Blythe stared at her mentor, lips shaking, eyes spilling tears. She didn’t say a word and that was so unusual my heart clenched.
“Do you have to tell her all this right now?” I breathed, heart breaking for the little witch, while at the same time my insides were becoming a jumble of nerves because we had to get into that concert. Now. Besides, we’d spent hours in a forest after the last performance and he hadn’t found her then.
“I do.” Sophie hugged Blythe again. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, but you’re just so damned curious about things and we were all afraid you’d try to find him. He can be charming and he can lure you in as he did your mother, but with you, he’ll never let you go. It’s not often a child is born of such unions and his people will want to know what you are and what you’re capable of.”
“Sophie,” I insisted as music started behind us. “This is so not the time for this. Our plan won’t work unless you’re up on that stage.”
Sophie swung around to march right up into my face. She spoke through gritted teeth. “This is important. The kapre are loners, but they will group if they know about her and they have powerful fire magic.”
The music behind us swelled and I grabbed Sophie and pushed her toward the arena. “We’ll protect her. I promise. Just go!”
She didn’t bother to pick up her bag or her bolline before she ran away from us. She shot one last loving look over her shoulder at Blythe.
Blythe merely stood there, staring at the things Sophie had left, then she knelt and picked up the bolline. “This means a lot to her. I can’t believe she just left it on the ground.”
“That woman has bigger things to worry about. Everything I thought was wrong. She’s a good person.”
“I told you that.” Blythe’s voice shook.
I could practically feel the hurt and shock rolling off her small body in waves. “Yeah, and I told you that you were a fire mage. So did Nikolos. You’d better eat that herb or whatever she was talking about because I get the feeling that laughter we keep hearing is your daddy and he’s very happy to have found you.”
She hesitated, her expression taking on that curious twist I’d noticed before.
I rolled my eyes. “Goddess, did your council know you. We are not approaching this thing now; we aren’t equipped to deal with him. We know nothing about the kapre and your Sophie is in more danger than even I can guess. If she can’t pull off faking what they do on that stage, she’s dead. You know this, right?”
Blythe nodded.
“I want you to stick by Elsa and Dooby tonight. Do not let them out of your sight. Dooby can use his powers and my sister is good with a gun. Most things can still be brought down with one.”
“I thought you hated guns.”
She sounded so forlorn my heart ached, but we just didn’t have time to deal with the trauma of learning she had a scary fire demon daddy and an entire group of people who had lied her entire life. “Not in every situation.” I nodded back toward where we’d left the others. “Come on, we’ve got a lilin to catch.”
We walked back to the vehicle. It wasn’t my imagination. Someone or something was laughing in the woods.
Chapter Twelve
The music filtering through every part of the forest reminded me of one of the nicer workers at the last children’s home I’d lived in. Nora had been one of us and she’d moved into her caretaker roll with an enthusiasm nobody else there shared. On Saturday nights, she’d bake dozens of chocolate chip cookies while dancing around the kitchen to Loreena McKennitt’s “The Mummers’ Dance”. Only that song. Over and over, until I hoped I’d never hear it again. So hearing it now did nothing to lessen the crop of nerves growing like weeds in my gut.
Dooby, Castor and Elsa stood huddled behind a grouping of thick trees. They didn’t hear us coming, so I had to tap Elsa’s shoulder when we got there. She jumped, turned and stuck her gun in my face before glaring at me. She pointed to the earplugs she already had in. I motioned for her to remove them.
“It’s not dangerous until they start singing and we have a minute or two.”
“Bright One, it’s certainly dangerous to walk up on an armed cop who is creeped all the hell out. Serial killers, I can do. An energy-sucking hell demon behind a wall of powerful witches is another thing entirely.”
I just stared at her and lifted an eyebrow.
She sighed, tugged on her Viking hat. “Did you find Sophie and break her thrall?”
“Yeah,” I said on a short bark of nervous laughter. “And we ended up learning more than I wanted to hear. The short explanation is Blythe could be in danger. There’s some kind of creature in the woods who might just be her daddy.”
Elsa blinked at me. “Are you fucking kidding me? We got all this other stuff going on.”
“Pretty normal for us.” I reached out and grabbed Dooby’s arm. He pulled out one earplug, lifted an eyebrow. “Stick to the little witch like glue tonight. Something could be after her.”
“Got it,” he agreed, stuffing the plug back in his ear.
I pulled it back out. “Dooby, no matter what happens, don’t raise any dead here.”
“Beri, I know better than to pull anything out of the ground here. The magic is so heavy it’s cloying on the skin. We don’t want to give anything dead power here.”
“Good.” I handed his plug back.
Eerie silence spilled into the air. Adrenaline spiked inside me and I knew we were on. “We just ran out of time. The witches are getting onto the stage. Blythe, put your earplugs in and for goddess’s sake, chew that herb Sophie talked about.”
“I don’t wanna throw up.”
“Too bad.”
She growled, which usually made me laugh, but my stomach was churning like crazy. I had the cigar down my shirt and though I hated the idea of leaving my body here for my friends to deal with, I kept seeing the agony in Nikolos’s eyes. The dead and rotting giant in that other dungeon. This was happening. I wasn’t letting him stay in that hell dimension one more night. “Let’s go shoot us a lilin.”
I’d noticed the lack of security on the sidelines before, so we didn’t bother to purchase tickets. It was that easy to flow into the crowd in our clothes. Because the singing had already started, most of the audience was already in thrall, swaying, some already moaning. I put out my arms to stop everyone and narrowed my eyes, peeling at the dimensional layers—because something was wrong. Even more wrong than the last time.
Just as before, the energy was being pulled from the trees and the ground, flowing into the audience. But this time, it was a dark purple that had twisted into snakelike ropes. They entered at the chest and flowed out of mouths to make an even bigger tangle in the sky that shot over the witches and wizards to the lilin behind them. And just as I’d thought, the broken part of the half circle was over Sophie. Her arms, held up like the others, already sagged and I knew she wouldn’t be able to fake this for long.
I turned to Castor and spotted Fenris flying carefully to us with something cupped in his hands. He held out the leaf which held a spot of blood—enough to dip the arrow into.. My brother stepped to the center of us and we all turned in slightly different directions to keep watch.
He’d just notched the first arrow when something slammed into my side. I flew back and hit Elsa, both of us toppling to the ground hard. Scrambling off her, I looked up to find Castor wrestling with the two bodyguards. His creepy angel guides didn’t appear, so I guessed they didn’t find the men a threat.
The bow and arrow had been knocked to the ground and I looked toward the stage, feeling as if the world had slowed. I saw the lilin not feeding in ecstasy, but looking at Sophie.
We’d run out of time.
Fenris still hovered over the fight, cradling the leaf that was bigger than his hands. I jumped up, grabbed the bow and arrow and frantically worked to remember everything Castor had taught me in my one pitiful lesson. Right hand dominant, so right eye probably was too. Face the side and left foot should be closer to target. Load arrow pointing at ground, one finger above, two below. Lift, sight and draw arrow back to mouth.
The blood!
I lowered the arrow and tried to gesture with my head at Fenris. He quickly picked up on what I wanted and flew down so I could dip the arrow in his blood.
When I lifted the arrow back up and aimed at the lilin, she was looking right at me.
I let the shaft fly.
And, of course, I missed. Luckily, I didn’t hit anyone else. Hands slippery with nerves, I jumped into the fray, trying to avoid kicking feet and punching fists, feeling along the ground for another arrow. I grasped two and this time when I faced the stage, the lilin had her palm facing up, her arm pointed at Sophie, who was now clawing her neck.
“Fuck fuck fuck.” I worked to notch another arrow with my sweaty hands and forgot the other lesson about not going too deep on the fingers. Just before I let this one fly, I inched them out until only my fingertips held the string. I took a deep breath and found my calm. With most of the fighting and audience noises muted due to the earplugs, it wasn’t hard to search inside myself and pull up the confidence, the belief that I could do this. Just as the arrow left my bow and arched high into the air, I remembered the vamp blood.
The lilin looked at me and flung up her arm.
The slam of power that hit my chest hurt like she’d punched right through to my heart and squeezed. Gasping, I brought up my hand and the pain hit, then abruptly stopped. The ring Blythe had made me burned hot for an instant, then cooled. The lilin looked confused, but pain also pulled at her features. My arrow was in her shoulder.
If I could do it once, I could do it again.
I barely took my eyes off her as people fought around me. I waved Fenris back, then dipped the arrow in blood before notching it. Aiming it down the center of my left foot, my eyes locked with hers. She started to throw up her hand, but Sophie did something to pull her attention away, and in that instant I knew I was going to hit her this time. I let the arrow fly.
It lodged into her left shoulder so hard she fell backward. The circle above the singers disappeared. This was my chance. I ran to the side of the crowd, jumped the flimsy barrier rope and once I knew my body would be away from all those feet, I closed my eyes and separated my two selves. The sticky feeling didn’t last long. I was soon shooting up into the air, hoping with everything in me that she had a spirit body I could harm in this dimension.
I raced toward her over a crowd that had gone crazy. Either her feelings were flowing to the audience or that magic had been too much. Below me Elsa punched a man in the face twice in rapid succession, Castor still battled it out with the two bouncers and Dooby had jumped onto the back of one of the bouncers and wrapped his thin arm around the man’s neck. I don’t know if it was Tweedle Dum or Tweedle Dee, but his arms flailed up and back as he tried to swat at Dooby like the necromancer was a fly. Blythe, watching, ran underneath me toward the stage. I pointed at Sophie, who was lying still up there. Blythe nodded, and in the chaos of the crowd, managed to toss her bag onto the stage before climbing after it to kneel by her mentor.
It seemed that breaking the circle so abruptly had also clipped the thrall the lilin had on the band. Witches and wizards blinked and looked around, and one by one anger filled their expressions. One wizard took a menacing step toward the lilin who had regained her feet. She saw my metaphysical body flying toward her and the absolute shock that whitened her expression was actually comical. Her mouth dropped open and she quickly lifted her hands toward me, but frowned in confusion when it seemed her muscles just froze. Guess the sprite vampire blood had worked. I zoomed to the side and gathered my cord in both hands, then shot down toward her.
She screamed as I started flying around and around, my cord wrapping her like a mummy and effectively binding her. I kept going, wanting to be sure.
I knew I wouldn’t have much time. Elsa and Castor were the only ones who would get themselves killed trying to stop what I was about to do. Dooby climbed the stage and boggled at the cord-wrapped lilin. He couldn’t see the cord, so she probably looked strange with her arms squished to her body. Relief filled me when I saw the cigar in his hand.
He looked up at me, offered a sad smile.
Startled, I narrowed my eyes at him.
Shrugging, he held up the cigar. “I worked a spell so I can see you like this. Also, I saw you put this in your shirt back at the motel. Figured you’d want it about now.”
Blythe spotted that cigar and stood up to stare at me, her small hands clenching into fists. She shook her head hard, blonde curls flying. “No!” she yelled.
That shout was so loud the still-half-tranced witches and wizards jumped and turned toward her. Several of them looked up toward me, but I could tell they had no idea who Blythe was talking to. One of them rubbed his eyes and stared as if he was seeing my cord. So at least one of the wizards had some gift of second sight.
Phro appeared below me next to the lilin and she looked solid. And scared to death.
I scanned the crowd and spotted the two bouncers at Castor’s feet. Elsa stood beside him, breathing hard, a heavy-looking tree limb in her hand. She couldn’t see me, but Castor could, and something in my expression must have clued him in because horror bleached his face white as he launched into a run for the stage.