Blood Mage 3 Read online

  “Hey, big boy!” she said as she tried to turn the giant’s attention away from me and Maaren. “Over here!”

  I finally released my magic, and the creature grinned like a buffoon as he tried to walk toward Ariette. The Fae twine tightened around his ankles, and the giant let out a grunt of confusion as he fell forward helplessly.

  With a giant crash that shook the earth, the giant hit the ground.

  I managed to bend my knees and roll with the shockwave that erupted from the fall, and I was able to keep my feet under me. As the literal dust settled, it became clear that, while the giant had smashed a few rows of corn with his massive bulk, no one got hurt.

  I’d say that was a giant success.

  “Whaaa?” he cried out as his massive form thrashed around on the grass. Chunks of dirt and plants spewed up from underneath him.

  Maaren swooped down and used her Hand of Air to pull the end of the rope up and around the giant’s legs, further entrapping him in our makeshift snare.

  Thankfully, giants are pretty slow creatures, and he didn’t even seem to notice what had happened until he struggled to stand. He couldn’t get up all the way with the rope around him and crashed back down to the ground with a heavy sob.

  “Take that!” Maaren cried out as an expression of complete bewilderment broke out over the giant’s face. The griffin flapped his wings a few times and brought him and Maaren high above the giant before they hovered in the air to watch the creature.

  “What?” the giant cried out. His voice bordered on teary, and I felt bad for the poor guy again. He really didn’t get it.

  “And that is how you take down a giant,” Maaren laughed as Jake landed on the ground with a cry and a gallop.

  The hunter slid from Jake’s back as the griffin slowed to a halt, and then she dashed up to admire her handiwork. Even flat on his stomach, the giant’s side was still at least twice as tall as Maaren as he lay there on the ground. The big lug had a teary-eyed expression, and he looked like he was about to burst out into a sob at any moment. It was almost pitiful.

  “Hey, big guy, it’s okay,” Ariette called up to him soothingly. “We’re going to just get you home.”

  “Uh, about that,” I started, “how do we get him home?”

  “Don’t worry crew, Kal’s on the job!” Kalista’s high pitched voice cried out in my ear. “I’ve already called into the guild for a couple of cargo haulers to come out here and fly him off to giant land, where he’ll be snug as a bug in a rug.”

  “I never did understand that saying,” Ariette laughed back. “I would never want bugs anywhere near my rug, and if they were inside it certainly wouldn’t be ‘snug.’”

  “I second that,” I agreed with a shudder. “You’d be looking at hundreds of dollars worth of creams alone!”

  “It’s just an expression, guys,” Kal shot back. “Sheesh. And by the way, you’re welcome for swooping in and saving the day once again. All I expect in return is to be named as the sole beneficiary in your will.”

  “I’m afraid my sister’s got that spot, Kal,” Ariette answered playfully. “Though sometimes I think you’ve been more of a sister to me than she’s ever been.”

  “Aww, shucks,” the dwarf answered through the comm unit. “You can’t see it right now, but I’m totally blushing.”

  Maaren nuzzled into Jake’s beak and patted his head as she whispered something to the griffin. It must have been something that made him happy, because the beast made a joyous chirping sound and kneaded his claws into the ground like a cat.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Giant,” I said as I walked up to our former target’s gigantic face.

  His beady black eyes stared back at me woefully, and his enormous upper lip quivered with barely pent up emotion. “Play?” he said sadly.

  “Yeahhhh, you can’t do that here,” I said calmly and slowly as I motioned toward the fields and houses. “You play up there.” I pointed back toward Kaul Mountain, where his home was nestled in its dips and crags.

  The giant didn’t say anything more but nodded his head in affirmation. He created a mini-dust storm as he pulled up dirt and then huffed out a breath, and I had to cover my face before I was blinded by dirt.

  “Yeah, yeah, you can go back home, where there’s a big farm that all the giants can run free and frolic in the meadows,” Kalista giggled into our comms unit. “And all of your grandparents and former pets will be there, too!”

  “We’re seriously sending him home, Kal,” I reminded the blonde dwarf. “This isn’t a code for giving him the axe.”

  “Whatever, my dude,” Kalista snorted through her comm link. “The drones are here. Let’s get back to the guild so we can get some rest and some fantabulous food!”

  “Did you make that word up?” Maaren asked suspiciously.

  “I would never do such a thing!” the dwarf cried back. “My eighth grade arch-nemesis made it up. I reclaim it now as a form of revenge against Jenny Spiker, that annoying little blonde. She was anything but fantabulous.”

  “That’s not how reclaiming something works,” Maaren pointed out, but I could already hear the purr of the Van of Death’s engine in the background.

  “I’m en route,” Kalista responded, completely ignoring the hunter’s words. “Be ready for pickup, or I’m gonna head back to base and empty the entire dining hall without you.”

  “I’ll see you back at the guild,” Maaren said to Ariette and me before she mounted Jake and took off into the sky.

  On the way through the air, Maaren passed three plane-like cargo haulers, one of the few human tools the guild kept around. They each had giant claws that hung down from their bellies like those ancient claw machines humans used to use back in the day. The carriers flew through the air and descended over the giant. Each claw hooked onto a section of Fae twine, and together, they rose back up into the air and carried the giant with them. I watched for a moment as they hauled the creature off toward Kaul Mountain and quickly disappeared into its depths.

  “Guys, let’s go!” Kalista hollered out of the van window as she screeched to a halt in front of us. “I’m dying of starvation over here!”

  I rolled my eyes and hopped into the back of the van, which was colored a bright, neon orange today.

  “It’s really hard to die of starvation when you ate three hours ago,” Ariette pointed out as she plopped into a desk chair.

  “Um, ‘really hard’ is what I’m good at, hello,” Kal replied quickly, and the Van of Death lurched abruptly forward as it raced back across the fields.

  We heard a loud honk as the dwarf spun us back onto the smooth blacktop, but she completely ignored it as she sped forward and swerved hard to avoid a collision.

  That was why I called it the Van of Death. Thankfully, I hadn’t died in it yet.

  As I settled in for the ride back to the guild, I folded my hands behind my head and sighed. We’d captured a giant and gotten a pretty good distraction from the major issue at hand: the Phobos and they’re growing power. But now, it was time to return to the world of the Racmoth and terrorists.

  “Ugh!” Kalista sighed exasperatedly. “Can you believe less than an hour ago we were planning our takedown of the Phobos in the nether realm? It was damn good to get my mind off those psychotic Unseelie elves for a minute. That was our first break in a week! A week, I tell ya!”

  “Kal, take it down a notch, my eardrums are getting blown up here,” Ariette chuckled as she braced her feet to keep from pitching over in the back of the van. “We needed that week after they kidnapped all those baby animals and Cirsen spilled his guts to us about their home base. You can’t just wander into the nether realm with no plan.”

  “Says you,” Kal shot back playfully. “I like to live my life on the edge.”

  The dwarf violently jerked the steering wheel to the left, and the entire van lurched. Ariette and I stumbled, but by now we were pros at staying upright in the Van of Death.

  “Ugh, don’t remind me about that elf and th
ose nasty tunnels,” I groaned and wrinkled my nose as I remembered the awful smell of the sewers under Jefferson City.

  “The nether realm doesn’t stink like that, at least,” Ariette assured me.

  “But how do you know?” I squinted at her playfully. “You’ve never been there.”

  “Touché,” she chuckled. “For all I know, it could smell like the sewers of Jefferson City mixed with the griffin pen, with a dash of my morning breath tossed in.

  “You don’t have morning breath,” I teased. “I’ve spent enough nights with you to know you’re just as lovely in the morning as you are the day before.”

  “Easy there, HC,” Ariette said with narrowed eyes. “Don’t make me take you right here in the back of Kal’s van.”

  “Yeah, Milton,” Kal added with a slight panic in her voice. “I just cleaned this thing.”

  “Relax, Kal,” I reassured the dwarf. “I would never soil your prized possession like that. Unless you wanted me to, of course.”

  “Don’t distract me while I’m driving!” the dwarf exclaimed. “Kal is not responsible for accidents that happen while horny.”

  “So what do we do about the Phobos?” Ariette tried to change the subject. “Before we left, you’d mentioned you have a new plan?”

  I confirmed the Fae’s question with a nod. “Yep,” I explained. “It involves our good friend, Professor Limmer. I want to--”

  “We’re here!” Kal cut me off as the Van of Death screeched to a halt. “We can keep talking when we’re inside, preferably over lunch.”

  “Hold your griffins, Kal.” I smiled at the dwarf. “We need to give our report first. Then, we can eat.”

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” Kalista laughed as she threw open her door and zipped out. “Let’s go!”

  Ariette and I stepped out of the van and headed toward the guild, our minds racing with the adventure that awaited us next.

  Chapter Two

  We got back to the guild and headed straight for the control room. Ekador, the old wizard who served as the guild’s bounty collector, was already inside with four brown sacks full of coins in front of him.

  “Ah, the conquering heroes return!” he called out as Ariette, Kal, and I walked into the room.

  I saw Ilias, the captain of a rival special ops team, at a table against the right wall of the room. He grumbled and turned away from us when we strode through the door. Ilias was very hard to figure out. Last week, I thought we’d formed a sort of kinship between the teams when he and his crew had helped us stake out the Phobos, but it seemed that kinship didn’t extend to regular old missions.

  I guessed it made sense. This sort of a mission put money directly in our pockets, but not his. No wonder he was a tad bitter.

  “Thanks, Ekie!” Kalista exclaimed as she swiped up one of the brown sacks that sat on the round table in the center of the room.

  Every time we completed a mission, we were rewarded, usually with a sack full of pretty coins. I eagerly opened mine up to see how many I could add to my savings. I had my eye on a shiny black sports car I was ready to buy as soon as I had the coins for it.

  “Uh-uh, nope, vetoed.” The wizard shook his head in disgust at Kalista’s nickname for him. He leaned casually against the table where the computers were.

  “What?” she drew out in protest. “You don’t like Ekie?”

  “Not even a bit,” he answered ruefully. “It sounds like you’re calling me ‘icky.’”

  “Man, you haven’t liked a single nickname we’ve tried out,” she wailed as she flopped her neck backward. “Not Ekie, not Dorie, not E.K.”

  “How about Ekador?” he asked playfully.

  “Dude,” the dwarf said seriously as she looked straight at him, “a nickname can’t be your real, actual name. That defeats the whole purpose.”

  “But I like my real, actual name,” he shot back. “I don’t need a nickname.”

  “Every badass needs a nickname,” she pointed out. “I’ve got Kal, Ariette’s got Ari, Milton’s got HC. Nicknames make a team.”

  “I don’t have a nickname, and I’m part of the team,” Maaren called out as she strode through the doorway.

  Kalista’s expression quickly turned into one of shock as she realized the hunter was right.

  “Oh no, we have to remedy this problem right away,” the dwarf said seriously.

  “Uh, no we don’t.” Maaren shook her head as she picked up her own reward. “Thanks, Ekador.”

  The wizard chuckled at the hunter, but Kal didn’t even notice. She was too busy in her thoughts as she tried to come up with a good nickname for Maaren.

  At that moment, my stomach chose to growl loudly in protest. I hadn’t eaten in a few hours, and my Fae metabolism was not happy.

  “Well, I’m going to the dining hall,” I told my team. “Thanks for the bounty, Eks.” I shot a charming grin at the wizard and dashed away before he had the chance to throw something at me.

  “That’s a no, Milton!” he called after me, and I felt a pen smack squarely into the middle of my back.

  “How about Air?” the dwarf asked Maaren as they all followed me out. “You know, because you’ve got the Hand of Air, and your name has an ‘air’ sound in the middle of it.”

  “Uh, nope,” Maaren said quickly.

  “Okay, what about M-ren?” Kal retorted without missing a beat.

  “That’s just as long as my name,” the hunter pointed out. “I thought nicknames were supposed to be shorter.”

  “Good point,” Kal acquiesced. “What do you think of Mare?”

  “Like a horse?” Maaren questioned sarcastically.

  “Right, so that’s a no,” Kal replied.

  The dwarf’s endearing babbling followed us all the way to the dining hall as she tried to come up with a good nickname for Maaren. None of them really stuck, and even the clever ones were shot down instantly by the hunter. Finally, Maaren stopped walking and put her hand on Kal’s shoulder.

  “I appreciate you trying to make me a bigger part of the team,” the hunter sighed, “I really do. But I prefer my real name, and my real name only.”

  Kal tapped her chin thoughtfully and shrugged. “No, no,” she pondered. “I’ll get something you like eventually.”

  I personally liked my own nickname very much, but mostly because it had come from the first time Ariette and I had met. She had noticed I like to play the hero all the time, so she named me “Hero Complex,” or HC for short. Maybe on this mission, Maaren would discover her own nickname. She was starting to grow annoyed with Kal, and I hoped for the dwarf’s sake she stopped fairly soon.

  “M-dog!” the dwarf exclaimed as we stepped into line behind a statuesque brunette elf. The stranger turned to give us a disapproving stare at Kalista’s loud exclamation, and I just smiled at her apologetically.

  “I’m not a rapper,” Maaren replied firmly.

  A glorious whiff of tonight’s dinner, roasted chicken with buttery mashed potatoes and garlic vegetables, hit my nose right as we approached. My mood got even better when I saw Sal, my favorite cook, at the counter.

  “Yo, Milton!” he exclaimed jovially as soon as he saw me. Sal was a real people-dwarf, and he always made it a point to talk to me when we ran into each other.

  “Hey, Sal!” I replied as a smile spread wide across my face. “How’s the chicken tonight?”

  “Oh, I roasted it myself,” he said nonchalantly, “so you know it’s good!”

  He looked at me seriously for a moment and then burst into a loud guffaw at his own joke. I didn’t quite get his humor, but I let out an awkward chuckle just to appease my friend.

  “Well in that case, I’ll have a whole breast, please,” I chuckled, “and a big old scoop of those mashed potatoes.”

  “You betcha,” he said with a small salute and set off to pile a plate high with chicken and potatoes. “Are we still on for tomorrow?”

  “Only if you haven’t changed your mind yet,” I shot back. “Storm ca
n be a handful, you know.”

  I had asked Sal to watch my Cerberus puppy, Storm, while the team and I went on the hunt for the Phobos. She was still much too small and untrained to take on a mission like this, but I wanted to make sure she was in good hands.

  “Why would I change my mind?” Sal asked happily. “My kids have been looking forward to watching the little darling all week.”

  Sal had a home with a wife and three kids, and I knew they’d all have a ball with the adorable, three-headed puppy while I was gone. It sounded like my thoughts were right on the money.

  “Then we are,” I affirmed as I pulled one of my room keys from my pocket. “Here’s my key. We’ll probably be gone around noon or so.”

  “She’ll be at my house waiting for ya when you get back,” he promised sincerely as he handed my heaping plate over to me. “Hey, Milton?”

  “Yeah?” I asked as I grabbed the warm dish. His eyes were more serious than I’d ever seen them before.

  “Be careful out there, alright?” he requested gently. “There’s been some rumblings going around the guild of what you guys are planning, and it sounds really dangerous.”

  I knew he’d heard all of the rumors about the prophecy and my destiny as the Racmoth. At this point, who hadn’t? Despite Hasen’s best attempts to insist the Phobos were gone for good, the whispers had grown in size over the last week. Now, it was hard for me to take a walk through the main hall without getting pinned as the Racmoth.

  “I always am, Sal,” I said honestly.

  “Good man,” he replied. “Now, go on and enjoy your food.” He shooed me away with his hands, and I took my plate over to our normal table with an amused snort. Sal always knew how to make me feel better about a situation.

  I was quickly joined by Ariette, then Maaren, and finally Kalista. The dwarf plopped two full plates of chicken on the table and slid a third plate of mashed potatoes from her arm like a waitress before she yanked out a chair and fell back into it with a grateful sigh.

  “I am so hungry,” she grunted out as she tore into a chicken leg and ripped the tender dark meat from the bone. “I am going to miss this food on the road, man, let me tell you.”