Abducted by Faerie (Stolen Magic Book 5)

by WB McKay

  My ladies stayed with me, and we worked as a unit. Phoebe lashed at the beasts' legs, tripping them long enough for Zoe, Ava, and me to slash at the back of their legs. The men were less subtle, but the quantity of blows we landed finally took a toll. Steggy and his wife were beginning to slow. Only one in five blows from their giant tails resulted in a flying sycophant. One of the men even managed to scramble onto the back of Steggy and ride him like a bull. He'd lost his sword in the attempt and was unable to do any real damage, but he'd stayed up there for several seconds before being tossed aside like a rag doll.

  I must have had a death wish because I decided to try the stunt that had almost gotten me killed again. This time there was enough space for me to fly up to a branch hanging over the battlefield. It wasn't an ideal location. The beasts were several yards away, but it was a good staging area. I readied my swords.

  "Phoebe, hold the male still," I called.

  She looked up at me and shook her head in reproach, but a smile spread across her lips. "You got it!" Several more vines flew out of the mist and lashed around the rhino-dino's legs and neck. "That's it!"

  My wings spread like a reflex and I hurled myself from the branch. A small drop, and I was gliding over the trail, headed right for Steggy. He was bucking up and down, trying to pull free of Phoebe's vines. Thankfully, he wasn't able to move far in any direction. I positioned Epic's long blade at a downward angle and pulled my wings close to my body, falling into a dive. It was a short drop, but I had momentum. The huge gray-green body grew large in my vision. I aimed for the spine, just behind the head.

  A wild buck broke a couple vines and allowed Steggy to launch into the air to meet me. My sword plowed into flesh up to the hilt and my body crashed into his, driving the air from my lungs.

  Whatever magic kept him silent shattered. When a beast the size of a house bellows in pain, you feel it in your teeth. In an undercurrent to the roar, was the thudding of his table-sized feet. If I could have breathed I would have screamed in pain at the sound invading my head. I longed to have men crushed in utter silence again.

  Somehow I'd managed to keep a handle on my sword. It was the only thing that kept me alive when Steggy went into a limping spin as one of the tendons snapped on his right rear leg.

  Finally, my breath came back to me, just before the blackness at the edge of my vision overtook me. Why had I thought it would be a good idea to try the tree drop again?

  In the midst of the spinning, I assessed the wound I'd dealt to Steggy's neck. I'd missed his spine, thus the lack of immediate death. Blood gushed from the wound, but not nearly enough to bring down something his size, especially with his healing abilities. Just my luck. If I stabbed myself in the neck with a thumbtack, I'd probably bleed out in under a minute.

  The bellow of the beast subsided as the shock war off. It was immediately replaced by the screams of my army being bowled over by his twirling tail. I had to do something before he mowed my whole team down by accident. I didn't have any great options, so I'd have to make due with a shitty option and a lot of can-do spirit.

  I worked myself around the hilt of my sword until I was hanging down the side of the beast. I looked down at his churning feet. I was definitely going to get trampled. If I got lucky it would only be a leg or an arm and I'd hit a large enough source of blood to take this fucker down. "Here goes nothing!"

  I pulled down on Epic's hilt and pushed on Steggy's neck with my feet. The blade, already having pierced the thick hide, pulled through it like a hot knife through butter. I was rewarded with a shower of hot, sticky blood as I was launched into a cushy cluster of thorns. "Ow," I wheezed.

  Zoe and Ava were at my side within seconds, looking down at me with grim resolve. "You check for wounds," said Zoe. "I'll rip strips of cloth for bandages. Be careful of broken bones."

  They were so serious that I burst out laughing, causing their frowns to deepen. I rolled to my feet and started the task of hunting down Epic. My back was sore from where I'd landed, and I was scraped to hell by the thorns, otherwise I was fine. "You thought I was going to be nearly dead again, didn't you?"

  "Little bit," replied Zoe. Ava nodded.

  "Yeah, well, me too. But I'm fine. This isn't my blood, it's his." I pointed to the corpse of Steggy while I looked for my sword. "Stop looking at me like I might pass out any second and get back in the fight. We still have another prehistoric beastie to deal with." A battle cry caught my attention and I glimpsed a host of vines whizzing past me. "Look! Phoebe didn't rush over here. She's kicking ass right now."

  Phoebe ruined the badass image by breaking into a broad grin and shooting me a wave when she saw me.

  Ava and Zoe gave me a quick salute and ran back into the fray surrounding Steggy's wife. She wasn't looking so good. As I watched, one of the men repeated my tree jumping move, plunging his sword into the beast's shoulder. "Ha! I knew it wasn't easy."

  Epic was buried in a pile of leaves. I only found him when a glint of sun pierced the fog and winked off his pommel. By the time I made it back to the battle, It was winding down. A second man had dropped onto the creature's back and was hacking away at its neck with an axe. I waded into the crowd of men and only got a few swings in at the legs before Mrs. Steggy hit the ground with a bellow. Seconds later, she was silent and still.

  "Well, that was gruesome." I leaned over and spit out some of the blood still in my mouth. My tongue probed for an injury, hoping to find something and coming up empty. Not something I wanted to think about. I spun slowly to take in the carnage and was confused with how clearly I could see. "The mist is clearing..."

  The men had taken quite a few losses. I could see at least six dead and a few more too injured to continue. I looked over the injured, daunted at the task of caring for so many who cared so little for their own lives, when the clansmen ran in and began helping their own. There was no chest pounding and celebration over the enemy's corpse. If anything they seemed somber.

  Graulfv made his way through the crowd and smiled at the perplexed look that I was sure my face held.

  "They care," I said.

  He nodded. "I've chosen carefully with the next generation and taught them reverence for life as well as death. There will be celebration once we've left the field of battle. Death is no longer all we revere. We have found balance."

  It had taken the death of all of his companions, but Graulfv had changed. I hadn't noticed it before, not bothering to look beyond the veneer of worship that irritated me so much. My relief and respect were immediate. "That must have been difficult for you. Change always is." I squeezed his hand. "I commend your bravery."

  Graulfv's eyes welled with tears of pride. I may have started to panic at the sight.

  "What do we do now, Sophie?" asked Ava, ignoring the moment in the most perfect way possible.

  I smiled and pointed up to the largest of the floating mountains that was now clearly visible above the forest. "Now we start asking those assholes some diplomatic questions, and if we don't like their answers, we poke them full of conciliatory holes." My grin turned wicked. "That's how diplomatic missions for the release of prisoners work, right?" Maybe balance was overrated.

  "Sophie is glorious in her righteous vengeance," said Graulfv reverently.

  "Hear, hear, Smarty." I lightly punched the old man's arm. "Hear, hear."

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Orani people were nowhere to be seen. Every time I'd looked at one of the floating mountains, I had seen a few of the winged people flying around them. Now that the mist had cleared, nothing. It felt ominous in a way that made my skin crawl. A flock of swooping, screeching avians would almost be a relief.

  "I can lower down some vines for the boys," said Phoebe, peering up to the lip of the floating mountain with a hand shielding her eyes. Now that the mist had cleared it was getting rather warm in the forest. "It's not going to be a fun climb, but they're strapping lads."

  "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea." I waved Zoe over. "Zoe, I'm
going to fly up with you and Phoebe to scout the area and drop down some vines for the guys to climb."

  "Sounds like a plan," she replied. "I'll carry some of them up, but it'll be nice not to make that many trips up and down. My wings ache just thinking about it."

  Ava decided to come with us to escape the men. If she asked, I'd have put a stop to the way they were looking at her, but Ava had always preferred to take care of herself, and none of them approached her directly. Like male birds preening and performing a mating ritual, the men flexed their muscles in front of her. The ones who spoke English talked loudly of their ability to make fine leather clothes.

  If they were hoping for a reaction out of her, they must have been disappointed. Ava, as usual, might have been in another world.

  "The quiet is bothering me," said Ava. "Something is not right." I smiled. Man, it was nice to have a pessimist around. "Patricia says the ghosts are afraid. The mist has never been cleared as far as any of them remember."

  Zoe shifted to her dragon form in a ball of flame, eliciting surprised noises from the men. They were still new to Faerie. Phoebe and Ava clambered onto her back.

  We took to the air at the same time and went up in gradual circles until the top of the floating mountain was visible.

  It looked very much like Zoe's home at the base of her mountain, complete with a lake. It wasn't nearly as massive as the one that housed the dragons, but it was impressive considering it was floating a couple hundred feet off the ground. There was still no sign of the Orani, so I signaled for Zoe to land near the edge by a cluster of boulders that would serve as a good place to tie off Phoebe's vines.

  "Go ahead, Phoebe," I said. It was hard to ignore the way the hairs stood up on the back of my neck the moment my feet touched the ground of the floating island. "Let's get the guys up here as quick as we can. I'm going to scout around. Zoe, you stay here in dragon form."

  She gave a comical nod and I leapt back into the air. The area around the edge of the hovering island was clear of trees, probably a safety measure to make sure the animals saw the edge approaching. And there were animals. I spotted several of what I would call deer, some with multiple heads and some with other oddities, and scampering arvora. I wondered how they got up there. Had they been on the land when it was lifted into the air? Had the Orani brought them into the air later? The questions didn't stop there. Why had they raised the island in the first place? I wasn't sure I would ever get my answers. That was fine with me, because I only had one question I needed the answer to: where was Owen?

  The men were making their way up the vines. I wasn't finding anything to warrant a continued patrol, so I returned to Zoe. "Everything looks fine for now." I let out an involuntary shudder. I knew it wouldn't stay that way. "Go ahead and start flying up some of the boys. The faster we're all together as a group, the better."

  Ava had walked off in the direction of the lake and just stopped, probably looking calm to anyone who didn't know her. I wanted to get her opinion on what I was feeling.

  "This is it, isn't it?" I asked her. "He's here."

  "I agree," she said.

  It was a relief, but not as much as it should have been. "What do you think of, you know, this?"

  She looked around the area with an unreadable face, but I thought I sensed disapproval. "So, ambush?"

  "Ambush," I confirmed. "If it were me, I'd wait until our force is divided about in half, then attack."

  Phoebe chimed in as she came up behind us. "So, you want me to make sure the men are ready?"

  I smiled. I was lucky to have the team I did. Zoe was flying up loads of men as quickly as she could, clearly uneasy. Only the men seemed oblivious to our obvious peril. "Yep. Get on it. I don't like this at all."

  I'd been wrong. Only about a third of the guys had made it up the vines when the attack happened.

  The Orani appeared out of nowhere. One moment the air was empty, the next it was swarming with beings unlike any I'd ever seen.

  I'd been operating under the assumption that the Orani were avian like the harpies, or my new in-between form. They were far from it. Instead of feathered wings, they were leathery with spikes protruding from the joints. Their bodies were mostly humanoid, but they were covered in scales and had a whip-like tail. If dragons had a half-shifted form, the Orani would be it, half-human, half-lizard and the stuff of nightmares. They fought like it, too, attacking with fury. They ripped three of the men off the vines and letting them fall to their death in a matter of seconds. Then, just as soon as the Orani had appeared, they vanished. The remaining men resumed their climb, thinking for a brief moment that the threat had passed. That ended quickly when the assaults continued by invisible attackers.

  How was I supposed to fight invisible, flying attackers? If I listened hard enough, I could hear the flapping of their wings over the din of the battle. Everyone around me was fighting, and none of them were getting anywhere. I lashed out with my swords from the ground, not willing to try the air. I caught the leg of an Orani and cut a bloody line. All the attackers were visible for a split-second. There were dozens. That was something, but there was no way that would be reliable enough to help everyone else. I had to find another way to make them visible.

  Zoe spread fire wherever she went, but found no targets. The Orani clearly were smart enough to avoid her completely. If they killed everyone else, one dragon wouldn't be a challenge. While I watched Zoe, mentally scrambling to form a plan, she managed to clip an Orani by random chance. Again, the whole group flashed into view.

  This time I saw something that might help. Not all of the Orani were flying, and not all of them were attacking. There was a group of five staying off to the side. They stood in a line, watching over the battle. From the brief glance I'd gotten, I hadn't seen any wings.

  I had to find some way to get to them without being noticed. Ava came into view and I grinned. Patricia.

  Ava lashed out in controlled strikes that definitely weren't random. She was being guided. As I watched, she slashed and caught an Orani across the stomach as it went over her head. The group of non-flyers was still in the same place when they flashed into view.

  "Hey, Ava, can Patricia see these bastards?" I asked, staying outside of her reach.

  "Yes, she can. I'd probably be dead if she couldn't," she replied, grunting out a couple more slashes with her long knives. "You need her help?" She let out a growl that had nothing to do with her physical fight. "If Sophie has a way to give us an advantage in this battle, you most certainly will leave me unprotected," she said in a waspish tone to the empty air to my right.

  "I think the magic that makes them invisible is being held in place by a few that aren't involved in the fight." I looked to my right, trying to imagine where Patricia might be. "If you could give them a case of the ghostie willies, they might make everyone visible."

  "That shouldn't take long," said Ava, her voice distant. I got the impression she was relaying Patricia's words. "Sophie will take care of me. Do your part." Ava's eyes cleared, and she saw me again. "She'll do it if you promise to defend me with your life."

  "Done," I said, holding out my hand to shake out of habit. There was the cold, clammy, prickly feeling on my palm that made me want to crawl out of my skin. I shivered. "Get it done. They're over there next to the woods."

  The battle was a freaking mess. Not that I could blame anyone. The men were still making their way up to the floating mountain. If I didn't have wings, I'm pretty sure I would have gotten back to solid ground as quickly as I could under those circumstances. They covered each other's backs as they climbed, taking turns waving their weapons around randomly to keep from being picked off. In the few minutes since the fight had started, the last of the men had managed to get off the ground. There were somewhere around fifteen of them left. Not a bad force once we could see our enemies.

  Phoebe was currently the star of the fight. Her vines flailed through the air over the men, making it almost impossible for the Orani to dive
-bomb them. The only fighters of ours getting destroyed were the ones venturing from her protection in an attempt to engage the enemy. There were quite a few of them. Ava was firmly outside of the protective circle.

  "Everyone under the vines," I called, and then glared at Ava. "Yes, that includes you."

  "Yes, Mistress," she replied, sketching me a mocking salute while she retreated. I followed her, flailing my swords in a random pattern over my head. I felt like a crazy person, but at least my head was still attached.

  The Orani flickered into view for a full two seconds. The men surged out from beneath the vines. "Stay under the vines until I say otherwise," I shouted. "Come on, Patricia," I grumbled under my breath.

  "She's calling for more help," said Ava. "She's not enough to distract all of them."

  "Damn it," I growled. "I was afraid of that. Is there any help to be found?"

  "Not up here," replied Ava. "There are plenty on the ground though. It'll be a few minutes."

  A lucky dive-bomber raked invisible claws down Phoebe's back, rending her red flesh and driving her to her knees. She waved me off when I started toward her, but her vines faltered in their shielding efforts.

  "Cover," I shouted, flailing my swords as fast as they would go. "Watch your heads." Even as I called out, the cries of men filled the air. Metal clashed on metal. "Phoebe, we need you for a little while longer."

  The vines were only down for a few seconds, but by the time our shield was back in place, blood dripped from a dozen wounds.

  "Come on, Patricia," I shouted in frustration.

  Not wanting to stray far from Ava, I made a couple forays into the open and managed to swipe at one of the Orani. In my brief flash I saw a bleeding foot, and the group that I suspected were working the magic. They hadn't moved. Whether it was from hubris or stupidity, I had no idea. I wasn't about to question it.