“Are you not more worried about the fact that a stranger somehow transported you to a forest that looks dark enough to hide only the most horrifying creatures?” Lorelle asked.
The girl crossed her arms in front of her and shivered as she looked around the forest as if seeing it for the first time. Lorelle was sure that at any moment she would fall apart in tears begging to go home and then she’d have to knock a backbone into her. But the human surprised her.
“I’ve seen things that I can’t explain before, and I’ve learned that asking questions doesn’t mean you will always get answers. I’ve also learned that sometimes you will get an answer that you wished you’d never asked for. So I typically try to stay out of the know, if you know what I mean.”
Lorelle’s eyes narrowed on the girl. “What’s your name, healer?”
“Jewel,” she answered simply.
“Jewel what?” Lorelle snapped.
The girl looked down at the ground as if the grass suddenly was the most interesting thing in the world. She muttered something so soft that Lorelle didn’t hear her.
“It can’t be that bad,” she growled.
Finally Jewel looked up at her with a flash of defiance in her eyes, daring Lorelle to laugh at her. “Stone. Jewel Stone is my name.”
Lorelle stared at her for several seconds before she burst into laughter. “I was wrong, it is that bad,” she said through the chuckles that racked her body.
“It is not that funny,” Jewel stomped her foot. This only caused Lorelle to laugh harder. Finally after several minutes she composed herself and looked at the obviously ticked off healer.
“Well, Jewel Stone, if I were you I’d change my last name. That’s just a little free advice from me to you.”
“I would prefer some advice on how to get home. That’s what I really need to know. Not how hilarious you think my name is,” Jewel stated calmly, attempting regain her composure.
Lorelle’s brow rose as she finally began to see a little backbone rising up in the unassuming looking healer. “The best advice I can give you, healer, is to accept your fate. Sometimes in life we don’t get choices, this is one of those times. Enjoy your time in this forest because it is bound to be the most pleasant left in your short life.” Lorelle didn’t let her conscience be touched by the fear that flared up in the green eyes on Jewels pale, pretty face. Instead she let Volcan’s magic once again pull her, dragging her away from the forest and the frightened healer, to her next victim—to the next life she would destroy. She decided this time she wouldn’t ask for a name. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t need to know because knowing their name made them a person, made them somebody’s daughter, niece or sister.
Then again, maybe she was doing somebody’s sister a favor by taking their sibling away. Maybe their healer sister out shined them for all of their lives with her gentle nature and unpretentious ways. Maybe, just maybe, she would keep feeding herself her own crap and it would begin to taste like chocolate.
∞
“Do you think it was wise of us to leave Stella so soon after telling her about all of this?” Sally asked Peri as they stood outside a dilapidated old home in the Chicago suburbs. The entire neighborhood looked as though it could use a good coat of paint and the world’s largest lawn mower.
“Right now we don’t have the luxury of wisdom,” Peri said though not unkindly. “We have three more healers to rescue from the talon like clutches of my bitch of a sister and I can’t be holding a bottle out for these young healers while holding their hand and singing Hush Little Baby.”
Elle laughed as she stepped up beside the two women. “You’re descriptions always do get better the angrier you become.”
“Bite me, Elle,” Peri growled.
“That’s not my job, Peri, but I know someone who could assist you,” Elle winked at Lucian who was staring quizzically at the two. He was still confounded by their banter and had openly admitted that most of the time he simply ignored them.
“Are we going to do this or what?” Adam asked.
“Why, are you in a hurry to get back to your mate, Adam?” Costin asked with a chuckle.
“Like you wouldn’t be chomping at the bit to get back to Sally if she had been left behind,” Adam said with an unapologetic shrug.
Peri turned to look at the group behind her. She had made all of the males come with them on account of what Sally had explained to her about Stella and left Crina with the two new healers, knowing she could handle them if need be. She stared at the four huge, devastatingly handsome men and frowned. They weren’t very inconspicuous in the rundown neighborhood as their beauty, and that’s what it was, shone like polished copper against tarnished silver. “Can you all please quit your incessant griping for five minutes so we can get this thing done? I swear it’s like dragging three year olds across the damn globe while they scream I want my lollipop.”
“Well, she is lickable,” Adam mumbled.
There was a snort of laughter from the other males, including Lucian, which earned them all a glare from the females.
“Ladies, the men obviously need time to mature, so why don’t we go in and save the day while they deal with their thirteen year old libidos.” Peri motioned for the girls to follow her, ignoring Costin’s response of, “It’s more like sixteen year olds, if you want to be accurate.”
“Sally, that one is yours,” Peri huffed.
“At the moment I don’t claim him,” Sally said as she tried not to laugh.
“That’s not what you were singing this morning, Sally mine,” Costin’s rich voice whispered in her mind.
“You shouldn’t dwell on the past, Costin Miklos, nothing good ever comes of it,” She teased back.
“I beg to differ. Every time I remind you of my past kisses, you give me more, and by more I don’t just mean kisses.”
Sally choked as she felt her mate’s hands in places not appropriate for a mate’s hands to be while rescuing a girl from the clutches of evil.
“Costin, I swear if your mate falls over in the throes of ecstasy I will declaw you and let Jen neuter you,” Peri called out as she reached the door.
“How does she always know?” Costin asked as the males joined them on the porch.
Lucian chuckled. “She’s just that good,” he answered with pride in his voice.
“Shh,” Peri held her finger up, hushing the males though she sent Lucian a caress of affection through their bond, pleased by his praise. She pushed the unlocked and unclosed door open slowly. As she stepped into the room she didn’t have time to react before Sally gasped and the males all snarled.
“Is that blood?” Elle asked as she stepped closer to the wall. Sorin was by her side as his instinct to protect her took over. He and the other males, besides Adam, had their noses in the air trying catch any scents that might tell them something of what had happened in the home. Adam roamed through the house checking to see if there was anyone present and when he returned back to the main room where the group still stood staring up at the defiled wall, he shook his head at Peri.
“Dammit!” Peri shouted as her power surged though her along with anger and a sense of failure that she was not accustomed to. Lucian took her chin in his hand and pulled her face up to look at him. His steel colored eyes stared intently down at her as he spoke. “This is not your fault. You expect too much of yourself.”
“I’m supposed to save them Lucian. It is my job to save them,” she told him almost desperately.
“I know, love, and we will. We will get her back. That is what I am for, remember?” He pressed a kiss to her forehead before looking back up at the wall. “Adam, get me something from the girl’s room please,” he told the fae.
When he returned Lucian took the shirt Adam handed him and he sniffed it, then he stepped up to the wall and sniffed the blood. “It’s not hers.”
Peri and the others let out the breaths they had been holding.
“What does it mean?” Sally asked.
&nb
sp; Peri read it out loud as she thought about the words.
“You freed one, but in doing so, you condemned the world. He has returned, though he never truly left. I will take what you think is yours, and you will pay for all you have done to me.”
“I feel like one of us should whisper He Who Must Not be Named has returned,” Sally mumbled.
“What is with you Americans and your movies?” Elle asked.
Sally shrugged. “How else can you enter a fairy tale, fight in an epic battle, or win the hot guy?”
Elle gave her a pointed look.
Sally looked sheepishly at her mate and then back to Elle. “I’m sort of living that aren’t I?”
Elle held up her hand with her forefinger and thumb slightly a part as if to say, just a tad.
“You’re sister sucks at rhyming,” Adam told Peri.
“Rhyming would have been a tad more dramatic,” Peri agreed. After reading it one more time Peri raised her hand and ran it through the air in front of the wall and, just like that, the blood, and dooming words were gone as if they had never been.
“We shouldn’t linger here, Peri,” Lucian told her softly in his deep rumbling voice.
She nodded. “You’re right. Sally, where’s the next one. Let’s just keep going. If we go back to Farie we’ll linger too long and then my soon to be bloody sister will snatch another one out from under us.”
Sally closed her eyes and sifted through the memories she and Rachel had been getting from the healers they were searching for. She smiled. “We’re going home.”
“To Romania?” Peri asked as her brow creased.
“Bigger than that,” Sally smiled.
The rest groaned. “Seriously, we have to go to Texas?” Adam huffed along with the others as they had heard Sally talk about Texas enough to want to beat their heads against a longhorn, or whatever it was she was always talking about.
“What?” Sally asked innocently. “Everything’s bigger in Texas.”
“Bloody hell not this again,” Peri snatched arms and motioned for Elle and Adam to do the same. “Show me where we are going in your beloved Texas Sally so we can get there and get out before my own ego grows out of control just from being in that blasted state.”
Costin grinned wickedly. “Wait if your ego will grow just from being in that state does that mean my…,”
“Shut it wolf,” Peri snapped and then looked at Sally expectantly.
“You can see in my mind?” Sally asked.
“Not usually but your mind is so open right now that if you think something directly to me I will get it,” she explained quickly to her.
Costin growled at the idea of one more person have access to his mate’s mind, but Peri ignored him. She didn’t have time to placate jealous wolves at every turn.
Peri waited as Sally closed her eyes and sent her the image. Peri shared it with Adam and Elle and then they were gone, leaving the sorrowful looking house in worse condition than when they had arrived. For a mother would now come home to that house to find her greatest fear realized, a child gone without a trace and without any hope of returning.
∞
Heather Banks stood on the front porch of her small home as the Texas heat beat down on her. Even the wind only brought warm air that did nothing to sooth her overcooked skin. She was convinced she was keeping Burt’s Bees Body Butter in business with the speed in which she used it only to turn around and buy more.
“Another day in paradise,” she mumbled to the tumbleweeds that she was sure were rolling by. The land around her had once smelled of rich, green grass, fragrant blooming wild flowers and that little underlying hint of fertilizer, and not the bagged kind. Now all she smelled was dirt, dead things, and more dirt. The drought had been hard on all God’s creatures in this part of Texas, whether human or otherwise. For months not a drop had fallen from the sky, and she knew the small town of Shady Grove wasn’t the only place affected. She tilted her head up to the sky and prayed that God would have mercy on them, if only for a few minutes. She imagined the angels looking down at her and remembered how her mama use to tell her that when it rained it was the angels tears as they wept for the lost souls of men. Heather wondered as she stood with her face aimed at heaven if the lack of rain meant no souls were being lost, or if the angels were just tired of weeping over so many. Then, not for the first time, she thought, is there something more? Her eyes closed and her heart ached for what she did not know. “There’s got to be something more,” she whispered so only the angels heard.
She heard the familiar sound of tires crunching her rock driveway and smelled the gas fumes of the old Chevy as her longtime friend pulled up. By the sounds of the prancing paws in the back, Cheryl had only brought three dogs with her this time. She heard the door slam and the tailgate creak as it opened.
“One, two, three,” she counted as the paws hit the ground and smiled at being right.
“Why in seven hells are you standing out in this heat cooking like a Ball Park on a weenie roast when you have a perfectly good air conditioner inside?” Cheryl hollered more loudly than necessary. Then again, Cheryl did everything more loudly than necessary.
“Oh come on Cheryl, it’s a beautiful day! The sun is shining and the birds are singing,”
“I know you’re blind, Heather, but ya ain’t stupid,” Cheryl interrupted.
Heather laughed. “Okay so it is hotter than Hades in August in South Texas, how’s that?”
“Gettin’ there,” Cheryl huffed.
“So who’d you bring me today?” Heather asked as she knelt down and held her hand out. She felt wet noses against her hand and arm and once they had her scent she reached out and ran her fingers through each dog’s fur.
“I’ve got Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea; they’re all Australian shepherd mixes.”
Heather rolled her unseeing eyes. “They do realize that this is Texas right?”
“We just train ’em, we don’t name ‘em. You know that, Heather,” Cheryl chided.
“That, and make fun of their name choices,” Heather said with a shake of her head. She stood back up and stretched her arms over her head. “Suppose we better get started.”
“Well, their names aren’t getting any better with us just standing here like blooming idiots.”
Heather followed after Cheryl and the three dogs, counting under her breath only by habit now. She didn’t need to count to know where the training building was from her house, she could do it in her sleep. She snorted to herself at that thought, because without her sight sometimes it felt like she was doing things in her sleep.
She felt the cool air of the building the minute Cheryl opened the door and the familiar smell of the many and varied dogs that had passed through her door. She smiled as she heard the excitement in her three current students as Cheryl let them lose to get some of the energy out of their systems. Dogs were a lot like children; they listened better if you just let them run it out.
“So where are they at in their training?” Heather asked.
Cheryl was just about to answer her when the training room door opened and the warm air blew in bringing with it a strange and oddly scented group of people.
Heather’s head snapped around as she heard the shuffling of feet and smelled the distinct musk of men, feminine smell of women and a tiny hint of fur. She started to take a step in the intruder’s direction but was stopped when Cheryl put a hand on her arm.
“What can we do for ya?” Cheryl asked the group. She watched as a brown eyed, brown haired beauty stepped forward and smiled with all the innocence of a bunny rabbit. Cheryl would have believed it except for the fox at her back. The man that stepped up behind her was tall, built as they say in Texas like a bull bought for studding, and inhumanly handsome. His narrowed eyes spoke that of a predator, and any on the other side of that woman was his prey.
“We’re sorry to interrupt,” the girl spoke and they heard the Texas lilt in her voice. “My name is Sally, and this here,” she poin
ted to the fox, “is Costin my ma—,” she paused then seemed to correct herself, “husband. We wanted to talk to Heather if we could.”
“You sound awful young to be married,” Heather spoke up. Her heartbeat sped up and she used all of her senses to reach out and “see” who it was that had entered her training building. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was her “something more.”
“Well, he hit me over the head and drug me into his cave, so what could I do?” Sally joked.
Heather relaxed just a bit, though Cheryl didn’t remove her hand from her arm.
“What do you want to talk about? Do you have dogs that need training?”
There was a burst of feminine laughter and Heather turned her head slightly as if to look at Cheryl. “Am I that funny or do I have a boogger or something on my face?”
“Pfft, please, Heather if you could see this bunch you would not be asking me that. They’re not,” she paused and then finally finished as their laughter died down, “normal.”
Chapter 11
“I can see your face with the touch of my fingertips. I can feel your breath though you’re a world away. I can hear your voice clearer than the purest tone. I can smell your skin sweeter than the richest morsel. I know you. My heart sees you better than my eyes ever could.” ~ Heather
“We do not have time to deal with the human, love,” Lucian purred through their bond.
“Does everything you say have to sound as though you’re about to have your way with me?” Peri asked irritated at her reaction to him, especially when she needed to be paying attention to the matter at hand.
“I promise you that when that time comes you will have no doubt of my intentions, now please deal with the human so that we can abandon this place before you sister graces us with her presence.”
“Good grief, give you males a little bit of power and suddenly you’re giving the orders,” Peri muttered under her breath before she flashed right in front of Cheryl. She looked the startled woman in the eyes and said, “I do apologize for this because you will have one hell of a headache when you wake up.” She touched wide eyed Cheryl’s forehead and as her body began to crumple Peri slowed its decent so that the human didn’t hurt herself. Then she turned to Heather who was looking right at Peri, though Peri knew the woman couldn’t see her.
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