Hound
Page 21
She stopped answering. She giggled.
Frantic, Charlie looked around but found that all eyes were trained on the magnificent structure the pixies wove. He looked to Katye. “Help her.”
“Charlie, the thing is done. Look.”
He turned back to find a couple dozen pixies smiling at him from midair. Between them was a six-foot-tall banana-shaped woven sculpture that glistened with rainbows.
“Go ahead, Charlie,” one of them said. “Give it a whack. Break it open.”
“I’ve heard of this,” Liam said. “I’ve never seen one.”
“Nor I,” said Redmond. “This is fascinating. Do as she says, Charlie. Open it.”
“Gran.” Charlie gently touched the brilliant fabric. It was hard to the touch. He pressed harder, and it cracked like an egg.
“Go for it!” a pixie urged, his pink-and-black wings atwitter with excitement. “Give it a smack and whack.”
Charlie rapped his knuckles hard and created a hole at the top of the structure. He saw only air inside. “What….”
Liam jabbed his shoulder. “No questions.”
Frantic, Charlie broke off hunks of the brilliant construction. Halfway down, he stumbled back. For there inside the cocoon was a little girl with auburn hair, cornflower-blue eyes, and silver wings held fast by the remnants of her shell.
The pixies could not contain their excitement. “Get the rest, Charlie. Big and strong. Get the rest. We want Flora. We want Flora.”
The girl made eye contact with Charlie. “Set me free, Charlie.”
“Sure… Gran.” And with Liam and Redmond to help, they cracked and peeled away the last of the beautiful casing.
She whispered so that only they, and of course the Hound, could hear. “I think you better start calling me Flora.”
The previously grumbling crowds stood and gaped in silence. Flora, with the aid of several pixies, spread out her dove-white wings to dry. She shrugged her shoulders, and the wings twitched. She looked at one of the pixies. “Okay, it’s more in the back.” She began to beat a rhythm. A gust of wind sent her six feet up. She threw back her head and laughed. “I can fly, Charlie. I can fly!”
The puka whinnied with impatience, turned, and made for the misty bridge that spanned the moat.
Katye smiled, though her cheek was still stained with tears. “Perhaps we’ve managed one good thing this day. Flora had to break, and that’s not always bad.” She knelt on all fours next to Lance. And while their flesh could not connect, she kissed him on the mouth.
As they separated, the air around him sputtered and sparked. And where there had hopped and wailed a giant blue-green bullfrog now crouched a tall, beautiful man with flowing raven curls, and like Finn, he was naked. He attempted to embrace Katye. His arms found only air.
“No.” She held a hand to her chest. “We end here. We follow in the steps of our parents, and for any with even a whiff of the mortal, this passage would mean death. There are no exceptions, no haffling or true-love codicils. Not even a willing sacrifice, like tragic Nimby or lovely Flora, will give safe passage to anyone mortal.”
“Then stay, Katye. Stay with me,” Lance pleaded.
Lizbeta, with one hand clasped in May’s, which had been freed from her shackles, gave Katye her other. With a sigh and sad smile, they followed the puka back across the moat and through the opening in the Mist, which closed behind them.
As rapidly as the Mist had appeared, it retreated. Where it had curtained the edge of the Unsee, it flew back farther and farther still, and then it vanished from sight.
Forty-Two
A HUSH spread over the several thousand fey in the field and clustered in the square. They watched the Mist retreat to leave the glittering expanse of the Western Sea.
“It’s gone. The Mist is gone. That cannot be.”
“May’s gone. She will return. She always returns.”
The crowd’s numbers swelled as those who’d hidden in basements, tunnels, and attics came out.
A circle formed around Redmond, Finn, Alice, the transformed Flora, and the others.
It grew tighter, and there was no mincing of words as seeds of discontent found the fertile soil of fear and uncertainty.
“A girl. That is no queen. Queen Alice. That’s not a queen’s name.”
“And a haffling at that. She will flee between worlds and leave us to war. Or worse, she will cause a human invasion.”
“You must give her a chance.”
“They will steal our lands.”
Dorothea, grief-stricken and furious, fanned their fears. “It will all fall to chaos. We must bring Queen May back. Sure, she ate some of you, but she kept order. She was a true queen. This puny mortalette, she is nothing.”
Finn ran a hand across his shorn head. He looked to Redmond and around at the others, which included the ex-frog Lance, who like himself didn’t have on a stitch as he stared out at the sea where his true love had vanished.
“I am sorry for you,” Finn offered.
“We had centuries together, and now…. I am Lancelot, by the way. Those two I’ve met.” He nodded toward Alex and Jerod. “The others I’ve seen through different eyes. The world is quite different when you’re green and hoppy.”
“I can relate.”
A fight erupted in the crowd as an ungraceful troll accidentally disturbed a platter of brownies. The tiny creatures screamed in protest and jabbed needle-sharp swords into the troll’s feet and ankles. The lumbering creature tried to flee, but in so doing knocked over a pram of baby elves, whose mother joined the brownies in their attack.
Liam turned to Charlie. “This is how and who we are. Without a ruler, no matter how despotic, we fall into turmoil. This, more than anything, was the cause and need for the Mist. I see that well. It’s no mistake that the war between our kind had no end.”
“Enough!” Alice shouted. Her voice, like a clarion, soared over the crowd. As though born to it, her feet floated off the ground. She rose to a height that brought her level with Lance and Finn, who came to her sides like a pair of naked sentinels.
Taking their cue, Redmond, Alex, Jerod, Liam, Charlie, Marilyn, Adam, and Flora with her battalion of pixies followed suit.
Alice nodded to Finn.
He smiled back at her. “You will do.” He raised his chin and howled. The sound carried beyond the walls of the Center. Like the waves from a nuclear blast, it roared across the meadow, the moat, and the forests beyond. It sailed out over the Western Sea in one direction and to the eastern borders in the other. It carried to the north and to the south. It brought silence and caused all who heard it to stop, to wait, and to listen.
Alice raised her arms. Her palms faced upward as she floated higher than the tallest ogre or troll. Her blonde hair floated behind, and while dressed in jeans, a Ramones tee, and scuffed red high-tops, all eyes fixed on her. Her graceful arms drew symbols in the air. She again looked toward Finn, held up three fingers, and nodded.
He howled in strong bursts. From all sides, even from within the earth, it was answered by thousands. The roar was deafening.
New fear appeared on the faces of the mob. Whispers stirred.
“She calls an army.”
“She will force us to her will.”
“She will be worse than May.”
“Yay!”
Alice floated and danced upon the wind. She appeared unfazed and unafraid. With clear blue eyes, she gazed out over the kingdom she’d been handed. She wafted higher. She looked from the mumbling crowds to her brothers and mother. She spoke as the first of the massive dogs she and Finn had summoned appeared.
He looked up at her. “We are an army. We are your army, my lady.”
“Yes, and so our reign begins.” She assumed the posture of the statue of Mary that stood atop her elementary school in Chinatown in New York City, and with arms wide open, she declared, “I am Alice. I am the girl who went down the hole. I am a haffling, and I am whole. I will be your queen.”
/> More from Caleb James
The Haffling: Book One
All sixteen-year-old Alex Nevus wants is to be two years older and become his sister Alice’s legal guardian. That, and he’d like his first kiss, preferably with Jerod Haynes, the straight boy with the beautiful girlfriend and the perfect life. Sadly, wanting something and getting it are very different. Strapped with a mentally ill mother, Alex fears for his own sanity. Having a fairy on his shoulder only he can see doesn’t help, and his mom’s schizophrenia places him and Alice in constant jeopardy of being carted back into foster care.
When Alex’s mother goes missing, everything falls apart. Frantic, he tracks her to a remote corner of Manhattan and is transported to another dimension—the land of the Unsee, the realm of the Fey. There he finds his mother held captive by the power-mad Queen May and learns he is half-human and half-fey—a Haffling.
As Alex’s human world is being destroyed, the Unsee is being devoured by a ravenous mist. Fey are vanishing, and May needs to cross into the human world. She needs something only Alex can provide, and she will stop at nothing to possess it… to possess him.
The Haffling: Book Two
Liam Summer, with the face of an angel and the body of an underwear model, has done bad things. Raised as the whore and cat’s paw of a murderous fairy queen, he has ruined many with his beauty. When Queen May’s plot to unite and rule the fairy and human realms fails, Liam wakes naked and alone in a Manhattan building on fire. Unaware the blaze is arson, and he’s its intended victim, he prepares to die.
Enter ax-wielding FDNY firefighter Charlie Fitzgerald, who Liam mistakes for an ogre assassin. As Charlie rescues Liam, he realizes the handsome blond has nowhere to go. So he does what he and his family have always done—he helps.
As for Queen May, trapped in the body of a flame-throwing salamander, she may be down, but she’s not out. Yes, she failed the last time, but Liam—and others—will pay. She knows what must be done: possess a haffling, cross into the human world engorged with magic, and become queen and Goddess over all.
As Liam realizes the danger they all face, he discovers unexpected truths. That even the most wicked are not beyond redemption, and that love—true love—is a gift even he can receive.
Dark Blood Saga: Book One
Handsome, brilliant, and surrounded by good friends, twenty-three-year-old medical student Miles Fox has a secret—and it’s not that he’s gay. Though he harbors a crush on his straight best friend, Luke. Miles, like his grandmother, Anna, possesses the healing gift, an ability she’s made him swear never to use or divulge, lest horrible things befall those he loves. It happened to her when Nazis butchered her family.
But it all goes to hell when Miles heals a terminally ill man on a New Orleans cancer ward and wakes locked in the psych unit. Worse, news of the healing miracle spreads. For millennia, its carriers have been hunted by those who would steal it. Dr. Gerald Stangl and his teenage son, Calvin, know what Miles possesses. They, like their predecessors, will stop at nothing to take it, including kidnapping, torture, and murder. As the Stangls’ noose tightens, Miles and Luke are trapped in a death match with stakes higher than they could ever imagine.
Readers love The Haffling series by Caleb James
Haffling
“If you love fantasy and like to escape into secret lands with mysteries at every turn, if you love strong young men putting all they have on the line for love… then this is the book for you.”
—Gay List Book Reviews
“I thoroughly enjoyed this dark and colorful adventure. Haffling really captured the essence of a modern fairy-tale, but it was so much more than that.”
—Fabulous Fictions
“I was really enthralled by this Young Adult novel…”
—Reviews and Ramblings
Exile
“Caleb James has arrived—and his work is more polished, fascinating and truly top notch.”
—Joyfully Jay
“Mr. James… weaves an incredible tale of fantasy in the modern world that, for me, makes it all work wonderfully.”
—OJ He Say!
CALEB JAMES is an author, member of the Yale volunteer faculty, practicing psychiatrist, and clinical trainer. He writes both fiction and nonfiction and has published books in multiple genres and under different names. Writing as Charles Atkins, he has been a Lambda Literary finalist. He lives in Connecticut with his partner and four cats.
Website: charlesatkins.com
Blog: calebjamesblog.wordpress.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Caleb-James-536765356387453
By Caleb James
Dark Blood
THE HAFFLING
Haffling
Exile
Hound
Published by DSP PUBLICATIONS
www.dsppublications.com
Published by
DSP PUBLICATIONS
5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA
www.dsppublications.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Hound
© 2017 Caleb James.
Cover Art
© 2017 Alan M. Clark.
www.alanmclark.com
Cover design
© 2017 Paul Richmond.
http://www.paulrichmondstudio.com
Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.
All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact DSP Publications, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or www.dsppublications.com.
ISBN: 978-1-63533-921-5
Digital ISBN: 978-1-63533-922-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950123
Published November 2017
v. 1.0
Printed in the United States of America