Page 7

Ray was cursing again, probably out of frustration. I was feeling rather like that myself. I could see the world spread out so invitingly all around us, could watch a couple of bright yellow birds chase each other across the sky, could feel the wind that rustled through the treetops, even smell the flowers. But I couldn’t touch any of it.

We could not get out.

“They’re gonna find us,” Ray said, pacing back and forth across the bodies. His legs had been reattached, but they were not functioning very well yet, or perhaps he was tripping on the corpses. “They’re gonna find us in the middle of a pile of their people who we obviously killed—”

“Perhaps they died in the crash?” I offered.

“And we didn’t?” He whirled on me. “Plus, you cut that guy’s arm off! You think they’re not gonna notice that?”

I regarded the fey in question. Ray had a point. He was looking a little worse for the wear, with a missing arm, a proud, blood splattered face, and long, red-stained, silver blond hair. They were so beautiful, these creatures, like their world. I felt a certain . . . not regret, but melancholy, that they’d had to die.

And then I remembered them ripping Ray apart so callously, and I wanted to kill them all over again, but they were already dead.

Although at least this one was still clothed, unlike several others.

I had stripped them to provide Ray and I with something to wear. Whatever had happened in that alley had given me my own body, but it had not transferred over any clothes. That did not bother me, but it might be a problem if we met anyone, as I did not know the customs here.

Unfortunately, the fey leggings had been far too long for either of us, as well as too large. But the tunics had proven easier to work with. I had hacked off part of the sleeves so that they did not cover our hands, but otherwise hadn’t needed to do anything. The one I was wearing was knee length on me, while Ray’s was a little below mid-thigh.

They were also very fine. Ray’s was brown, although that word didn’t do it justice. It had a luxurious, velvety nap, which turned a beautiful russet shade if smoothed one way, and a light sable when pushed the other. I had settled on calling it brown, but it was more like the hue of the forest floor: different every time you looked at it from another angle.

My tunic was simpler: a pale gray that did not change color. It was technically quite plain, with neither embellishment nor embroidery, but it was not peasant garb. It had a silver sheen to it when the sun hit it, and while it was a thick, heavy weave that was as warm as wool, it felt as light as silk. It looked like what it was: the clothing of an aristocrat.

It appeared that the fey had sent elite soldiers after me, ones willing to die to complete their mission, and yet they had equipped themselves so poorly. There wasn’t a sword in the group, and only a single knife, and it was quite small. I had found a leather belt with a scabbard attached, into which I’d already placed the knife for ease of transport, although it didn’t fit. It was more like the kind you would normally slip down a boot, in order to hide it.

But why would the fey have to hide their weapons? And why did they have so few of them? It looked as if the larger knife had been left behind, and just the empty scabbard taken into battle.

Even if they had planned merely to push me into the trap they’d laid, and had not thought to get caught inside with me, surely it would have been better to be cautious? Going practically unarmed into battle against a largely unknown enemy, and one with backup nearby, with almost no weapons? It did not make sense.

Like carrying pints of human blood.

I could only think of one reason the fey would have blood. They must have thought that dhampirs were like vampires, and that I would need it to heal should I be wounded in the fight. They clearly wanted me alive, for what purpose I did not know, but they wanted it badly.

Enough to strip their soldiers before battle?

All except the one with the knife hidden in his boot.

“Dorina?”

Ray snapped his fingers in front of my face, as if he had been attempting to get my attention for a while. Or, to be more accurate, he tried to snap them. It would probably be several days before his coordination fully returned, after his nerve endings healed. That put us at a disadvantage in a fight, and I was little better.

I had tried to manifest my spirit form a few minutes ago to scout out the area and see if I could spot any silver-haired fey. Or to determine if there was a village nearby where I could nudge help our way. But it had not worked. I did not know whether that was because Faerie had different magic from Earth, or whether I was merely too tired. The two fights had taken a great deal out of me, and my spirit form took considerable energy.

But it was not encouraging.

And no weapons to speak of was even less so.

“Damn it, are you listening to me?” Ray snapped.

His temper seemed a little worse for the wear, too.

“Of course, Ray.” I looked down at the dead fey again. “Perhaps if I mushed him some more?”

“Mushed him? Did you just say mushed him?”

“Or I could set him on fire.” I wondered if any of the fey had been carrying a flint? I started to check, when Ray grabbed my arm.

I looked up into angry blue eyes and flushed cheeks, I supposed because he had some blood to work with now. “Yeah. That’s just great. You need to breathe, okay? Die of smoke inhalation and you leave me all alone in Faerie and that’s not happening, all right?”

“I would never—”

“Which means you don’t die, I don’t die, nobody freaking dies! We got that? Are we clear on that point?”

I did not think it was particularly up to us, but doubted that this was the time to mention that, either. “Yes.”

“Good.” Ray went back to thumping the crystal ball some more.

It did not seem to help.

“I think that it is broken,” I said.

“I know it’s broken!” He tried to push some hair back from his forehead, but only succeeded in poking himself in the eye. “Damn it!” He glared at me through the limp black strands. “The problem is that the shield is not broken, and the fey are coming, and we gotta get out of—what are you doing?”

“The fey warriors were not well equipped,” I said, tugging on a bloody corpse. “None of them had a sword and mine broke during the fight. They do not appear to make the souvenir versions combat ready.”

“So?”

“So, all we have is a broken sword and a knife. I thought that I would make us some more.”

“Some more what?”

“Weapons. We don’t know what we might be facing, and Faerie is said to be treacherous.”

“But how are you planning to—” He stopped abruptly, his eyes going from me to the fey, whose leg I was currently working on, and back again. “You thought you would make us weapons . . . out of their bones?”

I knew that look. It was the one Dory sometimes gave me, when I had accidentally done something unacceptable. I put the tibia back.

“No?”

“My God,” Ray said, staring at me. “I don’t believe my life. I just don’t, you know?”

I didn’t say anything. After a moment, he went back to trying to break the small control sphere, in the hopes, I supposed, that it would also destroy the shield. But even vampire strength did not seem to be up to the task.

I watched him while checking out the fey’s body through my peripheral vision. Their bones were nice and thick and very hard. They should take an edge well, instead of shattering as human bones were wont to do. I just needed to gather up a few more, lower leg bones usually worked the best, and—

Ray started shrieking.

“I’m sorry,” I said, dropping the bone again.

The shrieking did not stop.

“Ray, I was only trying to—”

I stopped talking when I noticed that he wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at something behind me. I turned and saw nothing for a moment, merely the dark green forest, with its old, old trees in the background, their twisted trunks a stark contrast to those of the saplings nearer the road. Some of the latter of which were rustling.

And then a very small creature came waddling out of the tree line.

I was immediately enchanted.

It was so tiny. It looked like Dory’s roommate, but it had miniscule wings and big, jewel-like eyes and a little baby snout, and it was so pudgy that its scale covered legs had fat rolls. They had rolls.

Its coloring was various shades of gray, with almost white scales on the fat little belly. But there was enough pink on its back and, especially, down the spine, to hint that perhaps it would be more colorful when grown up. But now it was just a tiny, roly-poly creature with bright, curious, sapphire eyes.

It was adorable.

And then I noticed that one of the trees was moving strangely behind it. Only no, that wasn’t a tree, was it? Trees didn’t have scales. That was a—

“Dragon!” Ray shrieked, right before I realized that the tree was something’s leg.

Something huge.

“Oh,” I said, and quickly got up to join him in pushing against the shield.

I thought that he had the right idea: roll us a little farther away, and make it clear that we were no threat to the child. But the shield was surprisingly heavy, or perhaps that was all of the bodies, and it had landed in a slight depression. It did not want to move.

Even worse, the tiny creature had the curiosity common to all young things, and was coming closer, probably wondering what this strange device was. The mother let out a bellow of warning that . . . was quite something. It was so loud that it was almost literally stunning, to the point that it upset my balance and had me stumbling about instead of Ray.

But the child paid no mind.

“Freaking brat!” Ray said, looking wildly over his shoulder. “Go away!”

It did not go away. In fact, our now somewhat desperate rocking was merely making it more curious. Another, even louder bellow broke the silence, which, if there was any fairness in life, would have also broken the shield, shattering it like glass in the presence of an opera star.

It did not shatter, but a moment later we were on our way, nonetheless. Not because of our combined effort, but because of the footsteps of the giant creature, which were thudding this way. They began moving the ground so much that we started moving, too.

One of the footsteps jumped us out of the depression and back onto the road, wobbling about like a giant ball. The baby laughed delightedly, and crashed into us, its little paws scrabbling at the shield’s surface, its bright eyes peering inside curiously. That didn’t add much in the way of momentum, as it couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds.

It did, however, terrify Ray.

“Get away! Get away!” he screeched, while apparently trying to take his own advice. He ran straight into the shield and then kept going, even when it began to revolve. He reminded me of a hamster on a wheel, if the hamster was a traumatized master vampire with superhuman strength and considerable motivation.

We started to roll, something made easier by the flat, trampled dirt of the road, which appeared to be well used. That would have been a considerable improvement, except that the plateau wasn’t as flat as I’d thought. It looked to be so, but was in fact slanted.

Which was why we had started rolling back toward the larger dragon.

Ray screeched again and threw himself sideways, and we left the dirt road for the verge, which was grassy and strewn with wildflowers and rocks. The latter made us judder every time we hit one and then bounce, which made it difficult to steer. Not that that mattered after a moment.

Not when we dropped off the plateau entirely and headed toward the valley below, all while being chased by the small dragon and what I assumed was its mother.

“I think it believes we’re a toy!” I yelled, as the baby rolled past us, all scrunched up in a little ball and giggling. It seemed to find this whole thing amusing. Raymond did not.

At least, I didn’t think so. He was no longer pushing as there was no need, as we were speeding down the steep mountainside. Instead, he had braced himself against the shield bubble, his newly reattached limbs splayed out, to try to keep from thumping about as the fey were doing, I supposed. But his face was almost blank.

It looked as if he might be having trouble processing his emotions right now.

I smiled at him encouragingly as I ran to stay upright, which did not appear to help. I could sympathize. I frequently felt the same, and without Dory, who I looked to for clues on how to behave, I was at a loss.

Particularly when I discovered that there was something that could crack a fey shield, after all.

The paw that came crashing down on us from above was longer and heavier than a car, and with far more force behind it. Fortunately, the shield was as slick as glass. It slammed into the dirt, but then shot out from underneath the huge foot before the web of cracks above our heads became a full-on structural failure.

“See,” I told Ray, who was staring at me with huge, blank eyes. “That was lucky, wasn’t it?”

And then the massive tail hit us.

We shot off the side of the mountain as if we had just come into contact with the biggest baseball bat in the world. I had my first look at the full-sized dragon as we tore through the air, and she was magnificent. At least the size of a five-story building, she made Dory’s friend look petite. I hadn’t realized it when we met, but Claire—the half dragon’s human name—might still be an adolescent, the equivalent of a teenager in their world.

I did not think that this one was.

She ran after us—moving gracefully in spite of her size—and then flew, taking off from the steep mountainside as easily as a human would step off a stair.

I watched in awe as she launched herself into the air, leaving an avalanche of dirt behind her. Unlike her baby, she was all shades of blue, from the acre of pale, silver-blue scales on her belly, to aquamarine on her sides, to sapphire on her back and, finally, to midnight along the heavily ridged spine. The darkest hues blended beautifully with the iridescent color of her wings, which was variously black, navy and silver when the sun hit them just right.

No, not the sun, I thought.

An alien star . . .

I felt dizzy again, and only came back to myself when someone began tugging on my clothes. I looked up and realized that Ray had found an emotion at last. Unfortunately, it appeared to be terror, because he was screaming again. And pointing ahead to where something else was hurtling at us through the sky.

Or perhaps we were hurtling toward it, I thought, or we were both rushing at the other, which might explain the speed at which—

“We’re gonna crash!” Raymond shrieked, as whatever was in front of us tried desperately to turn.

It succeeded, although not in getting away. We hit it broadside, and at such a rate that all I saw was a massive explosion of shattering wood. I hadn’t had a clear view of the craft or whatever it was, but it must have been big judging by all the fey suddenly falling everywhere. And getting plucked out of the air by the mother dragon, who seemed to have forgotten us in the face of an easy meal.

For our part, we continued racing ahead, and then falling so quickly that we splashed down in water what felt like only seconds later. I was still looking behind us, at a wooden platform that was all that remained of whatever we’d hit. It was listing around the skies, half a dozen fey holding onto the edges and another few trying to haul them back up, while a dragon picked them off like appetizers from a canape tray.

I’ve been here an hour, I thought, blankly.

I’ve been here an hour, and look what I’ve seen.

What will I see next?

“Don’t turn around,” Ray said conversationally, sitting beside me.

He no longer appeared terrified, and in fact, seemed unusually calm.

“Why?”

“We landed in a river and we’re about to fall over a great bloody waterfall.”

I looked over my shoulder. He was right. “Faerie is . . . unpredictable,” I commented, not sure what to say under the circumstances.

“That’s one word for it,” he agreed, as the current took us.

This time, I was the one who screamed.