When the coin touched my palm, a tingle of powerful magic ran down my arm. I held it up between my thumb and forefinger—it looked different. Instead of the imprint of a maple leaf, this coin now had the profile of a howling wolf stamped into the reverse side. Glyphs were engraved around the wolf's head. I flipped the coin over to the obverse. There was an incised image of a woman in portrait, her head partially occluding a full moon. The detail was amazing; even the craters on the visible part of the moon were clear.
It wasn't until I inspected the coin more closely that I realized the image was of me. In tiny letters under the figure were, in English, the words Princess Luna the First.
"Magician," I said, "I don't like jokes about being a princess."
"No joke, Luna. You are a princess. My princess." Then, as if to change the subject, he said, "You only call me 'magician' when you're mad."
"You finally figured that out?"
"Okay, no more 'princess' comments. But the coin's template is fixed; all future coins will be the same. It only needs one final touch."
"What's that?"
"It needs some of your essence on it. Kiss the coin."
Kissing my own image seemed like narcissism, so I kissed the rear of the coin. Strange magics tickled my lips as a tiny amount of stored lunar energy trickled into the coin.
I turned to Mike and handed him the coin. "This will keep your memory clear as long as it's near you."
Mike examined the coin, then surprised me by kissing it. He had a strange look in his eyes, reminding me of how cubs looked at their mother.
"Should I kneel or bow, Saint Luna?"
I was surrounded by comedians. "I'm no saint. I've done terrible things." Then I realized he was serious.
"You prevailed in battle against greater numbers yet showed mercy by letting them live; you prayed and healed me in body and spirit; and you have wrestled with demons."
"Who told you about the demons?"
"Logan is proud of his alpha."
"I'm not a saint. Just a knocked-up ex-cheerleader from Wyoming."
"You told me yourself that you're not human. And this blessed coin has an image of you with a halo over your head."
The occluded moon over the bust on the coin did kind of look like a halo. Another of Mason's jokes? I laughed off Mike's comments.
"Mike, only dead people can become saints. I want to put off sainthood for as long as possible. I've got kids to raise. Don't call me a saint."
"As you wish. What do you want me to do?"
"Just take care of the coin and help Logan with his tasks."
I hesitated a moment before hugging Mike goodbye; he had to know there was no romantic element in my hugs by now. "Take care of yourself, sailor. And go slow on the exercises until you get used to the new you."
"Yes, Princess. Or should I call you alpha, like Logan does?"
"Just stick with Luna."
"Have a safe trip, Luna." He shook Mason's hand and headed back to the second SUV.
"So, you're going to produce more of these trinkets?" asked Naomi in a bored voice as she examined her nails. "I might like one to give to my niece. She's very young and likes glittery objects."
I gave Mason a warning look. The magic in this ‘trinket’ was powerful, too powerful to give away.
"You want me to give you an isotopically-pure amulet imbued with the magic of two realms and the essence of a moon-touched werewolf? Why the hell would I do that? You took advantage of me on our last deal because I felt sorry for the kidnapped girls. What are you offering?"
Still feigning indifference, Naomi said, "They're, what, about an ounce of gold? I'll give you two ounces of gold for each of these coins." She paused for a moment, then winked at me. "But only because they have a cute picture of my favorite werewolf on them."
"I just walked out of the most secure vault in Las Vegas with almost two hundred pounds of gold. I need no more gold."
Mason looked at the sky. The sun had reached its zenith and afternoon would soon be upon us. "The best time to create these 'trinkets' will soon be over. After that, it'll be centuries before the planets align again to allow this." Mason polished his nails against his shirt, imitating Naomi's indifference.
Kuga interrupted, her curiosity overcoming her quiet composure. "But what can these do?"
"Keep memories alive, bestow good luck, and allow a magician to open a gate between the earth and the Fae realm."
"That doesn't seem like it's worth so much," said Kuga. "We already have memory amulets, you made good-luck charms for Logan's children at a whim, and there are gates like this."
"Gates that can only be accessed by traveling to a spot used for nuclear weapons, only at certain times. We can use these from anywhere on earth, at any time."
Mason's statement made my mind race, and I missed Naomi's reply.
Mason smiled at Naomi. "Maybe they are too valuable to give away. Open trade with the Fae realms would be a tremendous boost to whoever gets their hands on these."
"Name. Your. Price."
Mason looked shocked, then recovered quickly. "Ten 'you owe me's.'"
"For ten coins? Don—"
"For each coin," interrupted Mason. "And I won't be able to make ten coins, that would put us way behind schedule. You'll be lucky to get one."
"Ten favors from the kitsune royal family would bankrupt us. No other supernatural would make any deals with us if they knew a gaijin magician had us that far in his debt."
"Your favors would include all of your family? Even your queen? I thought it would be just you, like the other favors we traded."
"If I die protecting Luna, my family will respect any deal we make. I have that authority." A not-so-subtle reminder that she was already risking her life for us. "Two favors for two coins."
"Back to one per coin? You think I can't count? Nine favors for one coin."
"Mass production should make them cheaper."
"Okay, go mass produce your own. I'll buy some from you when you get a batch."
Mason turned to me. "Can you give me more coins? I want to see how many I can make before we have to leave."
I handed him the eight coins I had in my pocket. I considered going into my backpack to grab more, but Mason shook his head. "This will be all I can handle today. Besides, nine is a good number."
Mason took the coins and, one by one, clasped each one in his hands, gathered magic from both sides of the portal, and forced it into the coin.
Mason spent minutes on each coin, imbuing them with the magic of many worlds. I could follow the spells, but I couldn't hope to match the power and complexity of his spells, even with all the time in the world.
But each coin took a longer time than the previous. At my inquisitive look, Mason said, “It gets harder as we move further from optimum alignment.”
The last coin took almost ten minutes. When he finished, he was breathing heavily. Mason handed the eight coins to me. "Please give these amulets your blessing, Saint Luna."
"I'm not a saint," I repeated, but I kissed each coin.
"Beautiful." Mason took one coin and held it up. "Sometimes I surprise myself."
He held the coin out to Naomi. "One coin. What are you offering?"
"But Luna has seven!"
"We're a team. These amulets wouldn't be so powerful without her blessing. I'm offering you one. What are you offering in return?" He gestured to the portal. "We have little time left for bargaining."
Naomi took a deep breath, "My best offer is five favors from the kitsune clan for one coin. Any more will destroy us." She looked like she was offering her firstborn child.
She held her breath while Mason considered. "Done." He handed her the amulet.
Naomi surprised me by kissing the coin, just as Mike had. Was this something to complete the transfer? Or was kissing my image a way to tickle Kuga's jealousy?
Her hand clenched it so tightly I feared she would bend the soft metal, but when her hand opened, the amulet was gone. Sleight of hand or kitsune
magic?
Her mood changed completely—no more trembling lip, no more eyes brimming with tears; she was practically jumping with excitement. "I'll get an extra tail for this."
Naomi turned to me with her brightest smile. "Luna, my dearest werewolf friend. You have a lot of extra trinkets. Have you decided what you want to do with them?"
"I'm your only werewolf friend. I know exactly what I will do with these."
I held one coin up and approached Naomi. Her eyes brightened until I veered and stood in front of Kuga.
"Kuga-san, please accept this as a reward for your loyalty. With this, even if you leave our pack, you'll be able to hang on to your memories."
Kuga kissed the coin, shivering with emotion. "Thank you, alpha-san." Then she showed her loyalty and honesty yet again. "You realize that this is worth much, much more than the monthly fee we pay your pack to maintain my health and strength?" A pause. "Even if I stayed with you for fifty years."
"Consider it your retirement package."
I walked over to Logan's SUV and made that "roll-down-your-window" motion. Logan complied and took a deep sniff. "I can still smell magic."
"It'll be gone soon. I want you to have this." I held out the coin, and he recoiled.
"I don't want that magic crap anywhere near me. What if it goes off?"
"It won't go off unless it's activated by a magician."
"And what do I need with a gold coin, anyway? We have a truck full of gold and cash. One more coin is nothing. And I don't need any favors from a kitsune."
He eyed the coin with suspicion. "What's it worth?"
Too quietly for her to hear, I said, "Naomi thinks it's more precious than all the gold in Las Vegas."
That comment activated Logan’s greed. He snatched the coin out of my hand with werewolf speed. I was going to tell him about the kissing part, but he beat me to it by placing the coin between his teeth for a bite test. Close enough to a kiss for Logan's purposes. He dropped the coin into his shirt pocket.
"Don't sell it just yet. Here's what I want you to do…"
The two SUVs made a dust trail at our backs as we headed for the portal.
20
The transition to Fae wasn't like walking through a door—more like walking from a brightly sunlit desert into a forest path. The sky darkened as if trees were above us, but the sky was clear. A memory surfaced, of the only time I had been in the path of an eclipse: the suddenness of the sky darkening, the quiet as all the forest creatures froze in place, the feeling that something momentous was happening.
The difference was that on Earth, a solar eclipse was a sign of the moon overpowering the sun, even if only for a short time. Werewolves love eclipses. Here, the darkness presaged something different.
I looked back at our footsteps in the desert sand, trying to spy the sunlight of Earth. Nothing. A faint tug told me the moon, my moon, was fading away. My inner wolf whimpered and curled up inside my head. I stroked her with a phantom hand.
We'll go home as soon as possible.
In a few minutes, the sand beneath our boots turned to turf, then to knee-high grass. I took a deep breath; the scents of a different world shocked my senses. So complex, so alive, with no trace of human technology.
I pulled out my cell phone. The screen was blank, even though I had charged it up in the SUV.
"Those won't work here," said Mason. "Almost no technology works here."
"Nothing? How can civilization work without technology?"
Naomi laughed. "For most of history, humans had no cell phones. Here they prefer to do things differently. On earth, we use technology. In this world, magic takes the place of technology."
"So they're primitive?"
"About the level of the sixteenth century on Earth," said Mason. "But they're not primitive. We can move mountains, change the course of rivers, perform feats that humans can't imagine."
I noticed the shift from "they" to "we," but said nothing. Mason was proud of his heritage.
To change the subject, I said, "There's no sun or moon, but I can see almost as well as on Earth."
"The sky is bright with stars at night. In the sun's place, we have an aurora." Mason pointed to the east, where the sky was getting lighter. Wait—was that really east? I could no longer tell. My internal compass, a mix of the wolf's distance-measuring instinct and constant knowledge of the moon's position, no longer worked. I took a deep breath to memorize this location by its unique palette of smells. Even without the moon, my nose was still better than a GPS.
In a few minutes, the aurora dawn arrived, providing light and warmth. Unlike the light of our sun on Earth, this light was composed of multicolored streamers of energy, both beautiful and disorienting. At first, the way the rainbow colors painted everything in an ever-changing pattern of colors was distracting. After an hour of walking, I had become used to the fireworks display and ignored the shifting colors. There was enough light to hunt and fight; that was enough for me.
We came upon a road and started walking east. The road was composed of granite slabs laid precisely together, forming a twelve-foot wide avenue. The middle of the road was slightly higher than the edges, probably to allow for rain to run off. I had expected something like cobblestones, but these slabs were even and only slightly worn, as if they had only recently been laid.
Mason noticed my attention to the road and said, "I'm proud of this road. It's held up remarkably well."
"You sound like you built it."
"Of course. I did. It was my summer construction job when I was sixteen. I laid the granite slabs. That's why I'm named Mason."
“What was your name before that?” Had he been hiding his real name from me?
“My name was always Mason,” he said with a laugh. “Mom decided I would be a mason, so she named me Mason.”
“Fae mothers have a lot of influence over their children’s life choices,” said Naomi.
“Unless the child gets fed up and leaves home,” said Mason. “I left soon after completing the road.”
I stomped the ground. "You laid these blocks in one summer?"
"Oh no! Just the first hundred miles. After that, another crew took over. And I had help."
We continued down the road while Mason talked about his summer internship as a road builder. It was entertaining, learning the history of Mason and this road. His voice was comforting to both me and my wolf. He rarely spoke like this—being surrounded by magic-hating werewolves and disbelieving humans must make it hard to just talk.
After about two miles, he halted, staring at a cracked granite slab in the middle of the road.
"Mason, you look like someone slashed the Mona Lisa in front of you."
"I put a lot of work into making this the best road possible. Who could have ruined it like this?"
"It's one slab out of thousands. See, it's easy to walk around."
"It's not that. It should be perfect, even after all these years."
I examined the granite using both werewolf and magical senses. There was something familiar about the composition, almost bonelike. Would my bone-healing technique work here?
"Here, Mason, I'll fix it for you."
Magic flowed, much faster than normal, following my will.
Mason's eyes opened wide, and he opened his mouth to shout, "Stop—"
Lightning flashed and thunder roared as the slab disintegrated. It threw me to the ground in a tumble. Naomi was already off the edge of the road, shielding Kuga with her body. Mason stood fast, protected by a shield spell.
"What the hell happened? That was a healing spell."
Mason looked over at Naomi, checking to see if she and Kuga were all right. At Naomi's nod, he turned to me and helped me to my feet.
"Luna, the metaphysics of magic work differently here. It fills this world with magical potential. I told you back in Las Vegas that magic works differently here. Nearly any spell you use will react badly. You’ll have to study and adapt any spells to this new world."
<
br /> I hadn't been so embarrassed since that time I’d put a schoolmate in the hospital for touching my ass. Learning to control werewolf strength had taken a long time. Now I faced the same thing with magical strength.
I stared at my feet. "I'm sorry. You already warned me, and I acted rashly."
Mason was still angry and opened his mouth to continue, but I received support from an unexpected source.
"That was fun!" said Naomi. "No harm done. Let's blow up more stuff." She winked at me. "Just give us a little more warning next time."
Mason was staring at the hole in the ground where the slab had once lain. Now there was a three-foot-deep square hole in the road.
He blew out a breath and said, "We'll have Mom send out a road crew to fix the pavement. Let's keep going."
After a few minutes, he reached over and took my hand, his way of accepting my apology.
As we walked, I breathed deeply, fascinated by all the new smells. Refreshingly few human or Fae smells, a far cry from the bustling crowds of Las Vegas. There was a forest off to our right and I had to resist the urge to race off to roam the cool paths, to hunt the creatures there.
Naomi noticed the way the forest drew my attention. "I'd love to hunt there, too. But in this land, the creatures of the forest also want to hunt you. And they're very good at it."
"Remember, you can't shift to your wolf's form for hunting," said Mason.
"I can hunt as a human. We did it a lot growing up."
"There are also no firearms here. They don't work."
"Werewolves don't like firearms either. The noise is deafening and causes bad reactions. You don't want to be near a startled werewolf. Instead, we hunt with—" Then I interrupted myself at a new thought. "Wait. You don't have any guns here? What prevents someone who can cross the barrier from just buying some automatic weapons and taking over?"
"The local laws of physics don't allow for explosives like the charge in a cartridge. Also, the scent of iron—as would be necessary for steel weapons—is anathema for many Fae creatures. Something like the scent of magic that sets a lot of werewolves off."
"That's why you insisted we don't bring any iron with us?"
Lycan Legacy - 4 - 5 - 6: Princess - Progeny - Paladin: Book 4 - 5 - 6 in the Lycan Legacy Series Page 17