We were snaking our way through the market towards the little café called Monmouth that had delicious coffee so strong I’d earlier dubbed it “colon blow.” Morrigan, meanwhile, was still in the lead. But pumped full of ax-mojo, I was running far faster than I normally could, and we were quickly shortening her lead.
Before I could bask in our triumph, however, two shiny black sedans roared up onto the street in front of us and the doors were thrown open. Getaway cars.
“Oh, hell no!” I shouted, putting some of my own power into my strides. There was no way Morrigan was getting away from me: not now, not after all she’d done.
And not with that damned book.
Moving away from Anyan, I shot forward and I swear I was barely a few yards from Morrigan when she turned to raise her arms, and I hit a wall. Not a metaphorical runner’s wall, mind you. It felt like the evil Alfar queen had raised an invisible brick wall in front of me. I bounced off it, hard, but used both my own mojo and that of the ax to stop myself flying backward.
I don’t know, at that point, whether it was my own anger or the ax possessing me, but much to my surprise I found myself striding forward like Xena, brandishing the labrys, which was almost blinding in its radiance.
“Get… back… here,” I snarled through gritted teeth, applying the ax to the edge of Morrigan’s shield. The Alfar’s little smirk vanished as the labrys’s blade began to penetrate through her shield. She scrambled backward, diving into one of the cars. I strained forward as the car revved its engines tauntingly and sped off into the morning.
The shields dissolved with an audible pop, and I found myself catapulted forward to sprawl in an undignified heap on the pavement in front of me.
“Motherfucker!” I yelled, popping up to my feet on a wave of pure adrenaline. I shook my labrys at the retreating cars, gibbering insanely. Just as I was considering throwing the ax at Morrigan’s retreating sedan, I saw the trunk pop just a tiny bit. Hiral’s long nose poked through the gap, and his little eyes leered at me as he gave me a wicked smile.
Before I could figure out just whose spy Hiral was, exactly, I heard a scuffle behind me. As I turned around, I felt the now familiar prick of a needle in my neck, and a hood being thrown over my head.
CHAPTER TEN
I came to, spluttering, when someone very rudely threw a glass of water in my face. Hearing a similar spluttering from beside me, I turned to see a very angry looking Anyan. Unlike me, he was gagged.
Before I could say anything to the barghest, we were both blinded by ridiculously bright floodlights. I winced away from the light, feeling like I’d been hit by a truck and wondering if maybe those were its headlights.
“Why are you kidnapping us again?” I raged, despite not being able to open my eyes. I felt as mad as I had watching Morrigan split. Even madder, since we might have had a chance to catch up with her if Jack hadn’t insisted on playing his little games. “You’ve already abducted us once, isn’t that enough? And where the hell is my ax? And my cheese?”
I waited for Jack’s smarmy politician’s voice, but the voice that floated to my ears was not Jack’s. Instead it was smooth, cool, and calm… Alfar calm.
“I am afraid, Miss True, that we have neither cheese nor an ax.” At those words, my heart dropped. My first outing out with the labrys and I’d lost it? Awesome. The voice in front of me, however, was still talking so I forced myself to listen. I told myself that at least the bad guys didn’t have the ax, and there was a good chance one of my friends had found it.
“Furthermore, you are also mistaken regarding my own identity, and the nature of the situation in which you now find yourself.” Hearing those flowing, formal cadences I knew it definitely wasn’t Jack behind those lights, and I knew whoever it was had to be Alfar.
“Huh?” I said, stupidly. I’d been so sure it was Jack and his cronies, again, that hearing a strange voice—a strange Alfar voice—threw me off my game.
“You have not been kidnapped illegally, as your language implies. Rather, you have been lawfully detained by the leaders of this realm.”
Oh, shit, I thought, my mouth going dry and my heart pounding in my chest. Angry noises were emanating from where Anyan sat beside me, but I couldn’t make out anything he was trying to say.
“For what?” I forced myself to say, trying to sound jaunty rather than scared shitless.
“You tell us,” the voice replied. “You may start with what brought you here, and why you are on our soil.”
“Your soil, huh?” I said, still trying to sound confident. I was trying to suss out who I was dealing with. For while “our soil” left little doubt that our kidnappers were connected to the Alfar rulers of the Great Island, I didn’t know how high up the food chain they really were.
“Tell us why you are here, Jane True,” the voice said, ignoring my own questions and refusing to play. “Or we will be forced to come to our own conclusions. Conclusions that you will not like.”
I shut my eyes, the lights too bright. And I started talking.
“You see,” I said, “I’ve always really loved Britain. I’ve watched all the mysteries on Masterpiece Theatre, and I can’t get enough Wallace and Gromit, and I really have to congratulate a culture that puts baked beans on toast and calls it dinner…”
“That is enough,” the Alfar voice said, grown slightly sharper. “Are you claiming to be a tourist?”
“Yes,” I said. “I even bought cheese. Are you sure you didn’t see my cheese, by any chance?”
“You are lying, halfling,” another voice pronounced. Lower than the first, it was still Alfar-cool, if not as calm as the other voice.
“Me? Lie? Do I look like a liar?”
“You claim to be a tourist to the human Great Britain,” said the second voice. “And yet you have only done things related to our supernatural Great Island.”
I scoffed openly at that mark, trying to roll my eyes but the light was too blinding.
“Let us see,” the second voice continued. “We have reports of your associating with known supernatural rebels. We have you in the company of the Original known as Cyntaf—and yes, we know what she really is, even if she tries to hide it. We have you visiting the Great Library. And we have you engaging in a firefight in Borough Market, in clear view of humans, risking our people’s careful arrangement with the human government. Shall I continue?”
I sat still, knowing I’d been paddled way the fuck up shit creek already.
“We also know, Jane True, that you come from the Territory formerly held by Orin and Morrigan. We know that Orin is dead, and that you were witness to that event. We also know that your former queen, Morrigan, has been sighted on these islands and that she was also involved in that firefight at Borough Market. What do you have to say on this matter?”
“Nothing,” I mumbled, looking down at my tied-up feet like a petulant teenager. “And she’s not my queen.”
“What did you say?” came the first voice.
“She’s not my queen,” I said, more loudly. “She’s a murderer and a…” I didn’t know who these people were, or how much they knew, or how they’d react if they did know the truth about the Red and the White. So I pulled back.
“She’s a murderer and a very bad lady,” I said, instead. I knew I sounded silly but I didn’t care.
“So you are not working with the Alfar known as Morrigan,” the first voice asked.
“Hell no,” I said.
“Are you working against the Alfar known as Morrigan?” the first voice asked.
I realized too late that my silence was as much an answer as any I could have given.
“Interesting,” said the first voice. “Cut the lights and prepare the prisoners.”
Someone did cut them, and my dazzled eyes were plunged into an acute darkness. I blinked, only seeing muzzy bits and pieces of things. Then I felt another needle at my neck, and I swore. Then everything went even darker, albeit a different kind of dark altogether.
This time I came to with another wet face. This one, however, was because I was thrown at the water rather than the other way around. Anyan and I had been tumbled into a wet ditch on a country road, presumably rather far from London. We’d been ejected from the back of a white van similar to Gog and Magog’s. It wasn’t our friend’s, however, as the unfamiliar license plate and the rough treatment attested. They would probably have allowed us to get out ourselves, not thrown us out.
Anyan was also stirring, and I made my way over to him. Together, we struggled out of the ditch and onto the dirt next to the paved road.
I called Blondie as we walked down the road to where there was a bus stop. My phone wasn’t one of those fancy smart phones, with a map, so we had to use the shelter to tell her the name of the stop, and what route it was on. Then we took a seat.
After giving us a quick healing—we were both grotty and out of sorts from all the rough treatment—Anyan snuggled me close, wiping my forehead clean and then kissing me there.