“I don’t understand that—you’re the oldest Fae in the world. Your word would carry so much weight.”
“I am the oldest, yes, and I am perhaps the most jaded. I admit that. I have no interest in clan politics. Clans…” Bastien exhaled loudly. “Such a hideous condition. A few Fae determine the rules for the rest. I have true autonomy, Maggie, constrained only by what I consider the laws of nature. For me at least, there is nothing more important than that. I go anywhere in the world I choose, unrestrained by political boundaries, unfettered by rules. I wish to go on making it that way. If humans disappear, I will take the shape of a new species and continue on. I don’t believe that will happen. I know it sounds hardhearted, but as your kind is fond of saying, that is where I am right now.”
“But nobody will believe me.”
He shook his head. “Do you know nothing of my kind? With the correct course of action, the truth will be exposed for all to see. I think you can figure out the rest.”
“Kill Zarkus.”
He nodded. “His death will cause her rage, and that will expose the world to grave danger, but she will not be able to hide her anguish. Her tenuous hold on my kind will snap like a dry twig.”
Bastien reopened the door and stepped out. He pulled the bent bicycle out of the trunk and it straightened and transformed into an antiquated, fat-fendered type before the tires met the pavement. Bastien scanned me as I walked around to the driver’s side.
“No, that will not do. It should draw more attention.”
The Jag changed shape again, shrinking into a sleek antique XKE roadster.
“I hope you fancy auburn,” he said.
I looked back at the car, but it remained silver. Out of corner of my eye, I noticed my hair lightened to a few shades brighter than Candace’s.
“If you need me again, I will find you. Best of luck.”
“Thank you,” I managed.
“Take care of my car—this is only a temporary trade.”
The humpbacked little black man climbed onto the bike and slowly pedaled down the sidewalk, squeaking as he went. I slid in the tight interior and brought the car to life, watching him disappear at the end of the long wall bordering Fontainebleau Castle.
I didn’t like feeling hatred, so I despised the feelings I harbored for Ozara. But what Bastien told me drove my rage even further. Paired with Zarkus—it made too much sense. I had often wondered why she didn’t just kill him, since he’d allegedly orchestrated two costly wars. She didn’t kill him because she loved him, and she didn’t blame him for the wars because she had orchestrated them herself. I wondered whether Dagda or Ra, the two previous Aetherfae, had any idea that she was manipulating them. No, probably not.
“What do I do now?” Get the hell out of here, duh.
The gleaming Jaguar turned heads at every intersection and along every sidewalk. At first I questioned Bastien’s choice. At least until it occurred to me that everyone was gawking at the car and smiling. No one paid any attention to me.
There was no reason for me to stay in France, so I pulled out my phone and concentrated on drying the innards. I didn’t need to. Apparently Bastien had seen fit to fix it for me. It came on and I pulled up the GPS. I would call Candace and Ronnie when I got further from the Rogues.
Just as I drove over the Seine to the east of Fontainebleau, my phone rang.
I looked at the number and hit answer. “Candace, I’m fine.”
She exhaled. “Did you find what you were looking for.”
“Yes and no. I’m on my way to you—where is that?”
“You’re on your way…as in by yourself?”
“Um, yes. Who else would be with me?”
“Has Gavin not found you?”
I slammed the brakes and pulled onto the shoulder. “What do you mean?”
“He was here a few hours ago—we tried to call you but your phone—”
“It was off,” I snapped. “Where—”
“He was heading to you—he should have been there by now.”
Something was wrong, and my stomach began to knot. I slapped the seat with my free hand. “Why did you let—”
“Let? Oh no. Sherman and Victoria warned him, but he refused to listen. He took off—”
“I have to call you back. Bye.”
I turned the phone off and stuck it in my bag. “So freakin’ stubborn. Gavin, I’m going to shoot you.”
I closed my eyes and felt my mind lift above the car. He was close, and I snapped to his side almost immediately. He closed his eyes, wincing, and smiled—he felt me. There were several stone barbs curled through his thighs and arms, locking him against a boulder with large white blotches. His beautiful face was bruised and bleeding—his condition sent me over the edge. All around him, Dersha, Chalen, and the rest of the Rogues stood glowering. Dersha struck him in the face—the sound of breaking bone echoed in my mind as I snapped back to my body. I floored the Jaguar and headed back to Franchard.
THIRTY-TWO
PROVIDENCE
“Get out of my way,” I screamed, whipping the car through traffic.
Then I called to Bastien, begging for help. Either he was gone, or he was ignoring me. Frantic and without a plan, I barreled toward Franchard. I was flying into a trap and I knew it. It was exactly what Candace and Ronnie, Sherman and Victoria, and Bastien warned me about, but I didn’t care. They were killing Gavin. It’s my fault. I asked him to come back. He put himself at risk to save me.
“I’m so sorry, Gavin.”
I didn’t bother with Clóca or Air. I just drove. I pushed cars out of the way—anything between Gavin and me was the enemy. On the west side of Fontainebleau I felt them gathered. There were fifteen Fae surrounding Gavin, four more in a perimeter in the evening sky. Nineteen in all. There had been sixty. Where are the rest?
The last mile disappeared in thirty seconds. I stabbed the brakes and felt the rear tires begin to lock up. Instinctively, my mind caught the little car with Air and brought it to a violent stop just beyond the parking lot. I blew the canvas top off and flew into the forest, clearing two hundred feet before my shoes ever touched the ground. They knew I was here. Time to start thinking, Maggie.
A Fae on the perimeter moved to the exposed Jaguar and took the form of a jackal. It sniffed the air, trying to catch my scent. Rather than chase after me, it continued to sniff. I sent a thin line of Quint, hidden inside Clóca, across the distance. Like an invisible cobra moving in to strike a rat, I shifted it behind the mongrel and inched closer. I wrapped him in Clóca first, making him disappear from the rest. He felt me and tried to struggle, but it was too little, too late. I impaled him with Quint and then let it spread through his chest. Pop. Flash. Then there were eighteen.
The three perimeter guards moved toward the place their coconspirator had been. One of them was Chalen. Ignoring him, I moved the other direction. The fifteen around Gavin were using raw energy as a barrier of sorts, fluxing it around them in the trees and boulders. I ran down the trail, determined to figure out how to get past them. Lying in a wet, dark puddle, I found the first human victim, her neck chewed and ripped down to the spine. The grayish skin on her face was speckled with tiny drops of crimson, her brown eyes locked in a death stare toward the sky. My eyes watered. I shuddered and fought my gag reflex.
Twenty feet further down the trail, I found an athletic looking boy a few years older than Mitch with his throat torn out and his hands chewed off. Blood matted blond hair, and a look of anguish still plastered on his face, he was much bloodier than the girl. It looked like he had tried to fight back. The smell of blood and internal organs left me retching. I leapt over him and settled on the trail at the edge of the Rogue’s shifting barrier. It moved back and forth about twenty feet, pulsing evenly. Thirty feet up to my right, just down a steep draw, the barrier moved back and forth over a massive slab of stone. I hurried to the backside of it. Fingers splayed, I connected with the stone and studied the barrier as it moved back and fort
h. The energy sank into the material, penetrating a few feet, but not all the way through. A smiled formed on my face when I realized I could go through it and emerge on the other side, unseen.
“Where is Claude?” Dersha silently barked.
“He is…gone. No residue, he appears to have cloaked,” another replied
“He doesn’t know how to form Clóca. Is the girl here?”
“No, the scent is different. There is a car. It smells like a male—testosterone. Claude is probably just having his way. He’ll be back.”
A male? Testosterone? Bastien said he was going give me a fresh start, but I had no idea he made me smell like a boy. I made a mental note to thank him and then carefully slipped inside a hole I formed in the rock.
“Dersha, she is probably on her way back to Kobold territory. She may not know he is here. Can we just kill him and be on our way?”
“No, she will come for him.”
“But how do you know?”
“The Second believes it, and that is good enough. Find Claude and bring him to me. I will not have any of you acting like wild dogs dragging a scrap of flesh into the woods to gnaw. Find him,” she bellowed.
Her grating voice was beginning to get under my skin, but I hoped that meant Ozara was still far away. The odds of getting Gavin out of this mess were small as it was.
I opened the solid stone in front, moved forward, and carefully repaired the opening behind me. I filled the void with Earth energy, masking my methodical advance—I hoped. The Fae energy moved back and forth above me, just a few inches over my head. I emerged in a veil on the other side of the boulder, carefully leaving it just like Billy taught me—completely unchanged. Well, close anyway. Dersha stood only a few feet from Gavin, who was still impaled on the boulder. Eight barbs, kept in place by an Earth-aligned Fae, were imbedded in Gavin’s arms and legs. He was still trying to fight his way off, healing the broken bones and lacerations in his face. I wanted to scream when I saw him suffering with my physical eyes. Dersha had severed his feet, locking him in physical form. Each time his face healed, she struck him again, opening new wounds.
I had to take out the filthy gnome holding him against the boulder first. Then, and only then, I would kill Dersha. She seemed to be as powerful with Fire as she was with Air. She wouldn’t be easy. The other thirteen were all aligned to different elements. How do I do this?
The sensation of being watched came back as I moved toward Gavin. My stomach folded when I considered the possibility Ozara was waiting among them like a spider. I crept as quietly as I could past a huge bronze-skinned Fire-aligned Fae. With long black hair, and thick muscles, he looked like an Egyptian god. His light brown eyes appeared to lock onto me, sending chills down my spine. He shifted his stare to a spot twenty feet to my right, so I moved forward.
Twenty feet from Gavin, I noticed that the Earth-aligned Fae straddling the boulder turned in my direction, his eyes trying to focus. I froze in place, waiting for him to divert his gaze. As I waited, I sensed a change in the barrier—it began shrinking in size. What are they doing? My chest tightened, making it hard to breathe. I moved to the left, away from Dersha, and a little closer to the red-haired Fae on the rock. His bright blue eyes didn’t follow me, but the barrier continued to move inward.
With Quint wrapped in Clóca, I sent another snake behind the thin gnome. His eyes shifted slowly to the right and he turned slightly, almost like he was watching it. His long, bladelike nose twisted to the left as he scanned the other direction. Fool. He disappeared from their view a moment before I engulfed him with Quint. Sizzle. Pop. I moved his residual energy, under Clóca, back to the other side of the barrier and released it. Every Fae turned and focused on the sure sign of an immortal’s death. In the opposite corner, at nearly the same instant, I released Claude’s.
Dersha reacted by spinning to Gavin, but before she made contact, I blew her into a tree hard enough to snap her back. I shattered the boulder holding Gavin and pulled him under my screen. With all the strength I could muster, I spun a thousand shards of sandstone in a tornado.
“Maggie, you shouldn’t have risked it,” Gavin moaned.
“Heal yourself and shut the freak up,” I snapped.
One Fae, apparently very young and weak, flashed out in the torrent of rock daggers, but the barrier remained. Dersha stood, smiling, and began moving counterclockwise. “Seal the barrier.”
The energy that had merely been floating on the surface plunged deep into the ground. There was no way to escape without penetrating it and being seen. I switched from Air to Quint and caught two more Rogues. They disappeared in a flash and I felt the barrier weaken. Gavin had healed, all except for his feet. Dersha had them.
“Maggie, get out if you can.”
Gavin’s plea was cut short as the twelve Fae inside the barrier sealed the holes. Dersha filled the inside of the space with pure energy and exposed our position. The Egyptian- looking Fae launched himself at us, sliding past the Clóca but splattering against a wall of Quint I sent to meet him. He crumpled for only a second before I drove a piece of stone three feet long and as big around as my thigh through his chest.
Everything twisted around us, the crush of energy was more than I’d ever felt. I focused on maintaining a barrier. The window to act offensively had seemingly closed. They circled us, studying the energy dancing off my Clóca. I laid flat on the ground with Gavin, and sent a human-sized lump of shield racing toward the barrier. The hulking Egyptian-looking Fae blasted it with electrical energy. I let it drop, like the person inside was injured. When he closed on it, I severed him into three large pieces with Quint. Dersha’s scream played like an angry soundtrack as I sent him to oblivion.
With one flick of a finger, she severed my connection to the ball of energy. All the Fae turned their focus on us. A Fae taking the shape of an African woman with massive exotic eyes tried to force her Air power past the Clóca, but like it had been with Mara, Air was useless. Dersha, however, used plasma energy to pierce both barriers. I dropped them, becoming visible behind four layers of energy.
They were chipping away as I fought for control of the elements. I had the upper hand with Air and Fire, but I was no match for Earth. Gavin gained enough strength to help, but with part of his essence severed, he was only a little more powerful than a young Fae. I managed to kill only one more before Dersha and I stood just three feet apart, locked in an energy-grappling match.
In a last ditch effort to buy some time, I blew her backwards with as much force as I could. It affected her as nothing more than a breeze, flicking the blonde bob of hair off her face. Let her touch you, my inner voice chirped. I shifted the energy between us and tried to grab her when she lurched forward. Her eyes flashed and she jumped back, just beyond my reach. I leaped toward her, my hands outstretched. One of the Rogues flashed toward me.
Her vice-like grip snapped the bones in my wrist, but not before I made contact with the moisture in her body. She struggled to let go, but I had her. Gavin, hobbling on stumps, grabbed her by the waist and held her in place. Before the blonde Air Fae could react, I froze the water in her physical body and blew her into pieces. Her mental shriek went quiet when she died.
While I struggled, Dersha separated Gavin from me. My connection to him shattered and she slung him into the waiting arms of two Fae. He tried to fight back, but he was simply too weak. Enraged, I spun Dersha to the ground and pushed my fingers into the small of her back. She weakened in front of me as we struggled for control of her body.
“Let him go or I’ll kill her,” I screamed at the Fae.
From behind me, an icy hand lifted me off of Dersha. The sensation of freezing spread slowly through my body, breaking my concentration. The Fae lifted me off the ground and turned me to face it. A small blonde male with large green eyes studied my face. Water inclined.
I tried to concentrate on the bones in his arm, then the electrical impulses signaling his heart to beat, but the numbing cold was more than I coul
d overcome. His face grew blurred and the sound of Dersha’s curses grew muffled. I thought it was the end.
Then everything changed. Like a foggy dream, I watched as a slender, disembodied hand, and a flash of green, appeared next to my captor’s head. His end came incredibly fast, and his flash temporarily blinded me.
A warm sensation washed over me as I struck the ground. Still light headed, I rolled over. The two Fae holding Gavin exploded in flashes of green light. Dersha fought to get to her feet as the rest of her allies disappeared one by one. Two of the three perimeter guards died next, but the other disappeared. Once again, Chalen escaped.
Ozara was there after all, and she wanted to save me for herself. Why kill the others?
The answer occurred to me as my vision quickly returned. At some point, she had to eliminate witnesses. The Rogues were foolish not to see it. Regardless of their stupidity, I was in trouble. I’ve lost. Had it been anyone other than Gavin, I would have been smarter. He was unconscious, torn, and broken. At least he won’t see it coming.
“Where are you?” I demanded, my voice weak and hoarse.
“Let’s finish them off and be out of this dreadful place,” Dersha said.
I crawled toward Gavin—I wanted to hold him before it happened. Dersha stood and walked toward me. I felt her hand graze my hair the instant before she yelped and leapt backwards, grasping the burned stump where her hand had been.
“What are you doing, Ozara?” she snapped.
“She’s going to kill us both, you idiot. You didn’t expect her to let you live, did you.” I started laughing. “And you think humans are stupid.” I cackled.
“We have a deal,” Dersha demanded.
“No, we do not,” said a voice I didn’t recognize.
Dersha scrambled to her feet, muttering, “Impossible,” over and over. She spun, lashing out with blue plasma. Slowly, against a thin green veil, it turned to puffs of smoke and disappeared back to her fingertips.
“Goodbye, Pandora,” the voice said.