by John Conroe
“He’s right,” I said to Lydia and ‘Sos, who was chewing his paw. “That healing up, bud?” I asked.
Grabbing the big front foot, I inspected the healing wound. “Looks good. Okay, you ready there, Pita?” I asked Lydia. She looked shell-shocked.
“That was the angel,” she said. It was a statement.
“Yup. He’s becoming a bit of a wiseass, but he’s a good guy,” I said.
“He’s an angel,” she responded, her tone and expression asking for clarification.
“Angels aren’t always nice. In fact, humanity’s interactions with them have mostly been short, violent, and one-sided,” I said.
“He called you brother,” she said. I nodded. “You really are an angel too?”
I held out my hand, palm down, and wiggled it. “Was. Now I’m more fallen than angel. Same with Tanya.”
Her hand went to her mouth, her eyes huge in her pale face. I pulled out my phone and snapped a quick picture. She blinked at the flash.
“Photographic evidence of you speechless. Priceless,” I said.
“You asshole. I’m gonna shove that phone where the cell signals don’t reach,” she growled, but I was already out of the room and headed up the stairs. She must have really been shaken up because she didn’t say another word as we left the church.
“Caesar,” I said to the soldiers as we got outside, already dialing Arkady.
“Dah?” he answered.
“We’re clear here. Senka’s four-person team is toast though. How are you guys?” I asked.
“Alive. Two were converted. Both formed armor. Parts of one got away,” he said.
My stomach lurched as I thought of armored body parts infecting Rome’s population. Lydia’s mouth hung open as she processed his words.
“We’re on our way,” I said, waving to our driver to crank it up.
What’s that phrase? Rome didn’t fall in a day? That didn’t seem so true all of a sudden.
Chapter 11
Fairie, Idiria
The Winter Realm section of Idiria was fucked up. No other way to put it, Mack thought. Not his most literary description, but still true.
First of all, it was cold. Idiria was uniformly comfortable in temperature, probably seventy degrees Fahrenheit or so. But as soon as they crossed into the broad arc of rooms and apartments claimed by Winter, the temperature had dropped into the forties, which left goosebumps on the bare arms of his sister and Ashley. Stacia, of course, didn’t seem to notice as she stalked the hallways with predatory grace.
The creatures lurking about the passageways were the second part of the messed-up ambiance. Lots of scarred, muscular ape-like goblins, white fur stained blue, particularly around the mouth.
“What, do they eat blueberries or something?” Mack had asked when they first crossed into Morrigan’s territory.
“It’s blood. Natives of Fairie bleed blue. Something about the amount of copper in their bloodcells,” Ian had remarked.
Mack had been trying not to stare at a particularly nasty specimen, a broad, powerful white beast with an empty eye socket and a patch of scarred tissue on the side of its head. The goblin’s single remaining eye had locked onto Mack and the squat monster had started to straighten in aggression. Then Stacia growled. Just a single, deep kind of snarl and the goblin turned away.
“Don’t make eye contact, Mackling,” she said when they were past. “It’s just like wolves and New Yorkers—a direct challenge.”
There were other creatures about besides the goblins. A few snow white cats the size of Irish wolfhounds, at least one sasquatch, and dozens of elves, not to mention the hordes of pucks buzzing about.
Speaking of pucks, Pancho and company rode on Ashley and Ian’s shoulders, their glittering black eyes watching their flying counterparts with wary suspicion.
Stocan led them further into Winter’s vast warren of rooms, corridors, and suites. Mack was hoping Stacia or Dec could find their way back out if things went to hell because he was hopelessly lost.
They entered a long hallway of dark wooden columns, each carved in a different elegant and downright creepy manner. Wooden creatures chased wooden people up and around the polished surfaces of the telephone-pole-sized columns, each scene stranger than the last.
The corridor ahead of them ended at a large set of black double doors guarded by four elves in black dragonskin armor. Two of the guards held short, complex-looking bows, and the other two each held a Black Frost blade in their hands. Mack had seen Neeve wield one of her two morphing weapons before and had instantly decided his only hope for countering such a weapon was a gun and some distance.
The guard on the right had his weapon formed into some sort of a pike, like a six-foot shaft with an attached ax blade, shaped a bit like a cleaver, and a sharp spear point. The black-clad elf on the left was tapping his left hand with a long, curving sword of light-sucking black. The sword tapper looked at Stocan with a raised eyebrow.
“The Speaker and her company for Queen Morrigan as requested,” Stocan said, his tone mild and matter-of-fact.
Mack was aware of movement around and behind them, more black-clad bodies and several white-furred, squatty shapes. He kept his right hand on the grip of his patrol-slung rifle, noticing that his sister’s arms were crossed in front of her. He briefly wondered why until he saw the butt of her Glock sticking out of one of the magazine pouches on her chest pack. The sneaky little devil had it positioned right by her shooting hand.
Ian seemed bored, but his powerful little submachine gun was slung like Mack’s rifle, across his body and ready to go. Stacia was absently inspecting her fingernails on Ashley’s right side, while her boyfriend stood on the left side, one arm crossed like Jetta but holding something in each hand. Mack caught the gleam of steel between Declan’s fingers and realized he was holding at least one of his orbs o’ death, probably two.
“Just the Speaker,” the guard said.
“Just leaving,” Ian responded, turning back the way they came. Mack turned as well and spotted the six elves and three goblins lurking in the corridor they had just walked through. There was a familiar thrum and two round balls of steel floated as smooth as pistons to hover unmoving between the new guards and the little company. The clink of metal on metal told Mack his buddy was freeing up the last of his deathballs. Declan had come back from Maine with three of them, but a fourth had shown up after his Vegas trip, the visit that had bankrupted several insurance companies.
The first two balls had the complete attention of the elves Mack was facing, and he was thrilled to see them frown at the unmoving orbs. Smart Keeblers. Those balls were instant death and Declan could make them do crazy nasty things.
Before Thanksgiving break, Mr. Jenks had brought a few old cars into Arcane one day and let the students beat them up. Mack’s impression had been that the survival teacher had wanted to let the other kids see what werewolf and other shapeshifter children could do to steel and glass with their bare hands.
It had been eye-opening to see Dellwood rip a door right off, or their werebear friend, Justin, roll up the hood of the Corolla like a rug. But the real show had come when the weres had tired of their fun. Declan had unleashed his orbs. Watching a one-ton car get utterly destroyed by what was, for all intents, four remote controlled cannon balls flying at close to the speed of sound was mildly terrifying, even for the kid who called Declan roomie. He’d done more damage in sixty seconds than the whole pack of werewolves had in fifteen minutes. Mack had one particularly vivid memory of one of the orbs blasting down through the roof while a second had come up through the floor, passing each other as they tore free of the vehicle.
“Death metal is forbidden,” the sword slapper hissed as the archers pulled back on their strange little bows, which Mack could see had oddly shaped compound pulleys.
The right hand door to the queen’s chamber opened and the elf named Greer poked his head out.
“What is the delay,” he said, or at least that’
s what Omega translated the words to in Mack’s ear, as the tall Guardian had spoken Elvish.
“I told the shit of the dragons that only she is allowed inside. They refused,” the lead elf replied in the same language. It was a little odd to hear the simultaneous translation, especially as Omega was somehow matching the voice qualities of each person so closely that it felt like they were doing their own translating.
“We refused and indicated we would leave. Your brother Guardians were willing to die trying to stop us,” Ian said in English.
The shifts in expression were very subtle, but Mack was starting to get a handle on elven facial expressions. The guards were all shocked that Ian had understood them, Greer not so much.
“Your grace in diplomacy will be noted to the queen. Did you consider that any one of the dragons could simply rip the ceiling open?” Greer said to the lead elf before turning to Ashley’s group. “You may, of course, bring your protectors, Speaker, although weapons must be sheathed,” he said, holding the door open wide and bowing his head slightly.
Declan’s orbs circled the party once in a silver, whistling blur before clinking into his messenger bag, one after the other.
“If you had killed them all before I got my hands on at least one, you’d have been sleeping with Mack,” Stacia said to her witch as they passed the four guards at the door.
“I would always save you a few, babe,” Declan said, moving through the doorway ahead of Ashley.
“When did he start calling you babe?” Jetta asked Stacia, who was following Ashley.
“Since never. That was the first and last time,” Stacia answered, her eyes still watching the guards as she disappeared into the room.
Greer still held the door as Mack, the last of the party, moved beyond the four furious guards. His earpiece hissed the translation of Greer’s final whispered words to the guards. “The queen heard your exchange with the Speaker’s party. She requested that I save you all from death at the hands of these Earth infants. If you fail as badly again, your ashes will be displayed on the wall of Shame for all of Queen Morrigan’s reign.”
Mack ignored the exchange and shifted his attention to the new environment his group found themselves in.
The room was immense, a long, wide rectangle filled with elves, goblins, and some things that Mack couldn’t even identify. It was a solid ten degrees colder than the outer corridor, putting the temperature right around freezing. Frost cobwebbed the glass of the windows high on the wall to Mack’s left and what looked like a dusting of snow wafted about the dark wooden floor. A long white carpet led down the center of the room to a dais and a crystalline throne that appeared to be made of solid ice. The queen’s massive sasquatch hulked near the right side of the throne and Neeve, slim and deadly in her black leathers, stood on the left, which would be the queen’s right.
Seated on the ice throne was Queen Morrigan, her own slender shape gowned in a thin glacier blue dress that left her legs bare from the knee down and her right shoulder exposed to the frozen surface of her chair. She watched them, unmoving, as Greer led them down the long carpet, passing the silent, staring eyes of the Winter Court.
Mack couldn’t help but notice that many of the female elves in attendance wore even less substantial clothing than the queen. In some cases, almost nothing.
A tap on his arm and a stern look from his sister was his reminder not to be distracted by the sights.
“Queen Morrigan, the Speaker and party, as ordered,” Greer said, bowing low to his mother.
The queen said nothing for several very long moments, just continuing to stare at Ashley while ignoring the others. Finally she raised one finger on her right hand, just barely lifting it from its position on the arm of her throne.
A dozen pucks flew over the throne, carrying a large, blood red pillow between them. The little shark-toothed killers landed the pillow on the floor between Ashley and Morrigan and then flew back to hover slightly above and behind the queen.
In the center of the two-foot square pillow rested a tiny, broken pile of silver metal and plastic.
“Is this yours?” the queen asked, her voice even colder than the room.
“No,” Ashley answered. Mack noticed neither of them had added any polite titles or honorifics.
“You will address the queen as your Majesty,” Neeve said.
“If you forgo titles, so will we,” Ian said.
Neeve drew a breath but froze when the queen raised one hand. “Still answering for you child, Ian?” Morrigan asked.
“Much as your child answers for you,” Ian said.
“Perhaps, in your ignorance, you do not recognize the importance of this situation, Speaker to the Dragons,” Morrigan said, turning away from the father and focusing on the daughter. “Let me illuminate you. This abomination was found in my halls. My advisors tell me it is most likely some type of observation device, formed into a mockery of true life. They tell me that only your people make objects like these.”
“Well, it’s tech. That’s for sure. Looks like a drone of some type—a micro drone. Mack, you follow military tech. Does this look like earth type spy stuff?” Ashley asked.
Mack was caught off-guard, having grown used to being more or less invisible during these kind of things. He looked from the little dragon speaker to the drone and then back up to find the queen and both her deadly children staring at him.
“Yeah, it’s Earth technology. Advanced, though. Very miniaturized. It would have to come from one of the big three: America, Russia or China. My bet would be America,” he said, concentrating on Ashley.
“Yeah, thanks. That’s what I thought. Probably from America, your Majesty,” Ashley said.
The queen looked at her blankly. “Are you not from America?” Morrigan asked.
“Yeah, but I’m not part of the government or military. I’m just in college,” Ashley said.
“You are saying, before the queen and her court, that you did not bring this device and use it to spy on the Winter court?” Neeve suddenly asked.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Not mine, I didn’t know about it, I didn’t bring it, I didn’t release it,” Ashley said. “Listen, the governments of our world all know about you and Fairie. That stunt you pulled when I was first kidnapped along with all those other kids brought you to the attention of the people in power. They consider you all a threat. So you shouldn’t be surprised that they would spy on you. Hell, you’ve been doing it to us for thousands of years. Turnaround is fair play.”
“There is no fair play, young Speaker,” the queen said, eyes studying Ashley. Suddenly her attention snapped around to Mack. “You. You know what this does?”
“Ah, it’s a drone, ma’am… er… your Majesty,” Mack corrected quickly at Ashley’s hiss of breath. “It, ah, looks like it is designed to fly and crawl, probably hides in corners and observes. Most likely it has a camera and microphone on it somewhere.”
“A what and a what?” the queen snapped.
“Devices to see and listen, your Majesty,” Ian answered. “A mechanical version of a puck or a Tink.”
“An abomination is what it is. Is this what you people do?” Morrigan asked.
“I’m not certain what exactly you’re asking, your Majesty?” Ashley asked after a quick glance at her father in confusion.
“You stain and defile life with your metals and poisons, destroying the very essence that sustains you?” the queen asked.
