“You will not!” Sebille and I both said at once.
Fighting a grin, Sampson pointed toward an old-fashioned, panel-sided car that was parked in front of the herbal store. It looked a little like a hearse. I really hoped that wasn’t prescient. “We can drive to the boundary of King Rhorr’s land in my car. We’ll have to walk from there.”
We piled inside and Sampson drove out of the lot. “It’s a fifteen-minute drive to the border. Then it should take us another fifteen to the portal. Assuming we don’t get waylaid.”
My brows rose to my hairline. “Waylaid?”
Sampson made a dismissive sound. “You know ogres.”
Yeah, I did. Which was why my stomach was churning from his words.
We drove in silence through a lush, green landscape with gently rolling hills that got sharper and larger in the distance. The foothills rolled toward a range of perpetually snow-capped mountains that bordered and then eventually cut through The Enchanted Forest.
It was a beautiful drive. Until it wasn’t.
One minute the landscape was lush and green. The next it was brown and rocky. Sampson pulled off the road and drove across a dusty patch of ground bordered on three sides by smaller rocks built into a low wall. It was clearly a parking lot built by ogres. Sampson stopped the car in the middle of the space and killed the engine.
We all sat looking across the land in front of us, seeing the broken towers and archways that I remembered from when Sebille and I had been there before.
Huge chunks of rock dotted the space, like squat, gray trees with no branches. Every gust of wind carried whirls of dust across the barren acreage.
We all filed out of the car.
Sampson pointed toward a tiny archway in the distance, next to a small pond with muddy looking water. “That’s the portal we need.”
“How can you tell?” Grym asked. “There are dozens of them.”
Sampson nodded. “I don’t have a strong connection to the place anymore. But I can still see its aura. There’s a glossy red aura over that portal. It will take us to Loveland.”
We started walking.
After a few steps, Sampson jerked to a stop and turned to Lea in her Nina glamour. He gave her an apologetic look. “I need to treat you like you’re Nina,” he said. “Desiree might have spies around the portal.”
Lea nodded and let him take her arm.
We managed to make it nearly to the portal before we saw the ogre. In fact, we got within fifteen feet of it.
So close.
A bald, purple mountain stepped out from behind a boulder, the ogre’s heavy features fixed in a murderous expression. He was holding a club that might have weighed as much as I did, and his thick, hairy arms were too muscular to fall straight at his sides. He had no hair on his head, but he had a coarse, rectangular patch of hair hanging from below his lips. The rough beard was cut straight across at the bottom and flexed as he snarled a warning to us. “Who goes there?”
“Who writes this guy’s dialogue?” I murmured to Sebille. She snorted in response.
Sampson lifted one fist in the air and then smacked it hard against his chest. He spoke a few words in a guttural language that I didn’t understand. But I recognized it as the language Rick and Maxine had spoken with the naked ogre.
The mountain with the club didn’t respond except to narrow his small blue eyes.
“This is Prince Denzel of Loveland,” Grym said. “I’m Detective Grym of the Enchanted Police Department.” He pointed to me. “That’s the Keeper of the Artifacts, Naida Griffith and that,” he jerked a thumb toward Sebille, “Is Princess Sebille of the fae.”
The ogre’s gaze slid to Lea-Nina and he grunted.
“My wife,” Sampson said. He reached down and placed a big hand over Lea’s belly and said, “Our unborn child.”
The ogre pursed his lips thoughtfully.
Sebille leaned close to whisper. “Ogres love babies.”
I nodded. Good to know.
The creature’s small eyes softened for a beat as he stared at Nina-Lea, and then he threw back his head and laughed, a sound like boulders tumbling down a mountainside. The strong scent of roses wafted over me as he bent double and slapped his thick, hairy knees. “We fight,” he said, his eyes alight. He straightened and jerked a thumb toward Sampson and then Grym. “For women and child. Winner takes all.”
Okay, the baby thing had definitely backfired.
Grym shook his head. “That’s not going to happen. I demand an audience with King Rhorr.”
The ogre shook his head and slammed the club on the ground. Twenty feet away, a chunk of an enormous column of rock cracked away from the top and slammed to the ground.
Fluttering ferret farts! He was going to kill Grym and Sampson with that thing. I stepped forward. “Listen, you. We’re not prizes to be won or lost. Now just step aside and you can get back to your business.” I grimaced. “Whatever that is.”
The ogre blinked, his dark brows lowering as he thought about my demand. He slammed the club down again. “We fight!” he roared. The sound rumbled across the land like a boom of thunder, echoing against the distant hills.
Without warning, he lumbered toward Grym, swinging the massive club across his middle.
Grym barely managed to suck backward in time to avoid being struck, but I knew it would only take one direct strike in the wrong place to kill him.
Unless…
In a flash of light, Grym transformed into his gargoyle shape.
Gently shoving Lea-Nina aside, Sampson followed suit. In the blink of an eye, he became the giant wolf I remembered from the mall. Both men attacked at once, driving the massive creature back with a rapid-fire array of slashes, snapping jaws, and club-like pounding from Grym’s rocky fists.
But the ogre didn’t stay on the defensive for long. He raised the club above his head and slammed it into Grym. It only grazed his arm, but the impact was enough to drive Grym to
