Love Charms (129 page)

Gracie giggled. “Yes, he’s so bad.”

“I hope you’re not giving him too much.
It makes him hyper and harder to control. Remember what happens when you lose
control.”

“I know Papa. I don’t let him have much.
Just a little bit when I kill the birds.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, a
father and daughter conversation on how to kill animals, raise them from the
dead, and the importance of keeping the family dog from drinking their blood. I
wanted to put my hands over my ears, but resisted the impulse. It was
irrational and would solve nothing. Instead I said, “Are we done here? I’d like
to go back to my room.”

“First, take Vera’s finger with you.”

Startled by the request, I stared at him.
“What?”

He frowned at me. “Pick up your friend’s
finger and take it with you.”

I looked to where the finger lay, smaller
than a pen cap as Vera was a petite woman. The flesh already looked gray from
the loss of circulation, and I knew from the other finger Kristoff had forced
on me that, it would soon begin to dry and the skin would start to flake off.

Displeased with my hesitation, Kristoff
said, “Are you disobeying me?”

My collar grew warm around my neck,
similar to the sensation right before I had been shocked in Athena’s office.
“No,” I said, my voice so soft it was barely audible.

“Then do as I ask.”

I moved to comply, gingerly picking the
finger up between my own, larger, fingers. “Can I go now?”

“Go. Have all the crystals charged when I
see you next or Vera will pay.”

I didn’t linger and left as fast as my
feet could carry me. The trembling held off until I sat on my small bed. Then I
began to shake so hard my teeth chattered. Anger, rage, and fear rushed through
me, finding release in the fat tears rolling down my face. And through it all,
I stared at Vera’s pinkie realizing how much was at stake, how much we both
stood to lose if I didn’t find a way to get us out of this mess.

Funny, I had thought when Mark died and I
went through the manslaughter trial that I had lost everything a person could
lose; money, friendship, love, freedom, and respect. Turns out I hadn’t even
come as close to hitting bottom. Now I had lost control of my own life, of my
own choices and people I cared about were still dying. I had become poison.
Worse, I had no idea what the antidote was.

Unable to look at Vera’s finger anymore,
I turned out the light and huddled in bed, waiting for sleep to come. I didn’t
dream when it did, just floated in nothingness until gradually I found my way
to the astral plane.

Only half aware I had left my body, I
drifted in the gray fog, allowing its ebb and flow to carry me. The astral
plane is an odd place. I think it’s probably the genesis of the concept of
limbo--a place where nothing really exists, where people’s shadows only pass
through, but never stay. Aside from other people also traveling outside their
bodies, I never saw anything other than the ubiquitous gray fog. There were no
landmarks or paths and people were little more than ghosts on this plane. We
had no ability to physically manipulate the astral environment beyond moving
amid the fog.

There was no night or day either, just
the same dull light that never wavered or changed. Sometimes I wondered if Rip
Van Winkle had gotten lost up here, trapped in the astral plane by some
malicious Sidhe trick only to wake up twenty years later. I shuddered at the
thought. This was no place for humans to live. It was part of the other world,
the world of spirit. Certainly no place for a sane man to be trapped for two
decades.

Given the static nature of the astral
plane, I found the appearance of a bright orb of light intriguing enough to jar
me out of my stupor. Not that it was easy to ignore since it sailed right up to
me, shining full force in my face. I put a hand to my forehead, shielding my
eyes from the harsh-as-a-helicopter-searchlight and frowned, curious.

It zipped away, hesitated, and then came
back to flash me in the eyes again. The orb repeated this exercise several
times before it occurred to me perhaps I was supposed to follow the light. The
next time the light zoomed off, I moved with it following as it swerved in and
out of the fog, soaring up and then shooting down with no notice. It reminded
me of trying to catch a firefly when I was a kid.

I kept up as best I could while scanning
the horizon trying to figure out where the light could possibly be leading me.
Eventually, I saw a stooped figure in the distance, and, whoever it was,
acknowledged me with a wave.

I returned the wave with a tentative one
of my own and stopped following the trajectory of the orb, suspicious. The last
person I had met up here had been Kristoff and that had not ended well. Was
this person in front of me Kristoff or someone...something worse?

The light, noticing I wasn’t following,
rushed back and then took off again only to circle back when I still hadn’t
moved. It began to spin around my head with ever increasing speed, creating its
own wind as it passed my face. When it tired of that, it zoomed off to the
figure in the distance and they appeared to commune for a moment. The light
returned and instead of harassing me like a gnat jacked up on pixie dust, it
spoke.

“Come, I won’t hurt you.”

Wary, I said, “How do I know that?”

“You don’t, but I can help you and you
aren’t in a position to turn down help.”

I weighed my options and decided the
stranger was right. I needed all the help I could get. Maybe I should give
someone who wasn’t trying to kidnap me and subordinate me to their evil
purposes a chance.

I moved forward, tense and ready to run
at the first sign of betrayal, but the figure stayed still as if he or she knew
moving might startle me. As I got closer, I was able to make out their features
and realized the person in front of me was the renegade mage.

“Fred? Is that you?”

“Hello Sofia. Good to see you again, I’ve
had my beacon searching for you the last few days, hoping you’d find your way
up here.” He approximated a bow with his crooked little body, blue eyes
blinking up at me from behind his thick glasses.

Confused, I asked, “But aren’t you a
renegade?”

“That’s what we like them to think.”

“We?”

“I’m a member of the FIB.”

“You’re with Fairy Intelligence?” I
blinked, shocked. He’d looked so cowed, so harmless.

He nodded and the air around him wavered
until Fred disappeared and a tall, slender man stood in his place. “Agent
Zrayus at your service.”

I blinked taken aback by his
transformation from a frail old man to the lithe, sinewy elf standing in front
of me. I had not seen any of this coming.

A thought came to me, one that brought
hope to my heart. “You’re going to rescue me?”

“Well, no.” He sighed. “You know about
the dragons and the renegades?”

“Yes.” I’d heard his no, but refused to
believe it.

“All our resources are on that right now
trying to prevent an all out revolution in the human world. We barely have
enough people to deal with that.”  His grey eyes met mine, steady as steel.

“Oh.” My heart became heavy. “So there’s
no one to rescue me and you can’t leave because you’re wearing a collar.”

He gave a sad smile. “We just can’t spare
the people. I’m sorry.”

“You’re wasting my time.” I started to
leave, furious that help was so close yet so far away and, worse, had no
intention of coming any closer.

He held up a hand. “Wait, I can help you
rescue yourself. Remember, I made your collar.”

I turned back to face him.

“And we need your help.” He raised his
hands toward me in a pleading gesture.

“My help?” I looked at him, confused.

“We need someone to incapacitate the
necromancer.”

I drifted back, wary. “What do you mean
incapacitate?”

He gave me a hard look. “Do you need a
definition? What do you think it means?”

“I’m supposed to kill him?” Repulsed by
the thought, I floated further away from the mage putting more distance between
us.

He drifted after me.“Kill him. Tie him
up. Hack him to pieces. The FIB doesn’t care, so long as his army of zombies
doesn’t come to the dragons’ aid.”

I closed my eyes at the ‘hack’ part. Even
to prevent a revolution, I didn’t think I could hack someone to bloody bits.
“Why me? Don’t you have some kind of Fairy S.W.A.T?”

“No one knows where to find the
necromancer.”

“We’re just outside Boston by the ocean
in a warehouse district. It’s a three story brick building.” I crossed my arms
and gave him a look.

“Oh.” He blinked in surprise. “We thought
you wouldn’t know where you were.”

“I know Boston and they didn’t try to
hide the location from me.” Score one for me against the overconfidence of
villains.

“Good to know.”

“You’ll send someone to help?” I
refrained from begging. Barely.

He shook his head. “I’ll try. I don’t
know if we’ll get there in time. We’ve dispatched everyone with the assumption
we wouldn’t find the necromancer—he masks his location with witch magic.
I convinced them to let me try and find you up here, thinking maybe you could
do something.”

“He’s got my friend. He’ll kill her if I
don’t do as he says.” I couldn’t keep a note of desperation out of my voice.

Zrayus’ expression grew solemn. “He’ll
kill more than your friend if you don’t stop him.” He paused and heaved a sigh.
“Look, things aren’t going well. The renegades have a large, well-hidden
network, and the dragons have the Sidhe crown. We’ve been focusing on getting
the crown back. Once the dragons cross over and merge their forces with the
necromancer, it won’t matter if we know where the zombies are, there won’t be
anything we can do to stop them.” Zrayus gave an apologetic shrug. “It’s all
about priorities. If they can’t lose, there’s no saving anyone.”

So I was on my own and in the column
titled ‘Collateral Damage.’ Great. “How am I supposed to do anything with
this?” I gestured to my collar.

“I can show you how to inactivate it. You
won’t be able to take it off, but at least you won’t get shocked.”

“But won’t that kill you?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Athena thinks she has
total control over me and my magic. She couldn’t be more wrong. No harm will
come to me.”

Well, that was good news, but...“If you
can inactivate the collars, why don’t you inactivate yours and come help me?” I
brightened at the idea.

“I wish I could, but I can’t and it has
nothing to do with my collar. Mine is a dud. I have other...duties”

“Athena?” I almost wished I could see
Athena’s face when she realized her collars weren’t foolproof.

He nodded. “She’s the brains behind all
this, we’ve got to stop her or she’ll just regroup. We want to end this and
she’s the key to winning the war as opposed to merely winning a battle.”

“What about the dragons? Even if you find
the crown, they won’t stop just because they’re not invincible anymore.” I
couldn’t see Zyllven giving up on his plan to have kids--excuse me,
dragonlets--any time soon.

“We’ve actually had some help with that.
Some human has gotten them to agree to let him negotiate with your government
on their behalf.”

“I don’t understand. Why worry about the
crown then?” I frowned at Zrayus.

“Because they’re honor bound to follow
through with Athena’s plan, but if we can remove her from power, they’ll stand
down. If we can’t stop her, stealing back the Sidhe crown becomes important.
We’re working every angle we can find.”

“Wait,” I went still. “You said you had
human help. Who?”

“John, no, that’s not right.” He
scratched his head. “I think it was Jacob.”

“Jacob?” My heart stuttered in my chest. 

“Does it mean something to you?” Zrayus
gave me a sharp look.

“My client was left for dead in Fairy by
the renegades. His name was Jacob and he had contacts in our government with
the Interspecies Commission.” Could it be that Jacob had survived? Dared I
hope?

He smiled. “Sounds like the guy I’ve been
hearing about.”

“He’s alive then.”  Jacob was alive. I
couldn’t hold back a smile at the thought. This was the first good news I’d
heard in a long time.

“Yes.”

“If you see him, tell him I said thanks
for everything.” I closed my eyes and pushed away the memory of Jacob’s skin on
mine, the way he smelled, the way he held me whether I cried in pleasure or
pain. It was over, I had to accept that and let it go so I could focus on what
I needed to do.

Zrayus looked puzzled. “Sure, but you’ll
probably see him before I do.”

“Not if Kristoff kills me. I’m not you. I
don’t have advanced training or magic to kill people with. You’ve got better
odds of walking away from this than I do.”