She’d traveled Swanicott many times in shifter form, but not like this, with a vibration taking her over, giving her distance and tremendous speed.
She finally landed with a strong slam of paws to earth, then another massive bound. She flew above the treetops, this time extending farther than a mile as she sailed through the air.
In that way, she began to gather up the miles quickly, so that even the wind couldn’t touch her. Her bounds lengthened, until they were two miles long and faster than a Harley gathering speed.
On she ran, her entire being fixed on Zane’s location from moment to moment. His captors were moving incredibly fast, which probably meant that Margetta had control of him and somehow was using her power to whisk him to another part of the realm. Very few in the Nine Realms could move at that speed. Zane could; Olivia as well. But wherever the Ancient Fae was taking him in Swanicott would be akin to a stronghold.
Olivia sensed the moment Zane was spirited across the Arundel Mountains.
She’d also reached the mountain range and bounded from one clear spot of forest, to a gathering of boulders, to a shallow valley, to another forest clearing and on and on until she was on the western slopes. She kept moving, especially when she felt that Zane’s position finally grew static. Now that Margetta had control of him, Olivia could only imagine what the Ancient Fae intended to do next.
Extending her senses, she could feel that he’d been taken to a rugged coastal area where few farms and no towns to speak of existed: Angler’s Cliff.
She raced along, knowing that the lengthening of each bound and the speed she traveled was beyond what any shifter in the Nine Realms could do. Or even vampires since she’d covered two hundred miles in barely twenty minutes. She’d moved like the wind.
For a brief moment, though, her heart sank. She’d been different her entire life and it seemed even in the Nine Realms, she wouldn’t be normal either.
She only slowed as she drew within a quarter mile of an enormous Invictus encampment a few miles east of Angler’s Cliff in an area known as the Dead Zone. Still cloaked, she drew close to the edge of the camp where a wall of red, wavy lines indicated the boundaries of a serious, complex fae spell. It was clear to her that Margetta had constructed a spell designed not just to keep intruders out, but to hide the encampment from most Realm-folk as well.
In the same way, she supposed, that she could ‘ghost’ Zane, and travel across an entire realm in the space of a few minutes, she could see a hidden spell. She bumped the wavy lines with her nose and sniffed. She could smell the sickly sweet redolence of the Ancient Fae.
Once more sniffing, she caught Zane’s scent coupled with the sharp metallic smell of his blood. The mastyr was hurt and she barely repressed a need to howl long and loud in response.
She paced back and forth, whining softly. Zane was being held inside, but how to get past the spell?
She loped fifty yards away from the encampment and saw that the wavy lines ceased another hundred yards high up in the air.
She smiled a wolf’s smile, because she knew she could bound over the wall. That kind of leap would also take her well into the encampment on the opposite side.
Before she attempted to breach the wall, she checked her cloaking frequency and found it fully intact, thank God.
She pawed the dirt and felt the bounding frequency flow once more through her chest, spreading to her hind quarters, her shoulders, and down all four legs. When the vibration covered her head, she took off running.
Soaring into the air, she cleared the spell and landed not thirty feet away from a beautiful woman surrounded by a golden glow of light.
She’d read blogs about Margetta and knew she was looking at the Ancient Fae. She had long blond hair, very similar to Olivia’s, but the woman’s eyes were an unearthly violet. Her skin looked like porcelain; it was so smooth.
She was talking to her army, toasting them with an ornate silver goblet. The Invictus roared their approval in response.
Margetta continued, “And now we have our first real prize of the war, one that I have foreseen, and which marks the beginning of the fall of the Nine Realms. Tonight, we execute Zane of Swanicott!”
Another deafening cheer.
Knowing she couldn’t be seen, Olivia lifted her muzzle and sniffed the air again. Her clever nose sifted through thousands of scents and found the one she needed to follow.
Zane wasn’t far away at all.
She quickly retreated to the edge of the camp in order to avoid an accidental encounter. She didn’t want to give warning of her presence by stumbling on some object or other, or by bumping into anyone.
Well beyond the general gathering of Margetta’s forces, she trotted quickly between the tents until she reached the one she knew housed Zane.
Guards surrounded the tent, two powerful shifter males and their female wraith mates. As she drew close, both shifters sniffed the air and growled, maybe smelling Olivia, she wasn’t sure.
Pushing the tent flap with her nose, she glided inside.
The sight of Zane face down and unconscious tore at her heart. Deep cuts crisscrossed his back. He’d been whipped badly and blood still oozed from the terrible wounds.
She drew close to his face, stretching out on her stomach and began to lick his cheek, whining softly the entire time.