The view narrowed, rushing toward the collapsed walls and tilted towers. Len had a stomach-swooping sense of the view plunging down, like cresting the top of a rollercoaster. Abruptly, the vortex went black as pitch.
“Be ready,” Nezri said, and Len realized with a jolt that he wasn’t ready... he wasn’t ready for any of this, what the hell had he even been thinking—
The edges of the vortex burst into flame, becoming a portal. “Now!” Danon barked, and leapt through the burning oval. Nezri followed—hands raised, ready to cast magic in attack or defense.
Len sucked in a sharp breath and lunged after her, emerging into blackness so complete that the crackling orange glow of the portal didn’t even make a dent in the murk. It snapped shut an instant after he was clear of it, and Len couldn’t have seen his hand in front of his face if he’d used it to slap himself.
He didn’t dare move, didn’t dare call out, for fear of alerting guards or worse. The place stank of mildew and rot. Before he could properly begin to panic, one of the Fae twins cast a glowing ball of light. It rose above their heads, but even magical light struggled to cut through the heavy blanket of darkness. A second sparkling ball joined the first, adding enough illumination to properly see their surroundings—which appeared to be an ancient underground vault.
The walls were rough-cut stone, slimy with age and damp. The floor was dirt... or maybe it had once been stone as well, but it had long since been reclaimed by the creeping earth. Aside from sickly blooms of fungi clinging to the crumbling walls, the place was free of Dhuinne’s rampaging plant life.
Maybe that wasn’t surprising, since it lacked even the barest hint of light.
Nezri and Danon stood ready for anything that might come their way as they looked around the echoing space. Danon froze and caught his breath.
“There,” he said, and started toward the far end of the vault, still cloaked in darkness to Len’s human eyes.
The glowing orbs floated in that direction as well, spreading their pool of light until it slid over a raised plinth, like a pagan altar. The two Fae hurried forward, Len following a couple of steps behind, as he’d been told. When he got close enough to make sense of the dark lump of a shape lying on the plinth, he inhaled sharply, fear and anger slamming into him in a tangled mass.
A battered black cat lay unmoving on its side, one ear tattered and chunks of fur missing from its body. Around its neck, a thin iron collar circled bare, blistered skin—a chain running from the restraint to a heavy bolt driven into the stone.
SIX
LEN TWITCHED, barely able to stop himself from lunging toward the unmoving cat. He burned with the need to check for a pulse, for breathing—any sign of life.
Before he could decide whether to push past the twins and take his chances, a low growl rumbled around the stinking space, raising the hairs on the back of Len’s neck. Red eyes glowed in the dim light as a darker shadow emerged from behind the plinth. The outline was vaguely familiar, and it made Len’s right hand itch for a canister of pepper spray.
“Cu-sidhe,” Nezri said, voice tight. She and Danon both dropped into fighting stances, leaving Len to wonder why the buggering fuck one of the dog-like sidhe was being used as a guard for the cat-sidhe. Shouldn’t they be on the same side?
“Are we sure the cu-sidhe isn’t a prisoner here, too?” Len asked, backing up a few steps so he wasn’t crowding Nezri in case they needed to fight.
The hellhound sprang for Danon, who darted sideways with a cry and slashed at it with his sword.
“Okay, guess not,” Len muttered, as his heart thundered in his throat.
Nezri flung a blast of crackling magic at the beast, but it seemed to slide off the hound’s matte black hide without doing damage. Len inched backward until his shoulders met the slimy, mold-covered wall as the fight exploded into the open space in front of the stone altar. He eased sideways as the cu-sidhe and the Forsaken lunged and slashed in a deadly dance, until he was able to slip behind the plinth and get a closer look at the injured cat.
He let out a sigh of relief as he saw the animal’s flank rising and falling in a rapid, shallow rhythm. Alive. That relief fled a moment later when he examined the iron collar and chain, looking for the padlock securing it.
There was no padlock.
The metal had been welded shut, leaving scorched hair and skin beneath the join. Cold rage bubbled in Len’s stomach, competing with a jabbering refrain of oh shit, oh shit, how do I get them loose?
Danon cried out—a roar of pain and anger.
“Axe!” Nezri snapped, and a moment later Danon’s axe flew through the air and clattered against the wall a few feet away from Len.
Len stared at it, and then stared at the iron chain bolted to the stone plinth. “Oh my god, are you kidding me?” he said... but he scrabbled for the heavy tool and darted back behind the altar for cover with the handle clutched firmly in both hands.
The head of the axe was chipped in one corner where it had impacted the wall—not exactly a ringing endorsement for its sturdiness. Most of the blade was still intact, however, and it wasn’t like they’d brought along bolt cutters or an acetylene torch to cut the chain.
Len—who had never wielded an axe in his damned life—said, “Fuck!” and hoisted the thing over his head like some kind of gay, blue-haired lumberjack. Directing the blow as far away from the cat as possible in case his aim was really, really bad, he clenched his jaw and let fly. The impact reverberated through his arms and shoulders as the blade hit the chain sitting on its solid stone base, and the noise made his ears ring.
He ducked an instant later as a blast of magic came within a foot of his head, slamming into the wall behind him with a shower of sparks. When he straightened, the balance of the axe in his hands felt wrong. Len looked at it stupidly, only then noticing that another large chunk of the metal blade had shattered during the blow. Fortunately, a glance at the chain revealed that it hadn’t fared any better, and now lay in two pieces on the plinth.
The cat was still unmoving, except for its rapid panting—this, despite the deafening sound of axe against chain only a couple of feet away from its head. Len tried not to be too worried by that, since there were several more immediate worries to deal with at the moment. He scooped up the tiny creature and ducked behind the sturdy stone altar again, cradling the cat-sidhe to his chest.
“Human!” Nezri cried. “Brace!”
That sounded deeply ominous, and in reality, there was no good way to brace for the sensation of icy death being yanked through his chest and dragged out of his ribcage. Len gasped, feeling like his lungs had frozen solid—frost crackling across tender bronchi and alveoli.
Something cold and powerful slammed through the vault. The cu-sidhe yipped in pain, and two seconds later a strong hand pulled Len unceremoniously to his feet. His arms tightened around the cat, desperate not to lose his grip on the small creature as his body fought for air. The vault had fallen into darkness again, the glowing orbs extinguished by the freezing blast of death magic. When an oval bound by icy blue flame hissed into existence in front of him, the sudden brightness of it hurt his eyes. He flinched, but the hand wrapped around his bicep tossed him through the portal without ceremony.
Len fell to his knees in the cave, surrounded by Forsaken who exclaimed in surprise and started toward him, alarmed by his appearance... or maybe alarmed by the injured cat’s appearance. Head spinning, Len tried desperately to twist sideways as he toppled toward the floor, not wanting to crush the little sidhe’s battered body.
Arms caught him before he could hit the ground, taking his weight and cradling him against a lithe form. He blinked up, clutching the warm bundle of fur to his chest. Familiar green eyes lit by worry and relief filled his vision.
“You did it,” Albigard breathed, even as two more figures tumbled out of the blue-ringed portal, crashing to the ground nearby. The portal irised closed behind them, leaving the cave in silence except for Len’s ragged breathing an
d the twins’ groans of distress.
* * *
Nezri and Danon hadn’t fared much better than Albigard when it came to processing dead animus. The only saving grace was that unlike Albigard, they hadn’t already been suffering from starvation and hypothermia before attempting to use it.
Danon had also taken a vicious bite wound to the forearm during the fight with the cu-sidhe, and Nezri had a claw slash across one thigh. Meanwhile, Len was uninjured—other than bruised knees from hitting the ground after being shoved through the portal. The sense of his internal organs having been flash-frozen subsided after a few minutes, leaving him feeling wrung out, but not nearly as drained as he had been after they’d escaped from the pocket realm.
Unfortunately, the cat-sidhe was another matter entirely.
The same elderly, white-haired female Forsaken who’d explained about the world tree’s magic leaned over the pitiful form with Len, as they gingerly examined the shape-shifting Fae. Len peeled back one eyelid with a careful touch, revealing the nictitating membrane drawn across the eye, which had rolled back until the white was showing.
The old woman, who had been feeling around for broken bones, straightened with a disgruntled noise. “That anyone would dare treat a sidhe in such a way,” she muttered. “Chained in iron, no less! Leesa—go find me a file. There should be one among the blacksmithing tools.”
The teenage girl who’d been hovering nearby nodded and hurried off.
Len ran a hand over his face. “If we can get the collar off, will their injuries heal? These burns, along with the lack of pupillary reaction—if this were an animal on Earth, I’d be really worried about hypovolemic shock right now. But unless you’re hiding some advanced medical equipment in the back of the cave, I’ve got no way to push fluids.”
“I don’t know what that means, human,” said the old woman. “But as long as the sidhe was not attacked magically as well as physically, they should recover with a few hours’ rest. And once they do, I would not want to be the person who did this to them.”
For the dozenth time since he’d first met a Fae, Len forcibly readjusted his worldview to ‘this is fine; these horrific injuries just need a nice afternoon nap to heal.’ He should know better by now, he supposed—even if the reality went against a lifetime of earthbound medical knowledge.
Leesa returned with a rough metal file and started patiently sawing away at the collar under the white-haired woman’s supervision. Len waited and watched until the iron circlet had been safely removed, and the cat arranged comfortably in a nest of blankets near one of the fires.
Albigard had returned to his borrowed pallet earlier, since he had little to offer the cat-sidhe in the absence of his magic. He looked up as Len approached. “How are they?”
“Burned,” Len said, lowering himself to sit next to the Fae. “Battered. Unconscious. Not collared with iron anymore, at least. What about the twins?”
“Resting,” Albigard told him.
He nodded. “You should take a page out of their book. We’re not going anywhere until the cat-sidhe has recovered, and you still look like hell.”
Albigard raised an eyebrow. “Do try not to be deliberately insulting.”
It wasn’t so much the observation that he looked terrible, Len knew, as the invocation of the demon realm that had offended him.
“For humans, it’s only a saying,” he reminded the Fae patiently. “Okay, fine. You still look like shit. Is that better?”
“Arguably,” Albigard replied. “What about you? Are you well?”
Len tried to decide how to frame his answer. “I... guess so? Honestly, I’m not sure what measuring stick I’m supposed to use under these circumstances. I’m not badly drained, though. Not like last time. Apparently, the twins didn’t even need all of the animus I got from the two dead guards to knock out the cu-sidhe and portal us back here.”
Albigard tilted his head, considering. “Your previous... specters... were only human. Fae lives—or Fae deaths, in this case—contain far more raw power. It’s a fundamental difference between the species.”
Longer life spans. Amazing healing powers. Magic. Len supposed it made sense that a dead Fae might act as a heavy-duty industrial battery, compared to a human acting as an Energizer double-A.
“Still not sure I’m on board with this necromancy thing,” he grumbled. “Using the dead like that...”
“Well,” Albigard pointed out mildly, “you were the one to suggest it, in this particular case.”
“Yeah,” Len agreed. “I’m painfully aware, believe me.”
“And it worked,” Albigard continued. “The cat-sidhe is here. We are one step closer to containing the Hunt, if all this talk of Chaima is not pure fantasy.”
Len eyed him curiously. “Are you seriously trying to give me a pep talk right now?”
“Merely stating fact,” said the Fae.
“Huh.” He took a slow breath and let it out, trying to ease the tension in his shoulders. “Well... like I said, you should get some rest. Unless the Hunt shows up, nothing’s going to happen for the next few hours. And when we’re ready to move, you’ll need all the energy you can get.”
“And you? Will you rest as well?” Albigard asked.
He probably should. Too bad he was so wired after the cat-sidhe’s rescue that he was practically climbing the walls. “I don’t think I can right now. Too much leftover adrenaline still sloshing around.”
“Understandable.”
Len scrubbed at his hair, which had long ago given up any pretense of being styled. “Assuming our hosts don’t mind, I might walk around a bit. Talk to people. This place is kind of fascinating... and, uh, not at all what I’d pictured, after your description of the Forsaken.”
Albigard shot him a wry look. “Fantasy and reality are often entirely different prospects. Perhaps we should count ourselves lucky that our new allies are not, in fact, sex traffickers and slavers.”
“You know, I really can’t argue with that sentiment,” Len agreed. He hooked a hand around the back of Albigard’s neck and rubbed his thumb over the smooth skin at the corner of his jaw, watching the Fae’s eyes slide shut beneath the gentle touch. “Go on—sleep. I’ll check in, and wake you up whenever something interesting happens.”
SEVEN
AFTER FINDING THE white-haired female elder—whose name was apparently Aesulna—Len asked if he’d be bothering anyone by wandering around a bit and asking questions. She assured him that he had the run of the camp, and that anyone who didn’t want to talk to him would simply tell him so.
It seemed unbelievable that it was barely mid-afternoon, given everything that had happened since he and Albigard had been hauled off to face the Fae Court that morning. While it was tempting to assume that time moved strangely in Dhuinne, Len knew that wasn’t it. They just hadn’t stopped for breath since then—or at least, Len hadn’t.
He emerged from the cave, the entrance of which was now more than halfway concealed by vines. The most aggressive tendrils had encroached several yards into the cavern, twining along the walls and floor. Outside, things were just as bad. Worse, even. Paths that had been wide enough for two people when he’d come outside to get a drink from the river earlier, were now a tight squeeze for one.
Several of the camp members were occupied with hacking back the choking jungle of foliage—apparently a full-time job in and of itself. Len wondered if Dhuinne had seasons. Would cold weather freeze the out-of-control greenery into submission for part of the year? He made his way to the river’s edge and drank some more of the clear, sweet water, then wavered for a few moments over the prospect of eating his last energy bar.
In the end, he decided to hold onto it for now. For one thing, he was still some way off from real hunger—the kind he’d experienced after days spent without food in the barren pocket realm. And for another, he suspected that, in a pinch, Albigard would be able to accept food from their hosts and give it directly to Len, as a way to get around the danger
of him accidentally falling into another gift-bond with a Fae.
He splashed a bit of cold water on his face and went to talk with the camp members who were busy beating back the encroaching vines. Leesa was there, and happily handed him the rough iron hoe she’d been using to hack at the plants. From the others on the plant-control crew, he learned that Dhuinne did not, in fact, have seasons. Not beyond the rainy season and the dry season, anyway.
This, they informed him, was the dry season. Len could barely imagine what the job of keeping the paths clear would be like when it was raining every day.
One of the men asked a tentative question about his necromancy, and Len answered as best he could... which admittedly wasn’t very well.
“Apparently, in a pinch I could even draw power from dead plants,” he concluded, gesturing with the hoe at the vines they’d been battling. “Though I don’t get the impression any of these are in danger of actually dying.”
Indeed, many of the dismembered plants were already sending out tentative new shoots into the pathway. As an experiment, they dug up one of the vines by the roots, and Leesa set it on fire with a gesture of one hand and an expression of deep concentration. Len closed his eyes, and thought he felt a hint of a cool, ineffable breeze caress his face.
“Did it work?” Leesa asked, bright-eyed and curious.
Len opened his eyes again. “I think so. I felt something, but it was faint. Still, I’d much rather get energy from dying plants than from dying animals or people.”
The man who’d asked about Len’s powers tilted his head, considering. “You a vegetarian, then?”
“Well... no,” Len said.
The male Fae shrugged. “Then you’re already getting energy from dying animals. And if you’re going to hunt or butcher an animal anyway, isn’t it best to use everything you can? ’S just wasteful otherwise, if you ask me.”
Forsaken Fae: The Complete Series, Books 1-3 (Last Vampire World) Page 40