Green Flame Assassin (Demon Lord series, book 2) (52 page)

“You and your aide, fall in behind me.”

“I-I—yes, Princess, I serve your will.”

I’d been keeping an eye on the woods, but missed seeing anything shot into the air, but I did hear the sharp
crack
of exploding black powder, an import from my world.  A burst of red smoke hung high above the woods, already thinning in a swirl of wind.

“Too late to avoid trouble,” I said.  “There’s the signal.  We need to turn hard into the woods, cut down the riders shadowing us, and keep going.  If the rest have to chase us at full gallop, dodging trees, we won’t have too many arrows coming at us.”

“Do it!” Izumi ordered.

She and I veered our animals into the woods, driving them with shouts, and digging knees.  My left hand held my reins while my right drew my new Beretta.  As we surged past blurring trees, coming up on warriors in bronze armor and tawny cloaks, I extended my weapon and squeezed off shots.  Two warriors toppled from their saddles with holes between their eyes, the backs of their heads wet, crimson messes.

“Grab their horses,” I yelled.  “We might need the spares later.” 
Besides, spoils of war.  They might have valuables in their saddlebags, food and water if nothing else.  We’re going to be pushing hard from here on.

A third rider tried to slow us down.  Yannin finally became useful by growing a spear of ice in his hand, driving the point through the warrior’s chest.  The body fell from the saddle, and we gathered in another mount.  From then on, we tore
way
too fast through woodland.  Only the fact that the cypresses weren’t packed tight saved us from disaster.

After a while, with no one closing on us, we relaxed our paced to spare the horses, veering off on a tangent to be less predictable.  “Think strongly of our need to find the Oracle,” Izumi yelled.  “Let the land bend us a shorter route.”

“God knows we need it,” Vivian yelled.  “If I weren’t a proud dhampyr bitch, I’d be
crying by now. My ass
hurts
. ” 

I thought of offering to kiss it and make it better, but this wasn’t the time and place.  “Hey,” I said, “If we can bend our path, the Autumn Court soldiers can bend theirs.”

“Of, course,” Izumi said.  “We should be coming up on their rebooted ambush any time now.”

“How you people live in this place totally escapes me,” Josh said.

“It’s all that most fey know,” Izumi said.  “Few of us travel to Earth anymore with its iron cities and railroad lines disrupting the magic of the ley lines, and your incomprehensible technologies.”

“You manage all right,” I said.  “I’ve even seen you use a microwave when necessary.”

“Don’t tell my mother.”  Izumi grinned at me.  “She’d be scandalized.”

Another one of those exploding arrows smudged the sky with crimson smoke.  I shook my head sadly.  “Don’t they realize that when their sentries do that to signal their men, we also get warned?”

“We fey can be quite set in our ways.”  Izumi flicked her reins and picked up speed.  I hung in there with her as she leaned her horse in on mine, driving us both to the edge of the path.  She shaped a sword of ice from thin, moist air and jabbed it straight ahead.  I snatched a quick look at her face.  Her eyes were hard as blue diamonds, her lips pressing into a firm line.  The force of her will iced the path ahead.  She challenged the path, “Bend.  Now!”

The path ahead of us jerked the way she was leaning, changing course—but then snapped back in irritation to where it had been.

Izumi bared her teeth like a challenged wolf.  “I will not be fucked with by a borderland that hasn’t even been claimed.  I am the Heir of Ice, Princess of the Winter Court, and I will be obeyed!”  Snow fell from the sky.  The cypress trees shivered under the lash of killing frost.  I thought I even heard a deep rumble in the ground as if some unseen moorings were being ripped.

And then the path curved sharply, putting Izumi and I dead center, with the rest of our party thundering along in our wake.  As we rode our new path, the sky darkened to twilight.  Silver stars appeared above, seen briefly as we pounded across clearings.  A bright hunter’s moon appeared, making the pale bark of the cypress shine.  Balls of yellow and tangerine, Will-of-the-wisps bobbed in the air, urging us on.

Not totally at home in a saddle, I risked a look back at our troops, wanting to get a feel for how everyone was doing.  Well enough, though faces were grim and fatigue had to be setting in.  I noticed great winding thickets of thorn had sprouted behind us, so we only had to worry about more interceptions ahead.  Without the recent heightening of my senses, the thorns would have been difficult to make out at dusk as I bounced on the back of a horse.  Now, my focus snapped details closer as if I were using a sniper scope. 

When I had time, I was going to have to analyze these abilities, and figure out the tougher skin I now had.  These were clues to my true nature.  Half human, I knew, but the other half of my DNA was a persistent mystery.  Old Man and Gloria both had that knowledge, but could they be bothered to let
me
know? 

Hell no.
 
That would make things way too easy on me.

And then we were out of the woods, splashing through water concealed by wiregrass and cattails. 
A bloated,  amber sun was rising off to the side as if we’d leaped planets.  Great scarlet gulls clacked in a gray morning sky, living pinwheels hovering above the marsh.  There were garnet logs in the water with … yellow-green eyes?

Crap!  We’re in the dream marshes.

I screamed at everyone, “Whoever the hell is thinking about alligators—stop it, now!”

The reptiles opened their jaws, showing us rows of sharp teeth as they made strange hissy sounds like the
skritch
of raked gravel.  One of them broke that sound in half by snapped jaws at us, like he couldn’t wait to chow down.  Our horses panicked, rearing, backing away, dumping all of us in the water.  Splashing told me the horses had too much sense to stay around
here
.

Tails wagging from eagerness, the gators were splashing closer in the shallows, bending the grass out of the way as they advanced.

My guns filled my hands, bucking as I unloaded round after round, emptying my clips. 

Izumi stood closest to them, just standing there unconcerned.  And then I realized that the water around her feet was growing hard and white, frozen into ice.  The ice floe grew, sweeping out to meet the gators.  In a moment, the reptiles had a lot to hiss about, frozen in place, locked in the ice.  Izumi stepped up onto her floe.  I hurried to do the same before the water froze around my lower legs. 

The landscape shifted from one breath to another, and we were at a small village woven from reeds, occupying a deck on stilts.  A wooden ladder beckoned us to the top of the pier.  We climbed.  The upper deck had a railing over which several fishing nets had been hung to be dried and repaired.  There were no people around, unless they were hiding in the woven huts.

“So where are we now?” Vivian asked.

Izumi shrugged.  “I don’t know, but it’s not the Oracle’s retreat.”  She looked around for Yannin, gesturing him closer.

“Yes, Your Glory?”

“Spread out.  See if anyone is home.  Also see if there are any boats around we can use.  I don’t want to stay here long.  This place makes me … uneasy.”

“How many boats?” someone asked.

We looked around for the rackety, cracking voice.

“And how much will you pay?”

“There.”  Josh pointed at a nearby thatch roof.

A small, wrinkled woman sat up there, her work clothes the color of sepia, her hair a mound of umber that might have housed a family of birds quite comfortably.  Her knobby nose supported glasses with round lenses.  She blinked owlishly at us, repeating herself, “How much will you pay?”

“A fair price,” Izumi returned.

The compact woman continued as if she’d not heard the answer, “pay in coin, pay in power, pay with blessing, pay with curse,” she cackled, “or pay in blood?”

“I have gold,” I said.

“Too late,” she sighed.  “We mean you no ill-will, but a bargain made cannot be unmade.  We’ve purchased our lives with yours.”  The doors to the huts opened.  More of the wrinkled old midgets stumbled out, knives and clubs, and bottles in hand.  Shoulder to shoulder, the formed a line that inched ever closer, wearing clothes that were patched and stained from hard labors, stiff with the dried salt-spray off the wind from the surrounding marsh. 

A crow cawed from a distant black tree that hadn’t been there before.  Several of his fellows answered him.

“What is going on here?” Izumi demanded.  “Do you even know who you threaten?”  The imperial confidence of her tone caused the villagers to pause.

“Bargain is a bargain,” said the crone on the roof.  “She told us we would not be destroyed if we held you distracted long enough.”

“Long enough for what?” I asked.

A fishnet flipped over me, tightening at once. 

My hand seized the hilt of my knife.  I struggled a second to free it from its sheath.  The canvas bag slipped from my side and dropped through the gap around my legs, hitting the deck. 

“For that,” the crone said.

The capturing magic of the net jerked it back, taking me over the railing, out over the water.  If only the villagers had harbored evil intent, my shield would have activated, saving me.  Flipped into the air, the world blurred as I fell, still entangled, trying to warm up my
Dragon Fire
tat to burn myself free. 

I smacked the water, and struggled to get my head up so I could breathe. 

A huge-assed shadow covered me.  I heard a growl and stared up into the fuzzy face of death. 
The Spirit Bear.

Her paw buffed my head, sending me flying into darkness.

THIRTY-EIGHT