I held up a finger, and he stopped.“I don’t need introductions, just a count.Who’s in charge?”
“Captain Burke, but he went to the castle with another strike team yesterday.So there’s only the six of us guarding the prisoners.”
I looked at Ash.“How many have we secured?”
“There’s the two you took out getting in, the one Geri shot in the leg, and the one you shot in the courtyard.Was there anyone inside?”
“One.So with this one, we should have everybody.”
“Everyone’s secured,” Geri said, coming around a corner of the building.
“Yeah, but we’ve got a buttload of hog-tied mercenaries scattered all over the road from here to Titania’s castle.We need to get them all in one place and under guard before we go after this Captain Burke.”
“No,” Mama objected.“We must pursue the captain immediately.If he is moving on the capital, he likely has something big planned.”
“I think he probably thinks he’s walking into an empty city,” I said.“There’s some kind of biological weapon that’s been cut loose across all of Faerie, and it’s got Titania laid flat.It’s some kind of wasting sickness, and if Mab gets it…”
“It could destabilize the power structure of all the land,” Mama replied.“If something were to happen to Mab, it could spell disaster not just for Winter, but for Summer as well.The balance between the two is delicate, but necessary for the survival of all fae everywhere.”
“You mean if Mab gets sick and dies…” Amy’s voice trailed off as she got the gist of what Mama was driving at.
“Then all of Faerie will suffer,” Mama confirmed.
“Then I guess we gotta haul ass after Captain Peckerhead and save my psychotic granny before all of Fairyland gets wrecked,” I said.“Let’s saddle up.”
14
After some argument, we decided that the best course of action would be for me, Amy, and Mama to go after this Captain Burke asshole and stop him from infecting Granny Mab, or worse.Geri stayed behind with Ash, Jarvis, and all our wedding guests to round up the rest of the mercenaries and keep them secure until we could figure out what to do with them.I had some concerns about that, not the least of which was leaving the bad guys in Geri’s tender care, but she promised she wouldn’t murder anyone, and I got the preacher we’d hired for the wedding to agree to keep an eye on her.
Reverend Hillman wasn’t your ordinary backwoods Georgia preacher.An imposing figure with his goatee and bald head, Sean lost one leg to an unfortunate firewood accident involving a hydraulic splitter, a stubborn chunk of red oak with a huge knot in it, and a quart of moonshine.But before he lost his leg, he was Special Forces with two tours in Afghanistan under his belt, so even with a prosthetic leg, he could kick some serious ass.And Geri not only liked him, but respected him, so when he promised to keep her from committing any more mortal sins, I believed him.
Amy loaded up on with a pair of sidearms and a boatload of ammunition, then stripped the body armor off the smallest guard and suited up, jamming strips torn off her wedding dress down into his combat boots so she wouldn’t be running through Fairyland in three-inch heels.Mama didn’t bother, and she gave me a dark look when I suggested she might need a weapon or some protection.She was in full-on Pissed Off Fairy Princess Mode, and I didn’t think challenging her would be good for anyone’s health.And by “anyone” I mean “me.”
I shucked off the stolen body armor, checked to make sure Bertha was loaded and I had my spare magazines within easy reach, and swiped an AR-15 from one of the mercenaries.I gathered up three spare magazines but left some hardware for Geri and her team.Everyone behind us had been all tied up when we left them, but there was no telling if they’d stayed that way.
With a final admonishment from Amy to the ones we were leaving behind to keep the slaughter down to a minimum, we saddled up and headed deeper into Winter, to try and rescue my grandmother.The whole mission stank of irony, since the last time I’d seen Mab, she tried to manipulate events to get me killed.Now I was trying to rescue her from a bunch of humans, a species she would usually consider no more a threat than a mosquito.But Pest Control had come in with the biologicals first and weakened her whole kingdom, so Mab wasn’t very Mab-like these days, at least if Titania’s condition were any guide.
We’d gotten about half an hour from the church/prison camp when Mama pulled her horse to a stop.“This is far enough.Gather close, I need to cast a spell.”
I paused and cocked an eyebrow at her.I knew Mama was magic, and I knew that she’d be way more magic here in Fairyland, but I’d never heard her talk about casting a spell before.In fact, I kinda recalled her telling me shecouldn’tdo that.“Say what?”I asked.
“My magic is stronger since I have lived in Faerie these last few years and has grown all the more powerful since my return a few days ago.I don’t know why, but I am far stronger than I have ever been,” she replied.“Now, I need to fortify our mounts so that we can catch this captain before he and his team get to Mab’s castle.Otherwise, we’ll be fighting amidst an entire city full of fae, none of whom know you.They will be as likely to slaughter any human they see as not, and I’d rather not worry about you getting killed while fighting alongside me.So we need to catch them on the road.”
“The guard said they only had about half a day’s head start on us, and they were on horseback, too.So if you can speed us up a little, we should be able to catch them before nightfall,” Amy said.
“That’d be good,” I chimed in.“On account of me not swiping any night-vision goggles from their camp.”I hadn’t seen anything like that, or I probably would have taken it, just because night-vision goggles are cool and Amy wouldn’t let me buy them whenever they came up on the Homeland Security surplus auction website.
We drew our mounts in close, and Mama closed her eyes for a moment.When she opened them, a lavender glow filtered out from her to the horses, who stamped and snorted as the magic settled over them.After a few seconds of sparkles, Mama wheeled her mount around and galloped off down the road, leaving me and Amy to follow.
Our horses wereflying.Not literally, although I reckon that wasn’t out of the realm of possibility either, but they were moving faster through the snow than anything I’d ever been on, and that includes a sled, a pickup, and a heavy-duty snowmobile one time.We blew rooster tails of white powder out behind us like we were Motley Crue’s tour bus, and I leaned over my horse’s neck to cut the frigid wind a little.
“Aren’t we gonna freeze the horses, going this fast?”I had to holler to be heard over the pounding hooves and rushing wind.
“I enchanted them with cold resistance,” Mama called back.She was a couple horse-lengths ahead of me and Amy, and we weren’t gaining even a little bit.
“Might shoulda done that for me, too!”I called, pulling the hood of my heavy cloak over my head.
“Sorry!”Mama replied, sounding way less sorry than I thought was appropriate.I just bent lower beside my horse’s head and tried not to freeze off anything I might need in the future.
