by M. H. Bonham
“Dude, listen to what you’re saying—to a goddess.” Tuzren slapped my head.
“Oww! Stop that!” I said, bringing my hand up to bat the little demon off my shoulder.
“Do you doubt my abilities?” Eir spoke with a hint of menace. Her brow furrowed and she frowned. She no longer looked like the gentle lady, but more like a fierce warrior.
“No…it’s just…I don’t know…” I stammered, taken aback by the sudden change in her demeanor. “You have to admit, that’s quite a curve ball out of left field, you know?”
“Great, he’s now mixing metaphors.” Tuzren shrugged. “Well, at least they both reference baseball.”
Despite her anger, my statement caused one side of her mouth to quirk up. “If you mean it was unexpected, indeed it was. I did not expect you to have Dark Elf ancestry.”
“But that would make me evil, wouldn’t it?” I winced at the thought.
“Do you feel evil?” Eir asked.
“Well, no. At least, I don’t think so.”
“That is your answer.”
I took a deep breath. “I don’t understand.”
Eir smiled gently. “Are humans evil?”
“Well, some are, but most aren’t,” I said.
Eir nodded. “How about Dwarves?”
“Well, Professor Bailey was evil, but I don’t think all Dwarves are like him.”
“What about werewolves and demons?”
I took another deep breath. “Okay, I get it. It’s not the race; it’s the individual. But aren’t some races more inclined to commit evil acts like Vampires and Orcs?”
“It depends on whether you’re a Vampire or an Orc.” The goddess shrugged. “Sometimes what we consider evil is simply a matter of survival to them. Sometimes it takes someone to point out the better way is to cooperate.”
I never really thought about the fact that Dark Elves could be good. Did that mean Light Elves could be evil? My mind went back to Elryn killing those two soldiers in cold blood after we incapacitated them. “Do you know how much Dark Elf is in me? I mean, I don’t have pointed ears or gray skin.”
Eir nodded. “My guess is that your Dark Elf ancestor may have entered your lines a thousand years ago.”
A thousand years. For a normal human, that would be thirty generations. But for mage lines? Given that a mage could live three times or more the normal lifespan of a human, it could be as little as ten generations or less. And given that Elves were nearly immortal, a half or quarter Elf could reduce the generations to a handful. “Could an ancestor of mine still be alive then?”
“It could be, but unlikely given the Cataclysm of the Drow’s universe.”
I nodded. I switched subjects. “Did my blood help you find a cure?”
“Inconclusive,” she said. “I may be able to save your friends, but that would require genetic resequencing and insertion of Drow genetics. It would take too long on a large scale for an entire population hit. I can, however, heal those who aren’t far enough along in the disease. While Officer Duncan would most likely not mind, it may be an issue for Elryn.”
“Elryn,” I repeated. “She already knows. She said that I was one of them. I didn’t understand, but now I do.”
“I will talk to her, but it is unlikely she would go through the procedure, if it meant she would carry something of the Drow in her genes.”
“Stubborn Elf,” I sighed. “I’ll try to talk to her.”
“Right now, I need you to return to Svartalfheim,” Eir said. “The Elfshot is a sure way for the Drow to spread a pandemic. Only a few people need to be exposed for it to spread rapidly.”
“I heard the governments were still busy closing the Gateways before I left,” I said. “And the Dark Elves can always open more portals.”
“Then, it will be up to you to stop them before they can spread the disease among humankind and the Light Elves.”
“Me?” I squeaked. “Seriously? I set foot in Svartalfheim/Nidavellir again and I’d likely to be shot on sight.”
“I’ll send you with some of my Elves who have undergone the genetic resequencing,” Eir said. “I can disguise you so the Dark Elves won’t recognize you. You will need to find the disease, those who can replicate it, and Vindar, and destroy them.”
“But Duncan killed Vindar,” I said. “I saw it.”
“Duncan shot Vindar.” Eir corrected me. “Although one of the rounds got through his dragonscale armor, the armor deflected it and it hit him in a nonlethal area.”
“Look, I’m a cop, not a hired assassin. My captain would probably claim I’m not even a very good cop at that having gotten five partners on disability in a month. Assuming I even get out of this alive, I have a track record that says everyone around me except a demon gets injured. You could probably find someone better.” I crossed my arms. Goddess or not, I wasn’t about to get involved in something I knew I couldn’t win.
“There is no one better.”
“How about that dual destruction team in New York City? I hear they have a hellhound. Or that wizard in Chicago?”
“Both booked solid with other deities.” Eir’s thin smile told me that I wouldn’t be long in any world if I continued my objections. “If you want a hellhound, Fenrir is available on loan.”
“Fenrir? Like the wolf that brings on the apocalypse?”
“The one in the same.”
“Sorry, not interested in Armageddon, if it’s all the same to you. So, if you wouldn’t mind showing me the way back to Earth, that would be most appreciated.”
Eir inclined her head. “This is not a request. You are going with my Elves. You owe me for caring for your friends.”
“Sorry, already got a date. She’s a pretty little werewolf named Luna. I’m sure you’ve seen her.” I turned to leave.
Suddenly, I found myself on the ledge on a planet with volcanos and massive lava flows, surrounded by Dark Elves.
“Shit.”
Chapter Eight
“Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore,” I said. It was hot, really hot, and not in a good way. I felt like someone had thrown me into a 350 degree oven. Instead of my normal clothes, I was wearing dragonscale armor and carrying my Vorpal blade and another short sword that had a dark blade. I drew both and scraped my armor in the cross-draw, dropping the short sword when it clipped a scale. “Damn!”
The Dark Elves had a reaction I didn’t anticipate: they laughed.
“This is the great warrior Eir sent with us?” said the Elf, presumably the leader. He was quite distinguishable by the nasty scar that ran along his face. The other Drow-lookalikes laughed at his comment.
I sheathed the short sword and the Vorpal blade, pulled out my gun, and shot him.
The Elf fell over. The laughter died.
“Han shot first. Remember that, asshole,” I said.
The Elf got up, a lead slug flattened against his dragonscale armor. “You could’ve killed me.”
“Yeah, well remember that.” Actually I couldn’t. I had lead ball loaded in my Glock and there was no way it could’ve penetrated dragonscale. But he didn’t have to know that. I holstered the weapon. “Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, my name is Ironspell. And you are…?”
“Garik,” the Elf said. He rubbed his solar plexus where the bullet hit and took the chunk of lead off his armor. “Captain of Eir’s warriors.”
“She sent me the B-team, eh?” I said. “I pity the fool who didn’t hire the A-Team.”
They gave me blank looks.
“Ever watch 80s TV shows?” I offered.
Still blank.
“Tough room,” I muttered. I looked around. Tuzren was nowhere in sight. “Great. I could’ve used the demon.”
Garik shook his head. “Too many risks. The Drow would recognize him from your earlier adventures and kill us all.”
“Newsflash. They’ll recognize me the moment I show up.”
“No, they won’t. Eir altered your appearance.” He hand
ed me a small mirror.
I looked into it. A Dark Elf looked back, complete with gray skin and pointed ears. It looked slightly like me, but not quite like me. I was surprised I didn’t notice my hands were gray. “How did she do that? Illusion?”
Garik looked at me like I was an idiot. I fingered the Glock in my holster. “She made some modifications to you before we left.”
“What?” I stared at him. “Last thing I remember was telling her that I wasn’t going.”
Garik rolled his eyes. “That was two days ago.”
“Two days ago.” Apparently Eir had the ability of erasing memories. Well, she was a goddess. I took a deep breath, despite the hot air and blinked. “Wait a second. I have asthma.”
“Had,” Garik said. “She cured you of it. Said she didn’t know how you became such a good warrior with it.”
“Inhalers.” I felt a stream of sweat run down my back. Maybe we needed to continue our conversation somewhere else instead of baking. “Okay, so what’s the plan?”
Garik looked down at the molten rock streaming below us. “I suggest we get underground or we’ll all be cooked medium rare in a matter of minutes.”
“Good idea—where?” I asked.
“Eir briefed me on the cavern complex,” Garik said. “We need to go down a level and go through the lesser used entrances.”
“So, we get closer to the lava?”
“Yes.” Garik motioned his team of five other Elves to come with us. “There are steps that lead down to the entrance.”
He led us to what looked like a precipice but had a flight of stairs roughly hewn into the rock. It was open along one side—and the drop was a doozy. Miss a step and you’d be cooked faster than Gollum when he fell into Mount Doom. Or Anakin when Obi-wan Kenobi defeated him. Or…well, you get the idea.
So, I followed the foolhardy crew who signed up for this mission, muttering about how this totally violated OSHA standards. It did nothing for my fear of heights. I kept myself as close to the stone wall as possible as we walked down. Let us not say that the Drow don’t have a flare for the dramatic.
The path on the lower level hugged the cliff wall. I felt dizzy from the heat, even though the river of fire ran maybe thirty feet below us. I couldn’t imagine any creatures living on this rock, but why they had to try to kill people on Earth, when many would accept immigrants, was inconceivable to me. Still, if Vindar and the Dark Elves insisted on killing people, something had to be done. Only, I wasn’t happy about being conscripted for this expedition. I would have some choice words with Eir, assuming I survived this.
We all reached the doorway to the inside caverns, and it didn’t surprise me to see the door shut and locked. The door was plain with no writing, making our job that much more difficult. There was no knob, no apparent mechanism, and no ward runes. You wouldn’t even know it was a door, except that there were obvious cuts where the door fit the rest of the rock.
Gandalf had nothing on this. There wasn’t even something carved over the door that said, Speak Friend, and Enter.
At Garik’s direction, the Elves first pushed on the door, but it didn’t come free. Then, Garik tried several simple incantations to open it, but to no avail. I sensed he didn’t have a lot of magic in him, despite being a Light Elf. I glanced at the group. We were all sweating and looked on the verge of heat stroke. So, they sat down and drank their water.
I hated being so close to the edge, so I scooted next to the door and leaned against the rock. Surprisingly, it felt cool to the touch. I took a swig of water from a canteen on my belt and pressed my face against the stone door.
Suddenly, it moved. I nearly leapt back. I glanced at the Elves, who had come to their feet. “What did you do?” Garik asked.
“Nothing. I just leaned against the stone. It felt cool.”
“Silvar, push on the door.” An Elf named Silvar walked over to the stone door and pushed. Nothing. Garik looked askance at me. “Try pushing on it.”
They gave me some room and I pushed on the door. It swung inward, easily. “I, uh, don’t understand.”
“You’re one of them.” Silvar drew his sword. “Eir didn’t tell us that we’d be working with a Dark Elf. She said we’d be working with a human.”
“Calm down, Silvar.” Garik stepped between us. “Ironspell is human. He just has a Dark Elf ancestor.”
Silvar glared at me. “That makes him a Dark Elf.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “It makes me a happy accident for you.”
“How so?” Garik glanced at me.
Idiots, all of them. Eir really did send me with the B-team. Or the B-Ark. Whichever. Assuming I survived this ludicrous mess, I was going to have a stern talking to the goddess. “It means I can probably circumvent most wards and locks they’ve placed.”
Garik nodded. “Good point.”
I pulled a flashlight from my belt—apparently they had outfitted me with a decent enough kit—turned it on and peered inside. The passage went downward, which I assumed was where the Dark Elves and Dwarves lived. I motioned to the Elves to enter and then closed the door. No sense in alerting anyone they had intruders in their caves by not following standard operating procedure (SOP).
We crept down the passage, expecting to be jumped at any minute. But, nothing popped out at us. Not even a ghost or Tommyknocker. I used my magical sight, but the tunnel showed nothing unusual. Perhaps the Drow didn’t think the Light Elves would enter their domain. It seemed foolish, but perhaps they knew their Light Elf brethren better than I did. The Light Elves despised Dark Elves—as you could tell from Silvar’s reaction to me having a tiny trace of Dark Elf DNA—and will kill the Drow on sight. I had witnessed it myself when Elryn killed two Dark Elves without mercy, once we incapacitated them. The image of those two people killed still haunted me.
Not surprisingly, the passage grew hotter the lower we traveled. I felt like I was about to collapse from heatstroke, when Garik stopped us for a rest. He came up to me. “Do you know any good cooling spells?”
In truth, I had been racking my brain for something to cool us off. The only spell I knew for cooling was making ice as a party trick. It needed enough water to work—something I didn’t think we had here, except sweat. If I did manage to pull off the freezing trick, the relief would be short lived and a waste of my power. I took a swig of water, figuring I would go through it even before we found Vindar. “No, not really.”
“Hmm.” Silvar said, looking as grumpy and hot as I felt.
“Did you check the spell book Eir gave you?” Garik asked.
“Spell book? Eir didn’t give me…” I hesitated and checked a bag I was carrying. It was light and felt empty, but when I put my hand inside it, I felt a book. I pulled it out. It was brown leather bound and with gold lettering said, Useful Spells, on the cover. “Huh. I guess she did.” I shut off the flashlight and conjured a light orb over the book. Flipping through the pages, I came across spells for attacks, defense, and even to summon water. As I turned the page, I found a spell which created a personal climate controlled shield. “Caeli condiciones ratio!” I pointed to Garik.
Garik relaxed. “That’s better. Can you do that for everyone?”
I went through and pointed at each of the Elves. Soon they were no longer sweating. I could just see a faint magical shimmer surrounding them if I used my magical sight. Otherwise, they looked normal. I used the incantation on myself last. Suddenly, the air was amazingly cool and comfortable. I took a breath in and nodded. I wondered what other spells I could learn from this book.
More importantly, I wondered what I had lost in my memory. Goddess or no goddess, I was feeling less charitable by the minute. Sure, she provided me with possible spells, but if she really wanted to fix the entire Elfshot problem, she should be down here, not me. Being a goddess had to amount for something besides getting a B-team to do the job for her.
Hell’s Bells, Elryn wouldn’t take the possible cure because it was derived from my blood loaded wi
th Drow genetics, so why was I bothering to go on this mission, albeit coerced? Sure, people would get hit with Elfshot, but realistically, how many? A couple hundred? A couple thousand? The CDC would have them quarantined and if we could convince the paranormal branch of the CDC that genetic manipulation would end it, they’d be handing out cures to all the doctors’ offices. Sure, it would require a Drow or two sacrificed for the mission, but once they got the genetic material, they could use their labs to manufacture it. It’s not like humanity hadn’t dealt with disease before.
It sounded callous, but in my effort to save humanity from toxic alchemical gas, millions of people still died. I suppose that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the nearly seven billion humans on the planet, but it still horrified me. I had that heavy burden to deal with. I had been avoiding the issue by not thinking about it. But being thrust into the Drow world for the second day in a row, brought that crashing down. Now, the Light Elf who had helped save the world with my father and helped me save the world now was dying and she was too stubborn to take the cure because it would taint her with my genes.
Screw the Elves, I told myself. Humanity did just fine without them. I flipped through the book and saw a portal generating spell next to a doppelganger spell. The portal spell was presumably for when we finished our mission. I glanced at the members of my party. I didn’t owe them anything.
“Ut hic de mecum in infernum,” I said, pouring as much power into it as I could muster. Before Garik could stop me, I vanished.
Chapter Nine
I appeared in the middle of the 16th Street Mall. If you’ve been to Denver, you know that 16th Street runs from the Capitol Building clear to LoDo. It’s full of shops and has a free bus running up and down 16th Street. There’s no other traffic besides foot and bicycle traffic. The Mall is usually crowded most times. Which made me stare at it now.
It was empty of people. A trashed out bus sat on the corner of 16th and Arapahoe. Arapaho was riddled with burned out Toyotas, Lexuses, and BMWs. A Porsche Cayenne made it into 16th Street before it flipped over. Garbage piled up everywhere. The buildings along 16th Street were boarded up, but some had shattered windows and at least one establishment had its door torn off. I could smell putrid smoke wafting from buildings. No electricity, of course. I checked my cell phone and found No Signal. Granted, the mountains always blocked the signal, but this was downtown Denver. A couple of street mutts moved from one trash pile to another.