Lord's Fall (Elder Races #5)(44)

Of course Eva would have thought of that. She had probably scoped that out as an emergency exit option when they had first arrived. Pia rubbed the back of her aching neck. If only she could think past this needle in her brain.

Eva said in an ultracasual tone of voice, “Guess this is when I point out how much help Hugh would be if he were still here.”

Pia just looked at her. They had made the only decision they could, given the information they had at the time, and the other woman knew it. “So why’d you let him go so easily, captain?”

The other woman laughed softly. “Touché.”

Light, running footsteps sounded just outside in the hall, and someone pounded on their door. Eva and Pia strode quickly into the common room as James checked outside. He stood back almost immediately. Miguel and Johnny had returned, and they brought Linwe with them. The Elf’s face was tear-streaked, her dark brown eyes stricken.

Pia said, “What’s happening?”

“People are fighting each other,” Miguel said.

“We knew that,” Eva snapped. “Be specific.”

“You don’t understand. People aren’t just fighting each other,” Linwe said. Her voice sounded hoarse and scraped raw. “Friends are fighting each other. It doesn’t make any sense. I just saw—I-I just saw Elyric cut down his best—his best—”

Johnny put an arm around her as she stuttered into choked silence.

Eva’s face had turned grimmer than ever. She said, “What’s burning?”

Miguel’s expression held an echo of the same horror that Linwe’s did. He said, “The Wood. The blaze is all around us. Someone set the whole damn place on fire.”

Pia’s stomach gave a sickening lurch as she realized what was causing the needle in her brain. The strange, beautiful Wood was screaming as it died.

If she thought Dragos was mad at her before, this was going to send him ballistic.

She muttered, “I’m never going to hear the end of this.”

TEN

Dragos didn’t stop at the New York City limit.

Instead he continued to fly south until he reached the Wyr/Elven border. The seven Elder Races demesnes in the United States did not follow any human geography, and state lines were not demesne border lines. The Wyr/Elven border cut through Lumberton, North Carolina, south of Fayetteville.

Once he reached Lumberton, he decided to pause and think. He landed on the shoulder beside I-95 South. Lumberton was a small town, with around twenty thousand humans and three thousand more of a smattering of the Elder Races. Even though Lumberton was several hours’ drive away from New York, it was just as gray, cold and dreary as the city had been.

Still keeping his presence cloaked, he changed into his human form to check voice mail and text messages, scrolling through them quickly while trucks and cars roared past on the interstate.

There. His vision narrowed. He’d gotten three phone calls from Pia’s iPhone. The first had come in almost two hours ago, and the others had come at intervals of every half hour afterward.

He didn’t bother to listen to any of the messages. Instead he punched speed dial. When a male answered his mate’s phone, his talons sprang out and the growl that came out of him shook the ground.

The male spoke rapidly, ”. . . Is quite well. This is Hugh Monroe. Again, your mate is quite well. Pia sent me out of Lirithriel Wood to tell you that she is fine, and that she thinks the Wood is interfering with your communication with each other. She gave me her cell phone because she wanted to be sure I reached you, sir, and I promise you, that’s the only reason why I’m using her phone right now.”

Monroe. It took Dragos a second to place the name. He was the gargoyle from Pia’s bodyguard team. Dragos took a deep breath and relaxed fractionally. Although he hated the gargoyle’s voice coming from Pia’s phone, he said, “Tell me everything.”

Hugh obliged by telling him about their trip into the Wood, along with every detail of the High Lord’s home, how Pia’s evening had gone last night and how she had sent Hugh with the message within minutes of waking up.

As Dragos listened in silence, he strode south down the shoulder of the interstate while traffic whizzed past, oblivious to his presence. Snow began to fall in fluffy, fat flakes that swirled over the dark gray land. The snowflakes that fell around him hissed as they boiled to nothing before they reached the ground, until a cloak of mist trailed behind him as he walked.

Fifteen more yards. He knew it like he knew the back of his own hand, just as he had known to a penny what had been in his original hoard before he downsized it. He knew to a precise inch the many miles of border that surrounded his demesne.

Monroe fell silent after he described flying away from the High Lord’s home. Dragos asked, “Where are you now?”

“I’m on the north side of the Wood, in the Francis Marion National Forest,” Monroe told him.

“You’ve done what you were told to do,” Dragos said. “Now go back in.”

Ten yards.

“I will certainly give it my best shot,” Monroe said. “But I’m not sure I can. I could feel the Wood close behind me as I left.”

Five.

“Try,” Dragos said. He hung up.

He checked through the rest of his messages, but there was nothing that couldn’t wait. Bayne had texted that Sidhiel had not made an effort to leave town. He sent out a blast message to his sentinels in a brief update and then he turned off his phone.