Faery Moon

by P. R. Frost

  As if I’d conjured him with my thoughts, he burst onto the stage. In one swift movement he retrieved a sword from a fallen enemy and stabbed a black faery in the back.

  Before he could recover his grip on the sword, he had five pressing him backward.

  “To me,” I called.

  With barely a nod of acknowledgment, he sidestepped a blow and placed himself at my back.

  “Just like old times, love,” he said, almost gleefully.

  I slashed at a goon that had sneaked under Donovan’s guard in reply. His squirt of black blood covered my hands and made my grip slippery. A little heat and tingle, but my skin didn’t burn like it would if these guys were truly demon-born and bred.

  “Can we hurry this up? I’m double-parked,” Donovan joked.

  Slash, stab. Shift my grip, parry two blades, jump back from a third.

  My shoulders ached. My thighs burned. The lingering groin injury flared back to life, feeling like a knife had ripped muscle. I kept changing my grip and the level of my blows to stave off fatigue. Fatigue that could get me killed.

  The ring on my right hand twisted about my finger with every shift. Part of me registered fear that it slid too easily and I’d lose it before I really needed it at the Goblin Rock.

  Presuming I survived that long.

  And still they kept coming at us. Armed demons are ten times more deadly than unarmed. Worse, these guys had wings to lift them beyond my reach. No way we could even the odds.

  “Tess, the magic net won’t drop!” Gollum yelled from the corridor.

  “Chant something. Light a candle.” Damn, that blue-black blade almost cut me in two. I dodged and caught the tip on my upper arm. Blood dripped down to my hand, further threatening my hold on the shaft of my blade.

  Scrap shuddered from within. He tired as much as I did.

  “I’ve tried everything I know how.”

  “If we could just cut a door in the net rather than destroy it,” Mickey said.

  An imp can go anywhere, Scrap reminded me. His eyes blinked at me from the right-hand blade.

  Imps open doors into any world. Could I break away from the fight long enough to slash through the magic?

  Another faery came under my guard.

  Donovan took him out with a swift stab to the solar plexus.

  The ring twisted again on my finger.

  I had a second imp trapped in the ring.

  “Donovan, cover for me for two seconds.” I kept twirling the Celestial Blade in my left hand, keeping at least one enemy at bay. All the while I ran my right hand up and down my leg, letting the rough fabric of my jeans turn the ring.

  In my mind I pictured a door opening in front of the dormitory, and another to the outside. The image became so real I almost missed the black faery flying down onto my head, his leathery wings absolutely silent.

  Just barely in time, I cut his hamstrings and he plopped into the middle of a phalanx of three of his buddies.

  They went down like bowling pins.

  I gulped air three times before I dove into the pig pile. Three of them died with a single blow. By the time I got to the fourth, Scrap began to dull and shorten.

  My strength flagged.

  We couldn’t keep up this fight much longer.

  “Hang in there.” Donovan’s voice came to me as if from a long distance.

  I could barely lift my blade. He stepped in front of me and dispatched the last of the fallen foes. “The dancers are out. We’ve got to make sure they get away.”

  “I’ve got to go with them. They can’t get home without me,” I ground out. I lost my grip on the blade. It clattered to the stage and lay there inert for ten long loud heartbeats. I just stared at it, knowing I needed to do something, too tired to remember what.

  The blade disappeared. Scrap crawled away to feed and rest.

  My balance teetered.

  Donovan grabbed me and braced me against his side.

  I felt like I could stand there forever, letting him prop me up.

  “I shouldn’t admit this, but I feel an overwhelming need to watch over you and protect you,” he whispered. His breath stirred my hair. “Put the ring on the other hand and we can make it official.”

  Something stirred within me. I couldn’t decide if it was pleasure or terror.

  “I owe it to Dill to take care of you, finish what he started.”

  Cold sweat broke out on my back.

  A ruffling of black side curtains saved me from having to answer.

  Without thinking, I grabbed the sword Donovan handled so lightly and leaped to the flurry of movement. One last spurt of adrenaline carried me the ten steps I needed to go.

  Gregbaum tangled in the yards of thin black cloth.

  I held the broadsword to his throat. “Talk.”

  “I . . . um . . . uf . . . eek!” The last squeal in response to a nick from the sword tip. He bled red just like any normal human.

  “How many more of your mutants await us at the Goblin Rock?” I pressed a little harder.

  His throat apple bobbed as he swallowed. “A dozen,” he squeaked.

  “Donovan. Find us a car. Fast.”

  “Take mine,” Lucia purred from directly behind me.

  I like to think I had enough presence of mind to accept her presence and not let her sudden appearance startle me.

  Actually, I was just too tired to jump.

  “What do I need to do to restore the balance in Faery?” I spat, still holding the sword at Gregbaum’s throat.

  “N . . . nothing much.”

  “That doesn’t tell me anything.”

  The drop of blood on his throat turned into a little rivulet.

  Lucia licked her lips.

  Gregbaum’s eyes grew wide in fascinated horror. His pupils fully dilated.

  Lucia came up beside me. She drooled a bit as her lips opened to reveal her fangs.

  “C . . . close the portal behind the last faery. Kill all the mutants or throw them through the portal. Make sure all of them go. The leak will stop. They’ll rebalance on their own,” Gregbaum babbled.

  “Go. Fight your battle,” Lucia urged me. “There is food and drink in the car to restore you. I even managed a bit of mold for the imp.” She half laughed, shouldering me aside so that she faced Gregbaum directly.

  “It’s not wise to accept food and drink . . .”

  “The food is safe. It carries no obligation of hospitality. Just my little part in restoring the balance of portals. I, too, need to score points with the Powers That Be.”

  I backed away, keeping the sword close to my side. No telling if I’d need it out in the Valley of Fire.

  “Where’s Sancroix?” I asked, sagging more than a little.

  The only evidence I could find that he’d ever been there was a pile of mutilated bodies. Not just dead enemies, but hacked-off limbs, severed heads, ragged slashes, and guts spilling all over the place adding their stench to the miasma of sulfur rising from the other corpses. And black blood everywhere. Great pools of it.

  I gagged and had to clamp my teeth shut to keep my bile from adding to the stench.

  Sancroix had gone far beyond defending himself or helping the mission to restore the balance. He’d succumbed to a berserker’s bloodlust.

  “Sancroix lit out as soon as the last black faery fell.” Donovan cleaned his sword of black blood on the vest of one of the dead ones. “We’ve got to go if we’re going to catch up with the bus.”

  “You aren’t going to leave me alone with her!” Gregbaum screamed. “She’ll . . . she’ll . . . tur . . .” He stopped in mid word mouth, moving but no sound coming out.

  “Do not worry about the bodies. My crew will clean up,” Lucia said. “Just remember to return the ring to me when you have finished.” She opened her mouth wide and aimed her teeth at Gregbaum’s throat.

  He just stood there, frozen in horror, totally mesmerized by Lucia’s exotic beauty and bloodthirst.

  “You can’t . . .” I
was equally horrified.

  Donovan grabbed me and dragged me away. “That is a confrontation long overdue. None of our business,” he ground out.

  “But . . . he’s human!”

  “None of our business how the lady takes her revenge for his deceit that jeopardized all the dimensions with imbalance and deadly consequences.” With one arm around my middle, he pulled me backward toward the exit and the waiting black Hummer.

  Chapter 47

  In 2000 the Aladdin Hotel became the first hotel to be closed, imploded, and reopened without a name change.

  “SHE TRULY IS A VAMPIRE,” I whispered as Donovan maneuvered the powerful car in and out of congestion on the strip. “I thought she was Damiri, just pretending to be a vampire because humans might accept her better.”

  “She is. The demon in her needs blood just like a vampire. But vampires are much more socially acceptable than demons. There is power in the legends,” he ground out, shaking his fist at a stretch limo that tried to cut him off from the freeway entrance.

  “Has she pretended to live as a vampire so long that she believes her own lies?” I delved into the picnic basket—a real old-fashioned wicker one with folding handles and a top hinged in the middle that opened at either end—and produced rare roast beef sandwiches, cans of iced cola, and rich, dark chocolate bars. Sugar, caffeine, protein, and chocolate. All I needed.

  In the very bottom was a jar of blue cheese that had gone moldy.

  Or is that moldier?

  I didn’t care if it gave Scrap gas and an upset tummy as long as it helped him recover. I left it open in the basket. He could crawl in there to recover in private. “You’ve got an hour, buddy. Make the most of it.”

  Heaven, came his reply, weak and distant.

  “As near as I can tell, she had no idea she might have demon blood in her until it took thirty years for her to age five. And she didn’t know the value of the ring until many decades after she sold it.” Donovan settled in for a long drive at fifteen miles above the speed limit. He drove competently with one hand, holding food with the other.

  “An artifact of power of that magnitude must have left some kind of psychic trail,” I mused. I thought of my lust for the ring.

  Or was that the imp inside seeking an owner who might have the power to free him?

  Got that in one, Scrap mumbled around a full mouth.

  The headlights of an approaching car made the diamond on my right hand flash and sparkle.

  “There are always rumors. Most of them false. When dormant, the ring doesn’t betray its importance to any but the most sensitive. Lucia became sensitive enough to detect it after she investigated her demon ancestry. Her family always had an eccentric aunt or uncle who lived well beyond normal years and played with magic. They thought them witches and hid them.” He downed half a cola in one gulp.

  “If she didn’t know, when did she start needing blood?”

  “Once she’d tasted blood in her vampire act, she started craving it. The demon genes sort of leaped to life. That’s one of the reasons Dill never allowed himself to indulge, even though he craved blood nutrition as much as he ached to transform.” Donovan passed a line of cars only going five miles an hour over the limit in the left lane. His tires skidded on shoulder gravel, but he righted the car quickly and competently.

  “Dill always did like his meat very rare.” I dwelled briefly on a memory, then banished it as useless. I needed information about living demons. “When did Lucia leave Europe?”

  “About forty years ago. The freewheeling hippie lifestyle in the States attracted her. She started speculating in real estate right off, in a small way. Built an empire in an amazingly short period of time. Most of her deals were cut at parties where she strewed just enough blood about to strike fear in the hearts of those with property to sell or develop. She can be up and about during the day when she has to. As long as she stays out of sunlight, she perpetuates the myth.”

  Hence the office with the painted windows and the covered patio below her bedroom. “You knew her then?”

  “Yep.”

  “How well?”

  “Not well enough for you to be jealous.” He flashed me one of his anxiety-dampening smiles.

  I did my best not to fall for it. Scrap said they were sleeping together now. I wasn’t jealous. Not really.

  “So, what exactly did Gregbaum do to Lucia to deserve . . .” I tried to banish the sight of her fangs sinking into the pudgy rolls of flesh on his neck.

  “He lied to her about the dancers. She knew they were real faeries. But Gregbaum told her they wanted to escape the imbalances in their home, not that he’d kidnapped them. He told her the magic net was to keep out Clean Up Teams from the Powers That Be. She had no idea in the beginning the spell she designed with Junior’s help was to keep them trapped in the building and enslaved. He lied to her about the origins of his goons, too.”

  “Which is?”

  “Mutations caused by the imbalance when WindScribe killed the king of Faery and nearly set off a civil war in a dimension that had never known violence. Trickery, yes, but not the kind of rage and need to kill we found in those black-and-red monsters. Contrary to a lot of fiction and propaganda, vampires, demons, and witches do not seek violence for its own sake. But they have to get blood to survive somehow. Dill was the only Kajiri I’ve ever met who abstained. It nearly killed him at times.”

  He swallowed deeply, blinked his eyes rapidly, and reached for another cola to mask his emotions.

  “Now that I think about it, Dill spiked a fever three times during the three months we were married. He ached all over and couldn’t eat anything. I remember worrying about him, applying cold compresses, making chicken soup. I don’t remember the timing to know if it happened on the night of the waxing quarter moon. But I’d have figured out a pattern eventually. He’d have had to tell me the truth.”

  “Reluctantly. He’d have put it off for a long time by arranging to be out collecting rock samples alone on those nights.”

  He swallowed and cleared his throat. “Junior kept leading more and more good faeries through the toxic waste dump their primary river became. They came out the other side, twisted, angry, more than willing to follow him as long as Gregbaum let them kill.”

  “Lucia has a point. Any time there is an imbalance, or a lot of dead bodies piling up, the threat of exposure increases. Witch hunts, demon hunts, vampire hunts, all become bigger threats,” I mused. Europe in the seventeenth century. Salem witch trials. Jewish pogroms and the Holocaust.

  Anyone “different” became fair game for execution.

  In a way, that strengthened the need for Donovan’s secluded resort that catered to sorcerers, demons, and vampires, where they could indulge their needs without fear of exposure.

  I didn’t like it, but I understood it, a little.

  “I’m helping you tonight because Lady Lucia’s long-term goals suit me better than Gregbaum’s quick money grab,” Donovan said reaching for another cola from the basket.

  “Can we still be friends? We seem to fall into the same . . . um . . . social circles and require each other’s help. And I’m not jealous of Lucia, or WindScribe, or any of your other women.” Having been raised by a Damiri—who are incredibly fertile—I don’t think Donovan was capable of fidelity.

  And I believe in monogamy once a commitment has been made.

  Oh, God. Gollum and Julia! I think I just made my decision.

  Anyway I looked at it, my relationship with Gollum was an unbalanced trio. Was I the third wheel? Or was Julia?

  No way to naturally, or gracefully cut it down to two people.

  One of us had to step away.

  “We’ll see. I take it Van der Hoyden-Smythe hasn’t talked to you yet about that phone call.”

  I didn’t like the feral satisfaction in the way he bared his teeth.

  “Yes.”

  “Marry me, Tess. You and I are a better fit than you and him. I’ll find a way to live wi
th your imp, though I know you love him more than any man.”

  “I’ll think about it.” I twisted the ring again, wondering. Every time I tried to imagine myself committed to Donovan, I hit a blank wall that morphed into Gollum.

  Shit!

  “Is that our turnoff coming up?” Donovan wasn’t the only one who knew how to change the subject without answering questions. I really didn’t want to have to explain the sudden churning in my gut that had less to do with the three sandwiches and five cans of carbonated beverages than it did with the memory of all the color draining from Gollum’s face when he recognized the caller ID on his phone.

  We caught up with the van carrying the dancers as it careened around a sharp bend in the access road. Gollum had to be driving. Our headlights picked out few details.

  The line of hoodoos appeared to be dancing families, frozen mid-step, hands stretching to join with another and failing. The one I’d put together to commemorate my first kiss with Gollum, was lost in the myriad of other ghostly forms.

  Lost like our love.

  As we crested the hill guarding the valley entrance the moon sent a shimmer of light along the eastern horizon. Not a lot of time left.

  “Damnation!” Donovan spat as he pounded the steering wheel. “The gate’s down.”

  “When has a little thing like a gate ever stopped you?” I dashed out of the car to raise the barrier, only to find it padlocked in place.

  “A feeble attempt to cut down on vandalism, like we reported this morning,” Gollum grumbled, coming up beside me. “This is a state park.”

  I wanted him to slip an arm about my waist, to reassure me that we’d find a way out of our dilemma.

  He kept his hands to himself.

  “It’s at least a mile to Goblin Rock. Can we hike it before the moon lights the portal?” I asked surveying the landscape, what little of it I could see in the glow of the headlights.

  “I think my friends are too far gone to walk that far,” Mickey mused.

  “Donovan, sword!” I commanded.

  He emerged from the Hummer with the blue-black blade one of us had taken off the mutants. “Let me. I’ve got more strength.” Before he’d finished speaking, he raised the sword and severed the hasp on the gate with one mighty blow. “Might have been easier to drive around, but that was more fun. And satisfying.”