by Jessica Grey
Briar Rose had lost; she had known it for some time, and now she recognized that Alex knew it too. Anger marred her perfect features. Alex knew that this could make or break them. Briar Rose could admit defeat and let the enchantment work itself out, or she could decide that if all was lost she would destroy the spell and Luke and Alex in the process.
“You cannot possibly understand what it has cost me, has been costing me for almost a thousand years. I am not going to let the polluted spawn of my sister conquer me after all this time.”
Alex tensed. Briar Rose was obviously seriously considering going with the “destroy it all” scenario. She could feel the magic in the air changing quickly from one frequency to another as Briar Rose ran through her options, calling up half a dozen spells in her mind and then discarding them. She must realize, as Alex had, that the backlash from dismantling the bed spell might damage her as well. The fae had invested so much of herself in the enchantment that it had become a part of her intrinsic magical makeup. Its destruction would, at the very least, leave her wounded and depleted of magic.
The attack, when it came, was ingenious. Instead of trying to directly take down Alex, Briar Rose instead tried to remove them all from the room. Alex felt the tendrils of the transporting spell trying to wrap around her, tugging at her. They were soft and insidious. Briar Rose wasn’t using her full power but trying to sneak the spell in without Alex noticing.
Alex waited until the last second to throw up a wall of protection around her and Luke. It was like playing a deadly game of cat and mouse. If she waited too long, Briar Rose would be able to strengthen her spell, pulling them out of the room and spiriting them to a location where she could attack them fully without laying waste to her precious enchantment. However, if Alex could play her cards right, she might get a moment, or even just a few seconds, alone with the enchantment. She wasn’t sure if she could appeal directly to it, but she desperately wanted to try.
Alex could feel the seeking strands of the spell beginning to tighten around her. As Briar Rose was preparing to strike, Alex put the full force of her magic into a protective covering for her and Luke. It flashed out of her, excited to be freed, running wild through her veins and out of her hands in a brilliant shimmering tumble. The wall it created around them was so powerful that the pulsing magic disturbed the air around them, blowing Alex’s hair wildly about her face.
Through the glittering, semi-transparent wall Alex could see the shock register on Briar Rose’s face right before her spell reached full power and she flickered out of the room—without Alex and Luke in tow.
As soon as Briar Rose disappeared, Alex pulled her power out of the protection spell and it crumbled to the floor in a million sparkling pieces that quickly faded.
“What just happened?” asked Luke, stunned.
“She’s coming back, any second.” Alex ran the remaining few steps to the enchantment. She could feel a faint heat coming off it, as it pulsed with ancient magic. “Quick, stand right by me. You need to be close when she comes back.”
Luke crossed to her side. “What are you going to do? What do you need me to do?”
“Plead my case directly to her enchantment. Just stay close.”
Alex had no idea what the etiquette for talking to magic was, or if there even was etiquette. She reached out her hand toward the spell and let her power flow out toward it. A strand of her magic, clear and bright, with sparks of white in its depths, coiled slowly around the nearest piece of Briar Rose’s spell, which sparked with dark rose red fire in return. The whispers that filled her mind were strange and otherworldly—magic talking to magic. She wondered briefly if many others had heard it happen. It struck her as an experience you wouldn’t want to repeat often. The pressure of that much power against her brain was dizzying.
She couldn’t understand everything that was being said, but she could feel the dark question, and then the disbelief, of the magic twisted into Briar Rose’s spell.
“Yes,” she answered it out loud. “She is deceiving you. The requirements of the original enchantment have been met.”
The spell’s magic recoiled as if it had been slapped. It seethed against her brain, the whispers overwhelming. It spoke in multiple voices, ancient and powerful. Over the centuries Briar Rose’s spell had harnessed power from many sources, and none of those threads of individual magic wanted to believe their mistress was lying to them.
Briar Rose reappeared near the door, this time entering the room with a force that sent a thunderclap reverberating throughout the small space. Her arms were already raised, ready to send the full force of her fury towards Alex. When she saw Alex standing with her hand touching the bed-spell, her magic intertwining with it, she let out a deep, primal scream of rage.
“Lex!” Luke cried in warning, but Alex had already rebuilt the wall of protection around them, this time including the bed spell behind the glittering power. She let every last piece of magic within her flow into the wall; the only part she held back was the strand that was communicating with the ancient enchantment.
The wall had re-formed just in time. The magic equivalent of Briar Rose’s scream of rage hit against it a split second after it was fully up. The wall bent inwards, as if made of rubber, than pushed the fae’s magic back. It washed through the room, darkening the air into a deep rose hue as it pulsed back out away from the wall. It was a frightening and awesome sight. Alex wasn’t sure what disturbed her most, the power Briar Rose had unleashed or the strength of her own protection spell.
Luke was apparently just as taken aback. He looked silently at Alex in awe and then slipped his hand back into her free one. As soon as his fingers locked with hers, she felt the pulse of her power alter slightly. The enchantment felt it too. Its strands pressed against the thread of magic she had sent out to it, the whispering voices pressed against her mind, questioning.
“Yes,” Alex spoke directly to the heavy, seething magic in front of her, trying to ignore the fact that she could see Briar Rose gathering herself for another attack out of the corner of her eye. “Yes. He is my true love. Free us.”
The enchantment paused, the moving strands halting in mid-air, considering. The word came through Alex’s mind as clearly as it had been spoken to her in English instead of the ancient language of magic. Proof.
She could see Briar Rose raising her hands again toward them, her mouth moving as she muttered a frantic spell. The fae’s face showed the strain she was under. Alex knew the next salvo coming at them would be intense, possibly overwhelming. Briar Rose was going to hold nothing back.
A deranged fae was trying to kill them, and the damn spell wanted proof. How do you prove that you love someone?
Luke squeezed her hand again. The poor guy had no idea what was going on in her mind, the back and forth between her and the enchantment. He just held her hand, trusting her to keep them safe while Briar Rose unleashed hell on them. And willing to die with her if she couldn’t maintain the wall. She tightened her grip on his hand, feeling the warmth tingle through her arm, the skin on her wrist still sensitive where her magic had left its mark.
Alex gasped. She held up her arm, her hand still firmly enclosed in Luke’s and shoved their joined hands directly into the woven tangles of the spell in front of her. The sleeve of her dress had fallen back as she lifted her arm revealing the tattooed strands of the friendship bracelet.
The magic burned around their hands, the strands roiling and sparking in a myriad of colors against their skin. It felt both cold and hot at the same time. Luke stared at Alex, never taking his eyes off hers, as the magic snaked up their arms. She looked up into his eyes and hoped that the enchantment would accept her proof.
And then it happened. The voices pressing against her mind stopped. The enchantment shimmered, then visibly trembled, before it began unwinding itself. The loops and braids of the bed-spell untwisted and fell to the ground in huge coils where they faded and disappeared. It happened so quickly that Alex barely had time t
o register what was happening; certainly not time enough to think in terms of relief or victory.
“No!” The scream from Briar Rose nearly knocked Alex off her feet. She had been paying more attention to the enchantment than to the fae or her own protection spell. The surge of magic that flew out of Briar Rose’s hands was like a tidal wave. It pushed itself at Alex’s shimmering protective wall, rushing over it, licking hungrily as it flowed down the other side. The entire room was shaking—no, the ground beneath the stronghold was shaking—tearing huge stones from the ceiling that crashed down and shattered on the floor.
Luke looked at Alex in horror. She frantically tried to divert more of her magic into the protection spell, but the room was shaking so violently, pulsing with a violent, malevolent magic, that she couldn’t get a firm grasp on her own power. It felt like it was getting sucked into the unwinding loops of the enchantment.
The entire room was being torn apart by the force of Briar Rose’s fury. The walls ripped away, stone by stone, revealing patches of blue sky. It’s just a matter of seconds, Alex thought hazily—mere seconds until Briar Rose’s overwhelming power reached them. The enchantment was unweaving, but it was too late, and too slow.
The edge of Briar Rose’s magic finally reached Alex. She heard Luke shout something; it may have been her name. She held onto his hand for everything she was worth as her body bent in half with the pain of the magic ripping through her.
There was a blinding flash of light, searing against her eyes. The last thing she saw was the final coil of the enchantment beginning to unwind. Her wrist burned with an other-worldly fire, but she kept her grip on his hand. If her last moments were going to be filled with such mind-numbing pain she refused to let go of that one small piece of comfort.
And then the pain was over. Alex could hear voices—excited and loud and saying her name over and over again. She could feel warm, strong arms supporting her body, and cool hands touching her face. The blinding white light was back behind her eyes. She marshaled the fragmented pieces of her mind enough to be able to reign in her power, pulling it back into herself. As she did so her vision cleared. She was lying in Luke’s arms in the middle of the floor in the storage room. The crumbled, charred remains of the bed were scattered around them, smoke wafting up from them toward the ceiling. Lilia and Becca were on their knees in front of them, Becca’s hands running frantically over Alex’s face as she sobbed in relief.
Her lips felt dry and cracked. She moistened them with her tongue and asked “How long were we asleep?” Her voice felt like it was burning through her throat.
Becca’s laugh bubbled through her tears, and she sounded slightly hysterical as she said, “Only thirty minutes, I don’t know how you got out, but it only took you half an hour.”
Alex looked up into Luke’s face; he was grinning down at her. “You did it, short stuff.” And he leaned down and covered her lips with his—a kiss long, sweet, and full of promise.
~ Chapter Twenty-One ~
THEY WERE SWEEPING up the still smoking remains of the bed and collecting the gems into a large filing box when they heard the pounding from the other storage room.
“I guess Nicholas is awake,” Becca grimaced. They all looked at each other for a moment as the pounding grew more insistent, accompanied by a few muffled shouts.
“I think we should get Lilia out of here,” Alex said. “I don’t know how much he is going to remember, but he might not be very forgiving about the whole knocking-him-out thing.”
“I can go into one of the other rooms,” Lilia offered.
“Yeah, that might be best; Luke do you want to go with her?” Alex asked.
“Um, no. I think I’ll stick around while you deal with a possibly angry guy roughly twice your size, if that’s okay with you.” Luke propped his broom against the wall. “In fact, if all three of you lovely ladies want to go hang out in the storage room across the hall, I could handle Mr. Hunt myself.”
Alex grinned at his protective stance. “That’s okay; I think he deserves us at least dealing with him face to face.”
Becca muttered something darkly under her breath. Alex couldn’t quite catch all of it, but she gathered it was about Nicholas and what he really deserved.
As soon as Lilia was gone, they approached the locked door to B-24.
“He doesn’t sound mad,” Alex commented in a low voice. “More like confused and panicked.”
“Well here’s hoping. Maybe he forgot everything. That would be handy.” Becca undid the lock and Luke reached out and swung open the door.
A disheveled Nicholas blinked at them. “Alex?” he asked in confusion. “What’s going on? Did you get my message?”
“Your message?”
“Yes, about the artifacts. Wait. Didn’t I see—Luke…wait…you were here, but there was a girl? The artifacts. Something about the artifacts.”
Alex, Becca, and Luke glanced at each other, not quite sure what to make of Nicholas’s rambling speech. He didn’t seem to have completely forgotten, but he also didn’t seem to be able to make a whole lot of sense out of what he did remember.
Luke spoke first. “Mr. Hunt, you seem a little bit out of it; maybe you aren’t feeling well? Would you like me to drive you home?”
“I feel…yes, not well. There was something…”
“Nicholas, I think it would be a good idea to let Luke drive you home. I’m sure you’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep.”
“I’m not tired, but maybe, yes. I should go home. Trying to remember something I was supposed to do,” Nicholas ran his hands through his already messy hair, causing it to stand up on end.
“Luke, take my car. He can get his later,” Becca handed Luke her keys.
“Here, let me help you out,” Luke put a hand on the other man’s shoulder and guided him forward through the adjoining room. As they walked past the remains of the bed, Nicholas’s eyes seemed to dart back and forth between the box of gems and the piles of smoking ash and twisted metal.
“Something isn’t right, not right,” he muttered under his breath, but he let Luke keep propelling him out of the storage room as Becca and Alex exchanged uneasy glances.
“That could still be a major problem,” Becca commented quietly.
“Yeah, it could be. Well I guess we need to get everything cleaned up as best we can and then hope for the best.”
The door opened again and Lilia stuck her head in. “I heard Luke walk by with that Nicholas person. What is going on?”
Alex shrugged. “He seems to be confused and not really sure what happened. But I think he’s trying to remember, so we aren’t really out of the woods. I guess we are going to just get all this stuff out of here.”
“And practice our innocent expressions,” added Becca bending to pick up several more gems from the floor.
“What are we going to do with the stones?” Lilia asked coming fully into the room and staring at the box with a mixture of fascination and revulsion.
“Well, I think they should be yours,” Becca said as she casually tossed the gems she’d just picked up into the filing box.
“I agree,” Alex said. “You should have an inheritance from your parents. You were robbed of that by Briar Rose; why not use her gems to help you here? You’re going to need money and a place to live. We’ll help you of course, but neither of us has money to get you started.”
“I do not like the thought of using anything of Briar Rose’s.”
“I doubt she created the stones. She just harnessed their power for her spell. They don’t have any of her magic left in them.” Alex walked over to the box and picking up a mid-sized emerald. She could feel the faint hum of magic against her skin, but it was the gem’s own; there was nothing sinister in it at all. “Here, feel.”
Lilia reached out and took the emerald, turning it over in her palm as she stared into its depths. “I want to go to school, to learn to make clothes like the ones in your magazines.”
Becca grinne
d. “Fashion school? Well, these babies would certainly help with tuition.”
“Yes, they would.” Lilia looked up from the emerald. “I will use them.”
“Great, that solves that problem. Now we have to figure out what to do with your mom’s burial stone,” said Alex.
“I would like to keep it, but I do not know where.”
“Maybe Luke has an idea, he’s the only one of us with a backyard to speak of, I bet he can stash it for you for a while. The other stuff is all small enough we can load it in Becca’s car.”
“Yup,” Becca agreed, “and these bed pieces and ashes we can box up and toss in some dumpster and then we’ll be in the clear.”
When Luke reappeared forty minutes later, the three girls had the storage room swept and clean, the rest of the artifacts and the boxes of gems and bed remains stacked neatly by the employee exit, ready to be transported to Becca’s car.
“Wow, you guys work fast,” Luke said in appreciation as he came into the clean storage room. “I’d never guess a magical battle went down in this room.”
“Magic? What magic?” Becca blinked innocently at Luke. “Alex, what is he talking about?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Alex shrugged. “He tends to imagine things, this one.” She smiled up at Luke. “We need you to move that big rock.”
“Wow.” Luke blew out a breath as he took in the size of the burial stone. “I guess I could use the moving dolly; I think we left it down the hall the other night. If someone wants to take me to pick up my truck we could maybe transport it that way. Where is it going?” He looked between Alex and Becca who were staring at him in shock. “Let me guess, my backyard?”
“A moving dolly! Why didn’t we think of that?” Becca asked Alex. “That would have made moving Nicholas so much easier!”
