by Chloe Jacobs
“I guess playtime is over,” she said with a groan.
His bicep was hard under her hand. The corners of his eyes tightened. “Did you slip away the very moment I left, or did you wait until I’d rounded the corner? Have you no regard for your own safety?”
“I’m used to taking care of myself,” she said. “And you said the faeries exaggerated the attacks, that things weren’t as bad as they made it out to be so I should be perfectly safe. Or was that a lie?”
His mouth compressed in a tight line. “The threat to your safety is great if you insist on traipsing about unprotected, no matter the situation. You must have regard for your position—”
Here it comes. She’d been wondering when he would use that angle to try and rein her in. “I know what the dangers are, and that’s why I had no choice.” Her voice broke. “We can’t ignore the fact that I’m getting worse, and the faerie queen can help.”
“You still should not have gone alone,” he murmured, touching their foreheads together. “This is something we should manage together.”
“You know I want you with me, but I have to stand on my own two feet.” She took a deep breath. “If we’re going to be together, your people need to be convinced that I would never do anything to wittingly put them in danger, and the way I am now…I’m putting people in danger.” She closed her eyes. “I’m putting you in danger.”
“I’ll worry, but I understand.”
She opened her eyes, surprised. “Siona is here, so I’ll be fine.” She had a weird compulsion to keep explaining. “And you have a hundred other things to deal with. I can’t keep taking you away from your responsibilities.” This was going well. She’d expected a much bigger argument, truth be known, but he was very calm about her decision.
“You will make the finest queen Mylena has ever known.”
Her heart tripped. His trust made her feel empowered and more nervous at the same time. She hoped he was right, but there were so many things still to overcome.
She frowned. “Listen, I need to talk to you about Wyatt. He’s here, too. The other boys are missing. Someone took them, and the faeries have offered to help us find them.”
So much for calm. His gaze darkened and he gripped her shoulders. “Where exactly are you right now?”
“Uh, we’re still camped in the goblin forest,” she said. “Why? What’s wrong?” This wasn’t about Wyatt. It was something else.
“The forest?” He shook her so hard her teeth rattled. “You must awaken. The gnome king has sent his army into the forest.” His voice seemed to be fading. She was waking up. “Awaken and protect yourself.”
“An army? Isaac, what’s happening?”
“He thinks to take my kingdom. Get Siona and leave the forest as quickly as you can,” he warned. “Protect yourself. Stay alive.”
Now she understood why he hadn’t freaked about her going with the faeries—because he’d already figured out what she was up to and decided it was the lesser of two dangers. If she was with them, she wouldn’t be out in the goblin forest searching for her human friends…except that she was in the goblin forest.
Urgency twisted his features. She could sense him trying to shake her again but couldn’t feel his touch anymore. The dream was slipping away like fast running water through her fingers, as if he was too upset to keep it together, or she was pushing him out.
“Isaac—”
“I’m coming, Greta. Wake up. Wake up now!”
Chapter Eight
She jerked awake, already reaching for her sword.
“Siona? Siona, where are you?”
It was still dark, but not completely. She could see her hand in front of her face…and she could see that she was alone in the tiny little tent.
Pushing to her knees, she listened through the canvas for sounds that didn’t belong before dragging on her coat. Her dagger and its sleeve were missing.
She crawled out into the open as Isaac’s words echoed in her head. A shiver went up her spine. Protect yourself. Stay alive.
The air felt as if the Great Mother was set on refuting the very suggestion that spring could be on its way, and she squinted into the early-morning shadows. The ground that had started to get soft and muddy in the milder weather had turned back into hard, icy ruts at some point during the night. A spooky mist clung to the ground. Prickles ran up and down her arms as she spied Siona and Wyatt standing very still only a few feet in front of the tent.
“Hey, what are you doing out here?”
The goblin hunter raised her fist sharply into the air without turning around. Greta took the hint, falling silent as they all strained to listen to the sounds of the forest. But there were no sounds. Not here, and not beyond the tree line surrounding the camp. That couldn’t be a good thing. What had spooked the forest?
Siona cried out as two figures rushed her from the misty darkness. Gnomes.
They came from the other side of the campfire. It was now just a dark circle of soot, but one of them leaped over the little crater anyway instead of running through it.
The gnomes were closing in on the faerie tents. More emerged from the mist to her left. They came right for her and Siona. She counted five in total. Each was dressed in tattered, grimy rags and ran on hairy, bare feet. They were surprisingly swift and quiet.
The first two were short and squat with thick, bushy eyebrows over scrunched-up faces. One had sharp, jagged teeth protruding out of an overbite from hell, and the other bore a dark shadow across the left side of his face that didn’t seem to be caused by the slanting angle of the meager light.
It was the last three that might prove to be a problem. They looked like they’d been burped out of a swamp bubble. All of them were tall. Wide. Noses the size of golf balls and hands that could close around her head with room to spare. One of them sneered at her and curled his fingers into a meaty fist that would probably knock her right into the next universe with one solid swing.
She drew her sword as Wyatt let out a harsh gasp. A gnome had his arm twisted up behind his back. Anger surged, overcoming her initial fear.
“I’m certain you gentle gnomes would much rather continue on your way than disturb this faerie camp and a couple of bounty hunters on the king’s business.” Siona’s voice rang out, with emphasis on the part about the faeries. Everyone knew how powerful the faeries were even if they didn’t think much of a couple of girl bounty hunters.
The triplets moved forward together. These guys hadn’t clued in yet that they might be in more trouble than their prey.
“The ugly one’s a human,” one snarled at Wyatt. Greta quickly switched places with him and gave the gnome a dirty look, shuddering at the sight of those long, yellow nails clutching a pointed staff. No way was he putting one finger on her.
“Human? You don’t say,” she replied. “Then you do realize that you’re threatening the soon-to-be goblin queen, right? You might want to think twice about—”
“Yeah, she’s the one we been lookin’ fer!” He grinned at his cohorts before turning to her, showing off yellowed teeth surprisingly the same color as his fingernails. “Thanks fer settin’ us straight.”
Greta swore.
She glanced down at the dagger in Wyatt’s hand—her dagger—with a frown. That wasn’t going to do him much good. “Don’t be a hero,” she told him sternly. “Find a proper weapon and stay safe.”
He gave her a nod. Wyatt was excellent at self-defense. Thankfully, he was also not a macho idiot, and he knew when to stand back and let her do her job.
“Get behind me,” Siona ordered, stepping closer to the both of them.
“Sure thing, right after I take care of these three big ugly dudes.” Greta stepped forward and swung her sword in a showy arc.
“Why should I let you take the big ones?” Siona continued, matching her. She had a grin on her face, getting into the spirit.
“Don’t think I can handle them, do you?”
Siona glanced sideways, sizing Greta up with a haughty air
of you-can’t-possibly-compare-with-my-sheer-goblin-awesomeness. “I think when I’m done with these two I’ll be finishing those ones off for you after you collapse in failure.”
“Oh, it’s on, babe.” She tossed her braid over her shoulder with a big smile. “Try to keep up, will you?”
Greta gave her full attention to the triplets. “What do you say, boys? Wanna dance?”
Somewhere close by, the sound of clashing steel rang out. It sounded just like a bell signaling the start of a boxing match, the kind she remembered her dad watching on TV.
Two of her three opponents pulled knives. One as he was circling around, the other waving it right up in her face. The third just took a swing at her midsection with his oversized club of a hand.
As cocky as she’d pretended to be, uncertainty choked her as she ducked the gnome’s fist and came back up to block the second’s jab with his long-bladed knife. She’d never felt so slow, so sluggish, and her reflexes were shot. At the clang of steel on steel, her wrist throbbed, sending pain up her arm to her elbow. She bit back a groan, hiding it behind a sharp breath.
She heard movement in the woods to her left, and her heart pounded. Her body wasn’t responding like it should. The harder she tried, the weaker she felt. All except for the rising pressure in the pit of her stomach, as if all the strength she needed to fuel her body was being funneled into the black hole of the chomping, snarling, smoky evil thing inside her. Her breathing became more labored, and she swore.
Siona swung a narrowed look in her direction. “You seem to be having some difficulty,” she called. “Do you require assistance?”
This should have been a piece of cake, but the hits kept coming. She managed to deflect for the most part, but it wasn’t pretty, especially when she realized it would have been much worse if Wyatt had not been holding off the dude at her back with his dagger.
“Over my dead body,” she muttered, fighting to keep her breathing regulated.
“That might be the case if you cannot hold up your end, danem.”
“You’re starting to sound irritatingly like my pater, Siona,” she snapped. “Cut it out.”
One gnome remained weaponless. He was actually more dangerous than the rest. He knew how to use his fists, striking hard while she was busy dodging knives. She was going to have a black eye and maybe even a few bruised ribs.
It made her angry. Creatures more dangerous than these had ganged up on her before. She’d hunted quarry through the tightly packed, half-dead trees of the goblin forest, and in pitch-black caves where slimy things crawled. Hell, she’d taken on ogres, ghouls…and even a fully turned faerie in the middle of a magick-induced spinning tornado of corrosive smoke.
“You will be my first human.” He was looking her up and down. He even licked his lips, but that wasn’t nearly as disturbing as the erection pushing out the front of his dirty trousers, cut off at the knees.
“Don’t count on it.” A chill ran down her spine. “I’d rather slit my own throat…” She adjusted her grip on the weapon, wishing her palms weren’t so sweaty. “Although I’ll settle for slitting yours instead.”
She made her move, stepping forward and swinging her arm in a wide arc. Instead of being fluid and sure, it started out wobbly and slow, but she pulled herself together in time and angled the tip of her blade in line with his throat.
Luckily, he was slower than she was. Not by much, but she got the job done, leaving a thin slice in his neck that immediately started to spread apart.
She refused to flinch as blood sprayed, splattering her hands like green paint coming off a brush. The gnome’s mouth worked, spittle flying. His eyes bulged and his hands flailed as if he might take flight.
Greta didn’t wait for him to fall, letting the momentum of her swing carry on into a slashing thrust of her blade across the sternum of the other gnome moving in behind her.
That one screamed and careened backward a few steps, dropping his knife. His palms flattened over his chest. Blood seeped between his fingers before he collapsed to his knees. She was already shifting again, turning to face the last one.
But he wasn’t the last.
Her heartbeat pounded in her ears as she glanced up to find dozens more gnomes pressing in on her and Siona, and a dozen more again surrounding the faeries. The princess herself wielded a sword, but while the consensus in Mylena was that the faeries were a deadly bunch, that reputation apparently didn’t come from direct battle skills. She was slow and clumsy with a weapon, making Greta wonder why she hadn’t pulled some freaky magick trick out of her hat to protect herself.
Byron fared better with a blade. He was only a short distance away, but surrounded by gnomes and too far to help his sister. Where the hell was Dryden? In fact, a number of the faerie warriors seemed conspicuously absent from the fight.
The princess cried out as a gnome caught her with a thin slice across the arm. Wyatt noticed and started for her side.
“Wyatt, wait!” Greta called. He kept going, making a beeline for the princess like a knight in shining armor. The dagger was his only weapon, at least until he punched a gnome in the face, elbowed him in the gut, and jerked the sword out of his grasp.
He might be capable against one gnome, maybe two, but he wasn’t a warrior. He was going to be massacred. Damn it.
She swallowed the sizzling magick thick in her throat, blurring her vision, crushing her chest. She rushed after him, but the way was quickly blocked against her and he was devoured by the mob.
Siona pressed her shoulders to Greta’s and they slowly moved in a circle. “This is a distressing turn of events,” she threw over in a tight voice.
Gritting her teeth, Greta nodded even though Siona couldn’t see. “We might be slightly outnumbered now.”
“Just slightly.”
She struggled to break through the pain choking her and find that Zen place where training took over and erased all thought, all doubt, all room for error.
She lifted her sword once again, but a sudden blur crossing the edge of her vision made her jerk back. Maybe it was just a trick of the changing light as the suns rose. But then there was another blur. And another.
The blurs reminded her of flitting hummingbirds, moving too fast for the eye to process. As another moved into the camp, she saw enough to know that they were man sized and armed to the teeth. The only other time she’d come across anything as fast was…
Finally! The missing faerie warriors. Thank God. With their arrival, Greta was able to fight her way to Wyatt’s side.
“Siona, stay with me!” She couldn’t afford to lose another friend in the fray.
At a subtle whistle behind her, she turned and blocked the swing of another blade and shoved it back, then shifted to meet more steel coming at her from the right.
The faerie warriors were closing in on the other side of the horde. Maybe that had been their plan all along. By surrounding the gnomes who were themselves surrounding their prey, the enemy was suddenly left with nowhere to go.
Greta might have agreed the plan was a good one…if not for the fact that they were still ridiculously outnumbered.
The attacking gnomes were all faceless to her now, as much a blur as the faeries. She couldn’t even see Wyatt or the princess. Byron stood shoulder to shoulder with Dryden, but they were obviously tiring. Ahead of her, Siona blocked and countered again and again, but even she couldn’t hold out much longer. Even as Greta thought it, the goblin hunter was a half second too slow and four gnomes were on her.
“Siona!” Greta tried to go to her, but she was boxed in just as tightly.
She fought her way through. Bloody bodies started piling up around her, but they kept coming. There were so many.
An army.
One of the gnomes cut her.
She cried out, immediately losing her tenuous grip on the magick. In a split second it went from pacing her insides like a caged animal to throwing itself against the bars with a vicious snarl.
Her whole body
burned, the hilt of her sword getting so hot in her hand she feared it would fuse right to her palm.
Suddenly, an enraged roar echoed from the shadows of the early morning, chilling and deadly. If that sound had a shape it would be twenty feet tall and just as wide, thick as a mountain and darker than midnight.
Greta laughed.
She’d know that particular roar anywhere. The burning pain from the cut in her arm and the darkness in her soul actually faded a little, and when Isaac burst onto the scene, she’d never been so happy to see anyone in her life, even if he looked fierce and wild, on the very thin edge of control.
Blood trickled from a cut in his forehead and his eyes were wide and manic. What had he gone through to get here so quickly?
She edged closer only to get shoved back, and the harder she tried to reach him, the more gnomes got in her way. But they were no longer attacking her. Their focus had shifted to the more dangerous threat.
Isaac took hit after hit from every direction. What if they’d been after him all along? What if they’d known that attacking her would be the best way to draw him out?
Suddenly he grunted and growled, twisting around. Greta gasped at the arrow shaft protruding from the thick muscle of his left shoulder. Another arrow hit him, sinking deep into his abdomen.
They were going to kill him.
Two more arrows hit Isaac. One in the arm, another in the chest, barely missing his heart. He didn’t even notice. His attention was on her.
She screamed at him to protect himself, but his focus didn’t even flicker. She fought the wall of bodies standing between them, but for every gnome that she put on the ground, another two took his place. With arrows protruding from his body, he threw gnomes over his shoulder and bashed heads together.
The monster rattled its cage again. A rush against her senses, almost like drowning, like having water flood into her mouth and cascade down her throat at the same time it pushed out her ears and nose and leaked from her eyes.
She didn’t want to give in, but she couldn’t help it this time, and once she did everything changed. Power filled her, gave her strength and certainty the likes of which she’d only ever felt once before…in Agramon’s circle, when the portal magick had coursed through her.