by S A Archer
Kev’s arms released her and he crumbled.
“Kev!” She hung on to him, slowed his collapse even as she fought to land without injuring herself. If it hadn’t been for her struggling to prevent his head from bashing the ground, he might have given himself a concussion. London knelt over him, stroking his too pale face. “Are you ok?”
“Yeah.” His eyes stayed closed. Body crumpled limply, he panted as if he’d just dropped after running a marathon. “I just need to catch my breath.”
She checked his pulse and it was erratic, but Kev pushed her hand away. “I’m good. Get to Lugh.”
They’d teleported onto a long, wide ridge near the top of the mountain. London cast a glance over the edge. Nowhere to go and no way they could have gotten there without teleporting or flying. Their car was nothing but a speck far below beside the road. She turned toward the mountain. The dark opening loomed ominously, but if Jonathan took Lugh in there, she would follow.
London hurried into the mouth of the cave that was big enough to use as a hangar for a 747. About fifteen meters inside, the appearance of a cave wavered and then dissipated, transforming into a great foyer that yawned before her. Of the four sets of double doors set into the marble walls, the one before her and to the left stood open, so London jogged through it.
Hearing voices, she followed them.
Chapter Nineteen
Voices echoed though the wide hallway, as London rush toward them. Cold fear clawed in the pit of her gut. Like in a nightmare, she feared she’d never find Lugh in this endless hallway of doors. Peripherally, she was aware of the paintings and the pedestals with sculptures and weapons on display. But she didn’t pay attention to any of it. Instead, she broke into a run, her footsteps echoing off the carved rock. Since she’d first been cursed, London had searched for a Sidhe who would end her torment. Only Lugh had come to her rescue, but now he slid further and further into some black abyss from which she couldn’t save him. She was losing him. Every day, faster and faster, he spiraled into this dark insanity. She’d pledged herself to him. Bound herself to him. She couldn’t lose him now. Not to some dark enchantment. Not to some dragon. Not to the Unseelie. She screamed for him, making his name echo all around her in a chorus.
Just as her panic mounted to near hysteria, she spotted light spilling from an open door. She skidded around the corner and into the room.
Jonathan leaned over some kind of wooden table. Beside him, Willem, the Scribe, babbled about something. But all she could focus on was the body stretched out on the table. London rushed around the men to see for herself.
Lugh’s long frame stretched out over the surface, but this was no table. It was a medieval rack. With a metallic clank, the dragon shackled Lugh’s ankles next to the ridge that would allow him to stand when the rack was turned upright. More shackles clenched tight around his wrists as Willem struggled with the crank to pull Lugh’s hands over his head, inch by inch. Lugh lay there, unconscious still, mouth slightly open, enough to reveal a hint of his fangs. Dried blood stained his chin. More blood smeared his torn chest, making it look like he’d lost a fight with a werewolf. His skin and hair were nearly as dark as Donovan’s now. Willem had warned London that because Lugh was a creature of pure light, that he couldn’t fight the contagion of the dark magic at all. And now it seemed to have consumed him utterly.
“What are you doing?” London licked her thumb and then cleaned Lugh’s chin. He was a Champion. A Seelie. At least at one time, he had been. If he were himself, he’d not want to be seen like this. Like a barbarian or some kind of monster.
“Making sure he doesn’t kill anyone.” Willem jumped and drove all his weight down on the crank, barely turning it. “Help me.”
London moved beside him. She glanced back at Jonathan as he examined the collar more closely. Once that was off of him, Lugh might well come back into furious consciousness. Not all the blood on him was his own. She’d seen him tearing into the wood elves before Kev got her to safety. For now, she could think of no better way, so London put her weight behind the crank. They stretched Lugh until he was fully extended, but not so much that it put a strain on his joints. “No more,” she told Willem. “We don’t want to hurt him.”
“But we don’t want him breaking free either.”
Jonathan reached between them and gave the gears another full spin, drawing Lugh’s shoulders up even more. “That should secure him. The shackles are silver, so he won’t be able to do magic or teleport.”
From the corner of her eye, she noticed movement. Kev watched them, leaning heavily against the doorframe. His eyes were as wide as hers felt. The uncertainty in them just as sharp. But he stayed back and said nothing.
“Everybody move back.” And once they were clear, Jonathan released a lever that sent the table flipping upright into just shy of a ninety-degree angle to the floor. Lugh’s body jolted with the sudden movement, but with the chains holding him, he didn’t slide down. Then Jonathan grabbed the collar, pressed his thumbs into the hollow inset, and flipped it open. He tossed it into a bin of wicked-looking instruments of torture like just another toy in the toy box.
The entire room looked like something from the Spanish Inquisition. And London’s fear for Lugh ratcheted up. She didn’t even want to know why the dragon had this room of torture. At least everything seemed dusty enough that it wasn’t likely he made a habit of using them.
Willem and London stayed before Lugh as Jonathan checked the burns on his neck. Then he pried back a lip to see the fangs. “Your fears seem substantiated, Scribe.” The dragon used his thumb to lift a lid and check Lugh’s eyes, that shined like obsidian, with no whites or irises. “A total Eclipse, as you said.”
“What are we going to do?” London whispered, looking from one to the next. “What can be done?”
Willem shook his head and Kev offered nothing more encouraging than a pained expression of worry.
Jonathan made a thoughtful sound, but said nothing more.
London slipped closer to Lugh. She reached up, cupped his face in her hand. “Lugh? Can you hear me?”
His head lulled as she moved it.
“Lugh?” She felt tears stinging, her need for him acute. She was more than the woman who carried his token and pledged herself into his service. He’d taken her for his own when no other Sidhe would have her. He saw her potential. Understood her need. Her fears. Her pain. “Please…”
His eyes opened suddenly. Even from the pure black depths, she knew he looked right at her. His lips peeled back as he hissed like a great cat. With a snap of his fangs, he lunged.
London leapt back. So did Kev and Willem, even though they were already well back from him.
The shackles rattled as the heavy metal banged on the wood, but the rack held him fast. Snarling and growling, he fought like a snared animal, yanking and twisting and spitting with fury.
“Lugh!” London shouted.
Whether it was his own name, or just the shout that caught his attention, he stopped his struggle and leaned as far forward as the restraints would allow to hiss at them.
“How did this happen to him?” Kev whispered.
Lugh snarled and launched into a rapid speech that London didn’t recognize. She turned to the others, but they shook their heads. Kev whispered, “You don’t want to know what he’s saying.”
Jonathan gave a gruff sound, the only one unafraid of the possessed Sidhe. “I could have done without the details of how he’d dismember us, and what he’d do with the half-dead bodies.”
“Too right,” Kev agreed.
Willem looked as green as if he’d just swallowed a bug.
Crossing his arms, Jonathan glared at Lugh. London watched the dragon, seeing something in his stance. “What is it?”
His deep voice rumbled up. “Before you came
, I got a call.”
And from the expression, she wasn’t going to like what he said. Fighting to speak past her suddenly parched throat, she whispered, “Who was it?”
“The Unseelie.” His dark eyes fell upon London and the weight of them drove her breath from her. “They want to meet.”
“What?” And London wasn’t the only one focused on him now with shock and confusion. Kev and Willem both rushed forward with protests of their own.
But Jonathan raised a hand that silenced them all. “You brought your fey problems into my home and now I am going to deal with them.”
“But the Unseelie will kill Lugh.” London gripped his arm. “And me. And destroy the chance to restore the fey realm.”
Jonathan’s eyes flickered with an internal flame. “In my home, I am the only one who does the killing.”
London backed away. Lugh trusted the dragon. She wasn’t so sure they could. But what choice did they have? She turned back to Lugh and he grinned at her with pure evil. He glared right at her as he jabbered something more in some tongue-twisting language heavy on the ‘L’s, ‘Y’s and long ‘A’ sounds. And then with a wicked, serpentine-like voice that froze her soul, he glared right at her and hissed, “You are mine!”
Kev murmured, “We are so screwed.”
Chapter Twenty
The tavern had a dozen or so human patrons, but they were engrossed with the football game on the telly and paid Donovan and his party no mind. Which is how Donovan preferred it. He stood near the doorway, arms crossed. Mckenna stayed in the booth to his left, periodically flinching or running his hands through his hair. The shock of the violence that erupted, and the loss of the lives of some of his elves at the hands of his supposed ally, weighed on his conscience, but he soldiered on. Just as long as he remained cooperative, Donovan wouldn’t need to bring him further grief. Tiernan lounged in the chair across from the booth, foot propped up on the table and chair tilted back. If the bartender objected to the misuse of his furniture, he didn’t risk saying anything about it as he brought Mckenna and Tiernan each a pint. Mckenna twirled his cup between his hands, staring at it. Tiernan helped himself to his drink, not that something so light would take the edge off the day.
There was no mistaking the dragon when he entered, ducking his head to make it through the doorway. The cold, reptilian eyes swept them all in a single, dark glance. Then he glared at Tiernan. “This is my territory. Respect it, hatchling.”
Tiernan put his feet on the floor. Any smartass quip died on his tongue before he spoke it.
The dragon turned toward Donovan. Cold and even. “What do you want, fey?”
Donovan uncrossed his arms, knowing the gesture of crossed arms meant intractability to some, and that wasn’t the footing on which he wanted this meeting to start. “To build a new fey realm.” He angled his head toward Mckenna, the cue for the wood elf to speak up.
Which he did. Not terribly loud, but clear and unafraid. “The artifacts I helped Lugh bring to you for safe keeping. We need them.”
The rolling sound from the dragon was something between a thoughtful hum and a growl. “Why don’t you ask the Shining One himself?” The dragon leveled a stare at Donovan. “Oh, that’s right. Because you made him sick.”
“Lugh is with you?” Donovan didn’t flinch from the dragon’s flaming eyes.
Mckenna and Tiernan both got to their feet at that. If out of fear or to prepare for some attack, didn’t matter.
“He is in my keeping.” The dragon asserted. “And if you’re wanting to get an answer out of him, you’re going to have to heal him.”
“Heal him?” Tiernan snapped. “The blighter is cracked!”
“And you fractured him,” Jonathan snarled. “So fix him.”
Donovan raised a hand and silenced Tiernan’s protests. “Then you’ll need to take us to him.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The first thing Malcolm noticed, as the slip of Donovan’s teleportation released him, was the voices.
The jumbled muttering tripped and stumbled over itself, mismatched and out of harmony. Wincing, he covered his pointed ears. He squinted at the foreign magic swirling all about them, laced into everything in the wide foyer of what looked like the inside of one of those posh mansions they showed on TV. “More magic artifacts here,” he informed Donovan. “But messed up. I have to find them. Get them straightened out.”
Donovan’s strong hand closed over Malcolm’s shoulder before he could get more than half a step away, drawing him back. With a tug, he changed Malcolm’s baring, and twisted him around to face the tallest bloke he’d ever seen.
The magic around the man flexed like smoke laced with sparks. And when the guy saw them, the smoke roiled with an inner flame that raised from him like the head of a dragon with its mouth open. Any other smell burned away as the magic surged with the hot scent of a forge.
“Geez!” Malcolm flinched away from the magic dragon’s head, which whipped to face him. Flaming eyes as big as melons burned at him.
Only Donovan’s continued grip kept him from dodging away. No one else reacted to the magic of the dragon looming threateningly around the massive bloke.
And the scariest part was, the guy didn’t even seem to be trying. This immense magic just flowed from him even with that serious calm about his stance and the stone-cold glare to his eyes.
The rolling rumble of his voice seemed to come more from the dragon head than the man. “This hatchling is your solution?”
Donovan lifted his chin, not the least bit intimidated. “Just take us to Lugh.”
The dragon man leveled his gaze at Malcolm, fire flickering inside his pupils. Serious doubt painted his features, but he turned from them and led the way deeper into the mansion. Leathery black wings flared open from his back and a scaly tail flicked like a snake.
Malcolm gulped, but his feet moved when Donovan propelled him forward. Casting a look back at Dawn and Tiernan, the other two Unseelie Donovan tapped for this mission, Malcolm saw tension flexing in tight twists of their magic. He turned back around and pressed on. The inside of the mansion glowed unlike anything Malcolm had seen before. There was magic in all of it, now that his eyes adjusted to seeing the details of it. Donovan forced him to keep moving, otherwise he’d just stare at the energy around him. It wasn’t fey. Not even a little bit like fey magic. He couldn’t make sense of a lot of what he was seeing, but somewhere, deep below him, a massive thing of magic flickered.
He could explore a place like this for weeks and still not figure it all out. The twinkle of gems of magic pulsed like stars in the matrix of the weaving. So weird.
But even still… even with tons of cool magic to explore… the magic that called to him most belonged to the artifacts. The jerky, hiccupy voices scratched and jumped all screwy. So outta whack that it got his back up, like the loud squeak of wet trainers on tile.
At the end of a long hallway, the dragon folded down his wings to pass through an open door, with the four Unseelie following him inside.
Distracted as he’d been, Malcolm hadn’t seen this coming.
The Seelie, his magic black and roiling like tar, jerked against the restraints keeping him chained against some board to the left side of the room. Across from him, Mckenna waited with another wood elf beside a Scribe and that enchanted human he remembered from the goblin-time.
Rightly, Donovan had marked her for death, and twice Malcolm had nearly succeeded. And then she’d gone and kicked Donovan in the face. She was so going to die for that! His hand flashed to the knife on his thigh. He only stopped when Donovan snapped “Don’t!” The human, London, or whatever her name was, stood there all bold like she even belonged here. She didn’t even have enough shame for what she’d done to cast down her eyes. Malcolm snarled at her, hating her like he hated everythin
g that happened to him back in the goblin-time.
From her now extended a thread of magic that joined with Lugh. Not like the connection that connected the fey of the earth realm to the ley lines, for no power surged through it, but a connection all the same. A binding.
And hidden within the hand that played with her necklace, some bright ray of sunshine escaped in narrow shafts between her fingers.
He assumed she’d gotten it from the Seelie, but what it meant he couldn’t guess without a closer look. Besides, if he were that close to her, he’d sooner just slice her throat than check out her jewelry.
“Focus,” Donovan snapped, getting Malcolm to look up at him. “We need to get that dark magic out of the Seelie.”
Malcolm scrunched up his face in confusion. “Get it out of him?”
Spitting in furious elvish, Lugh jerked violently on the chains, like some demon possessed him. Malcolm only knew enough elvish to pick out the curse words.
Ignoring the babble, he tilted his head as he considered the raging Seelie. Then Malcolm reached out a hand, but snatched it back when Lugh snapped at it with his sharp teeth. But he couldn’t reach far, with his arms yanked up so hard, so Malcolm began again.
His fingers tickled over the magic in Lugh’s chest. The threads of his magic writhed like worms or pencil-thin little garden snakes. The magic of the threads didn’t even feel like the strands of silk like it usually did, but it had a woven texture to it, like the thong of a leather whip. There was nothing pure about this darkness. Nothing natural about it. It had been woven. Something he’d never seen within a fey before. Woven enchantments the fey created had similar patterns to it, but this was tightly fashioned, without even a loose thread on which to tug. When he pinched one of the wormy bits of magic, it struggled to jerk free of him. And other thongs of magic slithered and coiled around Malcolm’s hand. Gritting against the disgust, he twirled his finger around the thong he’d caught and yanked.