She turned to him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Davis. I didn’t know you were here or I might not have been so abrasive in saying that.”
“That wouldn’t make it any less true, though would it?” he asked.
“No.”
Matt turned to Elmer. After all, he was the one Matt saw as the authority figure here. What with the sheriff’s uniform and all. Wonder if he’d still think that way if he knew Dunwood was currently possessed too? Even if it was a possession from the other side.
Probably not. But then, there really wasn’t any need to tell him that, now was there?
“If Taz and her crew can find him, can we fix him? Do we need a priest?” Matt asked.
Elmer hesitated. My guess was that he was wondering just how much to share with Matt. Finally, he linked his elbow with Matt's and started leading him to the door. “I promise you, we’ll do our very best to keep him safe. But right now, you need to go home to your wife. If Quinn shows up, call us immediately. And if we find him first, we'll let you know. We really won't know what we're dealing with until we have him.”
Matt looked deep into Elmer's eyes. For a minute, I thought he was going to argue, but he didn't. He left. The man loved his wife, too, and he could read the lines between Elmer's words as well as anyone. If Quinn showed up at home, very bad things could happen.
Lily sniffed and that drew all of our attention.
“What are you not telling us, Lily?” Rose asked.
The girl glanced at the door Matt had just left by nervously, then back to her grandmother. “It wasn’t just me that Titania was going to sacrifice,” she said softly. “Titania only let the demons have about half the coven. That half is scheduled to die tonight. She plans to make that rift as wide as she can in one fell swoop. Then they’re coming after the pack.”
“With a horde of demons backing them, your pack would never stand a chance,” Elmer said.
No shit. We barely survived Titania and the Erlking back in Faerie. No way could we withstand the full fury of hell. Not to mention, of course, that this entire realm would become a living nightmare.
“So, the souls that are currently in the ones to be sacrificed are planning to jump to the uninhabited ones, I take it?” Elmer asked.
Lily nodded, a tear traveling down her cheek. “I heard Titania and the one that used to be Quinn discussing the plan. I think she took pleasure in me knowing exactly what was to come.”
The queen would have taken a great deal of pleasure in that, I knew. But I would take an equal amount of pleasure in stopping her.
There had to be a way.
“Is there any way to close the portal that the queen opened?” I asked slowly, my brain trying to come up with a plan. “I mean, one portal pretty much looks like any other, right?”
Shaylee looked at me, her eyes widening. Then a slow smile expanded across her face. “It takes a royal Fae to undo a portal opened by another royal. But as I happen to be one of those, and blood of the queen to boot...”
Elmer’s eyes lit up. He was onboard now too. “Are you saying that we can shut down that portal?”
All eyes were on Shaylee. “Not the original one,” she said. “That one has too much of Hell’s power behind it. That’s warped the royal magic into something new.” She paused, grinning. “But we can shut down the one she opened there to reroute the magic of her coven straight to the rift.”
“And then, you could open another portal ending where her’s does and have it going someplace safe? And far, far away from the original rift?” Elmer was clarifying the plan. He was dead on too.
Whoever he had been before, he was a smart man. Of course, Dunwood could be helping with that. He’s pretty damn smart himself.
"As long as we can find the other end of the portal, yes."
Okay, so now we had a plan.
Chapter 22
Jed took our plan one step further.
“I have some friends that might be able to help us with this,” he said.
My first thought was that he was talking about the Luparii. I wouldn’t exactly call them friends. Especially since even if they did help, they would follow up that help by trying to kill the pack. Talk about a win – lose scenario. But the Luparii’s prime mission in life was to eliminate everyone with the ability to shift to another form.
Scary thing was, Jed had once been one of them. Before my sister and her pack changed all that.
Taz must have been thinking the same thing I was. “No way in Hell,” she said, shaking her head. “We aren’t bringing them into this.”
Jed’s brows drew together, then cleared. He barked a short laugh. “I wasn’t talking about the Luparii,” he said. “I have some old military friends in the tri-state area. They’re pretty open minded and might be willing to help.”
Taz still didn’t seem to be convinced, but Elmer was totally for it.
“If you think they can be trusted, then I say bring them in,” he said. “We’re going to need all the help we can get.” He paused. “If we could have some good, well-armed Christian men guarding that coven’s meeting ground tonight, it would make a big difference.”
Jed nodded. They must share a brain. “That was my thinking. If Titania still thinks she has Lily, and if we can manage to switch out the portals without her knowing, then that should put a huge crinkle in her plans. It might buy us enough time to get that rift closed.”
Elmer looked at Shaylee. “If we do manage to close that Hell Gate, is there any chance that she’ll be able to open another?”
Shaylee shook her head. “I think if the royals had any power left, they simply would have made the portal bigger to begin with.” She looked over at me and smiled. “And now, her ability to have a big tithe for more power has been greatly diminished by Steele and her crew. That means that the longer we can delay Titania here, the less time she will have to recruit more humans for her sacrifice.”
“And that means less power for the next seven years,” I said. “Normally the Erlking could be handling that, but he and his court are locked out of the realm. Hard to recruit the humans if you don’t have access to them.”
Shaylee’s face darkened. “Oh, there are still ways,” she said. “In the days of old, the Fae would open a Faerie gate into a hillside and then throw a party with enchanting music and all of the most beautiful creatures in the whole of Faerie. Humans wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to explore. And once they stepped foot into Faerie...”
“There was no way out,” Rose finished. “Sounds like the Fae to me. And I can totally see the Erlking doing just that. Using his limited recruiting abilities to the maximum.” She paused, frowning. “But is there any way to stop him?”
“None that I can think of. He could literally open the gate anywhere.” Shaylee shivered. “Actually, with what’s been going on lately, I wouldn’t put it past him to open it in the middle of a big city. He’d get more than a few humans that way.”
Elmer swallowed and looked distressed. “As horrifying as that sounds, I’d say we need to concentrate all our efforts on the task at hand before taking that one on.”
“I agree,” Jed said. Of course he did. It was like Elmer was a carbon copy of Jed. Or was that vice versa?
Jed left to call his friends, and Rose turned to Taz. I could guess what was coming, and if I was right, Taz wasn’t going to want to hear it.
“We need to move the wedding up.”
There, see I was right. On both counts. Taz looked horror stricken.
Here we had changed her perfectly planned wedding more than once already and now it looked like yet another change. Hopefully this one wouldn’t require the resending of the invitations. We were running low, even with the minimal guest list.
“Rose...,” Taz started.
“We can’t wait another two weeks, Taz. If Jed’s plan works and we can throw Titania off, you know as well as I do that it will only be a matter of days... maybe even hours... before she finds a way around it.” Rose shook her he
ad. “We can’t risk the end of the world just so you can have your wedding on your schedule.”
I expected an outburst, but we got lucky. Taz was in a reasonable mood at the moment. One that could understand the logic behind Rose’s statement. As much as she didn’t like it, she accepted it.
“Should I call Jed’s parents?” she asked softly,
Rose gave it some thought and then puffed out a short burst of air. “It’s really up to you, but they might not be able to make it on such short notice.” She paused. “If it were me, I think I’d keep the original wedding date and plans as they are. Who is going to know but us that you are already married?”
Taz’s face softened. “You know, that just might work.”
“I hate to be the nay sayer in this,” Elmer said. “But the more friends and family we have at that ceremony, the more love and goodwill going towards that rift. And we need all we can get.”
“Christians are pretty loving,” I said slowly. “And the church’s congregation seemed to really enjoy the outside service.”
Elmer started grinning. The fact that the grin showed up on Dunwood’s face was doing a number on my heart. The soul warrior had better keep his word. Dunwood had better make it through this.
“And a few hymns and extra prayers certainly wouldn’t hurt matters,” he said.
“But we tried that and it didn’t work.” Lily looked scared. “Why would it work now? Just because we add a wedding to it?”
“There’s more added than just a wedding. You have me now.” Was it my imagination or did Dunwood just grow several inches? “And the full power of God behind me too. Especially if we add a prayer or two to the service.
Now Rose was grinning. “My money’s on God any day of the week.”
JED HAD MANAGED TO sign on five men to the task. Each and every one special forces. According to Jed, between them, they’d be carrying enough fire power to keep Titania and her coven well away from that second portal’s entrance.
I might have doubted the effectiveness of such a small number if I hadn’t seen Dunwood in action. This Special Forces thing must be about the equivalent to the queen’s guards. In a word, each of them a one-man army in himself. I knew me and my girls were.
And three of my girls were going with Jed. The other two would be helping to guard the hell gate. Jed had sworn to me that he would bring the men up to speed on their special abilities. I didn’t want them to be considered a liability rather than an asset.
My girls were very good at what they did. And they had full knowledge of exactly what they were dealing with. That should make a huge difference, all by itself.
He might have gotten more offers of help, but he took Elmer’s insistence that all be God-fearing Christians to heart when he made his choices of who to call to action. Not all good men were Christians.
“We need to make sure that they each have a clover and a cross,” Rose said.
Jed nodded and shortly after, he and Rose started to plan out and coordinate the men’s arrival. What he planned would bring a few more into the informational fold, but it was necessary as not all of the men were in short enough driving distance to make it in time.
We were all thankful that we had Cin on our side. As it had been with my raid on Faerie, her popping ability might just be the saving grace for this mission too.
I knew for a fact that my sister would not be willing to risk so many unknowing innocents if we hadn’t had a way to get them clear of any danger. Fast. After all, we were the good guys.
Shaylee, Cin, and I were in charge of shutting down Titania’s gate and replacing it with another. We debated for a long while as to where to direct the end of the new portal. Of course, we wanted it as far away from the hell gate as possible, but we also didn’t want to direct a vast amount of evil to anyplace that was likely to be well populated.
There was always the possibility that Jed’s men would fail. Not likely, according to Jed, but a chance regardless. The odds would be better if they were given a full briefing on just what they were dealing with. The problem with that was whether or not they would believe him. We were all hoping that Jed’s status would lend some weight to his warnings, as incredulous as they might seem to the men.
Our first stop was the portal’s entrance in front of the hell gate. According to Shaylee, as the two were synced, closing it should also close the other. The timing was the tricky thing. It would really have helped if we had Coyote in on this too. But I had to understand his reasoning. We didn’t want to endanger him, either. And the man, godling, or whatever he really was, was terrified to be around Elmer.
I had to think that fear was not of the unfounded variety and respect it.
While we were waiting for the word to come that Jed’s troops were in place, we were actively guarding the portals. This wasn’t the time for surprises. Like Titania having said one thing in front of Lily and yet planned something far different.
I really hoped that wasn’t the case.
While we were making sure things stayed free and clear on our end of the portal, Taz and Rose were in charge of arranging the last minute wedding. Their task might just have been the hardest of all.
I’d kind of expected my sister to break down with all of this. But she had surprised me by handling it like the Taz I first saw back in Faerie. Which reminded me, I really needed to alert Cin to Taz’s being with child before the festivities started tonight. If anything happened, I wanted her bopped right out of there along with the congregation.
She would be mad as hell at me for arranging that, but hopefully she’d come around when she found out why I’d done it. Benandanti babies are even more special than regular ones. And this one would be a rarity indeed. A full-blood Benandanti.
From there, my mind took the leap to the child that I had agreed to raise as my own. If we managed to get this rift closed, I'd become a mother even before Taz.
Chapter 23
The problem with portals is that even if the beginning and ending of them were here in the human realm, everything in between was in Faerie. Weird, I know, but a fact none the less. Which made this venture a bit tricky.
If Lily couldn’t lead Jed and my girls to the other end of the portal, then our plan wouldn’t work. At least not fully. We could still shut down Titania’s portal here in front of the rift, which was the most important part. But as doing that would immediately shut down the portal at the end of its path, there was no real way to keep Titania from knowing.
With that knowing would come another devious and manipulative plan. One we didn’t know about. That worried me.
So, when Jed called and said they had a portal in sight, I felt a certain sense of relief. Cin immediately popped herself and Shaylee to Jed’s party to close that portal. We wanted to close that one first, so that Shaylee could almost instantly reopen another one. We were lucky that one Faerie portal looked like any other. Especially at a distance. If the guards at that clearing did their job, Titania and her witches wouldn’t be able to get close enough to it to tell the difference.
After a few minutes, my relief started to fizzle out. The queen’s portal in front of me was still there. Seconds later, Cin and Shaylee popped back in, both smiling.
Until they saw the still open portal.
“Damn it,” Shaylee said quietly. “The one I just closed was a decoy.”
I nodded. We really shouldn’t have expected anything less from the queen. But it still left us with a problem.
“Cin, you might want to go and let Jed know that there really isn’t any reason to guard that other pathway.” I paused. “We’ll shut this one down and that will wink out the other end wherever it is, so at least she won’t be able to feed the rift remotely.”
“So, we have extra guards for the wedding, then?” Cin asked. “That might not be such bad thing.”
And then she was gone, only to return minutes later with Jed and the rest of my team. The look on Jed’s face was grim, but determined. We weren’t quite dead
in the water yet.
If we could just keep Titania away from the rift until we were able to close it, the main danger would be over. We still had a plan in place.
I was just really hoping that Rose was right about the amount of love and goodwill at a wedding.
“If done here, I need to take Jed to get his parents,” Cin said.
Jed’s eyes left the rift and focused on the kitsune. “Are you familiar with North Carolina? Can you pop us there?”
She chewed her bottom lip, thinking. “How close are they to Cherokee?”
He grinned. “They live there.”
“Then no problem.”
Just like that our party had shrunk by two members. The only problem was that Cin had forgotten that she was our mode of transportation home.
We were keeping the kitsune busy just getting all of us here and there. Once she got back, she still had to go with Jed to collect all of his volunteers. Her work wasn’t nearly done yet.
I was still really thankful that we had her. I just wish being part of our pack hadn’t cost her the love of her life. We’d never be able to make that up to her.
WE COULD HAVE CALLED Rose for a ride, but she and Taz were busy trying to arrange a quick wedding, and I really didn’t want to interrupt their planning.
So we waited.
Then my curiosity got the better of me. After making sure we were all a safe distance from the rift in the case of wandering demon souls, I made my way over to Macy.
“How are the humans we pulled out holding up?” I asked.
She lifted one shoulder. “Better now. Quite a few of them were recent takings. They’ve already gone back to their families.”
“You think they’ll say anything about where they’ve been?”
Another shoulder lift. “We gave them a cover story to use, but who knows. If they do tell the truth, do you think anyone will believe them? I hated telling them to lie, but that was really the best option for them, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, yes. Not much fun being back to relative safety if you’re just going to be locked up for insanity.”
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