Wild Ways

by Tanya Huff

  They knew about dragons, though. He circled around and came in so that his shadow on the ground didn’t give the game away.

  The last Boggart in the pack of nine wasn’t guarding the rear, it was the slowest and if it couldn’t keep up, the others would leave it behind without a second thought. It squealed when Jack’s claws closed around its fur.

  Or beside its fur. Or something.

  The Boggart could’ve rolled sideways to freedom but, propelled by blind panic, it tried to run faster and catch up to the pack disappearing into the underbrush at the side of the road. With the two of them on the same trajectory, Jack had time to poke through the illusion and get a good enough hold to haul the shrieking creature into the air. Afraid it might thrash its way free, Jack gave a quick squeeze and then worried he’d crushed it beyond conversation all the way to the clearing where he landed.

  Masked from Human notice by surrounding trees and the night itself, he dropped the Boggart on the dormant grass and bent to check it was still alive. On the bright side, he’d found the pack, so it wouldn’t be hard to grab another if he had to.

  The Boggart lay on its side like road kill already beginning to bloat.

  Jack took a long sniff, close enough he sucked a hair up into his nose, and sat back on his haunches when the Boggart jumped up and ran for the trees.

  Ran right into the cage of Jack’s claws.

  It flipped upside down, spun around on what might have been shoulders, head bent at an awkward angle, then decided to play dead again and flopped flat.

  Jack sighed.

  Coughing and choking, the Boggart flailed its arms and legs, trying to wave the smoke away. Once it had cleared enough for Jack to see its face, he said, “Look, you answer some questions, and I won’t eat you. You keep dicking me around, I’ll have a snack and catch up to the pack.”

  Flat black eyes narrowed. “Am cheated! Not said You Highness here!”

  “Who didn’t say?”

  “Scary!”

  “Yeah, I’m gonna need a little more than that.”

  “Scary not all Human!”

  “Little more.” Although that wasn’t a bad definition of an auntie.

  The Boggart waved an arm, hair flapping. “Rock hair! Night eyes! Power like dirt! Smell like dirt!”

  “Dirt?”

  It smacked the ground. “Dirt!”

  “Earth?”

  “Earth. Dirt.” The Boggart made gesture that clearly meant whatever, and stood. “Go now?”

  “Not yet.” Jack translated rock hair and night eyes to gray hair and black eyes but the important part of the description was the smell. All the Gales smelled a little like earth to him. Charlie smelled like wherever she was—in Calgary a bit like the mountains, in Cape Breton a bit like the shore. Allie smelled like growing things. But the aunties smelled like the dark, rotting places deep in the oldest part of the forest. “Did the scary not all Human tell you to attack the festival?”

  “No. Attack music place!”

  “Yeah, that’s what a festival . . . never mind.”

  “Said young scary not all Human there! Said not hurt!” It folded its arms. “Not said You Highness there!”

  “Did the scary not all Human open the gate?”

  It blew foam from between rubbery lips. Jack decided to take that as a duh.

  “And the scary not all Human called you?”

  “Called all.”

  “I didn’t mean just you. What did she promise you if you attacked the music place?”

  “Not to hurt. Do thing. Go home.”

  “So the gate’s open?”

  “Go home, not come back.”

  “The gate’s open one way,” Jack translated. “You can get back to the UnderRealm but you can’t turn around and return to the MidRealm.”

  “Goblins stay. Big nasty.”

  “What?”

  “Goblins stay. Big nasty.” It was clearly wondering what Jack hadn’t understood about that.

  “There’s Goblins here? In the MidRealm, and they’re staying? Goblins came through when you did?” Goblins were mean. And kind of gross tasting, but right now that wasn’t important. Boggarts hung around on the edges of Goblin packs trying to seem tough, so he guessed they’d be the big nasty to the Boggarts. “Where are they now?”

  The Boggart made a noise that could have meant it didn’t know.

  Jack singed the grass at its feet.

  “Goblins not here!”

  “I know that!”

  It flattened under the sudden blast of smoke, hugging the ground. “Goblins do for scary not all Human!”

  “Do what? Never mind, they’re Goblins.” Goblins were thugs, vicious, nasty thugs. His Uncle Ryan had been attacked by about fifty of them once. Taking down a Dragon Lord would have made them top dog in more than just the low-level circles they ran in, but it would have worked out better for them if they’d been less flammable. Afterward, Uncle Ryan had lit up any Goblin he ran into—or flew over—as a kind of a hobby. If the Goblins were doing something for Auntie Catherine, it was something unpleasant. “Did you hear where she sent the Goblins?”

  “No. Truth to Highness.” It rolled back onto its feet and held up both hands. One hand had three fingers. One had six. “Truth to Highness,” it repeated. “Go home now?”

  “Yeah. Sure.” Jack shifted back on his haunches, giving the Boggart a clear run to the trees. It looked up at him suspiciously for a moment, then took off, using its hands as well as its feet to gain speed. As soon as it was out of the clearing, Jack surged up into the sky. He’d follow it to the gate and see if he could pick up the Goblins’ trail. They wouldn’t be far from the gate. Not even Auntie Catherine would allow a pack of Goblins to run loose in the MidRealm.

  He hoped.

  “Why are we stopping?” Charlie leaned forward and peered out the front window as Paul pulled over to the side of the road. She could see lights through the trees but nothing near enough to the car to explain them stopping.

  “There’s a guard at the gate. If I go back in again, at this hour . . .” Paul’s voice trailed off.

  Charlie sighed. “So your entire plan was to ask Jack to help and wing it? Great. And I’m guessing Eineen can’t do that whole Selkie seduction thing now you two lovebirds have paired up.”

  “Expecting Eineen to seduce the guard isn’t only demeaning, it’s cli-chéd.”

  “You use the skills you’ve got, dude. But never mind . . .” She opened the back door. “I’m on it.”

  “Planning to seduce the guard?” Eineen asked.

  Charlie settled the guitar strap over her shoulder and grinned. “Depends on the guard. How far are we from the gate?”

  Paul glanced at his GPS. “About half a kilometer.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes and come on in.”

  It was a pleasant walk. The night had cooled a little but was still warm with just enough breeze to lift damp hair off her forehead. She could hear the two part percussion of waves against rock in the distance while, closer at hand, an owl mournfully demanded her identity from the trees. Directly over the road, half a dozen bats created shadow patterns between her and the stars. Then the owl swooped out of the trees and nailed one of the bats, snatching it out of the air with a twist of its head and snap of its beak. The bat squeaked once, and died.

  Allie would have called it an omen. Charlie wanted a second opinion before she jumped to any conclusions. Sure, the whole experience had sucked for the bat, but the owl got dinner.

  The gates leading onto the mine property were locked on the inside. No surprise.

  The lights were on in the trailer. She could just see the top of the guard’s head and a lot of messy dark hair through the open window. About to play him out and up to the gate, she realized she had no idea how close the Goblins were or how well they could hear. Given their reputation, it didn’t seem too smart to give them a heads up and time to plan an ambush.

  “Hey! Hello in there!” When the guard looked out
the window, Charlie smiled at him and waved. “Hi! My car broke down and my phone’s dead. I need some help!”

  The thing was, most men wanted to be heroes.

  “Are you lost?” he called, coming down the stairs. He’d clearly attempted to tame his hair by running his hands through it and he was tugging wrinkles out of his shirt as he hurried to the gate.

  In spite of Joss Whedon, most men didn’t see danger when they saw a pretty blonde.

  “I’m just in Cape Breton for the music festival and I guess I took a wrong turn and then my car made this grunch noise and just stopped.”

  “A grunch noise?” His smile slid toward patronizing, and Charlie absolved herself of any guilt in advance. “So you’re a musician?” He gestured at the guitar with the hand holding the lock as he pulled the gate open with the other. “You going to play something for me?”

  “Actually, I am.” Charlie put her fingers to her strings.

  When Paul’s penis-mobile pulled up seven minutes later, the gate was open and the guard was on the ground, propped up against the fence.

  Paul’s eyes widened. “You killed him!”

  “Don’t get your y-fronts in a twist,” Charlie sighed, getting into the car. “He’s having a nap.”

  “There? On the ground?”

  “Interestingly enough, I can do a lot of really cool things—including getting in and out of a D minor 7th add 9—but carrying a sleeping man significantly heavier than I am across six meters of grass and up four crappy stairs to his comfy chair is a bit beyond me. He’ll be fine,” she added when Paul continued to stare and the car continued to stay exactly where it was. “I’ll give him a poke when we leave. Now, can we get on with this? It’s late and I’m tired.”

  “Paul.” Eineen’s voice drew his attention off the guard. “We should get this done.”

  “It’s like I’m not even talking,” Charlie muttered as Paul finally got them moving in the right direction.

  When she got out of the car, she scuffed through the thin layer of gravel to the dirt below and paused for a moment, sifting the night for the out-of-place. If there were Goblins in the mine, then the gate had to be close. Goblin herding made cat herding look like a smart idea; not even Auntie Catherine would be able to control them over any great distance.

  She couldn’t sense the gate, but she honestly hadn’t expected to. Like she’d said to Jack, Auntie Catherine, knowing she was in the province and working with the Selkies, had probably hidden it.

  Paul had unlocked and opened half of the big double doors. Eineen waited on the threshold. “Are you coming?”

  Charlie grinned. “Not even breathing hard.”

  The contrast between the night and the light in the room that led to the elevator and the shaft down into the Duke made Charlie’s eyes water. She blinked rapidly, trying to speed the adaptation. Mines, particularly empty mines, should be dark and spooky not lit by harsh industrial fluorescents. By the time all the retinal flares had died down, Paul had the elevator open and was handing out hard hats. She couldn’t see Goblin sign in the room, but just in case, she asked Eineen what she saw.

  The Selkie’s eyes went black from lid to lid. “No blood, no gouges from tooth or claw. They have not been this high.”

  Charlie spun her hardhat on one finger. “I was kind of hoping for no empty beer cans, no used condoms, and no graffiti saying UnderRealm rules! MidRealm drools! but I’ll take no blood or claw gouges.” She paused at the elevator and leaned out over the shaft, peering down through the grates on the floor. “I see why they call it a cage. You’re sure this is safe?”

  “I would worry more about what you’ll face at the bottom,” Eineen told her.

  “Yeah, I think I’ll worry about getting to the bottom first.” She took a deep breath and stepped into the elevator, grate cutting into the bottoms of her flip flops.

  When Eineen moved to follow, Paul stopped her. “You should wait up here. I can bring the pelts up. There’s no need for us both to go into danger,” he added quickly.

  Charlie snickered. “You know she can probably kick your ass, right?”

  They ignored her.

  “The skins belong to members of my family. I will retrieve them. We . . .” She reached out and touched his cheek. “. . . we will retrieve them, together.”

  “Yeah, that’s sweet.” Balanced on her right foot, butt against the safety bar, Charlie sketched a charm on the bottom of her left flip flop to make it a little sturdier. “But none of the skins are yours. Why not grab Tanis or Neela—they’re somewhere around the festival—and let them retrieve their own skins?”

  “Because they’re distraught!” Hair fanning out in an ebony wave, Eineen spun around to face Charlie. “They would have no consideration for their lives.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you Tanis, but Neela barely cracked upset, and yeah, I’m sure she’s repressing for the sake of the kids. Mental states aside, they deserve to be here.”

  “With their skins so close, they’d be easy prey for the Goblins and whatever else is down there!”

  The gate clanged shut.

  “Excuse me?” Charlie dropped her shoe to the floor and slid her foot into it without taking her eyes off Eineen—and not for the usual reason. “And whatever else is down there? It’s funny but I don’t recall you mentioning anything but Goblins.”

  “It was more a feeling,” Paul told her. Eyes still locked on Eineen, Charlie could see him in her peripheral vision, standing with his hand over the big green button.

  “We didn’t see anything but we heard . . . thudding. Kind of drumlike. Um . . . booming.”

  “Booming?”

  “And scraping.”

  “Scraping? Booming and scraping,” she repeated, but they didn’t sound any better lumped together. Call her paranoid, but Eineen’s complete lack of expression suggested she hadn’t mentioned both the booming and the scraping on purpose. “There is no way those sounds can be good.”

  “Whatever it was, it was deeper than the skins,” Eineen pointed out. “If you keep the Goblins away, we can grab the skins and be out before it rises from the depths. Do it!”

  About to ask what she expected done, Charlie realized, as Paul’s hand slapped down on the go switch, the command hadn’t been to her. The elevator shuddered and dropped about six inches. Reflexes honed growing up in a large family only just kept the bottom curve of her guitar from impacting against the metal grid as the sudden movement slammed her to one knee. “Fucking, ow!” Small mercies, the edges of the metal had been worn smooth by men in hard-soled boots, shuffling in place as they rode up and down and down and up and down again, but the grid still dug into her knee and it hurt! “That’s definitely going to leave a . . .” She frowned and touched a gleaming line where the paint had been scored from the metal. “Last time you were here, did a Goblin grab on to the bottom of the elevator as you left?”

  “Yes, but Eineen aimed the beam from my hardhat light into its eyes and it fell away.”

  “Thanks for mentioning that, too.” One section of the grate had been nearly cut through. “It looks like the Goblins are staying in the mine even though they could climb the walls or the cables or, from the looks of this, cut their way through the rock to the surface. Eineen, what are the odds they’re staying down there because that’s the job they were hired to do?”

  “You don’t hire Goblins,” Eineen sniffed. “You bully them or you blackmail them or bribe them and even then you don’t expect them to keep their word.”

  “Yeah. So why are they staying in the mine?”

  “They can’t get out.”

  Charlie twisted and pointed at Paul. “That’s right. They can’t get out.” Eyes narrowed, she shifted her guitar against her thigh, strummed a simple chord progression with her thumbnail, then scanned the inside of the elevator. “Paul. One step to the right.”

  “You don’t tell me . . .”

  “Now!” She played again as he moved. “There it is.”

  “Ther
e what is?”

  Right. They couldn’t see it. “It’s a Gale charm. And since I didn’t put it there, that pretty much guarantees Auntie Catherine did.” The charm had been worked in and around the blank spaces on the instrument panel. “The Goblins aren’t leaving because they’ve been charmed in. She’s charmed the elevator so they can’t use it, they may not be able to even get into it. Since they’re still down there, she had to have also charmed the cables and the walls of the shaft. I don’t know why they’re not digging their way out, maybe they are, maybe she specifically told them not to and they’re so afraid of her they’re not going to try. But she missed a spot.” The aunties were not omniscient, no matter what they, personally believed. “They can ride out on the bottom of the elevator.”

  “But when they get to the top, the cage will be blocking the shaft.”

  Charlie scraped her fingernail over the deepest gouge. “They’ll go through the elevator.”

  Paul folded his arms. “You said they couldn’t get in.”

  “Through isn’t in. Those degrees of yours, not in English, are they?” Gripping the safety bar, she rolled back on her heels and stood. Then bent and took a look at her knee. The grate had pressed purpling dents into her skin but not broken it. On the one hand, good. On the other hand, a blood charm painted across the floor would keep anything out.

  Overkill for Goblins, she supposed, but the thought of a pack of them running loose sent a shiver up her back. People would die before they were rounded up again. And, yeah, the Gales didn’t interfere with the Fey; she’d heard that her entire life. Apparently Auntie Catherine hadn’t been listening—the proof of her involvement was right there on a pitted piece of painted steel. Charlie settled her guitar into place, took a deep breath . . .

  And nearly fell again when the elevator jerked to a stop.

  “Warn a person!” she snarled at Paul.

  He shifted to stand behind Eineen. Quite possibly, the smartest thing he’d done in the limited time Charlie had known him.