changeling chronicles 03 - faerie realm (17 page)

“Don’t let me look him in the eyes again.” Vance paused. “I’d say he’s been drugged, but we can’t interrogate him in this state. Does Isabel have a knockout spell in your flat?”

“One to use on humans? Yeah.”

“Tell me where it is. I’ve been in your flat, so I should be able to move it here.”

“You can be that specific?” I thought. “Coffee table. Right at the back, in a box. We had to hide them from George.”

“Good enough.” A spell appeared in his hands.

“If Isabel was in the flat, you probably scared her to death,” I said.

“At least I didn’t leave roses.”

I gave a reluctant smile. His left hand was bleeding pretty badly, and for all I knew, he might have got cut up underneath his thick coat. Those claws were wicked sharp.

“What are you doing?” Wyatt demanded. His face was mostly human, but his body was half covered in black scales. His clawed hands reached, trying to get a hold onto the side of the packed earth.

Vance threw the knockout spell at him in answer. The part shifter slumped forwards.

Vance disappeared. Before I could blink, he’d reappeared again, his uncle’s unconscious form at his side. The Mage Lord staggered a little and Wyatt fell forward onto the grass.

Vance crouched beside his uncle. He looked a little paler than usual, the cuts on his face bleeding worse than ever.

“You should get a healing spell,” I said.

“Probably,” he muttered, flipping his uncle’s body over. “I’m not supposed to use my ability on this level right after shifting.”

“On this level…”

“Transporting people,” said Vance. “It uses more power than moving objects.”

“You do it all the time,” I pointed out, dropping to a crouch next to him.

“I’ve never been good at restraint.” His hands passed over his uncle, waving the stick-like object I’d seen him use before. Dispeller—it revealed and negated dangerous spells, on a minor scale. “I knew it.”

“Knew what?”

The dispeller vanished. Vance lifted the back of his uncle’s head. Seconds later, a bloodied thorn appeared in his hands.

“It’s some kind of talisman.”

“A talisman,” I repeated, a chill rushing up my back. No way. No freaking way.

Thorns, everywhere, digging into my skin.

“Scream, Ivy Lane,” a voice whispered. “Nobody will ever hear you.”

“Ivy?”

I shook my head. “Not a fan of thorns. Sorry. I’ll take it to Isabel. She might be able to figure out where it came from. But I won’t have it in the flat.”

Vance said, “I’ll hold onto it. We’ll take it to one of my fields.”

I opened my mouth and closed it. “Thanks. Our flat’s warded, but if this contains traces of the faerie it came from, it might bring them to us.”

“You’re sure it belongs to a faerie?”

“I can’t think of any witch charm that involves thorns,” I said. “Summer magic, though… there’s a controlling spell I’ve seen one use.”

Human hands grabbed my arms, tugging me deeper into the pit.

I shook the image away. Vance gave me a curious look. “Controlling spell… you mean, influencing emotions or impulses?”

“You could say that, yeah.” A familiar panic crept up my throat. “Avakis didn’t do it, but another faerie who collected humans did. It wasn’t sophisticated, like using a vow. If a person held one of her talismans, she could snap her fingers and they’d attack anyone she ordered them to.”

And I’d nearly died in her trap.

“This faerie,” said Vance. “Someone lured the other shifters outside…”

Oh. God.
Not her. Please, please not her.
I’d rather fight the Lady of the Tree without a weapon than go up against the Thorn Princess again.

My nails dug into my palms, drawing blood. Rational thoughts warred against instincts. I wanted to grab the thorn from Vance’s hand and grind it into dust.

“Let go of it,” I croaked. “Please. If it controls shifters, it might have got you already.”

Vance held out the thorn. “I’ll decontaminate it.”

“Mage spells don’t work against faeries.”

He turned to me, already holding the dispeller in his other hand. “How exactly did the talismans this other faerie used work?”

“She—used their blood. And her own. She…” I blinked hard, trying to knock the images away. “Each thorn was smeared with a drop of her blood and a drop of the person’s she wanted to control.”

“Then it’s built to control Wyatt, not me.” The dispeller flashed, and the blood staining the thorn disappeared. “It’s clean. I’ll dispose of it once we use the tracking spell, but right now, it’s our only possible link to the person behind this.”

I swallowed against my dry throat. “Yeah. I know.”

“We don’t have long until sunset,” said Vance, turning the thorn over in his hands. “We’ll test this first.”

“Back at mine,” I added. “Shit. Didn’t Rita say thorns were appearing everywhere? He must have tried to remove them, and…”

“Got caught,” said Vance. “This tomb, though…” He moved over to the hole in the ground. “Nothing seems to be buried down there.”

“You could displace the earth and find out.”

“Not right now,” he said. “I’ve overstretched my abilities already. I’ll take you home. If you want to use a tracking spell on these thorns today, you’ll have to be quick to do so before the sun sets.”

I nodded. “Are you going to leave him here, or…?”

“Leave him.” He scowled down at his uncle and shook his head again. “The faerie must have got him when he left the house. The wards can’t be broken.”

“So how did Velkas…”
take Anabel?
I hadn’t stopped to wonder before. Sure, Velkas had been a pure Sidhe lord, but even someone as powerful as him couldn’t cross an iron barrier. Except, apparently, in the middle of a faerie apocalypse.

Vance stopped, a frown pulling at his mouth. “I don’t know. I did change all the wards after they took Anabel, but Velkas found a loophole once already. Whatever it is, nobody’s been able to find out. Of course, he left no traces behind.”

Unease brewed inside me. “I… you don’t think it might have to do with the talisman, do you? If it’s true, and the sword contains his magic… would it counter iron?”

Vance’s jaw clenched. “Iron is poison to faeries, isn’t it? But if they don’t directly touch it, maybe their magic can remove a barrier.”

Oh. Oh, crap.
“If it’s true, then nowhere with iron barriers is safe as long as whoever’s carrying the talisman is still walking around.”

Vance’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “No. We need to find out the truth as quickly as possible. I’ll talk to the Chief again. He might know.”

“Yeah.” I stared down at Irene, re-sheathed at my waist. Fuck. The one advantage I’d always had over faeries was their weakness to iron. I’d counted on it, even more than my faerie magic.

Every human in the city was in danger if this killer faerie could disable iron wards.

Vance’s bloodied hand rested on my arm. “We’ll solve this, and make the killer pay.”

“They’re stronger than either of us, if the killer has the talisman. Even a Sidhe lord’s magic might not be able to stand up to it.”

“I hope we’re mistaken, but if we aren’t, you’re capable of bringing down a Sidhe. You’ve proved that already.”

Yeah. I’d done it twice. Except both times, the circumstances had been the same.

“Only in the Grey Vale,” I said. “If I went there—used my magic to open a way through, and somehow challenged the owner of the talisman in the place I got my power from…”

Vance’s grip on my arm tightened. “As a last resort.”

“Yeah.” I met his gaze, willing him to understand. “You know I’ll have to go back eventually, right? Even without this ridiculous promise, and the talisman. My magic belongs to that place. Maybe it’s acting up because it
wants
to go back.”

“No,” said Vance. “It wants an anchor. Didn’t the Chief say most Sidhe lords’ magic is contained within an object?”

“What, I need a talisman?” I looked down at Irene. “My sword’s made of iron. Wouldn’t work.”

“If
you
had a talisman, you’d be more than a match for whoever the killer is.”

Damn. Maybe he was right. But in order to find out, I’d need to talk to the Chief. Who hated my guts, and would hate the idea of me wielding a weapon made for faeries even more.

On the ground, Wyatt groaned. Vance looked back at me. “We should leave. Ready?”

I nodded.

We landed on the road outside my house, next to a bush of thorns. It grew thick and dense, obscuring the road.

Vance looked from the thorn in his hand to the bush and back again.

“What the hell?” I gasped.
Shit.

“The house is warded,” Vance said. “This area’s protected against evil intent, but the thorns…”

“Faeries can’t come into my flat. She—the killer—left them outside.”

Vance glared at the mess of thorns as though he expected them to rise up and attack us. Well, that wasn’t unlikely as far as Faerie went.

“Use a cleansing spell,” he said. “Clear the whole road. I’ll help.”

“Yeah.” Never mind the thorn he already carried… this was a direct attack. Maybe because he’d taken the thorn from Wyatt.

Of course the faeries knew where I lived. But I’d taken pains to make sure they never came close. All the precautions of the last few weeks had unravelled.

Blistering anger seared my palms and blue energy arced through the air, scissoring into the thorny hedge. It split clean in two, fragments breaking all over the road.

“Fucking. Faeries.” I stormed over to the nearest thicket, raised my hands, and brought magic crashing down like a hammer. Fury overtook my instincts and it was several moments before I realised I’d drawn an audience.

A car rumbled up behind me. “What’s
that?”
demanded the guy inside.

“You don’t wanna know,” I said, holding a palm full of magic. Of course, being human, he couldn’t see
how
I’d smashed up the hedge. “This road is closed.”

“On the orders of the Mage Lord,” said Vance, waving a hand and displacing another patch of thorns away.

“Shit, all right,” said the dude in the car, putting the vehicle in reverse.

“I thought you said you’d overtaxed your ability,” I said to Vance in an undertone.

“Only by transporting people.” He did look tired, though, and there were lines underneath his eyes that hadn’t been there before. “If you want to try the tracking spell today, you’ll have to do it here.”

“Speaking of spells, get a healing spell.” I pointed at his bloodied hands and face. “Honestly. You nag
me
about running off and getting into trouble.”

I turned around and saw Isabel staring at us from the road, with George at her side.

“Do I even want to know?” she asked.

“Probably not.” I left Vance displacing more thorns and approached her. “A faerie. It’s… a warning.” I glanced at George. Shit. I’d put a target on our flat by meddling. “Do you have a healing spell handy?”

“Don’t you? I thought you kept one in your inside pocket.”

“Oh yeah.” After all the times I’d been caught off guard without a healing spell, I’d stuck one in the same pocket I kept my phone in. “I need another for Vance.”

“And explosives,” said Isabel, leading George back to the flat.

“Not glitter!” I called after her.

I returned to the hedge, heart thumping. This was a warning, all right. Maybe someone had overheard me talking about how much I hated thorns.

Or maybe another faerie had slipped out of the Grey Vale.

Vance waved a hand. More thorns vanished. Sharp points flashed before my eyes.

Thorns thick and dripping with blood. My blood. I couldn’t move. The thorns pinned me into place, biting into my skin. A tendril wrapped around my right shoulder and squeezed. I screamed, hoarse and loud, but nobody heard me.

Isabel waved a hand in front of my face. I hadn’t even noticed she’d come up beside me. “Ivy? You’re zoning out.”

“Yeah. I hate thorns.” I shuddered. “Is that the healing spell?”

I took it, activating the blue band-shaped spell with a snap. Some of my aches and pains vanished. Another flash told me Vance had activated his. The way his hand automatically jumped to his left arm suggested he’d been bitten or scratched more than once. By his own uncle. Jesus. We had to stop whoever was targeting the shifters.

Unfortunately, the thorns proved resilient, and only Vance’s displacing ability could get rid of them. By the time the last thorn had vanished, the sun had disappeared in a golden haze behind the rooftops, and we’d had to turn away no fewer than fifteen cars who’d turned into the road to find the way blocked by thorns. The house sat on a cul-de-sac so we didn’t get too much traffic, but the mages would probably have to deal with a line of complainers demanding to know why magical thorns had been blocking the road.

“The council will be pissed with me.” I knelt to clean up the last of the discarded spells.

“I’ll take care of it.” Vance stood still, eyes closed. “That’s the last of them?”

“Yeah. You okay?”

“Don’t worry. Whatever caused me to shift drained a lot of my power. I’ll be fine tomorrow. You should go home.”

“Before another thorn monster attacks me.” I joked to ease the tightening in my chest. This situation kept getting more tangled. More—thorny. Ha. Too many problems, not enough time, and a death threat hanging over my head, possibly from the person behind the shifter deaths in the first place.

“Wish there was a way to make sure no shifters leave their territory tonight,” I said.

Vance nodded. “Mages are patrolling. They’ll call me if they see anything.”

Yeah. That’s what I’m scared of.
We needed answers
now,
but I couldn’t use the tracker on a faerie thorn inside our house. Not with George in there. Isabel had gone back into the flat to make sure he didn’t run outside, but I’d have to tell her the truth. I doubted Henry and Susie would ever trust us with babysitting again after this week.

“I don’t get it,” I said softly. “Thorns. They’re not the Lady of the Tree’s, even if she does have the talisman. Velkas’s blade can… if she has it, she can take life from others.”