Chapter 8
Robin had snuck Wrenn into the Gallery of Artifacts once. He’d waved his hand and touched her forehead. Then he’d nodded and said, “There,” as if that one word was enough to allow her to transit in and out of all the tiny, hidden pockets within Oberon’s Castle.
He hadn’t given her that kind of key, of course. After five minutes deep inside the Gallery, his spell had worn off and the room had flung her all the way to the Armory’s yard. She’d landed in the middle of a cloud of pixies running tactical drills.
She’d only gotten a glimpse of what was in there—a troll mace the size of her head. An ethereal silver bow, quiver, and arrows. Keys. Several daggers. Fae-made chainmail. Indigo and red kami-made leather and silk armor. Modern-looking leather-and-silver elven body armor that appeared to be more grown than built.
And swords. Hundreds of swords in all shapes and sizes stored on the walls that ran away from the door into what looked like infinity. Swords three kelpies could use to cause all sorts of suffering.
This level of the castle was mostly vast outer rooms surrounding a central column of stairs and elevators. The whole set was high enough up the spire that the curve of the outer hall kept you from seeing more than twenty feet ahead, but you could hear.
Wrenn ran along the inside wall, watching and listening for neighs and brays. Up ahead, clops turned to footfalls and horse noises turned to yells.
The kelpies were shifting to human form.
There was some sort of magical geometry and physics going on in the castle that probably had to do with proximity of pockets of fae-generated realities, the reporting henge, nearness to Oberon’s main rooms, and portal access. She’d never been able to consciously discern a pattern, though she sensed one.
So did the kelpies. She rounded the curve to find three handsome dark-haired men in kilts standing in front of a blank space on the inner wall.
Except it wasn’t blank, and they weren’t alone.
The biggest of the kelpies in human form—he was a good four inches taller than Wrenn, and looked to be carrying at least half-again her body weight in pure muscle—held Robin by the scruff of his neck.
They’d tied his hands with a black leather belt to keep him from zapping out spells, and from the looks of it, had smacked him against the wall enough times to stun him into semi-consciousness.
All three kelpies wore the same black polo shirt with the same little silver-green horse embroidered over their left pec. All wore matte black tactical kilts covered with pockets and body armor panels. Even their boots were black, though their socks were the same pale green as the little horse emblems.
They were also almost physically identical, except for a fair size variation. All had handsome square jaws, the same glorious ebony curls hanging over their foreheads as had the vamped-out one in the tavern, and enough of a five o’clock shadow to accentuate high levels of testosterone.
All had twisted leather straps tied around their necks. Each strap threaded around multiple silver rings.
Their bridles.
They were all things kelpie—dumb, pretty, arrogant, and dangerous.
“You know who that is, don’t you?” Wrenn pointed at Robin.
The huge kelpie scowled like a toddler. “That th’ lass, Ranger?” he asked the much smaller one standing to his left.
The smallest of the three, the one the big one called Ranger, sniffed the air. “She tried t’ steal my bridle, lads.”
So the massive draft-horse-sized kelpie turned into a squat little human.
A chorus of ohhhhs and ahhhs rose from the group.
Ranger pointed at Wrenn. “Run awa’ now, ye ugly sow, before we thrall ye an’ smash yer brains like we’re doin’ t’ the goat boy.”
The big one held up Robin and gave him a shake.
“The King’s going to have your heads,” Wrenn said.
The three kelpies laughed. “We’re th’ Queen’s stallions.” They all puffed up their chests as if they truly thought being the Queen’s favorites would save them from Oberon’s wrath.
She pointed at Robin. “That’s Puck, you morons,” she said.
The big one peered at Robin’s face. “All th’ goat boys look th’ same.”
Ranger shrugged. “Th’ fat ugly one thinks we care.”
How many times in her life had she heard that exact insult? You’re too tall. You’re too strong. No one wants a woman your size.
“The Shire horse thing was compensation, huh?” Wrenn held up her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart.
Red demon fire shot horizontally out the sides of Ranger’s eyes. “We lucked intae this, boys!” He tapped the wall. “I scent th’ power.”
Robin stirred. “You are not allowed—”
The big one rammed his head into the wall.
“Stop!” Wrenn yelled. They might actually hurt Robin with all the slamming.
The one called Ranger ignored her pleas and ran his hand over the wall.
The concealment spell hiding the Gallery of Artifacts cracked like glass. A splinter fell off and clinked to the floor as if it had been made from the finest leaded crystal like the doors to the practice room.
A ball of magic formed around Ranger’s fist and he, too, hit the wall.
The entire spell shattered.
Wrenn cringed. A claxon alarm bonged.
Ranger dashed through the opening. The big kelpie dropped Robin and followed. The other one looked at Wrenn, then at Robin.
“What are you idiots trying to steal?” Had that vamped kelpie said anything about kelpie artifacts? She couldn’t remember. “Who are you working for?”
The remaining one made a rude gesture, then also sprinted into the Gallery of Artifacts.
Wrenn ran to Robin. “You okay?” She untied his hands as she watched the kelpie disappear around a stand of staves.
She looked around. “Where’s the Royal Guard?” Someone with authority to enter a walled-off pocket of terrible weapons should have shown up by now.
Robin pulled himself to his hooves. He slapped a hand against her forehead then pushed her toward the hole in the wall and the new entrance in the Gallery. “I’ll tell the King the situation required a paladin.”
Without a fae guide, she could get stuck in there. “But…”
A ball of magic formed around his hand and he tossed her through.
Chapter 9
The fae were particularly good at spellwork that warped space and time. It was pretty much all they did—or at least all they pretended to do. Casting an illusion of doing the warping and bending was usually as good as actually doing the work.
Illusions saved magical energy. Saved energy provided a strong tactical advantage—an advantage often nullified by her ability to see magic.
Nine times out of ten, Wrenn Goodfellow could tell illusion from structural spellwork. Inside the Gallery of Artifacts, the illusions were the structure.
The inside of the Gallery was at least ten times bigger than the room’s possible space, and extended so far from the entrance that the back wall was not visible. It wasn’t, though. Wrenn knew it wasn’t, yet it was.
The only explanation that made any sense was that the Gallery was a small pocket realm anchored to the castle. As a realm, its internal space didn’t fit into the room where it “lived.” And just to make things more fun, the realm itself was full of illusions making it look and feel significantly bigger than it actually was.
And all the illusions served as alarms, tricks, and traps.
She looked over her shoulder at Robin on the other side of the hole. He must have done something to hide her from the guard spells inside the Gallery. She looked back at the three kelpies disappearing between the display cases.
They, too, hadn’t set off the alarms.
To her left, a row of modern-looking display cases formed a line into the endless shadows at the far end of the Gallery. Behind the cases was a wall full of mostly bows and arrows, with a gun or two thrown in.<
br />
These were not the displays around the entrance. When Robin had brought her in before, the antechamber had a wide arch over an open display floor. Everything there had been fae in origin, and of the exquisite work Oberon liked to show off.
Every single object in this area glowed with magical light, some so brightly she had a difficult time telling if the object was a blade, or an arrow, or even a whip. Most of the objects carried multiple layers of magic beyond their inherent enchantments.
More of the alarms and traps. Some were glowing so brightly because they were purposefully hidden under an illusion, like the mask in the display case just inside the door. It looked kami, but she could tell immediately that it wasn’t—someone had tooled leather to look like a blue demonic oni, but it wasn’t a real oni, nor was it even a good fake. And the magic around it was one hundred percent fae.
But it grabbed her attention. She tried to look around, to perhaps spot the real kami artifact it was meant to help conceal, but the bright blue color and the flat-out gall of such fakery made her want to punch the display case.
Which was probably the point.
She turned her back to the mask.
And there, directly across from the overtly melodramatic display of a fake kami artifact, was another display case, this one holding an obviously fake dolphin-headed Viking arm ring. It, too, made her want to hit the case.
So in this part of the Gallery, guard spells went full-in on the contempt of all the other magicals. Every single display case here was full of distractingly audacious bits of illusion meant to piss off pretty much anyone who got this far inside.
The kelpies had run right by.
In the shadows at the far end of the Gallery, a kelpie kicked another case.
“Hey!” she yelled as she shaded her eyes from the magical glare permeating the Gallery. How much power would this merry band of morons gather to themselves if they stole heavily enchanted weapons? She looked over her shoulder again. When would the castle Royal Guard—
She turned her head back to look into the Gallery and the big kelpie hit her with a straight-on jab to her nose.
Something cracked and pain blossomed from the bridge of her nose, but she didn’t falter. She slid her foot back and held her ground.
Wrenn wiped away a drip of blood and sneered at the kelpie over the back of her hand.
He blinked, and for a second he looked frightened.
Her nose had already begun to reset itself. “We’re not near your loch, you dumbass,” she said. “So what little enthralling ability you might have had over me, you most certainly do not have here.”
For a fraction of a second the huge handsome kelpie, the one who was clearly stronger than the other two, jutted out his lip like a toddler. Then the rage hit. Red demon fire blazed from the sides of his eyes. He grabbed her jacket and swung her into the display case with the fake elven arm ring.
The hit felt as if she’d bounced off concrete. The case didn’t crack.
It moved, though.
“Ranger!” The kelpie yelled. He picked her up to swing her against the case again.
Wrenn lifted both her feet off the ground. She tightened her back. And all that pent-up energy from her flashback released as a two-footed kick. One heel hit his lower abdomen. The other, his crotch.
His breath billowed out of his mouth as a high-pitched wail. He dropped her against the shifted case.
Wrenn rolled into the shadows between the case and the wall of blades behind it.
The kelpie bellowed. One of his mates, somewhere deep in the Gallery, responded with a chorus of brays.
At least one had changed back into his stallion form. If this one changed, his next stomp would do real damage.
She needed a weapon.
Every blade in the Gallery glowed with fae magical fire so bright she had a difficult time discerning where the blades ended and the grips and pommels began, but under all those fae concealment and illusion spells she picked out the truth: All the blades on this section of wall had been forged by the elves from elven silver and steel. All carried Norse runes and elven enchantments. And every single sword and dagger looked strong enough to cut a kelpie in half.
One sword glowed less than the others and she could make out its true size and shape. It was the biggest Viking sword she’d ever seen, bigger than most claymores, and with tightly woven emerald-green magic over its leather-covered grip. And it looked sharp enough to split a tree in two.
Wrenn jumped to a crouch and grabbed the sword’s hilt.
The emerald magic puffed out in much the same dough-like way the barricade enchantment between the henge and the castle had, but instead of forcing her to drop the sword, it glommed onto her hand as if the sword had tied itself to her with silk.
“Heh,” she said. “I think you like me.” Maybe she really was a witch of elven descent.
The big kelpie bellowed, and in a blink of an eye, went from big man to thoroughbred-sized horse.
Wrenn held the sword between her and the stallion. “What do the Scandinavians call your kind? Bäckahäst, correct?” She twirled the sword. “Elves do not like dark fae.”
Deep in the Gallery, another kelpie whinnied. Mr. Big raised his head and whinnied back. Then he snorted at Wrenn and ran toward his companions.
One of them found what they were looking for, she thought, and bolted after the kelpie stallions—until Ranger, still in human form, barreled into her from the side.
They both flew into a rack of staves. Rods and poles, most with metal caps, clanked and clattered to the floor. Ranger stomped his foot down onto her wrist holding the sword, trying to force her to let go, and grabbed her by the hair.
Thank goodness she didn’t get a view up his kilt. She did, though, get whopped in the jaw by one of the kilt’s armored plates.
“Get off me!” she roared. Damned disgusting kelpies. Why did the Queen keep an entire stable full of them? They were as shallow and evil as vampires.
A blast of magic hit Ranger’s head. He yipped and fell to the side, panting and mumbling as if the spell had scrambled his mind.
Wrenn kicked him in the gut and rolled to a crouch.
Robin stood a few paces away, framed in the glow of the gap in the wall and leaning against one of the undamaged display cases. “Put that back.” He didn’t move, or point, or indicate in any way that he meant the sword.
She held it up. “This?”
He looked up just as one of the kelpies galloped right into him and the display.
The case smashed to the floor. Robin somehow danced out of the way. And behind them, the third kelpie dashed through the gap and back into the castle.
He ran headfirst into a new concealment enchantment meant to close off the Gallery from the rest of the castle. And standing out there in the hallway, at least five members of Oberon’s personal Royal Guard held up their hands to cast a new enchantment at the Gallery of Artifacts.
“They’re going to vent the Gallery,” Robin said.
“What?” They weren’t in a spaceship. Though in some ways they were, because of how the spells manipulated space, but this place was magic, not science.
Robin moved his hands. A spell formed. “You need to go,” he said.
“What about you?” she asked.
He looked back at the Royal Guard. “I’ll be fine.”
He wouldn’t. “You’re hurt.”
Robin’s eyes flashed from the handsome blue of his glamour to a starscape of black. The horn nubs on his head brightened, and suddenly he carried a full set of massive curved goat horns. He grew in height. His goat legs elongated and grew thicker, darker fur.
His uniform changed from the midnight blue militaristic jacket and boot-like foot coverings to something black and coiling as if he wore a coat of living night.
A portal opened to her side.
When she looked back, he’d reverted to his young glamour. “Go!” he said.
“Rob—”
Ranger tackled he
r into the portal.
Chapter 10
Alfheim County, Minnesota, the mundane world…
Eduardo Martinez leaned against his cruiser and watched the golds, pinks, and purples of the post-blizzard sunset spread over the remaining clouds. The sun had burst out from behind the gray clouds early mid-morning and had started the normal freeze-thaw cycle that always happened after a big storm this time of year. What had been snow on the roads turned to mush, which was now turning into a slick layer of ice.
He’d already handled more accidents today than he usually did the entire summer. The one about to be hauled away by Gullinbursti Reclamations’ tow truck would hopefully be his last for the day.
Bill waved from the cab of the truck. Ed waved back, and then to the two tourists who’d spun their Audi into the ditch on the other side of the road. They were an older couple whose youngest had just started college, and they’d come up north for Alfheim’s Halloween festivities.
The festivities around here were more Samhain than Halloween, but “the mundanes” didn’t need to know that, as the elves like to say.
Ed rubbed at his stocking cap’s Alfheim County Sheriff’s Department logo, situated on his forehead like some sort of authoritative third eye—which wasn’t as authoritative with the locals as he liked.
He’d been on duty for almost a full twenty-four hours. He’d caught a few naps in his cruiser, but between the fright with his daughter last night, the blizzard, the werewolves and their run, the elves and Samhain, all the traffic problems…
The tourist wife had said it was a brand-new Audi and they hadn’t quite gotten the feel of it yet. Then the husband shrugged and launched into a story about the good old days and the Great Halloween Blizzard of ’91.
Bill would take the car into Magnus Freyrsson’s dealership, and the shuttle would take them to the resort where they were staying, which also happened to be owned by Magnus Freyrsson. They’d get a complimentary bottle from the local winery and a calming massage from one of the elves who worked in the resort’s spa.
Death Kissed Page 6