Possible lead on the puck’s whereabouts. Watch for updates, and prepare to mobilize.
Rhys was the first to respond. Where did you find him?
We haven’t yet. Gawain caught his scent on Old Friars Lane. More news when I have it. After sending the quick reply, Nikolas pocketed his phone and left.
As he sped to the area, Nikolas thought of what he had gleaned from the mobile phones of the dead Hounds. On the day he had been attacked, one of the Hounds had received a call from a public call box. Then much as Nikolas had just done, that Hound had sent out a group text to three people, and they had responded quickly.
Each mobile Nikolas had collected had the same corresponding texts on it. He had killed all the participants involved in the attack.
Like terrorists, Hounds tended to operate in cells or, more accurately, in packs. The alpha had received a phone call, mobilized his pack, and they had converged on the village where Nikolas had been.
Someone had known where Nikolas was going to be that afternoon, and they had informed a pack of Hounds. Could Robin have done such a thing? Had he been tracking the knights of the Dark Court, only to betray them one at a time? Was he the reason why their numbers had diminished so drastically over the last six months?
Nikolas hadn’t shared Oberon’s good opinion of the sprite. He’d never been overly fond of Robin, finding him capricious and unpredictable, but he also would have never believed Robin to be capable of such treachery.
Now he was no longer so sure. None of them were quite who they once were, when Oberon had been a strong, vital leader ruling over a thriving, prosperous court.
The Porsche ate the miles with a languid purr, and in the evening’s fading light, Nikolas came over a rise and looked out over the land. Patches of farmland traced a different pattern than they once had, but the dip and curve of the land itself hadn’t changed.
Ancient memories drifted through his mind. The thunder of Fae horses’ hooves pounding the ground and the clash of swords. The screams of pain, and the flares of deadly magic so bright and beautiful, warriors stopped to stare in awe as they died.
And then that final unsurpassable roar of Power, as Morgan unleashed what he had been holding in reserve.
The earth shook and cracked with a force that had thrown horses to the ground and brought everyone—the most Powerful nobles and foot soldiers of two kingdoms, the Light Court and the Dark, and the humans allied to either side, both friend and foe alike—to their knees.
As long as Nikolas lived, he would never forget that sound.
A human had done that. A human had brought some of the oldest and most Powerful of the Elder Races to their knees.
Or, at least, a creature that had once been human.
Nikolas didn’t see any sign of a Mini, but when he drew close to the cluster of white oak trees, he pulled to the side of the road, stepped out of the Porsche, and walked.
The sun’s light waned and shadows lengthened, and insects played a seesaw symphony in the underbrush. The gloaming was near, the time that was neither day nor night, when shadows left their anchors to mingle and whisper together before the moon’s pale light sent them scurrying home again.
As Nikolas strolled alongside the underbrush, the symphony fell silent, and it only began to play again when he had passed.
At first he didn’t pick up Robin’s scent, but he did sense a smear of darkness on the road that drew him. He reached the spot where a hiss of dark magic had expired and knelt on one knee to examine it. The darkness was both psychic and physical. The magic had burned into the asphalt.
Isabeau’s Power signature was quite distinct. When he passed his hand over the shadow, it bit his skin, the last toxic sting before the last of the magic dissipated completely. Glancing at his palm where a reddened welt raised, he dismissed the tiny injury and took a deep breath.
With the exception of Oberon, none of the Dark Court who had Wyr in their ancestry could change into their animal forms, but their Wyr blood did give them enhanced abilities. Gawain was the better tracker, and it must have been several hours since Robin passed this way, but once Nikolas had knelt down, he could finally scent the puck, along with the faint scent of a strange woman.
What was she? Clearly she wasn’t Isabeau herself, and she didn’t smell like Light Fae.
He laid his hand on the asphalt road and asked it to tell him what it knew of her. The oldest roads in this in-between land that bordered England and Wales, and Other lands and Earth, were more sentient than most realized.
The road woke and gave him the impression of dichotomies. Strength and fragility. Exhaustion and determination. And magic. So much magic.
And something else. There was something about her. Something distinct, perhaps even familiar. He strained to glean more information, but the road had ceased talking to him and had fallen asleep again.
“I wish to know what you are doing here,” he whispered to the unknown woman, drumming his fingers on the road. “And what you might have to do with a stray puck and an enemy Queen.”
Now that he had located Robin’s fading scent, he stood and followed it a few meters farther until it disappeared. Then there was only the woman’s scent for many meters. Unless Robin had managed to take flight somehow—and the puck could change his shape into many creatures, but he could not fly—the woman must have picked him up.
Nikolas tracked Robin’s scent backward to the place where it left the road and disappeared into a hole in the bordering hedge. Robin had cut across the land until he reached the road. Then Nikolas turned to trace the woman’s scent back along the road and came to a place where tire tracks disturbed the tall grasses on the narrow shoulder.
There had been a Mini, Gawain had said, and the woman must have been driving it. When it broke down, she walked into town.
And she had encountered a wandering puck along the way.
The rest of the tale would not be told here. He walked back to the Porsche and drove into Westmarch.
The town was younger than that ancient, cataclysmic battle but older than most. Worn cobblestone streets cut across one another in a crooked pattern. The shops had closed some time earlier, all except for a single newsagent’s, a liquor store at one end of the high street, and a large, sprawling pub nestled in the center of the town, named Dark Knight.
The pub’s wooden sign had a painting of a knight, bearing a shield with Oberon’s crest—a white lion rampant against crimson crossed swords on a black background. Some people had long memories in these places.
When Nikolas came to the pub’s parking lot, he saw Gawain’s Harley-Davidson parked between other vehicles. A Mini was tucked out of the way at the back of the lot. He pulled in and switched off the engine.
Briefly he checked his phone. Gawain had texted him fifteen minutes ago. Waiting for you in the pub. Robin’s been here. I can smell him.
So as he had suspected, the puck and the woman had indeed come into town together. That was a tale Nikolas quite wanted to hear.
And if the Mini was any indication, at least the woman was still here.
He texted Gawain, Guard the front door. I’m going to test a theory and come in the back way.
You got it, Gawain replied.
Sophie couldn’t make it until the evening.
No matter how she fought to stay awake, an inexorable black tide washed over her, and she fell into a deep pit of unconsciousness.
She dreamed she lived in a cage.
She stared between the bars at a woman who was both beautiful and terrible to look at, with long, shining golden hair and wide, cornflower blue eyes, and a lovely, young face that was a cross between a flower and a nightmare.
The woman’s gigantic face came closer, and the nightmare was the rage in the woman’s eyes.