“It will be enough. Hold strong.” As he pushed conviction into every word, the spell was beginning to fray around the edges. He told her, “We’ll see you soon.”
Her slanted, green eyes turned fierce. She said, “When you get here, you’d better bring a talented healer with you, or we’ll have to abandon this land and Oberon with it.”
They would lose their home and their King, and Isabeau, Queen of the Light Court, would have won.
Nikolas’s determination hardened anew.
He would never let go of his home and King.
“That will never happen,” he said between his teeth. “I swear it. Not as long as I draw breath.”
Annwyn gave him a curt nod. “Good to hear.”
Her face began to break apart. Quickly before the spell frayed away completely, he said, “Until next time.”
As her image faded, she told him, “Fare well, old friend. Gods be with you.”
Silence fell over the clearing. The nine males regarded one another in grim silence.
They needed a healer but not just any healer. They needed a superb one proficient in both physical and magical arts.
They were low on funds, which meant they were low on supplies.
They needed sanctuary, real rest, and a way to break through whatever magic was blocking the crossover passageways.
And they needed Oberon to wake the fuck up. Maybe then they could rally enough to vanquish the bitch Queen once and for all.
Chapter Three
Two weeks after meeting Kathryn Shaw in LA, Sophie came to the last stage of her journey, and the engine in her rental car stopped.
As in flat out quit. No coughing, wheezing, or knocking to give her any warning. No puff of oily smoke. Click, off.
She almost pulled right. At the last moment, she remembered she was driving in England, not in the United States, and she yanked her wheel left. Not that it mattered since the area was deserted anyway.
Still, better to get off the road if she could instead of leaving the car stranded in the middle of the lane. The Mini coasted gently onto the shoulder and rolled to a stop with its snub nose resting in tall green weeds.
She turned the key in the engine. Nothing. The starter didn’t even turn over.
Silence pressed against her senses, green and heavy with the rich sense of a profligate summer. The sound of her tense breathing filled the interior.
She tapped a fingernail against the brand-new GPS mounted on the dashboard. It was dead as a doornail. The only thing she knew for certain was that she was several miles south of Shrewsbury, either near or over the border of Shropshire, and a few miles away from her destination, the village of Westmarch.
Just for shits and giggles, she checked her new cell phone and Pocket Wi-Fi. While it was supposed to be fully charged, the phone was also dead.
Naturally.
Climbing out of the car, she looked north and south. There wasn’t a soul to be seen. The rolling countryside was intersected with lines of green—hedges, bushes, and dense, tangled copses of trees.
It seemed like as good a time as any to cut loose. After several weeks of deep physical trauma and emotional stress, a switch flipped in her head, and she melted down. Swearing at the car, she kicked the tires and slapped the windshield like a bitch while she counted up all the what the fucks in her life.
Of which there were oh, so many.
The most relevant what the fuck at the moment was how her technology curse seemed to have grown exponentially overnight. Up to this point, it had been limited to small electronics. Alarm clocks, the stupid Keurig. Her computers constantly went on the fritz, and she burned through an average of three iPads a year. Phones came and went with depressing frequency—although usually, she managed to get five or six months out of them if she left them to recharge in places other than her bedroom. She glared at her current phone.
She ought to be grateful the curse hadn’t caused her 747 to fall randomly out of the sky. That thought sent a chill running over her skin, and she slapped the car again.
A spark of awareness began to insinuate itself into her exhausted brain.
Snap out of it, Sophie, she scolded herself. You’re pounding on an inanimate object like it knows or cares. Get your act together. You’re acting like a whack job.
As quickly as her meltdown had come, it faded. Mostly, if she were to be honest, because she was too jet-lagged to sustain it, not because of any self-control on her part. Her partially healed injuries throbbed, and the major muscles in her thigh ached. The journey had taxed her body’s resources to the limit.
Sucking in a deep breath, she took a step back and considered her choices.
She could sit in the car and feel sorry for herself, and she was tempted. Even more tempting—she could climb back into the car, flip the locks, and take a nap.
But she really couldn’t see anybody. No person, piece of farm equipment, power line, or any kind of building was in sight—not even a pile of ancient ruins, which were sprinkled throughout this area of the world like so many Starbucks in Manhattan.
Last time she had checked, it had been close to 6:00 P.M. Summertime in England meant she had a good three and a half hours of sunlight left.
She could watch and wait, but it was entirely possible that nobody would be traveling on this road until tomorrow.
And she was so hungry. It hit with an urgency that felt like a spike piercing through her middle. Her confused body didn’t know if it was supposed to be day or night. The lunch she had eaten before she met with the solicitor in Shrewsbury had been hefty, but that had been several hours ago.
She had a couple of packages of sweet nuts and crisps from the plane flight, but at the thought of eating more of them, she got a queasy feeling. Her body needed real nourishment, not empty calories.
So, walking it was. The village of Westmarch had to be just a few miles away, maybe as many as five. Normally that kind of hike wasn’t an issue. Now she had to brace her tired spine at the thought.
All she had to do was reach the village. Paul, the solicitor in charge of overseeing the old entailed estate, had said Westmarch had a pub with rooms for rent, where she could get a hot meal and spend the night before she bought supplies and headed to the gatekeeper’s cottage in the morning.
That idea had appealed, so he had called ahead to reserve a room for her. Once she reached the village, someone could come back for the car and the rest of her things in the morning.
She still wore the skirt and blouse that she had worn to the solicitor’s office. Moving quickly, she opened the boot, rummaged through one of her suitcases, and pulled out jeans, a black T-shirt, a jean jacket, and black Doc Martens boots, which would be comfortable and sturdy for walking. Or running, if need be.
Last, she fingercombed her dark, curling hair back and snapped a band around it. Instinctively she reached to check for her Glock before she remembered she didn’t have it with her.
She’d had no problem leaving her apartment or notifying the precinct she would be taking an extended break. The most difficulty she’d had in leaving was when she had said good-bye to Rodrigo. When she had told him the news, she had reached out to hug him in the same moment he had reached for her.
Somehow the good-bye hug had turned into a tight clench, and they clung to each other for a long moment before letting go. They’d always worked well together and over the last couple of years had become good friends. Now they were the only two survivors of a confrontation nobody had expected to turn fatal.
After that, she had left LA without a backward glance, but she missed her gun with a passionate intensity that some felt over losing a best friend or a lover. Despite the array of offensive and defensive spells in her repertoire, she felt naked without her gun.
The Glock was streamlined and understated, and unlike her taste in the guys she’d dated or her curse with electronics, the gun was utterly reliable. It had saved her ass more times than she could count.
She would fucki
ng marry that gun if she could.
Instead, she’d had to pack it away with the rest of her possessions in order to make this trip. Her California concealed-carry permit meant nothing in the UK, where handguns, semiautomatics, and pump-action rifles were prohibited for most citizens. Sophie had a better chance of contracting malaria here than obtaining a firearm certificate.
As she changed, she kept a wary eye on the secluded Shropshire countryside, but nobody showed up to offer her a ride.
Naturally.
Because if they had, it would have made this too fucking easy. Fuck.
Finally she settled her bag across her body, messenger-style, grabbed a water bottle from the front passenger seat, and forced herself to put two of the small packages of nuts and crisps into the pocket of her jacket.
After she took a long pull of water from the bottle, she wiped her mouth with the back of one hand, then locked the car. Then she swung into a walk that would eat through the miles at an easy pace that her body could handle, heading down the road.
The tight ache in her right thigh eased as tired muscles loosened. Soon her stride turned loose and flowing, and the surrounding quiet began to sink in. The heat of the day had fled, leaving behind the growing chill of a cool summer evening. She felt almost as if she were swimming in pure, ageless golden sunlight.
She began to understand why Kathryn had said the Welsh Marches, or the area that bordered Wales and England, was some of the most mystical land in the world. Land magic wrapped around her, archaic and untamed. Crossover passages to Other lands existed somewhere nearby. Maybe several of them. Maybe even a lot of them.
Soaking it in, walking steadily, Sophie fell into a trance until what looked like the head of a dark mop trundled onto the road several yards ahead.
It just so happened, her trajectory along the edge of the road brought her closer to the wandering object. At first she thought it might be a badger, but when she drew closer, she discovered that wasn’t the case.
Huh. It really did look like the head of a dark mop, sort of all poufy and puffy, and roughly the same size.
It meandered down the middle of the road at a slow enough pace that she caught up with it without really wanting to or trying.
She wanted to ignore it and pass on by. She didn’t want to pay attention. That ambulatory mophead was a what the fuck she didn’t need to jot onto her list.
Angling out her jaw, she paused to look, first down the road in one direction, then behind her. Still no vehicle in sight—but that didn’t mean it would stay that way. This was deep country, and there weren’t any streetlamps. The road would get very dark after sunset.
The mophead was dark too. It wouldn’t show up well in a vehicle’s headlights. Her imagination did the rest.
“Shoo,” she told it. “Get off the road.”
One end of the mop appeared to lift up and turn in her direction. It approached unhurriedly.
Crossing her arms, she waited. When it got close enough, the starch in her knees gave out. In spite of herself, she squatted.
A small, bizarre face like a miniature Ewok’s blinked up at her from a mane of dirty, tangled hair. It had huge, bulbous eyes, one decidedly off-kilter, and a small, black button nose.
It was a walleyed Ewok.
It was… Was it a dog? Maybe it was a Pekinese or a Shih Tzu mix. It had dreadlocks embedded in hair that fell down to the ground. The matting was so pronounced she ground her teeth.
She held out her hand to it. “Don’t bite me,” she warned. “Or I’ll walk away from you without a second glance.”
The Ewok ambled closer. It sniffed at her, then nosed her fingers, the gentle touch so fleeting it was over before she knew it.
Aw, hell.
Her squat turned into a kneeling position. Carefully she patted the creature. When it drew closer and put a paw on her knee, she gently deepened the inspection.
Opposite the round head, a curly tail was embedded in the tangled filth, and yes, four legs were buried in that mess. The shape of the body felt like a dog’s. When she sank her fingers into the hair, she could feel the small curve of protruding ribs.
Fingering the matted hair around that ridiculous little face, she found two delicate flaps of ears. Maybe it wore a collar with a name and address, but at the thought of finding its owner, anger shook through her.
The dog was too small to survive long on its own in this kind of deserted countryside. The protruding ribs and the dreadlocks in its hair spoke of long-term neglect, even abuse.
As she pulled the dreadlocks apart to look for a collar, she found a knot of silvery rope, tied too tightly around the dog’s neck and broken at one trailing end. When she touched the rope, magic seared her fingers.
Muttering a curse, she recoiled. There was real, magic-sensitive silver wound into the rope, and it was bound with some kind of broken incantation that still held enough cruel Power to raise reddened welts on the ends of her fingers.
If it did that to her skin, what was it doing to the dog’s neck?
Suddenly this what the fuck shot to the top of her long list. Her anger turned into a deep, fierce rage.
“Okay, little guy.” She kept her rage out of her quiet voice. “You haven’t bitten me yet. Hold still. I’m going to get this off you.”
The dog sat on the pavement, blinking up at her, almost as if it knew what she was saying.
Digging into her bag, she pulled out her pair of nail clippers and set to work. Although she knew she had to be hurting it, the dog never moved, nor did it appear to flinch.
Despite the broken incantation, the knot in the rope seemed to twist and slide away from her efforts like a live creature while cold pain seared her fingers. She spat out a null spell to negate the magic.
For a brief moment the Power in the broken silver rope dissipated. When she felt it begin to coalesce again, she worked faster, digging the pointed end of the nail file into the knot until she finally yanked it loose.
When she pulled the rope away, the dog rounded on her with a snarl. It moved so fast she didn’t have time to pull back. Sharp-looking white fangs flashed as it snatched the length of silver rope from her hands and flung it over its shoulder.
She had gotten too used to the dog’s docile cooperation. Sitting back on her heels, she stared, but the brief display of savagery was already over. The Ewok face turned up to her, its large, filmy eyes blinking mildly.
A few feet away, the length of silvery rope dissolved with an acidic hiss until all that was left on the pavement was a darkened smear that stank like rotten eggs and left a faint shadow of psychic malice. What would the rope have done if she’d still held it? Would it have burned through her fingers?
Sophie looked around at the peaceful-seeming countryside, then back down at the dog.
Sighing, it put its chin on her knee.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she muttered. “You did not just do that, did you?”
But it had, indeed, just done that.
She inspected her fingers. The reddened welts had turned into raised blisters in places. She wanted to check the dog’s neck to see if it was blistered too, but there was too much matted hair in the way. Also, it was wretchedly filthy.
She needed to cut the dreadlocks off and give the dog a bath with a mild soap, then check for blisters.
But first things first.
Pulling out her water bottle, she poured water into the palm of one cupped hand and offered it. There was no telling how long ago it’d had a chance to drink, let alone eat.
Sniffing at her hand, it opened an oddly hinged mouth, wide as a frog’s, and sucked at the water in her palm. Sucked, not lapped, making small, audible sounds as it swallowed. Tilting her head, she watched it drink.
When it finished the water, she poured more into her palm until it stopped drinking. Only then did she take a drink herself. Afterward, she capped the mostly empty bottle and stuck it back inside her bag.
“All right, kiddo,” she said to the dog. “
I saw those toofers of yours. I know you could do real damage if you tried. Don’t you bite me.”
With that admonition, she picked it up gently. As she did, it climbed up her torso and stuck its face in her neck with a deep sigh.
Automatically her arms closed around the small body. She knelt there frozen, holding a strange, stinky dog in her arms. It probably had heartworm and fleas.
Oh, no. Oh, no.
This wasn’t going to happen. She had an agenda for the foreseeable future, and it didn’t include adopting a pet, let alone adopting a special-needs pet.
She was going to carry it to the village and hand it over to somebody else. Surely, there had to be a country vet somewhere that could give it medical care.
But there was the abuse, the neglect. The cruel magic rope that had dissolved into nothing. Her jaw clenched on another surge of rage. She didn’t know who would do such a thing to an animal, but whoever they were, they had to either live in the area or to have passed through recently.
Sophie, she said to herself, you’re not here five minutes, and you’ve already started a shit list. Some people don’t know how to take a vacation.
Aloud, she told the dog, “I just want you to know, this conversation isn’t over.”
As she climbed to her feet, she sensed Power. Not the kind of magic that radiated from the ancient land. Not the kind of Power she’d sensed in the length of rope.
This was a strong concentration of personal Power. It traveled toward her with the speed of a bullet. At the same moment, she heard the deep mechanical growl of an approaching engine.
Instinct caused her to leap to her feet. Maybe that approaching Power was benevolent or at the very least indifferent.
Maybe it wasn’t.
She was in no shape for a possible confrontation with an unknown entity that held that kind of strength here, in an unknown land, especially without her Glock as backup. Striding off the pavement, she plunged into the thicket of brush bordering the road.
As branches of green foliage closed around her, she pulled the shadows around her like a cloak. Only then did she glance back at the way she had come.