by J. A. Curtis
“What now?” She turned to me.
Driving wasn’t an option. Walking out in the open would make us slow and vulnerable.
We had one more option, but the passage was blocked off.
“Tell me you have a change of clothes for her,” I said to Kris.
Kris nodded. “In the trunk. Mina thought—I... I mean, yes, we brought some.” She swiped at her eyes and pulled the latch. The trunk popped.
I watched Kris battle her emotions, uncertain what to do or say. A tear slid down her cheek.
She realized I was studying her. “You’re not the only one who cares for her,” she whispered.
Humans were supposed to be deceitful, ruthless creatures that only looked out for their own wellbeing.
But not all of them.
An understanding passed between us.
“Your Majesty, go change, quickly,” I said to Chels. “We won’t be safe until we reach the Haven. Wolpertinger.”
“Yeah?” He still lay on the seat, a little dazed. Chels watched him with large, fearful eyes.
“I need you to take a message to the Haven.”
His head rose, nose twitching. “You do?”
“Tell Palon we’re coming through the mines on the north side of the mountain and we’re going to need him to clear out enough of the cave-in so we can get by.”
“Yes. Yes, sir!” He jumped to his feet. “You can count on me, sir!” He turned to Chels and bowed. “If you’ll excuse me, Your Majesty.”
Chels sat in the back seat, unmoving. She stared at Wolpertinger, then she undid her seat belt and bolted out of the car, running barefoot into the forest.
“She’s not really running off, is she? Now?” Wolpertinger asked.
Chels didn’t turn back.
“Did she not hear a word you said?” Kris said, enraged.
“I’ll get her,” I grumbled. My hand rested on the car handle. I wasn’t about to fail Mina’s last orders. “Wolpertinger, do you know where the entrance to the mine is located?”
“Of course.”
“Take Kris. Then go deliver your message.” I looked to Kris. “I’ll meet you there. You don’t have rope, do you?”
“There may be tire chains in the trunk.”
A smile tugged at my lips. “Be careful.” I threw the door wide and bolted after Chels’s fleeing form.
It wasn’t much of a chase. Chels already hobbled and had slowed to pick her way across the uneven terrain, flinching when something jabbed into her tender feet.
I was attempting, really hard, to keep my growing rage in check. When was she going to get it into her foolish head that we were the ones trying to save her life?
Her back went rigid.
“No,” she gasped. “Not now! Please!” She sank to the ground, holding her head and whimpering.
I snuck forward, unsure what was happening. Her eyes shut, and her body trembled as she huddled against the earth.
Her eyes flew open. She looked to me with fear and urgency. She rose to her feet and hurried toward me.
“You win. You win. I’m coming. No time to change though.” She rushed past me, back toward the car. “I’ll grab some shoes. You grab whatever you want to carry, and we run, understand? Otherwise, we won’t make it.”
22
Faerie Blood
Mina
“Sometimes we give so much, we have nothing left to give.”—Nana
MY HANDS WERE COLD.
Consciousness returned before my ability to move. Voices floated in and out of my brain like whispers caught on the wind.
“... you think this won’t work...”
“... untested... General Jazrael won’t give up...”
“... doesn’t mess with future plans...”
“... careful, Bres, we still need her...”
The fluorescent lights came into view first, the ceiling covered in white paneling squares that reminded me of my dentist’s office. A fuzziness buzzed through my head. I let it fall to the side. One of those metal poles on wheels that you see in hospitals that holds bags for IVs stood to my right. True to form, a bag hung on the pole, half-filled with what looked to be blood.
Was I in a hospital? The room was neutral and non-descript enough. A blinded window let in slitted rays of light not too far away.
The sleeves of my sweatshirt were torn away, and a red IV line ran from the bag into my arm—which was strapped down twice. One cut across my forearm, the other across my bicep. That was worrisome. Hospitals didn’t strap people down, right? Not unless they had a good reason.
Another red-filled line attached to the bag and went off somewhere out of my line of vision. Did I need a blood transfusion? Had I lost blood somehow?
A lot of blood. My head fell to the left and another pole-bag-IV setup was on my other side, with two lines, one going into my arm and the other who knows where.
This arm was also strapped down. A silver disc latched onto my bicep. Why would a hospital place that on my arm? They didn’t know I was a faerie. Did they?
The outline of a person appeared, bending over me. I squinted, willing my blurry vision to focus.
A man stood above me. Hair pulled back in a low ponytail and brown eyes with a tint of red.
I’d seen him before, in my visions.
“Time to wake, Jazrael. We’re ready to get things underway.” His hands tapped against my cheeks, jostling my head back and forth. The last of the fogginess retreated from my mind.
“Bres,” I snarled, recalling the man who had recruited Fand from my visions. “Where am I?”
Bres straightened, looking pleased. “You recognize me. That’s a good sign. Margus made it sound like you knew next to nothing. But maybe it was only a ruse to mislead him, yes?”
There was a snort that drew my attention. I was on a metal slab, tilted downward, arms and legs strapped to the sides. Margus stood at the end of the slab, leaning against the wall, arms folded. He glowered at me and then dropped his eyes to the floor.
I glared at Margus, trying to understand what the eye avoidance meant as I answered. “No, he’s right. I don’t know much.”
The coldness in my hands persisted. It was deep. Almost as if radiating up from my bones, sending a mild ache through my joints.
“Perhaps,” Bres responded, drawing my gaze back to him, “we shall see what you do know.”
A subtle nausea mixed with the anger in my stomach. “The last person who tried to coerce information out of me ended up getting rebooted,” I warned.
“Hmm, yes. Fand’s tactics were... unreliable. We didn’t yet possess a working version of the instruments we will use today in order to get more accurate results.”
He bent and came up with a helmet in his hands. It looked to be metal and had some sort of visor on the front.
I gritted my teeth as the nausea grew stronger. “What is that?”
Bres held up the helmet, a proud glint in his eye. “Human technology in this day and age is amazing—almost a type of magic in and of itself. Add a little actual magic to that technology, and the possibilities—well, they’re almost limitless.”
He placed the helmet over my head, the visor coming down in front of my eyes, blocking my vision. He secured a strap under my chin.
“Bres, take this off. Now,” I demanded.
“Sorry, Jazrael. Stay with me. If you listen carefully, you can remain calm through the process. Think of this as a virtual reality game, mixed with a little brain scanning and a touch of your own personal brand of magic. I will wear a helmet much like yours, only mine is the controller. I’ll be guiding you through the process.”
My heart pounded and my mouth went dry. All of this sounded creepier and creepier. “What process?”
“Your visions, of course, I plan on accessing them with you. There are certain things we need to discover, and I plan on extracting that information.” I heard him strapping on his own helmet and the click of a switch. “Now relax, this won’t take long. Although, I should
probably warn you, the device will almost suck you dry, so don’t panic if you lose feeling in your extremities or experience some pains in your chest. You should know by now, faeries cannot die from blood loss.”
Blood loss. The bags filled with blood. The coldness in my hands. Bres hadn’t been giving me blood. He’d been taking my blood. My own brand of magic. The nausea spiked, washing over me like a wave. I moaned.
I twisted against my restraints, banging my helmeted head against the table. “Get this off me!” I bellowed.
“I would appreciate a little help, Margus,” Bres said.
There was a pressure against my helmet, and my head was forced back against the table. Already, I was losing feeling in my hands and feet. A scream rose in my throat.
That’s when the visions started.
Bres’s voice filled my mind. “Show me the scepter of Queen Morrigan.”
I was in a house made of vines and leaves. Flowers adorned the inside and small light bugs glowing in jars granted light. A boy of nine or ten sat at the feet of his parents. Black speckled feathered wings sprouted from his back.
A loud banging came. The boy’s head shot up. Brown eyes with a tint of red stared with panic at the wooden door.
The woman turned to the man, lips pulled down, her multi-colored butterfly wings fluttering. “They wouldn’t—they have to know you had nothing to do with all the fighting.”
The man’s large, wingless body rose, a grimness in his crimson eyes. He stepped to the door and opened it.
“Rakin? The time has come.”
The man’s shoulders slumped, but he nodded. The boy jumped to his feet. “No! Father—”
A stab of anger and pain-filled anguish consumed me. “Not that,” Bres’s voice was in my mind. “Go farther.”
I stood among a group of wingless faeries dressed in faerie armor, Bres at their head. He held, in his hand, a golden rod with a blue stone on the tip and faced the dark scaled Chimera. It faced Bres and his followers. Goat horns jutted from the Chimera’s head, and its lion-maned robe covered its body. Its reptilian eyes focus on Bres.
“You cannot deny me, Chimera,” Bres said. “I have the scepter. Whoever holds the scepter is granted passage through the portal. That has been the agreement since the creation of the Otherworld.”
“Farther.” Bres’s voice commanded. “Take me to when Jazrael stole the scepter.”
I was flying next to a large green dragon. Jazrael sat on the magnificent beast’s back, golden scepter held in her hands.
“Stop her!” A voice shouted from below. “She has the scepter!”
Two monstrous creatures with wings flew up, trying to cut off Jazrael’s escape, but the dragon blasted fire, causing them to dodge out of the way.
Jazrael tipped to the side and threw herself from the dragon’s back, falling into empty air, her arms and legs spread wide.
Her dragon changed into a large white horse with wings. The pegasus dove so fast it was a blur of hooves and feathers. Jazrael’s arms closed around the flying horse’s neck as the winged creature veered up and out of the dive. They rose into the sky, scepter still held in Jazrael’s grasp.
She ducked her head against the horse’s mane as it shot ahead faster than any creature I’d ever seen, leaving the monsters chasing her far behind.
I sensed Bres’s urgency. “Where? Where did she hide it?”
Panic coursed through me. I had to resist. A part of me sensed the numbness climbing into my arms and legs. Sharp pain struck my chest, and a sense of doom filled me.
I was going to die. I didn’t care what they said about faeries—with each passing moment, life flowed out of me.
Don’t let him find the scepter, I thought. My body spasmed as the pain grew. He’s going to kill me.
Fight him. I had to fight...
“Where?” Bres’s voice boomed in my mind.
I.... couldn’t... let him... the queen... the faeries...
The vision fractured into a million pieces. A flying horse, a home, a scepter, blood-red eyes. Images passed through my mind, swirling with no coherence.
“WHERE?”
Pieces formed around a wooden door on the side of a mountain. Some words my brain couldn’t grasp hung on a sign just above the doorpost.
“Yes, but where?”
My chest was about to burst open. “Please...” a voice whimpered from far away. “Please, don’t kill me... help me...”
I AWOKE ON THE SAME table strapped down. The instruments of torture, including Bres and Margus, were gone. White bandages wrapped around my arms where they had punctured me in order to steal my blood. The metal disc was still attached to my arm. Feeling was back all the way down to my fingertips and toes. I flexed them just to experience the sensation of them responding to me.
I was alive.
A tear trickled down my cheek. The rational side of me knew I couldn’t have died from what happened, but with my body shutting down, wasting away, reason had no longer held any sway. I wanted to live. I didn’t want to die or fall. I wanted to experience life and grow old—whatever that meant for faeries. I wanted to live my life without the weight of responsibility that was dragging me down, demanding that I sacrifice my safety again and again.
A sob broke out. Then another and another. Tears streamed down my cheeks. What I wouldn’t give to go home, to pretend I wasn’t a faerie. To pretend I hadn’t made a mess of everything.
But I had made a mess of everything. And it was my job to fix it, or at least to hold everything together for as long as I could. I sniffed. Crying wouldn’t stop any of this. At least I’d stopped Bres from getting the information he needed. I wouldn’t give away knowledge that might hurt the faeries.
The door to the room swung open, then shut. I blinked in surprise. Dramian entered the room. The tux from the dance gone. He wore his leather cuirass, the sleeveless leather top of the faerie armor, along with the rest of his faerie warrior gear. He came and stood over me, staring down at my tear-stained face.
“You know, Mina, I think you may be a masochist.”
His eyes fell on my bandaged arms, and the edges around the grim line of his mouth tightened. “Faeries don’t believe in torture.” He jerked the straps off my arms.
“Dramian, what are you doing here?”
“The better question, I believe, is what are you doing here?” He shook his head. “Less than twenty-four hours after our... little run in, and I find you like this.”
“Margus and the Fomori attacked. They caught us by surprise.”
“I told you I worked for Margus. After running into me, you didn’t stop to think that he and the others might be close by?” He undid the leg straps with a savage pull.
His hand closed around my arm, and he helped me up from the table, but my body was too weak to stand. He caught me as I sank, his arm pressing my body to his. Our faces were so close, his warm breath brushed my face. The memory of our kiss flashed through my mind.
“Did you know they were close by?” I asked, an awkward dryness in my throat.
He sighed and sank to the ground with me, holding me in his lap. “I assume he’s always close by,” he growled. “But Margus doesn’t always tell me his plans.”
“They didn’t get what they wanted. They still need me.”
I suddenly understood. Margus hadn’t just broken me out of jail to keep the police from discovering about faeries. They wanted me here, in the game with the faeries. Jazrael had stolen and hidden the scepter. I was the only one who could reveal where it had ended up. They wanted me alive and accessible as much as they wanted the queen dead.
And Bres’s little trick with the blood-sucking device hadn’t worked. So now what?
“Is this Margus’s plan? Sending you in here?” I asked.
His lips pressed together in a hard line before he spoke. “No more questions, Mina. I’m getting you out of here.”
He pressed the metal disc on my arm and pulled it off, then frowned at the burn mark sti
ll visible on my arm from his earlier disc. I snatched it from him and stuffed it into the pocket of my sweatshirt. If they were going to use it against me, I wanted a few on hand that I could use against them.
He settled my burned arm around his shoulders and wrapped his around my waist, lifting.
“Just like that?” I asked.
“Would you rather stay and be subjected to Bres’s experiments again?” He held me up, bearing most of my weight against him.
Never. But someone had most likely let Dramian in. How else had he found me? Did Margus just let him roam around Bres’s secret lair? Either he thought he was rescuing me on his own, or he was following orders. But why would Bres let me go? He’d almost gotten what he wanted from me. Another round, and I might not hold him off.
“Dramian, what is this about?”
His fingers on my waist hardened. “I just said, no more questions.”
“I don’t take orders from you.”
“Can’t you trust me, Mina?”
“You just said you were working for Margus.”
He grunted. “Would it be possible to put a little more weight on your legs and maybe focus on getting out of here? Then you can question my loyalty all you want.”
I placed some weight on my shaking legs, they wouldn’t hold long. “Fine. But we aren’t going to get far like this.”
I released my faerie guardian as Other Mina, and she scooped me up into her arms.
“You’re going to call too much attention to us,” Dramian protested.
“So this is an escape.”
He threw his hands out. “What did you think it was?”
“Okay, then...”
I closed my eyes and pictured Bres in my mind, trying to ignore the wave of terror and nausea that coursed through me at the image. When I opened my eyes, instead of Other Mina, an exact copy of Bres stood, holding me in his arms.
Dramian’s eyebrows raised. “I still think that’s unfair.”
“Yes, well without the emerald, I won’t be able to cloak myself as well.”
