changeling chronicles 03 - faerie realm (22 page)

“What?” I asked. “What’s the point of this? What do you want?”

Stupid question, really. For most faeries here, the answer was ‘tasty human flesh’. I’d pushed it away with my magic, so it had brought me into its natural habitat. I’d either drown or get chewed on unless I grew wings.

Think.
My sword was all but useless in this scenario. Even killing the damned creature wouldn’t save me from drowning. I’d make a vow only as a last resort, but it was one of the few languages faeries understood.

I called the magic instead.

Blue light flared from my hands, my arms, my whole body. Like I’d leaped into a blue-white flame. Here, magic drew strength from pain, anger, and even the spirits of the dead. Perhaps I could cross the veil again, but not without leaving Vance behind.

I glanced over my shoulder at him. He’d drifted even further away. Almost close enough to jump for the bank, and safety. As for me, the swirling current carried me towards the water’s centre, where the toad waited to devour its prey.

Taking a few deep breaths, I let the magic pour through me, fed by the echoing pain of everyone else who’d been caught in this trap. Faces flashed before me, in a thin mist over the surface. This realm overlapped with the veil, and the dead rose to support the magic flaring from my hands.

Instinctively, I knew what to do. Sheathing Irene, I used both hands to conjure a wave of energy, which I flung at the toad-creature.

A spray of water exploded outwards, glancing off my shield. The toad opened its huge mouth and bellowed, but I hit it with a second attack. In another wave of filthy water, the creature disappeared beneath the surface.

I looked for Vance. He’d gone.
Oh. Shit.
For a heart-stopping moment, I thought he’d fallen into the water. Then I saw the lily pad. It had drifted over to shore. He’d climbed out…

Except he might be anywhere in the forest.

Worry swarmed me, dulling the magic down to a faint buzz. I spun around wildly, knowing it wouldn’t be worth risking a swim to shore. I’d need to find another way…

Without warning, the scene changed. I stood in a clearing once again, minus the toad. Minus Vance, too.

“What the hell was that?” I demanded. Was the whole thing an illusion?

Nobody answered.

Cursing the faeries, I stalked along the path.
Take me to Vance,
I told Faerie. I had magic; I ought to be able to control where I walked. Avakis had. He’d built a whole castle out of this power. It had fallen apart when he’d died.

Which meant, in all likelihood, his own sword was useless without the power I’d taken. Velkas was different. His magic had been left behind, because he hadn’t bet it on our duel. As for Calder… I’d sealed his magic with the Invocation.

Still. One super-powered magical artefact gave us enough grief for twenty.

I kept walking. No sign of Vance. My heart drummed with nervousness. Not for myself, but for him. Mage Lord or not, humans were prey here.

Magic flared around me—the only warning before thorns latched around my ankles and the ground fell away. I tumbled head over heels down a path which turned into a steep slope.

Thorns tugged at my feet, dragging me towards the open trunk of an old tree.

Great. The Grey Vale traded in creepy faeries living in ancient trees. The creature wielding the thorny ropes he’d used to snag me was around ten feet tall and covered in green mottled skin. An ogre… but not one I’d seen before. Definitely not the Thorn Princess.

“Human.” He bared his dirt-stained teeth. “I caught a human.”

“Big mistake, mate,” I said. “You don’t wanna mess with
this
human.”

I called magic into my hands. He squinted against the blue. “You’re a magic stealer, too.”

“Magic stealer? Those thorns aren’t yours. Faeries like you don’t have magic.”

“I stole it.” He grinned again.

The thorn launched me into the air. I flew a good ten feet, landing in a crouch on sheer reflex. He lumbered towards me, laughing. “She left a good trap here, didn’t she? I like this magic.”

The thorny whip caught the back of my jacket even as I used my magic-enhanced instincts to jump higher. I cleared the ground, landing in front of the ogre, and swept my blade across his neck.

Thorns grabbed the hilt of my sword and tugged before I could make contact with him. I gritted my teeth and pulled back, but the thorns latched on tight. Irene flew from my hands, landing a few feet away.

“You’ll pay for that.”

I gathered magic in my palm and blasted the ogre in the chest with it, then ran for my sword.

Thorny branches blocked my path. The ogre couldn’t be controlling them, surely. It wouldn’t have the intelligence to rob me of my iron.

The ogre stood still, shaking its head dazedly. “You’re not human. Evil Sidhe!”

“Oh, I’m human, all right.” I threw another handful of magic at the thorny obstacle, which withdrew. I lunged for my sword.

Another thorny branch grabbed at me from behind. I swung Irene around and severed one, using magic to form a shield against a second. I’d been trapped last time I’d come here, and nobody had come to get me out when the thorns closed around me.

It wouldn’t happen again.

The blue light streaming around my non-weapon hand brightened, pulling in my rage, and the memory of the pain this place once caused me.
Never again.

I held onto the magic like a second blade, and whipped it around. The ogre fell, landing in a nest of thorns. He yelled, flailing hia hands, as the branches closed their grip. He disappeared underneath a thorny blanket. I stared, dropping the magic.

The thorns had turned on their master, and intended to choke the life out of him.

I watched in horrified fascination. I’d heard about faeries’ attempts to steal one another’s powers backfiring like this. If the thief couldn’t handle the magic, it’d eat them alive.

As a human, stealing Avakis’s power had never been on my plan. I’d just wanted to get out alive. Thanks to the vow we’d made before our fight, his magic had been
forced
to serve me.

What do you want?
I thought at the magic, which surged and swirled around me, feeding on the ogre’s pain. Did it want me to turn into another Avakis, an inhuman torturer?

The ogre gave one last spasm and lay still. A foul stench overwhelmed me. Decaying magic, and faerie blood, pungent as a week-old corpse, dived up my nostrils and choked my throat, making my eyes water. My magic wavered, and I swore I sensed
excitement
coming from it.

“No.” I stepped back.

The thorns shifted along the ground. They’d killed the ogre, but they contained the magic he’d tried to steal.

A branch whipped at my ankle. I jumped, then hopped over a second one like a bizarre game of jump rope. My sword swiped out, and the thorns wisely backed away. The stench became unbearable, glazing my eyes and dulling my vision.

“You’re mine, now, human.
”

“No.”

Bright light streamed from my hands. I severed branch after branch, but they kept coming, like layers of a faerie glamour peeling away one at a time. There must be thousands of them. That, or they had some kind of regenerative ability. Like cutting the head off a hydra only for it to grow two more.

Shit. If it couldn’t die, I needed to get out of here before I turned into a human pincushion again.

“You wandered into my lair, and you’ll die here. Pretty human. Let me hear you cry out for help.”

“No. No, no, no. Please—”

Screaming, so tortured and high I could hardly believe the sound came out of my own mouth. Pain beyond imagining, puncturing every inch of me.

Inhuman laughter.

Thorny vines wrapped tight around me, climbing up my legs. Thorns alone couldn’t cause this much pain. Surely. Her magic made everything worse.

The magic. It had tapped into my thoughts, somehow, forcing me to relive—

I squeezed my eyes shut, hands curled into fists so tight my nails drew blood.

No. I had magic this time. I was Ivy Lane, faerie killer, and I wouldn’t be outdone by a bunch of thorns.

“Fuck off back to the hell you came from,” I snarled aloud, concentrating on the present rather than the images beating at the doors.

My blade flashed out. I missed the thorns, but magic ignited the air, forming a shield. I gathered a palm full of blue-white energy, dazzling enough to force my eyes open again.

More. More. Not enough.
The power built with all the pain I fed into it. The ogre’s corpse began to glow.
Death. His death feeds my power.

A tidal wave of raging magic rose from me, around me. With a resonant humming sound, it exploded outward.

The air rippled, the ground shrinking beneath the wave of pulsing magic. Branches snapped, thorns shattered, and even the ancient trees shook to their roots.

I stood surrounded by broken thorns, magic singing through my veins. Not only my own magic, but a humming sensation coming from all around me.

Now I concentrated, the faint sound of screaming rang out from the pulsing magic. So faint, it was more of a whisper—a collective of a thousand human voices, reduced to silence.

Faerie’s last victims. Their pain fuelled my power.

I dropped to my knees, the adrenaline draining away as quickly as it had arrived. Faerie was down one spell, but the realm had claimed so many lives already.

I’d nearly been one of them. When the Thorn Princess had dragged me into her lair, I’d been buried underground for a day until Gerry, the old man who’d saved my neck in Faerie, had hauled me out of there.

That was the day I ‘died’ to Avakis. I’d returned to the castle a broken wreck, scarred so deeply even a healing spell couldn’t undo the damage. Every day that passed, I’d expected the Thorn Princess to come back and claim me. Avakis himself ignored me, assuming I was another weak, helpless human. Two and a half years later, I’d proved him wrong.

Thorns flashed before my eyes. I blinked, and they’d gone before they could grab me. Great. Now I was hallucinating.

Magic swirled in the air, and the whispering voices sounded closer than ever. My hands automatically jumped to my ears. But like my thoughts had hit a switch, the sound grew louder. Screaming, overlaid with the faint sound of a piano playing—

“Stop. Stop it. Be quiet.” I pressed my hands to my ears like if I pushed hard enough, I could remove the sound from my own head. The noise remained, a haunting tune, and the screams turned to voices.

“Help us… you left us here, Ivy Lane.”

“You left us here to die.”

“Now it’s your turn.”

A keening moan started, adding to the cacophony. I was barely aware I’d curled up in a ball until my head hit the earthen carpet. There weren’t any thorns. I’d actually lost my mind.

No.
Faerie shaped itself around your thoughts. It knew I’d been here before, knew how I’d suffered. The realm wanted to claim me.

Rationally, I knew that. The voices, though… they sounded too close. Too real. Were these people stuck with me, because my magic drew on the pain of everyone who’d ever suffered here?

“Stop!” I croaked. “I’ll set you free. Somehow. I…”

My own voice faded as the voices grew louder. Accusing. Angry. With the force of years’ worth of rage and pain, they slammed into me like a thousand bullets.

“Ivy.”

Hands grabbed mine
.
My fingers curled around Vance’s, grasping tight. The illusion fell away, the voices fading like a radio carried out of sight.

The thorns were gone. The whole thing was a hallucination.

“Thank god.” Vance hadn’t got through Faerie unscathed. Blood stained my hands when I let go of him. One of the cuts on his face looked pretty deep.

“I thought I lost you,” I said. “What happened?”

“Traps,” he said. “A troll, three elves, and a leprechaun.”

“All walk into a bar,” I said, and cracked up. Hard. I laughed until my ribs hurt, leaning against Vance for support. I rubbed my eyes and found them wet.

“When you disappeared, I figured Faerie was pulling a trick on me,” Vance said. “I couldn’t get back to you. I tried to find the path, but I was too deep in the forest. I got the distinct impression it was trying to trick me into thinking there was a path when there wasn’t.”

“Yeah, it does that.” I shuddered. “Speaking of, we’re off the path now. How’d you find me?”

“I saw your magic. There was a flash of blue light.”

“Lucky it was me.”

Faerie had done a number on his smart suit. Whatever dirt-repelling spells he usually wore had probably been negated as soon as we’d gone over the veil. Only his coat remained more or less intact. Blue-tinged faerie blood stained his arms, and his shirt had been torn in several places.

“None of that blood’s yours, is it?”

He shook his head. “Two hobgoblins tried to jump me. I killed them.”

“Good.” I touched my thumb to the cut on his cheek.

“That’s it,” he said. “We’re going on a date the instant this fiasco is over.”

“Pretty sure any fancy restaurant would kick me out if I showed up covered in blood.”

He chuckled softly. “I’ll keep that in mind. And no roses.”

“No damned roses.”

I rested my forehead against his for a moment, listening to the sound of his quick breathing.

A howl sounded. I jumped. “We’d better go before something nastier comes here.”

Vance stood at the same time as I did, looking around. The hole I’d fallen into had become a path once again, stretching in a straight line. Silver light lit the way. I took a breath and turned to him.

“It wants me to follow.”

Magic swirled to life again, beckoning me forward. Vance’s steady hand rested on my waist, anchoring me in the present, as I walked towards our fate.