by Kailin Gow
That was it. Just play on their stupidity. Remind them of how much they needed him. Pietre went from sitting to standing, smoothly adopting the pose of a man giving a lecture to three students. The better to stay in control.
“Palisor is the source for us.”
“What does that mean?” the abomination, Jake, asked.
Pietre smiled. “I’m glad you asked that, young man.” Though he would be gladder still with the pathetic creature destroyed as it should be. “You know that we do not fit with the rules of this world. It takes something extra, call it magic, for us to exist at all.
Palisor is a world full of that magic, and when the gate appears, it flows into the world.” He looked at the boy, Fallon. “Like blood into one of our kind.”
“That’s not important,” Fallon shot back, “and if that’s all you have-”
“Did I say that?” Pietre demanded. Even trapped like this, he was not going to let some barely-turned whelp speak to him like that. The abomination asked the next question.
“Do you know how do we get in now that there’s no dragon, no Briony and no Aunt Sophie?”
Pietre smiled. “That’s a good question, young Jake.” Not that he planned on answering it right away.
No, the key was to draw this out. To give himself time to recover. Pietre had to be ready for the moment this ended. As soon as they had their answers, the three boys would undoubtedly stake him, after all. At least, that was what Pietre would do in their place.
“You know that my own plan for entering Palisor focused on Sophie Edge, of course. I waited for years for her or someone like her. After that, it was relatively easy to get close to her. Once she started to change into what she really is, the natural attraction she felt for my kind made that straightforward.”
Pietre paused, letting that sink in. He had been playing this sort of game with people decades before the young men around him had even been born.
“What natural attraction?” Jake asked.
Ah, perfect. “Why, the intrinsic attraction all of Sophie’s kind feel for vampires, even as they know they ought to hate them. It is why Sophie loved me so much.” Pietre turned his smile on Kevin. “It is why your Briony loves Fallon so much. Why she finds him so much more attractive than you.”
The glance from the werewolf to his brother wasn’t much, but Pietre caught it nonetheless. So, apparently, did young Fallon. So, Pietre was right about the young vampire…there was potential for him after all.
“Don’t listen to him, Kevin,” the boy said, “he’s just trying to cause trouble. Trying to get us to fight with one another so that he has a chance to get away. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Pietre spread his hands. “Just because I want you at each other’s throats in a particularly literal sense don’t mean that I’m speaking anything but the truth.”
“You’re lying,” Kevin said.
“Really?” Pietre raised an eyebrow. “But didn’t dear Briony lose interest in you very suddenly, Kevin?
Didn’t her interest in your brother always seem at odds with what he was? Wasn’t she very quick to go back to him?”
Fallon took a step towards Pietre. “Shut up.”
Pietre stepped back to match it. It wasn’t the time to fight. Not yet. No. Now was the time to take a guess. “Why should I? Or don’t you want your brother to hear? Tell me, Fallon, what were you and Briony doing when you spotted the dragon? Just talking or something more… tantalizing?”
The little flicker of Fallon’s eyes was enough to tell Pietre that his shot had hit home. Even better, Kevin moved from Pietre’s side to confront his brother. Sometimes, it was all so easy.
“What were you doing?” the werewolf demanded. “Are you the reason Briony returned her ring to me?”
“What Briony does is her business,” Fallon shot back.
They were so nearly over the edge that for a second, Pietre was tempted to give them just that little extra push. It wouldn’t take much, and then he could use the chaos to rid himself of two nuisances. Three, if he could get a clean strike at Briony’s brother.
Pietre tapped his foot against the underbrush, trying to decide. Sadly, he could see at least one better way to play things. Oh well …
“It is simply what Briony is,” Pietre said in his most carefully soothing tone. “I am sure that it is not deliberate.”
Kevin turned to him, and for a moment, Pietre thought that he had misjudged things. That the anger werewolves always felt around his kind would spill over. Somehow though, the boy managed to get a grip. Not bad, for a mere animal.
“What’s going on with Briony?” Kevin demanded. “What is she turning into?”
Pietre smiled. “Certainly not a shifter like you. She is more of something along the lines of our kind.”
It was delightful to watch the way the young man froze. “No, not Briony!”
This was a knife edge, of course. Push too much, and the boy would give up completely. Too little, and he would be insufficiently on edge for Pietre’s needs. Pietre forced a laugh. “Does that make her less attractive to you, shifter? If she were to become a vampire, would you still love her?”
“Of course.” Such sincerity in that reply. The boy actually believed it.
“But you loved Fallon here before he became a vampire,” Pietre pointed out. “He was your brother. Your closest family. Yet after he became one of my kind you couldn’t stand him. All because he was a vampire. Do you really think Briony would be so different?”
“Briony is different,” Kevin insisted. “She isn’t a vampire. She’s nothing like you.”
“Oh, she’s a little like us.” Pietre was enjoying himself again. Now for the important part. “When you enter Palisor,” he said, “it will be practically all fanged ones. What will you do then, boy?”
It took a second for that to have the desired effect, but when it did, the effect was obvious. The werewolf went very still. “What do you mean, ‘when I enter Palisor’? I thought I couldn’t.”
Pietre shook his head. “I cannot. Nor can your brother or young Jake here. No vampire can enter without a key, which means either Sophie or Briony, plus one of the dragons.”
“No vampire can,” Fallon said.
“Exactly.” Pietre looked around the little group.
“Palisor’s inhabitants detest vampires. We are from darker powers. Shifters, on the other hand…” Pietre looked at Kevin steadily.
“Are you saying that I can enter?”
Oh, give the boy a prize. Pietre had practically laid it out on a plate for him, and he only just got it?
Still, what did he expect from a creature for which advanced thinking probably revolved around which rabbit to chase next?
“Shifters are different,” Pietre confirmed. “After all, the dragon is just another type of shifter, and it got through easily enough. It is simply a question of finding the gate once more.”
“So I find the gate,” Kevin said, “I go through, find Briony and Aunt Sophie, and then bring them both back?”
“Isn’t that what I’ve just been saying?” Pietre demanded. “But then, I assume you’re deaf to most things that aren’t dog whistles.”
He stepped back as the werewolf’s hands balled into fists.
“So what do you get out of this?” Kevin asked.
“Why are you telling us this?”
“Me? Oh, I want to live as much as the next man. More, probably. Living is a habit, you know. The more you do of it, the more you want to. If telling you all this will help me live a little longer, then it is what I will do.”
“And if it helps you get into Palisor,” Fallon said, “so much the better.” Pietre grinned. “Clever boy.”
“You need either Aunt Sophie or Briony back to let you in,” the young vampire continued. “That’s why you’re helping.”
“True. Though it doesn’t change any of what Kevin here must do. Does it, Kevin?”
The werewolf slowly shook his head. “How do I find the gate again? Do I just drink from the stream?”
Pietre laughed. “Hardly. This is the difficult part for you, boy. The gate moves around. It does not open in the same spot twice in succession. For finding it… well, the simplest way is to follow a dragon, but who knows when another one of those will show up?”
The werewolf took a step forward. “There must be something we can do.”
Pietre shrugged. “You think so? I waited hundreds of years before Sophie came along, and then she waited fifty for the dragon. Perhaps you will have better luck with pure chance than I did, which is why I have told you that much, but I am hardly betting on it.”
Fallon clenched his fist. “We don’t have that time to wait.”
“Wait, don’t wait. It is nothing to me.”
“Well, at least you won’t be here to see it happen,” Fallon declared, reaching for his fallen stake.
Pietre had been expecting it though, and by now, his resources were at a much more acceptable level. He wove his hands through the air, wrapping shadows around himself even as the boy turned. In just a few strides, he was into the trees, though the master vampire couldn’t resist one final taunt.
“I will watch your progress with interest.”
Chapter 3
Briony stood open mouthed at the sight of her great-aunt, who now looked more like an older sister thanks to the transformation that had come over her.
And not much older at that. One moment she had simply been Aunt Sophie, the next moment, her true Hugtandalfer nature had shone through, leaving her as this beautiful, youthful, fanged creature of the fey.
“Aunt Sophie?” Briony asked, even though she knew it was still her.
“It’s her,” Archer the dragon-shifter assured her.
Aunt Sophie concurred. At least, the older girl smiled. “It’s still me. This is just… I guess you could think of it as the real me. Or at least the real me now that I’ve come into my powers.”
The fanged-elf man beside them, Aunt Sophie’s father, inclined his head gracefully. “And you look lovely, my daughter. But now, we must hurry to the King. He will want to see his daughter, and we should not delay.”
“My father is really the King?” Briony asked.
“You aren’t joking?”
“Your father, is the King of all the woodland elves,” Aunt Sophie’s father said.
“Sorry,” Briony said. “Do you have a name? I can’t just keep thinking of you as Aunt Sophie’s dad.”
“I am Leytham. My brother is Waltham.” The fanged elf gestured to a path leading from the meadow they stood in. “We must go to him now.”
They walked, making their way through woodland that was like that of home, and yet somehow not like it. It was too bright, too vibrant, the path lined on both sides with flowers that should not have been able to thrive in the shadows of the trees, yet which did anyway.
Leytham walked at the front of their group, leading the way. Archer, in his form of a tall, golden-skinned boy with almost white hair, brought up the rear. Briony kept close to Aunt Sophie between them.
There were things that she needed to know, and that she hoped her great-aunt would tell her before they arrived.
“Why is all this happening now?” Briony asked.
“Why am I changing? It is just time.”
“No, I mean… well, why didn’t anyone tell me about this before? Why am I here now, when my…” she wasn’t ready to call him that yet, “when the King could have sent for me at any time?”
Ahead of them, Leytham sighed. He kept walking as he spoke. “My brother is not well. As a people, the Hugtandalfer live for a very long time by human standards, but we are not immortal. We age, even if we do not show it. We die. Our king is one of the oldest of us now, and I fear he will not live much longer. He needs an heir.”
Briony got that straight away. “I’m supposed to be that heir? I’m supposed to step into the throne, just like that? Isn’t there someone else?”
Leytham shrugged, turning back to them.
“There is Prince Vigor.”
“There then,” Briony said. “You have a prince. And from the name, he sounds like he should be perfect. You don’t need… hold on, does this mean I have another brother now?”
“Not precisely,” Leytham said, “and that is part of the problem. Vigor is not truly of my brother’s blood, even if he is a full -blooded Hugtandalfer. Waltham adopted him when he had need of an heir.”
“You said ‘part of the problem’,” Briony observed. “What’s the other part?”
Leytham looked uncomfortable for a moment.
“That would be the part where the Prince is handsome, but cold, and selfish. Even our king is not sure Vigor will be suited for the throne.”
“Father,” Aunt Sophie said, “you aren’t about to take my niece into danger, are you?”
“I am merely bringing her home. Word of how King Waltham’s daughter is a natural-born leader in the human world has gotten through to Palisor. You are here because King Waltham is dying, and he wants to see you, which is why Archer was sent to find you, but that may not be all …”
Archer moved forward from the back of the group, interrupting what the male Hugtandalfer was about to say. “We must go now. There isn’t much time. We have wasted enough time getting Briony here, fighting that vampire at the gate.”
That was enough to make Aunt Sophie purse her lips. “Pietre. I should have finished him when I had the chance. I should have known he would not give up trying to get here just because I left. He tried to use Briony, then?”
Archer nodded. “He’s still out there trying to figure his way in. I don’t think he’ll stop, even now.”
“Could he get in, though?” Briony asked.
Aunt Sophie shrugged. “Probably not. Not now. But it is always better to be certain. Especially with him. If he were ever to get through…” Since Aunt Sophie still had an arm around her, Briony felt the shudder that ran through her.
“It would be that bad if he got here?” Briony asked.
Aunt Sophie nodded. “With a vampire like Pietre in Palisor, he would bring his darkness here and pollute the Hugtandalfers. More than that though, he would find it easy to gain more power here. Power that he could then take back to Wicked in order to kill both werewolves and humans. He has wanted that for years.”
“So if he had managed to persuade you to take him through…”
“Things would have been very bad indeed. Falling for him wasn’t exactly my best moment.”
Just hearing those words, thinking about Pietre still out there, brought Briony’s mood down a little.
What had happened to Fallon, Jake and Kevin? Were they all right, or was Pietre hurting them even now?
There was no way to know. No way to help.
As though sensing her mood, Archer grinned.
“Come on. You should at least see some of this kingdom before you meet its king.” He looked to Leytham. “If that’s all right?”
“You’ll take her to the castle?”
Archer nodded, and shifted. On the path, his form took up most of the available space.
“On you get, Briony,” Aunt Sophie said. “It seems you’re doing this the comfortable way.”
Briony hesitated, but climbed onto the golden dragon’s back as it knelt to let her up. In place, she looked around. “How do I hold on?”
Aunt Sophie smiled. “For dear life.”
Briony grabbed hold of Archer’s neck automatically as he took to the air in a bound that let him spread his wings. In just seconds, he was far above the trees. It was totally different from flying with Fallon. That had been uncomfortable, and slightly frightening, and more like leaping than truly flying.
This was a smooth glide, higher than Briony had been outside of an airplane, with the trees rushing away beneath her. Then it was clouds.
“Archer?
Could you maybe go a little lower?”
The dragon snorted with what Briony was sure was laughter, but he flew lower. Low enough that Briony could really see everything below better. At first glance, it looked a little like the land around Wicked, but there were differences. It was a much brighter land than the world she had left, for one thing, like a painting that had been done purely in primary colors.
Those colors were subtly different too, almost surreal. The sky had pinks and purples in it as well as blue, like the first glimpse of sunset permanently mixed in with the rest of the sky. The clouds danced with light in rainbows of color that made Briony gasp to see them.
There were differences in the land below, too.
Instead of the flat expanse of trees there would have been back home, these ones quickly gave way to rolling hills cut through with streams and deep pools.
There were creatures on those hills. Briony thought she saw horses, though when she looked closer, she could see the horns rising like cathedral spires from their foreheads. In the pools, Briony saw the flick of great fish tails, only for human heads and torsos to surface moments later to stare up at her.
By that point, Briony was too busy staring at what lay beyond the first hills to worry about the attention. Towers stood against the skyline, high enough in some cases to pierce the lowest clouds.
Walls ringed each tower, creating a courtyard around it while separating it from the rest. Or not quite separating it. Slender bridges of white marble stood between the turrets, connecting them in a delicate web that made the castle looked like it had been draped in lacework. To Briony, it was everything that a castle in a fairy tale place like this should have been.
Archer flew on towards it. As they got closer, Briony saw that there were flat roof areas or balconies on most of the towers, looking a little like helicopter landing pads might have on skyscrapers. Except that it wasn’t helicopters landing on these, as Briony found out when Archer circled one of the towers, swooped closer, and landed in an elegant spread of wings.
Even as Briony slid down from his back, Archer transformed once more into the amber-eyed young man he had been.
“Welcome to your father’s castle, Briony,” he said smiling. “Shall we go inside and see your tower?”