Sorceress Hunting (A Gargoyle and Sorceress Tale Book 3) (24 page)

Anna stood and began to pace. “I’m all for warning my
people so they can defend themselves, but they aren’t going to just agree to
this alliance, not for days and days. If at all. Even then, they are going to
want assurances. Not to mentions samples and specimens to study.”

Gregory tilted his head thoughtfully. “Then we will
give them that.”

“Why would we agree to such? You’ve all seen what the
humans did to Whitethorn and Goswin.” The banshee stood, preparing to leave.

Anna gave a hoarse cough. “It’s too late. We humans
already know other non-humans are roaming the forest. There isn’t going to be
something called common sense or reason, or peaceful co-existence. Even if
you’re willing to show goodwill on your part—which I do not see a lot of here
at the table—peaceful coexistence will be a long way off.”

Lillian found herself agreeing with many of the
human’s points.

Gran came over and leaned a hip against the table,
looking down at Anna. “That’s where a bit of old-fashioned Coven persuasive
magic will come in handy.”

“You’re crazy,” Anna challenged but leaned back and
gave her head a shake, “nuts, but I’ll try to convince my superiors Gryton is
so scary, we need an emergency response team hunting him down ASAP. Anything
else that happens after is out of my hands.”

Gran grinned. “Don’t worry dear. Coven magic will help
smooth the rough edges. At least enough they won’t shoot or dissect you on
sight.”

“That’s very reassuring, thanks.”

Again, Lillian found herself sympathizing with the
human, and thinking this plan sounded about as well thought out as one of her
own.

“This is a stupid plan,” Anna mumbled as she walked at
the edge of the forest, cloaked in shadow magic. “I’m going to get locked in a
cage for the rest of my life—make that short life.”

“I won’t let that happen,” Shadowlight said in a
cheerful tone.

“You’ll be in the cage next to me, drugged out of your
mind. Just how are you going to rescue me then? I’m curious.”

“No cage will hold me,” he countered, far too excited
at the thought of infiltrating HQ to see reason.

“Having you here is even stupider than the plan cooked
up by Gran and the demigod.” She frowned. “Don’t come crying to me when you get
a tranquilizer dart in the ass.”

He huffed and stalked away a few paces, still close
enough to hide her approach from the patrols walking the perimeter, but far
enough away for her to gather he was upset at her.

“I’m sorry, but I still think this is a bad idea, we
shouldn’t involve kids in this mission.” She directed the last at Vivian.

“And you’re….how old again?” Gran arched an eyebrow at
her.

“Almost three times his age.”

“Hmmm, a sage old twenty-two, yes?”

“At least I’m an adult. I’m a military brat, third
generation.” Anna continued her march, annoyance fueling her strides. “I’ve got
older brothers in the forces too. Been training long before I enlisted.
Shadowlight’s a kid. He shouldn’t be here.”

Gran huffed, rather like a gargoyle’s sound of
annoyance. “It hardly matters what we think or want. If we’d left him behind,
he would have followed. Besides, this way, if Commander Gryton wants to try for
Shadowlight a second time, he’ll have to go through an entire military camp on
high alert to get him.” Gran ducked under a low-hanging branch, and then looked
back, “Strange as it might seem, this is the safest place for our young friend.
That’s why Darkness and Gregory agreed to send him here. Even his mother
agrees.”

Well that decided it. Anything that old battle axe agreed
with, Anna had to automatically oppose.

“Darkness will be with us every step of the way. He
won’t allow his son to be harmed by the humans even if he does get caught.

Anna still wasn’t reassured. Darkness didn’t have the
best track record as far as she was concerned.

And one fully grown gargoyle, no matter how skilled
and experienced, wasn’t a match for what they were walking into.

He just wasn’t.

“Oh, stop worrying,” Gran hissed at last, “and have
some faith for once.”

“Fine, ask me again in a few hours. I’ve got lots of
faith.” Faith that their asses would be in cages.

*****

The first checkpoint was twenty feet ahead.

Darkness, Vivian, and Shadowlight hung back another
twenty feet behind her, still firmly cloaked in shadows. For the moment Anna
was, too. Shadowlight was awaiting her signal to drop the shielding magic
cloaking her.

He’d promised to keep a physical barrier in place,
encircling her body in case anyone got trigger happy. Anna appreciated the
added layer of protection, but was more worried for the young gargoyle.

Suddenly appearing in the middle of a base that
appeared to be both edgy and on high alert did seem like a good way to get
shot.

She glanced around one more time, hoping to see
someone from her unit. She’d much prefer to be taken in by one of her own. It
might minimize the manhandling, and Major Resnick always seemed able to get the
gears turning faster.

If she could convince him of the Fae’s good
intentions, maybe he would champion her cause.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t one familiar face in her
immediate vicinity.

At least she had gargoyle back up. They’d promised to
pull her out if it looked like she couldn’t convince the other humans.

Ah hell.

What really bothered her was the fact that the people
she’d once relied upon, she could now no longer trust to have her back. That
tore her up inside.

“Let’s get this over with.” She waved to Shadowlight,
their agreed upon signal. A slight tingle and what felt a bit like water
flowing over her exposed skin was the only warning before the shadow magic
cloaking her vanished. A shout of warning from the nearest soldier caused a
riot of activity, and suddenly two dozen guns were pointed at her.

With her hands held above her head, she shouted her
name over a chorus of commands to get on the ground.

“I have an important message for Major Resnick. I need
to speak with Major Resnick.”

There was more shouting of ‘get on the ground’.

With a sigh, she dropped to her knees.

This was going to be one long damned day.

*****

After much shouting of orders, marching at gunpoint,
and a few painful prods to redirect her in the direction they wanted her to go,
Anna finally arrived at her present location.

A nice, roomy, cage with clear walls, probably made of
some ballistic glass-type compound. She’d been ordered to tie herself to the
only piece of furniture, a metal bunk with no mattress, situated in the center
of the cage. Its four stout legs were screwed into the cage’s floor. Zip tying
her ankles to the bench legs was easy enough, but how the hell was she supposed
to tie both hands behind her back?

So she’d asked.

In the end, she tied them in the front and used her
teeth to secure the tie.

It was stupid.

But she also admired how they’d learned not to touch
anything they found in the forest. For all they knew, she might have been a
Riven. But she wasn’t, damn it. Now she sat in a brightly lit cage, tied hand
and foot, while several soldiers and a number of scientists looked on.

Great.

She imagined more persons of importance were watching
her from behind the windows of the second floor offices and other viewing rooms
which circled the arena floor.

Above her head, laying belly down upon the roof of her
clear prison, Shadowlight had taken up the best position to watch the goings-on
below. She had to constantly remind herself to not look up and give his
position away.

There were two other cages on the floor with hers. One
was intact. The other looked like it had shared a dance with a wrecking ball.

Darkness and Gran sat on the ceiling of the intact cage.

Anna forced her eyes away from their direction too.

“If you won’t send Major Resnick, I’ll just start
shouting my message until I lose my voice.”

No response.

“I am Corporal Anna Mackenzie. The night of the town-wide
masquerade I was attacked by creatures called the Riven. They are straight out
of your worst nightmare.”

Still no response from her audience, so she continued.
“Their bite is part contagion and part venom. Once you’re bitten, you start to
transform into one of them. They are as evil as it comes. Like a rabid animal,
but one that retains enough intelligence to be calculating. I was bitten by one
of these little monsters several times. The only reason I’m not one of them is
because there was something else in the forest that night hunting them.”

More silence. No, wait, there was a familiar thump of
booted footsteps coming from outside in the hall. The person halted. She heard
the whispering of voices. A crackle of a radio.

She continued her report to the room even though her
attention was on whoever was coming down that hall. “The one hunting the Riven
found and saved me instead.”

More whispering just outside the room’s main double
doors.

There was a slight squeak of a door opening, a change
in the air currents, and then the sound of several more boots joining the first
set. Major Resnick came into view accompanied by some other upper brass.

Well, maybe she’d gotten someone’s attention after
all.

“And does this he have a name?” Major Resnick asked.

Anna nodded, “He goes by the name Shadowlight. As you
can guess, he’s not from around here. Neither are the Riven.”

“Does this…Shadowlight…come from the same place as
these Riven?”

“Yes, but they are natural enemies. Here’s the
kicker.” Anna cleared her throat wondering if she was about to lose whatever
credibility she might still have in their eyes but figured she might as well
release the big white elephant into the room.

“They are not of earth. They are from the Magic
Realm.”

There, I just kissed away any credibility, Anna
thought with dry humor.

Resnick’s nostrils flared slightly, but that was it.
He held his silence for several moments.

No one else said a word though the scientists standing
near the back of the room were tapping away on their tablets.

“This Shadowlight told you this? And you just believed
him?”

“Well yes. Here’s the thing. He’s a gargoyle. He has
the wings, tail, and horns to back up his claim. Oh, and his blood is toxic to
the Riven. Gargoyles serve the Light, and the Riven, the opposite.” She laughed
at Resnick’s expression. “That takes some getting used to, sir. Magic. Not a
hoax. Not space aliens. Two warring factions from another realm and we’re just
catching some of the fallout. It’s only going to get worse.”

She was going to be hoarse long before she was done
talking.

Shadowlight watched from his perch and yawned for the
fourth time. All they did was talk.

And talk.

Talk in loud voices. Talk in hushed voices. Talk in
tiny whispers between each other when they didn’t want Anna to hear. Talk on
radios or other devices to yet other humans in other rooms.

They talked, but did not listen. Were they deaf?

Anna was sounding tired and hoarse. He couldn’t blame
her. They asked the same things over and over again, as if they didn’t have the
intelligence to remember the answers the first ten times.

His father said they did it to wear down the human and
to try to catch her in a lie, but it wasn’t working because she’d told them
nothing but the truth. A truth they didn’t want to hear.

Shadowlight stood and stretched, circling the
dimensions of the cage’s roof, looking for the impossible: a more comfortable
position.

Anna pretended to stretch her shoulders and neck,
using the move to hide her true purpose: to send a dagger sharp look his way.

He sighed and flopped his haunches back down on the
surface, flicking the tip of his tail so Anna would know he was getting tired
of being invisible and doing nothing.

Hunger was starting to gnaw at his belly. It had been
several hours since he’d last eaten, and his body had burned through many of
its reserves during healing.

His father looked bored as well. Gran might have been
bored had she not been weaving the spells to keep the humans calm and willing
to talk.

He frowned. Gran’s spells were working too well. The
humans were going to talk each other to death.

“So this gargoyle you call Shadowlight healed you with
his blood to rid you of this so-called Riven’s taint. How do we know one is any
better than the other? Or that this Shadowlight wasn’t just some construct
created by your delirious mind to make sense of what was happening to you?”

It was the male scientist by the name of Fleming who made
that last remark. He was the most doubtful, having trouble accepting magic was
real. He wanted to blame all the events on something called aliens. As if magic
was a figment of a weak mind.

“Have you any proof to back up your claims?”

“What?” Anna barked out a harsh laugh. “The claws and
teeth aren’t enough?”

“They are anomalies certainly. But magic? No. I’m sure
there is a better explanation.”

“What about the sidhe and the sprite you captured and
then lost. The kid told me about that.”

“An as yet undiscovered species.”

“Oh, come on,” Anna hissed. “They are not originally
from this world. They came from the Magic Realm long ago.”

“There is no such thing as magic.”

Another scientist and two of the military advisors who
had been part of an earlier discussion looked like they were ready to start
another back and forth debate.

Shadowlight was sure he’d perish if he had to listen
to another one of their long-winded debates.

“Human,” he called down to the greatest doubter, the
scientist with the grey-peppered hair. “What will it take to make you realize
Anna has spoken nothing but the truth?” Shadowlight dropped his cloaking magic
and tilted his head as he waited for the human’s response.

As Lillian would have said, they did not disappoint.

There was a wave of noise and motion, and every gun
was suddenly pointed at him instead of Anna in the cage.

Over it all he could hear Anna swearing and shouting.

“Hold. Hold fire! He’s bulletproof. They’ll ricochet.
He’s protected by magic. Don’t fire.”

Shadowlight merely held his position and let the
humans sort themselves out. The room grew still once more, with the scientists
and other persons of importance shoved to the back of the room while the
soldiers with guns came forward. Shadowlight was mildly surprised none of the
humans had used their projectile weapons upon him yet.

Which was good, since Anna might be right. Once his
magic deflected the bullets, there was no telling where they’d end up—possibly
in a human. That wouldn’t be good for what Gran called negotiations.

The one called Resnick had held his position a few
feet in front of the cage. It was actually very brave or foolhardy, as he was
within easy jumping distance of Shadowlight’s position.

His tail flicked playfully at the thought.

“Don’t you dare!” Anna hollered at him from below, her
voice muffled by the thick cage walls. “You’ll start a firefight for sure.”

“Aw, humans are no fun.”

“These humans aren’t, no. What they are is ‘twitchy as
hell’ and understandably so. Don’t you dare move.” Anna transferred her gaze
from him to other targets out in the room. “I know he's big and scary, and far
from harmless, but he’s just a kid. He’s only eight years old.”

The one called Resnick made a series of hand gestures.

“Hey! Whoa, wait.” Anna shouted, “Think of this as
peace talks. No shooting or tranquilizing the delegates.”

Resnick glared at Anna.

“The kid isn’t alone. If you do something drastic to
the kid, his dad is going to do something drastic back, sir!”

Shadowlight noticed a few pairs of eyes drifted away
from him to scan for other threats, but they always returned to him every few
seconds. To his left Gran and Darkness were shifting, likely preparing to do
something to draw attention away from him.

A voice rose from several places at once, and he
decided it came from one of the communication devices.

“Subdue and capture the specimen.”

Gran shot up, her magic flaring around her. “Oh, for
the love of Light. Boys and their guns.” She muttered a few choice words as she
stepped off the top of the cage and dropped the eight-foot distance to the
ground like she was stepping off her back patio. She landed gracefully and
brought her staff to the ground as her concealment spell vanished.

Magic flashed outward from her staff, flying across
the room faster than the eye could follow. By the exclamations the soldiers
made as their weapons vanished, they might now be a little less skeptical about
the existence of magic.

“Oh, peace. I mean you no harm.” Gran walked over to
Anna’s cage and tapped on the front. It disappeared on the second rap, and then
Anna’s zip-ties vanished. “However, cages and gunpoint is no way to begin an
alliance.”

She made her way toward a side door. “A conference
room is a much nicer place to talk. I just happen to know there is a spacious
one through that door, up a flight of stairs, and a short walk down a hall.”
Two soldiers approached her, knives at the ready.

“Really, boys?” Gran asked them in a pleasant tone.
“Need another demonstration?”

Shadowlight hopped down from his perch and walked up
behind Anna where she was attempting to reason with three soldiers trying to
corner her.

The soldiers backed off at his approach, deciding Anna
wasn’t an easy snatch-and-grab.

By this time, Gran had convinced her two soldiers to
go elsewhere. Though Shadowlight realized it might not have been Gran’s threat
which drove them off. Everyone still in the room was evacuating.

Gran laughed. “Good to know I can still clear a room.”

“This was pointless,” Darkness hissed from the shadows
near Shadowlight’s right side. “The humans are too blinded by their fear and
prejudices to be of any use.”

“Oh, my tall, winged friend,” Gran said and gestured
to the lab at large. “This was just the start. I’m still softening them up.
They will be more reasonable after they get over their shock.”

Anna made a choking sound, which might have been a
cough, he wasn’t certain. “When they get over their shock, they are going to
come at us with everything they have.”

Shadowlight heard his father’s growl.

“Ah, my dear doubters, you will see.”

With that Gran led the way to the conference room.

*****

Anna sat in a big comfortable meeting room chair—one
of the ones that rolled. She rocked the chair from side to side as she chanted
‘we’re all going to die’ under her breath.

No one else seemed to believe her.

Gran sat in the chair across from her. Darkness
stalked the room’s outer walls, and Shadowlight played with the other chairs,
pushing them around the table. By the cant of his widespread ears, he was
clearly delighted by rolling chairs.

“Shadowlight, come here.” Anna caught herself about to
pat her thigh and froze. Gran, however, missed nothing and grinned at her near
social guffaw.

“Nice catch,” Gran whispered in a conspirator’s tone.

Shadowlight galloped over to her and pushed two of the
chairs closer together. He then proceeded to sprawl across both seats.

“That’s not going to…,” Gran started to say just as
both chairs rolled in opposite directions, and Shadowlight landed on the floor
with a disgruntled huff. “…end well.”

Anna folded her arms on the table and dropped her head
down on them. “They’re not just going to shoot us dead. Oh no. We’re all going
to get dissected, and then frozen or pickled or something.”

“Frozen?” Shadowlight asked, sounding entirely
unconcerned.

“Or maybe they’ll use gas, less damage to the bodies
that way. No, wait, some politician is going to be pissing in his pants and
order a missile strike. Yeah, hellfire missiles for us.”

“Oh, hush,” Gran said, “Lillian and Gregory are on
drone duty, and the unicorn and pooka are ready as well. As masters of
deception themselves, they are astute at sensing and locating human devices
that, shall we say, don’t want to be found.”

“The who and the what? And is that your roundabout way
of saying some of your gang can detect tech hidden by stealth technologies?”

“Never mind dear, just remember we have our own air
and ground forces capable of taking out nasty things. The drones are unmanned,
which will make them fun target practice for some of the other Fae if this
escalates into something hostile.”

“You’re all crazy. I thought it was just the kid
because he’s a kid. Nope, you’re all…” Anna halted mid-sentence and turned
toward the meeting room’s north door.

Darkness was already there, and Shadowlight took up a
protective stance next to Anna’s shoulder.

Gran turned her chair toward the sound of footsteps.

Anna was holding her breath. It was a bad habit she’d
been relapsing into these last few days.

A knock came, firm and sharp—an actual knock, not the
sharp crack of a door being kicked in by a heavy boot.

“Enter,” Gran called, “if you’re ready to listen.”

Major Resnick eased the door open, one hand pressed
against it, the other palm up, and then he advanced into the room. Darkness
retreated to the southeast corner. To make the Major feel more at ease?

It was a nice thought but wasted. Nothing was going to
put her CO at ease. Well, maybe the business end of one of his tranquilizer
darts.

“I’m here to relay messages to my superiors.” His eyes
scanned the gargoyles.

“Well, that’s a start.” Gran gestured at the chair
closest to Major Resnick. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

The chair she’d suggested was at the far end of the
table, about as far from the two gargoyles as he could get and still be sitting
at the table.

Resnick raised an eyebrow at Shadowlight as he still
stood near Anna’s shoulder.

“You sure it’s safe? That one looks like he thinks I’m
going to take away his favorite bone.”

Anna tracked up to Shadowlight and studied his
expression. “Oh, that’s a gargoyle version of a smile. He likes you. I think,”
Anna added a shrug to the end of her statement.

Shadowlight’s grin grew wider. “I like the brave.”

Major Resnick coughed into his fist. “You’ll like the
military then. Our ranks are filled with many brave men and women.”

“Good,” Gran piped up, “I’m hoping you and Shadowlight
will hit it off.”

Major Resnick arched an eyebrow again. Anna decided
her CO was going to sprain a facial muscle before the day was over.