Dance By Midnight (14 page)

He/she's smile widened as he/she leaned against the wall, closer to Mike. "You are a charmer…and so deliciously…
human
."

"Thank you." Mike's tone remained firm. Calm. But I saw his hand holding the gun shake. "Do you have a name?"

"You must know a name is a gift of power to the other." She pursed her black lips. "So I will give you mine if you give me yours."

Oh no… I tried to mentally warm Mike not to give it his real name! So when he opened his mouth and spoke I was pleasantly surprised. "My name's Leonard. Leonard Nimoy."

She arched a black eyebrow. "That's not your
real
name, is it?"

Mike gave her a pitiful look. "You think I'd choose to be called Leonard?"

When she laughed the floor beneath me vibrated. "True. Then you can call me Delilah."

Drag name. Oy.

"You didn't want
our
names?" Sam said. I nudged her. Why the hell would she ask that? The thing didn't seem to see us. In fact, I don't think it even looked at us.

When it did, its eyes burned red and it snarled. "No. You stink of the God Mother, blasphemer and betrayer. Your blood is polluted and foul. But the human's…his is pure and strong."

Blood? What sort of Fae creature liked human blood?

Oh god…I hoped like hell we weren't talking about a Fae vampire, because that was just…fifty shades of wrong.

"I can hear your contempt for me and our kind in your voice, Mother's child. You even speak of yourself in the third person. Believe you are royalty."

Sam opened her mouth for a verbal tirade but I pulled at her arm and leaned in to whisper in her ear. "I don't think she can see me."

She stared at me and then, "Delilah, how many of us do you see?"

The creature laughed. "You see? You still call yourself us—"

"No, I mean do you see us as only two?" She pointed between herself and Mike.

Delilah frowned. "Of course. What sort of idiotic questions are these?" She turned her attention back to Mike. "I can give you dust if that's what you want….but what will you give me?"

"Hey Delilah!" I shouted at her. My voice echoed in the tunnel, but the tall woman/man didn't look at me. "You're the ugliest queen in the realm and your shoes don't match your pants!"

Still no response. That was just odd. What kind of Fae creature didn't see me but lusted after humans and disliked Witches. I didn't have my BBOE handy and this wasn't the time to consult the
Grimoire
. Didn't want to bring attention to myself. "Hey Mike, keep it going. She doesn't see me. We might make this work for us."

He didn't respond and kept a healthy distance between himself and Delilah. "What is it you want in trade?"

"Oh," she reached out to stroke his cheek with a hand the size of his head. Mike stepped away and she looked like she was pouting. "Oh…you reject me already?"

"No…I just need to know what you want in trade. The dust is very important to me."

"But if you touch this dust…." The pout became a grin. "Then you'll be trapped here."

"I know. But that can't happen. I really need the dust."

"Then I will make it easy for you." She turned and looked directly at me. "I want that."

THE SPiDERWYK'S WEB

I put a hand to my chest. "Me? You can see me?"

Delilah didn't answer. Instead she looked at Mike.

Sam looked from me to Delilah and back to me. "Delilah…what did you point at?"

"I don't know. I can sense it. I can smell its magic. But I can't touch it." She slid a devious look to Sam. "Therefore I know I want it. And I want it before Maab realizes it's here."

Mike slowly shook his head. "I don't have the power to give whatever it is you sense. I'm afraid my friend and I don't control such things."

Delilah glanced over in my direction. "Pity. At least with me whatever it is has a chance to survive." She moved from where she'd slumped beside Mike and slid to where I stood. I took several steps back as her black eyes searched the area. From the unfocused look in her eyes I knew she really couldn't see me. She sniffed…and then sniffed again. "It's here. And it feels…." Abruptly she straightened up and oozed back. "Familiar. I've smelled that before. It smells of the fire…"

Uh oh. That didn't sound good.

"Fire?" Sam move to stand just a little in front of me. "What fire? We thought the scorch on the walls was the fire, but that turned out to be you."

"Yesss…" She refocused on Sam. "Because the magic of that fire coats everything. Maab said it was tainted. Powerful." She hissed. "Etheeeeeereal…"

The fire had been…Ethereal? That didn't make any sense. Unless the spell I'd used from the
Grimoire
was Ethereal in origin?

"What do you mean by that?" Sam was looking for answers.

But Delilah's form shifted, parts of her legs oozing back into a large puddle of black ocher. "A changeling brought a prize to us, but it wouldn't share. Wanted to keep it for herself. Believed it was important. Told us Maab would want it…" Abruptly her eyes become the size of white painted grapefruit. Her mouth extended out to either side in a weird-ass caricature of a well-known DC Comic villain. "But it burned us…it burned everything…and Maab…
ABANDONED US HERE!
"

Time to go!

All three of us took off running in the opposite direction. I was already tired and this was not helping. I stupidly glanced back to see if she was following, only to behold her ass end changing into the shape of a seven-foot black widow spider. Alongside her ran hundreds of smaller versions, all in hot pursuit of…
us
.

I didn't know how far we'd gone before my side started to hurt. My mom used to say the bear got me when I would run and get this kind of pain. But somehow I was pretty sure this wasn't a metaphorical bear, but a signal I was losing a lot of energy really fast. The spell to guard the two of them as well as myself was in super-protect mode. It didn't help that my legs felt like I'd tied iron weights to my ankles. I was lagging behind the two of them and that big ass spider was catching up.

The really stupid idea of refocusing the guarding spell on just the two of them and not myself came to me. I'd already been in the Cairn and survived the illness of re-entry into the physical world. So without stopping, I imagined lopping off that extension. It worked because the pain in my side disappeared and the weights on my legs lessened.

"Here!" Sam shouted and disappeared up ahead on the right. Mike did the same at the same spot, so when I got to that same spot I turned right—and smashed into the wall. The combination of my speed and a sudden stop resulted in my bouncing off the wall and rolling several feet, ass over end, on down the tunnel.

I'd barely come to a stop when something wet and warm grabbed my right ankle. I was on my stomach, every bone and muscle in my body protesting the spill I'd just taken, so I had to twist to see what had hold of me.

Delilah the spider bore down on me, her upper half a nasty combination of the goth drag queen and the body of an arachnid. The little ones clicked along the walls, running up the sides and the ceiling. The image pulled every childhood nightmare I could remember to the front.

But even that wasn't as terrifying as the disembodied black hand that held my ankle. It stuck out of the wall and began to pull me with it…
into
the wall!

"Sam! Mike!" I tried to grab anything I could to stop from being yanked hard into the wall I'd just bounced off of. But anything I grabbed broke and came away in my hands. I even tried willing the flaming sword to come to me and imagined hacking the thing at the wrist to get rid of it.

Nothing happened. So whatever it was, the
Grimoire
didn't see it as a threat to…it.

"I can smell you!" Delilah's voice boomed down the tunnel.

The hand gave a hard, dislocating yank. I fell backward and landed in…

Water?

I was literally treading water. Damn cold water. I was disoriented and unable to figure out which way was out. My lungs screamed because I couldn't take in any more air. Something grabbed me around the shoulders and pulled me up.

When I broke free of the water I gasped and sputtered and kicked up a fuss.

"Calm down." Mike said gently in my ear. "I got you."

I held on to him as he pulled me out and then helped me sit on what felt like thick grass. A blue fire flickered and popped and crackled on the water's edge and after I'd gasped enough air I looked up from my prone position.

I saw stars.

Lots and lots of stars.

I saw the shadows of treetops, and the glowing eyes of owls as they looked down at me.

Something obscured the image and I looked into the black and shadowy face of… "What…the hell?" I managed to say, coughing all the way through.

"Hey, be nice, Dags. He just saved your ass." Sam moved into view and put a hand on the thing's shoulder. "Thank you."

You are welcome. It is not often I have visitors, and so I would cherish the time for talk.
He refocused his featureless face on me.
I am Hob.

I managed a weak smile. "Uh…hello Hob… I'm Dags."

He nodded and moved away. The best way I could describe it was a store mannequin, the kind with no features. Only this thing wasn't white, but black. Mike was still beside me and helped me sit up—and that's when the pain began. Fire ignited all along my right shoulder. I couldn't move my arm. I also lost hold of the present world and blacked out.

When I came to I was propped up against Mike, my entire right arm pinned to my chest with…silk?

He is awake.

Mike looked down and I returned his upside down gaze. "You look like shit. Are the shields still up?"

I nodded. I could still see the shimmer around him. "Yeah…what's wrong with my arm?"

"Same thing happened to Sam." He smiled. "Sort of missed a right tunnel and hit the wall. Only yours was more spectacular. Sam's arm's in a sling. You dislocated the whole thing and it looks like you cracked your collarbone. I'm afraid Sam can't heal you while she's under the protection spell. She's already tried. It's like we're encased in Teflon—except when we hit solid objects."

"Yeah," Sam said from where she sat on our left. "Too bad it doesn't work like armor to protect our physical bodies." Her right arm was in a sling of the same material. "But Hob said this," she said and nodded to the silk sling holding her arm in place. "This will heal us in a short time."

"What is this stuff?" I tried to sit up, and couldn't.

"You really don't wanna know—"

It is the spun silk of the spiderwyk.

I blinked. "The what?"

It is the creature that works with me to guard the gate between the Cairn and Alfheim.

I frowned at Hob. "You're not talking about that huge drag queen spider that chased us?"

No. That is a spriggan.

Sure. "Is Alfheim where Queen Maab and the Faeries live?"

Yes
.
It is only a small part of the world beyond the gate
. He lifted an arm and gestured to an actual iron gate to the left, just across a small brook. The ironwork was detailed with gnarled trees and connected to a high wall of stone and trees.

"The fact the gate is made of iron…that's significant isn't it."

Sam answered. "It is. It keeps the fae out. The Faeries don't want their creations to have access to their realm. Hob was telling us how the two queens, Maab and Titania, while they don't agree on much, they do agree on segregation and discrimination."

Cheeky. "But the truth is the Faeries can't really travel past the Cairns, can they?"

No. Any time spent on this side causes the Fairies great pain and prolonged time spent between the worlds has been known to grow madness.

"Interesting arrangement." I tried to sit up again and this time made it but not without Mike still supporting me. "Wish we had those kinds of safe-guards set up between the other worlds and ours."

"We did," Sam said as she scooted closer. "Before the Bulwark."

"I hear about that war all the time but I still don't know much about it."

"All we really know is the gatekeepers, or Sentinels, were destroyed. The edges of the worlds now bleed back and forth." She pulled at a tall blade of grass and yanked it up. "It's like a game of whack-a-mole. You fix one hole and two more pop up. The Ethereals are the worst at setting rules and then breaking them."

The Ethereals, or the Angels as we call them, have always wanted to rule the whole of existence. They have always held true to this ideology. They began the war and punished an entire realm for their transgressions. In the end, if they are not stopped, the universe will be swallowed up by them, and our realm, as well as the one you know as Abysmal, will disappear into the ethers of memory.

Hob feared the future he saw, and somehow with that realization came the knowledge the Fae had seen it in the waters between where we were and the gate. "So Alfheim isn't part of the Abysmal?"

No.

"And it's not part of the Ethereal."

No.

I didn't really know how to interpret that. I knew of five planes, or as Sam called them, realms or worlds. Was it possible Alfheim was in the Mental?