She allowed him to pull her along in silence, but he could sense her frustration building, her patience wearing thin. Her lips pressed together into a tight line, but she said nothing. She was often keeping her troubling thoughts bottled inside. She didn’t want to upset him, he thought with a pang of regret.
He relaxed when her eyes met his and cleared. A slow smile returned to her face. But when her gaze fixed above him, he frowned and asked, “What?”
“Your hair is on fire.” Slowly her hand rose between them, silver strands of energy lacing up and down her fingers, she ran her hands through his unruly hair. He shivered when she touched him yet leaned forward to give her better access.
“’Twould be a first,” he said, teasing her. To his relief she laughed aloud.
“Why do you always know the right thing to say to calm me down?” She stepped further into his space.
His lungs constricted until all breath seemed impossible. Instead there was only fire she alone could contain. Sighing into her caress, amazed she was comforting him, he dared to speak his most hidden thoughts. “Every time you come close you pierce what’s left of me soul. It should be impossible for you to touch me and yet you dare and I can nay breathe until you do.”
Had she any true grasp of his words she might have reacted quite differently. Yet she didn’t. For this small favor Dearg was eternally grateful to that fool of a Wenderdowne who called himself Henry for keeping her in the dark. She would learn the truth and hate him for it.
With his guard down, he almost didn’t hear the crash of underbrush in the near distance, or the snarls of foul creatures surrounding them. The unicorn had left them some time back, but he was too under her spell to care. He should have known better.
Amie screamed when a spear lodged itself in his shoulder, missing her by a hand’s breath.
Dearg roared, shoving her behind him to face the enemy.
Too late!
His thoughts turned wildly as he tried to come up with a way out, a road leading her to safety. But with Iudicael still holding sway over him, he could not truly protect her. So, letting go of her hands, he ripped the spear from his shoulder, ignoring the sting of the gaping wound, flipped it around and threw it back into the trees.
A keening wail sang against his ears as the point met its target and shadows darted between the trees.
“Dearg!” Amie screamed as another spear came flying through the air, this one glowing with a bluish sheen. He snarled, reaching up to catch it, and this time leveled it in both hands.
“Run! Keep going the direction I was taking you and the house will find you!” He listened to the shuffle of her feet and for a moment believed she might find this window of opportunity and run to safety.
Grriegar’s sake, woman, run!
“No!” she shouted, wrapping her bare fingers around his. He flinched as her nixy traveled up his arm, same as it had the other night. The night he knew he had fallen in love with his enemy. Their eyes met briefly and what he saw took his breath away, the appearance of flames leaping in her black irises. Steeling himself, he hefted the spear to deflect a thrown knife, and then another spear.
“Climb up onto me! I can nay protect you and fight them.”
Amie grinned and scrambled up onto his back when he bent his knees low, just in time to miss a fire-tipped spearhead. One hand dug into the collar of his shirt to remain pressed to his chest. He shuddered at the painful contact, but was able to turn easily now. She weighed less than a feather to him, and yet her touch anchored him, gave him the control he had lacked for more than a millennia.
Dearg would have said he was never taken aback by anything, being old as the oldest trees himself. When Amie lifted her free hand and sent out a stream of violet-colored energy into the trees, she proved him wrong yet again. The crackling energy split and attacked the shadows, stunning them long enough for him to rush and slice three with the ice blade in his hands. They screamed under her nixy’s hold, the dull glow of their eyes burning with hatred as they were attacked.
“What are you doing?” he called to her over his shoulder, unable to keep the laughter from his voice. He had known many Wenderdownes, but none of them could do this.
“I don’t know!” she shouted back.
“Do nay let up then!” Rushing again, he stabbed another hole through the shadow-draped figure’s chest. They were all protected by some kind of guise, a dark nixy which made them appear as wights. But Dearg had been around when the wights swept across kingdoms with their plague. These were Unseelie with puny weapons. They wielded nixy-enchanted weapons because they had forgotten how to wield their own power, a gift from living too long with humans.
“Dearg, look out!” Amie called after he had finished the last, who crumpled to charred ashes. He looked up and was almost too late for the axe blade coming down over them. He ducked and fell back where they had been, eyes widening as he watched the hulking beastly creature pursue them with red eyes.
“It’s a golem,” he warned her, hoping she knew what this meant. Her nixy would nay work on them. He should have known the blighted beasts would be mixed into this mess.
“What do we do?” she whispered in his ear and he trembled with the urge to shift and take back the control she gave him. The curse was what kept him locked tightly together, weak and unable to fight back. Once, he would have crushed this dark creature in one swipe. Flames were escaping her hold, engulfing both of them. “Dearg!” she shouted, not in pain but fear for him.
Others were appearing from the trees, half beast and half men who were able to shift shape at will.
“Hang onto me,” he said roughly, smoke escaping with his breath. And then he threw up his hands, allowed the fire to escape. White energy came with it, hotter than lightning and hotter than the sun. He didn’t wait to discern why he was able to harness her nixy, only savored the roars of the creatures before them. They darted away, fire clinging to their fur and scales and inhuman skins. The moment they did, more figures leapt from tree trunk to tree, slicing their blades.
Dearg readied another blast but her lips against his ear stopped him.
“Wait! Something’s not right.”
He watched, all the while backing up to ready their escape. If the golem were distracted he was making a break for the boundary line. They were less than a league away. He needed to bring her swiftly home, where the house would protect her and she be safe.
But as he watched the new battle taking place among the dark ones, he knew Amie was right. Something else was out there, fighting off their enemies. As the numbers dwindled down, and other evil creatures spilled from the underbrush with sword, axe and knife wounds spilling onto the earth, he could almost make out the three blurred figures fighting with them.
One was taller than the tallest golem, tawny-haired and roaring with the strength of a lion. The next was almost childlike and feminine in her twists and acrobatic leaps through the air. He was surprised to see a dull red energy escape the slice of her daggers, the mark of the Unseelie.
“Dearg, let’s go before they see us! I have a bad feeling about this,” Amie urged against his ear, pressing her cool hand against his heated chest. He grumbled in his first tongue a moment before turning to follow her.
She was right. Whoever these beings were, it was not certain they would be on their side. And he sensed an ever-present threat looming behind this attack. His instincts told him the battle was not over yet, but only beginning. Wrapping his hands around her thighs, he hugged her closer to his back and ran.
The border was there, thin and translucent in appearance, yet powerful enough to stop the wrong people from entering. He picked up his pace, pushing harder against the frosted ground, and growled when a hooded figure stepped into his vision and held open their hands.
Amie gasped behind him, lifting a hand at the ready. “Who is that?”
Dearg paused and could have laughed at her timing, this meddler above all meddlers. Before Amie could release a charge, he r
eached up to cover her hand with his own and said, “Watch the forest.” Then, turning to the stranger, he stated as calmly as he was capable, “Dameri.”
The human princess pulled her hood back and fixed her sparkling blue eyes on Amie. “I see you heeded my warning and kept her far away.”
“What?” Amie exclaimed, pushing past him to stare down the gremlin hunter. “What is that supposed to mean? How do you two know each other anyway? And why would you tell him to take me into the woods knowing those crazy people were out there?”
“Unseelie,” Dameri corrected.
“What?” Amie asked while he turned his attention to the forest behind them. Sure enough two other figures were approaching them, the golem and Unseelie who had helped them.
Should have known she’d have her hands in this. But what was she trying to prove?
Dameri laughed and repeated, “The beings who attacked you were Unseelie who lost touch with their inner nixy.”
A rough, gravelly voice interrupted them. “But they were led by the golem.”
“Ah, I see you finished disposing of our friends, Ginuog.”
Dearg repressed the urge to growl as he and Amie turned to greet the strangers. Dearg stood directly in front of her but Amie pushed past him when the woman appeared at the beast’s side.
“Faye?”
Chapter 39
Unveiling the Vale
Adrenaline coursed through Amie’s veins at breakneck speed after their attack. She was in no mood to deal with Dameri. And she had made a point to block out the fading memory of the dream she woke to hours ago, while in Dearg’s arms. In a weird way, Amie had loved fighting the enemy while riding his back like a spider-monkey. Shooting out webs of energy from her fingertips, she had very much felt like a comic book character. Her mind hadn’t registered they were fighting actual people. When the enemy moved, they were like shadows, without definition and shape. The golem were another story. They terrified her.
Now she was staring one in the face that was bigger than any of the others, looking eerily like Vincent from the TV show Beauty & the Beast. She half expected to see Catherine Chandler in her Eighties shoulder pads beside him. But the leather-clad vixen was definitely her best friend.
“Faye?” she whispered, cutting through the silence and wincing at the brokenness in her childhood friend’s golden eyes. Amie blanched at this look, immediately started building up her inner defenses, because she had seen it before, when Faye told her that her parents were dead.
Dearg grabbed her by the shoulders, blocking her view then, until all she could see was the brilliance of his cobalt eyes. Pressing his forehead to hers, he said, “Remember what I said before?” His harsh mask was set back into place, but for a moment she saw the pleading in his eyes.
“Just you and me,” she agreed, thinking he might be the only person she could trust anymore. His eyes brushed the forest behind them before he sighed. Amie frowned when he released her and nearly protested.
Until she heard that voice from a dream, from another life, awaken the dead wood behind him. “Amie?” Faye said.
Jessamiene Wenderdowne stared once Dearg had moved aside, revealing Faye, with her Selene-esque leather jumpsuit and faintly glowing golden eyes. Faye, her childhood best friend who was obviously not human.
Where are Jo and James?
Faye launched herself into Amie’s arms before she could ask the dreaded question. Though she was just as thin and wiry as ever, she managed to give her a bone-crushing hug while saying, “Amie! OMG, you have no idea how much I’ve missed you!”
“Faye,” Amie said, trying to pull back so she could start demanding some answers.
Pushing away abruptly, Faye glared up at Amie, her bronzed eyes narrowed into cat-like slits. “Do you have any idea what we went through to find you?”
“You look…shorter.” Amie spoke the thought aloud and Faye smirked.
“Yeah, yeah, rub it in. Not all of us can be Wenderdownes.” The name in Faye’s Southern twang sounded funny.
“Guess not,” Amie replied and wondered why her words sounded bitter. She glanced at the hulking beast watching them with a muzzled smile. “Who’s this guy? And don’t tell me his name is Vincent.”
The creature in question stood a head taller than all of them save Dearg, which was hard to tell with the fatigues he was wearing, a black cross of military and mercenary. Faye’s eyes flashed to the beast in annoyance before returning to her half-Seelie friend. “You remember the guy at my party seven years ago? Ben? Well…” Here she turned to glare daggers at the monster. “Turns out he’s a rogue golem and he had been hunting you for ages. Lucky for us, we figured it out first. Got into an all-out brawl with him after my surprise party, the same time you were attacked.” Her gaze flickered to Dearg and then Dameri behind her.
“Ben?” Amie gasped. This was the infamous Ben, British doctor and savior extraordinaire? The lion king ignored Faye and grinned knowingly at Amie.
“She has a right to know. And we’re not giving the Merlin any more time to hunt us down,” he said.
“You’re Ben?” Amie queried, caught the roll of Faye’s luminous golden eyes.
With a slight nod of respect, he leaned forward on the massive gun now serving as a cane in front of him. “Among other names, Ben belongs to my human form. My first name was Ginuog. I am a golem, Jessamiene Wenderdowne. Long ago, Lord Oberon created us from the earth of the Borderlands to protect it from human influence. We were only made to follow orders at first. But Lady Titania gave us something we weren’t supposed to have, free will. We rebelled and chose the wrong path. My people were sent beyond the Vale because of our wickedness. We chose the wrong side of the war and have since fallen into darkness.”
He grimaced with a hint of a growl. “If you have not read of us, this is because those who taught you are even greater fools to forget us. We can change any shape, take any animate and inanimate form. We are the thing that goes bump in the night. But we aren’t the worst thing out there.” Taking a step forward, the dark creature brought shadows with him. “There are those inside the walls of Wenderdowne who have an even darker agenda than my people.”
“What are you saying?” Amie shook off Faye’s comforting touch and took a daring step toward the beast.
“They are coming, the dark ones who steal all light. They have been planning for this moment ever since your birth, Gatekeeper. Do not think your coming here was accidental. This was planned. But nothing can prepare you for what is coming.”
“Enough! She will learn soon enough.” Dearg came between them, bringing the fire with him and betraying his feelings. Flames escaped his fingertips, reflected in his pupils, and Amie instinctively captured his hand in hers.
The golem sized his opponent up, a smirk being the result. “A grand job you have done informing her, Freargde, keeping her in the dark. What did you expect her to do when they come to blaze the gates down? Slitting her throat would have been easier.”
Amie frowned, the name Ben had used for Dearg so familiar, like she had read it somewhere before. “What do you mean?” Amie rounded on him, fed up with riddles and ready for true grit.
Dearg’s eyes softened. “Ginuog speaks the truth. You are special, Amie.” When she scoffed, he grasped her shoulders in his hands, willing her to listen. “Amie, there has never been a Wenderdowne like you before. Your father’s kind are powerful but their power was always limited. But humans are unpredictable. We don’t know what you’ll be capable of. The Exiled believe you will be able to keep them shut out forever. They won’t wait for you to ascend, Amie. They’ll attack sooner than that.” Desperation twisted his hard features.
“What are you saying?” She turned to look the others in the eye, “Are they coming now? That’s why y’all are here, isn’t it? Why we were attacked earlier…”
“Don’t worry. We’ve got a plan.” Faye brushed easily past the beast with none too gentle a shove, packed with an extra nixy punch judging from his wince.
“Wait a second!” Amie shook her head, stepping back until Dearg’s wall of a solid chest was against her again. Gesturing wildly, she pointed to her best friend’s companion. “What the heck is going on here? What did you mean he was hunting me? Was he with those creeps we just toasted back there? And what do you mean seven years ago? It’s been maybe a month and a half since I’ve been gone! And were you the chick I saw dancing in the market?”
Dameri interrupted before Faye could finish. “We do not have time for this! We have wasted precious minutes already. Dearg, you must return her to the castle or Henry shall notice. Above all we must not attract unwanted attention. We do not need the Merlin involved in this affair.”
“Are you frigging kidding me?” Amie nearly shouted at the tiny human. “I just found out my best friend is here and you expect me to let her walk away?”
Dameri rushed to them, taking Amie’s hands in her tiny palms. To Amie’s surprise, the sadness in her blue-green eyes tugged at her heart-strings enough to make her recoil. “Too much is at stake. We mustn’t allow Henry to know your Unseelie guardian has arrived, or that we are in league with a golem. Henry has fought too many wars against them and will not understand. But I implore you, Jessamiene, keep our secret and trust we hold your best interests at heart. Dearg shall explain our plan and Faye shall be allowed to tell you more after tonight, this I promise you.”
Amie sighed and glanced back at one of her oldest childhood friends. “Faye, you know I’m going to need to know what happened eventually.”
Faye nodded, features drawn once again behind the world-weary mask she had arrived in. They had known one another far too long to not be able to read one another’s facial expressions. And the gap in their little entourage was plaguing her thoughts and worst fears.
What had happened to Jo?
Silver Hollow Page 30
