Jenks rose up, his wings unusually noisy. “Some, but it hurts like hell. Can I ride for a while? We got what, another half mile?”
Trent nodded, and Jenks landed on his shoulder, making him shiver as something seemed to sift down through him like Jenks’s dust. Still shaken, he turned and started up the path, his pace slower. He could have done something else. Maybe cut his hamstrings and tied him to a tree. Knocked him out. Used one of those sleepy-time charms he had tucked away. It wouldn’t last long this close to the ocean, but it would have been enough to slip away. Anything other than letting his reactions get the best of him. He’d slit the man’s Goddess-blessed throat.
The cool shadow of the trees took him as he stepped off the path and struck out to the north, and Trent stomped ahead without breaking a single twig, crushing a solitary stem. Head down, he unconsciously wove between the trees, taking the path of least resistance as Jenks became quieter and quieter. “Ah, are you sure you’re okay?” Jenks said, and Trent jerked, having forgotten he was with him. “Your aura looks like it took a hit.”
Trent slapped at a mosquito, then rubbed another one out of existence. “It did.” He’d forgotten pixies could see auras all the time. His now damaged aura was a direct result of burning his neural net and was probably why Jenks’s dust was making his skin tingle. “I can’t tap a line.”
Jenks’s high-pitched noise went right through Trent’s head. “Wait up. You just lost your magic? All of it? And we’re still headed for the fortress of doom?”
Trent craned his neck to look at the sheer cliff face facing them. He couldn’t see the monastery from this angle, but the opening to the monk escape was close. Where’s the creek? “Yes. Everything that is not invoked and in my belt pack is out. I’m going to have to improvise.”
Jenks was silent. The birds had found them, and jays screamed at them from the canopy until they were out of their territory. “This just got a lot more complicated,” the pixy said, and Trent paused to listen for the sound of water.
“Rachel catches offenders without magic,” Trent said. But Rachel knew what she was doing. And when she didn’t, she could improvise on the fly, coming up with options that left a lot of collateral damage but usually only hurt herself, not the people around her. It was one of the things he would never admit that he admired about her. The more he tried not to be his father, the more he saw his father’s face in the mirror.
“Yeah,” Jenks said, and Trent continued along the base of the cliff. “But Rachel is a professional,” he said, making Trent wince. “You, on the other hand, are a well-prepared, wealthy elf with too much time on his hands and a grudge for having been stood up at the altar. And you just became less well-prepared, cookie maker.”
Steeling his face into a bland mask, Trent trudged forward, slipping through the sunlit shadows without stirring a leaf. “You can stay here if you want. It will take me a couple of hours to get to a phone and send someone for you.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! I said I was with you, and I am. I just don’t want you to go in with a damaged battle plan. Rachel does that, and it drives me batty.”
Somewhat reassured, Trent’s pace smoothed. “My plan will work without magic. I’ll just have to be more aggressive.” Again his mood darkened, and both he and the pixy went silent as he remembered the man’s shock and surprise in the sun. It had been fast, but not fast enough. What the hell was wrong with him, and how could someone like him take care of a baby? How could Lucy ever love him?
Angry, Trent pushed at a branch, almost snapping it.
“You sure you’re okay?” Jenks asked.
“Fine.” Trent took a slow breath as he stopped, listening again. “There should be a stream here. We need to get on the other side of it. The tunnel is halfway up a cliff at its base.”
“No.” Jenks persisted, his wings clattering as he made the short flight to a leafless lower branch and sat in a drop of sun that made it through the canopy. “What’s eating at you? I know you don’t care about that man you just offed except that you wish you’d done something less permanent.”
Startled, Trent dropped his gaze from the cliff top. “Excuse me?”
Jenks reached back to run a hand over his damaged wing, reminding Trent of a tiny cat. “You’re distracted. It’s making you slow, not to mention my job twice as hard. Spill it. You need all your focus if you’re going to survive this, and by Tink’s panties, you are going to survive it. Rachel needs your help.”
Trent held his breath, trying to decide what to say. The faint sound of water came faint on the wind as it gusted, and he leaned into motion. “Nothing is bothering me.”
The harsh sound of Jenks’s wings made him squint, and the pixy landed on his shoulder to find his balance by gripping his ear. “Damn it, you did it again,” the pixy grumbled.
“Did what?”
“You lied to me,” Jenks said, and Trent frowned. “Pixies can tell when people lie. That’s why Rachel and I get along so well.”
Trent tried to see him as he stepped over a moss-covered log, but he was too close. “Rachel doesn’t lie?”
“Oh, hell, she lies all the time, but she knows it. You’re lying to yourself, not just me. What gives, Trent? Let’s have it now so we can get on with our lives, short as they might be.”
The smugness in Jenks’s voice scraped over Trent’s frayed nerves. The last person who had pointed out his flaws like this had found himself down the camp’s well for three days. “It’s none of your business,” he said with a false lightness, not wanting to admit to a pixy that he was worried he was turning into a psychopath to save his species. How could anyone, much less a little girl, love that? His daughter deserved the best, and his soul felt like it was dying. “Can you hear water running?”
Jenks was silent for a long moment, then he said, “Yep. You’re headed right for it.”
The earth fell away in front of him, and he slowed as the scent and sound of running water rose up like a balm. Cautioning Jenks to hold on, Trent slid down the mossy, rocky side, his thoughts churning. He hadn’t expected children for another twenty years. Ellasbeth, at least, had had nine months to realign her thinking. He had had three.
A branch he had his foot propped against gave way, and he slid, effortlessly catching himself on a rock. Money didn’t make a child happy, only spoiled. And if he was going to raise a child, he wanted to do it right—without relying on Ceri. All he had was the distance his father had shown him and brief snatches of motherly affections taken in glimpses, hardly remembered. He didn’t want Lucy to grow up feeling alone, surrounded by everything and having nothing.
Trent’s final lurch brought him before the small stream, and he stood straight, assessing both the best way to get across it as well as the sunny ridge high above him on the other side. His hands were scraped, and he wiped them on his dirty and torn biking outfit. The thought of raising this child was only slightly less terrifying than the thought of losing her forever.
“You’re not worried about getting your daughter, you’re worried about what happens afterward,” Jenks said suddenly, and Trent’s jaw clenched. Head up, he reached for an overhanging branch and went hand over hand, feet swinging above the rushing cold water.
“You’re worried you won’t be good enough,” Jenks said, darting off when Trent swung wildly and jumped for the bank.
Looking at his scraped, bleeding hands, Trent muttered, “Hardly.”
“Liar.” Jenks stood on a bare branch, his hands on his hips and a smile quirking his expression. “You don’t think she’s going to love you, and it’s killing you.”
“I have no doubt that I’m good enough,” Trent said, then lowered his voice. “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be risking my life to acquire her.”
The pixy laughed at him, sifting a bright silver dust. “I’m not talking about being good enough to get in and out of the Withons’ compound with her. You’re scared about what you are going to do with a little girl, Mr. Most Eligible Bachelor Multibilliona
ire with More Money and Resources Than a Small City.”
It was too close to the truth for him to admit, and Trent tilted his head to see where the top of the cliff and the sky met, almost straight up. “I have people to care for her already lined up,” he said, stifling the rising feeling of inadequacy. He didn’t have one person interviewed, one inquiry made. He wanted to raise this child himself, as he wished he had been. “Can you fly yet? I think the opening is above the ledge.”
Jenks darted in front of him, his wings loud but clearly functioning again. “Wet nurses and nannies,” he scoffed, looping before him like a courting hummingbird. “You want to raise her yourself, and you’re afraid you’re not going to be a good dad. That you won’t know how to take care of her, that you might break her.”
His brow furrowed, and Trent forced it smooth. He was never going to work with pixies again. His father had been right to ban them from the grounds. “Will you fly up there and check? The opening is about four by four and will have a small ledge before it.”
Jenks’s looping stopped, and he hovered right in front of him, looking both young and wise, honest and angry. “Let me tell you something, Kalamack,” he said as the sparkles sifted from him. “There is no way that you can be more scared than I was with Matalina pregnant and us living in a flower box that didn’t have enough dirt to keep out the heat, much less hibernate through. I was ten years old and a family on the way.”
Trent didn’t flinch, already knowing about Jenks’s life. “Lucy will be well cared for,” he said shortly, and he reached for a handhold. He’d simply climb up. The opening was said to be very close to the waterfall.
“That’s not why you’re scared,” Jenks said as he flew in front of him, landing on the best handholds before Trent moved to them. “You’re scared that she’s not going to like you, that you’re going to do something wrong and she’s going to hate you.”
Stretching for a handhold, Trent met his eyes, hesitating as he found understanding had replaced Jenks’s biting, sarcastic accusations. He had slit a man’s throat and left him. He didn’t have a moment’s regret for it other than he should have found a better way. Something was wrong with him. How could a child love someone who takes the life of another and doesn’t care?
Trent took a breath to speak, changed his mind, and reached for the next crack. The sound of Jenks’s wings mixed with the chattering water, and slowly Trent inched up into the light.
“You got nothing to worry about, cookie maker.”
Stretched along the rock face, Trent squinted up. Jenks’s silhouette was lost in the sun’s glare until the wind shifted a bough and shade covered them again.
“I can guarantee it,” Jenks said as their eyes met. “The second that you see her, you will fall in love. You will do anything for her, anything at all, and she will know it and love you back. That’s all kids want to know—that you love them.”
He tried to say something, anything, but the glare of the sun struck him, catching the words in his throat.
“And you will,” Jenks said, his voice coming as if from the sunbeam. “You can’t help it. It’s built in. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t there for the first three months of her life. She’s been waiting for you, and you’re going to fall in love. Take it from someone who held his first five children as they died in his arms.”
Trent swallowed hard, blinking the sun from his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice low so it wouldn’t crack. His legs were trembling, and his hands ached. The top of the cliff was close, and he lifted himself another foot, straining.
Jenks moved to the shade, his head down and his wings slumped. “I didn’t tell you for your pity. Fairy farts, I don’t know why I even brought it up. I’ll see where the tunnel is.”
The wind from his wings shifted Trent’s hair to tickle his face. Wondering, Trent watched him dart away, pixy dust making a brilliant sunbeam. Why indeed?
THREE
Muscles straining, Trent levered himself up onto the wide ledge. His leg scraped the cliff face, and his arms began to tremble under his weight. Exhaling heavily, he twisted to sit with his back against the rock, legs dangling over the edge, his eyes closed against the sun, the cool breeze eddying from the mouth of the tunnel beside him. Fatigue pulled at him, a fatigue that was from more than biking thirty miles and climbing halfway up a cliff, from more than killing a man he hadn’t wanted to. He couldn’t remember the last time he slept. Catnaps in the back of the car were a poor substitute. It was about eight in the morning, but his body was still on East Coast time and he was ready to nap.
The dull throb in his leg stirred him, and he opened his eyes, bending forward over his pulled-up knees to run a hand over the smooth fabric of his riding clothes. His tights were torn, and he’d made a mess of them, the original shine now scraped and dulled.
“Tink’s panties, I’m tired,” Jenks said, and Trent flicked his eyes to the pixy perched on a rock near the edge, his wings moving slow enough that he could watch their lazy motions and the dust spilling from them. “What do you do to keep awake?” Jenks said, half to himself as he dug in his belt pack and shoved a wad of what was probably nectar and pollen into his mouth. “Me, I ’eep eatin’,” the pixy said around a sticky mouthful. “I’d offer ’ou un’, but you’re oo big.”
A sudden hunger pinched at Trent’s middle, and he reached for his own belt pack. “That’s okay. I’ve got something,” he said as the crackle of shiny paper caught the sun and sent blinding flashes against the cliff side as he ripped open the packaging. Neither of them said anything as they ate, and the sticky sweet, almost musty tasting chewy bar of energy and free radicals disappeared in five easy bites.
An unexpected feeling of camaraderie stole through him as he sat in the sun and crumpled the packaging up. He didn’t think it stemmed from Jenks’s easy acceptance of the elves’ unusual crepuscular lifestyle of being most active at dusk and dawn. Pixies were the same, napping the four hours around noon and midnight. It wasn’t often he spent time with someone who was comfortable enough with him to not have to keep up a running conversation. Jenks talked a lot, but only when he had something to say.
A stray thought drifted through Trent, and he surreptitiously watched Jenks finishing his own meal, wondering if perhaps pixies had once been elven pets thousands of years ago. But as his eyes flicked to the sword at Jenks’s belt, he decided it was more likely they had served as guards in exchange for the land to safely raise a family, much as Rachel and he seemed to do. Smiling, he tucked his blowing hair behind his ears. They had lost so much history.
His arms had quit trembling, and still silent, he spun to his feet and turned his back on the heat of the day, peering into the low-ceilinged tunnel smelling of damp and wet rock. “Ready?”
“Just a sec.” Jenks’s wings hummed as he lifted off. “I gotta pee.”
Nodding, Trent took several hunched steps into the darkness, fumbling for the penlight in his belt pack as his sunstruck eyes struggled to adapt. He clicked it on and played it over the rough-hewn ceiling inches over his head. Something smelled off, and he couldn’t put his finger on it. Not like an animal had taken up residence, but . . . crickets. Dead crickets?
He took several more steps, the chill deepening about him. The walls had been chiseled to a bumpy smoothness, and the floor even more so. The way sloped upward as expected, going only a few feet until it turned and his light struck on bare rock. The dampness from the nearby waterfall made him wrinkle his nose. That there was no guard struck him as suspicious, and he breathed deeper for the scent of elves, finding nothing but that thick, cloying scent of crickets.
“Crap on toast, where’s the guards?” Jenks said as he hummed in, his silver dust a temporary sunbeam pooling on the floor. “I don’t smell any sign of anyone being here. Ever.”
Trent took another step forward, his thoughts on their timetable. Finding the sharp turn, Trent played the light over the ceiling and floor, nose wrinkling. It smelled worse.
Jenks darted ahead past Trent’s penlight. Suddenly he pulled up short and drew his sword, sputtering as he waved it about. “Spiderwebs,” he said in disgust, and Trent stiffened.
Spiderwebs? “Jenks. Get back here!”
A good fifteen feet down the passage, Jenks hovered in the middle of the tunnel, a bewildered expression on his face. “It’s a web,” he said. “A real one, at that. Not sticky silk.”
Beady eyes stared at him from beyond Jenks, never blinking. Trent fumbled for the radio he’d taken from the man in the bathroom.
“Hey!” Jenks shouted, darting up as Trent threw it past him. As the radio hit the wall and fell, a palm-sized spider, furry and arms wiggling, fell with it. “Holy shit!” the pixy exclaimed, darting back to him as three more spiders scuttled out from the shadows, descending upon their injured companion to rip him into unequal pieces. “What the Tink-blasted hell are those?”
Stifling a shudder, Trent panned his light over the ceiling. “Poisonous. Hold on a sec.” Tucking the penlight under an arm, he unzipped another pocket in his belt pack. He tore open the small package, and steam began to rise as chemicals in the outer package mixed and generated heat. The scent of beef stew mixed with the smell of dead crickets to make his stomach turn, and he tossed the bag to slop against the floor.
It’s probably the motion they respond to, rather than the smell of the food, he thought as a dozen spiders of all sizes converged, fighting as they each claimed a portion and retreated to the shadows.
“That is uglier than a shit sandwich,” Jenks said, not having moved from his shoulder.
“We haven’t seen the matriarch,” Trent cautioned, not moving as a spider the size of a salad plate crept out of the darkness, moving slowly as it came to sit on the largest hunk of meat. Shaking his head in disgust, Trent started to edge around them, Jenks pressed close to his neck. He’d never thought he’d ever see them, especially not an entire self-sustaining colony.