by J. B. Garner
Aelfie was full of surprises, even more surprises than I already figured he had, and he pulled out another one as he cut me off not with a retort but a finger over my lips. I knew I was turning as red as my hair in a race between anger and, let’s be totally honest, lust. “No, and you know I’m not lying. You are a Dwarf, by the Ten Gods, and that is a noble thing. You are one of the last of a race that has worked endless wonders and you carry in you the gift to work those wonders again.”
I grabbed his finger and gently pulled it away from. “What good does all that mean when I don’t even know what being a Dwarf is?” His gaze was intense now, penetrating right down to the core of me and I couldn’t take it, relenting for the first time since we had met. “Even if I had the least clue, it doesn’t change the fact that this bird’s nest on my chin is nothing more than a cross to bear, an obstacle to fight with.”
Aelfie’s ears twitched but he managed to quell his horrified gasp this time. Instead, he managed a soft smile, slipping his finger free from my loose grasp as he brushed my beard with the fingertips of his other hand. “No, Mary, your beard is magnificent, a fiery blaze that speaks of the courage in your heart, something I have seen now in action. It is part of your beauty, whether you wish to acknowledge it or not.”
His touch was intoxicating and I was about to cry foul, suspecting it might be due to some crazy magic. The truth was that it all came from Aelfie himself. I wasn’t a naïve twit so I didn’t think of it as love, but I wasn’t so close-minded to not see it, to feel it. There was something there as I put my hand over his, pressing his long fingers into my curled beard and the flesh of my cheek underneath.
“I think you’re crazy,” I murmured as I turned my head up, our eyes meeting again, “but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m the crazy one.” I didn’t believe all Aelfie had said or maybe the better way to put it was that I couldn’t believe it, not quite then. Still, I was willing at that moment, as my heart pounded in my chest, to give it a shot, to buy into the bullshit.
“No, milady, you are not crazy, but you are – “
Whatever Aelfread had been about to say (and God, did I want to know what it was) was cut off by a heavy knock on the door, more of a slam to be fair, followed by Blythe’s booming voice.
“We know you’re in there! Give us the pointy ears and we won’t have to blow the door down!”
Chapter 7
AELFREAD ROSE TO HIS full height, eyes immediately searching for potential exits. I was forced to go to the edge of the bar to back into the living room, where poor Officer Howard was still standing there in a magical haze. The easiest way to beat a hasty retreat would be through the window in the kitchenette and down the fire escape but with Beaks unaccounted for, that seemed like an obvious trap, not to mention we’d be leaving the innocent cop high and dry.
“We cannot stay,” the Elf murmured barely loud enough for me to hear. “Even with the defenses you have, we must not risk your life like this.”
“My life?” I shot back. “You’re the one they want to gut for a reason you still haven’t come clean about.” I arched an eyebrow up at him. “And what defenses are you talking about? I don’t think a kitchen knife is going to disturb this lot.”
He smirked, his eyes focusing on the back window. “We’ve been awfully busy, you have to admit, dear Dwarf.” Like the melodramatic snot I had pegged him for, he left out the answer to my other question, even as the front door rattled again. “Besides, they are likely bluffing, especially with so many mundanes in the area.”
“That didn’t stop them from blowing up the store, did it?”
Blythe’s voice boomed through the door again. “Look, shorty, no matter what that twit promised you, it’s a load of lies.” As if I didn’t already know that Aelfie was a con man! “I know we got off on the wrong foot, but my employer wants to make amends. How does a pound of solid gold suit your fancy? All you have to do is give us the Elf.”
God, whoever wanted Aelfread had very deep pockets or didn’t give two cares about wealth. Aelfie’s eyes were on my back as if expecting me to turn on him, and I couldn’t really blame him for being wary. That was a ton of money right there and I always had a peculiar taste for gold, hell any precious metal or stone. I suppose I really was some kind of magical Dwarf after all.
Instead of throwing open the door, I pulled open the kitchen’s junk drawer and pulled out a ball peen hammer. It wasn’t my baby sledge but it felt reassuring to have it in my hands. “What about the guardsman?” Odd, I had meant to say ‘cop’.
That one gesture was enough for Aelfie and I could hear his abbreviated sigh of relief from here. “What about him? They will not hurt him. No one in the know is stupid enough to entangle the human authorities in such a way.” He moved to the back window in two fluid steps. “This is the only way, even if it is an obvious trap.”
“We can’t risk that; we’ve got to make sure he’s safe.” Yeah, it was likely stupid of me to be so worried but I barely accepted that I was risking my neck for Aelfie and his unknown crime. I sure as hell wasn’t going to get this dope killed for the same.
I was five steps into the living room before he noticed I wasn’t by his side. “Oh, you stubborn Dwarf! What are you doing?!”
His belabored exclamation mingled with Blythe’s final warning. “Fine then, I’ve given you plenty of warning, stuntie.” Goosebumps broke out on my arm and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, magic thick in the air.
Now I’m not a fast runner for obvious reasons but fear and adrenaline can work wonders in a pinch. Another two steps and I was at the still-comatose Officer Howard. To an outside observer, it probably looked hilarious to see the two-hundred-pound-plus of doughy police officer hoisted above my head and into a fireman’s cradle. Aelfread was saying something that wasn’t Truespeech or English and the electric feeling in the air doubled.
I ignored all of that as I made a run for the bedroom door. It wouldn’t be much protection but shoving the cop into the other room was better than nothing. As emerald light leaped over the bar and struck the nearest of my drawings on the wall, I put my boot to the bedroom door, throwing it open before I roughly heaved Officer Howard in. If we both lived through this, I would be advising him to lay off the jelly-filled doughnuts.
That was the moment the fuse on the proverbial dynamite ran out. For the third time this evening, a muffled shockwave detonated outside the room, making my teeth chatter despite the intervening wall. Unlike the store’s shutters, the flimsy apartment door offered no resistance at all, blowing apart in a shower of splinters, nails, and shavings. It looked like I was going to get pelted with shrapnel before being blow off my feet but then things got really weird.
A selection of the geometric patterns on the drawing Aelfie’s magic had struck flared with a reddish glow like molten lava. Time seemed to slow for me as deep down subconscious knowledge burst into the forefront of my brain. What I had drawn, hidden among the rest of the pattern, were letters of some ancient tongue, runes that held power now unleashed by Aelfread’s own magic. What those runes were called and the word they formed were answers that worried at the edges of my mind, unknown yet hovering right below the surface of my memory.
What the runeword did was blatantly obvious, though. Its glow mixed with the light of another word hidden in a drawing across the room before bursting into a translucent wall of force bisecting the living room. I didn’t want to think of what it would have done to the cop if he had still been standing there but I was glad the wall was there now. The debris from the explosion bounced off the glowing field like so many spitballs then the blast itself hit.
The ringing echo sounded like the world’s biggest hammer slamming into the side of a tank. Even though the shockwave had been held back, the sound was almost deafening in and of itself. My ears screamed their displeasure and my head started to ache fiercely from the abuse, even as cracks formed in the light wall. The protection it was providing wouldn’t last for much longer.
While I couldn’t hear anything outside of echoes, I could see well enough to catch Blythe’s beach-ball body through the settling debris, one hand clamped over his left ear and the other clutched to a short, wooden cane topped with an uncut hunk of diamond, all filtered by the reddish hue of the wall. His piggish face was twisted in the ugly combination of pain, frustration, and surprise as he shouted … something. I couldn’t make it out, just like I couldn’t make out whatever Aelfie was saying as he spun me around to face him.
I could read his expression, though. There was fear of some kind there but I didn’t know if it was worry over his own skin or concern for me. What I could tell for sure was that he was shouting and pointing at the back window as he took my free hand.
“Okay, okay,” I shouted back, barely audible even inside my head, “let’s go!” I stumbled along as he led me, keeping a hold of my hand the whole time. I had to wonder why he wasn’t dazed like the rest of us, especially with those giant ears of his, but I could worry about that later. We had bigger problems.
Chief among those was the window shattering inward a moment before we got to it. As if the door weren’t enough, that would represent the last of my security deposit being tossed into the wind. The cause of said shattering was the skinny frame of Beaks standing on the fire escape, his temple showing an awful bruise from where I had walloped him earlier and his hands gripping a black, iron crowbar like a sword. His beady eyes positively lit up with joy at the sight of us, the kind of sick joy that someone who really likes hurting people must feel.
Even though my ears were starting to recover, I still couldn’t hear what he was saying as he lunged through the window, swinging for the fences at my head. Reflexes took over as I ducked down and to the right, too small a profile for Beaks to adjust his swing despite his own short stature. The crowbar cut the air above my head but it did hit something else, namely Aelfread.
I knew that from his cry of pain, a shrill sound that cut through the ringing in my head and stuck right into my heart. Maybe I was imagining it or maybe my assumption of Aelfie’s frailty magnified the sound. I don’t know but it set off something in my brain, a pure rage akin to a volcano spewing molten lava over the landscape.
Beaks had no clue what was about to happen as he cursed and hopped over the window sill, still intent to wreck my face. He was in mid-hop as I pushed up from my crouch, swinging the hammer along with the motion of my body. The flat end of the head hit home right into the soft spot of the goon’s side, right under the rib cage, backed by all my weight and muscle.
Understandably Beaks dropped the crowbar as he collapsed onto his hands and knees beside me. His deep, hard gasps of pain were the first semi-clear sounds I could hear past Aelfie’s scream but they didn’t stop me. It wasn’t just that this guy had hurt Aelfread, though that figured into it way more than I was willing to admit at the time. No, this guy and his buddy had been doing a great job of screwing over my crappy little life, turning it even crappier.
All I could see was Beaks as vulnerable as a baby, tinted with red rage. Screaming incoherently, I hit him square in the back, eliciting another wheeze of agony as he slammed face-first onto the floor littered with broken glass. Now blood was spilled and part of me knew that was enough, that I should stop, but there was a lot more of me that was too pissed off to want to stop. Snarling, I raised up my hammer one last time, measuring a shot right at the back of Beaks’ little skull.
“Stop, he has had enough,” Aelfread whispered, a sound that should’ve been lost in the rush of blood in my ears and the constant cracking as the wall steadily collapsed in the living room. His fine fingered hands, shivering in what had to be pain or shock, wrapped over my raised fist and that flipped open the anger release valve in my brain.
My eyes widened as I felt numb. I had almost killed this guy with my own two hands. Yeah, maybe you could justify it by the fact he would’ve killed us given the chance. You might even be right but thinking about it with cold logic doesn’t change the feeling of it, that sick feeling of homicidal rage curdling in your gut.
“I almost killed him,” I stammered but Aelfie cut me off before I could carry on, holding on tight and pulling me towards the window.
“Do not, my dear, not right now.” I could tell he was trying not to sound as hurt as he was and I could also tell he was favoring his left leg quite a bit. “We have to go; your runes will not hold any longer.”
Aelfie’s pain sobered me up quick. I could angst later. I had promised to keep him safe and I was making a mess of that. “Right!”
Using Beaks’ writhing form as a step stool (an act which shoved another satisfying ‘oof’ out of him), I knocked out the last sharp edges of glass in the window frame with the hammer and boosted myself through with Aelfie right on my heels.
The cool night air chilled the sweat on my brow as I helped Aelfread down the rusty metal steps of the fire escape. Our escape was a lot slower than I would have wanted, burdened by my short legs and Aelfie’s injury, and I was holding my breath every time we rounded a landing, expecting the echo of a gunshot to join the distant barking dogs and crying alley cats. To my surprise, the only sounds out of place were our grunts of pain and exertion mixed with the groans of the aging steps.
I only risked a glance upwards when we set down on the dirty pavement by the apartment’s dumpster. Blythe was on the landing by my window, all right, but he wasn’t aiming a gun at us. Instead, he was carefully hauling Beaks’ semi-conscious body out of the window. Maybe there was some honor among thieves after all. That was good as it was buying us a chance to lose the dynamic duo, though how far we could get with Aelfread’s leg I didn’t know.
It wouldn’t be far, that much was obvious after a single step down the alley. Adrenalin had gotten the Elf down the fire escape but it was fading fast. He let out a cry when he stepped on that injured leg and in the faint yellow light of the alley, I could see that the clawed end of the crowbar had punched through his pants and right into his right thigh. Aelfie’s blood was a vivid ruby red, almost sparkling against the white leather.
“You should leave me, dear Dwarf,” he hissed. To our mutual surprise, he meant it.
“To hell with that,” I growled and took the decision out of his hands. Aelfread was a bit lighter than Officer Howard despite the foot of height the Elf had on him so throwing him over my shoulders in the same fashion was markedly easier.
“Ten Gods, this is undignified!”
I ignored his bitching and ran as fast as my little legs could carry me, cursing my sweat-slick moustache as it tried to droop into my mouth. This was certainly faster than trying to walk it but I wasn’t an idiot. It wouldn’t be enough, especially as Aelfie’s leg needed some actual medical attention and soon.
It wouldn’t have been enough, that is if a carnation pink Kia four-door hadn’t roared up to the alley’s exit, screeching to a halt right before us. From behind, I could hear heavy footfalls on the fire escape. Time was running out as the Kia’s passenger door flung open.
A tanned, bright-eyed, and blonde-haired woman held her hand out at us from the driver’s seat. In Truespeech, she yelled, “Get in! There is no time to – “
I cut her off by yanking open the fortunately unlocked back door and tossing Aelfie as gently as I could onto the bucket seat. Kicking the door closed, I hopped in next to the lady and slammed my own door shut.
“Nice to see someone listen for once,” she smirked as she slammed down on the gas pedal and we sped away.
Chapter 8
AS THE ARMS disappeared in the rearview mirrors, all I could think to do for that first moment was to pull the hairs out of my mouth and try to get my beard back into some semblance of decency. It was a strangely calming act, starting to slow my heart that was still pounding like a jackhammer. Calm was what I needed though if I was going to keep us both safe.
The next step was making sure that Aelfie wasn’t going to go into shock or bleed out from the puncture in his leg. You can�
��t keep someone safe when they’re dying, right? As much as I wanted to find out who had saved our bacon, I had to prioritize. Sure, Ms. Pink had to have her reasons to do this and where there were reasons, there was an agenda, but I had to hope that agenda required us to be safe and sound for now.
I was turning to lean over the center console when Ms. Pink spoke up, sticking to Truespeech. “You should sit down and buckle in, Dwarf.” She eyed me sidelong, those blue eyes sharp and clear as an eagle’s. “Worry not about Aelfread. He will live for long enough to get help, assuming he winds up worth the trouble.”
That didn’t sound particularly friendly, a fact that Aelfie registered as well. Through clenched teeth, as he stayed sprawled out in the back, he said, “I am most certainly worth the trouble, milady. I am the son of King Aelf Sylvinson and prince of the Spaces Under The Lakes as you must know and I can certainly – “
Ms. Pink let out a sarcastic laugh. “Yes, I know exactly what you’re worth, Aelfson.”
I ignored Pink for the moment, confident in my balance. Aelfie had his hand clamped over the oozing wound (direct pressure is always a smart move), but he seemed more worried about the course of the conversation, one eyebrow arched. “That voice … you cannot be – “
“The girl you tried to do a quick swindle on at the bar?” Every word was spoken with utter confidence. “You are a notorious womanizer, Aelfson, and I happen to be a lovely woman. What better way to – “
I couldn’t tell which was the bigger pain to him, the wound in his leg or the sting of being pinned down so accurately. What? I had no illusions about the kind of man, er, Elf Aelfie seemed to be. “I may be an admirer of the female form but you go too far with such base accusations, madam!”
“I even doubt the orphan buys that one,” she laughed. “It does not matter anyway, not with the bounty you have on your head now.”
