“Great. So something else is out to get me?”
“I suppose it could be a sending from Azazel,” Nathaniel said. “One of his experiments?”
“Then why not say so?” I asked. “Azazel loves to rub it in my face when he thinks he’s about to get the better of me.”
“I guess we just have to accept that you’ve pissed off enough people that we can’t tell who’s after you without identification,” Beezle said.
“Why is it my fault when these immortals come after me?”
“Well, you do keep foiling their evil plans,” Beezle said.
“So, I should let them kill innocent people?”
“All I’m saying is that it puts a target on your back,” Beezle said.
“Enough,” Nathaniel said. “Why did I consider it a good thing to bring you along?”
“That wasn’t too bad,” Beezle said. “You might want to work on your cutting tone, though. I can’t fence with an unarmed man.”
“It is a wonder both of you have not yet been killed,” Nathaniel said seriously. “How can you hear the enemy approaching over the sound of your bickering?”
“Maddy survives mostly on luck,” Beezle said. “I’m not sure being able to hear the monsters approaching would make much of a difference.”
“I resent the implication that I’m some kind of half-wit stumbling around in a sea of chaos,” I said.
“You said it, not me.”
“Gods above and below,” Nathaniel muttered.
Beezle winked at me.
We came to the edge of a wood. There was a clear path proceeding through the trees, and the forest looked as bright and happy as the field we’d just passed through. A doe and her fawn stood a short distance away, and seemed unconcerned by our presence as they fed on leaves and twigs.
Beezle gave the deer a good hard stare. Then he leaned close to my ear. “Those aren’t deer.”
“Do I want to know what they are?” I asked.
“Probably not,” Beezle said. “It will just give you indigestion.”
I pointed out the deer to Nathaniel. He nodded.
“Should we go forward?” he said quietly.
“There’s no other way to go if we want to get back home. Let’s just hope they don’t bother us,” I said, and stepped onto the path.
Both deer looked up as my foot crossed into the forest. They shimmered for a moment, and the deer suddenly weren’t there anymore.
But something else was, and they looked far too happy to see us.
9
“YOU WERE RIGHT,” I SAID TO BEEZLE. “I’D RATHER not know.”
The creatures grew before our eyes until they were the size of the trees that towered in the forest. They looked like a cross between trolls and dogs, with lumpy, misshapen, humanoid faces attached to furred four-legged bodies.
Long canines protruded over their lower jaws, and their disconcertingly human eyes seemed to say one thing when they looked at us.
Lunch.
“Stand and fight or try to escape?” I asked.
“Fly!” Nathaniel shouted.
I didn’t need to be told twice.
Beezle launched off my shoulder. I pushed out my wings and shot into the sky above the trees, Nathaniel beside me. We accelerated away from the troll-things, which howled as they saw us taking to the air.
I looked back over my shoulder and gasped. “Oh, that’s not fair.”
I pulled up for a moment. Nathaniel and Beezle turned to see what I was looking at.
The creatures were growing wings. Huge, reticulated wings sprouted from their bodies. The larger creature narrowed its eyes at us in triumph.
“Fly faster,” Beezle said.
“No,” I said. “We can’t outrun them. Evasive maneuvers.”
I dove back into the trees, the other two following me. For a moment we were out of the sight of the monsters, hidden by the thick, leafy canopy. I settled in a sturdy-looking curve of branch, and Beezle landed on my shoulder. Nathaniel hovered in the air beside me.
The monsters both roared in anger as we disappeared. A moment later the ground trembled, and then a gale-force wind hit us as the creatures lifted off the ground. They buzzed over us, shouting at one another in a language I did not understand, clearly searching. They flew in small circles above the trees, and we tensed as they passed above us, then relaxed when the trolls moved on.
“What do you have in mind?” Nathaniel whispered, his face close to my ear so I could hear him over the wind. “We can’t hide here forever. They are large enough to grab us from the ground if we stay under the tree cover.”
“So if we stay under the trees, they’ll grab us from the ground, and if we stay above the trees, they’ll catch up to us quickly,” Beezle said. “Why didn’t I stay home with the TV and the popcorn?”
“We’ll have to fly in and out,” I said. “And try to blast them with spells while we’re at it.”
“Oh, great,” Beezle said. “We’re going to kill something else of Titania and Oberon’s, and then they’re really going to be pissed at us.”
“Do you want to get back home to the TV and the popcorn?” I asked.
“Fine, fine,” Beezle said. “Have it your way.”
“Look—they’re staying above the trees for now. So let’s try to get as far as we can under the canopy. They make so much noise they should be easy to hear if they approach,” I said.
Nathaniel nodded and Beezle squeezed my shoulder with his claws.
“I take it that you’re riding?” I asked Beezle.
“I’m not built for evasive maneuvers,” Beezle said.
“You left yourself wide-open there, but I’m not going to take advantage on account of the fact that we’re in mortal peril,” I said.
Nathaniel and I flew quickly and quietly toward the path. The branches of the trees arched over the path and left plenty of room beneath to fly between the two sides. The trolls were still above, roaring at one another.
“We’re always in mortal peril, so if you’re going to have scruples about things like that, you’re not going to be able to keep up with me,” Beezle said.
“If that’s the case,” I started, but I never had the chance to finish.
Something wrapped around my waist and yanked me backward, out of the air.
Beezle cried out as the impact caused him to lose his grip on my shoulder.
A moment later I slammed against the bark of a tree, and looked down to realize that one of the tree’s branches had wound around me. Another branch quickly wrapped around my ankles. Across the path, Nathaniel had also been captured by the trees. The trees began to shake, almost like they were trying to communicate with the trolls.
“Oh, no,” I said, annoyed. “I know what to do with you.”
My hands were bound tight against my sides by the branch, but I could still wiggle my fingers. Which meant that I could send a blast of fire scorching down the bark of the tree.
The tree loosened its grip on me for a moment. I laid both my hands against the branch and gave it a good solid blast until it ignited.
It let me go and I plummeted toward the ground for a moment until I could get my bearings and start flying again. The air quickly filled with smoke.
“Why don’t you just wave at the trolls and say, ‘Hey, I’m over here’?” Beezle said conversationally as he reattached himself to my shoulder.
“Should I have let the tree crush me to death?” I asked, flying toward Nathaniel.
He’d blasted his tree with fire as well. That meant that we were both free. For the moment, anyway. The trees were looking very ominous all of a sudden. The two trees that had caught fire were waving their branches around in distress.