by S A Archer
“It was easy money.” He grabbed one of the not yet empty glasses and tossed back its contents in one swallow.
“What it did, mate, was get me all tangled up with magic and fey and wizard stuff.” She tilted her head and gave him an overly bright smile and batted her eyelashes at him in mock innocent charm. “Which has led me in a roundabout way into working for Manannan.” Which was not technically untrue, given Lugh’s allegiance.
Peyton’s hazel green eyes slid back to her. His hard gaze had impact to it. “If you’re just here to make my life a living misery, you needn’t have bothered.” His Cork accent, with the elongated ‘R’s, only became more pronounced when he was aggravated. “Not even the manna of the gods can take it away any more.” Leaning forward, he started to roll a joint, knocking some of the ambrosia dust onto the rolling paper to lace it with magic.
London rested her elbow on the table and propped her head in her hand. “How did a good Irish boy like you end up working for wizards anyway?”
Peyton ran his tongue along the edge of the paper and sealed it with the expertise of someone who rolled many joints in his lifetime. “Young, dumb, and horny for adventure. I didn’t want to learn to fix engines and live a rerun of my old man’s life, with grime and oil permanently caked around my fingernails.” He paused long enough to light up and suck in a heavy drag. He blew it out, with manners enough to aim the smoke away from London. “The fey in England are all hunted out. The fey of Scotland are off limits. The wizards can’t cross the veil into Ireland. So they needed a bounty hunter who could bring them what they needed.”
“Why are the fey of Scotland off limits?”
Despite the drugs and enchantments, Peyton wasn’t off his game. The serious cut of his eyes wasn’t softened by his chuckle. “I thought you worked for Manannan. You should know.”
“He’s not always forthcoming with all his business and I want to know.” London held her own expression carefully, not wanting to give anything away with her non-verbal cues. The more she learned, the more incriminating it was becoming for the self-proclaimed god of magic.
“Is this all you wanted? To ask me a bunch of questions you should already know the answers to?” Peyton rolled the ashen tip off his joint into the ashtray.
“I want to know everything there is to know about the wizards.” London laid her phone on the table and tapped its screen meaningfully. As careless as he had been, it was almost as if Peyton meant to get caught, taking the passive aggressive route to self destruction. But London was gambling that her overt threats to expose him would be blackmail enough to ensure his cooperation.
“Fine. You want to know everything about the bloody wizards?” He pulled the so-far-ignored check over to him, tore off the bottom edge and wrote on it.
When he handed it over, London looked at the name of the coffee shop, and its location on a pair of cross streets in Liverpool.
“Meet me there tomorrow morning.” Peyton dragged on his joint once more. Speaking as he exhaled, he said, “You’ll learn more than you ever wanted to know.” And from the hard edge Peyton carried, that even the magic and drugs couldn’t dull, London could believe it.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The selection of music the Fey Bangers played attracted a mixed crowd. The four band members each got to pick a few songs, and while Joel and Kaitlin went for the romantic and pop stuff, Griffin and Malcolm wanted something hardcore. Something with a lot of awesome drums, that let Malcolm bash away with the music. Like “Trenches” from Pop Evil and “Lift Me Up” by Five Finger Death Punch. Those songs screamed out the things he’d been feeling tearing out of his chest.
Killing Rand hadn’t purged the fury. Tearing through the goblins hadn’t lessened his pain. All the shrieking hate that gnashed and gnawed at his insides couldn’t get out of him. And the more he thundered on the drums, or tore a blood trail across the countryside, the more the poison seemed to twist within him, rather than purging.
Even Kaitlin, her body and her magic, couldn’t make it go away. As she sang “All You Wanted” by Michelle Branch, she kept turning to him and reaching out to him. Her voice resonated with meaning as she sang, “If you want to, I can save you. I can take you away from here. So lonely inside, so busy out there. And all you wanted was somebody who cares. Please, can you tell me, so I can finally see, where you go when you’re gone.” She wanted so much to reach him, but he kept his head down, closing her out.
She couldn’t follow him where he’d gone.
When the concert was over, Malcolm slipped backstage and slammed his way out the rear exit. The rest of the band would stay and dance to the DJ’s mix with their growing fan base, but Malcolm wanted nothing to do with any of it. They weren’t the reason he played. Neither was the promise of fame or money. He didn’t want any of that.
In the alley between the buildings he couldn’t see the stars in the column of sky above him, but he looked up for them any way. Just like Donovan, his own guiding star, they were there, somewhere, but gone from his sight and out of his reach.
He dropped back so that he impacted against the brick wall with his shoulders. With the bandanna wrapped around his wrist, he wiped at the sweat that was chilling in the night air.
“Great set.” The voice belonged to a girl and she was so close.
Malcolm jolted, but kept his back against the wall. Cutting a look at her, he watched the girl approaching.
He called her a ‘girl’, but as she got closer, he could tell she was probably several years older than him. Like, twenty-something. Her blond hair tumbled and twisted about her shoulders like she’d been dancing. For a human, she was attractive, almost fey-like, with the shape of her eyes and chin. The fake elven ears added to the impression. As she walked closer to him, she did that girl-walk, where her hips seemed to roll with each step. Not overly so, but enough to catch his attention. With the low-rise jeans and the halter top, her smooth stomach added to the hypnotic way she moved.
The fact that she was human was one strike against her. That she had the glowing lace of the Touch shimmering within her skin was another.
This girl knew a Sidhe when she saw one. He would bet money on it.
Her head tilted a little, as she tried to get him to meet her eyes. And when he did, she smiled for him. “Great set,” she repeated, now that she was almost within reach of him.
Those brilliant blue eyes twinkled.
And Malcolm knew her.
His expression blanked. Before him the alley vanished. He wasn’t leaning against a brick wall, but gazing up from a stone table. And that pretty girl laughed with seduction, blue eyes twinkling in the firelight.
He’d been drugged out of his head. And she’d laughed at him.
As the human wrapped her arms loosely around his neck, she smiled coyly. “You remember me now?” The space between them disappeared.
Malcolm raised a hand to stop her, but she pressed into him anyway, so that her breast filled his palm. Bending her leg, she brushed her knee to the outside of his thigh.
“Remember how we used to party all night long?” She asked, her face so close that her nose playfully brushed against his. Then her mouth covered his.
Malcolm’s hand closed over her breast and she moaned. His growl was muffled by her mouth. When he rolled with her, switching positions to pin her against the wall, she didn’t resist him.
His clawed fingers snagged in the magic lacing through her chest. As Malcolm pulled his mouth from hers, he dragged the magic out of her like a fistful of fishing net.
The girl’s mouth opened wide, as did her eyes. She knew what he was doing. She could feel it. Before the scream could escape her, Malcolm clamped his hand down over her mouth. He shoved her back hard to the wall. “This…” He tore the threads of magic out of her. “Doesn’t belong to you.”
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br /> No amount of her punching or clawing would stop him. Malcolm kept her screams silenced, just as useless as his screams had been. Twisting his fist in the strands of Sidhe magic, his and others, he ripped every fiber of it from her body.
The blonde’s eyes rolled back as her body gave a violent convulsion. Then her hands dropped limply from him. When he stepped back, snatching his hand from her mouth, her body slumped into a heap on the ground.
There wasn’t a mark on her, except her smudged lipstick.
And yet, she was dead. Staring up at the sky for the stars that had abandoned them.
Malcolm left her where she fell. Ironic that he could hear “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark” by Fall Out Boy as he walked away. He scrubbed the slobber and the lipstick from his palm onto his jeans, and then straddled the motorcycle that Jasper, the club owner, had loaned to him. With his ears and face covered with the helmet, Malcolm leaned into the machine that carried him from that dark place to hunt down the rest of his stolen magic.
6 days after the creation of the new fey realm
Chapter Thirty
In the twilight, Lugh knew his lone figure was still visible on the gravel shoreline of the Snake River. The dry and broken landscape offered little opportunity for concealment. Although he didn’t bother with Glamour, the hood of his cloak shadowed his face and hid the scratches on his neck from Bast’s claws. The Egyptian Champion protected her temple and her portal with vicious devotion, but that hadn’t been the cause of the scratches over much of his body. Negotiation for the temporary closure of the portal had taken a romantic turn, as he’d hoped. Blood, sex, and magic were often the currency for such intense negotiations. She’d been content with two of the three. It bought him her indulgence for a week. It wasn’t the tightest window for his mission. He’d only two days remaining for the Incan portal.
Trust ran thin, as the Champions noticed the global changes in the ley lines. Those who owed Lugh favors had been the easiest to convince. The ones with appetites he could feed had been not too difficult to sway. But the portals that yet remained were protected by less malleable guardians.
Dione’s warnings echoed in his mind, even as he scanned the scrub brush for movement. He’d yet to cross a line from which he could not recover. This may well be the first. Even denying his culpability to himself fell flat in the face of his new, somewhat Unseelie, sensibilities. The feline of his personal darkness watched all that he did, seeing every act and every word with clarity. Although he might be able to fool others, the connection to the new realm and the Unseelie through whom it spawned, made it increasingly difficult to fool himself.
What he did now amounted to betrayal. The forgiveness of which was a tenuous hope at best. The consequences he prayed would wait until after Manannan’s arrival in the new realm. Then, he could spend eternity making amends, if need be.
The soft panting was his first sign that he wasn’t alone. Lugh turned slowly, his sharp eyesight catching the movement on the harsh landscape. The coyote trotted closer, his head down to follow the scents and keep his profile low.
Lugh slipped his hand beneath the cloak, gripping the unseen hilt of the dagger at his waist. His magic could be traced. The dagger couldn’t be.
The animal stopped his approach several paces from him. It swayed, as the yellow glow of its eyes studied Lugh. For a moment, Lugh thought the coyote would turn and go. But instead, the shape of it shimmered.
In its place, the crouching figure of a man in leather leggings and loincloth appeared. One hand touched the ground between his feet, while his other elbow rested on his knee. Not exactly a relaxed stance, since he could quickly spring up from it. “Did you bring it?” His unnerving golden eyes reflected the dying light.
Lugh unlaced the leather cording binding the sheath to his belt, and tossed the dagger to the ground between them. “Bast doesn’t know it is missing.”
“She should never have kept it from me.” The coyote snatched up his long lost blade. He hiked up the legging to his left knee and bound the blade to his calf, then covered it with his clothing.
The exact circumstances that resulted in his lost dagger hadn’t been confided in Lugh. Nor did he truly care at this exact moment. “So we have a deal?”
“Our passage will be closed by sunrise and remained sealed until the new moon. No longer.” The man shifted back into his coyote form.
“That will be sufficient.” He watched the animal retreat, losing him quickly to the shadows. The exact way that the trickster meant to accomplish this feat, he’d not confided in Lugh. But should that Champion discover the means by which it had been accomplished, it wouldn’t show any trace of fey magic. Besides, it would hardly be the first time the coyote pulled such a stunt.
Lugh only hoped he tread carefully enough not to get caught in the conflagration when Bast found one of her battle trophies missing.
He’d no time to contemplate that worry now. Not when so many more portals remained open. If only Manannan hadn’t charged him with closing them all. If only he could be satisfied with most of them. Then they might make their play for the new realm immediately.
As it stood, ‘twas much better that Lugh take the burden of dealing with the other realms, rather than risk the backlash to the fey with Manannan’s heavy handed tactics. Thus far, the portals in the Americas and South Pacific were dealt with. Of the ones that remained, only two truly concerned him. The dragon realm and the Nordic realm.
Drawing on the connection to the new realm, Lugh pulled the magic he required to teleport across the planet. The Scandinavian terrain glided with a smoothness that contrasted with the roughness of the shores of the Snake River. The mirrored surface of the lake caught the early morning light coming over the snowcapped mountains.
The village in the cleft between the hills wasn’t one any human had visited in ages. The Vanir who lived in the hamlet of two story buildings constructed with exposed timbers where more elf-like than any of the other Nordic races. Tall and blond as he was, Lugh would hardly stand out among them.
Even still, he kept his hood up and slid his gaze around in search of the squirrels and ravens that reported to Asgard. Even in the early hour, the villagers began their day. Lugh offered smiles and nods as was appropriate. The Vanir knew a stranger in their small community, but they might easily mistake him for a Vanir from another town and the open friendliness they offered proved this hope. As he passed a bakery, the woman setting out her pastries on the window offered him an iced bun, which he graciously accepted. “Have you seen Jordaan?” He asked of her, hoping his accent wasn’t too apparent.
The woman smiled up into his eyes. A smile which didn’t falter even as the unmistakable pressure of the tip of a sword tapped down on Lugh’s shoulder. “Appears someone is looking for you, as well.” She said, with maternal sweetness that belied the danger which had found him. She gently reclaimed the pastry from him. “You’re rather busy at the moment. I’ll keep this warm for you.”
Lugh turned his head only enough to see the sword’s tip, which was a misnomer given the width of the heavy blade, even at the end.
The hand that snatched back his hood was none too gentle. Typical of one of the Aesir. “There is nothing so egregious as the deception of elves.” The massive Aesir sneered, showing his perfectly white and even teeth which could tear through leather strapping as easily as thread.
“Heimdall,” Lugh started, shrugging with as much innocence as he could fake.
The Aesir shoved his fingers into Lugh’s chest, driving him back several paces. “I can see to the ends of the world, elf!” His voice rumbled from within like a bear’s.
“Heimdall,” Lugh tried again, “Just listen—”
The Asgard Champion, the protector of the Nordic portal, wasn’t one to tolerate empty talk. He double handed his sword that likely
weighed four times Lugh’s entire body weight. Even tall as Lugh was among the fey, Heimdall towered over him. “I can hear the grass grow as easily as I have heard every lie you have uttered.”
“I can explain—” Lugh side-stepped the first swing of the blade. Then leapt over the second one. “I’m not asking much, really!”
“You thought you could hire Jordaan to do your trickery for you?” Heimdall snapped his head toward the Vanir lingering a few paces behind him. From the black eye and split lip, Jordaan had endured this wrath himself once already.
“I am sure we can come to an arrangement.” Lugh twisted away from the next swing, then leapt up to catch the bracing for the second floor balcony and swung himself up onto it. “Two days! Just two days!”
“Arm wrestle me for it?” Heimdall grinned with those big white teeth of his. The Aesir was toying with him.
He’d snap the hollow fey bones in Lugh’s arm like a pheasant wing. “I’d prefer not.”
Heimdall reached up and gripped the edge of the balcony, then tore it completely off the building with the crack of timbers.
Lugh twisted a layout over Heimdall’s head and landed lightly on his feet behind him. The commotion brought a circle of bystanders to the street, surrounding them. “How about one day? Twelve hours, even!” Blast this bone-headed Viking. As ever, just as immovable as a mountain. “Is there nothing we could bargain with?”
“No!” He shouted with the kind of finality that implied a certain joy in thwarting one’s opponent.
