by Charley Case
With the large sunglasses, Penny couldn’t tell if the woman was asleep or not. Just as Penny was about to fly closer, the woman spoke.
“Well, now. What are the chances that a faerie dragon just decides to land on my balcony?” Her tone was humorous, but she didn’t smile.
Penny cleared her throat, nervous for the first time in a long time. “Shir shee, shee? I don’t suppose you understand draconic?”
The woman sat up and finally smiled. “What kind of historical artificer doesn’t speak draconic? Most of the good stuff was made by your people.”
Penny sagged in relief. She hated having to find ways to communicate when she was trying to do complicated work.
“Squee! Chi chi, shir? Thank the turds of Geralt. I figured if anyone spoke it, it would be you. My name is Penny, and I’m hoping you might be able to help me solve a problem. Just so we’re on the same page, you are Rebecca Breck, right?”
“I am.” She rose and wrapped a long white sarong around her waist. “I thought all the faerie dragons on Earth were dead?”
Penny smiled and spread her arms, as if to say, “Obviously not.”
“What?” the blond man called out from the kitchen.
“Nothing, honey. Why don’t you come out here for a second? There’s someone you should meet.”
The man slipped off the stool and added a few words to whatever he was working on, then dragged himself away and came outside, squinting against the bright sun. As he stepped up next to Rebecca, it became apparent that he was a good five inches shorter than her.
“What are you saying, honey?”
“Lance, this is Penny. Penny, this is my husband Lance.”
“Chi chi. Shir squee. A pleasure, Lance. Can you tell him I really like the house? This place is a real work of art.”
“I understand you.” Lance laughed. “Thanks, we worked hard on it. The pool was my idea.” He puffed up at that a little.
A small, curly-haired child about four or five years old ran out of the house and wrapped his arms around Rebecca’s legs, hiding from Penny’s view as best he could. His hair might be blond like Lance’s, but the little guy looked thin and gangly like Penny imagined Rebecca must’ve been as a child.
“This is our son Grimmly.” Rebecca squatted and put a hand on his back to reassure him. “Grimm, this is Penny. She needs our help. What do you think; should we help her?”
Grimm nodded vigorously. “Yeah!”
“That’s right. If people ask for help, then you should at least try.” Rebecca rubbed the child’s back affectionately but smiled up at Penny. “So, what is this thing that you need our help with?”
“Squee shir. I need to figure out how to kill a Drude.”
Lance barked a laugh. “Oh, is that all?”
Penny nodded.
Lance’s face fell. “Seriously?”
Penny nodded.
“Shit.”
“Shit!” Grimm parroted in a loud shout.
“You said it, buddy.”
Chapter Eleven
Mila and Remmy fell for far too long, considering how high off the ground they had been when they entered the portal—hardly more than a foot. Mila hoped it was an effect of the portal and not an indication that they had somehow entered a place in between realities and become stuck there.
Just as Mila’s concern began to rise to alarm, the world materialized around her and Remmy, and they fell the rest of the way to the ground in a pile of tangled limbs.
Remmy scrambled to her feet and took a defensive stance, then drew two long silver daggers from matching sheaths hanging from a dark brown leather belt slung low on her hips. She had discarded her hoodie before joining the fight, but Mila could see that she had tucked her phone into her waistband at the small of her back.
Mila got to her feet more slowly. The pain of her injuries was still blocked, but a very large portion of her power seemed to be flowing into her body in a way she didn’t quite understand. Not to mention, she felt woozy from the blood loss from being stabbed in the kidney.
As she stumbled forward, Mila caught herself on a huge machine with flaking green paint. She blinked as she tried to figure out where they were, but she couldn’t focus. There was a smell like oil and steel, along with a hint of rotting wood. The most prevalent smell was that of the ocean.
The room they’d landed in felt large, but she couldn’t be sure because it was dark and old factory machines years out of date and half covered in rust surrounded them. They seemed to be tucked away in a corner of an old factory or warehouse.
Mila screwed her eyes shut and traced the line of magic being sucked away at such a high rate. From the source, an area at the back of her skull, Mila followed the line of power as it twisted through her. The magic spiraling down her spine flowed to the small of her back, then branched off to disappear into the stab wound Yaminah had given her.
Remmy gently placed her hand on Mila's side as she leaned on the old machinery. “You need to take a healin’ potion, boss lady. You lost a lotta blood. Let me take a look at the wound.”
Mila nodded, and Remmy helped her get the shredded hoodie off. She felt warm hands on her back lift her gray t-shirt gently.
“How the hell did she get through the mythril?” Mila hissed, short on breath and woozy at the constant drain on her magic.
“Holy shit, boss. This looks insane. There’s a residue of magic on the mythril, but the wound is closing up on its own.” Remmy grabbed the discarded hoodie and used it as a rag to clear the blood from the wound to see what was happening better. “Yeah, you’re healing this thing up pretty good. How are you doin’ that?”
Mila shook her head. “I don't know, but it’s taking a huge amount of power.”
“There it goes. Just closed up, looks as good as new.” Remmy frowned when she saw Mila still leaned on the machine, her eyes closed tight. “You get stabbed somewhere else?”
Mila shook her head. “Broken rib.”
As she said it, she heard an audible pop from inside her chest cavity as the bone reset.
A few seconds later, the drain stopped, and Mila took a deep breath. She finally felt like herself.
She straightened and ran a hand over the stab wound but felt nothing other than a bit of residual blood becoming tacky as it dried. The edges of the mythril chainmail were cleanly cut, and as she ran her hand over them, they reconnected, one tiny link at a time. The armor seemed to be able to heal on its own, which was good, Mila thought, because she didn’t feel like she had much left in the tank.
“You all good?” Remmy asked softly.
Mila nodded. “Yeah, I’m good. Did you see where Yaminah went?”
“Up the stairs. Probably through that door.” Remmy pointed to a set of iron mesh stairs that led up to a walkway. A metal door had been set into a sheet metal wall beside the catwalk.
Mila looked up. Sure enough, they stood in a large factory of some kind. The roof towered overhead and had an intricate set of track beams with old winch cranes dangling from them. Windows lined the walls close to the ceiling, letting in only a small amount of light through the built-up grime on the glass.
“Did you see her go in there?” Mila picked up Gram from the floor where she had dropped it when they’d landed.
“Nope. She was already gone when we came through. Otherwise, we would be in the middle of a fight that we probably wouldn’t be winning. I can definitely smell a bunch of Rougarou somewhere in here.”
Mila took a sniff but didn’t detect anything new on the air. “How can you smell them? All I smell is oil and steel.”
Remmy sniffed again. “It kinda smells like rotting wood and sweat with a dash of copper thrown in. How can you not smell that?”
Mila took another sniff and did smell the rotting wood, but she had thought it was just rotting wood. Now that she looked around, she decided she’d be surprised if there was any wood in the building at all, let alone enough to fill the building with the smell of rot.
“I can smell it,” Mila said, taking another sniff. “I just thought that was wood rot. I guess it would help to know what things smell like if I want to identify them that way. So how did you know Yaminah went up the stairs?”
Remmy pointed at the floor. “Blood trail. I had both my daggers in, and she’s leakin’ like a government scandal.”
Mila had missed it at first due to the dim lighting and the grimy concrete floor, but Remmy was right. A trail of blood droplets led from the corner they stood in right to the stairs. Mila even spotted some wet spots on the steps as they reflected what little light there was.
Mila pulled out the Ivar and unlocked the safety. “Let’s go. We need to find out where we are and call for some reinforcements. We need to stay quiet. I think you’re right; we would be overrun in here.”
Mila took the lead as they climbed the stairs, her gun held in both hands close to her face. She had to be careful to place her feet softly, or the iron mesh would ring out. Remmy, on the other hand, seemed to have no problem at all staying silent, which Mila figured had to be a part of her magic.
At the top of the stairs, Mila checked that the walkway was clear and noticed a heavy metal door at the far end that likely led to an outside stairway. Mila noted it just in case they had to make a quick exit, then padded softly to the other steel door Remmy had pointed out a few strides down the catwalk.
“Good guess on her coming this way.” Mila pointed out the smeared blood on the flaking blue paint next to the silver doorknob.
Remmy placed an ear to the door and listened for a full thirty seconds before she straightened and nodded. “I think it’s clear.”
Mila nodded back, then gripped the knob carefully as she held the Ivar so that it would point into the room as soon as she opened the door. “Ready?”
Remmy nodded. Mila turned the knob, shoved the door open sharply, and bounced in, gun first, to give Remmy room to come in behind her.
The room was dark except for a row of large windows on the far side of the large space that overlooked the factory floor and let in some of the dingy light. However, a dozen rows of metal shelving blocked most of that light. A walkway passed through the center of the rows, but the rest of the room was blocked from view.
Mila swallowed hard, then quietly began to move forward, Remmy a step or two behind her, blades out and ready to strike.
Mila stepped into the first aisle, the Ivar pointed down its length, and nearly pulled the trigger out of shock.
A dozen slack-jawed people stood packed together, staring her way blankly.
Mila spun around and saw a similar number of thralls on the other side. Not one of them seemed to notice she was there.
“Fucking hell,” Mila whispered as she let out a pent-up breath. “I nearly shit myself right there.”
There was no answer, and Mila quickly looked around for Remmy. The goblin stood on the other side of the room beside the windows.
“There’s more in each row, but they aren’t moving either.”
Mila nodded and quickly made her way to Remmy, making a mental tally as she glanced down each row. She knelt down beside Remmy so she couldn’t be seen through the windows from below.
“There are at least a dozen thralls on each side in every row,” Mila whispered. “That’s like three hundred thralls. How the fuck has Azoth built up numbers like this without anyone noticing. He must be taking dozens every day, and that’s not even mentioning all the people he changes into Rougarou. If a dozen people vanished in one city, there would be a national emergency.”
Remmy snorted. “I’m guessing most of these people are coming from places that aren’t exactly civilian conscious. And if you think you couldn’t take a few dozen homeless people from a city without raising much suspicion, then you are much more sheltered than I thought, boss lady. There are forgotten people all over the world if you take the time to look for them.”
Mila frowned, but Remmy was right. She hadn’t been thinking about those unfortunate enough that they slipped under the radar. “You’re right; I am naive. But it still begs the question of how he is rounding them up. He can’t very well send out a pack of thralls; they look like shambling zombies. And the Rougarou are out of the question. Plus, it must take a considerable amount of magic to make this many thralls. The one time I saw him make a Rougarou, it looked like it took a lot of power to change that poor elf woman.”
“I would bet that it does take more power to convert magicals, but I don’t think most of the thralls are magicals. I think they’re just Peabrains. He wouldn’t get much power out of them, but it probably doesn’t take much to enslave them either.”
The sound of shouting out in the factory caught their attention. Mila stood slightly to see what was going on, but there was a walkway that blocked her view. She saw a door in the corner of the room that led out onto the catwalk. Quickly squat-running over to the metal door, she gently opened it and slipped out onto the walkway, Remmy right behind her.
Mila peered through the railing and saw Azoth standing in the middle of a large cleared-out area of floor just below them. He held Yaminah up by the throat with one of the smoke tentacles he had used to restrain Finn.
Yaminah’s body hung three feet off the ground as she tried to pry the tentacle loose with her fingers. Mila could see that the stab wounds Remmy had inflicted were still dripping blood, creating a small pool under Yaminah’s twitching feet.
“Why would you go after her?” Azoth roared, his normally creaking voice sounding more like metal sheets being ripped in half. “You know I am saving her for last. Now she knows we can get to her, and she will flee.”
“I was only trying to protect you.” Yaminah choked out. “My Geas won’t let me act against you. That means there is truth in me saying that your obsession with her is harmful to your greater goal.”
That gave Azoth pause, and the tentacle pulled her close to swirling void where his face should have been. “Swear to me that you are not trying to thwart me. You have good ideas. I would hate to have to dispose of you for something as simple as rebellion.”
“I swear it. I can’t. The Geas would kill me on the spot.”
Azoth considered Yaminah for a long breath, then unraveled the tentacle and dropped her in a heap at his feet to cough and suck in deep breaths.
“I will return shortly. Another Lone Valkyrie is ready for me to pluck from its den.” His tentacle withdrew under the edge of his gray robe.
Mila’s eyes went wide. She had assumed Azoth had normal legs under that robe, but it appeared he also had tentacles, or maybe just tentacles. She should probably find out what a Drude actually looked like. Up until that moment, she had assumed he was humanoid, but there was no reason that he had to be. For all she knew, he could be a pile of sentient octopuses, or three children standing on each other’s shoulders…with a trained octopus.
“Azoth, you must be careful,” Yaminah pleaded, slowly regaining her feet. “Capturing that one was pure luck,” she said, pointing off in a direction Mila couldn't see. “It only worked because she had become weak while she was in close proximity to her exiled sister.”
“Do not question my strength!” Azoth roared.
“I was merely advising caution for your own wellbeing.” Yaminah didn't back down from the obviously irritated Drude, which impressed Mila quite a bit, even if she was a murderous psychopath.
Mila slowly crouch-walked along the walkway, trying to get to an angle where she could see who Yaminah had been pointing at. Hopefully, it was her sister from Dubai, and she could save her, or at the very least, kill her to save her soul for another life and deny Azoth the pleasure.
“You have done well in organizing my army and finding me so many to convert, but do not think to overstep your place. I own you. You serve me. Do not presume to act on my behalf without my knowledge.”
Yaminah bowed her head and nodded. “I will do my best.”
Azoth flicked his hand in the air, and a void portal ripped opened behind h
im. “See that your best is good enough.”
Mila came to the exterior wall of the factory where the catwalk turned ninety degrees to follow along it the entire length of the building. She turned and finally got an angle to see who they were talking about.
Two sets of the magic-canceling restraints like those Mila had seen the Drude use in the past shackled the Valkyrie. As with Heather, the restraints were attached to a long chain that had been hung from one of the many cranes suspended from the ceiling. The woman had been hoisted a foot off the ground, so the shackles held her entire weight.
Mila winced when she saw the woman’s hands had turned purple from her time hanging there. Though she wanted nothing more than to run down and free the woman from her painful ordeal, Mila restrained herself because it would be a suicide run.
With her head down and her long dark hair hanging in her face, Mila found it impossible to identify the Valkyrie for certain, but there seemed to be something familiar about her. She wore a white blouse that had been torn in a struggle. Several blood stains had soaked into the white material, but they had all turned a ruddy brown color to show the wounds had stopped bleeding. She had on one black stiletto heel, with the other nowhere to be seen. A tight khaki pencil skirt finished off a very business-oriented outfit.
Mila’s eyes widened.
“That’s Victoria,” she whispered to Remmy. “How the fuck was he able to catch her?”
Remmy gave her a shrug. “No one’s invulnerable.”
Azoth turned back to Yaminah. “If she tries anything when she wakes, I want you to hurt her until she stops, do you understand me?”
Yaminah nodded. “I understand.”
“Good. I will return in a few hours. Perhaps you can refrain from running off on some crusade this time.”
Yaminah didn't say anything but kept her head bowed in deference.
Azoth turned and stepped through the portal, which slammed shut with a snapping sound.
“We need to get out of here, and get word to the sisterhood,” Mila whispered, indicating that Remmy should start heading back the way they had come.
