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Can you lead me to my mom and Rocket?I had no trouble sensing the dragon or werewolves, but I had no extraordinary abilities to help me find normal people—ordogs.
Yes. She recaptured him. They aren’t far. She’s heading back to check onyou.
We’d barely moved ten yards away when the werewolves sprang at Zav. Two of them burst into flames, the same as the bullets. They weren’t incinerated, but the squeals of pain as they ran off, fire burning their fur, would haunt my memory for a longtime.
I turned and jogged back down the path. By the time I found Mom and Rocket, the skirmish was out of sight, but more yelps of pain filtered down through theforest.
“Are you okay?” I waved at her and Rocket, whose tail was clenched between hislegs.
“For now.” She looked warily up the hill. “Do we try to get around them or goback?”
“I don’t think the werewolves will be a problem afterthis.”
“And the dragon?” Mom’s usually stoic face wasashen.
“He captured one and said he was hauling him off for judgment.” I was tempted to abandon this mission and go back, but to what? I didn’t have any other leads, and who knew how much time Colonel Willard had? “Why don’t you tell me how to get to the tunnel, and I’ll go in without you. You could wait here or go back to thecar.”
“If that’s the reception you get when you meet magical people, I think I should offer to go in andyougo back.” She held out her hand. “Give me that vial, and I’ll go ask aboutit.”
“They’re not going to be happy with you, either, after you shot their guard dogs, if that’s what the werewolveswere.”
“My bullets didn’t do anything.” She shook her head in disgust. “Do you have specialones?”
“Yes.”
White light flashed up the hill. I whirled toward it, prepared for some new attack. But the dragon vanished from my awareness—from this world. The lead werewolf had too. The others were still out there, the handful that had survived, but I sensed their auras getting farther and farther away. They wererunning.
“This is our chance.” I cleaned off Chopper and sheathed the sword, though I kept Fezzik out. When I brushed a hand through my hair and pushed my braid over my shoulder, it came away damp, and raw pain burned my scalp. Blood smeared my fingers. Well, if that was the worst I’d gotten, that was a win. But was the battle truly over? “What exactly is waiting for us in your tunnel? A village, you said. Are we likely to have to fightagain?”
“I think they’ll let me in—they have before. I’m not sure about you. Did that one call youRuinBringer?”
“Yeah. The magical have a lot of names forme.”
“Flattering.”
“Most of them aren’t,no.”
“Is the dragon gone?” She squinted suspiciously at the routeahead.
“He opened a portal and left—that was that light. He could come back, but hopefully, he’s busy locking up his prisoner in the dragon equivalent of a jail cell in his ownrealm.”
I’d never been through a portal, and I’d only seen them a couple of times. From what I’d heard, they were very difficult to create, and only a few magical beings had the power and knowledge to do so. Some of the other worlds had permanent ones that could be used by travelers, but Earth supposedly didn’t have any. This was a one-way trip for most of the beings who came here tohide.
Mom shook her head slowly. “All the years I lived near and in the woods, and I never saw anything other than elves, and elves only when they wished it. The last few years have been…” She looked at me with a frown. “What’schanged?”
I waved for us to walk while we talked, worried that our enemies would return. “I don’t know what’s changed for them, but the magical have been coming to Earth in droves to hide out here. Colonel Willard and her intel team have theories—overpopulation in their worlds, new and stricter governments, an oppressive tyrannical overlord making their lives hell…” I thought of Zav and had no trouble imagining him oppressing someone tyrannically. “But few of her contacts say anything concrete. They get a haunted look in their eyes and refuse to talk aboutit.”
Do you know,Sindari?
With the battle over, the great tiger walked at my side. Rocket kept shooting him suspicious looks, and his hackles remained up. Poor dog. He should have been left home to entertainMaggie.
Do I know what’s happening to cause the magical to flee other realms? No. Del’noth is not like the seventeen worlds in the Cosmic Realms. It is not a place that you can travel to. Long ago, my ancestors were fleeing hunters who felt it a great triumph to slay a magical tiger—the Zhinevarii, as we call ourselves. We did not wish to start a war, only to be left alone to hunt our prey and enjoy the company of our kind. The most powerful of my kind attempted to create their own special realm, but they lacked the magic necessary. They made a deal with a pair of dragons, who assisted them in the gargantuan task in exchange for the promise that some of our warriors would allow themselves to be magically linked to figurines and called upon to help the owners in battle when the timecame.
I touched the figurine on my necklace. I’d had to kill a powerful ogre wizard to claim it, but not a dragon. Sindari had told me the ogre had stolen it, but I hadn’t realized from whom—orwhat.
The realm they created is not like the others,Sindari added,not a planet that orbits a sun in a star system in this galaxy. It exists in between in another plane, another dimension. It is pure magic. Only those bound by one of the magical figurines can travel between it and otherworlds.
Bound? Are you a prisoner, then?A surge of guilt filled me. When I’d gotten the figurine, I’d considered it a prize, fairly won in battle. It hadn’t occurred to me to ask if Sindari was an unwilling prize. Of course, it had taken a month before he’d deigned to talk to me, so learning anything about him had been difficult.Should I try to find a way to free you so you can go home and staythere?
