CHAPTER NINETEEN
WHEN I WAS LITTLE, I saw a movie called Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I now felt like I was starring in one called Trains, Ferries and Taxis, because that was what I’d been traveling in for the past two weeks.
I’d waited one more day in Montenegro before leaving. As devastated as I was, I couldn’t spend any more time nursing my broken heart. I’d already given any demons that were after the spearhead enough of a head start. So, I’d gotten the bank account information from Costa, nearly fainted at how much money was in them, then made arrangements for the first stop on our spearhead-hunting trip.
Adrian had listed several places where the spearhead might be. The good news was that most of them were on this side of the globe. The bad news was that still left a huge amount of territory to cover. It hadn’t been a big deal for Adrian back then. He’d had demon realm vortexes to use for his mode of travel, and those were nearly as quick as teleportation. I, however, didn’t have access to either demon realm vortexes or the light realms, which were even better because I could simply think my way to wherever I wanted to go in those. No, I had to do this the slow, hard way.
Flying would’ve shortened things by a lot, but that would mean leaving Brutus behind. At least once over the bumpy, sleep-deprived and seasick two weeks I’d spent traveling, I have to admit that I considered that, but I couldn’t. For starters, Brutus was invaluable when it came to his fighting abilities and his capacity to get us away quickly if the fight was unwinnable. More important, however, he was a cherished friend.
Yes, when we’d first met, I’d viewed Brutus as an unwanted protector that Adrian had thrust upon me. After all, aside from his history as a guard gargoyle for a demon realm, he was the size of an elephant and his farts could peel the skin from your nose. He also drooled when he slept, and I feared for stray cats when he flew at night despite repeatedly telling him that he was not allowed to eat them. But over the past several months, he’d become much more than a protector or even a pet. If I cried, he’d sit with his head as close to being on my lap as he could manage, and when I’d hold in the pain so I didn’t upset the people around me, he’d stare at me, his solemn red gaze seeming to silently promise that he’d fix everything if he could.
Lately, he’d also taken to bringing me back “presents” from his evening flights. When we were in Travemünde, Germany, the departure city for the ferry we were taking, it was a rosebush complete with roots from his tearing it out of the ground. After we’d ferried from Travemünde to Malmö, Sweden, it was a small, fancy marble birdbath that must have previously adorned an upscale backyard. When we had to spend the night in Stockholm because our train didn’t arrive until the following day, Brutus brought me back a gold-colored statue of a ten-horn stag. From the damage to the bottom of it, it had been ripped free from some permanent fixture. I only hoped it wasn’t a national monument.
He might not be able to speak beyond grunts, chuffs and roars, but clear as a bell, Brutus kept letting me know that he loved me. I loved him, too, weaponized farts and all, and you didn’t abandon those you loved just because the road with them was bumpier than the road without them. That was a lesson I intended to teach to Adrian, if I survived all this to see him again.
Our last stop was Jukkasjärvi, a little town in the uppermost northern part of Sweden. Unlike most of the other passengers on the train with us, we weren’t here to get a glimpse of the famed aurora borealis, more commonly known as the northern lights. Instead, we were looking for an artifact that had never been associated with this place.
Maybe that’s the point, I thought as we got off the train and I got my first good look around at the village bordered by forest on one side and a long, winding river on the other. Who would think to look in a tiny arctic town for an ancient Roman weapon that had last been seen in the heart of the Middle East? Not me, and probably not anyone else, either. This place was so remote, if I wanted to hide something where it would never be found, I’d certainly consider hiding it here.
Brutus chuffed with relief when we collected our bags and he was finally able to leave the luggage car. He’d had a much smaller area to hide in this time, so he was glad to be off the train. He stretched out his wings as if getting the circulation back in them, then beat them until he hovered a few dozen feet from the ground. I didn’t know if he was expelling some pent-up energy, or going higher to get a better look at his new surroundings. Either way, it didn’t go unnoticed.
“Where did that seagull come from?” the blonde woman next to me asked, her accent outing her as British.
“He’s mine,” I said, lowering my voice as if embarrassed. “I take him everywhere with me, so I snuck him in the baggage car when they told me that pets weren’t allowed on the train.”
The woman gave me a look I was used to, but hey, a seagull was a lot more normal type of pet than what Brutus really was.
“He seems to like it here,” she finally said, looking back at Brutus as he made a few wide circles overhead.
He did look happy, and I wondered if it was from more than finally getting to stretch his wings. Jasmine and I were pulling our coats tighter around us because it felt like it was only a couple degrees above freezing, but Brutus appeared to be reveling in the cold. Then again, I suppose he would. He’d been born into a lot colder conditions than this.
If you asked someone to think of a demon realm, they would probably say it contained fire. I don’t know how that rumor got started, but the opposite was true. They were frozen because there was no sunlight. If I were looking for a scientific reason for their existence, I’d say they were a mishmash of M-theory and parallel universes. Take a demon powerful enough to manipulate the gravitational field between a spot in this world and the mirror image world next to it, smash the two together to form an overlapping “bubble,” and you had a new demon realm complete with whatever buildings, cars and humans had been unlucky enough to be sucked along for the ride. I’d been on that particular ride, and it was like being on a roller coaster set to the speed of “please, someone kill me now.”
“Are you here for the Icehotel?” the British woman asked me, dragging my attention back to her.
“Yep, we’re spending the night there,” I said, trying not to sound as unenthused as I felt about it. Unlike Brutus, I didn’t have fond memories of being in perpetual cold.
“So are we! Are you staying in a cold room, or warm?”
I knew what that meant because I’d had to choose between those two options in order to make the reservations. “Cold. We wanted the full experience.” This was a lie—dammit, why was I stooping to lying to a total stranger?—but I had my reasons for picking the frozen option.
She elbowed the man next to her. “That’s what I said we should do, but this cheap bugger called it rubbish.”
The cheap bugger in question rolled his eyes. “She’s paying to freeze her arse off while we’ll be warm and happy, no offense t’ya, miss.”
I didn’t take any because I agreed with him. The cost of staying in the ice part of the Icehotel had staggered me, but it was where Adrian would have stayed when he was here. If I was retracing his steps in the hopes that they would lead me to the spearhead, I had to retrace all of them.
“Oh, the bus to the hotel is pulling up,” the woman said, glancing up at Brutus once more. “Best call your pet down and hide him in your bag.”
I stifled my laugh at the thought of a bag that would be big enough to fit Brutus. “No need. He’ll follow by air.”
Her brows rose. “You trained him like a hunting falcon?”
That was one way to spin it. “He came to me trained” was what I said.
She gave me another “you’re weird” look, but said, “Quite. Well, since we’ll be seeing more of you at the hotel, I’m Zoe, and this is my husband, Dylan.”
“Iris,” I introduced myself, choosing an I name so it would be easier to remember. I kept that theme when I waved Costa and Jasmine forward after I’d shaken Zoe’s and Dylan’s hands. “And this is my sister, Jada, and her boyfriend, Carl.”
“Pleasure,” Costa said after giving me a startled glance when I called him her boyfriend. Hadn’t Jasmine told him I knew their secret, as if it wasn’t obvious? Men. They weren’t nearly as good at hiding things as they thought.
I was surprised when their response to Costa and Jasmine was much stiffer than the friendliness they’d shown me. They shook Costa’s hand as if they’d really rather not, and they kept giving Jasmine oddly censuring looks.
“Carl, eh?” Dylan said, looking Costa up and down. “Short for Carlo, I expect?”
What did he mean by that? I wondered, when a deep voice said, “And I’m Zach,” right behind me.
I turned around, stunned. Zach stood there, wearing his usual hoodie and jeans, his demeanor as casual as if he’d been traveling with us this entire time. I barely registered the much longer pause Zoe and Dylan had before they accepted the hand that Zach held out to them.
“Is this your boyfriend, then?” Zoe asked me, releasing Zach’s hand almost immediately after she grasped it.
“No,” I said with all the repellence I felt at the thought. Dating an Archon would be so sacrilegious!
“Ah.” Zoe’s smile turned into a smirk. Then she leaned forward and whispered loud enough for everyone to hear, “I feel the same way about dating another species.”
For a second, I panicked. Were she and Dylan minions? Was that how Zoe knew that Zach wasn’t human... Oh. Wait. That was not what she meant.
“Are you serious with your racist shit? I’ve got news for you—I’m half Latina!” I sputtered out even as Costa growled, “You’re pulling this with the wrong person,” with more of his Greek accent than usual.
Zoe and her husband stiffened as if they were the ones who’d just been royally insulted. “That a threat, mate?” Dylan asked, squaring off against Costa.
Costa laughed. “Normally, it would be, but not this time. I can sit back and watch, because if you keep pissing off my friend, he’ll get Old Testament wrathful on your ass.”
“Doubtful,” Zach said in a mild tone. “For one, I do not spill blood unless ordered to. For another, even if it were mine to decide, I would not repay them in full for their sin. My purpose here is to save lives, not to take them.”
Dylan looked rattled, as if on some level he sensed that there was more to Zach than he could see. Then he lost that brief moment of intelligence and sneered at Costa and Zach. “I don’t need to be threatened by a fucking dago and his n—”
Zach held up his hand and Dylan didn’t finish his other appalling slur. Dylan’s eyes bulged while his mouth started moving faster and faster, yet no sound came out of it.
“For your trespasses, you will not speak again for three full moons,” Zach said, still in that same mild tone. “And if you do not repent of the hate in your heart by that time, your speech loss will become permanent.”
“What did you do to him?” Zoe screamed as Dylan’s miming became more frantic. Her shrill voice turned several heads among the people who were also waiting for the bus. Zach stared at her, letting a glimpse of his real power out through the tiny, star-like lights that appeared in his eyes.
“Stop speaking,” he said, those brilliant lights burning even brighter. “Or you will soon be as silent as he.”
She shut up with a gulp, grabbing Dylan and almost dragging him back to the train instead of toward the bus. Guess she’d decided against their going to the Icehotel. I resisted the urge to yell, And you got off lucky! after them.
“That was epic,” Jasmine breathed.
“So much for not being vengeful,” Costa said with a grin.
Zach lifted his shoulder in a half shrug. “If it were vengeance, their bodies would lie slain on the ground. This was merely a lesson.”
I gave mad props to Zach for how he’d handled the racist duo, but there was another, more pressing topic I had to discuss.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, because what you did to those two was masterful, but you told me goodbye the last time you saw me, and it sounded permanent. Why are you back now?”