“No one updated Jason on exactly what we pulled out of that hole in Malta, did they?” she asked.
“I meant to include that in my request for an actual salary,” Raja said with a grin. “Bearer bonds, stock certificates, diamonds, gems of other types, gold, silver, platinum… Most of the paper is old but still valid.”
“How valid?” I asked carefully.
“I spoke with Shelly on your behalf already,” Eric told me. “Getting everything transferred into a corporation in your name will be complex but straightforward enough. You can afford to pay your people’s credit card bills, Jason.”
“And then a couple hundred million,” Mary finished. “You have the resources to run your own court now, my love. And the Masked Lords don’t have that money, which I think all of us regard as a win.”
“Fair enough,” I said with a soft chuckle of awe. “All right, Kristal, Raja, you’re riding in the back with Barry and the heavy firepower. Bring some heavy firepower.”
I offered Eric my hand.
“Can I ask you to keep an eye on things until Damh and Amandine are awake?” I asked the old Keeper. “They’ve had even rougher days than I have. I saw the Hunt shattered. They saw their friends massacred.”
“I’ll keep the place safe,” he promised. “Go find our Queen, Jason.”
39
Despite my promises to the contrary, I’d intended to stay awake the entire trip. So, of course, the next thing I knew after us leaving Calgary’s city lights was Mary shaking me awake while Raja filled up the SUV’s gas tank.
“We’re in the mountains now,” she told me. “Filling up in Canmore before we go into the park.”
I shook myself and rubbed my eyes.
“How long was I out?”
“An hour or so. Traffic was pretty light and you needed the sleep,” Mary said. “Plus, if there were any problems, Raja is propping his feet on a machine gun.”
There was a blanket thrown over the M60 in his row, but she wasn’t exaggerating. The middle row had an M60 and Kristal’s boxy submachine gun. The back row had a blanket tossed over an assortment of other weapons, including several large swords.
Apparently, the big curved sword Raja favored was called a tulwar, for example.
My own weapons were in their usual spot Between, including Esras. I figured that traffic cops might question why someone had a six-foot-long spear in the passenger seat of an SUV.
I was starting to get more and more of a sense of what the spear thought of things, too. It hadn’t been happy to be stuffed Between. It was only really “happy” when it was in physical contact with me.
Perhaps most interesting was that, so far as I could tell, the ancient spear didn’t even like violence. The blood bond my father had forged, however, meant that it could only truly be its “full self” while I was holding it.
“How far does the GPS say we have left?” I asked Mary.
“About another hour, at which point we’re turning off onto roads the GPS doesn’t have programmed into it,” she said. “How do you feel about navigating by map?”
“Grumpy and uncomfortable.” I poked at the glove compartment. “It’s in here, right?”
“Yeah. They don’t actually want random tourists on the roads we’re about to go on, so even the maps aren’t great.” Mary leaned her head against me for a few seconds. “I hope you know where we’re going, love.”
“I think so,” I confirmed. I still had the link I’d forced open to Mabona. We were getting closer.
Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like she was getting any more awake.
It was late enough when we reached the entry to the park that the gate attendant gave us a rather harder looking-over than I was expecting. It was a good thing we’d concealed the weapons, as I was pretty certain that Canadian park rangers, especially, would disapprove of us bringing heavy weapons into the park.
Mary, of course, just spun a happy burbling story about going in for dinner and staying at one of the hotels in Banff. I wouldn’t have known enough about what was normal to tell a believable story—though, to be fair, I didn’t get the impression we needed much of a story.
Once we were through the gates, we followed the highway about halfway to the tourist trap masquerading as a town we were supposedly heading to. At that point, Mary turned us off onto a side road that curled its way around a mountain next to the main road.
Ten minutes later, she slowed the SUV down as we pulled up next to a road that was barely better than a dirt trail.
“Here’s where the GPS gives up,” she told me. “Got that map out?”
I did, in fact, and had been using my own phone to pick out exactly where we were. The paper map, at least, had the dirt side roads on it. It was far from perfect, but it at least gave us an idea of where we were.
As for where we were going, well…that was up to me now.
“Down that road,” I said with a sigh. “We’re still at least fifteen miles away. Deep into the back country, I’m guessing.”
“Looks like. All right, everyone, hold on. This is going to be bumpy.”
She was thankfully exaggerating. One of the advantages of the very large, very expensive vehicle that Eric had acquired for me was that the shocks were in perfect condition.
It was still a rough ride, but it wasn’t so bad as to count as bumpy.
“I imagine the Queen traveled here Between, right?” Kristal asked from the back seat. “This seems rather…beneath her dignity.”
I chuckled.
“Kristal, it’s beneath our dignity, let alone Mabona’s,” I told her. “But it’s also somewhere almost no one is going to look.”
We came up to a turn-off on the dirt road, an even more decrepit-looking lane, and I pointed.
“That way, Mary. We’re getting closer.”
She turned us up the road and we drove deeper and deeper into areas no tourist was supposed to see.
Somehow, I was unsurprised as the road actually started to improve in quality as we went on. We passed several gated roads with discreet signs. Past the gates, neatly maintained gravel lanes passed back into the hills.
Some were probably private lodges. Most were almost certainly park properties.
“This turn,” I finally pointed out. I checked the map as I did so and exhaled slowly. “This is the last one. Nothing leaves this road. Goes up deeper until it hits a lake.”
Studying the map more closely, I saw the icon on it.
“Looks like there’s a park building on the lake itself; I’m guessing some kind of research facility. I think she’s closer than that, though.”
I could see Mabona hiding out in a coopted mountain research shack, but I couldn’t see her spending weeks or months there—and she’d gone to ground almost ten weeks before. Somewhere between there and the end of the road, there was another private lodge, one that belonged to the Queen of the Fae.
Any question of whether we’d found the right place was answered about ten seconds after we opened the gate. Mary was starting to move the Escalade forward again and a sniper round slammed into the windshield.
The SUV had started as an expensive, heavily built vehicle. Then I’d left it in Eric’s hands repeatedly over the last few months. The windshield might look normal, but tanks would have blushed in envy at its damage resistance.
Which was a damn good thing at that moment, because the bullet had been aimed directly at Mary.
“Drive!” I barked. “The car is armored; it can take the fire. Go!”
She slammed on the accelerator as a second round hit in the exact same spot. Even the enchanted windshield cracked slightly under that impact, and I swallowed a curse.
I hadn’t really needed the confirmation that our sniper was supernatural, but that kind of accuracy was just that. I wouldn’t want to rely on my ability to hit a target that small twice at any range, but it was also the best way to punch through the defenses of something like the Escalade.
Mary twisted the wheel, se
nding the SUV skidding sideways as a third round smashed into the frame of the window. She hadn’t managed to force a miss, but she’d avoided the third hit on the same spot that would have broken the windshield.
“That’s an antimateriel rifle,” Raja said calmly from the back. “NATO heavy rounds. What is the windshield made of?”
“Glass and the magic of one grumpy old gnome,” I told him as a fourth round smashed into the car.
We were moving forward fast enough now that the bullet hit one of the side panels and bounced off. The glass on the Escalade was tough. The panels were almost unbreakable.
Two more bullets struck home before the sniper stopped shooting. For a second, I thought we were home free—and then the car echoed with a loud crash as Raja rolled down his window and fired something out of the side of the vehicle.
He hit the rocket he was aiming for over a hundred feet clear of the car, the armor-piercing explosive detonating in midair. The asura paused, hummed thoughtfully, and then fired a second shot from the massive pistol he’d produced from somewhere.
A second rocket exploded and Raja continued to study the forest.
“I think we’re clear now,” he announced.
“Rockets?” I asked.
“It’s what I would have done,” he told me. “AMRs are fantastic, but if they fail, you need something heavier.” He tapped his ear. “Distinctive sound, too. Once I had the window open, I could hear them coming.”
“Thank you,” I said, then looked over at Mary. “Mabona’s along the road, up the mountain. Let’s go see how she’s doing.”
For some reason, I doubted the sniper was her security…which suggested at least part of the answer.
40
The driveway wound its way about a mile out from the rough back road we’d been following. I could feel us getting closer to Mabona with every moment, but it was still a relief to emerge from the trees and find the ski lodge waiting for us.
The lodge was a trio of chalet-style buildings arranged around a paved parking lot. Single-story wings connected the three buildings to allow for travel without leaving the buildings in storms or bitter cold.
They also allowed the lodge to function as a three-sided fort, and a row of SUVs of similar bulk to my Escalade had been lined up to form the fourth wall.
A wall that was being watched. A warning shot kicked up dirt in front of us as we slowed towards the wall, very clearly intended to miss.
“Stop here,” I told Mary. “I don’t blame them for being paranoid. Leave this to me.”
We stopped the SUV and there was no more gunfire. I got out of the vehicle and slowly approached the impromptu barricade, my hands in the air.
“Hello, the house,” I shouted. “I’m Jason Kilkenny. Unless I’ve managed to spectacularly end up in the wrong place, you know me.”
There was no response for several seconds, and then a familiarly lithe form jumped up on the hood of one of the SUVs. Standing a few inches over six feet tall and moving with inhuman grace, there was no question the guardian was fae.
The Steyr rifle in his hands and the silver-hilted sword slung over his shoulder marked him as a Hunter—which was what allowed me to recognize him.
“Kilkenny,” he greeted me as he stood in front of the barricade. “You’ll understand we’re a bit nervous.”
“Oisin, son of Liam,” I replied. “You know me. Not just by name, by face.”
Oisin and his sister were Vassals of the Queen, and Mabona had sent them to help me out during the chaos of my arrival in Calgary and the conspiracy I’d wandered into the middle of.
He didn’t come any closer and the gun didn’t waver.
“I’ve met Jason Kilkenny, yes,” he allowed. “But faces can be forged—and voices, too.”
I sighed and called Esras to me. The butt of the spear slammed into the snow-covered gravel and I met Oisin’s gaze flatly.
“I am Jason Alexander Odysseus Kilkenny Calebrantson,” I told him loudly. “I am the bearer of Esras, a Noble of the Wild Hunt, a Vassal of the Queen of the Fae—a sworn defender of the High Court and your ally. I have weathered storms and gunfire to reach your door, and I seek the counsel of the Queen we both owe Fealty. Will you deny me?”
He was a Hunter. I could lie about what I was claiming to be, but to lie about my true name with Esras in my hands would be hard—and a Hunter would have seen right through it.
“No,” he said slowly, then laughed and slung his rifle. “You’ll forgive me, I hope, my brother. We are under siege in what was supposed to be our safehouse. No one should have been able to find us.”
“Most people aren’t Vassals who bear ancient arms,” I told him as we clasped forearms. “I managed to pierce Mabona’s defenses and find her, but not well enough to bring Hunters to her side. How bad is it, Oisin?”
“Bad,” he confirmed bluntly, waving for Mary to bring the Escalade up. “The lodge had power and phone wires running down to the city, plus satellite internet. No cellphone signal, but that was a selling point.”
“I’m guessing had is the operative term here?” I asked.
“Wires were cut and the satellite dish hit with an antimaterial rifle less than half an hour after Mabona collapsed. We don’t know what the hell is going on.”
“The Masked Lords killed Ankaris,” I explained quickly. “They used him as a conduit to attack the rest of the High Court. I don’t know where the others are; all I could think to do was to try and protect the Queen.”
“And thank the Powers that are that you came,” Oisin told me. “Win tried to leave last night, but they blew her car up with rockets and shot her down with cold iron bullets.”
I winced. Win Jernigan was—had been, I supposed—a Fae Lord, one of the most powerful beings in the world, short of a true Power. But yes, the sniper team that had almost taken us out would have sufficed to kill her if she’d been driving an unarmored vehicle.
“Mabona raised shields around this place to bar sensing and communication,” he continued. “They’re still up. She’s the only one who can lower them, and she’s been unconscious for days.”
“So, you can’t call for help, no one can walk Between to you, and there’s almost certainly an enemy formation gathering strength nearby,” I summarized.
“Bingo. I don’t know what we do from here,” he admitted. “There’s a dozen of us here, but we were a general traveling security and support team. No heavy arms, and Win was the most powerful of us.”
“Fortunately, I have backup,” I said. “And, unless they’ve done something even more obnoxious than I can think of, I have a way to get them here.”
Oisin moved one of the parked SUVs aside to let us park the Escalade inside the barricade, then closed it up behind us. An androgynous and young-looking fae emerged from one of the chalets at his shout, walking with an equally familiar poise.
I didn’t know the Noble, but I recognized the power and grace of their status.
“Kilkenny, this is Christa Hase,” Oisin introduced us. “Hase, this is Jason Kilkenny. He’s like me: a Vassal and a Hunter.”
“I know who Kilkenny is,” Hase replied with a small smile and bow. “Greetings. I presume you’re taking them indoors?”
“Aye.”
“Hold up one moment,” Raja suggested. He was still shoulders-deep in the SUV’s backseat, the rippling muscles of his broad and uncovered back catching a lengthy admiring glance from Hase.
He emerged after a few seconds, holding the M60 in one hand and a box of ammunition in the other. He took a few seconds to link a belt from the box, into the gun then offered it to Hase.
“Cold iron–cored bullets,” he told the noble. “Thousand rounds in the box, another box in the car if you need it.”
The big asura grinned.
“Trust me that if you fire off a thousand rounds through this, somebody will hear to come to help you reload.”
Hase chuckled and hefted the heavy weapon.
“Why didn’t we have one
of these, Oisin?” they asked the other member of the Queen’s security detail.
“Because we figured assault rifles and Nobles would be more than enough to hold off any enemy who stumbled across us,” the Hunter replied. “We thought the Queen’s hiding spot was a secret.”
“It wasn’t, I’m guessing?” I asked.
“They were too damned ready,” Oisin said grimly. “Maybe, maybe, they used the same link from Ankaris to find her that they used to knock her down, but…” He shook his head. “They were in place fifteen minutes after she collapsed, my brother. They knew where we were.”
“And if they knew where Mabona was and had enough data on Tír fo Thuinn to attack Ankaris successfully, we have to assume they could locate all of the High Court,” I said. “That’s…not great, people.”
“Go see the Queen,” Hase told me. “I’m guessing you forced a link to find us, but unless you’ve seen her, you don’t know bad it is.”
With Oisin playing guard dog outside, I wasn’t entirely surprised to find Niamh, his half-sister, inside. She was in the process of switching out IV bags on a mobile stand in the lobby, working from a well-equipped array of medical supplies…that were tossed all over the big decorative table next to the giant fireplace.
The fireplace in question was currently burning away, a carefully stacked and maintained pile of logs keeping the main lobby of the chalet warm.
“Niamh,” I greeted the blonde Healer with a bow. “I take it you’re not merely a random Healer the Queen happened to send my way, are you?”
She flushed, then returned my bow.
“I am Mabona’s personal physician,” she admitted. “I have been for, oh, about eighty years. I’d wondered why she sent me to take care of you back then, but my question seems to have been rather thoroughly answered since.”
I nodded.
“That long. You met my father, then?”
Noble's Honor (Changeling Blood Book 3) Page 21
