Ellie pounded her fists into her mother’s armored leg. “Let me go, Mom! The—”
She stopped talking. She wrapped the fingers of one hand around the one thing every story said was the only means by which to make a kelpie pliable. The one magical item that kept them under control.
She wrapped her other arm up and around her back, and pressed down on her backpack as if making sure the bag was as much in contact with her body as possible.
Then she looked up at me. “I love you, Frank,” she said.
Ellie vanished.
The cottage took her and all she held, including the kelpie’s bridle.
Chapter 18
The cottage had taken Ellie. She was safe. I had to believe she was safe. I would believe she was safe. Not believing in her safety felt like a bullet hole from which I would bleed out in both body and mind.
If I still had my mate magic, I’d know. I’d feel if she was safe. I’d know.
But I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t be sure until I reached the cottage.
Or I got my mojo back.
I stared down at Titania. “Give me back what you stole,” I growled.
She adjusted her antlered helmet and made a small motion toward the kelpie’s head as if to tell me to shut my damned mouth in front of the evil fae.
I knew some of the stories about kelpies. About how they embodied the malevolence of dangerous waters, both as untamable horses and as handsome strangers who dragged their victims to their deaths.
The question was just how angry the kelpie Titania had bridled was, and whether or not he feared his Queen more than he wanted to give himself over to his rage.
This place favored the rage.
The kelpie’s eyes turned bright, demonic red. He wail-whinnied a shriek so piercing and evil I cringed.
Titania should have just held onto his back and let him shriek. Violent acting out took a lot of fast twitch energy and he would have calmed down enough for her get control pretty quickly. But she didn’t.
She slapped one of her gags onto the kelpie’s muzzle.
The kelpie bucked and kicked. Titania was now on the back of a wild raging Scottish bronco and for a second, I felt sorry for her.
Only for a second.
The kelpie bucked her off. She twisted in the air like a cat and landed in a crouch too close to his lashing hooves. One of the kelpie’s front legs hit one of the sharp, crystalline antlers.
Kelpie blood splattered across her front.
This time, the shriek moved toward the kelpie as if he pulled it back from the magic of the veil. It hit my back like a gale-force wind and grated against my ears like a sandstorm. The sound pushed on the kelpie, shrinking him down, and concentrating his magic into a smaller body.
A beautiful young man appeared, one strong and healthy with a head of large black curls. Blood dripped from under the edge of the black t-shirt covering his left bicep but he didn’t seem to notice. He also wore a black modern-looking tactical kilt and big heavy boots, all with a strong paramilitary feel.
He picked up a rock and whipped it at Titania’s head. Rapid, angry Gaelic followed. Then he turned toward me.
His eyes were the same green death color he’d been in horse form. “Oh, look. Another paladin,” he said. “How special for ye.”
I was no more a paladin than I was a jotunn. “I am not your enemy,” I said.
He grinned. “I smell a lake on ye.” He sniffed the air. “Smelled the same lake on th’ magic the Queen kidnapped.” He leaned forward. “No concealments can hide a healthy young thief from me.”
Ellie’s concealments worked on him, but not as well as they did other magicals. The cottage got her away, but she’d also taken his bridle.
I wanted Bloodyhoof to trample this miscreant into the magical soil of the veil, but I had a feeling that’s what he wanted.
He wanted my horse, and I think my stallion knew it, too.
Bloodyhoof reared and met the kelpie’s words with his own loud and strong neigh.
The kelpie laughed. “Aren’t ye gonnae make a dash for it?”
Titania righted her helmet. “Dash for what?”
Oh, she knew he meant a dash for the cottage and my lake. I could tell from the extra flair in how she dusted her knees and the exaggerated wiggle of her torso. She was being contrary while showing dominance. She’d gone into full trickster stance.
The kelpie touched the gash on his arm, then rubbed his cheek and his lips, smearing blood across his face. “I smell her, mah Queen.”
Titania stopped prancing. She looked up at me. “I don’t know how you convinced the cottage to pull her back after I told it to listen, Frank Victorsson.”
It had worked.
She held out her hands and her crystalline armor collapsed onto her body. “It’s tired.” The armor darkened into shimmering night-filled glass. “Which means it won’t do what it needs to do until it has enough power.”
It was still in Alfheim. It had called back its battery—but it needed to recharge. I had time. I could get to Ellie the way I had last night. I could find my way before the cottage closed up for the night, drained away Ellie’s power, and moved her somewhere else.
The kelpie might get to her, too.
Titania pointed at the kelpie. “Tell Odinsson what he’s dealing with now.”
She vanished just as a new blast of magic hit my back.
The kelpie’s eyes widened in terror and he turned to run into the corn field across the service road.
Arne jumped through first. Magnus appeared with Sal and her scabbard in his hand. They reined the horses around as they watched the kelpie run between the harvested corn stalks.
Arne’s All-Father surfaced, then sank back under his armor, then surfaced again in an oscillating brilliance I had no choice but to turn away from. Magnus’s beauty, though, showed up the kelpie’s handsomeness for
