“I am not a mage,” I said, “Only a witch and alchemist. Karen is a Human witch. We are faced by mages and demons and a great evil, our only aid that of a cat shifter.”
Closing my eyes for a moment, I truly felt the magic of the man standing in front of me.
I opened my eyes and blurted, “You’re a battle mage?”
That brief smile again. “My father was. I have had some training, but my magic is that of a halfling, not an Elf.”
But strong. Perhaps stronger than James Campbell, who was the strongest Human mage I had encountered other than Aleksi Nieminen. And halflings were known to have some unique magic. Alfheim had used them as shock troops for millennia. Miika probably wasn’t any stronger physically than I was, and he definitely wouldn’t be as fast or heal as well as I did. One thing I had not seen from any of the mages involved in hunting the statue was battle magic, or at least nothing in the class of Elven battle magic.
“Do you drink coffee?” he asked.
“Yes, I do.”
He switched to English. “Let’s go get a cup and you can brief me.”
An hour later, after listening to my tale, he leaned back in his seat and smiled. A true, happy-looking smile.
“I do believe I can help. I have what I think might be a valuable attribute. I’m a realm walker.”
“Danu merde,” I breathed. I was looking at a man who could take me home.
I tried to pay the bill, but he took it from me. He held the door for me, both entering and exiting the café. He held my door when we reached his car, a dark green BMW that probably cost four times the price of my poor destroyed Honda.
We drove up to Chevy Chase, and when he turned into a residential neighborhood, I grinned as we passed several of my wealthy clients’ homes. He turned into the driveway of a mansion that didn’t need my services and I felt us slide through the wards surrounding the place. Someone had done a wonderful, if somewhat eclectic, job with the landscaping.
He parked the car in a five-car garage, the other bays also holding luxury cars. We entered the house through a side door, and he led me through the kitchen and dining room to a large sitting room.
“Make yourself comfortable while I put some equipment together,” he said.
While he was doing that, he asked me a number of questions. Instead of trying to give him piecemeal answers, I told him the story of meeting Isabella, the event in Arlington, the sacrifice of Jennifer Watkins, and the attack on James Campbell and the PCU.
“I don’t know where Aleksi Nieminen is, or how to stop him,” I concluded. “I do know that I can’t hunt him while I’m pinned down in my compound. I don’t even know who all my enemies are, or how many sides there are in all of this.”
Out of the blue, Miika asked, “Do you cook?”
I was taken aback and didn’t know what to say. I tried to put a smile on my face. “People say I’m a pretty good cook, although I can’t get all the ingredients I’d use in Midgard.”
“I’m in,” he said, and winked at me. “You can’t imagine how much I’ve missed home cooking.”
Chapter 20
I knocked on the window of the Werewolves’ Mercedes. The man closest to me looked over, and I saw his eyes about bug out of his head.
“I thought you puppies learned your lesson,” I shouted. “Tell Vance I’m not happy about this.”
The driver started the engine, revved it, and took off. Or tried to. It wasn’t a very impressive getaway after I had knifed all four tires. The noisy flapping of the tire rubber sort of ruined the drama.
We didn’t know what the men in the FBI cars were doing, or whose side they were on, so I dealt with both cars the same way. When they rolled down their windows, I shot their cars full of sleepy gas.
Two mages sat on either side of the bamboo grove where they could watch the cottage. The fairies had watched them since they first arrived and reported there was no evidence the mages knew about each other. I crept close enough to get a feel for each mage’s magic and reported back to Miika.
We discussed what I reported and devised a plan. When the Fairies suddenly boiled out of the bamboo grove hurling spears, the two unknown mages failed to protect their rears. I stepped up behind one mage and hit him over the head with a hammer. Miika stepped up behind the other one, laid his hands on the guy, and sucked his magic and consciousness from him. From that point, it was a simple matter for the Fairies to grab the mages by their clothing, carry them inside the grove, and for me to set a ward around it.
“That was a pretty neat trick,” I told Miika. “I don’t suppose a witch can learn it?”
He shook his head. “No, but I know a rune spell that is similar.”
I tried to tone down my smile, afraid I might blind him.
Miika dealt with another of the mages by simply walking up to him and asking if he was ready to die. The man, who turned out to be one of those who bid on the statue when Weber had it, took Miika’s measure and decided to go back to Los Angeles. A band of Fairies followed him to his car and watched him drive away.
That left the two groups that worried me the most. The Fairies confirmed that Bronski, who they knew because he had been to the compound before, was there with five other Humans, set up in a picnic shelter in the public park. The Fairies also reported the Humans were armed with ‘weird-shaped clubs’, and the pictures they drew in the air showed the shape of assault rifles.
Considering Bronski’s willingness to use guns in Annapolis, I worried about my friends as well as the Fairies and Pixies in the area. What would happen if a bullet didn’t hit anything? Would it keep going until it did? I didn’t know.
Then there was the pair of mages who had taken up station by the oak at the front of my property. I didn’t recognize them, but their magic felt strong and dark.
And these people were only the side show. We had no idea where Nieminen was or what he was doing. A nagging voice in the back of my mind said that he was planning something. He had seen what he could do in Arlington. Suppose he decided to do that someplace like New York or London? What was his ultimate objective? Isabella and I had discussed that, and neither of us liked any of the answers we could imagine.
Isabella volunteered to come out of the compound to help us, but I wanted someone besides Karen inside. In spite of the impressive abilities of my new ally, I trusted the jaguar shifter more than anyone on the planet. I knew she could take care of business.
“I think we should deal with the warriors first,” Miika said. “The mage they have is far weaker than those others.”
“Can you protect yourself against bullets?” I asked. “I can set stationary wards, but I’ve never tried to shield myself from bullets.”
“How is your archery?” he asked.
I pulled out my bow, as did he. I called a Fairy to me, and three flew over. I asked them if the men were wearing vests. It took a little bit of back and forth questions and interpretation, but they finally confirmed that the Humans were wearing vests.
“Miika, in Annapolis, Bronski and his men wore bullet-proof vests. That means you can’t shoot them in the body.”
The Fairies helped us to find trees that had a clear view of Bronski’s forces, and Miika and I climbed into separate ones. Mindful of the Humans’ guns, we decided that each archer would take no more than two shots from a given stand. If we were spotted, we would get the hell out.
“A whole lot easier to come back and try again when you’re alive,” Miika said, and I fervently agreed.
Two of Bronski’s men were outside the picnic shelter, stationed apart from each other and watching the compound through binoculars.
I was trying to figure out the best shot to take on a crouching Human wearing body armor when the man I was watching sprouted an arrow from the side of his head. The suddenness of it startled me. I shifted my eyes to the man farther away and saw him jerk, then fall over with an arrow sticking out of his eye.
Miika’s statement that he had “some training” in
the battle arts was obviously Elven distraction. I considered myself an excellent archer, but that last shot was over a hundred yards. The halfling crawled down his tree on the side away from the picnic shelter and snuck away, following a Fairy to his next tree stand.
We waited. Almost two hours later, two men emerged and walked to where the dead men lay.
The man closest to me reached his comrade, and when he saw the man was dead, stopped and looked up. My arrow took him in the throat, and he went down without a sound. I looked around for the farther man but didn’t see him. After scanning the area more slowly, I saw him lying face down on the ground with an arrow sticking out of his neck.
Shortly thereafter, another man came out of the shelter. He called out a name, evidently wondering where all his comrades had gone. My arrow hit his throat, while Miika’s entered his eye. I slid to the ground on the side of the tree away from the shelter and crawled over to another large tree. I climbed it, nocked another arrow and waited.
We waited for half an hour, then a black ball sailed out of the shelter, hit the ground, and rolled. A thin stream of black smoke rose from it. I had a bad feeling and immediately slid out of the tree on the side away from the shelter and started running. Behind me, starting rather softly, I heard an ear-splitting siren sound that grew louder and louder. Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw an ugly black cloud billowing toward me.
The sonics of the spell were disorienting, and I tried to shut it out, concentrating on reaching my compound. A Fairy spun in the air, hands over her ears and a look of anguish on her face. I snatched her out of the air as I passed.
I reached the fence around my compound before the smoke reached me. I vaulted the fence, hitting on my feet and rolling on the other side. Beyond it, the park I had just vacated was filled with the smoke. Fairies and Pixies streamed over the fence toward me. The Pixies almost never came inside. The park was theirs, and my compound belonged to the Fairies. Two wars between them had established that decades before.
A few Pixies and a couple of Fairies were caught by the smoke. They dropped from the air, hit the ground, and didn’t move. The smoke stopped at my wards, a roiling, oily, stinking cloud. Birds dropped from the trees, and I could see flowers and bushes wilting.
I stared at it in horror. The evil required to even think of such a spell was beyond my understanding. Miika had not made it inside my wards. I prayed to the Goddess that he either managed to escape in another direction or ward himself.
Isabella and Karen came running from the cottage, stopping when they reached me. The horrified expressions on their faces mirrored what I was feeling.
Then Isabella changed. She crouched and gathered herself, then launched herself up toward the fence.
“No!” I reached out and grabbed a handful of her hide. She was so powerful that she lifted me off the ground, but I was strong enough to pull her back. Rounding on me, she snarled, but I didn’t let go.
“Don’t be stupid,” I said. “Look. It killed Pixies and Fairies. Magical beings. I know you’re strong, but you don’t even know what kind of spell it is.”
She snarled at me again.
“No. You can’t,” I said. “I can’t lose you. I need you.”
Again, she snarled, and snapped at my hand, but I didn’t let go. Then I felt the tension drain from her body, and abruptly she shifted back to her Human form.
“Sweet mother. What kind of monster would do such a thing?”
“Evil,” Karen said. “There is evil in the world, and there’s your proof. That’s why I joined the Bureau.”
“I hope there weren’t any people, any children, out there.” I looked around. The Pixie village had over a hundred inhabitants, maybe two hundred. Children and babies.
The Fairy queen lit on my shoulder. She told me that the Pixies had taken their young underground when the bad Humans first arrived. But some had obviously been caught out by the spell, and a couple of dozen Fairies were unaccounted for.
A few minutes later we heard the first sirens. The park was bordered by residential neighborhoods on three sides, and people would have reported the viscous black cloud.
A police car pulled up in front of my gate, and I went out to talk to them.
“Are you all right, miss?” an older cop asked me.
“Yes, but I have no idea what that is. It feels evil,” I told him.
He craned his neck, looking inside my compound. The black cloud pushed right up against the fence on the park side but came no further. He eyed me with suspicion.
“I had wards set by a witch,” I told him. “It’s cheaper than hiring a night watchman. I guess I got my money’s worth, but I have nothing to do with that…whatever it is.”
That got me looks that said I was crazy, but I didn’t care. Better crazy than criminal.
Soon there were lots of cops, FBI, military, ambulances, and helicopters—some official and some from the news media. In the midst of it all, Miika strolled in through the front gate. He had Fairies and Pixies clinging onto his hair and clothing and peeking out of his pockets. The Fairies were pretty freaked out, but the Pixies looked as though they were in shock.
“Thank the Goddess you’re safe,” I said, pulling him into the compound, away from all the insanity outside and toward the cottage. Once inside, I poured him a shot of agavirna. He downed it in a single swallow.
“Very nice,” he said. “I approve.” Then he fell into a chair and leaned over with his elbows on his knees and his hands covering his face. “That was bad,” he said.
The Fairies rarely came into the cottage, but they were flying all over the place, and so were the Pixies, fussing over those Miika brought with him.
“I saved as many as I could,” he said, straightening up, and I could see tears in his eyes. “I couldn’t save them all. I can’t believe that unholy bastard was willing to poison the earth to strike back at us.”
“No honor,” I said. “How did you get out?”
“I cast a shielding spell. The cloud is starting to dissipate now, but the wind carried it into the houses north of the park. I think they’re running out of ambulances. I’ve seen battle in numerous realms, but never anything like that.”
Television reporters came to the gate several times, wanting to talk with us because we were so close to the cloud. Some tried to ask about why it didn’t come past my fence. I refused to speak with any of them.
Isabella reported that the two dark mages who were hanging around earlier had left.
“Too many witnesses,” Miika said.
“Afraid of being blamed for that spell if anyone suspected they were mages,” Karen countered.
Chapter 21
By the following morning, Miika and two mages contracted to the PCU declared the park safe to enter. Humans still wore hazmat suits to enter the park, and I wore rubber hip waders and surgical gloves. The beautiful park was a wasteland. I hadn’t seen anything that bleak and foreboding since 1945. Rhoslyn, the Fairy queen, reported that a dozen Fairies and between thirty and forty Pixies had been caught by the spell.
I approached a woman in a hazmat suit who appeared to be in charge of documenting the damage. She told me they had counted more than three hundred dead birds and dozens of dead squirrels. She and her team had also noted the Fairies and Pixies, who were in the process of recovering their dead. In addition, more than a dozen Humans living in the area around the park had died.
“As far as I can tell, not a blade of grass survived,” she said. “Trees, bushes, flowers, all turned that ash color. The only things that are still alive are the branches of those two oak trees that hang over the park from your property, and that bamboo grove over there. Do you mind telling me why that cloud didn’t penetrate your fence?”
I suddenly remembered the mages we had imprisoned. Although I wanted to find Miika and check on the mages, I realized the woman was waiting for an answer.
“Witches’ wards,” I told her. “I have the whole property protected.”
&
nbsp; She didn’t act surprised, though it was hard to see her face through the mask she wore.
“You wouldn’t happen to be the witch, would you?”
I debated several ways of dodging her question, but finally said, “Yes.”
The woman nodded. “Helluva strong spell. Lucky you had it in place.”
I tracked Miika down at the northern edge of the park. He stood staring at the houses across the street. Their walls were stained gray and black, and some of the materials looked as though they had melted or had acid splashed on them. A few had open windows.
“That is where the Humans died?” I asked.
“See the open windows? Where the spell found its way in, it killed everything it touched.”
“What did you find in that picnic shelter?” I asked, switching to Elvish.
He shook his head. “Nothing. The police and FBI are being very tight-lipped, but I do know that they found the assault rifles of the men we killed.”
“And the arrows?”
“Yes, they found those, too. The press hasn’t been told about either one. In fact, other than authorized officials, you and I are the only ones they’ve allowed into the park.”
I looked around at all the people in hazmat suits, the police cordon around the park, and all the official vehicles parked around the area. “They think we know something,” I said. “Don’t trust any of the PCU people. Karen doesn’t want any of them to know where she is.”
I leaned close to him. “The bamboo grove wasn’t harmed. I think we should check on the mages we left in there.”
His startled look proved that he had forgotten about the mages, too. We walked around through the nursery gate and back to the area where the bamboo grew against the fence. Lying on the grass where we had left them were the mages Miika had spelled. I leaned down and was relieved to see that both were still breathing.
“So, what do we do with them?” I asked him.
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