Tab Bennett and the Inbetween
Page 11
This is the man who killed my sisters. All the air went rushing out of my body. He’s joking about killing them.
Alex scoffed. “Three successes in thousands of attempts hardly win you bragging rights, rabbit. I would think you’d be embarrassed to call attention to how often you’ve failed. How many of They have Bennett’s boys put in the ground? A hundred, closer to two? Daniel must be very unhappy with you.”
Nicholas’ eyes narrowed. “King Daniel has great faith in my skills.”
“However misplaced,” Alex said, with a shrug.
“Let’s not bicker anymore. I have a message for your princess from Daniel.”
I got to my feet, holding my head high. “Say it then, and go.”
“You didn’t tell me she was so…spunky,” he mocked. “You’re going to be more fun than your sisters aren’t you?”
Alex snarled and moved forward but I put my hand on his shoulder, stopping him. All the anger and fear I felt was turning into something different, a fury as cold as the graves he’d left my sisters in.
“You have thirty seconds to tell me your king’s message and then I’m going to let him rip you apart.”
“I understand,” Nicholas sneered. “Straight to business then. King Daniel of the kingdom Underneath is very eager to make your acquaintance, Princess. Several times now he has prepared for your arrival only to be disappointed. He was terribly unhappy when those other girls revealed they were not you by choking to death on the dirt. What a tragic waste. And preventable too, if only you had come to him yourself.”
I tried not to show any reaction but I felt like he’d just punched me in the stomach.
“He wishes to invite you to visit him to discuss essential matters of state. He sincerely hopes there will be no more…unpleasantness between his people and yours.”
If murdering my sisters merely qualified as unpleasantness, what would all-out war look like?
“Please consider yourself a welcomed guest,” he said, bowing low before me.
“If you’re done talking, I’ll kill you now,” Alex said calmly.
Nicholas turned his eyes back to Alex. “Try.”
“Wait!” I yelled. Both men turned to me in surprise. “I have a message for your king.”
“Certainly your majesty,” he replied with mock eagerness.
Alex looked at me uncertainly. But I didn’t hesitate; I knew exactly what I wanted to say.
“You may tell him that I will come to see him one day and when I do, I will kill you both. Tell him that he hasn’t even begun to see the ‘unpleasantness’ I am capable of.”
Then they were gone and George was standing next to me. I saw Alex sprinting across the lawn, chasing a white blur I assumed was the Nicholas into the trees.
Chapter Nine
I don’t think I’d ever seen Francis so angry—which is saying something. He paced back and forth in my living room, swearing and stomping his feet. His face was turning the deep, bright red of a radish. I’m not a doctor, but he seemed dangerously close to stroking out.
Having finished yelling at George and Matthew for abandoning their posts in a time of crisis, he’d moved on to Alex. “We could have lost her today. Do you understand that? He could’ve taken her. She might have died.”
“You’re right, Francis.” Alex looked up at me, regret all over his face. “My actions were stupid and reckless. If anything had happened to her, it would have been entirely my fault.”
“I don’t care who you are. You can’t come in here and put her at risk. I won’t allow it. We’ve all worked too hard, for too long, and given up too much to lose her now.”
Alex nodded but I could see that he was running out of patience for being scolded. I looked to George for help defusing the situation before things took a turn, hoping he’d be the voice of reason, but he seemed unwilling to remind Francis that he was still in the room.
“That’s enough, Frannie,” I said, using the hand gesture I’d seen Alex use to quiet Pop. It didn’t work. All the anger he’d been venting on Alexander came down on me like the proverbial ton of bricks. “Don’t you ‘Frannie’ me.” Somehow his face got a little redder as he said, “Your life wouldn’t have needed saving if he didn’t endanger it in the first place. Don’t misunderstand; he took you outside so he could cop a cheap feel. He didn’t even consider the danger that would put you in. He was being selfish and thoughtless, not to mention completely irresponsible.”
“First of all,” I said, “I want it on the record that it wasn’t a cheap feel. He’s my fiancé. And second, if I’d gotten hurt today or worse even, it wouldn’t have been entirely Alex’s fault or George or Matthew’s either. It would have been my fault for not knowing how to take care of myself and your fault for not teaching me and Pop’s fault for keeping me in the dark about who I really am and no matter who we pinned the blame on, I’d still be dead.” Francis pointed his finger at me but I’ll never know what pearls of hollered wisdom I missed out on because I interrupted him before he got started. “Look, I didn’t ask for this. I was perfectly happy being a bank teller but that’s not the life I’m going to have. I’m going to be Queen and that means I have to be strong enough to protect every one of We of the Light. Right now, I can’t even protect myself and that’s completely unacceptable. I asked Alex to teach me to fight and he said he would. I’m hoping you guys will help me too.”
“You’re encouraging this?” Francis turned to Alex. “You think Bennett is even going to let her try.”
Instead of answering, Alex looked at me, giving me the opportunity to speak for myself. I took a deep breath. “I don’t need his permission or yours. I am the queen and you are the loyal subjects. If I say jump, you obediently head for the roof. If I want to learn to fight, you show me how. Because that’s my will and, correct if I’m wrong here, what I want is what We all want.”
Robbin chose that moment to come through the door on a burst of cold air. He was whistling the theme song from The A Team and carrying a couple of shopping bags. He looked around the room, taking in the strained faces. “Was there an attack? What happened?” He grabbed my shoulders and turned me toward him, surveying for damage.
“I believe our little princess just grew a pair,” Francis said. There was a kernel of respect in his voice.
**********
Alex came into my bedroom. He didn’t knock. He just walked in as if he belonged there, which I liked but also kind of hated myself for liking. He stood by the door, smiling at me.
“You’re leaving?” I asked.
“I came to say goodbye.”
Suddenly the thought of his long absence seemed unbearable. I didn’t want to go weeks or months without seeing him. I wasn’t sure I could last ten minutes without seeing him. “How long will you be gone?”
He sat on the edge of my bed, a half smile making his perfect face even lovelier.
“Will you miss me?” he asked, clearly convinced that he knew the answer.
“A little.”
“Only a little?”
“Well it’ll be boring here without you to complicate everything.”
He stretched out beside me on the bed. “Do I complicate your life?”
“You’re joking, right?” I laid back too, rolling onto my side so I could look at him in the dim light.
He sighed and rolled onto his side, so we were facing each other across the small space between the pillows. “Are you sorry I came here?”
“This may just be the enchantment talking, but I’m not. I wouldn’t say I’m happy you came but I’m not sorry that you’re here.” He laughed when I added, “I told you it was complicated.”
He reached over and rested his hand on my hip and I let it stay there. “There’s so much you don’t know; so much I want to tell you.”
“So tell me.”
I caught these little flashes of what he was thinking about—a horse, a castle, and what was unmistakably Bennett as a younger man.
“You’re very like you
r mother,” he said. “Sometimes you remind me of her so strongly that I find myself about to call you by her name.” Twenty-five years after her death he still missed her; I could hear it in his voice. “When we were children, Gwen and Robbin and I were inseparable. We got into so much trouble together.” He chuckled softly, remembering. “Gwen loved it here in the World. She came wherever she could, always dragging us along with her. She was five years older than we were – bossy and beautiful already. Robbin and I worshipped her.”
“You’re only five years younger than my mother? Gross. You’re way too old for me.”
“Did you know that Robbin is seven months older than I am?” he asked innocently.
We both laughed. “How old are you in people years?”
“In the Inbetween, elves age rapidly from birth to maturity and then very, very, very slowly after that. We live a long time. Human age has no meaning to us. You’ve been here your whole life so you’ve aged like a human but that will stop once you come Home. You’ll look just the way you do now for years and years. It will be centuries before you see your first gray hair.”
“But if I stayed here?”
“You would age like a human and die like one.”
“And if you stayed?”
The look on his face told me that such a thing would never happen. He might slum it once in a while, but he wouldn’t want to live here. “The same would happen to me. I would live and die like a normal man.”
That didn’t sound so bad to me but I could tell that the idea was sort of repulsive to him. “I’m just a normal woman.”
He smiled at me. “You are anything but; that’s why it’s so hard to leave you.”
I noticed that we’d drifted closer to each other while he was talking. His face, his whole delicious body, was just a few inches away from mine. Once again I was struck by how beautiful he was. His smile made my chest ache. I wanted to kiss him; the enchantment whispered in my head that kissing him would be an excellent idea.
“What were you thinking just now?”
“Nothing,” I said.
He laughed.
“What’s funny?” I whispered.
“We are.”
Then he kissed me, his mouth soft and warm on mine. I tangled my fingers into his hair, deepening the kiss, my tongue seeking his, suddenly bold. I slipped my hands down his strong arms, under his shirt, to touch his bare skin of his back.
I heard a knock at the door, heard Francis say, “Alexander, Bennett is waiting for you.” I climbed on top of him and kissed his neck, nibbled his ear.
Alex sighed against my lips. “I have to go, love” he moaned, his voice little more than a whisper.
I leaned over to press my lips against the base of his throat. I could feel his heart racing. “I’ll miss you.” I repositioned myself so the hard length of him was pressed against the soft core of my body. I began to move against him, grinding my body into his, hard against soft, again and again until I could hardly stand it. I could feel the brightness growing inside me, lighting me up, and nothing could keep me from it. “I need you.”
With a growl, he rolled over so that he was on top of me. He kissed me, brushing his lips against mine before he drew my bottom lip into his mouth, between his teeth, and bit and sucked. “I need you too. Gods I need you.”
Francis knocked again, harder this time. “Let’s go Hilldale.”
Alex’s eyes were swirling, blue and gray and mercury. “Just another minute,” he whispered as his finger found its way between my legs, pushing against the wet silk of my panties and then inside me. I rocked against him. His finger moved in and out of me, teasing me in the just the right spot to make the light inside me brighter, hotter. When he leaned over and nipped my lip again, I felt my body tighten around his finger, a flash of lightening inside my body, pushing me into a deep pool of light and warmth and pleasure. He held me until my body stopped shaking then he kissed me one last time and left.
*********
That night I had a dream that Nicholas and I were walking through the deep woods. He had his hands over my eyes so I had to trust him for every step. We moved slowly and close together but he wasn’t keeping me captive and I wasn’t struggling to get away. We were just taking a walk together; there was no reason to be afraid.
“Watch your step,” he whispered.
Without my eyes, my other senses seemed stronger. I could hear the trees swaying in the breeze, whispering secrets to the sky. I could smell the festering of leaves that would soon turn to new earth. I could hear animals growl and snap as they tracked their prey through the undergrowth. I could feel a sheen of moisture, damp and close, clinging to my skin, molding the long gown I wore to the curves of my body. I shivered though I was neither frightened nor cold.
“There’s a branch,” he cautioned. “Duck.” Gently, he tucked my head and I slipped under it. I giggled, enjoying the game.
“Are we almost there?” I asked.
“Nearly. The tree we’re looking for is deep in the deepest woods. It’s a secret tree. But I’ll show it to you.”
“You won’t let me fall?”
let me fall, let me fall
“What is that? Who’s there?” I felt the brush of feathers against my cheek.
“It’s nothing, just the starlings,” Nicholas answered. “Ignore them.”
He guided me deeper into the woods. I could hear the starlings landing on the branches above my head, feel the wind from each flap of their wings, smell the sweetness of berries on their breath.
“Where are you taking me again?”
“I’m taking you to find your sister.”
find your sister, find your sister the starlings called
“Rivers isn’t lost. Rivers is dead."
“I heard.”
When he took his hands away from my eyes, I could see everything, all the beauty and terror of the forest, all the wonder of ordinary things transformed by moonlight and shadow. I wanted to stop and take it all in but Nicholas was anxious to keep moving. Deeper and deeper and darker and darker, I followed him until we came to the place we’d been searching for.
The tree stood alone in a clearing. It wasn’t especially tall but nothing grew above it, leaving it bare to the sky and stars. It was wide and old and gnarled with symbols cut deep into its bark. Its branches stretched out instead of up, reaching toward us, circling the tree like a spiral staircase.
“This is the tree of stairs,” Nicholas explained. “If you say the right words, it will take you Underneath.”
From above I heard the starlings calling, find your sister, find your sister
“Why would I want to go there?” I asked.
********
Faint though it was, the sound of tapping woke me out of the dream. I turned toward the window, half expecting to see Nicholas’ pale face on the other side of the glass. Instead it was a starling, his ruby red eye a pin point of light in the early morning darkness.
“Go away,” I said.
The bird kept tapping, looking at me, waiting for a response.
“My sister isn’t lost, you creepy thing.” I knocked against the glass and he flew away, rejoining the swirl of starlings flying around in my front yard. Another bird broke free of the formation to take his place. It started tapping too.
“Go away.” I knocked on the window again but this bird was made of tougher stuff than the other. Every time I knocked, he tapped back. “I don’t know what you want. My sister is dead.”
The flock changed direction mid-flight and flew to the edge of the woods, settling on the trees there. The bird on my windowsill tapped twice more against the glass.
“You are freaking me out, little bird. Please leave me alone.” He tapped again. “What do you want? Do you want to come in?” I asked. He tilted his head in that eerie way that all birds do and blinked at me.
“Do you want me to come out?” I asked.
He tapped twice.
“Yeah, I’ll just bet you do.”
“You should have woken me,” he said. “What else did they say?”
“They didn’t say anything.” It seemed ridiculous to me to get worked up over some birds – even if they were tapping on my window and visiting me in dreams, they were just birds. “Well one of them may have indicated that he wanted me to go outside.”