Benta frowned. “There is,” she says. “We deal with these two first.”
“That one says she’s fae law enforcement.” Sheriff Martinez waved his hand toward Wrenn.
The elf named Benta unzipped her coat as she walked toward the snowmobiles. “Fae laws? Ha.” She revealed a perfect hourglass dressed only in a crop top under the coat.
“Damn,” Ranger breathed. “I’m in love.”
Elven tattoos circled the elf’s waist. She flicked her wrists again.
The magic on her fingertips danced onto her tattoos. Colors rose. Patterns formed. And a new sigil hit Ranger.
“He’s a kelpie, alright,” she said. “And thankfully not something worse masquerading as a pretty-boy horse.” She walked toward Ranger. “Kelpies are not welcome in Alfheim.”
“It’s nae my fault,” he whispered through his containment spell, and did his best to nod toward Wrenn.
Benta turned to Wrenn. “You claim to be law enforcement?”
“I am,” Wrenn whispered.
A new sigil formed around Benta’s fingers. She slapped it against Wrenn’s chest.
Fire screamed up Wrenn’s throat. She gasped, but it disappeared as fast as it hit.
“You’re carrying some complicated fae magicks.” Benta stepped back. Her eyes narrowed. She leaned her head back to call to Sheriff Martinez but kept her eyes on Wrenn. “She’s not fae. I can’t get a good read because of the enchantments.” She leaned closer again. “Huh. Ed, please come here.”
“I’m a Royal Guard Paladin,” Wrenn whispered. “I hunt vampires and dark fae for the King. I’m on a case.” Dare she say more to the elf? She needed to understand the politics here first. If she pissed off the elves, she might inadvertently get herself in trouble with the King. Worse, she could cause an incident.
Benta stepped back. “Oberon.” A string of Old Norse followed.
Or cause a war.
“Wrong thing t’ say t’ an elf, darlin’,” Ranger whispered.
“Quiet.” Benta slapped a secondary spell over his mouth.
“Please release me so I can return the kelpie to Oberon’s Castle. We will deal with him there,” Wrenn said.
Sheriff Martinez watched Ranger more than Wrenn or the elf, and still held his shotgun ready. He walked over and stood behind Benta.
The elder elf stepped closer and tilted her head to the side as she peered at Wrenn’s eyes. Then she stepped to the side as if looking for marks or scars along Wrenn’s hairline. “Ed,” she said. “There’s a resemblance here, is there not?”
The Sheriff gave Wrenn the first good look all evening. His eyebrows arched. “You got family here, Ms. Law Enforcement?”
Family. “No,” she said. The “family” she had here was not her family. Not at all.
He shrugged. “What about the sword?”
“I got it by accident,” Wrenn said.
Benta frowned. “There are no accidents with the fae.” She peered at the sword. “Woodland sharks, the lot of them.”
Not Robin. Well, yes Robin, but at least Robin had some scruples.
Benta reached for the sword. “What’s your name, mundane?”
She wasn’t a mundane. She was a witch. Better, though, that the elf thought her a mundane. “Wrenn,” she said. “Wrenn Goodfellow.”
Benta snatched back her hand. “Goodfellow? And you carry an elven blade?”
Ranger’s eyes widened and he smirked as if to say Ye’ve stepped in it now, luv.
Sheriff Martinez leaned toward Benta. “If she really hunts vampires, maybe she can tell us why the kelpie knows.”
He was referring to the Gulf Coast vamps. “I’d like to know, too,” Wrenn said. “I think it’s caught up in my case.”
Officer Martinez pointed at Wrenn. “I want to talk to this one.”
Benta shook her head. “No deals, Ed. Not even with fae-adjacent mundanes.”
He scowled.
The elf’s wrists flicked. Two small, tight, fast-spinning sigils formed at her fingertips.
She grabbed for the sword still in Wrenn’s grip.
And the huge fancy elven blade, the one that had maybe told Wrenn its name was Red, the one she felt might be a she—the one that was otherwise just a sword—decided it had an opinion.
Mine! exploded off the sword as a concussive wave.
A wave of blue-white, electrical magic.
Chapter 15
The elf named Benta took the blast full in the face and yet somehow stood her ground. Sheriff Martinez fell over into the snow. And Wrenn…
This was not the first time in Wrenn’s life she’d stood in the center of a ball of possessiveness. She’d watched possessiveness take on the shape of blindingly blue-white light before.
The moment when Victor’s vampire creation had ripped Victor’s head from his body—the memory, the vision, the pain and terror and screaming—overlaid itself over reality as if the moment itself was the true fiend.
And for a split second—less than a split second, or maybe more, maybe a whole lifetime—the sword in Wrenn’s hand became Victor’s lightning rod. The possessiveness became Victor. The Sheriff fell to the ground and out of the intruding overlay of her memories … but Ranger did not.
Ranger did what all kelpies do—he flared his nostrils and pulled in the scent of her frozen muscles and her thumping heart. And Ranger became the monster.
But he had always been a monster. Like Victor’s, a beautiful one, but with pale green eyes. An inordinately perfect specimen of male size, shape, terror, and rage.
And the real-world wave of possessiveness that had burst off the sword, the wave that had knocked her memories back into her vision, the ball of magic from the elven blade did something much worse than knocking the sheriff to the ground.
It stripped the containment spells off Wrenn and Ranger.
He was free to rip the head off the world.
The sword had no idea what it had done. It had barked at the elf and gone back to sleep like some giant narcoleptic war dog.
It was still in Wrenn’s hand. Still heavy and superbly balanced and sharp as death itself. Still something that, like Victor, was probably going to haunt her for the rest of her life.
Her fingers spasmed. Her forearm jerked.
Wrenn dropped the elven sword.
Ranger twisted his shoulder and swept his hand toward the hilt. He arched and he lunged and he grabbed the hilt just before he landed on his back in the snow.
The blue-white memory overlay popped and sparked
