Awakening Read online

  The elf had watched this exchange with a bored look, and raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow at me.

  “Ready?” he asked scornfully, as if a whispered conversation with friends was beneath him. I didn’t deign to reply and instead tossed my head and stomped past him to leave the pub.

  I was stopped in my tracks by a chair shoved backwards into my path. A shifter had stood violently and was beginning to growl as he turned. Sleek fur sprouting as he metamorphosed into a large black panther. The female orc sitting opposite him was weighing up a short knife, testing its balance before she threw it. He ducked and the knife slammed into the bar by my head. I froze, staring at it.

  The shifter twisted, bumping me aside so hard that I fell into the bar. “Hey!” I called out. He whipped his head round to look at me, fangs dripping saliva. The elf stepped in front of me, sword drawn.

  The orc had crossed the table and shoved the elf in the chest. “Stay out of it pretty boy,” her voice was low and menacing. I saw the elf’s hands start to glow as he called upon his magic. I heard voices egging the fight on and it looked like the goblins had started a gambling pool, betting on the outcome. Things were going downhill fast. Then Goat, the troll, cleared his throat. A low rumbling sound that seemed to fill the bar. He had a blunderbuss steadied by his shoulder and was pointing it at all four of us.

  “Pack it in,” His words were short and simple but very effective. Magical beings healed faster than regular humans, but even a shifter would be seriously put out by being hit at nearly point blank range by the old fashioned gun.

  The shifter morphed back into a human shape, only his glowing yellow eyes betraying his emotions. The female orc stepped back and put a hand on her companion’s shoulder, glaring at the elf.

  “Show’s over,” stated Goat to the patrons who had been watching the fight eagerly. There were a number of groans.

  “We’re leaving,” I said hastily, grabbing the elf’s sleeve and tugging him towards the door. Goat nodded and lowered the gun.

  The goblins were singing a song as we finally left and a strange looking green cake had turned up at their table. Maybe they were celebrating a birthday after all.

  Chapter 6

  Outside, I buttoned up my sheepskin jacket against the cold wind and breathed as I waited for the elf to follow me. He didn’t take long to leave behind me and with barely a glance, started striding down the street.

  “Oh no,” I said, grabbing his arm this time. He started to shake me off. “Look, I’m trusting you here, my best friend is missing and all I have to go on is that pendant that you’re holding. I need to know what you did to it and where we’re going,” I paused, “and who you are and who your friend is and why she’s missing and how is that related to Aloora and…” I stopped then, realising I was ranting and starting to sound hysterical.

  He tilted his head, seeming to consider me, then nodded slightly with a tight smile.

  “Can we walk and talk?” he asked gesturing to the street he had started to walk down.

  I nodded and released his arm. “Start talking,” I was curt but didn’t trust myself to say more, I had been through a lot tonight and was worried for Aloora. I didn’t want him to think I was a crazy woman who couldn’t control her emotions, even if that might have been true.

  After a couple of paces, with me almost trotting to keep up with his longer strides, the elf started talking.

  “I am Lorandir. My friend is Espretha. She disappeared two days ago and I have not been able to find her,” he paused, taking a deep breath and letting it out in a sigh, as if wondering how much to tell me. I kept quiet, now he was finally talking I didn’t want to put him off.

  “Until you walked into that pub with her pendant. She always wore it around her neck,” he stopped there almost wistfully.

  “What did you do to it to find her? Was it something to do with the enchantment on it?”

  He glanced at me then looked ahead again. “Yes. It is a luck charm. We created it together, so I used her magical signature to locate her.”

  I nodded. Mats had been right, it was a luck charm but I was sure there was something else too, otherwise why couldn’t he have used something else of Espretha’s to locate his friend.

  I had heard of ‘finding magic’ but had thought it was a natural gift rather than something that could be infused into jewellery. Finders were often employed by the police services for missing person cases and I knew some museums employed them when rare artworks or artefacts were stolen.

  An idea popped into my head. My mind whirled with possibilities, if I could learn to infuse finding magic into my jewellery, I could market my wares as unloseable. Fuelled by the idea and possibly exhaustion, I blurted out a question.

  “Can anyone do that?”

  Lorandir looked shocked. I clarified and modified my tone to one of mild interest, “I’ve never heard of finding someone with an artefact, unless you’re a natural finder?”

  He seemed to think about it for a long while and I forced myself to stay silent too, as we continued towards wherever he thought Espretha was.

  “It is a, I think the word would be, ‘friend’ charm in English. Elves form these with special… friends, I think is the word, who they have a lifelong bond with. It allows us to contact each other.”

  “Like a phone?” I asked, before realising that sounded sarcastic.

  “No,” he sounded exasperated, “more like a connection. We can sense each other’s emotions and know if the other is in trouble. When this was torn from her neck, I lost that connection and knew she was in trouble but I couldn’t find it or her. It was like it was cloaked with other magic. It’s hard to explain.”

  I thought back to Aloora’s room. There was always a slight magical energy coming from it but as it reminded me of her, I had never really thought about it before.

  “Aloora has a lot of magical scrolls,” I spoke my thoughts aloud, “perhaps one of them was cloaking it or blocking the magic somehow.”

  He glanced at me again; he looked a little impressed with my logic. Then his eyes squinted slightly as if remembering something.

  “Aloora…do you mean Aloora Dragonquest?” he asked, using her online handle.

  “That’s her,” I didn’t say anything else. People often recognised Aloora and she enjoyed her lively debates on social media. I expected him to be starstruck or start quizzing me about her latest posts, but he simply nodded as if it was normal to be searching for a minor social media celebrity on a Friday night.

  We didn’t talk much for the rest of the journey as he strode and I practically jogged across the city to our destination. The city was remarkably quiet, the only figures we saw were vampires and donors crowded around the all night blood store. I gave an involuntary shudder as we passed the Capitol Shopping Centre with its modern neon sign for ‘B’, glowing red, of course. We hurried on past the disinterested queues.

  He paused outside a tower block of sleek apartments near the railway line and we both looked up, the building seeming to reach to the sky. The concrete looked formidable in the night and the sheer glass windows were mostly dark with only a few shining brightly to indicate occupants were home.

  “She’s in there,” his voice shook slightly and I knew he was anxious. So was I. That pang of sympathy tugged at my chest again. On a whim, I pulled my goggles over my eyes and looked up. There weren’t many magical auras that I could see, a couple of half trolls close by, on the first floor I guessed. I continued to look up, craning my neck and disturbing Errol, who snorted unhappily and dug his claws into my coat in protest. It was a tall building so I could have been mistaken, but it looked like there were a couple of forest green elf auras and several violet gnomish auras, although I couldn’t work out how many or how high up they were from this angle.

  I pushed the goggles back onto my head and scanned the metal buttons on the entrance pad. There was a code to get in. There was also another pad of numbers to the right of the door that connected to a speaker
. This was clearly how visitors got buzzed in.

  “Any idea which flat she’s in?” I asked hopefully but wasn’t surprised when he shook his head, his mane of blonde hair catching in the wind and blowing into his face. I supressed a smile at seeing a dishevelled elf and pressed two numbers at random.

  I heard the digital beeps that indicated a buzzer was ringing somewhere in the building but it ended after five rings. I wasn’t surprised. The few windows lit up suggested there weren’t many people in or awake this evening and it was late. I tried again and this time someone picked up after two rings.

  “Who is it?” asked a nasally voice through the speaker. I looked at the elf, who shrugged unhelpfully.

  “Er, pizza delivery?” I said tentatively.

  “Where’s the boxes? And I didn’t order a pizza.” Damn, there must be a camera. I should have expected that in this expensive a building. The speaker hung up. They might be calling the police as we waited.

  I studied the digital pad by the entrance. I had my unlocking key on me, but I had only ever used it for locks at the Arcade and my own shop, not on keypads. It was worth a go I supposed. I took it out of my pocket and placed it near the keypad. Open, I thought, willing it to work.

  To my surprise the door clicked and I pushed, opening it all the way. I put my key away carefully, and looked behind me towards Lorandir.

  “Well come on then,” I gestured, pushing the door open confidently as if breaking and entering was something I did regularly.

  We stood on the clean, white tiles of the foyer and I let the door clank shut behind us. The noise echoed through the empty lobby. Luckily there were no security guards here.

  Lorandir glanced up and slightly to the left. He waved vaguely. “She’s up there.”

  “I don’t suppose you can tell which floor, can you?” I asked hopefully.

  He shook his head. I walked to the lift and stepped in as it opened almost immediately. “Guess we’re going to have to stop on every floor then,” I said cheerily as I mashed all the buttons making them light up.

  He sighed and stepped in. My stomach rolled slightly as the lift lurched upwards. Errol hissed softly. He didn’t enjoy the lift any more than I did. It was only a few seconds before we were at the first floor and my stomach rolled again as the lift jerked to a stop. I gazed expectantly at Lorandir as the doors opened.

  He shook his head, looked upwards and stayed put. I sighed. This was going to be a long lift ride. I started humming a tune as I looked around the metal box we were riding in, trying to ignore the small lurches in my stomach every time the lift stopped and started. Lorandir glared at me. I met his eyes and hummed a little louder, not caring if it offended his elvish ears. I saw his jaw tighten but he stayed silent and his gaze drifted upwards again, towards Espretha.

  On the tenth floor, Lorandir stopped looking upwards and looked forwards and to the left.

  “Here?” I asked tensely. The constant stopping and starting of the lift had put me on edge and I didn’t know what we were walking towards.

  Lorandir nodded. He seemed to be tense too. We stepped cautiously out of the lift and the metal doors slid silently shut behind us. I pulled on my goggles and looked to the right. Several violet auras were in one of the flats, a gnomish family perhaps, but Aloora hadn’t mentioned relatives in the city, so I guessed she wasn’t with them. I looked to the left and saw a couple of forest green auras and one pale violet one. My heart jumped to my stomach; that could be her. I pointed in that direction and Lorandir started walking slowly down the corridor to the left. Being an elf, his steps were light and the plush blue carpet muffled my steps as I followed behind.

  The goggles made it dark inside so I pushed them back up on my head, wincing as they caught a strand of hair. I considered the modern artwork dotted throughout the hall as we walked. The elf paused by every door then continued until he reached the very end of the corridor. At the last grey door, opposite a painting that was called “Summer Sun” but could equally have been called “Expensive Blobs of Yellow on Bright Blue”, he stopped and looked at me.

  “She’s in there,” he put his ear to the door, “I can hear voices but not what they’re saying.”

  I moved one of my plaits out of the way and pressed my ear to the door. I could hear mumbling too. Errol stirred on my shoulders, sniffing. He loved Aloora because she always brought beef jerky for him whenever she came over to my place. “What can you smell boy? Is Aloora in there?” I petted his head soothingly. I pulled the goggles back down and immediately saw two very bright forest green auras and a paler violet one off to the left, in a different room perhaps.

  “Two elves and a gnome are in there,” I confirmed in a whisper. “What’s the plan?” Lorandir met my eyes with a surprised look. We had come all this way and he didn’t have a plan.

  “We knock and ask if they’ve seen Espretha and Aloora.”

  “Right,” I replied, “and then?”

  “What do you want to do?” he hissed back at me. “Break the door down? We don’t know who is in there. What if there are children?”

  I started. I hadn’t considered this could just be a family having a late movie night with some magical guests, my goggles didn’t sense humans after all. I didn’t have a better plan.

  “OK, OK,” I said, raising my hands in an appeasing gesture, “but if they don’t answer…”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Lorandir replied with finality. Great, I thought, but I nodded. I fingered the key in my pocket, we could get in if we needed to.

  Lorandir lifted his hand and knocked sharply on the grey door. I stayed slightly to the left of the door out of sight of the peephole drilled at average human height in the door. If it was his friend, all well and good but if it was something more sinister then the element of surprise wouldn’t hurt. Errol scrabbled down my body and sat at attention by my feet. He was very alert and I felt a surge of hope that we had indeed found Aloora.

  There was a long pause as we waited but then I heard footsteps moving towards the door. The sound of the peephole shutter being lifted and then muffled voices.

  Lorandir cleared his throat then knocked again. I gripped Bane and tensed, prepared for trouble. To my surprise, the door opened slightly and light flowed out into the hallway.

  “Espretha!” Lorandir exclaimed, emotion making his voice crack. “You’re all right. I was so worried.”

  Espretha cut him off. “What are you doing here?” She sounded nervous and slightly pissed off rather than pleased to see him. “You have to go,” she made to shut the door.

  Lorandir put his hand on it, resisting slightly. “Please. What’s happening? Are you alright?”

  “You have to go,” Espretha repeated. As she made to shut the door, Errol darted forward and squeezed through the opening. Espretha gave a shriek as if she had seen a mouse and released the door, which swung open.

  Lorandir stood there looking baffled. I stepped forward and Espretha shrieked again as she saw me, and I barged through the now open door and into the short corridor.

  Inside were white walls and pale laminate flooring, modern and easy to maintain. “Errol,” I called, trying to sound sure of myself when I’d pushed my way into someone’s home.

  I made it to the open plan living space, a white leather sofa facing a sleek tv screen and, behind that, floor to ceiling windows showing a view over the city. The skyline was lit up with street lights glowing against the dark night sky and some sort of laser show going on above one of the clubs in what I guessed was the direction of Cardiff Bay.

  A picture hung above an electric fireplace which was heating the flat, with fake flames flickering above smooth white pebbles. It was so large and out of place in such a modern building that it drew my eye.

  In contrast with the modern canvas artwork in the shared hallway, this picture was in an ornate golden frame and had a medieval or renaissance look to it. It showed a large red dragon reared up fiercely with its jaws open, breathing
fire at several silhouetted people who were cowering. It struck me as an odd choice of picture for this flat.

  A dark-haired elf was standing in the kitchen. He wasn’t happy about a dwarf barging into his home and had picked up a large knife. I held up my hands in a gesture of peace.

  Espretha seemed to have regained her composure as she entered the room. Lorandir was loitering sheepishly in the hallway. He had expected her to be in trouble but it looked like she was shacking up with another elf without telling him.

  The male elf looked at her with meaning and I wondered if elves were telepathic.

  “You need to leave,” she stated, clearly shifting her gaze to me and looking me up and down as if I was a piece of dirt. I glared back, but there wasn’t really a good reason to be in her home if she was fine.

  “Of course,” I replied in a sickly-sweet voice, “As soon as I find Errol,” I added with some satisfaction as her narrow lips pursed and her large blue eyes narrowed. With Gunther’s charm, I wasn’t affected by elvish glamour but they were still beautiful.

  At this point, I heard a scuffling sound and turned to the source. Errol was scratching frantically at a closed wooden door on the same wall as the fireplace and the weird painting. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. This was unusual behaviour.

  I walked to the door, and made to open it.

  “NO!” screamed Espretha. I turned to look at her. What was behind that door?

  The dark-haired elf looked at her then shrugged and threw the kitchen knife towards me. I ducked just in time. It thudded into the wood of the door. I glanced up, it was embedded up to the hilt; the elf was strong.

  I drew Bane and stood again, switching to what I hoped was an intimidating dwarven battle stance. The male elf’s hands were now glowing an electric blue as he summoned magic. I dived behind the sofa as he launched the spell; I didn’t want to chance Gunther’s charm not working. I felt the heat of the spell and the sofa shuddered as it took the brunt of the blow.