Offset like the space around The Great Hall at home. Offset like Rose’s borderland, but not as much as the pocket in which the elves locked Dracula and his minions.
A sign manifested out of the shimmering multi-colored sky. An odd sign. A sign that had no place outside anyone’s Great Hall.
Metal hoops swung around the central glowing orb. The first hoop sat at a forty-five-degree angle to the pole supporting the sign, and another hoop, also at a forty-five-degree angle to the first hoop, attached to the first at a single point. The structure rotated on the pole and created the optical illusion of electrons circling an atomic nucleus.
Crossroads Saloon, it said in a blocky, kitschy, sixties font.
“We are in Nevada,” Portia Elizabeth said.
Nevada. Non-Nevadan, Sonoran Desert plants. Technology. Magic. Someone had built a restaurant at an intersection at the edge of many worlds.
Raven and Portia Elizabeth had brought me to a literal and metaphorical crossroads.
Raven pulled into the empty—but not empty—parking lot. I couldn’t see any other vehicles. I felt them, though. A sense of chariots filled the flat hard-packed desert around the building.
New chariots. Old chariots. Natural and magical, technological and fantastic.
I stepped out and looked up at the sky. Magic shimmered as if just out of reach. It swirled like fairy lights around the boards, clear doors, and windows of the Crossroads Saloon.
A pounding bass rolled out of the building. The air smelled of grilled meats and roasted root vegetables. The entire interior seemed to be visible from outside, yet it clearly was not. There were magicals in there. Magicals of types I suspected I’d never met before, and likely never would again.
“Best food on the planet,” Raven said. She straightened her knit cap. “One could argue that the Crossroads outside of Tokyo serves better fish.” She leaned against the fender of our SUV chariot. “The Crossroads in Alice Springs serves lizard, though the one in Germany has the best beer.”
“How many Crossroads are there?” I asked.
She pointed over her shoulder. “Planet-wide? Don’t know.”
Portia Elizabeth shrugged. “There are two more marked locations in North America. One is in the Sonoma Valley outside San Francisco.”
Something about this exchange picked at the bottom of my brain.
Portia Elizabeth stared at my chest as if my heart was whispering its own incantation. Her eyes narrowed, and her green energy contracted into a shimmering, flowing wave of energy not all that different from what her dress had looked like when I woke up.
Raven didn’t seem to notice, or if she did, opening the doors took all her attention and she’d decided to ignore us.
Her wings fully manifested in the air over our heads, spread in the clear raven gliding position. No angel wings here. Raven was all that was raven in the world—all the cunning perception. All the precise attention. And every ounce of the cleverness of the corvids.
But she was more than the intelligent, bored trickster. I was in the presence of the best of what plucked out a living under the shadow of fighting giants. Raven was the wisdom necessary to avoid being trampled. She was the knowledge needed to feed oneself and one’s family after the predators have decimated and reformed an ecosystem. She was cunning. She was the refusal to lie down and die.
Raven was the shrewdness that manifests within an abundant system. She wasn’t just a god. She was adaptability.
I was in the presence of one of the primordial forces of evolution.
Raven, this spirit I had associated with North America, was much more—she was native, but she was also native to the world.
She winked.
Portia Elizabeth curled her hand around my elbow and…
We moved.
Chapter 18
The open serving floor of the Crossroads Saloon was significantly larger than the exterior of the building should have allowed—even though it wasn’t. What felt like hundreds of tables spread out before me—table after table in a massive, grand Hall—though I only saw perhaps twenty, and they fully occupied the space I perceived.
I closed my eyes, blinked, then looked again. A performance area filled the wall directly ahead of me, and appeared close enough that I clearly could see the lonely stage with an old upright piano.
I twisted my head and listened, and yes, under the din of restaurant chatter, a soft, sweet piano tune filtered through the room. I couldn’t place it—or hold it in memory long enough to think about the notes—but it wafted through the air on the back of the scents of grilling meats and beer.
To the right, another wall with several doors leading to what was likely the kitchen, private rooms, etc. To the left, a huge thirty-foot carved wood bar backed by an equally huge mirror. Closer to the stage sat another section with raised booths, shielded by curtains of magic.
I blinked again. The walls were too close. No way should hundreds of tables fit inside, yet they did. They were here. I knew they were here. I just couldn’t perceive them.
Of the tables I did see, shadows shimmered as if physical and reflective in the low light, and hid each table’s occupants.
I must be looking at layer upon layer of glamours. Individual glamours, room glamours, building glamours all embedded inside a huge crossroads glamour that distorted space and time the same way as the glamour around The Great Hall.
Portia Elizabeth stood to my left. She placed her hand on my arm and nodded into the saloon. “Come,” she said.
Raven was nowhere to be seen.
“How come I’ve never heard of this place?” We wove between shadowed, slippery tables. “I study,” I said. When your daughter is a witch, it’s the smart thing to do. “This place doesn’t feel like a borderland between The Lands of the Living and the Dead.”
We moved around another table but still hadn’t moved any perceivable distance into the room. “I’d think the elves would be well aware of any place with so many glamours.”
Portia Elizabeth stopped in a gap between tables and reached for my hand. I let her take it.
“Wolf will explain,” she said. But mostly I got the impression I was asking too many questions.
The glamour around The Great Hall had a dazzle to it—a bit of shock and awe that overwhelmed and dissuaded questions. Crossroads Saloon had the same sort of nimble brilliance, as if the spellwork itself did not want a questioner to figure out and exploit its flaws. Which, if anything, told me I was inside a grand magic. One that, like The Great Hall, had not been built by just a single wielder, but was a magnificent spellwork structure born from the work and power of many talented beings.
Beings who surrounded me as they laughed and dined behind their personal glamours.
What had Raven and Portia Elizabeth pulled me into? Had I unwittingly allowed myself to be dragged into enemy territory?
Portia Elizabeth gripped my hand. “Stop worrying. Keep your wits about you,” she said.
You’re not paranoid if everyone really is out to get you, I thought, but she wanted me to stop with such thoughts, so I did.
We walked around table after table and magicks after magicks. Some tables felt as if spirits partied, some as if dark, angry things dined. A few felt familiar, as if touched by witches. But none felt elven—or fae.
Portia Elizabeth tugged on my hand. “Watch your step.”
We’d come to the raised area to the side of the bar. Golden railings covered with shifting, rotating sigils separated it from the main floor. Sheets of distortion hung from the ceiling. I picked out booths in the shadows, but nothing else.
Portia Elizabeth led me up the single step into the special section.
Anubis sat in the booth directly across from the step. A lovely meal of fragrant roasted meat, root vegetables, and unleavened bread filled the table. The god winked his jackal eye and raised his beer as we passed by.
“Was that—”
Portia Elizabeth shook her head. “You cannot be star-str
uck, Frank Victorsson. Not when meeting Wolf.”
Star-struck meant not thinking straight, and she obviously wanted me on my best game.
Laughter rolled out of the shadows in the next booth. The one after that held seven spirits I did not recognize. They, too, raised their beers to us.
The final booth, the one closest to the stage, shimmered with a light all its own. Someone laughed. A yip followed, then a growl. A denim-wearing leg and a big, black boot dropped out of the side.
Raven stepped out of the booth into the space directly in front of Portia Elizabeth. She waved me forward.
Sitting in the center of the booth, one arm draped along the back of the maroon leather and the other flipping a fork between his—hers? I couldn’t tell—fingers, had to be the spirit they called Wolf.
The spirit sat, but we looked each other directly in the eye.
Gunmetal gray hair stood straight up from the spirit’s head and added to its height. Ice blue eyes stared at me from sharp, angular features. Coiled muscles worked under a smooth, clinging, gray silk shirt, and tensed along an exquisite long neck.
Magic danced around the spirit, but not like the winged magic that so clearly marked Raven.
This spirit’s magic danced and yipped. It prowled and it played. It formed one node, then another, then another, as if moving from one member of a pack to another.
I bowed my head courteously. “Wolf,” I said. “Greetings.”
It sniffed. The hand on the back of the booth dropped below the table and a new yip followed.
Pup ears appeared, then a snout, though this “pup” had to be full adult-timber-wolf-size not to have completely vanished next to the spirit.
The snout and ears dropped below the lip of the table.
This was not a Native American spirit, in much the same world-essence way that Raven was not a singular spirit from any specific indigenous tradition. Was I in the presence of the Wolf, the essence of all the versions of Wolf who populated all of the world’s magicks? This Wolf carried predatory might. Every single wolf- and dog-like ability to hunt, herd, and control what needed hunting, herding, and controlling all but shimmered in the air around it.
But this Wolf lacked a strong sense of pack. Power oozed from this semi-world-spirit on a level I did not think possible, but it was not all that was the world-Wolf. No, this Wolf was more Las Vegas than it was world.
I was in the presence of an urban spirit.
Wolf rubbed the tip of its nose and peered at me as if reading every one of my stray twitches as a threat.
The spirit tilted its head. It cupped one elbow with a hand, then tapped the fingers of the other against its cheek.
It grinned.
I understood vulnerability. I came into this world a lumbering mountain of naïve pain. But never in my life have I felt so blatantly stalked.
If Wolf wished to take me down, there would be no escape, no matter how I fought or ran.
“Do you understand where you are, Mr. Victorsson?” it asked.
I damned well better not show fear. “No,” I said. Or lie.
It frowned. “Do you understand what this place is?”
It’d kill me if I answered wrong. It would rip off bits, gnaw me to the bone, and leave me in the identical state from which my father plucked me. “A Great Hall.” I had no idea what else to call it.
Wolf nodded. “Close enough.”
I exhaled. I had no idea I’d been holding my breath.
It leaned against the back of its booth. “So you’re the giant?”
The question caught me off guard. “I’m not a jotunn,” I said. “It’s a nickname the elves use.” Like “Biterson” for the vampires, but I didn’t say that to Wolf.
Wolf laughed. “Yes, yes.” Wolf winked. “Now I understand why Raven finds you interesting.”
She’d vanished. Portia Elizabeth still stood to my side, but Raven was gone.
Wolf’s magic flickered in the corner of my eye, demanding I bolt away and directly into its pack member waiting on my other side. It was playing with its food.
Every line of Wolf’s mouth, nose, and eyes accentuated. The shadows of its cheeks darkened, but its eyes brightened. “Why are you in my territory, Mr. Victorsson?”
I was pretty sure that the entire planet was some Wolf or another’s territory, though I’d now met not one but two world- and semi-world-level spirits claiming Las Vegas as theirs. Perhaps the transient—and international—nature of the city, combined with the strong, heady natural magic of the desert, made this place perfect for a powerful urban spirit to reside.
Or perhaps Wolf, like Raven, liked shiny baubles, and nothing beat Vegas in both shininess and blingy baubles.
“The Elf King of Alfheim wishes Portia Elizabeth’s help,” I said.
Wolf sniffed. “An elf desires help? From a succubus?” It drawled succubus out into an ironic string of individual phonemes.
“He asks only that she talk to the Courts.” It wasn’t the taking in of the dark magicals that was the problem; it was their falling off the wagon, so to speak, and Portia Elizabeth proved that a return to darkness was not inevitable.
Or so I hoped. Guessed, actually. Nothing about her green magic carried the vicious oiliness of the vampires, and the dress…
The dress was something new. Or old. I picked up nothing from it other than it was strong magic.
Magic Raven did not want Portia Elizabeth to use in a fight. I glanced back at Wolf.
I was standing in front of the unavoidable harm my offer of service was destined to drop onto my head.
Wolf must be the spirit with whom Raven made her deal.
“You are a dark magical, Portia Elizabeth?” Wolf wisped its hand in her direction.
She did not respond.
Wolf sniffed again. “My pups are not enough darkness for your elves?” it asked me.
I stood perfectly still. Wolf was not Brother, nor was it Dracula. Wolf would not be manipulated and distracted. Wolf would not make a mistake if it attacked.
“Remy Geroux will also stand as a witness,” I said.
“Your elves meddle.” A low growl followed. “My wolves are less wolf because of the elves.”
This wolf was claiming the werewolves as its own. But how could an urban, Vegas wolf claim magicals that had been with humanity for as long as there had been humans?
A second “pup” lifted its head over the edge of the table and sniffed at the air.
I would not show fear. “Less wolf. More human,” I said. I’d have a word with Remy about this. “Best for the modern world.”
Wolf laughed again. “Adapt or die. Correct, Mr. Victorsson?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
Wolf took a bite of its meal. It chewed steadily, its eyes on me the entire time as if I was about to steal its treats. When it swallowed, it dropped a scrap onto the floor.
Whimpering and shuffling followed, as did a few low growls.
“Your witch daughter killed an elf, did she not?” Wolf asked.
Rose, I thought. “When the witch in her became too much, yes, she did kill an elf. They were trying to help her. She didn’t mean to do it.”
Wolf sneered. “Your father created a new body from the parts of vampires. That body came calling, did it not?”
“It did,” I said. Denying the obvious would help no one. Not me. Not the elves. Not Alfheim. “It took decades before Rose became a problem. Decades before the vampires turned on Alfheim.”
Wolf sat back and placed its hand on the top of the booth’s seat again. It tapped its finger and wiggled its nose. “Seems to me, Mr. Victorsson, that you are the core of Arne Odinsson’s dark magical problem.”
How was I supposed to answer such a statement?
It dropped its fork and pointed at Portia Elizabeth. “He offered his services?” it asked.
She bowed her head. “I don’t believe he understood the gravity of his words.”
Wolf sneered again. “Yet he offered.”
/> She continued to look at the floor.
I dared not point out that I had offered to Raven, and that its deal was with her, not me. If I did, I had no doubt that it would shred me before I got the last word out of my mouth.
“What do you expect of me?” What did this giant spirit, this semi-god-thing that controlled so much, want with me? I was insignificant in a world brimming with magicals.
All I had was my offer of service. All I could give to any of the significantly-more-powerful elves who had adopted me—who’d helped me find my way into a livable, tolerable future—was to be the immovable mountain between them and things much worse.
Nothing else. Nothing more. I was the re-animated corpse who could take a blow, so that’s what I did.
I took blows.
And now a spirit wanted to use that against me.
“You see magic, do you not, Mr. Victorsson?”
“Yes,” I said. “I see pack magic around you.” The roiling stalking. The hunting lunges. The need to protect. “I see meta-pack magic, as if the magic of the packs is acting like its own pack.”
Wolf nodded as it approved.
“Your vampires opened gates,” it said. “One opened into Las Vegas.”
I’d gathered as much from the conversations at the apartment complex. “We had no control over from where Dracula pulled his army.”
Wolf waved its hand as if dismissing not just my comment, but Dracula in general. “I lost Anthea to his call.”
Anthea the vampire—and Portia Elizabeth—worked for Wolf. What that meant, I did not understand, but I got the feeling I’d know soon enough. “I got a pike through my chest.” If Wolf was going to harm me in some way, it needed to know I could take the hit.
Wolf grinned. “You will finish the job she started.” It scratched the head of one of its pups. “Bring me the troll.”
I stepped back from the booth. “Why?” What did the troll do to Wolf? “We found the troll within hours of landing in Las Vegas. She’s not hard to locate.”
Elf Raised (Northern Creatures Book 3) Page 13
