It’s him, she mouthed to Robin.
Two hundred years out there, probably hiding in caves and feeding on rats, but he’d survived that night in Edinburgh. She now had proof—and evidence that he might still be out there terrorizing the world.
Robin touched his lips again, and leaned his head toward the dryads.
There was another, the dryads reported. A big man who was mundane, yet not. A man who heard the dryads, and saw their magic.
Robin squeezed her hand.
She saw magic. She heard the dryads. And she was mundane, yet not.
This man might have been touched by the same forces Victor had used to make her “viable,” as he’d said, and to bring her witch abilities to the surface. He could, like her, be a victim of Victor’s experiments.
Or he could be something entirely worse. Something that had survived a supposed death on an Arctic ice floe.
The vampire her captor had created was bad enough, but this man—this monster—was why Victor had kidnapped her in the first place. Because he’d wanted a mate.
Wrenn Goodfellow was no monster’s bride.
Robin pulled his phone out of his pocket and tapped on the app he used to call up the non-Heartway gateways, the spots only royalty used, then turned it so she could see.
The closest gate to the elves’ home was some distance north, situated on a trail inside protected land labeled Paul Bunyan State Forest.
Then he quickly closed the app and stuck the phone back into his pocket.
Thank you, she mouthed. Send me now. Please.
Robin frowned.
Residents of Oberon’s Castle were supposed to use the Heartway when traveling into the mundane world. Only so many fae could walk the world at the same time, and Oberon was a stickler for this particular rule.
Even his Second had to follow procedure.
Victor Frankenstein had held her captive. He’d unleashed a demigod of a vampire. And he’d lied about the death of his first mistake—a mistake that might have information about his vampiric brother.
Wrenn Goodfellow turned on her heels. She’d never, not once, made others pay for her pain and existence. The men of Frankenstein did.
“Robin…” she whispered.
One of the dryads shrieked.
Chapter 7
A sparkling orb of light appeared between the dryads.
The dryad on the left tripped as she stepped backward. The one on the right raised her hands to shield her face. A protection spell manifested between the dryads and the orb, but it was too late. The orb exploded outward into a crackling ball of red and green magic.
Someone powerful had interrupted the dryads’ report. Someone with enough power they could pop into the sanctum of Oberon’s spies without even a tickle from the castle’s security spells.
Robin gasped. “What is she doing?”
A feminine hand shot out of the ball of light. Fingers grasped the antlered helmet of the shrieking dryad. And then the dryad’s entire suit of armor and the ball of light vanished with an audible pop.
The two dryads vanished. Up a side branch past the henge, a sprite hooted in shock, then also vanished.
“What just happened?” Wrenn said. Someone—a heavily magical she, from Robin’s response—had literally stolen the armor off a spy’s back.
The wisps of natural green and red magic floating around the henge wiggled and brightened as if someone had attached jumper cables to the sanctum’s giant tree branch.
Robin breathlessly inhaled. “Oh, no,” he said.
All the magic around the henge—where the dryads had been standing, Robin’s natural shimmer of turquoise and leaf greens, the normal aurora-like sheets of extra blue in and amongst the clouds—all of it—stiffened as if someone with a lot of power had yanked it taut.
Two centuries with the fae and this was the first time she’d sensed panic among the inhabitants of Oberon’s Castle. “Who was that, Robin?” Though her instincts tossed out a likely guess.
Her phone buzzed. So did Robin’s.
Every phone buzzed. The whoop of a siren wailed from somewhere nearby.
Robin pulled out his phone. “There’s a breach.”
“In what?” she asked as she pulled out her own phone. “The message says to shelter in place.” Nothing about a breach, or whose magic might have caused it, or what any of it meant.
Robin looked around as if to locate an escape route.
Her instincts said she was about to be called to fight. King Oberon was about to need his paladins. “If there’s a fight, I need to know what I’m dealing with here, Robin.”
Plus she still had the tension coiled in her back and legs.
One of Robin’s eyebrows pulled up so high his forehead wrinkled all the way up to his little horn nub. A wry smile followed. “We need arms.” He pointed back along the branch, toward the wide arch that led back into the castle and ultimately the stores of the Armory.
He wanted weapons. While inside the castle. “Robin…”
The air popped. A gust followed.
A greenish death-stallion manifested in the center of the henge. Demon red eyes blazed. He reared up and pawed the air with his massive hooves.
The stallion brayed out a sonic shriek so loud Wrenn covered her ears.
Someone had released a kelpie in horse form into Oberon’s home.
Robin pulled Wrenn to the side. “What has she done now?”
“Who?” Wrenn asked, though she’d already guessed. Only a royal fae had enough power to cause some type of breach, and only one queen had her own private herd of kelpie stallions.
Titania was up to something.
The kelpie whipped his head around as if he had no idea where he was, or why, or how to get his bearings—until he looked directly at Robin.
The kelpie recognized Oberon’s Second in Command. He looked up again at the sanctum and his horse body language changed to that of a fae who recognized his surroundings.
“I don’t think he was expecting to end up here,” Wrenn said.
“Doesn’t matter. No kelpies in the castle.” Robin pointed at the stallion. “The order came down last night.”
So the King had locked down Oberon’s Castle to both vampires and kelpies.
Which he wouldn’t have done if he didn’t care about the blood syndicate. Or the vampires. Or the dark fae involved.
A ghost of a sigil formed in front of the kelpie.
Robin gripped Wrenn’s arm as he pointed. “The henge,” he said. “It’s part of the reporting spells. It…” He inhaled as if he’d just realized he was about to tell her a secret.
Available information about the powers of royal fae was slim to none, as was information about their intelligence-gathering spellwork. Wrenn had no idea how the dryads did their slight-of-hand, or how they communicated with the land, or about their armor, or the henge.
They were spies in the service of King Oberon and she would never be in a position to understand the details of their lives.
But she knew enough to know the ghost sigil between her and the kelpie stallion was not fae magic.
“Elves,” she breathed.
Elves had engaged the Queen and caused her to let loose kelpies. Elves who likely originated in the territory into which the dryads had been sent to spy and probably had something to do with the root of their vampire blood syndicate issue.
And who were likely harboring Victor’s other mistake.
Even if they were not the North American elves, any elven magic manifesting inside his castle was enough to infuriate the King.
Robin grabbed her hand. “We need to leave,” he said.
Wrenn yanked away. “You need to send me into there.” She pointed at the sigil. “Now.” She couldn’t open a portal into the elves’ territory without entering the Heartway. Robin could. “Tell the King you felt the situation called for a paladin.”
He pouted just enough to make her worry about his feelings. Not about his health, or hers, but about a
slight on his precious satyr honor. “I can’t, Wrenn. You know that.”
Yes, he could. “Yet you gave me information on the closest gate.”
His pout flickered into anger, but that quickly ran and hid under the cover of his returning pout. “So you could make an official case.” He yanked on her hand.
The kelpie shrieked. He reared up on his death horse hind legs and slammed his front hooves into the elven sigil.
Power burst off the hit, power so strong, so bright and blue, it felt like Victor’s lightning rod.
“This is an official case!” She pointed at the kelpie.
The sigil vanished, but the kelpie did not. He tossed his head and looked over his shoulder as if peering at someplace other than the henge.
“Damn it, Robin! Send me now!”
Robin yanked her toward the archway into the castle.
The kelpie looked over his shoulder and brayed out a call. Then he jumped between the standing stones of the henge. A rumbling thump filled the entire space when his hooves hit the wood of the branch.
The sound did not match what her mind expected. It echoed correctly inside the cavernous space holding the henge, but the reverberations felt off—and the timing of the echoes—as if it were coming from a significantly farther distance.
The Queen had opened a portal and Wrenn did the dumbest thing she could do while in the presence of a kelpie in stallion form—she ran toward the henge.
“Wrenn!” Robin yelled. “Don’t—”
A second kelpie jumped through the rip. Then another. They looked around in much the same way as the first had when he manifested. Unlike him, they didn’t immediately get their bearings.
The first kelpie pawed the floor and snorted at the other two. Then he swung his head toward the arch between the sanctum and the rest of the castle.
They were talking to each other, and the first one through—and the biggest of the three—was giving the other two instructions.
“Robin…” Wrenn pointed. “They’re up to something.”
Walls of golden power manifested on either side of Wrenn. She looked over her shoulder. Robin waved his hand again and the two walls merged into point about ten feet from where she stood.
He’d spun a magical wedge between her and the stallions. It wouldn’t stop them from stampeding, but it should divert them around her body. She wouldn’t get trampled.
“Run!” Robin took off toward the archway.
Wrenn looked back at the wedge and the kelpies streaming by. They growled and wailed, and split around the magic moving walls.
The wedge followed Robin like a puppy, forcing her away from the kelpies’ portal.
“Damn it.” Wrenn ran after Robin.
The two smaller pale green bodies pressed against the wedge on either side as she ran, with the biggest one pushing from behind. Red demon eyes glared down. White sparks snapped every time magic touched magic. And each hoof strike on the branch caused another reverberation, another echo, that merged with their white sparks and red eyes.
Wrenn couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see, or think, or move well enough to get away.
The two smaller kelpies galloped through the archway between the reporting henge and the rest of the castle.
Robin’s magical wedge, though, had other plans. It must have interacted with a containment spell set to hold in the kelpies because she ran face first into a doughy wall of magic.
The largest kelpie also slammed against the wedge-shield and the air oscillated. She fell backward, out of Robin’s magic shield and directly under the keystone of the arch, but still on the henge side. The grand stone rose up to her left, curved over her head, and dropped down again on her right.
The barrier shimmered in the golden light streaming in from the henge side and looked more like a thin, stretched-out cloud of pixie dust than anything capable of holding off kelpies.
Which it hadn’t. The hooves of the second two kelpies clacked against castle stones just outside the archway.
The kelpie with her snorted out an order. The other two looked at each other and galloped down the corridor.
None of Robin’s natural magic filled the corridor on the other side of the barrier, so either the kelpies pushed him ahead, or he’d whipped up a strong concealment enchantment. But strong spells took concentration, and time, neither of which had been available.
So it was just her and the particularly menacing kelpie pawing at the floor next to her legs.
He was the size of a draft horse and the same pale sickly green as all the other kelpies. He smelled fresher than most, more like sunshine on a loch than rotting lake weeds. His eyes shimmered with their normal ruby brilliance and he wore a shimmering bridle of champagne gold.
He was quite handsome for a murder pony, charming in a grand Scottish way, and able to kill a lass thirty times over before she drew a breath.
At least this one wasn’t a vampire.
He sniffed at her face as if he meant to lick her. Wrenn slapped his muzzle with a protection spell.
He sneezed and wet kelpie breath bounced off her cheek.
Ugh, she thought. Her innate protection magic wasn’t strong enough to hold him off for long, but it would keep him from biting. “What’s your name, kelpie?” she cooed. All that need to murder tended to make them single-minded and boorish, and sometimes a good fawning pampering put them into a stupor long enough for a lass to get away.
The kelpie pawed at the wood. He pushed his snout into the barrier, then backed off as if it stung.
He used his head to nudge her against the magic.
A heat prickled as her back pressed into what felt like twinkling fairy dust dough with some give, but not a lot. It ballooned out around her sides as if it were about to swallow her whole.
She pulled herself back into the henge side.
The kelpie’s ruby red eyes narrowed. He clearly understood what had just happened.
So he was more intelligent than the average kelpie. Big, extra strong, and smart—this one might be royal.
Wonderful, Wrenn thought. “You should probably turn around and go back through that portal before King Oberon takes a personal interest in your marauding,” she said.
The kelpie brayed out a laugh.
He was also unsurprisingly arrogant. So arrogant, it seemed, that he felt confident enough to nudge her even though she’d slapped him with a protection spell—and to put his bridle within reach as a result.
If she could steal his bridle, he’d have to do as she asked. Which she might be able to manipulate him into doing anyway. “You were battling elves, were you not?” she asked. “Nothing worse than an elf, huh?”
He sniffed at her face again.
“Is that portal still open?” She pointed around his massive neck.
The kelpie’s head came down and he slammed his forehead into her breastbone—and slammed her into the sparkle dough barrier.
Wrenn coughed. She inhaled deeply and allowed her silver and green protection spells to knit around her body. The kelpie wanted to use her as a shield to force his way through into the castle. Maybe she could move her arms well enough to grab onto his bridle? The leather across his muzzle pressed against her front and if she—
The kelpie rammed his head into her chest again. All her breath puffed out into the barrier. Sharp pain radiated up into her neck and down both her arms and out into her protection spells. She instinctively tried to inhale—and got a lungful of burning magic dough.
New hot pain radiated outward from her chest. She was drowning inside barrier magic. The damned kelpie had found a way to drown her on dry land, high up inside a castle, because that’s what kelpies did. They dragged you under.
If she was going to asphyxiate on magic, so was the kelpie. No kelpie would get the best of her, no matter how big and strong.
She grabbed the silver rings on either side of his mouth and yanked downward. The barrier magic resisted, puffing up around his muzzle, but enough worked into his nos
trils that he tried to snort it out. He tried to buck, but the dough-like mounding of the magic constrained him as much as it did her.
Even in the tight cushioned space, he managed to slam against her again.
Wrenn fell through the barrier magic. Fresh air rushed into her nose and lungs. Burning pain still set every nerve in her body on fire, but she breathed.
And she still had ahold of his bridle. She reached for the strap between his eyes, hoping to yank off the entire assembly.
The kelpie pushed through his head and spit directly into her eyes.
Wrenn yelped. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” She pulled on the bridle’s strap.
The kelpie charged through and swung his head at the same time, slamming her against the cold stone of the castle wall.
Her left elbow joint popped.
New white-hot agony manifested in and around the entire left side of her body. Her fingers disengaged from the bridle, not because she let go, but because her left hand stopped working, and her right hand responded with a spasm.
She slid down the cold stone wall to the floor.
The kelpie towered over her, his head up as he sniffed the air, and his bridle still on his head. His front hooves were close enough that he could rear up and trample her where she sat. He could, if he wanted, completely rip off her damaged arm.
He whinnied, then cocked his head as he listened.
Down the hall, another kelpie whinnied a reply.
The kelpie galloped away, toward his comrade, leaving her alone to pop her elbow back into place.
She yelled as she pushed herself off the wall and realigned her joint. Her witch-body resilience would have the pain settling momentarily.
Most of the weapons cache was in the Armory under lock and key. But some of it was not. Some of it was just too magical and too important to the King to have it out where mere acolytes could lay their hands on it.
Some of it needed to be kept close to the royalty.
Wrenn bolted down the corridor after the kelpie and toward the one room in the entire interconnected metropolis of Oberon’s Castle that a dark fae should not, and hopefully could not, enter: The Gallery of Artifacts.
Death Kissed Page 5