I snatched her off the ground and spun toward the magical rope rippling around Ellie. “Deep breath, my friend.”
Sal did her version of an inhale.
I slammed her blade into Titania’s magic.
Chapter 15
To rupture is to tear violently without control. Something you wanted contained always comes gushing forth. There’s no way around the spilling of guts.
The thing with real ruptures is that they don’t mend themselves. Even after all the pain and anger spills from the wound, that hole in the soul is still there. Which is why I’m thankful my mind was never as piecemeal as my body. If it had been, the rips and the agony would have needed surgery to fix. And no one can be their own surgeon.
My brushes with tearing have made me that much more sensitive to magic. I can see if magic is stable, precarious, agitated, or about to burst. I can read the spits and the sparks and the vibrating sheets. I know good magic from bad, and good magic going bad.
But nothing had prepared me for the magical rupture I caused when I sliced through Titania’s snake-ropes of power.
The moment Sal’s blade touched the outer edge of the rope, I felt the magic reverberate through her metal, into her handle, and up the woven magic around her grip.
A reverb similar to, yet different from, the same oscillating waves that had rung through the space of the veil earlier. It felt deeper this time. Lower, as if the entire boundary vibrated.
Sal slipped through the magic as if she were slicing off bits of gelatin which didn’t give the resistance I expected. I stumbled into the wound as Sal’s head slammed into the snow-covered pasture and for an instant—a microsecond blink of an eye—I was connected to Titania’s magic.
Red and green. Tooth and claw. Hunger and sex and warm bones. Fae magic was alive and free and only cooperated because a fae it liked fed it good treats and kept its cubs warm and safe.
And now I’d sliced open that magic, and it spilled so violently it slammed me backward into Arne’s ready-to-buzz sigil.
My back hit what felt like a vertical puddle of acid. When Sal’s handle hit the sigil, my arm went numb.
She was unconscious, as she warned she’d be. She couldn’t help. I leaned forward, trying to get off Arne’s barrier, as I willed my numb hand and fingers to not let go.
The shield sigil spun once, twice, three times—and spun my perception with it. I didn’t move—my body stayed against the magic Arne had raised to shield himself from Titania—but my sense of the boundary flashed forward, then back, then forward again as if the ground itself flipped. My perspective flipped from snow-covered and elven to richly green and fae and back again.
The elves, my home, the magic of Alfheim, the steady state of the region’s Norse heritage, the calm of so-called Minnesota Nice, the predictability of snowfall and snowplows, the cycle of freeze and thaw of my lake—these were quiet waves. Order and chaos balanced. No ruptures. No gushing.
But Titania—and all the fae—were all about the peaks and the valleys. All about the emotions and touches and worship of nature’s wonders. Entire realms were built around perfect apples. Religions manifested out of the fervor and raucous dances under Beltane moons. And chaos balanced order.
Then back to Arne and Magnus. Back to the riotous democratic—yet controlled—violence of the Norse gods.
Then Titania and the layers and layers of festivals and goddesses worshiped.
My gut rolled. A pounding throb smashed against my temples and if I didn’t get off Arne’s sawblade, I’d lose myself in the back and forth flashes. I’d be vulnerable.
Titania might take Ellie again and the acid-like pain, all the reverberations and the echoes and the veil-rupturing magic, would be my life, or lack of life. Lack of mate magic. Lack of reason and emotion and the brilliant wonder that was Ellie, half-asleep and skin-to-skin, under the warm golden sun of her cottage.
Ellie, also alone, somewhere she couldn’t leave, not knowing if I remembered her and probably stripped of her own memories of me.
I bellowed but my yell came right back at me, like all things in this mirror-thin place between worlds, and hit me full force with its teeth and claws.
I gasped to pull in what breath I could. I’d survived a pike through my chest. I was not going to my end because I’d accidentally backed into an elf’s sigil. I wouldn’t be collateral damage in something so banal.
A shadow appeared in front of me. Two hands reached through the wavering mirror-like waves and pulled me away from Arne’s sigil.
“Frank!” Hrokr Arnesson peered at my face, then around my arm at his father’s sigil. “Move!”
He tossed me, Sal still in my hand, toward Ellie.
I stumbled, but managed to avoid Titania, and somehow circumvented her flailing, sparking magic before falling to my knees in front of Ellie.
Sal had said nothing about possible ill effects on Ellie and Hrokr from rupturing Titania’s magic. No mention of how it would stun Ellie into incoherence, or cause Hrokr to change.
I looked back at the Loki elf.
There was concern there, in that face, hidden amongst the burning awe.
I shouldn’t have looked at Arne when he went All-Father back at the barn. I shouldn’t look at Hrokr now. One should not look upon the face of a god.
Hrokr Arnesson’s ears were no longer the same tall, pointy shape of the elves, and had lost a good three inches as they rounded down into something more sprite-like. A subtle rainbow of colors now danced in his gray elven ponytail and in the sparks of magic outlining every single tattoo on his face, scalp, and neck. His clothes had changed from the black hunting leathers into tighter-fitting, strapped-down, somehow darker-than-black fighting gear. He was now fully covered from the collar around his neck to his gloved hands and his massive, knee-covering boots.
Fire spat and slapped in his magic. The control of his elven sigils had given way to that slippery, burning truth that had always been underneath.
But it was his eyes that frightened me the most.
The concealed elf, the man whose father had hidden him not only from Alfheim, but from the fae, stood in front of me with eyes as utterly black as his clothes. Eyes that held the cosmos, and eyes that stole souls. Magic flickered out the sides of those eyes as if his vision was on fire.
The witch in the bayou, the one from whom I took Rose, had eyes like that. She’d stared off into her own raw, uncontrolled power. Rose had too, at the end.
Hrokr whipped up a counter sigil to slow his father’s grinding shield. He glanced toward his father. “I’m sorry, Dad. I was trying to divert her magic.”
I touched Ellie’s arm. “Honey?”
She blinked. A retch-like shudder spasmed through her body. “Mom’s magic…”
“I severed the ropes.” I helped her to her feet. “So she couldn’t pull you into her realm.”
She looked up and to the southeast. “The cottage…” Her entire body shivered. “It’s terrified. It can’t quite feel me. It doesn’t know what to do.”
“Is it pulling you back? Is it trying to move?” If it was only pulling her back, then she’d be safe. But it moved, too…
Ellie continued to stare southwest. “Sal cut the routing magic?”
“Yes,” I said. How long would Titania and the elves be frozen? “Arne and Magnus can get us back to Alfheim.” If they realized we were between realms. If they didn’t fall to the oscillations.
She rubbed her arms. “We need to get out of here.” She leaned against me, and magical sparks flew when her backpack knocked against Sal’s handle. “Mom is caught here.” She shivered again, but this time I was sure it was more out of terror than chill. “She’ll be in pain when she’s fully through, and driven to reconnect to the correct pathways.”
I’d hurt Titania when I slashed her connection to Ellie and Hrokr. I’d caused her pain and disorientation and now we were stuck inside the veil with the most powerful, soon to be the most vengeful, of the fae.
And two also-disoriented elder elves whose power levels I understood intellectually, but had only seen peripherally.
Hrokr whipped up another sigil, this between him and Titania. “She’ll hunt,” he said.
Ellie tugged on my hand. “We need to get to the cottage. It will protect us.”
She meant the cottage would protect her. I was the one who had done this. I doubted it would protect me from Titania’s rage.
“It’s going to move, Frank,” she said. “If it moves me without Mom interfering, we’ll…” She looked up at me. “We’ll be able to find each other. I’ll remember you. You’ll remember, like Chihiro. We’ll find each other.”
Her face said she didn’t believe her own words. “I’ll find you. I promise,” I said.
Ellie bit her lip and hugged me tightly. “I know.”
Hrokr cleared his throat. “This place shifts,” he said. “You might make it. Or you might end up purifying yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka.”
Ellie looked down at the ground and slowly nodded her head. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She looked up at me. “We have to try.”
She wasn’t giving up. She looked back at Hrokr. “Come with us.”
The fire streaming from the sides of his cosmos-eyes blazed with all the glory of his god. “Are you offering me shelter inside your concealments?” he asked.
Ellie must have realized what she’d just done. “I am offering you an audience at my gate to state your case.”
He’d wanted to know if Ellie would protect him, too. Now he had his answer. He bowed his head. “Go!” He turned back to his father, but thought better of it. “Take my sheep,” he said.
The or else in his voice rode out on a wave of slippery, fiery magic and dripped between us—unspoken yet just as destructive as a splash of acid.
Ellie sucked in her breath. “Loki,” she breathed.
“Yes,” Hrokr said.
Tension hardened her face and neck. “Do not attempt to trick my mother, Loki elf,” she said. “She will chew you up and spit you out.”
If he heard her, much less understood, I could not tell. He pointed at the sheep again. “Snowdrop,” he said.
Hrokr turned his back to us.
We needed a way to get to the cottage. “Will we find vehicles here?” I pointed at the barn. Anything that might help us make the twelve miles back to the cottage before the cottage closed up for the night.
“I don’t know,” Ellie said.
I scooped the lamb up in my arms as we ran up the hill, hoping for one small bit of luck.
Chapter 16
We were between realms, in the fabric of the veil itself, in the in-between where magic influenced the real world. We were quite literally inside the geometric lock that opened and closed contact between The Land of the Living and all the other Lands, Dead or otherwise.
I had my doubts about access to combustion engines here, or either of the elves’ lovely electric vehicles. This was not a plane where mundane science worked.
We had to try anyway.
With Sal on one shoulder and the lamb tucked under my other arm, I followed Ellie and the three ewes up the hill. A bonfire of magic blazed behind us, a tortured mix of fae chaos and streamlined elven spells. Hrokr stood in the center, between his father and his step-grandmother, adding—or subtracting, I couldn’t tell. He disrupted, for sure.
Perhaps leaving the Loki elf in the center of what might just turn into the magical equivalent of an international incident wasn’t the best idea.
Not one moment of this had been a good idea. Not my misinterpreting Arne’s concern about Hrokr as a threat to Ellie. Not my mishandling the dryads, because I was pretty sure I mishandled that situation, even if I didn’t know how. Not in how I responded to Hrokr and his requests. Or his threats.
Or fully trusting Sal when she said to cut the magic ropes.
She was still unconscious. Had she realized that her slice would harm Titania? And that the harm would cause even worse problems? Did she care? Battle was her focus, so battle we did. When one’s only tool is an axe, one does a lot of chopping and splitting.
What other choice did we have? Without Sal disrupting the entire magical circuit, Ellie would be gone, and Oberon would likely show up looking for his grandson.
Which at this point was probably inevitable, considering the blazing, blinding magic erupting from the wound I’d caused.
And my girlfriend’s mother, the Queen of the Fae, was about to hunt for us, and the elves, and probably everything else here in the veil. Hunt me as if I was some idiot village boy whom she’d decided was not at all worthy of her daughter.
The three ewes ducked under the fence just as a flash and a magical concussive wave hit our backs.
Ellie stumbled. The lamb jumped from my arm and followed his mother under the fence, and I accidently dropped Sal while juggling her and the animal.
She hit the snow with a yelp and a sudden, utter re-awakening into consciousness.
She swore in what sounded like Old Norse.
Ellie pointed at my axe. “Did she just talk?”
“The helpful fae magic is close by?” Sal said. “Freeing her worked?”
Ellie scrambled to her feet. “We need to go.” She turned toward the fence.
I reached for Sal. My reach required a twist, and I caught a glimpse of the magical storm behind us.
Titania’s ruptured magic gelled around her body. The antlered helmet sharpened into a rack of obsidian knives. The borrowed dryad armor solidified into sections of cutting light that appeared to float above her skin.
“How dare you!” she roared, and sent a thick, massive bolt against the elves’ sigils just as Arne and Magnus snapped through the barrier into the semi-realm of the veil, both in full armor, but without weapons. They were, it seemed, adhering to whatever treaty or promise they’d made to not bring along elven artifacts.
“Don’t let the fae steal me,” Sal said.
I picked her up, wishing for Arne’s scabbard, and set her on my shoulder. “I won’t,” I said.
Arne whipped out a new shield, but at an angle to the ground—an angle good for running and launching an attack.
Magnus bolted up the ramp and dove for Titania. Her hands came up to zap him, but he grabbed her and they rolled across the snowy pasture, armor clinking and clacking, until Titania’s razor antlers caught the ground.
She punched the side of Magnus’s head. He hollered and rolled into a crouch.
Titania jumped to her own crouch. “Why do the pretty ones always put up the worst fights?” She kicked Magnus away.
Arne motioned to Hrokr to come over to him. The Loki elf looked first at his father, then at Titania and Magnus. Then he looked at us.
The fire magic around his eyes flared. He smiled.
Behind us, a horse snorted.
“Whoa whoa whoa!” Ellie yelled.
I looked back at the fence. Bloodyhoof stood on the other side of the fence’s wooden rails, his handsome bay coat shimmering a deep red and his black-filled Fjord-horse mane brushed up and standing on end as if he was the greatest of Greek war horses.
He wasn’t Greek. He was Norse, and he was not going to allow the Fae Queen to attack his elves.
“I’d forgotten that he’s as beautiful as Magnus,” Ellie breathed.
The stallion’s eyes blazed in much the same way they had while we were in Vampland, except this time, the fire looked more alive. More chaotic. More… Loki.
I looked back at Hrokr. He’d somehow done this.
Bloodyhoof whinnied and pawed at the ground. He pranced to the side just as the lamb darted between his hooves.
“Blodughofi is drawn to the hunt,” Sal said.
The stallion raised his head and neighed out a call. Two other horses responded.
Lucky and Comet, the two Percherons stolen by Tony and Ivan and forced into Vampland, thundered around the side of the barn and leaped the fence as if they were show jumpers.
�
�Hrokr sent the sheep into the barn,” I said. He must have used them to bring out the horses.
I held out my hand as I scooped up Sal with my other. “Blodughofi, my friend,” I said. “How about we ride you out of here?”
Bloodyhoof snorted again. He sniffed at Ellie, then backed up.
“If he jumps here, he’ll land on—”
The stallion leaped. He arched his grand back and he pushed off the ground with all the strength of his powerful hindquarters.
Bloodyhoof sailed over the fence, and us, as if he could fly.
“Oh… oh wow,” Ellie said. “He’s worthy of a valkyrie.”
The last magical I wanted to see right now was a valkyrie. “We need to go. Magnus has other horses.” Maybe we’d get lucky and a more rideable animal would come through.
Arne and Magnus’s sigils parted with an audible pop and opened just enough of a rip for Bloodyhoof to jump through. He landed to the side of Titania and reared up as if to stomp her into the muddy snow.
She roared and jumped back, her hands coming up to hit Bloodyhoof with a bolt.
The two Percherons charged in, both kicking at the Queen, and keeping her from striking the stallion with magic.
“Magnus needs to get those horses away from her.” Ellie curled her arms around my waist. “If she hurts them…”
If she hurt Magnus’s prize horses, there’d be a war, but Ellie’s face said something else—there’d be trauma. Not just to the horses, or the elves, but to Titania, too. Hurting beasts would trigger a new cascade of anguish that would make any war that much worse.
There was nothing we could do. The horses circled. Magnus tried to calm Titania. And Arne held out his hands to his son.
Hrokr looked at his father. He looked at the horses circling Titania. Then he looked directly at Ellie and me.
Something shifted again. Something slippery and both planned yet heavily dependent on the moment. Something utterly trickster.
Hrokr darted for Bloodyhoof. He was up on the stallion’s back with his hands curled in the horse’s mane before the other magicals could respond.
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