Vampire Innocent (Book 9): An Introduction To Paranormal Diplomacy

by Cox, Matthew S.

  “Wait, they’re medusas?”

  “Na. Not lit’ral stahn. Na man go near one less’n ’e be blind.” He waves the shillelagh around randomly. “Dem dark ones. On a count o’ dem not findin’ no ’human men, dey take dis girl an’ make ’er one o dem.”

  I look the leprechaun in the eye. “I swear to you I did not grab you for your gold. If you’re sincere about wanting to do me a favor, please help me find this kid.”

  “Aye. Kin do. Y’ave me wahrd.” He pedals his legs. “Ye kin put me down now.”

  How did I go from being sucked into a magical portal in my sister’s closet to eyeball deep in ‘mythological’ creatures halfway around the globe? Sigh. The hole just keeps getting deeper. I swear, if we find this kid and she sends me on a fetch quest for the doll she dropped in the woods…

  Deep breaths, Sarah. I’m not in a video game.

  I set the leprechaun on his feet. He picks up his hat, puts it on, and proceeds to walk away. A few steps later, he stops, looking back.

  “Well, cahm ahn. What’re ya waitin’ fahr?” He resumes walking. “Follow meh.”

  Sure. Why not? This can’t possibly get any weirder.

  31

  Quarreling, Quarreling

  The leprechaun moves pretty darn quick for a guy with such little legs.

  Somehow, he doesn’t appear to be racing along. His legs aren’t blurring comically fast, but he’s traveling at about the same speed as an ordinary human. I think I should just set my brain aside, stop expecting anything to make any sort of logical sense, and roll with what’s going on—sorta like one does while watching a David Lynch movie.

  “Mardle,” says the leprechaun.

  “I’m sorry?”

  He laughs. “Tis me name. Mardle.”

  “Oh. Hi, Mardle. I’m Sarah.”

  “Pleased ta meet ya.”

  We walk for a bit in silence.

  “You know where this girl is?”

  “I do.”

  “Are we going there?”

  “Na yet. Need ta ’ave a conference afore we start nudder war wit the dryads.”

  Sigh. Werewolves and vamps have a treaty, why not these guys? I should get a job at the UM—united myths.

  A few minutes later, we pass between two trees and the forest in front of me abruptly changes into a tiny village. Trees are still everywhere—this isn’t a human village with streets, courtyards, fountains, and parking meters. Reminds me a bit of hobbit homes, only the doors are in massive tree trunks rather than hills—and these guys are smaller than hobbits. No one bigger than a toddler could get into these houses in any semblance of comfort. Some thirty or forty leprechauns are in sight, some walking around, some talking, a few doing crafty things like carpentry or weaving.

  All the leprechauns stop at once, staring at me like I’ve put ketchup on steak in a fancy restaurant. A few take it up a notch, giving Mardle the same kind of look my mother would give Sam if he tried to bring a wild skunk into the house as a pet.

  In seconds, a swarm of tiny, angry men surround us, all shouting at once. Mardle holds his hands up in a ‘hang on, slow down’ gesture. I’m unsure if they realize what I am or if leprechauns get this bent out of shape if any human finds this place. My gut tells me we traversed a portal between those trees, or maybe a confusion enchantment to keep people from noticing a straight-up mini village. Hmm. My stomach didn’t do a backflip, so it’s probably a wall of confusion.

  Good. I’ve had enough dimension hopping for one eternal lifetime.

  The argument rages for a few minutes, then stops short when Mardle yells the same short phrase several times in a row. Stunned, the crowd stares at me in complete disbelief. Did he just tell them I’m pregnant with his child?

  “What did you say to them?”

  “Told ’em ya dahn’t want me gold.”

  I blink. “They’re this shocked about me not wanting your treasure?”

  “Aye. Never ’appens.” He grasps the lapels of his coat. “One moment ta explain.”

  The other leprechauns listen intently as Mardle rambles in some other language. Unlike the brownies, they all have recognizably unique faces… far closer to humans. Even Kezbit, the brownie… umm, king or queen, looked exactly like the others except for having a slightly more ornate outfit. It’s like a factory stamped them out on an assembly line.

  Hmm. I wonder if I could feed off them. Would eating too many brownies make me fat?

  Okay, bad joke. Even my Dad would throw something at me for that one.

  From looking at the others, no one individual stands out as being higher in station. They’re all wearing 1800s-era suits, but no two are exactly matching in color. Their derby hats vary in size, generally having the same style. Somehow, their clothing is simultaneously well worn and pristine. And no, they aren’t all gingers—only about a quarter.

  Mardle finishes talking, looking around expectantly.

  A leprechaun sporting a beard so long he probably steps on it sometimes points at me and barks at Mardle.

  “What did he say?”

  “’E wants ya to wipe out da brownies afore ’ey agree ta ’elp. We’re a bit miffed at the unprovoked aggression.”

  “I can’t attack the brownies. They have Sophia and they’re too powerful.”

  “Don’ believe ’em,” yells a black-bearded one, in English. “Ya kin kill ’em but it moight take ya coupl’a trips.”

  “Huh?” I tilt my head. “A couple of trips? I’m not following.”

  Mardle laughs. “Aye. Ya squish one, t’others will teleport ya far off. E’ry time ya squish one, ya end up far away ’avin’ ta keep goin’ back.”

  “First, they be annoyin’,” says a brown-haired leprechaun, who appears surprisingly young—like in his twenties. “If annoying don’ work, they try embarassin’. An’ once they git really angry, they be sendin’ ya ta dangerous places, like da inside o’ a volcanah.”

  I rub the bridge of my nose. “There had to be a hundred or more of them. I can’t spend the next six months zooming all over the world killing them one at a time. If I don’t get Sophia home in time for Christmas, my parents will kill me.”

  The leprechauns mumble amongst themselves, occasionally shrugging, scratching their heads, or picking their noses.

  Grr. This is ridiculous. “Why are you guys fighting with the brownies? The dark dryads are going to hurt some little girl. Okay, I understand the brownies stupidly blame you for the problem. Somehow. I haven’t taken enough LSD to understand brownie logic. They’re wrong. They shouldn’t have attacked you. Sorry if this sounds disrespectful, but a brownie-leprechaun war is both pointless and not my problem. There’s a little girl out there in a lot of trouble. Help me find her. Once she’s safe, you can go whack brownies over the head with your shillelaghs all you want.”

  Mardle looks up at me.

  The leprechauns resume arguing with each other as if I’ve ceased to exist.

  Sigh.

  After a few minutes, their ‘debate’ fizzles out to silence when an elder-looking one approaches me. “The consensus be ya must choose a side. Brownies or us. We stand at an impasse. As long as one o’ them wee infernal pests still haunts the woods, we cannot distract our efforts away from defense.”

  “Them or us!” shouts roughly three-quarters of the leprechauns.

  “I can’t kill the brownies.” My claws didn’t scratch the roots. Not sure they’d work any better on the brownies, even if they appeared squishier. “Some kid is being turned into a dark dryad. I’m sure it’s not a pleasant process and is going to twist her into something dark and wretched. She’s much too little to work customer service.”

  The leprechauns stare at me like I’m making up words.

  “If you can’t kell de brownies, den you’ll fight us.” Elder Leprechaun jabs his walking stick—I mean shillelagh—into the ground. “We may not be as dangerous as the wee bastards, but we’ll not go down without de fight o’ yer life.”

  “No! I don
’t want to attack you either,” I yell. “The brownie-leprechaun war is pointless!”

  The leprechauns break into a chant of, “Them or us!”

  “Stop et nao!” yells Mardle, raising his hands to silence the crowd. “Ey promised the lass a favor, so ey will ’elp. She ain’ after no gold. Rare ta see a ’uman who nabs one o’ us an’ forfeit tha pot fer sake o’ a strange wee lass she donna know from ae rock. You lot kin keep bickerin’. Ey got somethin’ ta do.”

  I exhale, close to passing out from sheer relief. “Thank you!”

  “Don’ thank me yet, lass. One leprechaun ain’ gonna be much ’elp against the dark dryads. We all go, an’ we drive ’em right off na problem.” He jabs the shillelagh at the group. “But they be a right stubborn lot.”

  “Umm. Okay. I should be able to figure something out. I’m a bit more capable than a normal person. Least we can do is go take a look, right?”

  Mardle pats his hat down securely. “Aye. C’mon, lass. T’aint far.”

  He walks off. I look over the group again, but my pleading smile doesn’t sway any of them. Most grumble about wanting brownie-mageddon. Right. Me going back there with intent to destroy them is an even dumber idea than Dalton firebombing a lair of vampires as a favor to an old flame who’s still pissed at him. Guess love really does make people do dumb things. If I had no other choice to get Sophia away from them, sure… but I can’t grab her and run off, leaving some other poor kid in a bad situation.

  Sigh.

  I keep accusing Sophia of being too nice.

  Guess we have a lot in common.

  32

  Delicate Balance

  Mardle leads me out from the village into the woods, talking the whole time.

  His accent is a bit strong, but not impossible to follow. According to him, this forest contains multiple portals connected to fey realms. It reminds me of the otherworld in Garrett Alder’s closet. Speaking of him, I still wonder if the potion he wanted worked. A vampire changing his bloodline sounds like something highly likely to fail or end in disaster, but going from Beast to Fury isn’t too drastic a change.

  Anyway, both the dark and light dryads live primarily on the inside of these portals, safe from humans. It might be more accurate to say humans are safer from them in the case of the dark ones. Mardle’s description of the ‘nice’ dryads makes them out to be quite lovely. They avoid people whenever possible except if they want to make more dryads. Their ‘victims’ often wake in the woods after believing they’ve had a nap.

  Dark dryads, on the other hand, sound a touch more aggressive. Mardle says they’ll try to kill humans whenever possible. The reason most people don’t believe dryads exist is because the nice ones make them forget and the dark dryads don’t let anyone leave alive.

  I’m not too worried about death, at least at night, so his story doesn’t rattle me too much.

  The big problem the brownies have is the portal to the dark dryad grove is deep inside the part of the forest the leprechauns consider their home. As brownies are wickedly mischievous, the leprechauns have created magical barriers to block their passage. So, the brownies can’t get to the place where the girl is unless the leprechauns let them by—not happening—or the leprechauns are wiped out.

  Leprechaun annihilation may or may not occur, but it won’t be me doing it.

  “Wee blighters have been on us for tree whole days now,” says Mardle.

  “Only three days? Your people made it sound like the war’s been long, brutal, and personal.”

  He shrugs. “We don’t much care for brownies.”

  “One good thing… I guess the battles are short.”

  He whacks me in the shin.

  “Ow.” I hop a few times.

  “Brownies could pull open tha portal fer ya. So kin we. ’Umans can’t even see et.”

  “I’m gonna assume the dark dryads won’t be interested in talking.”

  “Na. Maybe they talk if ye were a man. They ’ave na use fer women. Wee girls, they tek back an’ corrupt. Yer too ol’ a lass ta be useful ta dem.”

  “Wow, considering a girl ‘old’ at eighteen. Dark dryads are even more brutal than Hollywood.”

  “Quiet now. We’re close.”

  I nod.

  Mardle goes from strolling along to zipping from tree to tree. I follow suit, attempting to stay hidden as much as possible. After a few minutes of stealthy moving, he indicates a group of six gnarled, ancient trees quite different from any others in the area: sickly grey with weird, lumpy roots stretching over the ground like cancerous nerve cells. Their leaves are darker than they ought to be, nearly black, and somewhat wilted. Stranger still, a faint ghostly cloud hovers inside the ring the trees form.

  “There ’tis. The dark sisters. Those trees er stuck between life an’ death.”

  I can sympathize.

  “The glowing cloud is the portal?”

  Mardle blinks. “You kin see et?”

  “Yeah. It’s faint, but I can see it.”

  He squints suspiciously at me. “You didn’t tell me ya’s a mage.”

  “I’m not. My eyes are real sensitive.”

  “Hogwash.”

  “Honestly, they are super sensitive. I can see in the dark.”

  “And ya fly before.” He rubs his beard. A little color drains from his cheeks. “You ’ave fangs?”

  “Only when I need to.”

  Mardle swallows hard.

  “I’m no threat to you or any of the other leprechauns. Yes, I figured out already it would probably be super easy to hurt all of you, but the brownies are wrong and I really don’t like killing people. Or leprechauns.”

  He keeps staring at me, the gears inside his brain grinding on the realization he hadn’t brought an ordinary human into his home village but a vampire who—probably—could’ve easily wiped them all out. Me not doing so, despite it being a far faster path to what I want (Sophia back) appears to calm his fears.

  “P’raps we kin do somethin’ just you an’ me.” He rubs his hands like a scheming weasel. “Dahn’t feel bad ’bout hurtin’ these beasties if ya ’ave ta.”

  “If they’re torturing a little kid, I’m inclined to agree with you.”

  “Ye ready?”

  “As much as possible.”

  “Follow me then.” Mardle hoofs it for the creepy glowing mist.

  I run after him toward the circle of twisted trees. He skids to a stop by a thick mass of roots forming a knee-high (to me) wall between the trunks, and holds out his hand. I take it, and we jump together over the barrier.

  The glowing mist, and the tree circle, vanish before my feet hit the ground. All around us, the forest appears thicker, darker, and noticeably more sinister. Every tree in sight resembles the ones forming the gate, ancient, huge, and shaped in unnatural ways. Long, gnarled branches overhead all interconnect as though the nightmare trees all held hands to block off the sky.

  Something tells me it’s never daylight here.

  Huge shadowy forms glide about in the distance, the pale white eye spots near the top of their ‘heads’ floating in the manner of will-o-wisps. They lack any true shape, merely a somewhat-head and a long trailing body of vaporous darkness. Considering my eyes are no longer capable of seeing shadows, it’s obvious I’m looking at spirits of some kind. Fortunately, none of them appear too concerned with my presence.

  “Whoa. This place would give Tim Burton bad dreams,” I whisper.

  “Eh?” Mardle peers up at me.

  I wave him off. Not worth explaining. “Where?”

  He scratches his head. “Not rightly sure.”

  The six-tree circle is a few paces behind us, so at least I don’t feel trapped. If it really hits the fan, we have an escape. Every direction appears to be the same, gnarled trees stretching off endlessly. I listen, turning in place, opening my senses for any clue of which way to go. Hoping to avoid a fight if at all possible, I resist the urge to call out in search of the missing child. Also, no one’s
told me her name.

  “Can you find her?” I whisper.

  He shakes his head. “Me magic’s all ’bout avoidin’ people. Yer the hunter.”

  “Right…”

  Grr. Frustrated, I huff. Next time I inhale, the air carries a faint human scent. I’ve been around my siblings, taekwondo class, and the dance studio often enough since my Transference to recognize the smell of child. Ooh. If I can smell her, she can’t be too far away. Unless vampires are like sharks and can smell blood for miles.

  Smelling blood—even if it is a pleasant sort of cotton candy smell—worries and angers me.

  This place doesn’t have any noticeable breeze, so it’s damn near impossible to tell where she is by scent alone while standing still. I begin walking in a random direction, constantly sniffing to see if the smell gets any stronger. A weak, gasping breath tinged in pain comes from my right, giving me a more concrete idea of direction.

  The giant shadow monsters still don’t seem to care about me. None are particularly close, which is good. Compared to them, I’m about the same size as a leprechaun. If they’re the lingering ghosts of some other creature, I don’t want to meet a living one.

  Drawn by a combination of impatience to get Sophia back, hope of getting the hell out of here before running into a dark dryad, and worry for this poor child, I move up to a run. In one of the long conversations I had with Aurélie, she spoke of ancient vampires who eschewed all trappings of society and preferred to live in the wilds like feral creatures. She believed them the origin of Beasts. Running in the woods makes me think of the story due to her telling me of how they lacked the ability to fly but could outrun the fastest horses. Those vamps would consider sneakers loud, clumsy, and slow. But they also had giant toenail claws and could climb walls and trees like monkeys.

  Eww.

  So weird. Having weaponized fingernails doesn’t bother me. In fact, it’s kinda cool. But the idea of the same claws sticking out of my toes is kinda disgusting. Makes no sense, right? Anyway, I don’t need to worry about sneakers slowing me down or making me clumsy and loud compared to those ‘nature’ vamps. I can fly.