by Evi Asher
“Why can you not bring her to me now?” He was not pleased. He was not used to having to pull information from his subjects. Usually they fell onto their stomachs trying to blubber it all up at once. This creature of his was going to be a problem. He could sense it.
She is in the fae realm, My Lord. There are wardings, and she has a necromancer with her.
“Necromancers belong to me.”
The servant went silent, and Nexanthon knew what his creature was thinking, and that was that necromancers had belonged to Nexanthon, but they no longer did, not since the eternals put the god into the long sleep. He was waiting for his servant to point out that annoying fact. If he did, he would die before he could draw another breath.
I have to wait for the right opportunity, My Lord. The protection spell will wear off soon, and I need to get her away from her protectors and open the portal to pass through the realms to the human world where you are.
“Bring her to me as soon as you can. I will not wait long.”
Yes, master.
“Fail me and you will wish for a sweet death,” he said, reminding his servant of the consequences.
Yes, master.
The communication was cut off abruptly, and Nexanthon was left taking relish in the pain he’d heard in his servant’s voice.
He looked at the hooded servant in front of him and nodded.
The servant slit the human’s throat and dropped it at Nexanthon’s feet.
Blood squirted in a torrent from the human’s neck, spurting in sync with the mortal’s dying heartbeat. The smell of metallic death filled the cave, overwhelming even the rot for a short moment.
Nexanthon closed his eyes and sucked in the new death. Old death was his favorite flavor, but all death made him content.
He would need more before the day was out. He had been made unhappy by the delay in having the phoenix within his grasp. He would not be happy until her fire blood spilled across his naked skin.
She would pay for his long sleep, and she would pay for waking him. She had done him no favor by waking him. Sometimes he wished to be asleep again. This new world was not to his liking. When he killed the phoenix, all the power of life she carried would convert, becoming death, and he would suck it in, becoming more powerful. She would pay for waking him. She had touched the sarcophagus with life flowing through her. It had nearly killed him and woken him at the same time.
She would pay, oh yes, she would pay, slowly and with a lot of pain. She would pay.
Chapter Ten
Athera was staring out at trees, nothing but a single tarred road and trees for miles, and it had been miles. They’d had to wait on William before they left, something about needing something out of the forest. He’d taken an hour before he’d come back and they had been able to leave.
They had been on the road for hours, and the scenery hadn’t changed much since Drusilla’s cabin.
“I’m beginning to think all the cities you were talking about are fiction,” Athera said.
“Hm?” Grave was sitting next to her, slouched back on the seat, and it seemed like he’d almost been asleep.
“I haven’t seen one city yet—only trees.” It came out sounding almost disgusted with the nature all around them, but Athera thought the trees were beautiful. She missed the buzz of the city. If she was honest, she would admit she missed everyone at home.
Frustration was riding her hard. They weren’t really any closer to finding the weapon that would kill Nexanthon, and she was sick of feeling like she was careening from one situation to the next. Even her campaign to win Grave had failed. She wasn’t sure it would ever start up again. A girl could only take so much rejection.
“We will be there within the next hour.” William was driving, with Josy in the passenger seat next to him. Heath and Laz followed in the car they’d come in behind them.
“There are cities, Ath,” Grave said.
The way her name came out in his voice had her trying not to squirm with pleasure. There should be some rule about the object of one’s sexual frustrations having such an effect on you.
“Oh really? Where are they, then?” That came out snappier than Ath intended.
Grave raised an eyebrow at her before closing his eyes and leaning his head against the back of the seat. He looked like he was going to ignore her and go to sleep instead. “The faery realm is huge. Bigger than the earth realm. There are cities, but you are forgetting that the faeare creatures of magic. They like nature around them, so the cities are scattered far apart.” He opened one eye, probably to see whether his lecture was sinking in or not.
When all she did was give him a flat look, Grave sighed, closed his eyes and muttered, “Moody.”
Athera chose not to point out that he wasn’t the one being hunted by a death deity, and he wasn’t the one being rejected at every turn.
Okay, so the last was something she wouldn’t have said out loud if her life was on the line, but hey, if she wanted to pout, she was entitled to it.
She stayed quiet, staring at the unchanging scenery while Grave napped next to her and Josy and William had a conversation that Athera was paying no attention to.
The jeep turned left onto a dirt road. Great. She hated dirt roads. They were kidney crunchers, in her opinion, and her bladder was full.
They hit a pothole and Athera clenched her muscles and prayed that she wouldn’t embarrass herself.
“How much further?” she asked.
“Soon,” William replied.
Athera gritted her teeth and crossed her legs as they hit another pothole. Then they were in the trees and she was distracted by the sheer beauty of the scene.
The trees arched over the road, forming a natural covering that filtered through the afternoon sunlight in dappled shades of green and yellow. The shade from the arching trees formed a magical twilight gloom under the canopy and Athera thought she’d never seen a more beautiful scene.
Little lights darted between the branches of the leaves and she drew a breath in, taken aback by the sweet elegance of the swooping lights.
“Are those fireflies?” She had never seen a real firefly.
“Some of them are.”
Grave was awake and looking over at Athera. She spared him a quick glance before she turned her attention back to the beauty outside the jeeps window.
“What do you mean some?” she asked without taking her eyes away from the darting lights. She could make out different colors and the rainbow spectrum was fascinating.
“Some of them are wee-fae,” Josy said from the front of the car.
“You mean like Tinkerbell?” Athera squinted her eyes as the jeep drove through a spectacular display of reds and greens. She could just about make out the shape of a tiny human figure in the center of one of the green lights.
“Yes, like Tinkerbell.” Grave leaned toward her, looking out of the window over her shoulder.
Athera was tempted to tell him to look out of his own damn window, because he was so close she could smell his masculine fragrance and feel the heat of his skin. Her pulse picked up and started a race without the starting gun, and when his breath fanned her cheek, her body shivered in anticipation.
“Are you cold?” Grave asked.
Crap, he noticed. “Yes,” Athera lied with no guilt whatsoever. She was done feeding his ego with her want of him. He was not going to have that power anymore. No matter what her traitorous body told her.
She needed a distraction, so she reached for the handle of the window and started to open it.
Grave’s hand closed over hers and he rolled the window up again. She was too shocked by the heat of his skin to protest, and by the time she got her wits about her, the window was closed.
“Why did you do that?” she snapped at him.
“The wee-fae are beautiful to look at, but bad to get near.”
Grave sat back into his seat again, and Athera twisted her body to look at him. “What is that supposed to mean.”
&nbs
p; “They are venomous,” Josy supplied from the front of the jeep.
“Oh.” Athera felt like an idiot for simply trying to open the window without first asking if it was safe. Damn it, she knew better than that.
“Why didn’t anyone warn me?” Anger made her tone snappy. She was angry at herself for being a moron, but also at the others for not explaining the little fae properly.
Grave shrugged. “I did.”
“Yeah, as I was opening the damn window. A better explanation next time I ask about something would be appreciated.”
“Once we get to the librarian’s home, I’m sure he’ll let you go through his library and increase your knowledge about all of the creatures of the eternal,” William said.
She almost laughed. It would stand to reason that the librarian had a library.
“I don’t know that I will have time to become a scholar, William.”
He didn’t answer, and Athera turned to look out the window again.
Knowing that the little faewere venomous didn’t make them less appealing. They were still so beautiful that they made Athera want to sigh.
The trees were starting to get closer to the road, and she was sure she couldn’t even call it a road anymore. The edges were becoming less defined, the trees moving closer toward the center.
She wondered if she should warn William they were about to run out of road, but she squished the idea. She did not feel like being the queen of obvious—not after her little faux pas with the fae.
The road ahead became as dark as night, but William kept driving. He put on the headlights of the jeep, but Athera could see nothing. She was about to voice her worry when daylight suddenly appeared all around them. They were through the trees. William pulled into the clearing and put the jeep in park.
“We are here,” he announced, and Athera looked around but saw nothing.
They were in a small clearing, a little bigger than the space it took to park both cars. Athera opened the door and climbed out the jeep. It felt good to stretch her legs after being confined to the car and Grave’s nearness for so long.
“Don’t wander off.”
His warm voice followed her out of the car, and she almost turned and snapped at him that she wasn’t a toddler, but she bit her tongue and kept her commentary to herself.
There was wild grass under her feet, but it felt as springy and alive as any manicured lawn. The air smelled of sunshine and the fragrance of flowers. Not any she could name, but then she had to remember she was on a different plane with a completely different ecosystem.
Athera looked around her. There wasn’t all that much to see except nature. They’d come out of the tunnel of trees into the clearing. On the other side of the clearing were more trees and lots of underbrush. The clearing held some small wildflowers around the edges, and everything was varying shades of green. No paths or anything else in sight. It was like a natural dead end.
“Where to now?” she asked, looking over at William.
He was standing with his arms crossed waiting for everyone to get done looking around and stretching. Athera walked over to him. “Well?”
He nodded, unfolded his arms and said, “Follow me.”
He walked toward the opposite end of the clearing from where they’d entered. He was going to walk right into the forest amongst the trees.
“Hold on.” Athera stopped and waited as William turned with a questioning expression on his face.
“What about the little faeries. You know... the venomous ones?” If she was going to be walking into something that had fangs and venom, she wanted to know it.
“From the clearing to the librarian’s home and well past it, there are spells in place to keep the dangerous indigenous creatures away.”
“So no bitsy faeries?” Josy asked.
“Nope, not one,” William confirmed.
“Okay.” Athera started walking again and followed William into the trees.
It was a bit more difficult than walking in the clearing. There was a lot of underbrush and roots hidden by fallen leaves. She learned to watch her footing when she’d stood on a root and almost twisted her ankle. Grave had reached out a hand and steadied her.
The only problem with that was that when Grave touched her, she felt anything but steady. So if she was going to avoid the humiliation of face planting in the brush, she would have to be extra careful.
They walked for twenty minutes, and as they went Athera got more comfortable in the forest. She started noticing things she would have missed otherwise. There were all kinds of bugs. Not just the annoying gnat type, but beetles with the most beautiful patterns. They were iridescent and sparkling with all the colors of the rainbow.
Athera knew better than to reach out and touch. On the earth plane, the rule was bright colors in nature mean danger.
She would follow the rule here, no matter what William said about protective spells.
“So, William,” Grave said from behind Athera. “Are you a changeling?”
“That’s a personal question,” William said over his shoulder.
“What’s a changeling?” Athera didn’t like not knowing. She had a vague idea from some fairy tales she read when she’d come to the earth plane, but she wanted to be sure.
It was Heath who answered. He was walking just ahead of her. “Sometimes, not very often, a faery will steal a human child from its parents, putting a fae child in its place. The children are called changelings.”
There was a lot more to the mechanics of it—Athera was sure of that, but it seemed that it was too involved to get into on a long walk.
“So are you a stolen human child?” she asked.
“I’m going to choose not to answer that question,” William said without looking back. He stepped in between two large trees and seemed to vanish.
“What now?” Josy asked, but she followed him through, vanishing as well.
“Must be some kind of invisibility shield,” Laz said. He was the next one through, followed by Heath. Athera wasn’t going to wait around and see if they came out again. Being alone with Grave made her fidget, so she walked through between the trees.
There was a cold feeling, as if she’d stepped into an ice water shower. It sucked her breath away, but it passed as quickly as it came. Athera stopped and almost fell when Grave walked into her back.
Strong hands reached out to grip her upper arms and steady her as his honey voice said, “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting you to have stopped.”
“It was my fault.” She stepped away from him as quickly as she could and took in the view around her.
They were in another clearing, this one much smaller than the last one. It was almost too small for the crowd of people standing in it.
William was in the center of the clearing. He was kneeling on the ground, and Athera moved closer to see what he was doing.
Buried in the ground with grass covering the edges was a massive metal disk. The closest thing she could compare it to was a manhole cover.
The question burned on her tongue, but she kept quiet as she watched William pull back the grass that was growing over it.
When had the entrance—she was assuming it was an entrance—been used last?
Heath knelt next to William, and between the two of them they made quick work of the overgrown grass.
William gripped a handle on the cover and twisted, then pulled.
There was a loud and vaguely ominous creak as the cover pulled out of its anchoring and opened up.
A rush of warm air flowed up out of the hole in the ground, and from where Athera stood, she could see the black gaping maw of the hole suddenly light up with yellow light.
“So this is the Liberian’s home?” Laz asked as he stepped closer and looked down into the now lighted manhole.
“Yes,” William confirmed.
“It doesn’t look like he’s been home for a while,” Heath said.
“Yeah, Heath has a point,” Grave commented from next to Athera.
“He’s home,” William assured them.
“How sure are you about that?” Athera asked.
William looked up, meeting her eyes with his own. “I’m positive.”
There was something in the way he said the words that made Athera uncomfortable. What new danger were they walking into now?
She was starting to fondly wish that she was back at Outsiders Inc being bored out her head. It was better than the constant fight-or-flight mode she was sporting now.
“There is a ten-rung ladder down into the tunnel. Take it carefully. It is stable, but the bottom of the tunnel is concrete, and you don’t want to fall on it,” William explained as he got up and stepped down into the tunnel.
“Oh, and will the last one through just pull the cover closed after them, please?”
He disappeared from view and Josy stepped forward. She easily climbed into the hole and down.
Athera went after her, followed by Laz and Heath. Grave brought up the rear, closing the hatch once he was down.
Once they were all at the bottom, Athera looked around. They were in a long tunnel that went both ways from the hatch.
William was smiling. “Welcome to the librarian’s home.”
Chapter Eleven
The librarian’s home was an underground bunker. Athera would have thought that meant it was utilitarian and minimalistic. It turned out it was anything but.
William led them down the left-hand side of the tunnel.
“These are the living quarters of the Liberian’s home. If you go right, you’ll find the library and the work areas.
“Why isn’t he here to greet us?” Heath asked from his place behind Athera.
William ignored Heath’s question as he stepped up to a round blast door.
He pushed a button on the side and there was a hiss of compressed air as the door opened, sliding seemingly into the wall.
Athera breathed in the smell of clean pine and the faint fragrance of flowers. Then she stepped in, following William, and almost had Heath ram into her when she stopped inside the doorway.
Thick, luxurious carpet covered the concrete under her feet, a deep Bordeaux color, and the room opened up. It was circular, with several passages leading off the main room.