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And saw him lying on the bottom of the shield, near the control mechanism, panting and shrieking softly whenever he found enough air. He was covered in blood, his eyes were wild, and he was trembling all over. I needed to get him somewhere safe, as I did not know if the fey could track their device.
But first, I had to deal with more pressing concerns.
“Hold still,” I said, tugging on what remained of his tuxedo.
“Ahhh!”
“I know it hurts. I am sorry.”
He stared up at me in apparent shock. His eyes searched my face, as if looking for something. Probably signs of the woman he knew, which he did not find. Dory was not here; I could feel her absence like a missing lung, leaving me breathless. We had never been apart, not even when I took an occasional mental flight away from our body. There had always been a tether there, a strong, unbreakable connection to my other half.
But not now.
It made me feel dizzier than the ride, and more than slightly horrified. I did not know what had been done to us, but this was not the time to think about it. This was the time to survive; thinking would come later.
The vampire seemed to feel the same. He tensed as if bracing himself. And then he nodded.
I held up one of his severed arms and looked at it. It had lost the sleeve, but the arm itself was more or less all right, except for the raw, red meat and shattered bone at the end. The fey hadn’t cared how much damage they did, merely wanting to put him out of commission. I felt anger well up in me, red hot and burning, but tamped it down.
Later.
We would have our revenge on whoever had ordered this, but for now, I needed to heal the vampire.
“Ray,” I said, suddenly remembering. “Your name is Ray.”
“Raymond Lu,” he said, his lips white. “I’d shake your hand, but . . .”
“You will in a moment.” I regarded the arm again.
It was weakly moving, but not in any purposeful way. A master should be able to control his body parts, even when they were not attached, but Raymond had lost too much blood. He was almost exsanguinated, and that . . .
Would be very bad.
We had avoided exiting through the other end of the portal, and had thereby missed the reception that undoubtedly awaited us. But we weren’t scot free. I paused, looking about.
We’d come to rest on the side of a hill, where a goat trail from below divided and created a small plateau. To our right and below was a verdant valley with a large river running through it, and bright green fields with grasses so long and thick that they moved like water under the breeze. To our left was a dense old forest, with tree trunks as big as houses and a canopy so solid that I did not know how any rain penetrated.
It was beautiful, but it was foreign. I could not name a single type of tree, a single bird, or even the variety of grass, which had odd, purple tips. My tongue flickered out, tasting the air. Cool and faintly scented, but also strange. Alien.
Faerie.
It had to be.
We must have traveled too far to reappear on Earth when we exited the ley line, falling instead into the land of the fey, just not where they had intended. I felt a shiver go through me, but it wasn’t one wasn’t of fear. It was excitement, curiosity, the thrill of the new. I was on an alien world that I knew nothing about—
So why did something smell like home?
“Wait,” I told Ray, who nodded weakly.
I searched around the gory bodies on the floor, and discovered that they were a bit gorier than I’d expected. Eight times more. There had been eight fey warriors in all, and each of them had on his person a small bag.
A bag of blood.
One of them had ruptured during the fight, but the others were intact, inside of clear packets that looked like plastic but felt like paper. It was very odd. I had no idea what they were doing there.
But they were a lifesaver, possibly literally.
Ray did not seem to want the fey blood; perhaps it was too strange to nourish him? But he had to have something. I tore the corner off of one of the packets, to make sure that my nose wasn’t deceiving me, and he made a soft sound. Yes, it was human. I stared at it some more. It appeared to be fresh.
