“Fine. Pack your shit.”
SHIT STARTED TO go wrong the second we hit the streets of Unterberg, but I was too busy being blown away by the scenery to really take notice at first.
The place was like something out of every epic fantasy book I’d ever read. Buildings that resembled the secret love-children of Notre Dame Cathedral and a drippy sandcastle were everywhere, and the streets were crammed with creatures I’d only ever seen in my imagination, along with a few that I’d never run into even there. The whole place was surrounded by steep cliffs that rose into the sky, leaving only a small strip of blue visible above. It made me wonder if we were actually underground rather than just nestled into a canyon.
Sol and Albert had given us a brief rundown on the city before we left, but it hadn’t come anywhere close to doing the place justice. They’d described it as a holdout for beings that MOME considered "too dangerous," along with anyone else that managed to piss MOME off, and, as it technically wasn’t located on earth, MOME held no sway there. That, and they weren’t allowed in the “door,” as it were. This small dimensional pocket, which could be accessed from numerous places around the world, but was only about the size of New York City, was ruled by a committee of elected members, all of whom had an equal vote in determining the few laws they bothered to uphold, the most stringent of which was that MOME agents were not allowed within its perimeter for any reason. That was the bare bones explanation we got before we arrived, and it had made me stare at Sol quizzically before she’d shrugged and explained that her Abuela had worked out some sort of deal with Unterberg ages ago and her arrival wouldn’t cause a stir.
Even as we wandered down a cobbled street packed with creatures of every description, and some that defied words, I was still unclear on how we’d gotten here, since we hadn’t really used my powers to do it. I’d transported us to a sketchy-looking alleyway in La Paz that Sol had shown me photos of and described in detail, a shift that had tired me out substantially, since I’d moved so many of us to a place I’d never been before, and then Albert had used some spell or other to light up a brick wall, which we all then proceeded to walk through as if it were no more than a tepid waterfall. On the other side, we’d been instantly immersed in the busy crowds of a street unlike any I’d ever seen before. I wanted to spend a few months wandering these small, winding, cobbled streets, getting lost, asking strangers for directions, and making friends with some of the amazing people I saw.
I definitely did not want to start a fistfight in the middle of the street.
But guess which of those two things I was now doing?
Yep.
My luck is shit.
The hand that clamped itself across my mouth was cold and calloused, but I didn’t wait to absorb any more details about it before I threw my elbow hard into the sternum of the person attached to it. It was a good thing my backpack was nearly empty, or whoever it was might have been out of reach of my elbow, but as it was, I’d only brought along my parents’ MOME file and a few essentials, so I connected solidly with whoever had tried to grab me. My heel automatically stepped back on the instep of my attacker and I heard the person cry out before stumbling away from me.
This way, Trev thought at me, as I felt his hand grab mine, and before I could even figure out how Seamus and Sol were faring, or who we were even fighting, Trev and I were running through the densely crowded street, away from Seamus, Sol, Edik, and Albert, and towards… well, I had no idea.
Where are we going? I asked mentally, since I didn’t have the breath for speech.
This telepathy thing was seriously handy.
I have no idea, Trev replied. Just trying to lead those MOME asshats on a wild goose chase.
Those were MOME agents? I was amazed that Trev had been able to tell who had attacked us at all, since I hadn’t had a chance to get a look at anyone before we’d taken off running. How could you even tell?
I recognized the guy who grabbed you.
It sounded like Trev was leaving something out, but I didn’t have time to press the issue as our mad dash through the streets seemed to be gaining us some attention, and not just from the three (yes, I’d managed one quick look over my shoulder to count) MOME agents chasing us.
Trev’s plan, whatever it was, seemed to be working, and we had MOME hot on our tails, even as we ran past carts filled with fruits and vegetables, and a few hot dishes that smelled amazing. The crowd was slowing down the MOME agents, but they weren’t giving up. Unfortunately, we also had a number of large, menacing creatures forming a tight line across the street ahead of us, with the rest of the pedestrians who had been filling the streets around us somehow disappearing from view.
Who are they?
Unterberg enforcers, Trev replied.
Friendly? I asked, even as I wondered how he knew anything about what was happening, since he’d claimed never to have been here before.
Not exactly.
Trev turned left so suddenly that I probably would have lost him if I hadn’t spent the first eight years of my life running around with him. Ok fine, the fact that he was still holding my hand didn’t hurt.
We snapped into a narrow alleyway between two of the palatial drizzle castles that passed for buildings in this city, complete with creepy-assed gargoyle things that stared at us from the crenelated wall that demarcated each property line. The alley didn’t look like a dead end, so I assumed that Trev had planned for us to make our escape that way, although how he had any idea where said alley went was beyond me. His plans seemed unlikely to matter, though.
The alley was blocked by a cadre of more of the same menacing creatures that had created a blockade across the street we’d been running through earlier. Now that I had a moment to inspect them more closely, I saw that the creatures were identical masses of what appeared to be roughly shaped clay. They had been molded into more or less human forms, but without any regard for the details.
“Are those golems?” I asked aloud, since we had stopped cold just before we’d run headlong into the oddly shaped creatures that towered before us.
“More or less,” Trev assented, still panting from our run.
“Are they going to kill us?” I asked, as the creatures stepped forward in disturbing unison.
Before he could answer, a shout from behind alerted us to the MOME agents careening around the corner of the alley, with their hands readied to throw who knew what at us. I was a heartbeat away from shifting us back to Sol’s cabin, when something huge and rough clamped on my shoulder and everything went black.
“OUCH! FUCK. THAT was unnecessary.”
I would have rubbed the sore spot on my ass where I’d just been dropped onto a rock-hard surface from golem shoulder height, but my hands were tied in front of me and I couldn’t even see what I’d been dropped onto, thanks to the bag that had been tied over my head.
“As is your profanity,” said a lilting voice, tinged with an accent I couldn’t place.
“No more than your condescending tone and mistreatment of prisoners,” I replied.
“Profanity is the mark of the uneducated,” said another voice, this one harsher and with a thicker accent that I still couldn’t place.
“Ok, Fuckface, tell that to my dad, who had two PhDs and cursed more than anyone I know.”
That was followed by a rather drawn-out silence.
It might have been awkward if I'd been able to see, but as I still had a bag on my head…
“What? Too soon?” I snickered, knowing full well that no one here had any right to be more upset about references to my possibly dead father than I did.
I had started cursing way more after my parents had died. It wasn’t like I’d started cursing more on purpose, but… I don’t know. Maybe it was in memory of my dad, or maybe it was just because I was a bit prickly about becoming an orphan. Algernon had pointed it out a month or two ago, and I had realized he was right, but had made no attempt to correct it.
“Perhaps it should be a pri
vilege earned by those with more experience,” said the first voice.
“Perhaps you should keep your bullshit opinions to yourself and quit policing people’s use of language so damned much. If you dislike my profanity to such a degree, perhaps you should remove yourself from my presence and return to whatever prudish origins begat you. Then your knavery might entertain those more inclined to partake in it, and the rest of us might be free of your stodgy presence.”
“Or you could just fuck off,” added Trev’s voice, from somewhere nearby.
I couldn’t help it, I chuckled.
“Damn it, Trev, I was trying to keep a straight face.”
“Enough of this, remove their hoods,” the first, more lilting, voice said.
And with that, I was doused in light, as the bag was pulled swiftly from my head. It took a few moments of blinking to bring the room into focus, but when it did, I let out a low whistle.
The entire floor appeared to be made of a dark marble, veined with silver and gold, polished to a high shine, and reflecting the light emanating from hundreds of glowing orbs that hovered at various heights around the ornately decorated walls, all the way up to the top of a vaulted ceiling that looked like the forgotten love child of a three-year-old’s sandcastle and Notre Dame cathedral.
“Nice digs,” I said, deciding to embrace the sass I’d been rocking so hard, even though I was clearly (now that I could fucking see) talking to the rulers of Unterberg. They were all seated around the most intense conference table ever built: a foot-thick marble slab over forty feet in diameter, which appeared to be engraved with glowing runes all around the edges. “Which one of you is compensating?”
That made Trev snort, and I took a moment to look over at him for the first time since we’d been dumped here. He was lying on his side, not having bothered to sit up yet, and he had four menacing looking golems standing directly behind him.
The room we had been dumped in was larger than a football field, but one curved wall was almost directly behind us, and a series of windows appeared to open onto a giant balustrade immediately behind the twenty or so people seated around the massive piece of rock. As impressive as the rock was, it was nothing compared to the array of people seated around it. A few of them looked like elves straight out of a video game, complete with skin tones taken directly from a tipped over Crayola box. Others looked like they might spend their free time lurking under bridges with clubs, while still others looked liked they’d hopped out of Hamilton’s Mythology. A few more had fur, wings, and horns in arrangements that I would never have predicted, despite a lifetime of reading fantasy and mythology on the daily. One or two wore hooded capes that kept them hidden from sight. None of them looked particularly "human" from where I sat, but far be it from me to deny anyone that label if they want it, so they were all people until they asked me to call them something else.
This whole scene definitely would have qualified as intimidating twenty minutes ago—ok, if I was totally honest, it was still intimidating now—but… in for a penny, in for a pound. It would seem completely two-faced to start being polite at this point and, besides, getting snatched up by golems and dumped on my ass on a marble floor with my head wrapped up in a blanket and then talked down to wasn’t exactly on my list of "ways to treat me that will earn my respect" so I was just going to hold my ground and hope that it didn’t get us killed.
“You do not seem to understand who you are dealing with,” said the first voice that had spoken to me, which I was now able to match to an extremely tall woman who could be described as… reedy. She was even a pleasant green color, with straw-yellow hair and ears that reached delicate points well above her head.
I interrupted her as she was taking a breath to continue.
“Well, my first guess was a World of Warcraft guild meeting, but, even though your ears might back up my initial impression, I’m guessing that you’re actually the folks in charge of this little realm.”
I could see a few people bristle at the claim that this was a little realm, but damn, people, I had been told it was the size of New York City. Even if it matched the population of New York City, it was still “little” in the grand scheme of things.
“Geographically little, I mean. I’m sure you guys are very big where it counts,” I said, through the firmest smile I could manage.
“Vic, you are totally gonna get us killed,” Trev chuckled, from his spot on the floor. If he really meant that, I wondered why he was laughing.
“Well, you’re no help. You must know more about these folks than I do—any sage advice is quite welcome.”
Neither of us bothered dropping our voices. These folks had home court advantage, and it seemed ridiculous to assume that they couldn’t hear us, no matter what we did, so there was no point in pretending. If we’d really wanted privacy, we could have spoken telepathically, but Trev hadn’t bothered with that since we’d arrived, so I assumed it was either a bad idea, or simply pointless.
“Can we get to the point already? We are wasting time.”
That was from the second voice that had spoken when we’d had the hoods on, which I could now see emanated from a person who looked… well, like a minotaur. I mean, a pretty handsome minotaur if such a thing were possible, but he totally had a massive, fur-covered upper body that looked quite muscular, as well as mostly human, although it was definitely holding up a bull’s head, or something kind of like a bull’s head. Definitely sporting a snout and horns at any rate. Kinda reinforced the whole World of Warcraft vibe, if I was being totally honest. I looked around briefly to see if anyone had snakes for hair, but no one seemed to.
“Yes, please,” I replied, once I’d wrapped my mind around addressing a minotaur, “getting to the point would be great. I like you, sir. What’s your name?”
Everyone just stared at me for a moment, and then the minotaur, or whatever he was, grunted.
“Torrence.”
“Seriously?”
He glared at me.
“Okay… well, Torrence, let’s get to the Gwendamned point, shall we? Why have you brought us here?”
“You have brought MOME agents into our inner sanctum and you DARE question why we have brought you here?”
“We didn’t bring any MOME agents wi—”
“Silence!” That was the elf lady with the seriously long ears, and she must have put a little something extra behind the words, because my mouth slammed shut before I could even think about it.
“MOME agents arrived here at the same instant you did. Whether they were chasing you or helping you is none of our concern. They are here because of you, and their presence is even less welcome than yours.”
“So, the fact that we were doing everything we could to avoid MOME counts for nothing? It’s all about consequences, and intentions be damned?”
“The road to hell is—”
“Oh please, don’t cliché us to death. Is that the punishment for bringing MOME agents here? What’s next? Pun-nishment?” I waited a beat, and Trev was kind enough to fill in with a verbal drumroll. The rest of the room was silent.
“Tough crowd. Look, we didn’t mean to bring MOME here. We will happily do all we can to help you rid yourselves of MOME in exchange for some help tracking down a friend of ours and—”
“You are in no position to negotiate,” said the minotaur.
“Torrence, I thought we were friends. Look, I don’t—”
“As it is your first offense,” Elf Lady continued, as if I had never spoken, “you are sentenced to ten years imprisonment in the dungeon of Regnadevarg, with an option for parole at three and six years if you behave—”
“You will releasssse them to me.”
My head snapped to the nearest archway in time to see Rhelia, in all her ebon-skinned, reptilian-eyed glory waltz through it, as though no one would dare stop her. Since she was a good head shorter than I was, I found that particularly impressive. I couldn’t help but notice the way Trev’s eyes lit up when she walked into
the room, and I made a mental note to ask him about it later.
“Lady Rhelia, this sentencing hearing is not open to the public. As you are not a family member of the accused, you must—”
“He issss my mate,” Rhelia said, pointing a regal finger at none other than my twin brother.
“WELL, THIS IS awkward,” I said into the absolute silence that greeted that announcement. It had gone on long enough to make me wonder what kind of crazy taboo there was against Rhelia dating my brother. However, as I took in the shocked look that Trevor was working hard to hide, I decided that there was more going on here than Rhelia announcing that she and Trev were an item.
“I’m assuming that means she wins?”
I looked between Rhelia, Trev, and the twenty or so flabbergasted people who ran Unterberg.
Once again ignoring me as though I weren’t even there, Elf Lady spoke directly to Rhelia.
“We cannot hold a dragon’s kin without their express permission,” she said, and then she turned to Trev. “Do you consent to being held in the dungeon of Regnadevarg?”
Trev cleared his throat briefly, and looked like he was trying very hard not to look at Rhelia.
“I do not.”
Then Elf Lady turned to me, and I had to assume that if Trev was somehow Rhelia’s family, that made me family by extension, because she repeated the question.
“I do not,” I replied.
“Then you are free to leave, under the protection of your dragon kin.”
Trev stood up, and I moved to where he and Rhelia were now holding hands close to the door.
“Know that if you are ever found here without the protection of your dragon kin, your stay of sentencing will be revoked and—”
Rhelia whipped around to snarl at the woman, who was not only twice her height, but had the command of a massive golem army, “He issss my mate, Nethia. Not even death will ssssever that bond. You have no hold over my family!”
Nethia (up to now known as Elf Lady) fell silent, and the rest of the room began to murmur quietly.
Victoria Marmot- The Complete Series Page 18
