Loose Changeling: A Changeling Wars Novel (35 page)

The watch in my pocket bounced as I ran. I could release Merlin. I could end this war before it started. Only thirty more feet.

My left knee gave way. I struggled to right myself, but my other knee refused to accept my weight. Warmth trickled down my arm as I fell. The breath rushed out of me when I hit the pavement. Spots of red and black obscured my vision for a moment before they cleared.

Three pairs of black, smoky feet approached. I grabbed for the knife in my pocket, struggling to pull it free in time to meet the hobgoblins. My arm twisted, catching on the fabric of my shirt. Maybe foresight was one of my Talents. Maybe the dream I’d had after I’d manifested had been real. Maybe this was how I would end—torn to pieces by hobgoblins.

I forced back the panic and reached for my magic. Some tiny reserve sparked to life, spurring my arms to move faster, to lift the knife, now a sword, above my head. I managed to slice the hand from one hobgoblin arm, but I couldn’t fend off all eighteen arms at once. Cold fingers closed around my wrists and my ankles as I prepared for another swing. All my training fled, and instinct overrode my senses as I kicked and screamed.
Not like this
.

A black shape blurred across my vision, a whoosh of air breezed over my face, and the clammy hands of the hobgoblins slipped away. I was left gaping, my breath misting the air.

When you’re sure, absolutely positive, that you’re going to die, it takes a moment to realize that you haven’t. The night sky was my tunnel, the moon my light at the end. I was oddly grateful that I hadn’t felt any pain.

The sounds of the surrounding battle gradually penetrated my hazy thoughts, as well as the ache from the arrow in my arm.

“Nicole.”

I turned my head, disappointed that death would not be quite so easy for me. The grushound stood over three black pools of liquid, its jaw dripping. Brown eyes stared into mine. “Nicole,” it said again in a gravelly voice.

Well, fuck me. Either I
was
dead, or grushounds could talk.

It lay down, belly flat against the ground, and lowered its head. “Please accept my bond. I am currently beholden to Grian.”

Something exploded above my head and rained purple sparks as I stared at the hound.

“Accept my bond, Changeling,” it growled, “or we’re both dead.”

“I accept,” I croaked out.

The grushound rose and shuddered, as though struck by a frigid breeze. “Good. Now get up.”

Everything hurt. My sleeve clung to my arm, blood soaking the cloth to my elbow. The ice bolt had seared through my pant leg and sloughed off the skin beneath. I gritted my teeth and suppressed a whimper as I forced myself into a crouch.

“Have I bonded myself to one of the Sidhe, or a sniveling weakling?” the hound sneered.

Nothing like a little anger to make a person warm and toasty inside. I lurched to my feet. “Not a weakling.” Thirty more feet, and I had a grushound at my side. A hound that happened to be resistant to magic.

“Keep close to me,” I said. “Block all incoming magic.”

The hound padded to my side and then turned, so that we stood in parallel.

I ran. The grushound moved in tandem with me, grunting each time it was struck. I would have felt bad, if I’d had the time. Gomez and Brown were just ahead of me—I focused on them and did my best to drown out everything else. Ten more feet. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the folded handkerchief. My right arm, the one with the arrow still in it, hung limply at my side.

“Brown! Gomez!” I cried out.

They both turned.

I’m not sure how it must have looked—me barreling toward them with a dog the size of a pony at my side, hobgoblin blood still oozing from its jowls. Neither of them ran, though Brown’s face lightened several shades.

I tossed the watch. “The watch—step on it!”

Gomez caught it easily in her left hand, the gun still clutched in her right.

“Are you sure we should—” Brown began.

But Gomez didn’t hesitate. She shook out the handkerchief. The watch landed with a metallic clink on the ground, and she placed her heel on it.

Crunch.

Blue smoke billowed out and the smell of sandalwood filled the air. In some places, the fighting slowed, until I could hear the individual strikes of metal against metal, the short burst of gunfire. The smoke drifted across the parking lot and coalesced just beyond the police line.

An old man in dark blue robes appeared, leaning heavily upon a walking stick. White hair cascaded down his back like a waterfall; his beard did the same over his chest. He stood nearly as tall as Kailen, and despite the white hair, his face was only lightly lined.

“Grian.” He spoke quietly, yet the Fae Queen’s name rushed over the combatants like a tsunami, leaving silence in its wake. Everyone stopped moving.

From the smoke and the mist, Grian stepped forward. She glided toward him, moving around the bodies already on the ground. When she was an arm’s length away, she knelt. “Merlin,” she said.

Merlin didn’t move. “You and your family have broken the Arbiter’s laws. You have imprisoned me for a millennium, using my magic for your own gains. And now you lead an attack on the mortal world.”

The Queen rose, her chin lifted in the air. “The mortals have falsely accused one of our own. As for the imprisonment, you are mistaken. I have done no such thing. The item that held you belongs to my son. It is not of my making.”

I automatically looked for Kailen and caught his gaze. He stood over the body of the last Minotaur, his sword still outstretched. With two flicks of his wrist, he folded it. I wanted to say something, anything, but he turned to Merlin and Grian before I could even form the words in my thoughts.

He’d taken the blame for Grian over and over, for the motherly love he’d never received. He had to tell the truth this time, for the sake of both the mortal world and the Fae, and for himself.

“The watch was a gift from Grian,” he said.

All the breath left me at once. I felt dizzy, weightless.

“That’s a lie,” Grian said without breaking Merlin’s gaze. “I had no role in the making of it. Kailen has already been punished by the Arbiter once, for his misdeeds.” Some mother Grian was.

Merlin straightened and stretched out a hand. “Then let me read the truth of it in your thoughts.”

Without even the slightest hesitation, Grian stepped forward and into his touch.

Both Sidhe went still; I didn’t even see the rise and fall of breath. Merlin was known for his magic, and was a Changeling. This would end here, now. I could go home, get someone to see to the arrow in my upper arm, take a hot shower, veg out in front of the television…

My fantasies were cut short by a sharp cry. Merlin dropped to the ground. The flicker of a smile crossed Grian’s face as she stepped away.

I was running toward them before I registered that I’d moved. All my plans, shattered. If I’d given myself time to think, I would have started running in the opposite direction. Grian wanted me dead, and she’d done something to take out Merlin. Merlin—the man who lived large in all the Arthurian legends my dad had read to us as kids. His imprisonment may have weakened him, but he was not weak.

And I was a Changeling, my magic freshly hatched, still young and untried and wobbly.

But emotions had a way of trampling logic, and I was filled to the brim with relief at Kailen’s honesty, anger at Grian’s manipulations, and a hope that burned as steady and bright as a kerosene lamp.

I slammed into the Fae Queen, and my weight carried us both toward the ground. Before the impact, I shoved into her thoughts with the gusto of a swimmer pushing off from the wall.

Darkness surrounded me, punctuated with pinpricks of light, like stars.

Oh, Nicole
. Grian’s voice emanated from all around me.
Will you ever learn?

I ignored her, focused on a mote of light, and dove toward it. Almost immediately, a subtle pressure began building against me, like the water at the deep end of the pool. I was still on the surface of her thoughts. I had to get below, into what made Grian who she was, to cause any damage.

But by delving into her thoughts, I made mine vulnerable to her. My memories flitted through my mind as she sorted through them. Though maybe “sorted” isn’t the right word. She sorted through my memories the way a two-year-old sorts through their toy box in search of their favorite Lego. My sister and I playing hide-and-seek as children, my first day of school, the time I broke my arm on the monkey bars. Tears gathered in my eyes. Grian had no right to muddle through my memories or my thoughts.

Flashes of Grian’s memories hit me as I dove. A memory of her crafting the watch, of her sneaking up on Merlin in the middle of the night, of her placing it against his skin.

The lights to either side of me shifted and lengthened into spikes.
Go back. This isn’t your battle to fight. I have returned your nephew and called off both the Guardians and the other Fae families. You could live your life as a mortal, unmolested. I will not bother you again
.

“And what about everyone else?” I called into the darkness.

They are not your concern
.

Like hell they weren’t. Maybe a few days ago I would have been content with such a bargain. Keep me and my own safe, and let the rest of the world deal with their problems. But I wasn’t that woman anymore. And these weren’t the fluffy, glittery Fae of youthful fairytales. Some of them were genuinely bad people, and I had the power to stand between them and the defenseless. I wasn’t going to let Grian wreak her havoc on the mortal world, or the Fae world.

Even if it cost me my life.

The darkness disappeared, replaced only with thin white spikes. I fell with them, into them, through them. They pierced my belly, my face, my hands, my feet. Each one prickled and burned, the pain spreading through my body like an infection.

I clenched my teeth, biting back a scream. Pieces of me began to fall away and still I pushed forward. There was no blood, only flesh and pain. Grian was cutting to my core; there would be nothing of me left by the time she was finished. If I didn’t turn back, she would leave me worse than dead. She would leave me completely mad. Panic began to eat away at my hope. My progress slowed.

But Grian had just tried to bargain with me. I may have been Fae, but I’d spent my life as a human, and nine of those years I’d spent as a salesperson—begging, cajoling, and convincing people to purchase daily planners. Maybe I wasn’t centuries old, like Kailen, but I’d learned a few things.

As soon as someone tries to bargain with you, it means something. It means you’re halfway to making a sale, because they’ve conceded they actually want what you’re selling. It means you’ve almost won.

Grian’s mental battle with Merlin had weakened her. The attempted bargaining wasn’t the whim of a powerful Sidhe. It was a desperate attempt to get me to leave her alone.

I pushed aside the pain and dove.

The spikes disappeared. I floated in an empty white space.

Changeling
…

Before she could say another word, before she could stop me, I imagined the door and made it real. As before, a little girl stood next to me, one palm placed against the wood.

“Sometimes,” I said to her, panting, “what we see in our heads is worse than the reality.”

I jerked open the door, and the monster emerged. Bloody saliva dripped from its jowls, its massive knuckles dragging on the ground as it lumbered into the white space. A matted patch of hair covered the top of its head; its clothes were torn and tattered. The little girl took a step back, then another, and then fell. The monster’s lips parted in a grin, revealing sharpened teeth. But instead of going after the girl, it turned back the way it had come and began to tear the door apart. Grian and the little girl screamed in unison.

I fled—up and up—desperate to surface. The screams followed my path, as loud as though I hadn’t moved at all. I found pieces of myself on the way, and I snatched them from the darkness, holding them close. Mostly my memories, and the quirks I held unique to me.

The pressure lightened. I felt cold air on my cheeks.

And then I was back.

Grian was beneath me, one of my knees pressed into her hip, the other stinging on the pavement. Her eyes were open and sightless, and her screams filled the night air. I checked my torso and my limbs. Other than the arrow and the skinless part of my thigh, I was unhurt.

“Nicole. Changeling,” a voice said behind me.

I turned my head and saw Merlin, his hand outstretched. He still lay on the ground, blood leaking from his ears and nostrils, staining his white hair red. “Bring her to me.”

I hesitated. “Are you sure?”

He nodded.

Well, I wasn’t about to argue with Merlin. Sliding off of the Fae Queen’s body, I pulled at her arm until her hand touched his. The screams stopped and both of them went still again. Was that how I’d looked when I’d fought her? I sat between them, unsure of what to do next.

A moment later, they both breathed again—Grian in gulping sobs, Merlin in rasping, shallow breaths.

He grabbed for my arm. “Her magic is spent. I have bound her. She will never be able to tell another lie, for as long as she lives. The only one who can undo this is you. The only one who can undo it is another Changeling.”

His grip held me tight, the gnarled fingers molded around my wrist. He waited.

“I won’t. I swear it,” I said.

The hand went slack, his eyes rolled back, and a last puff of breath left his lips and curled into the air. I felt his life wink out like a burnt-out bulb. I was alone again—the only living Changeling. It made me gut-wrenchingly sad.

Footsteps crunched against the asphalt.

“So,” Officer Brown said, “what just happened here?” He had his thumbs hooked into his belt, one hand resting lightly over his gun.

I pointed to Grian. “Arrest her. She’s the one that killed those people. She’ll give you a confession, if you ask for it.”

Dorian stepped out of the crowd of Fae, dressed in a flannel shirt, black leather pants, and loafers. I could have sworn I hadn’t seen him among the Fae as they’d approached. Had he only just now arrived? I wouldn’t have been surprised. He had his own piece of moonstone and the Talent to travel. He seemed to have a knack for showing up in the right place at the right time.