She was wrong. It wasn’t the shackle’s key. It was the Thieves’ Key. “Oh, you beautiful thing. That will work perfectly. Come here, quick.”
Esmeralda scurried over, moving in her disconcertingly quick manner, and handed me the Key. I’d never seen the Key fail against any lock, man-made or supernatural, but I’d also never tried it against something designed to punish magic. I held my breath and slipped the key inside the shackle’s keyhole.
“Why are you just sitting there?” Esmeralda asked.
“I’m just making sure this doesn’t take my hand off.”
“Oh. Yes, that would be unfortunate. But at least you would be free.”
I stared at her for a moment, then turned the Key. The artifact glowed blue, but more importantly the manacles stayed dormant. With two quick flicks of my wrist, my hands were free. “You have no idea how much I love you right now. I thought I was going to die down here.”
“Oh, you still are. Just more quickly now,” Kára said. Esmeralda squeaked and hid behind me.
“How do you people move so quietly?” I said, rubbing my wrists.
“I’m a forest creature,” Esmeralda said.
“And I’m barefoot,” Kára replied.
“Okay, fair enough. Hey, you know what?”
Kára raised an eyebrow. “What?”
I grinned like one of Holda’s wolves. “My magic’s back.”
Brilliant light shone forth from my hand, slamming the Valkyrie against the cavern’s far wall. I took a step forward and threw another spell her way, lifting her off the ground and slamming her into the roof. I wrapped her in a ward and hurled her across the room, into the wall, then blasted her with light, driving her to the ground. She groaned and twitched, trying to get back to her feet, trying to kill me.
I slapped the dwarven shackles around her wrists. “Now, you German bitch, we’re gonna have some fun.”
***
“We have to go,” Esmeralda said. She was still hiding behind my legs, peeking out at the thing inside of Miranda’s body.
I crouched down to look her in the eye. “I can’t leave. That thing has my friend, and I need to help her.”
Esmeralda craned her neck to look over my shoulder. “It can’t be done. Once the monster is inside, there’s no getting it out.” She looked down at the floor and wrung her hands. “I’m sorry, but your friend is dead, and we need to leave before we join her.”
I stood up and turned away from her, scowling. Behind me, the Valkyrie laughed. “She’s right, you know. This body fits like a glove,” she stretched as best she could with the manacles tying her down, “and I would just hate to leave. I think I’d cause quite a mess on my way out.” She looked down at Miranda’s body, pouting. “It would really be a shame. She’s lovely.”
They were both right. I had never managed to free a person from a demon without killing them, never even heard of it happening. A demon doesn’t come gently out of a host, it rips and tears its way free, as vicious as any knife.
“Wait a minute,” I said.
“We don’t have a minute,” Esmeralda said in a trembling voice. “I can hear the dwarf coming.”
I smiled my wolf’s-tooth grin. “That is exactly what I wanted to hear.”
I carved a circle into the stone floor at the entrance to my cell. I was starting to get a better feel for what the Exorcist’s Dagger was capable of. It was spelled to cut through anything, whether that was normal matter, a person’s body, or even magic. A wound from the knife wasn’t automatically fatal–the fact that I was still alive was proof of that–but I bet that it would have made a demon vulnerable to a physical attack. A demon, whether it was a Valkyrie or Holda herself, would normally shrug off a blade in the gut, but if that wound was made with the Dagger, I expected a different outcome.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” the Valkyrie asked. She reclined against the cave wall and watched me with disinterested eyes. “Planning to cut your way through the mountain?”
“Not exactly,” I said and crouched by the circle. “Brilda!” I shouted down the hallway. Esmeralda’s face blanched–which meant it became a slightly lighter shade of green–and she scurried off to the back corner of the cave.
The dwarven healer stormed into the room. “What are you bellowing about? Did Kára cut off your toes? Because I can’t fix toes. Stab wounds, burns, breaks, those are fine, but if you cut something–” She stopped dead and stared at me. “How in Hel’s name did you escape? Kára? Why are you chained to the wall? What’s the meaning of–”
I touched the circle. Blue flame raced around the channel, locking the dwarf inside, and the cavern’s odd, crystalline stone trapped the Æther, holding the ward in place.
Her face turned red. “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you and then I’ll bring you back to life and then I’ll kill you again.” Then she cut lose with a stream of something guttural and foreign, something that sounded an awful lot like an accusation of inappropriate relations with close family members.
Esmeralda peered out from behind my jacket. “You trapped her.”
“He pissed me off is what he did,” the dwarf snarled. “When I get out of this circle, I am going to crush you like stone in an ore factory. I’m going to rip you limb from limb. I’m going to–”
“Grind my bones to make your bread? Oh, sorry, that’s giants, not little people.”
“I. Am. Not. Little!”
“Whatever. I’m not going to hurt you, I just need the tools you use for your healing spells.” I reached out to grab the bag of herbs on her belt. In hindsight, that was stupid. The ward I had set up kept the dwarf in, but it did nothing to keep me out. Brilda latched on to my wrist like an alligator. She was immensely, shockingly strong, and she pulled me inside the circle with no apparent effort. She flipped me through the air, slamming me against the cold stone floor.
I tried to assemble my armor, but Brilda’s attack had crushed the air from my lungs. I couldn’t breathe, let alone weave a spell. The dwarf pounced on me, pummeling me with her fists. And believe me, her strength was in no way proportionate to the size of her arms. It felt like she was hitting me with tiny little sledge hammers.
“I really should study jiu jitsu,” I muttered as I tried to protect my head with my arms.
Brilda climbed off of me–which changed her height by about an inch–and started kicking me in the ribs. Steel and leather crashed into my side, sending blinding pain rocketing through my body. The dwarf growled, and across the room, the demon possessing Miranda laughed.
An unholy shriek split my ears. It sounded like a hawk getting skinned alive, a raucous, terrible, shrill noise. I rolled over and scrambled to my feet. Esmeralda was on the dwarf’s back, eyes rabid, clawing at Brilda’s eyes, yanking on her hair, digging her knees into the dwarf’s sides. The Moss Maiden was a flurry of tiny green violence.
The dwarf tried to grab Esmeralda, but her arms were too short to reach her. The Dwarf tried to roll, to throw the Moss Maiden off, but Esmeralda was faster than a cracked out squirrel, climbing across the leather garments like they were tree bark.
“Esmeralda! Look out!” I shouted. The Moss Maiden vanished in a flash of green and I let loose with a blast of crystalline force. The dwarf flew back, arms and legs splayed, and crashed against the ward, pinned five feet in the air. She kicked and flailed and struggled until my magic overtook her. I released my spell and let her fall to the ground, unconscious.
“Thanks,” I said breathlessly.
Esmeralda had once again become calm and frail. “She was hurting you.”
“I thought you were, you know, afraid.”
The Moss Maiden shrugged. “I was. I am. That doesn’t mean I can’t help.” I smiled at her. “I like you,” she said. “You can see me. Most people can’t see me. And the ones who can want to eat me.”
That put an end to my smile.
I grabbed the dwarven healing tools, lowered the ward long enough for us to step over the line, then tr
apped the Dwarf inside once more.
The Valkyrie stared at us with cold, fiery eyes. “Quite impressive. What’s with the toys? Fancy a career in nursing?”
I showed her shark’s teeth. “Not exactly.” I stretched out my hand and closed my eyes, searching for the Valkyrie’s spirit. The demon growled but I seized it with my mind, snaring it in my thoughts like a steel trap. The demon’s body went rigid as a board and fell flat on the cavern floor.
“You’ll. Kill. Her,” the demon snarled.
“Esmeralda,” I said.
The Moss Maiden had backed into a corner. “Yes?”
“Fancy a career in nursing?”
“What’s a nursing?” She thought for a moment. “Also, what’s a career?”
“Bring those tools over here,” I said. “Lay them out next to her, and mash up some of the mint and cinnamon. Spread it over her heart.”
The Moss Maiden did as I asked, applying a healing compress to Miranda’s body. I stretched out my other hand. I needed to be of two minds, maintaining two spells. One to keep the demon under control, to draw it out of Miranda’s body, and the other to keep the exorcism from killing her. I remembered the feeling of the dwarf’s healing ritual, the smell of the enchanted herbs, the cold of the compress, and the icy, soothing energy of the magic at work. I summoned the Æther, channeled it according to my memories, and wove a spell around Miranda’s body. “Come out of her,” I whispered.
The healing spell failed, miserably.
Miranda coughed blood.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“God damn it,” I growled. I had fucked something up, some subtle movement of the energy, some odd echo in the Æther that I hadn’t been able to mimic. Jordan would have known what to do. She was always good at this kind of thing.
I adjusted the spell, shifted the way the Æther ran through my mind, and tried again. “Come out of her.”
Miranda spasmed and groaned, her face twisted in agony.
“That’s a dwarven healing spell,” Esmeralda said.
“It’s supposed to be.”
“You’re not very good at it.”
I shot an annoyed look at her. “I figured that out, thanks.”
“Would you like me to help?”
I blinked. “Come again?”
“Would you like me to do the healing spell? The Moss People are a bit more attuned to the balance of nature than the square rock crushers.”
“You are? Why didn’t you say so?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“Right. Of course. Esmeralda, would you please use your healing magic on Miranda?”
The Moss Maiden smiled like that was the most wonderful, original idea she’d ever heard. “I’d love to!” She wiped the compress off Miranda’s body, laid one hand on Miranda’s head and the other on her chest, and began to sing. The song was low, almost inaudible, the sound of wind chimes and rainfall. She raised her head, eyes closed, a beatific smile on her face. Her tiny, frail hands began to glow, and a lambent fog spread around Miranda’s body.
I released the failed healing spell and focused exclusively on the demon. “Come. Out. Of. Her!”
Miranda’s body bucked once, but the Maiden’s magic soothed her. The fire faded from Miranda’s eyes. The Valkyrie didn’t emerge from her mouth like I expected, but lifted up from her entire body, like an image superimposed. The spirit rose into the air, wrapped in emerald fire, luminous, brilliant, and beautiful.
Until it turned to look at me with those terrible cat’s eyes, and shrieked through those awful needle teeth.
“Burn,” I growled. The Valkyrie howled as the Æther boiled around it. The demon that had stolen Miranda flared red, then burst into a million crimson shards.
Miranda’s body lay still, bathed in light. The Moss Maiden still sang, her haunting voice echoing off the cavern walls.
“Miranda?” I asked quietly.
Esmeralda didn’t open her eyes. “Not yet,” she said, then resumed her song. The cloud shimmered and flared bright white. Miranda’s back arched, then fell still.
“Miranda?”
For a moment, nothing.
My heart pounded.
Her body was still.
Then she coughed. “Caden?”
I ran across the room, fell to my knees, and wrapped her in my arms. “Miranda! You’re all right!”
She coughed again, and wiped blood from her chin. “Yeah, I’m fucking great.”
I grabbed the Moss Maiden in one arm and dragged her into our hug. Esmeralda’s eyes went wide, but a moment later she put her arms gingerly around us.
“Come on,” I said, “let’s get the hell out of here.”
“No,” Miranda said flatly.
“What?”
“I am not leaving.”
“I don’t understand. I mean sure, the glowing rocks are kind of neat, and where else are you going to find an angry dwarven shaman, but this is the abode of a mythological Norse terror, a being dedicated to the destruction of your home town and–”
“And the bitch that stole my body,” Miranda said. “I was awake the entire time, Caden. I saw the things that monster did while it was inside me. The homes it burned. The people it murdered. Holda tried to summon Wotan, Caden. She killed five people to bring her asshole husband back to earth, and I am not leaving this place until we pay her back.”
“Jesus,” I said, “Wotan is walking around?”
Her eyes were hard and fierce. Her jaw was set. “No, she must have screwed something up. But that’s just one more reason to kill her before she manages to pull it off.”
“Miranda, I don’t think I can take Holda on, not here, not yet.”
“I know,” she said. “But I have a plan.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Does this plan involve property damage and violence? Because that’s what most of my plans look like, and I’m here to tell you that that is not an optimal course of action right now.”
Miranda looked at me sideways. “No, it does not involve property damage and violence. Give me a little more credit.” She looked at the Moss Maiden. “What’s your name?”
“Esmeralda.”
“Thank you for your help, Esmeralda.” The Moss Maiden preened. “I just need you to do one more thing for us. You’re good at hiding, right?”
“The best,” she said.
“You can look like other things? Rocks and trees? Even animals?”
“I can.”
“Do you think you could do that for me? Hide me? Make me look like something else?”
The Moss Maiden thought for a moment. “I think so. What do you want to look like?”
“Like a demon,” Miranda said. Then she looked at me and raised her shackled wrists. “Also, can you unchain me? We haven’t even gone on a date yet, and it seems a bit early for S&M.”
***
The Moss Maiden laid her hands on Miranda’s forehead and sung another song, this one faster-paced and more clipped, but no less beautiful than the melody that had preserved Miranda’s body while I extracted the demon. Miranda shivered as the veil fell over her, and when she opened her eyes they glowed with green fire.
“How do I look?” she asked.
“Creepy,” I said.
“Perfect. Thank you, Esmeralda.”
The Moss Maiden smiled demurely. “Anything I can do to help defeat the White Lady. She’s very mean.”
Miranda took the Exorcist’s Dagger and cut the eyelet that held the shackles to the floor, leaving the fetters connected by the thick, heavy chain. “What are you doing with those?” I asked.
Miranda grinned. “Chaining you up.”
“I, uh, huh. What were you saying about not even going on a date?”
She leered at me. “Come on. You got to see me in this,” she gestured at the Valkyrie’s vestments, “which appears to be made of tissue paper and happy thoughts. It’s only fair. And it’ll help sell Holda on my plan. Besides, you can use that Key to get out pretty quickly, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then come on, lover boy. Let’s get naughty.”
Miranda closed the manacles around my wrists. I was immediately cut off from the Æther, from my power, and it left me feeling naked and vulnerable. It was probably all in my head–the manacles didn’t seem to do much of anything until I tried to use my magic–but I was uncomfortable all the same.
Miranda grabbed the middle of the chain. “Jesus, these things are heavy.”
“They’re dwarven-made,” Esmeralda said. “They tend to overcompensate.”
I gathered up the chains. Without the Æther to strengthen me, I had trouble moving them. “Okay, let’s go. Can you find your way back to Holda’s throne?”
Miranda nodded. The Moss Maiden, however, began to tremble. “I can’t go in there,” she said. “They’ll eat me.”
I smiled down at her. “You’ve already done more than enough, Esmeralda. Thank you.”
She ran over, frighteningly fast, and hugged my leg. “Be careful.” She ran over and hugged Miranda, too. “Take care of him,” she said sternly.
Miranda laughed. “I’ll do what I can.”
Esmeralda ran off, disappearing in the blink of an eye.
“Ready?” I asked.
Miranda led me out of the cell and down the hallway. “This way.”
The cell was deep inside the mountain. We walked for about twenty minutes, the entire time climbing a subtle incline, before we got to a part of the cavern I recognized. The sounds of frantic folk music echoed off the crystal walls.
Miranda took a deep, steadying breath. “Okay, play along. Pretend I just kicked your ass.”
I nodded. Miranda stormed into Holda’s throne room, dragging me along by the giant iron chains. The walkway I had destroyed had been remade, stretching out over the deadly waters. I stumbled and limped after Miranda, favoring my right leg and acting like my right shoulder was out of joint. Holda saw our approach and clapped her hands twice. The music and the dancing stopped instantly, and every demonic eye turned toward us.
“Kára?” Holda asked. “Is everything all right?”
The Wild Hunt Page 28