Into the Woods (49 page)

“You don’t look different,” the pixy said, and Trent nodded, moving creakily as he popped the top of the vial again. He was still connected to the line, and moving hurt.

“It’s invoked,” he breathed. “Just not implemented.” As Jenks checked the window, Trent dabbed some of the potion on his hat, then moistened the entirety of the ribbon before replacing it around his neck.

I do this for my child. I do this for me
, he thought, and the tingle of the line seemed to settle through his aura. Faint in the back of his mind, he thought he heard a satisfied chuckle. It was done. Finished, he dropped the line, sagging in relief as his headache vanished.

“Hey, she’s pouring it into a bottle,” Jenks said from the window, then he whistled, catching sight of him. “Holy toad pee in a bucket!” he exclaimed, darting up and down as he took in the changes. “You even look like you’re wearing his clothes! That’s slicker than—”

“Snot on a frog, yes,” Trent interrupted him, grinning at his apparent success. He didn’t look any different to himself, but clearly it had worked. He was going to pay for this later with a string of bad luck. He knew it, even with his promise to suffer and dance for the amusement of the ancient elf gods. The last time he’d used wild magic this heavily, he’d ended up freeing an insane demon. Too bad he was going to have to do it again tomorrow.

Jenks met him, grin for grin. “Okay, I’m impressed. It’s a good thing that there’re no pixies on the premises. You might look like Harold, but your aura is off.” And without another word, he put both feet against a baby food jar and shoved it off the counter.

Horrified, Trent jumped, adrenaline pounding through him as he stared aghast at the laughing pixy. “What the hell are you doing!” he said with a hiss, glancing at the window. The door only muffled sound; it did not cut it off.

Wings a blur, Jenks gazed out the tiny window. “I’m helping! The guy is coming. Hit him, and walk out. It doesn’t get any easier than that, cookie maker.”

Realizing he was right, Trent flung himself to stand beside the door, snatching up the pan he had brought in with him. My God, he was down to beaning people with kitchen pans, but it probably wouldn’t kill him. Containment. Minimalization of effect. Palms sweaty, he adjusted his grip on the heavy pan. He might not need the charms for the woman at all. Jenks was thinking better than he was.

“It’s probably a rat,” the woman was saying as the door cracked open and Trent tensed. Maybe he should have used the sleep potion instead. This was going to make some noise.

“Hi there!” Jenks said cheerfully, and the man peering in through the door looked up, his eyes widening. His mouth opened, and Trent reached to yank the man inside.

Feet stumbling, the man spun, but Trent was already swinging, and the pan met his forehead with a clang. His eyes rolled, but he wasn’t out, and Trent struggled to hit him again as the man blocked it, falling to the floor stunned but fighting.

“Harold?” the woman called, and Trent got a grip on him, clamping his arm around his neck in a sleeper hold.

“Tell her it’s a rat and to stay out,” he whispered, and the man grunted.

“Tell her, or I’m going to stab your eyes out,” Jenks added, hovering before the suddenly frightened man.

“Ah, it’s a rat!” the man warbled, his terrified eyes fixed to Jenks’s bared sword. “D-Don’t come in! I’ve got it cornered. I’ll be out in a sec.”

“Don’t count on it,” Jenks whispered, grinning evilly.

“No kidding?” the woman said, and Trent tightened his grip. The man choked, his fingers digging into Trent’s arm as he fought for air, crashing into the shelves and sending jars of baby food that would never get eaten shattering against the floor. Jenks darted to the ceiling, and Trent hung on, feeling as if he was breaking an unruly horse as the man flung them into the walls, produce, everything . . . until he slowly lost consciousness and stopped moving.

At the window, Jenks motioned for him to hurry up. Trent let go, shoved the man off him, and stood. Shaking, he brushed at the baby food and potato dust. “Got it,” he said, trying to match the man’s voice, then snatched the guard’s hat off the floor. Jenks tucked in under it as he put it on his head, sliding in between Trent’s own cap and the bigger hat from Harold. Trying to catch his breath, Trent looked down at the slumped man. A flash of memory of the forest intruded: sunshine, birdsong, blood upon the fern. His fingers twitched, reaching for the knife.

Please don’t lead me astray
, he thought, agonizing over his decision. It would be easy. It would be sure. To leave him as he was might lead to his own death. To trust an ancient elf goddess was inane! She wasn’t real! The only real thing here was if he was caught, he would die and his species would fight another thousand-year-war only to die with him.

But then his hand closed into a fist. He needed to hope that miracles could happen; otherwise he would lose all chance that he could find a way to be who he wanted, who his daughter needed.

“Did you get it?” the woman called, and Trent reached for the pan on the floor, ignoring Jenks’s questioning hum.

As Jenks hovered uncertainly, Trent hit the guard once more for good measure, the reverberation echoing all the way up his arm to his spine. “Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled. Tossing the pan to the floor, he staggered out.

Time to get his daughter and get out of here.

FOUR

T
he young woman stood with her back to the counter, a warmed bottle in her hand and her arms crossed over her chest. “Well,” she said sourly. “Did you get it?”

Heart pounding, he smiled his best sheepish expression and nodded. His voice wasn’t disguised. He’d heard Harold speak; he knew he couldn’t match it.

“That’s what I thought,” she said, pushing herself up with a slow wariness. “I’m not cleaning that up. Let’s go. Ms. Tight-ass is probably itching to leave. That woman is driving me crazy.” She was headed for the door, and Trent adjusted his hat to cover his ears, wincing when Jenks swore at him. “You don’t wake up a baby to eat,” the woman complained, arms swinging casually. “And then Tight-ass wonders why she won’t go to sleep. You can’t set a baby’s schedule; you work around hers!”

His knees were quivering as he got to the heavy doors, opening one for her. He wanted to blame it on the exertion of thirty miles on a bike, half a mile in the cliff tunnel . . . and all of it when he should be sleeping, but he knew it was excitement and fear.
His daughter
.

“Thank you, Harold,” the woman said, hesitating briefly before she went out into the hall.

“Mmmm,” he muttered, dropping his head as her eyes ran from the top of his borrowed cap to his bare feet, hopefully covered by his glamour. A spike of tension snaked through him when, for an instant, he thought she could see beyond it, but then she turned away, hips swaying as she went into the hall.

He exhaled heavily as he followed her, hearing it mirrored by Jenks sandwiched between his cap and the guard’s borrowed hat. A soft clearing of his throat pulled his gaze up to the four guards waiting for them, pistols on one hip, ley line charms on another. “Assume the position, Megan,” the shortest man said, a hand on the butt of his pistol, a half smile on his face.

“Shove it. You know it’s me,” the woman, Megan apparently, said, her smart-ass attitude doing more than anything else to ease Trent’s pounding heart. “If you try to frisk me one more time, I’m going to pull your balls off and make Princess-Cries-A-Lot a rattle.”

Megan turned on a heel, shocking Trent as she looped her arm in his. “Besides, they caught the guy, right?” she said, jauntily walking them down the tiled, whitewashed hall.

The men jumped to follow, two hustling to get in front of them, two behind. The ceilings were low and made of darkly varnished timbers. Painted stone walls threw back the echo of the men’s boots and the soft scuffing of Megan’s shoes. There were no windows, but wall sconces illuminated everything in a soft, comfortable glow between the closed doors made of thick wood, varnished as dark as the ceiling.

“I’ll be glad after tomorrow,” Megan chatted as they walked, and Trent wondered if Harold and Megan had a little thing going as she squeezed his arm and smiled up at him. “This is insane. Guards in the hallways and escorts everywhere . . . I really appreciate you being my assigned guard. I hate picking work buddies.”

Trent shrugged, trying to hide that he was feeling the first hints of a cold sweat breaking out. He’d never seen so many elves together before, even at his own botched wedding. His jaw was clenched, and he forced himself to relax as Megan gave him a sidelong glance at his continued silence. They were all West Coast elves with their straw-yellow hair smelling faintly of salt. His father had always taken time to remove that particular human tag when tweaking damaged genomes, wanting to preserve what he could of their true beginnings. There were lots of special camps scattered around the United States tending to the elves’ stagnant population, and though the mechanisms and techniques to repair the demon-wrought damage came from his father, the artistry varied, especially west of the Mississippi.

Megan kept up a running commentary as the hallways widened, branched, and began to take on the feel of home and comfort, the occasional chair and table set at the increasingly numerous windows that opened up to ocean views. The walls were three feet thick, with wide billowing drapes moving in the free-flowing wind coming in through spell-protected windows. He could hear Jenks muttering, memorizing the layout as he peered through the grommet holes in Harold’s hat. Trent was starting to think that they might actually be able to do this without killing anyone else when they made a sharp series of turns and found the nursery door. At least, Trent assumed it was the nursery. What other room would have six men guarding it?

All six men came to a threatening attention as his group approached, and Megan’s chatter cut off. “Hired help,” Jenks whispered. “Mercenaries. This is your dragon, elf man.”

Worry pinched his brow as he estimated the damage he was going to have to do to get past them with a baby in arms if there wasn’t a window in the nursery. Smoothing it away, Trent cleared his throat, pulling his arm from Megan as they came to an uneasy halt. He tried not to look at the featureless door. His child was beyond it. He would find a way.

“Identification?” the one closest to the door barked, and Trent’s back stiffened.
Blast it all to hell . . .

Megan sighed, her lips tight as she pulled a card from around her neck and offered it to the man, her motions slowly belligerent, an ugly squint to her eye. Saying nothing, the man ran a scanner over it, handing it back when it beeped.

Trent’s pulse quickened. His badge was still in the kitchen around Harold’s neck, presumably. There were ten men and one woman within earshot, probably more within thirty seconds from this spot. He had only his questionable sleep potions, and who knew who was behind that door with his child. He was not going to start his parenthood by killing his daughter’s mother if Ellasbeth was there. The Goddess, if there was one, was laughing at him.

“Harold?”

He felt Jenks shift under his cap; clearing his throat in a negative sound, Trent shuffled forward, feeling his pants as if looking for it.

“Oh God,” Megan moaned, standing with her hip cocked. “Please don’t tell me you dropped your pass? I bet you lost it in the kitchen killing that rat.”

“Rat?” The man with the portable scanner met Megan’s eyes, then Trent’s. Eyebrows high, he reached for the two-way on his belt.

It was getting out of control, and Trent tensed. “Ah-a-a-a,” he muttered, talking more to Jenks than the man with the scanner. He couldn’t take this many people down, even with Jenks’s help. He might be able to escape, but he wasn’t leaving without his daughter. He could go back and get the pass. Maybe duck out of sight and send Jenks. He was faster.

He met the man’s eyes, trying to look sheepish. Putting a hand in the air as if asking for him to wait, he started to back up. The man with the scanner frowned, his eyes flicking behind Trent as if telling the guards to stop him. Trent’s fingertips began to tingle even as he forced his shoulders to slump, trying to look harmless. The man before him was the biggest threat. He would go down first. If he could get his pistol, he might be able to take three more down before the rest reacted. Perhaps not. They seemed immune to violence, even Megan.

The click of the door opening shocked through him, and his attention jerked to the nursery along with everyone else’s. Around him, the guards pulled themselves together as if for a superior they had no respect for—reluctantly and with sour glances. A sliver of stone floor and white walls showed beyond the door, and then it was eclipsed as Ellasbeth strode through, looking more frazzled and tired than he’d ever seen her.

Trent shifted to a halt, his bare feet silent on the cold floors. His expression carefully blank, he studied her, this woman who had promised they would bring the elves back to greatness together, then stole both the technology and his child that would bring it about. His hands were clenched, and he opened them. Megan was watching him.

Ellasbeth’s yellow hair was pulled back into a ponytail, something he’d never seen before. It made her look younger, more vulnerable, and with her height and natural athleticism, he was reminded of the professional women’s volleyball team he’d once met. She had a degree in nuclear transplantation, but she looked more like a student than the professor she was. No makeup marked her, and she looked better for it, even if her green eyes were tired and droopy. It was nearing noon, a time when elves would be napping if they had a choice, but he thought her tired look was due more to the stresses of having a new baby than lack of sleep.

She was wearing cream-colored pants and a matching suit coat as if it were a casual Friday—like she would ever unknot her emotions enough to partake in one. If her expression was even halfway pleasant, he might feel guilty for what he was about to do, but only anger filled him—anger at her lack of understanding, anger at her inability to see beyond her immediate self, anger she had embarrassed him in front of Cincinnati’s elite by walking out on him at their wedding, giving him an ultimatum that he had no immediate control over, anger at himself that he was jealous she was doing what she wanted, not sacrificing all for the betterment of their species.