"A mom can't be too careful," I responded.
"And yet you're chasing after assassins, sneaking through my forest to visit mayhem upon them."
"Better now than later. Once the cubs are born, I'll be tied up for years, unable to strike back without leaving them unprotected."
Cheshire looked away, lost in thought. "Yes, it seems that only mothers look to the future, make plans, work hard to make a better future for their kits."
Those glowing eyes fixed me with a glare. "Let's come to an agreement. I'll allow you to pass through my forest unhindered. In exchange, you'll eliminate the threat from those fairy hunters that prize our pelts."
I opened my mouth to object. There was no way to guarantee I could do as she asked.
Her smile turned fierce. "That will help my kits in the future. More so than a single meal from a wandering wolf would help them today."
"Well, since you make such a good case for working together, I accept your kind offer and will endeavor to do my best to stop future hunting parties from invading your domain." Not the promise she had asked for, but it was the best I could offer without lying.
Another stare, then the bared fangs morphed into a grim smile. "I'm sure you will do your best. Or the next time you traipse through my forest will be the last."
Between one second and the next, she faded away, just like in the books and movies. The smile lingered on before it, too, vanished.
Could I trust her or her promise? The human-shaped Fae held keeping promises in high regard. Did that respect for truth and vows extend to the non-human Fae?
No way on Earth or Fae to tell. I would just have to act as if the promise was real, but still keep my ears perked for betrayal.
I continued my trek to the castle that housed the Guild of Assassins, rushing to make up for lost time.
2
One hour later, I crouched at the foot of a castle wall. An expanse of smooth white marble loomed above. The marble went up uninterrupted for at least one hundred feet. Above that was gray granite, stretching another hundred feet to the castle roof. Inset in the granite was a row of darkened windows. Good—I wouldn’t have to climb all the way to the roof.
I tested the alabaster marble with a claw, making the tiniest scratch possible. To my dismay, the stone squealed at the touch of my nail. I could gouge hand- and footholds to climb, but the noise would alert the guards.
I hated relying on unknown magic or devices not built by Mason or myself, but it was time to use one of the tricks we had bargained for.
I pulled the bundled cord from my pack. Made by the Japanese spider-goddess Jorōgumo, it had interesting properties. Woven of spider silk, it was virtually indestructible, could extend almost indefinitely, was tacky to the touch for climbing ease, and one end was knotted intricately to produce a weighted ball for throwing. Even niftier, the ball would adhere to anything until it was released by the thrower.
There was also a matching set of gloves and booties that would let the wearer scamper up sheer walls like Spider-Man, but I couldn't use those. I needed to be able to pop my claws at a moment's notice so I had left the gloves and booties behind with Mason.
I stepped back about six paces. Luckily the night was nearly as dark here as in the forest. I uncoiled the line, extending it until there was enough looped on the ground to reach above the slick marble section.
I tossed the ball-like knotted end of the rope up and down a few times in my hand to get a feel for the weight. About the size of a baseball, it weighed about three pounds. I looked through the gloom and picked my target, a one-foot square of rough marble next to one window. One deep breath, a quick wind-up, and I threw the end of the rope as hard as possible at that target.
Years of softball and werewolf strength made it a perfect throw. The ball struck in the center of my target, making a soft plop sound as it hit and adhered to the wall. The silken rope hung down the side of the castle, ending a few feet from the ground.
I waited a few moments to see if the sound had alerted any guards. After five minutes, I was ready. Hidden next to the wall, I grabbed the line with my left hand at shoulder height, then bent over and used the claws of my right hand to take a hold on the space between the marble fascia and the foundation. A tug on the line much greater than my weight showed that the line didn't budge. Jorōgumo had crafted well; the silk line was as solid as a bridge cable.
I put one foot against the wall and started up, step by step and hand over hand. At the fifty-foot point, I gasped and my arms trembled. I was shocked at how weak I had become, then shocked again that I hadn't considered the effect the extra baby weight would have.
I held on with my left hand, then reached below and formed a belay loop in the dangling line below me. With this magical spider line, all it took was making a loop and letting the line adhere to itself. I put my right foot in the belay loop and stood, shaking out my arms and shoulders one at a time.
In less than a minute, I recovered. Werewolves get tired, but we don't stay tired for long. Still, this was a wake-up call. Did I have the strength to finish? For a moment, I considered abandoning the plan, letting Mason take whatever drastic measures he wanted to end this threat.
I wish this spider line worked like a pulley. I jerked desperately as the wall under my bracing hand moved. Then I realized the wall was sliding down—which meant I was moving up. Consternation overshadowed my relief at the help. This apparatus held mysterious properties. Going into a fight with untested devices would be like going into a firefight without checking a clip.
That spider-bitch had a lot of secrets. I should have dragged her ass here with me. No, she would have liked it a bit too much; she enjoyed killing fairies. Damn subconscious was always right. I dismissed my wish to bring that monster here.
As I ascended, various protective spells slid over my body, feeling like the touch of spider webs—slid, but didn't trigger. Werewolves are the opposite of magic; the most potent spells slide right off. If a spell affects something natural, like a huge stone held up by magic, we're fast and strong enough to survive that attack. Usually.
Nature's perfect magician-killing machines.
I had arrived at the casement window, which was unlocked. Why lock a window that’s over a hundred feet in the air and protected by potent spells? A sniff and a listen showed that the room was uninhabited.
Even the window's hinges were oiled, opening without a sound. The right-most pane opened at my touch, swinging inward. Once inside, I reached out and pulled the spider-silk climbing device inside. The ball came loose with a tiny plop, and I waited in the darkness for a moment to see if the sound had alerted anyone.
Ready to pull the hundred-foot length of line up, I paused with the adhesive ball in my hand. Did this device have other tricks? I wish this line would pull up by itself.
Like a strand of spaghetti sucked into a child's mouth, the line obediently slithered up. Even my belay loop unraveled by itself when that section reached the ball. It left me with about ten feet of line and a slightly heavier ball. The strangest thing was that I could sense no trace of magic in this device. How the hell did it work?
No time for experimentation. I coiled the ten feet of line and stashed it in my bag, then closed the window to prevent any wind from slamming it against the wall and alerting the guards.
At the door, I kneeled down and put my nose to the gap between the door and the floor. Inhaling deeply, I sorted the scents in my mind. No one was nearby, but traces of assassins were heavy in the air.
The door opened at my touch, and I entered the darkened hallway. The scents were stronger now. I dismissed the scents from the household help. The help didn't have that distinctive odor from the invisibility suits the full-fledged assassins wore.
I took a confident step down the hallway, only to be jerked back by my inner wolf. My right foot froze one inch above the tiled floor.
Balanced on one foot, I sniffed for danger. Then I scanned the area for magical traps. No tingle or scent
of magic, no one within a hundred feet of here—so what was the danger my alter ego had alerted to?
The tiles, white and black glazed ceramic in a chessboard pattern, were spotless and shiny. Shiny, but not unworn, and the wear wasn't even: A random pattern of tiles had more wear than the others.
Damn assassins had installed mechanical deathtraps in their own castle. What would tripping the trap do? Poison arrows shot from the walls? Guillotine blades dropping from the ceiling? A damn boulder rolling down the hallway?
Poison wouldn't hurt me, I could dodge dropping blades, and the boulder I could kick back where it came from. Waking everyone in the castle and ruining the mission.
A quick phantom pat on the head for my alter ego to let her know I appreciated her help. Then I jumped from one worn tile to the next to evade the deadly traps.
I had to hold back a giggle at the thought of how it must have looked: a barefoot, pregnant werewolf playing hopscotch in the hallway of a castle full of assassins. I was happy Mason and my pack couldn't see me now.
At the end of the hallway, I sniffed deeply. The oldest assassin was that way down the stairs.
A dozen death traps later, I stood outside the entrance to the Guildmaster's bedroom. I had passed an enormous, intricately carved entryway to stand here where my nose had led. A plain solid wooden door without the fancy carving or gold inlay of the other entrances.
Compared to the fancy door, this simple entrance, looking like a servant's access port, had more than ten times the magical protections of any other door I had passed on my way down.
I scanned the door. In the center was a handle and a simple-looking keyhole.
To break down the door and depend on werewolf strength and speed to end the Guild's interference, or to try to sneak in?
Sneakiness won out. I touched the handle and lifted with infinite care. No extra strength was necessary; the handle turned easily at my touch. I cracked the door a tiny sliver. The darkness within matched the darkness of the corridor.
Magical protections that would have fried any fairy or human who tried to enter merely tickled my hand, lines of magical force bending around me like a stream flows around a rock.
I had to open the door wider than normal to allow my belly to pass. The door latched silently behind me. I did the werewolf scan of a new area, sniffing deeply to identify those present. Examining the area with infrared night vision showed two inhabitants. Breathing patterns showed both in the depths of sleep.
Okay, targets identified and escape was possible through the door I had just entered. My werewolf half was happy—and eager for revenge.
The slumbering bodies were in separate beds. A younger-smelling man lay in the ornate bed with expensive embroidered covers and a duvet. At the foot of the bed sat a tiny pallet. The old fairy was asleep, protected from the wooden shelf by a thin mattress.
I was a step away from attacking the younger man in the fancy bed, then took a closer look. The sneaky traps, the disguised door, and now the Guildmaster was present here in this fancy bed? Not likely, given all the misdirection I had seen so far.
With a deep sniff, I learned a lot about these two men, knew them better than they knew themselves. They had a lot in common.
Decision made, I knelt down by the cot, put my iron spike under the old man's nose, and whispered in his pointed ear, "Guildmaster, I've come to kill you."
With no change in the pattern of his breathing, his eyes popped open and he replied, "No, bitch. You've come to be killed."
3
A light blinked on and a powerful force jerked me backward so quickly I didn't have time to react. I was flying before I could finish the Guildmaster. I hurled the iron spike at the bastard, but I missed his head and only spiked his bedclothes to the wooden pallet he lay upon.
Then it was a scramble to curl up in a ball to protect my unborn and hope for a relatively soft landing. I smashed against the far wall with a stunning impact that forced all breath from my body. I was still falling to the floor when the unseen attacker zipped close, much faster than any human or werewolf I had ever seen. His blows came as if from nowhere, peppering my head with concussive force. Only my werewolf-tough cranium and muscles kept him from shattering my skull.
Then the blows stopped, and I finally landed on the floor. My claws popped out of my toes and grabbed the wood beneath me. Going airborne against someone this fast would be a death sentence. In an instant, I cataloged my injuries: concussion, twisted neck, broken nose, cracked cheekbone, black eyes. But the cubs were safe. My protecting arms were a welter of bruises, but they had shielded my babes.
I used a trickle of the moonlight magic stored in my moonstone to heal all my internal injuries, but left the bleeding cuts and bruises alone. Let them think I was severely injured.
Through swollen eyes, I watched my attacker. The young assassin from the fancy bed stood there, breathing heavily. Clad in ninja-black pajamas, he was tall and well-muscled. His ears were rounded, showing human DNA in his makeup. But his eyes were deepest black. On his chest was a curious amulet, shaped like an hourglass, which exuded magic of a type I didn't recognize. Looking at it made my already swollen eyes hurt even more.
But if he was this fast, why hadn't he already finished me? Then I noticed the blood dripping from his hands, plopping on the floor. Not just my blood. His knuckles were a broken mess and splinters of bone protruded through his skin.
He was fast, but not superhumanly tough. I had a chance against him—maybe—but against two of them?
I checked on the oldest assassin. He was still stuck in his bed. My wild throw had gone through his bedclothes and impaled the wooden pallet. He couldn't pull the spike free without touching the iron and killing himself. Subconscious skill or pure luck, I had pinned him like a butterfly, and it was all that kept them from ganging up on me.
The young killer was gasping for breath, and sweat was dripping from his brow. I kept a swollen eye on him as I tended to my injuries.
I had trouble breathing; the attack had flattened my nose. This would hurt. I grabbed my nose between thumb and forefinger and pulled the cartilage back into place, wincing at the cracking sound. Then I leaned forward, put one finger against my left nostril and exhaled sharply, sending a clot of blood and snot to the floor. Then I repeated the gesture with my left nostril, then took a deep breath to test that everything was in place.
"Did the big, tough assassin hurt his hands on my skull?" I teased.
Instead of replying, the killer gestured with a grunt and his hands started glowing with a white light. For a moment, I was elated. If this idiot tried a magical attack against a werewolf, he was in for a short-lived surprise. Unfortunately, he wasn't launching a magical attack; he was using fairy self-healing magic on himself. Not as fast as a werewolf could heal, but in a few moments his hands were completely recovered.
Instead of attacking, the killer spoke to the old man without taking his eyes off me. "Guildmaster, are you injured?"
"I'm stuck here for the moment, Onyx. Capture the bitch. I have questions for her."
Three short sentences in Fae that revealed a lot.
"Onyx—what a pretty name," I said. "You may address me as Princess Luna." I spoke in royalty-to-commoner mode, the same as the Guildmaster had used. Onyx grimaced at the insult but made no reply.
He brought one hand up to his amulet but froze at my next comment. "He doesn't know who you really are?" It wasn't the comment, but the mode I used, disappointed parent to child, that shocked him. He could take it as an insult, but we both knew the truth.
I tried raising one eyebrow and winced at the pain. I opened my mouth to let his secret out—
Between one instant and the next, Onyx was on me, raining blows on my head and shoulders, harder and faster than ever. Only my iron-laced gloves covering my belly protected the cubs. It was like he was flickering in and out of existence between one instant and the next.
He evaded my fastest return punches with ease, and he seemed
able to punch me at will. How the hell was someone human so damned fast?
I'd had bouts with fighters faster than me in the past. The trick was to get them in close enough to grapple and overcome them with greater strength. But this man evaded my lunges with contemptuous ease.
Only the fact that my foot claws were locked into the wooden flooring prevented him from throwing me into the air. That would have been the end of me.
Again, just when I thought I couldn't take any more punishment, he stopped, freezing in place ten feet away. His fists were more damaged than before. Hell, even his knees and elbows were skinned and bleeding, making his black ninja suit stick to his body.
In the time he took to magic himself back to health, I performed my healing. Besides swollen eyes, a concussion, a twisted neck, and cracked jaw, I had severe internal bleeding from the kidney shots he had delivered with his knees. All the pain washed away under the influence of silver moon magic, but I left my external bruises intact to give the appearance of weakness.
I cocked an ear but could detect no one outside the door. Did all those magical blocks on the door prevent help from coming? And why didn't he free the Guildmaster? Surely, working together, they could finish me. Was he trying to show off for the Guildmaster?
But at this rate, Onyx wouldn't need any help to finish me.
The glow from the amulet on Onyx's chest was dimmer, as if its battery was running low. That had to be the source of his unnatural speed. What the hell was that thing? The design tickled a memory. Although the amulet was much smaller, I had once encountered a similar-looking device that had trapped Mason, Naomi, and Kuga in a slow time bubble. I had countered that slow-time trap with an iron arrow that destroyed the device.
This gadget was the opposite, allowing the wearer to move faster through time. Knowing his amulet's secret didn't help. I could shrug off magical attacks, but I could no more affect time than I could avoid gravity. He had been evading my iron-knuckled fists with ease. There was no way I could hit his amulet with iron. Hell, I couldn't even hit him.
Lycan Legacy - 4 - 5 - 6: Princess - Progeny - Paladin: Book 4 - 5 - 6 in the Lycan Legacy Series Page 28
