13
AS WE STARTED across the parking lot toward her car, I could feel Trixie relaxing beside me. She had met with the queen of the Summer Court and walked away unscathed. What she felt like now, after running for nearly three hundred years, I couldn’t imagine. Of course, we weren’t out of the woods yet, but at least we were headed in the right direction.
“Are you going to ever tell me what Sofie told you about the Towers and Indianapolis?” Trixie asked in a deceptively calm voice. I cringed. I had known this question was coming but I’d been hoping that she would stay focused on her problem with the elves for a little longer. Did we need to heap the Towers on her list of things to worry about?
“What about that conversation we had about me not telling you everything because I wanted to protect you?” I said, flashing a hopeful smile at her.
She didn’t smile back. “I said I understood your reasoning, not that I accepted it. You need to tell me what’s going on.”
I sighed. “I know.” Pulling her close, I leaned over and brushed a kiss against the side of her head. There was a part of me that wanted to tell her. I wanted to pull open my chest and spill out everything that I had been hiding from the world all these years, but that desire to bare my soul was outweighed by a fear that the truth would send her screaming from me, as any smart person would.
“Well, isn’t this a surprise!” declared a cocky voice from behind us. Trixie and I stopped walking and turned toward the speaker. My heart lurched in my chest as my eyes fell on the warlock standing a few dozen feet away in the middle of the parking lot with his wand pointed at me. “It seems we’ve found the elf we were searching for, and she’s strolling with the one person who would most like to see the Towers fall.”
“You’re insane, Billy,” I called back, shoving Trixie behind me. “You’ve got the wrong elf and you know it. I might not like the Towers, but I wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to attack them like this. It’s suicide.”
My mind scrambled for protective spells that would shield both Trixie and me. I didn’t have my wand on me and I had dropped the stick I grabbed from Demoiselle Noire’s in the grass when I returned to the park. F*ck. I didn’t even have a weapon. Heading to a meeting with the queen of the Summer Court armed to the teeth hadn’t seemed a good way to convince her that I wasn’t a threat.
“No one believed you to be particularly smart.” The warlock laughed.
I ignored his taunts, focusing on drawing energy toward me. William Rosenblum was old, but not too old. Maybe in his fifties. We had had a few run-ins while I was living with Simon in the Tower. He was an arrogant prick and had never thought too much of me, which I was hoping to use to my advantage.
“Trix, when I tell you to run, I want you to head straight for the woods and don’t stop,” I said in a low voice.
One of her hands rested on my side, her fingers tightening in my ragged T-shirt, while the other pressed the edge of the white book she was carrying into my wounded back. “I’m not leaving you.” Her voice wavered with fear. A couple months ago, she attacked Simon, but then she had been lucky enough to sneak up behind the old bastard while he was busy attacking me. This time she was staring down the wrong end of a wand with no defense.
“You have to. I can’t protect us both. Now go!” I shouted. At the same time I threw a massive bolt of white-hot energy at Billy, sending it crashing against the shield he had barely created in time. The energy bounced off his shield and shot out, crackling through the air as it slammed into nearby trees and lampposts. Limbs crashed to the ground and sparks jumped. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Trixie running for the tree line to my left.
Billy knocked away the last of the energy with a wave of his hand and shifted his stance so that he was facing the direction in which Trixie had run. I ended the first spell and quickly wrapped energy in my hands while shifting my thoughts to a second aggressive spell. I wasn’t trying to kill him. Well, at least not yet. For now, I would be content if he would keep his attention on me, giving Trixie some time to put some distance between this bastard and herself.
With a grunt, I whipped the second spell loose. The energy caught up the wind, sending it scraping along the ground before it pummeled Billy so that he was forced to shield his eyes against the dirt and gravel that was thrown in his direction. His shirt and protective cloak flapped in the fierce wind, plastering against his thin, frail frame before dancing behind him like a pair of black wings. While I was good at it, I didn’t like f*cking with the weather. Spells like that tended to get out of control fast and cause massive amounts of collateral damage—not that the Towers were worried about a little thing like that.
I took advantage of his brief distraction to close some of this distance between us. My movement didn’t go unnoticed because as Billy dropped his arms, the wind died and I was pummeled in the chest by a surge of energy. I rocked backward, struggling to regain my balance while I instinctively raised a new protective shield against another strike.
“What brought on the sudden decision to attack the Towers?” William called while his hands moved before him, weaving strands of energy together as he cooked up a new spell to rip my face off. “You kill Master Thorn and then decide that it’s now safe to take down the rest of us?”
A ring of fire sprang up from the concrete around me, the flames reaching more than nine feet in the air. The heat was intense, baking the air so that it was becoming hard to breathe and making it feel like my skin was melting off. A*shole. I hated fire spells. They weren’t difficult, as aggressive magic went, and were, in my opinion, the lazy man’s go-to magic when he didn’t want to be bothered with something that took a little effort and originality.
“Come on! Don’t even pretend that you’re sorry Simon is gone,” I said, forcing out a laugh. Sweat was pouring down my face, leaking into my eyes, so that it was becoming difficult to see. My body was screaming for me to get out of there, but my mind was torn between maintaining my protective shield and dissecting the fire spell. I had always thought that William was a decent warlock, so he had to be up to something else.
Just as I finished unraveling the spell and was dousing the flames, a pair of blades shot through the last of the fire. The first bounced off the shield while the second embedded itself in the barrier, stopping a bare inch away from my stomach. I grabbed the blade from where it hung in the air with my left hand.
William frowned to see me unharmed. “It’s not about being sorry that Master Thorn is dead,” Billy began a bit stiffly, as if insulted by my saying that he might be concerned about Simon’s well-being. “It’s that someone like you succeeded in doing him any harm.”
“Yeah, should have lain down and died,” I said while strengthening my protection spell.
“Exactly.” William smiled as he switched to an ice spell. I had been expecting it. It was like he was thumbing through a teaching syllabus for a new apprentice. There wasn’t an original thought in his little brain. I was beginning to wonder if he had come after me to earn himself some street cred in the Towers, because I couldn’t imagine that he was all that well respected. F*cking puss.
With a wave of my hand, I blocked his new spell before it could jump from his fingertips and then smiled when a new sound entered the area. Gritting my teeth, I pulled in as much energy as I could before shoving it at William. The warlock’s eyes went wide as the force hit him from the side rather than head-on as he was expecting. Still on his feet, he slid several yards to the right into the street and into the path of what turned out to be an approaching pickup truck.
Tires squealed as the driver slammed on the brakes before the sickening crush of steel hitting flesh and bone echoed through the park. Switching the knife to my right hand, I ran over to where Billy was groaning on the ground. The truck couldn’t have been going more than thirty-five, so Billy wasn’t killed by the impact, but he was in pain. Dropping to one knee, I raised the blade and hesitated. Could I do this? My gaze flashed to his blood-streaked face and in his eyes I saw blazing hatred—not fear. If I didn’t kill him, he’d come back. He’d kill me. He’d kill Trixie.
The blade arced downward, fast and straight, plunging into his chest. Billy gave one last cry and died. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. My hand flashed out and the figure was thrown against the side of the truck, trapped. When I looked up, I saw the driver watching me from where he was pinned against the side panel. The large man’s face was sickly white and his brown eyes were so wide I was afraid they’d fall out of their sockets.
“You okay?” I asked, pushing to my feet while releasing him from the spell.
He nodded, cringing back into the crumpled steel. I paused to look at the front of his truck. It looked to be one of those diesel-guzzling monsters that sound like a semi. It took a little more damage than I would have expected, but then he hadn’t had much time to stop.
“Sorry about your truck. Your insurance cover acts of warlock?”
He nodded jerkily, still looking dazed and terrified.
“Good. If you could wait a few minutes before calling the cops, I’d appreciate it.”
“You’re . . . a . . . a warlock?”
I frowned. “Yeah.”
“You gonna kill me?”
“No.”
The fear didn’t completely ease from his face as his eyes jumped to Billy’s body. “Was he a warlock?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure he’s dead?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re not going to kill me?” he asked again, with no small amount of skepticism filling his deep voice.
“No, I think I’ve done enough of that today,” I muttered as I started to walk to the parking lot and Trixie’s car. Behind me, I heard the large man whisper a relieved thanks. I started to raise my hand to wave off his thanks, but immediately dropped it to my side. In this world, when a warlock waves his hand, everyone shits their drawers in fear of the spell. This guy had been through enough for one day.
I was sick to my stomach. It wasn’t bad enough that I had killed another creature, but I had scared the crap out of another person when he had done nothing more than happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. To make it all the more sickening, I wasn’t sure if he was thanking me for killing a warlock or for not killing him. How much longer could the world survive living on this edge of fear?
Stepping onto the sidewalk, I walked into the nearby grass, crossing to where the woods started. With a couple whispered words, I waved my hands as if scooping up air. Seconds later, water bubbled up. It drifted into the air until it collected into an orb about the size of a bowling ball and hovered about waist-high. I dipped my hands into the water, rubbing them together to wash away Billy’s blood. I shouldn’t have been performing magic, but after being forced to fight Billy with magic, I didn’t care if I was being watched by Gideon. I needed to find Trixie, to hold her, but I wasn’t going to search for her with another man’s blood on my hands.
Lifting my clean hands from the water, I sent it dripping back to the earth while I wiped them on my jeans.
“That’s a pretty neat trick,” Trixie said.
My head popped up, searching the area until she stepped out from behind a large tree. I sighed with relief, my shoulders slumping. I was grateful that she had run, but I’d known down in my bones that she wouldn’t go far.
“I’ve tried it with dishes, but I get water everywhere,” I said, forcing a smile onto my face. My first instinct was to run across the remaining few yards that separated us and pull her against me, but I forced my legs to remain locked in place. I needed her to come to me. Every time this shit happened, every time she was faced with violent evidence of my past, I expected her to reject me, to run screaming in the opposite direction, because it was the smart thing to do. She hadn’t . . . yet.
Trixie walked toward me, carefully picking her way over fallen limbs and brush to reach the edge of the trees. My hands were fisted at my sides and my teeth were clenched in the effort to hold still.
“Are you all right? Did he hurt you?” she asked, stopping just out of arm’s reach.
“I’m fine. Not a scratch. You?”
She nodded. “Fine.” But when she looked up at me, I could see the tears in her eyes. My willpower crumbled. I took a step forward and roughly jerked her into my arms while she wrapped hers around my neck, pulling my face down to her shoulder. A shuddering breath racked her body as she tightened her hold on me.
“I was so scared,” she said in a broken voice. “I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t help you. He could have—”
“I’m safe. We’re both safe. He’s dead and we’re safe,” I kept repeating, waiting for the reassurance to sink into both our brains.
“This has been the worst day ever,” she said, wiping away her tears.
“Definitely.”
“But I don’t understand. What elf are they searching for?” Trixie asked, pulling away so that she could look up into my eyes.
Reaching up, I cupped her cheek with my right hand, wiping away a stray tear with my thumb. “We should get going. The cops are going to be here soon and I’d rather not have to answer too many questions.”
“No,” Trixie said sharply as she stepped away from me. “You’re not evading this. This had to do with what you warned Arianna about. Why do they suspect elves of threatening them?”
My right hand fell back to my side while fear tightened in my stomach. She was right, but I was afraid to utter the words, afraid of her reaction, but if I couldn’t trust her, then I had no one in this world. “It appears that a group has managed to locate the Ivory Towers,” I said slowly. Her mouth dropped open and her breathing became heavy. “They chased one of the surviving members involved to Indianapolis but lost him. They were afraid that he would tell others before they could find him, so they destroyed the city.”
“But I don’t understand. Was he an elf?”
I shook my head. “They believe it was an elf who found the Towers, but they never saw him.”
“What?” she cried. Her beautiful features twisted in anger as she paced away from me into the woods and then back again. “This is ridiculous! If they never saw the person, how the hell do they know he’s an elf? They’re using this as an excuse to continue to hunt my people.”
“Trixie, the elves are known to be the best at working glamour and that’s what’s hiding the Towers. It makes sense. Without being a trained witch or warlock, elves are among the few races that could see through the glamour.”
She drew close to me, rising up on tiptoes so she could glare at me in the eye. “How can you defend them?”
“It’s logical,” I snapped. “Logical and true.”
Trixie gasped, jerking away from me as if I’d hit her. She stared at me through narrowed eyes before they widened with an idea. “You know,” she whispered. “You know who found the Towers!”
“I have a strong idea, yes, and he’s an elf. Technically, a dark elf, but the Ivory Towers don’t see much difference between the Summer Court, Winter Court, and the Svartálfar. If they don’t have their hands on the actual culprit, then they’re going to start wiping out elves until they’re all gone so they don’t have to worry about this problem again.”
“What are you going to do?” Her tone had softened as the anger seemed to seep out of her.
My shoulders slumped and I shoved one hand through my hair. “Find him. Either kill him or hand him over to the Towers in hopes of preventing anyone else from finding out what he knows.”
“What?” She shook her head as she grabbed my arm. “You can’t do that. You have to let him tell others. Tell the world leaders. Let everyone know where the Towers are.”
“And then what?” I shouted, losing my grip on my temper as fear burned up the last of my restraint. “Let the world march on the Towers? Send their armies and bombs rushing toward the Towers? The only thing that will happen is that they will fail. All the soldiers will die and not a Tower will be touched by a bomb. And when the dust settles, the warlocks and the witches will come out of the Towers and then the real carnage will begin. The war that follows will put the Great War to shame.”
Trixie shook her head in denial. She released my arm but I grabbed her wrist, holding her in place. “Do you know how many it took to destroy Indianapolis?”
“Gage . . .” she started in a strangled voice, but I didn’t let her off the hook. I couldn’t let her hold on to this thought of taking on the Towers with force.
“I know the spell. Not well enough to do it myself, but I know it. It would have taken no more than six warlocks and witches to destroy the city. Six! There are hundreds of witches and warlocks around the world. Do you think the armies of the world honestly stand a chance? Hell, the Towers wouldn’t have allowed the countries to build them if they thought the countries could win in a fight against them.”
Tears slipped down her face and she stopped trying to pull free of my grasp. “Then what are we supposed to do? We can’t continue like this.”
“I know,” I whispered, releasing her wrist. She stepped back and I sighed. “Things need to change, but this way, taking on the Towers with force, isn’t the way. It will only make things worse. If I thought we had a chance, I would have blasted the locations of all the Towers out to the world years ago.”
“You know?”
I nodded. “I don’t think it occurred to any of them until recently that I might tell someone. They knew I didn’t like them, but I don’t think they thought I was capable of betrayal like that. They don’t think one of their own kind would do such a thing, and despite my separation, they still consider me one of them.”
“Will they hunt you now?”
“Some.” I shoved my hands in the pockets of my jeans to keep from reaching for her. “They’ll keep coming until I give them a reason to stop.”
“And that’s handing over the elf to the Ivory Towers?”
Half of my mouth quirked in a smile. “Try not to feel too much sympathy for him. He’s a real a*shole and I think the world would be better off without him around.” My half smile disappeared as she frowned. “I’m sorry. I want change as badly as you. Maybe even more so, but this way will only get millions of people killed and we’ll end up in a worse place than we are in now.”
“Then how do things ever change?”
“From within. It’s slow and dangerous, but the fighting is unlikely to spread into the rest of the world. I know you can’t tell, but it’s happening. Things are changing in the Towers. It will get better. Maybe not in our lifetimes, but it will get better if they keep pressing forward.”
Trixie looked up at me. A thin, fragile smile drifted ghostlike across her lips. “Things must be changing. You’re here.”
“Yes, and I’m not the only one. It will get better.” I extended my right hand to her, holding my breath as I waited to see if she’d take it. I understood her need to strike back at the Towers and I held a great key that would help the world. I prayed that she understood that revealing the Tower locations to the world only led to death and destruction, not freedom.
Slowly, Trixie stepped closer and placed her hand in mine, allowing me to pull her into my arms. “I don’t like it and my instincts say that the information should be shared, but I understand. So many of the people I knew when I was a child are dead as a result of the Great War. I can’t go through that again. Maybe I’m a coward,” she said against my shoulder.
“No. You’re trying to fight smarter.”
In the distance, I could hear the whine of police sirens drawing closer to the park. The truck driver must have called in the cops and it was time for us to get going. Pressing a kiss to Trixie’s temple, I ushered her over to her car. As I placed her in the passenger seat, I took the keys and jumped behind the wheel. I was afraid that I’d have to work a little glamour of my own to get by the cops, and oddly enough it was more easily done while driving the car.
“So what now?” she asked on a sigh of relief as we jumped on the expressway without being stopped.
I reached over and tapped the cover of the white book that lay forgotten in her lap. “You need to read through that and make some notes for me. I need to know what changed with the elves before they started having problems. Diet? Magic? Sexual positions?”
Trixie gave a little snort. “I doubt Arianna had such things written down, but I’ll make a note,” she said sarcastically. She sighed again and I looked over to find her staring at the book she was now holding. “I honestly forgot about this. It all seems so . . . unimportant now, you know? Considering the mess with the Towers.”
“This is important to me,” I said firmly. “The Towers thing is fixable and so is this. It won’t be easy, but we’ll fix it.”
“Thanks, Gage.”
“No problem.” I hit the turn signal and glanced in the mirrors before sliding over into the left lane. Afternoon traffic was light, and I was eager to get Trixie safely tucked away. “I thought of something else you could look into for me.”
“What?”
“Have the elves ever consulted the Hearth Women?”
Trixie turned in her seat to look at me. “No, but then I thought they were just midwives and humans were their only clients.”
I smiled. “You’re right in that humans are usually their only clients, but a few other races trickle in here and there. They have skills beyond being midwives. Centuries ago, the Hearth Women were called the Handmaidens of Hera. Hera may have been the goddess of marriage, but she was often seen as a protector of the home, hearth, and childbirth. Could you ask them their opinion and advice?”
“Sure. If you think it will help.”
“Thanks,” I said. I had a feeling that they would be much more helpful to Trixie than to me, because much like their patron goddess, the Hearth Women didn’t much care for men. “Oh, and a word of advice: don’t eat or drink anything they offer. Also, don’t let them touch you if you can help it. Be polite, but also try to keep a distance.”
“Why? Are they dangerous?”
“Only if you don’t want to find yourself extremely fertile,” I grumbled under my breath. “I think we’ve got enough to handle right now and don’t need to add to it with an unexpected bundle of joy.”
Trixie sank a little lower in her seat as she stared out at the winding road as we got closer to my apartment. “Definitely.”
For now, I thought it was enough that I had told Trixie that I loved her. She knew I was doing everything within my power to protect her from the Towers and help fix her problem with the Summer Court. We had never talked about the future and we never uttered the word kids beyond commenting on mixing up a potion to protect against conceiving any. When the world wasn’t on the brink of exploding around us, our lives were good and neither of us was ready to take it a step further. At least, I didn’t think so.