Traveler

by Melanie Jackson

  “Come here, little fey,” he said, offering what comfort there could be in a pair of arms. It was inadequate reparation for her loss, but it was all that he had. “I think you need a rubdown and then a nice long nap.”

  It said a lot for the growing trust between them that Io walked into his embrace without any hesitation. Of course, they were walking into battle together tonight. If they couldn’t trust each other now, they were out of luck.

  “Did you talk to Zayn?” she asked, head drooping onto his shoulder. “The cell phone worked today?”

  “Yes. He and Cisco understand the timing. They’ll be out of the Labyrinth before midnight.”

  Jack ran his fingers up the back of Io’s neck and buried them in her hair, alternately tugging and massaging. She groaned softly.

  “That’s so nice.”

  “Come on.” He led her to the hammock and lowered her over it crosswise, her face down. He patted her bottom.

  “Jack, if you make one lewd remark—”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Jack assured her sincerely. But he was thinking lots of things. Tight jeans and the posture would have wrung lascivious thoughts from a plaster saint.

  Nevertheless, he was all business as he set out to rub down her legs and back. Resisting all temptation, he knelt and began at her ankles, working his way back up slowly. He began to trickle some of her magic back into her body, but kept at the repetitive slow strokes until he felt the tension finally letting go of her tensed muscles. When he paused, her small humming noise encouraged him to go on.

  He slid the hard outside edges of his hands up the length of her spine beneath her sweater and then circled her shoulder blades, stroking down her sides to her hipbones. He began kneading the small of her back. More magic came, warming his hands and making her body glow softly. The transference of power between them was getting easier.

  He moved onto her arms, so small yet strong, and then stroked down to her hands. Those fascinated him because they were so diminutive and soft, her fingers curling in like the cup of a five-petaled flower.

  Eventually, in spite of his best intentions, his body and magic betrayed his impure thoughts, and Io raised herself back up off of the hammock to look at him.

  “Such a dirty mind. I can hear you thinking, you know.” She reached for him, eyes recharged and gleaming.

  “You don’t have to…” he began, but lost his breath when her hands slid over him. They were tiny but not weak, and she was at her core a siren fey. Even death had to answer the call.

  Magic arched suddenly between them, a current so strong it nearly dropped them to their knees.

  “Jack?” Io’s voice was shaking. “What…?”

  “Damn.”

  The internal, inborn magic a faerie carried within its body was a fey’s only protection from the world, its shelter from the throngs of humanity they were far too sensitive to live among comfortably.

  But their core magic wasn’t adequate protection for him or for Io, not anymore. Their inborn magics didn’t shield them from all-consuming intimacy. The two different powers mated and made bigger magic that was harder to control. It got stronger every time they touched. And the magic wanted more all the time—body, heart, mind, and soul.

  Neither Io nor Jack was ready to give that, though, so the fierce desire also brought internal war. The struggle, the hunt, and Io’s attempted emotional aloofness just aroused him more. It made him want to pillage.

  Then she looked up at him with those blue eyes stunned by the power, her body soft under the onslaught, her lips slightly parted, and he found he could temporarily resist the basest of his impulses that said he should take her whether she agreed or not.

  Oh, but it was hard! He could hear her heart leaping. The sound maddened. He wanted to hold her, to say it would be all right, that he would protect her from everything—even himself.

  But more than that, he wanted to have her. Now. He knew that it was a magical, emotional sort of craving that rode him, one that no amount of physical intimacy could fulfill. He could have her and have her and have her again, and he would still want.

  His magic didn’t care about logic or feelings. It was like an addiction.

  Jack hesitated at the thought, knowing it should disturb Io, but she did not pull away.

  “Tell me to stop,” he whispered.

  “No.”

  It wasn’t a cure, but touching helped. Yes, it definitely did, he thought, lowering his mouth to hers and kissing her with intent, all gentlemanly impulses discarded for the moment.

  The magic was cunning and helpful now that they were cooperating. It had clothes unzipped and unbuttoned with barely any effort on their part.

  Jack lifted Io into the hammock, stepping between her stripped legs, and began leaning into her. Magic didn’t want foreplay, it wanted to join up the parts that were separated and grow itself into something huge. That required that Jack be inside her. Now.

  She was tight, but yielding. Her body wanted, too, and he shuddered with pleasure as she wrapped her legs about him and pulled him deeper inch by relentless inch.

  He curled his fingers into the cotton mesh to anchor it and began a slow retreat. His body protested and stopped its moaning only when he retook lost ground. He began pounding into her, each thrust inside getting hotter and hotter.

  Io arched, her magic lashing out with bright blue hands and pulling him in after her, calling his climax out of his body against his will and inclination.

  Jack collapsed over her, his body setting the hammock into a short swing. He was stunned. No one had ever been able to reach inside and take power from him.

  When the shivering finally stopped and they were able to speak again, Io cleared her throat and said softly: “Jack? The magic…wants something from us, doesn’t it? This isn’t enough.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “And it won’t stop doing this…this…lust thing until it gets what it wants, will it?”

  “Probably not.”

  She swallowed. “I guess we’ll have to figure out what it’s asking for when we have more time.”

  Eat my heart. Drink my soul. Love me to death.

  “I know what it wants,” Jack said, levering himself upright. A part of him wanted to retreat from her, but he kept himself from doing so. “Come on, let’s take a shower and then catch a nap.”

  He offered her his hand, which she accepted warily. The magic had subsided but wasn’t gone. He understood. With any encouragement the growing enchantment would compel them to another round, and Jack didn’t want that to happen. Not yet. They had to sleep. Maybe after they rested they would regain some control of themselves.

  “What does the magic want?” Io asked. Her question was even tighter than her grip.

  “Just the usual,” Jack answered shortly, making sure she had gained her footing before letting go. He’d had Newton’s apple dropped on his head a while ago and was used to the idea, but he wasn’t at all sure how she was going to take the news about the magic’s laws of evolution and gravity applying to her as well.

  “And that would be?”

  “For us to fall in love and then make baby feys. It knows our kind are all but extinct, and it’s protecting itself. Without us, it dies.” He turned his head to see how this news was being received, but couldn’t read anything in Io’s expression. Her lids were lowered, her eyes veiled.

  Was she considering the fact that they had never practiced any kind of birth control while having sex? It was rarely necessary among feys because they almost never conceived without magical aid. Of course, magic had been aiding them.

  “It doesn’t want much, does it? Personally, I don’t think I can do all that tonight,” Io finally said. “My social calendar is completely booked with mass destruction and arson.”

  “Yeah, mine too. The magic will just have to learn to live with frustration just like we all do,” Jack joked. But his voice sounded short, because for some reason he did not like her answer, even though it w
as the only sensible one.

  The magic didn’t like it either and sent a shaft of desire through him, jerking his eyes down to Io’s body so he would be confronted with her nakedness.

  She nodded and stepped quickly into the bathroom. She had color in her cheeks, but whether from renewed desire or embarrassment he couldn’t tell.

  He decided it might be best if he didn’t follow her.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The sky was blanked out with heavy clouds, so Io could not see the moon, but she didn’t need a lunar clock to tell it was nearly the witching hour. The Halloween crowds were growing manic, almost impossible to control, high on drugs, high on booze, high on mischief and dark magic.

  “Time to go,” she whispered to herself.

  Io left the shadowy doorway where she’d been loitering and pushed her way into the throngs, heading for her chosen hive entrance on Edmund Place. She wore a cheap black cape that covered a tool belt outfitted with gun, knife, salt and hair spray instead of the usual screwdriver, pliers, and wire cutters. Her face was hidden behind a latex troll mask. Jack had chosen it for her.

  He really did have a morbid sense of humor.

  Her most important evening accessories were not visible. They were the enlarging spell that Jack had picked up while entering the city on his last trip out, and the fire spell, which, after careful tuning, could ignite almost anything she touched and burn it to ash. Of course, she hadn’t been able to try the spells out on any magical beings to see if they worked with supernatural beasties like gargoyles. Not that she wanted to! Io shuddered and pushed the thought away.

  With these two magics, she planned to take the can of hair spray and turn it into a flamethrower. The salt in her belt would also be multiplied until it covered the underground in sterile snow. Looking at the crowds, she hoped fervently the havoc would all stay belowground. She wasn’t trying to burn or purify the topside city—but the crops and the soil they grew in had to be destroyed-forever. She was going to march through Goblin City’s underground like General Sherman going to the sea.

  There might be casualties up top. She had to accept that.

  Fire and salt were good for another reason. They were effective goblin-stoppers, should keep the beasties from creeping up behind her as she retreated. That meant she only had to watch her front and sides.

  She was hoping passionately that most of the goblins were topside for Halloween. They seemed to be. The streets were full of them. She was quite happy to be a saboteur, but as the night went on and she saw the monsters reveling with the tourists, she was less enthused about being their executioner. They were buglike, but bugs that seemed to have feelings too.

  She checked her watch to confirm what she felt, and then lengthened her stride. She began using magic to get people out of her way. Jack’s bit of death-fey intimidation juju worked like a charm on the distracted partyers who split like the sea on the prow of a ship.

  Io tried to psych herself up as she would before a game, but of course this wasn’t just sport and it made the task harder. In a game there would only be two ends of a field or court to worry about, and only two teams to keep track of. But tonight she and Jack were after many goals. They had many enemies. And there were at least three teams in the field, possibly a fourth: tourists, goblins, those on the side of angels—Io smiled at the idea of her and Jack in wings and halos—and maybe H.U.G. The home team had the advantage of numbers and ruthlessness, and there were no referees to keep the fight fair. Io doubted the goblins would be using Marquis of Queensberry rules, so she, Jack, Zayn, and Cisco, couldn’t afford to either.

  Synchronicity would be an important player too. If Io began or ended her arsonistic distraction too late, her friends might all be caught and subdued through sheer numbers of goblins returning to the hive at dawn. But Io still had to give enough time for Zayn to rescue Chloe—and for Jack to get to Horroban, deal with him, and then escape topside—before she fired the tunnels and trapped their enemies inside. Both she and Jack were loaded with lots of protective magic, and Jack had the steel fist, which should be able to remove any obstacles that blocked his path. Yet the fire she was about to loose was a magical one, fed with two supercharged spells that had never been mingled before, on a night when raw magic rode the air in nearly tangible waves of limitless fuel. There was no way to predict accurately what it would do once she unleashed it.

  She was especially worried about Zayn and Chloe being slow to escape. Chloe…Even career criminals had a certain system of ethics they honored. A thief or confidence man would abhor a childmolester or rapist as often as anyone did. That often wasn’t the case with goblin-fruit junkies.

  She’d warned Zayn, “You’ve got to watch Chloe. She has probably been brainwashed to hate all of us. Horroban would have done this right off. And she knows if you take her away from here she’ll never taste goblin fruit again. She may very well turn on you the first chance she gets. And she’ll drag her feet all the way.”

  Zayn nodded, but hadn’t changed his mind about rescuing her.

  Poor Zayn—he had it bad. But…Io shrugged. There was nothing she could do about it now. It was in the lap of the goddess, who’d have to look after the ill-fated love affair; Io was busy saving mankind.

  The last part of the night’s plan was to have Jack’s buddy blow up the perfume factory. Casualties, Cisco had assured Jack, would be minimal because it was in the business quarter and would be closed for the night. Besides, most tourists would be rushing down to the red-light district—for once quite literally full of red light—to see what the underground fires were about.

  Looking at the packed streets, Io wondered if this was realistic thinking. People might be too drunk to think clearly about what to do in an emergency or pay any attention to where they were. Of course, on the plus side, the factory wouldn’t go up until three A.M. That would give tourists a chance to tire and go home, and the worst of the raw magic would have subsided back into the earth, returning some wits to those who were overwhelmed by its power.

  In spite of her earlier, impulsive words to Jack about having a weenie roast at the bonfire of Goblin Town, Io would have objected to this part of the arrangement because of the remote chance of hurting the Halloween tourists—except for one thing. There was no way of knowing how much of the addictive perfume might have already been bottled from earlier harvests or where it was stored. If they had had more time, they could have gone in again and investigated the factory more fully, but the hours and minutes of preparation time had simply run out. Finding Horroban and the fruit fields had been their first priority. They hadn’t discovered any stash.

  All Io could do was hope, and remind herself that the people reveling around her were dead anyway if Horroban succeeded in his plans. They might already be addicts if they had been to Glashtin’s club.

  “’scuse me.” A drunk reeled back from Io, staggering into the street. His glazed eyes showed traces of fear as he looked at her mask. The man should be afraid. Tonight she was more dangerous than any real troll.

  Io nodded once but didn’t answer. Her throat was too tight. Bottled-up fear and revved magic were both trying to escape, and slowly strangling her as she kept swallowing against them. It was painful, an all-but-intolerable burning in her throat, but all she could do was ignore the fear and the magic until it was time to let them free.

  So, here was the team. Here was the plan. Io thought again of Jack, already on his way into the hive. Of all of them, he had the hardest job, and the most dangerous. He needed every bit of power and luck that Fate could spare.

  Jack…

  Instead of continuing to try and psych herself into battle mode, Io bowed her head and began praying to the goddess for his well-being. Her lips moved behind her mask, perspiration beading on her forehead and running down her cheeks. She was nearly certain it was perspiration and not tears.

  The please, please, please, of her prayers matched her footsteps and thudding heart as she marched down the increasing
ly deserted street.

  Goddess! Why hadn’t she listened to the magic and told him that she loved him? Her fear of love might kill him.

  Jack passed through a more formal arch that marked the start of Horroban’s home—goblinium grand in style perhaps—and went under the structure he thought of as the clock tower, though it actually was more of a lopsided cylinder and had no clock in it, just a half-formed ugly face crossed with sticks jutting out of the south side two-thirds of the way up. What its purpose was, he could not guess. It seemed ornamental, but goblins as a rule did not go in much for art.

  Next there was a moat ringed with torches. Io hadn’t liked this place at all. Jack understood. It was impossible to judge just how deep it ran because the water was quite black and tarry, showing nothing but the flickering orange fire on its black surface. Yet, he was convinced that the circular lake ran very, very deep. It felt deep.

  It didn’t seem possible that anything could live in it, but Jack was willing to bet that something did. Horroban wasn’t the type to do things solely for aesthetics, and there weren’t any other watchdogs about. At another time, he might have been curious enough to toss in a stone and see what happened, but whatever was down there could just stay down there. Jack didn’t plan on making any social calls on swamp monsters that night. One should always let sleeping dogs and monsters lie.

  The ceremonial entrance to Horroban’s stronghold had been stolen off of someone’s Moorish castle. The door was thick, studded with iron nails, and it was barred—but that wasn’t a problem. Finally calling upon the spell he’d been charging all day, Jack wrapped himself more deeply in his muffling invisibility and then jammed his fist through the old oak portal. He shoved the inner bar aside, doing his best to keep the sound to a minimum.

  Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in…or I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in.