Chapter 1
A woman walking home late at night has a choice. She can either walk in the light and hope people will help her if she has any trouble, or she can walk in the shadows and hope no one sees her. I figured no woman in her right mind walked through dark streets at night, so the predators should be looking elsewhere.
Of course, it didn’t require an IQ test to become a criminal, or a rogue Werewolf with robbery or rape on his mind. Maybe I needed to reevaluate my state of mind and my decision-making processes.
Three Werewolves in their Human forms stepped out of the shadows. A quick glance over my shoulder showed two more behind me. Under the circumstances, I didn’t think their intentions were honorable.
My sword whispered out of its sheath almost soundlessly, but I was sure the Weres heard it. I didn’t think I could take five Weres with only a sword, but mostly I hoped it would distract them. I surreptitiously sketched a rune with my other hand and spoke a Word under my breath.
A wild animal roared, filling the alley with a heart-stopping sound, and then the world caved in on the Weres standing in front of me. A dark shape fell from a roof to my right, landing on two of the Weres and knocking the third one against the far wall.
The shape resolved itself as an animal of some sort, maybe a large cat. Definitely a cat. It clawed the two men with all four feet. It bit one of the Weres in the head. I heard bones crunch and he went limp. The third man moved toward it with something in his hand. The cat slapped him. His head swiveled on his neck, and I noted that as he fell, his face continued to look over his shoulder. The cat bit the second Were’s head and then turned to look at me.
The entire fight took only a few seconds. I shook myself out of my shock and spun to face the Weres behind me. They stood frozen, but I guess my movement caught their attention. Proving they weren’t complete fools, both turned and ran. I was tempted to send the spell I held after them, but I knew I wasn’t alone in the alley.
I turned back and discovered the cat was gone.
A woman walked toward me. She stood no taller than my chest and appeared to be a full-figured Mexican peasant woman—similar to many of the hotel maids in the city—dressed in blue jeans, a loose white blouse, and a khaki jacket. She had dark skin, a Mayan nose, and her dark hair hung down her back in a braid as thick as my wrist. I shouldn’t have been able to see her eyes in the dark, but a thin ring of yellow surrounded her dilated pupils.
“Didn’t your mama tell you not to walk down dark alleys at night?” she asked in a Spanish accent.
“My mother said a lot of things I should probably have paid attention to.” I realized that I had seen her before—just an hour earlier at the club where I was listening to an Irish band—she had brushed against me at the bar when I was getting another beer.
She chuckled. “Perhaps we should find somewhere else to talk,” she said. “Before anyone decides to ask questions.”
Without another word, she turned and started walking down the alley, stepping over and around the bodies of the Weres she had killed. I sheathed my sword and followed her. I wasn’t sure the sword would help me against a being that could turn three muggers into Werewolf tartare without breaking a sweat. Two of the Weres were shredded, soaked in blood, and their skulls were crushed. The third guy had a broken neck, and the side of his head and face were marked by four bone-deep slashes.
Whatever my mysterious benefactor was, she was absolutely the baddest woman I had ever met. I hoped that I would wake up in the morning and discover she was only part of a weird dream. Or maybe she wasn’t some kind of shifter. Maybe she was a mage and she’d called a demon or something. That thought didn’t make me feel any better.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Home.”
“Okay. We need to talk.”
I stopped. The last thing I wanted to do was go anywhere with her. The whole scene in the alley was a horror show, and I just wanted to get as far away from it, and her, as I could. After a few steps, she realized I wasn’t with her and turned. I tried to keep my hand from shaking as I held out my business card.
“It’s late, and I’m beat,” I said. “Come by my office in the morning.”
She took the card and nodded. “All right. Try to stay out of dark alleys. Buenas noches.”
I watched her walk away. She moved silently and with a sinuous grace that didn’t seem to fit her build. I released the spell I had been holding. Whether it would have stopped her—or her familiar—was something I wasn’t eager to test.
Not wanting to be followed to my house, I went to work rather than go home. I had a small cottage on the property where I lived when I first started the business. There was no chance of anyone invading it.
The cottage was a bit rustic and cramped with only three rooms. I built it when I first bought the land, as I didn’t have any money to rent an apartment. It didn’t even have heat or electricity the first few years, I just spelled light and heat.
My landscaping business covered eighteen acres of prime real estate near American University. I couldn’t afford such land at current prices, as evidenced by some of the eye-popping offers I had recently received, but it was fairly cheap when I bought it forty-five years before. There wasn’t any way I could find enough land for a nursery close to DC if I sold it.
As I walked past one of the four oaks that anchored the corners of the property, a Fairy swooped down and landed on my shoulder. She chattered in my ear, mostly about a neighbor’s dog, while I unlocked the gate and let myself in. I hoped that my Fairy nest buried the evidence if they decided to deal with the offending animal.
Fred and Kate, my garden Gnomes, had already gone to bed, and no light shone from the windows of their mound. When I entered the cottage, it smelled a little musty, and I opened a couple of windows to let it air out. I hadn’t stayed there in a while. After a quick shower, I snuggled under the covers in a bed that felt comfortingly familiar.
My crews showed up at six in the morning. I didn’t need to get up, but I rolled out of bed anyway. Looking out the window, I saw that my foreman, Ed Gillespie, had everything under control. He handed out work orders, helped the crews load up the plants and the equipment each would need, and sent them out the gate.
After a quick shower, I showed up with a cup of tea and watched.
“Hey, sleepy head,” Ed called. “Late night and didn’t make it home? Did ya get any?”
Various crew members called out greetings. The feeling was familiar and comfortable, and I needed it after the horror of the night before. I realized that I must have been in shock after witnessing that slaughter. It was a wonder I didn’t run screaming from whatever it was that wore the form of a woman.
For forty years I had done all the mind-numbing paperwork, accounting, phone calls, and routine work. I was glad to pass as much of it as I could to Maurine, my office manager, Kathy, my accountant, and Ed. I still had to sign the checks and contracts and other things.
I was finishing up the morning’s necessary paperwork and had almost forgotten the previous night’s events when the woman from the alley walked through my office door at nine o’clock. She sat in one of the chairs in front of my desk and looked around. I judged her to be older than I originally thought. Somewhere in her forties, maybe.
“Nice place. Landscape architect. Makes sense. You don’t look any the worse for wear from last night,” she said.
“I didn’t do anything last night. Look, I’m grateful for your help, but I don’t get involved with the paranormal community. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Ah, well, then I’ll state my business quickly,” she said. “I need an Elf, or a very strong witch with very specialized skills. An Elf would be better, especially a realm walker.”
I didn’t bother to ask why she was talking to me about Elves, but rather stared at her. My shock from the night before returned, and I felt numb.
“Kellana Rogirsdottir,” the woman said, reading my card that she held. “Sounds almost Icelandic.” She turned her face up to me. “What is it really?”
“Kellana ap th’Rogir,” I said.
“And you’re from Alfheim?”
“Midgard.” I tried to shake myself out of my daze. “I’m not a realm walker.”
“Oh? And how did you get here?”
I felt almost hypnotized, staring into her yellow eyes.
“I came here with a realm walker,” I said. “A less than honorable man.” Why did I say that last part? She had me completely unsettled.
She raised an eyebrow. “And he abandoned you here?”
“After a manner of speaking. He died.”
Alaric was handsome, exciting, and full of wild ideas and promises. He decided that we should come to Earth, a realm with little magic, and get rich. Realm walkers were the most successful thieves imaginable. I was young and dumb, and although his plan made me uncomfortable, his kisses and his hands drove me wild and jumbled any thoughts in my silly head.
He walked us into the realm of Earth at a place called Dresden on February 14, 1945. If he hadn’t been standing in front of me, the bomb would have killed me, too. When I picked myself up, I found I had come to the place Humans called Hell.
I shook myself out of my reverie. “I don’t think I can help you.”
She breathed a deep sigh. “I am looking for an artifact. A portal. I know who had it, and I followed him here to Washington. But he’s dead, and he didn’t have the artifact when I found his body.”
“I still don’t understand how you think I can help, Miss…”
“Isabella Cortez. Doctor Isabella Cortez. I can’t feel the artifact, Sel Kellana. You see, I don’t have any magic. An Elf could detect it, I hope, as could certain types of witches or mages. Human mages might feel it, but I think a mage from another realm might have better luck.”
I shrugged. “An artifact that’s a portal? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such a thing, and I’m not a mage.” I stood. “I wish you luck, Dr. Cortez. Thank you for last night, but I have work to do.”
I thought she was going to be difficult, but she shook my hand, gave me her business card, and graciously departed. My talents didn’t include precognition, but it didn’t take a soothsayer for me to suspect I hadn’t seen the last of her. It was only after she left that I wondered how she knew I was an Elf and knew enough about Elves to use the ‘Sel’ honorific in addressing me.
Of course, for so many years Humans considered the possibility of other races as fantasies. Lately, they were more apt to wonder about my humanity.
My afternoon appointment in Chevy Chase involved the type of work I enjoyed. A couple had recently bought a house. As was often the case, the lawns and garden had once been nice, but age and neglect had left them in a pitiful state. The woman I met with wanted a showplace, a beautiful garden to match her large, fancy house.
I soon learned that she wasn’t a gardener and wanted the landscaping only to look at. She had no intention of ever getting her hands dirty by taking care of it. So, I needed to come up with an eye-popping design with some unusual elements to wow her friends, and an on-going maintenance contract to keep my crews busy. I heard the cash register in my head ring repeatedly as I walked around the place, sketching and taking notes.
After promising that I would have a design for her the following week, I got in my pickup and backed out of her driveway. No traffic, just a car parked down the street. Glancing in my rearview mirror while I drove off, I saw the car pull away from the curb and follow me. I didn’t think anything about it until I was about halfway back to the nursery. The car was still following me.
I drove into a fast-food place and bought a milkshake. When I pulled out again, the car soon reappeared behind me. Since I led a fairly low-key lifestyle, and no one knew I was an Elf, such an occurrence was unusual.
The type of run-in I had the previous night was rare, though more common the past couple of years. Two years before, on Beltane when the veils between realms were thinnest, celestial alignments led to the veils thinning to the point of rupture. Rumor was that Vampires hired a demon to actually cause the rupture, but other rumors said Werewolves hired a realm walker.
No matter the cause, creatures from other realms flooded into Earth’s realm, including thousands of Vampires and Weres. Demons rampaged on the Capitol Mall, and even invaded the halls of Congress. Werewolves created a crisis in London.
Humanity’s long denial of the supernatural shattered overnight. The Chinese used nuclear weapons against an invasion of demons and shredded the veils. Even beings without magic walked between realms, and two years later, the veils remained fragile.
As the awareness of paranormal beings and witchcraft spread, rioting broke out in many places. Witches, or suspected witches, and other non-Humans were persecuted and murdered in many places. The magic users and non-Humans fought back. Martial law was declared in all or part of seven southern states in the U.S., and China reverted to savage barbarism in an ongoing war against demons.
In other places, mages and witches began practicing magic publicly, Vampires opened nightclubs to prey on starry-eyed college girls, and TV reality shows became circus-like extravaganzas.
When Samhain came six months later, it became evident that Earth wasn’t the only realm affected. All the realms descended into chaos. Enough Elves—refugees from strife in Alfheim and Midgard—settled in Iceland to start their own political party. I had met two other Elves in my first seventy years on Earth, but suddenly there were thousands of us living openly throughout the world.
But having two men in a black Mercedes follow me around was a first.
Since I was driving a pickup truck with my business logo that said, “Fairyland Landscape Design and Maintenance” on the doors and tailgate, it seemed silly to try and lose them, so I drove back to the nursery.
Driving through the gate, I saw the Fairies out among the flowerbeds, and that made me think of Isabella Cortez. Any non-Humans entering my land would draw the Fairies out in full battle mode to defend their territory, but Cortez didn’t attract their notice. Very curious.
My followers didn’t try to enter after me but drove on past.
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