I decided to dive in and divert the conversation. “You really think that this silver dagger of mine can stab a wight?”
Degoba had provided me with a silver dagger. Of course it wasn’t one hundred percent silver, it would have been way too malleable, but it had enough of the metal in it to hurt a wight, the spiritwalker had said. And to hurt Alex, Patrick, and Ralph as well. I’d watched all three of them shy away from it when the older man held it out to me.
“I think it can bite the wight’s butt, all right. And you just keep that pretty pointy stick away from me. You tried to stake me once, already.” Alex snickered, glancing at me.
Ralph let out a guffaw. “Yeah, and she almost made it.”
“I wasn’t in my right mind, guys. You promised you’d never bring that up again!” Even through my protest, I was smiling.
As we headed into the park, behind Tonya’s car—Patrick and Degoba were riding with her—our laughter fell away. Jokes were all well and good, but things were about to get real. What we were about to do was probably one of the most dangerous things I’d ever attempted. Oh sure, breaking into a dragon’s house could be deadly, but there I knew the variables. Here, the unknown was . . . well . . . truly unknown.
It was nine thirty. Later in the year the area would be crowded, but now the few campers braving the winter elements were tucked snugly inside their RVs, out of the chill evening.
We trundled along Harbor Defense Way until we came to the turnoff into the parking lot near Kinzie Battery. Alex eased into a spot in the empty lot, next to Tonya’s car, and turned off the ignition. I glanced out the windshield. Across a short concrete slab, a gravel path led along a small rise, shrouded on either side by thick undergrowth and shrubs tall enough to tower over our heads. In the distance, I could barely make out the looming presence of the battery against the night sky. As I stared at the trail, an unrest crept over me and I realized how very much I didn’t want to go there.
“Okay, I guess this is it. Shimmer, you ready?” Alex unbuckled his seat belt.
“Yeah, dagger’s at the ready. But what are you and Ralph going to use? Neither one of you can touch silver.” I stared at my blade. I was quite capable of using it—but I hadn’t been in a real scuffle in a long while.
“I’m a vampire. What do you think?” Alex bared his fangs at me, giving me a toothy grin.
I snorted. “What if the wight doesn’t bleed?”
“I’m quite able to do massive damage with my strength and fangs regardless of whether a creature has any blood.” Sounding almost offended, Alex opened his door.
Ralph cleared his throat. “I’ll probably turn into my wolf form. That way if somebody does draw blood . . .” He paused, and I smiled quietly. Ralph had a little quirk. When he was in his human form, he fainted at the sight of blood, which effectively made him useless during a fight, unless he shifted.
Actually, it wasn’t the sight of blood that did it, but a bloody wound. On the rare occasion when Alex had spilled a bottle of blood on the floor, Ralph had turned pale and looked queasy, but he’d managed to stay on his feet. I wanted to ask him what trauma had set off the response, but we didn’t know each other well enough for me to pry into that personal an experience.
“Good thinking. That way we won’t have to worry about you hitting your head on some sharp edge.” Alex took Ralph’s fainting episodes in stride, but he didn’t mince words to try to make the werewolf more comfortable about them.
Ralph rolled his eyes and gave me an Oh brother look. Sometimes Alex treated him like a kid, and while Alex was definitely older than Ralph, Ralph had been around awhile. I was older than both of them by a long, long ways. But given that my life had been spent in the Dragon Reaches where time moved differently, time for me seemed nebulous. In relative terms, I was as young as Ralph. And in relative terms, Ralph was a bit younger than Alex. Chai was the oldest of us all.
As we headed over to Tonya, Degoba, and Patrick, I patted Ralph on the arm. “Don’t mind him—you know he doesn’t mean to come off so abrupt.”
“I know that, it’s just his nature. But damn it, Shimmer, the whole fainting thing? Embarrassing enough, especially given I’m a werewolf.”
“At least you’re not a vampire. That would be really bad if you fainted at the sight of blood.” I snickered. “Can you imagine the ribbing you’d get then?” At that, he laughed and we hustled on over to the others.
“So, what now?” Tonya shivered. She had brought a wand with her, and what looked like a pretty nasty piece of weaponry. She was also carrying a short sword.
“Ooo, pretty!” I gazed at the sparkly blade. It looked wicked sharp.
“You like?” She held it out.
The blade extended about sixteen inches, and the hilt was carved from an antler. It was flat and double edged, and looked relatively plain, but the edges were honed to a razor-sharpness—that much I could tell by looking, and it glinted as the moonlight filtered through the cloud cover to reflect on it. She moved back and swept it around in an easy figure eight. It was obvious she’d had training to use it as a weapon. This was no ritual blade, for looks only.
“Where did you get it?” I admired her ease with it. While I could use a dagger, and to some extent a short sword, I’d relied more on my wits than my weapons skills. I’d also relied on my brawn—I was pretty strong. All dragons were, and I’d gone up against more than one adversary in my days wandering through the Dragon Reaches, after being released from the Lost and Foundling.
“My mother was . . . you could call her a Renaissance woman. She had a lot of skills, including fighting. She actually learned from her uncle, and he taught me, as well. Before he died, that is.” She made a sad face. “I miss him. Uncle Van. He was quite the character, though he liked booze more than was good for him. Like my mother.”
I found myself wishing Tonya lived in Seattle. We could probably be good friends. As it was, I nodded and turned to see what Degoba had ready. Patrick, of course, would do the vamp thing like Alex.
To my surprise, Degoba held nothing in his hands—no magical items, no weapons. Just . . . two empty hands.
He saw my look. “There comes a point where some of us do better without an encumbrance,” was all he said. The energy behind his words felt strong and sinister, and I let it go at that.
Degoba pointed toward the trail. “Let’s head out. I’ll take the front, along with Alex. Shimmer, you and Tonya come second. Ralph and Patrick, third, and Chai, would you take rear position?”
We quickly sorted out into two rows, then headed off down the path. Degoba and Alex were both quiet as they walked. In fact, I realized that Degoba was making less noise than the vampire, which was mighty unusual. He seemed to glide over the trail, the gravel barely shifting below his feet.
I, on the other hand, made my fair share of noise. The gravel crunched under my shoes, and it was wet so it was harder to keep traction. Walking in sand is the hardest, but gravel falls a close second in terms of feet sliding on the shifting surfaces. The rocks were slick, but at least I was wearing shoes, which kept the rougher edges from digging in. I’d walked on a lot of pebbled beaches in the past, so I was used to the feel, but I hadn’t mastered anything akin to the way the men were managing it.
We came up over the rise and the path narrowed. We weren’t far from the battery, but the path seemed to telescope in front of me. It had to be an optical illusion, or maybe it was the wight’s magic, but it looked like the path disappeared into a dark mist at the end.
I glanced over at Tonya. “Is it supposed to look like this?”
She shrugged. “It is nighttime, which can play havoc with the line of sight, but no, really? I think the wight senses us near and he’s throwing up his first line of defense.”
Degoba coughed. He kept his gaze straight ahead, but his words were clear enough. “Listen, the energy is starting to move. Think of it like a magical haze, an unnatural fog rolling in. Be prepared for the forest wight to attempt to subvert u
s through illusions and influence. Its abilities to influence behavior aren’t necessarily limited to humans, though it will be harder for them to affect those of Fae origin, or vampires. I have no idea about dragons, djinns, or werewolves.”
Ralph grumbled. “Weres—especially lycanthropes—are definitely susceptible to charm.”
I frowned. “I have no idea about dragons. I think you have to know our names to gain full control over us—but I can’t be certain of that. It’s not something that was taught to me at the orphanage. Except I’m susceptible to a vampire’s charm, so . . .”
Tonya peeked over her shoulder at Chai. “What about you? Can you be charmed? And . . . do genies really have a bottle that controls them?”
He let out a snort. “Charmed? Not from something like a forest wight. As for bottles and djinns . . . I’m not Barbara Eden and this isn’t the Arabian Nights. No, djinns are not brought under control by a bottle or a bag or a magical lamp, or any such object. However, we do have a trigger that allows the possessor to control us. Each djinn’s trigger will be different, and none of us will ever willingly tell you what it is. I escaped seven hundred years ago and plan to remain free.”
I’d known Chai for the past hundred years, and yet I’d never known he’d ever been enslaved. The thought made me queasy that someone had owned him. “It’s like magical slavery.”
“Of a sort, yes. And yet, our masters have to be cautious because . . . well, you know all about the folly of asking me for a wish or a favor. The same thing applies to capturing a djinn—be careful what you ask for, you will get it . . . But usually not in the form you hope for.” The look on his face was dark. “When my kind realized long ago that we were vulnerable to entrapment, we evolved ways of making it as unpleasant as possible for those seeking to enslave us. Eventually, it became a part of our nature. Now we’re born this way and can’t undo what we set into motion.”
We reached the end of the path by then. We were staring across a swath of grass that ran along the front of the concrete walkway attached to the front of the battery. The battery rose three stories tall—the top story open to the night sky. Both the left and the right side had two stairwells, leading to a section on the second tier. And in the center, staircases ran from the second story to the third, meeting in the middle on a landing, looking like an inverted V. I wasn’t sure what was atop the battery, but there was a center door leading into the enclosed sector.
On the bottom and the second stories, the openings into the battery looked like dark mouths, waiting for us to enter. The square columns spaced along the bottom soared all the way up to the third story, holding up the wide, open ledges that loomed over the ground floor. In the partial moonlight, the concrete took on an eerie glow, marred by what appeared to be camouflage. I wasn’t sure if it was paint, worn and weathered, or if people had tagged the building, but it gave it almost more of a military look to the battery than if the building had been spiffy clean.
“Where do we start?” I couldn’t decide if it was safer to go up top and work our way down, or to plunge right into the depths of the main floor, from where most of the energy seemed to be emanating.
Degoba stepped forward, holding out his hands. “The energy is highly restless. Tonya, do you feel it?”
She moved to the front and stood by him, holding out her hands. With a shudder, she lurched back. “It’s grown much stronger than the first time I sensed it. The wight has had time to strengthen.”
“He’s had time to extend tendrils from this place—hiving out into the town. My guess is that your house, Patrick? Is not the only one with a forest wight. Especially since the town has so many ghosts.” Degoba seemed to debate for a moment, darting glances at either end of the structure, and then he pointed toward the center. “Let’s go meet the wight in its nest.”
The moment he made a decision, he sprang into action and strode forward, gesturing for Tonya to return to my side. Alex scrambled, and we were on the move again. We had barely reached the concrete when there was a rustling from behind us, from behind the bushes crowding both sides of the path.
I whirled around, as did Chai and Ralph.
There, behind us, emerging from the brush, were creatures that looked a lot like walking tree stumps. They were bare-branched, and their roots bunched up into legs, propelling them along. Their branches writhed—but they weren’t the movements of wind through the trees. No, this was deliberate. There were at least twenty of them, about ten from each side, all aimed in our direction.
I squinted, trying to make out their faces—dark hollows that could be eyes, black maws that could be mouths. But it was hard to tell under the light of the night.
“Holy shit, guys—we have company!” Ralph stumbled back, against Tonya. She had stopped when I turned but hadn’t yet caught a glimpse of what was coming our way. The next moment, everybody was facing the shambling trunks, with Chai in front, on the receiving end.
“What do they want?” My first instinct was to attack, but then I thought, what if they were forest spirits entrapped by the wight? We couldn’t just start killing things at random, could we?
As if echoing my thoughts, Ralph said, “Don’t attack till we know what they want. They may be friendly.”
“Don’t be so sure about that.” Alex swung to the front, flanking Chai. Degoba did the same.
There was plenty of room, so the rest of us spread out so we’d have a better line of sight. A thought occurred to me that maybe we’d better have somebody guarding our backs, which were now facing the battery, but once again, Ralph was ahead of me. He moved a few steps toward the building and shifted into wolf form. The blurring of his transformation was so quick that my mind had a hard time taking in what I was seeing. One minute Ralph was there, a second later—a very large, snarling wolf. There seemed to be no point of in-between.
Satisfied that we now had some semblance of a warning system, I turned back to the tree creatures. I’d read a lot in the past few months, and at first the thought of Tolkien ran through my mind.
“Ents?” But as I looked at them, I thought no—they couldn’t be. For one thing, Tolkien created ents. And for another, if these creatures were ents, they were short, squat, and much nastier.
“Fae,” Alex said. “Sapwalkers, to be specific. They belong to the same realm as floraeds, and they are highly volatile and dangerous Earthside nature Fae. But don’t let the word nature lull you into a false sense of security. These guys aren’t friendly, if I’m not mistaken. I haven’t ever had to deal with them, but I know that nature Fae don’t usually take kindly to mortals. Or what they think is mortal.”
Degoba snorted. “That’s the truth. No, Shimmer, don’t delude yourself into thinking these are going to be friendly. Nature is fierce, and she’s self-protective, and she doesn’t give two hoots about us. But we need her to survive, we need her because she is the only thing that gives us life in these bodies. So we accept her capriciousness and respect the hell out of her. She’s bigger and stronger than we can ever hope to be.”
I blinked. That wasn’t the way most Earthside pagans talked. But then again, Degoba was a spiritwalker. I glanced over at Tonya.
She nodded and readied her sword. “Not to mention the fact that I doubt these creatures are under their own control right now. No matter what they would—or wouldn’t—do given their own volition, if the forest wight has control over them, we’re in danger.”
“How do we attack them?” The wind had picked up and now it riffled through my hair, blowing it back. I wished I’d pulled it back into a ponytail. I held up my dagger, trying to look menacing.
“Same way you attack anything else, except I have no clue where the hearts are on these things. I don’t know if they even have internal organs. Not every creature does, you know.” Degoba was rocking from one foot to another, looking for every inch like he was testing the ground around him. “It’s muddy, be cautious when you move. Even the grass is slippery.”
The tree creatures were
nearly to us. We’d spread out into one long line, so that we’d all have a chance to attack. I grumbled. If the sapwalkers were being controlled, fighting them felt wrong. But we couldn’t just let them walk all over us.
That brought to mind another thought. “Guys, what can sapwalkers do to us? Anybody know?”
“Unfortunately, I do know. They can whip those branches around your throat and strangle you. I think they can absorb your bodies, too, but I’m not sure just how.” Alex didn’t look at me, just answered the question.
That changed my mind—it was them or us, and I wanted it to be us. Strangulation attacks, hmm? That presented a host of potential problems, given that each sapwalker had at least five to seven branches and most were long enough to reach over our heads. That meant they could easily coil around our necks.
There were five of us facing the sapwalkers, with Ralph guarding our rear. Which meant there were at least four sapwalkers for each of us. But the creatures were large enough that only one of them could crowd in on each of us at a time, as long as we didn’t spread so far apart that they could hem us in on all sides.
I caught a deep breath, held it a moment, and then let it slowly whistle out as the tree creature thudded its way within reach of me. As it waved one of its branches, I realized I was in attack distance. It sent its branch whistling through the air and I jumped back. With no one behind me, I was able to avoid the lash of its limb. I quit thinking and went on instinct, and my instinct told me to reach for the branch.
Lunging forward, I managed to catch hold of it. Rather than woody, the branch actually felt rough, almost like coarse hair over a pliable reed. Whatever it was, I brought my dagger down, severing a good three feet of the branch from the sapwalker. The appendage went limp in my hand, and a trickle of liquid orange gel—like dishwashing soap—began to flow out of the severed limb. The sapwalker let out a shriek that sounded suspiciously like a crow.