The only one who might know for sure was the six-tailed rat demon clenched in his white gloved hand.
The gun Detective Marco had pressed to the thing’s head was unlikely to elicit any honest answers. Demons didn’t fear death.
Rachel, however…
“Keep it away from me!” the rat demon screamed.
The rat thing squirmed frantically. Dug its little claws into the meat of Hilaro’s padded, fleshy hands.
Rachel took a step closer. Her hands remained clenched into fists at her sides. And her eyes blazed with green light.
Which was beyond normal even for a talent.
“I’ll make it talk,” Rachel said. Her voice took on a strange, echoing quality.
Oh dear.
Hilario held up his other hand. Which still had the crowbar in it.
Even as he realized the unfriendliness of the gesture, Rachel’s eerie green eyes blazed brighter.
He released his grip on the crowbar just in time.
It flew from his hand, surrounded by a corona of green fire. The crowbar spun like a propeller. Swirled around the group, trailing green sparks.
Oh dear, this was so very bad.
“Rachel!” Hilario shouted, “Stop! Your magic doesn’t belong in this place. It will call the bad things.”
The crowbar stopped spinning. In front of her. The green fire around it blazed even brighter. Metal groaned and screeched. The metal stretched. Flattened. Took on a new form.
Into a thin bladed sword.
Rachel reached out. Wrapped delicate fingers around the newly formed hilt. The green fire ran up her arm. Over her entire body. Green flames licked the air around her. But the fire didn’t consume her. Didn’t even harm her clothes.
“Let them come,” she said in her strangely echoing voice.
Easy for her to say.
He racked his memory. Green fire. Where had he heard of it? And what did it mean? Was it another type of energy?
And where had Rachel come from?
She certainly wasn’t from the normal world.
“Holy fuck, Rach, what’s going on?” Marco said.
He stood, gun held loose at his side, his face slack and dazed.
If he were closer, Hilario would have snatched the gun from him. Thrown it over the cliff. And then maybe run as far as he could as fast as he could. There was a part of him. The old, stained part of himself that wanted to shrink back from that green fire. An instinctual fear that nearly turned his spine to water.
The Green Realm.
A fragment of the legend popped back into his mind. A legend of a lost land and a city. Maybe not lost, though. The queen of the realm…
“Give the creature to me,” Rachel said.
Her voice commanded. Automatically his arm started to extend. The six-tailed rat demon screamed and dug his claws deeper into Hilario’s hand. Pain shocked him out of the trance of command.
He stumbled back.
“Rachel, wait,” he said.
“No!”
Her voice rumbled like thunder.
Oh dear.
He opened a sliver of his inner senses to assess what was in front of him. Was nearly blown back by the waves of power radiating from her. So much of it. Where was it coming from?
“Give it to me.”
She lowered her sword at him. Green fire licked up and down the blade. The rat demon screamed. A high pitched warble that threatened to burst his eardrums.
“Rachel!” Marco shouted.
Somehow he’d come out of his daze. He had his gun up again. His jaw clench and his thick brows drawn down.
The gun was pointed, of course, at Hilario’s head.
“I got this!” Marco said.
The detective moved toward Hilario. Reached out for the rat demon.
How was this going so wrong?
23
The Green Realm.
What was it?
A fragment of a song popped into Hilario’s head.
Oh, the Gypsies of the Green Realm….
…wandered the endless night…
…no home but the stars…
…look not into their eyes…
…burning sorrow in their hearts…
…for the lost city of the Green Realm…
He’d heard it sung in a tavern by a troupe of goblin-elves. Nasty things that were repulsive, yet strangely attractive. They were sloppy drunk, singing lustily at the top of their lungs. At least until the tavern owner threatened to behead them with his bloodstained ax.
Curious, Hilario had asked the tavern owner, a scarred meta-orc with three arms and a terrible scar running down the left side of its face, about the Green Realm.
Don’t be askin’ ‘bout that, the tavern owner said, the words barely intelligible from his mangled lips. Them green gypsies ain’t been seen since back before the dragons. Tricky things. Powerful. Wouldn’t wanna mess wit them again. Theys realm be lost and theys scattered. All the ways dead, I hopes. Good riddance to ‘em.
Which was about as much as he ever found about it. The twist in his gut told him he should have asked around some more.
Especially with Rachel standing before him, covered in strange green fire, using a kind of energy he’d never experienced before.
Though at the moment, not having Detective Marco pointing a gun at his head topped his list of current desires.
“Give me that fucking thing,” Marco said.
Hilario took a tentative step back. The dank, fetid air of the realm of despair, reeking of death and rot, clogged his nostrils. The gusting wind rattled the blood thorn trees behind him, their branches scrapped against each other like glass on metal. The van’s weak headlights cast rippling shadows on the barbed gate and the rough stones of the lighthouse behind it.
Marco had a crazed look that suggested he really shouldn’t be handling a firearm. Or any weapon.
And if he was in his right mind, he definitely wouldn’t be asking to hold a six-tailed rat demon.
“Respectfully, sir, that would be
