by Susan Conley
Mona thought of that massively thick neck. Defeating it would be very difficult. Cart headed into the shed while she watched from behind the safety of the building. Tania jumped them again, this time closer down to the pond.
“We aren’t here to hurt you,” Nic’s voice rang out.
Apparently the beast disagreed, because it lowered its head and ran at them again.
Nic sent out a lasso of magic and jerked its feet out from under it. Mud and slush and gravel spattered when it hit the ground.
“We did not trap you,” Nic clarified.
The beast shook his head, snowy mush flying in a ten-foot arc around him, and roared. Mona watched as the half man rose, mud and magic sliding off him. She squinted. The minotaur had a natural resistance to magic, but there looked to be something else going on here. A spell on him that made only one person’s magic stick to him. She’d remove it but there was no way to do so without touching him. If needed, she would, but she sincerely hoped it wouldn’t be needed.
The minotaur swung its head from side to side and Mona realized there was a whole lot more than that spell on him. The earthy tones had blended into his skin, making it difficult to see. Except for the faint red pulses. Red pulses like the areas on the Lycoan’s spells. Someone had manipulated this working too.
Tania and Nic turned from their whispered conversation.
“I can help you get revenge.” Nic’s voice was full of power and promise.
The great shaggy head stilled, although his shoulders twitched as if he fought against the urge to move.
“I can also send you back so no one would ever know you’ve been gone.” Nic’s voice was lower this time. “You tell me. One hand up for revenge and both hands up for return.” Nic demonstrated what he wanted as he spoke.
A foot pawed at the ground, causing Nic to pull Tania tightly against his side. The beast stood, toes scuffing the ground.
“You want to do both, don’t you?” Tania asked. “I’m not sure we can promise that.”
“She’s right, I can’t promise you that we’ll be able to do both,” Nic said. “Not because I don’t want to, but I don’t know what and who you’ll find when I send you to get your revenge. However, if I can, I’ll help you get back. My word.” He smacked his fist on his chest twice then did a half bow. A ritual Mona didn’t get, but the minotaur seemed to be reassured; he knelt and raised one hand in the air.
“Okay, I’ll take your word you won’t harm us and you have our word we won’t harm you. We need to get close enough to undo your bindings.” Nic took a step and the half man jumped up, arms cocked to fight. Nic stopped. “I can’t do this if you don’t trust us.”
Tania took a step forward and bowed. She flicked her fingers and Mona saw a set spell tornado around her, then her crown was plopped on her head. Mona thought this was supposed to change her into the finery she’d worn at the Puck’s binding, but without imps around, this was what she got.
“I’m the ruler of the Folk in this area and this is my . . . consort,” Tania said. “Our promise to help you binds us to do you no harm.”
The fists lowered.
“I’ll stand here, next to you, while my consort works, if that’ll put you at ease.” Tania slowly walked toward him then stood with her back half to him, trust implicit in the stance. Mona did notice she’d gone to the side where she’d be standing in the sun.
Nic waited half a heartbeat and joined them.
Tania was saying something to the beast that Mona couldn’t hear.
“Must be an Asterion, they’re smart. A regular minotaur acts on animal instinct alone.” Cart gave a dry chuckle. “An Oberon who doesn’t fight first and ask questions later, this’ll be new.”
“Stop doing that!” Mona hissed.
“What?”
“Showing up at my side with no warning!”
“You want me to warn you that I’m at your side? How?”
Mona just shook her head and looked back. The beast had his arms raised and Nic was examining the workings etched into the underside. Tania kept up her low-key banter. Cart might be able to hear it but she couldn’t.
Whatever she was saying must have been funny because Cart started to snicker then almost doubled over with suppressed laughter. Tania shot them a glance, not breaking her banter with the beast.
Nic approached Tania, who turned and bowed her head regally at the beast before stepping away. Nic elegantly pulled at each strand using a small hook of magic and gathered together the lines that were binding the Asterion to this place. He then wrapped the hook of his magic around them and brought them to his fist.
Cart and Mona moved closer as Nic spoke to the being.
“I want to grant you some power to help you and so that whoever you face knows I sent you,” Nic said. He flicked a bit of magic at it, marking its brow with a symbol Mona couldn’t make out. “When you are ready to for me to get you, what movement do you want to make?”
The minotaur clapped his hands three times.
“No, something simpler that you can do even if disabled. Not that I think that’ll happen, but I want to plan for any eventuality.”
The shaggy head nodded then stilled. He touched his chest three times, going across, down, then up to make a triangle.
“Yes, I can use that. Touch any place on your body to make a triangle and I’ll either come get you or pull you out. Good idea. Now let’s see. . .”
Mona watched as her brother—her brother, the one who’d never used magic and who had suppressed his heritage until less than two weeks ago—created a spell of amazing simplicity and beauty. She remembered thinking that Tania’s spell was like looking at copperplate after reading block letters. Nic’s elegant sigils and three-dimensional runes, were like the most elegant of calligraphy, simple, clear but so well structured and shaped there was joy just in the formation of the pieces while the whole became a work of art.
“Either hand, Nic,” Tania pointed out, her voice soft so as not to break his concentration. When he was done she added, “Nice job.”
Mona thought this was a bit of an understatement.
“Thanks. You ready to send him?” Nic’s voice sounded tired.
“Yep. Here,” Tania wrapped a hand around his wrist and Mona saw the swell of energy she sent into him. “On the count of three. One, two, three!”
The spell literally pushed him away. The effect was odd to watch as he shrunk toward his middle from top to bottom. Then he was gone.
“That’s different, I’ve never seen anything like that,” Cart murmured.
It made Mona feel better that she wasn’t the only one who thought the method odd. With the minotaur gone the hole under the platform drew her attention—there was one more containment spell. About to tell Nic and Tania, she found them heading over, Nic carrying Tania in his arms as he fed energy he’d cleaned into her. That’s what it was, Mona realized, he cleaned energy like a Warder but could also make spells.
Oberon. King of the Elves and able to do all magic. Mona watched as he set Tania down, worried over his reaction when he found out exactly what these new powers meant.
“Shouldn’t you wait?” Cart called to them, his disbelief that they were doing this now clear.
Mona agreed—they had low energy and who knew what else was in the pit? She stepped closer, until she could see below the edge of the ground. No more angry red, just the lime green of the ancient spell, the one that looked so much like a memory spell.
“Finishing the job while we’re here,” Nic called back. “Want to help?”
“This one is safe,” Mona assured Cart, knowing it was true but unable to put her finger on why. The color? The intent of the sigils? Something.
“Nah, call me if you want backup.”
Nic and Tania stepped right up to the edge of the hole. Mona watched as the edges of the spell swayed as if drawn by their presence. The one tendril curled up and unraveled, leaving a bright blue and a goldenrod yellow.
Tania and Nic
’s colors, but not put there by them. The pair looked at the strands and seemed to come to a decision.
“What is it?” Cart asked under his breath. He stood behind Mona, hands on her shoulders, a sense of excitement vibrating off him. Even the Weres who’d crept back out were standing still, as if aware that this might be a momentous occasion.
“It’s a memory spell, similar to the one Smythe used on me.”
“A memory—”
At that moment Nic and Tania counted to three and each grasped a strand, belatedly throwing a shield up.
Two figures formed in front, semi transparent but clearly there. The woman older and in the raiment that Tania had worn not so long ago when the Puck had bound her to find the Lycoan. The man in a brief kilt of leaves and bark vest that did nothing to cover his very hirsute body. Even the tops of his feet had a pad of brown, curly hair. They were life sized and frozen as if in mid-action.
The last full Titania and Oberon stood there, ready to impart something to Nic and Tania.
A loud crack and Randall, Cart’s mother, and . . . by the goddess, that was Dad!
“Dad!” Mona couldn’t help the exclamation from escaping her lips.
He turned just his head and winked at her before quickly looking back. Nic’s expression at seeing him was less than pleased. Mona knew he had issues with their dad’s seeming abandonment, but when the Queen of Elfhaven had called, he’d had to go.
“We’re waiting here!” Randall said.
“That’s your father?” Cart said, distracting Mona from watching Nic and Tania trying to figure out what they were supposed to do. The pair looked flummoxed, then took a pose mimicking the holograms.
“Yep.”
Cart’s reply was a soft chortle. Mona didn’t have time for figure out what that meant as the pair dropped their shield and together proclaimed, “Welcome.”
Mona watched as the colors surrounded the couple, entwining and meshing with their magic. Imps started blinking into existence. But something, something was still off. Like an off-tune instrument in a band, a faint buzz of evil played on her nerves.
Mona looked around. There, on the top edge of the askew lumber that had once been the Lycoan’s torture rack. A last little bit of vermillion still hung despite the fact all of the ties for the Lycoan’s workings should have been cleared from this area when Nic had freed the minotaur.
“Come on,” she said to Cart. “There’s some of the residue from the person who helped the Lycoan I want to look at.”
A couple of the Weres looked over at them as they moved closer, before turning back to watch the light display of new imps being created.
“Here, give me a boost up. I want to touch it.” Something about it made Mona think the spell had been placed by whoever was helping the Lycoan. Although, it wasn’t really a spell, just a bit a magic residue with the marking of the person who’d worked it.
“You sure that’s a good idea?”
“It should be okay.” The only other magic in this area was the residue of Nic and Tania’s spell to send the minotaur away. “Plus, spells shouldn’t affect me.”
Although, come to think of it, they had been affecting her some. But this probably wasn’t the time to mention that.
Cart knelt his six foot plus frame down, wrapped his arms around her thighs, and picked her up. Mona grabbed onto his shoulders for balance.
“You could have warned me!”
Cart was nuzzling her stomach. “This going to take long?”
Mona ignored his question and stared at the splash of color. It wasn’t a sigil or rune, more like it was a little bit of energy left from a working. The same deepening color appeared on many of the Lycoan’s workings.
She reached out and touched the piece.
The remnants of the transfer spell Nic and Tania created for the Minotaur swirled in a blue and yellow cyclone around them. Cart’s grip loosened and Mona slid a fraction before the familiar blackness of a jump swallowed then. There were, she noted, less of the faintly tinted black specters today. In fact, as she watched, one with a slight orange shade coalesced to a pin point then popped out of sight with a slight spark.
Imps, this was where imps came from. She looked around at the magical sparks created when elves’ souls returned to the goddess.
The light returned like the flash of a light bulb. They were at the edge of a road curving down a hill in a lazy “s,” barely visible through the trees. The air was slightly less chilly then it had been in Canada, but much, much windier.
“I know this place.” Cart turned and looked around at the trees and the small lot behind them. He let go of her and jogged down to a sign facing away from them on the road, read it, and jogged back up. “We’re in New Jersey.”
Mona looked around at the forested hills. Cart didn’t give her a chance to observe much before he hustled her away from the road and across the parking lot. The purr of a motor explained his actions.
“You sure?” She’d never been, but from what she’d heard this was not what she’d expected it to look like.
“Absolutely,” Cart said as he continued down to the trailhead marked at the end of the parking lot. “This is the South Mountain reservation. The local townships have a deer problem and they contract us to cull the population. They think we use rifles, instead every year we have a tracking and training exercise for the New York City protectors. It’s about three square miles, all of it hilly.”
“And clearly you have an idea of where to go.”
“There’s an abandoned estate on the very northern edge. Huge place, looks like an English country estate—formal gardens, viewing ponds, the whole deal. Think the heirs are fighting over the land. Anyway, unless whoever placed that bit of magic is at the remnants of the mill, which I doubt, as it’s pretty close to the road, I’m guessing that’s where we should head.”
“Can we jump closer?” They’d slowed down as the trail rose steeply. The path curved around the sprawling upturned roots of a giant felled tree. Holes and furrows marked the debarked wood.
“No, I—” Cart stopped as Mona grabbed his arm.
There was a shift in the wind. She felt the power rushing toward them as the wind began to shriek. The scent of wet leaves and snow raced in front of it. Cart turned around and ran back down the trail, pulling her down and behind the rotting tree. He tried to slide her in the small hollow below and cover her with his body. Mona stepped to the side.
“No, I need to protect you!” Mona said, whispering frantically. “There’s magic in that spell, magic intended to harm. It won’t affect me, but it could affect you. I need to be on the outside so I can shield you.”
“But there’ll be debris and branches, you need to be on the inside,” he hissed back.
“The tree will protect me.” The leading edge of the windborne spell hit them as a sapling tangled in the roots of their shelter then crashed down. Cart wedged himself as far back in the hollow as he could, then wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her in front of him.
“No, I need to face out, I need to see the spell,” Mona said, squirming and trying to move.
He snarled, and in the gloom of the now overcast sky she could see the magic he’d need to change building up. She put both hands on his face. “Josiah, stay with me. I need to do this, and you need to trust that I can.”
A second passed, filled with the now howling wind and clatter as smaller bits of debris bounced and pinged against her back. Cart closed his eyes and loosened his hands. Mona brushed his lips with hers before she rolled over.
The sky swirled with sigils and runes, huge amber shapes tinged with vermillion. The distorted images were hard to read. Wind, speed, shield, all clearly moved from their original places in the working. Mona reached out and nudged the speed rune.
Abruptly all the twigs and papers and debris of a forest in winter plummeted. Mona squealed and attempted to shield her head with her arms.
“Dammit, Mona!” Cart pulled her closer.
Then silence.
No birds, no wind, no sounds even from the not so far off road.
“GO!” Cart shoved at her and she scrambled out, bumping on the half dozen bricks now littered over the path.
She watched back up the trail, in the direction the wind had come from. Something, some thing was coming down that path. A faint hissing built up and moved toward them, slowly stalking their way.
Cart slipped out of the hollow, his jacket ripped and streaked with blood.
“Help me get this off. I want to be ready to shift.” He was carefully pulling his arms out of the jacket.
Mona reached over and realized splinters of wood were embedded through the fabric and into his back.
“Let me pull out the worst of these,” Mona said softly. Knowing they didn’t have much time as the hissing become more distinct, she grabbed a jagged edge of fabric and pulled out the ones with the most blood around them.
Cart leaned over to undo his boots, grunting in pain. Mona kept an ear out, listening again for the shushing sound she’d heard earlier, but except for their whispers nothing was moving. Whatever was coming had stopped. Was it close enough to see them? She looked around, she didn’t see anything or the glow of any spells. A small window then, to help Cart heal before they faced whatever was coming after them.
“Ready?” Mona whispered. Without waiting for his response or for him to straighten, she grabbed opposing corners of the ruined coat and yanked it up, following the direction of the scrapes.
“Cracked—” Cart bit off the rest of his exclamation. The copper scent of his blood filled the air. Mona plucked out the larger bits she could see, tossing them under the tree.
“Shoot!” She shook her finger after a particularly barbed piece pierced her.
Cart started to stand up. “You okay?”
“Stay there. Two more and I’ll be done.” Mona braced her sore hand on his back and pulled with the other. Done.
Cart stood and grabbed her now bloody hand in his own scraped ones.
