by John Conroe
“They are of decidedly higher intellect than the elves give them credit for. The leader, Pancho, likely identified your scents just as Stacia surmised he would. He then sent the others looking for my drones, which were rather well hidden. Connecting your scents to my drones was a sophisticated logic chain. Look, now they’ve found the second as well.”
Sure enough, a couple of pucks had landed in the second drone’s field of vision and were squatting down and chittering about it.
Back at the first drone, Pancho was staring intently at it. Then he started to squeak, squeal, and, well, sort of dance a little. Right in the middle of his ultrasonic spiel, his voice dropped way down to mere teenaged girl range and spoke a very clear “Ash.”
“He wants Ashley,” I said.
“Actually, Father, he wants them to be taken to Ashley. There may be some mention of a lack of purpose without having her to guard and protect.”
“Well, I can open a gate, bring them here, then bring them to Earth,” I said.
“No,” Chris said, a little sharply. “Sorry. It occurred to me that if they can wait a week, we’ll come back and gate right into that garden room with them acting as a security team. Once we’re done, they could come back with us to Earth and Ashley.”
“I concur,” Omega said. Instantly, the drone produced a series of sounds that passed quickly out of my range of hearing. Pancho chattered back and in turn received an immediate response from Omega’s drone. “I have indicated that Ashley would like them to guard her quarters for the next seven-day interval, after which the individuals they scent on the syrup can will arrive. At the conclusion of your activities, they will be able to accompany you back to Earth and will then be conveyed to Ashley herself. They have agreed. I also told them the syrup was for them.”
Pancho backed away from the drone, then zipped over to the syrup. He knelt and rather ceremoniously took a big handful which went into his mouth. His left arm raised up and every puck froze in place. Then it came down like a flag person at a NASCAR event and the bottle was swarmed with furry little bodies, the bottle itself getting knocked around until it disappeared under a pile of pucks.
Fifteen seconds later, they split apart, each of them cleaning the remaining syrup off their fur or other clan member’s fur. The maple syrup jug itself was ripped open, the tough plastic shredded by countless piranha teeth.
“That’s… impressive,” Chris said, eyes wide at the sugary carnage.
“They are fascinating creatures and completely the product of Winter Court genetic engineering. It is my working hypothesis that they have developed unintended behaviors and abilities, far beyond their maker’s intent,” Omega said.
“Kind of like you did?” I asked, smiling at his interest in them.
“Do you think they’re reliable?” Chris asked, second guessing himself after seeing the maple feeding frenzy.
“Pancho and his clan are the only pucks we’re familiar with,” I said, glancing at Stacia, who nodded. “They are completely dedicated to protecting Ashley. She’s like their chosen queen.”
“He’s right. I don’t love the little monsters myself, but they dote on Ashley,” Stacia said.
“Yeah, they don’t seem too thrilled with werewolves but they developed a certain respect for Stacia and perhaps a tolerance for the rest of us. And you saw how smart they are,” I said.
“Well, it’s the best we can do. When we come back, we will check on them with the drones, then we can bob on over to Idiria,” Chris said. “If that’s everything for here, let’s head back to Earth.”
Chapter 11
“Mack is looking for you,” Omega said as I stepped through the looking glass and onto Earth. I was the first one through because Draco was stationed inside the tack room where the portal was set up. We didn’t want any misunderstandings.
The little dragon bounded over and shoved his nose at my stomach as I was still processing Omega’s words.
“Did you tell him where I was?” I asked as Stacia came through next.
“I explained you were arriving back from Fairie. He’s on his way here. Jetta is missing.”
‘Sos came through next, wearing wolf fur. Stacia, who’d obviously heard Omega, gave me a set of raised eyebrows. “What do you mean, she’s missing?” I asked. Chris came through last and I closed the portal.
“She used their truck for an errand and didn’t come back. Mack tried calling her but her phone went to voice mail. I gave him its location and he caught a ride with Matthew. Her phone was on the front seat of the truck, which was parked on Wright Farm Road three-point-two miles from Colchester.”
“What about her friends?” Stacia asked.
“Mack spoke to several of her girlfriends and discovered that she had mentioned meeting a boy she’d met at school. He was described by Jetta as ‘tall, hot as hell, with a killer accent, like Scottish or something’,” Omega said. “Mack has her hairbrush in a plastic bag.”
“Is Aunt Ash home?” I asked.
“She is. I have alerted her to both your arrival and the possible need of her skills. She waits inside your family quarters.”
“Omega, how long has she been missing?” Chris asked.
“Arcane cameras show her leaving the school parking lot at seven twenty-three last night.”
“You didn’t have any drones on her?” I asked.
He paused, something he almost never did. “I did until she berated me for invading her privacy. I pulled back my last micro drone two days ago.”
“From now on, keep drones on all team members please,” I said.
“Whoa. I’m not cool with that. If I want privacy, I should have it,” Stacia said.
I locked eyes with her as I spoke. “Omega, what path did she take after leaving the parking lot?”
“Based on all available public and private camera systems, she took Route 2 North, out of Burlington, stopped once for gas and a Vitamin Water, but based on camera footage at the next station, or rather a lack of footage, must have turned onto Wright Farm Road. I am scanning all subsequent footage for possible facial recognition of Miss Sutton in any other vehicles. Matthew scent tracked her around the truck. She never left the road, but must have stepped into another vehicle. Mack will arrive in seven minutes.”
“Privacy is pretty limited already. If she’d have allowed a micro drone on her or in her purse, we wouldn’t be looking for her,” I said.
“Sounds like she went for a rendezvous with this hot guy. How mad will she be when you guys track her and him down?” Stacia asked.
“Without her phone?” I asked. “She doesn’t go the shower room without her phone.”
That gave her pause. “Hmm, maybe she forgot it in the heat of the moment?”
“The Red Caps are out and around, and some dude with a foreign, potentially Celtic accent suddenly shows up to sweep her off her feet. I hope it’s just teen lust,” I said.
“When you say it that way, I get concerned,” she said.
“Mack is here,” Omega said.
We met him as he pulled into the restaurant parking lot, Matthew riding shotgun in the Sutton truck. My roomie was visibly distraught, his eyes tight with worry and his jaw clenching when he paused between words. He recounted what we had already heard, and like me, he’d put the accent together with the recent Red Cap attack. Then Matthew added his own bit of news.
“I smelled dog all around the truck. Weird dog too; no variety of canine I’ve ever smelled before,” he said. Werewolves know scents like I know spells.
“What about the guy, the suave foreigner?” Chris asked.
“That’s the weird part. I only smelled Jetta and this dog,” Matthew said. His crush on Jetta was legendary and his eyes weren’t his normal brown color, but bleeding into yellow.
“Let’s get Aunt Ash working on her location,” I said, herding them into the back door of our quarters. My aunt met us in the family kitchen, leading us into the open family living and dining area. The big, heavy farm tabl
e was already laid out with an open map of the county, a circle of salt expertly poured around the perimeter. Mack handed her the baggie with his sister’s brush and Aunt Ash inspected it.
“Anyone else use this?” she asked.
“Probably her roommates and friends from time to time,” Mack asked. “Wouldn’t most of it be hers?”
“Aye, but the mixing of others would be a problem fer accuracy, ya see,” Ash said.
Matthew stepped over and took the brush gently from my aunt. He pulled hairs off it, sniffed them, and started to make two piles. One pile was mostly brown. The other had reds, blondes, blacks, and browns in it. His pushed the multi-colored pile to my aunt. “Those are hers,” he said with absolute conviction. My aunt raised an eyebrow at the colors.
“She used to change her hair color a lot when we were, you know, hunting our parents’ killers,” Mack said. “She never lost the habit.”
Ashling’s frown melted at his tone and she gave a single nod. “Don’t you worry, Mack Sutton. I’ll find yer wee sister and then we’ll send the two most savage men on the planet to retrieve her, we will,” she said, giving him a hug.
“And a couple of rather nasty wolves to deal with any dogs,” Stacia said.
Awasos chuffed. “And a were-bear-wolf,” she amended.
I scooped up Jetta’s hair and grabbed scissors from the drawer, immediately starting to cut the hair into tiny particles. Stacia, who’d seen this act before, grabbed a sheet of printer paper from the wireless printer on our family desk nearby, putting the white sheet under the little pile of chopped hair. Meanwhile, my aunt set up candles at the major and minor cardinal points around the circle and the map. I noticed the map had been aligned with magnetic north, one of Aunt Darcy ‘s field compasses sitting nearby as the giveaway.
Ashling studied the layout of the circle, the map, and the candles. She turned and gave me a nod. I lit the candles with a thought, all eight at once. Stacia handed her the pile of chopped hair.
My aunt took a pinch of the chopped hair and held it in the palm of her right hand. “Aimsigh,” she whispered. Find. Hair by hair, the pile streamed out of her palm on a gust of air. The strands of Jetta’s chopped tresses crossed the circle, swirling in the air above the map. And kept swirling. Ashling frowned.
“Faigh do chuid fe`in,” she commanded. Find your own.
The river of airborne follicles formed a spinning circle above the map, chasing each other like dogs at a park.
“Block me will ye,” my aunt said, eyes narrowed at the map. “Boyo, lend me yer wee elemental,” she said aside to me.
“Draco, come,” I said.
I didn’t need to raise my voice because the call went out at least as much mentally as vocally. The doors to the house swung themselves open at my aunt’s gesture and I did the same with the ones outside in the barn. A swoosh and a thud sounded outside, then the clatter of sharp talons on hardwood as my little dragon scuttled in through the kitchen. He slipped past Awasos with a slight hiss, swerved around Chris, giving him a wide berth and sideways glance, and then dove between me and Stacia, wriggling his body into place. Green reptilian eyes lifted to mine and I nodded toward Aunt Ash. His gaze moved over to hers and froze as the powerful Air witch held out her left hand, palm down. Shuffling over, he lifted his head till her hand covered most of it. Both of their eyes closed at the exact same time.
For a few seconds, nothing happened, then the spinning circle of hair stopped dead in place and a second later dropped straight down, the first ones landing on their ends. The tiny strands were now standing upright, the hairs behind them stacking themselves in multi-colored replicas of their original lengths.
“Now that we’ve pushed aside that bloody bit of chicanery, ye’ve got some work, now don’t ye?” Ashling asked us.
“What happened?” Chris said, leaning down to study the map. The hairs were touching an open spot on the map about three miles of twisted roads away from where Jetta had left the truck.
“What happened is that some gobshite black magic bastard thought to block our spell, he did,” Aunt Ashling said. “But ye’d need some bloody big bag o’ tricks to block a elemental, now wouldn’t ya,” she said, patting Draco on the head.
Chris raised an eyebrow my way.
“The original spell should have found her instantly. Someone cast a block on it. Given time, Aunt Ash probably would have broken it down,” I said. My aunt snorted. “Definitely would have broken it down. But she used Draco as a massive amplifier. He’s an Air Elemental and she’s an Air witch.”
“So she turbo boosted her spell?” Chris asked.
“Closer to rocket powered. Blasted right through it,” I said. “But whoever did it will know they’re busted, so we have to go get her right now. Draco, find Jetta. Protect.”
My mini dragon shot out of the house and was just a disappearing dot in the sky when we got outside. Chris climbed into Beast with Stacia, myself, and Awasos while Matthew joined Mack in his truck.
“This dude who took Jetta knows we’re coming?” Chris asked.
“He knows someone poked a nasty big hole through his wards,” I said. “He won’t know how fast we’re coming but he’s likely on high alert.”
“So the danger is he’ll hurt or kill Jetta and bolt, or take Jetta and bolt,” Chris said.
“Draco will be there in a few minutes,” I said.
“And just what will or can your dragon do?” Chris asked.
Stacia leaned forward. “You haven’t seen him in action, have you? Not recently, I bet?” she asked.
“His priority is to find and protect Jetta. He knows her and will have no trouble rooting her out. So he’ll either get between Jet and the bad guy or follow them,” I said.
“But what can a dog-sized dragon really do?” Chris asked. I gave him a look. “Okay, I trust you but I’m just concerned.”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” I said.
Chapter 12
Five minutes later, I pointed with one hand as Beast slid into an old farmyard. I said, “That’s what he can do.”
A late model Jeep Grand Cherokee was burning in the driveway. Two blackened bodies lay on the ground, one to each side of it. A man with dark hair was backed against the worn wooden wall of the barn, holding Jetta between himself and Draco, who flapped back and forth, side to side, looking for an opening. We piled out of the vehicle.
The man with Jetta, who I could now see held a giant knife to her throat, turned our way. His eyes lit on me, gleaming a little, and he smirked.
“Okay. Damn,” Chris said, looking at the destruction. The smirk on the man’s face vanished as Jetta’s kidnapper took in God’s Hammer, Stacia, and Awasos, who flowed out of the car in wolf form but then immediately stood up in bear shape. Like sixteen feet up.
Mack’s truck bounced into the rutted dirt driveway and he boiled out of the car as soon as it was in park, a gun in his hands aimed right at the asshole’s face. Matthew came out the passenger side and just jumped over the front of it, sliding his body across the hood of the truck, barely touching it.
“Shoot him, Mack! Just fucking shoot him!” Jetta yelled as Mack advanced, Glock in a two-handed grip, Matthew snarling right behind him.
Stacia, ignoring the action, walked over to the burning Jeep and inspected the bodies. “Red Caps,” she said, sniffing a little.
“If there’s two, there might be more,” Chris said. “‘Sos, you and Stacia scout for others while we talk to our new friend here.”
Awasos dropped to all fours and headed around the barn while Stacia headed into the farm house, her DP-12 held ready.
“Now, how about you let our young friend go and we’ll talk about things,” Chris said.
“Ohh, ‘tis the mighty Hammer O’ God, his own self. Am I to tremble then?” Jetta’s captor said, his voice burring with a thick accent.
“His accent registers as Welsh,” Omega said in my ear. Chris heard it and so did Matthew. The man apparently did as well.
/> “Welsh? Ah, are you a black dog?” Chris asked.
“No ye bloody fool, I’m thee Black Dog,” the man said, smiling an unpleasant smile.
While they were talking, I was reaching for the man with my magic, thinking now would be a good time to reuse my new water spell. It slid right off him. My magic recoiled from the man before it ever reached him. He spun my way.
“Oh, it doesn’t touch me now, not a bit. What’s the grand warlock to do?” he asked with a tight grin.
