Hidden Worlds

by Kristie Cook

  “In that, you’re wrong again,” I said. “I can’t just go home and forget about all this. This place. These people. My family. It’s my war, too, even if you don’t see it that way. I’m forever chained to the Land of Faerie, whether you like it or not. I’m here to stay.”

  I swung around and took to the worn path into the woods, heading down the road I’ve used many times. It was a familiar road, but it never felt comforting enough for me to stay in Faerie.

  Sary didn’t follow me after that. I wished she had. I wished she had fought harder to love me the way I knew she could, the way I loved her.

  But she didn’t, and I wouldn’t be turning back now. Even if I saw her again, this felt like a final goodbye.

  When she was out of sight and the thick of the forest surrounded me, I plucked a tiny blue orb out of my pocket. My heart was shattered, and I didn’t feel like seeing anyone, but I also didn’t feel like trekking the long way back home through Faerie with such sorrow plaguing my thoughts. I rolled the smooth stone in my hands until it turned a milky white before bringing it swiftly to my lips.

  “Hey, Camulus. I could use a bit of help here,” I whispered into the tiny orb.

  The elven-pixie traitor appeared in a vibrant flash before me, looking curious to find me asking him for help when I’d adamantly refused it before, but he bowed his head without so much as a protest at why he’d been summoned from the far-off Santiran Lands.

  “Can you take me home? My human home?” I asked. My gut was knotted up in a ball, and my voice croaked as I gave him my request. I straightened, hoping I didn’t look too pathetic.

  He bowed his head once more, never revealing any judgment against me. He held out his hand. “Of course, brother of Queen Shade. Just hold on.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven Worlds of Magic

  Worlds of Magic

  May 5th, 1703

  At times, the world is quiet, harmonious and still. These are the moments I try to relish as much as possible, because there are never enough of them. Moments when everyone is well, everything is taken care of and nothing is wrong with the ones I love. These are the days I long for when things go awry and life feel bleak and treacherous, much like the grey-laced skies before a torrential storm.

  Today is such a day, filled with a bluebird-colored sky without a cloud to mar it in any way. The children play with their games and laugh, letting their happy voices echo through our home. My wife tends to the fire and prepares dinner, singing that song that fills my mind up when she’s gone, even as death calls to me while I sit in my favorite rocking chair on our porch, observing the sun set over the tree tops and hearing my children play. I’ve made certain there are no other dark beings lurking, but there is no more time to discover the origin of the curse that steals my life force every waking moment.

  My son will inherit the Empyrean blade and shall pass it on to every firstborn male in our family. I pray it will keep them safe for generations to come. Its magic is pure and worthy of an elemental. I am proud to have it protect my loved ones when I am gone.

  There is no other moment in time I’d rather live in than this moment, and if I die today, I will die a most joyous man.

  ~Brendan

  There were no more journal entries in the grimoire. Even though I’d read it dozens of times by now, it still left me feeling lost because I didn’t know if my uncle died after that day or what had happened to him that was killing him. He lived in my mind forever now, like so many people I’d met along the way. Even though I’d never met him, he was as real as any other person and gave me a new goal to look forward to: discover who had waged the war to exterminate the elementals. Somehow, I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but at least I now knew why there were so few of us left.

  Time blurred into a mess of jumbled memories, candlelight and days locked in the Pyren, reading scroll after scroll. I could read them easily now with Braelynn’s spell still working for me. It was a good thing, because reading and studying the scrolls ate up the hours well enough as it was.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t much else in the scrolls that hadn’t been revealed in the grimoires, so I found very few new spells I could get any use out of. Still, wasting my time was the only thing I could do to keep my mind occupied and unnoticing of the endless hours.

  Sometimes it sucked being all alone.

  I flicked the lights back on in my house as evening morphed into nightfall. The grey of the days outside filled me up with the perfect amount of glum to match my mood. It wasn’t that I didn’t have tons to do—there were still hundreds of escaped Unseelie still wandering about the world that I could track down and either imprison and ship off to Oran, or exterminate. No, I just didn’t care.

  A knock on my door jerked me back to the present as I reached into the fridge for another cold can of Coke. I listened for a moment and wondered who could be visiting me. Unseelie couldn’t get through the barrier dome my family had set up before my mother died. Humans could walk through it since they lacked any magic and were barely a threat, but other faeries? Only those who’d been invited there before could return, and only when I was in residence. Otherwise, the dome didn’t allow anyone access.

  I headed toward the door and peered out through the peephole, curious about my visitor. Rylan stood there shifting on his feet. Rylan, nicknamed Soap, was a friend of Shade’s and a good friend to me, too.

  I unlocked the bolt and swung the door open to greet him.

  “Hey, man.” Soap grinned and held out his hand. I gave him mine, expecting a shake, but he pulled me into a firm, manly hug with a rough pat on the back. Once he let me go, I moved to let him pass, and the scent of the forest, freshly cut grass and wildflowers followed him in as he stepped into the living room.

  Faeries had some permanent nature smell to them. It always surprised me when I’d been away from Faerie for a while, and it took some getting used to. Soap had lived in our house for a time when he and Shade had dated. I often wondered how he felt about her leaving him for Dylan, but he hadn’t sulked too long and appeared cozy the last time I’d seen him with Brisa, Shade’s best friend, around his neck. Now I wasn’t sure what was going on between the two. Brisa was a pretty girl, but I’d always found her too harsh with words for my taste. I liked girls who were confidant but not overbearing.

  “How’s the hermit life treating you?” He sat on the couch, sprawling his arms along the back and crossing his foot over a knee, looking quite comfortable. I took the recliner, which used to be Shade’s favorite spot but was now all mine. Everything in the house was mine now. For a while, it’d been fun to be the master of my own domain, but the novelty had worn off quickly.

  “It’s fine,” I answered. “What brings you here? The Scren Palace suffocating you?”

  Rylan laughed. His long, golden-brown hair was tied back and ran down to past his mid-back. He had all sorts of crap laced through it, too. Thin braids, shells, trinkets. He reminded me of a caramel-headed Jack Sparrow. I wondered how he was able to walk about as silently as he did. It was truly baffling.

  “Nah. I don’t hang around there much.” His eyes drifted off into the distance and flicked toward the TV I’d left on mostly for background noise. I never watched it.

  “I hear ya.” I placed my soda on the dusty wooden table between the couch and recliner. “Want a drink?”

  “Yeah, man. I’ll grab it.” Rylan hopped to his feet before I could even think about getting up, so I let him get his own can. I stared at the screen where an old rerun of a long-running game show was playing, the one where contestants spun a wheel and tried to guess a word or phrase. It was perfect to zone out to, but Rylan returned before I could even guess what word they were trying to figure out.

  “So what brings you down here?” I asked.

  Rylan snapped the can open and took a long swig. “Man, I miss soda. It’s one of my favorite things about visiting the human realm. I just got back from the Eastern states after cleaning up a mess of Unseelie there.”

&
nbsp; This piqued my interest. “How’d that go? I got into a nest of them just around here. Can you believe that crap? Right here, near my house.” I shook my head, still steaming about Oran’s tribe.

  “Yeah, Shade filled me in. Sorry to hear about Anna, but I’m sure she’ll hold her own against Oran. When’s the wedding?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m sure Shade will definitely remind me about it. She’ll make sure I attend.”

  Rylan grinned as he finished off his soda. “Yeah, she’ll keep you on your toes.” He sighed and lay back onto the fluffy couch. “I kind of missed this place, though it was sure more alive with Shade here.” He sounded sad and less like the mostly happy Rylan I’d gotten to know in the past.

  “Hey, how’s Brisa doing?” The small talk was exhausting, but I figured there wasn’t anything better to do.

  He slumped even more. “Good. She’s back at college now. She’s adamant on finishing her degree and becoming a pediatrician. After working as an intern volunteer for a couple weeks, she said it was her calling. I haven’t gotten to see her much since she enrolled in pre-med. She’s always pretty busy. Frankly, I think the world of Faerie freaked her out.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t blame her. “Yeah. It’s not for everyone. Especially non-magics. Even with the sight.”

  He crushed the can between his palms. “So the real reason I came here was to drag you out of this misery pit.”

  I huffed. “Hey, I’m just taking a break, man.”

  “I know. But you’ve got to get out of this gloomy place.” He took a look around and shook his head.

  “Sary sent you, didn’t she?” I asked. My flat voice came out dry and bitter. Damn, how had I become so jaded?

  Rylan frowned. I was on to him. He wasn’t used to humans not falling for his persuasive tricks. His glamour tricks and charms failed miserably on me.

  “Close, but not quite.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Don’t try it on me, Soap. You know just as well as I do that elementals don’t fall for faerie glamour stuff. Just don’t already.” I sighed and rubbed my face as Rylan tapped his fingers on his thigh. “All right. Who sent you then?”

  He perked up and pulled a mirror from a small sack dangling from his belt. I hadn’t even noticed it before and was pretty sure he had a shrinking spell on it and kept all his gear in it.

  He waved his hand over the mirror and placed it onto the coffee table. A bright beam of light shot out of it, up toward the ceiling, and flickered a few times before the image of a teenaged girl appeared.

  I inhaled sharply. It was a faint image, and it flickered in and out constantly, but I knew who it was. I’d met her before—twice actually—but just briefly. The hologram showed her smiling at me and waving, running fast down a sidewalk. Seeing her again made me feel suddenly better, less dreary and more energetic. That is, until I realized the only reason Rylan would show me her photo was because she was in mortal danger.

  “That’s Zena. How do you know her?”

  I turned to face Rylan, who was sitting up and looking at me with a very interested expression on his face. I wondered why it was that he’d waited to tell me exactly why he was there. It heightened my suspicions, but I held back my tongue so I could hear him out first.

  “I’m sorry to have to ask you to help us after all you’ve been through, but I was asked to find her.”

  “Who asked?” I crossed my arms, worn out by all the faery runarounds.

  Rylan’s frown made me feel bad for being so rude.

  “Her mother is looking for her. I ran into her on a routine stakeout of Unseelie activity down south. She and her mother have the sight but are both human.”

  “So how’d she know you’d be able to help her?”

  He shrugged. “I have no idea, but she was wearing a strange stone around her neck. I think it wards off evil ones.”

  My thoughts ran back to the green stone around Zena’s neck. “Zena had one, too, but it didn’t keep a night elf from tracking her.”

  “Where’d you last see her?”

  “Vegas. But I had to mind wipe her.” A sudden guilt hit me as I remembered I’d promised to help keep her safe after the ordeal with Oran ended. I’d already broken it. Crap.

  “Unfortunately, I don’t have the right kind of help. I need a human warrior to track and find her,” Rylan said. I groaned quietly but didn’t say a word. “Will you help me?”

  The girl’s projection flickered again. Her eyes seemed to call to me. Then the image broke up and dissipated. Where her beautiful face had once been was now empty air. Rylan cursed and shook the mirror. It had malfunctioned somehow, leaving me to wonder what was going on with it. I thought faery magic was a bit more stable than that.

  Finally, I straightened once more and spoke. “Okay. I’ll help, but don’t make me regret this.”

  Rylan gave up on the mirror projector and threw me a wide, toothy grin. “Awesome! I can’t promise you anything, but you won’t regret helping. I swear it’ll be like old times hunting Unseelie, except we don’t have to execute her.”

  “Okay … that’s a relief.” His sense of humor was wacked.

  “Oh, there’s one more thing,” he said.

  I groaned and leaned back in the overstuffed chair. “All right, go ahead, hit me with it.”

  “I left the girl’s mother with Queen Aluse, the Raven Faery Queen, for protection.”

  I lifted my eyebrows in surprise and glanced at Rylan, who shrugged. I’d never met Aluse, but I’d heard many stories about her from my sister. From the look on Rylan’s face, there was more than one task at hand.

  “Okay. What do I have to do with that?”

  “She needs a curse broken on her younger brother, Trey, before we can help Zena’s mother. We need a warlock to do it.”

  Not much to go on there, but I didn’t want to make her wait. “Okay … how do I get to her?”

  “Our rides are waiting for us outside the dome.”

  He pocketed the mirror and muttered something about it not working right. I tossed him a questioning glance and decided it wasn’t worth pursuing. I slumped away to get my stuff together and refilled my travel pack. I also strapped my Empyrean blade snuggly onto my back. Finally ready, I followed him to the front door, and we both stared at it apprehensively. We’d been in too many battles to turn back, but it never made leaving into the unknown any easier.

  “Ready?” Rylan asked.

  “Always.”

  I reached out and unlocked the door, swinging it open to peer outside. Seeing nothing out past the dome’s boundary on our lawn, I shut and locked the door behind us before we stepped out onto the driveway, exiting the boundaries of my home and sanctuary. I glanced back one more time, mentally saying goodbye to the Pyren.

  As we crossed beyond the dome, two black-winged faeries slammed into the ground before us, making us both jump. They’d hidden in wait just at the edge of the dome. Their wingspans were wide, but they’d tucked them in behind their backs as they landed. Even so, the longest of their feathers dragged on the ground and appeared dusty from the dirt clinging to them. One was a woman with long, rich brown hair and tanned skin who gave me a flirty smile and lifted her eyebrows as she fluttered her pretty brown eyes at me.

  It was nice to see a pretty face in such desolate times. I hoped to find out more about her on the trip. I threw her an equally wide grin and waved. The other was a male with dark black hair cut just under his ears and equally dark eyes. Both looked like they worked out, encased in lean, hard muscle.

  I didn’t think the woman was Queen Aluse. She’d never come fetch a person herself. She was a queen who could send an underling to pick up a person. I turned and sent my magic toward the barrier, reinforcing the protection spell. Satisfied it would hold while I was gone, I faced the beautiful winged faery again.

  “Hi,” I managed to say, holding out my hand. “I’m Benton.”

  She threw me another flirty smile. “I’m Bibbette. I’ll have to hol
d you like this.” She opened her arms, inviting me in. I nodded and let the woman’s strong arms encircle my waist as she pressed herself tightly against my back. I glanced over at Rylan and took a deep breath.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t let you go,” she whispered close to my ear, sending a spark tingling through me. I hoped that was a promise.

  “Ready?” Her male counterpart asked.

  Rylan and I both nodded, ready to rejoin the world of magic.

  “Ready,” we answered.

  The End

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  Inescapable

  by

  Amy Bartol

  CHAPTER 1- MOVING DAY

  As I drive past the placid façade of Crestwood College’s stately clock tower, I realize that this is the building they refer to as Central Hall. It’s the trademark of the school, and they stamp its image on everything they use to represent them. My acceptance letter had been embossed with its seal. The scent of autumn drifts through my open window along with the deep, echoing bell from the clock as it tolls out the hour. The loud, desolate sound sends a chill over my skin. It is funny to me how something as harmless as a clock tower can be winsome and sinister at the same time.

  In the car behind me, my Uncle Jim gives me a couple of short honks of his horn. As I gaze at him in my rearview mirror, I see him gesturing for me to turn left at the next stop sign. His paranoia that I will miss the street to my dorm makes me smile, so I turn on my signal to relieve his anxiety. Crestwood’s campus has only a few streets; if I miss the turn, it won’t be fatal. If I manage to get lost here, then I don’t deserve the academic scholarship they gave me, I think to myself, using my mirror to refresh my lip-gloss.