by Alicia Wolfe
I struggled, ripping at the green webbing that bound me, but it was stuck fast, and thick as concrete. Worse, it exuded a heady smell …
My vision dimmed, blurring to almost nothing. My strength ebbed, and I started to pass out. My shifter strength flared to life, giving me the vitality enough to ward it off. Blinking, I resumed tearing at the webbing with new zeal. I didn’t know how long I could resist its fumes.
Davril, meanwhile, sawed at the webbing with his sword. He let out a triumphant exclamation and tore away a long strand. Then another and another. In moments he had jumped to his feet and was approaching me.
“Stay still,” he said, and slashed a long ribbon of webbing to my right. A couple of more slashes and I toppled forward.
He caught me. Panting, we stared into each other’s faces.
“Ruby,” I said.
I went to her. Without shifter abilities or the innate power of the Fae, the webbing had put her to sleep. Davril freed her of it and I dragged her away from it, but she was out cold.
“How long do you think before she wakes up?” I said.
“I don’t know.”
“But she’s okay?”
“I think so. Yes, she’s fine. But if we don’t hurry, Angela will have that wardrobe, and with it direct access to the Shadow.”
“That does sound dire.”
Holding his sword out before him, he jogged away, leaving the room and heading in the direction of the main doors, where Angela’s army was massing. He spoke into his enchanted wristwatch as he went—summoning his own army, no doubt. The Fae Knights were going to war.
I spared Ruby one last look, then darted after him.
“Calling in the cavalry?” I asked.
“Well, the entire force, but yes, the cavalry, too. They should be ushering passers-by away from the area and setting into Angela’s minions at any moment. Hopefully that will stop her if we fail.”
We ran through dark halls, passing down a long staircase and through broad corridors. At last the huge main doors came in sight ahead. Sure enough, I could already hear the sounds of fighting outside—shouts and the ring of steel on steel. The two eyeless witches were approaching the doors, one still holding Gavin, the other towing the wardrobe where it floated above the ground.
“Open them now!” the first witch said.
“Very well,” Gavin muttered. He said a string of words and the Guild House doors flew open.
Outside Fae Knights in armor battled the bikers, mages and bird-people that composed Angela’s army. No doubt she was out there as well, leading the fight against the Fae. Was she even now glancing toward the open doors, seeing her chance?
A thunderclap shook the foyer, and I gasped at the sound and the accompanying light. There was a huge flash, and suddenly a figure stood on the threshold of the Guild House. When my eyes adjusted, I saw that it wasn’t Angela.
It was Nevos.
“Hello, brother,” he said.
Chapter 21
“You!” snarled Davril. He and I had just been coming on the witches from the rear, meaning to ambush them, but now they whirled, seeing us. Thanks, Nevos.
“You will not have the wardrobe,” one hissed at us, but I was already moving. She’d let herself become distracted, allowing me to get in close.
I smashed a fist across her jaw, and she went flying, just like she’d sent me minutes ago. She didn’t go so far as to hit the wall since the walls were further apart here, but she went a good ten feet, then slammed into the floor and slid along it, for the moment unconscious.
Without her to suspend it off the ground, the wardrobe fell, crashing heavily to the tiles. I hoped it would break, but its magic was too strong. It did land with a bang, though.
Enraged, the remaining witch flung Gavin at me, and while I was dodging him she whipped out her wand.
A fireball gathered on the tip and flew straight at me. Davril intercepted it with his sword. It caromed around the ceiling, finally exploding the chandelier hanging over the marble floor. The chandelier’s remains fell, flaming and glittering, to the floor, and we all threw ourselves aside. Its shrapnel erupted in all directions, and I winced as something sliced my arm.
When I glanced up, the witch was stalking toward me, nursing one leg, which was bleeding. It didn’t seem to have slowed her wrath any, though. Another fireball gathered on the tip of her wand.
Behind her, Nevos was doing something with the wardrobe. He was holding up a strange glass cube in the palm of one hand and casting a spell. The cube flickered, and so did the wardrobe.
My attention stayed on the witch. She advanced on me, murder in her eyes, then coiled her hand to throw the fireball. Davril was nowhere in sight. I rolled to the side. The fireball hit the marble where I’d just been. Boom!
I bounded to my feet, one hand holding a pile of dust and shrapnel. I hurled it at her face. She coughed and wheezed. The new fireball that had been building on the tip of her wand fizzled out.
I punched her in the belly, then across the jaw. She sagged to the floor like a sack of ugly spuds, out of the fight.
Coughing, Davril rose from the floor, picking shards of glass out of one arm. I went to him and brushed some more jagged splinters off him.
“You okay?” I said.
He nodded. He’d dropped his sword, but he scooped it up, and we both rounded on Nevos together. The wardrobe was shimmering out of existence. No, that wasn’t quite right. It was disappearing from the floor but reappearing in his little glass cube, but in miniature. He’d found a way to make the huge gothic monstrosity mobile. Clever Nevos. Even as we moved toward him, the wardrobe completely vanished from the floor, now appearing very solid inside the cube, which fit on the palm of his hand.
Smiling, Nevos hung it from a clip on his waist.
“You’re not going anywhere with that,” Davril said.
Nevos reached to the scabbard on the other side of his waist and drew a sword, dark and gleaming, inset with jewels glimmering with strange energy.
“You can’t stop me, brother,” he said, fairly spitting the word.
Behind him, battle still raged in the streets, but at the moment it wasn’t coming any closer. The knights and the thugs had quite enough to contend with by themselves. We probably didn’t have long, though.
“I can, and I will,” Davril said. “But because you are my brother, I give you this one chance. Surrender and you will not be harmed.”
Nevos laughed. “I wish I could make you the same offer, but it would be a lie.”
He sprang forward and hacked at Davril’s head. Davril blocked the blow with a clang. His sword flashed with the impact. Bunching his shoulders, he flung Nevos back, then aimed a swipe at his abdomen. Nevos swayed backward, avoiding the blow. Sweat flew from his long black hair.
My heart pounded. My belly fluttered. The truth was I didn’t want either one to die. But that might mean neither one would prevail, either. And someone had to win.
It had all come down to this. Brother against brother for the fate of the world.
Nevos lunged forward with a flurry of quick strikes aimed at Davril’s torso. Davril’s sword licked out, knocking blow after blow aside. Nevos drove him backward, jaw set, eyes hard. At last Davril found a break in the net of steel and sent a fist at Nevos’s face. The fist connected and Nevos reeled back, blood trickling down his cheek.
Grimly, the two brothers circled each other.
“Screw this,” I said. I stepped forward to attack Nevos.
“Don’t,” he said. “You’re on the wrong side of this, Jade. But you don’t have to be.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “You serve the Dark Lord!”
“Yes, and his will shall triumph. As it should. The Fae have had their chance, and they’ve proven themselves unworthy.” He sliced at Davril’s head. Davril parried. “Davril proved himself unworthy.”
“Traitor,” Davril said. “Villain. I can’t believe we once played together in the yard.”
Circl
e, circle.
“Yes, and I can’t believe you betrayed me. That you seduced my wife.”
Davril glared. “She and I had been promised each other since we were children! We loved each other.”
“So you don’t deny it! Good!” Nevos hacked at Davril’s ankle, meaning to hobble him. Davril danced back and thrust at Nevos’s unprotected throat. Nevos pirouetted gracefully, avoiding the strike, and the two resumed circling each other. “See?” Nevos said to me. “He doesn’t even deny betraying me. He brought this all about, Jade. Davril, not me. He’s the cause of the war. Of everything.”
Tears burned my eyes. “Davril, is that true?”
Davril didn’t spare me a glance, but something strange passed over his face, something like guilt. “Yes, Jade. It’s true. I won’t explain myself. I won’t beg for forgiveness.”
Nevos spat a gob of blood. “Pride! You always were a proud one, you ass.”
He lunged forward, slicing at Davril’s arm. Davril blocked the blow, then delivered what would have been a devastating strike at Nevos’s head. Sweat flying, Nevos sprang aside, then slashed at Davril’s face. Davril parried.
They were evenly matched, I saw. Neither one could best the other, or if they did it would be luck that decided the outcome.
I could make the difference. Anger burned in me, though, and hurt. Davril truly had seduced Nevos’s wife and brought all this about, and he was the one who had presumed to lecture me on morality! The gall!
“Jade!” Nevos said. “Decide! Me or him!”
With a wild cry, I sprang. I had made my choice. The outcome was never in doubt, really. I flew through the air, a scream on my lips, and landed on my target’s back. Nevos cursed beneath me, but my weight did the trick. He stumbled and tripped over a rod of the fallen chandelier. Davril rushed in and kicked him in the solar plexus. Nevos grunted and fell to his knees. I jumped off, ripped his sword loose and danced back.
Breathing heavily, Davril nodded at me. “Thank you.”
“Sure.”
Kneeling, Nevos glared up at us. “You think you’ve won, but you’ve won nothing.” He studied me. “Jade, did you not wonder how I found you? How I knew where the wardrobe was being kept?”
“I assumed you just followed the sounds of fighting.”
He shook his head. There was victory but also sadness in his eyes. “No. I used one of the oldest spells of all. I simply followed one of my hairs that was not attached to my body.”
I went cold inside. Awkwardly, I looked at Davril, then back to Nevos.
“You … a hair?” Unable to stop myself, I lifted my free hand to my own hair and raked my fingers through it, as if expecting to find Nevos’s missing strand there. Maybe I did, too. All I saw were a few loose dark hairs.
Nevos grunted. “You two deserve each other. Both cheaters and liars.”
Davril looked stung. “Jade … Did you … and Nevos … ?”
Before I could answer, the tide of war finally reached us. A gaggle of knights, mages and thugs, Angela among them, spilled into the foyer from the street. Battle raged all around, everyone fighting everyone. Davril and I found ourselves fighting back to back. We did it awkwardly, though, and there was some seriously thick tension between us. When we had space to breathe, we looked for Nevos, but he, and the wardrobe he still carried, were gone.
Almost.
“There!” Davril said. He pointed to a figure cutting his way through the battle, heading outside.
“After him!” I said.
Together we ran through the battle, having to hack our way through it, and at last poured outside. Nevos’s pterodactyl-like mount, the taron, was just setting down on the city street. He climbed aboard the saddle and said, “Ra!”
The taron pumped its wings and lifted off, taking to the skies. A few bikers fired guns at it, but the bullets hit a magical shield that shimmered with orange lights around the creature and were incinerated. In moments the flier and its rider had reached the height of the tallest skyscrapers. That thing could really move.
Davril whistled. Lady Kay on her gorgeous white wings rippled into visibility overhead, then settled toward the ground. Davril leapt into the driver’s seat and I hauled myself into the passenger’s. As he took the wheels and guided her upward, I whistled, too. Chromecat appeared, black wings pumping, and trailed close behind us.
“Go, girl!” Davril said, and stomped the gas.
Lady Kay shot forward through the canyon of steel and concrete, aimed straight at Nevos on his taron.
Nevos had obtained one of the blunderbuss-type pistols his former associate Lyra had sported, and he turned in his saddle and fired a blast at us. The gooey ball of green death sped straight at us. Davril jerked the wheel, bringing Lady Kay to the side, and the whizzing goo hurled harmlessly past.
“Do you have any guns?” I said. “I lost my crossbow.”
“Sorry, no guns.”
“Damn.” I shook my head. “Just get me close enough. I’ll jump on him. Steal the cube.”
“That energy shield will fry you.”
“Let me worry about that. I can disarm any shield.” So I hoped, anyway.
He glanced at me sideways. “Thanks for taking my side, back there.”
“You didn’t make it easy for me. You could’ve given me a reason, you know.”
“Like saving the world?”
I rolled my eyes. “Sometimes a person needs a little incentive to do the right thing. I know you have some reason why you did what you did. Did Nevos beat her? Was he cruel? Were you her protector?”
He sighed. “No. Nevos was not abusive.”
“But …”
“But that will have to wait for another time.”
Nevos was fast, but Lady Kay was proving faster. We were gradually gaining on the taron. I pulled my legs beneath me on the seat and crouched, ready to leap onto the hood of the car and then onto the taron. I’d have to remember to disarm the shield first and somehow not fall off the hood while I was doing it. Damn, but I really needed to look into getting a desk job.
Nevos swerved around the side of a building, and we followed. I held on tight to the door and dashboard, then looked up to get a fix on Nevos …
… and saw Walsh, huge and red and winged, in his dragon form, barreling down the canyon of steel straight at us. Or rather at Nevos. The traitorous Fae, however, hauled on the reins of his steed, bringing it up. He just barely managed to gain enough altitude to avoid Walsh’s snapping jaws. The great dragon slammed his teeth shut on the empty air where Nevos had been a split second before.
Unable to follow Nevos quite as nimbly, and with us dead in his sights, Walsh drove right toward me and Davril.
“Shit!” I said.
Davril spun the wheel, hard, throwing us down a side-corridor. Behind us Walsh passed in a rage, smoke issuing from his maw.
Breathless, I glanced to Davril. “I guess the witches’ holding spell couldn’t hold him for long.”
“Apparently not,” he said. His face was sheened with sweat.
He made another turn, then another. I saw Walsh pass between two buildings, then vanish. I hoped he was going after Nevos. After all, Nevos had the wardrobe. Just as I was thinking this, Nevos himself appeared, flying his taron directly above us.
“Enjoy!” he said.
He’d tilted his mount sideways so that he could do what he did next: he flung his arm and a ball of rippling pale green magic fluttered down to us, then engulfed Lady Kay. Instantly it dispersed. Then Nevos was gone, laughing.
“What did he do?” I said.
Walsh appeared between the buildings ahead. Flame building at the back of his mouth, he saw us and barreled straight for us.
“Why isn’t he going for Nevos?” I said.
Davril muttered some Fae-ish swear. “That bastard! He transferred the wardrobe’s magical signature to us.”
“He what?”
“Now Walsh thinks we have the wardrobe.”
“That bastard!”
I’d picked the right brother, all right.
“It will only last a few minutes, but that’s all he needs.”
Walsh gathered the fire in his maw, preparing to unleash it. Davril and I would be roasted alive. All of a sudden, a blaze of lightning forked down from the heavens and speared Walsh in the scaled back. He bellowed in pain. The fire disappeared.
Wide-eyed, I glanced behind us. Grinning, her red hair streaming behind her, Ruby raced toward us on her broom.
“Sis!” I said.
“Jade!”
She came alongside us and flicked us a thumbs up. “I woke up with a huge headache and you two nowhere in sight. I figured you must be in the shit without me.”
“Language, Rubes!”
Davril was more to the point. “Can you use that lightning spell again?”
“Sadly, no. That took most of my mojo.”
We turned a corner, our craft forming a tight formation, with Chromecat still flying immediately behind. I couldn’t see Walsh, but I knew he must be somewhere behind the buildings I could see, and though he couldn’t see us he could sense the wardrobe, or at least its false signature. No way we could lose him. We had to deal with him somehow.
“You have any magic that could help?” I asked Ruby.
She frowned, then patted a satchel on her saddle. “All I can think of is my anti-shifter serum.”
“Your what?”
“A syringe full of a special serum. It will revert any shifter from its animal form to its human form. Pretty expensive spellgredients.”
“Jeez, well I wouldn’t want you to spend anything.”
“Okay, fine, you can use it, but I don’t know how you’ll get it into his bloodstream. His scales are too thick.” She rummaged through the satchel with the hand not guiding the broom, pulled out a capped syringe and tossed it across to me. I blinked at it, grimaced, and thrust it through my waistband.
“Don’t do anything foolish,” Davril said. I rejoiced at the genuine fear I heard in his voice.
“You see any non-foolish options on the table?” I asked.
He said nothing.
I’d been gathering myself to scramble forward onto the hood, but now I scrambled backward, over the back seat and onto the gleaming silver trunk of Lady Kay. I whistled. Chromecat shot forward, and I jumped into her seat. I thrilled at the feel of her engine under me, but I forced myself not to look down. It was a long way to the city streets, and I couldn’t fly like I used to. Thanks to the fucker that was even then hunting us.