Otherworld Challenger

“How the hell did you get in here?”

Her voice in the headphones alerted Jethro and he glanced quickly behind him. It took only a few seconds for them to reach the same conclusion. They spoke into their microphones at the same time. “Iago.”

Right first time. Although they couldn’t hear him above the sound of the engine, Iago mouthed the words. Silent laughter racked his body. The sorcerer was clearly enjoying himself at their expense.

Jethro’s voice was a furious growl. “Tibor didn’t send two vampires to follow me. The woman was my tail. This trickster bastard obviously tagged along then used his invisibility to sneak into the plane.” In time with Jethro’s words, the vampire’s features changed, shifting and becoming Iago’s sharp-featured, black-bearded face. She would know that face anywhere. It was imprinted in her memory from the first time she’d met him when Moncoya had brought him to Spae before her father escaped imprisonment. Iago’s green eyes gleamed with enjoyment.

“Leave this to me.” Vashti unbuckled her seat belt.

“Don’t be so fucking—”

She didn’t stick around to hear the rest of what Jethro had to say. Discarding her headphones, Vashti scrambled over the back of her seat. It was a tight squeeze and she landed in an undignified heap in Iago’s lap. It wasn’t the best way to intimidate someone, but it did have the element of surprise, particularly as Iago, without the benefit of headphones, hadn’t been expecting her.

In one fluid movement she curled into a ball, gripping the sides of the rear seat on either side of Iago’s thighs and bringing her knees up hard under his chin. The sorcerer’s head jerked back and Vashti was willing to bet he saw stars. With grim satisfaction, she watched the smile disappear from his face.

The little aircraft rocked wildly from side to side as Jethro craned his neck to try to get a glimpse of what was going on behind him. Willing him to trust her and keep his attention on the plane, Vashti focused on her task. Iago had so many tricks at his disposal she had to neutralize him as quickly as she could. Not an easy feat in such a tight space. Since Moncoya had ensured his daughters were trained in every aspect of combat, Vashti was as comfortable wielding a samurai sword as she was in a boxing ring. Her instructor’s words about being trapped in a confined space with a larger opponent came back to her now. If you can’t outrun him, go for the eyes first then the groin.

Launching herself at Iago with her thumbs extended, Vashti prepared to put her training into practice.

* * *

Jethro had flown planes in some tricky situations. There had been that one time he had been caught in a violent sandstorm over the Sahara. Or the other when he’d been forced to make an emergency landing on a deserted highway when the canopy flew off just after take-off. And who could forget the death-defying spiral he’d had to fight his way out of when his rudder pedal had jammed on his first solo flight? But trying to control a plane while a faerie princess and a sorcerer slugged it out behind him? It was new situation. Not one he had foreseen and certainly not one he relished.

The worst aspect was Jethro could neither see nor hear what was going on. All he got was an impression of bursts of activity and the occasional elbow or foot in the back of his neck. Scanning the ground below him for somewhere to land, he saw nothing suitable. Iago had timed his appearance to perfection. They were flying over a built-up area.

Jethro risked a glance over his shoulder and winced as Iago caught hold of Vashti from behind, with a hand around her throat. She responded by bringing her elbow up and jamming it into his windpipe. Iago quickly released her.

Trying desperately to keep his concentration on not killing them all by nose-diving into the ground, Jethro was jostled into almost losing his grip when Vashti tumbled onto the passenger seat next to him. Iago followed close behind, hurling himself on top of her.

Iago wasn’t a big man and his skill came from his ability as a sorcerer rather than any physical strength. He was also a coward, known to flee from a situation when things got physical. Nevertheless, he outweighed Vashti and he wasn’t allowing chivalry to stop him. Using his fists, he was systematically pounding any part of her he could reach.

Out of the corner of his eye Jethro saw Vashti trade blow for blow, giving as good as she got. He felt an oddly proprietorial sense of pride in her. That was until she opened the passenger door. At that point any pleasure he might have taken in her accomplishments turned into instant fury.

“What the hell are you doing?” She couldn’t hear him, of course. A series of expletives aimed in Vashti’s general direction burst from Jethro’s lips anyway. Somehow it made him feel better.

A torrent of icy air rushed into the cabin. At the same time Vashti caught hold of Jethro’s arm, turning his attention to her. Hold me. She mouthed the words at him.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Amorous encounters in midair might be an exciting proposition in some situations. Not this one.

Even though she still couldn’t hear him, Vashti seemed to get the gist of that question. Shaking her head impatiently, she tugged at his arm again. Iago, doing what he did best, had given up on traditional methods and had begun to shift from human to animal form. Within seconds, in addition to the turbulent, swirling wind inside the cockpit, they had a snarling leopard. This would make a great story to recount to other pilots over a few beers. If he survived to tell it.

His teeth already chattering wildly with the cold, Jethro grabbed Vashti’s upper body, hauling her close and pinning her to his side with one arm as he did his best to steer the plane with the other.

Catching Iago unawares before the sorcerer had fully shifted, Vashti clung to Jethro’s arm as tightly as she could, using both feet to kick the snarling leopard toward the open passenger door. Predictably, the cat didn’t go without a fight. Gripping Vashti’s right calf with its claws, it was about to close its teeth on her ankle when she launched into another kick with her left foot. Pushing back against Jethro with all her strength, relying on him to keep hold of her, she caught the leopard full in the face. Releasing her with a guttural cry, there was nowhere for the cat to go except out the open door.

Another kick from Vashti sealed its fate. As he began to free fall from the plane, Iago shifted briefly back into his own form. Swiftly, he changed again, stretching out his arms to become a soaring eagle. For a moment or two he flew ahead of the plane, then, wheeling nonchalantly away, he took a different course and disappeared from view.

Moving out of Jethro’s hold, Vashti slowly altered position until she was slumped in the passenger seat. Her movements were weary and uncoordinated.

Jethro wasn’t sure if the change in her manner was caused by cold, shock or the injury the leopard had inflicted on her leg. The priority had to be to try to get that door shut so he could find out. It was not going to be an easy task. His hands were numb on the controls, his facial muscles stiff with the effects of the glacial temperature. The frigid air was turning his labored breath to vapor in front of him. He couldn’t hear anything in his headphones and he doubted his own ability to speak coherently to air traffic control even if he was able to make contact. His brain was stubbornly refusing to process the information on the tracking system in front of him. There was no way he was capable of landing this bloody thing with neither his hands nor his brain working properly.

How long did they have in these conditions? Jethro had no idea. He was flying as low as he safely could. There was still nowhere to land. His pilot’s training had covered a number of emergencies, but nothing like this. Stories of doors flying off or being deliberately damaged merged together in his befuddled mind. But his door was intact and still there. Flapping wildly, but firmly attached. He just had to find a way to get to it without letting go of the controls. If he could hook something around the door handle, maybe he could pull it closed. His whole life was a series of long shots. As shots went, this had to be one of the longest.

Tapping Vashti on the shoulder to get her attention, he mimed what he wanted her to do. She stared back at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes. He tried again. Something flickered into life behind the blue blankness of her eyes. The sidhe ring of fire began to blaze brighter. Her gaze dropped to his waist. Then, to his relief, she nodded.

At first it seemed Vashti’s fingers wouldn’t work as she tried to undo Jethro’s belt. With painstaking slowness, she managed to get the buckle open. Jethro lifted his hips up from his seat so that she could slide the belt out through the loops of his jeans. More agonizing minutes ticked away while Vashti struggled to make a loop in the end of the belt. Once she was done, she nodded at Jethro.

Catching hold of her by the waistband of her pants with one hand while he once again flew the plane one-handed, he watched out the corner of his eye as she leaned as far out of the open plane doorway as she could get. The strain of holding on to her was almost too much for the numb muscles of Jethro’s right arm and, as Vashti angled out and tried to loop the belt around the door handle, he once or twice almost lost his grip on her. Finally, on the sixth attempt, she got the belt around the door handle and, battling against the wind, pulled it closed. Instantly the tornado that had been tearing through the cockpit died away.

Slumping into her seat, Vashti picked up her headphones. “So—” her teeth were still chattering like castanets as her voice sounded in Jethro’s ear “—if flying is the safe option, tell me about a day in the life of a necromancer.”

* * *

The gouges in the flesh of Vashti’s right calf were deep and bloody. Her black jeans hung in ragged strips below the knee on that leg and she winced as Jethro swabbed the wounds with a sterile wipe.

“Serves you right.” Now that they were safe on the ground, he seemed determined to fire a series of grim questions and allegations at her. “What the hell possessed you to open that door?”

“I thought it would be fun.” From the scorching look of fury on his face as he glanced up from his task, Vashti gathered he was not in the mood for humor. She sighed. “I knew Iago was about to shift into something deadly. I was all that was stopping him getting to you. Opening the door and pushing him out seemed to be the only way to get rid of him.”

Was it her imagination or did his expression soften ever so slightly? It was still stony, just perhaps not as granite-edged as it had been. “You were lucky he chose a leopard. You’d have lost this leg if he’d decided to become a tiger instead.”

“I think his choice was dictated by the space available. He didn’t have room to shift into anything bigger.”

They were still inside the plane. Jethro had insisted they weren’t going anywhere until he’d taken a look at her leg. Having cleaned up the scratches, he was now searching through the first-aid kit he kept on board the plane.

“I need to put a temporary dressing on your leg. When we get to my house, I can take another look and decide if you need to see a doctor.”

“I’m fine.” It felt strange to have those big, capable—surprisingly gentle—hands on her flesh.

“You won’t be if these cuts get infected.”

“How far are we from your house? Tell me we don’t need to do any more flying.”

He grinned and she thought how much smiling suited him. It took that hard edge off his looks. She wanted to tell him to do it more often, then she remembered they didn’t have that sort of relationship. It was strange how sharing a plane journey with him and a leopard had made her forget that Jethro was almost a stranger. And an antagonistic one at that.

He returned to his task, his fingers deft as they placed sterile dressing pads over her wounds and bandaged them in place. “No, just a motorbike ride followed by a short boat journey.”

“Now I know why you were so angry about the distance from the portal to your home.” Vashti remembered Cal’s question—“Do you have to go home first?” And Jethro’s brusque response—“Yes.”

She wanted to ask him more. Like, “Why, when time is so important, are we starting our journey here in Maine?” She suspected, since Cal, who was his friend, had gotten the almost-silent treatment, she wouldn’t fare any better. No doubt about it. The man was an enigma. “I didn’t realize it meant you had to travel from one end of the mortal realm to the other.”

Jethro had finished tending to her leg and was surveying her ruined jeans with a grim look about his mouth. “Nothing I can do about them. You may get some strange looks, but I’m sure you can give them one of your haughty royal stares in response. Can you walk?”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

His eyes lingered on her face. “You are a very unusual girl, did you know that?”

“I’ve had an unusual upbringing.”

Something changed then in the dark depths of those eyes. It was as if he withdrew from her without moving. “So you have. I almost forgot.” The words seemed to rouse him into action. “Wait there.”

After Jethro had landed the plane he’d taxied straight from the runway into a private hangar. His booted footsteps echoed now on the concrete floor as, having jumped down from his side, he walked around the front of the aircraft and opened the passenger door. “Give me your hands.”

Vashti hesitated a moment. Her fierce independence went to war with the fear of looking foolish. What if she found she couldn’t walk and fell flat on her face? Pride won. Placing both her hands in Jethro’s, she allowed him to assist her out of the plane and onto the ground. To her intense relief, her legs, although shaky, held her weight. She leaned against the side of the plane while Jethro retrieved their bags from the space behind the seats, the scene of her recent fight with Iago. Her muscles were stiffening and she was going to have some serious bruises tomorrow to remind her of that encounter.

“Will Iago come after us again?” She would need all her strength if he did.

“Sooner or later, yes. All I know for sure is he’ll do it when we least expect it.” Jethro moved to another part of the hangar. Pulling back a tarp to reveal a mean-looking motorbike, he quickly checked the machine over. Apparently satisfied, he beckoned Vashti over and handed her a helmet. “Put this on.”

She glanced around the hangar. There were numerous other large, vehicle-size, canvas-covered shapes within the building. “Is everything in here yours?”

Jethro was stowing their bags in a cargo box on the bike, but he glanced up at that. “Yes. Why?”

“Necromancing must be a lucrative business.”

There was that grin again. The one she had thought, until so recently, she hated. Now, all of a sudden, it managed to turn her insides to liquid. Vashti wasn’t sure she liked the change. She didn’t have time to examine her reasons, but it felt a lot like control had somehow been handed over to Jethro.

“It pays the rent.”

Once they were out on the open road, Vashti found some of the tension that had gripped her oozing away. The greenery and freshness reminded her of home. Perhaps the mortal realm wasn’t so different or threatening, after all. If you took Iago out of the equation. She had been here before, of course. Moncoya had used his daughters to intimidate and threaten—sometimes to kidnap or assassinate—his enemies. On those occasions, Vashti and Tanzi had been closely guarded. Their focus had been on their assignment not their surroundings.

Vashti remembered a conversation with her father about those missions.

“Why do you send us and not your sidhe warriors?”

Moncoya’s eyes had narrowed. Those eyes were as blue as her own and with the same sidhe ring of fire, yet subtly different. Probably because Moncoya wore eyeliner and Vashti didn’t. “Do you question my judgment?”

“No. I’m not stupid enough to do that.” It was true. Vashti might be more defiant than Tanzi, but she never deliberately incurred his wrath.

He had laughed. “You are my statement to the world. My beautiful twin daughters. My perfectly matched pearls. No one expects you to also be my killing machines. Each time I send you into the mortal realm, it gives two messages. One is about your loyalty to me. The second goes deeper. It tells the world the faerie race is not what legend would like mortals to believe. We do not sit at the bottom of the garden benignly waiting to bestow our favors upon the earth-born race. We have stepped out from between the pages of a child’s tale. Yes, we still look good—” he’d waved a hand to encompass them both “—but we can kill a mortal with one hand.”

Even though, at that time—before she had known the full scale of his villainy, including the fact he had murdered their mother—her loyalty to Moncoya was absolute, the words had caused Vashti to shiver. Yet she knew there had been a time when faeries and mortals had coexisted amicably. Their childhood nurse used to tell Vashti and Tanzi tales of the old days. Days before Moncoya’s rule. It was dangerous talk, but she had risked it. Vashti knew Cal hoped the challenger—if he could be found—would restore some of that lost harmony between mortal and fae. It isn’t lost. It has been systematically destroyed by my father. It had never occurred to Vashti to question the origin of her father’s hatred for mortals.

Cal and Moncoya were half brothers, sharing the same faerie father. While Moncoya’s mother was a sidhe, Cal’s mother was a mortal woman, a nun who had hidden her talented sorcerer son away from his scheming father during childhood so he could not be given to Satan as part of an evil pact. Cal had grown up to become Merlin, the great sorcerer and now the leader of the Otherworld Alliance. Moncoya, through his ruthless drive and ambition, had usurped the faerie throne in a bloody coup. They might share a father, but no two brothers had ever been less alike. Perhaps the fact the brother he hated was half mortal explained Moncoya’s all-encompassing loathing for the earth-born.

Under Jethro’s skillful handling, the powerful bike purred along the country roads like a dream, eating up the miles until they reached a rugged stretch of coast. They followed the scenic route, hugging a dramatic shoreline of soaring, jagged rocks and gunmetal waters on one side and patchwork trees in every shade of green, gold and orange on the other. Finally, Jethro pulled into a narrow lane and halted the bike alongside a wooden boathouse. On the pebbly shore where they stood, the little building was level with the ground, but, as Vashti walked around to stretch her aching limbs, she saw it extended out into the water on raised stilts. A small motorboat, big enough for two people, was pulled up onto decking at the rear of the boathouse.

“Don’t tell me. This is your place and that’s your boat.” She was beginning to wonder if Jethro had transport tucked away all over the mortal realm. But surely she’d heard it was meant to be a big place and that would be beyond his means?

Jethro nodded as he wheeled the bike into the boathouse. He indicated the boat. “Twenty minutes and we’ll be there.”

Where is “there”? Vashti supposed she would find out soon enough. When Jethro had finished stowing their bags in the boat and locking the bike away in the boathouse, she joined him in the little vessel. “It feels like we’ve been traveling forever.”

“Welcome to my world.” He started the engine and the boat was soon skimming over the dark waters. Behind them the coastline with its tall pines and dramatic rocks began to fade. Ahead, an island, roughly horseshoe in shape, covered in the same spiky pines, came into view. “Home.”

There was something in Jethro’s voice as he said that single word. A note Vashti had not heard before. Emotion was something she still could not fully understand, but she had a feeling she was witnessing it now in its rawest form.

As they drew closer, she could see a jetty poking out from the island into the water. Above that, there was a single wooden house. Tall and majestic, set like a jewel among the encircling pine trees, with the sun’s dying rays glinting on high, arched windows. It was hauntingly beautiful.

“Who else lives there?”

“Just me.” Jethro steered the boat toward the end of the jetty. “Welcome to de Loix Island.”

Vashti shook her head. “You own this?”

He laughed at her expression. “I’m a loner. I don’t like sharing. Besides, it belonged to my parents before me.” He brought the boat to a halt alongside the jetty. Springing lightly onto the wooden boards, he reached down a hand to help Vashti.

“A fleet of planes. Motorbikes and boats strategically placed where you need them. Your own island. I may not know much about the mortal realm, but I know enough to know none of those things are normal.” Her hand was still in his as she gazed up at him. “Who are you, Jethro de Loix?”

“Just an ordinary boy—” his irresistible grin appeared; the one that made her want to grab him and kiss him until he begged for mercy “—who happens to have outrageously wealthy parents and kick-ass necromancer powers.”

Chapter 5

Jethro leaned his forearms on the deck rail and looked out over the darkened water. The half-empty glass of Scotch whiskey in his hand was doing its job, as was the feeling of being home. Cal had asked him if he had to come back here. The answer was simple. Yes, he did. He had to remind himself every now and then that life wasn’t all about fighting monsters. That peace and beauty still existed. That his own little corner of tranquility was here any time he wanted it. And he had to check everything was right in his world. This time, of course, he had another reason to return. One he hadn’t divulged to Cal.

Who are you, Jethro de Loix? He’d given Vashti his standard, flippant response. It was the answer he’d honed over the years. Because the truth was too difficult to contemplate explaining to another person. I don’t know who I am. How crazy does that make me sound?

Most of the time it didn’t bother him. He didn’t think about it. Then there were times—like now—when Jethro was reminded of the kindly, elderly couple who had brought him up and the unanswered questions would buzz around inside his head like an annoying, trapped fly. He knew he had not come into their lives by any conventional means. The thought made him smile. His parents—Bertha and Gillespie de Loix—had been older than the grandparents of other boys his age...and they’d both looked younger than their actual years. There had been no baby pictures, no anecdotes about first steps or first words, and no family tree to help him establish his place in the world. Jethro had grown up knowing that, despite their wealth, he meant more to them than gold.

Bertha and Gillespie had done their best to give him a conventional upbringing, yet they had been overawed as they’d watched him grow up to be stronger, faster and smarter than his peers. Gradually their pride had become tinged with fear when it became obvious he had other talents.

How many other children who, having just learned to speak, spent hours sitting alone in the graveyard holding lengthy conversations with unseen companions? When Bertha’s aging tabby cat had been trampled by a horse, it should have been dead. It was dead, she’d insisted later to Gillespie. But after Jethro had whispered a few soothing words and laid his hands on the poor, broken creature, old Mitzi was like a kitten again.

And they never mentioned—because it would really be too foolish to dwell on it—the woman Gillespie had seen in the woods here on their holiday home island. A woman with white hair and pale skin, dressed all in white. She’d reached out her hands to Jethro, beckoning him to her and, enthralled, Gillespie had begun to walk toward her, leading his son with him. It was only when they’d gotten close that her expression had become a mask of malevolent triumph. Too late, Gillespie had realized he was walking into a trap with no way of escaping. At the last minute Jethro had stepped between his father and the apparition and spoken in a language Gillespie hadn’t recognized. The woman froze. When Jethro spoke again—in a voice of command—she had simply vanished.