, my legs tensing to keep me on my branch. The beating of the Great Raven’s wings stirred up leaves like a small tornado, and powerful talons wrapped around my upper arms and shoulders and squeezed.
I dangled from the bird’s grasp and tried to hold still, not daring to turn my head to look back at Jasper. Last time I’d hitched a ride on a Great Raven, I’d been on the bird’s back. This felt markedly more precarious, and in a matter of seconds, I determined that it wasn’t my preference to dangle in the air.
When the bird dropped me near the stone ring, I landed in a crouch and let out a relieved breath at touching solid ground again. Not even waiting for the Great Raven to take flight, I sprinted to the doorway, traced the sigils, and sprang through.
I emerged back into the world in a corner of the Aberdeen Inn not far from the bar in an area roped off to keep patrons from standing too close to the doorway. I stepped around the barrier and scanned for Gretchen.
When I spotted her sitting on a stool at the bar with a mug of ale near one hand, I nearly went limp with relief. But then she turned, and I caught the glassy look in her eyes. My heart dropped a few inches in my chest.
I strode forward and grabbed her arm just as she picked up her glass. A bit of beer foam sloshed onto the ancient wood bar top.
“Petra, you made it,” she said and gave a little lilting laugh.
I glared across the bar at Morven, the Ghillie Dubh who owned the place. He looked like Santa Claus, with his ruddy cheeks and white beard down to his chest, if Saint Nick were a part-time body-builder. Then I swung my glare to Gretchen.
“You let him take your power,” I said accusingly to her.
A part of me knew it wasn’t really fair. There was no way she could have known to be careful with Morven, and he had a way of making offers that were hard to resist. Most Fae knew how to steer clear of him, except in the cases where his services were needed, but a human in Faerie for the first time was completely vulnerable.