Death Kissed

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

Redemption, she thought. What did you do?

  A gateway into a desert. Heat. Still night, like here. She knew these things, even though no one told her, or showed her, or communicated to her in any conscious way.

  She was still connected to the sword. She had to be.

  Ed looked over the edge of the pit. “Where are my children?” he bellowed.

  She threw out her hands as if surrounded by ghosts. “Red!” She felt the sword. How long would her connection to the sword hold? “They’re in Texas,” she told the wolves. “Ed!” She reached out her hand. “I feel the sword!”

  He immediately stuck out his foot to slide into the pit.

  The big Thor elf grabbed his arm. “No. Let us handle this.”

  The elves needed to let Ed handle it. They were his kids. They needed him. “Let him go!” she yelled. She could get him into the Heartway. “Ed, I can follow.”

  He pulled away from the elf and slid into the pit. “You better not be lying to me.”

  “If you can carry out your brother, do it now,” she said to Gerard.

  He sniffed at her with his wolf nose, then looked down at Remy.

  Gerard Geroux lifted his wounded brother and bounded up the side of the crater.

  How was she going to do this? She didn’t have a token, and there weren’t stations here.

  But there were lines—lines she’d seen when Red exploded.

  “As a Paladin of King Oberon, I hereby officially request law enforcement backup from the Sheriff of Alfheim County.” She looked the Sheriff directly in the eye. “This is not a deal. This is parallel behavior.”

  He nodded once.

  She looked up at Bjorn Thorsson. “I need you to hit me with whatever magic the sword gave off.”

  His lip curled.

  “I can hear her!” Wrenn yelled. “She’s talking to me. I can follow!”

  “Then you take me,” the big elf said.

  “I cannot take an elf into the Heartway.” Probably. Most likely. She’d never tried. Now was not the time to accidentally kill an elder elf.

  She could move a mundane, though.

  “We’ll call you the moment we have a specific location,” Ed yelled.

  Wrenn nodded. “They’re in Texas,” she said.

  Bjorn looked over his shoulder. He stiffened. “I’m sending them!” he snapped.

  There was another elf up there. Another powerful one.

  A sigil formed in front of Bjorn’s hands. He twisted his fingers and straightened his arms and all the blue electrical fire that had been dancing along his shoulders moved to his magic.

  Wrenn pulled Ed close. “Hold on,” she said, just as an elf named Bjorn hit her full force with the electrical power of the sky.

  Chapter 21

  The elves had run Ed’s family through a gauntlet of magical approximations the moment they’d set foot in Alfheim, so he knew what it meant to be inside magic. “Expect spells to feel this way” with fae, and “that way” with kami, they said. These spirits will feel slighted “if you do this” and those spirits “if you do that.” Mostly, don’t bother the magic and it won’t bother you.

  Hold still and let it spin out. Concentrate on how it’s changing the world around you. Respond to the changes, not the magic itself.

  Except it never worked that way in Alfheim. Or Texas. Or anywhere. Mostly because the magic wasn’t going to leave you alone long enough for you to get your bearings.

  Bjorn called down the power of Thor to do whatever it was Wrenn had asked. He hit them with energy so strong it changed the cold, clean scent of winter air to the acrid ozone smell of a terrifying electrical storm. But this place called the Heartway? It burned like they’d actually been hit by a real bolt of lightning.

  No, like Ed stood inside of a bolt of lightning.

  “You need to stay in physical contact with me until we catch a gate,” Wrenn said.

  There was still breathable atmosphere here, even with the ozone and the flat white—or colorless—nothingness around them. He heard her words and wasn’t gasping for air. “Okay.”

  There was nothing here. Nothing he perceived, at least. “You said this place is like a railway,” he said. As far as he could tell, the Heartway was empty, though up and down still counted, and left and right. No rail lines or trains—though he had a strong sense that there were lines here.

  “It is,” she said. “Except we’re not in a station.”

  He lowered his shotgun and stepped in front of her. She was taller. She could see around him, and it would be better overall if they both saw whatever was coming at the same time.

  “I’m not seeing anything other than…” How was he supposed to describe it? “There’s ground here. I’m pretty sure I see ground. But I’m not really registering the ground. Does that make sense?”

  “Rail lines need to travel through territory,” she said. “This place is the equivalent to magical open country. A no-man’s-land of sorts. It’s between realms. Inside the veils.”

  “Are we between The Land of the Living and The Land of the Dead?” Because Frank had talked about moving between The Lands of the Living and the Dead.

  Ed being dead would not help anyone.

  “No,” Wrenn said. “The places inside the veils are… primordial, I guess. That’s why there’s nothing here. Nothing’s been built.”

  Behind him, Wrenn reached into her jacket to pull out her phone. “I need to figure out where we are in the system.” A few swipes and she held out the phone as if looking for a connection. “Come on.”

  She expected service. Inside a primordial magical place.

  Reflexively, Ed pulled out his own phone.

  No bars on his. “Yours works?”

  Hers trilled. “The fae have been teching-up these past fifteen years or so.”

  “What carrier is working with magicals?” This was all too weird.

  “It’s the King’s system. The Queen calls it TwinkleBell.” She twisted it around. “There.” Several apps unfolded like little dancing pixies landing on her screen. One in particular lit up. “We aren’t anywhere near a stop but the map says there are trains nearby. The problem is Texas is a big place.”

  “But you can still hear the sword, correct?”

  She tilted her head. “Not in here.” Her lip twitched.

  So they were blind. Unless…

  Ed held out his phone. “I can see the kids’ phones.” Unless that kelpie turned them off. “The van’s got a GPS tracer on it.” But his phone didn’t have service.

  “Heh,” she said, and touched her phone to his.

  Every single app on his phone transferred to hers, and probably his passwords, too. “You better not tell the elves fae magic can do that.”

  “I’ll wipe it off my phone when this is over.” She tapped at his tracker app.

  “You do that,” he said. “The moment we get back to Alfheim.” With his kids. Because they’d be returning with the kids or they wouldn’t be returning at all.

  Wrenn tucked away her phone. “Put that away and prepare yourself,” she said.

  Ed tucked his phone back into his pocket and readied his shotgun.

  “Step with me.” Wrenn moved him about six strides to the left. “This is going to hurt.” She wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “Don’t hold your—”

  Something hit him square in the chest. And gut. And head. He fell and—

  He landed on his back and his head bounced off a rough wooden floor. His lungs sucked in heavy, wet, electricity-filled air. Raindrops hit his face even though he was inside, blinking through the blue-white glare of this place.

  He wasn’t moving. The jars lining the walls rattled but not from travel on any train tracks. They rattled because of the electrical power roaring off the tall metal rod sticking through the roof.

  Frank came to the elves because the power of Thor brought him back to life, he thought. But he was pretty sure it wasn’t that simple, and that he shouldn’t care anyway, and that he had a task
in this moment that had nothing to do with Frank Victorsson.

  Ed was here for his kids.

  He flexed to sit but a huge hand, fingers steepled and spread out, touched his chest as if to cage his heart.

  A face appeared from the glare. “Well, well, what do we have here?”

  A bolt scar on the side of his face. Deep maroon, fire-filled eyes. Fangs.

  Frank’s brother stared down at Ed as if he was a beer and a bag of chips.

  Ed swung the shotgun around, but the monster grabbed the barrel.

  “Never shoot the conductor,” the monster said. He looked up at the huge lightning rod. “The Heartway takes what it wants to get you where you need to be.”

  “How are you taking from me what it needs?” Ed asked.

  The monster looked down at him again. “You?” He sniffed at the air in much the same way as that damned kelpie. “Ah, yes. There is something tasty there. It hurt, didn’t it? Killing that vampire?”

  There was no point in lying. No point in puffing himself up or giving this fae manifestation even a hint that he wasn’t at peace with what he did. “Nothing hurt worse,” he said.

  Never in his life had Ed been so personal with violence. Never in his few years as a deputy, even with the violent types in Santo Guijarro county. He’d seen blood, yes. Gunshot wounds, and severed limbs in that one car crash. But nothing like what had happened in that dim, moldy room in real Texas, which hadn’t been much different than the one conjured by the Heartway for Wrenn Goodfellow.

  There’d also been glass jars there, in Texas. And body parts.

  The monster—the conductor—sniffed. “Ah…”

  And this place shifted.

  There’d been an autopsy table, too, but unlike the Heartway room’s table, the vamp’s had been on the floor. Ed inhaled sharply. The strangers from Minnesota who said they were magical—they were magical, he’d seen one turn into a frickin’ wolf—were supposed to be here. They were supposed to help.

  He had a baby boy at home. He was a deputy. He wasn’t supposed to deal with serial killers.

  He hit that vampire with the butt of his shotgun. The vile thing winced enough to allow Ed sufficient leverage to roll away. He shot out a window. Light streamed in. The vamp screamed.

  Ed curb-stomped the monster’s head against the edge of the autopsy table.

  The shift reversed.

  The monster—not the vamp in Texas, the conductor—sniffed at his face. “Slayer,” he whispered. He sniffed again then sat up. “I will give you a boon, little mundane: You are right to fear what you fear.”

  What the hell did that mean? Damned fae and their tricks.

  The monster pointed at Ed’s face and laughed. “I like you!” He lifted his other hand off Ed’s chest and nodded over his shoulder. “You’re not the one who’s supposed to have the token, little mundane.”

  Ed lifted his head to look.

  Wrenn stood in the threshold of a door. Darkness roiled behind her as if there wasn’t a room back there, only void. She wore a loose white shift of a dress, one with a tie at the neck that stretched open enough he saw her shoulder. Her hair hung free and cascaded down her back like black fire.

  Neither the shift nor her hair covered her scars. One coiled up the from her chest and around another, smaller, star-shaped scar. Then it ran up the side of her neck where it sprouted into a tree-like pattern on the side of her face. Yet another, darker scar ran down her right arm.

  A man stepped between her and the monster. His clothes were some sort of old style, the kind with floppy shirts and pants that only buttoned. His short hair was messy like he’d just gotten out of the shower, or moved out from under the rain leaking in from the ceiling. His eyes gleamed the same blue as the electricity surrounding the rod.

  That’s Victor Frankenstein, Ed thought.

  Victor snatched Wrenn’s arm and yanked her toward him, all while staring wide-eyed and terrified at the monster. She didn’t respond, or pull away, even when he licked her cheek. She just watched her vampire brother.

  The monster bolted off Ed and straight for the man.

  The Wrenn Ed knew manifested between him and where the monster grabbed hold of Victor Frankenstein. The modern Wrenn without scars, whose soul had been bared to him by this place. The one wearing the black leather jacket. She grabbed him by the shoulders and lifted his upper body off the floor.

  Behind her, a snap. Then a wet ripping. A gurgle.

  Wrenn squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

  She slammed him against the hard, dry, dusty Texas ground.

  Chapter 22

  Pebbles bounced along the dry ground away from Ed and Wrenn’s shuffling feet.

  She gasped and rolled away from him, her hand over the left side of her face as if he’d just slashed her cheek.

  He hadn’t. Someone—something—had, right where Victor had licked the aspect of Wrenn in the white dress. Blood seeped through her fingers.

  “You okay?” The elves never did anything like that. Not that kind of blood magic.

  Wrenn gasped again and… flickered.

  Ed blinked. Was it the shadows? His eyes hadn’t adjusted to the gloom. Except he’d seen flickers like that before, when a glamour broke.

  “I didn’t have a token.” She looked at the blood on her hand. “The Heartway took… other things.”

  Something in his mind flickered as if an internal glamour wavered. Not now, he thought. He hadn’t had a flashback to his boot coming down on that vamp’s jaw in years. To how much different vampire blood smelled from mundane blood. To…

  He rubbed his face. Damned fae magic took a slice out of his brain.

  “Did you…” He shook and tapped his own temple.

  Her eyes narrowed. “It can’t take from you. You’re a mundane.”

  So are you, he thought.

  She patted at the cut on her cheek. It, at least, had already stopped bleeding.

  The Heartway had showed Ed something he shouldn’t have seen. Not only his own flashback, but hers, too. He nodded once and let it be. It wasn’t his place to add to the invasion.

  Wrenn staggered to her feet and moved into the shadows. She obviously needed a moment.

  He looked around. Crumbling adobe walls surrounded where they landed. To their west, a gap in the wall showed the final salmons and pinks of evening as they spread over the horizon. To their east, another gap in the walls—pretty much only the corners of the building still stood—revealed thick brush. Something skittered away, probably a horned lizard, and vanished under a jumble of branches. Birds chirped. Somewhere in the distance, a coyote yipped.

  Ed inhaled. A heavy Gulf of Mexico breeze slapped humidity against his nose and sinuses.

  They’d landed inside the remains of an old mission somewhere on the Gulf Coast, not far from the ocean.

  Wrenn wiped the blood onto her black pants. “This building used to be the local equivalent to Manny’s Backwoods Lodge in the Paul Bunyan Forest. Such places tend to harbor unused Heartway stops.”

  She waved as if she refused to say any more.

  So no more talk of the Heartway and its heart-ripping ways, which was fine with him.

  She extended her hand to help him up. “We should be in a place called Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge.”

  Overhead, stars shimmered in the evening sky—and a dull glow danced along the horizon to the south.

  They were near a town. A big one, too, from the light pollution.

  The town was likely Brownsville, which meant they weren’t anywhere near Santo Guijarro County. But it also meant they were considerably closer to South Padre Island—and one of the most powerful Gulf Coast vampire clans.

  American vampires were not Old World vampires. American vampires were new money, relatively speaking. American vampires were corporate.

  Lots of shipping money, in New Orleans. Lots of oil money, in Texas. And all along the coast from the Everglades to South Padre, lots of t
ourist destinations, especially destinations where transient young people liked to get drunk and act stupid.

  American vampires were as American as baseball, apple pie, and tax evasion.

  Ed dusted off his knees and tied his jacket around his waist. Winter temperatures in South Texas were normal summer temperatures in Minnesota, and he’d overheat damned fast if he didn’t drop the coat. “Is he taking them to the Claytons?” he asked as he stripped off his hat and stuck it into his back pocket.

  Wrenn frowned. She didn’t seem fazed by the change in temperature, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. He’d seen her brother—not her vampire brother, but Frank Victorsson—walk around totally unfazed by temperature changes, too.

  And after the little bit of privacy invasion he’d just witnessed in the Heartway, he was one hundred percent certain that Alfheim’s elf-raised son of Victor had a fae-raised sister.

  All of which he stuffed into his Wrenn Goodfellow file in the back of his mind.

  “Warren Clayton Jr., patriarch of Clayton Gas and Oil, master of his domain, and owner of half of South Padre Island via an intricate web of shell corporations.” Wrenn pulled out her phone again. “Warren Clayton, Jr. also happens to be the one and only Warren Clayton of Belfast, a grifter of a man born right around the same time as I was.” She held the device again as if looking for service. “And one of the first Anglos in this area.” She tapped at the screen. “His son disappeared about ten years ago.”

  She knew more about the clans than he did. “You and I are going to share notes when this is done,” he said.

  Wrenn looked him up and down. “No deals, remember, Sheriff? Not even with fae-adjacent witches.”

  There was that witch thing again. He filed that, too. “Where are my kids?”

  Unlike Paul Bunyan, reserves in this part of Texas were full of roads and trails. If Ranger got the van onto a flatter surface, he’d have them out and to the vamps in no time.

  He pulled out his phone and called up the GPS tracker.

  According to the app, the van was literally on top of them.

  He cocked his head, listening for little clicks, or small noises, or dust settling. And there, just on the other side of the south wall, a small tick of a cooling engine.