Ed wasn’t so sure about that. Not after Sophia’s bout with… something… on Samhain evening. He couldn’t remember. “They’re bait. I know. Answer my questions. Which way? How far ahead are they?”
She held up her hand as if she were listening for something.
Back in Alfheim, Bjorn had zapped him with a spell to clear away his fatigue. Which it had. But he was pretty sure the shortness of temper that always happened when he needed sleep was still there. Still festering. Still making him hotheaded.
That hotheadedness was what had gotten him into his original vampire problem.
She looked around. “We need a plan,” she said.
Ah, yes, he thought. Our best-laid plans.
Wrenn shook her head, then peered into the trees again. “I don’t see where they are,” she said. “Ranger’s not actively spiking his magic. I think I hear Red.”
The sword was still talking to her. “What’s it saying? Is it aware that it’s with my kids?” Because the other magical artifact seemed well aware when it was around children.
“She keeps repeating ‘We bind thee, Fenrir.’ I can track her, but she’s not stable enough to help.” Wrenn snatched a good-sized branch off the ground. “So we need a plan, especially if we run into vampires.” She twirled it around her hand. “Will one of these work on the local vamps if I use it as a stake?”
Fenrir, he thought. “Fenrir?” he asked.
Fenrir meant Ragnarok.
And Ragnarok meant an end to the elves.
He didn’t know that for sure. But then again, most people who got a cancer diagnosis didn't know for sure that it was going to kill them. Who knew? You might get hit by a bus instead.
“Fenrir,” he sighed. Ragnarok was going to kill him. He was pretty sure of it. “I need to get my kids.” Get them home and make plans to keep his family as safe as possible during the end of the world.
The expression on Wrenn’s face suggested that she was a lot better at reading people than her brother. It also suggested that she was a lot better at making sure other people didn’t read her. “You do understand that if this leads to one of us—or Ranger, for that matter—killing Warren Clayton, there’s going to be a war.”
Ed sighed again. “From my understanding, the kelpies thought they could profit off the vamp-on-vamp violence that’s already going on.” He pushed his way into the brush again. “As a great man once said, ‘Let them fight.’”
The faster the dark magicals killed each other off, the fewer of them they’d have to deal with post-Ragnarok. If there was going to be a post-Ragnarok.
“They’re kidnapping regular fae and feeding them to the vampires,” Wrenn said.
“That damned kelpie kidnapped my regular kids and he’s about to feed them to the vampires!” Ed shouted.
Whatever Bjorn had done to counter his fatigue hadn’t propped up the mechanisms he used to keep his hotheadedness under control. Probably because that control came from a lot of what his wife called metacognition.
Wrenn peered at Ed’s eyes. “Bjorn Thorsson’s anti-fatigue spell is wearing off.” She didn’t ask. She stated.
“You think, Victorsdottir?”
Her jaw clenched. “I was on the brink of drowning. Victor found me. He made sure I didn’t die.” She blinked three, four times in rapid succession. “He told me I couldn’t leave because he’d built a monster and that monster wanted me as his mate.”
“And?” Ed asked. She was big and strong and could have smacked the living shit out of that fop he’d seen in the Heartway so she was running on excuses.
Her lip twitched. “You’re his friend, aren’t you?”
“Who?” he responded, though he knew damned well who she meant.
“The monster.”
Ed laughed. “You believed what Victor Frankenstein told you?”
“He tried to drown me.” Her voice had turned ice cold.
Ed blinked. “Victor tried to drown you? I thought you said he’d saved you.”
She looked as if she was about to throw a punch. “Your friend tried to drown me,” she spat through clenched teeth.
And there it was. The railroad connecting two hundred years of Wrenn Goodfellow’s beliefs contained a hub of fakery around which she’d built a good chunk of her life. Was it Ed’s job to rip down the façade? Maybe. Maybe not. But he was a hothead, and like she said, Frank was his friend.
“You think Frank tried to drown you?” He laughed again. “Frank, who has lived with the elves since that ice thing with your fa—Victor Frankenstein? Frank’s a teddy bear.” A preoccupied teddy bear, but still a teddy bear.
“His name is Frank?” she asked.
Had she calmed down? “Yes,” he answered. “He did not try to drown you, Wrenn of the fae. I will stake my reputation on that.” Of course he didn’t know for sure if it was a lie. How could he? But he had a pretty good sense of human behavior. “Do you really think the elves of Alfheim would have adopted a murderer?”
She rolled her eyes.
He realized immediately the hypocrisy of his statement. “Those two vampires were an experiment. The elves wanted to see if they could help them be better. They did, for seventy years. Then…” He waved his hand toward the coast. “The point is that we all knew what those two vampires were, but the elves, they had to try. We all know what Frank is, too. There’s no need to try, with him.”
Her lips thinned. “I have Victor’s notes. His logs. I have proof.”
Ed threw his hands into the air. “Did the fae get those for you?” She sure was holding on tight to those beliefs, wasn’t she? “Because something tells me you’re firmly under the thumb of your precious King Oberon.”
She pushed by him. “I have a kelpie to bring in.”
“A kelpie who just happened to help you steal an elven artifact that’s talking up Ragnarok, for Odin’s sake! And drops you into Alfheim? Where your brother Victor told you is a monster just happens to live? Right after we have
