Wood Sprites(171)

“It’s not as simple as he said. They now have cameras everywhere. There is no more anonymity. I can’t just disappear and resurface someplace else.”

“We warned you of that danger when you came to this world.”

“The bank account you gave me for such emergencies is empty. Sire must…”

Yves pressed his hand against the Ambassador’s chest and spoke a word that sounded Elvish. The Ambassador went to his knees with a cry of pain. A spell glyph appeared on his forehead, gleaming brilliantly. “You must remember your place. You were my little pet project. I alone made you. I am your god.” Yves cupped the male’s chin in his hand and whispered menacingly as tears ran down the Ambassador’s cheeks. “The pure black of your hair. The raven wings of your eyebrows. The strength of your chin. Every line on your face, I picked for you. I planted you into a female’s womb and gave you life. I made you and I can unmake you with a word.”

“Forgiveness,” Feng cried, his voice breaking from pain. “I was afraid…”

“Humans are lowly beasts, products of random chance, that are barely above monkeys. You are a masterpiece of spellworking.”

“Even lions fear large packs of monkeys,” Feng whispered.

Yves growled another word and Feng screamed as his veins suddenly blazed under his skin as if his blood had turned to liquid fire. The ambassador convulsed into a tight knot, shrieking.

Louise bit hard on her lower lip, trying to keep in an answering scream of pure fear. She had never heard an adult male cry out in pain before; she had never heard a sound so raw and terrifying. Jillian clung tight to Louise, burying her face into Louise’s shoulder, sobbing with terror.

Yves spoke a word and Feng slumped to the floor, panting hoarsely as his skin faded back to normal.

Yves stepped back from the male. “You will bring the dogs sniffing my heels if you try to hide at my feet. You will go and be the warrior I made you and draw them off my scent.”

“Yes, husepavua,” Feng whispered.

“Follow the plan as you were told to do in emergencies like this. Use one of your alternate identities to go to the island and cross to Onihida. Someone has to keep rein on the oni until the Dufae heir can be caught and harnessed—or we find someone else to open a gate for us.”

“Yes, husepavua.”

Yves turned away, not bothering to watch the male stagger to his feet and stumble out of the mansion. He walked down the hall to stop at the next painting and pointed to it. “Sell that.” He pointed to a small statue. “Pack that.” He turned and gazed at the twins. “It’s a shame they’re not true identical twins. I’ll have to be more careful with them. Take them down to the casting chamber and put them into a spell cage. I’m sure they would figure out how to escape anything mechanical.”

* * *

Louise tried to tell herself that the spell cage was a fascinating awesome thing. In almost any other instance, it would be. Being carried down into a maze of dimly lit caves, shackled to the floor, and locked inside one, however, was really, really scary.

“Right,” Jillian muttered after the elves had trooped back upstairs. “This is a sticky wicket.”

“Could be worse.” Louise knew it could be much worse. She had at least kept the elves from discovering what she had shoved into her socks as they snapped the manacle about her right ankle. By luck or that weird sense of knowing what was coming, she had pushed the Swiss Army knife painfully deep into her shoe.

The electric lights went out, leaving only the gleam of the active spell encaging them. They sat at the center of the spell inscribed into the stone floor.

“I say,” Jillian used a thick British accent. Louise wasn’t sure who Jillian was channeling but she was glad that her twin wasn’t freaking because at the moment, Louise was slipping toward totally losing it. “Let’s not give fate any more ideas.”

“Uh huh,” Louise forced out as she fumbled in the deep shadows.

Light suddenly flared out from Jillian.

“What’s that?”

“Spell light. I made it.” Jillian held up a brightly gleaming orb.

“Awesome!” More heartfelt words were never uttered. Louise unfolded out the various blades of the Swiss Army knife, trying to figure out which she could use on the shackle. Luckily the thick iron cuffs were probably over a hundred years ago and fashioned when tolerances were in the fractions of an inch, not microns. “We need to get out of here. Get the babies. And…”

“Burn the house down.”

“Yes. Somehow. I doubt they have a closet full of high explosives that we can use.”