Contents

Close Protection Orc

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT PAGE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

JOIN THE COMMUNITY

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY ONE

END

GRATITUDE

Close Protection Orc

By Robert McKinney

TITLE PAGE

Close Protection Orc

By Robert McKinney

COPYRIGHT PAGE

Copyright 2020, Robert McKinney

All rights reserved. Published by McKinney Can't Press

This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously, or are entirely fictional.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to mckinneycantwrite@gmail.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Join The Community

Close Protection Orc

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Gratitude

DEDICATION

For C. We’ll get there, brother.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To mom, who taught me to focus on winning the fight. To dad, who thought that the Iliad was great reading material for nine year old boys.  To Jurijus Chitrovas, who provided me with such amazing art for this book. Most of all, to my wife. As always, you are my heart and sky. You kept me standing and helped make this story the best it could be.

JOIN THE COMMUNITY

If you like what you see in the pages that follow, then visit our growing community at https://www.patreon.com/mckinneycantwrite . Once there you’ll find short stories, audio dramas, and even the chance to become part of the writing process for my upcoming books!

- mckinney

ONE

It all went to shit on a Tuesday. My client was busy negotiating something or other in the building at my back, and I was so bored on the job that I almost missed the first signs of magic across the street.

That surprises most people. Not the magic but the boredom. I’m a bodyguard, and despite working in a business where beatings, bullets, and knives are a steady possibility, the boredom was what I had to deal with most. On days like this, the job meant hours of standing in the hot Texas sun while a nearby client lived it up in an air conditioned room. And in a world where any day could turn nasty in the blink of an eye, the most important, and hardest, part of the job was avoiding the temptation to do something, anything, to break up the monotony and distract you from securing your client’s safety. After all, both this world and the one which hid next door were stuffed with people who knew their way around violence. What separated a trained close protection officer such as myself from any brute cocky enough to call himself a bodyguard was the ability to stay alert for the moments where bloody skills were needed.

I kept that thought in mind as sweat soaked its way through the bullet proof vest and bland business suit that was the unofficial uniform for CPOs like myself. Even then, I was still tempted to slip a hand towards the pair of palm sized books resting in the inside pocket of my blazer.

And to be honest, I may have already been in the process of doing just that when that flicker of magic caught my attention. 

An all too familiar cord of tension began to spread through my shoulders. I could feel the hair rise on the back of my neck as that tension gave way to paranoia, and a near certainty of being watched. Without drawing attention to myself, I pushed my glasses further up on the bridge of my nose and scanned the area around me for any other surprises.

My current client’s meeting was with a parts supplier on the outskirts of El Paso, not too far from the strip mall where I kept my own office. This part of town was fairly sparse, so far as buildings went, and I found nothing across the street save for a thin stand of scrub bushes that shivered in a half hearted breeze.

Well, nothing but those bushes, and the magic, of course.

I’d spent enough time in Faerie, the alien land that sometimes overlapped with the mortal world, to recognize a glamour when I saw one. Every fae-touched creature, even half-orcs such as myself, could instinctively summon that magic of illusion and disguise on some instinctive level. For most of us half-bloods, especially those that were raised in the mortal world like myself, that meant a shift in skin tone towards one of the mortal hues and a shrinking of the tusks that protruded upward from our mouths. In the hands of the fae, however, a glamour could do much, much more.

The fact that I’d noticed the one across the street at all meant that whatever was watching me wasn’t a high powered lord or lady of the fae. The fact that I hadn’t noticed more than a hint of that magic, however, indicated that whatever had crafted the spell was not something to be taken lightly.

I sighed.

The idea of being followed by a mostly invisible fae would have scared the piss out of me only a few months ago. Things had changed though, after a few of my more recent jobs ended with the overthrow or public shaming of fae nobles.

I’ve gotten used to visits from other denizens of Faerie in the weeks that followed those jobs. Almost all of them had merely been curious about the bodyguard who’d helped take down the well known and feared Lady of the River, Storm, and Sea. Very few opted to use the front door. That meant spotting the occasional dryad beneath the tepid current of the Rio Grande, or being tailed by mist obscured satyrs while out on pre-dawn runs. Their visits, while annoying, were usually harmless.

Unfortunately for me, usually wasn’t always.

I may have responded to the voyeur a little differently if I hadn’t been on a job. I didn’t want to risk an ambush when there was a chance for my client to be caught in the crossfire.

The glamour meant that pinning down exactly where my fae stalker was hiding would be difficult, so I decided that the best course of action would be to scare them enough to force them out of hiding. Brandishing either of the pistols stashed on my person wouldn’t have done me much good in that regard, as most fae, despite a near century of warfare with the Erlking, still lack what I’d consider a sufficiently healthy respect for firearms.

Magic, however, was another story. Magic was how the fae maintained their control over the bulk of Faerie. Magic was how the fae had exiled most goblins, half-bloods, and orcs in the centuries before the Erlking used the turmoil of World War’s I and II to smuggle a shit ton of guns into Faerie. Most of all, magic was how they could survive at all in the depths of Faerie, a land of unceasing change, malice, and trickery.

If I wanted to spook this glamour-cloaked fae enough to make a mistake, I’d need to make use of some magic of my own. I reached into my jacket pocket and brushed my hand across the pair of books stored there.

One was a dog eared paperback with miniscule font, and I didn’t need to draw it into the light of day to know that a cover declaring Shakespeare’s Complete Works Vol. 1 would greet my eyes. The other book was an old, leather bound tome of fae poetry that so often stole my attention these days. Though the book’s title had long since faded, there was no missing the glowing, thin tendrils of electricity that crawled over every bit of skin that made contact with its surface.

I looked both ways down the street to see if anyone was close enough to notice what was about to happen. The streets seemed abandoned, and while the building at my back featured a window that spanned most of the wall, the office where my client negotiated inside lacked line of sight on where I stood.

No witnesses, I thought.

Well, no mortal witnesses, at least.

I took the old, leather tome of fae poetry in hand and steeled myself for the impending show.

TWO

Though usually packed with cramped, flowing script, the ink seemed to flee at the arrival of direct sunlight.

I stared at the blank page for a moment, confused. While I’d gotten used to weird things in the months I spent fine tuning the scraps of magical power that were available to me, disappearing ink was a surprise.

As I leaned in close to examine the page, I saw words returning to the places where my shadow covered the page. That was a new one, I thought, as I began to leaf through the pages. Though I’d read the book from cover to cover God knows how many times, it always found new ways to surprise me.

Tucking that newest quirk aside for future investigation, I scanned through the pages until I found what I was looking for. It was a bit of poetry that I’d repeated in the desert so many times in recent months that I could easily repeat it by heart. Familiar or not, I knew that magic could get finicky in the presence of anything made of iron, including the Glock 21 in my shoulder holster and its baby brother at my ankle. I wanted my spell to work, and also didn’t want to display the hardware on my person, so I made sure that I had the book of fae poems to lean on before I repeated the magic words.

A seed of power grew in my chest as I started to speak, and before long, I could feel the force of it bring a tingle to my lips. The sensations only grew as I neared the end of the short passage that detailed a storm.

The last words of the fae poem were halfway out of my mouth when my sock rode low and brought my ankle holstered pistol into direct contact with my skin.

A zap of static discharge stung my skin and a sudden empty, chilling sensation filled my chest as the spell fizzled.

Well, OK, I thought as I let out a breath. Of course the spell failed. Despite all the chaos it could cause, magic was still a fragile thing in some ways. Though I’d never had a spell completely fail me due to the presence of a holstered weapon in the past, I should have realized that it was only a matter of time until something as common as a drooping sock and a bit of cold iron disrupted a spell.

Even with the old, eldritch tome of fae poems in hand, I’d still been sloppy. If I was going to do this spell, I needed to do this right as I could manage.

I took a moment to think and came up with a few conclusions. Removing the Glock 21 in my shoulder harness was a non-starter. The shoulder holster that held it was a pain to remove, and the gun itself was too large to go without notice if I pulled it out from under my jacket. The Glock 26 at my ankle was another story. It was a small gun, designed to to be hidden in the palm of a large man’s hand if needed.

Getting rid of one gun full of iron was better than none, so I dropped to one knee and started fiddling with the laces of my shoe. It was an act, of course, which gave me time to unwrap the ankle holster and place it in a spot behind my foot that would be hard to see.

I thought of the spell that I’d just tried while I removed the weapon. Though I was still unable to summon the bolts of lightning that my friend Tati could toss around, I’d been able to bring down localized thunderclaps that could deafen and disorient. In practice, the spells worked like a magical flash bang, and had proven their worth in quite a few encounters with privacy violating fae.

Still, the spell had failed despite all of my practice. I couldn’t help but laugh at my shortcoming, and remembered a line of Shakespeare which mirrored my frustration.

“Fear no more the lightning flash,” I whispered, translating a bit of the great bard’s Cymbeline into the language of Faerie on the fly. “Nor the all-dreaded thunder ston-.”

The words were not yet out of my mouth when a rustling sound not unlike a leaf strewn wind interrupted me. The noise began in a hush, before growing into a murmur that fast became a whispered chorus, low but still more clear than a ringing church bell.

“Fear not the lightning? Nor the all-dreaded thunder?” asked the mix of soprano highs atop feminine lows. “Fear not me?”

A new surge of power filled my chest and made my hair stand on end even as the lithe, feminine quality of those voices cut into me. They made my heart pound, my eyes water, my fingers twitch, and head feel as if I’d been drugged in the span of a second.

The chorus was lovely.

The chorus was massive.

The chorus was absolutely terrifying.

And though I wasn’t sure of much, I was sure of exactly one thing.

There was no way that the chorus had come from the glamour wielding fae across the street.

I didn’t get a chance to dwell on the chorus or what I thought of them, because a crash of thunder slammed out of the sky overhead without so much as a flash of lightning for warning.

I’ve been in car crashes that were less disorienting than that crushing wave of thunder. It was as if something had taken my rather modest flash-bang of magical sound and thrown it in front of a tower sized megaphone.

The thunder was there and gone in an instant, but the unmistakable sound of breaking glass chased in its wake. Something hard and sharp grazed against the back of my neck, and I spun to find that the window I’d been standing in front of was shattered to pieces. The thunderclap had been strong enough to break every piece of glass within a block of where I stood.

Well, not every piece of glass, I noticed as I took in my surroundings. The windows of my Jeep were untouched, which was not surprising. It had more than one layer of protection surrounding it.

Once again, I pushed my glasses further up on my nose and noticed, with some relief, that the thunderclap had spared them as well.

By the time I remembered the whole reason I’d summoned the thunder in the first place, the glamour using fae was long gone. I couldn’t tell whether the spell was enough to make their camouflage slip since the unexpected shower of broken glass had competed for my attention. But who or whatever it was had disappeared.

The lone plus side was that I’d apparently chased off whatever was watching me. I’d barely had time to savor that minor victory when I heard a door slam as my client rushed out of his office.

THREE

Alejandro Appens was a heavyset man with coke bottle glasses much thicker than my own and skin a shade or two lighter than mine. Though I’d only worked with him for a week or so, I’d seen more than enough of his personality to know that he wouldn’t do well under pressure. I turned to face him in time to see the look of complete and utter shock on his face as he soaked in the chaotic view of glass shards on the ground and a building’s worth of empty window frames.

I felt my cheeks warm up as I watched that dumbfounded look on his face. Easily riled or not, I was supposed to be a professional, and should have never put him in this situation. Though still new to the practice of crafting spells, I’d faced enough fae in my time to know that magic, especially something as powerful as thunder or lightning, was not a first choice when conducted where mortal clients could see.

Sure, the glamour across the street had been a possible threat, but there’s a wide range of options more conservative than brandishing a weapon or playing with the forces of nature. Any normal bodyguard worth his salt would have taken a wait and see approach at the least, and merely prepared the weapons he had at his disposal at most. Jumping the gun before the danger had been concerned was bad enough. Using magic, a tool that I hadn’t yet mastered, was unacceptable. Get it together Aden.

If I really wanted my business to take off to the degree that I’d envisioned, I’d need to be more reliable, and be seen as such as well. Given how shocked my client still looked, putting him at ease would be a solid step in that direction.

“Clima extraño, señor.” I said, trying to sound as if the shattered glass around us was a basic walk in the park.

“Si.” my client nodded distractedly at my words, then started to tiptoe his way towards me as if afraid of crunching the debris under his business shoes. I started to move forward to meet him halfway when he froze and pointed at me.

“Your neck!” he exclaimed in English. “Dios mío! You’re bleeding! You’ve got blood all over your neck!”

Hearing that you’ve got a cut throat isn’t the kind of news that one wants to hear. It’s also the kind of thing that I felt like I would have noticed. A casual swipe at my throat and shoulders revealed that I was indeed bleeding a little, though not from the throat as my client had feared.

“It’s nothing, sir.” I said, rubbing at a spot of blood between my forefinger and thumb. “I was standing with my back to the window when lightning struck. Some of the glass must have grazed me.”

“We need to get you to a hospital!” replied the client, his voice going shrill. Shit. Associating my services with freak accidents would be bad enough. The last thing that I wanted was for him to tell all of his friends about how his bodyguard needed to visit the hospital for something that I considered no more than a boo boo.

“I promise this is nowhere near serious, Mr. Appens.” I said, again keeping my tone casual. “How about this, though? You go wrap up your business in the office. While you do that, I’ll patch myself up with the medical kit from the vehicle.”

The client squinted at me, unsure whether to trust his own fears or the show of confidence, and I hope competence, that I was presenting.

“Are you sure that you can handle that by yourself?”

I pulled my glasses off my nose and used a bit of my jacket to rub away at a smudge on its surface. While I did so, I presented the client with a confident, worry free smile that I’d learned to fake after coming back from my first war, years ago.

“I’ve been a soldier on far worse days than this, Mr. Appens.” I said. “I assure you, I’ll be fine.”

The show of confidence must have been convincing, because my client nodded once then tip-toed his way back to the office to finish off his deal.

Once he’d gone, I turned around and made my way to the Jeep parked in the front lot of the building.

A note was pinned to the driver’s side window, which was the one nearest to me. It hadn’t been there before I’d summoned the thunder, which meant that whoever had left it had been stealthy enough to do so despite being less than a dozen feet from my back.

The note carried a message scribbled in plain black handwriting.

“Nice trick. Meet me at your office when you’re done with the mortal.”

The note carried something else as well. A stamp bearing the official seal of the Erlking, Iron Lord of Goblins, Half-bloods, and Orcs.

FOUR

I spent most of the drive back into town looking over my shoulder and checking the rearview mirror. I did it so often that my client, a man who I hadn’t pegged as particularly vigilant, noticed and asked me if everything was alright. A comment about keeping an eye out for more “clima extraño,” freak weather, got him off my back, but his return to obliviousness did little to put me at ease.

The note was stamped by the Erlking, Iron Lord of Goblins, Half-bloods, and Orcs. Though most of the things that lived in Faerie saw him as little more than a warlord, I’d spent my entire adulthood looking up to him as some mix between a teacher, leader, and all around savior.

Until a century ago, goblins, orcs, and the various half bloods of Faerie were essentially exiles, pushed out of Faerie by fae with serious power. The Erlking changed that by arming us with iron in the midst of World War One and carving out a piece of Faerie for the misfits and castoffs of that world.

He was the only reason that half-orcs like myself even knew that Faerie existed. Without him, I’d have never seen the eternally twilight sky that churned with unfathomable magic. Without him, I’d never have heard mountains sing to the grasslands below, or become part of a community that would quite literally never die, so long as I did my part.

The Erlking was also the reason that I rarely slept through a night without nightmares of battle, or dreams of intoxicating, beautiful fae maidens that were somehow even worse.

A part of me wanted to ignore the message stamped with his seal. After all, I was retired, and couldn’t be summoned back into service without a full mobilization of every other creature that was a veteran of his armies. Pretending that the message had never happened would have been easy as well. All I had to do was drop off my client and carry on with my mortal life in the mortal world, as was my right.

But the pull of community was hard to ignore. When you’re embedded, like I was, so deep that the group was part of your core, you’ll always feel the call of loyalty, and if that fails, the guilt.

Ignoring a request from the Erlking wasn’t an option. Not for me. Even retired.

I dropped off my client with no more freak weather occurrences and made good time back to my office, where the note told me to meet.

The office was located in a low rent strip mall on the outskirts of town.

Standing in front of the charmless building was something I never thought I’d see in the mortal world.

An old blooded orc, standing in full sunlight without a shred of glamour to hide its true nature.

An orc, its eyes burning with rage and staring straight at me.

FIVE

Even with the waves of anger and aggression rolling off the orc at my door, I was almost relieved to see him standing there.

I knew the guy, and while he was certainly what most would ID as a threat, I doubted that any of his violence would be aimed at me. Colonel Cuinn Treg was one of the Erlking’s soldiers and an absolute terror in the fields. He’d been one of the first orcs that the Erlking had linked up with upon his first invasion of Faerie, largely because Treg was one of the only orcs or goblins crazy enough to have stayed in those lands once the fae had begun hunting our kind in earnest.

Colonel Treg was also a terror on patrol, and had built himself a reputation for stealth and explosive bouts of ferocity decades before I was even born. He was the first officer to notice my own talent for stealth when I first joined the Erlking’s forces, and personally transferred me from a rifle formation to the scouts. He forgot more about the art of scouting through enemy territory than I’d ever know, and was the single best officer that I’ve ever had the pleasure of serving with in either world.

Hell, he’d even been kind enough to share a handful of war stories about my mom, who he’d served with half a century before I’d been born.

None of that, of course, explained why he was standing outside my office without a glamour to disguise him. Without it, the Colonel looked like muddy green and olive colored slabs of meat that had been unceremoniously pressed into blue jeans and flannel. A thick brow cast his gold colored eyes into half shadow, and his heavy jaw was made all the more apparent by the lopsided pair of three and four inch tusks that protruded from his bottom lip.

It didn’t make sense. Glamour, the magical disguises that allowed our kind to pass through the mortal world largely unnoticed, was so intrinsic to our kind that even those with the weakest bloodlines exuded it on an instinctive, automatic basis. A full blooded orc like Treg should have had a glamour so strong that I wouldn’t be able to recognize him by sight alone in the mortal world.

With that in mind, I paused to look up and down the streets around me. Assuming Treg was the one to have left the note on my Jeep, he shouldn't have had time to arrive at my office and wait too long. My office was pretty far on the outskirts of town. That was usually a boon due to the low costs of rent, but was now doubly useful due to the lack of foot traffic that would have come close enough to catch a good look at Colonel Treg.

The lack of smartphone wielding onlookers, screaming, or the national guard being called in told me that no one had noticed Treg or his appearance so far, but that didn’t mean that I wanted to risk his being visible for too much longer.

I gave him a wave, then hustled over to unlock the door and usher him inside my office.

SIX

“Your glamour’s dropped.” I said as I closed the door behind us.

The Colonel ignored me as he stomped into my cramped office. The modest space consisted of a narrow hallway that served as a waiting room. It had two mismatched chairs and a door that led to my office proper, a 12 by 12 square that contained my desk, a black gun safe, and two more chairs on opposite sides of the desk.

I finished locking the door and followed the Colonel, who by now had entered my office and was pacing back and forth in front of my desk.

“Your glamour’s dropped.” I repeated, my voice raised and tone stern. “Anyone could have seen you. You can’t just -”

“The fae took my son.” he growled. “They took Bakel.”

I froze in my tracks, keys still in hand. Memories stirred in the back of my head, making my throat tighten and heartbeat speed up. I knew what it meant to be captured by the fae. If they held you too long, there was a good chance you’d never be the same.

Lord knows I wasn’t.

I shoved the memories aside and gestured towards one of the chairs.

“Start at the beginning.” I said as I took the other chair for myself.

The Colonel chose to stand, though he stopped pacing at least.

“You know the drill.” he began. “Scouting run into Faerie. One that seemed to be normal until he sent us a messenger.”

That’s a red flag, I thought with a fair bit of unease. Scouting units usually went out in groups of three. One man as a spare, in case one of the three took a hit, another to drag him to somewhere safe, and the third to watch both of their backs with a gun. You don’t waste a third of your manpower on message duty unless something big has gone down.

I leaned forward and gestured for him to continue.

“His unit found something out there.” said the Colonel.

His fists clenched and relaxed before clenching again, as if he were imagining how it would feel to get his hands on whatever was holding his son.

“Something big enough risking the loss of a man to run a message back home. The Erlking thinks it’s a weapon. Magic.”

I cocked my head to the side, curious.

“Magic weapons are a dime a dozen.” I said. “They’re also useless for the army. Glamours are one thing, but I’ve never heard of a goblin or orc that could use so much as an enchanted butter knife. Even the half-elven fae in the ranks can’t use them reliably.”

Treg fixed me with a gold eyed stare, and I could practically feel the heat of his rage on my skin.

“You’re not even a full blooded orc, and I still watched you call down thunder earlier this morning.” he said. “I don’t know what the Hell happened to you while behind the wire last year, but even I can see that times are changing, and changing fast.”

I paused at that, giving Treg the space to continue speaking.

“Anyway, it was important enough that he sent his second man off as a messenger to make sure that the Erlking knew the weapon’s last confirmed position. He almost waited too late to do it, because the runner saw my boy take a hit and get captured before taking to the trails home.”

The Colonel stopped pacing for a moment and looked down at his boots.

“I’m going out to get him today, and I need you to come with me.”

“Why me?” I asked. “You’re a Colonel. You could take a whole battalion into Faerie, and they’d thank you for the honor.”

“Yes.” said my old friend, and his voice once again began to quake with a burning anger. “And start a war while I’m at it. If the Erlking brings a full army back into Faerie, that’s a declaration that no one will ignore. The lords of Faerie will accept a few skirmishes here and there. Lord knows that's how they play with each other as it is. But if I take what I really need to get back my boy, we’d be at it again, like we were before even your time.”

His lips twisted into an approximation of a smile then, as if he’d suddenly remembered some bitter, half-forgotten joke.

“You’re different, though. Ex-scout. Emphasis on the ex.” He said. “You’re a weapon for hire as far as Faerie is concerned, and an unaffiliated one at that. Not one fae lord raised an objection after you took out the Lady of the River, Storm, and Sea on behalf of your client last fall. This is small potatoes by comparison. The fae bastards won’t even blink.”

“Sounds like splitting hairs, to me.” I said. “But I guess that’s not surprising, considering the fae. I’m a far cry from an army, though. What do you need me for? Specifically.”

The Colonel’s eyes blazed.

“I’m prepared to die if that’s what it takes to get us to the target, Aden.” he said. “If that happens, I need to know that I can depend on the people who are with me to get my son out alive. Can you do that for me?”

I looked down at my hands, then back at the Colonel. He’d taken a chance on me, back in the day. Taught me how to survive, no matter what horrors life put in my way. Sure, I knew that half of the horrors I’d faced were a direct result of him recommending me for the scouts, the soldiers tasked with the most dangerous missions, in the first place. I also knew that without him, I would’ve never known what I was capable of, and that I’d never have had a chance in Hell of surviving captivity without his careful guidance.

Now he wanted me to return to Faerie for a hostage rescue, arguably more dangerous than scouting. But at the end of the day, there was only one choice for a guy like me to make.

“I can do it.” I said. “You can count on me.”

SEVEN

The Colonel and I packed some gear and took my Jeep to the Bridge of the Americas Border Crossing, a few miles southeast of my office. It was rush hour for this part of town, and the multi-lane pseudo-highway that provided access to the thin line of border security kiosks were choked with traffic.

I could tell that the delay was driving the Colonel more than a little crazy. That was fine by me, so long as he remained in control enough to maintain the glamour that he adopted before exiting my office.

I’ll also admit it. It was odd to see him without the orc trappings. I’d only known the Colonel in the context of Faerie. The light of that place had a habit of washing away the low level magics of glamour that most of us reflexively used for disguise, and as a result, I was used to seeing Colonel Treg with tusks and in shades of muddy green and olive.

His glamour, however, was a light brown skinned, flaming ginger-haired, square jawed man who stood out like a sore thumb. 

The last thing that I wanted was for us to attract attention just before crossing the border, largely because I didn’t want anyone nearby to notice that we’d be entering something far more foreign than Mexico. I took advantage of the gridlock to reach into my backseat and draw out a nondescript black baseball cap, throwing it at Treg. We wanted to avoid standing out and that hair wasn’t helping anyone.

Doorways to Faerie come in many forms. Some were man, or rather creature, made entries that depended on complex weaves of spell-script. Others were random, fleeting portals that could swallow up unwary travelers in the blink of an eye. The most powerful and useful doorways came in the form of the barriers between nations. If you cross over a border at a point that’s used often enough, you could use it to catapult yourself to the edges of pretty much any territory in Faerie that you could imagine.

The transition was usually quick and subtle, but mortals noticed them on occasion if you weren’t careful. I didn’t want to deal with border patrol circulating stories about a vanishing Jeep on my way back into the country, so I needed every part of our crossing to go over smoothly.

Speaking of border patrol.

“Get your ID out.” I said as the pseudo-highway’s lanes narrowed and a line of border checkpoints came in sight.

Treg raised an eyebrow at me.

“ID?” he asked.

“Identification.” I said as I pulled my passport out of a glove box. “Mortal papers that declare who you are, and your nation.”

“I’m not some quivering goblin that fled Faerie once the fae started hunting.” he said. “I have no need of mortal identification.”

“That’s a problem,” I said, “because we need to cross here, and I’m not ramming my way through a border checkpoint.”

“We both know there’s no need to rely on a mortal crossing.” Treg replied. “We can use a river. I’m sure that a deep enough portion is somewhere nearby.”

“I’ve already done that earlier this year and earned myself a stint with a fae Lady.” I said, trying not to shudder at the memory of unnatural waves crushing me and the sensation of a mouth filling with water. “I don’t plan on doing it again. I guess we’ll turn back around and figure something out.”

“No.” replied the Colonel, who began to fidget in his seat. “No turning back.”

“What are you doing?” I asked, turning to look at the Colonel shifting around awkwardly in the passenger seat. He’d undone his seatbelt, a cardinal sin in my opinion, and was pawing at the flooring between his legs. Moments later, he straightened up while holding a crumpled receipt between his fingers. My recent client must have left it there instead of trashing it, the prick.

“This will do.” said the Colonel, inspecting the crumpled paper.

“That will do what?” I said. “Get you free refills at Arbys?”

“I don’t know of this Arby’s.” replied Treg as he started to flatten out the receipt on my dashboard. “I do know that this paper will serve as a fine IP.”

“ID.” I said, correcting him. “And I’m not sure that you’ve wrapped your head around what I’m talking about.”

“Exiled goblins and cowardly orcs would not have survived in the mortal world for centuries without knowing how to bypass mortal authorities.” replied Colonel Treg. “You’re a half-orc, so you’re not accustomed to a glamour as powerful as mine. Trust me. This paper will do fine.”

I was about to tell him that, no, this would not do fine at all when I realized that the lanes ahead of us had already narrowed. Our chance to pull over to the side or back out was gone, and to make matters worse, I could see that the border check kiosk was only one car ahead of me. The guard inside asked the driver ahead of me for ID. Once the check was done, the officer caught my eye, gave me a nod, and waved me forward.

Shit, I thought as I eased my Jeep forward. We were out of time, and I was fairly sure that I could convince the border guard that the Colonel was too drunk to know what he was doing if the glamour turned out to be bunk.

I pulled up to a border kiosk and handed my own ID over to the forest green uniformed officer first. He squinted at the picture on my passport, then at my brown skinned and ethnically ambiguous face. I could fit in most places on earth, provided people didn’t look too hard. Unfortunately for me, hard looks appeared to be up this border guard’s alley.

He handed my ID back then gestured for Colonel Treg to pass over his.

The Colonel leaned across the Jeep to pass the crumpled receipt to the border security guard before I could stop him or try to make up a story about him being drunk. I noticed a smear of what smelled like french fry grease on the paper as he did.

The border guard looked at the paper with suspicion, then blinked and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He held the receipt up to the light of the afternoon sky overhead, then shrugged and handed the receipt back with a nod.

“Have a good day, gentlemen.” said the guard. He waved us along.

“I’ll be damned.” I said as I took the Jeep out of park and drove over the border.

“What?” asked the Colonel.

“How’d you do that?” I asked.

“What?” repeated the Colonel. “The glamour? That was simple.”

I shook my head.

“No, actually, it’s nowhere close to simple.” I said. “I thought goblins and orcs had trouble with glamour.”

The Colonel snorted.

“We can use them just fine, so long as they’re simple and small.” said Colonel Treg.

“Then why didn’t you teach me any of this when I was in the scouts?”

“We tried.” replied the Colonel. “Even with you, though it rarely went anywhere. You young bloods could rarely make them work in any reliable manner. It was usually just easier and safer to teach you how to hide the boring way.”

I thought back to my own attempts at recreating one of the few scouting charms of stealth on my Jeep a while back. It hadn’t gone well, and a client had to stop and correct my work before we’d been able to go out into the open again. I guess the Colonel had a point. Though I knew more about magic these days, the circumstances in which I learned that magic wasn’t something that I’d wish on anyone.

EIGHT

We reached the border and paid the price for crossing into Faerie via this particular crossing - a drop of blood drawn from a bit lip on both of our parts. The transition was quick, and after feeling a tugging sensation just behind my navel, I found myself, Jeep included, in a grass covered meadow of Faerie.

As always, the first thing that I noticed was the lurid, twilight sky. There were no stars or moon, only clouds lit by a sun, or fires, that burned pink and purple and green just shy of the horizon.

What surprised me this time, however, were the corpse lights.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of them drifted through the air around us. Cold, sickly sea green flames no larger than the size of a clenched fist, hovering above the Faerie grasslands. Some were hip high, some ankle. They were gathered in clusters as if trying to mimic the flocks that birds made at the change of seasons.

Apprehension trickled through me as I watched them float by. Corpse lights weren’t uncommon in Faerie, to the point that most could see three or four in any given sky. This, however, was more corpse lights than I’d ever seen in my entire life combined. That was a problem, given that corpse lights come from the dead bodies of spirit animals.

There’s wildlife, of a sort, in Faerie that’s different from what you’d find in the mortal world. When they die, the animals of Faerie slowly evaporated into these floating, sea green flames instead of falling to rot. The light shows didn’t stick around forever. A corpse light may dance over the treetops for a while, but eventually they sank back down to the earth, and reformed new spirit animals.

The plus side of that arrangement was that there was never a risk of overhunting a food supply while in Faerie. Any animal that was killed eventually returned, no matter how many times it happened.

The bad news was that the spirit animals that returned tended to remember what had happened to them before. That made them a pain to track and eat for all but the most accomplished hunters in Faerie. It also made them … irate.

They also came back stronger, or infused with strange magics on occasion. We’re talking jaws that dripped acid, claws that crackled with flame, or things that were just too odd, too wrong to define with mortal words.

The risk of a corpse light landing on the earth before spawning an angry grizzly bear was bad enough. The risk of that grizzly bear oozing shadows that could choke the life out of prey from afar was much much worse.

I looked at the dense clouds of corpse lights swirling around us, and did some rough, nowhere close to accurate, math in my head. With this many dead, and so many of them close to a rebirth judging by their proximity to the ground, there were bound to be a few that came back angry and powerful enough to show us just how much they didn’t appreciate being hunted. I scanned the area around us again, and saw that while none of the ankle high corpse lights had begun to sink into the earth, dozens within a few feet of us were close to doing so.

We needed to get out of here before those corpse lights created something that would see us as prey.

I hopped out of the Jeep and popped the trunk in the back. Inside was a pair of duffel bags the Colonel and I had packed before crossing over. I slung one over my shoulder, and grabbed the other one in my hand.

“Dismount and take this.” I said to Colonel Treg, gesturing towards the duffel bag in my hands. “We’re going on foot and we’re doing it now.”

He followed me out of the Jeep, but didn’t reach out to relieve me of the bag I held out for him.

“This vehicle of yours is faster than most of everything that breathes in Faerie.” he said. “We can catch up with Bakel’s trail faster if we stay in it.”

I shook my head, and eyed the corpse lights that still floated around us.

“Yeah, it’s fast, but it’s also loud.” I said. “Like you said, we don’t have an army, which means we’ll need stealth more than speed.”

“We don’t have time to walk, Aden.” he said. “They’ve got my boy. We should hit them, hard and fast.”

“What we don’t have time for is to stand around debating this.” I said. “Some of those corpse lights will start reforming as new spirit animals soon, and we need to be out of their sight before that shit happens.”

“That’s all the more reason to use the fucking vehicle!” said the Colonel, his voice now coming out as a growl. Over his shoulder, I could see a cluster of corpse lights shake at the sound of his voice. To my surprise, and concern, a few of them even changed directions and drifted a few feet in our direction.

I’d never seen that before, but didn’t have time to wonder what it meant.

“I didn’t come to Faerie just to drive into an ambush, sir.” I said. “The Jeep is loud. You taught me better. You know better. We’re going on foot.”

The Colonel growled again, and took a step in my direction. Behind him, I could see more and more corpse lights drift towards us, as if following suit.

“I could take the machine from you.” he rumbled, still approaching.

I dropped the spare duffel bag on the ground and turned my back on the Colonel.

“Do what you want. I’m done wasting time.” I said as I started walking away. “Just try and remember something first, before you do something stupid.”

“What’s that?” said the Colonel, his voice far too close for comfort.

“I’m pretty fucking sure you don’t know how to drive.”

I kept walking, my eyes scanning for the sight of corpse lights melting into the ground. After a few feet, I heard the sound of rustling cloth and clacking metal as the Colonel retrieved the duffel that I’d left behind for him.

It didn’t take the Colonel long to pull up beside me.

“We march hard, and take no breaks until it’s time to make camp.”

I just nodded, and picked up the pace as the first corpse lights dimmed, completing their slow descents to the ground.

NINE

It didn’t take us long to find out where all of the corpse lights were coming from. We saw a pack of coyote-like animals ripped limb from limb as we crested a hill. Whole flocks of birds also lay on the ground, their bellies slit and necks broken. It seemed like animals lay slaughtered everywhere we looked. Always bloody. Always with beads of corpse light taking form from their flesh.

We traveled far enough to pass through the densest clusters of those fist sized, drifting flames, but not enough to to leave them fully behind. There were just too many dead bodies of spirit animals strewn across the land wherever we left. The Colonel and I tried to ignore them. It wasn’t like we didn’t already have enough to focus on. Word from the unit of the Colonel’s lost son pointed towards an “ungoverned” patch of Faerie. We both knew that the territory’s lack of a fae lord didn’t mean anything. When it came to Faerie, and the shifting chunks of land that literally moved through time and space within it, every territory had a ruler. The fact that we didn’t have a fae lady or lord to assign to this piece of space just meant that whatever held sway in these parts was too far from sanity for the Erlking or his peers to communicate with.

My money was on whatever was killing the spirit animals in this territory being one and the same as the creature that ruled it.

The sheer presence of that much carnage should have been enough to turn my guts to water but all I felt was giddy.

Once the shock of the corpse lights and death had worn off, I couldn’t help but be ecstatic as the Colonel and I jogged through the depths of Faerie.

It's an addiction, I think. That, and exposure. Like most of the Erlking’s recruits, I’d been hooked from the very moment I’d first entered Faerie. Who wouldn’t be? It was a magical land. Literally.

Things had changed after I’d been captured, though. It would have been better if they’d just hurt me while holding me prisoner. Instead they treated me like a guest … sort of.

For God knows how long, I was exposed to every pleasurable sight, sensation, or act that the Lady of the River, Storm, and Sea could provide. And let me tell you, when a fae like that has a guest, they go all out.

It was horrible. While with her, I did things that I’d never have considered before. And what's more, something about her, something about Faerie, made me want to revel in every moment of it. Well, almost every moment. There were periods where I was myself, or close enough. Spots where the shame and anger overrode the pleasures she could provide. I’m grateful for them, especially now. Without them, I’d have never escaped. Maybe never would have even tried.

Even then, there wasn’t a night where I didn’t dream of her and the craving she’d left me with. Running through the wilderness in the half-dark of Faerie didn’t help. Even knowing more than most just how vicious and devious Faerie could be, a small part of me wanted to veer away from the Colonel, and see what found me across the frontier.

For the second time in the day, a line from a Shakespearean play came to mind.

“Here is a path to't:” I whispered in Faerie under my breath, as if an impromptu translation would help keep me on task. “'tis some savage hold.”

I heard a noise nearby that snapped me out of my thoughts. It was that same sound again, a feminine chorus of urgent whispers. They bubbled forth in an unbroken stream, before multiplying into still more voices.

Too many to count. Just like the corpse lights overhead. Too many, but all of them saying the same thing.

I bit back a curse and dropped down low to the ground. The Colonel, who had been running more or less alongside me, followed suit. He crawled over, careful to keep his form below the height of the knee high grass.

“What is it, ‘Shaker?” he asked in hushed tones, using the part nick-name, part call-sign that I’d picked up in the scouts. It was a moniker I’d gained after bringing my book of Shakespeare along on my first mission. Add in the fact that my hands tended to shake after most fights, and it ended up being a name that would follow me forever.

“I don’t know.” I said. “Whispers. Magic. I think it’s trying to warn me.”

“You’re going to have to give me a little more than that.” growled the Colonel.

“I don’t know.” I repeated, stressing the last word. “All of this magic shit is still new to me.”

“I don’t hear anything.” said the Colonel. He shook his head, frustrated. “With as many grenades as I’ve thrown, it’s a surprise I can hear at all.”

I lifted my head high enough to peek over the grass. There was nothing of note around us other than a few, heavily wooded hills in the distance. I glanced over them, then froze as the voices in my head suddenly changed.

“Trap.” said the whispers in perfect unison as my eyes landed on the furthest hill in the distance.

“Trap.” I agreed, and pointed out the mound of earth for the Colonel to see.

“Well you’re just full of good news, aren’t you?” replied Colonel Treg. “That hill has a pretty good vantage point of this entire area.”

“Yeah.” I said, mulling over a plan of action for a second. Good vantage point or not, there was high grass all around. Any half-decent scout would have been able to approach a target like that undetected. And though it had been a while since I’d used those particular skills, I was pretty sure I still had what it took to be a shadow in the field.

“You’re thinking what I’m thinking? Sneak on over and take a look at what’s there?”

I looked over to see the Colonel digging into his duffel bag and retrieve a long handled, iron headed woodsman’s axe. The design was old school, and looked unwieldy, but I knew from experience that the Colonel’s orcish frame would handle it without issue.

“You got half of it right, Shaker.” he said, as he strapped the axe to his back in a manner that wouldn’t rattle as he moved. “Get your weapon ready. I’ll take point. Don’t get in my way.”

TEN

God damnit, I thought, looking at the Colonel and his axe. This was a bad call. I also knew that he’d been close to violence earlier when I’d told him that we’d be making our trip the slow way, instead of in my Jeep. Now that we were close to the enemy, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to convince him to lean towards caution again.

I also didn’t know if I even wanted to try. For all he knew, his son was in that stand of trees, at the mercy of enemy hands. I could see how something like that would make anyone blood-thirsty. But that didn’t mean that I couldn’t tamp a crazy idea down into what was merely unwise.

“Fine.” I said, as I started to dig into my own duffel bag. “But if we’re doing this, we do it smart.”

“This isn’t the time for thinking, Flint.” said the Colonel.

“This is the time for basic tactics.” I said as I located what I was looking for, and pulled it out for him to see.

“Don’t tell me that’s what mortals call a rifle these days.” scoffed the Colonel. “Just like your mother. Always bringing new mortal trinkets into Faerie.”

“Welcome to the modern world.” I said, as I loaded a magazine into the nearly brand new AR-15 that I’d brought along with us. Though it featured nothing that a competition shooter would write home about, it was relatively lightweight and came with a 1-6 power scope fixed to its top rail. I racked a round into the chamber and made sure that the scope was set on 1X power before I bothered speaking again. “We crawl to the trees and take the sentries out first. We keep it quiet with your axe. I’ll use this to cover your back.”

The Colonel and I waited a few minutes to see if my mysterious whispers offered any extra bits of knowledge. When they stayed silent, he led the way through the tall grass. It was slow going, but that’s to be expected when dealing with the fae. You don’t give them the chance to know you’re coming. Not when the least of them can fling embers through your head, or turn the grass at your feet into a tangle of snakes.

Our caution paid off, and we made it to the trees without being spotted. I could hear the whispers growing louder and louder in my ears as we entered that grove, but for the life of me, I couldn’t spot a single enemy.

We searched the grove for what must have been an hour, slinking between trees with the kind of precision expected from all of the Erlking’s scouts. Nothing. Despite the whispers, we didn’t find a single damn thing save for a handful of the sickly sea green corpse lights that had been everywhere since we’d entered Faerie today.

Eventually, the Colonel sighed, and straightened up to his full height. Even with the dense stand of trees around us, he was plain to see.

“Get down!” I hissed at him, glancing around to catch the approach of any oncoming attack.

“Why?” said the Colonel, his voice as bitter as venom.

“Because the whispers are coming back.” I replied.

Colonel Treg squinted at me, as if looking for some knick or defect that had to be buffed out. Then he crouched, the motion so smooth that he blended back into the foliage like rain soaking earth.

The Colonel was good. So good that I lost track of him in the forest, and couldn’t pin down his location until his head reappeared over my shoulder before heading deeper into the woods around us.

“What are they saying?” he asked.

“I can’t tell -” I started to say, but froze when I realized that was a lie. When I listened hard, when I focused, I could make out the words. They hadn’t become any louder, just clearer.  And they were saying the same thing.

Disguise. Deceit. Conceal.

God. I scanned the trees again, as a sense of dread welled up in my stomach. The words I’d just heard - disguise, deceit, conceal - were more than just descriptions of treachery. They were the very basis for how most things in Faerie approached warfare in the first place.

“Don’t move!” I snapped, no longer trying to keep my voice quiet. “There’s a glamour in here! It’s hiding something!”

The Colonel wasn’t listening, and was already stomping his way over to me as if he could somehow slap the voices out of my head.

He never reached me, because in the time it took him to take a half dozen steps, something metallic clicked and exploded under his feet.

ELEVEN

The blast must have thrown the Colonel through the air, because the next thing I remember is watching him slamming into the ground some twenty feet away from where he’d been standing.

The whispers stopped abruptly. It could have been from how hard my ears were ringing. Or maybe they’d decided to just shut the Hell up.

Ringing ears or not, my eyes worked well enough to watch the glamour unravel before me. Metal fragments quivered and smoked in trees all around where the Colonel had been standing - more than enough steel to disrupt even the most well crafted magical illusion. I also noticed that a one hundred foot wide cluster of trees in the grove had been turned into a psychotic cat’s cradle of narrow trip wires. Metallic threads were stretched between trees from root to top, and I could now see a dozen, battered olive grey objects the rough size and shape of shoebox tops attracted to several of the trip wires.

Even without my stint in the U.S. Army, I’d probably have recognized them. Claymore mines. Mortal made, mass produced, absolutely devastating claymore mines. Each one of them was packed with iron ball bearings that, when triggered, erupted like a giant shotgun blast. And judging from the crater that was smoking twenty feet away from Colonel Treg, he’d triggered the mine while standing less than five feet away.

“Ahh.” gasped the Colonel. “Ahh, that. That hurt.”

“Holy shit.” I said, and started making my way over to where the Colonel had landed. A few tripwires stood between us, but with the glamours that had hidden them now gone, I was able to reach him without triggering any more of the blasts.

“Yes, yes, take your time, Flint.” murmured the Colonel as I approached. “I’m just having a lay down over here.”

Hearing his voice shook me. Maybe even more than the blast had. Colonel Treg had taken a claymore mine blast at damn near point blank range, and still had it in him to speak. It should have shredded his body to pieces. Once I reached him, I realized that my expectations weren’t far off.

Half the meat on one of his legs was missing, and the left side of his body was a bloody mass of rips and holes from hip bone to shoulder. None of the claymores’ ball bearings appeared to have stuck him in the head. While those kinds of wounds would have been a quick death sentence for any human, and most of the fae, it wouldn’t be enough to spell the end of a full blooded orc. Not immediately, at least.

Most things born of Faerie don’t have to worry about infections, so I knew that he’d have a good chance of living if I could just patch him enough to keep him from leaking. I dug out the med kit from my duffel bag and started to apply a tourniquet to his leg. By the time I finished, I realized that keeping him from bleeding out was far from my only worry at this moment.

Gunpowder and bombs were not common in Faerie. Until recently, I’d have sworn that you’d only see them in the hands of one of the Erlking’s men. After my last job had brought me face to face with fae enemies using machine guns, I’d been forced to realize that at least some factions in Faerie were adapting to the times, and had started to arm some of their people, maybe their half bloods, with more common mortal weapons. I’d never heard of anyone, even within the Erlking’s armies, using claymore mines here. I did, however,  have an idea of what whoever had placed these traps had in mind for us.

While plenty of armies may use mines, claymore mines linked to tripwires were usually the purview of people hoping to cover their backs. They’d place mines as they traveled, knowing that if anyone attempted to follow in their paths  would likely be close enough to hear the explosion and return to mop up any survivors. I also knew that unlike some mine fields, claymores were the kind of weapon that wasn’t seen as fully disposable. Even if the people who had placed these were out of earshot by the time we’d set off the explosives, they’d eventually come back to recover their weapons for use another day.

No matter which way I looked at it, I was sure that the people who’d placed all of these tripwires would be coming back. I didn’t know if they’d be back soon. All I knew for certain was that I didn’t want to be here by the time they returned.

“Can you move?” I asked Colonel Treg as I finished packing the last of his many, many wounds with gauze. The question was little more than a formality. His leg didn’t look like it’d be carrying anything, let along his bodyweight, anytime soon.

To my surprise, the Colonel gave me a nod and held out his hand for me to pull him to his feet. I obliged and was able to pull him upright for all of three seconds. The moment The Colonel attempted to take a step on his bad leg, it crumpled beneath him.

He dropped like a stone, and didn’t make a noise of discomfort or pain as he did. That was a bad sign, because I could tell that it wasn’t the pain keeping him down. It was a limb so mangled that too little structure was left to do its job.

“That’s a problem.” said the Colonel, sounding well and truly calm for the first time all day.

“Every problem’s got a solution.” I said. “There’s trees everywhere. Give me a minute, and your axe, and I’ll get you a crutch.”

I was just about to reach for the Colonel’s axe, which was somehow still gripped in his hand despite the explosion, when I heard a long, low note ripple through through the grove of trees.

It was a signal horn, the kind used by many fae, sounding an alert from a mile, maybe less, in the distance. Given how fast most of the fae could be when they wanted, that meant that …

“I hate to be the one to tell you this.” said the Colonel. “But it looks like a minute is all you’ve got.”

TWELVE

The whispers returned along with the horn. They came in ones and threes and sixes at first, but then passed on into dozens, hundreds, too many to count or even comprehend.

Fuuucking Hell. I didn’t know much about the whispers or where they came from. But the sheer volume of the whispers I was hearing meant that the incoming magic was big. Maybe even  working on the scale of those used by archfae and the Lords of Faerie. If I thought that the Colonel and I needed to get the Hell away before, I sure as Hell was eager to move now. Movement still wasn’t an option, though. Not with the time that the Colonel and I had left. I needed to think of something else, and do it fast.

I scanned the stand of trees around us. Terrain like this obscured vision and provided many places to hide. While a scout like myself, which tend to be more oriented to fighting on the move than in one static position, would have loved to fight in a place like this under normal circumstances, the Colonel’s bad leg meant that we wouldn’t be able to adopt our normal approach of firing, hacking, finishing, and relocating until we ran out of enemies.

If being mobile wasn’t an option, then I had to lean into what skills we had left. And if you know anything about scouts, you know that all of us are damn good at hiding.

I took a few seconds to put together a plan that, depending on how many creatures were in route along with that horn, had a chance of working out. All I needed was a decent firing position for myself, and for the Colonel to trust me.

I gave Colonel Treg the rough cut of what I wanted to try, then dragged him over to a tree where he could start building himself a hideout. Branches, brush, and blankets from our bags - he used all of it to build himself a camouflaged spot that could stand up to inspection at arm’s length. Once he added in a layer of glamour like the one he’d used outside my job earlier in the day, he was invisible in every sense of the word that mattered. After that, I wove my way past the remaining tripwires, and ran to the edge of the woods nearest to where I’d heard the horn earlier.

I didn’t have to wait long. Within seconds of arriving at the treeline, I saw two horsemen appear on the horizon. To no surprise, they moved with the same uncanny grace that I’d come to associate with creatures that lived long enough to spend a spare century or two on one skill or another. It was only when they came closer that I realized what I was seeing.

My first instinct about the two riders had technically been right. There was indeed a pair of fae, their eyes hidden by leather caps that reminded me of blends between old school football helmets and the headgear worn by the spartans in film. Both carried large, circular shields covered in white painted spell-script. One held a bronze axe, the other a bronze spear, and I had no doubt that each blade would be dripping in some cruel magic.

My guess about the things they rode on was less accurate. They weren’t horses, they were massive stags with a tangled thornbranch’s worth of horns on their skulls. As they came closer, I realized that my impression of thorns was even more literal than I realized. There were vines and blossoms nestled amongst the antlers, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to have found a birds nest or two if I’d stopped to look even closer.

I imagined what it would be like to be rammed by one of those things. Not just impaled, but hooked, and shredded and ripped as the beast shook its powerful body back and forth to dislodge my corpse. 

Shit as that image may have been, it didn’t change my plan too much. I took my rifle off safe, braced it against a nearby tree trunk, and placed my crosshairs on the chest of the closest incoming riders.

There are competing theories of engagement when it comes to modern rifle fire. As a Texan and son of an Army rifleman, I’d been brought up with the belief that shots should come out clean and precise. After serving in the Army myself, I’d also been exposed to more foreign approaches, including the original Soviet intentions for the AK-47.

For them, the AK was less a precision rifle, and more of a submachine gun on steroids. Sure, that meant taking the time to line up one’s sights to make sure that the first shot counted. It also meant that instead of popping out one shot before carefully aiming, you lined up your irons and let off as long a burst of automatic fire as you could contain.

I’d never really come around to the Soviet way of doing things, but given today’s circumstances, I could see it’s appeal. My AR-15 lacked the fully automatic functionality of a Soviet rifle, but that didn’t stop me from squeezing the trigger as fast as I could once I’d confirmed my initial aim at the incoming riders.

The first round of my barrage smacked into the nearest fae from a distance of fifty yards or so, while my second through twelfth cracked through the air, into the dirt and bounced off the shield of the nearby companion.

The Soviet approach paid off, because the fae’s response to my gunfire was chaos. Both shield bearing riders attempted to hop off of their mounts, though only one made it as his stag collapsed under the crippling influence of the iron cored ammunition I’d pumped into its blood stream. The other rider, the one with the spear, pulled his mount to a stop and hopped off his mount, javelin arm cocked and aimed in my direction.

I didn't wait to see how great the fae’s aim was. Instead I ran, taking care to retrace my steps to keep from stumbling into any glamour hidden claymore mines that I had missed my first time through the trees.

New whispers kept me company as I moved, growing louder and louder as I dodged branch and thicket until they were drowned out by a new sound. Hoofbeats.

A glance over my shoulder revealed that the rider who I’d failed to hit had remounted his stag and was weaving his way through the trees behind me. They were faster than me, and were gaining ground quickly. Pretty much the only advantage I had was a better ability to dodge and weave my way through the trees. Or at least I thought that, until another glance showed me that, no, the spear wielding fae and the mount he rode were both far more graceful and full speed than I would ever be.

I had maybe five seconds before the fae rode me down and impaled me with javelin, horns, or all of the above.

Fortunately, I caught sight of my destination, the same claymore mine strewn field that I’d left the Colonel hiding in earlier. I sprinted past one tripwire strung up between two wide tree trunks, and threw myself into a baseball slide under another that I barely saw coming in time to drop down.

The fae rider on my tail didn’t slow down one bit, and for a moment, I dared to dream that he’d blunder into a tripwire and light himself up. While the claymore mines hadn’t been able to kill Colonel Treg, they’d been dealing with the dual disadvantage of going up against the rough and tumble constitution of a full blooded orc, and facing a creature that didn’t have to worry about the influence of iron.

Every full blooded fae, with the exception of goblins and orcs, was fully at the mercy of iron. The mere presence of it nearby was enough to bring them discomfort, while the touch of it was a bane that brought blisters and worse.

It only got worse once blood was involved, and once those claymores went off, there’d be plenty to spare.

Or at least there would have been, if the damn fae hadn’t leapt off his mount and flowed into a far more graceful imitation of my own baseball slide under the tripwire that I’d dodged.

He didn’t even glance at the booby trap before moving, and I had just enough time to kick myself for forgetting that this bastard may have been the one to place the glamours over the landmines before he finished his slide, raised his spear, and prepared to skewer my head.

A pile of leaves, bramble, and brush at the fae’s back exploded outwards before he got off the throw. The Colonel had been hiding just where I’d left him, biding his time for a proper ambush. He was too far to reach the spearman with a swing of his axe, but that didn’t stop him from throwing the whole iron headed weapon, end over end, to land with a crunch of splintered bone in the fae warrior’s spine.

Legs folded like a puppet with newly cut strings, and a whole lot of unpleasant things began to happen at once. The Colonel, not content to leave it be with a throw, drew a handaxe from inside a pouch that I hadn’t noticed before, and started to crawl on three limbs towards the downed fae.

His target floundered on the ground and clawed at his back in a not so vain attempt to reach the axe. He would have been better off if left it, because the moment his fingers met the Colonel’s embedded blade, they erupted into foul colored boils. It only got worse as more blood pumped out to make contact with the iron axe. The mixture began smoking at first, before eventually catching into blue and green colored flames at the touch of so much iron. 

“I can’t reach him, Flint.” said the Colonel, still down on three limbs. He no longer looked so angry. Just tired. “Finish it.”

For a moment, I didn’t know what he meant. But then I remembered how it used to be in the scouts. The opening salvo of suppressed, heavy hitting carbines. The following rush with bayonets, machetes, shovels. The cripled fae groaned as the iron burned its way past his flesh and the flames it birthed began to die down. Before long, he’d be back on his feet, if he was a strong one.

Though potent, iron was rarely enough to kill a fae by itself. Just make them wish they were dead. For a while.

I aimed my rifle at his skull. A finishing blow, even without iron cored bullets.

The fae must have lost his headgear at some point between his acrobatics and the Colonel’s strike. His clothing half reminded me of what I’d have expected a viking to wear, and outside of a pointed ears and nubs of horn just above his brow, his face was just as dark skinned and sharp featured as my own.

I finished it, like the Colonel had asked. That didn’t make it feel right. It didn’t …

I shook my head, and checked out the area around us. The fae’s stag was standing nearby, unruffled by the blood or loss of a rider. There was something on its back, behind where the rider had been mounted. Wrapped in cloth, the beast’s burden smelled foul from half a dozen feet away. Lord knows what it was carrying in addition to the rider.

The stag let out a soft chuff of sound, and I eyed the mount’s vicious tangle of horns. Too much of a threat, I thought as I raised my rifle again.

“Hold.” said the Colonel. He didn’t yell. He didn’t need to.

Looking over, I found him eyeing the beast with an odd look on his face. He didn’t look so tired anymore. He looked thoughtful. Alert.

I glanced from him, to the stag, and back again.

“You can ride this?” I asked.

The Colonel snorted.

“I spent a half dozen centuries in Faerie before your Erlking returned.” he said. “I can ride it, assuming you don’t put it down first. Help me up.”

THIRTEEN

I helped Colonel Treg haul himself on top of the stag, and searched the fae’s body while he got himself situated with the reins. I didn’t find a horn. The lack of a horn on our dead fae meant that his companion, the one I’d shot off of his stag, would still be able to signal others in his group once he recovered from the iron I’d shoved into his chest. For a moment, I considered going back for him to finish the work. The Colonel told me that we’d be gone before any others could make it to us, though. The survivor wasn’t a threat. I kept the specifics of how I’d left him to myself, in case Colonel Treg disagreed.

Before we left, I took a moment to inspect the cloth wrapped bundle that had been strapped to our newly acquired mount. It was a body. An animal’s body, though one that was so far gone that I could barely confirm that it had four legs. The smell was rancid and wet and unmistakably rotten.

I shook my head to clear my nose, but also out of confusion. The mount looked too well cared for to have been used as a simple beast of burden ferrying corpses across the land. And also, things don’t rot in Faerie. Not like they do in mortal lands.

I didn’t have the time to give the mystery any more of my attention. There were more fae out there, and the Colonel and I needed to be gone before they came hunting. We ditched the rotten bundle and traveled as hard as the stag would take our combined weight.

The direction we chose to move in didn’t bring us any closer to our goal. After the mess we’d made in the booby trapped stand of trees, we’d need to bed down somewhere for a little while. Partially for Colonel Treg to have a chance to recover. Mostly, though, so we could plan and figure out how in the Hell we’d make it to his son, now that this corner of Faerie had been alerted.

Treg was the one who spotted the cave, about a mile in the distance after hours of riding. It looked low, cramped, and wet. Perfect for a pair of scouts in need of a place where no one would want to look.

The pair of us dismounted the thornbranch horned stag and passed by still more corpse lights as we reached the mouth of the cave. The Colonel handed me the reins, and to my relief, the animal followed my lead without complaining.

“I’ve never seen an animal trained this well.” I said as I led the animal inside the cave. It barely fit, but didn’t seem to mind the close confines.

“It’s just time.” sighed the Colonel as he limped in after me. His leg had stopped bleeding through the bandages I’d wrapped it in somewhere along our ride. The limb still looked mangled, but I knew that by morning his orcish constitution would have had enough time to provide scabs and some return to function.

Colonel Treg found a spot that looked inviting, and sat down against the side of a wall, not too far from the stag.

“It’s just time and patience.” he said. “Spirit animals don’t die of old age. If you can keep one from being burnt by your enemies or bled by predators for long enough, even a feral beast can become as gentle as a lamb.”

I looked at the thornbranch tangle perched where a normal stag’s antlers would be. Something dark stained one side. Maybe blood, maybe not.

“I don’t know if gentle is what this mount’s meant to be.” I said.

The Colonel shrugged.

“Gentle at the right time and place, then.” he said. “First watch is on me. Sleep while you can, Flint.”

“You have a plan for tomorrow that I don’t know of yet?” I asked.

“We left enough of a show at those trees for whoever planted those traps to come after us.” he said. “We also rode hard and fast enough to gain us some time. Even with magic, they’ll need to go slower than us to stick to our trail.”

“None of that is sounding like a plan to me.” I said. “Don’t leave me hanging.”

The Colonel looked at his hands before speaking again. When he did, his voice was muted.

“I’ve been across Faerie more times than I can count, Flint.” he said. “And I’ve kept track of every weapon that I’ve seen in these lands. The mine that did this to me was something I’ve seen here before. Seen used by a soldier who lost the Erlking’s favor. Who’s supposed to be dead. It was a long time ago, for a half-blood like you, but not so long for me.”

I thought on his words, then put some of the pieces together for myself.

“You’re expecting a different kind of attack, aren’t you? Something more than the magic you’re used to the fae bringing.” I said. “You’re waiting for an enemy that knows how we fight, because what? They’re a traitor to the Erlking?”

Colonel Treg looked at me as if trying to unravel some kind of knot.

“Worse than a traitor.” he said. “A cancer of loyalty. Half her unit defected and followed her when the Erlking cast her out of the army. Still more turned once she met and spoke with them in the field. She is a liar, and a cheat, and far too good with a rifle. And if you meet her face to face, I just need you to promise me one thing.”

“Don’t worry about me.” I said. “I’ve faced killers before. If she comes for us, I’ll put her down in the name of the Erlking.”

“No.” replied Colonel Treg. “Don’t promise me that. Not until … no. No. What I need is for you to promise to remember my son. If you see him, don’t worry about me. Don’t worry about the traitor. Just get him out. Can you do this for me?”

I just nodded. The Colonel sighed.

“Sleep while you can, Flint, because I doubt either one of us will be due a good night’s rest for a while.”

FOURTEEN

Despite Colonel Treg’s advice, I spent a few minutes leafing through both the tome of fae poems and my pocket copy of Shakespeare before heading to sleep that night. Part of it was because I hoped the great bard would distract me from the glow of corpse lights falling outside of the cave. Part of it was due to a wish that something I read inside the fae tome of poems would give me a leg up on any spell-summoners we ran into tomorrow. More than anything, though, I just wanted something familiar. And after the last few months, reading those books side by side had become a source of comfort to me.

Neither one of them ever got old. The language of true Faerie was so loaded with innuendo and suggestion that I always, without fail, found new meaning on the page. Each visit to Shakespeare’s plays were filled with similar discoveries.

“To die, to sleep,” I whispered to myself, maybe in Faerie, maybe not, while reading through the books. “To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there's the rub, for in this sleep of death what dreams may come.”

Comfort seeking or not, I was still exhausted after so long a day under Faerie’s eternally twilight sky. I fell asleep within an hour, the books left open on my chest.

“‘For in this sleep of death what dreams may come.’” whispered a voice. A dozen voices. A hundred. A thousand. Some were matronly, others full of youth. All were crystal clear.

“What dreams may come, indeed?” crooned the swarm of feminine whispers.

Death, said a new voice. A lone, sexless murmur this time. Death. Light. Watch.

Hunters nearby. Two legged. Dangerous.

Crawling, no, sprinting. Nose close to the ground. Hunters near. Hunters close. A clap of thunder.

“No,” I said. “That’s not a thunderclap. It’s a gunshot.”

Death, said the whisper again. Light. Watch.

Higher now. Cloud high. Free, but not safe. Hunters below. Two legged. Dangerous. Far? Another clap of thunder.

“That’s. Not. Thunder.” I repeated. A stint in the desert had embedded the bark of an AK chambered in 7.62 into my memory. I’d know that sound anywhere. Even in Faerie.

I also knew the landscape that I’d just seen. It was an eagle’s eye view of the territory where the Colonel and I had crossed into Faerie. Though the grasslands and hills were the same, the corpse lights that draped it on our arrival were missing.

“Corpse lights don’t fade away that quickly.” I said. “Was that the past? Is this the past?”

Death, came the whisper. Urgent now. Light. Watch.

Running. Tall and running quick with the herd. Thorn-branch horned and strong.

Cornered. No more running. Hunter nearby. Hands moving, tying ropes onto herd.

Riders. New riders, not hunters. Riders safe.

One. Two. Two taken. Fine. Herd survives loss of two.

A thunderclap. Close. Another. Then axes, knives, and teeth.

Riders. Hunters. Both are the same. Safe?

Death, said the whisper. Light. Watc--

I woke up freezing, my face wet and chest soaked in water. Sputtering, I scrambled to sit up and found Colonel Treg awkwardly bent over me, his weight propped up by the long handle of his axe, one hand holding an empty canteen that still dripped water over where I’d been sleeping.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I said in English.

“What are you doing?” Treg demanded in kind.

“What are you doing?” echoed the corpse lights drifting outside the cave. Their voices were legion, and all spoke in the language of Faerie.

FIFTEEN

A dozen corpse lights hovered outside of our cave, casting shadows that were drenched with an aquamarine glow. They didn’t drift, but instead bobbed with an eerie, uniform rhythm that I realized, with a start, was matched to my own breathing.

“I’ll admit it.” said the Colonel. “That’s new to me. And fucking creepy.”

I nodded, so scared I was unable to speak.

Corpse lights don’t do anything but float and make new spirit animals once they sink. They did this predictably, on a schedule that lined up roughly with 48 hours from creation to loss. Out of everything in Faerie, where even the mountains rarely stayed put for more than a day, corpse lights were a rare constant so reliable you could substitute them for a clock.

They didn’t think, didn’t want, and certainly didn’t talk. Not unless something had changed.

And in a world where magic had been used against me and my kind more often than not, that scared the absolute shit out of me.

They also weren’t just outside. One floated no more than an arm’s length away from me. The Colonel’s awkward posture was due to more than his need to support his weight by using his axe as a makeshift crutch. He’d leaned over me to dump his canteen and wake me up while still taking care to stay as far away from the corpse light as he was able.

The corpse light changed direction, as if drifting on a breeze that neither one of us could feel. It drew close to the Colonel, who flinched.

Well, shit.

The sight of the Colonel recoiling away from the corpse light did more to freak me out than an entire day’s worth of chaos, violence, and death. He wasn’t just a war hero. He was a soldier who’d repeatedly lived up to his legend right before my eyes. There’d been days where I’d seen him face down a raiding party of fae on his own. Hell, just today, he’d been blown up. Literally caught in an explosion that had thrown him through the air, and hadn’t offered more complaint than an understated “that hurt.”

And here he was, backing away from a light.

If this floating golf ball-sized ball of sea green flame was enough to intimidate someone like Colonel Treg, then I should have embraced my own instincts from the first moment I’d seen it. I shouldn't be here watching the thing. I should be running, sprinting out of this cave as fast as my legs could carry me.

Scared or not, I couldn’t leave the Colonel behind. Loyalty may not have been enough for the traitor who’d planted the claymore mines amongst the trees, but it was enough for me.

What’s more, there was also the dream to consider. It had shown me more than a few creepy whispers. It had shown me images, memories I think, of spirit animals that had been slain one by one in the places we’d gone through.The Colonel and I had seen scores of slain monsters on our passing through Faerie. I was pretty sure that the dream had shown me how a sliver of those scores of spirit animals had died.

Once I added in the fact that the corpse lights near our cave were now echoing my voice, I was left with an unavoidable thought.

Some kind of magic had linked me to the corpse lights of the dead spirit animals we’d seen, maybe they were the whispers? I didn’t know how it had happened.

The only thing I was sure of was that if I could figure out some small piece of why all of this bullshit was happening, I’d be able to make the day, and these corpse lights, make a little more sense.

And after, who knows?

Maybe I’d be a little less scared of the corpse light before me. Of the threats all around us. Of the whispers that even now wouldn’t leave me in peace.

I lifted up a hand to touch the corpse light.

SIXTEEN

The Colonel swatted my hand down before I could reach the corpse light hovering before me.

“What the Hell are you thinking?” he said. I looked to find him looming over me, his torn body between me and the corpse light in the cramped confines of the cave.

“Stop hitting me.” I said. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s happening here, and I’ve never heard of a corpse light hurting anyone.”

I pointed at the corpse light, and was rewarded by another, quite literal slap on the wrist from the Colonel.

“I’ve never heard of corpse lights hurting anyone, either.” he growled. “But I’ve also never heard of a corpse light talking. We’re not dealing with normal, Shaker. Don’t touch it.”

I lowered my arm, and held my hands out to show that I wouldn’t try to touch the hovering flame for the moment.

“The corpse lights.” I said. “I saw spirit animals being killed when I was dreaming. I think these corpse lights came from them, and have been showing me how they died. The fae were hunting them alongside people with guns. I think the corpse lights were trying to show me something important. I don’t know what, but I’m going to find out.”

The corpse light in the cave, and the dozens outside echoed me again as I spoke. Though I spoke in English, their echoes came in Faerie - as if translating from one language to the other on the fly. Our voices overlapped, distracting me so much that it was becoming hard to think.

“Let me get this straight.” said the Colonel, apparently feeling similarly himself. “You had a bad dream while in Faerie, and now you want to play with strange magic.”

He snorted, and the disappointment was plain when he spoke again.

“I didn’t teach you this.” He shook his head. “This is fae talk. Maybe you learned this from them, while you were in captivity. What are you thinking, Flint? What did they do to you?”

I looked at the corpse light, which bobbed up and down in the middle of the cave. I heard the whispers, while faint, which I could always seem to hear on a Faerie wind. It hadn’t always been like this. The voices hadn’t always been with me in Faerie. They were now though. Always nearby. Ever since I’d left the Lady of the River, Storm, and Sea.

“I’ll tell you what they did.” I said, my voice as cold as the flame on the nearby corpse light. “The same things they’ll do to your son if we don’t get him back. The dreams. The corpse lights. They’re trying to show me something. Like it or not, I’m going to find out what.”

For the third time, I lifted my arm and reached for the nearby corpse light. This time the Colonel didn’t try to stop me.

SEVENTEEN

The sea green flames of the corpse light flashed blue as my fingers grazed the surface. I felt a chill run up my arm, and my hand passed through the corpse light like the ghost of flame that it was.

Nothing else happened. No visions. No knowledge. No surges of power.

“Well.” I said.  “That was uneventful.”

“Well.” echoed the lone corpse light, its words still coming out in Faerie. “That was uneventful.”

I sighed.

“This will get old soon.” I said.

“This will get old soo-” the corpse light started to say, before being interrupted by Colonel Treg.

“Flint.” said the Colonel, now watching the fae light with sharp, intense eyes. “Say something again. And this time, pay attention.”

I shrugged.

“She sells seashells by the seashore.” I said.

The lone corpse light in the cave repeated me.

Then I got it.

Up until now, every corpse light that we could see had been mimicking my words. Now, though, only the corpse light in front of me was playing telephone.

I said something else. Another children’s rhyme.

The corpse lights outside of the cave continued drifting without eerie comment. The one in the cave, however, repeated me verbatim.

What’s more, it repeated me while holding absolutely still.

That won’t seem like a big deal to those who weren’t accustomed to seeing corpse lights. For people who’d lived in Faerie for any length of time, however, the image of a still corpse light was as odd as watching rain fall up instead of down.

Without a word, I dashed outside of the cave and checked on the other corpse lights that had been echoing me before. They continued to drift through the air without direction or intent.

“I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.” I said outside of the cave.

Their response was silence, save for the one that still echoed in the cave at my back.

I returned to the natural shelter and came down to one knee so I could better inspect the corpse light. Despite my first impression, it wasn’t holding still, not completely. There was a slight bobbing motion not unlike a plastic ball floating on top of a miniscule wave. The corpse light wavered a little up, then a little down, as if correcting its position in the face of an outside force, like a breeze, that was trying to push it away.

Following a hunch, I began to reach out to touch the corpse light again. It moved toward me before I moved an inch, smoothly floating towards my face before I had a chance to even lift a finger in its direction.

I froze. The corpse light followed suit, again responding before my brain had even finished giving my muscles instruction.

Holy shit. I thought. It’s reacting to, no, obeying me at the literal speed of thought.

I mulled it over for a moment.

If it could do that, then maybe …

“Speak.” I said.

“Speak.” it echoed, the words again overlapping with my own.

“Be quiet.” I said.

This time, the corpse light responded with silence.

“Yes.” I said, turning to the Colonel, who watched me with suspicious eyes. “Don’t look at me like that. We’re onto something.”

I turned back to the corpse light.

“Show me your spirit animal.” I said. “Show me how it died.”

Silence, again, from the motionless corpse light. No visions. No magic. Just nothing.

I sighed, pinched the bridge of my nose, and squeezed my eyes shut in frustration.

There was no blackness, however, once my eyelids slid down.

Instead I saw a vision of myself. My point of view bobbed up and down, as if floating on top of a gentle sea.

“I get it.” I said, eyes still shut. “I can see through the corpse light. I can control it.”

This was… unnatural. Corpse lights were not supposed to be sentient beings; they didn’t think and feel they just carried out the task of slowly drifting to the ground before their reincarnation.

An idea struck me, and I opened my eyes with a grin.

“Colonel. I have an idea.” I said. “I think I know how to get your son Bakel back.”

EIGHTEEN

The Colonel shot down my plan almost immediately, but admitted that there are merits that we may be able to use. He advised me to sleep while there’s still time left in his shift. I took his advice long enough to gain a few more hours of rest, then spent my turn on watch experimenting with what the corpse light can do while the Colonel slept.

With just a thought, I can tell the floating sea green flame where to move, be it an inch in front of my nose or even a mile high in the sky. I can see and hear the world through the corpse light’s own senses when I close my eyes, and can make it echo my words, even while out of my sight, on command.

The connection between us seemed to weaken after a mile or so. I even pressed it too far once, and lost contact completely, at least until it returned of its own accord a few minutes later.

By the time the Colonel woke in the morning, I had a new plan.

“It’s simple.” said the Colonel as he gingerly placed some weight onto his bad leg. While the limb had scabbed over while he slept, it was too mangled for more than a limp, despite his orcish constitution.

Colonel Treg grunted, no doubt frustrated that the magic inherent in him was not up to the task of regrowing half a leg overnight. He shook his head, then looked over to me.

“It’s simple.” he repeated.  “I like that part at least.”

It was the closest I would get to an OK from him, because he led the thornbranch horned elk out of the cave without another word.

With that settled, the Colonel and I set off for our separate positions. I lugged my duffel bag up the rock and craig covered hill that contained our cave, while the Colonel mounted and rode out of sight.

We waited, apart, in the twilight of Faerie like that for hours, until the waiting came to an end.

From my perch behind rocks and nestled amongst boulders, I noticed something approaching in the distance. I closed my eyes and focused on the corpse light, which was waiting high above the ground where the Colonel and I hid.

A minute’s worth of concentration allowed me to guide the corpse light over to the Colonel’s position. He watched the sea green flame approach with suspicion, but held his tongue. 

“We’ve got incoming.” I said, and the corpse light echoed my words - albiet in Faerie. While I still couldn't pick up on all the nuance of the language, the Colonel had spent more than enough time in the fae wilderness to be fluent.

“Twenty on foot, from what I can tell, converging on the cave. They’re in two groups. The closest has five. The rest are following, maybe 100 meters behind. It looks like they’re carrying a lot of sacks with them, too. If I had to guess, I’d say they’re dead bodies, like the one we took off your new pet.”

“Bodies?” asked the Colonel. “Do you think-”

“No.” I responded. “There’s at least one prisoner with the group. Hands tied, with a hood on, and wearing scout’s kit. My money is on that being your son. Get ready.”

“I still don’t like this.” said the Colonel, gesturing towards the corpse light.

“You don’t have to like the magic.” I said via the corpse light messenger. “Just get your axe ready, make your pickup, and don’t fall off the damn stag.”

Colonel Treg shook his head, a look of distaste on his face.

“I wasn’t talking about the damn light.” he said. “I’m talking about you. What you’re doing. What you’ll have to do, even if this works.”

Oh, I thought. Of course he wouldn’t like that. The Colonel was never the kind to leave a man behind. Not unless he had no other choice.

“Only one of us has two legs that work.” I said. “Don’t worry about me. I’m good at this kind of thing. After all, I’ve been trained by the best.”

I took a moment to open my eyes, and cranked my riflescope up to 6X before scanning the field before me. Though the fighters were close enough for me to see clearly with the naked eye by now, I was grateful to have the extra detail that the riflescope provided. The nearest group, the clump of five, was maybe 400 meters away. Well within the range of the weapon in my hands.

I closed my eyes, and again watched Colonel Treg through the senses of the corpse light.

“They’re in the kill zone.” I said, then opened my eyes again.

At this distance, the nearest fighters looked like a handful of toys, while those behind them looked like vaguely man shaped bugs.

There was still a bit of time, so I took a moment to settle in behind my rifle and line up a shot.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.

I squeezed the trigger.

NINETEEN

My rifle barked as it spat out a 5.56 bullet containing a core of bright, hardened steel. The round fell short, despite my careful aim, so I inhaled again, adjusted, and fired on the exhale.

This time my shot struck my target in the chest. I saw a puff of red and a flash of green as the fae blood ignited on contact with the fragmenting steel of the AR-15 round.

I repeated the process. Sometimes missing, sometimes not. Three more fighters collapsed with red blood and green flames licking up from their wounds.

I settled my crosshairs on the last and largest of my targets in the forward group. A dull grey piece of cloth was wound around its face like a makeshift bandana or shemagh. Using it as a reference point, I lowered my aim to center mass.

I fired again. Missed. Missed again. Then jackpot as my gunfire birthed another cloud of red mist behind my chosen target.

The fighter paused, shook its head, then continued towards me at flat a run instead of falling.

I sucked in a new breath. Aimed again. Fired again. Hit again.

It kept coming.

Shit, I thought as the fighter picked up speed. The Colonel had warned me of traitors amongst the band that had set the mines in the trees. Traitors from the Erlking’s forces didn’t just mean half-bloods, like myself.

It meant goblins. It meant orcs. Pureblooded, bloody minded, able to survive an explosion at point blank range orcs.

A handful of bullets wouldn’t do shit to a true orc. If I wanted to stop it, I’d have to hose it down with sustained fire aimed at body parts that mattered.

I drew in a long breath, willing away the nervous jitters and shaking hands that adrenaline wanted to bring my way. The oncoming traitor orc was now less than 300 meters away. Too far for it to use the short spear that I could now see in one of its hands, but well within the preferred range of a modern fighting rifle.

Inhale. Exhale. I started squeezing the trigger at a methodical, steady pace. More of my rounds struck true as the distance between us became smaller. By the time the orc ahead of me had reached 200 meters, I’d tagged it at least five times.

On my sixth shot, it stumbled. I squeezed the trigger again. Click. Empty.

I pulled away from my scope with a curse, and moved to reload the rifle with one of several spare magazines. While I did so, I was able to shake the tunnel vision on the charging orc that had blinded me to the actions of the other fighters on the field.

Where the first group of five fighters was either writhing on the ground or charging my position, the figures in the more distant and larger group of fighters were all busy laying flat on the ground.

For a moment, I thought they were trying to get small in the absence of easy cover. That idea died when I saw the first puffs of dust and muzzle flashes as they opened up on my position with fully automatic machine gun fire.

Fast, heavy bullets hammered into the rocks around me and kicked up chips of stone into my face. I recoiled away from the stinging splinters, and rolled behind a boulder that soon became the focus of a massive barrage.

I tucked myself close in behind the boulder and closed my eyes tight. It was hard to focus, but I managed to connect with the corpse light that still hovered near the Colonel’s hidden position.

“I’m taking heavy fire.” I shouted, my words half drowned out by the sound of gunfire. The corpse light repeated my words. “Get ready.”

“I can tell, they’re all focused on you.” said the Colonel. “I can move in from behind and pull some attention away from you.”

“No.” I replied through the corpse light. “You’re supposed to wait for my signal. Don’t worry, you’ll know it when you hear it.”

I opened my eyes, ending the connection, and took a moment, a brief moment, to reorient myself and breathe. With this much incoming fire, using my rifle would be useless, if not suicidal. Fortunately, I had more than a rifle and a corpse light.

I took out my old, leather bound tome of fae poems, just as I’d planned, and flipped to the same page I’d read in an El Paso parking lot, what seemed like an eternity before.

I read a page, cupped my ears, and whispered a passage in the true language of Faerie.

There was a flash overhead as a lightning bolt passed across the half-dark sky of Faerie in utter silence.

The quiet didn’t last, because the eruption of thunder that followed made the very ground shake under my feet.

TWENTY

I rolled out of cover as the echoes of thunder reverberated through the land. The formation of gunmen were clutching their ears in the distance, and even the traitor orc, who by now had reached the very foot of the hill, had stopped its approach to fall to one knee.

I ducked down and closed my eyes.

“Now’s the time, in case you were wondering.” I said through the corpse light.

Looking through the corpse light, I could see that Colonel Treg was already moving. With axe raised, he sprang from hiding, crossed a 100 meters worth of space, and crashed his stag mount into the back of the gunmen’s formation. His targets must have been deafened, because none but those closest turned to face him, even as his axe rained down blows and his mount speared a man sized figure through the chest.

With the kind of skill only borne from centuries of life and practice, the Colonel steered his mount over towards the bound, hooded figure that I’d seen through the corpse light earlier. Colonel Treg didn’t pause to untie the prisoner. He just reached out a free hand and lifted him into a fireman’s carry.

The corpse light had trouble keeping pace with the mounted pair as they spun on four heels and sped away from the fight. Through the light I could see the Colonel remove the hood from the prisoner, revealing a half-orc that, despite softer features, shared a resemblance to his rougher looking dad.

I pulled the corpse light up close to the Colonel’s ear so he could hear me over the sound of galloping hooves.

“Good job.” I said. “Meet me back at the Jeep, like we walked about earlier. This is going to be goodbye for a while. I can only control the corpse light from a mile out, and I’ll need it to get away from this hornet’s nest.”

Colonel Treg started to say something, but his son interrupted before he could answer.

“Wait!” shouted Bakel, the Colonel's half-orc son. Apaprently he understood Faerie at least as well as his father.  

He sounded scared. Panicked, even. “You left a man behind?  With them?!”

“As much as I hate to say it,” replied the Colonel. “He’s proven more than able to handle himself.”

“No! You don’t understand! The weapon we came for, they’ve got it!” replied his son, his voice cracking from the strain. “It’s a wand! A magic wand! Get your man out of there now!”

The corpse light connection abruptly ended.

TWENTY ONE

It was the tone of the kid’s voice more than the words that made me feel a dropping sensation in my gut.

Though enchanted knives or bows were a common threat, magic wands were the Faerie equivalent of, well, fairy tales. Idiot proof implements of power that anyone, be it mortal child, fae lord, goblin, or orc, could use with little more than a thought.

The Erlking’s forces had been fighting against all comers in Faerie for more than 100 mortal years. We were despised. We were hated. And among some of the fae, we were even beginning to be feared. If magic wands really existed, someone, somewhere would have used them against us by now.

I needed to focus, because this was the same kind of talk that distracted scout teams, like the Colonel’s son, enough to be captured in the first place.

“There’s no such thing as magic wands.” I said to myself, ignoring the fact that I’d once said the same about fairies a decade earlier.

I came back to my own senses, and found that the whispers around me had grown in volume again. I also noticed that the gunfire was still missing so I poked my head out from cover to give the battlefield a look over before my corpse light returned, and I made my escape.

The bloodied traitor orc who’d charged me was still there at the bottom of the hill. It was standing now, and from this distance I could see that it was female, even with the grey mass of cloth wrapped around its face. It looked up at me, then cocked its head to the side in a way that was strangely familiar.

She was holding something in hand, and my stomach dropped as I realized that what I’d mistaken for a short, stabbing spear at a distance was in fact a one foot length of metal, no wider than a thumb at its thickest point.

I’ll admit that it wasn’t quite what I’d imagined a magic wand to look like. But expectations or not, it was best not to underestimate this weapon.

“You’ve got to be shitting me.” I said, as I dropped the tome of fae poems in my hand, and reached for the rifle slung to my chest.

I was halfway through lining up a shot at the orc when she tapped the wand against the base of the hill. The motion was casual, unhurried. Wholly confident.

For the second time in as many minutes, the earth began to shake under my feet. The movement didn’t end, as it had after I’d summoned thunder a short time ago, but instead grew more violent in the span of a heartbeat.

For a moment, I thought that the traitor orc had used her wand to cause some sort of earthquake.

That thought ended when the first claw punched its way out of the earth.

It wasn’t a living thing. It was skeletal, made of naked bone without an ounce of flesh attached to its dusty surface. The claw thrashed and scrambled until it found purchase on an outcropping of rock. I watched the stone crack as the boney claw dragged more of itself out of the earth. First a wrist, an arm, a shoulder.

The ground trembled again, and another claw burst out of the ground.

More rumbles followed, and still more skeletal hands appeared. The nearest of them began to reach for me.

My hands shook as I laid them back on my rifle. I’d fought against magic before, Hell, I’d even fought with magic on occasion, but I’d never seen or heard of anything like this. Not in the Erlking’s ranks. Not among the Lady’s court. Not once in all the years that I’d shared beers and war stories with half-blooded veterans after I’d retired.

I didn’t know how in the world this traitor orc had managed to use this magic implement, but I did know that when it came to magic, cold iron was best.

I reloaded my rifle and lined up my scope for one last shot. The traitor orc was too close for the high powered zoom that I’d been using until this point, so I paused to crank the zoom of the riflescope back down to 1X before opening fire.

It was a fast adjustment. Not quite a reflex, but still quick by any standard. It still took a moment, though. Time enough for me to catch a glimpse of why the larger group of fighters hadn’t resumed firing at me.

Though my thunderclap had disrupted their battle rhythm, it hadn’t put any of them down for the count. No, the company of fighters arrayed before me were just busy unwrapping the sacks they’d dragged into battle to open fire with their guns.

Just like I’d guessed, sacks were filled with a collection of half decayed corpses.

Corpses that, despite all their rot, were now beginning to stagger towards me.

I gave the corpses a quick curse, and shifted my aim back to the traitor orc at the base of my hill. If I killed her quick, I could probably end her magic before this Faerie interpretation of a Night of the Living Dead reboot tore me to shreds.

Sucking in one last breath to steady my nerves, I settled my crosshairs over her face. Something about her seemed familiar, but I pushed that out of my mind, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger.

The ground beneath me shook again, or maybe it was just my hands.

Either way, I missed.

I would have gone for another shot, but the skeletal hands and claws were too close by then. One yanked at my ankle, and I lost my footing. Another claw lashed out at me before I could rise, and while it failed to grab onto my wrist, it knocked the fae tome that I’d dropped earlier into a slide.

The book had been uphill from me to begin with, and was now sliding down slope, past my head, and towards a ledge of rock that led straight to the traitor orc waiting below.

Running on instinct, I kicked at the skeletal fingers holding my leg. Bones snapped, and I rolled towards the tome in an attempt to grab the book before it could fall over the cliff’s edge.

My hands were quick, and I managed to snatch it out of the air. But quick hands were of little use as I began to slide towards that same ledge of rock myself.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I shouted as I slipped across rock and over the cliff edge. I saw a rocky outcrop racing towards me. Twenty feet. Fifteen. Five.

Impact.

I woke up God knows how much later. My head felt like an egg clutched in a slowly closing vise, and my hands were bound in the same way that I’d seen the Colonel’s son restrained.

The traitor orc sat on the ground across from me. Behind her, I saw fighters, some fae, some orc, starting campfires and setting up tents. One of them made eye contact with me, and started forward as if to show how little he’d appreciated my attention earlier. A few other fighters headed him off, their hands on his chest and eyes cast in the traitor orc’s direction.

I’d been captured.

Oh, God. I’d been captured again.

I’m not too proud to say that a shiver, then a full on shake, of fear went through me as I thought back to the last time I’d been taken by the fae. My time as an involuntary guest of the fae Lady of the River, Storm, and Sea had been enough to almost drive me insane. From the looks of the motley crew of fae born fighters gathered around me, my upcoming stint as a prisoner would be far less hospitable.

I closed my eyes, hoping against hope that I’d find sight through the corpse light. That this time, with it, and the magics that I already knew, I wouldn’t stay chained at someone’s whims for long.

To my relief, I found it waiting for me in the air, no more than a few dozen yards away.

I sighed and waited until the shakes went away. After that, I opened my eyes and fixed the traitor orc with a stare.

“How do you want to do this?” I said, my tone equal parts determined and grim.

The traitor orc cocked her head to the side in that too familiar way, then started to unwrap the dull grey cloth that masked her face.

The figure before me dropped the cloth mask, and stared at my face. Like all pureblooded orcs seen in the twilight of Faerie its features were heavy boned, heavy browed, and tusk toothed.

Even so, I could trace the path of a familiar cheek and a recognizable nose. I could spot the kinship, just like I’d been able to tell that the half-orc I’d helped rescue was of the same blood as Colonel Treg.

I thought of growing up. Not alone, but with dad, which at times felt like the same thing.

Alone. Just the two of us, left to make it work, because she’d died.

I tried to say something. Blinked back tears. Swallowed hard.

“Mom?”

“Hi Aden.” said the orc who I’d last seen more than two mortal decades ago. “As you can guess, we’ve got a lot to discuss.”

END

Aden’s story continues in Inhuman Intelligence Collection, Book Five of Faerie Protective Services

GRATITUDE

Yooooooo, we did it! Close Protection Orc isn’t just written! It’s out in the wild, and you read it from start to finish!

If you like what you’ve just read, and wanna get more, then check out Inhuman Intelligence Collection - book five of the Faerie Protective Services Inc. Series! The last few books have already been a bit wild, but trust me, it only gets crazier from here.

If you enjoyed the book, I’d really love it if you could go and leave a review for the first book of the Faerie Protective Services Inc. Series. It takes maybe 30 seconds, and is one of the best things you can do to help me share this book with more urban fantasy addicts like us.

Speaking of addictions, have any of you guys had a chance to read Jim Butcher’s Peace Talks yet? I finally had time to rip through the story, and can’t wait for the patron saint of urban fantasy to get around to releasing Battle Ground in a few weeks! 

I’ve got a ton of new stories to write for all of you in the meantime. Stay safe out there, guys, and keep reading.

- mckinney