"I hear all that you're saying, Storm, but think of all the power I have at my disposal back in Atlanta."
There was that dark chuckle again. "Who in their right mind in the Beladors or VIPER would stick their neck out for me besides you, Evalle? Just go." He rubbed his forehead. "I'm sorry."
He sounded so beaten. The man she loved was larger than life, greater than the gods and goddesses. She'd seen him overcome the impossible time and time again.
Frustration burned through her. If she had to leave him in this place, she wanted to make damn sure he could kill everything that dared to attack him until she could return. To do that, she needed to tap into his inner angry child.
She'd beg for his forgiveness later, but right now she wanted to see her warrior.
"How can you give up on us, Storm? You're willing to let Nadina win? Is she that much more important than me?"
His muscles tensed again and he started growling, a deep rumble of warning.
That was more like it.
She pushed again. "I gave you more credit than that. I pretty much told Macha to eat my boots when she tried to stop me from finding you. I'm here and I'm fighting, because I love you. I won't ever give up on you, but you're giving up on me and your father."
"Get. Out!" he snarled.
"Make me."
"Done." That ugly black chuckle rolled out of his throat then he lunged, body shifting into a jaguar the size of a bear with eyes glaring at her.
They were demon red.
Jaws opened wide enough to snap her head off.
Evalle shoved her hands up and screamed, "No!"
Could he touch her?
She had no kinetic power.
Howling erupted out in the demon parlor.
Icy fingers snatched her backwards before Storm's massive jaws would have slammed shut. The frigid spirit dragged Evalle through a tumbling vortex of dark swirls. Howling filled her ears then piled into every corner of her mind. She grabbed her head, screaming at the sensation of twisting and spinning through nothing.
All at once, the spinning and noise stopped.
Cold seeped deep into her bones and formed an icy layer on her skin, but it was blissfully quiet.
Chapter 13
Someone was slapping her face. Brina grabbed the wrists and opened her eyes, ready to kill her attacker.
Lanna's frightened face hovered over her. "Finally."
"Why are you hittin' me?"
"You would not come back. Your energy was drifting. I told you about problems with wanting to stay in dream."
Brina took the hand Lanna offered and stood up, searching her surroundings. "Where are we?"
If Lanna had looked frightened before, she sounded terrified now. "You do not remember that we are stuck in unknown realm?"
Brina reached up to her throbbing head and clutched it, which did nothing to stop the pounding. "Sort of. I remember you and ... teleporting, right?"
"Yes, but what about the dream. You went into deep sleep. Did you find someone and tell them what happened to us?"
"I can't remember." Visions of a man flickered in Brina's mind. Tzader. "I think I saw Tzader."
"Did he say anything?"
"I don't know, Lanna." She hadn't meant to sound so irritated, but she was struggling to figure out what was going on and Lanna kept pressing her for answers.
"Who is Tzader to you?"
Brina put both hands on her head, but the banging wouldn't stop. "He's with the Beladors."
"I meant, how important is he to you? Is he your lover?" Lanna asked with the sincerity of someone trying to discern an important detail.
Brina, on the other hand, didn't care for some young woman sticking her nose into Brina's private life. She stared ahead at nothing, thinking on that. Tzader was part of her private life. Oh, yes. They'd made love under a large tree, a spot they'd chosen as their secret meeting place as teens. But that was not something she was sharing with Lanna. "You're asking impertinent questions. I'll remind you that I'm ... " Brina paused, struggling to finish that sentence.
"You are Belador warrior queen."
"I know that!" Brina snapped, but her irritation was over the momentary lapse. So I'm a queen? No wonder Lanna was distressed. Brina's shoulders relaxed. "I was havin' a moment of confusion, but I'm fine now."
Relief poured off Lanna. "Thank goodness. I was very worried. But I still need to know if you told Tzader anything."
Brina couldn't honestly recall. She dug around in her mind, trying to pull up details and started shaking her head. "They should have found us by now. I'm a queen and you're Quinn's family, right?"
"Yes." Lanna whispered, but her eyes matched the fear in her voice when she said, "Maybe you should try to relax."
Images started flying through Brina's mind of Tzader and warriors fighting and someone throwing Noirre majik on her. Her body began shaking so hard she couldn't make it stop.
She stumbled to the side and Lanna grabbed her arm. "Lie down and I will help you sleep again."
"No!" Brina jerked away. A vision of Lanna jumping toward her while Brina was covered in Noirre bloomed in her mind. "Who are you? She backed up another step."
Lanna yelled, "I am Lanna. You know me. Come back. Do not move any more. I can hardly see you!"
Brina took another step back. "You attacked me in the castle. You're with the enemy."
"No. You are confused. Stop!" was the last thing Brina heard before the fog closed in around her.
Chapter 14
"You will awaken now!" yelled in Evalle's ear. She jumped at the threatening sound and opened her eyes to find Adrianna glaring at her.
"What?"
"Okay, you're really back." Adrianna stood up and shoved damp strands of hair off her shoulders.
Evalle rubbed her eyes and blinked further awake but the candles were glaring. She slapped at the ground around her. "Where are my sunglasses?"
"Over there." Adrianna pointed to where the glasses sat next to the altar several feet away.
Why am I over here? Evalle pushed to her feet and noticed the sweat streaming down both sides of Adrianna's face. "Was there a problem?"
"You might say that. You dragged a spirit back here with you."
"You didn't let it in, did you?"
"No, you let it in."
"Me? How was that my fault?"
Adrianna could sound pissy with the best of them. "Technically, this is all your fault since you're the one wanting to open a path to another realm. But to answer your question, you must have upset the spirit because it was bound so tightly to your arm I couldn't break the connection. If I hadn't figured out what to do, you would have stayed with the spirit."
Evalle shuddered at that possibility. "What happened?"
"I had seconds to either break you free or explain to Tzader why there was nothing left of you but an empty vessel. I used a spell to draw the spirit away from your body long enough for you to wake up. Once that happened, the spirit lost interest."
Looking around the clearing, Evalle asked, "Where is it?"
"Have no idea."
"Ah, crap. I can't let it go roaming free."
"Are you serious?" Adrianna asked. "This city is full of spirits. What's one more floating around?"
She had a point, but things like new spirits unleashed on Atlanta always came back to bite Evalle in the ass.
"Your turn to explain what happened," Adrianna ordered.
If Evalle shared a word about Storm's red demon eyes or how beaten he was mentally, someone would try to talk her out of going after him.
Not going to happen.
She said, "That witch doctor, Nadina, tricked him and now he's captured in this place full of demons."
"Has he turned into one?"
That was direct, but, unlike Storm, Adrianna was not a walking lie detector. Evalle said, "Not yet, but they're trying. I have to go back, but not in an astral projection."
"Where is he?"
"This huge cavern looking
place called Mitnal."
Adrianna stared past Evalle, thinking so hard tiny lines formed at the bridge of her nose. Then she looked up quickly at Evalle. "Storm's from South America, right?"
"Yes."
"I think Mitnal is known as land of the dead, but the one I'm thinking of is Aztec. It's the underworld and ruled by some guy Hunna or something."
"Hanhau," Evalle corrected.
Adrianna snapped her fingers. "That's him."
"Looks like a bad Halloween skeleton costume with an ugly owl's head."
"Hanhau can look like a pickle or a giant demon or anything else he wants. He's so old he's probably forgotten his original form."
"So how do I find that place again, but in my physical form?"
Adrianna scratched behind her ear, clearly stalling.
Evalle held up her hand. "Before you waste any time arguing with me, I'm going to get Storm and I need your help." She'd never begged, but there was a first time for everything. "Please."
"Argh!" Adrianna stalked around, hands in her hair agitating the blond mass. She shook her head, muttering to herself. When she finally settled down, she came back and said, "Fine. But no guarantees on either or both of you getting out. Got that?"
"Understood."
"First we have to find Nadina."
"Why?"
"Because if she managed to make a deal with Hanhau then use herself to bait a trap for capturing Storm, she knows how to get in and out of Mitnal. Any idea where she is?"
"Only that Storm said she was not currently in Mitnal. He thinks she's hiding somewhere safe."
Holding her chin with two fingers as she thought, Adrianna said, "Kai would know if Nadina was in our world and maybe even have an idea of how to find her."
"How long will it take to reach Kai again?"
"Depends."
"On what?" Evalle demanded.
"Whether you have to talk to her yourself or if you can keep from getting cranky if I talk to her."
Tough call on that, but Evalle was finding all kinds of new personal depths when it came to saving Storm. "You can ask her. I made the rounds on the way here to meet you tonight and found my best Nightstalker. He said he hadn't seen the witch doctor or heard any word of her in days, so if she's here in our world she's hiding like Storm said."
"When we do find her," Adrianna continued as she packed up her witch supplies with the precision of someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder, "Nadina is not going to be easy to corner, and it won't be easy to convince her to take you into Mitnal."
"She does not want to piss me off any more than she has."
"That's all good and fine, badass, but we need some major juice to pull this off."
Evalle lifted an eyebrow. "Are you saying she's more powerful than a Sterling witch?"
"Normally, no, but Hanhau is more powerful. If Nadina has cut a deal with him, I have no idea what we're up against."
"If we capture Nadina, can you cast a spell on her to do what you say?" Evalle asked.
"Probably, but she'd have to be incapacitated so that she couldn't bespell both me and you first." Adrianna walked around, systematically picking up her candles, thinking out loud. "We need someone like Sen to-"
"No!" Now that her arms and legs would function again, Evalle shoved to her feet and twisted out the kinks from that crazy out-of-body trip. If she helped Adrianna pick up this stuff, the whole thing would go faster.
Blue eyes slashed at Evalle with irritation. "I didn't say to call in Sen," Adrianna stressed, then stopped to shake her head when Evalle reached for a candle. "Thanks for the help, but don't touch my things."
Evalle lifted her hands and backed away.
Content that her majik toys were safe, Adrianna continued packing herbs and candles into plastic bags. "All I'm saying is we need some major power to pin down Nadina. If not Sen, who else do we know? Doesn't a centaur own the Iron Casket nightclub?"
"Yes, that's Deek D'Alimonte, but I can't ask him for anything. I already owe him an open-ended favor."
"Oh?"
"Not talking about that," Evalle said, nipping that whole topic. Tristan had teleported her away from a Medb ambush, back to the nightclub where she'd left her bike. But he missed by about a hundred feet and she landed in Deek's office uninvited, then tossed her cookies on the centaur's pants and shoes.
Most people that unlucky or stupid didn't live to tell about it.
Adrianna named a couple more, but Evalle nixed each one as either being an agent of VIPER and/or a Belador. She couldn't bring the team into this. Macha could help her, but only if she'd had a lobotomy and could be convinced that Storm wasn't a demon. Quinn could probably take control of Nadina's mind, but he was in bad shape already. Evalle needed to go check on him as it was.
"Without some serious muscle, we have no plan," Adrianna declared. Then she paused and snapped her fingers. "I've got it."
Thank goodness, because they'd run through the entire registry of nonhumans that Evalle knew. "Really? What?"
"I'll find out where Nadina is and you get that guy you know who makes mega blasters. He gave you one that stunned a troll when we had the Svart troll problem. If we can stun Nadina with one of those things, I can work a spell." She paused to pull a cell phone out of her bag of tricks and hand it over.
Taking the phone, Evalle should be happy that Adrianna had an idea, but she was talking about Isak Nyght. Isak made custom weapons that killed nonhumans. He was one of the few humans in the city who even knew that VIPER agents and other preternaturals existed.
The last time Evalle saw Isak, she'd stopped him from kissing her and informed him that she and Storm were an item.
They were a lot more than that now if she was truly mated to Storm.
What had been Isak's reaction?
He took it as a challenge.
The minute Evalle informed Isak that Storm was trapped in another realm, Isak would hold a party to celebrate.
"What?" Adrianna asked, evidently irritated at Evalle's hesitation. "Do you or don't you want to free Storm?"
"Of course I do."
"Then why aren't you on the phone calling your black ops buddy?"
"I'm calling now."
But she had no idea how she was going to convince Isak to save the one person he wanted out of the way permanently.
TAmr Medb, home of the Medb coven
Chapter 15
"How many of our coven have we released into the mortal world?" Maeve asked, hovering near the wall of precious stones, some the size of her head.
"Only a hundred," Cathbad the Druid replied, walking from the throne over to where Maeve moved her hands slowly in front of the wall. "Half of them were sent directly to the area called Atlanta."
"How is that going?" She glanced over to see that Cathbad had dressed in a black suit with a black shirt. He would have gleaned the way mortals dressed today from their warlocks who had traveled to the mortal world. His pale brown hair still had a bit of curl in it just as it had years ago, but he was wearing it shorter now. Brown eyes that had left women strewn in his wake smoldered when he caught her looking. He grinned and she knew why she'd allowed this druid to talk her into the prophecy.
"They're surprising me with just how good they are at deceiving the VIPER agents, especially the Beladors. Have ya figured out how to unlock the visions stored in that scrying wall?"
Maeve smiled, enjoying how her reflection sparkled in the water shimmering its way down the rock face and pooling at the base inside a half circle of diamonds. She could have any appearance she wanted, but she preferred her black hair, lavender eyes and full lips. "I've made some alterations to the stones and water that allowed me to observe a few visions, but nothing useful. Of all the queens allowed to rule in my absence, Flaevynn may not have been the most intelligent, but she was definitely the more cunning based on the things we've uncovered. Unfortunately, she didn't appear to have enough common sense to keep a slug alive."
"Perhaps we should have fine-t
uned the prophecy to have groomed a better lot to stand in for us," he joked. "From what I've learned through interviewing warlocks and witches who survived Flaevynn's rule, she depended heavily on her daughter Kizira."
"Didn't she die during the battle?"
"I'm not entirely certain. All I've been able to confirm is that she did not return with the Medb warriors sent to attack Treoir."
Maeve turned to Cathbad. "What of this Kizira? I heard one coven member indicate Kizira was accused of being a traitor at one point and sent to the dungeon. Her father, the reigning Cathbad at the time, was rumored to be in conflict with Flaevynn, even allowing the girl a year to live where she chose before she had to accept her priestess position when she reached adulthood."
"I've heard as much in my talks around TAmr Medb. We need better information." He stretched his fingers and grinned. "That only takes skimming into the subconscious to find hidden treasures."
She waved him off with a hand. "That is your territory. I have no desire to wallow in the minds of those far inferior to me."
"As always, I'm the one who must do the dirty work," he said in mock despair.
"Oh, please. We gravitate to that for which we are best suited." She winked at him and swung back around to the wall, waved her hand and watched as the entire surface turned into a view of mountains and a castle rising in the mist. Large creatures were flying again. "The gryphons are still loyal to Treoir. I don't understand why, when they have Medb blood as well as Belador. How could they just change allegiance like that in the middle of a battle?"
She'd listened to several reports from warlocks who had returned from the siege on Treoir Castle.
"Perhaps they're not all loyal to Macha and the Beladors, only thinking of self-preservation for the moment."
"You have a point. That could be it." Dismissing the view, Maeve floated back to the floor and strode over to the throne with Cathbad following her. She took in the room as she walked. "This room is not fit for a camp follower."
"From what I heard, that is exactly what it was suited for if the stories of Flaevynn's sexual exploits are to be believed."
"We are fortunate the prophecy ended with her. The Medb reputation would have suffered if Flaevynn had ended up immortal as the fool had believed would happen." Maeve would have liked to have seen Flaevynn's face as the Medb queen's body warped into Maeve's reincarnated one. Maeve and Cathbad had made a blood pact two millennia past and created a prophecy, which allowed Medb queens born after Maeve's death to live six hundred and sixty-six years. Each would marry a descendant of Cathbad who carried his name.