I took the ring, of course. I like jewelry, and it looked old and worn, and I wanted to get a good close look at it, but I really didn’t expect anything magical to happen the second I touched it.
And nothing did.
“I guess I won’t be joining those two special people,” I said, running my fingers around the outside of the ring. It appeared to be made of ivory, or something like that, with the outer edges bound in gold. There was nothing inscribed on it, and no design scratched into the ivory, but it still felt nice in my hand. “Wouldn’t the person who created it want it back?”
“The originator?” A fleeting expression of amusement passed over Terrin’s face. “I’m quite sure he would give much to have it in his possession again, but that would not be at all wise.”
“Oh?” I slid the ring onto my finger and admired it. “He’s not a giant orange eyeball, is he?”
“Nothing so dramatic to look at,” Terrin said with a little laugh, glancing over my shoulder when, behind me, someone gave a little screech. It was impossible to tell if it was just some kids being kids or someone who just discovered what a Prince Albert was. Given that the piercing tent was down that way, I thought nothing of it. “But nonetheless, extremely dangerous.”
“So why do those two men who you think are dragons want it if it’s so bad?”
“The ring is not bad in itself; it’s the user who dictates whether it is used for good or evil. And all the dragons, not just those of the black sept, have sought the ring since the weyr was destroyed. But that is a long story, too long to tell you now.”
“Uh-huh.” I held out my hand and looked at it. “Since I didn’t disappear when I put the ring on, I don’t quite see what’s magical about it.”
He chuckled. “It’s not a Tolkien sort of ring. Its magic is… unique. That is, it’s unique to whoever wields it and whatever the ring wishes to be used for.”
I looked at the ring, half expecting a wee pair of eyes to look back at me. “Wow, that’s… weird.”
“As I said, it is unique.”
“It’s pretty, though. I just hope,” I said, starting to pull the ring off, “this isn’t one of those bad kinds of ivory, like from an elephant or something. I’m a firm believer in karma, and I don’t want to think what sort of horrible thing will happen to me because I admired a dead elephant ring.”
“Ivory? Oh no, it’s horn.” That twinkle was back for a moment. “Unicorn horn, as a matter of fact, and I can assure you that the unicorn in question donated her horn for the purpose of reinforcing it.”
“Riiight,” I drawled, and removed the ring. I was just about to hand it back to him when a blood-chilling scream ripped high into the night air, so loud we could hear it clearly over the throb of music.
Two
Terrin was off before I could even process the fact that someone was in serious trouble; mercifully, it wasn’t long before my wits returned, and I legged it after him. I thought at first the screaming was coming from the demon tent but quickly realized that the noise came from beyond it, toward the big open field that served as a parking area. Two other people were running in the same direction—a big, blond man who seemed to be made of muscles and a small elderly woman with black-and-white hair. I passed by the latter, but the blond dude was well ahead of me. As I raced around the tent and hit the open area, I stumbled and would have fallen if the elderly woman hadn’t caught my arm before I fell.
Ahead of us, lit by a small portable light, were four rows of cars. Terrin stood in front of the first row, facing a tall, thin man who seemed to be wielding some sort of sword. A woman lay prone on the ground between Terrin and the man, and before my brain could process what I was seeing, the thin man with the sword flung his arms upright for a moment, so that the sword glinted dully in the night sky. With a terrible flash, he brought it down, right on Terrin’s shoulder, slashing downward through him, almost completely severing his arm. I was left sick and numb with horror, a great yawning pit of terror seeming to open at my feet. I tottered on the edge of it, trying desperately not to faint.
The mangled Terrin fell almost on top of the woman.
The blond man ahead of me leaped on the Terrin-killing man, and for a second, I saw something silver flash between them. Then the sword-man was gone—there one second and gone the next—leaving only a thick curl of black oily smoke that hung heavily in the air before slowly dissipating. I stopped dead where I stood, trying desperately to make some sense of what had happened, my brain shrieking that I had to do something to help Terrin.
The old lady passed me and reached the spot where Terrin lay dead, lightly vaulting over an inky pool of blood that stretched out from his inert form just as the blond man spun around and picked up the immobile woman.
I dropped to my knees, my legs suddenly unable to hold my weight, and watched with disbelieving eyes as the man staggered back toward me carrying the woman, while the old lady trotted beside him, talking rapidly in a heavily accented voice. “Take her to my trailer, Kurt. She isn’t harmed, just stunned, although it was foolish of her to try to deal with the demon on her own. It’s not as if she’s a Guardian…”
Neither of them spared me so much as a glance as they passed by. I stared after them for a second before turning back to look at where the dead and mangled body of my almost-boyfriend lay.
“Hey,” I tried to yell, but the word came out a scratchy whisper. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hey, you can’t just leave him. He needs help.”
By now the couple was almost back to the center of the Faire and evidently didn’t hear me, or didn’t care, because they kept walking.
Bile rose in my throat when I looked at what remained of Terrin. I knew I should do something—maybe he wasn’t dead. Maybe he was just stunned? Maybe his arm could be put back on.
I retched at the last thought, doubling over and heaving up everything I had eaten before the band started playing. When my stomach settled again, I crawled over to where Terrin sprawled, tentatively reaching out to touch his neck.
He was still warm, but I didn’t feel a pulse.
I got to my feet somehow and instinctively stumbled my way back toward the lights and noise of the Faire, back to where there were people other than me who could take charge of the situation and make the nightmare end.
By the time I reached the closest booth—closed now—I was gasping for air. Up and down the aisle all the booths had closed down. Music still pulsated from the big tent, but there wasn’t a single person to be seen. A few crows hopped around, pecking at spilled popcorn and other debris, but other than them, there was no living creature to be seen.
With a shaking hand, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the emergency number. “There’s a man… a friend… Some guy hacked him down with a sword, then disappeared into a puff of smoke,” I told the woman who answered. My throat was so tight that my voice came out like gravel. Sharp, pointy gravel.
“Smoke?” the woman repeated.
“Yeah, black smoke. He was there, and then he wasn’t.”
“People do not turn into smoke, madam.”
“This guy did. Can you please get the police out here?”
“Your location?” the woman asked.
I told her where I was and that the murder took place in the parking lot.
“Are you sure your friend is dead?”
“Yes,” I squawked.
“Did anyone else see this alleged attack?”
“Alleged? It wasn’t alleged! It happened right in front of me. Look, I realize it sounds odd, but the sword guy attacked my friend and then just went poof! Disappeared! And, yes, there were two other people there who saw it, so would you please send the police out? Who knows where that madman is, and my friend is lying dead on the ground, and he has no pulse and… and…” I broke down, unable to take it anymore.
She assured me that medical help would be sent immediately, as well as police, and asked if I wanted to remain on the line. I told her no and clicked off,
although I remained clutching the phone as if it were a lifeline to sanity. I wiped my face (and nose, I’m ashamed to say) on my jacket sleeve, wishing like hell that I could restart the day.
Flashing lights in the distance got me moving again. Way across the pasture that was being used for the fair, I could see an ambulance and a couple of police cars, zooming across the long, flat valley floor. I made my way back toward the place where Terrin fell, intent on waving the ambulance over so they could cart him away.
He wasn’t there.
I spun around wildly, my heart in my throat, my eyes huge in an attempt to find where Terrin’s corpse had fallen. “He was here,” I said aloud, jogging down the line of cars before stopping and running in the other direction. “I know he was here. Right here. Oh my God, the murderer came back for him!”
That’s how the police found me—running up and down the line of cars, babbling to myself. I clutched at the nearest cop and dragged him over to the spot where the ground was still stained with Terrin’s blood. “There! He was right there! And now he’s gone!”
The policeman and his buddy examined the ground. The ambulance pulled up, lights flashing silently as the medics hurried over.
“Did you see anyone move the body?” one of the cops asked.
“No! It has to be the murderer. He probably de-poofed and hacked poor Terrin to bits and went off with Terrin chunks stuffed into a bag!”
Both cops and the two medics stared at me. “De-poofed?” one of the cops finally asked.
“He turned into black smoke after he struck down Terrin,” I said, wringing my hands. Why weren’t they searching the parking lot for signs of the murderer? “Surely there must be a blood trail you could follow!”
The second policeman took out a notebook. “Would you describe the deceased?”
“Before he was hacked to pieces, I assume?” I took a deep breath and tried to marshal my madly running brain. “He was about an inch taller than me, midthirties, slight build, brown hair and eyes, square chin, gold-rimmed glasses. His hair was starting to recede, but not really far back, just a bit. Um…” I tried to remember what he was wearing, but the vision that rose before my eyes was one of blood and an almost amputated arm. “He had on a pale blue checked shirt, blue sports coat, jeans, and black shoes.”
The cop was writing down the description. “Did he have any tattoos or scars? Was he wearing any jewelry that stood out?”
“No, none of those.” I suddenly remembered the ring that I’d been holding when Terrin was murdered. My hand went to my pants pocket, where I’d evidently absently stuffed it. At least that was safe—although now it was too late to give it back to him. “He looked like exactly what he was—a nice guy.”
“Something like that gentleman?” the first cop asked, nodding over my shoulder.
I turned to look and felt the world come to a grinding halt. At least my world did, for standing next to the nearest booth, deep in conversation with the blond man who’d hauled off the unconscious woman, was… Terrin.
I took a step toward him, wondering if the world had suddenly gone insane. He didn’t look the least bit like he was favoring his arm—the one that had almost been severed—let alone like he’d been attacked at all.
“That’s… that’s him,” I heard myself saying.
“Him? That man there is the victim?” the cop asked.
I took another step toward Terrin. “Yes, that’s him. Only… he’s not dead now. He was dead. He had no pulse, and his arm was almost off, but now he’s… not.”
Terrin looked over at that moment and saw me. He smiled and lifted his hand in greeting until he saw the cops and ambulance behind me. His smile faded as my legs suddenly recovered from the shock and marched me toward him.
“You’re alive,” I told him, well aware that the cops and ambulance dudes were right behind me.
“Yes, I am.” He looked slightly confused. “Should I not be?”
“You were killed. Just a few minutes ago. By that tall, thin man with the sword.” I poked him on the shoulder that had been severed. It felt solid as all get-out.
Terrin blinked at me for a moment, then shot a smile over my shoulder. “Good evening, Officers. Is there some problem?”
“This lady claims that you were assaulted earlier. Gravely assaulted.”
“He was!” I protested. “He was dead.”
“Clearly not,” the first cop said, giving me an odd look.
“I know what I saw.” I turned to the blond man to whom Terrin had been speaking. “You were there, too. You saw what happened. Tell them that the sword guy killed Terrin and then disappeared in a puff of smoke.”
Blondie pursed his lips for a moment, then shook his head and said something in German. One of the cops asked him a question in the same language, and Blondie answered in Swedish. “I saw no one dead. One of my colleagues was feeling unwell, and I escorted her back to her trailer. That is all.”
“You’re lying!” I admit that I was close to shouting at this point, but I was righteously enraged. I pointed at both Blondie and Terrin. “They’re both lying. I saw what I saw.”
Cop number two consulted his notebook, while cop number one stopped the ambulance guys from leaving. “You said that you saw this gentleman here get struck down, his arm almost severed completely from his body, and his body lying in a pool of blood. You also state that his attacker disappeared into a cloud of black smoke.”
The emphasis was impossible to miss. Nonetheless, I ignored it. I marched over to the spot where Terrin had fallen and gestured to the stain on the grass. “Look. Right there. See that? It’s blood. His blood, from where he was killed.”
“I’m not dead, Aoife,” Terrin said gently. He peered over my shoulder at the ground. “That looks as if someone spilled some fruit punch.”
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on,” I told the cop, who was now muttering in an undertone to his partner. “I don’t know if this Terrin is a duplicate or something, but I didn’t hallucinate the killing. I saw him get killed. That blond guy there saw it, too, despite what he says. Obviously they’re trying to cover something up, but it’s not going to work, do you hear me? I know what I saw!”
“Calm down,” policeman number one said, taking me by the arm. “There is no sense in getting yourself upset. As you can see, your friend is alive and well.”
“That’s not my friend!” I shouted, frustrated to my back teeth with the fact that no one seemed to be listening to me. “That’s an imposter. Or his twin. Or something, but it’s not the man I saw get killed right before my very eyes!”
“I think you should come with us now,” the ambulance man said, taking my other arm. “You are upset and a little time away from the situation should calm your mind.”
“My mind is perfectly calm,” I told him, digging in my heels to stop them from dragging me to the ambulance. “And don’t think I’m not aware of what you’re doing. You think I’m deranged, don’t you? Well I’m not! They are!”
The second ambulance guy got to me at that point, which was a shame because he intercepted my run for freedom.
I won’t go over the next few hours because they were tedious and frustrating beyond belief. The more I protested that I was telling the truth, and that the impossible really had happened, the more people gave me the look that indicated they didn’t believe a word I said. The people at the hospital where I’d been taken were all very nice, but none of them listened at all, and they certainly didn’t believe me. They shot me up with something that made my brain feel like it was full of molasses and put me to bed in a room with bars on the windows. The following morning my sister Bee and brother Rowan showed up. I explained to them what happened and requested release.
“I’m sorry, Aoife, but the doctor says you’ve had a mental breakdown,” Bee told me. “He said it wouldn’t be good for you to be out on your own just now.”
Rowan smacked her on the arm. “You weren’t supposed to tell her that.”
“Breakdown?” I sat on the edge of the bed, wearing only my underwear and the loose hospital gown, wanting nothing more than to go home and curl up in my own bed. “I haven’t had a breakdown. I saw a murder conspiracy! An impossible one, yes, but I know what I saw.”
“What you said happened was impossible,” Bee said with a shake of her head. “You couldn’t have seen it. You must have imagined it. Did you have anything to eat before the event? Perhaps your date drugged you.”
“Drugged me?” I gave her a look that dealt with such a ridiculous idea. “Of course I wasn’t drugged. No, I did not eat or drink anything in Terrin’s company, so you can scratch that off your list of possibilities and just accept what I’m telling you.”
“That you saw a man disappear into smoke?” Rowan looked doubtful. “Aoife, that just doesn’t happen.”
“Just get me out of here, and I’ll make you understand,” I begged. “I’ll take you to the GothFaire, and you can see the place for yourself, not that there’s probably much to see, but if you were to stand where I was standing, then you’d see that I couldn’t mistake what was happening right in front of me.”
They slid each other a glance, and to my horror, Bee shook her head. “We had a long talk with the doctor, and he really thinks that if you spend some time with people who know how to deal with situations like what you’re going through, you’ll be right as rain in no time.”
Fear crawled up my skin at her words. “You’re not… you don’t mean—”
“We’re signing the papers to have you admitted to a facility. It’s called the Aardvark Center for the Deranged.”