Green Agate Pretender

by Morgan Blade

  The smith canted her head, staring at me. “What do you have in mind? We will not kill our own children. The wild ones are the purest of fey, those in whom our magic burns brightest.”

  “If they harm my son, my dragon-soul will demand their lives. Have you ever seen a dragon’s vengeance? And then there’s Selene, the Red Lady. She can do nothing with Colt a hostage, but if he is killed, Fairy will be ashes. All of it. Her grief and rage will see to it. She hasn’t been truly sane in a very long time. Colt in enemy hands isn’t helping.” I sighed. “I think I understand them. They want all of Fairy unpatterned, like the Wildlands. They think that natural state the best for all.”

  “They might be right,” the smith said. “Fire and earth and skill raised Civilization above the wild as I played favorites. I don’t know that this was best. It may in fact have been the beginning of the Great Decline.”

  “Again, explain the fuss. What do you want of us?” the poetess rhymed.

  “Take me to the tie in the Phoenix Court, then to the one in the wilds. The Hunt honors you still, right? They will listen to you? Keep the Wild Hunt off of me long enough for me to join the crystals. Then I will bargain for my family.”

  The crone narrowed her eyes at me. “You would walk away from the crown of all Fairy for the sake of your family?”

  I met her stare and lied my ass off. “Without a moment’s regret or hesitation.”

  They huddled and whispered, at last turning back to me. “We will do as you say.”

  They encircled me and joined hands. Their eyes closed and their heads tilted back as if they shared an inner vision. The gravel glowed. The harsh green light washed through us all. A beam shafted up over the islet. The green replaced the world. I felt a lurch. The light died.

  And we stood in a dim room. There were curtains drawn across windows. A few small lamps burned. The bedroom had the smell of sickness, of coming death. There was no one to object to our intrusion. A chair off to the side had some abandoned knitting. I think a nurse was off on a potty break.

  The room’s owner lay in bed. His eyes were closed. He wore a nightshirt with gilt cuffs and lace around his throat. Wizened, shriveled, overpowered by the king-sized bed, the frail fey struggled to breathe. On the bed beside him was the tie of the Phoenix Court, its energies fanning the weak fire of his life. At this man’s death, his son had pledged to give me his tie and oath of loyalty.

  I didn’t have time to waste. I grabbed a spare pillow and pressed it over his face, holding it there until his weak struggles ended. I pulled the pillow away and put it under his head.

  “Your brave sacrifice is appreciated, and will long be remembered, old man.”

  A mission bell rang high in the sky, peeling across Fairy.

  “I’ve always like bells,” the Smith said.

  The three shades watch me pick up the tie.

  I looked at the poetess. “Let’s go.”

  The green light came again, and passed, and we were in the Wildlands, in a natural garden with thousands of orchids. Jungle surrounded a waterfall. There was a blue-crystal lagoon edged with white sand. Jewel-winged parrots and white cockatoos preened in the trees. A winged fox with stag horns sat on a white boulder. Seeing us, he fled.

  “The other beasts will come soon,” the crone said.

  The smith pointed through the waterfall to a shadow in it middle. “The last tie—except for the crown you wear—is there, in a cave.”

  A little cliché, but fine.

  I took a moment to draw off the backpack and add the Phoenix Court tie to the Heart Stone. It merged with a wash of emerald light. The stone tried to pattern on me, but I refused to overwrite the patterns already there. I’d taken oaths and owed it to my lords and ladies to let them rule under me, over the kingdoms they already knew.

  I carefully fitted the pack behind me. It settled comfortably between my folded wings. Unfurling those wings, I leaped, flapped, and plunged toward the waterfall and the mystery behind it. Splashing through the falls, I landed inside a twelve-foot pocket of rock. In the center stood a stone altar. A skull with three horns, one pushing up off the nose, rested there. The skull had a bony frill at the back, some kind of ancient lizard, but definitely not a dragon. The eye sockets were empty. In the wedged-open mouth, I saw the glint of crystal.

  This easy?

  It seemed unlikely. I activated a shadow spell, flushing it with raw golden magic. Dragon Sight kicked in. The altar remained unchanged. The skull became that of a bull. The crystal tie became a lump of melted glass.

  Useless trash.

  At the same time, the back of the stone pocket turned dimly translucent like smoky quartz. I was seeing through an ancient, powerful glamour pretending to be a wall. I folded my wings and walked around the altar. Without stopping, I stepped through the wall. This broke the illusion. A slanted tunnel led me down into a cavern. Here was a full skeleton with a lizard head. It had wings and a finned tail that ended in a spiked ball. Its mouth gaped, holding the real tie. My Dragon Sight confirmed this with an emerald tag. I looked for magical traps. There were none. I stepped up on the bone-knee and reached for the crystal.

  A scrape of a boot sole warned me. I leaped up, grabbed the tie, and kicked off the skull, beating my wings a furious moment for extra height as I looked down. A halberd sliced just under me, missing. The head of the pole had a spike on top, an axe blade on one side, and a hammer on the other.

  I recognized the fool swinging it. “Reggie, what the hell! Haven’t I killed you enough?”

  I landed on top of a high, round-topped column.

  “Give me back my crown, you soddening cut-purse.”

  “Are you sure that’s the word you want to go with? Surely you aren’t suggesting I’ve pissed myself.”

  “Come down here and die like you need to. I’m the only one allowed to be the Overlord of Fairy. No one has suffered more for it than I.”

  “How’d you get here. Last time I checked, you were chained in a dungeon, about to get your balls whacked off. Do you still have them?”

  “Yes, curse your eyes. Now give me my crown.”

  I scanned the cavern to see if there were any other surprises lurking about, and I saw her, back against a wall, in heavy shadow. It was the crone, the healer with a head of snakes.

  I chided her. “Oh, you brought him. That’s not doing Reggie any favors.”

  The snakes hissed in reply. She said, “My dear Reggie deserves to rule. Most of Fairy has forsaken the ancient altars. Not so, my dear boy.” The healer staggered out into the open. She pointed at me. “Kill the outworlder, Reggie. Take the crown that only fey may wear.”

  Reggie yelled and charged my pillar.

  I drew a PX4 Storm semi-automatic from my armory on Earth and shot the Pretender through the head. He dropped dead. The halberd clattered to the stone floor. “There’s only room in this world for one pretender to the throne and that’s me.” I dropped to the cavern floor beside Reggie.

  The hag screeched in fury, but she’d made the mistake of fully manifesting. I picked up the halberd and rammed the spike into her stomach. She curled up, clutching her guts, keening piteously. I put a round in her head as well. Being a manifestation of the land, her incarnation died and turned into leaves, loam, and assorted branches. Fey goddesses don’t die easy. I had a feeling that the magic of the Land would eventually reconstitute her in a new body, hopefully in a better mood. Maybe even sane.

  Using the halberd, I took off Reggie’s head. Since he wasn’t coming back from the dead anymore, he wouldn’t be needing it. I put it in my backpack. After all, Kellyn might want it. I took a moment to fuse the Wildlands tie to the others. Looking at the resulting Heart Stone, I had a heat-shaped crystal mass, now entirely green. Inside the crystal, I saw a vacuum, a crown shaped hollow. I could add the crown now, bond to the land, and become a god here.

  All it would cost me was my son. If it had just been Kellyn, I’d have written her off, but I couldn’t do that with Colt.
>
  The beasts of the Wild Hunt would be gathered outside with the other two shades. The prisoners would be there, too, to control me.

  Time to get sneaky.

  I poured a little of my lifeforce into the backpack so I could handle it with my armory spell. I sent the pack off into the ether. It vanished from my hands. If I were in my Malibu armory, I’d have seen it reappear on a table in my secret vault. This way, if I didn’t get Colt, they’d lose the Heart forever. There was residual magic stored up in the land, but if I didn’t bring the Heart Stone back in a few days, that magic would wane, and the whole world would start a rapid decay. People should really know better than to mess with a demon lord. There are few things we stop at when facing long odds. Or when we’re pissed.

  I summoned another Storm Px4. With one in each hand, my Demon Wings tattoo active, and my red protective sphere ready to manifest, I retraced my steps toward the surface. I climbed into the stone pocket with the fake tie, and strolled to the curtain of water. I peered out. It’s hard to see through rippling water, but I made out a whole zoo of exotic animals, many of whom had never even been heard of on Earth. It was a good thing my stealth spell concealed sight, sounds, and smells, or there was no way I’d pull this off.

  I walked beside the curtain to a side gap between water and cliff face. I stepped out, fanned wings, and descended in a smooth glide. I landed on grass, near a baby palm, and eased around it, my eyes scanning for Colt. Perhaps the shades could sense me, but I doubted the Wild Hunt could. I hoped not anyway.

  I had doubts because some of these beasts were millennia old and long steeped in fey magic, making them most uncanny. That meant there were no guarantees. Still, when you have just one hand to play, you go for it.

  THIRTY-ONE

  “Some people need their ass on

  fire to know they’re in hell.”

  —Caine Deathwalker

  Cloaked in my Demon Wings spell, wings of magic kept everyone’s attention brushed away from me. I passed water-horses, stag-foxes, hydra-swan, winged leopards, griffin, manticore, chimera, and starbirds. The lesser beasts weren’t invited so I didn’t have to worry about tripping over smaller things. Uneasy, a unicorn swung her head as I passed, but her potent magic didn’t break my defense.

  I ghosted past palm, mahogany, and a strangler fig tree. There were brazil nut trees with purple pods ready for harvest, and cinnamon trees scenting the air.

  I worked my way to the core of power where the other two shades held court. Beasts there had human characteristics: a woman with a lower body borrowed from a giant spider, a lady with a giraffe neck and four legs. There was a centaur, a minotaur, and a maiden with an owl head, ripe, perfect breasts, but wings instead of arms. Feathers preserved her modesty from the waist down—damn it.

  Not that this was the time to play. Focus!

  The fey immediately before the poetess and the smith looked entirely human, except in the eyes. The hunger there, the savagery, was feral, primal. They may have worn silver armor and forged weapons, but they were beast too, on the inside. It was the only way they could lead such a host.

  The poetess crossed her arms, flashes of rage in her eyes as she confronted a massive man with a bastard sword on his back. He smiled coldly, holding that bend of lips like it was chiseled on. His golden hair was a wild tangle on top, shaved closely on the sides. He had the pointed ears of all fey, and blue-green eyes, the color stolen from a Douglas fir.

  “Where is the child?” the shade demanded. “We do not make war on cubs.”

  The man said, “I kill whatever needs killing.”

  The smith gasped. “You killed him!”

  “Not yet. He is with his grandmother, under guard.”

  Where? Tell me where.

  The man’s reference confused me. Kellyn was an honorary grandmother. Colt wasn’t related to any fey. He wasn’t Izumi’s child. Whatever these people had heard, they’d gotten it wrong.”

  The poetess hissed in displeasure. I thought for a second snake-head had reconstituted herself, but no. “You are a fool not to know the trespass laid, the offense you have made. Captain of the Hunt, would you bring death to us all? Just so you can fall?”

  The animals stirred, understanding the words all to well. Fanning flame wings of yellow-orange and red, firebirds scorched the boulders the perched on before settling down again. Some of the beasts—the unicorns and hippogriffs especially—looked like they wanted to run from the conversation, but they were held fast by the events they’d set in motion.

  “You exaggerate,” the Captain said.

  “No,” the smith said, “we do not. The child is held in your glamour, but if it occurs to him to leave his pleasant dream, he will shred your power and awaken. If he awakens, he will be safe from your power. If he is safe, his mother will not hesitate to strike with twice the fury that she once used to break the Wild Hunt.”

  The smile finally left the Captain’s thick lips. He looked better without the smirk, but a face full of lightning would have improved him more. “You are making no sense. The daughter of the Winter Queen has no such power, and has never challenged the hunt. And as long as we have her mother, too—”

  “You do not,” the poetess said. “The child you hold is not of fey blood. That is what we have been trying to get you to understand. He is not human either, this son of the Dragon Lord.”

  A woman beside the Captain wore a chainmail tunic that dropped down to leather leggings. A wide leather belt had a whip attached and a number of throwing daggers. Her hair was a rusty brown cascade down her back. She interrupted. “The child is either Deathwalker’s or not.”

  “Oh, he is, dragon-born from both parents. His mother is Selene, the Red Lady, Goddess of the Red Moon.”

  The Captain looked up into the sky as if afraid a crimson orb was falling to earth to crush him. “That cannot be.”

  The poetess sighed. “You have lifted your hand against a child demi-god with a bloody goddess for a mother, a warlock-dragon for a father, whose grandfather is the Emperor Kur, Lord of the Dragon World and commander of the dragon armies. The child’s Godfather is Lauphram, who destroyed Atlantis and commands the respect of all demon kind. His god-mother is Gloria, the vampire princess. Are you beginning to understand?”

  The Captain gritted his teeth. The muscles of his jaw knotted. “But as long as we have the child we can bargain, both for what we want, and for forgiveness. I think you should tell us the exact location of the last tie so we can be sure it isn’t taken. I know it’s in this valley.”

  I felt like sighing myself.

  Blondie here is too stupid to live. Even if I gave him the Heart Stone and promised no retaliation, I’m a demon lord. Don’t people get that? Demons lie. Demon lords more so. No matter what I promise, the Hunt will be broken. They will beg for death. They will long for it. Their marble-eyed heads will be mounted on my den wall before this rage ever cools.

  A blinding revelation, it occurred to me that I had affection for my women, my weapons, my treasure and cars—but Colt was the first possession I’d ever truly loved.

  Just say something that lets me know where he is.

  As if reading my mind, the smith lifted her hammer and thrust its head just under the Captain’s nose. “We will not ask you again—where is the boy?”

  A female voice screamed from the pocket behind the waterfall. “Captain!”

  He looked. I looked as well. The water veiled a large shadow with many legs. The shadow scuttled to the gap in the fall I’d earlier used. A spider woman appeared and scrambled down the rock, dragging a headless corpse with her. There was blood on her face, as if she’d been drinking from the body. Reaching the ground, she shouted. “It’s Deathwalker!”

  I tensed, bringing up my semi-automatics, primed to fire.

  “I found his body inside a secret cavern.”

  Not so secret anymore.

  “He must have run afoul of a defensive spell. His head was bitten clean off by a creature of bon
es.”

  Or not.

  Spider lady approached, dragging Reggie’s corpse along behind her. Dramatically, she pulled him up and cast him down at the Captain’s feet.

  The Captain hungrily stared into the eyes of the spider lady. “And the Heart Stone? Is it there with our tie?”

  “I didn’t really look around, but I suppose…”

  The Captain flushed with rage. “Don’t suppose. Go make certain!”

  The poetess leaned into her sister to whisper. My dragon hearing clearly caught her words. “That’s not—”

  The smith cut her off. “I know who it is. Doom must be closer than any of us know.”

  Absolutely.

  The walkie-talkie clipped to my bag of grenades crackled. Izumi’s voice emerged. “Caine? Can you hear me?”

  It was a damn good thing that my magical cloak extended to the device I wore. No one around me reacted to the magically shielded voice, just as they wouldn’t have reacted if I’d broken out in a bawdy ballad. I picked up the radio and spoke. “Caine here, go ahead.”

  “Ghost spies have the approaches nailed down, providing intelligence so we can close in. Grace and Tukka will be with you once you come out of stealth mode. Demon clan and Phantom Court soldiers are in striking range. The Thorn Queen and her elite guard are closing in on you under cover of thorns. We’ll hold back until you tell us you have the prisoners, over.”

  “Got it. What about Selene, over?”

  “No clue, over.”

  “Okay, wait on my command.”

  Damn. Selene’s gone rogue. On the bright side, Grace and Tukka are here. They can’t see me, just like I can’t see them, but back up’s close.

  The spider lady vanished back behind the waterfall.

  Feels like time’s running out.

  And then I saw it, a grindylow climbing from the lagoon, onto a vine-wrapped rock. The amphibians had bad reputations because they liked to playfully pull unsuspecting children into water, drowning them, eating them. Its goblin-like upper body shivered, grayer that green, a temperature reaction. From the waist down, he had emerald squid tentacles, coiling, grasping the rock as an anchor. The creature’s bulbous head swayed as it watched the rest of the Wild Hunt. The thing looked unhappy. It called out, “Can I kill them yet? I’m hungry, and the woman is making the water cold.”