Suzanne Johnson - Elysian Fields

He fought to keep his eyes open. “No, but we hire wizards all the time to do jobs that aren’t legal. How do you think I got two permanent transports set up in my house in New Orleans? And who else sees you as a big-enough threat to want you dead?” He winced and pressed bloody fingers into his bloody stomach. “The wizards want to use your skills, not destroy them. Only the other elven clans, who saw you as a threat even before we were bonded, really want you dead. My money’s on Lily if not Mace himself.”

I thought again of Lily being in the L’Amour Sauvage office with Etienne— a necromancer. Even if he didn’t do it himself, he might have given her a recommendation. Rand was right. No wizards hated me enough to go after me like this alone, but there had to be at least one greedy enough or power-hungry enough to help the elves.

Regardless, Elfheim was the last place I needed to be. “Okay, let’s get out of here. Where can this transport take us? We can’t go back to New Orleans. Not yet.”

Rand winced and shifted position. “The transport here follows the geomantic lines. We can go to Old Orleans or one of its outposts, to Vampyre, to Faerie, or other places in Elf heim.”

Rand tried to get to his feet, but fell back with a grunt.

I managed to get up and held out a hand. With me pulling hard, he finally got upright, if slightly hunched over. He kept his left hand clamped on his stomach as if his organs might spill out if he let go. My own ribcage felt as if a water buffalo had trampled on it after hitting the bedframe, but at least I wasn’t bleeding.

He couldn’t take much more, and we needed to be gone. I located the transport by the heaviest bloodstains and hobbled into it.

Rand came to stand beside me, almost doubled over in pain. “Say pobl-o-dân and then the destination. Where are we going?”

I wrapped an arm around his waist and named the only place I could think of where I’d feel halfway safe: “ Pobl-o-dân . Old Barataria. Grand Terre.”

Transports were draining, even if a certain wizard hadn’t already used up all her physical magic trying to fight off a homicidal undead maniac. Rand and I landed on a cold patch of ground in the pitch-black night, the sole illumination from the Beyond’s ever-present full moon.

Its silvery glow revealed only that we’d come to rest on soft, damp soil, with high grasses around us. The crash of waves could be heard nearby, and the air was thick with the smell of salt and seaweed. This was Grand Terre, I assumed, but where on Grand Terre was another matter. Jean Lafitte probably wouldn’t have an open transport too close to his home in the Beyond, just in case unwelcome visitors popped in.

I visualized the Louisiana coastline in my mind and tried to fix our position by the sound of the waves. Grand Terre and Grand Isle were the two biggest barrier islands due south of New Orleans. In modern times, Grand Terre was unpopulated except for a state-protected wildlife area, much of the island lost to erosion. In Jean’s times it had been much larger, its land more solid. He owned a big house here, and ruled a colony of up to a thousand pirates and other assorted riffraff I didn’t want to stumble across.

Rand and I had collapsed where we landed, and didn’t speak for a while. The black sky overhead seemed to hang low because of all the stars. Had there been more stars back in the early nineteenth-century slice of time Old Barataria was caught in? Or had city life just dulled the wonderment of them because we’d surrounded ourselves with so much fake dazzle?

Finally, I climbed to my feet. Sea winds ruffled through the tall grasses and whipped my hair across my face hard enough to sting. I shivered from the cooling air, and realized for the first time that my sexy little red dress was mostly in shreds.

As the adrenaline drained, the damage reports started filtering from body to brain. My feet had been shredded from running without shoes, and the dirt—or sand, or whatever combination of the two we’d landed on—stung them. My head throbbed. Breathing was torture. I touched tentative fingers against my ribcage, and gasped from the knife-jab of pain. At least one of the ribs that had just healed was bruised again, if not cracked. I was a bloody mess but had no idea how much of the blood was mine.

To my right, I could see Rand struggling to sit before he gave up and flopped back down, panting. His pale sweater glowed in the silvery moonlight, covered with big, dark splotches I knew were literally blood-red. “Rand, you okay?”

“Not . . . sure.” He wheezed on every exhale. “You got . . . staff ? Can you start . . . fire?”

I sat next to him, feeling around where we’d landed, and finally raked my hands across the staff. “I have it, but I don’t think a fire’s a good idea—not until it gets lighter and we can see where we are.” I didn’t know how many undead pirates Jean had in Old Barataria, but being found by the wrong ones could be worse than facing Mace Banyan. Although hopefully they’d take us to Le Capitaine before doing anything fatal.

Rand coughed, and his breathing had a whistling undertone. I didn’t like the sound of it. “I’ve never been to this part of . . . Beyond but I thought . . . always night.” The sentence had cost him too much breath.

“Jean told me once that at dawn and sunset, it lightens enough to see for an hour or two before it starts getting dark again. They never get sunshine, but they do get that kind of predawn and post-sunset grayness. When that happens we can see where we are. Till then, let’s stay put.”

Like either of us could go anywhere yet. Especially Rand, and I didn’t have the strength to help him.

“Cold,” he whispered, or maybe that’s all the strength that remained in his voice. I shifted closer and curled up next to him, holding my breath until the pain of moving subsided. Too bad I hadn’t had the foresight to bring a blanket from the cabin in Elf heim before we transported. While I was wishing for things, I wished that if I had to curl up in the outdoors, it could have been with someone else. Which was selfish, because if not for Rand, I’d probably be burned crispier than the Axeman. On the other hand, if not for Rand and his stupid elven Synod, the Axeman might never have been after me.

“Will Mace be able to tell where we’ve gone?”

Rand didn’t answer, so I shut up and let him sleep or be unconscious. I didn’t want to know which; there was nothing I could do about it. I prayed we’d be able to find Jean, maybe even Jake, and one of them could get word to Alex.

My heart clenched at the thought of Alex. By now, Ken would have called him. He’d know I’d been attacked in the driveway. Ken heard me screaming. Would they realize it was the Axeman since he’d burned the evidence? Would they think to look in Rand’s house and find Vervain’s body, or would the elves find it first and do damage control? Would Alex think I had died in the fire? Had Sebastian survived, or was he cold and scared somewhere, bleeding to death?

I pondered questions that had no answers and, shivering, burrowed closer and sought warmth from the wrong man.

***

I congratulated myself for not screeching in fright when I woke face-to-beak with a brown pelican the size of an overfed bulldog. He appeared almost as startled as I, and hopped atop a log lying a few feet away, turning his back to me as if by not seeing me, I might not see him. I wondered if that would’ve worked with the Axeman.

Rand and I had curved ourselves into a spoon, and I was almost warm. Almost. I eased from beneath his arm and, holding on to my ribs, twisted stiffly to look at him. He didn’t stir, so I poked him. “Rand.” I spoke in a hissing whisper, not knowing if there were pirates about. Finally, he moaned and flopped on his back.