She hissed, “You were asleep.”
Affront flashed across his handsome features. “I never fall asleep on watch.”
“Keep telling that to yourself as you go wake Andrea up!”
The sharp clashes of metal in the distance—those were swords. James leaped toward Andrea’s slumped figure as Pia raced for the nearest bedroom. Eva would never sleep through this kind of commotion, not unless she’d been drugged.
Eva and Miguel lay in a large bed. Miguel had the bedcovers pulled up to his chin while on the other side of the bed Eva lay stretched on top, wrapped in a blanket.
Having learned her lesson the hard way with James, Pia slapped Eva’s ankle hard and jumped back out of the way as the other woman lunged to her feet with a growl.
“You know that bomb you mentioned earlier?” Pia said. “It went off.”
She didn’t bother to stay and chat about things. Eva would figure it out. Instead she ran to her bedroom to get dressed, yanking her clothes and boots on with unsteady hands. She unwrapped her light crossbow—the only weapon she was comfortable enough with carrying—and slung a belt of bolts around her neck. If only she could get her head to stop ringing. That sense of a high, thin scream just on the edge of her hearing felt like someone was shoving a needle into her brain.
Eva strode into the bedroom as Pia shouldered her pack. By the growing light in the window, she could see that the other woman was dressed and armed. Red tinged Eva’s bold dark features and sparked in her furious black eyes.
“Every last fucking one of us was goddamn fucking asleep,” Eva said. “Every last one. I’m gonna kill us.”
Pia told her tersely, “It wasn’t your fault. Something wanted us asleep.” Even as she said it, she knew that wasn’t quite right. She remembered the shadowed figure of a man, and the oily black sludge trying to take her over before the peanut bit her and shocked her awake. “Not something. It was someone, and I think he wanted more than just our sleep.”
Eva’s gaze narrowed. “Got a description of this guy?”
“Call me crazy,” she said, scowling, “but I’m pretty sure he’s got green eyes. I keep . . .” Her voice trailed off as something slipped into place. “I just remembered. I’m pretty sure I dreamed about him the first night we were here.”
“Did you, now?” Eva moved to the window to look out, hands on her hips. “Dreams, spells and fire. That ain’t good, princess, but whoever this fucker is, he ain’t our problem. I sent Johnny and Miguel to scout out our best exit strategy.”
Pia didn’t argue. Eva was right. There was a time for sticking things out, and this wasn’t it. When they got safely back to Charleston, or better yet, New York, she could send a sympathy card to Beluviel and Calondir for whatever this disaster turned out to be.
She went to stand beside Eva. There wasn’t much to see outside, other than the smoke or the fog, except for a patch of dark water below that glittered with a tint of red. Man, her head ached like a son of a bitch. She said, “I wish we could see what was burning.”
“The walls, floor and ceiling are cool and our air quality is good,” Eva said. “Same out in the hall. If this building’s on fire, it hasn’t gotten close yet. We’re going to have to rappel out the window if the exits are blocked.”
Pia took a breath. Their windows looked over the river at the top of the falls, and the water rushed underneath the building to plunge over a deadly number of rocks before hitting the bottom. “I assume you have a plan to avoid going over the falls?”
Eva said, “One of the building’s main support pillars is underneath the common room window. We can use the pillar as an anchor and cast left with ropes. River’s edge is three pillars to the left. It’s awkward, and we’ll get wet and cold, but we can do it.”
Of course Eva would have thought of that. She had probably scoped that out as an emergency exit option when they had first arrived. Pia rubbed the back of her aching neck. If only she could think past this needle in her brain.
Eva said in an ultracasual tone of voice, “Guess this is when I point out how much help Hugh would be if he were still here.”
Pia just looked at her. They had made the only decision they could, given the information they had at the time, and the other woman knew it. “So why’d you let him go so easily, captain?”
The other woman laughed softly. “Touché.”
Light, running footsteps sounded just outside in the hall, and someone pounded on their door. Eva and Pia strode quickly into the common room as James checked outside. He stood back almost immediately. Miguel and Johnny had returned, and they brought Linwe with them. The Elf’s face was tear-streaked, her dark brown eyes stricken.
Pia said, “What’s happening?”
“People are fighting each other,” Miguel said.
“We knew that,” Eva snapped. “Be specific.”
“You don’t understand. People aren’t just fighting each other,” Linwe said. Her voice sounded hoarse and scraped raw. “Friends are fighting each other. It doesn’t make any sense. I just saw—I-I just saw Elyric cut down his best—his best—”
Johnny put an arm around her as she stuttered into choked silence.
Eva’s face had turned grimmer than ever. She said, “What’s burning?”
Miguel’s expression held an echo of the same horror that Linwe’s did. He said, “The Wood. The blaze is all around us. Someone set the whole damn place on fire.”
Pia’s stomach gave a sickening lurch as she realized what was causing the needle in her brain. The strange, beautiful Wood was screaming as it died.
If she thought Dragos was mad at her before, this was going to send him ballistic.
She muttered, “I’m never going to hear the end of this.”
TEN
Dragos didn’t stop at the New York City limit.
Instead he continued to fly south until he reached the Wyr/Elven border. The seven Elder Races demesnes in the United States did not follow any human geography, and state lines were not demesne border lines. The Wyr/Elven border cut through Lumberton, North Carolina, south of Fayetteville.
Once he reached Lumberton, he decided to pause and think. He landed on the shoulder beside I-95 South. Lumberton was a small town, with around twenty thousand humans and three thousand more of a smattering of the Elder Races. Even though Lumberton was several hours’ drive away from New York, it was just as gray, cold and dreary as the city had been.
Still keeping his presence cloaked, he changed into his human form to check voice mail and text messages, scrolling through them quickly while trucks and cars roared past on the interstate.
There. His vision narrowed. He’d gotten three phone calls from Pia’s iPhone. The first had come in almost two hours ago, and the others had come at intervals of every half hour afterward.
He didn’t bother to listen to any of the messages. Instead he punched speed dial. When a male answered his mate’s phone, his talons sprang out and the growl that came out of him shook the ground.
The male spoke rapidly, ”. . . Is quite well. This is Hugh Monroe. Again, your mate is quite well. Pia sent me out of Lirithriel Wood to tell you that she is fine, and that she thinks the Wood is interfering with your communication with each other. She gave me her cell phone because she wanted to be sure I reached you, sir, and I promise you, that’s the only reason why I’m using her phone right now.”
Monroe. It took Dragos a second to place the name. He was the gargoyle from Pia’s bodyguard team. Dragos took a deep breath and relaxed fractionally. Although he hated the gargoyle’s voice coming from Pia’s phone, he said, “Tell me everything.”
Hugh obliged by telling him about their trip into the Wood, along with every detail of the High Lord’s home, how Pia’s evening had gone last night and how she had sent Hugh with the message within minutes of waking up.