Ignite the Fire: Incendiary by Karen Chance

 

Chapter Thirty-Three

 

 

I stared at Arsen and he stared at me. And then his hands went for my throat, because of course they did, I thought, as my back hit the dirt. Of course, they damned well did!

But he didn’t succeed in choking the life out of me, because Rhea hexed him the next second, and then Guinn was shouting at us. “Here! Up here!”

I looked around, confused, until I spied her, sitting twelve feet up in the cleft of a huge old oak. She was looking a lot more like a fey suddenly, with her hair a dark poof around her face and filled with leaves and sticks; her heavy, if stylish, coat gone, and the sleeves ripped off her shirt; and what looked like one of the missing sleeves tied around her forearm. She was acting more like a fey, too, making a sweeping gesture that one of the huge branches of the oak she was riding mimicked exactly—and knocked three running soldiers off their feet.

“Are you deaf? Come on!” she yelled, when I just blinked at her.

And then her tree . . . started moving closer. It had been partway down the path in front of us, but now it reversed course, the roots spidering over the ground in ways that roots should not do. Causing me to have to fight a serious and profound urge to run screaming in the other direction.

I refrained, since the other direction held fey. Like the ones who were now shooting at the shield that Rhea had just thrown up. I glanced around, but if there was an alternative way out of here, I didn’t see it. So, we scrambled up the tree, which turned out to be the race car of the vegetable world, because as soon as we were up—

“Holy Crap!” I said, as the thing took off, trundling through and in some cases over the confusion like we had four-wheel drive. Or a tank. Or an out-of-control bulldozer, that put two huge limbs out in front of it and just scooped fey out of the way.

That was lucky, as they were everywhere now, leaping up from the ground as if they had springs in their feet, shooting arrows and throwing spells, and using some of those weird energy spear things that I’d seen them employ a few times before to devastating effect.

But the effect wasn’t so devastating now, as a phalanx of trees had formed up all around us. They were lashing out with limbs and roots, knocking fey out of the way, slamming them back into the forest, and trampling them underfoot. Or under root, I guessed, which made my head hurt and complain about the things I got it into. And then, in one memorable event, several fey were sent ping ponging between the wildly waving branches of half a dozen trees, until they finally managed to find free air—about thirty feet up.

I didn’t think their adventure in horticulture had managed to kill them, as they’d had shields, but it hadn’t made them happy. I, on the other hand, was feeling the first optimism I’d known in a while. I looked at Guinn, and shouted to be heard over the creaking wood and yelling fey and exploding spells.

“How are you doing this?”

“I was always told that grandfather could hear the plants sing!” she said, looking back at me with wild eyes. “I thought they were merely stories. It seems I was wrong!”

Looked that way, I thought, holding on. And then reaching out for Rhea, when a harder than normal bump sent her bouncing off the branch and into the air. Because there were no seatbelts in this thing!

I caught her before she fell off our crazy ride. But the shock interrupted the shield she’d somehow been maintaining, causing it to drop. And the second it did—

The ground rose up and hit me in the face.

Or, at least, that was what it looked like. After a stunned second, I realized that I must have fallen off myself, although I didn’t see how. I’d had a death drip on the branch with my thighs.

Oh, that was how, I thought, as Arsen jerked me up to his face.

“Release me, witch!” he snarled, his fingers digging into the arm he’d somehow grabbed, to pull me off the tree.

“You’re holding onto me!” I pointed out. And only afterward realized that I was speaking another language. Because, yeah, I guessed Pritkin spoke fey as well as understood it, didn’t he?

But I hadn’t been borrowing that particular ability before, and it freaked me out. And so did the mass of fey—like a whole damned battalion—heading for us at a dead run. And fuck that!

I kneed Arsen in the privates, only to belatedly remember that he was still wearing the bottom half of his armor. It was tied onto his gambeson, the long, padded tunic that these guys used to keep armor from meeting flesh, and which had been long enough to hide a solid steel cup. And oh, God, that hurt!

But I had bigger problems right now, because here came the fey—

And there went the fey, as half a forest worth of trees suddenly rose up and ambushed them from both sides. I had a moment to see a churning mass of limbs and silver hair and tossed up ground, and then I was staring up at a frantic looking Guinn, who’d somehow talked the racing tree into doing a one eighty. And then doing another one after Rhea cursed Arsen, sending him stumbling back into the woods, and I scrambled onboard.

We took off, galloping through the forest amid a whole host of other trees like . . . like a stampede.

“What are you doing?” Rhea yelled at Guinn, as I nursed a possibly fractured knee. “The camp is that way!”

“I know!”

“So, turn us around!”

Guinn stared at her, while hugging a tree limb with her whole body. “Do you see a bridle on this thing?”

“But you said—”

“That I could suggest things—”

“So, suggest they go around!”

“I did. They said an army is behind us—”

“And another one is in front of us!”

“Not if the fey are all out here—”

“You don’t know that!”

“I don’t know anything,” Guinn agreed. “But do you have a better suggestion?”

“Yes!” Rhea’s eyes flashed. “I would suggest not running straight through the middle of a Svarestri camp!”

“Is the camp where the guys are?” I asked, looking ahead to where fires were now clearly visible, glimmering through gaps in the forest.

“Don’t answer that!” Rhea said sharply, causing me to blink, but Guinn had already nodded.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“How do you think?” She shot me a look. “A tree told me!”

And then a fey grabbed me by the hair from somewhere above.

Three guesses who it was, and the first two don’t count, I thought, as I was dragged up to Arsen’s furious face. How the hell he’d gotten up there, I didn’t know, but he was close enough that I could have poked my fingers in his eyes. So, I did, because it felt like he was trying to scalp me. And as soon as he yelled and let go, Rhea hexed the shit out of him, really giving it her all this time, with a satisfaction that reminded me a lot of her mother.

He landed in the dirt behind us, convulsing, and I landed back on the big limb I’d been occupying with Rhea—sans a good-sized clump of hair. And then we all landed in the middle of the fey encampment, because we’d just broken through the tree line. Although I didn’t know if that was the right word considering that we were bringing the trees with us.

It didn’t look like the fey knew, either. I had a split second to see shocked faces, and people grabbing for weapons they didn’t manage to reach and that wouldn’t have helped them if they had, and then they were scattering in all directions, because it was either that or get mowed the hell down.

And that was a problem, because there were two people here who I didn’t want run over!

“Guinn!” I screamed.

“What?” she turned around.

“The guys! We have to get the guys!”

“I know that! Where are they?”

I stared at her. “You don’t know?”

“How should I know?”

“You said you asked a tree!”

“I did, but it’s not . . . you know, they don’t communicate details particularly well—”

“Guinn! We’re going to kill them trying to save them!” I yelled, right before I went flying.

I hit the ground at the feet of an incandescent fey, who’d just lassoed me with some kind of spell. And, of course, it wasn’t just any old fey. It was a half-naked, armor-wearing jerk with glowing golden eyes and long silver hair whipping around his face. He would have been an impressive sight, if I hadn’t been so goddamned mad.

“Arsen, you asshole!”

He seemed a little taken aback by that, why I didn’t know. But then he grabbed me—by the arm this time, thankfully—and shook me. “What have you done to me? What have you done?”

“Nothing! Let me go!”

“You’re a witch, and you have bespelled me!”

“I’m a Pythia, and my power doesn’t even work here!”

“Then what happened to me? Why am I here? Where am I?”

“Dude, you’re asking the wrong person. I don’t even know what I’m doing here—”

“Liar!”

“Hey, watch who you’re calling a liar,” I said, just as a tree threw a tent full of fey at us.

I jumped, and somehow stuck the landing despite being twelve or more feet off the ground at one point and still enmeshed in the strands of a glimmering spell. Which I broke using vampire strength when I hit back down, and then looked up. And saw Arsen staring at me from where I guessed he’d thrown himself out of the tent’s path.

“Your power doesn’t work here?” he snarled.

“That’s . . . not my power,” I told him. And then I ran, because if I’d ever seen murder on someone’s face . . .

But getting away was harder than it looked, much less finding Mircea or Pritkin. The camp was now a mass of churning trees and ruined tents and spreading fires and fleeing horses. Fey were also running and leaping everywhere, including a bunch who had gotten their shit together and come up with some torches, which they were using to try to scare off the misbehaving trees.

Only that was proving counterproductive, because now the trees were pissed. I saw one grab a torch from a fey and start chasing him with it. While his fellow soldiers just stood there, flatfooted, as if this hadn’t been covered in the training manual.

Welcome to my world, I thought, and then things got worse.

Because of course they did, I thought, as Arsen grabbed me again.

But he wasn’t the reason I was worried. No, that would be the horrific sound that had just cut through the skies, like the screech of a jet engine. Only louder and shivering not only across my skin, but feeling like it was trying to shake my insides apart as well.

Arsen flinched and stared upward, too, along with much of the rest of the camp. The trees were still running around, destroying things, but the people had momentarily forgotten to be scared of them, because they were too busy being scared of something else. Something worse.

And then we saw it, a massive body swooping over the forest, bending and then sheering off the tree tops with its enormous belly. Moonlight glinted on an acre of ebony scales as it circled back around, shone on the huge wings that had blocked out the stars, and gleamed in the too-intelligent, fire-lit eyes. They looked hideously out of place in an animal’s face, and would have told me who it was even if I hadn’t already known.

And realized what it meant.

Aeslinn was back in dragon form, only this time, he was huge. Not that he hadn’t been before, but this . . . was fucking absurd. He looked like a 747 up there, a sight that twisted my already messed up brain.

But it also helped a little with the crazy timeline I was dealing with. Because, sure, maybe Aeslinn had healed that stump of his fast enough for it to look old after only a short time, but he had not gotten that massive that quickly. Not even close.

So, he had fled his capitol, gone back in time with Jonathan, and taken up residence in his mobile hunting lodge, hobnobbing with some vamps. And then what? Hid out for three hundred years?

Because that was what it was looking like.

He’d wanted time for something, and boy, had he got it. All he’d had to do was stay out of sight, either on Earth or in Faerie, and nobody would even look for him, because he wasn’t missing! The younger version of him was on his throne, just as he was supposed to be.

But what had he done with all those years? What had he needed so badly that he was willing to sacrifice a capitol for it? And what was he doing now, that required Pritkin for some reason?

I didn’t know, and I didn’t find out, because Arsen threw off his disbelief and—

“Give it a rest!” I yelled, as he shook me some more.

He did not give it a rest. So, I tore away, using Mircea’s strength, and then laid him out with a savage uppercut. It was cruel, considering that he didn’t seem like that bad of a guy, but right then, I didn’t care. Because somebody was about to be hurt a lot more.

Somebody was about to be dead.

Pritkin! Mircea! I thought desperately. Where are you?

But, once again, there was no reply. I stared around, but all I saw were running fey, a burning wagon tearing off down a dirt road, and the dragon circling around for another pass. And then a fey hit the ground, right in front of me, as a spell bolt came from somewhere behind.

“I’m going to kill her,” Guinn panted, shoving me to the ground in what was suddenly a little grove of trees.

Most of them had arrows sticking out of their trunks, which did not appear to be bothering them any, and one had hooked a fey’s sword in a branch, which it was waving around in an almost mocking manner. The blade reflected firelight over the scene as they circled us, planting themselves in the churned-up dirt as if they’d always been there. Which would have been great, except that I didn’t want cover right now. I wanted Pritkin! And Mircea, and to get the hell out of here—

And then I noticed what was snapping around my ankles.

“What is that?” I demanded, because there was another spell—purple, this time—trussing me up.

“Get used to it. You’re about to have more,” Guinn said grimly, right before I socked her in the jaw.

I didn’t use vampire strength that time, but her head snapped back anyway. But then Rhea grabbed me. Her face was dirty, too, and her usually perfect hair was wild. She looked more than a little crazed.

But not half as much as I was. “Would everybody get the hell off?” I snarled. “What is wrong with you?”

“That is what we must explain,” Rhea said breathlessly.

“There’s no time! Aeslinn is about to eat Pritkin—”

“What?”

“—like right now, so get off me—”

“Where is Aeslinn?” Guinn demanded, grabbing what remained of my hair. “Where is that bastard?”

“Right there—”

“Where? Point him out!”

“The huge ass dragon, are you blind? Now let me up!”

“She’s off her chump,” Guinn told Rhea. “Knock her out and let’s go.”

Rhea didn’t listen to her, but she didn’t let me up, either. “Lady, Aeslinn cannot be a dragon. He is light fey—”

“He’s a light fey monster who has been buddying up to Zeus and learning how to eat souls! And the next one he plans to consume is Pritkin’s! Now let me go!”

She ignored my order again, although the frown between her eyes grew deeper.

But it didn’t matter because the purple spell proved no more of a match for vampire strength than Arsen’s had. I kicked outward and it disappeared with a final zap, making my legs feel numb and weak underneath me. I nonetheless scrambled up—

And was immediately tackled by supposed helpers. “Lady, no!” Rhea said. “You’ll be killed!”

“Damn it, Rhea! I’m not really here!”

But she was strong and determined, and she wasn’t listening to reason. And I was afraid to borrow Mircea’s strength, since it might seriously hurt her. But then Guinn grabbed something out of her waistband and—

“The fuck?” I stared at the thin line of red welling up on my arm, staining the lace. And then at the telepath holding a knife that she must have taken off a fey—and which she was now waving in my face.

“If you’re not here, then how do you bleed?”

“Faerie doesn’t have spirits, Lady!” Rhea said quickly. “It’s in a different universe, with different rules—”

“So?” I demanded, watching my sleeve turn red. Damn it!

“So, you told me yourself—when your ghost servant Billy Joe entered Faerie with you, he suddenly acquired a body. Souls manifest bodies in Faerie, and Lover’s Knot is a soul bond.”

I looked up at her for a second, and then down at my bloody arm again. But before I could respond, Guinn shoved her own arm in my face. It had a gory wound both deeper and larger than mine on the bicep. It looked like an arrow or maybe a knife had clipped her, and not superficially. She’d bound it up in the remains of her other sleeve, but it had bled through the cotton, staining it bright red.

“See that?” she asked, cutting off part of her petticoat with a savage stroke from the blade. “A fey gave me this before your acolyte could save me—cut me halfway to the bone, he did. Something that shouldn’t be possible if I’m not really here!”

“Listen to her lady,” Rhea urged. And then jerked out her wand and dropped another fey, one of three who had just broken through the tree line, while Guinn’s leafy posse dealt with the rest. Rhea’s fey plowed through the dirt, coming to rest right in front of us. I stared at him and he stared back, and despite the fact that he wasn’t moving, I didn’t think he was dead.

He looked a little too vicious to be dead.

“You not only kidnapped my brain, you made me a body to go with it!” Guinn said, not missing a beat. “Can I die like this? Do you know?”

“I . . . I’ve told you all I know,” I said, still staring at the fey.

“Not good enough!”

I looked up to find her rebinding her wound. “Then go home! Get out of here—”

“Don’t you think we’ve tried?”

“We tried to pull all of us out, several times,” Rhea said breathlessly. “It doesn’t work, Lady. Perhaps because you brought us here—”

“Or perhaps because we have bodies now!” Guinn said savagely.

I ignored her and gave them a mental push, trying to send them back to Gertie’s or at least back to the imprint; I assumed Guinn could navigate from there. But nothing happened.

I tried some more.

“Why is she looking like that?” Guinn demanded.

“I believe she is trying to send us home,” Rhea said, biting her lip.

“It isn’t working—”

“I know it isn’t working!” I said. “But it should be!”

“Not if we have bodies—”

“Stop saying that!”

“Why?” Guinn challenged. “It’s true.”

“It isn’t true! I was in Faerie yesterday as a ghost—”

“Yesterday?” Rhea said.

I nodded. “Mircea—a master vampire with mental abilities,” I added for Guinn’s sake. “Pulled me into some kind of tunnel complex, then Iris touched me and got drawn in as well—”

“So that’s what she was talking about,” Rhea said. “I had wondered.”

I nodded.

“But are you sure you were in Faerie? Perhaps—”

“My power didn’t work; I’m sure! And we were spirits—or something like them—Iris, too. We were even hit by spell bolts that did nothing—”

“Well, they’re doing something now!” Guinn yelled, as outside the little glade, the terrible, soul searing screech of a dragon tore through the night and fey spells lit up the sky.

We hunkered down, hands over our ears, because the din was honestly breathtaking. It was almost as good as a stun spell, all on its own. But as soon as it slacked off slightly, Guinn grabbed me by what was left of my shirt.

“Magic grows; it learns,” she hissed. “It isn’t static; it isn’t a machine! Spells adapt over time, as long as they have the energy to work with—”

“And you’re Pythia,” Rhea added. “Meaning that Lover’s Knot had an almost unlimited source of power fueling it. Who knows what it could do?”

Okay, finally something clicked. I flashed back to the castle in Romania, when Mircea and Pritkin and I had first visited it. I’d only been able to see through their eyes for brief periods, and even then, it had been confusing and impossible to direct and pretty unclear.

But in that underground lab, I’d been myself, looking like me and in full control of my actions, just ghost-like. Mircea had called me a mental projection, as if my mind was there, but nothing else. Because we were linked mentally and he had just manifested that link.

But now . . . what was I now?

I looked down at my hand—dirty, bruised, and with grime in the lines of the palm and under the fingernails. And then at my clothes, which looked like you’d expect after tramping through a forest for hours. And then there was that missing clump of hair . . .

It all added up, I’d just been too preoccupied with what I was seeing in the Common to pay attention to what I was seeing here. Or to what I was doing here, without Mircea’s years of experience with the mind to help me. I had his gifts, but not his knowledge.

And that, as it turned out, was a really dangerous combination.

“You’re saying I shifted our souls in here?” I said, still hoping I was wrong.

“And Faerie clothed them in flesh,” Guinn said, with the air of a woman who has won through against great odds.

“It seems the only explanation,” Rhea agreed. “Although it may be only a partial shift—”

“Like Chimera,” I said hopefully, referring to a Pythian spell that allowed a Pythia to visit two timelines at once. It was usually reserved for emergencies—or for training, because if you died while in Chimera, your soul just snapped back into the remaining body.

But Rhea was biting her lip again.

“This isn’t Chimera, and the Pythian power doesn’t work here,” she reminded me.

“Meaning . . . what?”

“What do you think?” Guinn said. “She means we can die in here! Or end up back in our world with half a soul—which means we die there. Which is why we have to go.”

“We have to retreat, Lady,” Rhea agreed.

“No.” I grabbed a knife belt off the fallen fey. “You have to retreat.”

“Lady—”

This time, I grabbed her, and let my fingers dig into her shoulder, because I needed for her to get this. “You’re my heir. If I don’t return, this is all on you. Get to Gertie, get to your mother. Have them train the hell out of you in the past, then shift to the present when you’re ready. I don’t know any two better women, you understand?”

Rhea stared at me with huge, frightened eyes. “Cassie, I—I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready.”

“Nobody ever is for this job, but I chose you for a reason. You’re better than you think you are. Stronger, smarter, braver. Better than me, all right?”

She stared at me some more.

“What about me?” Guinn said, looking less angry and more unsure suddenly.

“Take care of her—and yourself. Get to a portal and she can shift you both back. Fey bodies drop when you leave,” I added, because her eyes had a thousand questions.

“And what are you going to do?”

“Finish this,” I said, and ran.