Tiddly Jinx (12 page)

No one so much as twitched an eyelid as the audience waited with bated breath.

“We’ve decided to step aside so that you may choose your own ruler. I leave the future of this great kingdom in your hands.”

He stepped back from the podium and stood next to me. The silence in the room swelled into a murmur. Sebastian stepped back up to the podium and held up a hand, waiting for them to quiet.

“The Erlking will stay in his position until a new official can be elected. The floor for nominations will be open for one week and the election will be held in six months’ time.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. We had six months to take care of the Pole.

“As first son of the house of Kireeth, I would like to make the first nomination.” The tone of the room had gone back to making libraries seem loud. “I nominate Cheney and Selene,” Sebastian said.

I TOOK A STEP forward to decline the nomination, but Selene held tight to my hand. I glanced over at her and she shook her head ever so slightly. Her face stilled me. She had doubts. Leaving was the natural choice, but making that speech tore a chunk from me. One person somewhere near the back began to clap, and slowly more and more joined in. Soon the whole room thundered with applause. Not everyone was clapping, but enough that the silent ones seemed fewer than they were. Sebastian came and stood on the other side of me. We exited in a line with Selene in the lead. Once we had cleared the crowd, Selene spun around and started talking before I could say anything.

“Don’t be mad. Sebastian’s right. If the people elect you, then we know they want us here and your reasons for leaving become a lot less convincing. I’ll be fine. I don’t mind a few threats or even some protesters. We have to at least try.”

“Don’t let them chase you away. Your legacy should be better than that,” Sebastian added.

I ran my fingers through my hair. “No one is chasing me away.”

“That’s not what it seemed like,” Sebastian said. “With the nomination you gain strength. Our enemies will be identified and can be dealt with. I cannot believe that everything you have fought for is so worthless to you that you can just walk away from it. You made me your child’s guardian. I will not allow her to live in a world that believes she is less worthy because of her heritage. She doesn’t deserve it and neither does Selene.”

“Then you should have nominated yourself.” Walking away hadn’t been easy, and it pissed me off that Sebastian undid everything I had just done. I wanted to live my own life without the entire fae race dependent on me.

Selene’s hand curled around my arm. “Cheney,” she said, her eyes soft and supplicating. “Is this really about us, or is it about your father?”

“Shouldn’t you find Frost?” I snapped, and she raised an eyebrow.

“Fine,” she said, but she wasn’t fine. She turned to Sebastian. “Thank you. No matter what he says, you kept him from making a mistake today.” She turned and walked out of the office, shutting the door harder than normal.

Great. I was honing in on my irritation at Sebastian rather than on the guilt for taking it out on Selene when there was a quick knock on the door. It burst open shortly after and Sy came through, brushing off the guard outside.

“It’s happening,” he said.

I didn’t have to ask what was happening. I knew from the expression on his face. There was a tear. Keeping all of this a secret wasn’t going to be possible. I waved the guard away.

When the door clicked shut Sebastian asked, “Where?”

“Cedar Ridge. I don’t know what it is, but I already lost two bounty hunters there when I sent them to check out a settlement of missing sylphs.”

“How do you know they just didn’t move?” Sebastian asked.

Sy’s lip curled. “Pieces. There were pieces left. I sent two hunters and they haven’t come back, either.”

“How did you hear of the missing sylphs before me?” I asked. He raised an eyebrow, reminding me of Selene, and I shook my head. “It’s doesn’t matter, let’s go.”

“You need to get Selene,” Sy said. “If there’s a tear, someone has to close it and none of us can do it but her.”

“She’s teaching Frost about magic.”

“Great. Bring her, too.”

“I’ll get them. We’ll meet you downstairs.” Sebastian took off at a run without waiting for a reply.

Sy and I headed outside. “Do you think we’ll need the coven, too?”

“I sent Tobias, a berserker, and Ghurim, a half-giant. They aren’t bright, but they make up for it with brawn. Whatever took them out has to be fast and strong enough to kill them on the first pass. I don’t think anything could survive round two with either of them. We need to shut this down now. I don’t care how we do it. There are worse things than death.”

Worry looked out of place on the laid-back half-elf. Sy normally gave the impression he had seen everything before. It made me wonder if he was more concerned about what we were up against or something else.

“How did you know about the attack?” I renewed my earlier question.

Sy’s mouth pursed and he glanced around to make sure no one was close. “The Abyss isn’t as autonomous as you might believe. There are unwritten, unspoken rules we all have to follow or…” He splayed his hands. “Let’s just say, it’s best not to draw attention to yourself from the wrong people.”

My whole life I had heard rumors—bedtime stories meant to frighten small children into being good—about a secret council who protected the Abyss from exposure by any means necessary, including cutting off tongues and turning bad little elves who revealed themselves to humans into swine. Obviously we all dismissed it as we got older and elf/human relationships became more of a reality without anyone turning into a pig.

Sy shook his head like he could hear my thoughts. “But those relationships never last, do they? Do you know a single half-elf who has both parents? How many even have one? It’s not a coincidence.”

What exactly was Sy saying? I opened my mouth to speak, but he cut me off.

“I’m not saying anything,” he said pointedly. “But if you’re a human without some sort of magical connection to the Abyss, you better hope you never learn about it.”

“Are you reading my mind?”

Selene came through the door, wearing a backpack and accompanied by Sebastian and Frost.

“Ready?” Sy asked them. “Do you need the coven?”

She shook her head. “I don’t even know if we can do anything. I want to see what we are dealing with before I bring them in.”

Sy nodded and pulled on a pair of thick rubber gloves from his pocket. When he had them on, he offered a hand to Frost, who rolled her eyes but took it, grumbling about hating to transport. Sy gave us the exact location of the settlement, and then a moment later we were all standing there. I let my eyes take in the surroundings. We were on the side of a mountain that was thick with cedar trees. The scent masked the only other smell. Death. Chunks of flesh and pieces of bone littered the ground. Most were small and delicate but some were larger—much larger—but every bit as dead.

A scream ripped through the mountain, impossible to pinpoint. I looked at Sy. “What was that?”

It was Selene who answered in barely a whisper. “Wendigo.”

I looked back at her, her hand trembled as she pulled a sword from her holding—something a half-elf shouldn’t even have, but rules never seemed to apply to her. Sebastian and I followed suit. I tossed a weapon to Sy and offered one to Frost, who shook her head. Selene crouched low to the ground, staring up at the trees, sword ready for battle.

“What’s a wendigo?” Frost asked, not looking overly concerned.

“
Shhh
,” Selene breathed as her eyes continued to dart around. “Cut off its head,” was all the explanation she gave.

There was another scream, and while I still couldn’t determine a direction it sounded closer. A lot closer. I squatted next to Selene and closed my eyes, letting my senses take over. Eyes could be deceived—made to see things that weren’t there. My other senses, when not hindered by sight, could work together to discover the truth. The hunter in me was at home in the woods and knew which sounds belonged and which didn’t. My nose could distinguish foreign odors. I was willing to bet that a wendigo wasn’t native to this forest or any other I knew, since I had never heard of it. Movement in the trees surrounded us—definitely not a squirrel. It was something larger, much larger and too fast to be human, but not quite as fast as an elf. The smell of blood and death, like a battlefield after a fight, grew thicker. My senses continued to sharpen as my heart beat slowed.

It happened in a flash. One instant we all waited and the next the enemy was on top of us. I opened my eyes and came up slicing with the sword when the trees went silent. My blade met flesh and cleanly passed through. The arm of the creature dropped to ground with a thump and everyone around me exploded into action. There were six of them. Strange creatures with half-rotting, grayish skin stretched over nothing but bone and muscle, and eyes of starving wolves. The one closest to me spurted blood from the stump above the elbow where his arm used to be, but it didn’t stop its attack. The monster charged, teeth gnashing and clawing with its one good hand, seemingly without an ounce of fear. Even the hungriest animal would retreat when injured. It would know it was outmatched instinctually, but this creature had no such recognition. I swung again, taking the head this time. Selene already had a body at her feet and was charging a second one. Sebastian, like me, had removed limbs, but the creature he was battling didn’t seem to notice. Sy stabbed his through the heart, jerking his sword up then pushing off with his foot against its chest, but the creature lunged for him at the same time he loosened his weapon. They tumbled backward.

“The head!” Selene shouted and went to assist her cousin.

I spun in a full circle, sweeping the surrounding forest. Frost was missing. I moved to where she last stood and a soft grunt carried through the air. I looked back over my shoulder at Sebastian who had finally killed his creature. “Frost,” I said, then took off down the incline in the direction I thought I’d heard the grunt come from. I spied her twenty feet away, leaning against a tree with her hands curled around a creature’s neck, holding it back as it snarled and dripped blood on her. Its fingers dug into her biceps, drawing blood. I took two steps over and decapitated the creature with one decisive stroke, its head rolling down the mountain.

Frost’s chest heaved as she caught her breath. “It didn’t die,” was all she said. I pulled the headless body off of her. “Should have taken the weapon.”

She turned her big eyes to me. “It didn’t die.”

I nodded. “It was already dead, I think.” I glanced back up the mountain. “We should regroup.”

She took a couple more deep breaths, and then struggled to her feet. My hand twitched to help her up, but I couldn’t.

“Do you need help climbing back up?” I asked.

She looked at the steep incline then rolled her shoulders with a grimace. Her cheeks slowly colored a bright shade of red. “I don’t think so.”

I nodded and whistled the call Sebastian and I always used. His head popped over the edge above and I motioned him to come down. Looking closer at the body of the decapitated creature, I noticed that it wore tattered clothing. Bites were missing from its arms and a couple fingers had been gnawed off.

“Have you ever seen anything like it?” Frost asked.

I shook my head and refocused on her. “How hurt are you?”

“Why? You going to heal me?” She moved to cross her arms, but couldn’t do it. The blood spread over her shirt. She glanced at the others climbing down. “Thank you for saving me, again,” she said softly, cheeks coloring once more.

The other three joined us. Selene adjusted her backpack while her eyes flickered from the body on the ground back to us. “You okay?” she asked Frost.

“Fine,” Frost said.

“Wendigo?” Sy asked. “I thought I knew every creature in the Abyss. How did you know what to do?”

Selene chewed on her lip, a haunted expression clouding the life that normally danced in her eyes. “Purgatory. Souls who fail to make it past the mountains become…that,” she gestured to the body on the ground. “Greed was the sin, I think. They couldn’t overcome whatever they did to get them there, and the monster they were on the inside eventually started to show on the outside.” Her eyes filled with tears. “But after you killed them there, they turn back into a person.”

No one spoke. She’d told me about her experience, but not in a lot of detail. I knew she fought things and I knew that she had overcome a lot of obstacles, but I didn’t know what all of those obstacles were. I would never understand the depth of what she went through. She fought monsters I had never experienced, but it was deeper than that. She also battled her own demons in a way that was hard to fathom.

“Did you have a weapon?” It was the only thing I could think to ask to break the silence.

“No,” she said. She absently licked her lips and glanced at the body on the ground. “It still looks like a monster now, doesn’t it.”

I stepped between her and the body. She didn’t need to look at it anymore. “It is a monster.”