by C. M. Cevis
“Is something up? Are you having trouble sleeping?”
Valerie shook her head, face growing red. “No, no, not normally. I just…” She looked up at Luna, her eyes bloodshot. Luna felt her concern growing as Valerie said quietly, “Last night I had this weird dream about some handsome man who I guess was my boyfriend. He turned up here in the shop late at night and we… kissed and stuff.” She rubbed her eyes, shoulders sagging. “I know I it was a dream, but I feel like it wasn’t. I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus, honestly.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t open today,” Luna offered, following Valerie as she trudged inside. “I’m sure everyone will understand if you take a day off.”
“Thanks for the concern, but I’ve got way too much to do around here.” Valerie smiled weakly.
“Alright, well be careful, okay?” Luna said, taking hold of Valerie’s hand gently.
The fatigue rushed its way into her connection and Luna had to work not to jerk back from the friendly hand she’d taken to comfort Valerie. She looked down at the linked hands and pushed back whatever was trying to enter her body. It wasn’t just fatigue, and it wasn’t natural. It had reached out for her like some sort of hungry parasite.
“Why are you looking at the counter like that?” Valerie asked with a chuckle, not noticing what Luna was actually looking at.
“I just… had never noticed the pattern on it, it’s pretty,” Luna replied, coming up with something quickly as she let go of Valerie and rubbed the tingly from her fingertips against her jeans.
“I might not be open too late tonight, but come back around if you want something. I should be ready to go in about twenty minutes or so.”
“Okay, thanks Val,” Luna said, turning and leaving the store, though part of her didn’t want to.
What in the world had that been?
34
Night fell, and like Lianna said, the binds fell from Gideon. He breathed in the freedom deeply. He hated being told that he had to feed her, but he didn’t mind doing the job itself. Part of him wondered if his power would work on Luna, but that was too risky. Besides, something about her intrigued him enough for him to want her around, and she wouldn’t be very present if Lianna was draining the life out of her.
Instead, he exited through the window and wandered through the neighborhood until he was a few blocks away. He moved past homes where the lights were on and people were still up and moving, instead peeking into back windows of dark and silent homes. It was easier to convince them that it was a dream when they were already half asleep.
Someone entirely too young lived in the first house, and someone too old in the second, but the third house seemed just right.
The bed took up most of the first-floor bedroom, and a man slept there, snoring softly. Several bras and pairs of underwear had been tossed to the side of the room, and Gideon waited to see if the owner of the undergarments would appear. After a few minutes, Gideon circled to the back door and tried the knob—unlocked. He smiled.
On his way through the kitchen, he glanced down at the paperwork scattered across the table and noted the man’s name, Ferris, before slipping into the bedroom. He stood over the man, then slid in beside him as if he belonged there. The man rolled to face him at the feel of the mattress dipping, his eyes opening groggily, and Gideon held his gaze with his own. He pushed down the man’s rising confusion.
“Did you forget?” Gideon asked.
Ferris’s eyes dimmed, and he blinked a few times. “Forget what?”
“I told you I had to work late tonight, so you asked me to come after I got off. Remember?”
“Oh,” Ferris mumbled. “I guess I did forget.”
“Good thing I remembered,” Gideon said, pushing more and more of his magic inside of him.
“Yeah. Good thing.”
Gideon had him before he kissed him.
35
Luna checked on Valerie as soon as the shop opened the next day. She was a changed woman. The light and life seemed sucked from her, and Luna had to work to get her to laugh. Luna ordered an ice cream and hung around, watching the other customers Val came in contact with, trying to make sure that whatever was inside of her friend wasn’t spreading. But they appeared normal. Apparently, it only went after Luna, and that was fine. She was the one that knew how to defend herself.
As Luna waved goodbye to her friend, she heard her name being called down the street. Bella stood in front of her store a few doors down, waving.
“Luna, can I borrow you for a moment?”
“Sure,” Luna said, trotting up to her. She noted the worried look and felt the smile fall from her lips. “What’s wrong?”
“Can you… check on Ferris for me?”
That was an odd ask.
“You want me to go see about your brother, not watch the store while you go check on him?”
Bella nodded. “We have breakfast together most days, but he wasn’t awake when I got there this morning. That’s not like him. He always gets up for breakfast, has coffee while I grab something to eat and we catch up, and then he goes to work out.”
Luna frowned, still unsure why that warranted her checking on him. “Okaaay…” She hoped that would get Bella to continue.
“I let myself in when he didn’t answer the door, and I tried to wake him up. He was so groggy and kept talking about this weird dream about this apparent boyfriend. He said maybe the dream had gotten to him, because he was really tired and had slept through his alarm.”
Luna breathed in sharply through her nose. “Did he tell you what the guy from the dream looked like?”
Bella shook her head. “I didn’t ask.” She shuddered. “Something in that house felt unnatural. I was hoping you could go over there, maybe figure out what’s going on.”
“Yeah,” Luna replied, mind racing. “I can go over.”
“Let me know what you find out?” Bella asked, concern naked on her face.
“Yeah, of course. I’ll go right now.” She waved to Bella and headed back to the ice cream shop. She needed to talk to Valerie first.
~*~
Ferris’s house was a bit messy, but nothing abnormal. Liza started poking around the outside of the house to see if there was anything they needed to be wary of, and Luna went through the front door—unlocked, as Bella said it would be.
It seemed that whatever was going on with Valerie was also going on with Ferris, but the two of them didn’t run in the same circles. That meant a third party was actively causing this in certain people. That was a serious problem.
The house was silent as Luna made her way through the front entry way and the kitchen. Ferris’s bedroom was at the back of the house, and he was just where Bella said she’d left him: in the bed, sound asleep.
“Ferris?” Luna called. She didn’t want to scare him, but she needed him awake.
“Hm?” He rolled over but stayed under the covers. “Bells, did you come back again? I told you I’m fine. Just tired.”
“No, not Bella. I’m her friend Luna, she asked me to come check on you.”
Ferris slowly pulled down the blanket, revealing some pretty wicked bed head and half-opened eyes that squinted against the sunlight from outside. “I told her I was fine.”
“I know, but she was worried about you, and I don’t live too far away. Can you tell me about this dream you had? What the guy looked like?” Luna was cutting to the chase on this one.
“She told you about the dream?” he responded, face flushing.
“Yes, she did, and it might be important. Please, Ferris, can you tell me what the guy looked like?”
He rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Blonde hair, short… blue eyes, short beard.”
“That’s what Valerie said too,” Luna muttered.
“Hm?”
“Oh. Nothing, sorry. Is the sleep helping at all?”
Ferris nestled back into the covers. “I’ll let you know after I sleep a little more.” His eyes closed.
“Okay. Let m
e make sure you’re not running a fever or something,” Luna lied, putting her hand gently against Ferris’s forehead.
He was not running a fever, but the fatigue leapt at the chance to taste her again. Luna jerked back from the half-sleeping man.
“There’s nothing outside,” Liza said, appearing beside Luna so suddenly that she jumped.
“Sorry, distracted,” she said softly, turning back to Ferris, who was already asleep.
“Is it the same thing?”
Luna nodded. “And the same guy. Who sounds like Gideon.” She sighed.
Liza frowned. “Beard, hair color, and eye color could describe several people when that’s all you have to go on.” She didn’t sound convinced, but she was right.
“Plus, he’s locked up all the time,” Luna said, heading out of the house and closing the door quietly behind her.
“Right.”
Luna sighed heavily and started the half mile trek back to Bella’s shop. “Something is draining these people. And with how heavy this fatigue is for both of them, I don’t think it’s just energy. It feels like it’s draining life.”
Her twin grimaced. “So they’re going to die?”
“Eventually—over a month or so, depending on who is draining them and how fast they need the energy. We’ve got to figure this out before it does kill them.”
“So what can we do?”
Luna tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Both Valerie and Ferris mentioned kissing. There seems to be a theme of seduction. I’m wondering if we can use that against it.”
“You just need to walk around the neighborhood in your underwear or something.”
Luna chuckled. “I want to attract whatever is draining life from these people, not get arrested. The last thing I need is to deal with Wesley right now.”
Liza laughed. “It has been really peaceful since he hasn’t been around as much.”
“Thank goodness for pushy wives and vacations.”
36
Nightfall came and Gideon left the house without a second thought. At this point, he was comfortable enough to believe that Lianna was indeed keeping the witch twins from noticing his escape. He still wasn’t going to stay close to the house.
This time, he went in a different direction, wandering until he hit a small neighborhood of smaller, older homes that looked well kept. Half of this neighborhood was still awake, which Gideon found odd. Apparently he’d found the lively part of town.
He picked a dark house at the end of a small cul-de-sac. It was surrounded by tall, mature trees that sheltered the structure from moonlight now and probably a good bit of the sunlight during the day.
There was someone inside this house, someone who was setting his hunting senses off. Someone who was brimming with life, more so than almost anyone he’d come across in his years of taking for Lianna.
Some type of ward guarded the doors and windows, though the person inside didn’t seem to be a witch. Witches were just humans, and the person inside had entirely too much life to be just a normal human witch. He wasn’t sure what the magic was, but it was meant to cause pain, not to necessarily keep him out. An odd choice, he thought, but then again this town didn’t seem like the kind of place that needed to worry about prowlers on a regular basis. Until now, he thought with a shrug.
He was able to dampen the effects of the magic on one window, though it still hurt like hell when he passed through. Enough that he gave serious thought to backing out and going elsewhere, but he could feel Lianna pressing against him. She wanted that life, and she didn’t care how much pain he was in going to get it. He was just the errand boy.
He made his way silently through the quaint and neatly arranged house, towards the side that contained the bedroom, he assumed. Once he was sure that all was silent within, he pushed the door open slowly and almost tiptoed towards the bed.
Towards the pretty redhead, sound asleep.
Luna’s friend, Asher.
Wait.
“Oh, you little prick.” Luna’s voice caused Gideon to spin toward the doorway. She stood there, hair disheveled and in mismatched pajamas.
“What’s going on?” Asher asked sleepily, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.
Gideon panicked. Luna could hurt him if she wanted to, and her sister’s warning echoed in his head as he forced a blinding light from his core into the room and used the distraction to get the hell out of there.
As the two women cried out, he launched himself through a bedroom window. The wards on the entrances to the house were not meant to keep people out, Gideon discovered the hard way as he noted the welts to begin to form on his skin before he’d made it out of the block of homes, but he didn’t have time to think about that now. He didn’t know how they did what they did, but since he hadn’t had time to dampen the magic on the way out, he was in pain and halfway terrified. He swore he could feel the witch coming after him.
Instead, he closed his eyes, and used everything he could muster to fling himself as far away from that neighborhood as he could. It was a borrowed ability, but it would have to do. He’d deal with Lianna being upset about it later.
37
“So Gideon has been somehow getting out without you knowing and draining life from people around town?” Asher said, neatly summarizing what Luna had explained.
“Right,” Luna said, taking a sip of the water she’d gotten for herself and Asher. She sat at Asher’s kitchen table with a tight frown on her face. She wasn’t leaving unless Asher was leaving with her, or those wards were replaced.
Asher rubbed her mussed hair. “How did he get out though? Didn’t you have him locked away in that room?”
“That is the question of the hour.”
“He’s gone, though I don’t see how he could have gone far,” Liza said, appearing next to Asher. “Are you okay?”
Asher shrugged. “I feel normal. Whatever it sounds like he’s done to other people, he didn’t get the chance to do it to me.”
Luna leaned over and gave her a tight side hug. “I am so glad that I had those things rigged to let me know when someone is tampering with them.”
Her friend leaned away to look at her. “How did you get here so fast?”
Luna and Liza exchanged a look. “I’ve… got a transportation potion that I keep made up in my closet, just in case.”
“A what?” Asher asked.
“A transp… it lets me transport myself somewhere quickly, nothing more. The distance you can travel is dependent on how potent the spell is, so I keep one potent enough to get me around Calidity if needed, and another strong enough to get me—” Luna stopped.
“Back to your past,” Asher finished.
Luna nodded. “Just in case.”
“Not to change the subject back to the fae prince that’s draining people, but what are we going to do?” Liza asked.
Luna sighed and leaned back against the kitchen counter behind her.
“I guess we find out what’s on the other side of that gate.”
“What?” Asher and Liza said in unison.
“I need to know what he can do and where he’d go. No better person to ask than his mother.” Luna shrugged.
Liza smirked and looked her over. “That sounds a bit like walking into a royal castle in your pajamas and demanding to see the queen like everyone should know who you are.”
“I’ll get presentable first,” Luna said with an eye roll. “Either way, we need to know. And she didn’t say a word about what he could do. If it’s whatever this life draining thing is, she should have warned us.”
“Ask her if she has any ideas how he got past your confinement too,” Asher suggested.
“I will add it to the list.” Luna grinned. “I wonder if it’s the middle of the night there too.”
“Is that going to stop you from going now?” Liza asked.
“Heck no.”
38
Asher drove Luna home and hung out in the living room while she showered quickly. Choosing nice jean
s and a pair of heels seemed sufficient to step through a gate that went who-knows-where to see a queen who didn’t know she was coming. Before she left, she pulled one of the extra candles that she’d made for Asher and lit it, sitting it in the middle of the dining room table. Asher was curled up on the couch in the next room.
“I’m leaving you a lit candle so that you’ve got Liza here with you,” Luna said as she entered the living room. “She knows where I keep the ready-made bits that you can use in case someone shows up and makes it into the house.”
“I seriously doubt that anyone will make it in here,” Liza said.
“Gideon made it out. And until I know how, I’m not taking any chances.”
“You still have a guest here too, right?” Asher asked.
“Zelda is upstairs, in the blue room. She sleeps like a rock, and you probably won’t see her.” Luna wasn’t planning to be gone all night.
Asher nodded. “Alright.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay?” Luna said, turning towards the basement.
“Be careful,” Asher called after her.
Luna turned and smiled. “I will, I promise.”
She was going to be as careful as she could. Whether she was going to be safe was a completely different subject.
~*~
Stepping through the gate was an odd sensation, one that Luna wouldn’t be able to describe to someone. It was almost like what you’d image being put into a blender felt like, but without the pain.
Luna rolled her eyes at the explanation her brain came up with. She’d try again later. That was horrible.
The room she found herself in had a small table, three chairs, a bell, and a heavy wooden door. The walls were plain, painted a light gray color that matched the color of the thin carpet on the floor. It looked like someone had just moved in and not gotten around the decorating that part of the house yet.
Luna frowned and walked slowly towards the table and the bell. It was the kind of bell that sits on a front desk at a hotel, ready to summon the host. She dinged it, grinning as the tone chimed. It was still odd, but for some reason the fact that it sounded exactly like she’d expected made her feel better.
