“It’s behind that?” I asked, walking past Blake and taking hold of the edge of the curtain.
“Yes, but be careful. It doesn’t like the light, so don’t leave the safe zone.”
I pulled across the curtain, the bars of the cell in the catacombs stared back at me.
“You transported the cell?”
“It was the only way to keep it contained. A young elf got too close and is still recovering from the interaction. After all the years it has been imprisoned it remains an extremely powerful demon.”
“I’m not a filthy demon,” the slick voice hissed from somewhere in the shadows of the cell.
“Then what are you?” I asked.
“I’m the beginning… and the end. I’m the truth and the lie. I’m life and I’m death. I am forever.”
“Oookay, so you are all those things, but a little light has you quaking in your boots?” I teased.
“You are the one who attacked me?”
“Attacked you? You attacked Jax. I was asking you to let him go… with a light signal.”
“Interesssting,” he said, his voice thick with an accent I had never heard, he drew out the s like a hiss. “Come clossser.”
“Des, no,” Jax said, grabbing my arm.
“Desss,” the demon said through the darkness. “Come closer, Desss.”
“You still haven’t told me what you are, if you aren’t a demon what are you, who are you?”
“I’ve had many names, Desss, which would you like? The name I gave myself, the one the humans called me, called my children? Would you like the name he called me, the one you run from?”
“Traflier had a name for you?” King Blake asked, moving to stand on my other side. I felt a buzz coming from him. His magic was rising. He was either shielding himself, or he was preparing to blast the thing behind the bars.
“He called me Racktaybyja, a name I never really liked. I prefer the name I gave myself, the one the humans came to fear.”
“And that would be?” I asked, taking a step closer to the bars. The light from above stopped just past where my feet rested and I wasn’t planning on getting any closer.
“Vamp—”
“Stop, just stop, okay,” I interjected.
“You know the name I speak? Even after all these years trapped here by him, you know the name they called me?”
“Des, what is he? What is this thing?’ Jax asked, placing his hand on my lower back. I couldn’t see into the darkness to where the demon was, but I could feel his eyes on me and it made my skin crawl.
Of all the things that could be real, this was one I was sure was myth.
“Desmoree,” King Blake said from behind us. “Do you know his name?”
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this. But I think he’s a Vampire.”
Then he was there, in front of me. Eyes as red as blood. Face as pale as stone and several pointed teeth barred as he hissed at me.
Jax jumped back. King Blake move too. I stood there inches from the bars that held the creature. The monster. The thing that was supposed to be my answer to stopping Traflier.
“I need to take your power to stop him.”
“You cannot, Desssmoree,” he replied as he stepped just into enough light to reveal his form in the darkness. He was taller than I thought he would be, broader too. He stood, arms folded across his chest. The arm that had turned black was white again and shone like marble in the low light. “You can’t take my power. But I could share it with you if you like? Just know, once shared there is no going back. You will be just like me. Strong. Powerful. Immortal.”
“If I can’t take it from you, what good is being like you? I need Traflier to take it from me.”
“Let me out and I’ll share it with him. Then we both get what we want.”
“Not going to happen,” Jax said. “Don’t listen to that thing. We can’t let it out. Traflier might have been a psychopath but even he knew that that thing was better off locked away.”
“Oooh, he did, did he?” the vampire asked, stepping closer to the bars. The light shining on his exposed arms and face made his skin smoke a little, before beginning to darken. “He couldn’t take it either. And I didn’t feel like sharing.”
“But you do now?” I asked.
“I feel like making a deal. How about it, Desssmoree. Do you want to make a deal with a demon?”
“You said you aren’t a demon,” I said, raising my brows. “Thanks for the offer. Eternity in darkness sounds like super fun times and all, but I’ll pass. There has to be another way.”
His snarl turned to a smirk and a his eyes wrinkled at the edges. “You do not fear me, Dessssmoree?”
I shook my head. His voice was so melodic. I found myself wanting to move closer. To see him clearer.
“Come to me, Desssmoree.”
I lifted my foot to step closer, then I was flying back, Jax’s arms tightening around me. I fell onto the ground with him right below the light in the ceiling. The second my eyes were off the vampire, it was like a curtain had lifted and I could think clearly again.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, looking at the king who was pressed back against the wall, as far from the vampire as he could get.
“I think he enthralled you,” Jax said, helping me to stand with him.
“For fuck’s sake, can things get any worse?”
The vampire latched onto the bars. His fingers went black and a second after its hands followed. “Believe me, Dessssmoree,” he said, his slick voice drawing me in yet again. “It’s about to get a whole lot worssse.”
I grabbed the king’s arm and pulled him towards the exit. “Come on, Jax, we have to figure this out.
The vampire uncurled his fingers from the bars and disappeared into the darkness of his cell. “I’ll be ssseeing you sssoon, Desssmoree.”
The way up the stairs went far quicker than I thought, before I knew it we were stepping back into the well-lit corridor of the elf palace.
“How do I get his power?” I asked King Blake, whose face still looked a little frozen.
“Are you kidding?” Jax asked. “Please tell me you are kidding? You saw what that thing did to me and I was just walking past it. You can’t take its power, Des. You can’t.”
I raised a brow in his direction. “Umm, excuse me?”
Jax hung his head. “I know you can do whatever you want, but I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
I lifted his face with my hands and looked into his green whirlpool eyes. “I know, but so many others are being hurt and if I can stop him, really stop him, It’s worth the risk, don’t you think? I mean, he could come after Ava again, he could come after any of us. We have to stop him.”
“Desmoree is right,” King Blake added, the confused, blank look replaced by a stern brow and stiff lip. He held in his hands a flame note, its edges still slightly alight. “I just received word. The interrogation of a Surt demon is complete, we know what he is after now.”
“When did you capture a Surt demon, and how the hell did you get it to talk?” Jax asked, looking from the king to me and back.
“We captured it a few days ago. It took a while to break it’s resolve. Finally after it was locked into its corporeal form we were able to… convince it to tell us what we wanted to know,” he said, taking a few steps up the corridor. “Come, we will consult Sien in regards to how we can obtain the demon’s power. We are going to need to act quickly.”
“What did the note say? What is he after?” I asked, following close behind the king.
“He wants the power to bring down the barriers between realms. To open the fey realm up to the human realm, the elf realm, the demon realm. All of it, one realm, one power. His.”
“But the mouth is gone, the gateway to the demon realm is sealed.” We rounded another corridor exactly the same as the last. There was no way I would be able to find my way through the palace. Every hall was the same as the last, only the doors changed in design and color
.
“He isn’t opening doors, Desmoree. He wants to tear down the walls between worlds.”
“Can that even be done?” I asked, Jax’s hand finding mine as we followed the king.
“I’m not sure,” the king replied. “With enough power, maybe. He has taken almost all of it from the Feydom, but he will need more than that to take over the human realm. He will need more fabled magic, dragons’, elves’, dwarves’, maybe more fey too.”
“How far to Sien?”
“Just up here. She was working with Ava on some potions to shield her from others gifts, now we know our cast was not as effective as we first thought.”
“Neither were your dresses. Ava phased wearing one.”
The King frowned in thought. “The gowns did work, though. Our cast appeared to also. Perhaps it isn’t so much that they don’t work, but that her magic finds a way around it.”
“Like a virus mutating or something?” Jax asked.
“Exactly,” King Blake replied. “We just need to find the right potion, power, something. There has to be something the magic can’t get around.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I said, stopping beside the king who had his hand on the silver knob of a blue door on my right. “Ava might forever have to battle this, find new ways to protect herself, or to purge herself of all she has mimicked. Now that Traflier has forced the yowies into extinction, we have no way to take that power from her.”
“We will figure it out, Des, I promise,” Jax said, leaning over to press his soft lips against my temple.
“Perhaps they have found something,” King Blake said and turned the handle to open the door. The second the seal was broken I heard them. The sweet carefree giggling of two young girls.
Sien and Ava were sitting on a round woven mat holding hands and giggling over a large glowing ball of purple magic.
“What you up to in here?” I asked and both of them blushed a rosy red releasing their grip on each other’s fingers.
“Mum, oh nothing. It’s nothing.” Ava giggled again as Sien stifled her own chuckle.
“Sien, have you uncovered a way to help Ava?” King Blake asked and it was as if Sien had only just noticed he was there. Her face paled and her eyes went wide.
“Your majesty, I’m sorry, no. Not yet. Everything we try she overcomes. It’s quite remarkable.”
“She really is,” Jax said, squeezing my hand.
The King made his way towards them and Sien quickly stood and bowed. King Blake waved her down with one hand. “Come, Sien, no need for the formalities away from the others. Come, sit, please.”
“Thank you, your highness,’ she said and returned to the floor in front of Ava.
“Blake, Sien is amazing. She has so many casts and potions and orbs and oh, Mum, grandpa is going to flip over these,’ Ava said, holding up a small orb filed with the purple magic still hovering in a ball between them.
“What does it do?” I asked, sitting beside them.
“It’s a glamor orb, you can make yourself look like whoever you want for about three minutes.”
“Is that why you were laughing before?”
“Sien was grandpa, it was so funny cause when it was wearing off she had grandpa’s lower half of the face, but her own eyes and hair.”
“Does it change your clothes or just your form?”
“Just your form. But with your fey magic you could change your clothes like how Ava does it, right?” Sien asked, circling the ball of purple magic with her hands. It shrunk down in size until it fell to the mat as a purple stone. She picked it up and placed it into a small wooden box beside her. I noticed more stones inside of various colors.
I wonder if all the orb’s magic are in those stones?
“Ava do you mind? We need to talk to Sien about something,” I asked, nodding towards the door. “Maybe you could go get something to eat. Has Maylea taken over the palace kitchen yet?”
“Mum, I want to stay here, you can tell me what’s going on. I’m not a baby.”
“I know you aren’t a baby, Ava. Believe me I know. But this is stuff you don’t need to worry about. I would just feel better if you didn’t have to hear all this.”
“Okay, Mum,” she conceded and climbed to her feet to leave. But before she did she leaned down and kissed me on the cheek. “I love you, Mum.”
“Love you more.”
Ava left the room and Jax came to sit on the mat with Sien and I. King Blake stood opposite Sien, leaning against the wall, arms folded across his chest. His eyes were trained on the wooden box of stones.
“Sien, we need to find a way for Desmoree to be able to extract the powers of a demon.”
“That thing in the dungeon isn’t a demon. But really? You want her to take its power?”
“How do you know what it is?” Jax asked.
‘I’m the only reason the vampire was able to be brought here in the first place. The magic I have access to can do far more than your fey power.”
“Look why do we need the vampire anyway?” I asked.
I still can’t believe vampires are real.
“Desmoree, the vampire feeds on human emotions. Traflier wants the human’s power. But theirs is nothing like ours. They are magical because of what they are, not what they can do. He doesn’t understand this, so we can use that to our advantage.”
“If he takes the vampire’s ability, he will be able to feed on humans too? That doesn’t exactly sound like a great plan,” I said, leaning against the wall as he tried to explain it to me again.
“He will be connected to the human’s emotions, all of them. The vampire in the dungeon has been locked away for however long, never aging, never changing. It survived because the humans survive.”
“So it can’t be killed?” Jax asked, moving to stand with me.
“I doubt it,” the king replied.
“Then, again, why is that a good power to give to Traflier?” I asked.
“Ava became unstable when her system was overfilled with power, power she couldn’t make sense of,” the king began, walking back and forth across the room as he talked. “If we dose Traflier with the vampire’s power, maybe the same will happen to him. If he becomes unstable, we will be able to capture him.”
“Capture, not kill?” Jax interjected.
“I expect it might be difficult to achieve that even without the vampire’s power inside him. He has taken all the Feydom’s power, who knows how many fabled creatures too? This is the only thing I can think of that will give us a chance to stop him.”
“Are you sure he took all the Feydom’s energy?” I asked and Blake moved to a desk on the far wall.
“Here,” he said, handing me a hand mirror. I took it and looked into its surface. My reflection stared back at me.
“I don’t see anything,” I said, holding it out for him to take.
“You need to think of where you want to see. Try again.”
I brought it back and looked into the mirror’s surface. My own frustrated expression looked back at me.
Show me the Feydom. Show me my home.
The surface quivered. The image changed to something I didn’t recognize.
“Des, what is it? What do you see?” Jax asked, moving to stand beside me. “Is that…?”
“Our house. I think so. There is nothing left of it. Jax, he has sucked the energy out of everything.”
“Is that the main door? There on the ground?”
I nodded. The entry door to our house lay broken on blackened rubble where our house used to stand.
“Look for the lake, the pink lake. Is it there?” Jax asked, a desperate pitch to his voice.
The pink lake, please let it still be there.
The surface of the mirror quivered again. I breathed a sigh of relief as the pink creatures under the glistening water came into view.
“Jax, it is there. They are okay. He couldn’t touch them.”
“Thank the fey,” he said as I handed the mirror back to Blake.
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“What do we do now?” I asked, pushing off the wall to join the king in the middle of the room.
“We ask the vampire to help us,” Sien replied with a smile.
“And how do we get the vampire to do what we want? Cause there is no way Des is taking that thing’s power,” Jax said.
“Jax, we had this discussion already,” I said, rubbing my forehead with my hand. I felt a migraine coming on.
“No, you said you wouldn’t be told what to do. I’m not telling you, I’m telling Sien.”
I shook my head and turned to Sien. “Is there a way I can take the vampire’s power? Or copy it?”
“Maybe, but it would be a lot easier if we had a strand or two of yowie fur.”
“You know about the fur too?” Jax asked, throwing up his hands.
“We know more than you think, Jax. We used to be on great terms with the yowies, after they were banished they lost all faith in the other magical creatures. They thought we were all out to take what was theirs.”
“There isn’t any left,” I said, wanting to stay on topic. “So what’s plan B?”
Jax headed for the door. “I’m just going to change while you guys think of something. But please, Des, don’t do anything until I’m back.” His eyes tilted at the corners and a deep crease etched its way across his forehead.
“I won’t.”
He raised his brows.
“I swear, Jax, I’ll wait for you to get back, okay?”
“I love you.”
“Love you more.”
As soon as the door closed behind him, I turned back to Sien. “Why is it you can do things the other elves can’t? I mean, you knew about the vampire, you created the cast to bring the entire cell here, and then Traflier too, and most of what is sent to the fey realm is created by you, right? I thought you were an elf, but it’s like you are something else.”
Sien’s eyes narrowed. “I am an elf.”
“But you are not a regular elf are you?”
She looked to King Blake and he gave her a curt nod before she turned back to me.
“Like some fey are gifted in ways others are not, the same is true for elves. The former king thought I would be gifted like my mother, in sight. But my talents lay with casting, with understanding the magics.”
Enchanting the Fey- The Complete Series Page 75
