Unexpected Ultimatum (Unplanned Princess Book 6) Read online

  That was what appeared: a single Huldufólk. It leaped out of the crack and landed in a crouch. Helga wasn’t close enough to the odd creature to make out the finer details, but there were no obvious wings.

  The creature stopped and stared at Helga, almost as if it recognized her. A shiver of concern passed through her. She searched her mind for the last time she’d made an offering to their kind.

  Despite the faint fear, there was something familiar about the being’s presence, even though she’d never seen a creature like that in her life. If she had, she would have held no doubts about their existence.

  Was it true? Had they been watching the humans of Iceland for centuries, hidden from their gazes? Even if that were true, she didn’t understand why this Huldufólk had chosen to show its face to three random researchers on the glacier.

  One painful possibility was that her team had trespassed and violated the Huldufólk’s land. For all they knew, this spot was sacred. The researchers had selected the location based on their combined experimental interests and the lack of existing instrumentation and sensor packages already present. It might prove to be a fatal mistake.

  Helga swallowed and scooted away, unsure about what she should do. Make an offering? Beg for her life?

  “This isn’t real,” Magnus shouted at the top of his lungs. “There’s no damned way this is real!”

  “You’re saying we didn’t see northern lights during the day, followed by the glacier splitting, and now we’re not seeing a being that came out of the glacier?” asked Aron in a skeptical tone.

  Helga couldn’t get any words out. She wanted to scream and reject the present reality like Magnus, but simple resignation settled over her. Her eyes could be lying to her, but her heart told her they weren’t.

  “We’re hallucinating,” Magnus insisted. “It’s gas from a vent.”

  “I see a birdman,” Aron commented. “Do you see a birdman?”

  The ground continued to shake, but the tremors were weakening.

  Helga’s heart managed to pound harder than it had been. Any chance of dismissing the encounter vanished with the clarification.

  “It’s not real,” Magnus repeated, shaking his head. “It can’t be.”

  Aron let out a strangled laugh. “You were the one who doubted, so it came. You shouldn’t have disrespected them.”

  “That’s not how this works. That’s not how reality works.”

  Helga didn’t know. She’d brought them up. Maybe it was her fault.

  The team could survive. They had to. This was Iceland. People didn’t die violently all that often. The Huldufólk might occasionally sabotage construction equipment, according to rumors, but they weren’t running around killing humans.

  She jogged behind a snowmobile and motioned for Magnus and Aron to join her. The ground had stopped shaking, making it easier for them to dart across the now-uneven ice and snow and get to the snowmobiles.

  They could escape. One magical creature must have its limits.

  Three more Huldufólk leaped from the crack. Their arrival stole Helga’s hope, and she stared at the crack, wondering if more would appear.

  Upon reflection, Helga reclassified it in her mind. It was not a crack but a massive crevasse.

  The team ended up a decent distance from the first creature. One of the new arrivals shouted something, which refocused her attention on them.

  Helga was surprised. She’d expected something inhuman for their language, something musical, perhaps. The language was unfamiliar to her and sounded nothing like either Icelandic or English, but she could imagine it coming from a human’s mouth.

  The original birdman called back to the others. Her voice was higher, lighter. Helga was sure the being was female.

  She reached for her phone, but it was gone, dropped somewhere during the tremors.

  “They’re going to kill us,” Magnus whispered.

  “They’re not acting as if they’ve noticed us,” Aron whispered back. “We can get out of here.”

  “The first one, she looked at me,” Helga insisted. “She noticed.”

  “She?” Aron replied. “How can you tell the difference?”

  Helga wasn’t sure. She was mostly going by the voice. For all she knew, male Huldufólk had higher voices than their females. There didn’t seem to be any major differences in their bodies from this distance.

  “We can get to the snowmobiles,” Magnus insisted, inclining his head toward the machines. “You’re right, Aron. We can escape.”

  “We’re surrounded by those huge cracks,” Helga replied. “We’ll crash.”

  Magnus gestured to his side. “That one looks like we can jump it. We’ll have to chance it.”

  One of the birdmen shouted something at the original arrival. Small balls of fire popped into existence and floated around him.

  “Magic,” Aron declared, his eyes ablaze with excitement. “They’re real, and they have magic!”

  The birdman thrust his arm forward. The fireballs screamed toward the birdwoman.

  She snapped her arm up. A wall of ice grew in front of her, absorbing the blasts with a sizzle.

  “We walked into a war,” Aron yelped. Fear replaced the excitement in his eyes.

  The other two birdmen surged forward as if they were skating without any obvious equipment. They raised their arms. The ice wall protecting the birdwoman exploded, showering her with shards and forcing her back.

  The first attacker blasted a larger fireball toward the birdwoman, then an ice pillar rose from the ground and flung her backward. Sharp spears of solid ice plunged out of the ground. She pointed at the two enemies closing on her. The spears flew toward them, but the birdmen sliced through them with their hands.

  Helga continued to stare at the spectacle. She was trying to make out more details about the strange beings fighting in front of her, but their light coloration made it difficult to discern much other than their feathers, beaks, and human configuration of limbs, each having two arms and two legs.

  Aron stood. “We apologize for trespassing,” he shouted. He repeated it a second time in English.

  “Stay down, you halfwit,” Magnus spat. “Let them be distracted by the—”

  Helga screamed. It all happened so quickly. Aron offered his apology, one of the Huldufólk turned his way, and an ice spike shot from right beneath Aron and impaled him. The ice lifted him into the air. His red blood dripped down the spear in startling contrast with the ice.

  The female Huldufólk shouted something, her tone angry. She jumped backward on a series of rising ice columns with her arms outstretched. Pellets ripped away from the front columns and hurled toward her three enemies.

  Two of the birdmen protected themselves with ice walls. The fireball-thrower melted half the pellets coming his way, but the others knocked him over. An ice spike from the glacier ripped through his chest.

  They might be hidden elves of legend, but they bled red like humans. Helga found that strangely comforting after Aron’s death.

  “Not real,” Magnus muttered. “They can’t be.”

  He hopped atop a snowmobile and turned the key. The remaining Huldufólk were too distracted by flinging ice spears at each other to go after him. Helga knew she should run too, but she remained transfixed by the unfolding battle.

  The snowmobile shot forward. He headed toward the jump he had pointed out earlier and let out a shout of joy.

  A wall grew beneath his snowmobile, then shot up and flung the vehicle onto its side.

  Magnus hit the ground first. The snowmobile landed on his head right after.

  Helga turned away from the awful sight. Her colleagues were dead, and she couldn’t escape.

  One of the birdmen turned toward her. She darted away from the snowmobile. He brought back his hand. Snow and ice flowed out of the ground to form a new spear. He flung it, and it pierced the snowmobile. A second attack finished off the last undamaged vehicle.

  The birdwoman skated along the ground,
trying to outpace the birdman. Helga was going to die, caught up in the bizarre struggle of creatures she hadn’t been sure she believed in only minutes prior.

  Helga jumped behind an overturned snowmobile and covered her head. It might be unavailable as an escape vehicle, but it might work as cover.

  A new ice spear flew toward her from her side. Two smaller spears ripped from the ground and smashed into the projectile, knocking it off course.

  A birdman snapped his head toward the birdwoman. Helga’s eyes widened. Had the birdwoman saved her?

  Ice walls rose around Helga on all sides, sealing her in. A roof followed, leaving her in the cold. She could barely make out the outlines of anything outside her ice cage.

  The muffled shouts of the Huldufólk mingled with pops and thuds. Something hard rained on the roof of her ice prison. A scream followed. Then there was nothing but silence.

  Helga’s heart thundered. There was an ice ax on the back of the snowmobile she could use to free herself, but she had no idea how long it would take.

  A dark form marched toward her. The fight was over, but which side had won?

  The walls of her ice prison fell to the ground. The lone figure stood in the distance, but Helga couldn’t tell if it was the birdwoman or one of the men.

  Helga bowed her head. “I apologize for trespassing. We didn’t mean to violate what was yours.”

  The figure raised an arm. Snow rippled around the bodies, both the humans and the Huldufólk. They flowed toward the cracks as if carried by the ground itself before falling inside.

  “If you spare me, I will do more,” Helga insisted. “I’ll continue to leave offerings, and not just at my grandparents’ house. I can do it at my apartment.”

  “I’ve already witnessed your respect,” replied the figure.

  This time the words were in Icelandic, though with an odd accent Helga had never heard before.

  “I don’t understand.”

  The birdwoman vanished, replaced by the odd distortion in the air Helga had seen earlier. “Survive.”

  Helga gave a faint nod, watching until she could no longer make out the distortion. She marched over and peered into the crevasses. They extended far enough that there was only darkness at the bottom.

  She looked around. The snowmobiles had been destroyed. The equipment had either been destroyed or lost. Magnus had the only satellite phone, so it was now somewhere within the glacier.

  With a sigh, Helga collected some energy bars from the snowmobiles. There wasn’t anything else worth carrying.

  Any clever Mark Watney-style plans she had for trying to get help via equipment transmissions were dead in the snow. All the instrument packages had been destroyed, and her computer was nowhere visible. She wasn’t sure if it was buried under the snow or in the cracks.

  There was no vehicle. There was no way of calling for help.

  There was only one choice left. Walking.

  “Survive,” Helga echoed. She looked up at the sun. “Hike southeast and pray for the best.”

  Chapter Three

  While Zaena admired many fine human technological innovations, her fancy headset comms system impressed her the most when she was on patrols. Air magic could accomplish spectacular feats of pushing voices over far distances, but nothing like what her encrypted comms setup could manage. She didn’t like the aesthetics, but the equipment spent most of its time underneath her helmet or, at that moment, invisible, along with her.

  “This is too early,” yawned Grace over the comm. “It’s not that I don’t support your weekly patrol and your whole ‘doing your part for the city’ thing, but couldn’t we have slept in a little later? If you want to start patrolling at 7:00 AM, that means we have to get up way earlier to gather all the gear.”

  “I saw on the news the other day about a brazen early morning robbery,” Zaena explained. “It reminded me that not all wickedness occurs at night in large cities. I don’t want the local scumbags to believe all they have to do to avoid me is move their crimes to a different hour.”

  “Local scumbags?” Grace chuckled. “You’re going native.”

  “Certain things are inevitable given enough time. It is an apt description.”

  “True enough, but getting back to the bitching at hand. Criminals prefer nighttime because it also cuts down on cops. You’re not the only person stopping bad guys in the Bay Area. If the point is to remind people you’re around, you don’t have to pick a certain time of day unless you’re convinced elven magic is behind it.”

  “I understand all that,” Zaena replied, “but the principle stands. We all agree that my involvement in these activities offers strong indirect support for the local authorities and bolsters their campaign against human criminals. The more fear we strike in the hearts of evildoers, the less chance they’ll risk committing foul deeds.”

  “True,” Grace admitted. “The cops have had plenty of time to scream you down as a dangerous vigilante and try to get the FBI on your ass, but somehow they always manage to dodge the question at press conferences or note people have a right to self-defense. That’s all but them giving their seal of approval.”

  With Zaena committed to weekly patrols, Grace and Karl had worked to refine the related recon and deployment methods of Team Princess. Advances in encryption in police radios made use of basic police scanners unreliable, and without hiring specialists in electronic chicanery, there wasn’t much they could do about that. She wasn’t ready for a dedicated hacking team, and neither Karl nor Grace felt comfortable about their ability to manage such personnel.

  Karl had been frustrated, but Grace had developed a useful system involving monitoring the various social media feeds for local trending events of interest. Zaena found social media overwhelming and stayed off it other than to look for funny penguin videos on Grace’s accounts, but her friend had already identified several incidents with her new system.

  “You could go to bed earlier,” Zaena suggested, “if early morning patrols are going to be a problem. While we are not firmly committed to this schedule, it’ll apply for at least the next few weeks.”

  “I need more sleep than you,” Grace reminded her. She yawned again. “I’m just whining. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’ll always worry about my friends.”

  “That’s sweet,” Grace replied. “I’m not seeing anything popping out on any of my feeds or alerts that requires your attention. I thought I had something a minute ago, but the cops were already on-scene.”

  “Are they able to handle it?” Zaena pressed. “The wicked perpetrator doesn’t possess a tank? My experience with other enemies leads me to believe I could carve through a tank. I might have to use an air shell, but that’s not unreasonable.”

  “Nope.” Grace laughed. “No tanks. Let’s dial it down. This is supposed to be a patrol, not a war.”

  “There are no hostage situations?” Zaena asked. “They might be cover for a clever bearer-bond heist. Or a misdirection involving a plan to steal gold bullion from a federal bank?”

  “Stupid Karl and stupid Die Hard,” complained Grace. “I read somewhere those kinds of bonds don’t even exist anymore, and you know what? I don’t know how easy it is to rob a Federal Reserve bank, and I don’t know if you getting involved would be helpful.”

  “This other incident could be something else. A heist involving the coins featuring the adorable Shiba Inu dog.”

  Grace sighed. “Remember when we discussed this before? Cryptocurrency doesn’t normally involve actual physical coins. It’s electronic. Ones and zeros inside a computer.”

  “They shouldn’t use the word ‘coin’ when describing such things then,” complained Zaena. “It’s misleading. Should I not have arrived with gold? You all seemed impressed by what I brought.”

  “Gold’s so last century.” Grace chuckled. “You should have set up RoyalElfCoin and made billions that way.”

  “That would be putting my identity out in a bold way.”

&nbs
p; “You do it without admitting who you are.”

  “I believe I shall stick with the gold. I understand it.”

  Humans were endlessly fascinating, but they also managed to make everything far more complicated than it needed to be. She remained divided on whether that was more charming than vexing.

  Zaena slowed and hovered above a Chinese restaurant. Her stomach rumbled. That was what she got for only having half an omelet before going on patrol early in the morning.

  It didn’t matter anyway. From what she could tell, the place wasn’t open. She checked the door. It wouldn’t be open for another two and a half hours.

  She flew on, keeping closer to the ground. Her experiences with the government and others had taught her even when invisible, she was potentially vulnerable to detection, but that didn’t bother her. Her existence wasn’t a secret anymore.

  The only reason she didn’t openly fly around on patrol was her concern about distracting drivers. Karl had made it clear how easily major car crashes could happen.

  That was another odd aspect of human behavior. She couldn’t think of an elf equivalent for the automobile. Artifacts were rare and not given to adolescents to control, and young elves’ magic was weaker and not as much of a risk.

  Humans, on the other hand, let their children and rage-filled fools tear around their streets in multi-ton death machines, counting on discipline to keep things safe. It was a testament to the strength of their civilization that it hadn’t ground to a halt over automobile-related carnage.

  Zaena dived between two narrow buildings to pass through a dirty alley. There was nothing suspicious unless she counted the man smoking a cigarette and glancing at a back door. Given the stains all over his apron, she suspected he was nothing more than an employee taking a longer break than normal.

  “Whoa,” Grace shouted over the comm.

  “What is it?” Zaena asked, excitement in her voice. “You located a bearer-bond heist? A bus that will explode if it goes too fast? A brutal battle in a dimly lit house of worship filled with doves? I can resolve all those incidents.”

  “There’s an apartment building on fire in a bad way,” Grace replied. “According to something I just read, firefighters have pulled most of the people trapped inside out, but there might be others left.”