No matter. Erik and the others would be searching for her, she had to be ready.
Once again, she began the painful process of stretching, tense and release—left foot, right foot, left leg . . .
By the time they surfaced again, the sun had risen, the day beginning to heat up. Erik scraped the hair out of his eyes, struggling to hold on to his temper. “Look,” he said to the ring of intent, blue, furry faces, “I’ve seen it before. You don’t have to show me again. I know what the fucking problem is, all right? I’m trying to fix it, but first I have to find Prue. Prue? Get it?”
One of the smaller seelies made a pathetic bleating noise and disappeared, leaving only a ripple behind. A number of the others wavered, their snouts whiffling in distress. He honestly would not have been surprised to see them burst into tears.
The little creatures had taken him back under the titanplant, straight to the rotting stem. He wasn’t sure how long they’d kept him down there, the water so full of suspended flakes of slime it was a filthy gray, but he knew it had to be more than five minutes. His lungs had shrunk to the size of manda fruits, and he’d lost buoyancy. Without the support of the seelies, he would have slid unresisting all the way to the seafloor. Lord’s balls, if it hadn’t been for the air Magick . . .
“You danced for her,” he said desperately. “Don’t you remember? She loved it, she laughed, she—” He choked, her image vivid in his mind, her face transfigured with delight, her eyes shining. His pretty Prue.
“Hoot, burble, burble?” said one of the seelies, so sleek and sinuous Erik was sure it was female. She slipped through the water until she floated nose to nose with the biggest of them all. “Hoot, burble, burble!” she insisted.
“Honk!” said the big one emphatically and Erik stared. Honk?
The two creatures conferred a moment longer, before spinning around to float on their backs, searching his face.
“Prue?” said Erik again, his brain racing with strategies, possibilities. He’d do the palazzos. Hell, he should have tried them first. Every noble house had a discreet entrance for the hired help. With the Voice, it shouldn’t take him long to extract the truth from any servant, even the most loyal. Conscience be damned, it was the only way left.
Almost hesitantly, the two seelies approached. The female nudged his biceps with her nose. “Burble?” When Erik lifted his arm, she snuggled beneath, pressed tight against his ribs.
Within seconds, the pack surrounded him with a wall of blue-furred muscle. There was only time for a snatched breath before they pulled him under.
Fortunately, the trip was rushed, but short. About thirty feet farther along the canal, the seelies back-paddled, slowing their forward momentum to a crawl. Abruptly, they backed off, leaving Erik to drift to the surface. Puzzled, he gazed around. The female shot past him, circled and returned. “Hoot!” Then she did it again. And again.
Erik squinted. Fuck, there was a rope! The strangest rope he’d ever seen, almost transparent. It hung from a garden wall, entered the water and disappeared. He looked back over his shoulder. The property was huge, the garden extensive, but it was definitely the same palazzo, the one with the water stair—the center of the corruption.
The blood turned to ice in Erik’s veins. What was at the other end of the rope, fathoms deep? Ruthlessly, he pumped his lungs full of air, feeling the Magick suffuse every cell in his body.
Heart hammering, he jackknifed into the depths, bubbles streaming back over his body. Exerting all his considerable strength, he hauled himself hand over hand down the rope, deeper and deeper. It felt slick in his palms, invisible in the filthy water. If he hadn’t been holding on to it, he wouldn’t have known it was there.
He lost track of how deep he went, accompanied by only the sleek female. She darted about his head, brushing back and forth, distracting him. Cursing, he tried to bat her aside, his guts twisting with sick horror. A hopeless litany pounded in his head. My Lord, Great Lady, please, no. I can’t bear it. I’ll pay, I promise. Just let it not be her. Please, please.
In the gray murk, he made out a small patch of blue. Small, very small. Too small for a human body. Relief streamed out of him in a plume of bubbles. But it was only when the female went crazy, circling at a dizzying speed, nudging him with her snout, that he began to understand.
The blue was the fur of another seelie, a kit no more than a foot long, with huge eyes and a small round face.
When it saw the female, it went mad, turning and twisting in a circumscribed circle. Its little snout whiffled pathetically, although he couldn’t hear it bleating through the water.
Erik frowned, feeling the burn beginning in his lungs. Shit, even with the air Magick, he might still drown. What use would he be to Prue then?
The female scrabbled at his shirt with her web-claws, recapturing his attention. That was odd. Why didn’t the kit make straight for its mother? With the last of his breath, he reached for the little creature, only to encounter a rigid structure. He fumbled his way around it. Corners, struts, bars—virtually invisible, like the rope.
Shit, a trap! And he was out of breath, spots dancing before his eyes.
Releasing the rope, Erik shot back toward the surface. The female went berserk, clawing at his head and shoulders, ramming into him with her sinuous, muscular body. He did his best to fend her off, to shield himself without hurting her. Scratches stung on his back and arms, his shirt tore and his ribs ached.
Trust me, he tried to say to her. You can trust me.
But of course, it didn’t work. Wasn’t that fucking ironic? Exactly like another female he knew, the seelie wanted proof.
Breaking into the open air, Erik inhaled in huge gasps. Then he grasped the rope again and tugged hard. It didn’t shift. To a chorus of protesting hoots, he hauled himself up the rope and over the garden wall, landing dripping wet behind a small shed, almost exactly like the one he’d seen in the palazzo down the alley. Panting, he scrambled to his feet. All was quiet.
When he tilted his head just right, he could see the early morning sunlight sparkle on the rope. The wooden door of the shed was slightly ajar and the rope snaked through it and disappeared.
Godsdammit, a clue, a lead he could work with. Someone was hunting seelies. Someone else knew they existed and was prepared to have him killed to shut his mouth. It all added up—the same son of a bitch who’d taken his Prue.
It seemed the bastard liked to lay traps.
Erik’s lips peeled back from his teeth in a soundless snarl. A vicious wind blew up out of nowhere, rattling the doors and windows of the shed. He took a step toward it, then stopped and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Fuck,” he said under his breath.
Spinning on his heel, he walked back to the garden wall and leaned over it. “I said you could trust me,” he said to the seelies still circling in the water. Then he set his feet, grabbed the rope and hauled, hand over hand.
The closer the trap drew to the surface, the louder the seelies hooted and burbled, churning the water in their excitement.
Erik glanced over his shoulder at the quiet of the velvety lawns, the windows of the tall palazzo. His skin crawled. “Godsdammit, will you shut up?” The noise abated somewhat.
The trap emerged into the sunlight, the seelie kit looking both astonished and alarmed. Out of the water, the cage was easier to see, a cunning and complex construction of interlocking struts with a flexible one-way chute that closed behind the prey, blocking the opening. Inside, along with the kit, was a juicy-looking bunch of water weeds. Delicious, if you liked that kind of thing.
Something about the trap reminded Erik of the Technomage star-ships he’d traveled in so many times, though he couldn’t imagine why that might be so. In any case, it was the work of moments to hold the chute open with one hand and grab the squirming kit with the other. For his pains, he got a cry halfway between a shriek and a hoot and a deep scratch across the back of one hand.
“Shit!” Erik leaned over th
e wall and let the kit plop into the water. Immediately, the mother curled her body around it, nosing at it with her snout, emitting a continuous stream of low humming noises he hadn’t heard before.
From farther down the canal came the regular splashing of poles, grunts of effort. The first skiffs of the morning. Caracole was waking up.
The seelies froze. A series of swirls and they were gone as if they had never been. Erik turned away. It had to be his imagination, but he could swear the female had shot him a final glance over her shoulder. Was it possible for a seelie to look embarrassed?
Dabbing at his bleeding hand with the tail of his wet shirt, Erik smiled as he padded toward the garden shed.
He sobered. Now for the bastard. And Prue.
The inside of the shed smelled fresh and green, not musty as he’d expected. Various garden implements hung from pegs on the walls, all shining bright with good care. The rest was the organized detritus of a gardener who loved his work, but Erik hardly noticed. His entire focus was on the rope and where it led.
A few quick strides and he fell to his knees to rummage in the far corner. His heart thundering with excitement, he yanked aside three bags of what must be well-rotted compost, to judge by the loamy odor.
Yes!
Lady love the seelies, the rope disappeared through a neat hole drilled into the top of a sturdy wooden trapdoor made of narrow planks and set flush into the floor.
As Erik considered it, his brain racing, two empty flower pots and a garden fork floated gently off the floor and began a placid gavotte at shoulder level. They were joined by a stately, thick-waisted watering can.
“Stop that,” he said, barely glancing at them. “I have to think.”
The fork fell out of the air with a tinny clatter, followed by the flower pots. Lunging, Erik grabbed the watering can just in time. His heart climbing out of his throat, he reeled to the door and peered out.
Nothing. Just the cultivated wilderness of the garden basking in the sun, and the morning traffic on the canal—a barge laden with vegetables for market and half a dozen skiffs, their owners yelling cheerful insults across the water. Ambient noise. Thank the Horned Lord.
With extreme care, Erik pulled the door closed and returned to his contemplation of the trapdoor. It was closely fitted to the floor, no gaps, only a large ring in the center. Locked or bolted on the inside, he’d bet his life on it. In fact, that was exactly what he was doing—gambling with his life and Prue’s. Experimentally, he tugged. It didn’t budge.
Setting his jaw, he braced his feet, wrapped both hands around the ring and hauled until his shoulders cracked. The hinges protested, but nothing more.
No surprise, but . . . shit.
All right, all right. Forget brute force, what about the air Magick? Erik glared at the trapdoor, and the fork shifted along the floor, the tines scraping in a suggestive kind of way. In the kitchen at The Garden, he’d lifted a heavy table, surely he could blast the damned door out of existence? He was certainly angry enough. A few stray leaves spun in the dusty air, slowly at first, then faster. The flower pots rattled.
Erik flexed strong fingers. For all he knew, he’d blow the roof right off the shed trying. His control was so poor, he couldn’t risk it. Gods, it would be so much simpler to knock boldly on the back door of the palazzo and overpower the servant who answered. But every instinct he had was screaming at him that he needed to be on the other side of that fucking trapdoor—now!
Coincidence be damned. Everything was clicking into place like the pieces of a giant puzzle. He no longer doubted his destiny. Somehow, the gods had set this whole debacle pinwheeling, and it was up to him to retrieve Caracole, the seelies—and Prue—from disaster. Him, and him alone. Erik inhaled, feeling the Magick fizz in his lungs.
Drawing his blade, he grabbed the rope and pulled. Whatever anchored it was solid. Not giving himself time for second thoughts, Erik sawed through the rope. The severed end slithered away and disappeared underground.
Feeling like a fool, he dropped to his knees, put his eye to the hole and peered through. There was a set of brick steps illuminated by a faint, greenish glow. His nostrils flared. Something unfamiliar, acrid and vicious, the slightest hint of it. The sense of wrongness was so palpable that he jerked back, cursing.
That settled it.
Erik seized the fork, but the planks of the trapdoor were so closely and skillfully fitted, there was no gap in which to set the tines. Godsdammit, how? His eyes narrowed as he studied the disk of pale green light that was the hole in the trapdoor. If he could control the air seething in his lungs, focus it . . . Very quietly, he began to hum, a soft vibration deep in his chest. It took him five minutes of sweaty, straining effort before he could see the flow of air, a sinuous ribbon washed with steely gray, the color of his furious determination.
Ignoring the thump, thump, thump of his heart, he sent it snaking through the hole. Where was the godsbedamned bolt? Kneeling on the dusty floor, he squeezed his eyes shut, sent the narrow current questing along the underside of the trapdoor. Ah, there!
Now to grasp, and pull . . .
The air flow slipped past the bolt as if it were greased.
All right. He’d push instead.
Every muscle in his body tense and shaking with the effort, he gathered up the air Magick and pushed. But he couldn’t control the power of the flow and direct it at the same time. Cursing, he dropped forward, the wood warm and dry, vibrating under his palms. His head bowed, Erik froze.
The Magick was dispersing, spreading out under the wooden boards, pressing up from underneath, making them creak and tremble. Concentrating fiercely, Erik hummed harder. Fuck, he mustn’t overdo it or the whole thing would explode right through the ceiling. And that would be that as far as stealth was concerned.
Wood groaned, a plank bowed up and a nail popped. Then another. And another. Erik’s heart leaped. By the Horned Lord, yes! Sweat beading his forehead, he increased the pressure until the timbers of the trapdoor were singing their own creaky chorus.
Enough, enough. Panting, he released the Magick. Nails stood proud all along one edge of the trapdoor where the air flow had been strongest. Well, hell, it would have to do. Half of them were so loose he was able to wiggle them out with his fingers. He levered the others free with the tines of the fork.
Then he worked the fork under the loose board and leaned on it with all his considerable weight. The wood twanged and fought, but slowly, slowly, it rose, revealing a hand’s width of that strange green twilight below. Reaching out, Erik grabbed a sturdy-looking flower pot and jammed it into the opening. His chest heaved as if he’d run full pelt across every Leaf in Caracole, from one side to the other.
Dropping flat, he shoved his arm into the gap, clear up to the elbow. A couple of fumbles and he got a firm grip on the handle of the bolt. It came easily, as if it had been oiled. And when he raised the whole door, it was whisper quiet.
Erik touched his fingers to the talisman on its gold chain. Thank you, Horned Lord, Great Lady. Tell her I’m coming. Lowering himself into the opening, he discovered the passage was no more than five feet high, the rope secured to a large metal hook with a complicated knot. Bent low, he started down the brick steps, toward the faint green glow.
He estimated he was under the garden two-thirds of the way to the palazzo when the snarling whispers began. A wave of shivers rolled down Erik’s spine, raising every hair on his body. “Thmell,” something lisped. “Thweet flesh. Thmell it.”
The passage flattened out. By the time he reached the last curve, Erik was walking so lightly he would have been on tiptoe if the height of the ceiling had permitted it.
“Ah,” sighed the voice. It made a revolting lip-smacking noise. “Thuck on bones.”
Erik came to an abrupt halt. A few paces before him, a short flight of steps led up into a pool of sickly light. It pulsed. The sweet, gut-churning reek of old blood rolled down the steps, and he clapped a hand over his nose and mouth. It was ever
y nightmare he’d had as a child, every monster that hid under the bed or in the shadows behind the door.
But he wasn’t a child, and Prue was up there somewhere, he was certain of it.
One hand on the hilt of his blade and his back pressed to the wall, Erik took the steps one at a time, the foul litany growing louder as he approached. With the utmost care, he crouched on the final step, well below sword height, and hitched an eye around the corner.
The passage widened into a small chamber, a cul-de-sac. A dark curtain made of some heavy, dense material hung on one wall from ceiling to floor. Opposite was a plain wooden door, the strange light streaming off it making his eyes ache and his head swim.
“Thweet meat,” said the door in that sly, glutinous voice. “Thoft, hot blood.”
Erik tilted his head and unfocused his eyes as the Purists had taught him. Under the grain of the wood floated a face straight from a madman’s vision of hell and everlasting torment. It was a caricature—a wide, lipless mouth with protruding fangs, slit-pupilled eyes. One set of curved, twisting horns grew from its forehead, another from the corners of its jaw.
The large eyes swiveled toward him, vertical pupils expanding with bloodlust. “Come close, thweet one.” The horrible light grew eager, pulsing green and vicious. “Tho big. Ah . . .” Again, the lip-smacking, but this time he could see the obscenity of its long tongue, shockingly pink and slick with spittle.
Erik didn’t move. “Who—what are you?”
The creature blinked. “Doorkeeper.” It swirled restlessly beneath the wood. “Trapped,” it added mournfully. “Hungry.”
“But you’re a demon,” said Erik, widening his eyes and looking suitably impressed. “How can one so powerful be trapped?”
With shocking suddenness, the Doorkeeper surged out of the wood, its snarling visage becoming three-dimensional. “Him! Cruel thpells. Hurts me.” Its fangs clashed and green-tinged saliva flew, hissing where it hit the floor.
“Who?”
Thief of Light Page 35