Pale Demon th-9 Page 16

  The sun beat down, making even the shadows hot. I sent my senses out as I stood on the road to the ruins, looking out over the purples and mauves, searching for anything, every part of me taking in the feel of the air, listening for the hum of a wing and hearing only an aching emptiness. I looked for a ley line, finding a crisscrossing of faded nothing, like hints of what had once been but was now gone. Empty. Everything was empty.

  My head ached from the echo, and I took in every nuance as I looked for a sign, a breath, a wing chirp. Every chip of rock, every shadow stood out in sharp relief as I searched for him, the image of the desert almost scratched on the inside of my mind and built around the faded images of ley lines that no longer existed. They whispered, hinting at a time when there was grass and trees here, and huge animals roaming, living, dying…until they vanished along with the ley lines. I wondered which had disappeared first.

  Al had once told me that demons made the ley lines in their efforts to escape the ever-after, but magic was older than that. Was what I was seeing now the faded remnants of lines gone dead? Had the demons destroyed the original source of magic in their attempt to banish the elves? I squinted, closing my eyes and reaching for a breath of understanding, wrapping my awareness around an empty shell of a scratch between the present and the past, finding no energy but only the lingering idea that power had once run here, now gone, leaving only the skeleton, dry and dusty, to hint at what had been. It made me feel so damned alone.

  A door slammed shut, and I turned, my last thought heavy in my heart. “Get back in the car,” I said to Trent, and Ivy slowly got out, her head bent over the amulet in her hand.

  Trent looked me up and down, his expression closed. “It’s an oven in there,” he said, turning to the map on the brochure. “And besides, it’s a bunch of pixies. How bad can it be? Just go and get him. You’re a thousand times their size.” Irate, he leaned against and squinted at me in the sun. The wind playing with his wispy hair, and the heat, made him look tired. “I’ll stay here unless you scream for me. Promise,” he said sourly.

  Yeah, like that will happen. Jittery, I looked at the map sketched on the big brown sign beside a trail, seeing that there was a quarter-mile footpath that circled around a ruin. According to it, about four hundred people had once lived here, almost a thousand years ago.

  Ivy shut her door with a backward kick, the thump not going on for long before the silence soaked it up. “You should listen to Quen more,” she said, looking up from the amulet to frown at the slight rise of land before us. “Pixies are deadly.”

  Trent frowned at the sky, and I ran a finger between my ankle and the heel of my boot. “A clan of wild pixies kidnapped an experienced runner,” I said. “They live in the desert. What does that tell you?”

  “They aren’t smart enough to move?” Trent said, and I made a noise of disgust. Ivy headed for the narrow footpath of paved asphalt, and I turned to follow. According to the plaque, archaeologists had begun to reconstruct the village site, but there were no walls higher than my knees.

  Reaching my awareness out past the faint scratchings of what might once have been ley lines, I tapped the nearest real one. My eyes closed as I found hundreds of them, some as far away as the next state. The lack of water had extended my reach, much like the lack of trees expanded my sight. Having so much visual mindscape to play in was almost nauseating, and I quickly spindled a wad of ever-after energy in my head. I remained holding on to the line, knowing this was not going to be easy. I didn’t want to resort to magic. If I couldn’t convince them to let Jenks go, I wasn’t sure if I could force them to without hurting them.

  The click of Vivian’s door opening was loud as I started out after Ivy, but she was only propping it open to get a cross breeze.

  Yeah, there was the Vivian angle to consider, too. Anything I did was going to land in the coven’s ears. Frowning, I picked up the pace until I caught up with Ivy, my heart pounding as we went up the slight rise. The altitude was getting to me. I tried to walk softly to listen for the clatter of pixy wings, but there was only the wind.

  How anything could survive out here was beyond me, much less flower-loving pixies. The only plant life I’d seen was tough and herbaceous, something that I’d never give a second glance at if I was home, but here, the tiny flowers stood out. “Trent is dumb enough to make me want to cover him in honey and toss him into the middle of them,” I said tightly as we passed down a narrow alley, slumps of rocks to either side.

  Ivy didn’t look up from the amulet, too worried to notice the stark beauty around her. It felt good to be moving, even though the idea that I was a ghost walking down an abandoned alley lost to history was creepy. I didn’t like the fatigue creeping up my legs. We’d walked only twenty yards, but it felt like a mile in the heat and elevation. No wonder Jenks couldn’t fly.

  The path turned, and we halted at the end of the village, looking over what was once probably the refuse dump. Below us at the bottom of a steep drop-off were figures etched into the rock, the dark surface chipped off to show the white stone underneath. Most of the glyphs were indecipherable circles and spirals, but the one with the bird holding a man in his beak was clear enough. It looked kind of Egyptian, and I wondered if demons had been here.

  “Look at those cave drawings,” I said, pointing out the one with the storklike bird.

  “They’re called petroglyphs.” Ivy didn’t even look at them, focused on the amulet.

  “Okay, but that huge bird is eating that man,” I said, and she glanced up.

  “I think it says ‘stay close to the village, or the boogie man will get you.’”

  I lifted my eyes to the open spaces over the glyph, feeling like we were being watched.

  “Right,” I said, not convinced. “And those little tally marks under it are what?”

  She shrugged, and I hugged myself, wanting to scream for Jenks. “Where is he?” I said, stifling my urge to take the amulet from her, knowing better. Ivy felt helpless, too.

  “I can’t tell.” Ivy turned in a slow circle, her expression one of the lost. “I know they’re watching us.” Pursing her lips, she whistled.

  Below us in the parking lot, Trent pushed from the car. I waved him to stay, and he kicked a stone as he crossed the parking lot to crouch and feel the dirt between his fingers.

  Ivy and I strained to hear something, but not even an insect broke the sound of wind on stone. I didn’t like this. If they took Jenks to ground, we’d never find them. “Jenks!” I shouted, then spun at a tiny rock falling.

  “Careful…,” Ivy said, her hand on my arm, and we went forward together, following the path over a small ridge and out of sight of the parking lot.

  I crept along, uncomfortable under the sun as the heat evaporated the sweat before it dampened my skin. Twenty feet ahead of us was another part of the village, the corner wall rebuilt almost to waist height. A small motion caught my attention, and I stumbled to a halt.

  There atop the wall, hogtied and with his own bandanna shoved into his mouth, was Jenks. I couldn’t see his face, but his quick motions told me he was ticked, squirming with his words muffled by distance and his bandanna. His wings weren’t moving, either. A black dust sifted from him. He looked like a sacrifice, and Ivy’s words about the local gods echoed in my thoughts along with the image of that bird with a man in his beak. Maybe it was a pixy.

  “Son of a bitch!” Jenks shouted, finally getting the bandanna off his mouth. “You cowardly sons of bitches!” he said again, then accidentally rolled off the wall to vanish behind it with a yelp.

  “Jenks!” Ivy shouted, lunging forward.

  “No, wait!” I shouted, reaching after her and feeling like the earth was going to drop out from under us. A piercing whistle echoed. My adrenaline pulsed.

  “Rhombus!” I shouted, cowering as my molecule-thin layer of ever-after rose up around us. The protection circle snapped into place with a mind-jolting echo, and I looked up as tiny arrows plunked into it. The sun seem
ed darker, scaring me. Have I put that much smut on myself already?

  “Stop!” a shrill pixy voice cried out ahead of me. “Or we kill the black-haired woman!”

  “Rachel, stop!” Jenks shouted, and I looked up. And blanched. Thirty. No, fifty, maybe more, pixies surrounded Ivy, all with a bow or a sword or both. She wasn’t in my circle. Her vampiric speed had moved her too far.

  “Ivy!” I called out, and she slowly licked her lips, fingers spread as she put her arms up in capitulation. Her face was deathly pale, and she barely breathed as the pixies, in shades of brown and violet, hovered over her, their dust coating her in a sheet of red, savage as they hooted and brandished their weapons. I had the ugly realization that this was how they survived out here—bringing down animals to supplement the traditional pixy diet of pollen and nectar. Shit, we were in trouble.

  “Ah, sorry about this,” Ivy said, freezing when the pixies above her told her to be still.

  “If you hurt her,” I threatened, and my gaze darted to the ridge. Trent was there, tense and looking like he was ready to do something. Damn it, I couldn’t protect both of them. What was he doing? If they saw him, they’d attack, and I tried to tell him with my eyes to get the hell out of here.

  The bright flash of yellow drew my attention back, and I frowned at the colorful pixy dressed in a flaming yellow, billowing outfit as he hovered before me. He looked like an ill eighteen-year-old who’d been into the Brimstone too much, his dark skin wrinkled by the sun and too little rest. His grip on his six-inch toad sticker of a spear was firm enough, though, and his green eyes were as sharp as any I’d ever seen.

  “Why are you following us, witch?” he demanded, hovering inches from my barrier. His words were so fast, I almost couldn’t understand him. My eyes flicked back to Trent, and I shifted my shoulders as I realized he was gone. Just start the car and wait, I thought, knowing that was too much to ask. He was going to do something, and it probably was going to make things worse. Stupid elf.

  From behind the wall, I heard Jenks shout, “What the Turn is wrong with you? They’re my friends!”

  The pixy confronting me darted to the wall. “Liar!” he exclaimed, gesturing for two pixies to get him. “They’re lunkers!”

  “They’re my friends.” Two pixies dropped down, depositing Jenks back on the wall right where he’d started from. Looking pissed, Jenks stood, wobbling as he tried to find his balance. It looked like they’d weighted the tip of one wing to keep him from flying.

  “I’m not making this up,” Jenks said in disgust. “I’m Jenks! Of Cincinnati. I’m traveling to the West Coast on a job, and I can’t stay here. And I’m not going to marry any of your women! I have a wife!”

  I exchanged a shocked look with Ivy, and she rocked back, centering herself. They had kidnapped him as stud material?

  “Liar!” the head pixy shouted, his wings moving fast in the heat. “You said she died!”

  I opened my mouth, but Jenks beat me to it, shouting, “I don’t want a new wife! I love my old one. Do you have troll turds in your ears? Get this thing off me!” Jenks shook his wings, dusting heavily as the clip weighed him down.

  Two more pixies, both in matching shades of sage green, had risen to flank the head pixy. “He did complain the entire way,” the one with the length of steel said.

  “Lifted his ass 150 miles, him bitching nonstop,” the other with the bow said. This was weird. I’d swear they were the same age, but they didn’t look like they were from the same clan. Pixies didn’t cooperate like this. At least, pixies east of the Mississippi didn’t. Maybe they had to band together in the desert to survive. That might explain why they thought Jenks should take a new wife, too.

  “He can’t even fly,” the second one said, pointing at Jenks with his bow. “Even without the shackles. I say let him go. They want him, and for all his finery and height, he can’t fly.”

  “He’s from the east,” the pixy in yellow said. “He’ll adapt. He’s not used to the air. Look at how water fat his flesh is. And his sword,” he said, hoisting the one in his hand, and my eyes narrowed. It was Jenks’s. “This is pixy steel. Pixy steel! Fifty-four kids he says he has. All living.”

  At that, the surrounding pixies rose up, gossiping in words too fast for me to understand.

  “He lies!” a pixy said. “You can’t keep that many children alive.”

  “Jenks can,” I said.

  “You’re not helping,” Ivy called out, and I winced.

  “I bet he can!” The head pixy in yellow waved Jenks’s sword around. “Look at him!”

  Jenks stood with his hands tied before him and his gossamer wings dripping a black dust. Even I had to admit he looked good, especially compared to the gaunt, smaller pixies surrounding him. In another world, in another time, in another size…but he was Jenks, my friend, and my anger grew. I daren’t move, though. Not with Ivy having a dozen poisoned arrows pointed at her.

  Around us, the pixy women tittered, and I burned when one said loudly, “I don’t care if he can fly or not. I’d just unwrap him and wear him like a fur.”

  “We stole you,” the head pixy said to Jenks, gesturing for them to back off. “You belong to us.”

  “Jenks doesn’t belong to anyone!” I shouted, but Ivy was silent. She was a vampire, and vampires were born to be treated like objects, given to others as favors for a day or a lifetime.

  At my exclamation, the pixy flew to the bubble and poked at it with Jenks’s sword. “You’re not big enough to stop us. Get in your car and leave, or we’ll kill the vampire.”

  I swallowed, feeling cold. “Please. I know this is weird, but Jenks has been working with us for over two years. He owns the church we live in. I pay him rent. You can’t keep him. He has responsibilities. A job. A mortgage. He’s got to get back to his kids because I’m not going to watch them!”

  “He owns property?”

  It had been the one with the bow, and I nodded as the pixies buzzed over that.

  “His garden has so many flowers you can’t step without crushing one,” I said. “The grass grows so fast, I have to cut it every week. His children are so clever, they stay awake all winter. They play in snow.”

  “It sounds like paradise,” a pixy wearing a flowing brown tunic said with a sigh.

  “You aren’t helping…,” Ivy said softly, her voice rising and falling like music.

  The pixy with the bow frowned, taking a higher position than the other two. “I told you we should have asked. They do things differently across the Mississippi.”

  “We caught him!” the leader insisted, but hope rose in me as I saw a crack in their resolve. “Dragged his sorry ass across six clans, and you want to give him up? His wife is dead, and he’s on a quest to spread his seed to the wind. Why else would he be wearing all that red?”

  Excuse me?

  Ivy made a small sound of disbelief, and I turned to Jenks. He looked as mystified as me.

  “Uh, that’s what we do where I come from to get safe passage through another pixy’s territory,” Jenks said.

  “You don’t just let them cross?” a pixy woman asked, her brown silk furling as she darted up. “How do you find enough food to survive?”

  A cultural difference? I thought. The entire mess was the result of a misunderstanding over the color red? “I’m sorry for the mistake,” I said, for the first time thinking we might get out of here without a fight. “Can we have him back? He won’t wear red anymore. We didn’t know.”

  The pixies were flitting in the sun, the shadows of their wings flashing over Ivy as they argued in small knots. Slowly I began to relax.

  “He’s a proven provider!” the head pixy said. “We need new breath in our children!” But the bows had been eased and the sword tips had fallen.

  “Look,” I said, taking a half step forward and halting when the pixies bristled anew at me. “He didn’t know wearing red meant that he was trying to spread his, uh, seed.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t know!”
Jenks said, flushing. “I can’t stay. I gotta get back to my kids!”

  “I’m sure we can work out an exchange for your efforts in kidnapping him and bringing him here,” I added. “Honey or something. What do you want?”

  I held my breath as the three leaders looked at one another and then at their surrounding people as if considering it. I’d buy them an entire tanker of honey if that’s what it took.

  “Can you get us…maple syrup?” the pixy in yellow said. “A gallon, maybe? The real stuff, not that lizard shit with the corn syrup in it.”

  I exhaled, my breath shaking in my lungs. “Yes,” I said, seeing the lines in Ivy’s face ease.

  The head pixy’s wings became a neutral silver, and he turned to the other two leaders. “For each of us,” he added, wanting more after I’d given in so quickly, and I nodded, smiling.

  “Three gallons. But Jenks gets his sword back.”

  “Done!” the three pixies said simultaneously, raising their weapons in salute, and the pixy standing beside Jenks cut his bonds. Jenks gave the buck a nasty look, letting the cut rope fall to his feet. His wings still flat to his back, he raised his hand to catch his thrown sword. Clearly not happy, Jenks jammed his sword away.

  It was over, and the pixies by the far rock slide rose up in a whirlwind of sound and color, shouting, “Ku’Sox! The Ku’Sox Sha-Ku’Ru!”

  A party? I thought as the air around Jenks and Ivy was suddenly empty of pixy wings. In celebration of a peaceful resolution and three gallons of maple syrup? Smiling, I strode to Jenks, still perched atop the wall. “Are you okay?” I asked, falling to kneel before him, hands curling around him but unable to touch. Never able to touch.

  “I’m fine,” he muttered, looking embarrassed as he wedged that clip off his wing and wobbled three inches into the air and back down. “Bought for the price of a gallon of syrup.”

  Ivy’s shadow covered us, and I looked up at her as she chuckled. “It was three,” she said. “And better that than my life.”

  Jenks nodded ruefully. “I’m never going to wear red again. Can we just write them a voucher and go?”