Ashes of Honor: An October Daye Novel (30 page)

My lunge had been surprising enough that we were almost out of the ring before the nearest Cait Sidhe snarled and raked his claws across my belly, freeing a flood of warmth down my front. It felt like more than just blood was trying to slip out of me. I forced myself to keep running. My wounds might heal fast, but no one ever said they wouldn’t hurt.

Chelsea’s eyes widened as she saw us running toward her. The smell of smoke and lilies grew stronger, her magic writhing through the air. She was getting ready to jump again.

“Chelsea, wait!” I shouted. “Take us with you! Your mother sent us!”

If I thought her eyes were wide before, it was nothing compared to what they were now. The blood loss was slowing me down. Tybalt surged forward, dragging me with him, and we reached Chelsea just before the smell of smoke and lilies became thick enough to be cloying. I slumped forward, my vision going blurry—and then it was the world that was going blurry, and it was the world
that was gone, replaced by the short-lived, furious shrieks of the Cait Sidhe.

And everything was the smell of smoke and lilies, and there was blood everywhere, and I closed my eyes and let the darkness—the darkness, and Chelsea, who was finally found now that I was on the verge of being lost—carry me away.

E
VERYTHING SMELLED LIKE BLOOD and nothing hurt when I opened my eyes on the star-splashed Annwn sky. The inside of my mouth tasted like blood and bracken—not the most appealing combination ever. I pushed myself to my elbows, trying to swallow the taste away, and realized I was lying on top of something Tybalt-shaped.

“Crap!” I rolled to the side, landing on my ass in the brush. Since nothing hurt, I looked down at myself, doing a quick check for injuries.

Claw marks shredded the front of my shirt, revealing pale strips of skin behind dark brown fabric that had been white when I put it on. My jeans were three shades darker than they’d been earlier, and my head was spinning. I heal fast. These days, I can recover from damn near any injury that doesn’t kill me. That doesn’t make me invincible, and the amount of energy it had taken my body to knit itself back together was clearly taking its toll.

I looked up again. “How long—?”

“I don’t know,” said Tybalt, sitting up and smiling at me. It was a pained, weary expression, but it looked real. “I was unconscious for the first part of it. Before you panic further, my injuries were superficial, unlike yours.
Please try not to get yourself gutted again. It’s hard on my heart.” He closed his eyes.

He was lying. I could smell too much of his blood for him to be telling the truth. And there was nothing I could do about it without getting us out of here. “We were both going to get worse than gutted if we didn’t run for—Chelsea!” I scrambled to my feet. My head throbbed, protesting the movement. “Where did she go?”

“Here,” said a meek voice. I spun to see the dark-haired girl with Etienne’s eyes standing waist-deep in the heather, a wary, hopeful look on her face. “Did my mother really send you?”

“Your mother
and
your father,” I said.

Her eyes widened. “My what?” she squeaked.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best approach. I’m never the most subtle person in the world. Massive physical trauma and blood loss turn out not to help. “Chelsea, look—”

“Are you working with the people who stole me?” she demanded. The smell of her magic was beginning to curl through the air around us.

If she jumped, not only would Tybalt and I be stranded in Annwn until we could find a way out, but we might never find her again. And Tybalt wouldn’t heal like I did. “Chelsea, wait. Please, wait. We’re not with the people who took you, I swear. We’re trying to help.” I pushed my hair back, showing her the point of my ear. “If we were kidnapping you, would I be showing you what I really am?”

“A better question: would she have felt the need to bleed quite so much to lend her claim veracity?” Tybalt climbed stiffly to his feet. At least he could stand. “While my dear companion is occasionally dense, she is rarely stupid to the degree that sort of gesture implies.”

“Nice ‘rarely,’” I said.

He inclined his head. “I felt that truth would be better received than polite falsehood.”

Chelsea giggled. It was a short-lived sound, and when I looked back to her, she seemed faintly stunned, as if
her laughter were somehow surprising. She’d lost her glasses somewhere, between the kidnapping and the running away. Without them, her resemblance to Etienne was clear. No one who knew him would be able to look at her and not guess they were related.

“I’m October,” I said. “You can call me Toby. Most people do.”

“I don’t, as a rule,” said Tybalt.

“That’s because you’re not people,” I said. “This is Tybalt. He’s a King of Cats. You can ignore most of the things he says.”

“I would bow, but given my current condition, I fear I would injure myself,” said Tybalt. “It is a pleasure to meet you at last, Miss Chelsea. You have quite a few people direly concerned for your well-being.”

“What—what are you?” The smell of Chelsea’s magic faded. “You’re not like the ones who…you’re not like
them
.” It was clear from the way she stumbled and stressed her words that she was talking about her kidnappers. “But you’re not human, either. You’re like me.”

“Tybalt’s what we call ‘Cait Sidhe’—the fairy cats. Which explains the attitude. And the eyes.”

“Meow,” said Tybalt, deadpan.

I snorted, and continued, “I’m Dóchas Sidhe.”

“You’re Sidhe?” Chelsea asked. “Mom always said my dad was one of the Sidhe, and they’d come for me if we weren’t careful.” Her face fell. “I guess I wasn’t careful enough.”

“We’re related,” I said, inwardly cursing Etienne—again—for getting involved with a folklore professor. Human folklore gets too much right and too much wrong at the same time. It’s hard to tell people you’re not planning to curse their cows and steal their children when every fairy tale they’ve ever read tells them that’s exactly what you’re planning to do. “Your dad isn’t Sidhe, Chelsea. He’s Tuatha de Dannan, and he’s very worried about you right now.”

Chelsea’s eyes narrowed. “If he’s so worried about me, where has he been my whole life?”

“That’s something you’re going to need to talk to your mother about. Just please, trust me.” I looked to Tybalt. He was still bleeding, but not as much; I hoped that was a good thing. Turning back to Chelsea, I said, “We really appreciate you getting us out of there before, Chelsea. Do you think you could take us somewhere a little less totally deserted? My friend needs medical attention.”

“I didn’t know I was going to get anyone out of anywhere!” she protested. “I don’t even know where I’m going half the time! I just wind up there, and then people grab me, or try to stick me with needles, or tell me they’re my friends and don’t I want them to keep being my friends.” She spread her arms, gesturing to the landscape. “I don’t even know where we are now, but did you see those stars? This isn’t Earth! We’re not on Earth anymore!”

“Annwn,” said Tybalt. “Some call it the land of the dead. Some call it the land of the blessed. Many centuries ago, a part of Faerie called it home.”

Chelsea froze. “We’re in Fairyland?” she whispered.

“You’ve been in Fairyland for a while, Chelsea,” I said. “It has a lot of different parts. The Court of Cats, for one, and the Fire Kingdoms, for another.”

“Is that where all the lava came from?” she asked.

“We wouldn’t call that the Snow Kingdoms,” I said, earning another of her brief-lived smiles. “You’re opening doors deeper and deeper into Faerie, and you have to stop. It’s not safe for you. It’s not safe for anyone.”

“Is that why there’s no one else here?”

“Among other reasons,” said Tybalt.

“I can’t control where we go. Mostly I wind up in places I’ve already been, whether I want to go there or not. We could wind up right back where we were, with those people who were trying to hurt you before.” Her eyes widened again. “Why were they trying to hurt you? What did you do?”

Maeve preserve me from the mood swings of high-strung teenage girls. “We didn’t
do
anything,” I began. “We…”

“I pursued an association with a woman outside my Court, and some of my subjects took umbrage,” said Tybalt. I stopped talking. He continued, “It is an unfortunate truth of the Court of Cats that we do not, as a rule, play gently with one another. When I did not oblige their request to focus my attentions on them, and them alone, they decided the appropriate course of action would be to depose me, that I might be replaced with someone more agreeable.”

“They tried to kill you because you liked a girl?” asked Chelsea.

Tybalt looked toward me. “Yes,” he said mildly. “They did.”

I reddened. Turning my attention back to Chelsea, I said, “We
need
to get out of here. Please, can you at least try?”

“We could end up anywhere,” she said miserably. “Totally anywhere.”

I paused. Chelsea hadn’t been coming to find us, but she’d found us all the same, just when we needed a miracle to get us out of the situation alive. She’d managed to take us back to one of the only truly safe, empty places in Faerie. Annwn had no resident monsters, not since Oberon sealed the doors.

And Li Qin, back at Tamed Lightning, bent luck.

“Try,” I said.

Chelsea swallowed. Then she raised her hands, the smell of sycamore smoke and calla lilies gathering around her. When she spread her hands, a circle appeared, apparently cut out of the air. Through it, I could see the lawn at Tamed Lightning, complete with picnic tables and frothy white lace-o’-dreams growing in the grass where you would normally expect to find mortal clover.

“Thank Oberon,” I muttered. “Come on. You, too, Chelsea. There are some people here you should meet, and we can call your mother and let her know that you’re okay.” And I could go out to the car while she was still calm, and get some of Walther’s power-dampening solution before she could jump away again.

We’d found her. We needed to keep her if we possibly could.

Tybalt was first through the portal, largely because I shoved him. He gave me a look that was half amusement, half aggravated dignity and stepped onto the lawn on the other side. I followed. Once I was through, I turned to beckon to Chelsea.

“Come on,” I said.

“Okay,” she replied, and stepped through. I
saw
her step through. She entered the glowing circle just as Tybalt and I had.

Unlike the two of us, she didn’t emerge out the other side.

The portal remained open for a moment, showing the moon-washed fields of Annwn. In that moment, I smelled apples and snowdrops. Then the portal vanished, leaving us looking at the rear of the company’s main building.

“Well,” I said. “
That
didn’t work.”
Riordan has her. Riordan has her again, and I can’t tell Tybalt, because he needs medical care, and he needs it fast…

“No,” said Tybalt. “It did not.” He grimaced. “Loath as I am to distract from the important business of resuming our wild goose chase, might we find some soap and water first? I need to wash these cuts before I run the risk of infection.”

“We’re finding you a first aid kit,” I said firmly, taking his arm. “Come on. I think there’s one in the cafeteria.” If there wasn’t, April would notice our arrival and come to find out what we were doing back. She could tell me where to find some bandages and antiseptic cream.

There are times I wish Faerie had more healers, or that my particular healing talents extended to people other than myself. Since I still can’t stand the sight of blood, I’m basically useless for anything more involved than smearing Neosporin on a scrape and calling it good.

Tybalt wasn’t quite staggering, but he was close. I tried to tighten my grip on his arm without being too obvious about it. He shot me a sharp look. “I am not going to
drop dead on the lawn. It would be crass to die without at least saying hello first.”

“Oddly, not that reassured.” I kept pulling him along. “Samson tried to
kill
us.”

“Yes,” said Tybalt dryly. “I noticed.”

“No, I mean—he really tried to kill us. Both of us. Not just you, which would be forgivable under the Law.” Succession in the Court of Cats is often fatal. As a consequence, the Cait Sidhe are considered exempt from Oberon’s Law as long as they stick to killing each other. A Cait Sidhe killed by another of his or her kind isn’t considered a murder victim so much as, well…bad timing. If Samson had killed me, on the other hand…“Even if the Queen wanted to hand out fiefdoms and cookies, I’m pretty sure Sylvester would insist on something being done.”

“Among others, yes. You have a surprising number of willing noble patrons. Even so, you must understand…Samson allowed you to be brought into the line of fire not because he thought he could get away with it, but because he didn’t care.” Tybalt’s expression turned grave. “The intent was almost certainly to send us both running into the shadows, where our deaths would go unremarked—and my death would be less likely to reverse itself.” Seeing my bewilderment, he explained, “A King or Queen who dies on the Shadow Roads—not after falling off them, but truly on them—remains dead. The magic that restores us can’t find us in the dark.”