Traveler

by Melanie Jackson

  Io reached out with an extended finger and tapped the nose less than gently, wondering even as she did it if she had lost her mind. Trolls were known to be sensitive about the size of their noses.

  Obligingly, the giant nose went blue from tip to brow bone, a lovely shade of ultramarine that nearly matched her eyes.

  Glashtin grunted, and the other troll sucked in his foul breath and muttered something beneath it before he began to chuckle.

  Toc pulled back and hurried over to the funhouse mirror mounted on the red-flocked wallpaper on the left wall.

  “It’s beautiful,” he breathed, admiring himself.

  “Can I have one too?” the other troll asked eagerly, changing his mind about the fashion when his friend decided he liked the color. Two added for good measure, “And some blue ears?”

  “Sure,” Io said, standing up. She moved slowly so that Glashtin would have time if he wanted to object to having his bouncers turned into clowns.

  The goblin watched her, but he did nothing to interfere as she touched the other troll’s nose and then each ear. She was careful to make them a little less vivid than Toc’s. A human’s magic would begin to wane with so much rapid use.

  Immediately, both trolls were busy looking at themselves in the mirror, shoving one another out of the way and bickering about which one had the handsomer nose.

  “Can you make my teeth blue?” Toc asked, baring rows of his jagged fangs.

  “No. Sorry,” Io said hurriedly. “It only works on skin.”

  “Too bad.”

  Seeing the trolls entertained, Io felt safe turning her back on them and facing Glashtin. She thought about chiding him for being a bad host and failing to offer her a drink, then decided not to push her luck.

  A more comprehensive glance at the room’s other wall showed her something alarming. There were a series of photos matted and mounted in baroque frames, all of them showing Glashtin with famous businessmen. Io made note of the faces. If these men were not modified goblins, then they were certainly goblin sympathizers. Unfortunately, there were no photos that might be Horroban.

  Unless he had been altered recently and replaced one of these humans.

  “So, little not-fey girl, why are you in Goblin Town?” The question was neutral, but Io suspected that the goblin was still suspicious of her. She had to admit that she had never heard of anyone receiving this sort of magical gift when entering the city. Still, that was the thing about supernatural power: it didn’t always make sense or obey rules of expectation.

  “I’m here to see Hille Bingels,” Io said promptly, seating herself on the goblin’s desk. It made her feel a little ill, but she forced herself to be flirtatious and crossed her legs to expose a lot of skin. “I was hoping to get her autograph.”

  “Yeah?” Glashtin’s eyes seemed glued to the crescent moon on her inner thigh. “You got your souvenir book in your panties?”

  “No.” Io giggled again. “I thought maybe she would like to sign me.”

  “I see.” Glashtin leaned back in his chair and began to relax. She gave him high marks for not touching when he clearly wanted to. Goblins rarely had that kind of discipline. “She might like to at that. But I think maybe I should warn you that Hille has—uh—other tastes. Sweet little girls sometimes get bitten when Hille starts to play.”

  “I’m counting on it,” Io said, completely truthfully. She touched her thigh deliberately. “I’ve been saving myself for her.”

  Glashtin grunted again and he finally smiled, showing just a hint of pale green incisors. He was prepared to believe that she had caught some teen psychological leprosy that led to moral rot. That was how most young people ended up in Goblin Town.

  “Then I think the two of you should meet. The band is taking a short break. Toc! Go fetch Miss Bingels. Tell her she has a special fan here to see her.”

  Toc reluctantly came away from the mirror. “You want I should go now?”

  “Yes. Bring her here,” Glashtin repeated patiently. “And Lyme, too, if he wants to come. He usually loves this sort of thing.”

  So, she would have an audience for her meeting with the SEXXX diva. Io’s pulse leapt, running through her veins at a gallop as though seeking an escape from what awaited her. This wasn’t something she wanted to do, but it was expected of her since she had the opportunity. Tracking Hille was a great way to find out where Horroban was staying. Her instinctual repulsion would have to be subdued for a time.

  If it could be.

  Io swallowed and pasted on her best smile.

  “Woohoo! Let’s party.”

  Chapter Three

  Io felt like an exhibit at a petting zoo, surrounded by hungry, carnivorous patrons. She knew what Hille and the others saw when they looked at her. She looked young and appealing in a healthy way, but weak, as if she never did anything more strenuous than pull on tight clothing. In a word, she was prey.

  And the goblin diva had seen her unusual birthmark and was obviously intrigued by it.

  “Is it real?” Hille breathed, reaching out with a thick nail, running it gently over the exposed skin of Io’s thigh.

  Glashtin obligingly moved the candelabra closer, and Io tried not to shudder at the inspection.

  “Oh yes. It’s real.” Io forced herself to meet Hille’s black insectlike eyes. It took an act of will to make herself speak the next words, but she managed to add, “Would you like to taste?”

  Greed flared red in the diva’s eyes. The others also sucked in their breaths. The trolls seemed especially excited by this idea, and Io wished that Glashtin would send them out of the room. Trolls didn’t just eat a little flesh, they crunched bones. And they had notoriously poor self-control.

  “What do you mean?” Hille asked cautiously, a dark tongue snaking over her wide mouth. There was definitely reptile somewhere in her family tree.

  There were laws on the books that the police were still willing to enforce in Goblin Town, only a very few, but they were firm about goblins taking flesh from unwilling victims. Or even willing ones who were drunk, drugged, or underage. Io knew that she looked to be all three.

  “I could…” Io reached inside her boot and pulled out her tiny knife and a white handkerchief. Black linen would have made more sense, but she knew that the goblin would like seeing her blood on the pristine cloth.

  Everyone in the room leaned a little closer as Io braced her booted foot against the desk and pulled back her skirt. She unfolded the knife in a perverse form of striptease, and laid the small silver blade against her skin. She said a brief prayer that Ferris was not lying about the amount of pain and blood that would be involved with removing the ticked birthmark. Too much blood in the air could be a very bad thing. For her. Trolls sometimes frenzied.

  She cut quickly, keeping the blade’s penetration shallow. As promised, there was only a small sting as she cut the graft’s thin blood supply. She quickly laid her hankie over the wound, hiding its unnaturally small size from her audience, and then extended the bit of brown flesh toward the diva. The dark crescent dangled from her knife’s silver tip as a small bead of blood rolled down its blade.

  “Take it. It’s for you.” Io’s voice was husky.

  The room filled with heavy breathing as the creatures began to pant.

  With a small moan, Hille snatched at the tidbit and popped it in her mouth. Her black eyes rolled back in her head, reminding Io of a shark as it attacked.

  As Ferris had predicted, the diva didn’t chew, but rather sucked on the skin for a moment and then swallowed it whole.

  Apparently the priest was also correct that it tasted right, because the diva made another humming noise that could only be a sign of pleasure.

  Io looked away and tried not to think about what she had just done. The only positive thing that she could say was that the act had failed completely to arouse her, so there was no danger of her actually falling for Hille’s intense sexual vibes. Apparently her vulnerability to sexual magic was purely heterosexual
in orientation.

  After Hille had returned to herself and stopped moaning, Io opened the desk’s center drawer and plucked out a pen. Glashtin made an abortive move to stop her as she reached inside, but paused when he saw that all she wanted was a writing implement.

  “Could I have your autograph, please?” Io asked, doing her best to sound about twelve.

  The still-dreamy-eyed diva took the pen in her lower right hand and scrawled a signature across Io’s leg, considerately avoiding the bloodied hankie.

  “Thank you,” Io said brightly.

  “No. Thank you,” the diva replied. Her tongue flicked out and then she swallowed twice. “I have to go now but maybe later—”

  “You have plans,” Glashtin reminded her. His voice was also thick and he seemed unable to pull his eyes away from Io’s thigh.

  Carefully, Io lowered her leg and pulled down her skirt as far as it would go.

  “Yes, I do,” the diva admitted reluctantly. She looked at Io hungrily, making Io feel ill. “But you’ll come to the club again, won’t you, pretty?”

  “Oh yes!” Io answered. She would probably have to. With her luck the diva would stop for a snack and mess up the tick before she led them to Horroban.

  A shaken Io returned to the auditorium long enough to give Zayn a signal that a tick was in place, and then she fought her way through the crowd to the door that led outside. She was praying that she wouldn’t be sick.

  She made it into the street and leaned up against the rough wall, gulping down lungfuls of the hazy air. After a time her roiling stomach settled and she was able to straighten.

  She sensed Jack only the moment before he took her arm and drew her away onto the sidewalk. He didn’t speak and neither did she in case anyone was watching. They walked along briskly, she appearing to be alone but with one arm held out awkwardly. It wouldn’t fool anyone near enough to hear her breathing. Her invisible pulse thrummed beneath Jack’s hand and her respiration was ragged.

  They continued in this odd fashion down the nearly deserted block until Jack found an unlit alcove of an abandoned store, and then he drew her inside the brick shelter.

  As soon as they were away from prying eyes, he dropped his magic, allowing her to see him.

  They stood chest to chest in the small space, staring into each other’s eyes. Io was tall, but Jack was still taller. Many death feys were.

  Jack’s Ankou ancestor had also left visible reminders of his presence in his descendant’s face. The eyes were gray, a flat impenetrable shade of pewter that gave lie to the notion that eyes were windows into the soul. His skin was slightly darker than that of most feys, so he could pass for human unless you got close enough to touch.

  His features were harsh but still beautiful, even under the green lights.

  Io willed her heart to stop its betraying pounding, but it was not feeling obedient. It had already been asked to suppress too much emotion for one night—disgust, terror, rage. It could not, or would not, again deny what it was feeling.

  “You came into the city with the oh-so-arrogant Zayn,” Jack murmured. His voice was a rough caress. “Does that mean that you are also with Humans Under Ground? Were you perhaps sent to distract me from finding the jewel? It is the sort of tricky thing Xanthe would do.”

  Io didn’t answer and tried to blank her mind in case he was somehow reading her thoughts. She knew that she should force herself to relax against Jack, to flirt and charm, but she couldn’t do it. Something about him was frightening, more frightening than Hille Bingel had been, and his voice disturbed her at a visceral level. She had to remain on guard.

  Or maybe she had just played the flirt too many times that night and her mind was rebelling at doing it again. She decided that she liked that explanation better. It was less frightening.

  “You aren’t going to deny it?” he asked, running a finger down her cheek. Magic leaped from his flesh to hers, making her catch her breath. Something inside of her clenched tight and she felt a wave of heat wash over her face and chest. Her impulse was to touch him back, but she clenched hands against the urge, squeezing so tight the muscles ached. He was manipulating her. The impulse wasn’t likely to be her own.

  “I can’t reasonably deny that Zayn is arrogant,” she whispered, twisting her face away from his touch as shivers of desire marched up and down her nape. “We all know it’s true. Why lie?”

  Jack laughed softly, and Io realized that he was feeling a little high, riding the euphoria of the influx of new magic. No wonder she hadn’t been able to gather up much in the way of stray spells in the club. Obviously Jack had been there before her, picking magical pockets and socking the power away.

  “So you don’t deny being Xanthe’s sacrificial offering. How conveniently refreshing.”

  Jack set hands to her waist and pulled her close. He wasn’t rough, but there was no way that she could fight him in such close quarters even if she weren’t feeling suddenly weak, and able to count pulses in her abdomen where his groin pressed against her.

  “But are you intended for me, or for Hille? Or both? She seems to have written her name on you, but I still think that you are here mainly for me. What’s your name, little lure?”

  “Don’t,” she whispered, trying half-heartedly to push him away. It was hard because desire was making her weak. Zayn had tried using his spells on her and it had not worked. They had both thought her immune to such magical forms of ritual, sensual persuasion. Obviously that wasn’t true.

  Or maybe Jack wasn’t using a regular spell. Maybe it was something that came from his being a death fey. That thought truly terrified her.

  “I’m not a whore. Take your hands off of me!” she gasped.

  “Take my hands away? But why? Do you know what women say to my kind when we lay them beneath us?” he asked, his voice a soft stroke of her ear as he pulled her lower body tight against his. Heat flared where they touched and his magic washed over her, rolling up her legs and then finding its way inside.

  She gripped his wrists, lean but impossibly strong, and tried to pull them away.

  “They say, ‘Eat my heart. Drink my soul. Love me to death.’ Isn’t that what you have come to say to me? ‘Eat me? Drink me? Love me, Jack?’ ”

  “No! I’d never say that.” She denied both his words and the ritualistic syntax, which called more seductive magic to his aid. She knew all about crafting spells. She had to stop him, had to escape before he wove the net of desire tight about her.

  “But you want to. We both know that you do.”

  Her body answered. She only had two breasts, but they were both functional and the nipples were hard and pushing against her leather corset. Her breath broke in frustration. She wanted, and she hated wanting, and thought she probably hated Jack Frost too.

  “No? Are you certain that you are not one of those poor creatures who is afraid of the responsibility of owning a body, of keeping a soul? Wouldn’t you feel better giving it away to a caretaker?” he asked, his tone seductive and at complete odds with his words. “Give it to me. I’ll take you, if you ask. I’ll do it now. You needn’t ever feel confused and unloved again.”

  Io froze for an instant. He couldn’t know! He couldn’t!

  “No!” And this time she said it with more force. Anger was moving through her, momentary lust turning into rage at this insult to her spirit and mind. She shoved his magic back at him with all her will. “How dare you touch me? Get your magic off of my body!”

  Jack sucked in his breath and his eyes widened as her power punched through him, driven by fear and rage.

  “I smell your anger,” he said.

  His body was hard as he leaned into her. His magic was back, harsher than before, racing through her, making her hot, making her weak, making her want. Before he had been teasing; now he was serious. If he asked for heart or body she would probably give it. He could break her. He could kill her.

  “Will I taste rage in your mouth, on your tongue, in your tears?” Jack asked.<
br />
  “The only thing you’ll taste is blood—and it will be your own,” Io spat at him, even as another nearly climactic shiver seized the muscles in her belly and groin.

  She could have wept with embarrassment at her body’s betrayal, but refused to let any tears cloud her eyes, lest he take it as invitation to dine. Stealing someone’s tears gave the thief immense control of the victim’s dreams. She could not allow him to wander at will through her subconscious.

  “Maybe. And maybe I’ll enjoy the blood too,” he said, and then he took her with a poisoned kiss that seared her lips and enflamed the rest of her body.

  Io had no choice but to ride the forced desire he poured into her all the way to climax, but even as her knees buckled and her back arched in surrender to his greater magic, she reached out with her own inner power, punching into him again and leaving him with a souvenir of his assault.

  Surprisingly, Jack wasn’t a total bastard. He could have dropped her onto the filthy ground, but instead he held her up with his hard arms until she was able to regain her footing, and even then he was gentle as he smoothed her ruched skirt back into place. He was careful not to touch the small wound on her leg.

  “You’re a nice girl, Annwn. But too tasty for Goblin Town. Hille’s had a piece of you, and she’ll want more.” Jack stepped back, his face serious. “Leave, and don’t come back, no matter what Xanthe says about duty and jewels. After all, now Hille isn’t the only one who has had a taste, and I might decide that I really do want you.”

  Io stared at him, trembling with fury and maybe something else. She knew her eyes were still blazing with unnatural fire because it cast a blue pall over Jack’s harsh features.

  “I can read your face, little fey. Consider carefully what might happen if you made love to a death fey. Gives new meaning to la petite mort, doesn’t it?”

  And with that, Jack drew his invisibility back over himself and disappeared into the night.

  “You rotten son of an Ankou,” Io whispered after him.

  She slumped against the wall as tremors took her. Jack had no idea how badly he had frightened her. At least she sincerely hoped not.