Free Hellebore’s Holiday by Viola Grace

Chapter One
     
     
    Hellebore Anders drove her car down the highway through the blinding snow. She was on her way to a pickup spot for a transport to a vacation spot. Seeing the birth of the midnight elf a few months ago had changed one of her prime outlooks on life.
    The future had suddenly taken a position front and centre in her plans.
    She hadn’t been able to arrange time away from her day job in time to enjoy a vacation after her time in the shifter’s house, so now, she was using her connections to take off just a few weeks before Christmas.
    “Are you sure that you want to go out in this weather?” Amaryllis Anders has asked her daughter.
    “I am fine, Mom. Just be glad I am not driving my bike. Even I can’t do anything against a Saskatchewan blizzard.” Hellebore had gone outside to see her father checking her snow tires.
    “They are brand new, Dad. I even had them tightened. I promise to drive safe until I get where I am going.”
    Her father looked at her with his sun-weathered features grim. “Take care, Bells.”
    “I will, Dad. I promise. I just need to sort some things out.”
    With the wind blowing around them, scraping them with ice, they faced each other, and her father nodded. “I know that being what you are isn’t easy. Take what time you need, we will be here when you work out what you need to work out.”
    She hugged him, smelling the gasoline, oil and ground-in dirt of his outer jacket. It was one of her smells of home, and she locked it in her mind.
    She slid into her car with her bag in the back seat, and she waved at him as she drove off to the GPS coordinates where her gate was waiting.
    Transport gates on routes in the human world were tricky, so they were devised in two parts. One part was set in place by the mage, and the person who was going to use it carried the other.
    Since the call to attend her second cousin’s wedding, Hellebore and her band had been called out on fourteen different events, and therefore, she now had a helluva collection of transport fobs. She checked the GPS for the third time and started to accelerate carefully.
    Ice under her caused her to slide and the flash of her transport blinded her. She thudded to a halt when her tires grabbed a solid surface and she hit the brakes. Her airbag deployed and everything got bright before it got dark.
    Her horn was blaring as a hand touched her shoulder. “Miss? Miss, are you awake?”
    She blinked and looked over at the owner of the voice. It rolled over her like water and licked at her skin. “I am awake. Did I hit anyone?”
    He chuckled and reached across her to release her seatbelt. “No one out here to hit. I don’t know why you are here or how you got here, but you didn’t hit a thing.”
    His features shifted as she stared at him, blurring as she blinked the blood out of her eyes.
    “Out you come.” He eased her out of the car.
    “My bag is in the back.”
    “I see it. I will get it as soon as you are settled. It looks like you split your forehead. How many fingers do you see?”
    She blinked and narrowed her eyes as a fan of digits waved in front of her. “Fifteen?”
    “Okay, concussion is a possibility. Stay awake. I don’t want to have to explain you to the Doc.” He eased her into the back of a car. She saw grills and the plate that told her she was in some kind of law-enforcement vehicle.
    He tucked her bag into his trunk and closed the door to her vehicle, taking the keys with him. He checked on her and gave her a quick wink. “Hold on, it is five minutes away.”
    She had never been in a law-enforcement vehicle that was using all of its horsepower before, but her head pounded hard enough that she couldn’t enjoy it.
    To her surprise, the vehicle eased to a halt just as she was beginning to compose a song to the pounding in her head.
    “Stay still; I will bring you into the aide station.”
    Her head was still throbbing, so she did as he asked.
    He lifted her again and brought her in,