Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond(102)
Author: Kim Harrison

At the window, Jenks motioned for him to hurry up. Trent let go, shoved the man off him, and stood. Shaking, he brushed at the baby food and potato dust. "Got it," he said, trying to match the man’s voice, then snatched the guard’s hat off the floor. Jenks tucked in under it as he put it on his head, sliding in between Trent’s own cap and the bigger hat from Harold. Trying to catch his breath, Trent looked down at the slumped man. A flash of memory of the forest intruded: sunshine, birdsong, blood upon the fern. His fingers twitched, reaching for the knife.

Please don’t lead me astray, he thought, agonizing over his decision. It would be easy. It would be sure. To leave him as he was might lead to his own death. To trust an ancient elf goddess was inane! She wasn’t real! The only real thing here was if he was caught, he would die and his species would fight another thousand-year-war only to die with him.

But then his hand closed into a fist. He needed to hope that miracles could happen; otherwise he would lose all chance that he could find a way to be who he wanted, who his daughter needed.

"Did you get it?" the woman called, and Trent reached for the pan on the floor, ignoring Jenks’s questioning hum.

As Jenks hovered uncertainly, Trent hit the guard once more for good measure, the reverberation echoing all the way up his arm to his spine. "Yes, ma’am," he mumbled. Tossing the pan to the floor, he staggered out.

Time to get his daughter and get out of here.

FOUR

The young woman stood with her back to the counter, a warmed bottle in her hand and her arms crossed over her chest. "Well," she said sourly. "Did you get it?"

Heart pounding, he smiled his best sheepish expression and nodded. His voice wasn’t disguised. He’d heard Harold speak; he knew he couldn’t match it.

"That’s what I thought," she said, pushing herself up with a slow wariness. "I’m not cleaning that up. Let’s go. Ms. Tight-ass is probably itching to leave. That woman is driving me crazy." She was headed for the door, and Trent adjusted his hat to cover his ears, wincing when Jenks swore at him. "You don’t wake up a baby to eat," the woman complained, arms swinging casually. "And then Tight-ass wonders why she won’t go to sleep. You can’t set a baby’s schedule; you work around hers!"

His knees were quivering as he got to the heavy doors, opening one for her. He wanted to blame it on the exertion of thirty miles on a bike, half a mile in the cliff tunnel . . . and all of it when he should be sleeping, but he knew it was excitement and fear. His daughter.

"Thank you, Harold," the woman said, hesitating briefly before she went out into the hall.

"Mmmm," he muttered, dropping his head as her eyes ran from the top of his borrowed cap to his bare feet, hopefully covered by his glamour. A spike of tension snaked through him when, for an instant, he thought she could see beyond it, but then she turned away, hips swaying as she went into the hall.

He exhaled heavily as he followed her, hearing it mirrored by Jenks sandwiched between his cap and the guard’s borrowed hat. A soft clearing of his throat pulled his gaze up to the four guards waiting for them, pistols on one hip, ley line charms on another. "Assume the position, Megan," the shortest man said, a hand on the butt of his pistol, a half smile on his face.

"Shove it. You know it’s me," the woman, Megan apparently, said, her smart-ass attitude doing more than anything else to ease Trent’s pounding heart. "If you try to frisk me one more time, I’m going to pull your balls off and make Princess-Cries-A-Lot a rattle."

Megan turned on a heel, shocking Trent as she looped her arm in his. "Besides, they caught the guy, right?" she said, jauntily walking them down the tiled, whitewashed hall.

The men jumped to follow, two hustling to get in front of them, two behind. The ceilings were low and made of darkly varnished timbers. Painted stone walls threw back the echo of the men’s boots and the soft scuffing of Megan’s shoes. There were no windows, but wall sconces illuminated everything in a soft, comfortable glow between the closed doors made of thick wood, varnished as dark as the ceiling.

"I’ll be glad after tomorrow," Megan chatted as they walked, and Trent wondered if Harold and Megan had a little thing going as she squeezed his arm and smiled up at him. "This is insane. Guards in the hallways and escorts everywhere . . . I really appreciate you being my assigned guard. I hate picking work buddies."

Trent shrugged, trying to hide that he was feeling the first hints of a cold sweat breaking out. He’d never seen so many elves together before, even at his own botched wedding. His jaw was clenched, and he forced himself to relax as Megan gave him a sidelong glance at his continued silence. They were all West Coast elves with their straw-yellow hair smelling faintly of salt. His father had always taken time to remove that particular human tag when tweaking damaged genomes, wanting to preserve what he could of their true beginnings. There were lots of special camps scattered around the United States tending to the elves’ stagnant population, and though the mechanisms and techniques to repair the demon-wrought damage came from his father, the artistry varied, especially west of the Mississippi.

Megan kept up a running commentary as the hallways widened, branched, and began to take on the feel of home and comfort, the occasional chair and table set at the increasingly numerous windows that opened up to ocean views. The walls were three feet thick, with wide billowing drapes moving in the free-flowing wind coming in through spell-protected windows. He could hear Jenks muttering, memorizing the layout as he peered through the grommet holes in Harold’s hat. Trent was starting to think that they might actually be able to do this without killing anyone else when they made a sharp series of turns and found the nursery door. At least, Trent assumed it was the nursery. What other room would have six men guarding it?

All six men came to a threatening attention as his group approached, and Megan’s chatter cut off. "Hired help," Jenks whispered. "Mercenaries. This is your dragon, elf man."

Worry pinched his brow as he estimated the damage he was going to have to do to get past them with a baby in arms if there wasn’t a window in the nursery. Smoothing it away, Trent cleared his throat, pulling his arm from Megan as they came to an uneasy halt. He tried not to look at the featureless door. His child was beyond it. He would find a way.

"Identification?" the one closest to the door barked, and Trent’s back stiffened. Blast it all to hell . . .

Megan sighed, her lips tight as she pulled a card from around her neck and offered it to the man, her motions slowly belligerent, an ugly squint to her eye. Saying nothing, the man ran a scanner over it, handing it back when it beeped.