by H. D. Gordon
The realization that I was trapped in this dead place settled over me, and I prayed to whoever there was to pray to for liberation, despite the hopelessness that had claimed me like the rest of this cursed land.
Then, so close to me that I felt the words rebound off my skin, the girl whispered, “You don’t deserve liberation. We’ve got your number now, and we are many. You’ll pay for what you’ve done. You’ll pay for every single life you’ve stolen. There’s no escaping destiny, and you’ve been fated from the start.”
“Fated for what?” I heard myself ask, though the voice was too calm and collected to have come from me. Inside, I was crumbling like weak foundation in an earthquake.
For the first time, Shaylee Taylor smiled, red painted lips pulling back to reveal a black hole where there should have been teeth. This was the last image I saw before crossing back over.
CHAPTER 19
My fist slammed into something hard, the cracking sound it made yanking me out of the place I had been in. It took me several moments—during which I sat atop my foldout bed, sweat plastering my hair to my forehead and breaths coming in harsh, tearing gasps—before I realized I was in my apartment again.
I let my hands unfurl and my shoulders slump, my eyes darting around the room to see Thomas standing over by the window, rubbing at his jaw.
Slowly, my right mind settled. I swallowed and wet my dry lips before attempting speech.
“Did I just punch you?” I asked.
Thomas lifted one dark brow, his hazel eyes adopting some amusement, but his aura shadowed with worry. He stopped rubbing his jaw and worked it around in a wide yawn instead. “Um, yes,” he said. “And you’ve got a hell of a right hook.”
I felt my cheeks flame and pushed some of my reddish-brown bedhead out of my face. “Sorry,” I said. “You okay?”
“I’ll live,” Thomas said, and paused, concern returning to his aura. “What about you?”
“Me?” I said, trying to be cool. I felt that if I let one crack show, the rest would crumble, like something precariously balancing. “I’m fine.”
“Really?” Both his aura and his expression didn’t look convinced.
I swallowed hard. “Really.”
“You were crying out—screaming in your sleep.”
“Was I?”
Thomas gave me a knowing look. I held up the act for a moment longer before sighing and letting my shoulders droop.
“It was terrible,” I mumbled.
“Your dream?”
I nodded. “I was here in Grant City, but it was…different.” I looked up at him and tried for a smile that likely looked like a grimace. “It was like all the color was gone. No sunlight, no auras, no…” I trailed off, trying to find the words.
“Life?” Thomas asked.
I nodded again. “And I saw…” I closed my mouth, cleared my throat.
“People whose deaths you feel responsible for?”
My brow furrowed and I pulled out of my head and really looked at Thomas for the first time since I awoke. He looked more strained, more tired than usual, which did little to lessen his appeal. I remembered now that while Remy and I had been wrangling up bad guys in the city, Thomas and Raven had gone on a different kind of hunt.
They’d gone in search of answers regarding a Demon’s Curse, and how it could be broken. I’d been so exhausted after being chased by Hellhounds and beating up douchebags all night that I’d only had the energy to tell Remy to drop me at home. Now that I thought about it, the last memory I had before slipping into that terrible nightmare was crawling through my apartment window and collapsing on my bed.
“Yes,” I said, remembering he’d asked a question. “I saw Shaylee Taylor. She’s the girl who the Scarecrow killed when he’d come to town looking for me. How’d you know? You and Raven have some luck on your supernatural search?”
“That girl is a handful,” he said, “but I guess you could say that. We learned some important things about the Curse, one of them being that the victim is attacked in nightmares, like I’m assuming you just were.”
“Why do you say Raven was a handful?” I asked. “Did she try to hit on you?”
Gold touched Thomas’s aura and he gave me a handsome almost-smile. “She’s just reckless, is all I meant.” His eyes ran over me, and his spirit sparked with appreciation. “Besides, she’s not my type.”
A flutter went through my chest, but mostly there was just a dull ache there, residue from what Thomas had called ‘the nightmare’. Since I’d woken up, there seemed to be a dark cloud hanging over me, and when I saw that even Thomas’s special brand of sunlight could not penetrate it, I knew I was in trouble.
I’d been to this place only once before, a long time ago, when I’d been a child newly placed with the Peace Brokers. This was the darkest of the holes down which depression could drag me. I was standing at the lip of it, balancing in a way that was unsustainable. Were I to fall, brushed over the edge by a light breeze or a gentle shove, I may not ever find my way back out again.
So I did the only thing I knew how to do. I ran on autopilot for a bit while the rest of me receded somewhere inside—to some back room of my mind where I could commence a quiet self-loathing. Most people do this without being aware of it even happening, but I was an Empath and aura-reader, and I recognized it all too well. In one sentence, I was a soul on the verge of a break, and the façade held in place by the tips of my fingers was the only thing keeping me together.
“What else did you learn?” I asked.
Thomas was silent for a moment. I saw there was sympathy shining in his aura, and turned away, ignoring the urge to snap at him that I didn’t want his sympathy, that I didn’t deserve it. Instead, I blinked and held up my hand to encourage an answer.
Thomas said, “A Demon’s Curse takes the life of its victim slowly. First, it attacks you mentally, infiltrating your dreams and poking at your weak spots. After that, it starts to take its toll physically. The combined effect, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, is death.”
I’d learned all this when I was with the Brokers, of course, but it’d been long enough that some of the details were fuzzy.
“How long does it usually take to kill?” I asked.
Thomas turned his head and stared out the window, taking in the scenery of brick as though it were a sunset. “Five days, usually. It varies based on how strong the person affected is, both physically and mentally. Five days is the norm for humans—who are usually the ones making some kind of deal. Many of them end up taking their lives themselves, just can’t handle the pressure. For you?” He shrugged. “Well, it’s already going on five days now… How do you feel? Other than the nightmare?”
Again, the urge was to lie, to fake being fine and maintain the mask. Instead, I said, “Well, I’m not dead yet.”
Apparently, this answer was more revealing than I’d intended, because more of that undeserved sympathy flashed through Thomas’s aura.
“Right,” he said, and moved closer to me on the bed, making my body shift nervously with his proximity. Cursed or not, the man had an undeniable affect on me. “You’re not going to die. We’re going to catch this madman, find the Demon who made the deal, and break the curse. The only thing you have to do is not die.”
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and made a move to stand, but as I did so, my head went dizzy and the world tilted. I swayed on my feet, my hands groping out and gripping Thomas’s wide shoulders for stability. I watched from the corner of my eyes as dull orange swam through his aura, the color of true concern. A thin sheen of sweat broke out on my forehead and a few drops rolled down my spine as I allowed my knees to buckle and returned to a seated position on my bed.
“Fine, my ass,” Thomas mumbled, as he caught me around the waist and settled me back on the bed. Silence hung between us for a few moments. Then, he said, “I know everything seems dark right now, and whether you want to say it or not, I know that you’re suffering.” He moved closer and w
rapped his arms around me, pulling me against him, where my head could rest on his chest and I could listen to the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. I melted there and wished I could stay.
“I just need you to hang in there, soldier,” Thomas whispered in his deep, soothing voice. “Help is on the way... Do you trust me?”
I tilted my head up, still cuddled close against him, and looked up into his beautiful hazel eyes. “I do,” I told him.
The faintest ghost of a smile pulled up his lips, his handsome face looking down at me as if I was the vision of a lifetime, something fleeting and in need of being savored.
“Then, soldier on, little Halfling,” he said. “Promise me you’ll soldier on.”
Had the request been to leap off a bridge with him, the answer likely would’ve been the same. If Thomas Reid wanted a promise from me, then he would get it. It was just part of what I’d come to refer to as The Thomas Effect, and dying or not, it was still as prevalent as ever.
“I promise,” I told him, and held on tight as he kissed my lips.
CHAPTER 20
Friday. Night number five of darkness in Grant City. I’d spent a good portion of the day in bed, my body too weak to do otherwise and growing more so by the hour. When I managed to find sleep, I ended up back in that gray, dead world that looked like this one, but was not.
There, I encountered ghost after ghost, like Scrooge’s Christmas Past, only these were people whose lives had ended in some way because of me. I woke from these dreams feeling worse than before, clinging to the promise I’d made Thomas and trying to shut out the turmoil. It turned out to be a greater task than I’d anticipated.
In the Land of the Lost—the name I’d designated the gray world—pieces of me slowly chipped away. Thomas had been right about the Curse finding weaknesses and hitting them. It was as if the bloody thing knew which parts of me were shaking and rocked the foundation that much harder.
What was worse, Thomas wasn’t there to comfort me upon the abrupt exits from this world. He had to be out chasing Demon lore and clues with Raven and the rest of the gang while I lay up in my apartment wallowing in misery and self-pity and feeling worse with every tick of the clock.
Seven days of darkness was what Leonard Boyce had prescribed, and if I’d known when he’d uttered the words how taxing it all would be I may have taken his threat more seriously. It was a wonder what a little lack of power could do to a “civilized” society hooked on technology. As the fourth day drew closer to an end, the light leaking out of the sky over Grant City, and the fifth night of darkness descended, I could do little but writhe in agony atop my old mattress, springs poking into my back and ghosts haunting my subconscious.
I was only aware of the time because of the rectangle of light that slanted in through the single window in my studio apartment. I watched the sunlight make a slow progression across the floor, losing luster with each passing hour.
The cycle inspired by the Curse carried on in this fashion: Wake up sweaty and panting from a nightmare where my personal hell was fabricated and glance around in terrified confusion while trying to catch my breath as reality settled back in. Next, I would writhe in pain for a while on the bed, teeth gritted and muscle spasms wracking me like a done dish. Finally, this would exhaust me and I would slip back into that fitful sleep where the inhabitants chased me from place to place like an angry mob with pitchforks.
Of course, that would make me the monster.
Following this array of fun events, the process would loop back and start over, a circle that went round and round.
Currently, I was back in the Land of the Lost, only I was not in Grant City. I wasn’t, in fact, in the human world at all, but one I thought I would never see again. I recognized the place immediately, as I would for as long as my soul persisted. It played too large a role in all my childhood fantasies to ever be forgotten, and even in this pale, poor-man’s version of the place, the familiar feelings it carried came with it.
The Fae Forest. I was in the Fae Forest.
My chest ached and my stomach twisted in a yearning sort of way, as it always had upon visits here. Just like the Land of the Lost’s version of Grant City, this version of the Fae Forest lacked any auras and signs of life. The geography was the same; ancient trees that looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss story, with fluffy, cotton candy-like canopies and thick, ash-colored trunks. A dense screen of fog floated above the ground, shrouding my calves and ankles and giving the illusion that I was floating on air. This fog, I knew, was usually fuchsia in color, but in this dead version of the Fae Forest, it was the dull gray of fog in the human world.
Normally, my senses would be full of the chirping and clicking of insects, the rustling and rooting of smaller animals and birds. Auras would be exploding from everywhere; greens from the earth and plant life, oranges and reds and sapphires from the pixies and forest creatures. Fae children would be dashing by, their auras like shooting stars the color of rainbows, their giggles and chortles drifting between the branches to reach ears that are keen enough to sense them.
But this was not the Fae Forest I remembered. Everything here was as gray as it was in that other Grant City, no life to speak of save for myself.
And, yet, it was hard to be here. I’d forgotten how much I’d missed it. I’d forgotten what it was like to truly be home.
I wandered, my feet carrying me through the forest as my heart ached dully in my chest. The last time I’d been here, it had been to see to the death of Tristell, the former evil Fae Queen, in an attempt to avenge my mother’s death. I’d succeeded in helping a certain Sorceress in taking out Tristell, and even though the Fae Queen had been a tyrant in need of meeting her end, many Fae would see what I’d done as traitorous, a crime against my own kind.
Then again, as a Halfling, most Fae didn’t even consider me their “kind”, so they could just shove that judgment where the sun didn’t shine.
Though some part of me had to have anticipated it, it still caught me across the jaw when she landed between the trees just before me. She was just as I remembered her. Her enormous feathered wings folded to tuck behind her, losing a velvety blue feather or two that floated down and disappeared in the fog covering the forest floor as they did so. Her skin was as smooth as porcelain, with an ethereal quality unique to full Fae kind—a kind of shimmer that sat over the skin, not perceptible to human eyes. Her dress was the flowing, multi-colored material made from the leaves of the Fae Forest, her feet bare and toes clawed into talons that were made for hunting and perch-grip.
Her face was like an old photograph, a memory that can only be accessed upon stern concentration, and slips away as soon as it returns. It stole my breath away, looking right at her, transferred me to another place, another time.
“Mother,” I said, the word slipping through my lips in a whisper.
Her head tilted in the birdlike fashion of the Fae, her slanted eyes pinning me. My first instinct had been to run toward her, to fling myself into her arms and hold on tight, but as she looked at me now, I realized this would not be that kind of reunion—that this was the fulfilling of a nightmare, not a dream.
As I watched, my mother’s beauty began to decay, the aura around her dimming like a light bulb on its last leg. Her smooth skin cracked like fine china, as if the moisture was being sucked out of her. Her face twisted into something terrible. Her lips formed harsh lines and her brow furrowed into an angry sneer.
I stood helpless, too horrified to move, too shocked to scream. My hands shook, wanting to find a way to hold her together against the invisible force that was pulling her apart. My throat went tight enough to choke, my eyes burning with tears that tracked not only down my cheeks, but also across my soul.
My mother’s mouth unhinged, and in a voice that was not quite hers, she said, “You. It’s because of you.”
I shook my head, the air rushing out of me in a sob. I didn’t have to ask what she meant. I knew.
“I didn’t mean to,”
I told her, the words coming out in a pleading gasp.
“It’s because of you that they killed me,” she continued. “If not for you, I would still be alive.”
Now the tears were flowing like rivers, etching deep trenches as they went.
“It’s not my fault,” I pleaded. “I didn’t ask to be what I am.”
“But you are, Aria,” my mother snapped, taking two steps toward me in a manner that could only be described as menacing. Then, she said something that struck a cord with me so deep that I felt my insides shake. “You were never my little angel. You were my little curse, and if not for you, everything would have been different.”
To this, there was nothing to say. I didn’t even bother searching for words, let alone my voice. In the other nightmarish encounters, I’d run or fought back. In this one—this nightmare that hurt past the threshold of pain any single creature should be allowed—I could only crumble.
And I had a feeling that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men wouldn’t be able to put me together again.
***
I bucked, crying out, but found my body suspended, trapped. My eyelids seemed to work, so I blinked several times, trying to pull my mind back to reality to see what had seized me so. When I saw that I was back in my apartment on my bed, I relaxed and took a breath.
I found I could move again, whatever had grabbed me releasing its hold, and I lifted my head to see that I was not alone.
And it was not Thomas Reid or Sam who was with me. It was Surah Stormsong, the Sorceress Queen.
She sat beside me on the bed, the picture of perfection, as always. Her lavender hair had grown much longer since I’d last seen her, her face as untouched by time as a teenager’s despite her many centuries of years. She was dressed in her usual attire, a cloak of the finest material draped over her shoulders, an arsenal of weapons hiding beneath its folds. A smile lit up her beautiful face as she stared down at me, her hand held out over me, no doubt having just released a Binding Spell that likely saved her from a right hook across the jaw, like the one Thomas had received.
