Hero's Haven

by Rebecca Zanetti

  Smart. His female was smart. He smiled. “I will bring you cooked meat.”

  She lifted a hand. “No, thanks. I’m not hungry.”

  Yet she had not eaten. He would bring her something to eat whether she liked it or not.

  Then he moved to the entry and ventured into the cold, shutting the door behind himself. He stilled, listening for threats and then smelling for them. No enemy was anywhere near. He couldn’t even sense an immortal, any immortal, in the distance. Good. His sweet Haven would be safe for now as he did what he needed to do.

  It was time to hunt. Animals first and the enemy next.

  He had returned. This world had better be ready.

  Chapter Eight

  The kiss had nearly detonated her entire body. Haven planted a hand against her abdomen and tried to quell her rapid breathing. She’d hidden it well enough from Quade, but holy burnt sienna in a tube. The man could really kiss. It might be a good thing he didn’t want to mate her, because every time she looked at that marking on his hand, she kind of wanted it. Deeply. When he shut the door behind himself, the atmosphere in the room changed. Mellowed.

  She gathered up her drawings, not surprised to find many featuring Quade. A couple featured a young girl of about seven years old with direct eyes and angled features. Haven had drawn the girl many times through the years, although they’d never met.

  Didn’t mean they wouldn’t meet soon.

  After setting the room to rights, and repacking their bags in case they had to make a quick exit, Haven stretched out on the bed and tried to relax every muscle in her body, head to toe. She dropped into sleep before reaching her ankles.

  For one second she was on a beach in Hawaii, and then a force dragged her through a portal to another place.

  This world was different. She stood on a mushy red round thing that kind of looked like a mushroom, surrounded by pitch-black liquid that rippled into the distance, propping up similar mushrooms. The sky was gray with a couple of faraway suns. The silence was painful as if everything held its breath—as if a predator awaited. She shivered in the cold, and instantly popped through another portal.

  Her lungs seized and her head screamed. Pain filled her face, and then she dropped onto purple grass, rolling several times to catch her breath.

  This place was new as well. She looked up to see tall trees, bare of leaves, their razor-sharp branches dripping with icicles. One teetered and dropped, slicing her arm and sticking into the ground. Pain welled, and she grabbed the wound, sitting up. She had to get out of there.

  “Quade?” In the past, she had been able to follow his voice somehow.

  “This way,” a deep voice called. “Safety.”

  A creature screeched from atop the trees, the sound bone-chilling. Then another scream, this one more of a high-pitched laugh. She shivered and ducked, trying to make herself smaller. Should she run into the trees? Or not move? Maybe whatever it was had horrible eyesight.

  “Hurry,” called the male voice from a world away. Or maybe several worlds away.

  She turned and leaped away from the trees, tunneling through portal after portal. Something tried to grab her, and she fought it off, getting tumbled around again.

  Finally, she landed on a heated rock, and the wind whooshed from her lungs. She coughed, partially rolling to her side, sucking in air. Wheezing, she stood and looked toward a deep forest made up of tall trees the color of blood. Deep and red. A monster howled in the distance. She looked for a way out, and a portal opened near the trees. She inched toward it, seeing blue swirl around inside.

  Cold clashed against her skin.

  She paused, and some type of force pulled her closer. “Haven! Help me.”

  How did he know her name? It wasn’t Quade. The voice was deep and hoarse. “Now!” The air pulled her, heating and chilling, hurting her skin. She fought it, scrambling, biting her lip. Every instinct she had yelled at her to run. Gasping, crying, she turned and fell onto the rock.

  She woke up, her hands slapping at the air. God. She gasped, sitting on the bed, her gaze darting around the innocuous motel room.

  Safe. She was safe. For now. She looked down at her injured bicep to find it was just a scratch. It had felt a lot worse in the dream. Was it a dream? But there was the scratch. What had just happened? She bit her lip, thinking through the journey she had taken. What had been in that final portal? If Quade was right, and she could really somehow journey to other places, that was a bad place. She almost hadn’t escaped. Or was she really nuts, in desperate need of the pills Quade had thrown away?

  For the moment, she might as well see how much trouble she was in right now. No way would she go back to sleep.

  Reaching for her bag, she secured her trusty old laptop. The motel promised free WiFi, so she connected easily, somewhat surprised that it worked. First, she researched the police officer in Idaho, and found the guy was out of the hospital and still having press conferences about the attackers. Well, press conferences online on the station’s Facebook page, so the rest of the world probably wasn’t tuning in. Good. Her shoulders relaxed.

  Then, she caught sight of one of the three comments, and her skin froze. She clicked on Pastor Jack and went to a different page—her father’s church.

  Oh God.

  She swallowed rapidly. So the Internet was not the sinful exercise he’d first preached. Her picture, the last one she’d had taken at fourteen, was over to the right with a big missing tag beneath it. Next to it was the composite drawn by the police officer with a question mark beneath it and the words: Is this our missing daughter?

  Her stomach heaved.

  Why were they still looking for her? Surely they were glad she’d been gone for so many years. Unable to help herself, she clicked through the photos, pausing at one of her parents in front of the church. Her dad’s brown hair was now sprinkled with gray, and her mother looked smaller than ever in her plain cotton dress and no makeup. Her lips smiled, but her eyes looked stark. Lonely. A pang hit Haven.

  It had been twelve years, and it still hurt. Her mother had shown her kindness, even love, but she’d always followed her father’s lead—except for one time when she’d stood between them and tried to protect Haven. She’d gotten punched for that. Nobody had wanted to face Pastor Jack’s wrath. In the pictures, his brown eyes looked serious and stoic. “You’ll never find me,” Haven whispered, clicking out of the website.

  She took several deep breaths. Okay. She was fine. Safe and away from them. How had they sensed that there was something different about her? Exactly what kind of gifts did she have that she’d never explored? Besides being able to fix a broken bone quickly. She conducted a quick search on demons and fairies and just found the expected fanciful or frightening websites. Enough of that.

  Then she typed in Quade Kayrs.

  Nothing. No articles, websites, or social media. So she typed in the Kayrs name.

  Also nothing. She apparently needed more information about Quade’s family. She tried to research the Kurjans, the Cysts, and other worlds, but nothing came up. Finally, she pulled up the email address that she used with the art dealers who sold her art. Her address was a series of numbers and fun names that had nothing to do with her.

  Several emails requested more art to sell, and a couple mentioned sending payments to her account in Texas. Good. She was running out of money. The Portland gallery owner passed on requests from three women she’d met who weren’t what they seemed, which was why she’d run from Portland. They were off, and they wanted more than art. What, she didn’t know. She conducted a quick search on their names: Promise Williams, Grace Cooper, and Faith Cooper. Nothing startling. Academic papers by Promise and Faith; photographs by Grace. Nothing more, and yet . . . something was there. Were they members of her father’s church?

  Who could she trust in this weird new world? Closing the email account, Haven
ran a quick search on her name to find her art reviewed in several places. Mostly good. Then a website drew her with fan fiction stories about little girls named Haven and Hope. They were fairies and demonesses and lost but having adventures, and there were misspellings and grammatical errors that somehow made the stories all the more charming.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  Some of the details, like her memory of picking apples, were too close to reality. She scrolled down, and a picture of a girl came into focus. The same girl she’d drawn.

  She sucked in air. Okay. This was a trap, but she wasn’t sure how. So she clicked on the contact form at the bottom, and a live screen opened up to the side of the story.

  “Hi.” The little girl’s eyes were a fathomless blue. “You’re Haven.”

  Haven swallowed. “You must be Hope.”

  “Yep.” The kid smiled, revealing a missing front tooth. Her light brown hair was in twin pigtails, and she had cute dimples. “I’ve been dreaming about you for a long time. We put up the stories so you’d call me. Me and my friends Libby and Pax wrote them.”

  Haven looked wildly around the motel room and then back to the screen. “Who are you?”

  The little girl wore unicorn pajamas, and a small light illuminated her from the side. “I’m Hope. I already told you that.”

  Haven shook her head. “Do your parents know about this? Who are they? Where are they?” What was happening?

  Hope rubbed her nose. “No, they don’t know. I haven’t tole them because you’re my fairy. I think. It’s been hard to find you, so I don’t know for sure. But we can be friends, right? I have another friend I don’t tell nobody about anymore, because I’m not supposed to see him. But I see him in dreams. You and me can be Internet friends.”

  “What do you know about me?” Haven whispered.

  Hope’s nose wrinkled. “Not enough. You’re Haven, a fairy, a demoness, and you’re running. But that’s all. I dunno if you’re good or bad, but I think good. We can’t tell each other about where we live or nothin’ until we know each other. Okay?”

  No. Not at all. None of this. “Are you a fairy?” Haven asked, her mind reeling.

  Hope snorted. “No. My aunt Mercy is a fairy. Do you know her?”

  “No.” Haven leaned toward the screen. This was beyond crazy. “Where is she?”

  Hope studied her. “I can’t tell you that. Everything’s a secret.” She sighed a long-suffering sigh. “It’s so boring. Where are you?”

  Haven licked her lips. “I, ah, can’t tell you.” What if somebody was using the kid to get to her?

  Hope nodded. “’Zactly.” Her eyes widened. “My mom’s coming. Gotta go.” She clicked off.

  Haven stared at the blank screen. What the hell was that all about? She was so far down the rabbit hole, she might never get home again. Not that she had a home to begin with.

  The door opened, and Quade strode inside. “I brought you a leg to eat.”

  Hysteria at his words and the entire situation finally took her, rumbling up in a chuckle that turned into a full-out laugh. She snorted and wiped her eyes. “It’s not me, Quade. The entire damn world has gone crazy.”

  He shrugged. “Aye. I can see that.”

  Chapter Nine

  Hope Kyllwood-Kayrs shoved the tablet beneath the covers and rolled over, pretending to be asleep. Her mama walked inside the room and kissed her forehead and turned off the light before shutting the door. Hope waited several minutes before sitting back up. “Mama is gone.”

  Paxton, her best friend, pushed out of the closet where he’d been hiding. A bruise covered his already strong jaw; he said he’d gotten it training, but he didn’t wanna go home. “I heard you talk to the lady on the Internet.”

  Hope nodded and tugged the covers open so Pax could climb in. She was seven and he was now eight years old, and she used to be scared at night. Now it seemed like Pax was having nightmares a lot, so she tried to get him to sleep over when his daddy was out on patrol and wouldn’t know. “I told you I’d meet Haven soon. I’ve been dreaming about her a lot. Maybe she’ll be my fairy or a sister of Fate or somethin’.” Hope was a prophet: one of three. Sometimes Fate told her what was gonna happen, but she never got the whole story right.

  “Maybe.” Pax snuggled down, his black hair sticking up all over. “I think you should tell your daddy about the Internet fairy. We can’t trust people not in the Realm.”

  The Realm was a group of vampires, demons, shifters, witches, and now fairies who worked together. Well, usually.

  “I dunno,” Hope murmured, turning on her side to face him. “She seemed kinda sad and alone. Her name is a good one, right?”

  “Yeah, but we don’t like the Fae a lot. I mean, we like your aunt Mercy, but the rest of them are kinda crazy.” Pax scratched his chin. “Mercy is crazy but in a good way.”

  Yeah, that was kinda true. “I wanna ask Drake if the Kurjans know about Haven, but I don’t want to tell him information,” she whispered. She and Drake used to meet in dreams, and they were friends, but since he was a Kurjan and she a demon-vampire, they were supposed to be enemies. Since she was the only female vampire in the entire world, she figured she could change that.

  It was probably her destiny or somethin’. She laid her face on her hand. “I can’t get to the dream world no more, Pax.” She hadn’t wanted to tell him because he’d be glad, but she had to talk to somebody. “I’ve been trying for a bunch of nights, and it’s like the world is closed.” Her green book, the one she couldn’t read yet, was there. She had to get to it somehow.

  Tonight Pax’s eyes were all blue. Sometimes they were blue and sometimes silver and often both. Tonight, they were the blue of a midnight sky without a moon. “I’m sorry, Hope.”

  She blinked. “I thought you’d be glad.”

  He shifted beneath the covers. “I’m not glad for anything that makes you sad.”

  Sometimes his words made sense when nothin’ else in the world did. She was glad they were best friends. A knock on the window made her jump.

  Pax slid from the bed and snuck to the window to open it. “Libby’s here,” he whispered, holding out a hand to let their other best friend in.

  Libby scrambled inside, her blond hair in twin pigtails. She was a feline shifter, but she couldn’t shift yet. “I can’t sleep,” she whispered, helping Pax shut the window before scampering over and sliding into the bed on the other side of Hope. “The wind is whispering a lot, and I don’t get it. Any of it.”

  Sometimes the wind talked to Libby. Fate talked to Hope. But so far, nobody talked to Pax.

  He moved back into bed. “Should we do somethin’?”

  Hope sat up and pushed the covers to her knees. “I have an idea. I’ve been workin’ on it, but I didn’t wanna make you mad. You know, there’s a power to three.”

  Libby sat and moved over. “Yeah. We learned that in meditation the other day.” Libby’s mama wanted her to meditate because she sometimes got a little wild, which seemed normal for a shifter. But meditation was fun for Hope, so she was glad to have Libby there.

  Hope nudged Pax to sit up and move over until they formed a triangle.

  “This is a bad idea,” Pax grumbled, crossing his legs. His feet were huge for his small size, and his belly still kind of rolled over, but he’d been working hard at training.

  Hope took his pudgy hand and then Libby’s, surprised at how much bigger Pax’s hand was than theirs. Once they all held hands, she closed her eyes. “I think I can do this. We have to find out why the dream worlds are gone.”

  “Fine,” Pax muttered.

  Hope concentrated really hard on reaching Drake across time and space. Nothing happened. She imagined her dream world and tried to put herself there. Nothing happened. Finally, Libby started to squirm.

  Hope opened her eyes. Her stomach hurt. What if she nev
er got back to the dream world? Her mama and daddy had met in a dream world and then saved this world from a terrible war. She was certain her future fate lay in a dream world, too.

  The tablet dinged beneath the covers. Maybe her fairy was calling again. She dove and grabbed it, clicking on the video chat. Her friend Drake’s face filled the screen, and he backed away, his eyes a lighter green than normal. With his dark hair and almost regular eyes, he could nearly pass for a pale human. “Drake,” she whispered. “How did you find me?”

  His dark eyebrows rose. “I read the story about Hope and Haven and clicked on the link.”

  Libby winced. “We should probably take that down now.”

  Hope rubbed her nose. “You were Internet searching for me?”

  Drake paused a second before answering.

  “He was looking for Haven,” Paxton said quickly. “Not you. Right, Drake?”

  Drake ignored him and stared at Hope. “What happened to the dream world? I can’t get there.”

  Tears almost filled her eyes but she stopped them. “I don’t know. I can’t get there, either.”

  Drake’s chin lifted. “If the other worlds are failing, maybe Ulric is coming home. My people have been waiting for him.”

  Hope sighed. Drake thought Ulric was a good guy, and her people thought him a bad guy. Maybe everybody was wrong and he was just an okay guy. “Do you think if his world fell apart that all the worlds fell? Like dominoes?”

  “Maybe,” Drake said, wiping dirt off his chin. Where was he that it was still daylight? They never told each other. “About this Haven in the story you put up online. Have you met her? Is she with you?”

  Paxton shook his head. “We don’t share, Drake. That’s the deal, remember?”

  “Hope? Haven factors into our mythology, too. Have you met her? Is she still alive and well?” Drake’s eyes darkened.

  Man, he used big words for a kid only eight years old. Hope nodded. “I talked to her, but that’s all I can say. She’s safe.”