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“The Glithiran codex, by chance?” He looked equally afraid for either answer I might give.

I shrugged and tried to ignore Harlan’s look of concern. He’d put it on when I reminded them I didn’t read elvish and hadn’t taken it off yet. “She just said codex. Is there more than one of them? You elves have a difference between scrolls and codices?”

“The Glithiran codex is the oldest we know of, but 0no one has seen it since the Breaking. But it wasn’t elvish, it was Ancient.”

I was processing how I felt about that when a riot of sound exploded outside and slammed into my front door.

Chapter Fourteen

I looked at the others as the bulk of the noise from outside fled, but a small puddle of it stayed outside my door. It was still early, and Saturday mornings were usually fairly calm in this part of Beccia, mostly due to the majority of citizens sleeping off hangovers. But the sound outside was anything but calm. I was closest to the door, but the others were right behind me. Alric stopped to pick up the cloak he’d worn and was completely covered except for his eyes by the time we reached the door.

I nodded to the two of them to be ready and opened the door. And slammed it shut a second later.

“What?” Harlan looked ready to grab the handle from me but I wasn’t letting go. The guy squished up against the door was dead, and probably was well before he hit my door. It was the flying snake thing with the razor teeth that was feeding on it that I wasn’t opening the door for.

“Damn it, I told that guard.” And now those things were tearing up innocent people in the streets.

“Told who what? And why won’t you let me open the door? Someone could be injured out there and we must give aid.” It was a little amusing that Harlan spoke more like a member of a ruling class, but Alric actually was one.

“There were some creatures that flew out of the holes the chimeras made at the dig site. Long, flying things with lots of teeth. One is out there with…dinner.” I cringed but there was no way that person out there was alive.

Alric didn’t say anything, but he moved forward and managed to pry the handle out of my hand. He might not be magical anymore but he was still stronger than me. “I won’t let whoever is out there in, but I need to see this.” He leaned in close, far more so than I felt he needed to.

With those eyes he might not need magic. The Alric I knew had stunning green eyes, but they didn’t have the power they did now. Even with no magic behind them, they had their own mojo. His real elven nature made them a bit bigger and they had a slight tilt up at the ends and the color. It was like every forest in the world had just awoken to a wash of morning sun.

I pulled back out of the way mostly because I was worried that I was having such overly dramatic thoughts about Alric’s eye color at a time some nasty beastie was literally chomping down on people on my front stoop.

Alric opened the door slowly and Harlan pushed his way in as well, and they studied the carnage outside—I could hear the chomping and a low hiss that I assumed was coming from the creature, but may have come from Harlan.

No one said anything, but I was just about to tell them to shut the damn door when three bright blurs of color wearing war feathers and waving skewers darted past us and out the door.

Now I was the one opening the door and shoving Alric and Harlan out of the way. The faeries were pretty much indestructible, but that thing could fly and I don’t think even they could survive those teeth. I hadn’t even noticed they were awake, but they obviously had been up long enough to assess the situation and get warred up.

The flying creature from hell looked up as my three insane faeries dove toward it yelling their own brand of verbal warfare. I started to rush forward, realizing in that instant that those flying lunatics meant far more to me than I thought.

Alric grabbed my arm and almost got his hand broken for his trouble. I tried to pull free. “Let go! I have to save them. That thing will destroy them.”

“They are far tougher than you know, give them a chance.” His grip was like steel, but that didn’t stop me from stomping down hard on his bare foot. He let go of my arm and I stumbled forward.

To find the monster flying snake thing fleeing in terror from my faeries.

They could have pushed me over with a feather at that point.

The girls did a crazy spinning happy dance, still yelling their war cries as they spun. Harlan brought out an old blanket I’d been about to toss out and covered the body. Alric continued cursing and holding his foot.

And I just stood there.

That thing was a vicious monster designed for one thing, killing. And one look at my faeries—I don’t even think they got close enough to touch it—and it fled.

“Could someone please explain what the hell just happened?” The girls gave a few more cries of a slightly higher pitch and soon my front yard, such as it was, was filled with faeries. From what I could tell by their sleek frames and leaf and feather clothing, they were the still wild ones living beyond the ruins in the forests. So many were now living in the city, the numbers of wild ones were reduced, but there were still a few hundred swarming my front yard.

The swarm cleared and a small gray cat-like faery flew forward. Queen Mungoosey was the only faery I’d ever seen who was basically a cat with wings. She bowed to me and Harlan, and we bowed back. Then she spun her wild faeries in a tight circle over the body. The blur was so fast I couldn’t see any individual faery, just a swirling mass of color.

Less than a minute later, the body and my blanket vanished. With a nod, Queen Mungoosey led the wild faeries away. My girls looked at me briefly, then Garbage Blossom started to follow their Queen. Until she got a look at Alric still sort of hopping around behind us. He’d stayed out of sight from the wild faery hoard, but limped forward now. I really did a good job on his foot.

Garbage Blossom whistled, and Crusty Bucket and Leaf Grub spun around. All three hovered in midair staring at Alric with open mouths.

I wasn’t sure if it was him being an elf, him being an elven lord, or just the fact he was standing in their living room. Therefore I had no idea if they were planning on kissing him or chasing him out of town.

Alric looked up from rubbing his damaged foot just in time to see the three of them swoop toward him at a very high speed. Then they all pulled up right in front of him and bowed.

There were way too many things going on for this early on a Saturday morning. I was just shutting the door when all three faeries zipped outside and tore back in after having ravaged my neighbors’ flower gardens.

Then they showered Alric with flowers.

I watched for a few moments, then shook my head and wandered back into the kitchen. I poured a cup of the Hythian tea and gulped it down. The pot hadn’t been on a warmer, so it had cooled a bit, but the intense bitterness of the brew hadn’t dulled at all. I almost stopped drinking, then looked back where my faeries were covering Alric in flowers, and finished the cup.

The girls weren’t saying anything, just throwing flowers and cooing.

“Let me guess, your people and the faeries go way back.” I refilled my mug with a blend of both teas, then went to the living room and took my comfy chair.

Alric was watching the faeries with a cautious look. “Not really. Before the Breaking, there were nursery rhymes passed down to children about winged little angels that would come in times of sorrow. But they didn’t come with us after the Breaking, and we never knew why.” His caution was changing to wonder.

Even after the whole pack of them had saved Beccia, there was still no way any rational mind would call these faeries, angels. Clearly the elven memories had been a bit foggy when those nursery rhymes started.

“Didn’t follow. Told to stay,” Garbage said forcefully, but then she smiled and tossed her remaining flowers on Alric’s head. “Now you back. All good. But you no hide anymore.” Her flowers deposited, she flew to the top of the faeries’ toy castle and sat down to watch him. The others quickly followed.

“You were told to wait here? By who?” Alric kept his voice even but I could tell he was really focused on their answer.

“By elders.” Garbage pointed to his blond hair. “By you people.”

Alric couldn’t have looked more shocked than if she said she was his illegitimate love child.

“Are you sure? How would you have known?” I had no idea how long faery life spans were, but I did know there was no way they had any form of communication that could have passed that information down for a thousand years.

“We there.” Garbage looked at all three of us like we were crazy. “We all there. You knew, right?” Her last question was directed at Alric, but he had moved over to the sofa and sat down like a lump of meal flour.

Harlan finally waded into the madness. “So, let me get this right.” He held up a pile of sweets that he had pulled out of his pocket. “You three, plus the rest of your people, have been alive for over a thousand years?”

I gave him credit, he was far calmer than I was. These little miscreants who were still seen as an annoyance by most of the population had been around longer than almost any being alive today?

Crusty Bucket had stuffed her mouth with sweets but still managed to let loose an outrageous laugh. “You funny!” She shoved another sweet in, then swallowed some when she realized she couldn’t talk. “We not babies, we around forever!”

Babies? She thought a thousand years would make them babies? “I don’t think we’re going to get much out of them. We need to talk to Queen Mungoosey about this. She’s the most sober of them all.” I watched as Leaf Grub stumbled out of Harlan’s hand, did a graceful swerve as she fell, and landed on Alric’s lap. She was slipping into a sugar coma but waved at him then just lay there giggling to herself.

“Yeah, nothing’s getting through to them now. What did you give them, Harlan?” The girls were addicted to sugar almost more so than booze, but I’d never seen them get so loopy so fast.

He held up a chocolate-smeared paw. “This new compound my patron left me before he left. It makes me sick, but the girls like it.”

Great, they and I would be fighting over my stash. I was going to have to find a new place to hide it.

Alric still hadn’t moved, even when the other two faeries drifted down to join Leaf Grub. They weren’t passing out, but were just very giggly and relaxed. It was as if they’d been smoking leaf-weed. No way were we getting more information out of them any time soon.

I turned to Alric. “Not liking that your people did some things you didn’t know about? Or that these little flying drunkards are older than you?” I was concerned. Alric always had things to say about everything. For him to just be sitting there was disturbing.

“I think he’s in shock,” Harlan said as he went to the kitchen and came back with a fresh cup of Hythian tea and forced it into Alric’s hand. “It comes from realizing one is not as high and mighty as one thought. Or that perhaps his ancestors lied to him.”

“It’s just that our stories were so far off.” Alric took a sip of the tea, then another before he continued. “These were our angels of myth? And why would we have told them to stay here? Our people barely survived the years after the Breaking. We might have been able to use their magic abilities to help rebuild.”

Alric stretched his neck and rubbed the side of his head. “I need to go home, but I can’t. Not like this. My people have multiple layers of protection around our home valley. I would never get in without magic.” He dropped his head down into his hands, and I actually felt sorry for him.

“Maybe Glorinal could help.” There I went trying to help him and exposing a guy I thought I really might like to the madness that followed Alric around like a love-sick puppy.

His eyes narrowed immediately. “I have a problem believing that a random fellow elf just showed up at the same time I came here looking for the chimera.”

“Couldn’t more of your people have survived and moved somewhere else? Or maybe he is one from your clan? You’re not the only one out in the real world, right?” I wasn’t happy thinking that Glorinal might have lied as to where he was from and his name.

“I’m the only one out from our clan, my people took the Breaking as a sign that isolation was needed. But there could be other groups. We’ve never heard of them but it’s possible, we never even tried to find them. But maybe he is behind the sceanra anam.” He was more muttering to himself than to us, but Harlan caught the phrase.

“Sceanra anam? You mean that thing the faeries chased off was one of those?” The shudder Harlan gave rippled down his fur under his shirt. He looked ready to be ill.

I may not have heard of the beasties, but those two had.

“Yes, another creature of myth that shouldn’t be real. One that was used as a story to scare bad elf children,” Alric said. “They prey on the evil and unclean. The name means soul eaters, and they slowly feed on the souls of their victims before they rip them to shreds and eat the body.”

I fought down a shudder. Knowing the name of those flying snake things made them all the more terrifying. “Did you recognize the man who was killed?” I hadn’t but to be honest I shut that door as soon as I saw the flying snake. Or sceanra anam. The name was too pretty for something that vile.

Harlan nodded. “I did. Jackal Hann, card shark, most likely coming home after a night of swindling people.”

“See? Bad guy. That’s not so awful.” Maybe if I kept telling myself that I’d believe it. The fact is I couldn’t think of anyone who deserved to die like that.

“Yes it is. They use their own judgment on who fits the evil criteria. And if they are like the ones from our nursery stories, that judgment is faulty to say the least. Who knows who else was killed by them recently?” Alric shook his head. “Our scholars passed them off as myths.”

“Maybe if someone hadn’t gotten the girls strung out on foreign candy we could ask them about them.” I looked over to where they were sprawled out across Alric’s lap. Still rolling and giggling. Not that they would be a big help anyway even not on a sugar high. Their concept of the world was very different from ours.