The Danger of Destiny (14 page)

And then, that quickly, and with that much lack of compassion, I dismissed him. I didn't give a rat's ass that his cry got chopped off mid-note or that it was already turning into a choking rasp.

I didn't give a crap.

I was already rolling on my left hip, searching for his mistress. Because of the two, she was the bigger threat. She might have magic to match mine. She was—

Stars, she was the Gatekeeper.

 

Chapter Eight

I'm not sure if we said, “You!” in unison. It's possible, but there was a lot going on and in the end that became just another detail I never completely nailed down for the memory book.

I know we gaped at each other.

We did that much.

Then Mouse, who'd been making interesting choking, rasping noises behind me, decided tearing at his neck was useless and that it was time to put his all into the alternate option of flight. The boy got to his knees and started power-crawling away from the big bad, which in this case was me, Merry, and my magic.

My right arm had been torqued behind me—I'd rolled as far as I could onto my opposite hip in order to blast the Gatekeeper with the magic streaming from my left hand—and suddenly, without any warning, I found myself being rolled in the boy's direction.

Hell no.
I was not turning my back on the Gatekeeper. She was
not
going to make another clean getaway.

“Grab her too!” I told my magic.

There's nothing my Fae likes more than a good target, and as it turns out, she's very adept at multi-tasking. Two targets? No problem: I had two hands. My chest flared hot as she quickly split evenly between the two.

“She has magic!” the Gatekeeper screamed.

Well, duh.
Though having magic wasn't doing me a helluva lot of good. The boy was dragging me—
my leg, Goddess, my leg
—and Merry's chain was scoring into the back of my neck, and the Gatekeeper was struggling behind me, and with each one of her jerks my left arm flirted with the idea of separating from its socket.

It all pissed me off.

I counteracted the boy's retreat with a sudden lurch of my own, throwing myself backward so that I lay flat on my back. A second later, Mouse fell on top of me. His knee drove into my belly.

I hit him, right on top of his head. “Get off me!” He tried, but Merry was still very much engaged with torturing his nose and cheek. “Merry! Knock it off!” I shrieked. “I'm drowning here.”

Perhaps it was the tone, because she dropped Mouse as if he were the plague carrier of plague carriers.

Gasping, Mouse rolled right off me.

My leg felt wrong. All that sudden movement, plus the aborted jackknife I'd attempted when the mutt had kneed me … it had led to a distinct sense of wrongness. The sort of awful that compels one to look. But it was so hard to see because the Gatekeeper was thrashing about as if she were having a seizure and that kept jerking me around. But finally, I got up onto my elbow and looked down.

I saw the trap and my gaze recoiled, flitting over to safer territory. The bits of blood-tacked fur underneath the chain that was attached to the thing—
the evil biting thing
—and from there to small puddles of post-change effluence, and the long, raking claw marks made by a creature who'd tried to drag herself away from the thing—
the evil biting thing
—that had held her fast all night and still held her.

Yes. Still held her.

My gaze lurched back to the thing and to the piece of meat clamped between its jaws. And finally, I forced myself to behold my own flesh—and by that I mean the kind of pink, mangled hamburger stuff you're never supposed to see.

Oh my Goddess.

I looked away, past Mouse's shoulder, to the canopy of trees. Green leaves, tall trees. Trunks wide as an old sailing ship's mast. Bark. Boughs. Sun breaking through the long spars.
Focus on that. Give yourself time. Don't throw up. Don't turn girlie. And beyond all other things, don't let your chin crumple.

I knew I wouldn't come out of it without some scarring and had braced myself for some mangled skin, but never in my wildest dreams had I anticipated the bracelet of festering gaping holes.

Goddess,
holes
.

I took another shuddering glance. And when I saw the creamy glint of bone beneath the freakin' holes, my anger exploded.

I am part wolf, you know? That makes me stronger than I look. And I'm part Fae, which makes me prone to prissiness and acts of casual cruelty. And I'm indisputably a female with a mangled ankle, which needs no qualifier whatsoever.

This wolf-Fae-woman was on the point of nuclear fusion.

I flung my arms wide—spread open—just like my mum did whenever she was about to let forth a rant about kids who would not behave. My magic was still attached to Mouse by the neck and the Gatekeeper by her waist and thus we were still miserably tethered together, so they went for a very short ride.

A thud as Mouse tumbled to my right, and lighter thud as the Gatekeeper hit the dirt on my left.

I lay there, arms flung wide, flat on my back, chest heaving. And truthfully, I had zero concerns for their relative health. All I was thinking was,
Keep them off me,
and,
Oh sweet heavens, my leg.
It was a cease-fire—at least for me.

Until she croaked, “Kill her!”

Really?

Completely attuned to all the glories of me—magic, wolf-strength, girl-power—everything fell into place. I didn't have to think things through. I didn't have to speak to my magic and tell her to tighten up and get ready for the lift. I didn't have to question whether I had sufficient muscle mass to do what I wanted to do.

As Yoda taught, I thought not.

I simply did.

I raised both arms, and Mouse and the Gatekeeper went airborne. They dangled above me, living puppets kicking their heels. The boy's face was kind of purple. The Fae's boots stopped at her thick ankles. Interesting.

And then she said, “Foul creature!”

Ah, screw it.

I slapped my hands together and their noggins hit with an audible thump.

*   *   *

You really can knock some sense into someone, given enough reason and complete disregard for the subsequent demise of a few thousand of their brain cells. However, my strength had come from the same source that gives ninety-pound women enough muscle mass to lift Volkswagen Beetles off their beloved. And as we all know, that's usually both spectacular and short-lived.

When my arms began to tremble like they did that unfortunate time I tried Pilates, I went back to my original pose. Supine on my spine, arms flat out, right leg twisted horribly. I watched the sky—it was going to be a cloudless day—and listened to the hoarse rasp coming from Mouse. Grudgingly, I eased off on my magic, allowing the guy who was going to get me out of the trap a little air. However, I kept a pincer hold on the Gatekeeper's waist. I'd lost her once; I wouldn't lose her twice.

“Release me,” she said, and the line of magic tethering us gave a twitch.

“No,” I replied.

“I will free you if you let me go.”

“You'll do that anyhow,” I said. “I'm going to sit up. If either of you makes a sudden move that will cause me any grief—I'm talking the slightest level of irritation—I'm going to knock some sense into you again. Starting with you, Gatekeeper. Got that?”

I twisted my neck a tad and Merry's chain slipped from the groove it had cut into the nape of my neck. Another burst of sweet-pea scent. I was bleeding. Perversely, I blamed the Gatekeeper for that.

“I want this trap off me,” I told them.

“I can spring it,” said Mouse in a cracked whisper.

I rolled my head to squint at him. He was both younger and older than I thought. Listening to his bravado, I'd mentally pegged him at around sixteen. But now, taking in his stature and general air of malnourishment, I revised that estimate to either a short fourteen- or a tall twelve-year-old. He had an intelligent face and disordered, floppy hair that needed a wash.

“Do they feed you enough?” I asked, thinking about another mutt, one who was stolen from me at the age of twelve.

Mouse's brow pleated. “If I eat too much, I'll grow too much.”

“And why is that a problem?”

“My wolf will grow too strong.” Though Mouse didn't add “Are you daft?” to his reply, there had been a wealth of inflection to his comment. The statement lay there between us. An invisible insult.

“You didn't turn into your wolf last night? Are you too young?”

“I took the potion,” he rasped, clearly insulted. “Like any other mutt. And will do, until my mistress decides that I've grown to enough to become a threat and that it would be better to find a new mutt to do her chores.”

That had to suck.

I sat up, and a short moment later Mouse did too. I looked to my left. The Gatekeeper appeared dazed. “Are you going to give me any problems?” I asked her.

“Mutt,” she hissed at me.

Some people need visuals about mutts and their powers.

“Up,” I said wearily again, and merrily, merrily up she went. Her feet scissored; her voluminous skirts flapped.

“I am a Fae of royal birth!” she screeched, sharp little nails tearing at the unseen thing that cinched her waist so tightly.

More blah, blah, blah.

I twisted my wrist, and upside down my toy went, somehow reminding me of one of those wooden Russian dolls. Maybe it was the skirts; maybe it was the vest with its embroidered emblem. Or was it the stiff fringe of her bangs, peeping out from her kerchief? I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

“Can you make her bounce again?” asked Mouse.

I turned to look at him.

“Your eyes,” he said in a shocked whisper. “Only once before have I seen eyes like that. Pale as the green glass bottles in the mage's tower.” He reared back to sketch a hasty hex sign in the air.

“Now you're hurting my feelings,” I said.

Great.
The mutt knew both Lexi and the Black Mage. So much for a happy working situation. I sighed. “Listen up, you two. You're going to work together to free me from this trap. Then, you're going to put me on that pony. After that, you're going to take me where I want to go.”

“Where?” asked Mouse.

“Daniel's Rock.”

“I don't where it is,” he said far too quickly.

Dumb kid, trying to lie to a liar.

“You do, and you'll take me there. But first,” I said, gingerly turning to look at the overhang of rock where I'd left Ralph, “we're going to get me some clothing.”

*   *   *

The horse was not a horse but a pony that had spent many pleasurable hours at the feed trough. My inner thighs ached from hugging her fat sides. Seabiscuit didn't much care for being ridden by a half Fae, half Were with an injured leg—a disapproval she aired with periodic tail flicks—but she seemed otherwise content to plod along without much steering.

A good thing, because I couldn't hold on to her reins properly, my hands being otherwise occupied with the two tethers of magic that kept Mouse and his mistress from doing a runner. The female Fae was ahead of me, those small hands so capable of firing balyfire pinned to her hips by one revolution of my magic. A looser knot was looped around Mouse's waist.

The boy took better to the leash situation than the Gatekeeper, for the most part pretending that nothing restrained him. On the other hand, his mistress had affected a few “accidental” stumbles within the first quarter hour, likely to test the bound's strength.

And after that, she'd fallen silent.

I imagine she was cursing herself for not taking better advantage of the earlier escape opportunity.

When I'd forced them to take me back to the place where I'd left my clothing and Ralph, I'd realized that I couldn't bring them into the cave. They'd see the Royal Amulet. His presence in this world should be a secret—I understood that without fully knowing why I did.

So, I'd taken a calculated risk, severing my magic and using it to surround Mouse and the Gatekeeper in a fat coil that kept them secured to the tree growing just outside the mouth of the cave. I'd done it gambling that I could retrieve Ralph before they figured a way of sliding out of their temporary bonds.

I'd been right on that. It had taken less than a minute to jam His Royal Ass-hat into my jean pockets and only a couple more to get over the heave session incurred from yanking my pant leg over my savaged ankle.

When I'd shakily hopped out of the cave on one foot I'd been afraid that they'd be long gone, but they were still there. Mouse had turned red faced from his efforts to squirm free from the magic donut, but the Gatekeeper had stood unmoving, her eyes fixed speculatively on the mouth of the cave.

Who, me? Escape?
That had been the message written on her impassive face.

I suppose I was to deduce from that that she had no magic other than the ability to hurl fireballs. Yeah, right. Like she wasn't sitting on her hidden talents, hoping to ambush me later. I kept asking myself,
What else does she have? And why isn't she using it?

Food for thought.

I'd get right to unraveling that puzzler if I wasn't so damn sleepy. “Tired” didn't cover it—I was near stupid with fatigue. Brain muzzy, eyelids weighted. Not tired, drugged. The drowsiness was an unnecessary complication. What was with that? I'd been in worse situations. Okay, I'd suffered a nasty injury. But people had become terribly keen on killing me. Getting hit, punched, choked, or stabbed was becoming the norm. Facing injury no longer put me into the danger of going into shock.

As for being tired? I'd gone longer without a nap. Not willingly, but longer.