Quest Realto lived on the Eastside, like I did, and she was one of the portal keepers. She guarded a portal that led to Annwn for Cernunnos. A coyote shifter, she and I had become friendly over the months I had been traveling to the Celtic Otherworld for my therapy sessions.
I finished eating while he chatted with her on the phone.
“You’ll be there until one? All right, is it okay if we come over in about an hour?”
I glanced at the clock. It was going on eleven.
“Thanks,” Kipa said. “We’ll see you then.” He hung up. “I should have asked you first. Will noon be good for you?”
“It’s fine. I’m dressed and I don’t have many errands to run today.” My phone rang and I glanced at it. Vixen. I answered. “Hey Vixen, how are you?”
“I’m fine, dear heart. I wanted to check on you and to ask what you thought about Lenny. You didn’t call me back last night. I’m hurt,” they said in a melodramatic voice.
“Oh, I imagine you’re so butthurt.” I laughed. “I’m all right, actually. Last night I had a bit of a meltdown, but today I’m okay. As far as Lenny, he’s got an attachment plugged into him. I don’t know whether it’s a spirit or a Walk-In, but I’ll try to figure it out. Meanwhile, I was attacked in the middle of the night by some astral nasty that managed to slip through my wards. Raj saved me, and later today I’m headed over to Annwn with Kipa.”
Vixen paused, then—their voice suddenly serious—asked, “You were attacked, girl? Are you all right?”
“I’m okay, though without Raj, I’d be dead now.” I was about to tell them that Raj had told me what it looked like, then stopped. Vixen didn’t know that Raj talked, and we wanted to keep it that way until Raj was ready. Raj had a right to his privacy.
“Do you know what it was?” Vixen asked.
“No, but I’m hoping to find out from Kipa’s friend—apparently they’re knowledgeable about all sorts of Cryptos and I know this creature wasn’t a spirit. I think it was an astral entity, but maybe it had the power of invisibility.” For some reason, I felt skittish about telling Vixen anything more about the incident, so I promised to call them later and got off the phone.
“I’m not sure why, but I didn’t want to talk to Vixen,” I said.
“Did you two have a scuffle?”
I snorted. “Dude, if Vixen and I got into it, that would be the end of me. Taipan snake shifter and a Charmer as well? Nope, I wouldn’t stand a chance. I feel very uneasy about their friend—Lenny. The one who’s got the…thing…attached to him. When I met him yesterday, I felt like he was watching me. Not Lenny, but whatever it is has hold of him.”
Kipa paused. I could practically see the wheels turning in his head. “Do you think that whatever it is realized you knew about it?”
“I have my suspicions, but I don’t know for sure.”
Kipa pulled his hair back into a ponytail and held it fast with a hair tie. He leaned back in his chair, staring at me with a contemplative look. He was truly gorgeous. We had said the “L” word a couple months back, but now and then it occurred to me that falling in love with a god was fraught with landmines. He was immortal, and while I was Ante-Fae, that didn’t mean I’d live forever. But I also reminded myself that he had spent decades with a human woman he had fallen in love with, and he stayed by her side until she died. And that…that was the story that had made me admit to myself that I was in love with him.
“I have a thought,” he said. “What if the attachment is what attacked you last night?”
I shook my head. I had been so tired that the thought had never crossed my mind. But the moment he said it, I could feel an alarm going off inside. “Fuck. Fuck me hard.”
“Glad to oblige, love, but what do you think about my idea?” He was still grinning, but his eyes told me he was taking this completely seriously.
“You may have something there. I don’t want to believe it because that means that Lenny’s creature is onto me and managed to find out where I live. Being stalked by an astral creature—if that’s what it is—isn’t my idea of fun.”
“Neither is being killed by one,” Kipa said, his smile vanishing. “We have to find out what that thing is so we know how to deal with it.” He paused. “Before we go, we need to beef up the wards so that Raj is protected. Although he seemed to hold his own last night.”
“True, but we can’t take a chance on the hope that he can do that again. He seems to have no control over the power. We can’t rely on it and if anything happened to him, I’d never forgive myself.” I glanced at the clock. “Crap, I need to feed the ferrets—”
“Already done. While you were sleeping. But you should run in and say hello to them. Elise seems to be feeling neglected. I’ll clean up while you do that, and then we’ll head over to Quest’s place. Make sure you’re dressed for walking through the snowy woods. My friend in Annwn lives in a cottage on the edge of Thicklewood.”
I’d never heard of Thicklewood. I knew all about Cernunnos’s palace, and Y’Bain—the massive forest that spread through Annwn. I also had some knowledge of Brighid’s castle. But I had no experience with the lesser-known places.
I hurried down the hall and entered the ferrets’ room. I had three ferrets, except they weren’t really ferrets. They were human spirits who had been bound into ferret form when I tried to free them from a tree they had been trapped in. The spell had gone awry thanks to a curse placed on the tree. Ever since then, they had lived with me, sliding more into their ferret natures with each year that passed. They’d been with me since the 1980s, and I had no idea how long they would live, but until then, I would keep trying to find the spell that kept them trapped. In the end, though, even if I wasn’t able to free them, they’d eventually age and die, and that would free them to move on.
Elise, a beautiful white ferret, was the most aware. She always managed to keep hold of her core nature. Gordon was still trying, but he was having trouble maintaining his memories of his former life. Templeton was almost fully ferret now, and I didn’t hold hope that he would be able to talk to me much longer.
I let them out of their cage. Templeton meandered over for a few head scritches before heading back to curl up in his bedding for a nap. Gordon began to zoom around the room, bouncing off the walls and wrestling with toys. As usual, it was Elise who came over for me to pick her up. I set her on the table in front of me and stroked her back. She leaned into my touch, sighing happily.
I missed you the past few days.
“I’m sorry. I know I’ve been AWOL, but I hope you haven’t been too lonely.”
Actually, your mother spent some time with us yesterday. She’s a lovely…Bean Sidhe. I’ve always wondered about the Bean Sidhe. When I was alive, I used to study mythology, you know. I pictured hags—terrifying and reaper like.
“You haven’t seen my mother when she’s working,” I said with a laugh. “She’s not nearly as pleasant. When she goes into full Bean Sidhe mode, her shriek can kill. Anyway, I wanted to check in and see if everything’s okay.”
What was the commotion last night? I felt something in the house, but I couldn’t tell what it was. It frightened me. And I felt you were in danger but I couldn’t figure out a way to tell you.
I stared at her for a moment. That Elise had felt it too meant that the creature who attacked me was powerful. Elise wasn’t particularly psychic.
“You felt it?”
Yes, I did. So did Gordon and Templeton, but they weren’t easily able to verbalize what they felt. They huddled up near me and kept talking about “the monster.”
If the ferrets were all feeling what had attacked me, that meant it had a great deal of power and I had to make certain the house was warded. I took my responsibilities as protector for Raj and the ferrets seriously, and I couldn’t imagine someone hurting them because of my carelessness.
“All right, thank you for telling me. I’ll try to make certain the creature can’t return. I have to go, but I’ll try to spend some ti
me in here tonight or tomorrow. I’d let you run around the house while we’re gone, but I don’t trust Raj not to accidentally step on you.”
I picked Elise up and cuddled her for a few moments, then shooed them back into their cage and secured the door. The entire back wall was one massive ferret complex so they had plenty of room to play inside the cage, and they had hidey-holes and a couple wheels to run on and space to be alone if they wanted to.
As I left the room, it occurred to me that if Kipa and I ever moved in together, we might want to buy a bigger house with a family room that I could turn into the ferrets’ sanctuary. Realizing what I was thinking, I tried to clear my thoughts. I wasn’t ready for a ring yet. Or a permanent roommate.
Chapter Eleven
Before we left, I looked through my ritual room, trying to find the most powerful wards I possessed. I thought I had installed the strongest ones to guard against Pandora, but on the off chance, I decided to look anyway. I was glad that I did because in the back of one of the altar cabinets where I stored all my spell components, I found a super-charged crystal that I had forgotten about. Fire and ice quartz—the spike was incredibly beautiful, with hundreds of fractures running inside the clear crystal. A multitude of prisms shimmered inside the spike.
I had charged it under a Black Moon a few years back, dedicating it to Arawn—the god of death, to whom I was pledged—and then put it away and promptly forgotten about it. But the crystal was still humming, and I realized that maybe sometimes we forgot we owned things to save them for a time when we’d need them more.
Carrying it out to the space in an étagère where I had arranged the spell grid for the wards, I added it to the center and immediately the energy of the house shifted. It was as though I had muffled the outer world, on both the physical and the magical levels.
“Whoa, that made things tighten up,” Kipa said, coming to my side.
“Yeah, it feels like I raised the drawbridge over the moat.” I glanced up at him. “That’s the best I can do for now. I’m going to run and change quickly, then we’ll head out.”
“Don’t be too long,” he said as I dashed down the hallway. “I promised Quest we’d be there by noon.”
I didn’t answer but darted into my bedroom, where I stripped off my dress. I kept on the leggings, but slid on a pair of gauchos in black. I pulled on a hunter green V-neck sweater and belted it with a silver belt. Then I slid my feet into boots that came up to my knee. They were black leather, with a half-inch heel, and I would be able to walk through the woods in them. Despite my love for hardware, I had chosen a pair with rubber soles. They had a single buckle and strap across the top of my foot. Hardware made noise, and I wasn’t sure how dangerous the Thicklewood forest was.
I shrugged into the jacket I had enchanted for warmth, and then added a pair of leather gloves, and draped a blue scarf around my neck. Another moment and I transferred everything in my purse to a backpack, added a bottle of water and half a dozen protein bars, and I was ready to go. I stopped in the living room to bribe Raj to be good and not get in trouble, then headed to the door.
There, I saw that while Kipa was still wearing his jeans and rust-colored sweater, he had added a windbreaker to the mix, and he, too, had a pack slung over his shoulder. He handed me a pair of earmuffs and slid his over his ears. They were fuzzy and warm, but I could still hear perfectly well.
“Ready?”
“Let’s go,” I said, as we headed out.
* * *
It was snowing, and the flakes were piling up for real now. Seattle got snow every now and then, and it usually didn’t last long when we did, but every few years we got a massive punch. It wasn’t as bad as it had been the year before, but the inches were slowly creeping higher and I had the feeling the storm would be around for a week or so before moving off.
The air was so crisp and cold it hurt my lungs and I started to cough, then covered my nose until we were inside the car and the heater was blowing out cool air. It would take a few minutes for it to warm up, so we waited. By the time Kipa had finally de-iced the windshield, the car was warm and toasty.
The drive to Quest Realto’s place usually took fifteen minutes from my house, but today it stretched out to twenty-five minutes thanks to how slick the roads were. We pulled into her driveway promptly at the stroke of noon. She was waiting inside, but when we stepped out of my car, she opened the door and hustled down the porch steps. Like most coyote shifters, she was thin to the point of being gaunt, and she had a weathered look to her. She waved us over toward the massive oaks that stood in her front yard.
“It’s blowing up a storm,” she said. “I know we were supposed to get a few inches, but another cold front is sweeping down into the area and it’s going to bring subfreezing temperatures. I can feel it in my bones. So make sure you’ve got candles and flashlights ready, because that kind of storm brings outages.”
I paused, frowning. “Should we go now? If the temperatures are dropping—”
“Everything will be all right. We’ll be back by tonight, so Raj will be fine.” Kipa wrapped his arm around my shoulders and kissed the top of my head. “I promise, everything will be fine.”
I wasn’t sure about that, but I decided to trust him. I turned to Quest. “When did they say the subfreezing temperatures are supposed to get here?”
“By tomorrow morning. They’re moving in overnight. The weather forecasters are saying it’s an arctic front like we haven’t seen in years. I don’t think it’s supposed to bring much more snow, but we may have freezing rain or ice storms. So I suggest whatever you have to do over in Annwn, you hurry it up and get back as soon as you can.”
Kipa glanced at the oak trees. “Is the portal ready?”
Quest jammed her hands in the pockets of her parka. “Yeah, it is. I won’t be here when you get back, but I think it should be set fine for your return. Good luck with whatever you’re doing.”
Kipa took my hand and we headed toward the portal. This was the one I used when I went to see my therapist, and I was familiar with the vortex.
As I looked up, I could see a giant spider’s web of energy between the trees. The glowing strands crackled and snapped as we approached. The trees themselves were sentient, like all portal trees, although not many people knew that. They could sense us, and if they didn’t want us to go through, they could stop us. But most often, portal trees paid no attention to who used them, or why. Only when their energy was harnessed by one of the gods or a powerful magician did they keep a watchful eye on the travelers passing through.
“Ready?” Kipa asked.
“Let’s go. Let’s get this over with.”
Holding hands, we stepped through the portal, into the mist beyond.
* * *
As we exited the vortex, we landed near Cernunnos’s palace. We were on a road that led directly to it, first passing through a small village that I was unfamiliar with. Most of the inhabitants were Elves. As Kipa and I stepped onto the cobblestones that surrounded the portal, forming sort of an entry pad, the portal keeper stepped forward. He took one look at Kipa and bowed.
“Welcome, Lord of the Wolves.” He glanced at me, and acknowledged me with a silent nod.
Kipa looked at him, frowning. “Since when did Cernunnos begin stationing portal keepers to greet visitors?”
“Lord Kipa, he ordered us to begin doing this about a month ago, should any of the Dragonni decide to try to invade Annwn.”
It was then that I noticed the portal keeper was heavily armed. He had a bow on him that looked like the equivalent of an elephant gun, and the bolts in his quiver were massively thick. I couldn’t help but wonder how strong he had to be in order to cock the bow string.
Kipa must have been thinking the same thing because he said, “Those must be poisoned bolts, then?”
Not poisoned,” the portal keeper said. “They’re allentar.”
Kipa whistled. “Then yes, they could take down one of the Dragonni. Not kill them, but
take them down for a while. Good thinking on Cernunnos’s part.” He wrapped his arm around my waist. “Let’s get moving. We don’t want to waste any time.”
“What’s allentar?” I asked. The word sounded familiar but I couldn’t recall what it was or where I had heard of it.
“Allentar is ilithiniam that has been fortified with dragon scales.”
I whistled. Ilithiniam was a magical metal that was incredibly strong and it held magic better than any other metal. The dwarves mined most of it. Combine it with dragon scales and it had to be almost invincible.
The path from the portal sloped downward, through an open meadow toward the village ahead. There was snow here in Annwn too—massive amounts of it compared to Seattle. The pathway had been shoveled, but it was still slick and to the sides were mounds of snow.
Beneath the banks of snow that had been shuffled off of the pathway, there was at least three feet of snow spreading across the field. To either side of the field stretched the great forest of Y’Bain. It bordered most of Cernunnos’s lands and the massive trees grew so tall they almost blocked out what light there was. The forest proper was always gloomy except for sporadic clearings where the light shone through. Cernunnos’s palace was on the other side of the village, probably two miles ahead.
Even in my enchanted jacket, I still shivered because the rest of me could feel the cold. We came to a steep spot on the path where the slope had at least a 15 percent grade. I stared at the descending trail.
“Dude, I’m not sure I can navigate that without falling flat on my butt. My boots have good tread on them, but that’s a steep slope and I’m not exactly the most graceful person in the world.”
Kipa grinned, shaking his head. “True enough. Tell you what,” he said. “It would be easier on both of us if I shifted into my wolf form and you rode on my back.”
“That might be best, since you seem to have good traction when it comes to snow.” I stood back as Kipa shifted into his wolf form. It was like watching a movie that had been sped up, to where his movements were almost a blur. The gods didn’t have to disrobe before changing form, which was a definite advantage.
Witching Fire: A Wild Hunt Novel, Book 16 Page 10