Rise of Allies (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 4) (41 page)

Behind them, she could see Gladwin buzzing in through the open window and flying around the suite to find the Queen’s flag.

“You know you’re going to be in trouble if somebody finds out,” Dani pointed out.

“So?” the taller boy asked.

“We don’t get in trouble,” the girl informed her.

That explains a lot,
Dani thought.
Spoiled brats.

“Unless you’re going to be a baby and tell on us?” the shorter boy asked.

“I don’t recommend it,” the taller one said with a glower.

“I’m not a tattletale,” Dani retorted.

“Good, because you wouldn’t like what that would get you.”

Dani scoffed. “Pfft, save your breath. You think I’m scared of your threats?”

“You should be. You don’t even have any magical powers!”

Dani saw that Gladwin had disappeared with the Queen’s flag out the window. “True…but I do have—
this!
”

All of a sudden, Dani pulled her fists out of her pockets and threw the Sticking Powder in their faces. The skunkies gasped in surprise, which only made them inhale more of the glistening dust.

It worked in seconds.

Their fluffy, skunk tails popped out. The girl turned in circles, trying to figure out how it had appeared, while the brothers wrestled with themselves in confusion—one with a skunk head atop a human body; the other, boy from the waist up, skunk from the waist down.

“What have you done to us?” they cried.

Dani backed away, laughing, jeering, and pointing. “Ha, ha, got you! Look at the freaks!”

But her triumph was short-lived.

There was a reason, after all, that people were advised not to buy things from the fairy market.

She felt a queer tingling sensation running all over her skin, and then two sharp pangs on the crown of her head and another fierce jolt at the base of her spine. Dani shrieked as a fiery burst of pain seared her face around her nose and she realized that now the skunkies were laughing at
her
, pointing and jeering.

“What?” she cried in alarm.

“You’d better go look in a mirror, cotton-tail,” the half-skunk brother said.

“Before some
bunny
sees you like that,” said the girl.

“Like what? W-what are you talking about?” In dread, Dani reached up to touch the twin spots on the top of her head where, just a moment ago, it had felt like somebody had driven two screwdrivers through her skull. She gasped as she felt long, velvety-soft protrusions coming up out of her head.

Ears?!

Then, at the bottom of her field of vision, she noticed something stuck to her face. She touched her cheek and was horrified to realize she had whiskers. She reached around and found a cottony puffball of some sort on the back of her dress.

She ran in a circle trying to see it, refusing to believe what she already, deep down, knew. “A tail. I have a
tail!
”

She stopped and stared at the half-skunk freaks. “What’s happened to me?” she choked out.

The girl smirked, folding her arms across her chest. “Let’s just say you’re some
bunny
now.”

Dani shrieked and leaped back from the door, covering a surprisingly wide distance. “The witch said it was temporary!
Gladwin, is Sticking Powder temporary?
”

She ran off, screaming for the fairy, racing so fast down the hallway that her strides turned into long, bounding hops.

#  #  #

The tumultuous swirl of three hundred people’s emotions in the ballroom had quickly overwhelmed and exhausted Isabelle.

Add a tightly laced corset that she wasn’t used to wearing, and the evening soon became a recipe for utter misery. She kept waiting for Dani to arrive, knowing her friend would cheer her up, but still, nothing. What the dash was taking them so long?

She glanced again at the long-case clock, hoping Dani hadn’t got lost in the dark on her way to visit Red. One more thing to worry about, as if Jake and Nixie being stuck inside the Enchanted Gallery wasn’t awful enough.

How she wished she weren’t trapped in here, wasting time, but Mother had insisted.

Thankfully, the magical orchestra started up the next waltz, and her glamorous parents and their friends went off to dance. Relieved to the bottom of her soul for a few minutes free of the agony of making small talk, she watched the dancers whirling across the gleaming parquet floor for a moment, but when she could no longer stand the debutantes nearby snickering at her for her bumbling in front of the Queen, she withdrew to the terrace outside.

She went to the stone railing, casting a disgruntled perusal over the moonlit gardens.
I am so ready to go home.
She missed her unicorns.

“Well, if it isn’t little miss nosy,” said a low, silken voice from the shadows.

Isabelle whirled around to find the vampire sauntering toward her. “Stay away from me.”

“Oh, but I have business with you, young lady. What were you about, prying into my thoughts like that today?”

“No, I—that’s not true—I can’t read people’s thoughts.” She backed away as he approached, wilting under his piercing stare. “I can only sense emotions,” she admitted, praying he did not murder her. “I’m an empath, you see. Not a telepath, like you. I-I can only read the heart, not the head. I didn’t learn anything, I promise!”

“No, I should think not, considering the heart in me stopped beating long ago.” He smiled in cool amusement when Isabelle winced slightly at the notion of a dead, silent heart sitting in his chest like a lump of rotten meat.

She tried to hide her distaste. “What are you doing at Merlin Hall? I thought vampires weren’t allowed at the Gathering.”

“Maybe looking for my next bride, hmm? What do you say, girl? You look healthy enough. Look at this golden hair! You shine in the darkness.”

“Get away from me!” She threw up her arm to block his hand reaching to touch a lock of her hair.

He gave her a droll look and lowered his arm to his side, and Isabelle realized he was only toying with her. “Ah, come, just because I drink blood, that doesn’t make me a bad person.”

“Actually, it does!” she said, shaken.

“Miss Bradford!” a harsh voice clipped out. “Is he bothering you?”

Isabelle drew in her breath as Maddox appeared at the top of the stone steps leading up from the gardens. Prince Janos turned and arched an eyebrow as Maddox marched toward them, his stare fixed on the vampire. Isabelle’s heart pounded.

“What have we here? Oh, Stone’s latest protégé. Noble Guardian! Another cannon-fodder boy.”

“Step away from Miss Bradford,” he said. “I’m only going to warn you once.”

“Indeed?” Prince Janos laughed. “Hold on! You look familiar to me. Do I know you?”

Isabelle slid to the side, escaping the focus of the vampire’s attention as Maddox stepped between them. She stared, wide-eyed, at the prince from behind the broad-shouldered Guardian lad.

“Of course,” Janos murmured, studying him. “You’re Ravyn’s pup. You have her eyes. And how is your lovely mother these days? Still cursing like a sailor and drinking like a fish, I hope?” A nostalgic smile skimmed the vampire’s face. “Such times! Tell the lethal lady that I miss her. That girl could hit an enemy in the throat with a dagger at twenty paces. What a woman.”

Isabelle could feel Maddox seething. “Unless you wish to test the skills that I inherited from her, I suggest you go away now, traitor.”

“So that’s how it is, eh? Very well. I shall not trouble you, for her sake. But be warned, lad. I was like you once. Young Guardian, head full of mush. Until I realized there’s no future in it.” The vampire flashed a smile that showed the tips of his fangs but did not reach his eyes. “On that day, I wised up, put away my little-boy dreams of heroics, and became—”

“A monster,” Maddox said.

The vampire feigned hurt. “A realist, I was going to say.”

Maddox held his stare. “If you go near Miss Bradford again, I will personally put a stake through your heart.”

The humor in Prince Janos’s eyes vanished. “You children bore me.” He turned away, took a few angry strides toward the railing, changed into a bat, and flew off through the trees.

Her heart thumping, Isabelle was still holding her breath when Maddox turned to her.

“Are you all right, Miss Bradford?” he asked in a taut voice.

“I think so.” She stared at him. “Thank you.”

“Of course. Can I get you anything? A glass of punch? Er…smelling salts?”

Her lips twitched a little. “No—thank you. I am well.”

He nodded like they were discussing military maneuvers. “You should go inside now.”

She glanced toward the French doors to the ballroom and then shook her head with a sigh. “Honestly? I can’t bear to. Not yet. There’s just…too many people.”

“I understand.”

“You do?”

He hesitated. “I don’t much care for crowds myself.”

She gazed at him in wonder. He turned away, clearing his throat.

“Well, if you mean to stay out here, then I should keep watch. In case he comes back.”

She hid her glee at the prospect of spending a few minutes with him. “If it’s not too much trouble, I would…really appreciate that.”

“No trouble. It’s my duty,” he replied, already glancing around, on the lookout for any sign of the vampire returning.

She tried not to stare at him. “It’s lucky for me you came along,” she ventured after a moment.

“Not luck. Instinct, Miss Bradford,” he replied.

But then he seemed to realize what he had just admitted to. Everybody knew that a Guardian could only arrive in time to protect people with whom he felt some sort of bond.

“Oh. I see.” She managed a decorous nod and feigned ignorance on this point to spare his feelings. Because, frankly, Maddox looked rather panicked that, for all intents and purposes, he had just accidentally admitted that he liked her.

Isabelle somehow held back a shout of joy and smiled at him politely. Maddox looked away, scanning the night, the trees, the roof, the garden, looking
anywhere
but at her. But it was no use. Even though she could not read him, the fact that he was standing here gave his feelings away.

#  #  #

“Ahhhhhhh!”

Jake and Nixie ran through the final painting, screaming their heads off. Nixie was too scared to pay the slightest attention to her sprained ankle. Speed was their only hope to escape the monsters everywhere.

Nightmare creatures peopled the underworld landscape of the insane Hieronymus Bosch, some so strange that Jake almost wanted to stop and stare at them in morbid fascination.

Bosch had clearly given great thought to the denizens of Hades: devils and gargoyles, chimeras and grotesques of all kinds.

Part-shrimp, part-toad, part-cactus.

Torso-men with no proper heads, but weird, angry faces set into their bare chests. They carried spears and seemed to serve as the wardens of this underworld prison.

A huge, nautilus-shell creature flailed its long green tentacles about, grabbing prisoners every which way and pulling them into its round, saw-toothed mouth.

A wolf-like beast with horns and blue-black fur sat on a throne in the center of the scene, howling with bone-chilling laughter at the antics of the goblins.

The very air was fetid, thick with smoke and useless pleas for mercy. Continuous screams issued from the severed heads displayed on pikes along the path down which Jake and Nixie fled. Above, winged furies circled, their threshing sickles at the ready. Rat-like bird-lizards with beaks and claws sharp enough to tear flesh pecked out people’s spleens while giant machines shaped like internal organs served as bizarre torture devices.