Stranger (38 page)

As Catullus, Gemma, and Bryn reached the farthest edge of the clearing, Merlin shouted, “Fire. Air. One must have the other. Smother the beast.”

Silence fell. Catullus waited, but Merlin did not speak again. The sorcerer turned inward, shutting out everything around him. Seeing that Merlin was entirely lost, his visitors withdrew into the woods.

“Poor guy,” Gemma said sadly as they walked. “To be trapped in that tree, in that unbalanced brain forever. Do you think his ranting meant anything?”

“Sounded like alchemy,” mused Catullus. He turned Merlin’s words over and over in his mind. Some accounts of Merlin described him as not only a sorcerer, but a seer, as well. Was Merlin prophesying? If so, what was he trying to tell them?

“I like your new clothes.” Gemma eyed him. “Gives me some wicked ideas about tempting the virtuous knight.”

“The knight isn’t so virtuous. He’s thinking about ravishing the pure maiden.”

“Not very pure, this maiden.”

“Thank God for that. Still,” he added, slightly melancholy, “I’m sorry to see that Ulster coat gone.”

“It was a grimy disaster full of holes.”

“Sentimental value.” His thoughts drifted back. “I remember you standing on the deck of the steamship as we neared Liverpool, wearing that coat. How lovely and determined you looked—the kind of woman I never thought to call my own. I didn’t know it then, but when I saw you” — he gazed warmly at Gemma— “I saw my soul. Wrapped in black cashmere.”

Bryn flew ahead, darting between massive trees. The pixie barely waited to see if the mortals kept up, which they did, but barely. Human legs proved less speedy than wings. Perhaps that might be another project for Catullus, should he ever return to his workshop. He’d built glider wings—which Bennett had put to very good use in Greece—but a self-contained flying machine … his mind whirled with the possibilities and mechanics.

“A door between worlds is near,” Bryn called back.

“Where will it take us?” asked Gemma.

“Where you need to be,” came the opaque answer.

Catullus hadn’t the patience for ambiguity. With time in such short supply, he needed to know where he and Gemma would emerge and how long it would take them to reconnect with the other Blades before moving on to London. “Care to be more specific?”

Naturally, the pixie would not answer. He zipped onward, with Catullus and Gemma all but running to keep pace.

Bryn suddenly darted back. “Not that way! We have to find another path.”

“What?” Gemma asked, but the pixie shook his head.

“No time! Head back … it’s coming!”

Bryn flitted off, leaving his mortal charges to hurry after him. Catullus threw a look over his shoulder to see what, exactly, they were trying to avoid.

It
turned out to be a hunched-over, wheat-skinned creature, its form crudely human. A thick patch of tangled dark hair obscured most of its face, but did not quite hide its wide-jawed mouth. It shuffled with ungainly motion, dragging a heavy club, periodically stopping to sniff at the air. Catullus thought that perhaps Bryn overreacted to the creature, since it moved so clumsily and didn’t seem to see very well. But as soon as the thing caught a scent, it leapt, quick as gunfire, and slammed its club down onto the ground.

With a large, yellow-nailed hand, it picked something up from the dirt. The smashed form of some forest animal
dangled from between its fingers before the creature crammed the dead animal into its mouth.

“Troll,” Bryn whispered, coming up beside Catullus. “Hungry and ill-tempered.”

They ran on, careful to keep downwind. The troll smelled horrible, but better to smell its stench than have it catch their scent.

Yet they had not gotten far when sounds just ahead caused Catullus to skid to a halt. He pressed himself up against a tree, pulling Gemma with him. She knew better than to demand an explanation. They both held still, listening.

Human voices. Men’s voices.

“God Almighty,” one of them groaned. “When are we getting out of this accursed place? I hate it here.”

“Did you see what happened to Coleby?” another said, horror in his voice. “Took one bite of that apple and then those … things … came. Dragged him right off. Staithes, you’re our mage. Why couldn’t we stop ‘em?”

“Because,” growled someone else, presumably Staithes, “that kind of faerie magic cannot be combated, even by a mage. Anyway, if Coleby was so stupid, serves him right.”

“I still hear him screaming,” the first voice said, horror chilling his words. “Let’s just go, before that happens to someone else.”

“Shut it,” a fourth voice snapped. “We can’t leave until we find and kill Graves and that Yank woman. Otherwise Edgeworth will burn us to cinders.”

Catullus inwardly seethed. The very last thing he had time or tolerance for was a pack of Heirs. Ammunition for his shotgun was running low, and he didn’t fancy getting into a sword fight, not when the Heirs had him and Gemma outnumbered and outgunned.

Retreat in the other direction was not possible, not with the troll making its slow, steady way toward them.

The troll …

“Wait here,” Catullus whispered to Gemma.

Before she could speak, he sprinted away. Directly toward the troll.

Catullus’s soft leather boots made almost no sound as he sped over bracken and grass, weaving a path toward the advancing troll. He spotted the creature long before it became aware of him, lumbering as it was with its nose high in the air.

The troll grunted in surprise when Catullus jumped in front of it—far enough to be out of range of its bloodstained club.

“Hey, Porridge-Brains.” Catullus waved his arms to be sure the troll saw him. “I’m a tasty morsel. Yes, I am.”

Growling, the troll raised its club, but Catullus turned and ran before the crude weapon could crash down on his skull. He dashed ahead of the troll, yet not so fast that the beast lost sight of him. A tough balance, for the troll could not run quickly, yet had the leaping speed of a grasshopper. Several times, the whoosh of acrid air announced the troll’s presence moments before its club came swinging down. Each time, Catullus dodged the blow, though only barely.

With a burst of speed, he raced back toward the Heirs. He thought himself clear of the troll.

It leapt out from behind a tree, cutting him off.

Catullus tried to sprint around the hulking beast, attempting to lead it toward the Heirs. Its swinging club kept pushing him back.

“Son of a ruddy bitch,” Catullus growled. His plan wasn’t going to work.

“Hey!”

Gemma’s voice.

“Hey!” she shouted again. “Limey bastards! With the bad teeth and waxy skin! Yes—I’m talking to you!” What the hell was she doing?

A flash of russet hair up ahead. He spied her, standing not a dozen yards from the Heirs. When the men also spotted her, they stood, momentarily stunned that their intended prey
stood nearby, literally waving her arms overhead so they could see her.

“The Yankee bitch,” one spat.

“Come over here and call me that,” she said. She turned, gathering her trailing skirts, and ran.

The Heirs started for her, all but the mage, who shouted warnings for the men to stop, that it was a trap. His admonitions went unheeded, and so even the mage was forced to join the pursuit.

Catullus, still dodging the troll’s club, caught glimpses of Gemma as she sped toward him. Toward the troll. With the Heirs in pursuit.

He grinned, despite the angry troll trying to brain him. Gemma knew without being told exactly what Catullus had planned, and when that plan had faltered, she knew how to fix the situation.

Gemma skidded to a stop ten feet from the troll. The Heirs were closing in quickly. She picked up a rock and hurled it at the troll’s back.

“Behind you, Ugly!” she yelled.

The troll spun around, arcs of saliva flying from its slavering mouth. It charged her.

Catullus lifted his shotgun, preparing to shoot the beast, but Gemma dove aside as the troll ran at her.

The troll, full of unstoppable momentum, barreled on and straight toward the Heirs. Shouts and guttural growls clashed with gunfire and crushing club.

Catullus ran to Gemma and pulled her up from where she lay upon the ground. He held her tightly. “Damn reckless woman!”

“Making sure your scheme worked,” she countered. “And it did, didn’t it?” A rhetorical question, since both Catullus and Gemma plainly saw the Heirs and the troll battling one another in a frenzy of modern technology, magic, and brute force.

“Like iron and carbon,” he murmured, gazing at her. “Combined, they create steel.”

She smiled up at him. “The steel of a blade.”

They turned away. With the sounds of battle at their backs, Catullus, Gemma, and Bryn raced toward the portal.

“There it is,” said Bryn.

The gateway between the mortal world and Otherworld appeared to be nothing at all. Only more forest.

Catullus’s brow furrowed. “I don’t see anything.”

“Between those two trees,” the pixie answered, exasperated.

Catullus studied the trees in question. They seemed ordinary—if gigantic, knotted trees could be considered ordinary, but definitions of what was and wasn’t remarkable grew indistinct in Otherworld. He looked beyond where the trees stood, yet all he saw were farther stretches of the woods, deepening into gold and green shadow.

“It shimmers,” Gemma said, “like liquid glass. I see it with my magic. The doorway.”

This satisfied him, even though he wished he had her gift, something that allowed him to penetrate the realm of the visible using his own ability. “As long as one of us can see the door, that’s all that matters.”

She pressed her lips together, and seemed to come to a decision. Taking his hands in hers, she said, “There is something I’ve wanted to give you. It’s been on my mind for a while. And now is the right time.”

He tried to think of what she might have to give him. Her notebook? Her derringer? She didn’t have much, and he was quite certain that a journalist, especially one from a large family, wasn’t wealthy. The Graves family’s coffers were more than full.

“You’ve given me your heart,” he answered, “and that is all I want.”

“There’s more.”

He meant to object, but she closed her eyes and an expression of deep concentration sharpened her features. She seemed to retreat deep within herself, drawing upon something unseen. He felt it then—a growing, gathering energy that hummed and pulsed through her. Her hands warmed quickly, almost fever-hot. The heat and energy radiated from her into him, first in his hands, and then unfolding up his arms, through his chest, until his whole body resonated with them.

The sensation was … not disagreeable. Quite pleasurable, actually. A connection between himself and Gemma, living energy that gleamed like silver threads both hot and cool. It wove into the fabric of himself, all throughout his mind and body: arms, chest, legs.

He knew of no scientific process to explain what was happening.

Something lodged itself into his will—not an object, but the pattern of a thing. His eyes closed to concentrate on this new presence, feeling it with his mind. It took shape there, in his thoughts and shadow-self. What was it? He did not deal with intangibles; this was new.

Concentrating. Bringing himself to narrow focus, as he did with mechanics and mathematics, yet this process focused within to the realm of subtleties. He had it now. It formed and solidified into—

A key.

His eyes flew open just as Gemma released his hands. She fluttered her lashes and looked at him speculatively.

“Is it there?” she asked. “Can you feel it?”

“Gemma,” murmured Catullus, “what have you done?”

She demanded, “Can you feel it? The Key?”

“I can,” he answered, scarcely believing what just happened. “It’s there, inside me.”

“Look.” She turned him so he faced the trees that marked the portal. “What do you see?”

He started. Stretching between the two trees was a shining membrane gleaming with visible magic. Moments earlier, all Catullus had seen were the trees and the forest beyond them. Now, it was as though the lenses of his spectacles had been replaced with glass that revealed magical energy. To be certain, he removed his spectacles. The vision of the portal remained—though slightly blurred due to his nearsightedness.

He replaced his spectacles, then glanced back and forth between the portal and Gemma. “I see it. The doorway. I can see it now.”

She smiled. “I did it. Wasn’t sure it could be done, but it can.”

“You gave me your magic.” Amazement edged his words.
“All
of it?” If she’d sacrificed her family’s legacy to him, he would find a way to return it. Immediately. It was too much. He could never accept her gift.

His heart eased when she said, “Half I kept for myself, but ever since the Primal Source was activated, it’s been stronger than ever, so I barely feel a difference.”

Even so, he shook his head at the enormity of what she had done. Something akin to awe roughened his voice. “I’ve never been given such a gift.” He looked back to the portal that, even at his glance, moved to open for him. “No door is closed to me now.”

She blushed with pleasure. He pulled her to him and kissed her, marveling at this fearless woman with a heart of steel, yet a generosity of spirit that seared his very core.

Bryn had less patience with the enormity of Gemma’s gift. “Cross between the trees,” he said tersely, “and you shall find yourself in Brightworld.”

Catullus and Gemma broke apart to ready themselves for the passage. Now that their time in Otherworld had come to an end, Catullus found himself oddly sentimental for the maddening, dangerous place. Gemma seemed possessed by
the same nostalgia, and they both looked around the forest with suspiciously bright eyes.

“I think I might miss it here,” she murmured. “Even though we almost died half a dozen times. And I’m starving. And it seemed like every female we met tried to steal my man.”

Catullus corrected, “One female wanted my
blood,
not me. Yet I must agree,” he added. “Treacherous and confusing Otherworld may be, but I’ll miss it, too.”