War Song (The Rift Chronicles Book 2)

by BR Kingsolver

  The right side of the card had a white stallion rampant—and very obviously erect. Not exactly shy, is he? I thought.

  He moved closer, taking my hair in his hand. His scent was so masculine—so intensely masculine—that it caused sensations between my legs. I realized his assistant must be a client of Kirsten’s. I recognized that pheromone-laden cologne. I made a note to ask Aleks when his birthday was so I could get me—him—a bottle.

  “Wonderful hair, fantastic raw material,” Rump said. “But damaged. It will require a lot of work.” He reached for my hand and frowned at my nails. “Oh, these are terrible. It’s going to take time and effort. For now, we’ll have to do appliqué.” His hand rose, and his fingertips brushed my cheek. “But other than needing a moisturizer and light makeup, your skin is wonderful, so smooth and soft.”

  We were the same height, so he was looking me directly in the eyes. “Yes, Miss Findlay, I believe I can help you display your full potential. Your ravishing beauty simply needs to find its proper expression.” He smiled. “Your cousin did explain my charges, and my full range of services, did she not?”

  I found myself almost breathless. “Yes. Yes, she did.”

  “Good. Just give my assistant your card, and she can take care of our first session while we get to know each other.”

  The assistant was suddenly there, as if by magik, with her hand out. I glanced around. A cosmetic chair and all the tools for washing and cutting hair were in a room to my right. To my left, where Rump was starting to steer me, was a room with a huge round bed.

  I reached in my pocket and pulled out a payment voucher, electronically signed by Olivia Findlay. The payee line was blank, but the amount was a quarter of a million dollars. I held it up so he could see it, and his eyes widened.

  “I’m seeking some very special services,” I said. “Something a bit unusual. Why don’t we sit down and talk?” I glanced over my shoulder at his assistant. “We won’t be needing you. Why don’t you go file your nails or something—and don’t eavesdrop. I’ll know, and it will take forever to grow that hair out again.” I smiled and let electricity play across my fingertips.

  She got the hint and left the room, closing the door behind her. I immediately cast a spell to disable all the electronics in the apartment. Taking his hand, I led him to a loveseat and pulled him down beside me.

  “This is all yours,” I said, “if you play your cards right. And if you don’t,” I pulled my badge out of my other pocket, “you’ll be old and gray before you dress any more hair.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong!”

  “I didn’t say you have. But Courtney Findlay-Moncrieff has, and if you don’t do exactly what I tell you, you’ll not only miss out on all this money, I’ll charge you with accessory to murder. Because Courtney is a murderer. Do we understand each other?”

  It took some effort to convince Olivia to go along, and then for her to convince the Council. But instead of dropping a magitek bomb on Courtney’s head, the Council answered her complaint in a more civil way.

  If Courtney was caught anywhere outside her compound, she would be arrested and hauled before a magisterial tribunal. But the Council wasn’t cruel. They would allow groceries to be delivered, and her hairdresser would be allowed to visit her weekly.

  Of course, Rump’s assistant would have to accompany him. He didn’t do all that hair washing and nail filing himself, although he did do the hair cutting and styling.

  Unfortunately, Carmelita had no clue about pampering rich women. She just knew how to sit in the chair and be pampered. The elven women had even less understanding of human cosmetology. Elves didn’t need makeup, and the way they styled their hair when they did made any human hairdresser look like an amateur.

  Witch magik operated much differently than mage magik. Kirsten couldn’t just think her hair black, or change her features with a wave of her hand. But with adequate preparation, proper materials, and time, her change into a perfect copy of Rump’s assistant was more solid and less ephemeral than a mage’s illusion or an elf’s glamour. I could touch her and not be able to tell the difference. It would also take the same preparation and magik casting to dissolve the spell.

  And Kirsten knew more about hair and cosmetics—and how to enhance them with magik—than Rump and his assistant could ever learn.

  Kirsten and Rump arrived at Findlay house in his car, showed their identification, were scanned, and their images sent up to the house. Then they were told to drive to the front door.

  Aleks, Carmelita, and I, along with two glamoured elves—Siarin and I invisible—drove up in a grocery delivery truck. The guards waved us through without a second glance after telling us to drive around to the side kitchen door. Which was fine by me—that was the entrance I was most familiar with.

  Aleks pulled the truck up to the loading dock, and we opened the back. Carmelita knocked on the kitchen door, and soon someone opened the large door on the dock.

  One of the elves and Aleks started unloading food while Carmelita stood by with a clipboard checking things off and flirting with the cooks supervising the operation. Siarin and I slipped invisibly through the dock and into the kitchen.

  I led her to the servants’ stairs, and we climbed to the second floor. I could have found young Moncrieff’s room with my eyes closed. An elf spy informed Joren that Courtney had personally emptied my closets and stood on my balcony watching her servants burn my clothes. Then she had put her only grandson in my suite.

  The one major thing that had changed were the two guardians standing outside the hallway door. Even in her craziest moments, Olivia had never been stupid enough to try and lock me in.

  I pulled Siarin back into the stairwell and eased the door closed.

  In a whisper so low that only an elf could possibly hear it, I said, “Do you have any magik to put them to sleep?”

  While we couldn’t see each other, I could tell she hesitated. Silence for a moment, then, “No, not really. You don’t want to kill them?”

  Anyone who had illusions of elves as pacifists should have been there.

  “Too much trouble, too much noise. I want to grab him and get out before anyone knows he’s gone. And if we kill the guardians, they’ll be looking for more than him.”

  “So?”

  I pulled out two small bottles containing potions Kirsten had prepared. Pushing one into her hand, I said, “We sneak up on them. When we’re close enough, hold your breath, pull out the stopper, and roll the bottle toward them. Then we head back here as fast as we can.”

  “Got it.”

  We snuck up within five or six feet of the closest guardian. I stopped, felt around for Siarin’s foot, and stepped on it. Pulling the stopper out of the vial, I rolled it on the floor toward the guardians, then started backing up. Fast. Siarin was a little slow on the start, but her legs were longer than mine, and she kept up. Reaching the stairwell, I opened the door and slipped through with Siarin hot on my heels. My last glimpse of the guardians showed them staring at the little vials on the floor, then they started to slump.

  I let go my breath in a whoosh.

  “How long before it’s safe?” Siarin asked.

  “Five minutes. Know any quick games to pass the time?”

  She chuckled. “I might if you were male. What do we do if someone comes along?”

  I pulled two more vials out of my pocket and handed her one.

  “And if it takes too long and Fasparin and the others have to leave?”

  “I have the key to the trunk of Rump’s car. We drug the boy, stuff him in there, and then you and I go out the secret way. If we can’t get to the car, we take him with us.”

  “Secret way?”

  I winked at her. “The way I used to sneak out at night when I was a teenager. I know they never found it, because it has a magitek lock on it that’s keyed to my DNA.”

  She chuckled. “How long will they be out?”

  “At least a couple of hours.”


  We waited while I worried about everything that could go wrong. Rump had told me that Karolyn was correct about Courtney’s friends. And when Rump called her to work out the details for his visit, they had discussed a little orgy. That wasn’t what I expected. I just wanted him to distract Courtney while we kidnapped William.

  When I told Kirsten about their plans, she laughed. “Don’t worry. As soon as everyone starts to get frisky, I have some incense that will take care of them.”

  “What about you?”

  “Filter plugs in the nostrils. The incense won’t knock them out, but it will cause some wild erotic hallucinations. They’ll still get their jollies, but I’ll just watch. Hell, if I get skittish, I’ll just steal his car and tell the guards he decided to stay the night.”

  “Are you sure?”

  With a chuckle, she said, “Hon, I’ve escaped wilder fraternity parties than this promises to be.”

  Chapter 49

  After the five-minute countdown, I cautiously peeked into the hall, then motioned for Siarin to follow me. I wasn’t worried about the guardians, who were slumped on the floor, but I also had Siarin’s worry about the time. We reached the door, and no one had entered the hallway.

  I unlocked the door, grabbed one of the guardians, and hauled him with me into the suite. Siarin followed with the other guardian.

  “Stuff them into this coat closet,” I said, and tiptoed on into the suite.

  It was early afternoon, so I didn’t expect anyone but William to be there, though I couldn’t be sure. I found him in the sitting room on the couch, using the screen to play a game. He had earplugs in, and I walked right up behind him without him hearing me.

  I clamped down on both his shoulders, holding him in place. He startled and turned his face up to mine. He tried to twist away from me, but I was too strong. Ripping the earplug out of one ear, he asked, “What do you want? What are you doing here?”

  “Your mother would like to see you. Would you rather stay a prisoner here, or join her in Scotland as a free man?”

  I gave him a minute to process things, then said, “Boyo, you’re going, whether willingly or unconsciously. You can always make the choice to come back here, but I don’t think you’re going to get any better opportunities to leave.”

  “Okay. Just let me get a few things.”

  “Are they things money can buy?”

  He gave me a strange look. “Yeah.”

  “Then they can be bought again. Your life can’t.”

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  I slid the Raider out of its holster, showed it to him, then put it away. “Because if I wanted you dead, you’d already be dead.”

  With a short jerking nod of his head, he said, “Yeah. Mom’s in Scotland?”

  “Not yet. Beatrice is, and there’s a plane waiting to take you and your mother there tonight.”

  Siarin waiting in the foyer startled him again, but he grabbed his coat. “You know how to get out of here?” he asked me.

  “This used to be my room.”

  I checked my chrono on the way down the stairs. Twelve minutes had passed from the time we left Aleks and the others. We should be in time to hitch a ride out in the grocery truck.

  The back stairs branched at each floor’s landing. The servants used them to service different parts of the mansion. We hit the first floor, and Siarin started to open the door.

  “No,” I said, stopping her.

  “I thought we were on the second floor.”

  “We were. The kitchen is on the ground floor. The house is one story taller in the back than in the front.”

  Descending another floor, she peeked out, then withdrew, leaving the door open a crack. I put my eye to the gap and saw Carmelita in disguise arguing with a cook.

  “I don’t know what you ordered, I just know what’s on the invoice, and we delivered everything. You want black truffles? I don’t have them. You’ll have to wait until next week.”

  Where they were standing left a clear path across the loading dock and into the back of the truck. The cook’s back was toward us. I pulled back and nodded to Siarin. She grabbed both our hands and cast her glamour over all three of us, then led us across the dock and into the truck. I sat down and pulled Bill and Siarin down with me, then pulled out the Raider and rested it in my lap.

  As we passed Carmelita, she was nodding. “Hey, I hear you. I’ll tell them. If there’s any way I can get them out to you, I will. Okay?”

  The cook grumbled, but agreed. Carmelita turned away, pulled down the back door of the truck, and I heard it lock. The truck doors slammed, and the engine started. The truck started moving.

  “Are we safe?” William whispered.

  “Shhh.”

  He subsided.

  I heard when we stopped by the gate, then as Aleks started to pull away, I heard a helicopter, and he slammed on the brakes.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Karl Rudolf shouted. I looked at William, who looked at me. His fear was obvious.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Siarin, take care of him.”

  I pounded on the front wall of the van, shouting as loud as I could. “Drive on! Drive on!”

  Aleks must have heard me, because the van lurched forward, gained speed, and then there was a horrendous crashing sound that continued for what seemed a long time. Gunfire erupted all around us, and I cringed, but no bullets penetrated the flimsy metal walls of the box we huddled in. After what seemed an eternity, we gained speed, and the ride smoothed out.

  I called Carmelita. “What the hell?”

  “A helicopter landed in front of us. Some guy jumped out and started yelling. When you told us to keep going, we threw up a shield and just rammed the helicopter. It took a while before Aleks could push it out of the way.”

  “What about the gunfire?”

  “They shot at us but didn’t penetrate the shield.”

  “Well, keep those shields up until we’re safe.”

  Carmelita chuckled. “We plan to. We’re sure not going to outrun anyone in this old truck.”

  It was fourteen miles from Findlay House to my mom’s by the fastest route. I could tell when we merged onto the freeway and Aleks sped up. A couple of minutes later, we heard the distinctive sound of a helicopter overhead, and then an explosion. The truck swerved wildly, and then there was a second, larger explosion farther away and above us.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Carmelita when she answered her phone. Not being able to see anything was driving me nuts.

  “Helicopter fired a rocket at the road. I guess they were trying to make us wreck or stop or something.”

  “And?”

  “Aleks blew it up.”

  “With what?” I practically yelled.

  “Magik.” She sounded puzzled that I couldn’t figure that out for myself.

  The three of us in the back of the truck were nervous wrecks by the time the truck stopped, although Siarin would have never admitted it.

  Karolyn and my mom came out to greet us, and Karolyn enveloped her son in a hug.

  “Are you all right?” she asked William.

  “Yeah. A little too much excitement getting here, but I’m fine.”

  She looked at me.

  “We got him away cleanly,” I said, “but somehow Rudolf got wind of things and tried to stop us.”

  Just then, Rump’s sports car careened down the lane and skidded to a stop. His assistant got out and said, “It’s me! Kirsten. Dani, I think you have a leak at the police station. That Rudolf guy came charging in, madder than hell.”

  “Yeah, he tried to stop us,” I said. “Where’s Butt-boy?”

  “Probably still in bed with your aunt. I figured I should duck out while everyone was running around shouting at each other.”

  “Karolyn,” I said, turning to her, “are you ready to go?”

  “As ready as ever. How are we going?”

  I ushered her and her son into my car. Then I turned to Aleks. �
��Want to go for a ride?”

  He grinned. “Sure. Haven’t had so much fun in years.”

  He opened the shotgun-side door, and Kirsten squeezed past him into the back seat with Karolyn and William. Aleks looked to me, and I shrugged.

  As soon as we were past the narrow lane leading from the road to mom’s house, I took the car into the air.

  “Are you planning on playing fighter pilot with Rudolf’s helicopters?” Aleks asked.

  “I have a lot more room to maneuver up here, and they can’t blow holes in the road in front of me,” I answered. Raising my voice, I said, “Anyone who can cast a shield around this car, there’s no better time than the present.”

  My car was smaller, quieter, and more difficult to see than a helicopter, so we made it most of the way across the city before we ran into any trouble. I was flying as low as I dared, but a helicopter spotted us. It was faster than my modified car and swooped in, firing a rocket at us.

  The rocket exploded against our shield, the shock sending us tumbling. I managed to get the car under control and steered us higher for more safety.

  Looking around frantically, I asked, “Where is he?”

  “Behind us,” William’s said.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the helicopter lining us up.

  “Hold onto your breakfast,” I said, pulling the car up into a climb. I kept pulling the car into a loop. When I leveled off, we were behind the helicopter.

  “Slow down!” Aleks said, and held out his hand in front of him. A shaft of white light bored a hole through my windshield and struck the helicopter, which exploded in a spectacular fashion. I hit the brakes and pulled the nose of the car up and to the side. Perhaps some debris hit our shield, but I managed to fly over most of it.

  A detachment of Whittaker’s mage-soldiers was waiting for us when we reached the airport. I took the car down, landed on the tarmac, and drove over to the hanger where I had put Beatrice on the plane.

  We hustled Karolyn and her son out of the car and rushed them into the hanger. William charged up the stairs into the plane like his tail was on fire, but as Karolyn started to climb the stairs, she stopped.