A League of Exiles

by Bella Forrest

  A shadow darted through the water several feet beneath us. My instincts kicked in with lightning speed. “What is it?” he asked, immediately noticing the shift in my expression.

  “I’m not sure. I thought I saw—”

  Fiona’s short but sharp scream filled me with dread. She vanished beneath the water, pulled down with abrupt force.

  “Fiona!” I heard Harper cry out, as she and Caspian emerged from behind the rock. They’d both heard her. Jax let go of me and dove after her, just as more shadows gathered, crisscrossing through the water. I went under as well, then stilled, my blood freezing. Slick, black creatures swarmed beneath us—at least six feet in length, each. They looked like thick snakes, with intense blue scales covering their bodies and black spikes emerging from their spines. Their beady black eyes glistened in the turquoise water, and they were incredibly fast.

  Three of them had gotten hold of Fiona, and were tightly coiled around her legs as they pulled her down. Jax was the first to reach her, grabbing her arms and struggling to pull her to the surface, while the creatures viciously held on to her. More swam around us, baring their sharp fangs.

  Harper and Caspian swam toward Jax and Fiona, but I waved them away. The water snakes moved toward them, and I knew we all needed to get out of the water, fast. I rose to the surface for a quick breath. Harper and Caspian tried to make their way to the edge, though they, too, were quickly surrounded by the creatures.

  “Stay out of the water!” I shouted. “They’re trying to get Fiona!”

  “What are those things?” Caia cried out, her voice trembling with angst. Blaze held her back. Her first instinct had been to jump in, but the dragon’s self-preservation instinct had kicked in.

  “You don’t want to know,” Vesta gasped, and readied her bow and arrows, her gaze flickering across the water as she tried to get Fiona’s location. “Hansa, get out of the water! They won’t settle for just Fiona!”

  “No, I need to help Jax!”

  “Get out! I’ll help,” Vesta replied, narrowing her eyes at Fiona’s figure underwater.

  I couldn’t leave her and Jax there. I went back under, and instantly understood what Vesta had meant. The snakes had freakishly huge mouths, with an opening about three feet in width and razor-sharp fangs. Two of them were snapping at Caspian and Harper’s legs. They both went primal as soon as the creatures drew blood. The vampires and Maras didn’t shy away from using their claws and fangs when needed, so they both snapped and slashed back at the snakes, while others circled in.

  Jax used his claws to cut through the ones tightening around Fiona’s legs. She screamed underwater as the third snake bit deep into her thigh. Others came at me, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to fight them all back. I didn’t have any claws, fangs, or weapons on me—I’d gone in for a swim, not a fight to the death.

  Arrows shot in from above, several in quick succession. A couple struck two of the three snakes currently holding Fiona down. They let go and flailed away, leaving thick trails of black blood in their wake. Jax managed to tear the third snake off, then pulled Fiona back to the surface. I swam as fast as I could, kicking and punching the creatures that came at me.

  But it wasn’t enough. Sharp pain burned through my right calf as one of the snakes took a bite. The water then trembled and moved around me, and the next thing I knew, I was being sucked upward by a small whirlwind. I landed on the edge of the pool with a sloppy thud, and gasped with relief when I saw Blaze pulling Fiona and Jax out of the water. Caia had joined forces with Vesta to conjure up another whirlwind, and they were now sucking Harper and Caspian out.

  “Thank the Daughters,” I breathed, feeling a little lightheaded.

  My leg throbbed with pain, and I broke into a cold sweat. I felt weak, in the most literal sense of the word. We’d all made it out, but none of us seemed well. Harper and Fiona were the worst, far too pale—even for their vampiric complexions—and unable to stand.

  Jax and Caspian seemed more alert. They had minor bites on them, but Harper and Fiona’s thighs and calves were covered in puncture wounds. “What the hell are those things?” Fiona murmured, her eyes drooping. She was close to passing out.

  “They’re called Anguiles,” Vesta replied, checking her vitals. “They don’t just bite, they suck blood. You’re weakened… You need blood. You all need blood to recover fast; otherwise, we’re stuck here for hours.”

  “Take some from us.” Blaze offered his wrist, as did Caia.

  I was able to get up, though my legs were unstable. Vesta pulled out a small knife and cut her forearm. She pushed the bleeding wound against Fiona’s lips, while Blaze took care of Jax and Caspian, and Caia looked after Harper. I made my way to their side and took Jax in my arms. He welcomed me with a shuddering embrace, pulling me closer and kissing my face, while being careful not to touch the silver blood oozing from my calf wound.

  “Next time, don’t wait around and get yourself killed just because I’m still fighting,” he whispered, then bit into his wrist and offered me a few droplets of his blood. “Yours might kill me, but mine can heal you, and I need you at full strength, Hansa. So drink.”

  I nodded slowly and licked his wound. The salty taste of his blood filled my mouth, and I could feel its soothing effect almost immediately. The bite marks on my calf were gone, with just a couple of holes left in the leather as a reminder of how close we’d all been to disaster.

  Fiona

  The grotto, with its reddish ceiling and walls, and the turquoise reflection of the water, came into focus. The mind-numbing pain in my legs was gone, and my heart recovered its pulse. Vesta’s fae blood wasn’t just incredibly delicious; it also sped up the recovery process. Human blood wouldn’t have brought me back this fast.

  “Do these Anguiles wait in underwater caves for unsuspecting suckers such as ourselves to show up?” I asked, pushing myself up into a seated position. Vesta was kneeling by my side, holding her bleeding wrist. “Here, swallow a little bit of this. It’ll heal that faster,” I said, then bit into my thumb, enough to draw a little blood. I smeared some on her lower lip so she could ingest it. She gave me a thankful smile, which I returned, along with a wink. “Least I could do.”

  “I didn’t think there were any Anguiles in these parts. They usually stick to lakes and swamps. They’re freshwater creatures,” Vesta replied, then glanced at the water. They were all gone, and the surface was eerily peaceful and smooth. It didn’t even look like it held dozens of Nerakian bloodsuckers.

  “Jeez, even your eels are trying to suck the life out of us,” Harper muttered, regaining her senses. Caspian held her in his arms, breathing heavily.

  “Oh, my days, you’re right,” Caia replied. “They did look like eels. Sort of.”

  Harper sighed, then raised an eyebrow. “Did you see their mouths, though?”

  “They could swallow any of us whole,” I said, then looked at Vesta, Caia, and Blaze. “Thankfully, we had you to save our asses. I was literally about to tell you guys that you were missing out on all the watery goodness when those things grabbed me.”

  They chuckled lightly. “The upside is that they’re not venomous, just vicious and sneaky,” Vesta replied with a shrug, then frowned. “It’s still strange that they’re here. I mean, this pond is definitely coming from an underground spring, but how could the Anguiles have traveled up here on their own? They’re usually confined to other regions, and there are hundreds of miles of desert between this place and the nearest swamp.”

  “What are you saying?” Hansa asked, while gearing up.

  “I’m saying that this isn’t natural,” Vesta replied, pointing at the water. “They really aren’t supposed to be here.”

  “So, what, someone brought Anguiles here?” Jax muttered, tying the leather strings of his scabbards back on his belt.

  “Basically, yes. Think about it. If you were a creature nearing extinction, like, say, the Manticores, wouldn’t you go out of your way to protect your territory?”
Vesta said. “As outsiders, the first thing we did, after hours in that scorching desert, was literally jump into the first body of water we could find. This one. Just in time for the Anguiles to try and eat us.”

  “The Manticores brought Anguiles to the cave to further protect their gorge,” I murmured, my heart skipping a beat. “They’re trying to keep outsiders away by all possible means.”

  “And you know what that suggests, right?” Harper smirked.

  “That there are definitely creatures hiding in this gorge,” I concluded. “Not necessarily Manticores, but if the rumors are true, then they’re the most likely culprits.”

  “We’re on the right track then,” Hansa replied, pulling her long, rich black hair back into a loose bun. “How is everyone feeling?”

  We were all back on our feet, geared up and ready to go. “I think we’re good,” I said, feeling the strength come back to my limbs. “Though I must say, it was pretty weird to be on the receiving end of a bloodsucking fang.”

  “Yeah, who would’ve thought, huh?” Harper chuckled. “Do unto others and so on.”

  “A taste of our own medicine,” I continued, laughing lightly. Soon enough, both Harper and I were doubling over to the point of tears, while the others watched, equal parts confused and amused. Of course, they didn’t know this little inside joke that Harper, Scarlett, Avril, and I had, as vampires in The Shade.

  “We laughed about something like this about a year ago,” Harper explained. “Fiona, Scarlett, Avril, and I spent a lot of time together, especially after I turned. We used to talk a lot, about life, death, and how we could possibly die. We came up with the freakiest scenarios, like something out of a slasher movie, but the most ironic and, at the same time, amusing, was this. Sort of.”

  “It was exsanguination, basically,” I completed her memory of our long talks beneath the pearly moonlight, surrounded by rustling redwoods and darkness. “Vampires getting their blood drained.”

  “Technically speaking, it wouldn’t kill us right away, but still. The irony made us laugh out loud then,” Harper said, a tinge of sadness added to her voice.

  “It’s still making you both laugh now, it seems.” Caia grinned.

  I sighed, slightly overwhelmed by the nostalgia of days gone by, long before the madness of Neraka. “Yeah, it brought back memories, I guess. I miss The Shade. My family. Those nights we spent talking about nothing.”

  “We wanted this, remember?” Harper replied softly. “We wanted to come here.”

  “I’m not walking back on this, don’t get me wrong,” I said. “Sure, we wanted to come here. But we didn’t plan on not going back. I don’t like being stranded here—not having the option to go back home.”

  That hit all of us on a deeper level. They all nodded slowly—they knew and felt the same. We’d come here on a mission, and, aside from the fact that the mission was far more complicated than originally anticipated, we couldn’t even leave. We were stuck here.

  “We’ll find the swamp witch, and we’ll all be able to go back home,” Hansa reassured us. “But before we do that, we need some allies on our side. So, how about we all go out there and meet some Manticores, huh?”

  A couple of seconds went by. We all looked at each other, allowing ourselves the luxury of a confident smile. “Sounds like a plan,” I replied, then followed Hansa and the rest of my team out of the beautiful but deadly grotto.

  I covered my head and face, then stepped into the searing afternoon sun. The air was uncomfortably dry, but the temperature was a little more bearable than before. The heat peak had passed, and we were ready to delve deeper into the Akrep Gorge.

  We got back on our horses and quietly trotted through the reddish ravine, carefully analyzing our surroundings. I couldn’t help but go back to my previous thoughts about going home. It hadn’t been that long since I’d last seen my parents—it wasn’t that I missed them yet, per se. I wasn’t even homesick at this point. What hurt was the prospect of never seeing them again. I hated not having the option to return.

  Soon enough, my mind wandered back to Zane. After he’d helped us escape from Azure Heights the night before, I worried. Was he okay? Did he get himself in trouble for what he did? Surely King Shaytan wouldn’t just let that slide—provided someone recognized Zane, of course. Maybe nobody saw him.

  Maybe I’d see him again. Soon, hopefully. I still had so many questions for him. Or so I kept telling myself, to avoid the truth—I wanted to see Zane, alive and well, wearing his arrogant smirk and reminding me that I was in over my head. It was much better than not knowing whether he was even still alive.

  Harper

  After that epic scare in the grotto, my caution spiked as we advanced through the gorge. It was a beautiful but savage place. The red stone walls rose high on both sides, with jagged tips at the top and narrow crevices at the base. Patches of weeds were sprinkled across the hard ground, with clusters of palm trees bending overhead, their wide, waxy leaves providing temporary shade from the still-burning sun.

  A narrow stream flowed to our right, snaking its way through the ravine. We spotted some of the local fauna—mostly deer-like creatures with big, vivid green eyes and a soft, pale orange coat—drinking water from the stream. There were plenty of reptiles creeping behind the rocks, such as brightly colored snakes and lizards.

  Birds trilled from the tops of the gorge walls, their bright pink and yellow plumage making them stand out. They seemed to serve as some kind of natural alarm, as they squawked whenever the jackal-like predators emerged from their holes and rushed after the orange deer. One of them was bold enough to stop in front of our group and bare its fangs at us. It nearly spooked the horses, until Caspian hissed at it—it was a primal, guttural sound that both fascinated and scared me, as it brought out his own predator nature.

  The jackal didn’t stand a chance, and it knew that very well. It yelped, then scuttled over to the other side, hiding behind another rock formation.

  “Don’t let the snakes get too close,” Vesta muttered, then shot an arrow at a ten-foot serpent that had been slithering toward her indigo horse. It was so quiet that even the stallion hadn’t heard or seen it. “They’re extremely venomous and can kill a horse in seconds.”

  The arrow missed the snake’s head by half an inch, at most, but it was enough to send a message. The creature swiftly turned and made its way back under the rocks. With that in mind, I used my True Sight to scan our surroundings again.

  “Oh, damn, there are so many of them,” I breathed, feeling my skin crawl. I had never been a fan of anything that slithered—with the exception of my brother-in-law and the rest of the Druids—but this was a whole new level of creepy. There were literally hundreds of snakes moving through the gorge. Most of them were hidden beneath chunks of red stone, and not visible with the naked eye. “Are they all venomous?”

  Vesta nodded. “Yes. The brighter the colors, the deadlier the snake, too.”

  That didn’t comfort me one bit, because they were all covered in bold pink, green, yellow, and red scales, their reptilian eyes quietly following our every move. I looked ahead, my True Sight still on, and pulled the reins on my indigo horse. “Guys, stop,” I murmured. “Thirty yards ahead. I think they’re Manticores.”

  Perched on a natural stone ledge approximately twenty feet above ground, the two Manticores were watching an orange deer lapping at the stream. From that distance, I could tell that they were young and slender creatures, but their muscles were toned to perfection, and their skin was the shade of chocolate. Their vivid yellow eyes were fixed on the deer.

  “We need to get out of sight, for now,” Vesta whispered, then pulled her horse to the side. We all followed, and got off our horses.

  I once more beckoned mine to keep the others in check. “Look after them, and don’t go anywhere,” I muttered, then shifted my focus back to the Manticores.

  Vesta came to my side, one hand resting on her sheathed sword. “Where did you see them?”

>   “Up there,” I said, pointing at a portion of the wall on the right side. It was crooked and angled outward, obscuring the actual ledge. The rest of my team couldn’t see the Manticores from that angle, but I had a clear view with my True Sight.

  They were beautiful, though clearly dangerous creatures, and they matched Caspian’s description of them. Their bodies looked mostly humanoid, except for some key differences. Their hands were a tad oversized and covered in auburn fur, with a long, sharp claw extending from each finger. Their hair matched the color of the fur covering their hands, forearms, backs, and calves, and it was naturally styled into a rich, lion-like mane. What really caught my eye were the tails—nearly identical to scorpions’, with well-defined segments across a length of ten, maybe fifteen feet, and a black spike, through which the poison was delivered, at the end. I shuddered, the sight of those tails reminding me of Cyrus Drizan, the fearsome jinni king who’d taken on a half-scorpion form. Though, from the stories my Great-Uncle Ben had told me about him, that jinni’s tail hadn’t been nearly as terrifying as these.

  The Manticores wore strips of brown leather over their private parts and carried multiple short spears strapped to their backs. That was how they hunted from a distance—and they were impressively fast as they both threw two spears at the unsuspecting deer. The metal tips pierced the animal’s neck. It gave out a short, sharp cry of pain, then collapsed.

  The Manticores then rushed down from their ledge and reached the deer. One of them bent down and slit the creature’s throat with one claw. At least the deer was spared an agonizing death.

  “Don’t move,” Vesta whispered. She’d seen them as soon as they came down. She pulled her bow and prepped an arrow. “Just in case,” she said, noticing my questioning frown. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with, for the time being. Let’s observe and follow first.”

  “After you,” Hansa breathed, her hand clutching the bejeweled handle of her broadsword.