“Did you, now?” Eva moved to the window to look out, hands on her hips. “Dreams, spells and fire. That ain’t good, princess, but whoever this f**ker is, he ain’t our problem. I sent Johnny and Miguel to scout out our best exit strategy.”

Pia didn’t argue. Eva was right. There was a time for sticking things out, and this wasn’t it. When they got safely back to Charleston, or better yet, New York, she could send a sympathy card to Beluviel and Calondir for whatever this disaster turned out to be.

She went to stand beside Eva. There wasn’t much to see outside, other than the smoke or the fog, except for a patch of dark water below that glittered with a tint of red. Man, her head ached like a son of a bitch. She said, “I wish we could see what was burning.”

“The walls, floor and ceiling are cool and our air quality is good,” Eva said. “Same out in the hall. If this building’s on fire, it hasn’t gotten close yet. We’re going to have to rappel out the window if the exits are blocked.”

Pia took a breath. Their windows looked over the river at the top of the falls, and the water rushed underneath the building to plunge over a deadly number of rocks before hitting the bottom. “I assume you have a plan to avoid going over the falls?”

Eva said, “One of the building’s main support pillars is underneath the common room window. We can use the pillar as an anchor and cast left with ropes. River’s edge is three pillars to the left. It’s awkward, and we’ll get wet and cold, but we can do it.”

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.

The thing about laws was, at their essence they were a decision. Before he had met Pia, Dragos had counted law as his finest achievement. Law was the necessary bridge he had needed to build between him and other creatures when the world had become so goddamn crowded.

But at his essence, he was a lawless creature. Other imperatives ran much deeper.

He would not tolerate being separated from Pia, nor would he let this Elven Wood keep his mate from him. If Pia herself was angry or upset with his decision, why then, so be it. They would just have to figure out a way to get past it.

And he would not let any other race dictate his actions.

Not when Numenlaur was involved, and prophecy might be at hand.

As he stepped across the Wyr/Elven border, he changed back into his Wyr form, launched into the air and continued south.

Choosing to copy the gargoyle’s actions, he landed in the Elven Wood’s much larger neighbor, the national forest. Coming to ground about a quarter mile out from his goal, he changed and walked the rest of the way through the new, slender young trees.

He had left the snow behind, but the chill, damp, cloudy day was little better. Even though he did not expect it, he kept his senses sharp in case the Elves chose to send periodic patrols around the Wood’s border.

Despite his wariness he did not encounter any Elves or any hikers either, for that matter. He sensed the Wood well before he came upon it. Then the visible landscape changed as he saw the dark, tangled edge of the old growth forest up ahead, and for the first time he came toe-to-root with Lirithriel Wood.

The Wood was aware of him. He could feel it watching and waiting. He pushed at it gently with Power, and it pushed back. It was wild and wary, and it did not want any part of him inside its borders.

He respected that. He just didn’t accept it.

He walked along the edge of the Wood and studied it. A couple of times he thought he had figured out how slip past its barriers, but when he rose into the air to try to fly inside he felt the Wood turn in on itself, and he lost his sense of direction. When that happened he wheeled immediately to fly away again until he broke clear again of its influence.

Eventually he settled on a wide, flat bluff, his head between his paws as he regarded the dense forest with the patience of a very old predator. It had been successful in keeping him out thus far, but he knew one thing it didn’t. He knew that he would find a way to get inside. He was far older than the Wood, and smarter, and much, much more convoluted. It was only a matter of time.

Sometime midafternoon, a male voice said in his head, Sir, did you still come south after we talked?

He said, Monroe?

Yes, sir. I can’t get back inside.

Various facts moved through Dragos’s thoughts like chess pieces journeying across a black-and-white checked board. Across the chessboard in his head the face of his opponent might vary, but there was always an opponent.

He said, Go to Lirithriel House. Explain to them that you were sent out to deliver a message and ask to stay there while you wait for Pia and the others. It is a reasonable request. I would like to know more about what happens inside that house, especially now.

Yes, sir, Monroe said.

Update me when you have a chance.

He could think of no possible good reason for those at the house to deny hospitality to the gargoyle. That might prove useful. And if they did turn Monroe away, Dragos would be most interested in learning why.

Once he had settled that matter, his attention drifted back to the Wood. He was not surprised at its stubborn rejection of his presence. It was, after all, a creation of the Elves. And it was impossible to reason with something that had no language.

Night slipped slyly across the sky, a stealthy assassin that murdered the bleak, lonesome day. The more the Wood resisted, the angrier Dragos became until his rage burned as a feral fire deep in the pit of his chest.

He could break it. He could splinter it to pieces and tear his way in. He was not only older, smarter and more convoluted. He was much stronger as well.

But Pia thought this tangled, obstinate piece of real estate was beautiful, and he supposed that counted for something, so he would hold on to his temper for a little while longer.

Then Monroe said, Sir, I’m at the house, and they’ve agreed to give me a room.

Very good, he said, for the first time pleased with how something had gone that day. Contact me if you notice anything out of the ordinary.

With that he launched into the air and flew east toward the coast, following the Wood’s border.

By now there were twenty-eight contestants and only two more days of the Games. He expected that all five of his sentinels would have made it through to the semifinal round, and he suspected that the elegantly fighting, disingenuous Quentin Caeravorn would have too. He was also very interested in finding out if Elysias had won through.

That was when a part of him noticed a small but entirely logical curiosity.

When he stopped pushing against the Wood, it stopped resisting him. That was all, and it was a remarkably simple fact, yet instinct had him changing his course minutely while he kept the main focus of his attention on the events in New York.

Then he slid into the Elven Wood obliquely, as if by accident, and he allowed himself a slight, predatory smile.

In the next instant, he lost his smile. Now that he was past the border, he could scent on a billow of wind the acrid bite of wood smoke and the dark taste of a chaotic Power that was so familiar to him even though the last time he had sensed it had been so long ago.

The Power came from one of the Deus Machinae. Someone was wielding one of the God Machines.

The damned fools were doing it again.

Pia.

He flung himself forward, hurtling through the sullen, deadly night.

• • •

“Are you saying we can’t break through the fire?” Eva demanded as she stared at Miguel.

“That’s what it looks like,” he said. “Leaving the building shouldn’t be an issue. All the exits are useable. The problem is leaving the area. That blaze is going like gangbusters and it doesn’t seem to matter that the forest is damp. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it’s been burning a while, couple days at least. That blaze looks mature.”

“So we hit the river below the falls,” Eva said. “And swim past the line of fire.”

“Not a good option,” Miguel said. “Some f**kers on the other side of the river are shooting at the swimmers, and we don’t have time to send someone to take them out.”

Linwe sobbed softly and covered her face with both hands, and James started swearing, a low vicious litany.

Pia said, “That leaves only one way to go, unless it’s blocked off too. The crossover passageway.”

She knew just exactly how Dragos would spell ballistic. It began with a capital I’m going to kill somebody so f**king dead for this, and well, after that point, it didn’t matter if you spelled the rest of the word right.