She bumped along the frozen ground and followed Ranger onto the trail. They rounded a curve into an open area—and right into the blinding beam of a military-grade flashlight shining from a parking lot a good twenty feet away.
A flashlight held by a mundane against the barrel of a shotgun. “Alfheim County Sheriff!” he shouted. “Turn off the snowmobiles and put your hands in the air! Now!”
Ranger pulled his vehicle around so it faced the lawman and turned it off. He did not raise his hands.
Wrenn pulled up parallel to the kelpie, but far enough away he couldn’t jump her and roll her off the snowmobile.
Ranger pointed at the officer. “Will ye look at that!” he called. “They sent their pet sheriff t’ take care o’ us!”
The officer kept the light mostly on Ranger. “Identify yourselves.” He leaned his head to the side and said something into his shoulder-mounted radio.
“Now, now, laddie, yer gonnae need t’ do better than that,” Ranger crooned. He didn’t seem one bit concerned about the shotgun.
Wrenn didn’t have a lot of experience with guns. They were close to useless when dealing with vampires and fae unless they were specially modified and took specially enchanted ammunition.
You had to get up and personal when dealing with the darkness of the universe.
No overt magic wafted off the officer, so he wasn’t carrying any specific, strong enchantments. If the elves had granted him smaller magicks, she couldn’t see them through the glare of his light. “My name is Wrenn Goodfellow,” she said. “I’m…” How to identify herself in a way that would make sense to someone who knew about magic, but would mean nothing to a regular mundane? “I’m also… law enforcement… where we come from.”
Hopefully, the pauses would get across what she needed to communicate.
The officer said something about “needing points out here” into his radio.
Points? Was that a reference to the pointy ears of elves? “I’m assuming you understand what… law enforcement… means?” Wrenn asked.
“Yes,” said the officer.
Ranger sniffed at the air again. “How many elves did ye call in, little man?” He sniffed again. “The reek o’ these infernal hell-beasts,” he slapped the handlebars of his snowmobile, “is keepin’ me from countin’.” He leaned toward Wrenn. “Gotta catch ’em all, ye know, sweetling.”
He winked.
The three mundanes roared into the clearing. They buzzed their snowmobile back and forth across the head of the trail a few times before stopping.
The driver flipped up the mask of his helmet. “Those are my snowmobiles, Sheriff!” he yelled.
“I know, Brad Anderson,” the officer responded. “Now give these two a wide berth and come around to the parking lot.”
One of the passengers pointed at Wrenn. “She stuck her fancy-ass sword through my cargo case!”
“So give her a wide berth and come around to the parking lot, will ya?” the officer said.
The same kid pointed at Ranger. “That one headlocked Dad with his thighs and he’s got nothing on under that skirt of his!”
Ranger chuckled.
The flashlight beam landed squarely on Ranger. “Let the man talk.”
Ranger shrugged and smoothed the front of his polo shirt. “It’s brisk here!” He looked over his shoulder directly at the three mundanes. “Best if we all went in t’ warm up wi’ some whiskey, eh, boys? Talk about th’ local lassies, aye?”
An enthrallment wave washed off his kelpie body.
He couldn’t affect men. Or could he? The vamped kelpie in the tavern had enthralled everyone, male and female. But Ranger wasn’t a vampire.
Wrenn swung her leg over her snowmobile. The sword hadn’t talked to her, or glowed, or done anything at all since she’d thrust it into the case. The emerald magic around its hilt had dimmed down to nothing more than a faint shimmer, too.
She pulled it out and pointed it at Ranger.
“Hey!” the one the officer had called Brad Anderson yelled. “You let him be!”
Ranger had definitely affected the men.
The kelpie snickered. “Hey, officer! This woman is gonnae manhandle me!”
The officer did not move from his location on the edge of the lot. “I can see that,” he said.
Ranger frowned as if he’d expected the officer to be as affected as the three on the snowmobile. “That’s disappointin’.”
Brad Anderson revved his snowmobile. “Unhand him, harpy, or Brad Jr. and Connor here will have words with you!”
“Unhand him, harpy?” the officer said, and aimed his shotgun. “What’d you do to them?”
Ranger smiled. “Bradley, Bradley Jr., an’ Connor. Hmmm….”
It couldn’t be their Scottish names that allowed the enthralling. Magic didn’t work that way.
Ranger rolled his eyes. “It’s easy t’ trigger aggression in like-minded men.”
Wrenn was well-aware of like-minded men. Victor had been a like-minded man.
The officer briefly threw the beam of his light onto the mundanes. “You Anderson boys turn off your snowmobile. Now!”
The driver turned off the engine. “This is all because they hired one of you,” he said.
Disdain dripped off one of you.
“We aren’t going to start with that, now are we, Brad Anderson?” the officer called.
The two boys got off the back and stepped away from the snowmobile.
Another wave of enthralling rolled off Ranger.
If she didn’t get this under control, the kelpie would get these mundanes to kill each other before any elf showed up. So Wrenn did the only thing she could think of that might make a real difference: She reached for the braided leather around Ranger’s neck.
Ranger pushed his near shoulder toward Wrenn’s body and lowered a hand to grab for the wrist of her sword hand.
He twisted. Her free hand flew by his neck.
Ranger grabbed both her wrists, one in each hand, and held her arms out, locked into position and unable to use the sword or throw up a protection spell.
She should be able to overpower him. He hadn’t been vamped. He was strong—all kelpies were strong—but she’d been chosen as a paladin because very few fae could physically match her strength. Yet she couldn’t move.
She yanked.
