A Hero of Realms

by Bella Forrest

  Thank God.

  Distracted by the pain, the dragon staggered backward, his tail flailing and narrowly missing my gut. I ducked down low on the ground as Bahir approached me. Julie hurried over—accompanied by Arron, who, like Julie, had somehow managed to reach the armor. I wasn’t sure how the Hawk managed to put it all on with one arm, but he wore a helmet and chest plate, as well as plates on his legs and knees.

  Before the dragon could cause us any more damage, we gathered together and Bahir vanished us from the burning chamber.

  Chapter 25: Ben

  We reappeared back at our camp. I dropped to my knees, breathing out in relief as I felt the brown sack and the dragon scale still fastened securely to my belt. I placed both on the ground and rolled over on my back, breathing in the fresh air.

  If a patient didn’t require this doctor’s help before an appointment, he sure as hell would need it after.

  I removed my singed cloak and peeled off my shirt, using the latter to wipe down my face, which felt burnt to a crisp. I had a nasty burn that stretched from the base of my neck down to the middle of my chest, as well as on my hands and arms.

  Julie had been covered with armor, but even still her face and hands were badly burnt. Out of all of us, Arron seemed to have gotten off lightest. Bahir healed his own skin before moving to me. He brushed his hands along my burns—causing them to sting horribly—before the burns disappeared. I was glad I didn’t have to wait for my body’s own healing capabilities to kick in. It would only exacerbate my craving for blood—which was already starting to come on full force again after the exertion I’d just put my body through.

  After Bahir had finished with Arron, Arron approached and looked down at the scale. He bent down and picked it up, examining it in his hand.

  “I’ll take care of this for now, shall I?” the Hawk offered. “It’s too big to fit in that sack and it shouldn’t be bent.”

  I shook my head. “No, I’ll keep it with me.” After all the trouble we’d gone through to get it, I didn’t want to let it out of my sight.

  Raising a brow, Arron placed it back down on the ground next to the brown sack.

  Once I’d rested my limbs a little and regained my breath, I sat up.

  “Are you okay?” Julie asked, leaning against the cliffside wall a few feet away.

  I nodded. “Thank you,” I said, “for helping me back there.”

  “That’s okay.”

  Picking up the sack and fastening it back to my belt, I tucked the scale beneath my arm and stood up. I walked to the border of the ledge and gazed out at the brightening sky. I was surprised that the dragon hadn’t come out of the cave to look for us.

  “So today is the day you have an appointment with the witch doctor, correct?” Bahir asked, moving next to me.

  “Yes, today.” The time had flown by, and in the end it was a good thing that the doctor hadn’t been available before now. We would not have been ready.

  “I suggest that we rest here a little longer,” Arron said, taking a seat and stretching out his legs. “We still have hours to pass before the appointment.”

  Although I was raring to go, we could all do with more rest. I for one could hardly remember the last time I’d slept properly and although I wouldn’t be able to sleep, at least I could rest my eyes. I walked over to my cloak and wrapped it around me, covering the brown sack at my waist, before lying down on my side and sliding the scale behind my back, safely guarded between me and the wall.

  Julie lay within my view. She met my gaze, and gave me a small smile. I returned the smile politely, then turned to face the other way, blocking her out and turning my thoughts to another girl. My girl. River. Will I ever see her again?

  * * *

  Since it would take seconds to travel to Uma’s island, we left our camp as late afternoon approached. Our appointment was in the evening but Uma’s sister had advised that we arrive a few hours earlier just in case.

  When we arrived on the hilly island, the sky overhead was heavily overcast, so much so that not a ray of sun broke through the clouds and Bahir didn’t need to use his powers to shelter Julie and me. We approached the doorstep of the castle. Before Arron could, I stepped forward and knocked on the heavy door.

  Uma’s sister opened the door promptly. Her round face lit up with recognition. “Aha. Come in, come in.”

  She swung the door wide open and allowed us all to step inside. She led us across the waiting room—now empty—and took a seat behind her desk. She opened up her ledger, and then glanced up at me. “So? Were you successful in acquiring the ingredients? I have noted down here you are due to pay a werewolf tooth, a strand of merflor, and a dragon scale.”

  “First, here’s the dragon scale.” I removed it from beneath my arm and handed it to her, watching with bated breath as she examined it.

  Seemingly satisfied, she nodded and placed the item in a drawer. She looked up expectantly. “And then?”

  I detached the brown sack from my belt and planted it down on the counter in front her. She loosened the string wrapped tightly around the opening and gazed down into the bag. She frowned.

  “What?” I asked, my jaw tensing.

  She pulled out the werewolf tooth. “This seems fine and genuine,” she said, rolling the huge tooth in her palm. Her eyes flicked back up to me. “But I still need the merflor.”

  My stomach dropped. “What? It’s in the bag…”

  My voice trailed off as I snatched the bag from her and gazed down into it. It was empty.

  How? I’d been examining the merflor just the day before yesterday.

  Could it have fallen out? What happened to it?

  Could it have been removed?

  I spun around to face my companions. “Did one of you touch the merflor?”

  Julie and Bahir looked blankly back at me. My eyes fell on Arron.

  “Perhaps it fell out,” he offered, furrowing his brows.

  My eyes narrowed on him. I’d kept the bag tightly shut at all times. Even when we’d visited Breccan’s cave, the sack had remained on my person and after we’d returned, the string had still been tied tightly around the opening.

  Could the Hawk be trying to jeopardize my meeting with the witch?

  I recalled the night before, when I’d been examining the merflor before returning it to the bag. That was the same night that Arron had approached me, handed me the vial of light blue liquid and made his “suggestion”. That had also been the night Bahir had left me and I’d leapt from the cliff—possibly the only time that I’d been separated from the sack.

  I’d felt the pain in my chest as Bahir prepared to exit. I’d dropped the sack before leaping from the mountain. Arron had remained on that ledge. He could have easily removed the light merflor and left only the tooth to provide some weight to the bag—so I wouldn’t notice the merflor was missing until time ran out for our appointment.

  There was no way I could prove any of this, and perhaps it was just my frustration getting the better of me, but Arron had made no secret all along that his preference was to get rid of me rather than pursue a long-winded route of trying to cure me.

  I cursed beneath my breath as I turned around to face Uma’s sister again. She was tapping her fingers impatiently on the desk.

  “Do you have the merflor or not?” she asked. “Because I’m afraid that without it, I can’t give you an appointment.”

  “Just give me a moment, will you?” I said.

  Grasping Arron by the shoulder, I pulled him across the room toward the door, Bahir and Julie following after me. I dragged him outside and, clutching his robe in my fists, pushed his back against the castle’s rough wall. My eyes bored into his. “Are you quite certain you don’t know where the merflor is?” I breathed.

  He glared back at me. “Quite certain, vampire,” he said coolly. “The last I saw of the plant was when you took it out and looked at it back at our camp.”

  My eyes continued to drill into his for several more mom
ents, trying to detect a faltering in his gaze, before letting him go.

  I kicked the ground, spraying pebbles all around me. Dammit.

  We needed to get some more merflor. But we were now only hours away from the time of my appointment. When Aisha had gone looking for it, it had taken her hours to find. Now that she knew where it was, it shouldn’t take her too long to find again. Perhaps she could even procure it before the appointment. But we didn’t have Aisha to help us any more. We had Bahir… Unless the male jinni felt that he had recovered enough to resume his hold on me.

  I turned to Bahir. “How is your strength?” I asked. “Could you inhabit me again now?”

  Doubt shrouded the jinni’s strong-jawed face. “No, Benjamin,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t risk it yet. I need more time… I haven’t exactly been resting since I came out.”

  That much was true. I couldn’t blame him, but it didn’t lessen my frustration.

  “Do you know where to find merflor in The Cove?” I asked him, hoping desperately that he had a better idea of where it was than Aisha had when she’d first ventured down there.

  “No,” he said, dashing my hopes. “I would need to search for it.”

  I breathed out. Oh, God.

  One thing was clear now—I would miss my appointment. I was going to have to try to push it back at least until tomorrow… and hope that the doctor wouldn’t charge some kind of “postponement” fee.

  I was about to turn on my heel and march back into the reception room to rearrange our appointment when Bahir let out a gasp, his body becoming rigid, eyes wide open. I froze, staring at him. His jaw slackened, his complexion growing pale. His eyes rolled in their sockets, then fixed somewhere above my head, as though he was seeing and also not seeing.

  “Bahir?” I breathed, stepping toward him. “What’s wrong?”

  My words snapped him out of whatever trance he had just fallen into. He rushed forward and grabbed my arms, sheer terror in his eyes. His lips parted, his breathing quickened. “Nuriya,” he said in a choked whisper. “S-She needs me. She is… in grave danger. I-I must go!”

  Panic surged through me. “What? No! You can’t—!”

  But he did.

  I could barely believe my eyes, but a second later, the jinni had vanished from the spot.

  Chapter 26: Ben

  What just happened?

  I was in a state of shock.

  It took a few moments for reality to sink in as I stared dumbfounded at the spot where Bahir had just disappeared.

  He’d abandoned us. Just like that.

  My thumb reached for the golden band around my wrist and brushed against the snake’s head.

  No. He has to come back. He has to come back.

  I pressed against the band of gold harder than I’d ever done before, so hard that the snake’s head bent out of shape. I kept expecting him to come back, or if not him, some other jinni. But nobody came. And of course Aisha was stuck inside me staving off the Elder—I couldn’t afford for her to come out for even a moment.

  What did he mean, Nuriya is in danger? And how can he just abandon his duty to me like this?

  I could only think that something had gone terribly wrong back in The Oasis. What, I couldn’t imagine.

  And what now? How will we get through this without a jinni by our side?

  “No!” I exhaled in frustration. I left the castle and raced down the hill toward the shore. Toward the direction I supposed the jinni had headed. However futile it was, I couldn’t think of anything else to do in that moment but run. I had been so accepting of the idea that a second jinni would remain assisting me as long as I needed. Now that he’d gone, my mind spiraled into a panic.

  I reached the bottom of the cliff, arriving at the beach. I stared out at the endless mass of water surrounding us. I breathed in deeply, trying to calm my racing pulse, even as I continued to touch the twisted snake head.

  Think. Just think. There has to be a way out of this. There just has to.

  I was too preoccupied to notice the speeding footsteps behind me until they arrived so close I could no longer ignore them. When I spun around, it was to see Arron, brandishing a sharp iron rod, aimed directly at my chest.

  “No!” Julie’s shout came from my right.

  I barely had time to react when she shot into Arron’s side like a missile, flooring him. Before I could even come to my senses enough to yell for her to stop, Julie had wrestled the rod out of the Hawk’s hand. Hurling it aside, she extended her claws and slit right across Arron’s throat.

  “No!” I bellowed, lunging forward and hauling her off the Hawk.

  But it was too late. Far too late. She’d plunged her claws so deep that they had severed his jugular.

  I turned on her, shocked.

  “Y-You killed him!” I hissed.

  Her lips trembled as she gasped, “He was going to murder you! I suspected he was waiting for this moment all along—for you to be without a jinni by your side. He would have gouged your heart out! I didn’t know what else to do.” Her voice rose to hysteria as she clasped a bloody hand to her mouth.

  I looked back down at Arron’s body. He, the great leader of the Hawks, who had once stricken fear in the heart of all vampires, now a bloodied corpse in the sand.

  I still hadn’t wrapped my mind around the fact that Bahir had left us, and now here I was: two of my most useful companions lost within the space of a few minutes.

  God help me.

  My gaze shifted back to the shell-shocked vampire.

  Now it’s just me… and this girl.

  Chapter 27: Ben

  I didn’t have even the slightest clue of what was to happen now. What would become of me. I continued rubbing the gold band, but it was to no avail.

  “Benjamin,” Julie said in a quiet voice. “I think we should get rid of Arron’s corpse. I don’t know how the witch sisters would react if they found out that we had murdered someone on their property. Arron even seemed to have some kind of connection to them.”

  She was right. The two of us bent down over the Hawk—me clutching his shoulders while Julie held his feet—and dragged him into the waves. We swam deep enough for the current to begin carrying him away. We returned to the beach and approached the bloodstained patch of sand where the Hawk had lain. I dug my heels in deep and unearthed the sand, kicking it about until the bloodstains were less detectable. When the tide came in, it would wash over it anyway.

  I dipped down to the water and splashed my face—even though it was already wet—as if it would bring me some semblance of clarity.

  One thing was for certain: I had to give up hope of having the heart surgery now. There was no way Julie and I would be able to procure the merflor, which meant that there would be no chance the witch doctor would see us—her sister had already made that amply clear. And, heck, I didn’t even have the first clue about how we were going to get off this tiny island.

  “What are you thinking?” Julie asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.” I looked down into her wide hazel eyes.

  She wet her lower lip. “The witch might not be of any help to us now in having lost the merflor, but… she must have a boat on this island that we could take.”

  “And go where?” I said, my voice strained.

  Julie hesitated again. “Maybe we should go to my father… The box,” she murmured.

  Oh, joy. The Elder box-trap thing.

  I would’ve let out a bitter laugh had I not been so devastated. Her suggestion had just signified my entrance into depths of desperation that even I hadn’t believed I would be forced to plunge into.

  Even if somehow, Julie’s idea worked, how would we reach her father now that we had no jinni to transport us? My hunger pangs were growing stronger by the hour. Soon, they would be unbearable.

  I didn’t have days to spend sailing the seas in search of Julie’s father’s ship. Besides, I didn’t know how long Aisha would be able to last in me. I didn’t know if
she would last as long as Bahir, whether she possessed even half as much stamina as him. And once she came out, that would be the beginning of the end.

  Julie drew in a sharp breath. “Look, Benjamin,” she said. “Whether or not we look for the box, or think of something else, we can’t just stay here on this island.”

  “And where exactly is this island anyway?” I said. “Even if we were going to go looking for your father—whom you suspect is hovering around The Tavern somewhere—we don’t even know where we are. I have no idea how to navigate seas in this supernatural dimension.”

  “I’ve spent nearly twenty years at sea,” Julie replied. “I know something about navigating these waters… Though I do need to know the exact location of this place.”

  “And even if we managed to find your father’s ship in time, how would we get the box?” I asked. “We have no jinni available to airlift it.”

  Julie drew in a deep breath. “I… I could return to my father,” she said, her voice low with resignation.

  That made me pause.

  “Return to your father?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I would go back to him.” She lowered her eyes to the ground. “There’d be no other way to get the box to you. It’s in my father’s study—which is usually locked—right at the base of the ship, so even if I managed to slip on board without anybody noticing and enter my father’s study, I wouldn’t be able to get off the ship without being spotted lugging a huge box… I’ve thought about it,” she said, more firmly this time. “Helping you is more important than my escape from my father.”

  I stared at her, surprised that she would be willing to do this for me. Then I reminded myself for the umpteenth time that this was not just for me—this was for the safety of all realms. The Elders’ resurgence would affect all vampires, humans, and God knew how many other species now that the Hawks were no longer a strong enough force to keep the Elders restrained.