Of course, the room was angled in such a way that I couldn’t see a damned thing.
I gulped down another deep breath and took three running steps inside. I skidded to a halt, gun held in both hands. I stood half-crouched in a shooter’s stance, heart whamming in my chest.
The square room stretched away upwards like a tall stone box, just as Xandra had indicated. It was bare, save for one piece of furniture. A circular slab of rock lay in the center of the room. The burnt-out remains of candles littered the slab’s circumference. Foul-smelling drippings from the candles flowed down the sides, spreading out across the floor like waxen spider legs.
Albess Thea lay on the slab, her legs and wings each bound by a wrapping of stout rope. It looked as if I’d stumbled onto an avian version of black-magic sacrifice. But had I arrived too early or too late for the ceremony?
Thea answered that as she raised her head. Her eyes, weak with fatigue and pain, focused on me in recognition. She did not speak. But she flicked her eyes flicked upwards.
I risked a glance. A steel rung jutted out of the wall high overhead. The room’s light source hung up there. A single cone-shaped torch sat burning merrily in a little metal fixture attached to the rung.
Nix sat by the flame. His armored battle talons curled firmly around the bar, and his eyes glinted coldly in the fire’s reflection.
“So this one was right,” he said, as if to himself. “This one knew that the prey would come, given the right time. And the right bait.”
With a quick movement, he snuffed out the candle with his wing tip.
No, damn it!
Suddenly blind, I dropped to my knees.
I was rewarded with a jolt of pain in my joints as I hit the floor. But that was all that saved my life.
A whirring snicker-snack! and my headset fell away. The earpiece dangled free on one side. The part that curved over the crown of my head clattered to the floor.
The spider-web feel of something soft and stringy falling across my face made me gasp.
Nix had come within a quarter-inch of slicing the top of my skull clean off. Instead, his talons had severed the headpiece and cut away a hank of my hair.
With a sick feeling, I dropped to my belly. Then I rolled to one side, squeezing the trigger like nobody’s business. I emptied the magazine in a near panic. I fired blindly up into the blackness. Each report of the gun in the stone chamber was a thunderclap to my ears.
I rolled back over. Then I crawled like a blind worm across the floor, chest wheezing. I felt a slick trail of wax under a palm. I turned to follow it back to the source. My forehead smacked into the base of the slab. For a moment I saw a nova burst in my skull.
“One almost wants to pity you,” came Nix’s cold voice. “None but one of the Hoohan can strike in the dark. And none but a Noctua warrior can make your death clean.”
Part of me didn’t want to speak. Part of me was afraid that Nix would home in on my voice and bring this little confrontation to an end.
Yet I wasn’t up for kidding anyone, especially myself. The Hoohan could hear mice in the leaf litter of a forest. My harsh breathing in this little room wasn’t going to be hard to pick out.
But maybe I could buy myself the time I needed.
“Why did you use a dragon?” I called out. “I mean, back on Sir Talish’s land. Why use a dragon, then hide the evidence and claim Thea was killed by wyverns?”
A snort. “One wishes to know trivia before one’s demise?”
“Hey, it’s my life,” I shot back. “Indulge me.”
I didn’t have time to hunt for another magazine, let alone reload. Instead, I put my firearm aside. I reached for my pack, and my hand grasped a familiar-feeling object. One that I’d placed in one of the outer compartments for just such an occasion. I tugged the zipper open and slipped my hand around the handle.
“One does not indulge prey. Especially when the answer lies directly over one’s head every day at court.”
A clack of talons as they shifted against stone. Somewhere above and behind me.
I had maybe a second or two before Nix launched himself into a dive at me. So I pulled out the item that I’d purchased at the last minute from the camping goods store. The trigger of the flare gun fell against my index finger like it was custom-made for my hand. I aimed it upwards and shut my eyes as I squeezed.
The device made a high-pitched report, followed by the POFF of someone punching a feather pillow. Bright orange light jammed itself between the cracks of my eyelids as strontium nitrate and magnesium burned with a flesh-searing brilliance.
Nix began screaming.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Nix’s screams came from a warrior whose huge, night-vision eyes had been seared into uselessness. I had no time to waste. I cracked open my own eyelids. Then I dropped the flare gun and scooped up my firearm. A single moment used to eject the spent magazine. Another to slam home a new one.
I risked a glance up. The flare’s little parachute had gotten hung up so it remained suspended, casting a baleful glow over the proceedings. Thea let out a pain-filled moan, but I didn’t dare attend to her yet.
Nix finally stopped screaming. He flew back and forth above me in a complete panic. The owl slammed into the walls again and again, slashing out with his talons and scoring the stone with deep gouges. A burble of curses and whimpers escaped from his beak. I’d never seen anything so vicious and pathetic at the same time.
I brought my gun up, sighted, and squeezed the trigger.
It took three shots to bring Nix down.
Then another shot to make him stop quivering.
I stuck the gun my holster and pulled out a pocketknife. In no time, I’d cut Thea free from her bonds. Her eyes gazed up at me blankly, still blinded by my flare.
“My dear child,” she breathed, in her faint, summery voice. “Nothing has changed since we first met, Dayna. Dark be the reasons for your visit, but a joy it is to see you.”
“Me too,” I said, as I took off my pack and unzipped the main compartment. “We need to get out of here.”
“Alas, I cannot walk, nor fly. The ones I called sisters and brothers were giving me my last ceremonies. I objected, so they tied me there. The bonds were tight, I cannot so much as feel my feet anymore…”
“You don’t need your feet,” I choked out. “I will carry you.”
Thea gave a pleased little ‘hoo!’ at that.
I slipped my fingers around Thea’s body, underneath her wings, and placed her as gently as I could into my backpack. She felt as light and bony as little Perrin, but for now that was a benefit. I zipped up my pack so that only the Albess’ head stuck out.
With Thea on my back, I picked up my gun and retraced my route through the expanse of the sepulcher. My low-light vision had been ruined by the shell burst of the flare, but I kept to the wall and relied on my memory to take me back. Another slosh amidst the mossy mire, then up and down some corridors, and then through the choke-point.
I picked up speed as I made my way down the long hall back to the exit. It was so dark outside now that I could barely make out a slightly lighter patch of black ahead. But a gust of cold air told me how close I was getting, so I ignored the squish-squish of my drenched socks inside my boots and pushed on ahead.
There were noises from outside. I pushed myself into a run, fearful that the Noctua were finally coming back to base, angry enough to spit tacks. The remaining piece of my headset buzzed in my ear. I didn’t hear Liam or Shaw. Instead, I picked out a couple of different voices. Owl voices, it sounded like.
Who is that?
What do we do?
Where is she-from-another-world?
I burst through the trapezoidal entryway. My lungs inhaled the fresh night air, my skin felt the tingle of flakes again. Gravel rustled under the soles of my footwear. I got ready to grab for my medallion to transport away. I only needed a few more yards to get beyond the range of the Noctua’s anti-magic wards.
With a BANG, I ran full-tilt into an invisible wall.
The impact drove the wind from my lungs and sent me sprawling. My earpiece popped free while my pack straps broke, spilling both backpack and wounded Albess across the rocks. The iron taste of blood filled my mouth as I bit my lip and crunched my tongue.
I fought my way to my knees again. I’d managed to hold on to my gun. I held it out, trying to see through my now-watery eyes.
A noose tightened cruelly around my neck. With my free hand, I grappled at my skin but felt no rope, no cord. And yet something held my windpipe in a vise, cutting off my air.
“Still depending on your other-worldly weapons to save you,” came a voice. “You are so very predictable. Throw your gun away.”
I choked as I tried to fight it. Yet my nails gripped nothing but air around my neck. Thea lay on the ground nearby. She let out a groan.
I tossed my weapon away into the darkness. The worst part was, I recognized the voice. I’d always figured that he’d show up again, at the worst possible time.
Just my rotten luck.
The dun-colored form of a proud stag stepped out of the woods at the edge of the clearing. My eyes went wide and I tried to speak. Only the hiss of air escaped by throat.
Wyeth, the eldest son of the Fayleene Protector Quinval, stood before me. His pleasant-looking deer face had an undeniably cruel, smug look. The top third of one of his antlers gleamed as if it were made of glass crystal.
“Yes, that’s right,” Wyeth gloated, as he noticed my gaze. “You thought you shot part of my antler away, didn’t you? It’s come back stronger than before. Just like me. Pity that you’ve only learned this right before I choke the life out of you.”
The tips of the Fayleene princeling’s antlers glowed with magical power. The two-finger pinch on my windpipe expanded to a full fist. I let out a gasp. Though I was already on my knees, I came within a hair’s breadth of falling forward onto my face.
An insistent buzz of sound came from my earpiece, which dangled by its cord on my chest. I scooped it up. I cupped the little plastic nub in my palm, just making out the tinny, ghostly words that came through.
She-from-another-world is in trouble!
We see her!
We’re coming!
“I’m going to keep my hold on your throat until you’re dead,” Wyeth went on, as he picked his way down the slope to stand atop the gravel only twenty of so yards in front of me. “Then I’ll do the same for the Albess. I’ll leave both your bodies for our friend Liam to find. So that my friends and I can do what all the truly fit do with the unworthy: feast upon their pain.”
I gripped the earpiece in one hand and held it to my chest. Blackness began to encroach on the edges of my vision. My head felt filled with fluid and ready to burst. I stretched my free hand out towards my tormentor. As if beckoning, pleading.
“You wish a last word?” he chuckled, reveling in this moment. “Go ahead. What is it that you wish to beg from me?”
The pressure eased off my throat just a bit. I gasped a reed-thin sip of air before I spoke.
“Just…stay…still.”
Wyeth’s brow furrowed. “What?”
Like armored, feathered bullets, Xandra and her fellow owls shot past me and towards Wyeth’s face. The princeling had time to register shock.
Then they were on him.
Talons sheathed in metal like scythes slashed at the Fayleene. Xandra and another owl gouged scalpel-like grooves in his scalp as they screamed by. Four other owls aimed their hammer-blows at Wyeth’s crystalline antler. It shattered with the sound of a cannonball dropped through plate glass. The magical glow that had tipped his antlers winked out.
The hold on my throat vanished. I took big, ragged gulps of air as I staggered to my feet. I couldn’t find my gun so I forgot about it, turning to scoop up the Albess from where she still lay on the ground, knocked almost senseless.
Wyeth shook off his attackers. He let out a cervine roar of outrage as he shook the jagged stub of his newly wrecked antler. A strip of his scalp dangled from his skull, streaming blood across the snow, spattering his insane deer face. He charged towards me, hooves clattering as he threw up a roostertail of rocks in his wake.
I dug frantically for my medallion. Two of my fingers made contact and pressed the cold disk of silver between the pads. I thought of my house, praying that I’d gotten outside the range of the anti-magic wards.
Wyeth’s charge vanished in a thunderclap of white light and throat-scouring ozone. I’d never been so happy to get that bleach tang in my nostrils before. One, two seconds of time suspended in the travel between worlds, and it was over.
I lost my grip on Thea. We tumbled across the expanse of my living room carpet.
I came to rest with a thump as my shoulders ended up against the base of my poor, abused couch. I couldn’t complain. Compared to most any other surface in my house, at least it was padded with soft cloth. Thea rolled to a stop against my stomach, her horn feathers tickling my nose.
The Albess let out a little cough, followed by a groan as she flexed her talons. At least it wasn’t a groan of pain. It sounded more like one of nausea and general misery.
I raised my head and looked around. Night had fallen. The glow of streetlamps filtered in hazily through the heavy curtains.
Then the ceiling light switched on with a click. This time I was the one who let out the groan as the bulbs dazzled my eyes.
“What in blazes is goin’ on here?” came a voice. “Dayna, is that you?”
Shelly Richardson stumbled out of the bedroom, still dressed in her work pants and tattered sweatshirt. She looked startled as she saw me sprawled out on the floor. But her jaw only dropped as she spotted the jumbo-sized Great Horned Owl I had curled up against me.
“Shelly,” I sighed. “There’s a lot going on that you need to know.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Admittedly, I never spent much time thinking about how I would introduce my friends from Los Angeles to the mythical creatures of Andeluvia. Esteban had met Grimshaw, but that had been by accident as much as anything else. Shelly had met Galen, Liam, and even Destry – but only under circumstances where they had been concealed or disguised.
This time was different. And believe me, this was not the way I anticipated introducing one of my best friends to the equivalent of a holy woman in the shape of an orange-colored owl.
I managed to prop myself up on elbows and sat up with my back against the ratty base of my poor, griffin-abused couch. Then I put a hand out to help Thea right herself. The way the Albess reeled, it was obvious the transport spell had still scrambled her balance. I could only hope that she wouldn’t regurgitate a pellet or any other kind of owl waste on my carpet.
“Albess Thea,” I began, extending my hand in Shelly’s direction. “This is one of my best friends in the ‘Land of the Angels’, Shelly Richardson.”
Thea spread her wings and bowed as best as she was able. Shelly looked impressed.
“Well, I’ll be,” she chuckled, as if surprised I’d managed to train a mere bird to perform on command.
“Shelly, let me introduce you to Albess Thea,” I went on. “The Albess is the ruler of the Hoohan, the anointed leader of their Holy Order of the Sepulcher, and the head of Parliament for the royal court of Andeluvia.”
My friend spread her arms and bowed back in good humor. “That sounds like a church going bunch of titles to me. Mighty fine to meet you, Albess Thea.”
“And it is fine to meet you, Shelly of Richard’s Son,” Thea returned, in her best grandmotherly voice. “I wish that my feathers were in better trim to greet you. I have been through dark times.”
Shelly’s grin froze.
“Dayna, did you just…”
I shook my head. “Shelly, this is what I’ve avoided telling you for some time now. Thea’s from the same place as Galen.”
“She’s from…heaven?”
“No. It can be pretty hellish at times, actua
lly,” I admitted. “Andeluvia is a real place, like Los Angeles, but it’s got people and…well, beings who look like animals we’re familiar with. But they’re as intelligent as you or I.”
Shelly continued to stare, her already taxed brain scrambling to connect the dots.
“Intelligent I may be,” Thea breathed wearily, “But I know not where we are, Dayna. I cannot be much use to you in my condition.”
“You’re safe,” I assured the Albess. “This is my world, and this my demesne, my castle. No one knows that you are here. I’m hoping to get you the help you need.”
The word ‘help’ seemed to get Shelly over the hump, so to speak. She blinked, and then knelt next to us. She reached out gingerly and stroked Thea’s wing as she spoke.
“You do look like you’ve been ridden hard and put away wet. Miss Thea, I’m a veterinarian. That is, I’m a doctor for many kind of animals. Like you.” Shelly shook her head. “I’m sorry, that came out unkindly.”
“You are not an unkind person,” Thea said. Her words reminded me achingly of Perrin.
“If it’s all right…may I treat you? I promise to be gentle. You won’t bite, kick or scratch if I examine you?”
“I shall refrain as best I am able.”
“Okay, then.”
I got out of the way as Shelly touched Thea under her wing, at the breastbone, the neck, and next to the base of her beak.
“Lordy, lordy,” she muttered. “When did you last have a good meal? Badly underweight, and signs of dehydration to boot.”
“The Albess has been unwell for a while,” I put in. I wasn’t sure if I should share personal details about Thea’s medical history, as it seemed rude, but I did mention her recent treatment. “I had to bring us here in a hurry. Thea’s been held in captivity for at least a couple of weeks. I doubt they gave her full rations.”
Thea let out a gasp as Shelly’s touch moved to the top of her feet. “My joint burns as feeling returns. I had been roughly bound, before Dayna freed me.”
A Perjury of Owls Page 20