by John Conroe
“Ah, and you hold me responsible,” she said.
He nodded.
“And just who was this agent of Winter?” Morrigan asked, although her smug expression suggested she already knew.
“He used the name Emil Fuchs. Princess Neeve and your familiar took him from our custody,” Declan said.
“Correction. My Black Frost took him from the custody of enforcement people who do not answer to you.”
“But he is your agent,” Declan said.
“Is he?” she asked archly. “You have made an assumption.”
“So the fact that he had entire flights of pucks, plus tens of goblins, both white and green, doesn’t implicate you and your sister?” Declan asked. “That would indicate that you lost control of your armies.”
“Another assumption,” Morrigan said, her tone as icy as her dress. “Did you examine those goblins of white and green? Did you see if the fur was naturally those colors or was it perhaps dyed? Did you know that goblins and pucks exist in places other than the White and Green Courts? Like, for instance, the wilds of the Middle Realm?”
Declan didn’t answer, his face blank, his eyes a little wide, like he was realizing his mistake.
“Why would you rescue the one who implicated you and your sister?” he asked.
“Because, infant, knowledge is power,” she said.
“And you have that knowledge?” he asked.
She didn’t answer right away, instead looking at him like he was an insect. Finally, she leaned forward slightly. “You have impugned my honor, my sister’s honor, my Black Frost’s honor. I now find myself uninterested in sharing the very information you seek, the very reason I summoned you.”
“Is there a way to rectify my breach of decorum?” he asked, looking slightly abashed.
She tapped one ruby lip with her finger, her nails glittering like ice. “Perhaps.”
“Just tell me, Queen Morrigan, what I can do and I will make it so,” he said, bowing much deeper this time.
“I find my Court lacking in entertainment, young witch. Perhaps an exhibition might bring some much-needed excitement to my court.”
“What did you have in mind, Your Majesty?”
“The best entertainment is that with the highest stakes. Life and death. Those of us who have lived many of your lifetimes find it the sweetest nectar. Watching conflict between contestants each struggling to live, hmmm. Nothing is quite as poignant.”
“You envision a duel, Your Majesty?”
“I do. Perhaps the very agent you accuse me with would like to earn his freedom?” she said. The crowd of elves, goblins, and creatures watching suddenly parted, and two black-clad elves led a third elf before the throne.
“This is the one you call Emil Fuchs, although I can tell you with certainty that is not his name. He will fight for his freedom, but should he lose, you may have him for his knowledge.”
Declan started to take off his messenger bag, but the Queen held up one hand, palm out.
“No, witch. It will not be you who fights for your cause,” she said, smirking. “Nor will it be your beastkin nor your Fallen,” she said, eyeing me for a moment before her gaze turned to Nika.
“It will be your night-touched standing in your place,” Morrigan said.
Declan looked at Nika, who stood straight, her eyes on Fuchs. My vampire’s sister gave the smallest twitch of her head, just a miniscule shake side to side.
“As leader of my party, satisfaction falls to me,” Declan protested.
“Not. In. My. Court,” Morrigan said in a hard voice. “You come here for information and offer me disrespect in front of my own people, my own nobles, with false information and without even an effort to investigate the veracity of those charges. So no, you do not get to make the choice of how my honor may be satisfied. She will do it or you will all answer for your arrogance and ignorance. Give him a blade!”
A short sword of bluish material was thrust into Fuchs’s hand and then his guards pushed him forward. He moved willingly toward our vampire, spinning the blade with easy familiarity. He was very tall, well over six feet, with long, lean limbs and the tight build of a trained fighter. His long blonde hair was greasy and lank and his eyes a little sunken in his face, suggesting that the Winter Queen’s hospitality had been lacking a bit. Dark blue eyes were focused on Nika, a look of fierce determination on his face.
My sister-in-law reacted instantly, pulling a long grey knife from behind her back. I recognized it as a present from Stacia, a titanium alloy blade crafted by an elven master smith in Idiria. Each of us had received one from her after one of their trips to Fairie.
Nika’s was an upswept blade at least ten inches long, with a fancy fighter’s hand guard and polished white grip that Stacia had been said was made from the tooth of a saber-tooth cat. Without the slightest hesitation, Nika moved forward, graceful and deadly.
Fuchs frowned and slowed; his initial eagerness tempered by her smooth movements. The two fighters began to circle, watching and studying each other.
“Do you think he even has what we want?” Declan asked, looking from Stacia to me.
“Hard to say,” Stacia said. “He had that military company in Europe, so he could have somehow obtained the Russian nukes.”
Fuchs glanced at us, surprised.
“But why?” I asked. “If he’s not working for the Queens, who is he working for?”
“What is this chatter?” Morrigan demanded, clearly annoyed by our side conversation. “This is life and death, and you natter on like village gossips. Does your companion’s life mean so little to you?”
Fuchs frowned and turned back to focus on Nika, who had ignored the opportunity his momentary distraction had provided. He darted forward, lashing out his blade in a snap cut at her left thigh. She slipped away with practiced ease, circling to his right.
“Could he have an agreement with the Vorsook?” I asked, earning myself a glare from the Queen.
Fuchs grunted and lunged, attempting a low angle stab, retracting out of it just as fast.
Nika sidestepped and snapped out her own cut, the tip of her blade slicing his right forearm.
He grunted and tossed the blade to his left hand.
“That makes a certain sense,” Stacia said. “Depending on what his payment was, he could deliver the nukes to take out New York City and kill all of us, then retreat to Fairie and set himself up as a warlord or something.”
“Not New York,” Nika said suddenly from the middle of the fight. “Somewhere else.” Then she dodged and blocked a wild series of slashes from the elf. “West,” she said, spinning away from him, then darting in low to stab him in the left calf. Fuchs pulled back, clearly limping, face a mix of fear and confusion.
“Stop talking,” Morrigan demanded. “If you ruin my fight, I will make you all fight for your lives.”
“It’s not a fight, Mother,” Neeve said suddenly. “I don’t know what they are doing, but this is not a fight. He hasn’t come close to her and she has injured his right arm and now his left leg. She is systematically taking his options and ignoring clear opportunities to end the fight.”
“Stop fighting,” Morrigan commanded, and the black-clad guards leapt froward to grab Fuchs and Nika. At least they attempted to grab Nika, but she avoided them and pulled back on her own.
The action ceased and Morrigan looked thunderous, her black eyes roving over the contestants and the three of us. “Thank you, Daughter. You are correct, as you always are about matters of single combat. This isn’t a fight… it’s an interrogation.” She studied Nika with close intent. “You are no mere vampire, are you?”
Nika shrugged, standing easily, with no signs of fatigue or concern.
Realization flooded Morrigan’s features. “You are a Listener! Get the prisoner out of here. Surround them!”
Fuchs all but flew off his feet as two giant guards grabbed him and hauled him away, the remaining guardians moving quickly to surround the four of us, Black
Frost blades morphed into stabbing spears.
Morrigan turned her focus to Declan. “You set this up!”
“Set this up, Your Majesty?” Declan asked innocently.
She looked beyond furious. “You intentionally provoked me into an honor fight, then you threw out questions designed to get my prisoner thinking about the answers so your spy could pluck the information out of his head, stealing my commodity right out from under my nose.”
“Oh, that,” he said with a boyish shrug. “Admit it… you’re impressed, right?”
The anger had vanished from her face, replaced with a cold, calculated expression that I didn’t like at all. “How could you know I would pick her?” she asked, waving a hand at Nika.
“We didn’t. But it didn’t matter who you picked. Stacia and Nika train with the best fighters on Earth daily. Chris is one of those fighters. In fact, had you picked me, I would have been the weakest choice, unless I cheated and used magic.”
“Which is why I didn’t pick you. Of course you would cheat. I would have no respect for you if you didn’t. But why not just entertain my offer? Why push for a steal?”
“Because then you would have been the one to cheat,” he said.
She nodded, a smile of delight on her face. “So I would, young witch. But now your trick is revealed and my dissatisfaction even greater than before. How will you deal with that?” she said, raising one hand.
The crowds of watching elves and goblins faded back as massive shapes moved forward. Only slightly shorter than Morrigan’s giant Sasquatch, these things looked like giant fat goblins, but with leathery gray skin that looked thick and tough. Tusks protruded from oversized jaws and they knuckled the ground like gorillas as they moved up to surround us except on one side, Morrigan’s side, where a giant black cat the size of a grizzly bear paced forward. There were at least twenty of the mega-goblins plus the giant cat.
“Ogres, Your Majesty?” Declan asked, eyeing the monsters with casual interest.
“These are not the degenerate filth you fought in the woods around that awful settlement to save your friends. These are the originals, the finest of my shock troops, each with skin so thick that even iron blades will not penetrate enough to hurt them, nor those vile iron balls you are so fond of. And while I cannot take all your magic, here in Arceglacie, the center of my power, I can block you from all outside sources. And you will find these fighters as resistant to your powers as is the Cat Sithe.”
The last was clearly directed at the massive black cat, which was shaped exactly like a domestic cat, not at all like a lion or tiger, except it was blown up to a size only a little less than Awasos himself.
“And when we destroy your prized shock troops and your pet kitty, how will you feel then, Your Majesty?” Declan asked. “Will your losses prompt you to punish us further?”
“I will do as I will, arrogant witch. You should perhaps concentrate on survival,” the ice queen said, flicking one hand in our direction.
Chapter 25
With a roar, the horde of ape-like monsters charged while the massive cat leapt, as fast and lightly as a toaster-sized tabby would. Its leap came straight for me, both dinner-platter-sized paws aimed at my head and torso, the full weight of that massive body lined up behind them.
Grim took over, shifting my body back one step and three to the left. My right fist punched the feline in the side of its skull, just below the right ear. Still moving, my combat personality flipped me over the cat’s neck, my left hand punching down into its neck vertebrae as I passed over it, upside down.
I become something of a bystander in these moments, watching as a different part of my mind directs my actions, leaving much of my consciousness to observe the action around us.
Therefore, I was able to see the moment that Declan reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a handful of steel balls, each the size of a jawbreaker gumball. He threw them into the air without watching them, instead spinning himself around in a fast arc, his right hand tapping empty air as he turned. The rising balls disappeared, one at a time, each time his finger tapped. As each ball disappeared, the head of whichever ogre he was looking at the time exploded. By the time they reached the zenith of his toss, there were only four left and they too snapped out of existence one by one.
Stacia simultaneously exploded into a giant white form that jumped over the ogre attacking her, flipping and spinning much as I was, coming down on its back, giant claws digging deep into the monster’s eyes, ears, and nostrils.
Nika moved with vampiric speed, slipping past the first wave of monsters, snapping powerful slashes at the backs of their ankles and knees, blood spurting from the suddenly gaping wounds.
I landed and Grim took a page from Nika and slashed an aura-lined knife hand across the massive forelegs of the cat creature. It screeched an earsplitting yowl as its weight finished coming down on its injured legs, collapsing in a black-furred pile onto the stone floor.
Stacia spun off the top of her ogre, twisting her heavy bulk like a gator in a death spin, massive paws locked into the screaming ogre’s skull through the eye, ear, and nose openings. A sharp crack sounded, and then she was landing next to her witch, who snapped his fingers and ten bloody steel balls appeared, hovering in the air around them, gore and ichor dripping off to spatter the black floor.
The thing Morrigan had called Cath Sithe started to rise, pain-filled yowl rising into rage, the wounds on its legs healing rapidly. Grim leapt lightly onto its neck, locked our legs around its heavily muscled throat, and raised my right hand, aura-covered and bladed into a spear hand, aimed at the back of the feline’s skull.
“HOLD,” Morrigan commanded, and we all froze in place, witch, vampire, werewolf, ogres, cat creature, and me.
“Enough. I am satisfied,” she said, her tone smug and… well… satisfied.
Beneath me, the cat arched its back and Grim leapt off, landing me back to back with Declan and Stacia as Nika blurred to us, taking up the fourth point of our defensive position.
Around us lay a circle of head-exploded bodies, Stacia’s backward-facing kill, its expression surprised, and a writhing handful of lame ogres. Blue blood from the ogres mixed with the red from the cat’s wounds and bits of white skull and gray brain were spattered in an almost perfect circle of gore around us. The giant black cat shook its head, twice, before slitting its eyes at me and growling.
The black-clad guards looked edgy and nervous, with the exception of Neeve and the man who had to be her brother, Greer. The princess leaned casually on her black spear while Greer looked mostly puzzled.
“It was as you thought, my Black Frost,” Morrigan said to her daughter.
“Oh, it was beyond what I imagined, Mother Majesty,” Neeve said. “But a moment more and Cat Sithe’s head would have been split open, leaving the Fallen to join the vampire in killing the rest of the ogres, if any were left alive. Did you portal those foul metal balls into their skulls, Realm witch?”
“Yeah,” Declan said. “Pretty much.” Stacia took that moment to Change back to human, taking new clothing from her discarded pack.
“Ingenious,” Morrigan said. “Hmm, like this?” she asked, holding up her right hand. A ball of ice appeared in it and then she turned and looked at one of the writhing ogres. She pursed both lips and blew once in its direction. The ball of ice disappeared from her hand and the ogre’s head split open like a log hit by an axe, glittering shards of ice mixed in with the brains leaking from the shattered skull. Not as explosive at Declan’s but just as effective.
“Yeah, looks like you got the hang of it, Your Majesty,” Declan said, his attitude much more respectful than it had been when we had arrived.
“And did you get what you needed from my prisoner, young vampire?” she asked Nika.
“He delivered two weapons, one to the Midwest, one to the West Coast,” Nika said, looking at the three of us. “He doesn’t know what the targets are.”
“LA and Chicago?” Declan guess
ed. Stacia shrugged and I frowned.
“If I may suggest,” Morrigan said with a demure smile that was the scariest thing I had seen so far, “the Others do not think like you. The numbers of casualties and dead from the cities of your overpopulated world would mean nothing to them. The Others tend to look to strategically restructure the infrastructure rather than attack centers of population.”
“So they would attack farms and ports, maybe?” Stacia suggested.
An expression of horror came over Declan’s face. He shook his head. “Fault lines,” he said.
“The San Andreas and the New Madrid fault lines,” Nika said with a slow nod. “Either would do enormous economic damage to the US.”
“Both would take the US right out of the fight,” Declan said.
“Worse. Russian nukes going off in the continental United States might trigger an all-out nuclear exchange,” I said.
“Pretty much do the job for them,” Stacia said.
“Sounds rather messy,” Morrigan noted. “Perhaps you should do something about it?”
I felt anger flare up at her words. She knew all this some time ago and instead of just providing the information, she’d played… games. My mouth opened to speak but Declan beat me to it.
“I trust this has been entertaining, Your Majesty,” he said.
“Oh yes. And incredibly informative, young Realm lord,” she said with a smirk, forming a new ice ball in her still open palm. “I do so love to learn new things.”
“With your leave, Your Majesty, we need to act upon this information,” he said.
“Go, go. Off with you,” she said, waving a hand. A deep bell tolled behind us, causing all four of us to look back. The stone archway had moved closer to us, a fact that was more than a little scary, as none of us seemed to have noticed it. Now it shifted, the center swirling until it smoothed out into a mirrored surface. I could see all of us reflected in it, but the elves, guards, and royals behind us all looked oddly distorted, their features sharper and more feral looking. Like perhaps we were seeing their true selves.
