Urban Mythic: Thirteen Novels of Adventure and Romance, featuring Norse and Greek Gods, Demons and Djinn, Angels, Fairies, Vampires, and Werewolves in the Modern World

by C. Gockel

  “Kelpie,” he said when her eyes snapped to his.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I am a kelpie.” He shrugged, rocking back on his heels and gazing over her shoulder. “You should have asked what I was in exchange for the tale of your encounter with a gercu.”

  Offering up information, clear and direct, without being prompted, was as kind as he had been. The name didn’t mean anything to her, but it gave her something to hold on to that wasn’t the certainty of loss.

  “What’s a kelpie?” she asked. If her voice sounded robotic, no one could blame her.

  “Something that’s scaring you, it seems,” he replied with a hint of humor.

  Lily giggled, and the tears escaped her control, and suddenly she was laughing and crying, sobbing and shaking.

  Chapter Nine

  The hysterical attack ran its course and left Lily tired and aching. However, the pain was duller, tempered by anger against the creatures that attacked the house and desire to find a purpose for her loss. She dried her tears and turned to Troy.

  “Thanks.”

  “I have yet to grasp what for, but I suppose your gratitude is welcome.”

  She debated whether she should try to explain that, after her reaction, she felt more capable to cope or that his sitting there without offering false words of consolation allowed her to keep going, contaminated by his calm. She decided not to elaborate.

  “So,” she began instead, “we still have a question unanswered. Why did the nice brownies change?”

  “And why would the doctor protect you upon learning a sign of her own impending demise? Yes, there are parts of this tale still untold.”

  “How are we going to figure them out then?”

  Troy’s gaze snapped to hers, and for the first time, she caught a glimpse of uncertainty there. The way he held himself added to his befuddled look, made him seem like a cat who had suddenly found his whiskers wet. Lily laughed softly and his surprise turned to weariness.

  He must expect me to break down in tears yet again. If I want to fix any of this for Grandma, I need to get it together and fast.

  “We shall not figure anything out,” he said when it was clear no new breakdown loomed ahead.

  “I refuse to let it go.”

  “You will.”

  “No, I won’t! Grandma deserves justice. I deserve justice.”

  Troy narrowed his eyes and studied her a moment before shaking his head. “You have no interest in justice. Revenge is what you seek.”

  “They’re one and the same,” she bit out, throwing the quote back in his face.

  “Or not.” He shrugged. “The matter could be more complicated than you can fathom.” Lily sat up, ready to argue, but he silenced her with a raised hand. “Regardless, she shall get it.”

  “Oh. But hold on a second. You just said I will let go.”

  “As you must.”

  “You don’t get it.” Lily pushed herself to her feet to dominate the conversation. “She’s my family. I loved—love her. And I won’t just let what happened in her house go. I won’t let it become nothing but crazy antics. I will find out what happened and why.” She directed her tirade at Troy even though it was aimed at herself, and he responded by standing as well.

  “You ‘don’t get it,’ girl,” he sneered, towering nearly a foot taller than she was. “You have shown yourself to be ignorant, weak, and gullible. Death is the only thing you shall find down this path should you choose to become involved.”

  “I can learn,” she said. “I’m not weak, either. I’ll be prepared to fight the next time.”

  Troy shook his head. “Return where you came from. Doctor’s blood or not, this is not your world.”

  “I’ll make it mine.”

  They were standing chest to chest, and for a moment, Lily saw such anger in his features that she thought he might be about to push his physical advantage. Instead, he took a step back and all tension vanished from his shoulders, presenting an insouciant facade with no apparent effort.

  “Will you?” he asked with a dark smile dancing about his eyes. “Will you follow our paths and share our ways? Do you think you can?”

  “Yeah.” Lily thought back to the last couple of days with her grandmother, of the way she had shown her the name of all those instruments. She thought back to her childhood, to the silly rhymes and innocent games that had sent her mother screaming for the hills, and she realized it. Grandma Mackenna had always meant for her to be part of this other world. “She believed I could, too.”

  “Very well.” Troy spread his arms out to the sides, encompassing the whole of the refuge, and then he performed a courtly little bow. “Show me how well you fit. Let us find the way to the riverside.”

  He walked past her, sinking into the foliage and barely rustling the thick leaves with his passing. Lily followed close at his heels, but he moved too fast. The greenery seemed to part for him but reach out to entangle her, and soon, she had to chase shadows. The color of his clothing blended in with the darkness, and his pale face looking back over this shoulder with a smirk was the last thing she could distinguish before finding herself alone.

  Lily rested her hands on her knees and took a deep breath, in and out. She was fine, really, but her body had trouble believing it and the emotional baggage dragged her down. However, she had seen the twisted look of a bully right before Troy disappeared from sight and she wouldn’t let him get away with it.

  If he thinks a little hiking will break me, he’ll be disappointed.

  The soil was soft under her shoes, the wildlife thick around her. The river had to be close, so she canted her head and strained to listen.

  “There,” she whispered. It was a sound just this side of her hearing and it reverberated through the closed space below the canopy, but it was there. She turned a full circle, trying to discern where it came from, but the lingering echoes made it difficult for her untrained ear. Still, after a moment of hesitation, she took a step, then another. The ground was not quite level, so it stood to reason she would soon find the river if she followed down the slope.

  In spite of her intentions, Lily couldn’t advance in a straight line. The trees weren’t the true impediment as they were sparse, thin, and wrecked. Only their upper branches presented any thickness, sprawled like grasping fingers to touch one another and creating a green cover far over her head. On the ground, it was brambles and shrubs standing in her way. Sometimes they grew in thickets impossible to traverse, and other times they stood alone and defiant, forcing her to sidestep them. Whenever she did, she made sure to take the detour toward the down slope, which would bring her that much closer to the water. She could still hear it, its gurgling a cocoon wrapped around her, and so she pressed on.

  She didn’t know how many minutes she walked before the first strange thing registered.

  It’s not getting louder. She tilted her head again to listen, but she found the same curtain of watery music that had accompanied her up until that point. How far can this sound travel in the foliage? How far can the river be?

  She looked around again, more careful this time. Scotland was a fertile place, but even so, this degree of lushness should correspond to a riverside, she was sure of it. Perhaps brambles weren’t precisely popular plants near the water—or anywhere, for that matter—but the soil was fresh, the trees gnarled but full of life. There was moss in their trunks. She had to be close, so she sidestepped a shrub with pretty red flowers and kept descending.

  Her legs began to ache by the time the next realization hit her. She lifted her gaze toward the canopy overhead and watched the brilliant green leaves quivering in the nonexistent breeze. Their borders were outlined by a faint radiance, as if receding sunlight shone beyond them, but no shafts of light crossed them to dance upon the floor. And once she truly looked, she had to wonder if the illumination had changed at all since she set out.

  “Perhaps I haven’t been walking so long,” she said aloud, chasing the unease away with th
e sound of her voice. “I’m tired after everything that’s happened, so it feels like hours but I must’ve been just one, tops. The light doesn’t change that fast.”

  Somewhere to her left, a bird cawed as if in mirth and Lily flinched, her eyes searching for the animal. Where did it come from? It was the first sign of animal life she had seen, other than herself and Troy. It hadn’t bothered her until that point, but now its presence irked her. It had felt like the bird laughed at her, a girl lost and alone in the forest, unable to find a river that lay so very close. She turned in a slow circle, hoping to locate it, but it was nowhere to be seen. She was as alone as she’d been.

  Throwing a last glance over her shoulder, she chose the downslope again to resume her search. She had to circumvent yet another shrub within three paces, though. Lily turned with a sigh and then stopped and turned to regard it so fast she got whiplash. It was a shrub right out of a children story, its branches giving it a naturally rounded shape, and bright red flowers stood in stark contrast against the deep green of its leaves.

  It was exactly like the one she’d passed what felt like miles before and she retraced her steps.

  It stood blocking her path in just the same manner.

  What the hell? Is that the same plant? Lily’s heartbeat thundered in her chest, the surety she’d felt only moments before all but gone. She forced herself to remain calm. Not possible. I’ve been walking down all the time, so circling back and not realizing isn’t an option. It’s just a similar bush. There must be a ton of similar-looking plants here.

  Although her rational mind was happy with the thought, there was a larger part of Lily who had been nearly eaten by bogeys and been saved by a kelpie. She grabbed one of the branches with both hands and twisted until it broke. Her fingers came away sticky, darkened with green-black ichor, and the jagged bark snagged her hands when she stepped back to admire her handiwork. The picture-perfect shrub had become a mangled, misshapen thing. It was the only hint toward human influence she could see, too. Satisfied, she resumed her purposeful walk, taking care to always walk down the slope and following more the terrain than the ubiquitous water gurgle.

  With each step, the weight of her legs increased and her movements became sloppy. The light still didn’t change, so she took to counting her steps to mark the passage of time. Two hundred saw her losing her footing over a raised root she should have been able to avoid, three hundred and ten marked the first time she miscalculated and got grazed by a bramble’s thorny branches, and by the time she reached five hundred, she was reduced to trudging on, trampling everything in her path or getting thorned by it. She knew she should mind the little cuts and bruises, but she barely had the energy to keep going, let alone to do so with any grace.

  Eight hundred and thirty-one steps later, she found it.

  Half the plant was round, coming up to her waist, covered in delicate red flowers. The other half had been twisted and flattened. Some red petals had fallen to the ground, and those that remained clinging to their stems were spattered with dark green-black droplets like congealed blood.

  A wave of nausea threatened to overwhelm her as she took in the only hint of human presence in the whole riverside. Her mind tethered on the brink of despair while her heart thudded to a stop, and then a burst of adrenaline kick-started her, sending a myriad thoughts racing along with the maddening staccato in her chest.

  Grandma told me stories about this, didn’t she? People getting lost in faerie paths. How did the protagonists escape? There were lights, right? You had to follow them. She swallowed. Or was that the way to get lost in the first place? It had been too long and, at the time, they were nothing but silly nursery tales. Bits and pieces of information fluttered just out of reach, beckoning her, but not giving her enough to prove useful. Sometimes, people surfaced after years wandering the paths, even though it felt like only minutes. I already feel like I’ve been walking all day long and then some. She refused to think about the other stories. The tales of people never coming back—more often than not after having enraged a faerie.

  A bird cawed and Lily jerked out of her thoughts. Its tone had been mocking and she half expected to find a huge, black raven laughing at her. She shivered and it cawed again, more urgently. She cast about, hoping to spot it. Somehow, her invisible companion scared her as much as discovering the faerie path did.

  Nothing. She was alone.

  “There was no call for violence,” Troy’s voice said, not two feet in front of her.

  She shrieked. He closed his eyes while she did, as if to better take in her fear, and then his tongue darted out and licked his upper lip.

  “And no true need for that, either, nice as it was.”

  “Since when did you get here?” Lily’s voice shook, but not as much as she thought it would.

  “‘When’ and ‘here’ are misleading concepts in this instance. I… watched you.”

  “I saw you disappear ahead of me.”

  “And you saw me appear again.” He shrugged, as if visual proof meant nothing.

  “You’ve been watching me stumble on all this time? Without saying anything?” Lily tried to cajole her fear into indignant anger. That, at least, felt a little like a shield.

  “Saying anything? To guide you to the riverside?” Troy smirked. “That would defeat the purpose of our experiment, I should think.”

  “That’s it? You were just trying to prove a point? And if I had gotten lost forever?”

  “Then I would have been right.” He stalked in a circle around her, drawing closer. “In fact, I believe I am. It has taken you this long to even recognize one of our paths, and it is quite obvious you are blind to its exit. No simpler snare than this lies ahead for you… And you are not capable of dealing with it.”

  In spite of her weariness, Lily drew herself up when she felt his presence behind her. “If there’s an exit,” she said, “I’ll find it.”

  Troy stopped moving. She didn’t dare look back at him.

  “The exit has not changed since you began searching for it. You have not seen it, and you will not find it now.”

  “I know what I’m looking for this time,” she insisted.

  “In fact, you do not.” There was a new nuance in his tone. Lily fought to place it. Was it… perplexity? “Why would you keep trying to cross a barrier you cannot even feel?”

  So I need to feel out for a barrier. That’s something, I guess. Aloud, she said, “Because I won’t step away from this.”

  His fingers touched her arm. They were long, graceful, and cool. A shiver ran down her spine as she turned, following the lead of his slight pressure.

  He stood close. She had known it, but it hadn’t prepared her to face him, neck craned back to meet his gaze. His viridian eyes studied her, looked into her with a mixture of confusion and curiosity along with many other things she had no name for, and it made her dizzy. After an endless moment, he nodded and took a step back, breaking the spell.

  “If that is what you wish,” he said in a low voice. “You have been warned.”

  Chapter Ten

  It wasn’t so much that the world changed as it felt like Lily herself changed. Something shifted in her center and her perception snapped into place. The echoes that had reverberated under the canopy dissipated, and the ground warped before her eyes. For a disorienting second, Lily couldn’t tell what way was up. Then, it settled.

  Rays of sunlight darted across the tree leaves and danced in her eyes, their angle suggesting a fast-approaching twilight. There was no real wind, but still she heard occasional puffs of humid breeze ruffling the vegetation. Birds tweeted somewhere in the background—there must be a nest nearby.

  Dazed, she walked past the shrub of red flowers, following the clear gurgle of water, and not three yards later, she caught the glint of weak sun reflected on running water.

  “What is this?” she asked, turning around. The place was both the same and different from the one she had stood on a blink before.

&nbs
p; “The riverside,” Troy said.

  “I was on the riverside? All along?” She pointed the shrub, the path under her feet.

  He narrowed his eyes, choosing his words with care. “The path you wandered was superimposed to the riverside, yes.”

  Lily thought back once more to the stories she could recall from her grandma. Most characters entering or exiting a faerie path wouldn’t even realize they’d left the real world until it was too late, so it made sense. Still, for the entrance to have been so close, and for her to be unable to feel it…

  She shivered and then, to hide it, began to pick her way to the river. Troy followed on her heels, his strides easy and confident.

  “How long since the attack? You told me saying ‘yesterday’ could be misleading, and I think I remember time doing weird things in the faerie paths.”

  “Well done,” he said, giving her a look of surprise and honest praise. “Time does tend to run quicker in mortal lands, and sometimes it folds many times over in the heart of our territory. This path was close to your world, and close to the river, so the correlation should be quite straightforward. I suspect little more than a day might have passed, perhaps two.”

  “I’m worried the trail will turn cold,” she admitted. “Or that someone noticed the attack and called the cops. They’ll never understand what happened and they might make it difficult for us.”

  Troy shrugged. “Mortals prefer not to see the affairs of fay.”

  “I can sort of see why.”

  They reached the river just then. It wasn’t wide, but the water was pure and the current fast. Glancing up and down, she saw no known landmarks, no houses. For all she knew, it wasn’t even the Dee.

  “Is it far to my grandma’s?” she asked, still worried about their timing.

  “I shall take you there,” he said, avoiding her question.

  The memory of the way he had changed when escaping the bogeys rushed back to her and hit her like a sledgehammer. Her mind had shoved it into a box labeled delirium, allowing her to cope, but his comment brought the vision of a stallion flashing to the forefront of her awareness, with coat like coal tar and eyes like cut emeralds.