Halfway Dead (17 page)

To my horror, Bindie was an early riser. So was Jim Dietrich, and, just to add to my misery, Wulfric appeared to not only wake up instantly at dawn, but he did so without the aid of coffee, in a cheerful mood, and ready to ask questions.

While I sat nursing a cup of instant coffee, Bindie flitted about me in a series of seizure-inducing motions that finally made me snap my fingers at her, before grunting like a wounded bear. She slowed to a hover, an interrogative tinkling emitting from her general vicinity. I waited for Wulfric to translate, while slurping my coffee in the surliest pose I could manage. It was still barely light outside, a fact that no one seemed to care about but me.

“What’s the little twerp want?” I grumbled.

Bindie twinkled brightly, then resumed her laughter. Or she began repeating the noise that I hoped was laughter, because I didn’t have the energy to delve into the mind of a hyperactive faerie.

Wulfric smiled, wide and bright. He was clearly savoring my state of disarray, and I directed a low-angle stinkeye at him from my prone position. “She wants to know if your hair is haunted.” He smirked in a way that made me wish my legs were longer. I would’ve kicked him there and then.

I turned a gimlet eye to Bindie. “No, my hair is not haunted, you impertinent little fiend. It’s called bed head.” Even as I spoke, I could feel the breeze moving through an array of architectural shapes that had spawned in my hair overnight. I smoothed one or three of them down impatiently, before returning my withering gaze to the floating ball of irritating cheer before me. Bindie helpfully brandished her sword, and I pointed a finger at her in a slow, menacing motion. “If you think about cutting my hair, I will introduce you to my cat. Understand?”

Bindie’s motion stopped, then she began to shake with laughter once again, while sheathing her tiny sword. Okay, so my threats were hollow, and she knew it. I guess all tiny fae are just mean, especially before sunrise.

“Lace up, Carlie, but finish your coffee, and take one for the road,” Jim said, and there was genuine kindness in his voice. He was freshly shaved, and fairly gleaming with health. I did as he suggested, slipping my feet into one boot, then the next, with a slow exploration of each aching toe muscle. We’d really covered ground yesterday, and the idea of a three-day hike with two tall men made me groan out loud.

“What do you need?” Wulfric asked.

“About a foot of height. Your walking pace is going to kill me.” I tied my second boot with a savage twist, snapping the loops outward grimly before standing to stomp my foot into place. With a final scooch of my toes, it was just right.

“We’re not in a hurry, and the way will be varied. I don’t think you will find the journey to be much of a test. It is the destination that will strain our abilities.” Wulfric shouldered an enormous pack on his broad back, wiggling to let it adjust to his frame. In moments, we were on our way, Bindie in the lead as a flickering globe of blue light so intense it shaded into white. The sun was coloring the east with the delicate pinks of a morning rose, and there was no wind. Birds called out as we skirted Wulfric’s paddock, where his herd animals greeted him with an array of cheerful noises. Their ears, both goat and donkey, poked over the roughhewn rail fence that reached a height of nearly six feet. At the end of the paddock, Wulfric stopped and swung the gate open. “Come on, lads and lasses. You’ve a few days to walk about without me.”

Instantly, four goats, two donkeys, and a single, dopey-looking mule began to amble toward the open gate. They were in no hurry, so we simply turned and left them to their impromptu vacation.

“They’ll be okay without you?” I asked, wondering who was going to milk the nannies. They’d be rather uncomfortable without Wulfric around.

“I’m not leaving them completely unattended,” he said cryptically. At that, I saw three more Wisps streak past us, pausing only long enough to chitter excitedly at Bindie, before making a beeline for the animals.

“Friends of hers?” Jim asked.

“Family. They’ll be only too happy to milk the nannies and keep an eye on the place while we’re gone. I left honey out as well, a sort of advance payment for their good work,” Wulfric explained, grinning back at the motes of swirling color that were already carrying a small tin pail toward the nearest goat, who I presumed could only be Mabel. Their teamwork was highly effective, if noisy, and Mabel bore their presence with a pleasant stoicism. Her placid face revealed a state that all hoofed animals can choose to adopt when they aren’t being purposely intransigent.

Bindie tittered at this, obviously pleased that her family would be in the lap of luxury while we were out trudging toward some sort of possible oblivion. I tossed her a jaunty salute, and she twinkled three times in succession; something that I suspected was the Wisp equivalent of an eye roll. It could have been a pleasant greeting, but that early in the morning, I was still naturally suspicious. I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at her, and schooled my eyes to look ahead. We were entering the first cool, deep vale of our trip, and the light of the burgeoning day seemed to flee, fearful of entering the trap that the forest had laid. Clever lattices of leaves and branches drank in the sun, leaving a timid state of semi-illumination that was cozy and the slightest bit mysterious.

We walked in silence, while eating various items from our respective packs. Wulfric appeared to be chewing on something that resembled the leg of a remarkably muscular chicken. Jim was tossing trail mix into his mouth at regular intervals, and I was demolishing three chocolate bars in quick succession. I know how to start my day off right.

We paused at a hillside spring that fell into a near circular pit, vanishing under our feet after a short distance. Cress and lilies crowded the edge of the little pool, and the water was cold and sweet. Jim filled our canteens, dunking them under the burbling surface in turn.

I paused, turned, and made a decision. “Wulfric, this is the place.”

Jim stopped in his tracks before he gleaned my meaning. “It
does
feel like this is a place of secrets. Wulfric, what do you think? Can Carlie’s magic be cast truly? Here, and now?”

“I was willing to submit to her geas anywhere, but this will do nicely. I await your direction, lady.” Wulfric walked to me and bowed with considerable dignity, and it sank in that I was going to bind a man of some power to my will. More importantly, he was entering this agreement of his own accord, and I knew that counted a great deal toward his spiritual honesty. I quelled the incipient butterflies in my stomach and began to focus on the saving grace of all witches. I started to embrace a ritual, and any state of nerves began to shimmer and die like an approaching mirage.

“Take a seat, please.” I pointed near the spring’s edge, and Wulfric folded his long legs up with a single, smooth motion.

He sat with a dignified calm as I invited Jim to sit as well. I’d begun rooting in my pack for the necessary items, selecting a simple array of things that would make no sense to anyone other than Gran. This was family magic of great power, purely cast, and built on a legacy of quiet study and limitless respect.

I took a place across from Wulfric, with Jim to my left, engaged in the kind of stillness that a professional soldier can adopt without thought. I reached up to my witchmark and plucked a hair so white it was nearly devoid of color. Wulfric had no reaction, but Dietrich’s brows shot up at this simple act. Soon, they would both see magic at close range, and for Jim it would most certainly be his first encounter with a spell that could tickle his senses.

Other than the time I zapped him into numbness, I mean.

I tied the selected hair in a complex knot that doubled upon itself like a hungry serpent. Inside the small loop formed by my fingers, I slipped a dried sprig of mountain laurel, crushing the leaves just as the stem slid home. Aroma of life and the mountains reached my nostrils, and I felt my eyes close in pleasure at the simple beginning of the spell.

I raised my hand, letting the charms fall against my skin. Each shape was a tiny metallic reservoir of cold against me, and I welcomed the sensation with all of my power. The spiral of energy began to insinuate itself through the air around me, and Wulfric’s body tensed at the first tingle of energy that reached him.

I called to him in a voice trained by years of modulation. “Wulfric, do you welcome this bond, freely and without deceit or resistance?”

He regarded me with an intensity that went well beyond the realm of humanity. “I do.” He closed his mouth and waited.

I opened my hand, letting the stream of powerful intentions take shape between Wulfric and me. The bond grew, thread fine at first, but quickly adding bulk with the strength of his power.

And mine.

I urged the bond to grow, envisioning a rope coiling into a robust, golden thickness that wrapped and re-wrapped itself until the connection was superb. I tugged with my will, and felt Wulfric’s answering call from deep in his own considerable reservoir of mixed strength. He was a child of two worlds, bearing the will of a Viking and the lethality of a vampire, but from the moment I lowered my hand, he was beholden to me. I shuddered with the awesome responsibility of partial control over a being of such power, and steeled myself to look in his eyes.

He was smiling; not in a condescending manner, but with open admiration. For some reason, that irked me even more than a knowing leer.

“It is done.” A flash of exhaustion blew through my bones like the rustling leaves of October, and I leaned to one side before catching myself.

Jim Dietrich said, “Wow. So
that’s
what all the fuss is about.”

“She is indeed powerful. Far more so than one would think, given her youth.” Wulfric’s tone was admiring, but still managed to raise some ire within me. I don’t like being patronized because of my age, or my sex, or my height. As you may imagine, I’m often forced to waste time correcting people who think otherwise. Just as I began to open my mouth for a biting commentary on Wulfric’s compliment of my magic, I looked up at a small glow above me. Bindie was hovering directly overhead among the lowest branches of a massive ash tree; her wings sounded like a murmur to my ears as I began to notice the bird noises had died away completely.

The forest was still. Unnaturally so, and Wulfric felt it too. Jim rose from his seat, noting our faces as one hand dropped silently to his holster. A black Glock gleamed in the sun a second later, and we instinctively arrayed ourselves closer together in a semi-circle. Wulfric sprouted two wicked-looking knives, and I held my charm bracelet before me like a rosary. I shook my head lightly to clear it; the binding geas had drained me for the time being, and I would have to rely on my charms in the event that anything went haywire in the next hour. Jim pointed slowly toward a thick growth of ferns that ran along the seep from the spring.

The ferns moved delicately as a long, inhuman hand parted the fronds, each finger ending in a shining black talon. The skin was the white of a drowning victim, pale and suppurating, and I thought I heard a cooing from behind the ferns.

“Wulfric.” My whisper was many questions in a single word.

He readied his knives, entering a crouch to get maximum traction on the soft leaf litter. “
They
are Sylphs.” His tone was grim, but confident. “Prepare yourselves for the second beast. I will attack.” With that, he blurred into motion, a luminous streak that shot forward to meet the thing as it burst forth from its hiding place.

I’d never seen a Sylph before that moment, and I never want to again. From my training, I knew that they were creatures of the air, and described as being magnificent paragons of spiritual beauty. The thing before us was tall, nude, and incredibly dead. Even accounting for the weird tastes of the Victorians who wrote so many tomes on immortal creatures, she was hideous. Her skin sloughed mist in wispy curls as she moved, and her breasts were bared to the elements, covered in a down of wet feathers that moved like serpent scales. She was beautiful in the way of nightmares, her black hair a nimbus around a long neck and shoulders that looked like the chill of an arctic wind had imbued her with the gift of eternal death. Hoarfrost and water dappled every inch of her skin, save a bloody mouth that parted to hiss a challenge at us. A rough skirt of black cloth whirled around her graceful legs as she leapt to meet Wulfric in midair.