He was far too concentrated on whatever he was doing to see the Fey come up behind him. He tackled the mage around the ankles and the man hit the floor with a thud. The rune went flying, landing right in front of me. The Fey saw and his eyes widened. He leapt for it, shouting something, but I couldn't hear him. There was a flash, a weightless feeling, and the next thing I knew, I was sagging against a cold stone wall, struggling to lift my head.
My muscles ached and my tongue felt thick in my mouth. I tried to move and tottered, dizziness eating at the edges of my vision. What the hell?
A strong hand clapped over my mouth and I was abruptly pressed against the wall by a tall, muscular form. I couldn't see a damn thing - someone must have left the lights off downstairs - but the way my body reacted told me who it was. I started to protest, but a flash of light illuminated the area at the same moment, and I forgot what I'd been about to say.
The dragon's head stood in front of me, but behind it wasn't the familiar mess of Gerald's stockrooms. Instead, I saw a black sky, with menacing gray-green clouds that rumbled almost continually. Deadly silver streaks provided the only light, giving intermittent glimpses of a cobblestone street and a cluster of two-story wooden buildings.
Just as abruptly as I'd been slammed against the wall, I was dragged behind the podium. "Stay down," was hissed in my ear. I looked up as lightning flashed again to see the Fey from the auction house crouched beside me, looking grim.
"Where are we?" I demanded in an equally low tone.
"Faerie."
I took a minute to process that. "And exactly how did we get here?"
"The rune. The mage activated it and opened a portal just as I reached you."
Almost like it was adding an exclamation point to his sentence, something hit the front of the podium, causing the heavy wood backing to shudder. The Fey was looking at something over my shoulder and I followed his gaze. The street had been clear only seconds before, but now it was rilled with about a dozen Fey, all staring in shock at the huge dragon's head. I realized that it was sticking out of an alley, so the lack of a body wasn't apparent. And in the poor light, it probably looked real.
Several of the Fey yelled in a language I didn't know, and something slammed into the cobblestones beside my hand. I jerked back without seeing what it was, but the next lightning flash showed that they had bows in their hands and several more were drawing back to shoot. "Tell them we're friends before they kill us!" I said in a furious whisper.
"I would, except for one problem."
"What?"
"We're not friends."
"But, you're all Fey," I protested. I hadn't been able to make out a lot about our attackers, but I'd seen that much. Their bright silver hair lit up the night like beacons whenever the lightning flared.
"Yes, well, that's one way of looking at it," he muttered, beginning to root through the jumbled mess inside the podium. He was right behind the dragon's face, and arrows rattled against its surface continually, but none got through. Maybe Gerald's old man had been telling the truth about it after all. "Are there any weapons here?"
"Why? Can't you talk to them or something?"
A brief, strobelike flash reflected an exasperated pair of eyes under strands of tangled blond hair. "They're Svarestri." he informed me, like that meant anything. I just looked at him. "I'm not," he added unhelpfully.
I gave up trying to understand and he went back to pawing through the hollow head. "If the rune got us here, can't it get us back?" I asked, after a moment.
His head whipped around. "You have it?"
"No, don't you?"
"No. I couldn't get my hands on it in time. It must have remained on the other side." He held up something he'd discovered in Mart's trash heap. "I don't know human magic well. What is this?"
"An inhaler," I said, going by feel. "Matt has asthma."
"And that would be?"
"Completely unhelpful." I glanced back at the gaping black tunnel behind us. "What about retreat?" I'm not a fan of dark alleys, but it beat staying where we were.
"They've already sent some of their number to flank us," he informed me. I have no idea how he knew - maybe his eyes could see better than mine. Since I'd lost my glasses in the shuffle, that was a good bet. I pushed him out of the way and started my own search inside the podium.
I waded through a nasty pile of used tissues, a half dozen crumpled soft drink cans, piles of broken display containers, several scratched acrylic stands and a pair of old sneakers. No wonder Matt could never find the damn gavel! I had to go mostly on feel, as the lightning flashes were more confusing than helpful, and the dark interior of the podium was no brighter than the alley. But as far as I could tell the most lethal thing inside the dragon's head was the smell of Matt's tennis shoes.
"Nothing."
"You're sure?" It wasn't at all reassuring that the Fey sounded almost as desperate as I felt.
"Just how much do these guys hate you?" It looked like talking our way out of this was the only chance we had.
"Bad enough to kill me if they can - and anyone with me."
This just kept getting better and better. A quick look out at the street told me that the trend was continuing. Not getting any response from the dragon must have made the Fey suspicious. Either that, or they thought they'd killed it. Either way, they were slowly moving closer, arrows nocked and ready. Shit.
I didn't have time to worry about it for long, because someone grabbed me from behind. While I'd been concentrating on the street in front of us, a Fey had snuck up on us through the alley. Several of them, I realized, as two more jumped my companion. I didn't think - there wasn't time. I just focused on my attacker's aura and gave a jerk. And since I hadn't been able to affect the Fey at Gerald's, I put a lot more effort behind it than usual.
The Fey holding me screamed, a high-pitched, almost musical note, and collapsed. I landed in a heap on very hard stones, but hardly noticed. I was too busy trying to figure out what to do with the avalanche of power that had flooded into me from the fallen Fey. It was a crushing weight, strong enough to cause tiny sparks in the air, as if a swarm of lightning bugs had descended on me. I'd never known anything like it and I didn't know what to do with it, but keeping it wasn't an option.
I panicked and sent the whole thing into the pavement, where my hands rested. Instead of grounding it as I'd planned, the surge of power moved under the cobblestones, churning them up like a giant earthworm moving through dirt. A giant, electric earthworm headed straight for our attackers.
The Fey scattered, but the building across the street had nowhere to go. A second later, the power hit it dead-on. It shook violently before erupting in a burst of wood, glass and pretty painted shutters, one of which hurtled across the street and almost decapitated me. I didn't have time to freak out, because my companion had hauled me to my feet and we were sprinting down the street, away from the raining cloud of rubble. I heard yells behind us, but nobody followed. I didn't blame them.
Chapter 3
I quickly discovered that high heels and cobblestones are a bad mix, and that bare feet aren't much better. The street had obviously been laid by a sadist, because some stones stuck up almost an inch above the others. I was limping before we'd gone two blocks, and had stubbed my toe half a dozen times.
Then the storm broke, with slanting sheets of rain hitting down so hard as to almost blow us off our feet. We took cover under a building with a second story that protruded out past the first, but it didn't help much. In less than a minute, I was soaked, the chiffon dress clinging to me like Saran Wrap.
"Stay here!" the Fey yelled to be heard over the sound of the storm.
"What? No!" Before I could grab him, he was gone, the gray cloak blending perfectly into the darkened street. I stood staring out at the rain, thinking murderous thoughts and wondering what the hell I was supposed to do now. With no one to back up my story about how I got here, I wasn't likely to be believed, even assuming I could keep from getting shot long enough to get a hearing. But I didn't dare go anywhere; without my glasses, everything was a big, dark blur until I was right on top of it - including any guards who might be lurking around.
Before anger and fear could edge over into full-scale panic, the Fey was back. "I've found us a bolt-hole. We should be safe there until the storm blows over." He took off his cloak and wrapped me up like a mummy. "It's not far. Try to keep your eyes down. Dark emerald is not a common color among the Svarestri."
I had no idea what he was talking about, and at the moment I didn't care. I nodded.
"And, er, keep in mind that I didn't have a lot of choice about accommodations."
"Fine, let's just get out of here." Anything had to be better than standing exposed on a street corner, waiting to be attacked again.
The Fey led me through a warren of narrow lanes that were fast turning into little rivers, then made a sudden turn into a dark doorway. The room beyond, although lit only by a few lanterns and a crackling fire, seemed bright after the street. I had a brief impression of raucous laughter, trestle tables filled with people, and the smells of wine and roasted meat. Then a large woman in an apron bustled over to us.
She and the Fey started a conversation while I kept my eyes down, trying to melt into the cloak as much as possible. I hoped I looked calm outwardly, but inside I was panicking. How did I know he wasn't bargaining for his own life by turning me in? I hadn't expected us to walk into one of the houses of the people who had just tried to kill us!
It didn't help that I couldn't follow a word of the conversation, but finally, I heard the chink of coins as the Fey paid the woman for something. Then we were following her across the room and into another one, where the lights were even lower and the activities of some of the people made my eyebrows rise. By the time we reached a flight of wooden stairs, I had seen enough to realize why the Fey had found it necessary to apologize. Several sets of hands tugged at the cloak as I passed, but he whipped it away from them almost before I'd noticed. A question was shouted after us, but I didn't understand it and the Fey didn't respond, so I just kept going.