Upon closer examination, Quinn could see blood everywhere, but no injuries to be found. The sleeves of his shirt were ripped all to hell, and his wavy golden hair normally pulled back in a tidy queue, was wild and down around his shoulders. His beard was matted with blood, and there were rust colored stains around his eyes and his ears.
He looked like he had been through an epic beating, but there were no cuts or bruises to be found. Several seconds passed and nobody moved, the three women standing there gawking and William still as a statue, looking for the entire world like a hit and run victim.
His eyes were what spoke to Quinn. Electric blue against the dried red river on his face, those eyes bored into her, asking questions without words, begging to be heard and understood. William opened his mouth, but of course no words came out. His chest rising and falling rapidly, he was fairly panting with the exertion of staying upright when he was clearly so weak and weary. Something wasn’t right, and Quinn couldn’t put her finger on it. It was Rose who spoke up then.
“Why can’t I even hear him breathing?” The question came out a bit high pitched, and it was evident to Quinn that Rose was on the verge of completely losing her shit. Seeing someone else about to fall apart did something to Quinn. When she was so prone to anxiety attacks, somehow being around someone else with the same affliction gave her the courage to pull herself together.
“Even someone who can’t talk should be able to make some sort of noise with their mouth,” Miss Benny said thoughtfully. “We are dealing with something else entirely, and I don’t like the looks of all of this blood and no wounds.” She stepped closer to William, who backed up in a panic.
“William Dear, do hold still and stop being a baby.” Quinn couldn’t believe the way Miss Benny was talking to the giant, but when the older woman rubbed her thumb across the now trembling man’s face and brushed away some of the dried blood, she grimaced.
“There are no wounds here. William, answer me if you can, is this your blood?” William only stood there, eyes like laser beams, and then he slowly nodded. “I’m going to ask you another question and answer that too. Did your injuries heal before the blood dried?” Shaking a little harder, William nodded again.
“William, did someone else hurt you?” More violent trembling and more nodding.
Firmly Miss Benny asked another question “William, can you tell me who did this to you?” The shaking got worse, and William looked like he was going to rattle his bones right out of his body. Rose and Quinn rushed in quickly to help in case he pitched forward, but Quinn reached him first. She put a hand on his shoulder, close to his neck, to keep him from keeling over, but her hand brushed his beard, and when some of the blood that was dried in the hair there made contact with her skin, her entire body froze.
Time stood still as images pounded through her head and pain laced her body. Her spine bowed out, but she had no control, couldn’t move and couldn’t stop the barrage of pictures that invaded her psyche.
It was horrible.
She saw exactly how William had gotten the blood on his face and his beard. Saw the wounds made from the sharp dagger-like fingernails on the hands of a hideous creature that bore a passing resemblance to Mara. Saw wounds start healing up while the creature was still licking the blood from its claws while tendrils of black smoke trailed from its mouth, and the agony in Williams face as he screamed without a sound, eyes closed and head thrown back in pain. She saw the creature slash at his arms, ripping through the sleeves on his shirt leaving red map lines all over that started closing almost immediately, yet he never made a move to defend himself. He was being tortured, yet never once tried to move, to run, to save himself. Quinn was sick to her stomach, but the images kept coming. This was watching a horror movie in fast forward, and she couldn’t find the remote to stop it. She saw visions of William stomping through the forest with a black garbage bag, laying out the dead bodies of ravens in various places, face full of sorrow. She saw so many things, unspeakable things, things that she would remember in her nightmares for years to come, and just when she thought she would die from the horror, a hand grabbed her and yanked her away.
Falling to her knees sobbing, she took Miss Benny with her. The older woman clutched Quinn close to her chest in a motherly fashion, petting her hair and whispering calming nothings. She would never be able to erase what she had just seen. Poor William. Poor William - and what was that monstrous thing that looked like Mara? Quinn knew in her heart what the answer was, but she couldn’t accept it as truth. It was as if all her terrible dreams were now her reality, but there was no blaming it on the meds; she’d been clean for over a year. She had just touched a man and read his memories through his blood. She had touched his blood and read his story without as much as a word passing between them. Her heart broke for William; he must have known. He must have known the whole time and been unable to tell a soul. His angry faces from before made sense, how much he must have suffered.
Quinn was not stupid; she could read between the lines. The something she had been running from in her own mind for the last ten years was here and doing terrible things. She needed to find Corbin. She needed him more than anything right now. He would steady her.
“You aren’t going to find the boy at his house,” the green man said from behind the group. “You are going to find him at his.” The old man had appeared out of nowhere, and no one knew how long he had been standing behind them watching. His eyes were troubled and his expression dark as he pointed at William.
“I’m starting to understand why I couldn’t find the familiar and couldn’t sense anything other than the scent of evil on the ravens that were left in the forest.” The old man looked straight at William, who had regained his strength and was looking miserable yet stoic amongst the crying women.
“She have you doing her dirty work, boy?” William’s gaze never even wavered, and he nodded his head. “That is some nasty work she’s been doing. You have a choice in the matter?” William looked sad and shook his head slowly, side to side. Of course he had no choice in the matter; the green man hadn’t seen the things Quinn had seen. That Mara-thing had William trapped but good. She would never let him go.
Gus walked up to the spot where Miss Benny and Quinn still knelt on the ground, and while Quinn dried her eyes on her sleeves, he said gently “I got something else to tell you, but I need you to be calm.” Of course she would be calm, she had already had the freak out of her life nearly tripping over an almost dead body in the middle of the path. What was old Gus going to say to her that would be worse?
“She took him; I saw her. She plucked your raven right out of the garden and flew away with him. She took him to her nest. I followed them.”
Quinn felt all of the blood drain from her body as she processed the news.
No no no nonononononono.
A low keening cry filled the air, and she dimly realized it was her but was powerless to stop the sounds crawling out of her throat. She took Corbin? And the green man watched?
“You just watched?” She screamed. She was on him in moments flailing and scratching at whatever she could reach, her hands just passed through though. No matter how much she kicked and raged, she couldn’t land a blow. “You let her take him, and you watched? We need to get him NOW!” The wind began to kick up around her, and thunder boomed in the sky. There was not rain coming; that was the sound of Quinn letting her power out. Quinn was angry, and when Quinn was angry she forgot to be careful.
“I don’t know a hundred percent what’s going on,” Rose came up next to Quinn and put her hand on her shoulder, “but that’s fucked up. Who is this she we are talking about?”
“Mara,” Miss Benny whispered, and the amount of hate that laced the word as it came out of the older woman’s mouth made Quinn shiver. “I knew I didn’t like her, but I just couldn’t see. I couldn’t see her.” Miss Benny looked close to tears, and Quinn wondered if the “see” she was referring to had anything to do with eyesight. There was
so much paranormal shit going on around her, she wouldn’t be surprised if everyone on the mountain had some kind of superpower. There was no time to dwell on it though. No time.
“I didn’t just leave him because I wanted to,” the old man spoke to Quinn with the kindest voice he had ever used to address her since she came to the mountain. There was no sign of grumpiness or snark, and his sarcastic attitude was gone with the wind. “I needed to get here to tell you. I can’t help him alone. I am not strong enough, and I guarantee you if I had tried and failed, she would be coming here next. It is in her best interest to keep him alive. Because you see, she is using him as bait, girl. What she wants is you.”
“Me? I don’t understand.” Quinn didn’t know what the hell was going on, but she knew from the visions she got from William that when it came to Mara, alive wasn’t necessarily the best case scenario. She was scared witless, but if her Corbin was in trouble, then she would gladly trade her sorry self for his freedom, even if she couldn’t fathom why Mara would want her in the first place.
“It took me a long time to put the pieces together too, and to be honest, there are still a few chunks of the story missing, kid.” The old man stared at her thoughtfully. “I got a look at her though, and I know what she is, or better yet what she was. In the old country, we called them Mare or Mara. In her case it isn’t a person's name although it sounds pretty normal and I would not have thought to question her. No, the Mara are a specific breed of demon. The Mara are where the word “nightmare” came from and they can control the dreams of man. She is the master of the familiar, the cloud belongs to her. She is the one who took Corbin, but the Mara are not usually this strong. She is old, possibly even older than I am, and her magic is dark. The Mara are assholes by nature, but not evil. This…Mara, she is something else. She stinks of something rotten, and I can only assume the power she has amassed via ill-gotten gains. She has probably been consuming.” His face twisted in disgust as he said the word.
“What is consuming?” asked Quinn impatiently. She didn’t have time for this shit, and if her Corbin suffered, she would kill Mara. She didn’t have any weapons and didn’t know how, but power tickled under her skin like it did before, and Quinn knew that if she got agitated enough, just like those times in the past, she could call on it to help her. On fucking purpose this time. She said it again.
“What is consuming?”
“Eating the power of another fae” the old man said, lip curling up under his mustache showing his disgust. “Yes, it’s just as disgusting as it sounds. You have to eat it, consume it, and process the energy. Normally it is just the power that is necessary to be consumed but some of those doing the eating aren’t all that picky about the bits that come with it.”
“That’s fucking gross, Uncle Gus.” Rose put her hand over her mouth as she fought the urge to vomit.
“She wants to eat me?” Quinn whisper screamed in horror. What was inside of her that looked tasty to a power hungry monster like Mara? Forget some mythical nightmare, this chick was the fucking boogeyman - and she had her stabby little claws all over Corbin right now. The air around Quinn turned thick, and the smell of rain permeated the air. A mighty wind picked up and gusted seemingly only around her, lifting strands of her hair and flinging them around her face. Her love was being threatened, and that would not do. Quinn had always been afraid of her power because of the potential hurt it caused to others. She wasn’t weak; she just didn’t know how to control herself so others didn’t get hurt. Well, Mara had unwittingly just removed that particular hurdle from Quinn’s path.
She felt the familiar tingling under her skin again, and the ground rumbled beneath her feet to answer her. She was calling, for the first time and on purpose, on whatever lived inside of her to get her through this task. She was going to let loose for the first time in her life, and it was going to feel good. She cocked her head slightly at Miss Benny and Rose.
“You and you,” she barked out and flicked her head in William’s direction, “and you stay here. The old man and I will go. I will bring him back.” Her voice sounded different, stronger than normal. No longer was she timid and unsure, she knew exactly what she needed to do.
Miss Benny looked worried and uncertain, and Rose was openly crying. William still stood silently, but he put his least blood-stained arm around Miss Benny’s shoulders, offering her support. Quinn was touched by his bravery. The things she had seen, they would break anyone’s sanity, and she had only seen pictures in her mind. How long had William suffered at the hands of that monster?
“I will bring him back,” she repeated firmly.
Quinn grabbed ahold of old Gus’s arm with the confidence of a woman going to rescue her man. “Can you get us there real fast like or are we going to have to walk?”
“You could probably do this on your own if you just tried,” he grunted, and grabbing her around the waist with one arm, he began to flit through the forest so fast the tree limbs slapped and grabbed at their clothing as the whipped by. Quinn didn’t have time to be slowed down by any obstacle, and she let the passing limbs pass through her as if they were inconsequential. The smell of rain grew heavier in the air, and the wind picked up intensity. She was practically a tornado now, Quinn and her power. She was going to go rescue Corbin from the clutches of a power consuming boogeyman, and she had her entire arsenal on display. If Mara wanted to eat Quinn to get at what was inside of her, then she would for sure give her something to choke on.
Quinn didn’t know how far she and the old man flew, but she was definitely surprised by how innocent and bland looking the cabin they stopped in front of looked. How could this possibly be the place? She and the old man stood side by side, just looking at the innocuous wooden building. She didn’t know what she expected to find, maybe bodies on the ground or ritualistic shapes carved into trees. There was nothing here but a little log cabin that couldn’t have had more than two or three rooms, and a shit ton of trees.
She started to walk towards the door, purpose in every step, but the old man put his hand on her hard to stop her.
“We need to stay outside. I don’t know all that much about your power, there is still something there that I just can’t put my finger on, but I work best in the open spaces – where I can see the green. We can’t let her get the upper hand, and trust me, she knows we are here. She’ll come out on her own.”
Quinn was impatient to see Corbin though. She didn’t have time to wait around for that scary she-devil to come up with something extra nasty to do. Who knew what she had been doing to him already? In the precious moments they had been talking out on the path in front of the lodge, what had he suffered at her hands?
Quinn’s breath came faster and faster, she couldn’t seem to get enough air to fill her lungs and her vision tinged gray at the edges. She was agitated and impatient, and her power was bouncing around inside her, a rubber ball of rose gold light and…something else too. She wanted to let it out. She needed to let it out. It smelled like a fast storm on a summer day, and the thunder was building in her blood.
Boom. Boom.
It’s probably my heartbeat, Quinn thought. The sound was deafening.
The sound of splintering glass pierced Quinn’s ears, and right before the green man threw himself on top of her, she saw the windows of the cabin shatter. Glass sprayed everywhere, and the air was filled with the skeletons of ravens as they shot through the open windows towards the man and the woman standing in their path.
Gus whispered something under his breath in a language Quinn didn’t understand, and limbs from nearby trees shot out sideways, weaving together to make a barricade. They were fast, but not fast enough as a few sets of raven bones made it over the woven wall. One of which caught the green man near his eye, slicing his cheek.
He bleeds red thought Quinn distractedly, feeling strangely calm amidst the barrage of bones. She still hadn’t seen Corbin, but it was evident they were in the correct place. The front door to the cabin squeaked ope
n slowly and out stepped Mara, or what had probably been Mara.
She looked rough, a monster parodying in a woman’s skin. The disguise was barely on now, and her once long pale hair was dark scraggly mess hanging in patches. Something thick and oily dripped from the ends; Quinn did not want to get close enough to find out what it was. Her once light blue eyes were now almost white and sunken deeply into her face, her porcelain skin now cracked and peeling like wallpaper. Her peasant dress hung on her bony frame, and Quinn wondered what exactly was even holding it on her body, she looked like a walking corpse.
She still had one arm inside the cabin, and when she fully stepped out and into the fading afternoon light, Quinn gasped at what she saw.
Her hand was wrapped around Corbin’s neck and she held his body up, his feet skimming the ground. He had his own hands wrapped around the one that held him captive, but he wasn’t struggling. More than likely he was trying to gain enough passage for air in his throat so that he didn’t strangle. His eyes burned with a rage that mirrored the feelings Quinn felt burning within her.
Mara’s laughter reached their ears, and it sounded off, crazy. Her words seemed wet like there was something stuck in her throat. She was the embodiment of foul.
“You must have found my William!” she laughed. “I thought I had him wrapped up tight, but he got away. Naughty boy. You know, pets these days can be so difficult.” Her smile disappeared for a moment, but she looked back at her hand encircling Corbin’s throat, and happiness lit up her eyes. “But I have a new pet, don’t I? You’ll do just fine, just fine. I said you would, and you will.”
Mara’s words weren’t making sense to Quinn. There was no way Corbin would do what Mara wanted, no way. He wasn’t moving though, just sort of hanging there with his feet barely touching the ground and Mara’s hand around his neck. What power did she have over him, and was it the same thing she had over William?
Northwoods Magic (Northwoods Fairy Tales Book 1) Page 15
