Power a better-than-average kelpie could channel into an access spell.
“Red!” Maybe Wrenn could wake her up. “Don’t!” She leaped toward the van and grabbed the driver’s side door handle.
Ranger slapped Wrenn’s Heartway token onto Redemption’s hilt.
We bind thee—
Ranger closed his eyes and pushed his head into the headrest. The boy looked up at Wrenn, his big brown eyes wide and determined. And the girl…
The girl knew what was happening. She inhaled deeply at the same time she slapped her free hand over Ranger’s mouth and nose.
“We’ll find—” Wrenn started to say. She’d gotten her hand around the door handle. The wolfmen were inches from getting between Ranger and the kids but that girl knew.
And she did what she needed to do to protect her brother.
What had to be Redemption’s nightmare burst outward from her hilt like an infinitely fast bubble. Ranger vanished into it first. The kids second. Then it came for the wolfmen.
The one on the hood twisted just as Ranger slapped the token onto Red’s hilt. His shoulder came around and he scooped his arm around his brother’s chest but they were closer than Wrenn. And they were magicals in the way of a magic explosion.
The bubble hit Wrenn.
She still had her hand on the van’s door handle. The kids still sat in the seats. Red still stood stuck into the floor between Ranger’s feet. But the world around them changed.
She’d been in Heartway stations many times. They tended to manifest like mass transit rail stations—gates and platforms and waiting benches. Whistling trains for effect and big ticking clocks to remind everyone to move along. Crumpled newspapers on the ground. The scent of oranges or flowers or snow in the air.
But she’d never stood on the rails.
There was no station here. No gateway. Just the lines.
And this place of elves had lines.
“Ley lines” was what the fae called them. The elves didn’t seem to care or utilize the power lines of the Earth, so she doubted they understood what King Oberon was doing underneath the veils. Or maybe they did.
Because here, inside this particular veil, something here in Alfheim out on the edge of town glowed like the busiest station in all the worlds.
She looked back at Ranger, the kids, the sword, and the van door she still gripped.
Ranger opened his eyes. His chin pointed toward the wolfmen.
Except he wasn’t pointing at the wolfmen. He was pointing at the Heartway car, or train, or bubble of spellwork, or enchantment—the name or metaphor didn’t matter—that was about to hit the bubble of power emanating from Redemption.
And then they were gone. All of it—Ranger, the kids, the sword, the damned van and the floor of the garage and the side of the house. All gone, taken by the Heartway to…
Wrenn gasped. Her head spun and her ears rang and she dropped into the new pit that used to be the lawman’s garage. She fell and stumbled, and did her best to stay out of the way of the two also-falling werewolves.
The magic had burned both of them, singed off their fur on the side closest to Redemption. No singes on her, no burns or cuts, either. Just the ringing ears. The wolf who had been in the air when Ranger slapped the token onto the sword—the one named Remy, if she remembered correctly—howled in pain.
The hot tang of werewolf blood hit her nose. Remy’s arm was broken and he bled from a gash across his chest.
The other one snapped at her as she stumbled down the slick side of the pit.
“The wolves are hurt! We need elves down here now!” She held up her hands. “I’ll get you help.”
The big one, Gerard was his name, howled.
Redemption, she thought. What did you do?
A gateway into a desert. Heat. Still night, like here. She knew these things, even though no one told her, or showed her, or communicated to her in any conscious way.
She was still connected to the sword. She had to be.
Ed looked over the edge of the pit. “Where are my children?” he bellowed.
She threw out her hands as if surrounded by ghosts. “Red!” She felt the sword. How long would her connection to the sword hold? “They’re in Texas,” she told the wolves. “Ed!” She reached out her hand. “I feel the sword!”
He immediately stuck out his foot to slide into the pit.
The big Thor elf grabbed his arm. “No. Let us handle this.”
The elves needed to let Ed handle it. They were his kids. They needed him. “Let him go!” she yelled. She could get him into the Heartway. “Ed, I can follow.”
He pulled away from the elf and slid into the pit. “You better not be lying to me.”
“If you can carry out your brother, do it now,” she said to Gerard.
He sniffed at her with his wolf nose, then looked down at Remy.
Gerard Geroux lifted his wounded brother and bounded up the side of the crater.
How was she going to do this? She didn’t have a token, and there weren’t stations here.
But there were lines—lines she’d seen when Red exploded.
“As a Paladin of King Oberon, I hereby officially request law enforcement backup from the Sheriff of Alfheim County.” She looked the Sheriff directly in the eye. “This is not a deal. This is parallel behavior.”
He nodded once.
She looked up at Bjorn Thorsson. “I need you to hit me with whatever magic the sword gave off.”
His lip curled.
“I can hear her!” Wrenn yelled. “She’s talking to me. I can follow!”
“Then you take me,” the big elf said.
“I cannot take an elf into the Heartway.” Probably. Most likely. She’d never tried. Now was not the time to accidentally kill an elder elf.
She could move a mundane, though.
“We’ll call you the moment we have a specific location,” Ed yelled.
Wrenn nodded. “They’re in Texas,” she said.
Bjorn looked over his shoulder. He stiffened. “I’m sending them!” he snapped.
There was another elf up there. Another powerful one.
A sigil formed in front
