The Wild Ways (47 page)
ELEVEN
C
HARLIE CAME OUT of the Wood just inside the perimeter fence, facing the mine-head.
HARLIE CAME OUT of the Wood just inside the perimeter fence, facing the mine-head.
“All I need is a definitive moment in time. Something that resonates so loudly, I’ll have no trouble following its song out of theWood.”
Allie folded her arms. “What if you’re wrong?”
“Then it doesn’t work and I end up where, not when.”
“And if you get lost?”
Charlie sighed. “Get lost once your first time in and no one ever lets you forget it.”
The landscape told her absolutely nothing about when she was. She’d followed the stirring anthem “Charlie Kicks Troll Ass” which should have brought her out just as the Charlie of ten days ago realized how things worked. Unfortunately, all that had happened/was happening deep in the mine leaving no impression on the surface. There was always a chance she’d followed an echo, a chance the song had been so powerful it would resonate through the Wood for years leading travelers astray. Well, travelers attuned to that sort of thing. Okay, her.
If it had worked, here and now Jack was chasing a Boggart down the elevator shaft and she was just about to hit the floor.
“What about paradoxes?” Graham had demanded.
“Chill.What happened, happened. And we don’t know what happened after that happened, so anything can happen.”When he seemed about to protest, she kissed him, kissed Allie, hugged Jack, and walked through the shrubbery in the courtyard into the Wood.
As Charlie emerged from an annoyingly dense bit of dog willow, she spotted Paul’s penis-mobile. No way would it still be sitting there ten days after Paul had disappeared or been discovered disemboweled. Either way, it’d be in a police impound lot.
Punching the air seemed entirely justified.
“Holy shit, I traveled in time. I’m like freakin’ Dr. Who, and the cute redheaded companion should turn up right about . . . now.” A quick look around. “Or not.” Apparently time travel was fine, but a cute redheaded companion was too much to ask of the universe.
She patted the penis-mobile’s shiny black roof as she jogged by. Kept jogging past the big double doors they’d left unlocked ten days earlier, and charmed open a standard-sized door in the next building. The big elevator was down in the mine, but a little research had turned up three smaller ones.
“Machinery breaks,” Graham pointed out. “If the big elevator is fried and they absolutely have to, they can get the miners out the coal shaft, let them ride the belt up, but better to spread their eggs over a few baskets and get them out one or two at a time in smaller, supplemental shafts.”
Much smaller, Charlie realized peering through the grating as the motor powered up. This cage would hold two people, three if they were willing to be very friendly and if Graham hadn’t printed up the schematics of the building for her and marked a big X on the spot, it would have been easy to miss. The steel door said only,
no unauthorized personnel beyond this point
not
open me to find an elevator you can use to save the day.
no unauthorized personnel beyond this point
not
open me to find an elevator you can use to save the day.
She glanced at her watch. Jack would have finished wrapping her in the Troll by now and started pushing the cart toward the Gate.
“Jack, I’m sorry, but you’re still too heavy to get through theWood.”
“The car . . .”
“I’m pretty sure . . . absolutely sure,” she corrected because certainty was at least half of making this work,“that I can get myself when I need to go, but I have no idea how much I can take with me. I’d hate to lose the car and you somewhere between now and then.”
“That would suck,” Jack admitted reluctantly. “What are you going to tell the guys and Shelly about me not being there?”
“That your guardian got freaked by news of the violence at the festival and made me send you home.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“Don’t worry, they’ll believe me.”
“Yeah,” Jack snorted. “Totally not worried about that.”
The tiny elevator smelled like heated dust and every once in a while gave a grinding hiccup that made Charlie think she should have just climbed down the metal rungs she could see passing outside the cage.
This elevator only went down as far as the Canaveral level.
“Don’t need to go any farther,” Charlie muttered, stepping out into a dark and empty tunnel. Pulling out a dozen plastic bracelets, she cracked them and slid six on each wrist.
“Magic?” Jack asked as she filled her pockets in the Emporium.
“Nope. Chemistry.”
A vigorous shake and she was bathed in the soft glow of dibutyl phthalate, the multicolored bands of light just enough to activate the night-sight charm on her lids. She couldn’t see much, but she could see enough to keep from slamming into random carts or the tunnel walls. Running full out, she followed a song of shattered stone to Canaveral where she’d fought the Troll.
“And won,” she muttered, stepping around a crushed cart, squinting under the overhead lights.
No sign of Eineen or Paul or the Goblins, but if the Goblins had let their prey get more than three meters from the gate, she’d be very surprised.
Another song sent her after Eineen and Paul. Circumstances dictated it be a love song—boy meets seal, seal enchants boy, boy and seal have children who make the Canadian Olympic swimming team. As she followed it, Charlie made a mental note to check if previous gold medal winners had ancestors from Cape Breton.
Given that it would be pretty pointless to arrive after the Goblins attacked, she concentrated on speed rather than stealth, leaping debris and not bothering to muffle the sound of her sneakers against the stone. Refocusing the Goblins’ attention on her was the point of the trip.
“How long will the batteries powering the headlamps last?” Eineen whispered.
“I don’t know. They’re supposed to be fully charged at all times, but there’s often large variables between supposed to be and are.” He was amazed by how calm he sounded. Forty-eight hours ago if someone had told him he was going to find himself deep in the
Duke
with a girlfriend who became a seal—or possibly a seal who’d become his girlfriend—backed up against a gate to a fairytale realm, and under attack by Goblins, he’d have suggested they were off their meds. He was terrified, sure, but Eineen was a warm weight against his side, her arms wrapped around his waist, and he had to hold it together for her.
Duke
with a girlfriend who became a seal—or possibly a seal who’d become his girlfriend—backed up against a gate to a fairytale realm, and under attack by Goblins, he’d have suggested they were off their meds. He was terrified, sure, but Eineen was a warm weight against his side, her arms wrapped around his waist, and he had to hold it together for her.
The same way she was holding it together for him. He could feel her trembling, but her voice was steady, the question had been matter-of-fact. He’d never loved her more.
Pushed into the light by its companions, a Goblin hissed, and spit, and howled out a one-man catfight as it scrambled back into the dark.
“That sounded insulting.”
“They use very inventive profanity,” Eineen agreed.
“You can understand them?” The noise hadn’t sounded like words.
“A little. But it’s been a long time since I’ve heard Goblin.”
He thought of asking her how long, but if time spent with Amelia Carlson had taught him anything, it was never ask a woman her age.
“This has all been for nothing,” she sighed. “When they attack, the four skins Catherine Gale took will be destroyed with me.”
“You’re not going to be destroyed.”
“Destroyed. Eaten. Same thing. They don’t like the light, but it doesn’t hurt them. Eventually, the taunting will drive one of them out to attack and at first blood—ours or theirs, it doesn’t matter—the rest will follow.”
“Well, I’d never thought about going through a Goblin’s digestive tract with you, but as long as we’re together, there’s worse ways to end up.”
She twisted in his arms to look up at him—twisted the headlamp back toward the Goblins, setting off another storm of hissing—and said, “You actually mean that, don’t you?”
“I actually do.” Paul would have kissed her except dipping his head would turn the light away from the Goblins. “However, are you sure that going through the gate . . .”
“Even if they didn’t follow us, what’s on the other side is worse.”
“Jack, the dragon-boy . . .”
“Dragon Prince. And he’s long gone.”
Paul had already tried the breaker that was supposed to turn the lights on in the side tunnel. He didn’t know if it wasn’t working because of the gate or the Goblins, but in the end, it didn’t matter. His pockets held his phone and some change. His belt buckle wasn’t large enough to use as a weapon. He was out of ideas. When he’d thought about dying, he’d thought about wearing a pale gray Armani suit and having captains of industry cancel million-dollar meetings in order to attend. There might have been a wife weeping attractively in the background. Torn apart and eaten by Goblins in a mine had never come up. It was hard to believe it was real.
Then it was suddenly very easy.
Pushed from behind, another Goblin stumbled into the light. Head tucked in between its shoulders, it snarled softly. Tiny gold rings glinted along the curve of one rounded ear and two of the small teeth between the four-centimeter fangs were gold as well. It bent and scraped the claws of both hands against the tunnel floor, gouging out four parallel lines and proving that its claws were strong enough to cut through rock as well as steel.
Wonderful.
Paul hoped that the marks on its grimy leather tunic were a faded pattern, but they looked a lot like tattoos.
The hissing and howling from the darkness grew louder. Goblins crowded the edge of the light. Glistening. Gleaming.
“They’re taunting it.”
Paul licked dry lips. “It?” A stupid thing to worry about, but he suddenly had to know.
“Goblins are hermaphroditic.”
“Okay, then.” His heart was pounding so hard his whole body throbbed with every beat. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t swallow.
“So are salamanders and Sylphs.”
“What?”
He felt Eineen shrug. “I didn’t want you to think it was only an attribute of the vicious.”
“Right.”
The Goblin crouched, reminding Paul of a cat just before it pounced. He shoved Eineen behind him, felt her hands on the small of his back, brought up his fists. His eyes snapped closed. He forced them open.
The Goblin was in midair, its claws a meter from his face.
And then it exploded.
Ears ringing, Paul staggered back, Eineen steadying him.
From the mess seeping out into the light, more than the one Goblin had exploded.
It looked like every Goblin in a line between the one attacking them and . . .
Charlotte Gale.
She picked her way through the mess, glowing . . . no, not glowing just bracelets on her wrists glowing. Her face . . .
Actually, she looked disgusted and muttered a litany of “Eww” as she minced forward. When she cleared the worst of the wet chunks, she looked up and smiled. “You know how there’s a note that shatters glass? Seems there’s a note that shatters Goblins.”
Those Goblins who’d been outside the line of fire were gone. Had disappeared back into the darkness.
Paul took a breath, gagged, swallowed so he wouldn’t vomit, and realized at some point in the last few seconds when death in obscurity had been imminent, he’d pissed himself.
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