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He drove up and a down a few low hills and shallow ravines. He parked the bike beneath a gold-leafed ash, one brilliant moment of autumn splendor.
He unpacked his leather Guard coat and slipped it on. The sleeveless but well-padded coat buttoned in the front. He wore a thick weapons belt over it, which was angled like a sash. He’d had the strap modified to support three small, thin daggers. They’d saved his life more than once.
He sighed as he took one last look at the Valkyrie. He had little hope it would be in one piece when he returned.
Then he took to the skies.
He flew faster than all other Realm-folk because of his heightened mastyr power.
He left the southern end of a long inlet that gave Swanicott a kidney-bean shape. He flew over Maris Luna and the western portion of Wraith Island for at least twenty miles, then another stretch of ocean. His built-in vampire guidance kept him on track. All he had to do was picture the end point and his internal navigation kicked into high gear. It never led him astray.
He quickly passed over miles of rough, rocky ground punctuated with strips of forest and dozens of hamlets. Every farm he saw had been cultivated from centuries of hard labor, with rocks cleared from the soil by the wagon full. It was no wonder most of the homes and fences were made of the same stones.
As he neared one of the larger towns, he noted that his Shifter Brigade was working the surrounding land, also hunting for Invictus signs. Two shifters were battling one of the vicious bonded wraith-pairs. If he hadn’t been headed to Britchett Falls, he would have stopped to help if needed. Shifters were fierce warriors, given to fighting almost as naturally as Zane was.
Instead, he shot past them, rising higher into the air. The closer he drew to Britchett Falls, the northernmost city in his realm, the more his anxiety grew. The Invictus had always been more active in his realm than any other. But in the past couple of weeks, he’d noticed an increased amount of wraith-pair attacks, usually as part of the chaos winds.
Because his troops couldn’t get past the wind to do battle, Zane finally faced the hard fact that Margetta had to be in his realm.
As he flew over the three main high-rise buildings of Britchett Falls, he passed the center of the city. At the same time, he felt a resistance to forward movement and slowed to levitate in place. This was what Chase must have encountered. At the same time, he caught Margetta’s sickly sweet smell. She was no doubt the cause not just of the wind, but what felt like a sp
elled boundary to the area.
He moved forward slowly and kept pushing against the spell. When he couldn’t move any farther, he finally wound up his battle frequency and let it fly in a blue arc of power. He watched small bursts of fireworks and a rippling of red waves fly through the air. Testing the spell, he found his power had disrupted it and he began to fly in the direction of the chaos wind.
He picked up speed and was soon traveling above the two-mile-long strip of clubs that started with several excellent high-end musical venues and ended with a few down-and-out joints near adjacent, rundown buildings.
Here was the poorest section of the city, where Invictus often preyed on prostitutes and drug addicts, usually drinking them to death. Drugs in his realm had become as much of a problem as they were in the U.S., especially with the introduction of cocaine into the Nine Realms.
Every major city seemed to have an area like this one, full of druggies, women working for their abusive pimps, and the homeless.
Three vehicles had crashed, one of them torched by laughing bystanders. At least a hundred Realm-folk were enthralled by the wind, most of them either fist-fighting with each other or breaking the windows of nearby stores and offices. The rest were too drunk to do much moving around.
A golden glow lit up the north end of the club strip. As he drew within a hundred yards, he saw that the gold light surrounded a beautiful fae woman. And there she was, the scourge of the Nine Realms: Margetta.
His instincts had been dead on: the Ancient Fae had come to Swanicott.
Several Invictus pairs were already feeding on a group of drunken trolls, draining them. And the Realm-folk in the area, enthralled by the wind, seemed oblivious to the presence of the vicious wraiths and their bonded mates or to Margetta.
As he drew closer still, what he saw next distressed him more than anything else he’d seen. Several wraith youths were under the spell of a powerful Invictus wraith, the kind that could help create the dreaded pairs. The young wraiths had probably snuck away from Wraith Island to have some fun on the mainland, not understanding how quickly Margetta and her troops could enslave wraiths to do their bidding. In truth, these innocent wraiths were as much victims as the Realm-folk with which they forged the heinous bond.
Margetta was training her forces well.
Needing to keep his hands free in order to do battle, he used telepathy to contact his Communication Center. Hey, Marian, you there?
Yes, Mastyr, came back at him quickly.
We’ve got a bad situation on the ground. He told her about Margetta, the number of Realm-folk in the area, and the looting. And I’m also watching three wraith youths turning Realm-folk into bonded pairs as we speak. Zane looked into the night sky. Contact Chase and see if he can get any closer. I was able to use my battle energy to break through Margetta’s spell.
Will do.
He waited until Marian’s telepathic voice flowed through his head once more. Chase says he’s a half mile away but he can’t move past the barrier. He wants to know if he should try his battle frequency.
Tell him yes.
He hovered in the air, waiting, but his mind filled with sudden fury at what he saw. He’d lost so many Realm-folk from Invictus depredations, including his wife. And now Margetta had just turned up the heat.
Marian returned. Chase said he tried his battle energy but nothing happened. The resistance remained.
