28
THE DARKNESS SEEMED impossibly thick around us despite a velvet sky full of stars and a half-moon hanging overhead. As my eyes soaked in what little light there was, I started to pick out a thick swath of trees surrounding us. There was a feeling of empty space directly in front of me, as if the earth suddenly fell away. I decided to trust the feeling and not step forward.
I had used a teleportation spell to take the hobgoblin and myself across more than a hundred miles, leaving us close to where the dark elves were huddled. Duff had given me the mental image of the spot, promising that it was a safe distance from where he had last seen them.
I needed to get my bearings before we started out. I had no idea where the hobgoblin had taken me, just that it had been south of Low Town and my shop. Cupping my hands in front of my face, I blew a slow, steady breath into them as if trying to warm them. The air curled around my palms, brushing against my fingers as I willed it to form an almost solid ball. Closing my eyes and turning my head away, I gave one more push of energy into the ball of warm air before tossing it up into the sky. When I looked back, a ball of energy hovered a few feet above me, casting the area in a soft, white glow.
Shadows lunged and thickened where they tightly clasped to trees and in deep hollows. There was a drop-off directly in front of me. I couldn’t tell how deep it was, but I wasn’t willing to find out the hard way. I could see a path leading off to my right that seemed to snake through the forest. The trees were heavy with leaves and the brush was thick on the ground, hiding all sorts of predators, but then I wasn’t counting on sneaking up on the Svartálfar. No one snuck up on an elf on its home turf, not even a warlock.
Turning around, I saw a stone formation rise up behind me. The glowing orb ducked in closer at my command, showing that two openings had been cut into what would have been a rock wall. A rush of anger flooded my veins and I silently cursed the dark elves for ever stepping foot in this place.
“Angel Windows,” I said, my eyes dancing over the rock formation. “They had to come here.”
Duff shifted on my shoulder, one tiny fist tightening in my hair. “That’s what the humans call this place. You know where we are?”
I nodded, turning toward the path, the glowing orb shooting out in front of me. It hovered high so my night vision wasn’t destroyed, but cast enough light to keep me from walking off the edge of a cliff. “Yeah, I used to camp here. We’re in Red River Gorge, but the dark elves aren’t supposed to be here. This is part of a national park. The government set up massive swaths of land for the fey to live undisturbed, but they aren’t supposed to be living in the parks.”
Duff’s chuckle was soft, as if he was afraid of drawing attention to us. “The elves go where the earth calls. The boundaries of the government are just lines on a piece of paper. If the elves choose to hide in the forest, do you think anyone can find them to evict them from the land?”
A sigh slipped from me, knowing he was right, but it made me feel uneasy knowing how many times I had come camping down here alone. Red River Gorge was part of Daniel Boone National Park, and was lined with some of the best hiking trails I had ever found. The sandstone that filled the park had been worn away over thousands of years to leave dozens of amazing formations such as natural bridges. I had wandered down most of the trails, and yet I found something new and beautiful on each trip. Angel Windows was a favorite formation of mine. I always tried to visit it as well as Princess Arch and Rock Bridge when I was in the park.
The only problem with Red River Gorge was that it was not a place you wanted to walk through in the dark. The entire park was a series of valleys and peaks. If you weren’t one hundred percent sure that you were in a valley, there was a very good chance that you were going to walk off the end of a cliff and fall down into a steep ravine. Every year, several people died in the park from falls. I was hoping not to be one of them as I picked along the narrow path that led to the main road.
As we came to flatter ground, Duff flew off my shoulder and zipped up ahead of me. Slipping past the reaches of my meager light, he disappeared into the trees as if he were made of them. I was hoping that he was going to scout out ahead and get our bearings before we were faced with the Svartálfar. I wasn’t worried about him betraying me to Reave, simply because the bastard had attempted to kill his friend for her organs. As a warlock, I wasn’t much of an improvement, but at least I hadn’t tried to kill the pixie. That had to put a point or two in my favor.
The darkness eased back as I stepped into a gravel parking lot at the head of the trail. Duff darted back to me, keeping a wide distance from the glowing orb.
“He’s where I last saw him. It’s another rock formation, like the opening of a cave at the top of a steep rise. I don’t know the human name for the place. Gage, why must humans name everything?”
A small smile lifted one corner of my mouth. “I don’t know. Maybe it gives them a sense of ownership.”
He gave a little snort as he grabbed his tail and twisted it between his two hands. “You said ‘them.’ Aren’t you human?”
His question made me stop. I hadn’t even noticed my choice of words. When I had lived in the Ivory Tower, Simon had taught me that I was no longer human, but after I left, I felt sure that he was wrong. I wasn’t so sure anymore. Maybe it was all the magic I had been using lately, the power coursing through my body, or even the echo of memories from Gaia’s garden, but I didn’t feel as if I belonged to that race any longer.
“I don’t think so,” I whispered. “I think it’s the same way that a vampire or lycanthrope is no longer human. They may have started out human, but in the end, they’re not.”
“Does that make you sad?”
I shrugged. My sense of identity was the least of my concerns. “It is what it is. Was Reave alone at this cave?” I abruptly changed the subject back to the reason I was standing in the middle of a gravel parking lot in Red River Gorge during the blackest part of the night. I didn’t want to think about my humanity, or the lack of it, when I was in the middle of hunting down another living creature.
“The bulk of his people have gathered there. Maybe you should wait. We can hide among the trees and wait until he is alone before attacking.”
“Can’t. He’s not going to leave his people. Right now he’s confident that I’m the only one who knows he’s the one with the information. He thinks that I won’t hunt him down while he’s surrounded by other Svartálfar.” Reave was almost right. Facing the dark elf nation alone was suicidal. They were warriors, born and bred. If the world didn’t stand on the brink of war, I might have considered Duff’s suggestion. But I couldn’t wait. Time was slipping away from me.
I did have one thing in my favor. The Svartálfar were fantastic liars and deceivers, Reave being among the worst. I was hoping to use that fact against him.
“Time for you to head back to your own people. I need to handle this alone.”
Duff’s face crumpled as he looked over his shoulder, back the way he’d come, and then at me. He was debating following me. Hobgoblins were sneaky little devils that could get in and out of most places using a mixture of magic and cunning.
“If anyone has a good shot at capturing you, it’s the Svartálfar and we both know it,” I said with a frown. “I won’t be able to help you if things get ugly. Even if I survive this, I won’t be the only warlock in the area. Get out of here. Tell your friend that we’re even now.”
Duff nodded. Lifting higher into the air, he gave me a little wave with a sad look before disappearing into the woods.
I was alone in the darkness, which now seemed to crowd closer despite the glowing orb hanging overhead. The wind ruffled the leaves and the sound of chirping crickets and frogs could be heard, but the world I knew slipped away from me. There was no rush of cars, no electric hum of appliances, no shuffling of people’s footsteps or the brush of fabric. I was a warlock alone in the domain of the elves.
Tapping down the fear clawing at my heart, I took a deep breath and drew in a swell of the energy circling around me. The spell was a simple one. I had been to this cave on more than one occasion, but I had always walked the long trail back to it. That, I would not survive tonight. The path was a narrow one, with a steep mountain on one side of it and a sharp drop-off on the other side. The trail ended in a type of bowl as you stepped into the cradled embrace of a wall of rock on three sides and a thick copse of trees directly behind you. While the trail was long and winding, the worst part was the climb up to the cave I had always called Rock Coliseum, as the ascent was a steep bank of broken rocks that slid out from underfoot as you climbed. There weren’t many places that were worse for a fight with a dark elf in Red River Gorge.
I released the energy with a word. It swirled around me before plunging through my chest. The glowing orb went out and darkness consumed the world. A second later, I was speeding through the trees, but I couldn’t feel the biting wind or the sharp brush of tree branches as I passed. I was reduced to little more than energy as I flew to my destination almost as fast as a thought.
My flight came to a screeching halt and my feet settled on a large flat stone at the bottom of the sharp rise to the cave. Again, I raised my cupped hands to my face and blew, creating another light orb, but this time, when I flung it out into the sky, it multiplied until more than a dozen hung in the air, lighting the area. The dark elves stepped silently out from behind trees and stood in the black mouth of the opening in the rocks that formed the cave.
“Hear me, King of the Svartálfar, I have no quarrel with your people. Send out Reave and I will leave without striking at them,” I shouted. My voice bounced off the high rock walls and echoed back toward me before becoming tangled in the line of trees at my back. For nearly a minute, there was only the sound of the wind in the trees. I could see the dark elves within the shadows created by my orbs, but no one made a sound. They waited to hear the decision of their leader.
“Quite brave of you, warlock, to come to our home alone,” one Svartálfar called down to me from the edge of the opening. He was a large man with a shock of white running through his long black hair. His voice wasn’t soft and melodious like Reave’s, but rough and coarse like a piece of splintered wood. “While I’m sure you’re powerful, we do have you outnumbered. You may kill some of us, but you won’t kill all of us before we get you.”
With a wave of my hands, I rose in the air until I was eye level with the old king, but hovering in open air. “I have no wish to slaughter your people. I want only Reave.”
“Ah . . . but as much as I hate to admit it at times, Reave is one of my people. He’s proven to be useful, so I find myself reluctant to hand him over to you.” The king’s face was sharp and angular, lined with deep scars. One long scar slashed down through his left eye, leaving it a blind milky white. Unlike those of the Summer and Winter Courts, the kings and queens of the Svartálfar weren’t born to their roles. To rule the dark elves, you took the position by force and you defended it until another stole it from you.
“Would you give him in trade for a service rendered?” I asked.
The question gave the old king pause as he stared at me skeptically. “What service would you offer?”
“It has come to my attention that the elves have been cursed with a rather nasty spell over the past several decades, long before even the start of the Great War. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
The king was perfectly still, as if he was made of marble, but there was a tension in that stillness that said I definitely had his attention. There was movement deep in the shadows behind him and I had a feeling that it was Reave, but I couldn’t see the figure clearly.
“You’ve been having trouble bearing children,” I continued in an even voice as if I were trying to put him in a trance. “More and more years pass between the birth of offspring. Your people are dying, going extinct without the need for a long, bloody war. The Ivory Towers will wipe all the elves from this world without needing to fight you.”
I cocked my head to the side as I stared at him, a new thought coming to my mind. “That’s why you’ve risked coming so close to the Summer Court. You’re desperate for children, so you’ve decided what? Steal members from the Summer Court to bear children? That must have been a hard decision, to willingly mix your bloodlines.”
“I don’t see how we’ve been left with any other choice.” The king’s voice was low, but there was a strong undercurrent of anger and hate boiling among his words. Despite the close relation between the three courts, there was no love between them. “As you’ve already said, great warlock, my people are fading away with no offspring to fill these woods. So, what’s your service? You’ve come to break the curse you set upon my people.”
“Unfortunately, because of the nature of the spell, I can’t undo it,” I admitted with a shrug. “However, I’ve spoken with someone who can. She’s already unraveled the curse and your people are free to repopulate the earth without being forced to sully your bloodline.” I was hoping that I was telling the truth. Gaia had said that she would meet with the Summer Court elves today and undo the spell. I was hoping that she could not only fix it in one day, but that she was going to help all the elves, including the dark elves. The only thing that was working in my favor was that the leader of the Svartálfar couldn’t immediately prove me a liar.
The king laughed, a cold sound that scraped along my arms and sent chills down my back. “Seeing as you are fixing a mess that your people made, I don’t see how I should feel obligated to give you anything.”
“My goal was to help the Summer Court. I didn’t have to help the Svartálfar, but I have.”
“And now you expect payment.”
I clenched my teeth. He was right and I felt like shit trying to force him into handing over Reave for fixing a curse that his people didn’t deserve in the first place. “I’m trying to give you an amicable solution to our problem.”
“It appears that you are the only one with a problem here, warlock, seeing as you’ve so kindly solved ours.” He chuckled, but there was nothing happy in that noise. “I’m feeling generous tonight. Leave now and we won’t kill you where you . . . float.” He finished with a wave of his hand.
“I can’t do that,” I said with a snarl. I didn’t want to kill the dark elves gathered around me, but I’d do it to get to Reave. “I can’t leave here without Reave. You hand him over to me now or you will find this valley flooded with warlocks and witches before you can even signal your people to attack me.”
“So you’ve moved from bribery to threats,” he said, sounding as if he were bored with the entire conversation.
“It’s no threat. Just a statement of fact. I can’t leave without him, and if you keep him, you risk the life of every last Svartálfar. The Towers are searching for an elf. They don’t yet know the elf they seek is Svartálfar. If I were to tell them, they would kill every dark elf on the planet rather than bother to search out their true target. You know this.”
I smiled at the king, a grim, cold thing as he glared at me. My voice dipped a little lower so that I was nearly whispering but everyone in the valley could hear me. “Or did Reave not tell you the true reason for his return to the bosom of his people? Didn’t you know that he’s the reason Indianapolis was destroyed?”
“Noooo!” The scream echoed throughout the cave before flying free into the night air. A tall, lithe body ran past the king and jumped from the edge of the cliff. There was no time to react as my mind struggled to accept that fact that Reave had thrown himself at me. I noticed the knife clenched in his fist a half second before his body crashed into mine. I grabbed his wrist and arm with both hands to stop him from plunging it into my chest, but I had no way to compensate for his hitting me. We flew backward into the darkness, smashing into tree branches as we fell to the earth in a tangle of struggling limbs. Pain exploded across my back as we hit a tree, while more pain slashed across my face as we passed branches. We had moved out of the light I had created, so I could no longer see Reave, but I had my hands on him, holding him away from me.
The impact of hitting hard earth and rocks threw us apart. Grinding my teeth against the pain, I rolled to my feet, eyes searching the woods for a sign of the damn dark elf. My heart pounded like mad and my breath was coming in shattered gasps. Pain seared through my chest with each inhale, making me think that one or more ribs were broken, but I couldn’t worry about it. I wasn’t sure if Reave would run or come at me again. He certainly had an advantage in fighting me in the woods, but it would be next to impossible to spot him if he ran.
The wind shifted and I twisted around to see a shadow lunging at me. The knife winked briefly in a shaft of light as he attempted to plunge it in my stomach. I sidestepped the blow, but Reave only turned and slashed the knife through the air. I raised my right hand to block his arm, but I wasn’t fast enough. The knife sliced through my wand, sending a massive jolt through my body. Breaking your wand sucked in the worst way, but you never wanted to be holding it when it happened. Any energy accumulated in that little instrument instantly shot back through the wielder.
I dropped the remains of the wand as everything became numb from my fingertips to my right shoulder. With my arm hanging limp at my side, I swung my left fist, hitting Reave on the side of the face with enough force to cause him to stumble past me. The deadweight was throwing me off balance and there was a buzzing in my head that wasn’t great for my concentration, but I was keeping a close eye on Reave now that I had him in sight again.
The dark elf turned toward me, knife raised. Everything in me screamed to cast a protective spell, but the jolt from the broken wand felt like it had fried a few circuits in my brain. I was worried that I’d only do more damage if I tried something before the buzzing passed, or worse, that nothing would happen.
Reave slashed at me with the knife, pushing me backward until I was pressed against a tree. He lunged again and overextended himself when he missed me and embedded the knife in the tree trunk beside my head. With a grunt, I kicked him in the stomach, sending him wheeling. As he tried to regain his balance, he tripped over a half-buried log and fell into the small clearing blanketed with golden light.
I followed after him into the light. The elf easily rolled to his feet and squared off against me. He didn’t look armed, but I wasn’t willing to stake my life on it. His black eyes were narrowed at me and spittle was running down his chin. Fear and anger were making him careless. It was the only reason that I was still alive after a hand-to-hand fight with a dark elf.
“Come on, warlock. Kill me,” he growled. “Or did you not reach that part in your training?”
“Don’t worry. They teach us how to skin a Svartálfar the first day,” I said with a mocking smile.
With a guttural cry, he charged me. My right arm was dead to me and my buzzing brain was like a hive of honey bees. I didn’t have a lot of options. As he drew close, I dropped into a baseball slide so that my foot slammed into his knees. The dark elf screamed in pain as he was thrown off balance. He flew through the air over me and landed on his face in the rocks and dirt several feet away. Reave rolled until his body crashed into another tree. His moans echoed through the silence. If I had hit him right, at least one knee was now hyperextended, leaving it completely useless. It also looked like he’d broken his nose and maybe an arm from that impact.
A part of me wanted to laugh. I’d spent the past few years studying different forms of martial arts, and it turned out to be my six years of playing interspecies softball that saved my life.
Pushing to my feet with my left hand, I remained in the middle of the circle of light, watching Reave’s ragged breathing. With a sigh, I drew in a trickle of energy and was instantly relieved to find that the buzzing steadily dimmed. The magic in my brain had rebalanced itself, so that I felt safe casting spells. Feeling was starting to come back into my right arm, but I didn’t welcome it because pain was replacing the numbness.
Lifting my left hand above my head, I sent a quick summon spell out into the ether before turning my full attention to Reave. I cast a second spell that lifted the elf out of the brush and held him above the ground before me. Blood poured down his face from his swollen nose and an array of scratches. His breathing was rough and shallow while his eyes remained unfocused, lost in the grips of severe pain.
Lightning forked and spiderwebbed across the sky, followed by a loud boom of thunder. The elves I could see jerked and stared at the sky, missing the sudden appearance of Gideon at my side. There was a sharp gasp when they noticed him. They shrank back into the shadows. Only the king remained standing in the open at the mouth of the cave.
“You look like hell.” Gideon’s eyes swept over my torn shirt and dirty jeans. He then looked briefly at Reave and gave a shrug. “Well, better than him at least.”
“Always a pleasure, Gideon,” I said sarcastically, feeling both exhausted and nervous. Step one of my plan was complete: capture Reave. The hard part was coming next: survive a meeting with the council.
“I need you to do me a favor,” I said, pulling my thoughts free of my growing fears. “Call an emergency meeting of the council.” Gideon didn’t move a muscle. I was asking a lot. I was putting his life at risk because he was supposed to be the one policing me. “It’s okay. You’re taking me . . . with him.”
The warlock’s eyes darted to Reave, who was starting to sweat despite the chill in the air. “He’s the one?”
“Yeah.”
For a second, rage filled Gideon’s cold, gray eyes but the rest of his face was like stone. He turned those hard eyes on me. “Are you sure?”
He wasn’t asking if I was sure Reave was the culprit. He was wondering about my decision to go before the council. I shrugged. “We both know I don’t have a choice.”
“Do you have your wand on you?”
A sigh escaped me as I looked over my shoulder at the dark woods. I was half tempted to call the broken pieces to me, but there was no point. The magic from the wand had already discharged back into my body. The only thing resting on the forest floor was a pair of broken sticks. “No. No wand.”
“Good.” Gideon reached over and placed a hand on my shoulder, preparing to teleport both me and Reave to whichever Tower was going to hold the meeting. By now, the information would have come back to Gideon. I could have done it myself, but I was afraid that if I announced that I was coming to the Towers, they’d ambush me and kill me on sight.
“Wait!” I shouted, and stepped away from Gideon while staring up at where the king was watching us. “I’m taking Reave and I will be sure the Towers know he acted alone, but . . .” I frowned, feeling helpless. “Well, it’s the Towers we’re talking about. If I were you, I’d move my people tonight.”
The king nodded, then stepped away from the edge of the cliff and disappeared into the shadows of the cave. He would move his people, disappearing deep into the forestlands of the surrounding area to protect them from any potential retaliation from the Towers. I was praying the council would be content with Reave’s life. And potentially mine.
I walked back over to Gideon and nodded. The warlock placed a firm hand on my shoulder, giving it a slight squeeze before the world went dark as we crossed a vast distance in a heartbeat. I said a silent prayer to Lady Luck that she might see me through this nightmare. I was doing the one thing that I swore I would never do. I was willingly walking back into the lion’s den after I’d barely escaped with my life the first time. Letting the Svartálfar kill me was starting to sound pretty damn good right about now.