Page 39

Chapter 39

I wished Fluffy could be with us but Connor was right: it was too much of an unknown and we didn’t need his nose for this. It was better he was safe at home, keeping a watch on Shadow who had made it his mission to scare me half to death at least once a day. I didn’t need to worry about my animals for now – and April had promised to take care of them if something happened to me and Connor. You had to think of these things when you were heading into a gun battle.

I dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt and my Xtra-Tuf boots. With the mud and cold rain, I needed the ugly things, and anyway they were comfortable even if they were a sin against all things fashion.

I added my rain jacket to my ensemble before Connor and I headed out to get the doughnuts and meet our motley crew. This time I’d been smart enough to order doughnuts for us as well; I hated smelling them when they were fresh and not eating one. Besides, it might be our last meal. I reached into the box on my lap and pulled out a large, glazed one that was still warm to the touch.

We piled into the SUV; it was a tight fit, but hey, you should always carpool when you can. Even if it’s a ride to your possible death.

‘Want one?’ I asked the others with my mouth full. I’d started to eat before I remembered to offer. My mum would have been mortified.

Connor held out his hand, and I gave him a doughnut. He’d been smart enough to make me a thermos of tea and I took a sip. Heaven.

I was trying to keep my mind off dragging my friends with me into danger. Even though Matilda seemed willing enough to help, she was still an unknown – and we had no idea what was going on with the ‘mean men’ under the mountain.

Gunnar cleared his throat. ‘I got the toxicology on Helmud this morning.’

I sat up. ‘And?’

‘Fisheye,’ he said grimly.

Sidnee whistled. ‘Damn.’

I shook my head in disbelief. ‘He really did stumble on them. I’d bet a paycheck it was simply a case of wrong time, wrong place.’ The cogs in my brain were whirring. ‘And Alfgar,’ I murmured. ‘Maybe the MIB were trying to cover their tracks, trying to pin it on Matilda.’

‘They know the dwarves are scared of her,’ Sidnee agreed. ‘When Alfgar’s death didn’t get the result they wanted, they tried a little more obviously with Evgard.’

‘I think they’re trying to run the dwarves out of the mine,’ I mused. ‘When their attempted purchase fell through, maybe they decided another method was in order.’

‘And this time the method was murder and intimidation,’ Sidnee said.

I frowned. ‘But why? Chromite isn’t that expensive. Surely they can buy it easily enough.’

Gunnar tapped his hands on the wheel. ‘Maybe it’s a component of the drugs they’ve been creating – fisheye or somnum, maybe.’

I couldn’t help noticing we were using a lot of maybes but my gut told me we were on the right path.

Thomas shook his head. ‘If they think they can run the dwarves out of the mine, they’re wrong.’

‘The explosion was a real escalation,’ I said. ‘I bet they’re on a timescale and somehow, we’re fucking with it.’

Sidnee grinned. ‘I’m always happy to fuck with the MIB’s schedule.’

We pulled into the car park. More debris had been cleared and some workers were getting ready to leave for the night. We climbed out of the SUV, girded our loins – or chests – with our vests, picked up our backpacks and weapons and headed up the hill to our rendezvous spot with Matilda. I led the way.

When we were in the spot where I’d talked to Matilda the previous day, I made sure everyone was ready and that the bakery box was visible in my outstretched hand. I called out clearly, ‘Matilda, Matilda, Matilda.’

Instead of making me wait, this time she appeared quickly, coming up through the ground like she was on a lift. She reached out her hands and I thrust the box into her impatient claws.

Matilda shoved doughnuts into her mouth at warp speed and it didn’t take long for her to devour a full dozen. Yikes, that girl needed to learn to savour her food. When she was done, she licked the last of the icing from her fingers and metal nails with a surprisingly pointy tongue. It looked a bit serpentine and I suppressed a shudder. She thrust the empty box back at me and I folded it flat and shoved it under a rock for retrieval later.

‘Rabbit bring good sugar snack,’ she declared.

I squelched a glare at the use of the moniker ‘Rabbit’. I didn’t think she was trying to insult me – she did that without any effort. ‘I’m glad you enjoyed the doughnuts,’ I managed, glad that Stan wasn’t there to hear her refer to me like that.

‘We go secret place,’ she declared. At least she was direct and on a mission.

‘Thank you, Matilda. I appreciate you helping us.’

She looked at me for a moment with her black eyes then turned. The mountain opened to her, revealing a tunnel tall enough for Gunnar to walk through without stooping. She walked into it and we followed.

Like my previous trip into the earth with Matilda, the tunnel looked like it had always been there, yet it was forming instantly as she moved. It was fascinating – but again I was disorientated, not knowing in which direction we were going in other than downwards.

The weight of the mountain started to bear down on me as my newly discovered claustrophobia kicked in. I didn’t realise I was gasping for air until Connor’s hand pressed into my lower back. His breath warmed my neck as he whispered, ‘It’ll be okay, Doe. Just breathe.’

I nodded and tried to concentrate on breathing normally. As a vampire-witch hybrid, I needed to breathe whereas Connor did not. It was one thing I’d missed out on by not being a full vampire .

Matilda stopped suddenly. ‘Bad magic,’ she grunted, pointing ahead.

All I could see was an earth wall in front of me. ‘Matilda, how do we get past this spot to where the mean men are?’

She shook her head then squinted at the end of the tunnel we were facing. The mud fell away to reveal a cement bunker. She backed up until we were almost touching. ‘Mean men!’ she hissed.

I walked up to where she had sensed the ‘bad magic’ to see if I could feel it. As I reached out a hand, I felt the prickly barrier. I took a step back. ‘Yep,’ I said aloud. ‘That’s definitely warded.’

Gunnar squeezed past us; when he felt the barrier, he jerked back his hand. ‘Yep,’ he agreed. ‘It doesn’t feel that strong, though, nothing like the barrier around town. It feels prickly.’ He closed his eyes in concentration. ‘I’m pretty sure I can break through it, but whoever created it will probably sense me. They must have a decent magic user with them – warding isn’t an easy skill.’

‘Why would a weak ward affect Matilda?’ I asked.

‘Bad,’ Matilda emphasised, shuddering. I heard a clattering and realised her hands were shaking, her metal nails clanging against themselves. Shit, this really was affecting her. Other than feeling prickly; it didn’t feel wrong or ‘bad’ to me and I was baffled by her reaction .

‘Didn’t you tell me that Liv said the only way to kill an earth elemental like Matilda was with an air elemental?’ Gunnar asked.

‘Yeah, so?’

‘Could the ward have been put up by an air witch?’

It made a sort of sense. Witches were weaker versions of elementals, so although an air witch probably couldn’t harm Matilda, they could make her very uncomfortable. The ward hadn’t stopped the hag from using her powers beyond it and she’d cleared the dirt away from the bunker, but she didn’t want to pass through it.

‘Huh,’ I said. ‘That’s actually a pretty great theory.’

Thomas interrupted our musings. ‘Gunnar, before you take down this ward, we need to make sure we can get inside of the bunker. Can anyone find an entrance?’

We stared through the invisible ward at a cement wall. I saw no points of ingress. Being able to see in the depths of the ocean, Sidnee had the best eyes in the dark. Luckily, we all had water bottles to help her, so in an instant her eyes flashed black. She moved forward and stared. ‘There’s an indentation on the right that could be a door.’

That was better than nothing. We had no idea if we could get through it, but having seen Gunnar open locks and seal the barrier temporarily, I knew some of what he could do with his magic. ‘Gunnar, can you open the cement door using your trick?’ I waggled my fingers at him in an effort to denote his magic.

‘I’m not sure,’ he answered honestly. ‘There isn’t a handle.’

Thomas spoke up. ‘I say we have Gunnar take down the ward and Matilda can take down the wall. It’ll be faster and we’ll have the element of surprise.’ He turned to Matilda. ‘Could you do that?’

Matilda’s eyes lit up in the weak light of our flashlights. She clicked her metal nails together and gave one of her cackles. ‘Matilda can do!’

Gunnar returned to the edge of the ward. ‘Everyone stand back just in case this has some blowback.’ We backed away cautiously, even Matilda.

He rubbed his hands together, concentrated, then lifted them to face the ward. He mumbled something in what I thought was Norwegian and a white light blasted from his palms. The ward glowed for a moment before a blast of wind hit us. Gunnar staggered back a few steps, his long hair and beard blown back.

Matilda laughed with delight. The second the ward fell, a large section of the cement wall melted away too.

There was no messing with the hag.