Changeling Dark Moon Read online

  ‘Last night?’ Tom said.

  ‘I had a late-night visit,’ Trey said with a shrug.

  Tom looked atAlexa. ‘Caliban also tried to get to Trey at the shooting range yesterday.’

  Alexa stared at Trey, the anger clear to see on her face. ‘You know, some communication around here might really help. Help everyone to know what is going on.’

  ‘We’ll discuss this later,’ Tom said, before turning to Charles. ‘Do we have any idea what they’re up to in Iceland?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Charles replied. ‘We only just had enough time to triangulate their location. We hope to be able to work our way round their masking spells and get a grasp on exactly what they are doing within the next few hours. Then we’ll start to counter their magic with our own and—’

  ‘No. Don’t do that,’ said Alexa.

  ‘Why ever not?’Charles responded. He looked at her from across the room, his dark and intelligent eyes narrowing as he tried to fathom out what might be going on. ‘As I said, it shouldn’t take us too long to discover what types of magic they are using.’

  ‘Charles, it is vitally important that you do not do anything at this time. Continue to monitor exactly what is going on in Iceland, and keep Tom and me informed, but do not start any counter-magic procedures without our specific say-so.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Alexa, but I don’t understand. If something is going on, I think that my team should be informed. If Lucien was around he would—’

  ‘Please do not presume to tell me what my father would and would not do under the circumstances.’ Alexa’s eyes hardened.

  ‘This is not acceptable, Alexa. I have to insist that—’

  Trey could see the salmon-pink colour creeping up from the base of Alexa’s throat. It was always a precursor for one of the angry outbursts that he had been on the receiving end of so many times in the last few months.

  ‘Charles, while my father is indisposed, Tom and I are in charge of operations here. I appreciate that I am asking a great deal, and if it turns out that I would be risking lives by pursuing this course of action for any length of time I would immediately ask you to start your work to eliminate that danger. Tom and I are in agreement on this, so for now I need you to sit on this information for a while.’ Her face softened again and she gave Charles a look that made Trey want to punch him on the nose. ‘Will you do that for me, Charles? Please? I need your help on this one.’

  Trey looked over at Tom sitting across the table from him and grinned. From the look on the Irishman’s face, it was obvious that he had not discussed any of this with Alexa and was none too pleased with her using his name in this way. Tom looked back at Trey with a withering glare and Trey suddenly lost all interest in studying him any further.

  ‘Now, Charles,’ Alexa purred, ‘if you would be so kind as to leave us for a few moments, Tom, Trey and I need to discuss things in private.’

  Charles looked decidedly unhappy about being dismissed in this way. He stood up, pulling at the hem of his jacket as he did so. He glanced towards Tom as if hoping that the Irishman would intercede on his behalf, but when he was met with one of Tom’s unreadable looks his eyes strayed towards Trey, who was grinning up at him, enjoying the sight of him being humbled in this way. Trey gave him a little wink, waving the tips of his fingers at him until Charles turned on his heel and marched out of the room.

  As Trey turned back to the table the dumb smile that he was wearing withered and died before the angry looks that both Alexa and Tom were giving him. The pink flush was back at Alexa’s throat again, and he guessed who might be next in line for the treatment.

  ‘Do you think that you could please try not to completely alienate the very people that are trying to help us, Trey?’ she hissed through clenched teeth. ‘You could at least try to act your age and not be so confrontational all the time.’

  ‘Me? What about HIM? Looking down his nose at me the whole time, making snide comments. He read my thoughts, you know. He sneaked inside my head, using some magic or something, and read my thoughts. If that isn’t inviting confrontation, then I don’t know what is.’

  ‘All right already,’ said Tom, cutting in before Alexa could respond. ‘Let’s all just calm down a little and try to screw our heads on.’ He blew out a frustrated breath. ‘Alexa, would you like to explain what your thinking in all this is, please? I should of course know, seeing as how you have discussed all this with me already, but I appear to have forgotten that conversation with you. It must be my age.’

  ‘It’s simple, Tom, and don’t for one second try to kid me that you haven’t already worked it out.’ She smiled at him apologetically before continuing. ‘If we start to go at this thing with anti-spells and counter-magic, any element of surprise that we may have on our side will be gone. If they know that we know where they are, they’ll simply shut up shop as soon as possible and disappear again.’

  ‘But we don’t know what they’re up to, Alexa.’

  ‘Tom, I understand your concerns and, as I’ve just said, if what they are doing over there looks as if it is going to put anyone in danger, I will immediately reverse the decision and let our people do what they have to in order to stop them. But this is what we have been looking for all these months, and I think we should use it to our advantage if we can.’

  Tom held her gaze for a few moments before slowly nodding his head. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘What’s the plan?’

  ‘A small team of us leave for Reykjavik as soon as possible. We gain access to the Tower of Leroth, and if we can do so without getting caught we take Mynor’s Globe from Gwendolin and return with it to heal my father.’

  Tom looked at her with a look of bemused disbelief on his face.

  ‘Just like that?’ he said, shrugging.

  ‘Well, I’m sure it needs a bit of flesh on its bones, but that’s the basic plan, yes.’

  ‘Who does this small team consist of?’ Trey asked. ‘You, me, Tom and Charles.’

  ‘Charles?!’ Trey said, standing up from his chair. ‘What in God’s name would you want that great stuffed shirt coming along for?’

  ‘Charles is probably the best sorcerer that we have. His father was an incredibly important part of our organization, and Charles looks set to follow in his footsteps.’ She looked towards the door through which the young man had exited before continuing in a low voice. ‘He hasn’t had it all easy, Trey. He was brought up in an almost monastic environment surrounded by sorcery mentors from around the world. He’s very good at what he does, and as we’ll be going up against one of the most powerful witches that has ever existed, I think we should take along as much firepower as we can.’ She smiled a smile that Trey didn’t like the look of. ‘But you’ll have a chance to get better acquainted with each other before we leave. I need you to work with him on something.’

  ‘What?’ Trey said, lowering himself back into his seat. ‘Get some tips on how to win friends and influence people so that I can charm Caliban into submission? No, thanks.’

  ‘No. You need to learn the thought-transfer spell that is in the book I gave you for your birthday.’

  ‘And what would I need to know that for?’

  ‘Do you remember how it was when you faced Caliban and his demons before? How frustrating it was for you not to be able to communicate with Tom or my father when you came to rescue me? As a werewolf you are completely unable to talk to those around you, but if you could learn that spell, and learn it quickly, you’d be able to “talk” with us when you needed to.’

  ‘Why can’t you teach it to me?’

  ‘Like I said, Trey, Charles is probably the best mage that we have in our employ. I’m good, but nowhere near as good as him. If I tried to teach you the spell, it would probably take us a week. If Charles does it, I believe you could learn it in a day or two. We don’t have a week. We might not even have two days.’

  Trey looked over at Tom for support, but the Irishman simply performed one of his winces followed by a little half-shrug
of the shoulders. ‘Time is against us,’ he said.

  Trey leaned so that his head hung over the back of the chair. He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled a long sigh. ‘Fine, I’ll learn the stupid spell with him. But I cannot and will not pretend that I like him. The guy’s an utter loser.’ He looked back at them. ‘What are you two going to be doing?’

  ‘We’re going to be putting some of that flesh on the bones of Alexa’s brilliant plan and getting ready to go,’ Tom said, standing up. His eyes had a hard, flinty look to them now and his mouth was fixed in a thin-lipped slash. It was a look that Trey knew all too well from their previous encounter with Lucien’s evil brother. It was Tom’s going-to-war face.

  Trey stood up and was about to leave the room when Tom stopped him with a hand on his arm. ‘And you …’ he said, ‘you are to tell me of anything else that happens to you that is out of the ordinary. No matter how small you think it is, how real or unreal. Do you understand me?’

  Trey nodded.

  ‘Good,’ Tom said, removing his hand. ‘Let’s go to work.’

  ‘Again,’ Charles barked.

  Trey glared at him, hoping that the look would be enough to make Charles back off.

  Charles looked back at him implacably. He blinked slowly. ‘Again,’ he repeated.

  ‘Lethren agorn shu alak hiroth,’ Trey intoned for what must have been the hundredth time. In his mind he formed the message that he wanted to transmit to the man on the other side of the table: Charles, you are a tool.

  He raised an eyebrow, enquiring if anything had come through.

  ‘Again,’ Charles said.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Trey said, letting his forehead drop down on to the table in front of him. ‘We’ve been at this for four hours. What am I doing wrong? It’s five bloody words. It can’t be that difficult to get this to work. Am I still mispronouncing alak?’

  Charles steepled his fingers in front of his face and looked over the top of them at Trey. He had loosened his necktie and undone his collar button about two hours ago, but these were the only concessions that he seemed willing to make against the stifling heat that filled the meeting room the two of them occupied. An hour or so earlier Trey had set the air-conditioning to full, but it appeared to be on the blink, because if anything the room was getting hotter as the afternoon wore on.

  Charles sighed and glanced at his wristwatch. ‘How many more times do I need to tell you, Trey? There is nothing wrong with your pronunciation. You got that perfectly right after the first hour – much to my surprise. It’s your mindset that isn’t right. With this particular spell your mind preparations must be right before it will work. So, if you please. Again.’

  ‘You’re loving this, aren’t you?’ Trey said, lifting his chin up and staring across at Charles from under his eyebrows.

  Charles snorted with derision. ‘If you think that I am enjoying sitting in a room with you, trying to teach elementary magic like this, you really do have too high an opinion of yourself. I am only doing this because Alexa asked me to. You can bet your soul that I have a thousand and one better things that I would rather be doing than be cooped up in here with you. I should be readying myself for our forthcoming little excursion to Iceland and making sure that I’m properly prepared.’ He let out a sigh and removed a handkerchief from his inside pocket, touching it to his forehead. ‘So, if you please, Mr Laporte, clear your head – that really should not be difficult for you – imagine that your thoughts are like a fluid that you are able to push out from your mind into the world outside your body, a fluid that you can direct into the minds of others, and repeat the incantation.’

  ‘Why is it so sodding hot in here?’ Trey asked, looking around again at the thermostat on the wall. He considered getting up and checking it for a fourth time but knew that it would be to no avail.

  ‘It’s the magic.’ Charles sighed. ‘Whenever a spell is cast, or in this case trying to be cast, a huge amount of energy is created as a tiny portal is opened between this world and the Netherworld. It’s this energy that allows us to trace the magic of others and counteract it. Different forms of magic produce different forms of energy. It just so happens that this spell, and others like it, produce heat. Now, please, do stop bitching and moaning about the temperature and repeat the incantation.’

  ‘Sod off.’

  Charles looked over at the teenager, an unpleasant look in his stare.

  ‘I know you don’t care for me very much, Trey Laporte, and to be perfectly honest I really am not overly keen on you, but I have been asked to teach this spell to you so that you can use it on our forthcoming mission, and I will spend all day and night in here if I need to in order to achieve that end. So prepare yourself as we have discussed, and repeat the bloody incantation!’

  ‘Like I said, sod off.’ Trey got up and moved over to the thermostat, banging it with the palm of his hand.

  ‘The heat is really bothering you, is it?’ Charles asked with a sneer. ‘Well, let’s see if we can’t cool you down a little.’

  There was something in the way that Charles had said this that made Trey frown and look back over his shoulder at him. Charles’s stare was particularly unfriendly – even for him – and, as Trey watched, Charles’s eyes suddenly snapped back in their sockets, the pupils rotating upward impossibly quickly so that the twin globes that gazed sightles sly back at Trey were now completely white. The sorcerer sucked in a great breath, tilting his head back slightly as he did so. Then he slowly stood and raised both hands in front of him, palms out, as if gently pushing against some invisible wall.

  ‘Nashgrun alacnarog!’ He enunciated the consonants with a hard edge to his voice, and to Trey’s ears the words sounded vaguely Welsh.

  There was a split second when nothing happened, and then the first chill burst of air hit Trey full in the chest, taking his breath away. He watched as a tiny vortex of swirling and dancing icy particles seemed to form just in front of Charles’s upturned hands, before flying out at incredible force to hit Trey fully in the face and neck. He blinked his eyes against the stinging crystals and turned his head to one side, only to have his ear filled with the frozen matter. The wind increased in intensity, and fine, penetrating snow sought out the gaps in his clothing, making him gasp as it instantly turned to ice water against his skin. He backed away but there was nowhere to go, as hard, sharp ice crystals stung his face and eyes, forcing him backwards until his back met the resistance of the office wall. The freezing wind continued to gather strength, and his teeth chattered noisily. The demented woodpecker attacking the china cup inside his head was the only sound he could hear over the howling gale.

  ‘Stop it, you madman!’ Trey shouted over the noise, but it was clear that the sorcerer could not, or would not, heed him.

  Trey looked down at his hands and noted how they had already turned a dirty grey-blue colour, the blood deserting the extremities and retreating into the depths of his inner body. His foot caught against something and he fell backwards, painfully catching his elbow on the skirting board. The cold was unbearable now, and he tried to curl himself into a tiny ball, huddling down and drawing his knees up to his chin as the snow gathered around him.

  ‘I said stop it, you lunatic!’ Trey bellowed. A small part of his mind could not help but wonder why nobody had come in to see what all the noise was about. Surely someone working in the office outside had heard this roaring wind and seen the swirling snow and ice that was rapidly filling the room.

  ‘Lethren agorn shu alak hiroth.’ Trey said through his chattering teeth. Stop it, Charles. He formed the thought as clearly as he could and concentrated on forcing it into the head of the other man. ‘Lethren agorn shu alak hiroth.’ Trey formed the words of the incantation in his mind in the way that Charles had told him to.

  STOP, CHARLES. STOP! he screamed inside his own head. He closed his eyes and forced the words out from his own mind into that of the man still standing statue-like on the other side of the room.

  The wind s
topped as suddenly as it had started. Trey opened his eyes again and looked about him. He shook his head in disbelief. There was no sign of the great drifts of snow and ice that had covered him seconds before. He held his hand up in front of his face and frowned at the regular pink colour of the skin. He touched his bare forearm to confirm what he already knew – that it was a perfectly normal temperature.

  Getting back up on to his feet from the floor he looked over at Charles, who was standing with his arms crossed, smiling at him from the other side of the table.

  ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘That came through as clear as a bell.’

  ‘What the hell just happened?’ Trey asked, shakily taking his seat again and looking about the room as though he was still unable to believe the images being sent between his eyes and brain.

  ‘An illusion. A mirage, if you will. You said that you were hot, so I hooked into the part of your brain that wanted you to cool down and simply amplified that desire a little … well, rather a lot actually.’

  Trey looked at Charles afresh. He didn’t like the guy’s manner, and he doubted that they would ever be sharing a taxi back from a club together, but he had to admire his abilities. He puffed out his cheeks and cracked a smile. ‘Well, at least I managed to get that bloody spell to work at last,’ he said.

  ‘Actually you had it perfectly about an hour ago. I just wanted to see if you could perform it under pressure. Well done – you learn very fast, Trey.’ He stood up to leave the room. ‘Keep practising, and pretty soon you should be able to invoke the spell whenever you want. You won’t even need to say the words aloud.’