Suzanne Johnson - Elysian Fields

My legs had gotten scraped from being dragged across the gravel, so I left a swath of red along the carpet on the stairs. The Axeman grunted whenever the staff touched him, but despite the tattered rags of his jacket starting to flame again, he didn’t loosen his grip on my hair. Finally, I got a hand around one of the banisters at the top of the stairs and held on, but the wood splintered with a loud crack.

I used every ounce of magic I could summon and channeled it through the staff. With a roar of pain, the Axeman dropped me at the top of the stairs and careened to the middle of the room before collapsing to his hands and knees. Smoke rose from his burning suit coat.

I rolled to my side and stilled, panting. Sebastian crouched under the sofa table a foot in front of me, surrounded by blood, his crossed blue eyes wide and dazed. An ax lay next to him, its blade red with blood and hunks of chocolate brown fur. I scanned his head and paws, which all seemed accounted for, but . . . “You chopped off my cat’s tail! You sick son of a bitch. Why would you do that?”

Still clutching the staff, I struggled to my feet, snatched up Sebastian, and ran toward the stairwell with him tucked under my arm like a blood- and fur-covered football. The Axeman was still on all fours, smoking and howling.

I raced downstairs, tripping as I rounded the bottom of the stairwell where it went into the guest room. Sebastian wriggled free and darted under the bed.

I hesitated, but heard the Axeman moving again, so I ran for the front door, praying I could get away and the lunatic wouldn’t take it out on my cat. It would take too long to track down my keys again in the dark driveway, so my only hope was getting to the coffee shop down the block where there would still be people out, topping off their eve ning with a latte. Surely the necromancer would have told his killer to avoid crowds.

I didn’t even think about going to Rand for help or trying to call him mentally, not until I almost bowled him over at the bottom of my front steps. But like with the attack at Six Flags, he’d know I was in trouble.

He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the street. “Come on, let’s get back to my house.”

I balked, trying to drag him toward the coffee shop. “We need to get to where there are people. He’ll follow us.”

“No, we—” Rand looked up, eyes wide, and shoved me to the ground. He landed on top of me just as an explosion seemed to bring the world raining down around us. Something landed next to my face, and I squinted through the smoke to see a brass box just like the one I kept on my nightstand to hold jewelry. It took a second for me to register that it was my jewelry box.

“Wait . . . what . . .” I reached out for it, and gasped when it burned my hand.

“Dru— we’ve gotta get out of here.” Rand rolled off me, hauled me to my feet, retrieved the staff from the ground, and pulled me across Magazine Street, stumbling behind him even as traffic began piling up and sirens sounded in the distance.

I jerked my hand away from his and looked back at my house. Smoke billowed from the upstairs sitting-room window, creating a foggy, surreal scene as it settled over the streetlights. My vision blurred a few moments before I realized I was crying. Flames flickered through my roof, and another explosion sounded from the back of the house. My library, all of Gerry’s grimoires and spellbooks. Sebastian.

Anger, hot and deep, boiled up in my throat, and with a scream of rage I started back toward the house. It was part of me, everything in there was something I’d worked for, something I loved, all I had left.

The world tilted, and it took a second for me to realize Rand had picked me up and thrown me over his shoulder like a sack of mulch. I screeched at him as I struggled, beating my hands against his pale sweater that seemed to glow in the light filtering through the smoke. But he ran as if I weighed no more than a potted plant, only setting me down when he needed to open his door.

I shoved past him to run back toward the street, but he caught me.

“You can’t go back, Dru—look.”

I was looking at the burning roof, but my focus was drawn by movement from the front porch. A dark, bulky figure stood in the open doorway, backlit by the flames. My whole life was burning up and that freak stood there watching us, holding his ax.

Rand took my hand and pulled me inside Plantasy Island, closing and locking the door behind us. “Come on—upstairs.”

“No, are you crazy?” I fought through the numbness that threatened to shut down my brain. “He can trap us up there, or set fire to this place and burn us out. And I have to see about my cat. He’s going to kill Sebastian.”

“The cat will find a way out, better than we could. We can barricade ourselves in upstairs, and I have another transport we can use if we need to.” Rand’s face was illuminated in golden light from the bonfire across the street.

I followed him up the narrow stairway. There was a landing at the top with three doors opening off it. In the middle one stood Vervain, Rand’s mother and clan leader of the fire elves.

Her skin was glowing, and it had nothing to do with the fire.

Vervain seemed lit from within, as if her blood were molten gold. I gaped at her, the shock of glowing skin finally sending my overloaded brain into full meltdown. She reached out a hand and only Rand’s presence behind me kept me from backing away on instinct.

“Don’t be afraid, daughter. Fod mewn heddwch .” She touched my forehead and, almost instantly, my muscles relaxed and a calm, pure energy flowed through me. She continued to whisper in a language I didn’t understand, until her final words: “Such pain.”

A crash from below destroyed the moment—glass shattering, followed by hoarse bellows. “The Axeman cometh,” I muttered, my feel-good elven vibes rapidly fading.

“Let’s get inside.” Rand propelled me forward, and we followed Vervain back into the room. Rand closed the door and locked it. I was glad to see a deadbolt instead of a flimsy doorknob lock. I barely had time to register a large, softly lit room decorated in earth tones before another crash came from downstairs.

“He’s in the greenhouse,” Vervain said. “Why would he hurt the plants?”

Was she bonkers? The man was an immortal undead serial killer fueled by the cold magic of a necromancer. He wasn’t going to pet the azaleas and sing Grateful Dead songs.

Rand rested hands on my shoulders and turned me to face him.

“Are you hurt?”

I blinked at him. “My house is burning and my cat is in there.” Sebastian and I had a rocky relationship, but I loved him. He was my last living link to Gerry.

Rand stepped back and looked at my legs, shrouded in strands of blood-soaked pantyhose. My feet left bloody prints wherever I’d stepped.

I rubbed my eyes. “I’m okay.”

He seemed satisfied that was true, and lifted my chin to look up at him. “Focus on what I’m saying. There’s an open transport in the bathroom, right behind us. If we get separated, go through it. We’ll follow if we can. Do you understand?”

I nodded and looked back at the glowing Vervain, whose attention was riveted on the door into the hallway. Rand handed the broken staff to me before moving to the far wall. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t lost Charlie in the chaos. He gripped a large chest of drawers around its top surface and dragged it in front of the door. Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairway, and my heart seemed to pound in time with their cadence.

“We should all go now,” I said. “Why wait?”

“It goes straight into Elfheim, and we’re giving Mace time to cool down. If we can stop the Axeman here it’ll be better.” Rand’s words tumbled out in a rush, and he flinched when the door into the room next to us crashed. “The transport word is pobl-o-dân . Say it.”