Page 19

Our second waterfall was green. Or perhaps that was a trick of the light. There wasn’t much of it, even to my eyes. But some crystals in the side of the cliff where we’d taken refuge shed a faint, emerald glow.

I almost wished they hadn’t, as it allowed me to see Ray’s pinched and worried face as he examined me.

Outside the curtain of water, which was less dense than the one in our first cave, I could see the fey vessels patrolling. They knew we were here, as we had not had enough time to escape. They just didn’t know where.

But they were searching.

We had slipped behind the waterfall, into a slight depression in the rock, before they arrived, not having any other choice. It made us hard to see with our own lights extinguished, but hard was not impossible, and the fey seemed to have realized that we must be hiding nearby. Their lights had swept past us once already, but the falling water seemed to have confused them. I didn’t know how much longer it would do so, however, and I could not walk, much less fight.

This . . . was not how I had envisioned my end.

“It’s not your end,” Ray said harshly, reading my thoughts. “Stop it with that shit, okay?”

“I did not mean to distress you.”

“I’m not distressed!” he snapped, which might have been more believable if I couldn’t see his expression.

He scowled, which dislodged a pebble from beside his mouth. It wasn’t the only one. The fey’s blast had peppered him with bits of limestone, to the point that he’d resembled a rock more than a man. That was why he’d taken a few moments to rescue me; he’d been all but immobilized by the sheer amount of the weight that he’d suddenly taken into his body.

His system was still expelling pieces of it as he healed, leading to occasional plink, plonk sounds as his flesh pushed out yet another pebble, before closing up again behind it. He still had a way to go, however, leaving him looking like he’d been dragged along a gravel-filled road for a few miles. It upset me to see it, but I looked no better.

We made quite a pair.

“There’s nothing wrong with my expression!” he informed me. “It’s exactly what it should be seeing as how I’m stuck in Faerie, got a fuck ton of murderous fey on my ass, and—”

“And are partnered with a cripple.”

His head came up at that. He’d been bandaging my wounds, using pieces of a blanket he’d found under one of the seats, but now I had his full attention. And he did not look pleased.

“Okay, first of all, nobody uses that term anymore—”

“Partnered?”

“Crippled! It’s not PC, okay? It’s not even accurate. Just ‘cause part of your body don’t work anymore—”

“Ray.”

“—doesn’t mean you can’t be useful. You can pilot this thing while I fight them, for instance—”

“Ray.”

“—‘cause I’m not so bad at it myself, you know? You think Dory would have promoted me if I couldn’t throw down? I can throw down!”

“I’m sure you can. But there are so many of them—”

“So, what? We’ve had bad odds before.”

“Not this bad.” I looked at him seriously. “I have counted at least eight ships. If there are twenty warriors per ship—”

“There ain’t eight ships. You counted some of them twice—”

“There are eight. And possibly more on the way. You must leave me—”

“Bullshit—”

“Listen.” I caught one of his hands. “I am lame. My hands have stopped shaking, but my legs are useless. I have no idea if this is permanent, but it doesn’t matter. It is the case right now, and that means I will only be a drag—”

“Damn it, Dorina!”

“—on you and your chances of escape. But we have one advantage: the fey want me, not you. If they capture me, they won’t look for you. You can get away, possibly even get back to Earth. But if we stay together—”

“What?” It sounded like a challenge.

“Then they will get both of us. And they have no orders to keep you alive.”

Ray just looked at me for a moment. What I could see of his face looked gaunt and hollow in the strange lighting. It made him look older than his usual youthful appearance, highlighting planes and angles that were not normally visible.

“Cause I’m not young,” he said, reading my mind again. “I got four hundred years under my belt, okay? So how about you stop treating me like some kid you need to protect?”

“I would never do that,” I told him seriously. Disrespecting a warrior who had fought at my side was unthinkable. “But if the choice is between one of us getting away, and neither—”

“Okay, how about you listen, for once?” he said, cutting me off with a furious whisper. “It’s always me listening and following orders, but you know what? I ain’t some flunky, some errand boy. I’m a master vamp and I’m your Second. And you know what a Second does when his master is injured and exhausted and talking crazy?”

“I am not—”

“If you’re talking about me leaving you to those murderous things, then yeah, you’re talking crazy!” His voice had gotten a little loud, so I put a hand over his mouth. He left it there for a moment, his eyes glimmering at me angrily over the top. Then he removed it, hesitated, and then kissed the back of it defiantly. “This is me taking over, all right?”

I blinked at him, more than a little nonplussed. But the truth was, I had no other ideas. I did not know how to get us out of this.

I nodded.

“Good.” Ray went back to fussing with the bandages.

I did not know if the fey had bad aim, or if a few of them had still been trying to wound instead of kill. But no major arteries had been severed in my legs. That was good in the sense that I would not bleed to death, but it did not help with the fact that I remained paralyzed. I concentrated everything I had on trying to move something, even just a toe, for a long moment.

It did not work.

I felt frustration and fear rising in my throat, and tried to tamp them down. But it was not easy. When I became angry, I tended to lash out at whatever was hurting me, but I could not do that here. As weak as I was, even had I been able to manifest my spirit form, I could not have held it for long. I could not do anything!

Meanwhile, Ray’s plan seemed to be to wait our enemies out, but I did not think that the fey were going anywhere. Whatever they wanted from me, it seemed important to them. They had the reckless yet tenacious attitudes of men who had been told to return with their shields or on them.

I did not think that going home without me was an option.

“Okay, that’s about as good as I can do with a crappy blanket,” Ray said. “Now, you stay here—”

“Where are you going?” I caught his arm.

He pried it off. “I’m gonna go check out this cliff face.”

“They’ll see you!”

“I used to be a smuggler,” he reminded me. “I know how to slip around all subtle like. They won’t see me.”

“But . . . what do you hope to find?”

“Another way out.” It was grim. He glanced at the fey lights, now less like the running variety and more like search lights, that were strobing the cavern. “These guys don’t look like they plan on leaving anytime soon. We need a back door, and water erodes. There could be a passage to another chamber or even to the outside hidden in these rocks. And if there is, I’m gonna find it.”

With that he was gone, before I had a chance to protest. I stared after him, feeling off balance again. I was not used to being the one left behind, the weak one, the one with nothing to do. It was disconcerting and highly unpleasant. I sat there for a moment, frowning at nothing.

Then I started searching the cabin, looking for anything useful.

The bench seats opened up to allow storage underneath, but there wasn’t much there. And what I did find reinforced my impression that this capsule had been used recently, despite its initial appearance. There were no weapons, but there was dried food—still edible—a container of what I assumed to be water, and another blanket.

I pulled the latter over myself, not that it helped much. The depression we were in was shallow, to the point that we’d basically become part of the falls. The entire interior of the craft was wet and I had water beading on my skin and dripping off of my nose.

After a moment, I took the blanket back off and used it as a bag instead, loading it down with the rest of the supplies. I emptied the two bench seats closest to me, then crawled awkwardly around to the other side of the pole to see what else I could find. I was hoping for a map, as our side in the war had allies in Faerie as well as enemies. If we knew where we were, perhaps we could reach some of them.

But there was no map. One of the remaining seats had nothing underneath it, and the last had a coil of rope, some fire making supplies, and a mirror. I took the mirror, which was small and probably also intended for use in making fire. It was a little larger than my palm, and showed me back a face that was pale, splattered with blood, and tired looking. I frowned and turned it on my body instead.

I wanted to see the injury to my spine, but it was difficult, and not just because of the location. But because it was so dark in here. I twisted this way and that, but the shadows were too deep. I needed better light—

And, suddenly, I had it.

A light lit up on the floor beside me, splashing my face with pale blue luminescence. It caused me to suck in a breath and throw the blanket and then my body over it. I froze in place, waiting to see if I had been spotted.

And waited.

And waited.

After what felt like an hour but was probably only a few minutes, I relaxed slightly. Perhaps the fey had not seen me, after all. Or perhaps they had, and were merely mustering their forces.

I waited some more.

But no one came. I eventually breathed a little easier, but wondered what I was supposed to do now. What if more of those lights came on? I couldn’t hide them all. What if this one refused to go out, leaving me—

The light went out.

I blinked at it, but it was definitely out. The blanket was soldier grade material, with a rough feel and a loose weave. I could see through it well enough, especially at this distance, and the only light at the moment was faint aftereffects jumping in front of my vision.

For a moment, I just sat there, wondering why there was a little frisson in my mind. It was a small sensation, hardly there at all, like a tiny fingernail scratching or a dim indicator light. As if something was waiting . . .

I thought, “Light.”

And there was light.

“Out.” I whispered quickly.

And there was none.

Huh.

I remembered how, when I first found the little craft, I had wanted to see it better, and the next moment, it had lit up. And later, at the top of the cliff in the first cave, I had heard the approaching Svarestri and wished for a way out. And the next thing I knew, Ray and I had been scooped up . . . and taken out.

As strange as it seemed, it appeared that the vessel could read my desires, and respond to them. I did not understand how this was possible. I did understand that this was useful.

Possibly very useful.

Another fey ship approached, with a sweeping blue light that was creeping over the rocks and crevasses of the cliff face, coming this way.

“Out,” I thought, as hard as I could, and their light went out.

I smiled.

The fey were unhappy. I could hear them from here, chattering to each other in a strange, guttural language. Odd; I had always heard that their languages were beautiful. Each to their own, I thought, and spun them around.

I actually laughed that time, as their craft slung about, hard enough that several of them almost fell out. But they didn’t, catching themselves at the last minute, which annoyed me. They had hurt Ray, had torn him limb from limb, had peppered him with stones. They were still looking for both of us, and would likely kill him if they found us, and take me off for possibly an even nastier fate.

Torture, I thought. They will want to know our plans for the war. I smiled again, and even without the mirror, I knew it was not a nice one. Let me show you my plans, I thought, and sent their craft rocketing across the void—

Straight into another.

The two crashed, then backed up and did it again. And again. And again, until very few of the boards remained intact and even fewer of the fey remained on board. And those who did were screaming.

They must have been yelling for help, because the other vessels came zipping over from every direction, and I learned a new thing: I could not control them all. One was easy; two was possible with simple commands, such as ram each other repeatedly. But no more. Whenever I tied to add a third, it jerked slightly, and seemed to stall out for a moment, but then tore away from my mental grasp.

Fair enough, I thought, and ordered one of the new arrivals to start firing those blue energy beams at all the rest.

“What the hell is going on?” Ray demanded, sliding back inside our ship.

“I am creating a distraction.”

“What?”

I sent the wildly firing vessel straight at two more, which sprang out of the way just in time. But they weren’t able to avoid getting strafed by those weapons. The sizzling blue beams mostly missed one craft, just sheering off a bit of the top, but the other was sliced clean in two.

Unfortunately, most of the fey appeared to have ducked. Fortunately, that did not help them much, as their craft was now tilting and whirling and acting crazy. It started firing randomly, too, although I had not told it to, which caused the others to scatter.

And gave us a chance.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said to Ray, who was staring at me.

“Wait—you did that?”

“These things seem to respond to thoughts.”

“Since when?”

“Since always?”

He scrunched up his face, then looked around. “Doesn’t work for me.”

“But it does for me, and we need to go.”

“Not out there,” he argued, checking out the wildly slinging weapons’ fire. “We could get hit as easy as them.”

“Then what’s your plan?”

He thought for a second. “You can control this thing?”

I nodded.

“Then send it back where it came from—after we get off.”

“Get off? But—”

“Trust me. Just do it! Do it now!”

I didn’t understand the urgency in his tone until I looked up. And noticed that all of the remaining vessels were charging back in, weapons blazing. A consensus had obviously been reached to sacrifice the rogue ship, despite the fact that some of their compatriots were still on it.

Which was a better distraction than anything I’d been able to come up with, I thought, as the cave lit up.

Ray threw me over his shoulder, and as soon as we cleared the ship, I sent the little vessel zipping back across the cavern. That led to mass confusion, as several of the fey crafts continued with the attack, while the rest broke off and tried to follow our speeding bullet. Ray didn’t hesitate; he started climbing up the rocks beside the falls, while I hung over his back and tried to keep the chaos going.

It was getting harder. I managed to cause another vessel’s weapons to fire briefly, which set a second on fire. I also caused the lead vessel fleeing after ours to stutter and falter for a moment, and almost get run into by another. But then I lost the connection, and it tore away into the darkness.

And when I tried a new command, all that happened was that I felt dizzy and unwell.

I didn’t think we’d be getting any more help. But then, perhaps we didn’t need it. Ray had indeed found a backdoor: a tiny crevasse in the rock that we could barely fit through, with the dark, wet stone close on both sides. At one point, he had to put me down, turn sideways, and drag me through an especially narrow area, but I didn’t mind.

Particularly when I saw what was on the other side.

“What is it?” I asked, hearing the awe in my voice.

He stared upwards. “I think . . . it’s a river.”

“It can’t be a river. There’s nothing holding it up.”

Ray didn’t answer that time. He just started climbing, taking us higher and higher and closer and closer. The not-a-river continued to sparkle like a vein of pure emerald, cutting across the ceiling of the cavern like another huge piece of stained glass. Only this glass moved.

Sunlight speared down through it as it shifted, dappling our faces as well as the rest of the cave we approached, until we came close enough that I could have reached out and touched it.

I looked at Ray, who had put me down on a protruding rock for a moment so that he could rest. He either read my mind or saw the wish on my face. He shrugged.

“Might as well. We gotta get out of here somehow.”

I held up a hand.

Pure, clear water trickled through my fingers, crisp and cold and causing me to laugh with delight. It was a river, a river held up by nothing at all. I splashed us by simply by pulling my hand down swiftly.

“Green fey,” Ray said, cracking a slight grin himself. “Gotta be. They pull this shit all the time.”

“You’ve seen something like this before?”

He shook his head. “Heard about it. Didn’t believe it, though.” He looked at me, and there was challenge in it. “Feel like a swim?”