by K. F. Breene
“Right now we need to get going. See you at Ivy House.”
Heat and light blasted her as he shifted, making her stagger back. She wasn’t long in following suit, the bag getting caught on her horn instead of her neck. It would do. In a moment, she was airborne.
A team of mages had snatched up the bar—and Jessie—under Austin Steele’s nose. There was no chance they’d just randomly stopped for food and rest. If they were this organized, they’d have a safe place to hold Jessie.
Lord help them if they couldn’t find that place.
23
I came to slowly, a hard surface below my aching body and throbbing head. Cold air slid across my face, the breeze slight but uncomfortable. Silence greeted me as I fluttered my eyes open, trying to collect my scattered thoughts.
Steel bars interrupted my vision, slicing through the image of a flat, stony surface nearly lost to the dim lighting. The bars rose all around me, bowing inward and connecting to a circular plate above me. The large, rusted chain attached to the plate connected to a high ceiling, anchored who knew how.
The ceiling stretched out until it reached a fissure. Light bled in from outside, diffuse but bright enough for me to see within the cavernous space. Something shimmered from the ceiling to the floor of the opening, as though it had plastic wrap blocking it off. Probably a protection spell of some sort, not that it was needed. The opening was much too far away for anyone to jump from it to me. Even if they managed, I was two stories down or so, out of reach.
I pushed myself to sitting, my head swimming. The platform beneath me swayed over a drop of at least a couple of stories.
A sea of spikes, each probably a person tall, good and thick, completely covered the ground below me except for one small path leading to a shadowy area that probably had an exit.
Swell.
Even if I could escape this rusty cage from yesteryear, I couldn’t jump down from that height without breaking something or dying, and if I missed the small landing strip, or hit it and bounced, I’d find myself not just broken, but impaled.
The haze cleared from my mind as I arranged my feet in a more comfortable sitting position and sucked on my lip for a moment. Obviously flying would fix several of my problems. I could safely land or even try for that opening.
What was the magic covering the opening, though? Could I handle it? Assuming it wasn’t plastic wrap, of course. And if not, would that same magic be over the exit that was sure to be at the bottom of this place?
I pushed to standing, wobbled, and reached for one of the bars. Rough, cold steel greeted me. At least there wasn’t magic on my somewhat rickety cage. That was something.
A rectangular block of steel interrupted the vertical bars, and I threaded my hand through the bars so I could feel it out. There was a keyhole in the other side. I shoved at the door and then wiggled it. Not much give, made of strong stuff, and there was no way my muscles were up to the task. Ivy House had made me stronger, but there were limits.
This was definitely a limit.
I’d likely found the prison that one kidnapper was talking about. The holding cell. Or to use a different name, the rendezvous point for the mysterious contract holder to come and collect me from whomever had managed to grab me.
“So okay,” I murmured, sticking my finger into the keyhole and wishing the door open. Nothing happened. I’d half hoped my subconscious would take care of that. “I just need to learn how to magically pick a lock, tear down some sort of shimmery magical wall, and then finally learn how to fly and get out of here. Nothing to it.”
“What?”
I froze as the voice floated through the air before waning.
“What?” I asked back.
A shuffling sound preceded a sort of large hominid character hobbling into my line of sight, long strands of matted hair hanging off its head and down its body, like an upright shaggy dog.
A few feet from its starting location, it stopped and turned, hair and shadow draping its face, and a great mustache and even more impressive beard reaching down to its chest. Only the nose was visible, a large spectacle that hopefully meant a keen sense of smell or it was just overkill.
“What?” it—he?—asked again, that single word somehow managing to sound slow and deep and ancient.
“Oh. I didn’t know you were there,” I said, pulling my finger out of the lock.
“What did you say?”
Slower, I repeated, “I…didn’t…know—”
“Yes, yes, I heard all of that. What did you say before? I missed it.”
It clearly meant when I was talking to myself.
“Nothing. I was just…taking stock of my situation.” I wrapped my fingers around the bars. “Why are you holding me?”
“I am not. I am guarding you.”
I wiggled the bars. “From whom?”
He paused, staring up at me. “They didn’t say.”
“Right, fine. For whom, then.”
“Your captors.”
I rattled the door, ripping off the connection to my team so I could get their locations. To my horror, nothing registered. I couldn’t feel any of them.
I used my magical Morse code.
“Ivy House?”
“Who are my captors?” I said through clenched teeth, waiting for a response.
“The people who put you in there.”
Silence greeted me, not even a wash of feelings from home base.
Panic slithered across my mind.
“Are you trying to be difficult?” I yelled, losing control.
“No.”
I leaned my head against the bars, willing patience. “Who are the people who put me in here?”
“Mages. Women. Very brusque, if you ask me.”
I was going to ask for their names, or who they worked for, but at the moment it made no difference. I had to get out of here. The question, as ever, was how.
“How long will I be in here? What are they going to do next?”
“Yes, that is a good question. It has been a long while since I have been solely in charge of this mountain, and for the last…oh, many years, this holding cell has been nonoperational. I agreed to guard it because that was my job of old, and also because they surprised me with the task, but…” He scratched his hairy stomach with his furry hand. “Well, I never really cared for this job. My home is in the wild. In the woods. There are no woods within the mountain. Besides, I don’t much like the problems of the magical world. Very dramatic. Did you know…” He tilted his head back up to me, and the hair on his face moved, as though he were smiling. “They think I am one of their Bigfoots. Absurd, I know. That’s just a made-up creature. But…” He nodded at me, his hand still resting on his belly. “I’m something of a legend around here. Maybe not as big as my cousin up north in those redwoods, but I have a nice little following around here, hunting the trees for me, trying to get a peek. Sometimes I show them a little leg, as it were. Maybe dart between the trees, too fast for a photo. You have to be quick in this day and age, though. Their little cameras are so fast. Much faster than those old upright, standing cameras. Remember those? Better picture, too. I have to be on my game. It keeps me busy. Kind of slow in the winter months, though.”
My knuckles were white on the bars. “You are welcome to haunt my woods. They’re glorious, and I have a diligent groundskeeper. If you let me out, you can roam to your heart’s content. I’ll even let you flash the locals—whatever you’re into. Or money. How about money? I can give you—”
He shook his head. “I have no need for money.” He spread his arms. “I don’t wear clothes. Woods, though, huh?”
“Acres and acres. Have you heard of Ivy House? Down in—”
“Oh yes, Ivy House. Now there’s a name out of my memories. Ivy House, yes. Lovely woods, there. Enchanted woods, my favorite kind. I like the way the magic feels on my—”
“No, no.” I pushed my hand out through the bars. I was worried he might start talking about his begonias.
>
He knew of Ivy House, though. We couldn’t be too far away. Given his predilection for the woods and the size of this cave, we might be in the Sierras. Not far at all, in the grand scheme of things.
Not that it mattered if I couldn’t get him to let me out.
“Lots of enchanted woods and lovely gardens,” I pushed.
“I do love the taste of flowers. They are scarce this time of year.”
“We have lots of flowers! Our groundskeeper, he’s a vampire—”
The creature sucked in a breath.
“You don’t have to talk to the vampire,” I rushed to say. “You don’t even have to see him. He’s a little crazy anyway. I get it.”
“Vampires are not the right sort. I used to try to capture them so I could pop off their heads and bowl them through the rest of their kind.”
“Right.” I grimaced. That was gruesome. “Well…he’s pretty tame. He’s really old. He got kicked out of his—”
“But I do so love flowers. Magical woods produce the best-tasting flowers.”
“Yes. We have lots and lots. The…groundskeeper wins the local festival every year for his gardening. That’s how good he is.”
The creature dropped his hand from his belly and looked back at that shadowy area. “My duty is to guard the prisoner. I cannot go back on my duty.”
“But”—hand still pushed through the bars, I stuck out a finger—“if you don’t get paid for it, is it really your obligation? You don’t even like the job. Maybe you should break the mold, let me out, and go back to—”
“I do love flowers,” he murmured, still looking at the shadowy area. “I’m salivating even thinking about them.”
“You could just free me and go.” I shrugged. “We have trespassers on Ivy House that you could scare, and then you could feast on all the flowers. Bring me down, and—”
“Oh no. They might hear. The crank is very rusty. I nearly went deaf trying to get you up there.”
That didn’t bode well.
I resumed holding the bars. “How about a key? Could you throw up the key?”
He scratched his head in a way that made me wonder if he had fleas. “How about this? I will just…go on break.”
I lifted my eyebrows even though he probably couldn’t see that. It gave me something to do while I tried to make sense of his words.
“Yes.” He nodded his great, shaggy head. “I used to get breaks, I remember. It isn’t my fault that no one is here to relieve me. It is my break, and so I must leave.”
“No, but—”
“And on this break, maybe I’ll get delayed. Yes, maybe I’ll sprain my ankle. That’s not my fault. Hikers sprain their ankles all the time. One fell off a little cliff and rolled a ways after seeing me. No one blamed him for that. He and his friends had to make a splint before they all hobbled away. It took a bit of time. A lunch break and a sprain, that should be enough time for you to escape.” He put his fist in the air. “Any mistress of Ivy House would have the magic to escape in that time, right? And if you’re lying, and you’re not the mistress of Ivy House…well, I’ll see you back here in a while, saddened that you lied about the flowers.”
“No, but you don’t understand. I just got the position. I don’t have all the magic yet!”
He turned for the shadowy area, his stride long and his speed surprisingly quick, and either those spikes weren’t as tall as I’d thought, or he was huge.
“What if they come back?” I yelled in his wake.
But he just disappeared into the darkness.
Breathing quickly, I heard a phantom clock ticking in my mind.
A lunch break and a sprain, assuming the mages didn’t return. That was all I had. Time for a lunch break and a sprain, plus a fake hobble back. His stride was long, though. It wouldn’t take him as long as it would a normal person.
As if there were any normal people within the magic world.
“Okay, okay,” I said softly, reaching out to Ivy House again. It was as though I existed in a vacuum, no messages or feelings going out or coming in. “Okay. I need to…open this door. No, wait, I need to fly. Flying is more important. Even if he does come back, he can’t fly. He wouldn’t be able to get me if I did.”
With shaking hands, I worked at the buttons on my shirt and pulled it off to expose my back.
“How do the others feel totally comfortable naked?” I whispered softly, putting my shirt on backward to cover things up. “Okay, wings, now is the time. Come out. Come out, come out wherever you are.”
I thought about two glorious wings extending from my back.
I thought about soaring through the sky.
I thought about jumping.
“Come on.” Eyes squinted tightly, I balled my fists, panic rising.
I hadn’t been able to do this while falling to my death, why did I think I could pull it off now, especially without contact with Ivy House? I wouldn’t be able to get myself out of this one.
24
Austin changed back into his human form at the mouth of a small cave, the trees and bushes around it nearly obscuring the opening. Ulric stood to one side in his human form, his expression grim, having been smart and taken his phone so he could call the others and direct them. Having hands in the other form was a decided advantage. Speaking of, Austin could smell the others, the gargoyle host, most of whom he didn’t personally know, and the three Ivy House guardians, their scents fresh but their forms nowhere to be seen. Traveling without wings, Austin had been the last to arrive.
He did not smell Jacinta.
He couldn’t feel her, either. Although their link had been severed at the lake, the feeling hadn’t sunk in until after they returned to Ivy House.
It felt like a hole boring through him, like a hollow absence he couldn’t bear.
Given the house’s constant blasts of panic and pleading, it couldn’t feel her either.
Austin swallowed a lump in his throat, feeling that dark brutality he struggled to contain stirring within him. Rising. If those mages had killed her…
“What’s the status?” he asked Ulric, his voice rough with unshed violence.
“She’s alive.” His tone was flat, and frustration and guilt swam in his gaze. He blamed himself for Jacinta getting taken.
Good. That meant he cared. It meant he’d do whatever it took to get her back.
Austin didn’t outwardly show his relief. But something loosened inside him. As long as she was alive, there was hope.
“Where is she?” he asked, a prompt to get the show on the road.
“In there”—Ulric gestured to the cave—“but they didn’t bring her in this way. I lost them in the trees at the base of the mountain, so I flew higher to see if I could get a glimpse of them from a higher vantage point. I saw someone working their way through the trees. It must’ve been one of the mages. They were gone by the time I got down here, but I was able to find this entrance. We’ll still need to find the other one.”
Given Austin didn’t smell this other person, it meant they’d magically masked their scent. Ulric was right—it had to be one of the mages.
“Why do we still need to find the other?” he asked, ducking into a small tunnel that his animal form would never be able to fit through.
“You’ll see.”
At the other end, the cave opened up significantly, about fifteen feet high and thirty feet wide. The dozen or so gargoyles mostly stood off to the sides, crammed together to leave as much space as possible for the three from Ivy House and Damarion, who waited in front of a shimmering magical curtain.
The mage had apparently come to erect a magical barrier.
As he approached the invisible wall, Austin got his first look at what they were facing.
Jess stood in the middle of a rusty cage suspended in midair, gently swinging over a sea of spikes.
“What’s the status?” he asked this crew, ignoring the blistering, churning need to grab Damarion and toss him at those spikes.
Damarion stiffened, probably having the same thought, but their issues could wait.
“We’re having a rather bad day, Austin Steele, thanks for asking,” Edgar said, staring in at Jess. He cradled one badly burned hand to his chest, the skin blackened and blistered and peeling away.
“Edgar tested out the barrier,” Niamh said, looking up at the ceiling, then down to the ground. He doubted it had given her any new insights. “Ye can see what it did to him. Vampire skin is more fragile than the flesh of a gargoyle, but wings are a different matter entirely. We can’t fly through this thing, and without wings, no one is getting anywhere but dead.”
“I offered to try anyway,” Mr. Tom said, his chest puffed up.
“Who would clean the house if you died?” Edgar asked. “I don’t like spiders.”
“Have you seen the mages?” Austin peered into the shadows layering the room. Not even a flicker of movement caught his eye. “Is she being monitored somehow?”
“Through the years, I’ve heard rumors of a basajaun in these parts, the keeper of the invisible prison.” Niamh shook her head. “I never passed any remarks on the story. The storyteller was always a drunk muppet. But…”
“I’ve run across the basajaun that lives on this mountain.” Austin walked along the barrier, cutting in front of the others, to see if it completely attached to the rock along the sides. If not, there was a chance he could peel it back in his animal form, which had a degree of magical resistance. “I traveled through these parts without realizing it was his mountain, and he was all set to challenge me for it. I deferred and left it at that. I had no idea about the prison. No one mentioned those rumors to me, or I would’ve checked it out.”
“How’d these mages know about it?” Damarion asked.
“Good question,” Niamh responded.
“Going up against that basajaun would be a helluva fight.” Austin crossed to the other side, and Damarion shifted in unease as he passed. “It would be a hairy situation.”
