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“No, Princess,” she answered. “His last spell was fulfilled, and now I am yours until the queen recalls me.”
“Then help me get back to MacBathe,” Royce whispered.
“Magic works differently here. I don’t know how to take you to the present. I can, perhaps, get us through to another time …”
“I don’t understand. Why can’t we just go the way we came? You are supposed to be so powerful.”
“So I am, but I was in his keeping when the queen created this dimension as a prison for the Fallen Druid. She was afraid he might be able to recall me to himself here, and so she made it next to impossible for him to use me in this dimension to get out.”
Damn, that made awful sense. Now what? He was Druid no longer; he was a monster—a black sorcerer and a monster. Somehow, she told herself, she had to get the hell out of Monster City!
She didn’t want to exhaust whatever powers she still had, so she hurriedly tore off a piece of her cotton shirt and made a makeshift sling for the Peckering at her waist without the use of magic. Instead, she used it to call to her Death Sword, but it did not appear. It seemed she would need more magic to call it to herself in this awful place.
She would need it against the big rats and whatever other things were out there. She racked her brain looking for the power to find her way to a white magic that would work in this realm.
Hatred, fury, and recognizable frustration bellowed in the air.
A roaring sound such as she had never heard before came at her as the beast raged after its prey. Right, she was his prey. Any minute and he would find her at the back of the building.
She could hear his heavy footsteps as he tore around his fortress after her. She didn’t want to jump shift and land in the middle of the giant rats, so she used her Fae super-speed to keep constantly ahead of him.
All the while she tried to break through the black magic’s barrier. And then, the rats came into view. Damn, she thought, any minute now and they would see her. She would be trapped between the giant rats and … him!
And if that weren’t enough, her vision shifted and saw that wasn’t all that was out there with her.
Another creature raised its hoary tentacles and, with dinner obviously on its mind, began galloping in her direction.
“This is so not good,” she told the Peckering. “It has fangs … and its fangs are dripping with something foul-smelling that I can smell from here … and, Peckering, it has a lot of eyes … oh by Danu … so many eyes …”
Four rats looked up, saw the creature charging, and must have realized a meal awaited the one who got to Royce first. The rats screeched wildly, as they stood and clawed the air. They appeared hungry and notably willing to take a chance that they could get a piece of her if they got to her first.
Royce saw the drama unfold as something caught in her throat, and she searched her mind for the thing she n
eeded to help her out of this deadly situation. Stress, she thought. This is what humans suffer …
Royce was not a warrior by nature. She didn’t like fighting, but now was not the time, she told herself, to be squeamish. She was going to have to put her training to the test, because this thing was going to be on her any minute.
She formulated a new plan. Would it work? She didn’t have the answer to that, but she knew it was better than nothing.
She stood her ground and waited. She was not immortal in this realm. She could die, if she made an ill step. She thought of her human friends who faced danger, sickness, and accidents, and her admiration for them as a whole was renewed.
Right then—so she could be eaten. She had never really contemplated death before. She had never had any reason to in the past.
Rats had gathered into a force, but the monster creature spotted them and bellowed out a growl that made them hesitate as a group.
Some stood on their butts and clawed the air defiantly at the thing that had stopped to throw its head around in fury, as though to tell them the meal was his and his alone.
They, however, were hungry enough to defy it and didn’t seem to be backing down as they started towards Royce again.
The creature’s head was fitted with many horns of different shapes, all ugly, Royce thought as she studied it. Its skin looked weathered and aged, but what was really eye catching were the spikes on its tail.
Long, spiked tail, much like a giant crocodile’s tail except for the many spikes. It stopped and pounded the clay earth every now and then as though to claim anything in its path, and then it charged again.
It caught one of the smaller rats and devoured it. Royce’s eyes opened wide, and she said out loud, “Okay … one appetizer down.” Would it slow it down? Would it try and eat more rats and forget about her? Were rats its normal diet?
Perhaps this would give her the diversion she needed.
Spikes shot through the air, taking Royce once again by surprise, but they weren’t aimed at her. Those spikes were headed for the rats! Okay, so whether it usually ate rats or not, it appeared the creature was determined on stopping anything else from eating her first …
