Boreal and John Grey Season 1 (2 page)

The Encounter

Episode 1

Nine worlds hang on the divine tree, whose roots feed in the river of Grey. The Gates between the worlds are gone. The guardians keep watch, honing their blades and biding their time. The day of reckoning will come. Beware of John Grey.

Chapter One

Vaettir

Although it was early September, the cold bit to the bone and the air smelled like snow. Snow and piss and trash. The alley stretched ahead, empty of life and strewn with crushed cans and paper.

Ella didn’t move. Faint humming filled her ears, and clicking noises sounded. The clouds above shifted, though no wind blew. The Veil was thinning. Shades would be lurking, waiting to pounce. In the past, faint, frail faeries came through; these had recently turned into more malevolent creatures — kobolds and goblins with a taste for blood.

Nothing moved. Her cheeks ached with the cold. Swearing under her breath, she shifted her hand on the grip of her gun. She wore her blouse inside out for protection and the patterned letters on the front scraped against her skin and itched. The charms hanging around her neck chimed softly as she turned to check behind her and she clapped a hand over them, the iron ice-cold against her palm. A strand of dark hair fell in her eyes; she blew it off her face.

Night was falling, limiting her vision, and she just wished she knew where the hell Simon, her partner, was. He was supposed to meet her, but there was no sign of him.

No sign of the caller who’d reported being pursued by a Shade, either, and she couldn’t just shout
‘Secret Paranormal Investigation Team of one here to save you’
, could she? Not with the Shade lying in waiting. Poor fellow had either escaped or found death. Sooner or later she’d know which it was.

The air thickened, growing opaque with dark fog, and she clasped her cold iron charm against her chest. She drew a deep breath and caught a whiff of blood.

A shift behind her, a current stirring the trash, and three Shades came out of the mist, running at her, claws extended.

Ella spun and slashed with her twin knives, the symbols on them blazing. She caught one Shade under the chin and cut upward, drew the other into the creature’s belly. The Kobold shrieked, clawing at its throat with sharp-nailed fingers, then fizzled and faded, returning to the grey space between the worlds — the river of Grey, where twisted ghosts and shadow creatures nobody knew much about wandered.

Quiet settled around her. She turned in a circle, knives pointing down. They dripped black ichor that burned holes where it dripped into the ground.

Where were the other two Shades? And where had all these come from? The Veil rarely thinned so much as to admit more than one at a time.

A swish in the air behind her and she dropped to the asphalt, rolling away, coming to a crouch. The other two Kobolds leered at her, spindly legs and ugly feet bare to the icy wind that now tore through the city. She rose slowly.

Dave would love this new development. One more thing to worry about, on top of the increased Shade aggressiveness they’d observed over the past days.

Ella barely had time to duck when the Shades attacked, each from either side. She slashed at one and backed away.
Simon, damn you, hurry up!
Her partner was so going to hear about this. He never stood her up, so what was going on?

No time for speculation. Her boots skidding on loose gravel, she raced toward a construction site. It stood silent in the night, pillars and scaffolds rising like ruins of some ancient temple, silvered by moonlight. She dug her fingers into the chain link fence and climbed up, swung a leg over and dropped on the other side. She ran lightly between pits and pieces of machinery, looking for a good spot to make her stand.

Too late she caught the glint of yellow eyes peering at her from behind a half-built wall. Backing away on broken pieces of concrete and planks, she tried to wrap her mind around this.
More Shades?
Maybe she should call Dave right now, ask for extraction ASAP.

But she never got the chance. The goblin, because that’s what it was, stepped from behind the wall, massive and horned, drooling silver saliva. The Kobolds snickered and chittered, a series of clicks and sighs that chilled her spine. Jesus, how many were there?

She drew her phone, keeping the knife in her other hand, and pressed one, the speed-dial for a distress call.

Then the goblin flew at her, knocked the phone out of her hand and slammed her down to the floor. Her head hit the concrete and the world blacked out for a moment. As her senses returned, the dark fading, she saw the goblin tower over her. She barely registered the burn of something sharp pinching her side, too shocked to feel much of anything. She patted the concrete at her side, seeking her knife in the rubble, then froze when the goblin drew back a massive fist and gave a grin full of sharp teeth.

Somewhere behind her, the kobolds clicked and clapped.

No, she couldn’t end this way. Sitting up, she scraped her fingers along the floor, found something long and cold —
a rod?
— and swung at the creature’s legs. It was like hitting a brick wall. The goblin merely sniffed, its muzzle wrinkling, then swatted the rod aside. It left her hand and skittered along the floor.

Since when didn’t the Shades flinch at the touch of steel?

The goblin crouched down and drew its huge fist back. Time slowed. She saw it coming at her like a dark wave, about to smash her face.
Damn you, Simon. If I die here, I’ll haunt you forever.

The fist stopped an inch from her face. The goblin groaned. Its yellow eyes widened, the lumbering body shuddered and pitched sideways.

Ella blinked up at the scaffolds and beams, then sat up slowly, her head spinning. Her knife lay a few feet away. She reached for it, her other hand going to her gun, still in its hip holster.

The kobolds advanced over the half-built wall, clawed hands extended, and she cocked the gun, taking aim.

Something pale streaked her vision and she blinked.
Hallucinations?
She must have hit her head harder than she thought. Because a man was there, blades flashing in the moonlight. He fell on the kobolds, twirling and delivering heavy blows, his blond hair flying under a green bandana. Like a hurricane, he pivoted and kicked, then cut and stabbed, until the Shades fell back, raising spindly hands to cover their faces.

Okay, what the hell?

The man didn’t stop. He spun closer to the kobolds, hacking at them with his blades — bowie knives, long and wicked, covered in symbols — marking one on the arm. The kobold shrieked and flickered in and out of existence. The other one cowered and whimpered. Ella narrowed her eyes. Why did they fear his knives but not hers? The blades were dark.
Iron?

A bellow from the left reminded her the goblin was still present. Crap. Her hand felt too heavy, her head too light, filled with sharp pebbles that bounced inside her skull. The goblin pushed itself upright and turned to her.

“Oh no, you don’t,” she whispered and took aim. She fired one, two, three bullets into its chest. The goblin staggered back but didn’t fall. Cursing, she reversed her grip on the knife and threw it at the creature’s head. It hit it smack in the forehead.

The goblin fell and fizzled, its limbs melting away, its torso and head going last, a grizzly Cheshire cat grin on its face — finally returning to the place behind the Veil.

Ella blinked at the empty spot the goblin had occupied, then turned to see the man dispatch the last kobold. Suddenly there was ringing quiet, punctuated by the guy’s hissing breaths. He looked up.

“Are you okay?” he asked. He had a strange accent, a way of drawing out the vowels. Russian, perhaps. He was handsome in a lean and austere sort of way — thin face, high cheekbones, a small mouth, and hooded ice-blue eyes. His chest rose and fell, stretching the black material of his dirty white t-shirt. He wore a green bandana under which his ash-blond hair fluttered down to his shoulders. “Hey, can you hear me?”

“Yeah, sorry. I’m fine.” To prove it, she clicked the safety of her gun on and stood, wobbling only a little. “Thank you. You’re...?”

“You should get out of here. More
Vaettir
may arrive.”

“
Vaettir
? You mean Shades?” That had sounded Nordic. Maybe not Russian then.

He nodded, eyes darting around the place, knives held loosely at his sides, ichor dripping steadily to the floor. Silvery designs flashed on his bare forearms —
tattoos?
Or paint?

“Yes, Shades.” He walked to the half-finished wall and checked behind it, every movement graceful like a panther’s.

Ella shook her head dazedly. What was wrong with her? “I’m Ella, working for the Investigations Bureau.” She didn’t normally recruit people, but he saw Shades, and the way he fought ... “Finding someone with your abilities is rare and we could really use another... Wait!” He was backing away and she didn’t even know his name. She took a step toward him as the police sirens sounded in the distance. “Don’t go!”

But he spun away, ran to the fence and vaulted over it with an ease that had her gaping. What was he, an acrobat? Then he was gone, vanishing in the shadows of the street outside, leaving her to deal with Dave.

With a heart-felt sigh, she turned to face her squad leader.

***