She's No Faerie Princess

by Christine Warren

  "Mine," he panted, barely able to speak now. He needed all his breath for the urgency of desire. He let his head drop and pressed his cheek against hers, feeling the light sheen of sweat that coated them both. He'd never felt anything more perfect than this, being joined with her, and he knew he never would. "Mine. Always."

  Shaking and desperate, Fiona turned her head until her dazed eyes met his, and Walker felt himself sinking under the pull of those deep violet pools.

  "Always," she whispered. Her eyes drifted shut, her breath catching as the tension filling them peaked and teetered on the brink. "Love you."

  He hadn't realized he'd been waiting. Not until he heard the words and felt the love and pride and possession and satisfaction exploding inside him like fireworks. Head thrown back, eyes blazing a gold so bright it cast their shadows on the wall of the bedroom, Walker roared the name of his mate and spilled himself endlessly inside her.

  When his heart resumed beating, about two minutes too late to prevent brain damage from temporary loss of oxygen to that organ, Walker pried open his eyes and looked down at the tangle of black hair on his pillow.

  He had to fight the urge to look smug. He couldn't do much about the fact that he felt smug, but given his mate's personality, he thought it best to at least put on a front of non-conquering male with a newly dragged-off mate pinned to the floor of his cave. Sure, it was a bedroom and a very comfortable king-sized bed, but he figured Fiona would view those as semantic differences.

  To his surprise, she didn't say anything, just lay limp and silent beneath him, struggling as hard as he was to catch her breath. He frowned as he realized that might be tough for her if he continued to lie on top of her, pressing her into the mattress.

  Reluctantly he shifted and rolled onto his back, taking her with him to reverse their positions. He heard her draw in a deep breath, but she still didn't speak. She didn't have to. She'd already told him everything he would ever need to hear.

  He wrapped his arms around her and held her snugly against him, nuzzling his face against the soft cloud of her hair that tickled beneath his chin. Her scent surrounded him, warm and sweet and musky, and with his senses full of her, he drifted back into sleep.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 22

  Walker knew he hadn't gotten drunk in a good long while, so the sensation of being yanked out of sleep by very small but very hard feet dancing across the back of his head didn't quite make sense.

  Opening one blurry eye, he stared blankly at his bare headboard and wondered what the hell was going on. He didn't usually wake up to hallucinations.

  "Miss Fiona! Mistress! Your Highness, wakes up!"

  Each progressively louder demand was punctuated by a stomp against his aching skull, but at least this time Walker recognized the voice and the feet that were torturing him. Reaching back, he closed his hand around a small, squirming, annoying form and brought it forward to meet his glare.

  "If you ever jump up and down on my head again," he said, eyes narrowed on the scowling red form of Squick, "I'm going to wring your neck and nail you to my door as a Halloween decoration. Understand?"

  The imp huffed. "I doesn't come here to talks to you, wolfie boy. I needs the princess!"

  Beside him, Walker felt Fiona stir and stretch and make an annoyed sleepy noise with which he heartily empathized.

  "Walker?" she asked, her voice still groggy. "What's going on?"

  "Miss Fiona! I gots news! Let us go, furry mortal."

  When Walker didn't obey fast enough for Squick's taste, the demon secured his own release by the expedient and painful method of sinking his tiny razor-sharp teeth into the side of the Lupine's thumb.

  Walker cursed and dropped the little bastard to the pillow.

  "I gots news!" Squick repeated, struggling across the downy surface of Walker's pillow to present himself huffing and puffing on Fiona's right arm. "I gots big news, Miss Fiona. Big, baddie-bad news."

  Fiona blinked away the last of her sleepiness and sat up, frowning. "What news? What's going on?"

  The frown on Fiona's face didn't begin to match the frown on Walker's, which appeared as soon as her pretty, pale breasts appeared in plain view of their visitor. Neither one of them seemed to pay any attention to nudity, but Walker did, and he didn't plan to take even the slightest chance of another living thing—even an annoying six-inch-tall imp—noticing his mate in nothing but her bare skin. Scowling, he grabbed his pillow and slapped it up against Fiona's bare breasts, concealing them from view.

  "You looked cold," he muttered when she turned her frown on him.

  "Miss Fiona, I finds out all kinds of thing down Below, but I doesn't thinks any of them be making you happy," Squick said. He seemed perfectly content to ignore Walker but also continued to jump up and down and hop from one foot to the other in his excitement to share his discoveries.

  Walker breathed a sigh of relief when Fiona made an absent gesture with her hand and covered both him and herself in casual, concealing clothing before she responded.

  "I can't say I'm surprised to hear that," she said, her face growing grim. "Just tell me you found out who's been summoning those demons. Or at least which demons they are."

  "Not whoses, Miss. Whatses."

  Fiona looked almost as confused as Walker felt. "What do you mean?"

  "It aren't a who that's calling the demons, miss. It's a what. An amulets. Very oldie, very baddie. Very baddie-bad. Before the Wars, bad."

  Walker saw her eyes widen.

  "That's not possible," she said, shaking her head. "I've never heard of an amulet that can summon demons. And besides, the only artifacts that survived the Wars are stored in the library at the Summer Palace." She sounded confused, as if she wanted to be certain even as doubt flooded through her. "No one can remove anything from it without the express permission of the queen, and she doesn't give it."

  "No, she don't," Squick agreed, "but I knows what I finds out, Miss Fiona, and I finds out this bad stuff. They is talking about it Below. Somebody up Above been calling up the demons and making 'em do stuff, and they gotta does it 'cause the amulet is strong and the one that gots it knows how to use it, and they don't really minds 'cause they likes to tear stuff into little pieces, but they still wanna do the tearing when they wants, not when somebody with a necklaces tells 'em to. That's why they leaving all the scribbles on the dead folks. They trying to find the right scribbles to tell the amulets 'shove off.'"

  Walker deciphered that breathless ramble—frighteningly quickly if he'd stopped to think about it—and swore. Loudly.

  "You were right," he said. "The demon is trying to break free from the summoner, and it thought the way to do that would be to feed on something a little more potent than a human."

  Fiona looked equally grim. "That's what it sounds like." She turned back to the imp. "Where did the amulet come from, Squick? Did you find out anything else about it?"

  "Some-some. The demons don't likes it 'cause it look like the sun, all goldy and sparkly. And the center they says got a big, big rock in it. One of them kinds that looks all dark and rainbowy. They likes the rock, but not the rest." He swished his arrow-tipped tail. "Some says it come from home, a long, long, long, long, long time ago."

  "Home? From Faerie?"

  Walker needed to break her of that bad habit—calling anyplace but right next to him home.

  "Yup. A kings used it in the fights, they says, and it made the demons stop and do whatever he says to 'em."

  Fiona's eyes widened. "So the amulet isn't summoning them, but it allows the summoner to control them. But why would it be necessary for a summoner to use an amulet? The control of the demons is part of their art."

  A very disturbing idea began to niggle the edges of Walker's mind. "But what if the amulet was powerful enough to allow someone who isn't a summoner to call the demons? Someone who normally wouldn't have the skill. That person would need help to keep them in line, even if he figured out a way to call them."

&nb
sp; "But they're demons. They need to be forced to do what you want them to. That's why there are summoners in the first place. It's not like any Tom, Dick, or Harry can just say, 'Hey, demon! Get over here!' and one shows up. You've got to have really strong magic to keep control of a demon. That's why there are so few summoners around."

  Squick nodded meaningfully. "Any summoner what can't controls the demons end up a magician kebab."

  "It also doesn't help their population that the only demons who usually hang around and listen to a summons are ones who are looking for a quick snack. I'm pretty certain that the abundance of things like Faerie wards around the borders of this plane and sunlight on this plane keep all but the hungriest and most reckless of them from letting anyone learn their true names."

  "I admit I'm not the demon expert here," Walker said, "but I know a few things about the way magic works in this world. From what I've always heard about demons, they're constantly looking for ways to get back into our plane. Have been ever since your ancestors kicked them out. The only reason they haven't found more ways in is because of those wards. But wards don't work against something that's been invited."

  "Summoning isn't really an invitation. It's more like a command."

  "Yeah, I get that," he nodded, "and from what I hear, that pisses the average demon off. They get to come to our world, but they have to be at the beck and call of some maniac of a magician. So don't you think the idea of answering an invitation rather than an imperial summons would sound pretty appealing? After all, if they got through the barriers without being bound to some summoner, I bet this place would look a lot like a demon's idea of an all-you-can-eat buffet."

  Fiona stopped, as if she needed a second to let her mind catch up with his reasoning. "You mean someone who isn't a summoner invites the demons in and then… tricks them?"

  "Like a mousetrap. From the evidence our friends so far have presented us with, the species doesn't strike me as all that bright. All the summoner needs to call it is its name and a few simple spell components, and Tess told me earlier that lists of names are passed around in the community like code words. They don't worry about humans getting ahold of them, because humans can't do magic. But if someone had an amulet like this, if they learned a name and placed the call, they could actually manage a summoning. The demon would see the opportunity for a free meal, take the bait, cross into our world, and wham! All of a sudden it's not a free ride, because the first course turns out to have a piece of jewelry that works better than any spell to keep demon appetites in line."

  "Oh my Goddess," she breathed. "It almost makes sense. That's why I couldn't read most of the glyphs. I was trying to read them like a spell, but there wasn't a spell attached to them. There's magic, sure, but it's a totally different kind."

  By this point, Squick was jumping up and down on the bed like a miniature two-year-old with ADHD. "I gots more!" He waited until they looked back at him, then puffed his chest out and continued. "I hears all kinds of stuff when I Below, Miss Fiona. I sneaked real good and maked sure no ones seed me. I gots real close when I seed demons talking together in their nasty demon ways. I heared stuff. There is rumors down there that would turn your stomach over like a pancakes."

  "What kind of rumors?" Walker demanded.

  The imp ignored him. Pointedly.

  "What kind of rumors, Squick?" Fiona asked.

  "The kinds that says something big is coming soon," he hurried to answer, glancing sideways at Walker to be sure the Lupine had noticed. "I heard demons say they was gonna come above and gather up some strength before they does the real baddie-bad stuff."

  "I wonder what they consider bad if none of this qualifies?" Walker muttered.

  "The point," Squick said, glaring at Walker before he remembered he wanted to ignore him, "is that if the demons gonna do baddie-bad stuff just 'cause they wanna do it, they gots to know a way to make it so the amulet won't bother 'em no more."

  Fiona looked at Walker, her eyes wide and troubled. "I think he's right."

  "Of course I is right." The imp crossed his arms over his chest and preened. "Now what is you gonna do about it?"

  Walker leaned forward and glared at the creature, who, he was discovering, was a big ball of obnoxious crammed into a tiny red package. "Watch it, pipsqueak. Show better manners to your princess."

  "Don't threaten Squick. It was an honest question." When the imp stuck his tongue out at Walker, Fiona turned the look in his direction. "Even if it was rudely phrased."

  At least she was an equal-opportunity scold.

  Walker snorted. "What? You're supposed to go stand in front of a rampaging demon and tell him you'd really prefer it if he didn't break the hold of his magical oppressors and go on a bloody rampage through the population of Manhattan?"

  She smiled. "Relax, mo fáell. I'm not planning on turning kamikaze on you. In fact, my plan was to call in reinforcements." She turned to Squick. "Have you told any of this to Babbage yet?"

  The imp snorted. "Why I stop to tell that puny pixie? He aren't nobody important."

  Squick glanced over at Walker when he said that. To include him in the group of the unimportant, apparently. Walker just glared back, which made him feel ridiculous. He was fighting with an imp who had the maturity level of a toddler and the grammatical skills of a non-native-speaking toddler with brain damage. What the hell had happened to him?

  "Have you spoken to him since the other morning?" Fiona asked.

  "Nope, I hasn't. I's been busy getting all this super-duper informations for you, Miss Fiona. I not have time to talk to no pixies."

  Walker saw Fiona's frown. "Is there a problem?"

  "I'm not sure. I just would have expected to hear back from him by now. Or for him to at least have gotten a message to me or to Squick."

  "Oh, he wouldn't talks to me, Miss Fiona. He hate me almost half as much as I hates him." The imp gave a broad shrug. "He probably gone back to Faerie for to tattle to the queen on how we isn't supposed to be here."

  Fiona didn't look convinced. "But I sent out a call. You answered, and you were Below. He should have responded right about when you did."

  Walker put a hand on her shoulder. "After everything that's happened lately, I don't blame you for worrying. Would it make you feel better if I went out and looked for him?"

  "Only if I went with you."

  He stared at her for a long moment, then sighed when she merely stared back. "You're getting ready to tell me that if I'm going, you're going, right?"

  "Right."

  "So it would be a really big waste of time for me to ask you to stay here where I know you're safe and let me do the missing pixie search."

  "Colossal."

  Grimacing, Walker pushed himself off the bed and reached out a hand to help Fiona to her feet. "Just so long as we understand each other."

  * * *

  CHAPTER 23

  They didn't head straight out to hunt pixies. First, Walker had to get in touch with Graham and give him an update. It was either that, Walker explained, or take the chance of the pack leader deciding to vent the frustrations of the human negotiations on his liver. Better to get the information update out of the way.

  Fiona also took a minute to put out another call before they left, and she carried the little pouch of glass with her just in case. She wished the call could reach all the way to Faerie, but it seemed that whatever curse had made the glass explode before was still forming a barrier between the worlds.

  Squick made a big production of griping and grumbling over being forced to spend his time looking for a pesky pixie until Walker threatened to strangle him with his own tail. So in the end he shut up and just glared at the world from inside the canvas bag Walker had given Fiona to carry him in. Someone might notice if she walked down the street with an imp sitting on her shoulder, Walker had pointed out.

  "Gate first," Fiona said as they stepped out onto the pavement and Walker turned to lock his door. "If we're going to retrace Babbage's steps, we m
ight as well start where he started."

  "Be faster to starts where he finished," the bag grumbled.

  Fiona ignored him. Her mind had enough problems to focus on already without worrying about the surly imp. Walker's theory about the identity of the person in control of the demons had thrown a huge wrench in their plans to identify him. At least when they'd believed him to be a summoner, the pool of possible candidates had been limited to that somewhat sparse population. The idea that the culprit could now be any one of the millions of residents of Manhattan didn't bode well for their chances of finding him. Especially not before anyone else got hurt.

  It had been pretty much all bad news since she'd woken up, Fiona admitted, biting back a sigh. She'd been having a really good dream, too. Something about her and Walker and complete privacy in a lushly furnished room with sturdy locks and an even sturdier bed frame. Instead of putting all that lovely carpentry to the test, she'd been jerked out of sleep and faced with an infinitely less attractive reality.

  She could practically feel the trouble brewing. Something was about to go wrong, if it hadn't already. She couldn't put her finger on it, but she could feel it, like an itch along her skin that refused to go away no matter how much she scratched at it.

  The fact that Babbage still wasn't answering her call made her nervous. Usually, she had trouble getting Babbage to go away. He tended to stick like glue whenever she gave him the slightest encouragement and often when she didn't. The only explanations she could think of for his silence did not reassure her.

  They entered the park on the Upper West Side, off Indian Road, avoiding the tennis courts to the south and the playgrounds that dotted the edges of the parks department land. Even so, they were hardly the only ones around. In the fading light of early evening, joggers and skaters and cyclists shared the paths with strollers and sightseers. Fiona even spotted a small group of humans in hiking gear, outfitted with binoculars and field guides for identifying the birds and plants that filled the park.