Forest Moon Rising (15 page)

The cool lights beneath the water only heightened the shadows and obscured details. Other than two arms, two legs, a head, and a stout body the size of a young black bear, I couldn’t tell who or what addressed us. Then two red eyes opened and glowed with menace.

“Your reward, Donovan Estevez, is free passage back to where you came from. You have succeeded where my children have not. You have proved yourself a friend.”

“You’re a little out of your element here, Nörglein!” I yelled. I circled the Celestial Blade from my awkward position. “You have no power here, no trees to hide within, no paths to blur and confuse.”

“Ouch!” Donovan yelped and jumped a little as the twin half moon blades with tines extruding from the outside curve brushed his calves.

“Put me down if you value your body parts, Donovan Estevez.”

“If I put you down, will you try not to take off my head with that thing?”

“No guarantees.”

“Look, I’m trying to save you. I had no idea he set the fire and waited for you to run out the opposite door. You can’t fight in your condition.”

“Wanna make a bet? How about the Mercedes if I turn him into firewood.” I ignored, for now, the idea that Donovan knew of the plan.

Now, dahling. I need to taste demon blood now!
Scrap reminded me that my blade was alive and hungry.

Donovan bent his knees and ducked beneath me. “Not bloody likely,” he sneered.

I came up swinging.

The right hand blade met resistance, then flew free.

Scrap doesn’t usually have the energy to converse while in blade form.

Adrenaline is a marvelous drug. I forgot my fatigue, the aches and pains, my depression. Nothing existed but me, my blade, and the enemy. I spun in a slow circle, using my casted leg as an anchor and pivot, weaving my weapon up and down, back and forth.

The obscure form sulked behind the signpost that announced, “NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY.”

“Want another taste, Scrap?” I edged toward the elf in a kind of sliding lunge, right foot forward, slightly dragging the left.

“Estevez, you are to blame for this. I told you to deliver her subdued and rational. She is not like other women.”

“You bet your gnarly ass I’m not like other women. I kill demons. I don’t lie down and submit to rape by them.” I stumbled on an imperfection in the dry grass. I needed a moment to center myself again. I lost track of my quarry. I sought movement in the shadows.

My blood still ran hot.

“All you have to do is say my name, Warrior,” the Nörglein said sweetly from my right, the other side of the pool. “Say my name and I will disappear from your domain forever.” He slid away from the metal pole.

“I know that. I even know your name, thanks to my friend, Gollum.” That’s what was in the file he gave me, as well as some details about cycles. The Nörglettes were nearly ready to go out on their own, find their own patches of forest to terrorize. That’s why the attacks had increased in the last year. He needed a new batch of young to rear to his evil ways.

“But if I speak your name out loud so that you can hear it, you will disappear from my proximity, but not this dimension. You’ll just find another patch of forest and continue your sexual predation upon innocent women.” I flashed the blade and he ran around the hot tub.

With my weapon in my hands, I felt stronger, more confident, and less clumsy with the cast. I followed him, moving onto the cement walkway that encircled the expanses of water.

“No woman is innocent,” Donovan snorted behind me. Wisely, he stayed out of my reach, or I just might have taken him out too for that remark. I’d been tempted before when I discovered his lies and treachery. But in a serious fight, I trusted him to protect my back better than anyone else. He’d saved me from Sasquatch, Windago, and mutant black faeries.

The big question remained: Would he protect me from demons he found useful?

Ask me again why I couldn’t marry him.

“Modern women are no longer true women,” the Nörglein whined.

“You mean because we think for ourselves and defend ourselves against monsters like you? You mean we are no longer property to be traded back and forth as favors by men?” My temper pushed me closer and closer to my prey.

Another few steps and I’d have him.

Most demons attack. This guy looked for a way to run. “Coward. Sneak. Pervert!” I yelled at him.

Maybe he just looked for a way to trip me up like he had a few weeks ago in Forest Park.

No blackberry vines here to twine across my path at his command.

“Precisely. I have to use all my strength changing into the form of the man she will accept. My children are born weak because of that.”

“If your kind is so weak that they can only propagate by rape, then maybe they need to consider extinction.” I lunged, all my weight on my stable right leg, the cast anchoring my back foot. Scrap tasted blood again. Just a little from a scrape across his potbelly though.

The demon ducked and ran. “Who will defend and nurture the forest if there are no Nörglein to protect it?” he called over his shoulder.

He ran back toward the hotel, growing taller and more humanlike with each step. His height, his gait, and the swinging braid down his back, looked exactly like Donovan.

If I hadn’t known where Donovan stood, I couldn’t have told the difference. Could the Donovan Doreen argued with at registration have been the Nörglein in disguise?

I was beginning to suspect as much.

They smell different
, Scrap reminded me.
I know who is who. Now. Thursday’s sighting is undecided.

The demon favored his left arm. The one I’d cut with the Celestial Blade.

Donovan moved into my path, preventing me from following.

I ignored him and shifted my grip, bringing the shaft of the weapon to my shoulder for a javelin throw.

“I’m not part of this. I never agreed to help him. Just because he orders, doesn’t mean I do his bidding. I would never harm you,” Donovan pleaded. “You have to believe me on this, Tess. I’m not lying.”

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I’m not going to fall for that line of Blarney on your say so.” I adjusted my grip.

“Father, what’s going on? Everyone is leaving the games and the clanging noises hurt our ears.” A teen voice cracked up and down two octaves.

Suddenly, all five of the Nörglettes surrounded their sire and helped him into the sanctuary of the hotel. Dozens of people spilled out the doors—finally—in reaction to the fire alarm and the sirens in the distance. I couldn’t follow my prey. I couldn’t pursue this fight to the end.

My vows to the Sisterhood of the Celestial Blade demanded discretion in public. Protecting the innocent sometimes required keeping them ignorant of the nastier things that have invaded our dimension.

I slumped with exhaustion, hunger, and defeat. No more adrenaline to fuel me.

Scrap shrank back to his normal gray-green self.

“You okay, buddy?”

“Me, too.”

I took my mold in the form of a B&B salad in the garden café. That’s blue cheese and thin slices of rare roast beef on a bed of greens. Soft cheeses are not the best choice for lactose intolerance. Hard cheeses are better. But close to midnight after a frustrating confrontation with the Nörglein, I needed something special.

I’d pay for it in the wee small hours of the morning though. I didn’t care while my tongue savored the creamy sweet and tart of the blue cheese.

“Nice to see your appetite has returned,” Allie said, flopping onto the bench seat opposite me. She looked tired but in a happy sort of way. She’d enjoyed her first con. “We’ll have you up to snuff in no time.” She grabbed a hunk of beef slathered in blue cheese crumbles from my plate.

“What happened with the fire alarm?” I asked, then stuffed enough garlic toast into my mouth so I couldn’t speak for a few moments, and also to keep her from stealing it. I was as bad as the Nörglettes.

“The Fire Marshal threatened everyone at the dance with jail time if he didn’t get a confession from someone about who built the little campfire on the arse side of the building.” She grabbed my second piece of toast.

I almost slapped her hand away. On second thought, I knew I was having trouble finishing my fourth meal. My appetite had returned but not full force. My stomach must have shrunk during my months of gloom and doom.

“Did anyone confess?”

“Two girls in our quintet of forest elves.” She signaled the waitress for decaf coffee. She took hers black and strong enough to get up and walk off by itself. I think that’s how all cops drink coffee.

“Decaf?”

“I want to sleep tonight. In case you don’t remember, I’m driving two hundred miles tomorrow evening.”

I shrugged and speared more lettuce and cheese into my mouth.

“What did the local boys in blue do with the girls?”

“A stern lecture and release to Donovan, who claimed to be their father.”

“Was he favoring his left arm?”

“Yeah.” She suddenly sounded very interested and wary.

“That was the dark elf. Who happens to be their genetic father. I left Donovan unharmed. Reluctantly.”

“Let me guess, he’s playing both side against the middle.”

I nodded, chasing the last crumb of blue cheese around the plate.

“Miss, may I speak with you?” The middle brother in height of the Nörglettes stood beside my table, twisting his hands together. I think I’d placed him eldest in the lineup.

“Since you asked politely, pull up a chair.”

As he dragged a chair from a nearby table to the end of my booth, I laid the staff with the knobby end encased in blue leather with dangling bits of turquoise on knotted leather thongs along the table, within easy grasp.

Not a Celestial Blade, but still a weapon in trained hands.

The kid sat silently staring off into a distance I couldn’t fathom.

“Speak up, umm ... What is your name?”

“Oak,” he replied automatically, still only half here.

“That makes sense. You have the coloring of an oak tree. You’re broad in the shoulder. Deep roots anchoring you to life too, I bet.”

He roused a bit. “My brothers are Fir and Cedar. Taller, less stable, shallow root balls that spread wide but don’t hold up in a fierce wind. My sisters are Blackberry and Salal.”

“I’m surprised one isn’t named Fern or Bracken.”

He shrugged. “The next batch maybe.”

“So what do you need to talk about, Oak?” I fiddled with the leather wrappings on my staff.

Allie shifted uneasily, as if she missed her utility belt with gun, taser, flashlight, and handcuffs.

“Our father is sorely injured. We must take him home tonight, before the gaming ends. He cannot heal in this dry land. Our home is the deep, damp forest on the other side of the mountain. He needs moss and lichen and mushrooms to bind the wound. We will miss the end of the gaming. We will never know who wins. I will never know what fascinates my father in the dealers’ room.”

I nodded. The sooner the dark elf left the better. I needed about another week off before I healed completely and could defeat him.

The Celestial Blade is one of the few substances in this dimension that can penetrate demon hide. I hoped he’d need longer to heal than I.

“We do not understand why you hurt him so dire.” He looked up from studying his hands to capture my gaze.

I saw true perplexity there. This child was as much an innocent of my world as humans were of his.

“Do you understand how much he hurts his victims?”

“Victims?”

“The women he rapes to get more children.”

“I do not know this word rape.”

“It’s the most heinous crime I know of.” Allie leaned so that her face was only inches from his. “It’s a violation of a woman’s soul as well as her body and her dignity.”

“I do not understand. Trees must spread their pollen.”

“But trees allow their pollen to be carried by the wind or by insects. The fertilized seed lands where it may, grows without the helping hand of a parent. Our children must be reared carefully, with love, from the moment of conception,” I tried to explain.

“Women have the choice to decide if they will accept a man’s seed within their wombs. A woman has the right to choose the man who will plant a child within her body,” Allie took up the litany.

Something in what we said landed on fertile ground within his brain. I saw a light of understanding. Maybe not complete comprehension, but something for him to think about.

“I chose not to accept your father as the sire of a child,” I pressed him. “For him to force himself upon me is rape. If he tries it again I will kill him. Our laws will treat me lightly and not call his death much of a crime.”