by J. B. Garner
“Right, well, the coast is clear to your apartment,” she said. “Plenty of police tape and a sheet of plyboard but no door, not yet.” As she turned back to the hall, there was the electric tingle in the air as she shifted shapes again. Between the warping muscles and the fursplosion, I was too fascinated to keep my eyes planted on Bunny’s feet. One day, I swore. One day, I would decipher the secret of the disappearing footwear.
There wasn’t need for any more words. We were all well-acquainted with sneaking around, so we kept our traps shut as we made our way down the hall. Fortunately, that late in the night (or more properly early in the morning by that point) meant we were unlikely to have unexpected observers. We made it to the entrance of my apartment with no trouble.
It was as bad as I expected it would be. The powerful burst of magic from Blythe’s artifact hadn’t just blown the door off its hinges. The shockwaves had atomized paint, powdered drywall, and cracked support beams for a good couple of feet to both sides of the door frame. While the loose debris had been cleaned up, it only left the battered wall looking forlorn and sagging.
As Bunny had said, there was a plywood board stood up and nailed into the still-standing bits of the frame with bright yellow police tape tacked onto that in crisscrossing strips. To me, it was an obviously rushed job, something threw up only to keep out the idly curious. Even the carpenter’s nails were barely hammered into place.
Bunny gripped the board on both sides with her fluffy paws, focusing on us with one of her red eyes. Switching back to Truespeech, she growled, “It will make some noise but I can take care of this easily enough.”
Before she could show off and possibly give us away, I pulled out my claw hammer and held it up for her. “Maybe this will work better, eh?”
Aelfread chuckled softly as Bunny snatched the hammer out of my hand. “For every Dwarf a hammer?”
Bunny let out a rabbity chuff and began to pry the nails away. “Wise arse.”
“Yes, indeed I am,” he smirked.
As for me, I shook my head with a smile and helped Bunny break into my own apartment. Yep, my life was really going places, that was for sure.
29
THE DOORWAY WASN’T the only thing that was wrecked.
I had been ready for things to be a mess but I wasn’t quite prepared for what we saw once we had pried the board away. My poor couch was driven into the wall, broken about the dead middle. My poor television now looked like it had not only fallen off a truck but also run over by one. My original art was gone off the walls without a trace while my old carnival posters were tattered into shreds and scattered like cheap confetti.
Everything I gave two craps about in the world, well, in my living room, was destroyed or gone.
I shouldn’t have cared. I had thrown away more when I walked away from the carnival so this should have been nothing. Except none of that had been mine; it had all belonged to Mr. Genovo. Everything here was; I had bought it or found it or created it and now … now it was all toast.
Bunny was already bouncing through the wreckage, heading straight for the kitchen. That wasn’t much better with the broken window boarded over and glass still littering the place. Seeing that didn’t help and a horrible mixture of pain, sadness, and volcanic rage welled up inside me. My fists curled up and my eyes watered. Should I break down in tears or stomp around in a fury? I didn’t know so I just locked up, quivering right inside the door.
Before I lost it completely, Aelfread was there. Kneeling in front of me, he placed his hands on both my shoulders. I could feel the warmth of his long, thin fingers as he brought himself down low enough to catch my downcast eyes with his own.
“I could deal with the couch, the TV, all that,” I murmured, my knuckles going white, “but the posters …” My eyes squeezed shut as I fought back the tears. It didn’t help.
Aelfread’s honey-sweet voice pushed through the pounding of blood in my brain. “They were memories, tangible reminders of a past you can never touch again but you dare not forget. Irreplaceable, you must be thinking, artifacts never to be found again.”
The anger was starting to win out over the sadness and a part of me wanted to tear away from the Elf, to hit something, anything to release some of that pent-up fury. “Exactly. Those” – I found myself trying to find the right word in Truespeech – “foul-hearted donkey-loving arses! They took the only things I loved from my life and tore them to pieces!”
Bunny hiss-whispered loud enough to be heard from the kitchen, “Gods, keep it down. Aelfson – “
If he responded to her, I didn’t hear it. In fact, Aelfread didn’t say anything to me either, eschewing words for a more direct expression. I didn’t expect him to plant a soft kiss on my forehead as his hands shifted to cup my chin, curly beard and all.
It was a miracle of restraint that I didn’t punch him.
Not that it was an unwelcome gesture, one that immediately lifted my spirits and soothed the worst of my rage. I was completely keyed up, though, ready to put my fist through the wall in blind fury. Heck, my arm had instinctively cocked back to plow him in the gut but the balm sank in before I decked him.
As Aelfie pulled back, he whispered softly, just loud enough for me to hear, “You know better, my dear. Those blackguards can tear at these mere things but the memories and the truth of those moments can never be destroyed.”
Cracking a faint smile even as I cried my last few tears, I opened my eyes. “You of all people are lecturing me about the need to let go of material possessions?”
His own smile widened a bit, one corner curling up into a smirk. “Well, I would say that I am an expert on materialistic yearnings hence I am imminently qualified to hold such a lecture, hypocrisy notwithstanding.”
I thumbed at the corners of my eyes and wiped my cheeks. “Fine, I suppose I can’t hit you for that.” We wound up smiling stupidly at each other when we really should have been getting on with things, a point that didn’t go without notice.
“Come on now, you two,” Bunny growled. She was leaning over the kitchen bar, paws planted on the counter and looking annoyed. The obvious comment about getting a room was left unsaid. “My paws are a bit too big to fit behind these drawers so can I borrow the Elf for a moment?”
I cleared my throat roughly and nodded. “Right, yes, sorry about that.” Aelfie cast me a searching look. “I’m okay now. Thank you.”
With a quick nod, Aelfread pushed up and swept through the remains of the living room with nary a sound. Bunny stepped aside, her ears folded back with impatience, letting Aelfie take her place. As he reached for where he had left the stone, I finished getting myself together and stuffed the biggest scrap of my carnival poster into my bag. Yeah, maybe I didn’t need the tokens to remember but I also didn’t need to totally let them go.
After a quick moment of rummaging and reaching, Aelfie broke out in a huge grin. Pulling his arm out and standing, he held up what had to be our goal. It was a rough bit of broken crystal, a sad little thing in comparison to the pristine, elaborate visions that had danced in my brain. Still, despite the weather-worn facet, broken bits, and scratched inscription, I could recognize it as part of that greater whole and pick out the start of the powerful runewords that had once pulsed with power. It was the real deal, a piece of a Cornerstone, and that was indisputable fact now.
We were all transfixed by it. You’d think after this last little reminder of history, memories, and insignificant material trinkets that seeing this ancient piece of Dwarven history wouldn’t touch me, especially considering I really didn’t know that history outside of fever dreams and phantom memories. It did anyway. The stone was both hauntingly beautiful and deeply touching, an aching echo of greatness that I knew might never come back.
For Aelfread, I think it was naked greed but I could understand that. Even Bunny stared for a long moment, taken in by that stirring remnant of power that was still palpable at the core of it, though she was the first to throw off the spell of the thi
ng.
Shaking her floofy head, her big ears flopping around in a mess, she said, “Good job, Aelfson, but we need to get moving. It is a good drive back to the Saginaw River and your father’s people.”
“Is that going to work?” Yeah, I hadn’t gotten the full briefing before and I was kicking myself for not asking. Silly Mary. “Will Aelfie be safe just at the river?”
“It is an important tributary for the Spaces Under The Lakes. The treaties with the Drachenreich give the King authority down to the Michigan borders.” Aelfread’s face twisted in a hint of fear and disgust but he got over it in a second. “Don’t worry, Huntress Kincaid, Father is always quite punctual. He will be expecting us within the hour.”
Giving him what I hoped was a reassuring smile, I turned to slide the plywood door aside. “One day soon I’ll get to sleep in my own bed again.”
Aelfread opened his mouth but Bunny cuffed him in the back of the head as they moved to the door. “Don’t even say it.” He looked hurt at the notion that he might have spouted off an impropriety but kept his tongue.
Despite the heavy burden on our collective shoulders, I shot them both a knowing smirk. “I’ll say it then.” Bunny facepawed as I mimed Aelfie’s musical voice as best I could, “And I hope that you shall not be forced to sleep in that bed alone, dear Dwarf.”
I had thought the Elf to be completely shameless but he still had a little bit of shame left, buried in a dusty corner of his heart. With a faint tinge of red on his pale cheeks, he muttered, “I would never say such a thing among mixed company, though admittedly I would most certainly think it.”
The bounty hunter glowered. Well, she tried certainly. There’s only so disapproving that a giant, cuddly Lapin Garou can look, I’ve noticed. “Do not encourage him, Mary.” She stalked past the both of us. “Now, can we please hurry?”
The moment we stepped back out into the hallway, we had our game faces back on. No more joking or kidding. Still, it was a relief to have that moment of levity among all this serious business. Like a trio of very strange, mismatched ghosts, we slipped back down to the stairs and into the stairwell.
Everything was going off without a hitch all told. We were going to pull this off and maybe things were going to turn out relatively okay. I cursed myself the second that thought slipped my mind.
We were just stepping into the lobby when things went south. Well, at least that’s what it sounded like, with raised voices faintly echoing through the room from outside. There was no sign of Mr. Jimenez, the door to his apartment shut tight, but the deep barks that accompanied the voices were enough to make us all stop on the spot.
“Polly would not have revealed herself unless there was trouble,” Bunny growled low. I’d felt the power behind the fluff before so I don’t think I imagined it when I felt the air quiver as her muscles tensed in anticipation. “We need another way out.”
My first instinct was the opposite of running. What they had done to my place had been the last straw in my book and I wanted to hurt Sinclair and his goons back. “Why don’t we just make a way out through them?”
“I know your anger, my dear,” Aelfread whispered, “and while I would revel in your just expression of it, we have other concerns.” He gripped the Cornerstone tighter in his hand, completely concealing the glint of it in his fingers.
I breathed in and out once, slowly, in through the nose and out the mouth. He was right, of course. Even if the stone wasn’t a big deal, I still had my promise to Aelfie to fulfill. Keeping him safe didn’t involve taking him right into the Drake’s fangs. “Right.”
Bunny nodded in agreement. “We can try the back but it is likely that Sinclair has that covered too as before. Is there another – “
An abrupt snarl, loud, piercing, and unmistakably made by Didymus, interrupted our planning, followed almost immediately by a gunshot and the cacophony of a fight. Bunny and I both instinctively took a step ahead while Aelfread took a half-step back.
Bunny threw an arm out to cut my impulsive move. “No. Get Aelfread and the rock out of here.” Her fur bristled. “I’ve got this.”
Despite my desire to help, I was smart enough to listen to the professionals in a dangerous situation. I nodded and reached out to Aelfread, a gesture he copied. A split-second later, Bunny was eating the distance to the front doors with long, loping strides, each one practically a jump in and of itself while Aelfie’s and my hands entwined and locked.
The answer was obvious to me and when I took a step in the direction of the stairs to the laundry room, I knew Aelfie agreed as he moved right along with me.
I only hoped that Mr. Jimenez hadn’t had the trapdoor covered with concrete yet.
30
“WHILE I AGREE that this is the only choice we have,” Aelfread said as he huffed and leaned against the laundry room wall, “will this get us to the river?”
Spinning my hammer in my hand, I slammed the claw end neatly into the crack opposite the hinges of the thankfully uncovered trapdoor. While there had probably been a catch or loop attached decades ago, it had long since been rusted or torn off. “That was the only way for the bootleggers to get goods in and out of town so it must have … at some point.”
Pulling hard back on the grip, I leveraged the rusty thing up and grabbed the lip with my other hand. Aelfread had caught enough of his wind back to help and we threw the door the rest of the way open with surprising ease. I must have wrenched all the rust loose when I busted in. Clean, white light from above mixed with the dingy yellow bulb hanging in the stairwell below.
There was a final temptation to turn around now, run back to see if Bunny, Polly, and Didymus were all right. Maybe there wasn’t a need to run down into the tunnels at all. Of course, if it was the opposite, we would be up the creek without a paddle or a Cornerstone fragment.
Aelfread made my decision for me by nimbly bouncing down the stairs. So much for that; my course was obvious. As he disappeared around the turn of the stairs, I did my level best to run after him, stomping down the steps as quickly as I could manage.
I caught up to Aelfie as he had stopped right past the bottom of the stairs in a murky puddle of light. I’d expected him to wait of course, to let me guide the way, but I’d also expected that he’d have whipped up one of those nifty magic light orbs as he had before. Instead, he was nervously shifting from foot to foot.
I looked up at him as I moved beside him. “Aelfie, what’s wrong?” And there definitely was something wrong, that much was certain. Okay, more wrong as things were already going sideways at that point.
He bit his lip and glanced sidelong at me. “I … well … I cannot light the way, Mary.”
That wasn’t a big deal on the surface. I whipped out my notebook, flipping back from the unknown runeword I had written to the light word. “I’ve got it but … are you hurt? Did those shackles do something to your magic glands or however this works?”
“Ah, not precisely.” That was a lie but I’ll give him credit. He walked it back immediately. “It is not that at all, truthfully. To be fully honest, I, uh, cannot actually work any magic.”
I was just about to activate the runeword but that admission blew my focus completely. My eyes snapped up from the page and back at the Elf. “What?” was my glib response to that little revelation.
“Everything I have done to this point has been with charms, little artifacts, and other enchanted baubles. A ring which cast light, a medallion bound with a memory charm, even a slip of a Dwarven bracelet that could trigger a runeword or two, there were my bag of tricks, you could say. Not one drop of it was my own, though.” Every bit of the suave, confident charmer that had been Aelfie’s public face was gone now and his voice was raw with emotion. “Why do you think I fled my father’s lands when I could be in the lap of Elven luxury? Oh no, there is no place in Father’s court for a deadspell like me!”
I shook my head and refocused on the runes; it would do no good to turn this into a ‘big deal’, not now and not
ever. The runes flared up into an even, reddish light, the now familiar chill rushing through my body. “While it might have been good to know that earlier, it’s not something to worry about now, especially with” – echoes of footsteps above decided to break in, hard-soled shoes instead of the padding of furry bunny feet – “that!”
The shame that was evident in every bit of Aelfread’s posture was rung out of him in a second. He grabbed my hand firmly and I didn’t need to be told twice what to do. As much as we might be the hunted with few weapons and little magic, we had one thing on our side and that was our location. As Aelfie had said, we Dwarves have an affinity for the underground.
I took off as fast as my stubby legs would take me, holding my notebook forward by the spine like an incredibly awkward flashlight. It certainly wasn’t working as well as those light orb things but it was way better than inky blackness. Dark or not, I tried to listen to my instincts, those strange almost-whispers I swear I could hear coming off the stones themselves. There was an occasional glint of light ahead which I chalked up to a polished bit of rock or a crumpled tin can. That same sense of familiarity I had before came back in a rush but I pushed it aside to concentrate on running.
The light wasn’t bad for long, though. Harsh, focused rays, more spotlights than flashlights, ignited behind us, casting distended shadow puppets of us on the dusty floor ahead. Sinclair’s deep, powerful voice boomed down the tunnel after us, “You are only delaying the inevitable. If you surrender now, I promise no harm will come to either of you!”
Aelfread’s response was far more resolute than I expected, shooting a glance back as he shouted, “No harm for us but who all will die for your vainglorious ambition, Dragonsong?” At least Aelfie seemed to have plenty of practice at talking trash and running at the same time. He didn’t lose a single step.
