The train raced on, the cars rattling over the tracks, in just a few seconds. It gave one final blast of the horn to signify it was leaving town—and maybe as a warning from the conductor that any other gargoyles would meet the same grisly fate. Coughing, I moved to the edge of the platform. Sure enough, my attackers were gone, nothing but gray dust on the tracks.
Behind me, Darius’s rumble shook the station, and as I whirled around, ready to join him, I suddenly felt a little woozy.
“Whoa…” I held a hand out to steady myself as I stumbled forward, catching my balance on the edge of a vending machine. My head hurt. My body hurt. Everything hurt.
Everything shouldn’t hurt.
I touched a finger to my cheek and pulled away sharply as a warm wetness touched back.
Blood. I swiped again, just to be sure.
Yup, definitely blood.
Noris’s spell must have been fading. He’d said it was only a temporary measure, but he could have allotted us a little wiggle room if we didn’t make it to the Alfheim portal before nightfall. Shaking my head, I wiped the blood off on my clothes and took off running. If I was starting to feel the effects of the battle, I couldn’t imagine how Darius was managing with eight gargoyles on his heels.
Well, make that four, apparently. As I surged down the steps and flung the gate open, I noticed piles of ashen attackers scattered across the lot. Sure enough, the poor cars had been crushed—though my baby remained safe far from the conflict. The gargoyles must have figured out that Darius couldn’t fly; they attacked from above, dive-bombing him in the way crows do when you accidentally wander near their nest.
He managed to bite one out of the air, crushing it with his jaws, but one landed and struck, stabbing a gleaming metal sword into Darius’s side. My hands flew to my ears as the dragon cried out, a sound oozing both agony and fury.
“Fight fair!” I shouted, though I knew how silly that sounded. Still, neither of us had weapons. Where was the honor in cheating? Unable to watch from the sidelines a second longer, I rushed forward—only to get swept aside by Darius’s massive tail. It knocked me clean off my feet, straight back into the gate. My head collided with the metal, and I won’t lie; it fucking hurt.
“I’m trying to help, you stubborn bastard!” I snapped, knowing his sensitive little ears would hear me. Even if he did, he gave no hint of it: Darius managed to shake the gargoyle on his back loose. Then, once it was back in the air, he let all fiery hell break loose—literally.
They say the bluer the fire, the hotter the flame. While Darius’s scales were both the setting sun and the crackling tip of a toasty bonfire in equal measures, the flame he breathed was pure blue. Even at a distance, the heat warmed my skin, and I rolled in on myself on the off-chance that any accidentally came my way. But the fire wasn’t meant for me. It was meant for barbecuing the gnats hovering around my dragon’s head—and barbecue them he did. All three were incinerated within seconds, showering the parking lot with black soot when the fire disappeared.
I looked up, eyes wide, when the heat died down and the crackle of flames, paired with a guttural growl emanating deep within Darius’s chest, disappeared. My stunned silence lasted a few seconds before my will to survive—for both of us—kicked into play. I jumped to my feet and raced toward him as Darius’s huge dragon head drooped forward, breathing hard and heavy through his flared nostrils. The first thing I did was yank the sword out, which caused him to growl, his lip curled up in a snarl.
I shrieked and tossed the sword aside when a burning pain shot through my hands: iron. The damn thing was made of pure iron.
The bastard commanding those gargoyles certainly knew who he was going after. The sword landed with a clatter a few feet away, and there I’d leave it until Darius could touch it. Behind me, there was a rush of air, paired with what I could only describe as the crackling of bones. Gone was the enormous dragon, and in his place, a very naked Darius. He sat hunched on the ground, blood dripping from his side.
“Oh my god,” I muttered, hurrying forward to inspect the wound. He tried to push me away, but I held firm. “How badly does it hurt?”
“S’fine,” he insisted before pushing at me again. “Really. It’ll heal.”
“Not fast enough.”
“Kaye.” He let out a long, weary sigh. “Can you just get my clothes please?”
Heat crept up my cheeks as I finally processed the fact that he was buck naked. Huddling in on himself, however, I couldn’t see anything…intimate. Nor should I be focusing on that. The stab wound on his side wasn’t his only injury.
Stubborn as ever, he kept shoving me back when I tried to inspect the bloody marks across his body, so I raced back to the platform for our stuff, slamming the gate behind me for good measure, and was back by his side with his pack seconds later. I dug out an outfit, which he took with a little half smile, not quite as apologetic as I wanted.
“You saw the battle,” I stated, as he tugged the shirt on over his head. Biting my lip for a moment, I turned away to give him some privacy while he pulled the pants on. “You should have seen that you were injured.”
“I did,” he said gruffly, and I whirled around with a scowl.
“And you still went through with it?”
“It’s not that bad,” Darius argued, but as I let him struggle to his feet on his own, I crossed my arms and offered a cold laugh.
“You can barely stand.”
“I also saw that you’d heal me and we would get rid of the gargoyles,” he told me, his voice getting weaker by the moment. “So… Can you just do the healing stuff already, and we can get on with it?”
I threw my hands up in the air with a scoff. Fairies were skilled in many areas, and the use of medicinal herbs was one of them. I usually applied that toward the teas I gave my clients, knowing a specific tea would help with nerves, anxiety, and panic attacks. When my brother and I had been kids, we had a whole medicine cabinet of healing herbs, blessed by white magic because we were constantly skinning knees and breaking toes and getting ourselves into trouble in the woods near my aunt’s house.
“I don’t have any supplies,” I snapped. Finally, he allowed me a moment to study the wound. When it continued to weep blood, I grabbed another pair of pants from his bag and used them to wrap the wound. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but it might slow his blood loss for now. When I was through, I straightened up, hands on my hips, and fought the panicky prickle starting to grow in my core. This was a serious injury—one that needed immediate treatment. “We’ll need to go to Alfheim immediately. The portal will take us to the city or to the woods, and I know I’ll be able to find all I need in the forest.”
After a blood payment was collected at the door, you had to choose 1 or 2 on a push-pad. Number 1: Alfheim city core. Number 2: the woodlands surrounding the main settlements. While I could rush Darius to a friend in the city, I knew it wouldn’t be his first choice, and given how hardheaded he’d already been about me assessing him, I needed to go with what was easiest.
“Kaye, I still don’t…” I dusted my hands on my pants as he trailed off, and when I glanced at him, I saw what he wouldn’t want me to see. I saw the nerves. I saw the anxiety. I saw the panic.
Too bad I didn’t have one of my herbal teas now.
“It’ll be okay,” I offered as gently as I could. “I know the shifter community isn’t always well received in Alfheim, but we’re together. We’ll be fine.”
“That’s a lot of confidence there,” he said with a weak chuckle. My eyebrows shot up.
“Use the clairvoyance if you’re so uncertain.”
“Too tired.”
And too wounded. I scooped up his bag on my way to brace him, sidling against his side and forcing him to use me as a crutch. He winced when we touched. That wound needed to be tended to—now.
“Look, we can either go to Alfheim,” I said, knowing how to get him to stop protesting, “or we can go to your clan. They would probably have a better gra
sp on dealing with wounds of this nature—”
“Alfheim,” he muttered gruffly, half-pulling me along beside him, half-leaning on me, as he steered us toward the train platform again. “We’ll go to Alfheim.”
I rolled my eyes. Now that I knew just a little more about him, manipulating him came easier.
And I wasn’t sure if I was okay with that.
I needed to know about his past, his clan. I needed to know if he had a responsibility to them, something he was using me as an excuse to avoid in the meantime.
But for now, we just needed to get to Alfheim.
“It was a pretty selfless thing you did there,” I noted as we took the steps one slow stair at a time. When he frowned at me, I added, “You know… Charging into a fight knowing you’d get hurt for me. It was… brave.”
He shrugged with another wince. “I guess.”
“Hey…” I stopped suddenly, the jerky motion making Darius grit his teeth. “Shouldn’t you have your wings back then? You thought about someone else before yourself. You were selfless. Shouldn’t that break the curse?”
“You’d think,” he grumbled, features hardening as he thought it over, “but I still couldn’t fly during the fight. I think I’m still cursed.”
Not for long, hopefully. He deserved something better than clipped wings. Shaking my head, I trudged on, his weight growing heavier and heavier as we approached the door. Just as I made my blood payment—a prick of my finger on a pristine silver nail sticking out of the door—the whistle of an oncoming train assaulted us, thunderous and shrill.
We were gone before it reached the station, tumbling between worlds.
Rushing, I hoped, toward salvation.
Not annihilation.
Chapter Eleven
For the first time in the history of our relationship, I woke up to find Darius still asleep. We had been in Alfheim for almost a week—roughly four days in the human world, as time moved differently here—and I had decided enough was enough on day one. I was fed up with this whole overbearing protector thing – it just had to stop. Darius wasn’t standing guard over me while I slept anymore. It wasn’t going to be a thing. I could take care of my damn self, and it was about time he acknowledged that.
First, however, we had had to deal with the gaping wound on the side of his (very-muscular) torso. We had crossed the portal between worlds together, which was always a dizzying, disorienting experience, no matter how many times I made that journey.
Humans classified the bridges between worlds in Norse mythology as the Rainbow Bridge, but I’d always had a sneaking suspicion that they created the myth because they somehow caught wind of the portals between Earth, and Alfheim. Like walking through a long, winding hallway, bright lights and swirling galaxies surrounded you as you crossed over. Below, your feet seemed to walk on air, as though you were fluid, weightless. I’d always feared I would fall straight down into the darkness below, but it hadn’t ever happened and I knew it was all in my mind. It would be a safe passage, as always.
The journey hadn’t been as easy as it normally was, though, what with me balancing a hobbling dragon shifter on my body who weighed a freaking ton. It took much longer than expected, but eventually, we entered the woodlands, a good clip from the city center, and near the elvish settlements. There were scattered clans of orcs, goblins, and trolls in the forests too; creatures that the elves had been tasked with managing—when they weren’t distracted by a pretty flower, or something equally absurd. I used to envy the elf way of life, carefree, for the most part, caught up in their daydreams and fantasies, far away from the realities of what the rest of us supernaturals had to deal with.
“Just stay here, and try not to bleed out,” I had ordered once we found our bearings, gently depositing Darius at the base of an oak tree at the forest’s edge. He’d smirked at my comment, shaking his head at my barking out orders. Obviously, he wasn’t used to being told what to do by anyone, much less a fae, but I didn’t care. He could growl all he wanted to, so long as he actually listened to me. Thankfully, this time he resisted arguing and remained seated on the forest floor while I surveyed the area, finding an elf cottage a few hundred yards away.
I’d then ventured inside, gathering what herbs I needed to make a suitable healing poultice. Thankfully, when I had returned with an armful of herbs and moss, Darius’s accelerated healing powers had already kicked in, ensuring I didn’t come back to find him bloodless and cold. After doing what I could to treat the wound, we started the long walk to the city center.
While Alfheim itself had many magical communities, supernaturals of all kinds clustered together in what was called the Core. Our council of elders gathered there, and most of our amenities were found there. Supernaturals without a clan, coven, Order, whatever could find a home there, welcomed with open arms. Supernatural species, in general, tended to inhabit their stereotype if they chose not to live in the Core. Elves dwelled in the forests. Goblins and orcs and trolls lived in the shadows and under mountains, competing with dwarves for territory. Vampires had grand castles in the foothills, extras added to make them as sun-free as possible. Demons lived… Well, I never quite understood demons, and what they did with themselves when they weren’t busy bartering for human souls. They were shadow dwellers, for sure, with a tendency to just spring up exactly where you didn’t want them, at exactly the wrong time. Thankfully, we had the Order of Angels—an elite demon-slaying task force—to take care of those nasty soul-suckers, so we weren’t bothered by them that often.
Most of the fae I knew lived in the Core as well, preferring the ability to rent or buy, one of the fairy specialized homes there, equipped with zero iron, bolstered with white magic, and surrounded by their community of supernaturals. Some lived in nature. A few bunked up with the elves. But most of the fae I knew had modern tastes. We weren’t immortal. We loved nature more than anything, but we didn’t want to live in a hollowed-out tree trunk.
It was to the Core that I took Darius our first day in Alfheim. My poultice held firm as we marched from the woodlands to the city center, and before too long we were making our way to Belladonna’s penthouse apartment. She had always let me stay there while she traveled around the human world, and I was excited to get settled. It was always so comforting to have a place to call home while in Alfheim.
I’d never learned how Belladonna acquired the funds to live the lavish lifestyle that she did, but owning a penthouse in one of Alfheim’s swankiest apartment complexes was nothing new for her. The apartment spanned the entire top floor of the building, most of it open and sprawling with its fancy uptown loft vibes. Boxed in by a huge balcony crawling with wild ivy, the four bedrooms, two bathroom apartment had more than enough space for Darius and me, especially when we were the only ones in there. No way did we need the dwarven-crafted granite countertops or the luxurious Jacuzzi in the master suite.
I mean. Maybe we’d need it one day.
On our first day in Alfheim, however, the only thing that truly mattered with our housing was safety.
The whole building was surrounded by a protection ward, something I suspected Belladonna had a hand in crafting, as it positively pulsed with fairy energy. There was a beefy security team at the door at all times—and who could blame them, given the mischievous nature of many of my supernatural brethren?
All visitors had to be frisked, then signed up and escorted up to the upper-level apartments. After my I.D had been approved upon arrival, I’d dragged a wounded, weary Darius upstairs to the penthouse, and after leaving him to heal in one of the guest bedrooms, I’d scattered Ravena’s protection stones everywhere for a little-added security, then cast a few white magic-fueled security measures of my own, just to be safe.
The first day had been a blur, with my being so focused on Darius that I’d barely had a second to take Alfheim in. It had been almost eight months since I’d last visited, and while the magical world seldom changed, I always liked to immerse myself in it as deeply as possible, once
I returned.
Thankfully, Darius was completely healed by the following morning, and so I took him to the local markets where sellers hawked their wares—all magical, all dangerous, most a rip-off. We explored the city, me acting as tour guide, to show Darius that it wasn’t quite as bad as he thought it would be. The Core was a mishmash of ancient and modern architecture, most altered magically by its inhabitants: houses shaped like a triangle, but sitting point-side down; hovering apartment blocks for the upper echelon who preferred no contact with us ruffians; man-eating plants reaching out for you from their oversized flower boxes; enchanted shop signs that shouted at you if you didn’t pay them any attention.
The Core was a lot to take in—like Manhattan in many respects, but I didn’t find the Core draining like I did New York City. All the different kinds of magic rejuvenated me. Alfheim’s air was thick with it.
And I tried to fill my lungs with it as deeply as possible.
With each passing day, Darius had relaxed—but only slightly. His fears weren’t unfounded. After all, Abramelin was undoubtedly still on the hunt for me after Darius fried his gargoyles, and while we did our best not to draw attention to ourselves, I just couldn’t sit in the penthouse all day and try to research Z from a distance. We’d both known we had to get our hands dirty in the Core—be where the action was, as it were.
We both carried protection stones wherever we went and had purchased a few droughts from the witch apothecary around the corner from Belladonna’s apartment. When consumed, the potions we chose would make us difficult to remember to all those we met in passing. They would know a fae and a shifter had just walked by, but our faces would never be clear.
Magic Fire: an Urban Fantasy Novel (Shifting Magic Book 1) Page 12
