Mathias climbed in on the other side and then drove out of the junction, heading south. The scant buildings immediately surrounding the junction faded to fields and woods. Other than the railroad tracks, all signs of human habitation vanished in the gloom. Forgetting my earlier embarrassment, I frowned over at Mathias as I asked, “Why are you going this way?”
“We need to reach Altnabreac.”
Which meant absolutely nothing to me. The tendrils of attraction curtailed in the face of fresh exasperation. It was difficult to keep my tone calm and gentle as I pushed for more information. “Where is that?”
“The village is about an hour’s drive from here.”
I pushed my shawl down so it fell around my shoulders. “Why are we going this way? We had tickets to Wick. Didn’t we?”
Mathias didn’t trouble himself with answering. I let out a slow breath. If my foot wasn’t hurting, I would be more worried about his erratic behavior. Now, I was merely annoyed. Still arguing with a 10 was something I instinctively balked at doing. Picking arguments with high numbers was not how a Spotter stayed alive, especially when I had worked so hard to keep my talent hidden. So I stayed quiet. When I wasn’t distracted by the pain and when Mathias seemed in a better mood, I would push for an explanation. Until then, I preferred to watch and wait.
Well, actually I would have preferred to run. It was what habit and instinct had taught me to do when placed in close contact with high numbers behaving erratically. Now . . . Now, I continued to ignore my own sense of self-preservation for a man I wasn’t certain I could trust was thinking or acting rationally anymore. Perhaps it was a foolish thing to do. And yet . . . I didn’t want to give up on him. Not when he had done nothing, except work to protect me. If that ever changed, even for a moment, I would find a way to get away from him. But until that occurred, I didn’t want to give up on him.
Reaching up, I pulled out the pins keeping my hair in a knot. As it fell in loose waves to brush my shoulders, I thought I saw Mathias looking over at me. However, when I stole a glance he was staring straight ahead. Scolding myself for my foolishness, I combed my fingers through my hair and then twisted it back up and pinned it into place once more.
Eventually Mathias drove down an isolated unpaved road, leaving behind one little village in favor of . . . desolation. My doubts about this rather less than defined plan grew louder when we finally arrived in an isolated village whose sign declared it Altnabreac. There was hardly anything here to even be called a village. There was a cluster of three buildings near the rails and one was definitely a train station. When we drove past it, I gave Mathias a hard look. “If this is our destination, why not simply take the train?”
“It is a requested stop only. That would draw too much attention.”
“And our arrival does not?”
Mathias drove further away from the station before stopping the truck in front of a rundown stone cottage off an even tinier dirt road. I wondered if this was considered the edge of the village. There was a gas lamp a few paces away casting a small circle of light, but for the most part the area was completely dark. I tugged my shawl back up as a partial cover against the cold and sleet while Mathias pulled our bags out of the back. He carried them inside before he came back to open my door. I hurried to get my crutches on the ground and hop out before he had a chance to touch me. I did not want any distractions right now. As soon as my foot touched the ground, however, I realized something was different.
Another look around confirmed there were more stone cottages, but they were spaced further out and back toward the rail station. A paranormal community partially hidden by a glamour. That sent a spike of worry though me. All thoughts of protesting this stop vanished as my focus switched to getting inside and out of sight. We entered the cottage, but Mathias didn’t act as though he was there to stay. He crouched in front of the fireplace and quickly started a fire. I looked around nervously. There were only a few pieces of furniture in the front room, a scarred and battered looking table with two mismatched chairs. The one-room cottage was definitely missing a few creature comforts. I was distracted from my observations as soon as Mathias stood up. He didn’t say a word to me while he strode toward the door with a determined look on his face.
“Mathias!” When he stopped with one hand on the door and looked back at me, I could only shake my head in disbelief. “Where are you going? You don’t mean to leave me here.”
“I will return.”
“What if someone realizes I’m in here? How am I supposed to explain things?” I gestured vaguely in the direction the glamour covered cottages were in as I added in a low hiss, “You can’t think everyone here will be unaware of the fact I’ve become the most wanted Spotter in the history of Spotters.”
He somehow remained completely unperturbed by my words. His voice was cool, calm, and collected as he replied, “No one will notice us because we won’t be here long enough to be noticed.” Mathias paused, studying my face, then added, “And if anyone does, they will assume we’re lost or tourists on holiday. Or both. Most of these cottages are empty for the winter. Stay inside. I have rations in my bag if you get hungry before I return.”
“Wait a minute, Mathias, you haven’t explained,” I started to say, but he was already out the door before I finished rather lamely, “what we’re doing here.”
I heard the truck rumble back to life and hobbled over to the door in time to see taillights vanishing into the gloomy night. Well, this was working out great, wasn’t it? I shut the door and hobbled to one of the two chairs, the one that looked to be the sturdiest of the pair. I set one crutch against the table and then dragged the chair over to block the door. At least, if someone came after me, I would have some type of warning.
This was ridiculous. I was stranded in a little village in the highlands of Scotland because Mathias wasn’t being rational. Or if he was, he was not sharing his plans with me. I prayed he had a plan because a 10 losing his mind was the kind of thing that usually served as the prelude to a Spotter horror story. It was bad enough when a 10 had ambition and plans but once they went mad, it took an act of God to bring them down. Of course, it usually took an act of God to stop ambitious 10s if I remembered the stories correctly.
I sat in the second chair, feeding the fire, for most of the night. A few times I dozed for an hour or two, but every noise from outside startled me awake. Half the time I nearly jumped out of my skin imagining paranormals bursting into the cottage ready to drag me to the nearest holding facility. Eventually I grew hungry enough to hunt through Mathias’ bag for the rations. I pulled the sealed rations out, and then stopped when my fingers brushed against leather. Extracting an older-looking worn leather book, I opened it to the cover page. A compendium of paranormal species. I had heard of these books, but never had the chance to read one myself.
While eating the jerky since it was the easiest of the rations, I flipped through the pages to find the ‘S’ entries. Spotters. I wanted to know more about Spotters. Something in me twisted when I realized my species was included in the rare and extinct listings. I shook the feeling away as I focused on reading the far too brief information about my own kind.
The entry held much of the information I already knew about our ability to see numbers and how we eventually became targets. That was something taught in schools when discussing the great purges of paranormal history, and the reason only the ambassadorial species were permitted to interact openly with the norms. Naturally, there were exceptions in the older norm countries such as the British Isles, Eastern Europe, and of course Greece, the birthplace of so many monstrous paranormals and the home to so many myths. Even then, only the approved ambassadorial species such as the centaurs, the satyrs, the dryads and naiads, and the sylphs were allowed to openly inhabit the mixed areas of paranormal and norm. Creatures such as river trolls were folklore and accepted by norms as part of the quirks of living in a world with paranormals, but they fully trusted that the Fae courts would tend to suc
h matters.
It was such a delicate balance between our species, not only with each other but also with the norms. The purges conducted by paranormals on other paranormals were horrible pieces of our past, but the purges carried out in the middle ages by the norms had been brutal to both paranormal and innocent norms caught in neighbors’ prejudices or feuds. Enough that paranormals had nearly used glamours to fade entirely from the world of the norms, save for a few stubborn members of the Fae courts. Eventually, the paranormal community came together and agreed to allow norms to know about some of our kind and the rest would fade into legend and myth. For the good of us all.
It was why paranormals who had been 10s were once more deemed too dangerous. My finger shook as I traced over the list of 10s included in the Spotters entry. Those names . . . Nimrod, Achilles, Alexander the Great, and Hannibal. All of them 10s, and all but one known for their cunning intellect as much as their ambition and power. Men who would have ruled over both paranormals and norms, whose names still lived on among both communities, if not for happenstance, an act of God some said. Because no one in the paranormal or norm communities at the time when we still acted in unison for the most part had been able to stop those men in their conquests of the world. Hannibal had been the last. The name of Achilles still carried terrible weight in the paranormal community because his madness and lack of restraint destroyed his entire species. The Myrmidons.
Mathias was a 10. I didn’t know his species, but I knew that for him to be a 10 at all times even when sleeping, there was only one thing that was certain. He must number among the most dangerous paranormals walking the world today. I needed to know more about 10s. I started flipping through the pages searching for an entry on the numbers Spotters saw. There wasn’t a guarantee that there would be a separate entry for the 10s, but perhaps there would be one for the number scale. Perhaps even a list of the species falling under the highest numbers.
I had just found the entry for the number scale when the door rattled. I dropped the book and clapped my hands over my mouth to keep from screaming. For a terrifying moment, I was seeing Weard hunters helped by locals surrounding the cottage. I couldn’t move. Maybe if I didn’t move, they would go away. Then, there was a thumping knock on the door. “Lauren! Open the door.”
Mathias. Oh thank God, it was Mathias’ voice.
Relief warred with annoyance as I scooped the book up off the floor. I brushed the dust off the cover and checked the delicate pages for any damage, then tucked it back into his bag before I hobbled over to move the chair.
When Mathias stepped inside, he didn’t question me on the chair sitting right next to the door. He only went to get our bags. I moved in front of the door to stop him. “Wait a minute, what are you doing?”
“We need to get a move on. I don’t want to waste any time.”
“Where did you go this time? And, where are we going now?”
“To get our new transportation. Come on. We don’t have much time.”
I frowned at him, but he didn’t seem to notice as he settled back on his heels to wait for me to get out of the way. Finally, I caved and moved out of his way before following him. I stopped short at the sight of three shaggy horses standing in the snow. They stood calmly, not even acting as though they noticed the weather around them. He couldn’t be serious, though. “Mathias.”
“You can ride,” he grunted as he secured our bags to the third horse’s back before covering them with a pale tarp that was only a shade lighter than the horse’s pale grey coat. “I checked with the doctor before leaving Edinburgh.”
He had been planning to put me on a horse in the middle of a cold, snowy, sleet filled night since Edinburgh. This concerned me. I hobbled over to the smaller of the two saddled horses and stroked its neck. “I can’t get in the saddle.”
“They’re the only way to reach our destination,” Mathias stated firmly but quietly. Then, he was standing next to me. “I will help you, Lauren. But, you need to trust me.”
I eyed the horses again. The two wearing saddles were both black and their manes were streaked with different colors. The larger of the two had shimmering green streaks while the one I stood beside had pale silvery blue streaks. A quick glance at the grey confirmed it had amber-colored streaks. All three horses had flowing manes and tails along with feathering on their lower legs. They were gorgeous. But . . . “Won’t it be too cold for them?”
“No. These are Fae ponies. They’re born and raised in the highlands. This is nothing for them.”
“Fae ponies,” I repeated. I looked them over again. Perhaps it was the foot of difference in our heights, but these horses certainly didn’t look like ponies to me. They stood somewhere between fourteen and fifteen hands at the shoulder with the exception of the larger black who was definitely closer to sixteen and a half hands at the least. But, there was a certain poetic lilt to the name of ‘Fae ponies’ over ‘Fae horses’ and the Fae were well known for their love of poetic romanticism. I stroked the smaller horse’s neck again as I murmured, “The ones you only whisper a destination to and they can bring you there?”
“Perhaps not quite where we are going, but they will get us through the Flow Country by following the fae paths. And, their passage won’t cause the same amount of disturbance.”
I so wanted to agree to ride a Fae pony, but my sense of self-preservation piped up. It was rather good at spoiling some of my desires. I stroked the horse’s mane longingly, then slowly withdrew my hand as I turned to Mathias. I blushed when I met his intense gaze. Struggling to remind myself that I needed to use my head and not my heart, I quickly broke the silence. “How lovely but, Mathias, I do not think I should go riding with my ankle still in a, umm, vulnerable condition.” His gaze only seemed to increase in intensity throwing off my planned argument. “Since it’s not healed,” I finished rather lamely.
Mathias was silent for a long moment and then he nodded, gaze flickering away. He was staring off toward the glamour covered cottages when he stated quietly, “I can take you to Wick and put you on a plane to Aberdeen. You’ll have to make your own way from there. You should head into Europe. More places to hide. And, stay away from Turkey.”
“What will you do?”
He shrugged. “I will try to keep the hunters from finding you.”
“You would go hunting for them, wouldn’t you?” I whispered, my heart already battering at my ribs at the mere thought of Mathias going back to face the hunters. What was he thinking?
He wouldn’t look at me as he murmured, “If we are not in hiding, it will be better that way.”
“No, it won’t.” I didn’t even know why I was protesting. But, I knew letting him go now would end very poorly for him and, perhaps, many others. He was a 10, but in this moment he needed protection. I rested my hand on the horse’s neck to steady myself as I handed him my crutches. “Help me on.”
“You wish to go with me?”
“I wish to keep you from doing anything foolish,” I replied a little more tartly than perhaps was wise. But, in that moment I didn’t care.
Mathias didn’t say a word as had now become the norm for him. Instead, he wrapped his hands around my waist and easily settled me in the saddle. I ignored the feeling of loss when his hands slipped away. Now was not the time to dwell on my feelings. I needed to figure out a plan of my own. One for making Mathias talk to me, so I understood what was going on with him.
* * *
Lauren
It turned out that Flow Country was a massive blanket bog. If not for the Fae ponies’ uncanny knowledge of the fae paths, I was certain it would have been far more difficult to traverse the mix of peatland and wetland. Even with their remarkable skill at picking their way through the bog, it was still disconcerting at times when we passed by scraggly trees that looked more like petrified fossils. Or the times when the snow dusted strips of peat floated away on the ripples caused by our passage.
The Fae ponies never shied, though. They merely forged
ahead at a rolling pace that was faster than a walk but not as bouncy as a trot, which was certainly a relief for me. If I had to be stuck traversing a bog on horseback in January, then I didn’t want every step jarring my ankle. I patted my horse’s neck as she followed Mathias’ horse, toying with one of the silvery blue streaks in her black mane, as I eyed the brackish water surrounding us. It wasn’t that I didn’t still trust Mathias would pick a less danger prone route to wherever it was we were going. It was more that I was very aware of the stories about the dangers of peat bogs because one of my foster families had been Hobgoblins and they loved a good scary story. It didn’t help that their two teenage sons particularly loved the stories about the bogs in the old country, preferences of the new seven-year-old notwithstanding.
Fortunately, the fae paths also seemed to deter any of the more dangerous paranormals who would be at home in a bog. No sign of any kelpies or nasty redcaps. Of course, the redcaps were more attracted to the sites of great battles, which might explain why they were most often found haunting the border between England and Scotland . . . and also Hadrian’s Wall. I had never seen a redcap, but the goblin was known to be prone to preying on anyone it thought weak even though they were normally too cowardly to be more than scavengers following the more dangerous and powerful paranormals.
As we reached a somewhat firmer hillock of peat jutting out of the bog, I came up with another reason for the absence of the bog’s natural predators. Perhaps, they simply didn’t believe anyone would be foolish enough to travel through the bog in winter. Mathias didn’t build a fire for our camp. All he did was lay out the tarp as a form of protection against the frozen ground. We ate some cold cut sandwiches that I suspected he had gotten from the Brownie or perhaps whoever he went to in order to borrow the Fae ponies.
I watched the bog around us, waiting for a kelpie to poke its head out of the water with weeds and rivulets of water streaming from its mane and eyes that glowed red. Something brushed against my shoulder and I jumped, a scream shattering the silence before I clamped a hand over my mouth. A noisy snort came from my left and I looked up to find the horse I had been riding gazing down at me. I lowered my hand from my mouth only to press it against my pounding heart. “Your manners are deplorable, Blue.”
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