"A war is coming," Horzt replied. "The Fey are quiet now, but Amalie is cunning and she is planning. Always planning. You confound her, Evangeline, but not for much longer."
"Can you tell me anything?"
"I can't. The Apothi are no longer welcome among the Fey Council members. Our people are divided, thanks to Amalie's reign. Not all agree with her end game goal."
"Which is what?"
His deeply wrinkled face squished down into something horribly sad. "A return to a time before man ruled this earth. She means to see you destroy yourselves, and she will use every tool available to do so."
"Without lifting a finger of her own?"
"Correct."
We'd learned, to our utter shock and amusement, that despite Amalie's apparently bloodthirsty nature, sprites and the rest of the Fey were actually pacifists. They couldn't make a physical move in a fight to hurt me. However, Amalie had no problem sending a horde of goblins in my general direction. Or taking over the bodies of three police officers and using their influence over the Triads to have me set up for murder. She was the ultimate manipulator.
"She will attack you sideways," Horzt said. "By any means necessary to accomplish her goal."
"Yeah, we've noticed. Is she behind the upswing in goblin violence?"
He nodded. "The loss of Walter Thackery and his machinations have left a void in her reach. She's going to fill it with whatever will hurt you most. Your allies are thinning out, but I can offer you two small gifts."
Horzt reached into the folds of his robe and removed a long, narrow leather pouch. I took it, the material impossibly smooth, and unfolded the top. Wyatt came forward a few steps to watch me pull out a roll of thin, yellowed paper with a white, bone-like pole at each end. A scroll of some kind, tied together with a piece of silky thread.
"This is a written history of the elves," Horzt said. "We keep very little written down, as our languages are oral and not transcribed."
I gentle unrolled part of the scroll. The tiny lines of black ink were written in characters I didn't recognize. "What language is this?"
"Aramaic. The scroll was written by humans as a favor many, many millennia ago. We came into possession of it when the elves were all but destroyed."
"So we need an Aramaic expert."
"Or a really smart internet translator," Milo said behind me.
Horzt frowned. He probably had no idea what the internet was.
"Thank you for this." I handed the scroll to Wyatt, then tipped the tube over for the second object weighing down the bottom. Another leather pouch, about the size of a grapefruit, dropped into my palm. The pouch was cinched tight, but whatever was inside wasn't solid.
"You needn't open that," Horzt said. "Not yet."
"What is it?" I asked.
"The cure for your infected friends."
My heart slammed against my ribs. "For the vampires? You found a cure for Thackery's virus?"
"I did. A teaspoon dissolved in a cup of warm human blood. Split the dosage among six. You should have enough for them all."
Relief flooded my chest, and sharp tears stung the corners of my eyes. "Thank you so much for this. But won't Amalie be pissed at you for helping us?"
"She no longer cares for the future of the Apothi, no matter our actual worth. So we will follow our gargoyle brothers to the north and leave the city for the mountains."
"I thought the Fey needed to be near First Break." First Break was the underground home of the Fey, built to protect a gateway to another plane of existence that housed the worst sort of monsters and demons.
"We need to be close to a Break, to our source of power. And this city does not house all of them."
"We could offer your people sanctuary at the Watchtower," I said without thinking—or discussing it with the people actually in charge of those decisions.
"A generous offer, but I must decline. Amalie will not chase us if we leave. Her wrath is far reaching and her memory long. I cannot risk my people becoming nearly extinct like the elves."
Like the Coni and Stri—two Clans of shape-shifting birds of prey that Amalie had helped destroy. My thoughts turned to Phin, and I missed him more than ever. "I understand," I said. "So this is good-bye, right?"
"For now. Perhaps we will meet again in a brighter future." Horzt turned around and gazed up at Wyatt. "I'm sorry I can't do anything to fix you, but your infection is beyond my ability to heal."
"You've already given us so much," Wyatt said. And he wasn't just talking about today's information and gifts.
"Be well and good journey to you all."
"Good journey," Wyatt said, and I echoed him.
The ground beneath Horzt rumbled, and he slowly lowered back into the ground the same way he'd come up. As the concrete swirled into place, shapes began to form. Shapes that became words: Good Bye Stony.
"Good-bye, Smedge," I said. "Horzt, too."
The words disappeared, and the rumbling ground was lost to the thunder of traffic overhead.
I studied the medicine pouch, shocked that I had the answer to one of our biggest problems sitting in the palm of my hand. It seemed too damned easy. Nothing fell into my lap like this, and yet I had no reason to doubt Horzt's sincerity.
"Something tells me Eulan will be surprised to see us twice in one day," Milo said.
"No kidding." I dropped the pouch back into the larger leather holder, then put the scroll inside with it. No sense in damaging either one of them.
"Do you think we'll find anything useful on that scroll?" Baylor asked as our group headed back for the hole in the fence.
"Hard to tell until someone translates it," Wyatt said. "But I doubt Horzt would have risked giving it to us if it was useless."
"Agreed," I said.
Marcus held up the piece of fence while the rest of us ducked through. We stopped as a group next to the first car.
"I want to get the cure back to the vampires," I said before anyone else could.
"Right," Baylor said. "If this works, we can certainly use their help again. Take Milo and Marcus with you. Truman and I will take the scroll back to the Watchtower and get started on translating it."
Across the circle from me, Marcus tensed at almost the exact same moment that Wyatt did. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Marcus growled. Wyatt grunted, then collapsed face-first to the pavement. A splash of red feathers poked out of his back, right between his shoulder blades.
"Get dow—!" Marcus couldn't even finish his thought before a dart hit him in the throat, and he dropped like a rock.
Milo lunged for Marcus. I grabbed Milo and yanked us both behind the parked car. Baylor skidded to a stop at our feet, a dart in his thigh, and he fell unconscious a split-second later.
"Where the fuck are they?" I asked, clutching the case to my chest. We were facing the road and the water, with no hiding places for snipers. They had to be under the bridge.
"No idea," Milo said. He grabbed Baylor's gun from his hand. "Call it in."
I fumbled into my back pocket for my phone. Something small bounced off the roof of the car, then hit the pavement in front of us. A round object that made my chest tighten. I didn't have time to reach for my emotional trigger, to attempt to teleport us out of there.
Milo tackled me to the ground right as the flash bomb exploded.
Chapter Six
Some serious discomfort in my left arm helped wake me up from total blackness. I blinked a cement block wall into focus. The ground beneath me was hard and cold. I wiggled my left arm, which was bent beneath my body and numb from the pressure. My head hurt from the concussion blast and I tasted blood in my mouth.
"Evy?"
Marcus's voice somewhere nearby. It echoed, though, hinting at close quarters. I grunted in response. Got my arm out from beneath me, then tried to sit up. Something heavy weighed against my neck—a metal collar of some kind. A collar attached to a length of chain. The chain was threaded up to the ceiling, connected to some sort of pulley, and it went out the front of my cage.