Tam was ready to go by the time Patrice finished. He had a valet, but usually dismissed him and fared for himself.
I stood. “Thank you. Go get yourself some dinner. We’ll probably be a couple hours at least. I’ll ring for you when I return.”
She curtseyed, then hurried to the door to open it for us. “As you will, milady.”
As Tam and I exited our chambers, Zed and Sig—another one of our personal guards—were there, waiting to escort us to our private dining hall.
WHEN WE ENTERED the room, we found Elan and Jason already there. We gathered around the intimate dining table, taking our seats.
“Are Hans and Greta making it tonight?” I asked.
Elan nodded. “Yes, though I think they’ll be a little late. Hans had his sword-mastery class tonight at New Valhalla, and on the nights he teaches, he always runs a little late.” Elan was one of my personal guards, but she was also one of my best friends, and the wife of yet another best friend.
Jason yawned and stretched. He looked tired. “What a day. I cannot believe how busy the store is. When we were in Seattle, I made okay money, but here, business is booming with a fraction of the population. Dream Wardens is doing a good business.” He paused. “I’ve had a lot of folks coming in offering to barter, though. How long before you think the new currency will catch on?”
Tam shrugged. “I don’t know. But people have to accept it sooner or later. We have to have an equitable system of commerce if we’re going to grow. I’ll address it at the next community meeting.” While we seldom scheduled mandatory meetings for the town, we did require at least one member of the household in attendance for our monthly meetings. That brought it down to a manageable size. And households could be considered roommates living together, or family groupings.
“How’s Aila doing?” Usually Elan and Jason brought their daughter with them, but tonight she was conspicuously absent.
“She’s studying for a big test tomorrow.” Elan grinned. “She’s determined to pass with honors this year. I promised if she maintains a B average, she can return to taking lessons with Rika.”
Rika was the head of training for the UnderBarrow Guard, and she taught martial arts classes for children on the side. Aila showed a remarkable aptitude for just about anything requiring bodywork, but she also had a tendency to let her schoolwork slide. Elan yanked her out of Rika’s training class as a last resort to get her to pay attention to her studies.
Jason snorted. “If anything lights a fire under her, this will. She moped all summer because she knew we weren’t going to let her go back to training until she brings home a full B average for an entire semester.” He smiled more often now, something I was grateful to see. It had been eight years since he had been trapped in the realm of Chaos, and he had finally cracked through most of the shellshock and learned to enjoy life again.
We chatted about this and that, and within twenty minutes, Greta and Hans hustled in. Both looked like they could use a good shower. Even Greta’s wings looked droopy. They joined us, apologizing for being late, and dinner got under way.
We were halfway through the meal when Zed approached the table, looking apologetic. “Your Majesties, we have a problem.”
Tam glanced up at him, frowning. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s been an attack off the road leading north, just outside the gates that mark UnderBarrow’s territory.”
I set down my bread. “What kind of attack?”
Zed glanced at Elan, Jason, Hans, and Greta. He knew they were safe to talk around, unless we told him otherwise, so he took a deep breath and spread a map on the table as we made space. He pointed to the northern gates, then traced a line a little off to the left, by the side of the lake.
“Here. Two of our villagers were returning from hunting when they came across the scene. It took them an hour to make it back to Willow Wood through the rain. Why they didn’t tell the guards at the gate, I don’t know, but apparently they decided that they should tell us directly.”
“Yes, yes, go on.” I sighed. We were still trying to get the villagers to accept the town guard as authority figures. They were falling in line, but most everybody had been used to living in a big city, where talking to the authorities could get you locked up, or worse.
“They found the remains of a group of campers at a campsite. There’s a makeshift cart, though it looks like they were pulling it by hand. And the remains of whoever was making camp, as well.”
“How many dead?” Tam asked.
“That’s the thing. They don’t know.” He paused, the expression on his face shifting. “Your Majesty, when I say ‘remains’…I mean remains. It looks like an entire camping party was ravaged. There were bits and pieces of bodies everywhere. There’s no telling how many victims there were. The hunters were afraid to stay in case whatever destroyed the camp should return. They hurried as fast as they could back to Willow Wood and then here, to UnderBarrow.”
I dabbed my lips with my napkin and then pushed back my plate. Spaghetti didn’t seem like such a good idea after all. “Did they recognize…anyone?”
Zed shook his head. “No, there wasn’t enough light left to discern anything more than the attack had been wholesale carnage. But the scent of blood was heavy in the air. We’ve dispatched a group of guards to check it out. They’re fully armed, of course. It sounds a nasty piece of business.”
I sat back, toying with my napkin. The energy leapt and crackled around me, and I could feel the same unease that I had felt during the afternoon as I watched over the fields. I wanted to go out there with the guards, to look around to see if I could sense anything. I thought of asking Tam, but I knew what he’d say. There had been times over the past few years when I had disobeyed his wishes. Hecate’s orders came first, and he accepted that. But he wouldn’t want me going out without her blessing, given the danger involved.
As I looked up, he was staring at me. “You want to go along.”
I blushed. “It’s not that I want to, but…” I turned to the others. “You might as well know. I woke up with the feeling that something is dreadfully wrong. It bothered me most of the morning until I finally took Zed and we went out to the lake, overlooking the wheat fields.”
“Did you figure out what it was?” Elan asked. She, like the others, took my premonitions seriously. “Was it an Abom?”
I shook my head. “No, actually, it wasn’t. I don’t know what caused the sensation, but once we were there, the certainty that something is wrong grew. I couldn’t shake it off. The moment Zed began talking about the attack, that feeling returned full force. I think that whatever I was sensing earlier is connected to this attack.”
Tam pressed his lips together for a moment. Then, he shrugged. “You’re probably right. You usually are. But it’s late, and there’s a storm at hand. The campground is an hour’s ride there and back, at the very least. I think, given there’s someone skulking around who has the ability to destroy a campground filled with people, it’s not in our best interests to check it out in the dark.”
“You’re letting the guards go,” I said, but immediately knew that was a mistake.
“They’re trained for it.”
“So am I.”
“Be that as it may, you’re not expendable. Let’s wait till we know what we’re dealing with before we take action. We would just be in the way and the guards would be torn between looking for whoever did this and protecting us.” Tam reached out to take my hand. He gazed at me long and hard, and the weight of his years of experience and life washed through me.
I let out a sigh. “Very well. I’ll wait. But tomorrow, we go look. And tonight, we stay up until the guards have a report for us. Deal?”
“Deal.” Tam turned to Zed. “Update us with whatever you find out, no matter how important or unimportant the information seems to be. And keep an eye on the remains. Zombies have made their way over to the Wild Wood from old Seattle. You never can t
ell what’s going to happen when you’re dealing with the undead.”
With that, he dismissed Zed and turned back to dinner.
Tam gestured. “Please, finish your meal.”
We all returned to our food but my heart wasn’t in it. Instead, alarms were ringing loud and clear that—whatever this was—we weren’t done with it yet, and we weren’t even remotely prepared for what was behind it.
BY MIDNIGHT, ELAN and Jason had gone home, but Greta and Hans hung around to find out what the guards had to report. We were curled up in our private chambers, talking while we waited for the men to check in. I was leaning against Tam’s chest, while Hans was rubbing Greta’s feet. I treasured these moments when we could just be ourselves with our closest friends, without having to put on a face for the public.
“Freya has set me in charge of harvesting. It’s daunting,” Greta said. She was a Valkyrie, still a relatively new one, and lately she had been working nonstop for her goddess. Freya was a tough boss. I was grateful I was bound to Hecate and not the Norse bombshell.
“What’s the difference between harvesting souls and escorting them to Valhalla?” I was still fuzzy on the whole “gather the souls” bit. I dispatched Aboms and sent them back to Pandoriam, their plane. I had little to do with spirits except for Queet, my spirit guide, who was currently taking a much-needed vacation. Queet had been testy lately to the point where I begged Hecate to give him some time off.
“Escorting souls to Valhalla means welcoming them to their afterlife and guiding them so they don’t lose their way. Harvesting souls comes on the behest of Odin and is a lot trickier.” She cupped her goblet of mead and shivered. “When Odin orders us to harvest a soul, we have to take them. Meaning…they aren’t dead yet.”
“Meaning you have to kill them?” I asked, lowering my voice.
She nodded, staring starkly at the fire. “There’s always a good reason, but it’s not like fighting a battle against someone trying to kill you. Or like taking out a monster. These are people who, for whatever reason, need to die. The Norns tell Odin, and he tells us. It’s part of the job I never really thought about much before I went through the ritual. We aren’t taught about it in our training. We only come to learn it after our flying-up ceremonies.”
I glanced over at Hans. He took her hand. It was difficult for him to put his arm around her shoulders, given she had massively beautiful raven’s wings, but he held tight to her fingers, bringing them to his lips for a kiss.
“Tell them, honey,” he said.
Greta closed her eyes for a moment, then hiccupped and took a deep breath. “Today I had to take the soul of a mother of five. She has five children under the age of ten, and they were there. I had to take her soul and watch as her body fell right in the midst of those children. The Norns insist it’s necessary—her thread came to an end, and for whatever reason, it was time to cut her free. But that didn’t make it any easier. Even though they didn’t see me, I could see the faces of her kids, and it just tore my heart up. Sometimes I wonder if I’m tough enough for this job.”
“What does Freya say about it?” These were tricky waters. There were times I’d had to do things I didn’t feel good about, but Hecate had bade me to do them. And there were memories that I did my best to leave in the past, where they belonged.
“Just that I’ll develop the ability to be unbiased in the future. Detached, she called it. But I’m not certain I want to be detached to something like that. I guess what I want doesn’t matter, though. There’s no going back. There’s no walking out.” She rubbed her head, then let out another sigh. “Thanks for listening. It helps to talk about it where I know I’m not going to be attacked for either being too weak, or being a murderer.”
And that was something I understood even more. Anyone not bound to the gods had no clue of what it meant when they required you to do something that went against your nature. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, it made for all sorts of inner conflict.
I was about to offer her another drink when someone knocked on the door. We were drinking mead made by the UnderBarrow brewers. It was stronger than most hard liquors I had tasted. I put down the bottle as Dara—our housekeeper—answered.
She led Zed into the living room and I instantly set the bottle back down.
“You have news?” I asked.
He looked shaken. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
Tam slowly straightened, brushing his hair back from his face. “What did you find out?”
Zed looked so pale that I motioned to the ottoman near the sofa. “Sit. Dara, please get a glass for him. I think he needs a drink.”
Zed shook his head. “No, thank you, Your Majesty, although I could use a cup of tea and something to eat.”
“Tea and a sandwich, please.” I motioned to the housekeeper and she vanished without a word. “Zed, what’s wrong?”
“My men figured out just how many were at the camp. We know that there were at least six adults and five children in the camp. That’s as much as we could put together from what…remained. There may be more in the undergrowth and forest around the campsite. The guards will look again in the morning.”
Zed looked queasy and I didn’t blame him. It was bad enough dealing with the remains of adults, but children? Far more difficult.
“Could it have been a pack of zombies?” Hans asked.
Zed shrugged. “We’re not certain. There’s very little we actually know except that right now, something big enough to destroy an entire camping party is out there, and it looks like whatever it is was hungry. The remains were gnawed on,” he added.
Tam sat very still for a moment, then glanced at me. “Come. We should sleep. We’ll get dressed and go out there at first light with the guards.”
I nodded, thinking that whatever it was I had been feeling, it had struck. And it wasn’t done. That much I knew to the very core of my gut.
Chapter 2
MORNING CAME TOO early. I blinked when Patrice woke me. As I slowly pushed myself up against the headboard, huddling under the covers, I realized that Tam wasn’t there.
“Where’s Lord Tam?” I asked, yawning.
“He’s been up for an hour. He’s in the Blue room, talking to the guards, milady. He asks that you join him as soon as you’re dressed. He said you’ll find breakfast there.” But she was holding out a cup of tea.
I took it, practically inhaling it, grimacing as I nearly burned my tongue. Cupping my hands around my mug, I slid into the slippers Patrice had laid out for me and padded over to my dressing table. She had laid out my leather shorts, a sturdy long-sleeved sweater, and my leather jacket.
“You win the award for prognosticating fashion needs,” I said with a laugh, placing my cup on the vanity. “I don’t have time for a bath, but that’s all right. I’ll take an extra-long one tonight.”
She began to brush my hair, parting it to plait it back. I stared at myself in the mirror. It had been a long road to get to where I was, one fraught with pain and loss and danger.
I was thirty-eight years old, young by Theosian standards. But it felt like I had already lived two lifetimes over, and had started in on another. The first had been when I was a child. That was cut short when my mother and I were kidnapped by a serial killer and I was forced to watch him kill her. The second had been from the time I was fifteen until I was thirty. Jason had taken care of me after my mother’s death, and I had lived in Darktown, in Seattle, guided by Hecate, focused on killing Abominations that crossed over through the World Tree. I had never given much thought to the future, but then the future hit me in the face when I had fallen in love with Tam. And everything had shifted again as the third stage of my life had begun. We had fled the destruction of the second World Shift, heading into the Wild Wood and making our way here, where we established Willow Wood. I had married Tam and become Queen of UnderBarrow. And we had settled in to make a new life for ourselves.
Everything had been peacef
ul—more or less. I had learned the ways of the Bonny Fae and did my best to adapt to them. And Tam’s people had adapted to me. Willow Wood thrived under our rule, and we began to put our former lives behind us as we carved out a niche in the new world. It hadn’t been easy, especially giving up the comforts of civilization, but we had managed and adapted, and learned to stay focused on necessities. Survival was not a macroscopic concept—not on a small-scale level—and definitely not on a day-to-day basis. But with this new threat, perhaps it was time to start looking at the bigger picture. Perhaps it was time to branch out again, to send scouts out, to look beyond the borders of our territory.
“What are you thinking about, milady? You look so solemn.” Patrice finished with my hair and then held out my clothes to me. We had worked out a system that kept me from feeling like a china doll, yet kept her from feeling expendable. She would lace my corsets when I wore them and she laced up my boots, and did my hair. But I put on my daily clothes by myself, allowing her to hand them to me as I was ready for them. Ornamental robes, I welcomed her help with.
As she laced up my boots, I said, “Long thoughts, Patrice. I’m just thinking about the past, and how it’s brought us to the present. And about where we’re headed for the future. We’ve had skirmishes before, but the look on Zed’s face last night, and the uneasiness I’m feeling in my bones, makes me think it’s time to step outside our borders and take a look around.”
I dipped my head, allowing her to fix my circlet on my head before I fingered the golden “F” pendant that hung from its chain around my neck. I never took off the necklace. Hecate had given it to me herself, and it was a tangible connection between us.
“I need to visit Hecate today. To ask her if she has any insight to what’s going on. I’ll do so when we get back. Can you ask a page to run a message up to Gudarheim to ask if she’s ready to meet?”
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