Page 1 of Great Falls Rogue
Part I: Clock Strikes Midnight
1
Lera
My sword whistles as it cuts the night air, putting down a salivating sclice. I jump back, panting as the hog beast makes a final swipe at me before stilling. Sword high, I survey the forest over my weapon’s tip, my heart drumming a strong steady beat against my chest. With my amulet off, everything inside me feels lighter. More alive. More tuned in to sound and touch and air.
More able to appreciate the dead sclice’s stench.
I wrinkle my nose. This night’s sclice is the third one I’ve put down this week—the tenth since I started these amulet-free nightly excursions a month ago. The spill of Mors’s rodents and other magical refuse is increasing with the approach of the spring equinox—Ostera—the change no more pleasant for being expected. Like the other sclices I’ve seen here, this beast is distorted, its mottled skin revealing a pattern of warts, including one in that odd snowflake-like shape that Gavriel thinks serves as a crude rune of sorts, making the thing invisible to humans and veil-wearing fae.
My body’s energy still singing from a good fight, I feel the forest come back into focus around me—the soft cracks of nocturnal animals, the heavy scent of damp pine. And with a deep breath, I force myself to get on with the true goal of today’s outing: collecting another sample from a Yocklol tree to help Gavriel and Arisha develop something to neutralize the damn things. I know that we are but containing the damage, that more horrors will keep coming until I can find and mend the tear in the fabric keeping the mortal realms magic-free, but that makes the Yocklols no less of a problem.
Despite appearing to have a trunk and vine-like branches, Yocklols aren’t true trees but rather mixes of creature and vegetation—just the latest delight leaking in from the dark realms. Yocklols also breed. And move. I’ve marked five since that young guardsman lost his arm to one last month.
On the bright side, the increased number makes them easier to find. Leaving the sclice, I follow the trail uphill to where I last saw one of the yellow blights and find the thing tucked between a cluster of aspen trees. Piercing the night’s darkness with my fae vision, I can see the yellow slime covering the Yocklol limbs. It shimmers slightly but calls little attention to itself otherwise. Unfortunately for anything that likes staying alive, one touch of the slime to flesh, and there is no stopping the resulting pus-ridden corruption.
“Let’s get this over with,” I mutter, glaring at the Yocklol, with its one eye—closed for now—and shivering deadly branches. Drawing a glass vial out of my satchel, I slide the wide mouth slowly onto a tentacle-like tip. Slowly lifting my blade, I do a quick final survey of my gear. Leather gloves. Soft leather padded suit. Boots well tied and ready to run. Good. Taking a deep breath, I bring the edge of the blade down on the sleeping limb, scraping the tiniest bit of yellow bark into my vial.
The Yocklol’s eye snaps open, the tentacled branches shifting like snakes.
Fighting the urge to bolt, which carries too great a tripping risk, I retreat one step at a time. My pulse quickens, my blood coursing through my tingling legs. It’s odd how something that so wishes to kill you can also make you feel alive. Around me, the forest’s night sounds are a familiar backdrop, the shifting branches and insistently hooting owl seeming to cheer me on. Another step, my foot checking the ground before taking weight, my gaze trained on the swaying tentacle-like limbs. Yocklol trees aren’t fast, but with the damage a single tentacle touch does, they don’t need to be.
Feeling a root beneath my foot, I adjust my balance. Three tentacles now slither along the ground, leaving no place to fall safely. My breath stills.Step. Step. Step. Inside me, Tye’s fire-calling magic flails against its mortal shackles. Before I became fae, my weaver gift required proximity to my males to tap into magic. I echoed their power but had none of my own. Now, although being beside the males magnifies our strength manyfold, the cords of magic coiling inside me are my own. Shadows of Tye’s fire, and River’s earth, and Shade’s healing, and Coal’s strange inward-turned magic, all quiver within my blood.
Each day, I think a fraction of my power might break free. But not today. Not now.
A yellow tentacle suddenly whips toward me, fast as a striking snake.
My arm moves on reflex, the sword’s honed edge severing the vine in midair. Falling to the ground with a soft thunk, the pace-long tip continues thrashing.
I curse. Separated from the trunk, the severed tentacle will continue flailing about, killing anything that might touch it. Forever. I’ll have to come back and clean up before we have blight-struck animals running about with boils, making the humans realize the extent to which things are going wrong.
Step. Step. Step.Reaching back with my foot, I take the final stride to escape the Yocklol’s reach. The thing continues stretching toward me, but the trunk moves much more slowly than the tentacles. In other words, I’m finally safe to run like hell.
Corking the sample vial, I tuck it securely into my satchel and lope through the now-familiar forest, my immortal eyes seeing the dirt trail and shivering pine branches plainly under the starlit sky. With the tall stone wall looming before me, I locate the covered exit of the escape passage leading back into the Academy and lower myself inside. A pool of ink-black darkness greets me, the ground invisible even in daylight. Hanging off the ledge with my feet dangling over the blackness, I take a breath, brace myself, and let go.
* * *
“You look feral.”Arisha’s voice greets me as I climb out of the passage amidst a thick cluster of trees and hedges lining the inside of the Academy walls. The fresh scent of evergreens and budding oaks fills my lungs, washing away the mold and stench.
“Is that a compliment?” I brace my hands on my thighs, looking at the brilliant girl whose frizzy brown hair and inability to braid it would no doubt make a scarecrow jealous. Behind her, torches on the tops of the towering Academy walls cast strange shadows on the silent stone, a stern reminder of where we should be right now.
“It’s a fact.” She taps her ears, then sneezes into her sleeve.
“Oh, right.” Suppressing a groan, I snap my veil amulet quickly around my neck. A tightness settles over my skin at once, the pressure of the veil amulet’s magic battling against my body’s desire for freedom. Each time, it seems to become a little more difficult to make the transition, the veil’s magic fighting harder for control against my body’s rebellion. The pendant heats against my skin, insisting that I’m human, an Academy cadet, nothing more.
“Stars,” Arisha mutters. “I know you’ve not moved, but I swear I saw a fae female leave and a human Lera walk over. It’s unsettling every damn time. Do you have my new toy?”
“And you called me feral?” Surrendering the sample vial, I retrieve a cloak I stashed beneath the bushes and throw it over my leathers. If I’m caught now, I’m just a student breaking curfew with a stroll through the woods, not a renegade ready to bring down River’s wrath. “I took down another sclice, by the way.”
“That isn’t aby the way, Lera.” Arisha blocks my path. Planting her hands on her hips, she glares like a schoolmarm—her puffy red eyes and nose somewhat spoiling the image. She wears an all-black outfit similar to mine—because “black is the color of espionage”—that makes her pale face seem to float in the moonlight. “This is getting out of hand—and don’t you tell me that you ran into the thing by sheer accident, because you lie as well as I do handstands. What if there had been more of them? You can’t be romping about by your—”
“Gavriel thinks I can,” I say quickly.
“Good try, but Uncle Gavriel thinks the sun will change direction if a book says so.” Arisha adjusts her glasses, her voice stuffy as it has been ever since the flowers began to bloom. “I’m not saying stop fighting. I’m saying stop doing it alone. Moving the dead sclice to where River’s patrols are likely to find it is a simple enough thing and will get the other fae involved.”
“No.”
