Chapter 13
The aggressive wind of a Wyoming blizzard was a shock to his system after the humid, rot-scented air of the demesne, but Tanner welcomed the clean freeze.
Tiny snow pellets stung his naked skin, but his thunderbird magic rose to the surface, an internal furnace banking against the chill.
He shifted his grip on the unconscious girl, Sazanel, tucking her small, bony form against his chest while he scanned the grey sky.
He was seconds away from shifting to fly her to the hospital when a shape hurtled out of the fading portal mist. Avelunne hit the snow-covered ground with a bone-jarring thud, bounced once, and sprawled onto her back, gasping for air.
Tanner took two frantic steps toward her, heart hammering, when a sound that belonged in a nightmare cut through the winter gale. It was the ear-splitting, wet screech of a hellfrog. It was answered immediately by the heavy, multi-tonal hiss of a basilisk. The monsters had arrived before them.
“Demon-fucking maggoty hell!”
He planted his feet and readied his sword, wishing he had magic to see through a blizzard.
Hellfrogs were nearly unstoppable killing machines, and he was in no position to fight one.
Behind him, Avelunne stepped around to scoop Sazanel from his shoulder, then retreated.
He adjusted his stance and listened intently.
A capricious blast of wind cleared the snow flurries. The hellfrog was a football-field away to his left, glaring at him with glowing red eyes. The basilisk was half that distance to his right.
Without warning, the basilisk slithered with preternatural speed straight toward the hellfrog.
The insectoid amphibian didn’t recognize the threat in time to avoid the basilisk’s impact or sharp beak.
The hellfrog’s jaws snapped, but the basilisk was faster, its beak tearing into the amphibian’s spine and ripping out of the body and tossing it away.
The basilisk wrapped herself around the hellfrog’s body.
A wave of grey magic coalesced around the hellfrog, consuming the hellfrog’s life force, leaving the rotted green-and-black corpse in the blood-stained snow.
The basilisk reared back, its feathered crown flared, and spat globs of viscous venom onto the hellfrog’s skeletal remains.
The great snake turned its avian head toward Tanner. The remnants of the control gem that Timoki had shattered looked like a gouged-out eye socket. A voice echoed inside his mind.
“Do not lick hellfrog blood. Debt owed. Debt repaid.”
Before Tanner could even process the unsolicited dietary advice, the air around the basilisk shimmered, and the next second, the basilisk vanished, leaving only a depression in the snow and rapidly cooling body parts.
Interesting that basilisks used the straight teleportation of witches.
But that was a mystery for another time.
He turned to find Avelunne hugging the girl on her hip with one hand and rubbing Sazanel’s arms and back with the other. “She’s shivering.”
Tanner stepped in close and pulled Avelunne and the child against him, creating a huddle of shared warmth.
He pushed his own heat outward, letting his magic bleed into them, sandwiching the girl between his chest and Avelunne’s.
The contact grounded him in a way the earth never could.
He felt Avelunne’s rapid heartbeat slow as she leaned into his strength, her skin icy against his.
“Where are we?” she asked. “Kotoyeesinay?”
“Feels like it. The northwest meadow, maybe.” Tanner squinted through the driving snow. He thought he recognized the shape of the distant tree line, though the perspective was all wrong. “I know this part of the valley better from the air than from the ground.”
Avelunne dropped her head to rest on his shoulder. “Why did the basilisk warn us about hellfrog blood?”
“No clue.” She looked pale and chilled. He adjusted his angle to bring her closer to his warmth. “Maybe she thought we’re wolf shifters who like to roll on dead things.”
Avelunne gave an amused snort. “Well, we really have been rolling on dead things.” She yawned. “Sorry. You did all the fighting. Mostly all I did was run, but I’m exhausted.”
“Lean on me.” Tanner raised his arm to wrap it securely around her shoulders, holding her and the child as if they were his. “I’ve got you.”
Her soft, vulnerable smile arrowed straight to his heart. His inner thunderbird wanted to fly joyous spirals into the storm, simply because she was safe, and she was his.
A frisson of magic to their right had him gripping his sword more tightly while he looked for the source. His senses belatedly told him it was Tinsel’s unique flavor of magic.
The blowing snow puffed out from the portal that formed about a hundred paces away.
The polar fairy stepped through the opening, wearing a red-and-green summer dress, a wreath of bent twigs shaped to look like miniature caribou antlers, and red plastic clogs with holes.
She had a large bag slung over her shoulder.
Denise Voski, more sensibly dressed in a heavy parka and insulated boots and carrying a medic kit, appeared a moment later.
Tanner walked toward them with Sazanel. Avelunne walked by his side.
Denise set her kit down in the snow, then held out her arm to receive the child.
Tanner surrendered her, then stepped back, close to Avelunne so he could continue sharing his heat with her.
Cold radiated from her skin, but she hadn’t turned blue or started shivering.
The healer adjusted her grip, settling the child on her hip, with the child’s head on her shoulder, while her free hand rested lightly on the girl’s back. Healing magic flared.
“High fever. Burn on the chest that goes deep. Dehydrated and malnourished.” Denise’s hand moved down to the girl’s leg. “Inflamed insect bite. Feels necrotic.”
“I think it’s more than a bite.” Avelunne’s tone held an undercurrent of anger.
“All six children we rescued have them. I think they’re egg deposits.
Shifter children are robust, and Ice Age shifter children especially so.
Tippizoars called them their legacy. Considering how the demesne works, those eggs are likely parasitic, draining the host’s life force to incubate. ”
Tanner had seen enough of the world’s cruelty to believe it.
Legacies and immortality via offspring became obsessions.
Tinsel’s perpetual cheer vanished into a rare, sharp frown.
Denise merely sighed and single-handedly unfurled a bespelled warming blanket and bundled it around the girl. “I’ll call in a specialist.”
Her healing magic briefly brushed over him.
“You’re remarkably healthy for having been in naked sword fights.
” She eyed the gore spattered across his chest. “And winning them, too, considering the blood isn’t your own.
Your poor dragon partner, however, is about tapped out.
No wounds worth mentioning. Take her someplace warm. ”
Tinsel dug into her bag, then handed a pile of clothes and elven boots to Avelunne.
Avelunne moved aside, her fingers seeming drawn of their own accord to the intricate leafy design on the boots. They were never sold, only given. A flicker of jealousy made him wonder who was behind the gift. He rolled his eyes at his ridiculous thoughts.
“What date and time is it?” asked Avelunne.
“The twenty-second of December, and about four o’clock,” answered Denise.
They’d lost a whole real-world day while in the demesne. It had only been a few hours to him. The rescued captives were going to need briefings on history to catch up.
Tinsel handed him a pair of jeans. “Sorry, they’re all I could find that would fit.” She winked. “I dare you to walk around town as you are. Take the wind out of those two blowhard dragons who think they can handle the cold.”
“Not happening.” Tanner handed his alfar blade to the fairy and stepped into the jeans.
He tried not to watch Avelunne, but his gaze traitorously slid toward her as she pulled a heavy green sweater over her head.
She was bruised, pale, and magnificent. The swell of her breasts and narrow hips sent his blood racing toward his groin.
Tinsel handed back the sword, her eyes twinkling with an unnerving amount of perception. “Your dragon?”
Denise stooped to collect her medic kit, then stepped through the still-open portal and vanished.
Tinsel waggled her eyebrows suggestively at him and tilted her head toward Avelunne. The fairy was an incorrigible matchmaker.
His sense of duty was at war with his heart, and he didn’t know how to resolve it. His inner thunderbird wanted to claim her. His human side had to do the right thing for her and the sanctuary town he loved. “It’s complicated.”
Tinsel laughed and shook her head, then turned to Avelunne, who was stepping into the deep forest-green elven boots.
“The Transition Center is overwhelmed and only going to get worse with the influx of refugees. They need your room. Do you want to stay at my boring bed-and-breakfast, or would you like to go with Tanner? He has a nice high mountain cabin with a spectacular view and a spa tub that would make a Roman senator envious.”
Tanner blinked. She’d never been to his home, so how did she know?
Avelunne’s hand went to her throat, one finger touching the charmed feather necklace that somehow seemed to have survived the mission. She glanced at him, then looked back at Tinsel. “I’d like to go with Tanner, please.”
Her words sent his emotions whirling. Relief that he wouldn’t be separated from her, then a sharp spike of desire he knew he would have to control.
She needed rest, not the pent-up passion of a thunderbird who has found his mate.
Worry followed on its heels. When had he last cleaned or done laundry?
Tinsel nodded. “Easy-peasy, to quote Magister Zephyr. I’ll portal you both now and send your belongings later. Including your phone, which I forgot.”
“That is very kind of you,” Avelunne said, her voice laced with fatigue, “but won’t you need your portal magic for the invasion force?”
“Not likely,” said Tinsel. “They have more than enough volunteers to create and hold portals in a wounded fairy demesne. I like to think of it as therapy. Surasa has made a world’s worth of enemies for centuries. Every fairy and sorcerer in town wants a turn.”
“Then if Tanner is amenable, I accept your generous offer.”
Tanner nodded. “I am.”
The portal Denise had exited through shrank and vanished.
Another opened almost immediately, revealing the carved and figured wood of his front door.
“This goes to your porch,” Tinsel said to him.
“The portal block for your cabin itself is good, but you’ll want to cover the rest of your property.
” She sighed. “We’re all going to need better portal blocks for a while.
We’ve bitten the tail of a vengeful monster. ”
Tanner nodded, profoundly glad that powerful Tinsel was a friend to Kotoyeesinay.
He held out his hand to Avelunne. She took it, but before stepping toward the portal, she looked back at the fairy. “Please ask Denise to tell the children we rescued — Maysan, Javier, and the others — that Sazanel lives. They will worry. In the pens, each other was all we had.”
“I will.” Tinsel made a shooing motion with her hand. “Off you go, now.”
Tanner was in awe of the woman at his side.
Even when she was nearly dead on her feet, she was looking out for children she’d just met.
He led her through the portal, stepping out of the blizzard and into the shelter of his porch.
A quick touch of magic opened the door, and he ushered her into the warm and quiet sanctuary of his home.
As he closed the door and saw her eyes drawn to the colorful hand-painted and hand-hewn totem support beam, he hoped the sky gods were with him. She was the lightning to his thunder. He wouldn’t have the strength to walk away from her tonight.