by John Conroe
“What? You don’t meet with queens every day, ya know,” she said.
“Well, most of the time this queen is trying to kill us,” I said, handing her the DP-12. “The time for first impressions is long past.”
“Nonsense,” she said, giving her hair a final pat after settling the deadly shotgun’s tactical sling over her shoulders.
“Okay,” I said as evenly as possible, bending down and opening the pre-made portal with a touch. Dark scrubby terrain loomed on the other side of the opening and I followed Stacia through it and onto the island.
Chapter 27
Light-colored sand added a small, small measure of visibility to the streaks of light in the early dawn sky, just enough to give my human eyes the shapes of plants, rocks, and small trees.
Stacia, who could see as if by daylight, led the way through the forest of short trees. Over her shoulder, I could start to see the orange light of torches. Head swiveling, she gracefully picked a path through the thickly grown evergreens till we stepped out of the forest and into a clearing.
Oval in shape, about the size of an NFL regulation football field, the clearing lay before us with a delegation waiting for us at the far end. Four six-foot torches had been jammed into the sandy ground and Queen Morrigan sat comfortably in what had to be some kind of folding throne. She looked fully healed, dressed in a skintight black dress that clung to her slender body. Her giant Bigfoot troll stood behind her, her deadly daughter, Neeve, on her right (our left), and Greer on the other side.
We approached across the space, all senses alert for the slightest sound, smell, or motion. Morrigan leaned back, legs crossed at the knee, elevated foot bouncing slightly as she studied us with interest. She glanced behind us, one elegant eyebrow lifting in slight surprise.
“No entourage, no army of guards or turned traitor pucks?” she asked, her voice a shockingly pleasant tone with an unplaceable accent.
“We’re minimalists,” I said with a shrug. Unable to stop myself, I glanced at Neeve. Her eyes left off their staring match with Stacia and flicked my way, analyzing me.
“I have given my assurance that I mean you no harm at this meeting,” Morrigan said, noting my glance at her daughter.
“Ah, yes, well that may be, but at least one of your party has, I believe, expressed a very different opinion,” I said.
“Naïvety and youth are not excuses for bad manners, Realm Holder,” Morrigan admonished. “My Killing Frost knows well that now is not the time or place for her to exact her inevitable victory.”
“Indeed, your deaths at my hands are pleasures to be savored and anticipated,” Neeve said, giving us an oddly formal little bow of her head.
“Awkward and not a little creepy,” I said to her before turning back to her mother. “Anyway, you called?”
Morrigan regarded me with something like amusement. “Such insouciance,” she said, slightly shaking her head. “Many have met demises so horrifying, your small human brain could scarcely comprehend them for uttering much less.”
“But admit it—none of them were near as much fun as I am,” I said, prompting a cough from Stacia.
Morrigan’s amusement deepened. “I’ll admit to a certain lack of boredom since your arrival. But enough. I believe my son conveyed my interest in, at the very least, pausing our hostilities?”
“He did. And I’ll point out that hostilities, as you call them, were never something we wanted. Yet you joined with your sister to initiate them,” I said.
She waved a hand as if kidnapping my friends was of tiny consequence. “Of course. How else to test you? An untried human witch, and a male at that? The odds favored your almost immediate failure and demise. So I should leave my sister to be the only player in the game? Bah!”
“And now?”
“Now is different. Now you have shown ability and resolve. You survive—no, you thrive. My sister made a serious mistake in underestimating you. She should never have brought you here, as you have changed the very balance of our lives in ways unexpected. So I wish to cease hostilities with you.”
“Permanently?” I asked.
“Don’t be a child. What is permanent? I have lived longer than most of the civilizations on your magic-blighted planet. There is no permanent.”
I glanced at Stacia, who gave me a tiny nod. “So a temporary break in our conflict, allowing you to focus on your sister and other matters, like say, the Vorsook?”
Her eyes narrowed at the name of the alien enemy. “They threaten both our worlds. Why have three enemies at this time when we can each concentrate on just two?”
“What terms?”
“Just a cessation of violence toward each other to allow us to concentrate on others.”
“Timeframe?” Stacia asked, gaining Morrigan’s full attention.
“I would point out that this discussion is among Holders only, but I’m told he dotes on you. I cannot believe there was ever a time I would have been so young and frighteningly inexperienced as to allow such a thing,” Morrigan said, a furrow between her eyes as if she was trying to remember. She turned back to me. “I will offer a one-time bit of advice, young Declan O’Carroll: Such attachments only weaken you. No doubt you will ignore it, but I’ve done it anyway.”
It was a tiny movement but I was keyed up and dawn was bright enough that I caught Neeve’s eyes shifting suddenly to her mother. Fast, then back on me, focused like a laser sight. No other expression or shift, yet on her was a major sign. Of what? As I turned my attention back to the queen, my own intuition offered up its best guess… surprise.
“Your advice is duly noted,” I said, earning me a twitch at the corner of Morrigan’s mouth. “As Stacia asked, what timeframe will you agree to?”
“Let us say, oh, maybe till a turning point on either front,” she said, tone casual but her eyes were very sharp and focused on me.
“Nebulous,” I said, dredging the word from somewhere deep down. “How about till one of our enemies suffers true defeat?”
She considered it, crossed leg still bouncing. The bouncing stopped. “A tighter restriction perhaps, but I’ll agree.”
“Does this bind all your agents?” I asked, glancing at Neeve.
“My Black Frost will restrain herself during this period of time,” she said, eyes narrowed. “As will your allies.”
“My allies?” I asked, already suspecting her meaning.
“Your Fallen ones, your… artificial being,” she said, tilting her head to watch my response.
“I don’t control them, and I cannot speak for them,” I said.
“Nonetheless, if they attack me or mine during the period of our agreement, it will be void,” she said, eyes going hard—harder.
I thought about that, then glanced at Stacia. She too considered it, then nodded. Omega whispered a single word in my earpiece: “Acceptable.”
“We agree. You have an accord,” I said.
“We?” she asked, interest peaked.
I nodded at Stacia. “We,” I confirmed.
She narrowed her eyes, studying me like a bug. Finally she uncrossed her legs and sat upright, holding out one hand. “I believe among your kind, you grasp hands to signify the completion of a negotiation?”
Beside me Stacia tensed and all three of Morrigan’s bodyguards became totally still.
There was a lot going on in that moment. By staying seated and making me come to her, she was dominating the situation. At the same time, she was using an Earth custom that would be difficult to decline. What could she do to me with a touch? I remembered that her strongest innate talent was the power of command.
I took a single step forward, a long step, long enough to bring me within two feet of her. Bending just a bit, I reached forward, holding my hand out.
“You must drop your shields that shine so bright about you, Declan,” she said drily.
I didn’t though—have to drop them. I just thinned the one around my right hand, pushing it down till it touched my skin, then pu
shing it even further till it lived just below the flesh.
Her hand shot forward and grasped mine with astonishing strength. There was no doubt she could have pulped it to jelly. I felt my eyes widen at her grip. Hers widened at the same time as some force I could not name pressed from her palm to mine. It got no further.
“Astonishing,” she said, visibly impressed. Then she shook my hand once and let go, leaning back in her throne. “We have an accord.”
I stepped back, moving my hand behind my back to shake it out, keeping eye contact with her. She smirked slightly, then her eyes flicked behind me. On my left, Stacia was already turning to look over her shoulder. Not willing to turn my back on Morrigan, and especially not Neeve, I stepped rearward and spun a bit to look at the far end of the clearing.
There was a tear in reality, a rip in space and time that hovered six inches off the ground. The ragged portal looked into deep jungle instead of scrubby forest and then the goblins started to jump through.
Chapter 28
The first two muscular green nightmares were through the portal before I had even turned back to Morrigan.
“Don’t look at me; look to yourselves. My sister is certainly here for your blood, not mine,” she said, smirking.
“Let me guess, you made an accord with her as well?” I asked, reaching into my messenger bag. The death orbs shot out of it as my hand grasped a collapsible baton.
Stacia’s shotgun roared twice, click-clacked, then roared twice more. I looked up to see three more goblins stepping over the bodies of the first two, just as my orbs of steel and silver hit them at high speed. Gouts of blue blood sprayed back into the portal even as the cosmic tear widened and more green-skinned monsters pushed aside their dead brethren.
A sharp, inhuman cry came from overhead and I glanced up to see a wave of flying reptiles flash across the sky, each with a rider.
Stacia continued firing at the wave of goblins while I extended the baton and used it to scribe a simple circle in the soft dirt around me.
“Out,” she said. I looked up and she tossed me her DP-12, following it immediately with her bandoleer of shotgun shells. “You good?” she asked.
I gave her a thumbs up as I set the empty gun and ammo on the ground. She headed for the nearest tree line, plunging into the woods.
“Abandoned so soon?” Morrigan asked lightly.
I ignored her, reaching my right index finger to my makeshift circle and powering it up with a thought. Not a moment too soon, as a bounding goblin bounced off the invisible wall, slamming into a tree.
“How long can that hold, do you think?” the Winter Queen asked, mildly interested.
I didn’t even look up, instead reaching deeper into my bag and pulling out one of my mega batteries. “Days, maybe weeks,” I said as I connected the battery to the circle with a line and a short string of runes. “And she didn’t abandon me,” I said. Right on cue, the awful hair-raising, testicle-shriveling howl of a werewolf in hybrid combat form echoed through the dawn forest.
“She’s not gone. She’s hunting,” I said, suddenly noticing the four torches still burning. With a short gesture I accelerated their burning, taking each wrapped bundle, as well as the sticks holding them, to the ground in a pile of ash.
Morrigan’s eyebrows had gone up at the howl and stayed up as I absorbed the heat of the torches.
A glance back at the portal showed at least fifteen goblins through and more coming, with a swarm of Tinks beginning to come through over their heads. I sent the captured heat across the clearing in waves of infrared energy, bringing it to full bloom on the venomous cloud of killer fliers. Hundreds instantly crisped into black cinders, but hundreds more came on behind them.
Kneeling, I began to reload Stacia’s shotgun, plucking size six steel shot shells from the bandoleer, then switching to steel slugs for the last six rounds, which would be first out of the barrels.
“You are severely outnumbered, young Holder,” Morrigan said in a conversational tone. More goblins poured through the opening in space and time, spreading around the clearing to secure it. Six green-clad Hunters of the Summer Court came through, two at a time, armed with bows and swords.
“Am I?” I asked, my own tone clearly not buying it. I set the reloaded gun aside and started drawing more runes on the ground around the perimeter of my circle.
“As strong as your circle might be, it cannot keep my sister’s army out forever.”
Behind the Hunters came four blue-armored warriors, and once they had spread out to form a protected space inside the circles of Hunters and goblins, a long, tanned leg stepped through, followed by the rest of Zinnia’s lithe figure.
My answer to Morrigan was cut off by Zinnia. “Making more deals, sister dearest?” she asked, but her eyes were locked on me.
“Just concluded, Zin,” Morrigan said. “But I think I’ll stay and observe.” I glanced at her and found her watching me with a sort of alien fascination.
“Where is the beast girl?” Queen Zinnia asked.
A goblin screamed across the clearing and I glanced up in time to see a giant white-furred arm and clawed hand yank the squat horror off its feet and into the short, thick trees. The screech cut off and a round, green, blue-bloody head flew out of the brush, bouncing on the ground. Instantly, a full half-dozen of the muscle-bound creatures tore into the forest to avenge their brother.
“I would say about… there,” Morrigan answered, waving a hand at the woods.
Growls sounded in the woods and another goblin screamed out its death cry. “Lead them—find her and kill her,” Zinnia said, clearly annoyed. Two green-clad Hunters took off with another six goblins in tow.
Finished with my rune work, I leaned over and pulled a working out of my bag. A working is an object of wrought power constructed for a specific purpose. Think of a voodoo doll or, as they’re sometimes known, a poppet, as a type of working. This one was constructed of a type of Fairy water plant, like a watercress, set inside an empty turtle shell, covered with six kinds of wispy, airborne seeds much like milkweed. I set it on the western side of my circle, pouring into it a cupful of water from a bottle, then powering it with a touch and a whisper.
I slung Stacia’s shotgun over my head before standing up to look at Zinnia, who was watching me, amused, hands on her hips.
“I have four flights of dactilyns, their riders, one hundred goblins, and thousands of Tinks. With thousands more waiting. You have not a chance,” she said, waving a hand at her open portal.
Stacia roared somewhere deep on the island and then I heard an elf scream. Higher than a human, but just as terrified as any horror movie victim anywhere.
“One less, I’d say,” I said. “What’s a flight? Eight?”
“Twelve, dear,” Morrigan added from the edge of the woods. She and her kids and giant bodyguard had moved further back, but still watched attentively. The air smelled a little less like swamp-ass Bigfoot already.
Something reptilian cried out a battle cry, which was cut off almost instantly. “Down to forty-seven of those dack things,” I said.
A Tink flew out of the woods and hovered in front of the Summer Queen, antenna touching Zinnia’s forehead. Zinnia snarled and batted it away, turning back to the portal to snarl something in Elvish.
Four more figures came through the dimensional doorway, three big men and a woman, like muscular bodybuilders. All four were obviously of human stock, almost naked, with just wraps around their waists. They stared first at me with green cat eyes before turning to Zinnia.
“Find the beastkin and put an end to her,” Zinnia commanded.
Instantly they began to change and shift, orange-black fur sprouting on their expanding, twisting bodies. Within moments, four hybrid weretigers stood, each over eight feet tall, one pushing ten.
I sent all four steel orbs at them but they deftly moved aside at the last moment and my death balls shot through the portal. Zinnia waved a hand and the portal closed.
“Los
t your toys?” she asked.
Got more of that shit but at least your portal is closed, I thought to myself
I raised the DP-12 and fired both barrels at the biggest tiger man. Two 12 gauge steel slugs hit his torso, blowing gouts of red blood across his companions. He stood, staring at me, for the time it took me to pump the action, then fell in a heap. I fired again, but a green goblin jumped into the path of the slugs, taking them both before falling and sliding across the ground.
The remaining three weretigers leapt into the forest while Zinnia cursed and waved a hand at me. I shot the last two slugs at her but she lifted her other hand and the slugs sparked off an invisible shield in front of her, one hitting a tree, the other catching a hunter in the leg.
