Fairy Magic (3 page)

Only because the supernaturals had been smart enough to duck rather than stand in the middle of the stage shooting at everyone like the Rambo squad.

“Ah, Marks, but you’re forgetting one thing,” Detective Jordan said, his smile easy and professional. “This establishment is owned by Mr. Oren Willowspell, the fairy who called us in for aid when the safety of his establishment was threatened by those armed intruders.” He waved his hand toward the chained humans. “Under Article 6, Section 6 of the Supernatural Decree of 1967, an attack on supernatural land and property clearly falls to our jurisdiction.”

Detective Marks’s pleasant face soured. “It has yet to be proven that humans initiated the attack.”

“Come now, Marks. We both know what the video footage will show.” Detective Jordan flashed her another dazzling fairy smile. “These humans are the aggressors, not the victims.” He glanced at Naomi. “Ms. Garland, you are free to go.”

“She is a suspect,” Detective Marks protested.

“Not in our investigation.” He slid a card out of his jacket and passed it to Naomi. “Get out of here. Send your statement to me.”

“Detective Jordan, this is an outrage,” Detective Marks barked at him.

As Naomi slipped away, the two detectives entered into a full-out regulations war, shooting quotes from the Supernatural Decree rulebook like they were magic bullets. Without so much as a thank you from anyone, she walked toward her car. Her night was ruined. She hadn’t found out anything about the hybrids, her clothes were torn, and her head still hurt from its unfortunate encounter with G.I. Jane’s fist.

Proving that any night was just one maniac away from getting worse, a cloaked figure jumped out of the shadows into her path. His cloak flapped in the wind like black oil rolling over water—like it was possessed by a dark and ancient magic. With a smooth flick of his hand, he threw his cloak off of him. It dissolved in the air, melting into a thick fog that shrouded the street.

Even in the mist, the man shone out with angelic brilliance. With long dark hair and pale skin, he was handsome—well, in a Lord of Darkness sort of way. His pale wooden bow contrasted against the dark threads of his black clothing. A gust of magical wind swirled his hair up into the air, exposing his pointed ears. Wings, beautifully dark, slid out of his back, their black feathers fluttering in the breeze. If you looked up ‘dark fairy’ in the dictionary, there would be a picture of this guy.

The dark fairy darted forward, his movements as fluid as water. Magic poured out of him in a gush of midnight light. The mist closed in around Naomi, the jaws of death opening to consume her magic. She shot a blast of Fairy Dust into the mist, igniting it with fire from a lighter she carried around. She was still working on getting her elemental magic to cooperate. Maybe it never would. Until she could master fire, she had to depend on more mundane means for her pyromania needs.

Her burning Fairy Dust snapped against the dark fairy’s fog. The particles of mist dissolved, turning back into a cloak. As the dark fabric fell to the curb, the dark fairy laughed. Fairy Dust shot out of his hands. Dark—almost black—it ripped through the air toward her. She ducked out of the way. It slid past her, so close, so cold, like the icy kiss of death. The Dust came back around like a swarm of black diamond bees. Naomi had never seen magic like it before. It was almost as though his magic was alive. She spun and shot, blasting the black cloud with pink Dust. The bonds between the beads of his magic split open with a howl, and the black Dust turned pink.

“Fantastic,” the dark fairy said as she gaped at the dispersing smoke.

Whatever was going on here, Naomi had the feeling he was toying with her. Dark fairies were known for their twisted sense of humor.

“Perfect,” he said, beginning to circle her.

Naomi turned to face him, but she was too slow. Moving as fast as a vampire, he blasted her with magic that she couldn’t evade. Like a net of magic, glistening like strands of black diamonds, the mist swallowed her in its grasp. Hot fire burned her blood, and glyphs blossomed up from her skin, pulsing blue and bright.

“You are just the person for the job,” the dark fairy declared, his voice rasping like bottled darkness.

Then he vanished in a cloud of magic. The cloud rolled over Naomi, pinning her feet to the ground. A force—heavy and blunt—tugged at every fiber of magic inside of her, twisting and contorting it into a tangled nest of broken threads. Tremors rippled across her body like a flag caught in the wind. Sulfur burned her tongue, pouring down her throat in a river of invisible flames. She felt like she was caught in a whirlwind of pain, her skin slowly but surely being peeled from her flesh. And just as she thought she couldn’t take the pressure anymore—that her head would implode from the sheer force of it—the magic swallowed her whole.

CHAPTER THREE

The Fire Plains

NAOMI’S KNEES HIT a patch of blackened grass. Taking a deep breath, she inhaled air heavy with burning stone and rotting wood. Above, the sky was dark with crimson light. A hot, dry wind cut through the open prairie, rustling against spiky rose bushes with black leaves and pink blossoms. Past the bushes, some hundred yards away, waited a forest of whispering blue and light purple leaves. It all looked so alien—like she’d been transported to a different world.

Naomi rose slowly, the blackened patch where she stood the only sanctuary in a field of tall grass that looked like it had been crafted from tiny green razor blades. A twisted mouth of branches snarled as a nearby plant tried to bite a piece out of her leg. She backed away from it, the sharp grass kissing her calves.

The ground shook beneath her feet like a giant’s war hammer. A chorus of howls echoed on the wind. She turned, and that’s when she saw them—an armada of beasts cutting across the sea of hell.

Men, dressed in animal skins and waving rods of dark wood, rode on the backs of the running beasts. Their howls were as wild—as eerily inhuman—as those of their beasts. Dozens of beast men surrounded Naomi. The biggest of them rode up to her on a mismatched hybrid beast. It looked like a grotesque cross between a werewolf and a horse.

“The Fire Plains belong to us, the Beast Masters,” his deep voice thundered. “You are trespassing.”

“Sorry,” Naomi said, her eyes locked on his hellish beast. It was so ugly that she couldn’t look away. “I don’t know how I got here. One moment I was fighting that dark fairy, then the next I was here.”

The beast master stroked the mane of his purring steed, obviously bored by her problems. “The price for trespassing is death.”

Yep, it really was one of those sort of days.

“However,” the beast master said, dark delight sliding across his cracked lips. He flashed her a crooked smile. “I am willing to be merciful for an attractive woman like you.”

His men raised their voices in a chorus of catcalls.

“How generous of you,” she said, smiling through the sinking feeling in her stomach. These beast men were bad news, and she had a pretty clear feeling of where this was headed.

The beast master swung his legs around and hopped off his beast. He swaggered over to her in drunken steps. “I am always generous.”

His men cheered and laughed.

The beast master reached out to touch her hair, rubbing it between his fingers. “So clean, so soft, so fresh.”

He was so close that Naomi could see the dirt tattooed into his skin. He didn’t smell so great either, like horse and wet dog mixed with stale alcohol and sweat.

“You are the perfect little thing to warm my bed tonight,” he said.

“Charming.” She smiled at him. “I have a name, you know.”

“So do I,” he said. “It’s Magnar. Remember it. You’ll need it later when I take you to my bed and you’re screaming my name.” His filthy hand reached for her.

She threw up her hands, blasting him with Fairy Dust. The magic exploded from her in a shockwave of raw power that she’d never felt before. Her magic slammed into the beast men, toppling them and their beasts over like a wall of dominoes. She didn’t wait to see if any of them got up. She took off running as fast as her feet could carry her, ignoring the hot, acid burn in her lungs and the tiny slashes of pain as razor-tipped grass cut into her leather pants.

Mountains loomed before Naomi, drawing her toward them. It was as though they were summoning her, promising protection from the plants and beasts of the wild. Blue and purple, the mountains stone in a majestic halo of moonlit magic. Pure white snow glistened atop their peaks. No, not snow. White ash. As she entered the wooded area of rainbow-dipped leaves at the base of the mountains, a gust of wind dumped a scoop of wet, heavy ash into her path. She stopped and listened.

The breeze was a soft rasp, its warm breath melting into her skin. No howls broke the whispering wind. No beastly stampede quaked the ground. Naomi leaned her back against one of the shiny iridescent silver-blue tree trunks, heaving in deep gulps of burning air. She’d lost the beast men—for now.

She allowed herself a few more seconds to rest, then pushed away from the tree. But as soon as she moved, an arrow shot toward her, nearly pinning her arm to the tree.

“Don’t move or the next arrow will go through your head,” a man’s voice echoed, booming at her from every direction.

Naomi stood perfectly still. If she didn’t know where he was, there was no way she could dodge his next arrow. Glowing golden eyes pierced the darkness, and a moment later he emerged from the shadows. Humming with power, the very trees seemed to bow before him as he strode toward her in measured steps. He was wearing only loose cloth pants that fell to his ankles and a pair of shoes that resembled slippers more than outdoor footwear. They seemed out of place in this wild land.

The crimson moonlight streamed down, bouncing off his bronze skin. A web of ancient magical tattoos covered one side of his chest, curling around his shoulder and down his arm past his elbow. The markings looked familiar somehow, but Naomi couldn’t recall where she’d seen them before. She
did
recognize the dragon patterns inside the tattoos. Only the most powerful mages dared to enchant their skin with dragon tattoos. Those tattoos were called the Dragon’s Mark. Legend said dragon tattoos fed on weaker magic, draining the host to the verge of death. Well, this mage didn’t look dead. Naomi’s eyes dipped, following the smooth muscles of his chest. Nope, not dead at all. In fact, there was enough life in him to fill a whole room of sexy dragon-marked men.

She lifted her gaze to meet his—and immediately regretted it. His eyes shone like liquid gold and burned with hard, unrelenting power. A magic as ancient as the dragons themselves burned inside of them, singing a mournful melody of days long since passed. Naomi found herself mesmerized by his magic—mesmerized and deeply afraid. Like standing before a terrible and beautiful predator, she couldn’t move. Her feet were frozen to the ground, her breath burning in her throat.

He was almost upon her. Even trapped inside of her fear, she couldn’t help but admire the sight of her imminent demise. The man with the dragon tattoos looked like an ancient volcano god. Sweat beaded his hairline, glistening like tiny crystal dewdrops on his short black hair. He moved with the forceful confidence of a wildfire about to consume everyone and everything in a river of flames. In other words, he looked good enough to eat. Skip-the-dinner-and-head-straight-for-the-dessert good. And he
still
had his arrow aimed at her head.

Well, no one was perfect.

“You have a shadow,” he said, as though that were the most curious thing he’d ever encountered.

“That’s strange?” she asked, every instinct in her body buzzing in panic as he stopped in front of her.

He towered over her, as large as a grizzly bear—no, a dragon. Definitely a dragon.

“People here don’t have shadows,” he said, indicating her moonlit shadow. “Here, people have no connection to the outside world. They have no or little magic. Every drop of magic has dripped from them, leeched slowly away over the centuries.”

“And where exactly is here?” she asked.

“Hell.”

Naomi looked around, his gaze darting from the ash snow to the pink leaves. “The spirit realm?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She cleared the hot ash from her throat. “How deep?”

“The second circle.”

The second of nine circles. As far as hell went, things could have been a lot worse.

“It looks so different here,” she commented. “The forest and mountains seem to go on forever.”

“In this realm, the Alps and the Black Forest have grown to cover much of central Europe,” he said. “Except for a few spots.”

“The Fire Plains,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Yes. If you’ve been there, I trust you’ve met the beast masters.”

He looked around, as though he expected them to jump out of the trees. Oddly, he didn’t look concerned by the prospect. No, he looked eager, like he’d enjoy nothing more than to confront the beast men and tear them to shreds with his bare hands. And he could probably do it too. God, he was terrifying.

She swallowed hard. “You’re not…”

“Dead?” Gold fire sparked in his eyes. “No. Like you, I’m very much alive. Alive and trapped here. How did you come to be in this realm?”

“I’m not sure how I got here.” Or whether she could trust him. She left off that last bit. After all, it was rude to insult someone she’d just met—especially if that someone was a big, scary dragon.

A shrill cry cut through the night. A chorus of howls and yelps answered it.

“The beast men,” Naomi said. “They are tracking me.”

He shook his head. “No, they are tracking me,” he said, pivoting to shoot an arrow through the head of a beast as it broke through the bushes.

Brown beasts poured out of the trees, dozens upon dozens of them. These were smaller than the wolf horses Naomi had met earlier on the Fire Plains. They looked like normal hellhounds. Normal hellhounds—those were two words she’d never expected to use together in a sentence.

The beasts snapped at them, forcing them back. They didn’t seem overly concerned with the arrows her dragon companion shot at him. He dropped his bow and drew his sword, slashing at the hellhounds in a flurry of picture perfect strikes. Naomi considered herself pretty good with a sword, but even if she studied from now until the next century, she’d never be half as good as he was. There was just a perfect, fluid flow to his movements, as though he were one with the sword, as though it were part of him.