Elfish by Julie Steimle (librera reader txt) 📖

Chapter One

“Isn’t that—?”

“Yeah. I think it is.”

Immediately the two British college swells rushed up the hallway to follow the dark-haired, young, athletic man in the striped red-and-black tee-shirt, both searching out a pen and something to write on from their pockets and bags. He did not appear to see them as he walked down the halls of Oxford—which wasn’t his alma mater, as he was an American. In fact, he stood out a bit like a sore thumb, or… rather, like a man who was accustomed to extreme athletics combined with the odd voodoo ritual. At least, he had his famous faux shrunken head dangling at his hip from a belt strap. He also wore a shark’s teeth necklace with a red crystal on it.

As he went around a corner, they sped up to catch him. But when they turned that corner too, he was not there.

“Where did the bloody American go?” the one young man said.

“Maybe he really is a Witchdoctor,” the other toff replied.

Both rushed further down the hall, scouring the hallways for Peter McCabe—the rather famous ‘footballer’ from the US (known as the Witchdoctor) who was currently visiting Oxford while alternately interning at the British Museum in London. Rumors had spread he was there. He was not quite interning. It was some sort of agreement with Oxford, the museum, and royal family apparently. How in the world he knew them, no one could figure out. He was just a guy from Massachusetts.

Peter stepped from the shadow, peeking after the pair of football enthusiasts before taking another hallway.

Being famous was usually useful. It got Peter into doors most of his other friends (and colleagues of the Holy Seven) struggled to enter. But sometimes it was a pain. He had to learn tricks for avoiding people. He had also picked up a few spells from Daniel Smith’s half-sister Silvia, which warded off stalkers and truly dangerous people. A few fans were no big deal. But there were times he needed to be invisible.

So he was… to certain eyes.

He continued on his way to visit with his ‘mentor’ at Oxford—Prof. Hamish Taylor, who was an expert in Medieval and Celtic Mysticism. Peter had obtained this contact from none other than Mr. Brian McDillan of California, a former SRA agent and vampire hunter who had encountered the professor ages ago, along with Matthew Calamori and Tom Brown back when they were just teenagers. It had been an interesting story—a story which both he and Daniel had also extracted from Tom and Matt in detail once Peter had learned about it. This was the professor who had ridden on the Halloween Highway[1], snatched up by the Unseelie Court along with Mathew and Tom—the very same Halloween that Eve McAllister had discovered she was not just a kid with a rare form of albinism, but a vimp[2]. It was also the same professor whom Howie[3] Deacon’s three friends had met in Cochem, Germany the day before a werewolf pack had attacked them (He had also been extremely grieved to hear about what had happened to the three college boys). Prof. Taylor got around.

Under Prof. Taylor’s tutelage, mostly using his collection of ancient records about the faerie folk, Peter had been researching everything the man knew about European elves. Peter only had time to do this between football matches and training, so he had been in and out all the time at Oxford over the course of a year, never steadily there. And yet he had been able to collect a substantial amount of information—which he quietly gave to his ‘flat-mate’ Daniel Smith who was supposed to be attending Oxford on exchange in relation to his former Masters and now PhD research, all connected to the same field of Cult Mysticism and Ancient Mythology. But Daniel hardly sat in on lectures. He said he wanted to just visit England for a ‘cultural experience’.

That’s what he told everyone at least. Daniel and Peter were on the same task. Daniel spent most of his time traveling the length and breadth of the UK, doing the footwork while Peter was the face of the operation. As a famous ‘footballer’, Peter was the one who opened doors to information while Daniel acted on it. As such, Daniel spent most of his ‘work time’ tracking down various living elves in the country, looking for ‘the one’. They had started this project together several years ago when the last of the previous Holy Seven, Mr. Carlton Jones, had charged them to find the Holy Seven’s ‘patron elf’. They believed they were now close.

Several years back, before this all started, Mr. Jones had told them all that he knew about this patron elf, which really wasn’t that much. He said it was one of the tasks or quests of each generation of Seven to find this select elf who had inconveniently dropped out of sight millennia ago. The patron elf was supposed to guide the Holy Seven in their work and give them aide whenever they needed a supernatural boost. No modern Seven had succeeded in finding the elf. But when they asked for more details, all Mr. Jones could say was, “As far as I know, the Seven’s patron was a penitent god-elf from Egypt.”

“God-elf?” It was the first time either of them had heard of the term.

Mr. Jones had clarified. “A god-elf is an elf who played god to human beings, usually in one of the pantheons. Our particular elf is rather difficult to pin down. Evasive, possibly. And the records of who that was were lost in the ‘Dark Ages’.”

That was the beginning of their research. They just knew their elf as ‘The Elf’. They had little else to go on, except one other thing.

“We do know the Elf did not originate in Egypt. In fact, we are sure it originated somewhere in Europe. The Elf had definitely been in Greece, but was not from there either,” Mr. Jones had informed them.

“And how do you know that?” Peter had asked.

“Artifacts left to us,” Mr. Jones had said with a tired sigh. “Bits from ancient records. Oh, and we know for certain that the Elf’s major gift was fire.”

“Fire?” Daniel had perked up.

Peter had smirked at him, as Daniel was a borderline pyromaniac. Yet he asked Mr. Jones, “What artifacts? What do we look for?”

“The ankh and the box came from the Elf. The Elf made them,” Mr. Jones explained. “If you study that box and all the writings on it, it may point you to him.”

Well, Peter had studied the folding Egyptian puzzle box that had been left in his possession, the one they had inherited back in high school when they had finally proven to the United Nations be that generation’s Holy Seven[4]. And that research had eventually led him to a ruin in Egypt which was (conveniently for him) under excavation at the time through a Stanford University group co-operation with the Cairo Museum. He went under the premise to visit and study under the Cairo Museum (with special permission as usual, getting it from the Egyptian government). The site itself was a temple once dedicated to the goddess Bastet.

When he came to the dig, he crossed the established barriers preventing tourists from entering, and he methodically explored that entire temple until he finally found the inscription he was looking for. The box itself was a model and map of the temple, so it did not take as long as he had expected. The inscription was in a stone wall—the sign of the Holy Seven which had been on the ankh[5], along with five colored circles arching over the top of it, three more to the left if that. The placement of the circles on the right had implied an abstract hand print that had each fingertip touched with paint, the sun symbol in the palm, as it would be in all of their palms. The last three were like the other hand with only the thumb, the middle finger, and the pointer. It made sense to Peter to fit his hands in those spots, fingers matching the colors. But when he had done that, his hand burned, propelling light into the wall, causing the wall to shift. A door opened in the stone.

Everyone at the site who had been near him at the time were shocked to see the entirely obscure doorway open. They were even more shocked when Peter walked right in. Luckily they had not seen him conjure a fire in his palm once inside then, with it, light a basin of oil which was standing next to the doorway. It was amazing the oil was still there. It was even more amazing the room did not reek of foul gasses.

The illuminated room was something else. It was full of treasure, from gold to ornate jars to weapons. A number of the artifacts looked too recent to fit the setting, though. Peter noticed a handful of medieval swords from Europe, each with the ankh mark of the Seven on them. There were also armor and shields—again, not Egyptian. Much of it looked Persian. Some appeared to even be East Asian. As far as he could tell, it was treasure room for the Seven, at least up to the Middle Ages. Nothing more recent. There were also mural on the walls with Egyptian hieroglyphs still perfectly preserved. But on one wall, near a peculiar carving of that universal Tree of Life found in almost every ancient megalith culture in the world, was a cartouche with writing in Aramaic (which at the time he could barely read), Greek (which he could read), and what looked like Ogham… that northern European writing which he knew nothing about at all. As the others rushed in, Peter quickly dug out his camera and took pictures of everything.

The others gasped, flooding into the room with declarations to the others that they had found something. That was when Peter realized he should have closed the door right after opening it and come back later that night, alone. This room did not belong to the world. It belonged to the Seven. But it was too late. Already the professors were inside, exclaiming over the treasure and the pristine hieroglyphs. They took pictures, but they also eagerly claimed items for removal to the museum.

The treasure, thankfully, was entirely claimed by the Cairo Museum, and would at least not leave the country. Peter was sorry he had not snuck out a few of the weapons belonging to the previous Sevens, though. They would have been useful. The others would have appreciated it. Instead, the find was credited to Professor Wycliffe of Stanford. And upon seeing the mixed treasure, he already had theories as to why such a mishmash of artifacts were together there. He was pontificating to as many who would hear him.

Peter’s name, of course, had not been mentioned in the final report of the discovery. He wasn’t supposed to be there anyway, and those on the site had attributed his discovery to ‘fools luck’. He had accidentally dislodged something, they had said. They all thought he was just a stupid ‘soccer player’ after all.

However, those hieroglyphs Peter had photographed had led him to another location, another buried temple. This one, he went to alone.

Again, he followed the signs of the Seven around the sandy ruin, opened doors and shifted age old stone with just the touch of his marked hand. But this temple, when he stepped in, he saw was untouched, unlike the previous temple of Bastet. No one else from the other Sevens had been