Summer Reign

by John Conroe

  “There are,” he said. “Many we know of, some we suspect and, I’m sure, some who remain hidden.”

  “Any way to tell someone’s allegiance?” Stacia asked.

  He shook his head. “The ones we know of were indiscrete when the Courts were in Idiria. Others conducted themselves with more subtlety but gave enough clues that we have a good idea of where their allegiance lies. However, the queens are old and cunning. There are surprises here. You should be careful.”

  “Hmm. Stocan, are you a spy for either court?” I asked, playing a hunch. He frowned and opened his mouth, unsure of what to say. “Never mind, I already know the answer.” And I did.

  He was loyal to the Middle Realm. To me in as much as I represented the Realm, but basically trustworthy.

  “You can tell?” Stacia asked.

  “I can. Like I can tell what’s edible and what’s poisonous,” I said, turning to point at a white blossom in a hanging basket suspended from the side of a column of stone. “That one will kill in seconds. Like you, dear: beauty and sudden death, wrapped in one.”

  “Awww, aren’t you sweet,” she said, only slightly sarcastic.

  “The Realm speaks to you,” Stocan stated.

  “It does. You might want to spread the word. Flush the rats out of hiding.”

  “The queens will know you are back,” he said.

  “I will be disappointed if they don’t know that already,” I answered.

  He nodded. “And you want this?”

  “I do,” I said.

  He looked at me steadily for a moment or two. “Are you going to sacrifice this realm to protect your Earth?”

  “Interesting,” I said, glancing at Stacia, who quirked an eyebrow. “Is that a common concern?”

  “It is. You and your group are known to be protectors of your world. Plus, you no sooner took hold of the realm and then you left it.”

  “Fair enough. No, I do not intend to sacrifice this land or even this world. In fact, I’ll protect it from either of the queens, their murderous daughters, or the Vorsook. But I do intend to use it to protect Earth.”

  “Your goals are ambitious. Some would say too ambitious,” he said. Stocan was measuring us, and the rest of his people were waiting on his results. I could see it in his body language, feel it in the tension of our onlookers and, then, of course, there was the little matter of the Realm’s own insight.

  “You understand what I am? Aside from the Realm Holder stuff?” I asked.

  “You are a powerful witch,” he said. Stacia snorted, looking amused when he glanced her way.

  “I am. And do you understand what I have behind me?” I asked.

  “The Speaker, her sire, your young friends, and, I believe, some powerful, well-placed individuals from your world,” he said.

  “Oh, it’s a bit more than that,” I said. “Let’s just say that I can call upon almost all the technological resources of my planet.”

  My phone vibrated where it lay on the table near my right hand. A single word popped up.

  Almost?

  Stocan frowned at the phone, clearly confused.

  “Let’s just make sure the message gets out to the Courts,” I said.

  He nodded slowly, eyes on mine. “I’ll assure it, although as you say, it is likely old news.”

  Chapter 16

  It turned out that he didn’t have to do anything. Our first contact approached as we returned to the apartment after an excellent aurochs dinner.

  “How does it feel to know you just ate a type of cow that the other wolves in your pack won’t have the pleasure of?” I asked my girlfriend.

  “Oh, is Mr. Realm Holder getting all full of himself?” she asked.

  “No, but Mr. Portal Maker might feel proud to give his mate a meal unavailable to anyone on Earth,” I said.

  She turned to look at me while we kept walking. “What?” I asked, uncertain of the look in her eyes.

  “That might be the first time you called me your mate,” she said.

  “Well, we’re mates, right? Not the Aussie kind of mates either, but the sleep-naked-in-the-same-bed kind of mates,” I said.

  Suddenly I was up against the wall, pressed there by a girl a head shorter and two-thirds my weight. “You better believe, deep, deep in your heart that we’re mates,” she said, then she was kissing me. It was a nice long kiss and I wasn’t really ready to come up for air when she suddenly ended it.

  I opened my eyes to see her head turned, staring at an elf who hadn’t been there a second ago. Part of me had been aware of him but most of me had been distracted by Stacia.

  He was very slender, even for an elf. If he’d been human, I’d have called him emaciated. Tan leathery-looking pants, a light green shirt, and a white wristband. He stared at me like a junkie spotting his next fix. I take it as a real bad sign when any male chooses to stare at me over Stacia—it’s obvious they have real issues.

  “What?” Stacia asked.

  His eyes clicked her way and the most minute flicker of distaste crossed his expression. Just a shimmer, a twitch, a hint. Way more than enough to ensure that he instantly made my shit list.

  “I have an offer for Lord Declan,” he said, staring at me while he spoke.

  “He’s not interested. He likes girls, and one in particular,” Stacia said. She wasn’t normally that blunt, so I knew it was a ploy to push his balance. It worked. His expression flickered to anger and disgust before it settled back down to just crazy. “Not an offer of that sort,” he said with distaste. “An offer of education,” he said.

  “Education, is it?” I asked. “What field of study?”

  “Realm control,” he said, emphasizing the second word in almost the creepiest way possible.

  “You’re gonna teach a Realm Holder about running a realm?” Stacia asked in total disbelief.

  The look he turned her way was totally hostile and a sudden insight made me look at him with my Sight. He glowed a sickly green. A toxic chemical, glow stick, zombie kind of green.

  “I think he’s Summer’s pawn,” I murmured to Stacia, then raised my voice. “You’re suggesting I take a lesson from the creature who’s tried to kill me multiple times in the last month?”

  “And you’ve already learned to stay alive, my lord Realm Holder. Her Magnificence has already begun the lessons,” he said.

  The ground shook slightly and the hard stone under his feet flowed like water, splashing up away from his legs as he dropped two feet into the floor. It all flowed back and flashed to solid in an instant.

  Stacia looked from the trapped elf to me with eyes wide. “Bravo, Declan. I’d say your Realm control is pretty tight, wouldn’t you agree Mr…” she asked the suddenly panicky elf.

  “No offense, Lord Declan,” he said, ignoring her question. Rookie mistake.

  A hand tipped with iron-hard, needle-sharp claws reached out and lightly gripped his face, swinging it back her way. “I asked for your name.”

  “Vinesh, my lady,” he said, his fear finding a new direction.

  “So what’s your offer, Vinesh?” Stacia asked.

  He was now very afraid for his life and seemed shocked at the sudden change of events. I got the impression that he was badly surprised by our responses, like maybe someone had given him a different idea of how we might act.

  “You need to learn to answer my lady’s questions, Vinesh,” I said. I started to raise my right hand but he was speaking before it got even with my waist.

  “The Princess Eirwen offers to treat with you,” he said in a rush.

  “Let me guess—deep in sunny Summer?” Stacia asked.

  “No, milady. Here in the Middle Realm. Well, not here, here but in the Middle Realm,” he blurted.

  “Where in the Realm, Vinesh?” she pressed.

  “In, in the mountains. On the lands of the Wild Hunt,” he said.

  “Those assholes?” I asked. Stacia arched one brow. “They’re the ones that tried to take my friend Ariel. They live on
my realm?” I asked Vinesh, while reaching out to the land around me.

  “Hmm, never mind. I can feel them,” I said. What I didn’t say was that they were somehow muted to my sense of the Realm. I knew where they were but I didn’t know much else. That was odd. The rest of the Middle lands were sharply defined to my senses, like an ultra high def television. But these guys were grainy, tube-driven, black and white.

  Stacia was watching me. She could tell something was off.

  “A trap, then?” she asked.

  “Not a trap, milady. Princess Eirwen guarantees safe passage,” Vinesh said.

  “Interesting. She guarantees safe passage on my land,” I said. “Maybe we should go see her?”

  “Good idea,” Stacia agreed.

  “I can arrange steeds and supplies by morning, my Lord,” Vinesh said.

  “Morning? Oh, no. We’re going right now,” I said, releasing him from the stone floor. Stacia grabbed his right elbow and I grabbed his left, hauling him along between us. The apartment was a short distance down the hall and the door opened for us at my thought.

  Once inside, we went right to the garden and dropped our guest on the floor. Stacia disappeared to get our guns and I set up the runes for a portal into the middle of the Wild Hunt lands. The clarity might be off, but I knew their location perfectly well now that I was thinking about it.

  “Lord Declan, what you are attempting is extremely dangerous and extraordinarily difficult for even a master Watcher of the Veil,” Vinesh said.

  Stacia came back into the room with bandoliers slung in a distracting manner and both shotguns.

  I leaned back on my heels and touched the portal circle. It zipped open, a clean slice through reality, a perfect doorway across the realm.

  “Definitely getting much smoother,” Stacia said, turning to Vinesh. His face was blank, almost unreadable, but I’d watched enough of the boring dragon negotiations to detect some shock and surprise. “Don’t you agree?”

  He looked from her to the portal and then flicked his eyes my way before they went back to the open doorway. He swallowed. My girl shoved him through and we both followed.

  Chapter 17

  We stepped out of Ashley’s garden and into the ancient mountains of Middle Realm. We went from white stone underfoot to dark, rugged granite and dirt, with sharp mountains rising all around us. My shields were up, but honestly, the instant the gate opened, Omega sent a tiny drone through and he would have told me if things were hinkey.

  Instead, we caught them off guard. The Wild Hunt occupied a natural pocket canyon set into the lower side of a big mountain. And the first thing I noticed, aside from the suddenly startled elves, goblins, and other things, was that the mountain was home to a good-sized elemental. It was buried deep in the solid rock, right down in the core.

  A couple of arrows flashed our way, stopping dead in the outer layer of my shields, held frozen four feet off the ground. Vinesh yelled a few times in Elvish, and I’m guessing most of the words were curses. Just call it intuition. The arrows stopped, then the curses stopped too as a small crowd started to gather.

  “What’s up?” Stacia asked, her eyes on the crowd but her attention on my distractedness.

  “There’s a big earthy I don’t know. It must have blocked some of my perception of the Hunt,” I said aside to her. Vinesh was now conferring with a tough-looking elf who had three scarred and squatty goblins hovering behind him.

  “And it’s, what? Protecting them?” she asked.

  “No. Maybe. I’m not sure,” I said. I could feel the mountain and the mountain was aware of me, but it was… not impressed.

  The tough guy sent one of the goblins bounding away before turning back to us, a mean glint in his eye. The goblin disappeared into a cave I hadn’t noticed and now, as I looked the canyon over, I could see there were more than a few yawning black entrances on the rock walls around us.

  “Is this thing a problem?” Stacia asked.

  “In that it doesn’t seem to have got the memo about me and the realm and all that,” I said.

  Figures emerged from the cave the goblin had entered, and I could see four people headed toward us. Two were shiny silver, one wore green, and the last was the squatty goblin messenger. After a second or two, I could see that one of the armored ones and the figure in green had female shapes.

  “Interesting armor,” Stacia noted. “And are those antlers growing out of her head?”

  “The leader of the Hunt always has antlers, I think,” I said. “She’s just got spike horns.”

  “You know her?”

  “I sort of promoted her,” I replied. “Which explains her armor.” Both armor-clad warriors were walking mirrors, reflecting everything around them. I also recognized the female elf in green.

  “Let me guess… you hit them with some kind of light?” Stacia asked.

  “Yup. Hit her boss with a big ole beam of super sunlight. They tried to take Ariel from my aunt’s place. I objected.”

  “And so you started a new fashion trend,” she said.

  “Ah, our young witch and his pet,” Eirwen, Summer Princess, said with a winning smile. I’m sure her charisma packed a real punch but the fingers of my right hand were touching the steel of my holstered Serbu and Stacia was resting her left hand on the barrels of her DP-12.

  “I believe you called,” I said.

  “So we did. You got here quicker than I thought you would. So precocious,” Eirwen said with a smirk.

  “Interrupted your evil plans, did we?” I asked.

  “We were discussing your education,” Eirwen said. “This is the perfect place for your first lesson, right now.”

  “And you intend to teach it?” I asked, pulling ambient heat from the ground. Far, far below my feet, I felt a river of something else.

  “Oh, I think you’re already learning it. This place, this mountain, it does not heed your new title, does it? You’re not getting the same information the rest of your realm feeds you, right?”

  “Oh. You’re talking about the earth elemental who is mostly ignoring me,” I said. “What of it?”

  “Here’s a lesson for free. The first thing a Realm Holder must do is subjugate all the elementals, as you call them, in her or his realm. But you just ran away, didn’t you?”

  “No, Princess Posey. You and your mom ran away after I beat your asses. Myself, I went home to get the stink of elf shit out of my nose. You know? The stuff you, your cousin, your aunt and your mom all left behind as you ran for cover,” I said.

  Her smile tightened, momentarily becoming a grimace before becoming sickly sweet. Ah, nerve touched. She turned to her companions in their mirror-like armor.

  “Arrogance wrapped in a naïve shell,” she said. Looking back my way, she said, “You actually believe you beat two queens of Fairie?”

  “No, we beat two queens, a dragon, assorted goblins, Hunters, three Guardians including your cousin, and oh yeah, you,” I said. “But you didn’t ask us here for a recap, did you? What do you want, Eirwen?”

  Far below me, something wiggled free and moved toward the surface, answering my call.

  “Despite your insults, I wanted to offer a lesson or two in Realm management,” she said.

  “Right, the whole oppress and deplete your elementals so you can run out of power, right?”

  “Let me guess… you’ve had a conversation with your realm?” she asked, brows arched.

  I didn’t answer, just waited her out. “And you blithely believed whatever your realm told you, didn’t you? But did they mention holdouts like the one Shazia commands?” Eirwen asked, nodding at the armored man next to the woman with the deer antlers.

  I couldn’t help it. I started laughing.

  “Oh come on, Princess Cupcake, pull the other leg. Nobody commands this mountain, least of all him,” I said. Antlers had been frowning at me, but this Shazia, who must have some elemental ability with Earth, flat out glared at me. He stamped his foot and the ground shook.

>   Stacia rode it out with her trademark casual grace, but I admit I stumbled a little. The elves, who were agile like, well, elves, handled it easily. Eirwen smirked.

  “Ooooh, shaky. So scary,” I said, channeling my best impression of Erika—at least, Erika’s sarcasm.

  “Do you have a voice, dog? Or do you just let him lead you around on your leash?” Eirwen asked Stacia, clearly already annoyed with me. Go figure.

  “Leave me out of it, Flowers. I’m just here to keep him from breaking too much stuff, you know, like cities, villages… mountain ranges,” Stacia said.