“So violent!” He snickered again. “More proof this town needs discipline.”
Not even the vampires had been this insipid.
A distant scream of a siren filtered through the trees. Ed was close by.
I lifted St. Martin off the ground by his neck and spun us around so I could get a better view of any vehicle coming down my driveway.
My house vanished. My garage, too, and Bloodyhood. Axlam’s car. I changed our angle to the world and we were in the woods, between trees I did not recognize, yet under the same blizzard-filled sky and among the same blowing snow.
My deck—my house—was gone. The lake, too. No temperature changes. No real wind change, either. Just a move into the trees.
The snow fell in sheets of blinding crystals and the wind howled as if he had moved us into the heart of the blizzard, and I was not near my home.
I shook St. Martin. “What did you do?” There hadn’t been a burst of magic like when he stole the kids, or any sign that he’d moved us into a pocket land. My house might still be there. The trees could be an illusion.
He snickered as he dangled from my hand.
“Threatening Alfheim will fast-track you into a permanent, uncomfortable, elf-controlled existence,” I said.
He gulped and slapped at my arm. The granite-hard shell around his fingers stung but he wasn’t nearly strong enough to do real damage. “Those little girls giggling on your deck looked tasty,” he croaked out. “My, grandma, what big ears you have.”
He said those little girls on your deck as if he’d planned to take them, but hadn’t.
Something was wrong—obviously the situation was wrong, but I was beginning to wonder if there was another unknown force at work here.
“Your boss. I want a name.” He did not have a real genie on his side. He was too inept with his planning and his posturing. “I want locations of all spells meant to harm the wolves.” But then again, genies did like the incompetent. “And I want the children returned. Now.”
He slapped at my wrist again, and tried to pull away his gun hand. “Put me down, you pathetic monster. Nobody loves you. Never have. Never will.”
I gave him a good shake. “Your shell is keeping me from pressing into your skin.” I rolled my shoulder outward and used every muscle in my back and arm to crank his gun hand to the side.
He shrieked.
“Yet overpowering your bones is such a simple matter,” I said.
“She killed my father!” he yelled. “Bitch needs to be taught her place!” No threats toward the children, only his predictable and pathetic daddy issues.
I yanked him close so he’d feel my breath. “This stops now. Do you understand, insect?”
“I’m going to catch the Sheriff’s girl,” he croaked out. “I’m going to catch that little elf and that puppy of hers. I’m going to put that murderer in a cage and I’m going to feed her those children one at a time. That’s what you all fear, isn’t it? That the true nature of the wolf will overtake the Alfheim Pack? And that the elves won’t be able to stop the resulting dismemberment?”
He spit. It hit my cheek like it had already frozen.
“That’s why my genie said to plan. That’s why he said to chip away at their mundane protections!” He swung his legs and tried to push me away with his feet.
It didn’t work.
“I’ll call those American immigration police!” he croaked out. “The ones who take babies without any dark magical help!”
He was using every possible attack—magical and mundane. And if he really did work for a genie—or a genie worked for him—he literally had access to chaos.
Chaos magic explained his erratic behavior. It explained the unpredictability and the ability to slam sideways into Alfheim like an eighteen-wheeler crossing a highway.
“What’s your special town going to do when they show up just as the pack is changing to run the blizzard? What are you going to do when they find that bitch with blood in her mouth and the torn-apart bodies of Alfheim’s sweetest little ones?”
All I needed to do was crack his shell. I could snap a few bones and render him unconscious.
And pray his benefactor didn’t have other tentacles into Alfheim—which it might. St. Martin did not seem to understand that the kids were already gone, or that all of them had been taken, not just those closest to Axlam. That might have happened without him knowing.
I swung him around and slammed his back into a tree hard enough to break his spine.
He croaked out a laugh. “My genie made special arrangements for you, jotunn!” he yipped—and cowered down into his magical shell. He literally shrunk away into whatever connective space the magic controlled.
I almost dropped him. Almost. But I had a grip on his aiming hand and control of his position and giving that up would give him the advantage—except his pulling back gave his shell room to work.
And to turn inside out.
Chapter 23
Amber magic latched onto my face. Amber glue, or sap, or the vomit of a bug flipped around from where it surrounded St. Martin and snapped itself around my head like a bubblegum bubble popping.
I gasped. Air moved into my lungs, but more slowly than it should. This wasn’t the oily low-demon-like rage magic my brother had used. This was barrier magic, the kind that keeps the mundane world at bay. St. Martin—no, his genie—had distilled it into a plastic bag he’d pulled over my head.
I whipped St. Martin into the trees and clawed at the magic goo wrapped around my head. He vanished into the storm and hit a tree not too far away. The thud echoed through the hissing of the snow and ice. He groaned. I tried once again to inhale.
The amber turned the grayness of the snow into a muddy brown, and the tree trunks to black. It amplified the roaring, both of my own blood in my ears and
