The elf named Benta took the blast full in the face and yet somehow stood her ground. Sheriff Martinez fell over into the snow. And Wrenn…
This was not the first time in Wrenn’s life she’d stood in the center of a ball of possessiveness. She’d watched possessiveness take on the shape of blindingly blue-white light before.
The moment when Victor’s vampire creation had ripped Victor’s head from his body—the memory, the vision, the pain and terror and screaming—overlaid itself over reality as if the moment itself was the true fiend.
And for a split second—less than a split second, or maybe more, maybe a whole lifetime—the sword in Wrenn’s hand became Victor’s lightning rod. The possessiveness became Victor. The Sheriff fell to the ground and out of the intruding overlay of her memories … but Ranger did not.
Ranger did what all kelpies do—he flared his nostrils and pulled in the scent of her frozen muscles and her thumping heart. And Ranger became the monster.
But he had always been a monster. Like Victor’s, a beautiful one, but with pale green eyes. An inordinately perfect specimen of male size, shape, terror, and rage.
And the real-world wave of possessiveness that had burst off the sword, the wave that had knocked her memories back into her vision, the ball of magic from the elven blade did something much worse than knocking the sheriff to the ground.
It stripped the containment spells off Wrenn and Ranger.
He was free to rip the head off the world.
The sword had no idea what it had done. It had barked at the elf and gone back to sleep like some giant narcoleptic war dog.
It was still in Wrenn’s hand. Still heavy and superbly balanced and sharp as death itself. Still something that, like Victor, was probably going to haunt her for the rest of her life.
Her fingers spasmed. Her forearm jerked.
Wrenn dropped the elven sword.
Ranger twisted his shoulder and swept his hand toward the hilt. He arched and he lunged and he grabbed the hilt just before he landed on his back in the snow.
The blue-white memory overlay popped and sparked as if the screen on which Wrenn’s brain projected it burned. All that remained were embers in the corners of her vision.
Ranger grinned up at her where he lay in the snow, arm up and hand around the hilt of her sword in a reverse grip. “Aye, she’s more claymore than Viking toothpicker, ain’t she?”
He was right there, right in front of her, on the ground, grinning up at her with red demon fire escaping from the sides of his eyes, holding her sword in such a way as to make it harder for him to attack than if he just dropped it.
She pulled back her foot and let Ranger catch the full brunt of the fae steel in the tip of her boot.
He rolled with the kick but she managed to open a gash along his cheek.
“I am fully within my rights as Royal Guard here, Ranger.” She kicked at the shoulder of the arm that held her sword, but he rolled again. “I can and will kill you for being an eminent threat to mundanes and any treaties King Oberon has with these elves.”
Information on the blood syndicate be damned.
There were other kelpies involved. Two others had come through the dryads’ portal. Robin was probably interrogating them right now in the comfort of the castle.
Not in the snow and cold. Not in the twilight between day and night in the mundane world. Not with a beautiful but stunned elf who stood perfectly still and blinking as if she didn’t remember where she was.
The Sheriff pulled himself to standing. He favored a hip, but had his shotgun back at his shoulder before Wrenn came in for her third kick to Ranger’s head. “Benta?” He looked her over.
When she didn’t respond, he aimed the shotgun at Ranger’s face. “The shells make you bleed. This close to your face I’ll probably blind you,” he said.
Wrenn aimed her next kick at Ranger’s crotch.
Ranger drove the point of the sword into the ground and raised his free hand. “Wait!” He braced himself with the blade, and now had leverage, even if he still held the hilt in a reverse grip.
Wrenn held her kick. “Move away from the sword.”
He looked at his fist and the sword, back up to her, then at the end of the shotgun barrel. “I’m needin’ a deal here,” he said.
The Sheriff poked the gun at Ranger. “No deals!”
“I’m a lot faster than ye, little mundane,” Ranger snarled.
He kept glancing at the elf.
The moment she came out of her stupor, she’d kill him. She might even kill Wrenn, for having a sword capable of overpowering an elder elf.
“Why did you break into the Gallery of Artifacts?” Wrenn asked.
Ranger didn’t remove his hand from the sword’s hilt. “Bridles, ye ignorant tart.” The red flames around his eyes flared.
Bridles? In the Gallery?
“Whose bridles?” For the first time in her years as a paladin, Wrenn wished she’d been trained on firearms. “Sheriff Martinez here could easily blow off your nose.”
“Oh oh oh!” Ranger said. “So th’ bonny elves saved yer ass, an’ made ye th’ actual honest-to-all-their-silly-gods head o’ policin’ in their territory?” He guffawed. “A mundane?”
“Are all kelpies like this?” Sheriff Martinez asked.
Wrenn nodded. “This one’s not special.”
Ranger pointed at the Sheriff. “Though he is a special mundane. He killed a granddaddy Gulf Coast vamp wi’ his bare hands.”
Martinez groaned. “Shut. Up.”
Ranger chuckled. “They would looooovvvvveeee t’ get their spindly spider fingers on ye.” He sniffed. “Or one o’ those….” He sniffed again. “Four?” Another sniff. “Five spawn o’ yers? Ye’ve been a busy man, my friend.”
In one swift, perfect movement, Ranger planted his feet and used his grip on the sword to push himself to standing.
Martinez primed the gun. “Benta! Now would be a good time for you to wake up!”
But Ranger didn’t pull the sword from the frozen ground. He stared at the elf. “I meant it, wi’ th’ deal.”
“You’re a liar,” Wrenn said.
Ranger laughed. “Ye’re a quick learner, darlin’.” He flipped his grip on the sword so that he’d be holding it correctly if he pulled it from the ground. “Deals.” He shook his head. “We were fine till all those vampires disappeared last month.”
The Sheriff poked the gun at him again. “What are you talking about?”
Benta stirred.
Ranger pointed his chin at her. “What happens when th’ enclaves get their hierarchies in a twist?” Then he pointed it at Wrenn. “Or us, sweets? What happens when th’ elders an’ th’ powerful smell a vacancy?”
Martinez swore.
Ranger nodded toward him. “He understands.” He tapped the middle of his forehead. “We can only trust our own.” He sniffed again. “An’ wi’ my kind, that doesnae work, either.” He shrugged. “We do stupid things.”
“You were running victims to the vampires.” This she’d already figured out. “But those vamps vanished? Died?” She only knew something had changed.
“Vanished,” Martinez said.
Ranger nodded knowingly. “See? He understands.”
“But the ones left still wanted their fill, didn’t they?” Wrenn asked. Started feeding on—and turned at least one of—their victim-running kelpies when their power structure was disrupted.
Because vampires could never be trusted.
Ranger sighed. “Oh, they wanted a lot more than their fill.”
“Did they want extra magicals?” she asked. How else were they to get just that extra bit of specialness needed to become the Big Vampire in Town? “They turned on you.” Looks like eleven exsanguinated sprites wasn’t enough.
Ranger yanked out the sword and took three steps backward. “O’ course they turned on us. That doesnae mean I cannae bring them…” He looked directly at Sheriff Martinez. “… a peace offerin’.”
What had been a man in a black polo shirt and a black tactical kilt became the draft-horse-sized stallion she’d met in the castle.
“Benta!” the Sheriff shouted.
The sword floated just off the shimmering pale-green hide on his back, making it far enough up she’d have a hard time grabbing it.
His bridle also lifted off his hide. It flared out with a sweet tinkling sound, and coiled down his horse neck and his horse back.
Ranger made himself a scabbard to carry her sword.
“Kelpie!”
Benta flipped off her jacket as she unfroze. Every single tattoo on her waist glowed. She ripped off the hat and all the tattoos along her hairline popped out white-hot like a crown.
She rolled up a crackling, almost-ultraviolet ball of magic and whipped it at Ranger’s head.
The ball grazed the Sheriff as it flew by. He swore and spun toward Wrenn, clearly somehow affected.
She caught him before he fell and he just as quickly rolled out of her grasp.
“No worries,” she said.
He frowned, then nodded toward Ranger and the elf.
Ranger had dodged the ball of magic. He bolted into the trees.
Instead of checking on the Sheriff, or Wrenn, Benta the elder elf ran after the kelpie.