by Lori Devoti
“I don’t have to pay you for the princess. We can just take her.” Even with Raf’s hand clamped around his throat, Geir managed to sound bored.
Raf laughed. “You think?”
“Yes, I do.” Geir’s gaze flickered, a blink so quick Marina knew the hellhound couldn’t have seen it.
One of the elves reached into his pocket.
Marina screamed, “Raf, behind you.”
The hellhound turned, tossing her uncle across the room as he did. The two elves who had entered with the witch dropped her and dashed to grab the royal before he collided with a wall. The other two rushed forward, swords in their hands.
Marina lunged, forgetting her ankles were bound and landed on her face. Her lip split, blood spilled into her mouth. As she pushed herself up onto her palms, steel flashed. One of the elves danced forward. His blade sliced through Raf’s shirt, into his skin, left a zigzag trail of blood in its wake.
Steel sliced through his skin, but the pain barely registered. Raf was too focused on the battle, too lost in the desire to change. Anger bubbled inside him. He bared his teeth and let the rage take over. He fell to all fours; fur sprouted from his skin and his teeth and nails lengthened. His eyes glowed red; he could feel the fire there, simmering, waiting to boil over.
Elves were trying to take Marina from him. He wouldn’t let them, couldn’t wait to taste their blood.
The elf who had cut him froze, then moved a few steps back. Silly little elf. He was no match for a hellhound, didn’t he know that? Raf moved to the side, his head low, his teeth flashing.
“Step away from her,” he demanded in their heads.
The elves exchanged glances.
They were unsure, had probably never faced a hellhound before.
Behind them Marina moved. She had fallen to the ground. Raf eyed the distance to her. He could leap, land on her and shimmer them both away, but…he glanced to the right…there was the witch, too. She stood where the elves had left her, her eyes huge and her face pale. He needed to reach both of them, get both of them away, but he also needed to fight. The bloodlust was growing inside him, triggered by what he wasn’t sure, but he was angry, as angry as he had been in a very long time.
He didn’t just want to get Marina and the witch away. He wanted to destroy the elves who thought they could take them.
He growled, tried to control the beast inside him. Letting the bloodlust take over meant losing control, possibly losing the prize.
Near the witch, there was movement—her guards and Geir. Marina’s uncle reached into his pocket and pulled something out. Whatever he held fit in his palm. He nodded to the elves closest to him. One drew his sword and thrust—his blade pointed at the witch’s heart.
With a curse, Raf leapt. Below him, Geir dropped to the ground and rolled. Instantly, Raf knew he’d been tricked, but he had no choice. The threat to the witch was real. If Raf changed direction or shimmered to Marina, where Geir was headed, the witch would be dead. He knocked into her, shimmering as soon as his foot struck her side.
He immediately shimmered them back into the room, but farther away, in the opposite corner from where they had been, but it was too late. The elves had donned some kind of masks that covered their noses and mouths and the room was filled with frothy white gas.
Raf fell to his knees. The witch collapsed beside him. He tried to stand, to shimmer, anything, but he was too weak to do anything more than watch as the elves grabbed Marina by the arms and dragged her unconscious from the room.
He’d lost her.
Chapter 5
R af came to. Still in dog form, he shook his head, tried to clear the fog that seemed to linger. Fog. Marina. The elves. He stood and swallowed the bitter taste that coated his mouth—the taste of the gas the elves had used.
He had failed, had let elves beat him. A growl built in his chest, changed to a roar as it escaped his throat. He changed to his human form. Naked and shaking with frustration, he slammed his fist into the cement wall. Pain rippled down his arm, into his frame; he embraced it, then pulled back his fist to strike again.
A gasp sounded from a few feet away. He spun. The witch he’d saved stared back at him. Her hair was stringy and her clothes were torn. It was obvious she had not been treated well and now after his performance, she looked as if she expected him to tear her into shreds.
He bit back a curse, forced the anger surging through him to mellow, and started pulling on his clothes.
When his pants covered his lower half, she looked a little more secure, at least she worked up the courage to ask, “Who are you?”
Dirty, in torn clothes and obviously shaken by being left alone with a raging hellhound, her voice was still strong. “What happened to the elf? The female. Did they take her?”
Thinking she was worried Marina was still near, might still be working for the elf lords, hunting witches, he replied, “She’s gone, with her uncle. You don’t have to worry about her, or them. I’ll protect you.” Like he’d protected Marina? a voice inside him scoffed. He shook his head, still unable to believe he’d been duped so easily—twice now, once by Marina and then by her uncle.
The witch took a step back, her gaze wary. “I knew her from Gunngar. She saved me.”
His shirt halfway down his chest, Raf froze. “Aren’t you a witch? Marina didn’t save witches, she burned them.”
The woman let out a soft snort. “Or made others think she did. I’d believed that’s what she was going to do to me. I was tied to the pyre. I could smell the smoke. I thought it was over…my daughters…” She looked up. “I have daughters. I didn’t want to leave them, but I had to. If I hadn’t the elves would have found them, too. The elves caught me and took me to the city square. Then Marina, their leader, arrived with a torch in her hand. I thought it was over. The flames hit the wood and my world exploded in smoke, but while I was preparing for the pain, something happened. I moved. I wasn’t in the square any longer. I was across the land…in a field. No explanation, nothing.”
“You were the witch Marina burned in the square? But you’re…you’re not—” Raf jerked his shirt down the rest of the way. He didn’t know what to say. He needed time to process what the woman was saying.
“It took months, but I made my way back to the city. By the time I got there, everything had changed. Gunngar was open, the elves were gone, most of them anyway. I was asking for help, looking for my daughters, and I asked the wrong person. Damn Svartalfar, dark elves.” She spat on the floor. “Willing to trade their mothers for an ale. They took me to the ones who brought me here,” she continued.
“So, Marina didn’t kill you?” Raf asked, even though the evidence was staring back at him.
The witch smiled and ran her hands over her bodice. “I’ve looked better, but I’m definitely alive. A few months living off the land, followed by a week in an elfin prison…my daily beauty regime suffered. But none of that matters, what’s important is finding my daughters.” Her torn skirt balled in her fists, she took a step forward, her gaze was steady and determined. “Will you help me?”
Raf glanced around the room. The net, box and locator were still there, but Marina was gone. He’d spent months hunting her, and in the pass of a few moments he’d lost her. Without her, there was no hope of getting the seer stone from the elf lords, no hope of finding revenge against his family’s killers.
And this witch wanted him to take time away from his hunt to help her. He crossed the room without answering, picked up the net and folded it until it would fit into his pocket.
When he glanced back, the witch was still there fidgeting with her skirt, but staring at him. Waiting.
He walked to the box and placed his hands on it. The clear material it was constructed of was cold and unyielding—as he’d thought Marina was. But this witch claimed Marina had saved her. His mind swirled. His plan, his justification for it, was slipping through his fingers like sand.
“Hellhound?” The witch took a step forward. She
licked her lips, but there was determination in her eyes. “Will you help me?”
Raf pressed his hands onto the box’s top until he thought, indestructible as he knew it to be, it might crack. This wasn’t a damn mission of mercy. He had spent what felt like a lifetime hunting who had killed his family—the stone was his last hope.
The woman moved again, started to speak.
With a growl, he turned on her. “I’ll take you to people who can, but that’s it.” Then his good deeds would be over—guilty or not, he would find Marina and sell her to the elf lords. He wouldn’t be distracted again, by anything or anyone—especially Marina.
Marina sat in the back of her uncle’s open-topped car, her hands folded calmly in her lap. Only she and the three elves sitting across from her knew the silk scarf artfully tossed across her wrists hid thin ties.
She was shackled again. Geir had wasted no time replacing the heavy dwarf shackles Raf had used with thin elfin ones. So much easier to hide. So much easier to continue his guise of the happy royal family. He’d already sent out press releases, announcing the information the elf lords had spread of her joining their ranks was “misinformed.”
Marina had listened to her uncle’s explanation of what he’d done with a hollow spirit. Raf hadn’t believed her, or hadn’t cared. Despite everything, she’d thought…she closed her eyes, willed the tears that threatened to form to disappear. She was alone. It was time she accepted that.
“Your sister will be happy to see you,” one of the elves, Tahl, said, then shifted his gaze over the others in the car. “She has missed you.”
Marina sighed. She should be haughty and cold; it was what her guards expected, what her uncle expected, but she was tired. Tired to the marrow of her bones. “I will be happy to see her, too.”
At her answer, the three guards started. She turned from them, stared out into the faces that lined the streets. They seemed different from the crowds she remembered before her journey to Gunngar, a little ragtag perhaps. She didn’t linger on the thought for long. Her mind quickly returned to her own situation. Now that she was on her own and trapped again, she needed to concentrate—think of an escape.
Not only had her uncle claimed the stories of her joining with the elf lords were false, he had also worked to turn her time in Gunngar to the royals’ favor—claimed that she had been there as their representative, not the elf lords, set her up as some kind of heroine who had pursued Amma when the witch escaped, then been captured by a hellhound and taken to the human world against her will.
The citizens of Alfheim had gobbled it up. The elves who had come out for her procession stared at her as if she had walked through the fires of Muspelheim. To them surviving the human world had to be as bad.
The idiocy, the farce, all of it made Marina’s head ache. She tilted her head back against the upholstery. Her mind drifted to Raf, how he’d looked as he’d lunged to save the witch….
Her uncle’s sharp voice cut through her moment of recollection. “Smile. Wave. These are your people. Your destiny. Your hope. Give them what they want.” He rode beside the car on a stallion.
He was beautiful and regal on his horse. His blond hair rippled in the wind and his body clung to the horse’s back as if he was part of the beast. He was the perfect elf, and he knew it. Expected Marina to be one, too.
But she never had and never could be. She was tainted with her witch powers, weak though they were, and she’d never “fit” into the royal life, not like her sister had. Marina didn’t share the royals’ outlook on anything. She hated the importance pretense seemed to hold in their lives, and as a witch herself, she couldn’t look down on non-elves. She had acted as if she did, though, for the royals and the elf lords—and she hated herself for it.
The car rounded a bend in the road and left the crowd of misguided citizens behind—or most of them. Perched in a tree twenty yards ahead Marina spotted a gleam of light reflecting off glass. A camera. One hard core member of the paparazzi looking for the shot no one else would get, the shot that would make him millions in currency and fame.
Marina tensed. Temptation flitted through her. She’d never shown any public sign of the true relationship between her and her uncle. While never described in detail, she’d always known there would be a price to be paid.
She glanced down at the scarf. One quick upward movement of her arms and the photographer would have his picture. All of Alfheim would have evidence that she wasn’t committed to the royals as her uncle would have them think.
But she would still be in this car, on her way to the mansion. And once he found out, she’d be forced to pay that undescribed price.
They were only a few feet away now. She could hear the camera clicking. She was surprised no one else seemed to notice, but maybe it was because she’d been gone, had forgotten what it was like to be under the constant scrutiny.
They were almost there; he was almost past, her chance gone. Slowly, carefully she pinched the scarf between her fingers and pulled it lower, just enough that the unmistakable sheen of the ties could be seen peeking above the silk.
She held her breath and the smile that she’d had on her face since arriving back in Alfheim. And as the car rolled onward, out from under the tree, she prayed the photographer had just snapped the picture of his life.
Raf had never been in Alfheim, not this deep into it anyway. When he and the others had walked through Gunngar’s portal they had landed in some part of the silvery land, but there had been no buildings there, no elves, and they had gone no farther. They had stayed by the portal until the garm figured out how to work the traveling device, then each had gone to their own land or land of their choice. In Raf’s case he had gone to the human world to find Marina. His hunter’s sense had told him that was where she would head. It was where most who wanted to get lost for a while headed.
But this time he’d chosen to land as square in the center of Alfheim as he could, in Alfheim’s capital city, Fisby. Home of both Marina’s uncle and the elf lords.
The portal he’d gone through opened into a small room. The unadorned space was a major departure from the portals he usually traveled through. In most of the nine worlds, portals were run and guarded by garm. The wolves tended to taverns and bars. A nice compliment to the weary realities of travel.
But here there was nothing but elves. Just seeing them made Raf’s hair ruffle. He crossed his arms over his chest and waited. Minutes ticked by. The four elves who occupied the room didn’t even acknowledge him; they kept their gazes attached to their computers instead.
Their obvious attempt to ignore whoever walked through the portal, to intimidate them and make them feel insignificant failed with Raf. He strolled forward and tapped one finger on the top of a pewter-colored monitor.
The elf behind the monitor let out an exasperated huff. “One mo—” He froze. His hand slipped to the elf beside him. One by one as if they were engaged in a football crowd’s wave, the four looked up and stared. A shocked, appalled stare.
Finally, one slapped the device protruding from his ear and began jabbering into his mouthpiece. Raf smiled, showing some teeth.
A door behind the elves slid open. A fifth elf entered, a grim expression on his face and a small electronic pad of some sort wedged under his arm. The other four stepped out from behind their terminals, swords drawn.
Armed computer geeks. Alfheim was already a treasure trove of new discoveries.
Raf stepped forward, his shoulders brushing against the blade of the closest elf.
“Type of being?” The tablet bearer tilted his head up to meet Raf’s gaze. He held the device in front of him as if ready to take notes, but his stance was wide. He was ready for a fight. How Raf wished he had the time to give it to him.
He leaned forward, so his nose almost brushed the elf’s. “Forandre.” Then waited to see how they would react to his announcement that he was a shape-shifter. Alfheim had a reputation for not being overly welcoming of other beings.
“Reason for this visit?”
Raf twisted his lips to the side. The elves were tense and nosey. Travel through the portals was usually casual. You paid a fee or provided a bounty and you got through. He’d never been questioned like this.
But then he’d never traveled to the heart of Alfheim before. There was no telling what surprises might be waiting for him.
He slid one foot over the floor beneath his feet, felt for a trapdoor or weakness in the boards. All seemed solid.
The elf waited.
“Business.” Raf replied.
“And you are…?”
“Raf Dolg.”
The elf tapped his notebook with a stylus. “A…?”
Obviously, forandre wasn’t specific enough for the pencil pusher. “Hellhound,” he replied.
He wasn’t prepared for the response. All four elves shoved their blades into his throat, the one on the right with a tad too much enthusiasm; blood ran down Raf’s neck.
“We don’t get many hellhounds here,” the elf replied, but not before Raf noticed his jaw tightening. “Who is your business with?”
Raf knew nothing about elf politics, few outside of Alfheim did. The light elves kept to themselves. Should he mention Geir or the elf lords? He had business with both—although the first might consider it more thievery.
He decided to stick with a hellhound standby—arrogance. “No one who wants their name tossed about casually.”
“Really? Have you been to Gunngar recently, hellhound?” The elf tapped a few times on his digital notebook and pretended to read something there.
Raf let out a growl. In the best of times he had little patience with bureaucrats and with four swords pressed to his throat, what little he did have was quickly evaporating.
The elf looked up, but Raf wasn’t looking at him. He was looking behind him at the door that had just flown open and the six elves pushed against it, ready to rush in.
