“Gotcha,” Baba whispered, and took hold of his hand so they walked through together, coming out the other side into an impossible land where everything looked the same, and yet indescribably different.
For starters, the sky was wrong. Three moons hung overhead, one of them slightly crooked as though it had fallen down and been put back up in a hurry. A light too dim to be sunlight but the wrong shade for night illuminated a stunning landscape of blue and purple trees; crimson grasses waving in a nonexistent breeze and dotted with flowers in colors he didn’t even have names for. Unusually shaped birds flung themselves through the tinted sky, eerie and beautiful, as if carving dusk out of day.
“Welcome to the Otherworld,” Baba said, letting go of his hand so she could pull her sword out of its scabbard. The long silvery length of it glittered dangerously in the moons’ cold radiance, and Baba herself suddenly looked like something out of a fairy tale; both more beautiful and more deadly than she had ever seemed on the other side.
Perversely, Liam only found her more attractive—magic of its own kind, since he wouldn’t have said that was possible.
“Wow,” he said, for lack of a better word.
Baba sparked a rare grin, becoming just Barbara again. “Pretty, isn’t it? I imagine it takes a bit of getting used to, when you’ve never been here before. Sadly, we don’t have time to let you adjust slowly. We need to find Maya before she does any more damage.”
Liam glanced around at the empty field and the trees that lay beyond it. There was no sign that anyone had ever walked here before them, not so much as a bent blade of grass or a hint of a path. “How?” he asked.
Grin widening, Baba pulled a long golden strand out of the velvet pouch hanging at her waist. It dangled from her fingers like something a poor miller’s daughter had spun out of straw. “Remember this?”
He peered at it, more confused than ever. “That’s the hair you took from Maya’s car, right?”
“This,” Baba stated triumphantly, “is one of Maya’s hairs.” She laid it out carefully on the flat of her sword, where it adhered like, well, magic. “Since it is a part of her, it will be drawn back to where it came from—and lead us straight to Maya, no matter where she’s hiding.”
Alexei guffawed, although Liam still didn’t understand, until Baba slowly swiveled in a semicircle, the sword held out straight in front of her like the divining rod Liam had once watched a gnarled old man use to locate a hidden spring. As it came even with a line of trees on either side of a shadowy lane, the strand of hair began to glow, dimming as the tip of the sword moved past, then brightening as she swung it back again.
“Handy,” Liam exclaimed, as they started off down a gentle slope toward the trees. “They never taught us that one in the police academy.”
A shrill cry broke through the quiet scene, and half a dozen centaurs charged out of the forest’s edge, razor-edged silver swords slicing the air before them. At their backs, a motley array of sharp-toothed, long-clawed nasties ran or crawled or flew toward the new arrivals. None of them looked friendly, and all of them looked quite capable of inflicting serious damage.
Liam swallowed hard and reached for his gun, trying to figure out the best place to aim on a part man, part horse. “Since I don’t have a sword, I hope my gun still works here.”
Baba nodded, her eyes focused on the enemy ahead. “In some ways, it will work better here than it does at home, since most Otherworld creatures can’t tolerate lead any more than they can cold iron.”
He blew out a breath, marginally relieved to know he still had a functioning weapon. He hadn’t been sure how the strange rules here might have affected something so strongly human in origin.
“Of course,” she added in a matter-of-fact tone, “most of the beings here have never been to your land, so they don’t even know what a gun is. They undoubtedly won’t be afraid of it until you actually shoot one of them.”
“Oh,” Liam said. “In that case, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” But that didn’t keep him from taking the weapon out and holding it in a firm grip. It might not scare the locals, but it sure as hell made him feel better.
Gregori nodded grimly at Baba, a wickedly bright silver scimitar in his hands. “You two go on and find the boy. We’ll take care of this lot.” He and the other two Riders started down the hill toward the oncoming horde, Alexei’s eyes bright with berserker glee.
Liam looked at Baba uncertainly. “Shouldn’t we help them? Three against dozens . . . it hardly seems fair.” Bloodcurdling cries rang out as the wave of creatures surged up around their three companions.