by Mason Sabre
“You don’t know what they’re capable of. You can’t help me.”
“I have seen what they do.”
Xander only nodded at that. “You’ve seen what they did to you. You’ve seen how they caged you up.”
No. Stephen had seen so much more than that now. He had seen death. He had seen cruelty. He had looked into the eyes of something malevolent and vowed to take it out. "They have other children," Stephen said. "They have them in cages in the rooms on the first floor. One handy thing of being stuck like this,” he indicated to his body, “is that I could go a lot of places I couldn’t before. I could see.”
“Did you see Joey? They still have him, right?”
Stephen wanted to tell him yes. To tell him he was safe, kind of. “No,” he said instead. “I haven’t seen him … not the real him, anyway. Just this side of the veil.” He could have been in one of the cages, though, Stephen supposed. He hadn’t checked them out then, hadn’t had the time to really stop and look, but he wasn’t looking for Joey then. It was possible he had missed him. “He could be somewhere, though. I didn’t go all the way around.” It was a big place, and in truth, it never occurred to Stephen to go wandering more than he needed to. The focus was on getting back into his body, getting back to Helena. “Are you sure he’s there?”
“He was the last time I saw him.” Another breath, another pause and another moment to take in the sight of his son. “I used to be there too, with him. As long as I did as I was told, I got to stay. Not that I was actually with him, but I was there. I could see him. He could see me.”
“But?”
Xander ran fingers through Joey’s hair. “But then I got stupid, and I tried to get us out of there. I had an opportunity, and I took it.” He scoffed, his attention going back to Stephen. “They caught me, of course. I begged them to let me stay, but Ben Norton said I had to earn it. I had to prove my loyalty to their cause.”
"The money fights?" Xander had been the fae who ran an underground, off-the-grid, fight ring. It was Others against Others with fights to the death. He got Others caught after curfew and caught by the sweepers and made them fight for their freedom.
“Yeah. Such a shit hole. It was a lie too. They made me tell the Others if they won, they’d earn their freedom, but what it earnt them was a trip to Norton Industries.” He paused again. “I knew too. I knew where I was sending them, but I still did it. I did it for Joey.”
“They wanted the strongest Others? How so?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
No. Of course, but something wasn’t making sense. Norton’s lot were Human, which meant one on one, they were weaker than Others. Having a strong Other would take ten Humans to withstand them, and then there would be death. But they had captured him, used tranquillisers and their weaknesses against them. “Oh, God. Subject one and Subject two.”
Xander frowned.
“Never mind.” It made sense. Those who Xander sent to Norton were dead. Used and then disposed of just like they would do to him and Helena. Fucking hell … he’d been so blind to it all. He’d not even realised. This was like unravelling a story a piece at a time, and with each slice he saw, he witnessed even more cruelty from the Humans. “The place where you worked, the money fights, it was destroyed?”
“Yeah. Blew up. That’s how I met Helena. She was a doctor on call.”
"Right. She saved you, and you betrayed her."
Joey turned in his father’s embrace, which had loosened a little … enough so he could move, and he angled himself, so his back was to his father and he could see Stephen. They were such the same, same mouth, same nose. Probably the same eyes if Xander’s wasn’t obscured by a patch that made him seem odd. “I hid from Lee and let him think I was dead. You captured him, and he knew I wasn’t. And I …”
“He saw you?”
“Yes. He had Joey. I …”
“Should have told me,” Stephen said. “I could have …”
"I didn't know you then. You didn't know me. Would you have helped me?" He paused and pressed his face against the side of Joey's as if he needed that little reminder the boy was there.
Stephen gave him time, but then said, “You do now.”
“Yes.”
"You've got a smart kid. He's been following me around, showing me things." He focused his attention on Joey. "You needed me to see, didn't you? You had these pieces, and you knew I needed to put them together." His gaze flicked to Xander. "Why doesn't he talk?"
“He can’t.”
“Can’t? He said my name, and his …”
“He’s an air fae. He can move the air around him to make sounds. That’s what you heard. They removed his ability to talk when he was a baby. He can speak if he needs to, but it takes a lot of energy. If he can’t make a sound, he can’t protest.”
If Stephen hadn’t seen the other children in the facility, this alone would be enough to make him want to mount Lee’s head on a pike and parade it around. The evil of Humans was astounding. “We will get him back.” It wasn’t just an empty promise. He’d get all the children out of there, even if he had to walk through fire and shed his own skin, he’d do it. Those children were not going to be left alone and forgotten to whatever fate the Humans had in store for them.
“How?” Xander asked. “We can’t do anything to them. Even you … they caught you, held you captive.”
"They had Helena. If they hadn't had her, they'd not have been able to hold me. That was the mistake they made. I promise you … I promise you; we will get Joey back."
He kissed his son’s head and only raised his eye to look at Stephen. “Perhaps he is already dead.”
"Then I will bring you his body, and we can lay it to rest properly."
“How?”
How … that was the ultimate question. “I need to get back into my body. I can’t do jack shit like this. The bottle Lee gave to you, do you still have it?”
A nod.
"Trash it. Also … there is a thing in my back. Right near the curve. It looks like a black pill. I think it might be a tracker or something. I need you to take it out."
“Tracker?” Xander shook his head. “Lee doesn’t know where we are. It can’t be tracking anything.”
“You didn’t tell him?”
"I wasn't giving all of my eggs over to him. No. He wanted you; I wanted my boy. Besides, Eden has this place warded. We're safe here."
A bargaining chip. Stephen understood that. He’d have probably done the same in the same position. “Lee has my soul ball. I think that is also why I am stuck. It’s cracked. He has it in his office, on a shelf behind his desk. There are three, just in a loose change dish. I don’t know how it will work, but Freya said I need to get back. It’s cracked, darker than the rest, reflecting.”
“Reflecting?” Xander asked, his eye went wide with it, the tone of his voice pitched. “Like a mirror?”
“Like a something.” Stephen ran a hand through his short hair and rose.
Xander copied. He gave Joey one last embrace. “I love you,” he said as he breathed the boy in. “We’re coming for you.” Xander almost matched Stephen in height, but he was slimmer. “I will get your ball back.”
“How, if you’re here?”
Xander shook his head and held his hand out to Joey. Joey handed him the ball he had played with at the gate. “You’re not the only one who has been blind.” Xander cupped a hand around Joey’s nape and leant down to kiss his forehead. “You hold on for us. We’re coming for you.”
Joey put the soul ball into his father's hand, and Stephen expected it to turn to dust as the others had, but instead, the edges of this one crumbled, like someone had poured something hot onto it and it was melting.
“What are you do—”
“Understanding,” he said. “It was there all along. The answers …” The ball sank into his palm and didn’t come out the other side. It melted into a pool across his skin and instead of dripping down at the edges, it soaked into his hand. His fl
esh drank it. As it vanished, Xander faded … to grow transparent. He raised his eye to Stephen one last time. “Save my son. Save him, and I will save you.”
Then he was gone.
Chapter 34
As Xander fell back into his body and gasped for breath, Eden let out her own yelp and then a shocked whisper of his name. “Xander …” She stared him right in the eye, but he wasn’t focused on her, or anyone. His attention was on the vacant space where he had stood, out of his body, just moments before … to where he knew Stephen was standing, and to Joey. His heart hammered so damn hard in his chest that even Stephen could imagine it like a pulsating creature under his shirt.
“Xander? Are you okay?” Eden rested a hand on Xander’s shoulder to get his attention, and then she clicked her fingers, once, twice. “Xander?”
He swept his gaze slowly back to her, a lazy gaze with his mind still wandering in the shadows of the otherworld. “I saw him,” he said. “I saw him. He was right there.”
“Nick?”
A quick nod, but he didn’t give either woman time to ask more because he launched himself up off the floor and raced toward the house, unsteady legs and all.
Eden struggled for her balance. Helena caught her hand and stopped her from going down. “Where are you going?” she called, but he was already gone.
He burst into the house and ran to the backroom where Stephen lay. The machines carried on with their bleeping, and Stephen remained motionless as Xander searched the room.
Eden and a confused Helena followed close behind, clutching Aiden’s little hand as if that would keep her steady. “You saw Nick?” she asked again, her voice giving a little hiccup at the end as if she were holding in tears, but her eyes were bright.
“I saw Nick.”
“How?”
He didn’t answer. He was too focused on what he was doing as he rifled through Helena’s medical tools in the top drawer of the counter. He took out a pair of surgical scissors and put it on the side with a frustrated sigh. A second later, he had the cabinet open, and almost all the trays pulled out of the way as his search grew more frantic.
“What are you looking for?” Helena asked. She’d moved around the back of him. One hand was still holding Aiden, but the other rested on Stephen’s leg. “Xander?”
“I saw him,” was all he could say like he was trapt in a trance. He turned to face both women, the need for haste clear on his face. “I saw him,” he said again as he placed his hands on the bed. “I saw him. You were right. He’s not sick. He’s not dead. He’s out of his body, and we have to get him back.”
“How?”
Eden steadied herself next to Xander. She used herself as a protective shield between him and Helena, even if she hadn’t realised she was doing it. But Xander had gone wild, even for them. He threw open doors, pulled apart drawers and tossed around boxes of things they would later need to sterilise and put back together. “Xander?” she said, this time she raised her voice. “What’s going on?”
He pulled out a metal tray. It was wrapped in kitchen film to keep it as sterile as they could manage. “He’s not dead, Eden. When I was out … I …”
“What?” She fixed him with a stare. “What did you see?”
“Nick. I saw Nick. Helena was right. He’s here. He’s probably in here right now, with us.”
“I am.” Stephen kept himself out of the way and at the door. Joey remained by his side too, and they each had their hopes pinned on the fae … the friend, the father.
“He knocked me out of my body. I was coming back in and I … I don’t know. He slammed right into me and then I was standing with him, and you two were at my body. He’s not dead.” He gripped Eden’s upper arms and squeezed them. “We have to help him.” Then he pushed her back and picked up the tray he had found.
“What are you looking for?” Helena asked.
“This.” He lifted a scalpel. It was in a small cellophane wrap.
A flicker went across Helena’s face. Just a flash of fear, of worry, and a peek behind her usual doctor facade.
“No. It’s all right,” Stephen said, and he stepped toward her, reached out and paused. He couldn’t touch her. He clenched his fist in mid-air and pulled his arm back. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you going to do with that?”
“I have to help him.” Near to Stephen’s head, there was a small shelf, and aside from the tubes and sterile packaged cannulas that were piled on the top, there was also a box of latex gloves. Eden used them when she was taking blood from Stephen, or giving it to Helena. Xander grabbed a pair and snapped them onto his slender hands with the fumbling grunts of someone who had never tried to wear them before. It didn’t help they were too small for him. “There is a pill,” he said. “It’s in his back. Nick showed me where to look.”
“A pill?” Eden asked.
He nodded. “He’s sure it isn’t used to track him because Norton would have been here, but he asked me to take it out. Just in case.” He didn’t wait for the women’s reactions. There was no time for that. They’d probably want to debate and ask questions about it, but even for Stephen, just saying those words out loud made it more real, more urgent and he nodded to himself as Xander tried to roll him over on the bed.
It was no easy task for sure. He cursed with it, though, and muttered something about diets. “Help me,” he said, although it wasn’t to anyone in particular.
Eden put herself on the other side of the bed. Whatever she thought, whatever her mind needed to do to catch up with what Xander had told her, could wait. She believed him, and that was enough. “You talked to him?”
“He’s been here all along. Every step. He wants us to get this thing out.” He glanced at Helena who was now standing at the end of the bed, her hand on her belly. Aiden stood next to her, pressed to her side, and silent for the first time in a while. “You did hear him.”
“How is that even possible?” Eden asked.
Helena shook her head, and Xander shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is doing what is needed to help him. I need to get him all the way over. Help me.”
And they did. Even Aiden pushed against Stephen, biting his little lip and grimacing as he put every effort into helping them. Among them, they got Stephen onto his front, and the machines sounded their alarms at the disruption to the connections. Helena switched them off. They weren’t needed any longer. They probably never were, but they were a comfort.
Helena grabbed a pair of surgical gloves too and pulled them on. “Where is it?” she asked.
Xander pushed the sheet down enough to cover Stephen’s backside, but he exposed the top where his back dipped. “Somewhere here.” He offered her the scalpel, but she shook her head. She used her hands instead to smooth along her husband’s skin.
He could almost feel it. He could almost imagine the gentle way her fingers traced his flesh with a combination of skill and the delicacy of a lover’s touch.
There were no scars or marks, and no X-marks-the-spot pointers on Stephen’s back. Aside from the tattoo that stopped at his shoulder blade, his back was perfection, smooth and toned. Helena dug her fingers in, creating red marks that vanished after a second. “Here,” she said. “It’s right here.” She parted her fingers and pushed them both into his skin to create a pinch and force the pill up.
“Do you want me to do it?” Eden asked. She put her hand on Helena’s.
“I’m still a doctor.” She held out her hand in that perfect manner, clinical, trained. And right then, as Stephen watched her, he fell in love with her a whole lot more. There she was. His Helena. His strength. She could have done the helpless woman thing. She could have fallen to the ground and begged no one to hurt her husband, but instead, she did what needed to be done.
“Scalpel,” she said, her voice a monophonic tone, and then she cut. The black pill was the same as the one he had seen taken out of Amelia. It was small and shiny, and without looking, Helena put her scalpel on the medical tray an
d picked up the surgical tweezers to grab the black lump and hold it in front of her.
Eden peered over her shoulder. “Is that …”
“Yep.” She nodded.
It was nothing special. More like a giant piece of rat shit than anything else. Eden grabbed a glove, but she didn’t pull it on. Instead, she used it as a tissue to take the pill from Helena “You’re sure this isn’t tracking us?” she asked Xander.
“Maybe it is, but no one has come.”
“He could be,” said Helena. She had a wipe, and she used it to clean the speck of blood from where she had cut. Already, the wound stitched itself; his skin meshed together all by itself. “Perhaps he is waiting until I give birth? If he knows where we are, and we think he doesn’t …”
“He’s letting us all do the work for him,” Eden said.
“Exactly.”
Eden dropped the pill into a metal dish, but before she went to the sink with it, she turned to Helena. “What if you have one too?”
The room stopped, even Stephen stopped. “I …” She reached behind her back as best she could, but it was hard for her to twist with the two little people growing within her womb. She tried, though, twisting. In the end, she gave up. “Check for me.” She gripped the edge of the bed and angled her back to Xander. “I don’t think there is anything there. I would have remembered.” Xander lifted her shirt and pulled down the waistband of her maternity jeans.
He was quiet for a second, or maybe that was just Stephen, waiting. He didn't know why, after all, they had been through, but the thought Lee might have had one of those things pushed into Helena's back …
“There are no scars,” Xander said, finally. He ran his fingers over her skin and traced every lump and bump. “I don’t think you have one. You’re not Other. You’d have a mark.”
Stephen let out a breath. It would have been another reason to kill Lee. God knew Stephen had already laid claim to Lee’s nine lives.
“She probably doesn’t have one because she’s Human,” Eden said. “Whatever it is for, they probably didn’t need it.” She had Stephen’s black pill in the dish on the side, and she tipped it into the pestle and mortar she used to grind her herbs. When she had ground it down to tiny black fragments, she tipped it into the sink and flushed it away. “They can track the fish.”
