Honeyed Words (31 page)

“Correct,” he said, bowing slightly in her direction.

Skella smiled nervously and gave a quick nod in Bub’s direction before she turned back to me. “I saw it at the concert. The leader of The Harpers wore it.”

I remembered that armband. Thought it was cool. I’d have to ask Mr. Stone how he came by it. Did he know what he had?

I pointed above Bub’s head. “When Anezka showed me the amulet, it had a reaction to me, seemed to change when I held it. Any idea what that was about?”

“Its allegiance is in question,” he said matter-of-factly. “The amulet seeks a master who is both skilled in the ways of a maker, but also strong of will.” He looked embarrassed. “I fear it will forsake the fair Anezka.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

Worry painted Skella’s face. “That’s a problem.”

I pressed my thumb against my forehead. The runes had begun to throb.

“You serve the amulet. Don’t you understand how it works?”

“The creation occurred before he summoned me from my hive mother,” he said. “I am sorry I do not fully understand. Please do not stomp on my head again.”

He was a killing machine, and I think he was afraid of me. I studied him hard, not answering right away. Maybe not afraid, exactly, but intimidated somehow.

If he’d come to the amulet from his hive mother, he probably didn’t know the rules for his kind. How much did his previous masters understand either?

“I believe you,” I said, and Bub nodded his head once.

I stood up and walked to the fireplace. His behavior had started to shift. He was growing less erratic, calmer. I stepped forward, into his space. I wanted him to understand that I didn’t fear him—that I was the alpha around here. I learned that from the Dog Whisperer. Don’t tell.

As I expected, he stepped to the side. I opened the shadow box and pulled down the amulet. The chain was a nickel alloy, normal and plain. The amulet, on the other hand, vibrated with power.

I walked back to the couch and sat down. Neither Skella nor Bub had moved. I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees and looked at the amulet, dangling it from the chain in front of my face.

The runes looked the same, but it felt different. The power resonated with me, ebbed in time with my heartbeat. Had this been what tipped the scales with Anezka?

I held it out to Skella, but she tucked her hands under her arms and shook her head. “Nuh-uh,” she said. “That’s dark stuff. I don’t want to touch it.”

I rolled my eyes and sighed. Everyone was a wuss.

“Anezka doesn’t understand how this works, does she?”

“No,” Bub said emphatically. “She is too volatile, too erratic. When I’ve tried to give her hints, she has not understood.”

“If I claim this,” I said, grasping the amulet in my left fist, feeling the warm throbbing of the ceramic, gold, and steel against my flesh, “you would come to my calling?”

Bub nodded in the affirmative.

“And you would help keep the forge hot, the fires under control. Heat the metal evenly and generally manage the fire and flame?”

Again, he nodded.

“But, if there is no attempt to control things, you leak, allowing the passions to rise, is that correct? You enhance anger and passion, rage and…” I thought a moment. What else was ever described as fire? “Creativity?”

“You are correct,” he said. “I cannot give you what you do not already possess, but I can call it forth, draw out the emotion, the warp and the weave. I enhance what already exists.”

Interesting. He acted as an amplifier. No wonder Anezka ran so damn hot all the time. She couldn’t help it. I bet she rocked Justin and Flora’s world, though. No wonder Flora couldn’t hang around. This place was a regular inferno of emotions.

“But there is more,” he said quietly. “Something changed here, something unwholesome.”

I watched him. “When?”

“It was that man, Justin,” he said, the disdain in his voice. “I do not know, as I was banished to the forge for a period of time, but something happened in the spring, some great shift occurred here. Something that has broken Anezka.”

“Wait … I thought Justin had been gone a year or more.”

Bub shook his head. “He returned in the spring; he had something to show Anezka, something powerful.”

“What was it?” Skella asked with a squeak.

He shook his head. “I am ashamed that I do not know. She cast him out, or so she claims. I was free to roam the grounds again, but things were different, tainted.”

Things were pretty volatile around here. If they’d amped up recently, like in the spring, I wondered if they had anything to do with me reforging the sword. Could be a coincidence, but with Nidhogg being out of sorts, and the other dragons agitated, who knows? Whatever it was, things here were chaotic.

“Next time Anezka gets her panties in a twist, she’s gonna succeed in killing herself,” I said as bluntly as I could.

“That must not happen,” Bub said.

I didn’t think he even had tear ducts or anything to allow him to cry, but the thought seemed to make the little mouth breather sad.

“I like Anezka,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “But you’re not helping her. All this chaos around here is making her more crazy than she’d be otherwise.”

“Losing the baby won’t help,” Skella said.

Oy, she was right. I rubbed the spot on my forehead between my eyes.

“What baby?” Bub asked.

“She had a miscarriage,” I said quietly. “She’s off to the hospital.”

He rushed forward, slamming his clawed hands onto the coffee table, cutting grooves into the wood. “She was not pregnant!”

“But she was bleeding,” I said, looking over to Skella, who nodded in confirmation. “And you said she had something inside her, something that was sick.”

“I would know a child,” he said angrily. “Did I not witness her own birth? Was I not there the night her mother died bringing her into the world?”

What can you say to that, exactly. “Then what happened to her?”

“Perhaps.” He turned and slumped to the floor. For a moment he looked like he did just after I’d crunched his head. “She is a maker, after all.”

“Meaning what?” Skella asked, sliding to the edge of her seat.

“Meaning,” he said, staring into the fireplace, “perhaps she has taken the anger and the hurt, the lost love and the fear and created a child in her womb.” He turned halfway and pointed to the amulet in my hands. “Not a viable child, but something altogether different—using that.”

I dropped the amulet onto the floor, where it rang a hollow sound.

“Is that possible?”

“A powerful maker can do many things,” he said. “The dwarves could take a boar’s skin and create a living creature of gold that could fly and give off light.” He got up and turned to me, his elbow on the table. “I cannot see her die. Please help her.”

“What if I just broke the amulet?” I asked, pushing it across the floor a few inches with my foot.

“No,” he said, leaping to his feet.

I snatched the amulet from the floor, ready to command him to stop if he attacked. Instead, he wrung his head in his hands, scraping off scales under his thick black claws. He began to moan and pace.

What the hell? “Okay,” I said. “I won’t break it.”

He slumped to the floor, and his moaning subsided.

“Would it be so awful to be free of this place, to go home to your hive mates?” I asked him.

He didn’t move for a long time. I looked over to Skella, who just shrugged. “Maybe he’s afraid,” she whispered.

“I love her,” he croaked. “If you break the amulet, I will have no hold in this world.”

That wasn’t awkward. What did this creature know of love? Hell, I barely understood the rudimentary aspects of it myself. On the other hand, he’d been around for roughly five thousand years. Maybe he knew it when he saw it.

“Okay, we find a way to keep Anezka from killing herself, allow Bub to stay around—within parameters.” I glared at him, but he didn’t even flinch.

“What about my people?” Skella asked. “We need a plan to rescue them, right?”

“The dwarves who have captured your people are all smiths, right?”

Skella shrugged. “Most of them have given up many of the old ways, but there are those who work with fire and steel, yes. They are the ones who forged the chains that bind the boy, and the bars that hold my people.”

“Where there are smiths, there is flame.” I looked over at Bub. “I think he may be able to assist us in our little adventure.”

She eyed him dubiously. “I’m not so sure about him.”

“I can help you,” he said quickly. “While you may travel through mirrors, I can travel through flame.”

I gave Skella a smug smile. “See, that’s what I’m talking about.”

She rolled her eyes, but she didn’t argue.

First things first. We needed to get to Black Briar before they sent a search party after me.

“Okay, troops. Here’s what we are going to do. Skella, you go around and batten down the hatches. Lock the doors, windows, et cetera. Hell, water the plants, too. We are going on a road trip.”

“What shall I do?” Bub asked, standing up straight and tall.

“Give me a quick inventory,” I said. “I know about the shotgun, but I don’t understand the carvings on the stock or the carvings on the support beams in the carport.”

“Flora did that work,” he said. “She is an adept craftsperson but could not stand the situation here. It would have been better if she had stayed and that awful man had left, but life is full of missteps and incorrect choices.”

Man, did I know for choices. I could fill a book with second guesses and missed chances. “Tell me about the gun, then. Is there something special about it?”

“It is very powerful,” he said. “Flora had a way of collecting the energy here, focusing it and enhancing the items she worked. The protections on this house are a large part of her work. She channeled the power of the amulet into her work, and she didn’t even know it.”

Interesting. “Can I use that shotgun?”

He shrugged. “It is a weapon. There is no implied ownership. It will work for whomever wields it.”

Maybe I’d take it with me to Vancouver. Couldn’t hurt to have something besides the sword. Deidre used a shotgun in the battle with the giants—for a while anyway, before it failed with all the magic around. I bet this one was different.

I bundled the shotgun in a blanket and laid it in the trunk of my car. I transferred my dirty clothes into a garbage bag and added those in with the shotgun.

It was well after dark by the time I had the kids in the car. Bub called shotgun, ironically, so I made him ride in the trunk. Skella thought it was pretty hilarious.

I just didn’t want to explain to anyone who he was.

Before I pulled the door to, I picked up the amulet and slipped it into my pocket. I felt like I was betraying Anezka, but I needed to find a way to fix all this. What I needed was some expert advice on this little wonder.

Forty-five

We drove down to Evergreen Hospital. I had the radio on, letting the tired DJs over at the metal station prattle into the silence. Skella watched the traffic go by the window, and Bub seemed to be singing a lullaby of some sort. I could hear him when the DJs fell silent.

His song was sad and unnerving; I turned the radio down. Skella cocked her head to the side, listening, and we rode into the night serenaded by the lovesick eating machine in the trunk of my car.

It started raining before we cleared the pass, and the rhythmic slap of the windshield wipers and the hum of the tires on wet pavement accompanied Bub’s surprisingly sweet voice.

When we pulled into the parking garage at Evergreen, I turned the car off but did not get out.

“Gletts is with Katie and Julie,” I said, looking at Skella. “I don’t think Katie’s forgiven you, and I wouldn’t push it tonight, okay?

“Sure,” she said, continuing to look out the window. It took me a moment to realize she’d been watching the wing mirror all this time.

“Who are you watching?” I asked quietly.

“My grandmother,” she said. “She is an old woman, not used to the rough treatment of the dwarves.”

I patted her on the knee. “We’ll rescue them. I promise.”

“I know,” she said, turning to face me. “You killed the dragon that killed my parents. You wield the black blade. Your blood sings of battle and vengeance.”

I watched her, cautious. “What do you see?”

“There are those among my people who have a gift,” she said, turning to glance at the backseat and, by extension, Bub. “They have a way with animals and birds. One—an old man—older than my grandmother, he can call the fish from the sea.” She looked back at me, her face filled with awe and wonder. “But you can control fire, bend metal, such as the mightiest of the dwarves I have seen.” She paused, collecting a stray thought. “You will like my grandmother,” she said finally. “If she lives long enough for us to find them again.”

I watched her face, but she was lost in thought. I couldn’t reassure her any more than I already had, so I turned to face the back of the car.