“I’ll find a way around.” I waved at the blackberry brambles and started to turn away, but Ayush lifted his hand.
“I know the government pays you, but if you can find the children, we’ll give you some of our cider and wine and lavender chocolates. As much as you want.”
Lavender chocolate? What strange thing was that? I wouldn’t say no to hard cider, but I wasn’t here for goodies.
“You don’t have to give me anything.” I waved and jogged off to collect my belongings from under the trap and to look for a break in the brush—and Sindari.
As soon as I was out of their sight, I would try summoning him again. And hope that whatever had driven him out of this world wasn’t permanent.
Before I could reach for the charm, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
“Yeah?”
“Ms. Thorvald,” came Colonel Willard’s dry Southern accent. “Did you not learn proper phone etiquette when you were in the army?”
“No. I was a pilot, not a secretary, and then they made me an assassin.”
“Assassins don’t answer phones?” Her connection was spotty, with voices in the background making it worse.
“Not politely. You’re supposed to be fierce and vague in case an enemy is calling. Do you have something new for me? I’m hunting kobolds.” Since the property owners were out of sight, I wrapped my fingers around the cat figurine and mouthed, “Sindari,” to summon him back. I hoped.
“I do have new intel. I’ve lost touch with the forest ranger who was trying to find the kobolds’ den, but the snitch in Port Townsend who first told me about the trouble has updated me. She says they may be taking orders from a leader and not necessarily acting of their own free will.”
“Yeah, I guessed that.”
The silver mist that always formed and coalesced into Sindari was slow to appear, as if it were fighting against some invisible force determined to quash the magic.
“You’ve encountered him or her?” Willard asked.
“Not yet, but someone knocked Sindari back to his realm.”
“Try to find that person instead. Have you killed any kobolds yet?”
“No.” This time, I did rub my butt cheek. “I just spotted them for the first time.”
The mist thickened, and I exhaled in relief as Sindari’s familiar features formed. It was taking longer than usual, but he was coming.
“Avoid killing them unless you can confirm that they’re responsible. We’re trying to create less animosity among the magical community for both our sakes.” There was a grimace in her voice.
“I know. I will.”
Willard’s reply of, “Good,” was almost drowned out by metal clanking in the background.
“Colonel, are you at the gym or are you recycling aluminum cans?”
“I don’t drink anything that comes in a can.”
“That’s what I thought.” I frowned my disapproval at the phone. “Shouldn’t you be resting?”
“I’m doing some walking and light stretching.”
“In the weight room?”
“I’ve been cleared for exercise, Thorvald.” She’d called me Val when she’d been in the hospital dying, but it seemed we were back to formalities now. “It’s fine. I want to get my health back.”
“You had cancer two weeks ago. The best way to get your health back is to rest.”
Finally, Sindari fully formed, once again a solid silver tiger at my side. I’d ask for details as soon as I got off the call but leaned against him and wrapped an arm over his back.
“It was a magically induced unnatural cancer,” Willard said.
“So that means doing squats and bench presses right after is fine? You better not have signed up for a new triathlon.”
“I’m not doing squats. Just light leg presses. And you do know that you’re my lowly civilian contractor, not my boss, right?”
“Lowly? I tower over you.”
“Two inches isn’t towering. If I grew my hair out, I’d be taller than you.”
“I’m positive that you with a six-inch afro isn’t regulation,” I said, though I suspected Willard could wear her hair and her clothes however she wanted at the office in Seattle. The soldiers stationed there were supposed to blend in to more easily monitor and control criminal activity from magical beings hiding out and traveling through the city.
“The regs just say it has to be off your neck and fit in your hat,” Willard said.
“If I had more money, I’d bribe you to grow it out just so I could see that.”
“You’ll get your usual combat bonus if you bring in whoever is leading the kobolds. There’s a school less than a mile from there. We can’t let them keep kidnapping children.”
“I know. I’m on it.” I hung up.
I’d resumed walking as I spoke and reached a stream that flowed through the corner of the property. The blackberry brambles lay thick on one side but hadn’t yet taken over the other.
“Looks like we can get through here, Sindari. What happened to…” I trailed off, realizing he wasn’t at my side.
I whirled, afraid he’d been kicked out of our world again. But I spotted him rolling like a dog on his back under some apple trees.
“Sindari?” I called. “What are you doing?”
He stopped rolling, his legs splayed, his forepaws in the air, but he kept rubbing his head on the grass under the tree. Rolling, he replied.
“I see you’re not overly traumatized by whatever punted you away from Earth. That was someone else’s doing, wasn’t it? You didn’t simply get tired and want to take a nap?”
Of course not, Val. My stamina is amazing. And I’ve only spent an hour in your world today. Sindari kept rubbing his head in the grass.
“Well, if you wouldn’t mind, we still need to find a kobold to question. And can you close your legs? I can see your junk.”
My what?
“Never mind. I’m going this way. Please join me at your earliest convenience.”
My boots squished in mud as I walked along a well-used trail on the clear side of the stream. It grew dim quickly under the forest of firs and hemlocks, the trunks rising a hundred feet and more. Dew dripped from the branches, occasionally landing on my head.
Every few steps, I knelt down to study fresh prints in the mud. They were smaller than mine but not as small as kobold prints. Maybe the local children used this path to cut through from property to property. That was another reason to find whoever was threatening them.
You’re going the right direction, Sindari told me as he caught up. Forgive my distraction. I could not resist.
“Resist what? Did someone sprinkle catnip under those trees?”
Fertilizer, I believe.
“Isn’t that stuff poisonous to animals?”
This was bone meal and fish meal fertilizer. Quite aromatic and delightful.
Maybe I would get some catnip later and see if my mighty silver tiger would roll around like that on my living room floor.
“Where did you go when you disappeared? Did you catch the kobold?”
No. I was close and then… ah, I found a trap of my own.
“You didn’t step in a snare and fly up in a tree, did you?”
No, I’m not so foolish.
“Ha ha.”
Follow me. Sindari sprang across the creek and onto another path. Here, the brambles had been burned back, as if by someone with a flamethrower. It was hard to imagine that being effective, since the forest was still very damp this early in the season. The trap was expertly laid and camouflaged. I didn’t sense the magic until it sprang, knocking me back into my realm with a blast of pain.
I’m sorry you were hurt. Do kobolds have mages powerful enough to create such things? I eyed the burned-back vines, wondering if magic had been used rather than a flamethrower.
It wasn’t created by a kobold.
Do you know what did create it?
Sindari didn’t answer right away, instead leading me around bends in the trail, then on toward an opening in the trees ahead. Maybe he didn’t know who had created it.
A faint tingle poked at my senses, like electricity under a high-voltage line. Magic.
Eventually, the trail led us into a large meadow of waist-high grass leading to an old windmill beside a creek. Sindari sat on his haunches and faced it. It was the source of the magic.
That is who created it, Sindari told me.
The windmill? I drew even with him, my instincts itching. The windmill represented a threat, but I also had the feeling that someone was watching us.
No, the being using it for its lair. He isn’t there now, but I can smell dragon.
I gave him a sharp look. Zav?
I didn’t sense his aura, and it was powerful enough that I usually did from a mile away. All I sensed, other than the windmill itself was…
Oh, damn. There were the kobolds again. I’d almost missed their auras since the windmill radiated magic. They were out in the tall grass. All six of them. Had they spotted us yet?
No. I recognize the scent of Lord Zavryd. This is another dragon.
“Another dragon?” I blurted out loud before I caught myself and switched to silent speech. How can we have gone from no dragons on Earth for a thousand years to two in the same month?
I don’t know, but brace yourself. We’re about to be—
All six kobolds rushed toward us, the grasses wavering madly with their passage. As I drew Chopper, the first one came into view. He’d traded his slingshot for a gun.
3
I dove to the side, rolling into the grass, a split second before the kobold fired at me.
Sindari pounced as the bullet whizzed past my head. He tackled the kobold with the gun, but the five others burst out of the grass, armed with guns, daggers, and bows and arrows. The weapons were small enough to fit in their diminutive hands—but dangerous enough to be deadly.
I leaped up from my roll in time to greet two rushing kobolds, one male and one female, with Chopper.