“Why?” Allie said she had no idea, but she had to figure out something before anything else came in to die. “You’re thinking that there is a draw here. That something or someone is bringing the animals here so that they can die. It’s a sound theory. I like it.”
He tried to call his cat, and it made him nervous that he couldn’t even feel him there like he’d never been a cat turned shifter at all. Which made him think that perhaps he might not be able to shift because he’d been cat to man. Sampson told Allie what he thought.
“So, if I were a shifter, then perhaps I would know if there was a draw here to lure these animals. It’s really too bad that I can’t. I mean, that would tell us something anyway.” Sampson told her that she might be able to, that Harper had been able to shift after her and Bryant were married. “Okay, so all I have to do now is figure out how to shift, right?”
“Wait. I want us to be careful about this. What if as soon as you’re a cat, you go right to the water? Then what do we know? We’ll know a little, but nothing more. So when you shift, I’m going to be holding onto you. So that, I don’t know, I can slow you down from tasting the water.” When she nodded, Sampson held onto her tightly and told her to think about her cat. “She would be right there for you. Just let her see that you’re ready and then let her do the rest.”
“What a fucked up time to be shifting for the first time.” He laughed when she did. They were both terrified about what could happen. “All right. I can see her. I’m going to shift right now.”
As soon as she shifted, Sampson knew that things weren’t going to come out the way that they’d hoped. Letting the form that she shifted into go, he looked at the image of Aurora. She was superimposed over Allie. Not sure what he was to do, Sampson did what he’d done all his life when the queen was nearby—he bowed low to her.
“I don’t know how much time I have here. Please stand, Sampson. The water is killing the land too. Did you figure that out?” He said that they’d not gotten that far yet. “You can heal it. Or Allie can. Just tell her to use—”
When she was gone, Sampson had to body slam Allie to keep her from going to the water as her tiger. Holding her down, he tried to think about what Allie had to use to fix the water. Holding her back was becoming too hard while he was thinking too, so he ordered her to shift. It might have gone well in the outside world, but she attacked him when he yelled at her.
It took him several long and painful moments while he held her. She cut into his back as well as his face a few times before he was able to get her down again. Smacking her on the nose, he finally got her to look at him when he ordered her again to shift. Christ. He laid back on the dirt and filth while she laid there, panting after becoming herself again.
“That hurt.” He told her he was sorry for hitting her. “Not that. That did hurt, but not like fighting to stay a cat when all I wanted to do was what you told me to do. The need to go to drink that shit was so powerful that it made my brain hurt to try not to. I could hear this voice, like a soft melody, telling me that the water was life giving. That to drink from it would not only give me magic, whatever that might have been, but I would have been invincible to all man.”
“Aurora was here. I mean, for a few minutes, she was you. Or the other way around. She was trying to tell me that you could fix the water. Because the water is what supplies the much needed sustenance to the plants and trees, healing the water would make it so that all this was healed.” Allie asked him what she was supposed to use. “I haven’t any idea. I did think of the sword, but that might not be it. She said that you could heal it.”
Reaching for the sword, she held it over her head. He didn’t know what she was planning, nor what would happen when she did it. Standing up, Sampson stood behind her, holding her body as close to his as he could while she plunged the sword into the water’s edge.
As soon as the water was stirred up, the smell of it rancid and smelling of death, he gagged a little but didn’t let her go. Opening one eye when Allie started cursing, he started to laugh.
Letting Allie go when she was laughing too, the two of them must have looked a sight. Standing near some nasty, shit-smelling water with dead animals lying around them like some kind of sacrificial spell, they were both laughing like loons.
“Well,” he started between bouts of laughter, “I guess the sword wasn’t it. I guess we’ll have to think of something else. Or you could just jump in buck naked and see if that works.”
“No, thanks.” She leaned over the water, tears streaming down her face from still laughing. “I think I’d rather roll in dog shit than to even dip my toe in that stuff.”
One of her tears rolled off her cheek and hit the sword, and ran down the length of it. As he watched, a burst of color came from the tear on its long journey, which had him pulling Allie away from both the water and the sword. The colors were so brilliant in the darkness of the void that he didn’t realize what it was doing until Allie pointed it out to him.
“There is no color, Sampson. It’s not a void, but it’s devoid of color. The water sucked it out of here.” He noticed then that the colors were touching the land surrounding the water. “Look at the water, Sampson. It’s boiling, I think.”
The tear finally made its descent down the sword, and the water, no longer calm, started to burble and pop. It didn’t look like it was boiling—more like it was working something out of itself.
Holding onto Allie, they saw color starting to bleed into the trees. Leaves that had been dead looking were exploding with color. The dead seemed to be absorbed into the ground, something that he’d not noticed until now. The natural order to things was working.
The area around them was beautiful as blooms began to force their way out of the dirt. There was a thrashing sound like a great beast was coming for them when they saw Bryant barreling down on them as his cat. Harper was right behind him with a gun. As soon as they saw them, his brother and his wife watched the show too. The wonder was just too mesmerizing not to have a look at it coming back to life.
Chapter 6
Buck watched his family as they sat in stunned silence around the table. It was only a minute or two after noon, but no one seemed to be in any kind of hurry to have some lunch. When Harper stood up, the men, all of them, looked to her for answers. Little Allie was still sitting there like she’d been hit between the eyes and left right there on his couch to heal up.
“Now that it’s nearly healed, I’ve asked Aurora to go and find out what happened. She said that she’d take her armed men with her just in case.” When Harper began to pace, no one said a word. She’d been doing that, pacing the floor, since he’d met her. “The pond is clear as if it was just poured out of the faucet. I saw it when it was healing, I guess you’d call it, and I can’t believe the transformation.”
“We were laughing.” Harper asked Allie what she’d said. “Sampson and I were laughing when my tear fell into the water. Not directly, you see, but down the blade of the sword that I was given. I think that the tears of laughter, along with the magic of the sword, are what brought it all back to life. Why? I don’t know. It would be easier, I guess, to figure that out when we know what the land was killed for.”
Aurora appeared in the room, and Buck was happy to see her. She’d have them some news, and they’d be able to move on from it. As it was now, all they had were guesses, and Buck didn’t much care for guessing games when his family was involved.
“The land is completely healed. Not only that, but there are animals there now that I’ve only seen at the palace.” Sampson asked her if there were small dragons and unicorns there. “Yes. How did you know?”
“When the water was cleaning itself, there were odd skulls and skeletons coming up from what I can only guess was the bottom.” Aurora said that the land there had been, at one time, a place where all manner of creatures could go. “You know what caused this, don’t you?�
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“I do. I’m sure that, if given time, you would have been able to figure it out on your own as well. It was the Millers.” Buck didn’t even look at Harper. It wasn’t her fault, and he wasn’t going to be pointing fingers at her now either. “Before, when I was trying to figure out where they got their magic to lure my faeries to them, I had no idea who had given them their magic. Now I know. It was a witch by the name of Helen.”
“Helen of the Dale.” He looked at his wife when she spoke. “I knew her. Long ago. She had something wrong with her. I can’t rightly remember what it was now, but an affliction that kept her from being able to walk far. It was said that she was powerful, but few people would get near her to find out. She had a bit of a temper too.”
“That would be her. Helen has been murdered by Margaret. Her scent is all over her dead body. Now that the land is healed, Helen will no longer be a part of it.” Buck wondered why, but before he could ask, Aurora explained. “As a witch, she would have been welcomed into the earth. But since she was working with the Millers to make the land sick, she would no longer be welcome. The money that she’d been paid was still upon her body. I can have it returned to you if you should wish it.”
“No, thanks. Leave it with her.” Harper shivered. “Okay, we know the who and the how, but what we don’t know is the why. Why would Margaret and Randal want to kill the land? I mean, there has to be a reason for it, don’t you think?”
“That was how she was able to lure the faeries to the land. When they would go there to help the land out, the Millers would capture them and kill the little ones. After a while, I guess after they were dead, the killing magic was no longer being redone, so the land and the area around it just continued to get sicker and sicker. The faeries no longer went there either, as the land was no longer any place they could go. So, without my people there to heal it on occasion, the land became what you saw today. Nothingness.”
“You were there, only for a moment or two. How did you manage that? By the way, I have your sword now. I couldn’t give it to you looking the way it did after it healed the water.” Aurora smiled at Allie and told her that no one else could use the sword now that it had bonded with her. “But it was mine only to use to help you. It did, and I’m glad to return it to you.”
“Nay, ‘tis yours to use. I have a feeling that you will find some uses for it, my child. As you and Sampson will with the extra magic that keeps you from being harmed.” Aurora laughed a little. “I had no idea when I gave the extra magic to you both that it would become armor that would shield you. It was only a bit of magic to make you both stronger in the event that something came for you.”
“It seems like a really expensive gift, my lady. I don’t want to cause any trouble by getting something so priceless while the others don’t.” Aurora looked at him, and he knew in that moment that a test had been passed. “Did I do something wrong?”
“The sword would only go to someone that is truly kind. It never would have come to you in such a place had you not really needed it. But from what I’ve been told, you pulled it from the magic to use it to cut away the wild vines that were hanging over the gate. Then again, when you were trying to figure out the pond. You are worthy of such a gift, Allison Prince. There is no other that could have wielded it, such as you did. It is a gift, but not from me to you. The gift is knowing that someone truly wonderful has taken the sword to use.”
“Thank you, my lady. I promise you that I will take care of it for the rest of my days.” Aurora told her that she knew that she would. “I have to admit, however, that I don’t really understand what the deal was with the pond and the dead forest. I don’t know about the rest of these guys, but I’d like to understand. I guess so the next time—hopefully, there won’t be one—but we’ll be better equipped to take care of something like this.”
“I can do that. And like you, I hope nothing happens like this again. The Millers got with Helen to get a spell. I believe it was to kill the pond, or at the very least, for it to be ill. Once they were able to make it that way, the faeries would go there to heal it with their magic. For reasons that I cannot explain, they enjoyed harming the little creatures that do so much and would capture them. Tearing their wings from their bodies and then killing them.” Buck asked why the forest was dead. “Because I forbade the faeries to go there anymore. In that, after the Millers died and there were no more faeries going there, the waterway made its way to the rest of the land. If not for your help, I fear that it would have taken over most of the land before I could figure this out. I cannot thank you enough for your help in solving this for us.”
“It was nothing really. In fact, I learned a few things. Like, I can shift. That I’m not as afraid of everything as I used to be. I’m growing.” Everyone laughed, and Allie pulled something from her pocket. “By the way, I have a gift for you too. I mean, it’s not really a gift, but it was the first thing that I saw when the seeds were coming up from the ground. This was on it.”
The stone was no bigger than a nickel, but it was more beautiful than anything Buck had ever seen before. Aurora must have known what it was, as she barely made it to the chair before she collapsed on it. After she told them all she was well, she held the stone to her heart.
“It’s not a stone, but a seed. One that I’ve not seen in a very long time. This will...I cannot thank you enough for this. It’s been gone from this world for many a decade. I will have the gardeners take very good care of it.” Buck said that he hadn’t thought anything other than that she’d take care of it. “I’ve never hoped to see such a thing again. You’ve no idea how precious this is to all of us in the other kingdom.”
“I don’t know how it came to be there, but I’m thrilled that I was there to find it when it came up.” Aurora hugged Allie, and he could tell that the young miss was embarrassed a little. “I’ve not been hugged this much since I was living at home. I didn’t think that I’d like it, but you’re all starting to grow on me.”
They all laughed, and it did lessen the tension in the room a little. They were all nervous, at least he was. There was something about having a queen of any kind in your living room with your family. And this one being magical changed up things. What if you made her upset with you? With all her magic, she’d be able to snap you into next year if she wanted to. Or worse.
Afterward, Aurora left them after talking to them about the land. It would be used as a place for animals of her realm and theirs to go for a relaxing time. There would be no way for humans to be able to come upon the place. Nor would anyone with ill will in their heart be able to pass into the area, ever. It was about the safest place Buck could think of.
The phone ringing startled him. Buck hadn’t been aware that Sampson and Allie had a home phone. When Allie went to answer it, he asked his son about it. Sampson laughed when he started to explain.
“It’s for people that need to get in touch with us, and we don’t particularly want to talk to them. Not always, but usually, they’ll try our cells first, then the house phone. Allie and I have decided that when we’re home since you guys can get in touch with us anytime you wish, we’d not have our phones on us. It’s really saved us a lot of free time.” Buck thought that was a wonderful idea. “I did too when Allie told me. I have to tell you, Dad. I love just being able to spend time sitting around with Allie and not worrying about anyone calling to interrupt whatever we’re doing.”
“I might have a talk with your momma about that. We have a phone and cell phones too. I haven’t given out my number to that many people, and not to you guys at all, now that I think on it. But there isn’t any reason that we can’t have the same kind of pleasure.” He would too. Might even get them another number to give out to bozos that bothered them. “Yes, sir. It’s a good thing you got going here.”
They all stood up when Allie came back into the room. Even without feeling her emotions, Buck could tell that she was a might upset. W
hen Sampson took her into his arms, Buck wanted to hug them both. He’d bet anything that it had to do with that brother of hers.
“Howie told the judge that I was supposed to be getting him an attorney. I’m not, but he, Judge Downer, wants me to come into the pretrial hearing and tell him that for the record. As soon as I hung up from there, Bill told me that I had another message. It was from the prosecuting attorney. He wants to ask me some questions about my brothers and sister.” Sampson asked her what she wanted to do. “I want to help in the prosecution of Howie. Please don’t feel I’m doing the wrong thing here. You have no idea what sort of things the three of them have put me through.”
“None of us doubt that is where he belongs, dear.” Sara looked around the room, and each of them nodded to agree. “Now, you tell us what it is you need from us, and we’ll make sure that he never sees the light of day again. Also, I think one of the boys has been an attorney recently. Perhaps they can have a sit in with you.”
“I’d like that.” Harley said that he’d been an attorney about thirty years ago. “Would you mind sitting in with Sampson and me? I don’t want to take away from your work or anything.”
“You wouldn’t be. But I’d like to suggest you have a quick word with the attorney before you go and see your brother. Then you can tell him that you’re not able to help him because you’ve been working for the prosecutor. That way, hopefully, he’ll get that you’re not on his side at all.” Allie told him that it would be clear before she left him. “Good. I’m glad to have a front row seat to this. I have a feeling that it’s going to bring out the man that he really is.”
Buck had a feeling that even Allie didn’t know what sort of person her brother was. Sure, they’d been telling her all the things that he’d been thinking, but until she heard it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, it would only be hearsay. Straight from the mouth of someone like him would send it home what a real shithead he really was. Buck only hoped that it wouldn’t hurt her too badly. He had fallen in love with the little thing and hated to see any of them hurt.
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