“I’m holding you to that make-up gift.I like Amethyst wine.”Cha rolled her eyes at that hint.A pricey apology.“Here’s your window of opportunity,” Wailing Jenny added, and the nose-to-tail rhino rigs parted, just wide enough for a sleek jag like Katu to slip through.
Cha barely had to prompt Katu to go—he leapt for the opening with fury and enthusiasm, more than happy to escape the place where those awful imps had dared to nip at him.He darted through the space Jenny had made for him and passed the laden beasts easily, pouring on as much speed as the Black Thirteen would allow.Checking the time, Cha verified that it would be tight, but she’d make it to the rendezvous with Dy and Big Betty at the depot, with a bit to spare.Then she’d have Dy’s assist again, to power past the depot, over the border to meet their Moonstone contact, and out again to blaze back home with the prize.
All still according to plan, more or less.Minus a sexy fae prince or two.
It was only after a few minutes of cruising clear, the night wind ruffling her hair, Katu settling from his scare as he burned off the adrenaline in speed, that it hit Cha: Azul had taken off without giving her the platinum coin.
“Lost the boyandthe coin,” she muttered.“Doesn’t it just figure.”
*
The light traffichad lightened even more, the Black Thirteen narrowing to a single lane, as they neared the depot.It was a big, sprawling complex, mostly horizontal, with none of the stereotypical fae spires and towers.That was because humans had helped to design the thing, optimizing the structure for the relay of Obsidian exports.It was a rare example of fae-human collaboration, practically a historical monument, and had an actual guided tour and gift shop.
The fae also imported goods from the higher fae realms and funneled those through the depot and into the human realms.A much smaller volume of human-realm stuff went through in the other direction to the fae that handled distribution from there.The fae-element of the design made the complex look like a glittering starfish, if a starfish had more than five arms and was encrusted in gems.
The design of the Black Thirteen, which terminated at the depot, played a role in slowing the transports, taking them from cruising speed to a more leisurely approach in the single lane, before splitting off into smaller, slow black ley lines that conveyed them to various arms of the starfish, according to the nature of their business.
On the far side of the complex, a smaller section handled the relay of the few human-realm imports the fae actually wanted, with a ley line leading from there to lines that splintered off to parts unknown in Obsidian.One fat ley shot straight for the distant, opalescent glow of Moonstone and beyond.That was the ley they wanted.
Someone had been clever in the depot’s design, with all the cargo transfer handled inside the building, which meant no ley lines connected from the human-facing side to the Moonstone-facing side.A nicely passive obstacle to the law-abiding, but not insurmountable for the wily smugglers.Dy hadn’t invented the trick of creating ley lines to bridge normally unbridgeable distances.Plenty of smugglers before them had found ways to manipulate the magic to circumvent that simple obstacle.No, Dy hadn’t originated the workaround, but she was the queen at this game.
Cha and Dy had maintained path-box silence, as the law-hounds would be listening in on depot-related chatter if they could be.They didn’t need to talk through this part through anyway, as they’d run the depot countless times.Cha spotted Big Betty at one of the pixie-dust export arms, getting loaded with their decoy shipment of black dust.Hopefully that part of the plan was going smoothly, anyway.
Cha motored off onto a side ley that led to a small village that served the depot tourists and traffic.And, not incidentally, hosted a robust smuggling trade for those small-time crooks who couldn’t manipulate ley lines.A number of inns and larger hotels formed the outer ring, in varying degrees of faux-fae style.On the plainer end were the places that served the transport riders—functional, some nicer than others, but all geared toward the comfort of regular human people with no fae-wannabe aspirations.
For the tourists, bigger resorts sparkled with lights positioned around fanciful parklands and pools, their towers spiraling up in twists of rainbow color.Between the two, a picturesque village sat, with torchlit, cobblestone streets bordered by shops and restaurants glowing with fae lights.Cha sat in the slow-black parking lot—threaded through with human-safe walkways in iridescent white stone, so it looked uncomfortably like a vast spiderweb to her jaundiced eye—and waited for the minutes to tick by until the rendezvous with Dy and Big Betty.
With nothing else better to do, and determined not to moon over Azul and that bone-melting kiss, she concentrated on the people strolling through the village like it was her job to keep an eye on them.Many wore costumes, playing at being fae for the night, with pointed ears and transparent wings.Some even had kids with them, she noted, to her disgust, acting like they were frolicking in some amusement park and not in a literal fae realm where actual monsters lived that loved to snack on the small and vulnerable.
Not her problem.Served those parents right, really.Maybe if the children got munched, then the stupid would die out from that branch of the human race before it could go any further.Cha caught herself on that at best uncharitable, at medium bitter, and at worst truly monstrous thought and had to recognize her foul mood.Losing a shiny platinum coin and the shiniest pussy sparkle she’d experienced in a considerable amount of time would do that to a girl.
But soon she’d be rich beyond her wildest dreams.The prospect should have brightened her more than it did.They’d be on the move soon, and that would occupy her attention.No time for moping when she was riding for a fortune.Coin was better than pussy sparkle any day.Only a few more minutes and Big Betty would be pulling out and they’d be onto the next—
“Seven hells!”she swore.A little kid—decked out like one of the Amethyst fae, entirely in purple, with wings, horns, pointed ears, and a second pair of arms flapping beneath the wings—scampered away from the village and into the shadowed meadow beyond the parking and hotel area.Cha waited a moment longer, with an attitude too cynically edged to be called hopeful, for the kid’s parents to wake up and give chase.
No such luck.
“Dy is so going to kill me,” she observed, trying to recall how many deaths at Dy’s furious hands that made on this gig alone.Even Cha probably didn’t have that many lives left.Sword in hand, she vaulted from the jag, leaving Katu idling at a purr, and raced down the network of shimmering paths toward the fading purple blur.
Of course the pathways weren’t a straight line shot.Set up to be stupidly fanciful and as twisted as fae hearts, they curved through pretty statuary of the cutesy versions of monsters, like fauns and mermaids, then split again to fan into smaller lines between each parking spot before coalescing again.Probably people on vacation enjoyed the meandering maze of pathways; for someone with a ticking clock who needed to get to a nummy tidbit of a human kid before whatever fae monster luring it got to swallow them, it sucked mightily.
Finally, Cha made it to the shadowed meadow, beyond relieved to be able to step onto solid ground instead of dancing around between brain-frying pixie dust islands.In the darkness, she couldn’t make out the bouncing purple blob.She did, however, pick up the sound of a pretty, tinkling bell and Cha’s already pounding heart skipped a few beats, feeling as if it dropped into her stomach.
“Fuck!”She picked up speed.Behind her, in the village, someone started shouting in alarm.“Glad you finally noticed,” Cha hissed at the unknown parent.
The sound of the bell—so lovely and compelling, even to her, who knew better—grew louder.She put on a last burst of speed.
Which meant she nearly crashed head on into the Eloko.
~28~
Sweet Silver Bells
It wasn’t terriblylarge, the Eloko being members of the gnome family, but no less terrifying for that.Covered in grass instead of hair, creatures of its ilk loved meadows like this.It held the little bell, still tinkling attractively in one clawed paw, and embraced the happily wriggling child in the other.The kid, fully under the spell of the bell, giggled merrily as the Eloko licked their face, pointed teeth ringing a circular jaw widening to swallow the kid’s head as its eyes burned like coals latching onto dry kindling.
Just fantastic.
Cha didn’t waste time telling the monster to drop the kid—it didn’t understand words and wouldn’t relinquish its meal even if it did—and that cursed bell was sounding better to her every second.In a few more moments, Cha would be snuggling up to be the next meal.Going for the most efficient shortcut, Cha used the momentum of her run, swung the sword at the Eloko, and chopped off the hand holding the bell.
