The Egg (Return of the Ancients Book 4)

by Carmen Caine

  I was jolted out of my reverie by the Queens themselves. “Perceptive,” they whispered in unison, their astute gaze giving me the shivers.

  But I didn’t know what they meant by that. They could very well have been confirming the fact they could have easily kidnapped me if they’d wished.

  Without warning, they raised their hands and a golden bubble of light formed around us—just around the Queens, Rafael, Jareth, and I. And before I had time to even wonder, the bubble popped.

  We’d been shifted into the Hall of Mirrors and were standing in the very center of the cathedral-like building. The two enormous mirrors hung suspended in midair, spanning the entire space, stretching from the floor to the breathtaking domed ceiling above me. I could only stand there, staring at them in awe.

  Gradually, I became aware of the fact the Queens were watching me, but I couldn’t read their faces. They didn’t display any emotion.

  “Human intuition,” they suddenly intoned. “An interesting power. One wonders why it isn’t exercised more often.”

  As Rafael’s curious brow ached my way, I just shrugged in return. I didn’t know what to tell him. Yet. I didn’t know what game the Queens were really playing, anyway. It could very well end with nasty consequences for me.

  Jareth gave a feeble snort. For a moment, he looked like he wanted to make some kind of snarky comment, but I guess he still lacked the energy. Instead, he just closed his eyes and leaned into Rafael standing at his side.

  Seeming to lose interest in me, the Queens addressed Rafael. “You are here, as requested, Rafael. But the mirrors will not help you. They have been silent since the last time the human beheld them. But if you wish, look in them as you will.” With a graceful flutter of fingers, they waved at the mirrors in an open invitation.

  We hesitated, uncertain what they were up to. They knew we didn’t trust them. After all, they were Mind Whisperers. And their faces were impossible to read.

  I glanced at the massive mirrors. They were astounding, so huge to be just hanging in the air. The Mirrors of Destiny. Rafael had told me that they faced each other to record into infinity, but unlike last time, their surfaces were dark now—pitch black, actually—and didn’t reflect anything.

  Or so it seemed.

  Instinctively, I knew that was wrong. The more I stared into the blackness, the more I became certain the darkness was alive. Moving. Sensing. Reaching.

  With a choking gasp, I recognized it for what it was.

  The Mutant Tulpa. It was enormous, stretching out to consume the entire universe, and my heart quailed as a feeling of dread and of impending doom encompassed me. Was that our future now? For everything to be turned into fear? Was there no way out of it all?

  Dimly, I became aware of Rafael’s reassuring hands on my shoulders. I guess I must have cried out, but his presence calmed me, providing enough strength so that I could point at the mirrors and exclaim, “It’s … it’s fear, and it’s alive!”

  The Queens descended upon us at once, their eyes locked upon the mirrors, and I could only bite my tongue and stare at the blackness of fear, horrified.

  It took some time before I realized that Rafael and the Queens were talking, but I didn’t hear their words. They sounded angry. Vicious. Afraid.

  Suddenly, I just wanted to get away.

  Stepping back, I moved to join Jareth, weaving a bit unsteadily upon his feet. He looked sick. His skin was pale and clammy. As I arrived, he tore his eyes from the mirrors to search mine. I could see the alarm in his face.

  He shook his head and said in a voice of resignation, “That’s our future then, Sydney.”

  “No!” Rafael interjected before I could respond.

  His voice rang loudly through the hall, and then strangely began to bounce back and forth between the mirrors, echoing “No!” louder and louder until the volume increased so much that the floor rumbled, and we all covered our ears.

  Jareth collapsed to his knees.

  I shivered, hugging my elbows.

  The ringing and rumbling stopped.

  Rafael inhaled audibly and faced the Queens, waving his hand at the black mirrors behind him. “Yes, what you see is where we are, the results of our choices, and yes, it could very well be the final result,” he explained, stubbornly locking his strong jaw. “But Sydney has not yet been given the chance to make her choice. And do not doubt it. She will make the right one.”

  I wasn’t so confident. But I guess he had a point. And it knocked me out of once again playing the part of a victim, of just receiving what life dealt without even trying to fight back. Deep inside my inner-being, a spark ignited. Rafael was right. Yeah, maybe Jareth and Rafael had made their choices, but I hadn’t. If I didn’t even try, fear would win by default. I had to remember that while my choice could spell the disaster in the mirrors, my choice also carried a promise of a chance to make it all right. I had to stand up and try.

  And I could start by not feeding the Tulpa the fear it needed to get even stronger.

  “Don’t feed it,” I said then. “It lives off fear.”

  It could have been a coincidence, or maybe not. But the mirrors chose that moment to vibrate. We all froze, watching as the darkness began to recede. It started at the corners, moving so slowly that I didn’t notice it at first until I noticed the blackness collapsing in on itself, growing smaller and smaller until it finally vanished into a tiny hole.

  But I knew the Tulpa wasn’t really gone. Not yet.

  Suddenly, the mirrors displayed a kaleidoscope of colored images. Millions. So many and so fast that I couldn’t understand them before they switched once again to reveal myself standing in a life-sized coke bottle, dressed in a black lace dress with Jerry perched on my shoulder. I was banging on the glass, trapped.

  As if in a dream, I reached out to touch the glass, but before I could reach it, the mirrors’ surfaces cleared to show nothing more than our reflections.

  “I don’t understand,” I said in the astonished silence that followed. My voice shook. I hadn’t really followed what had happened the past few minutes.

  The Queens seemed shaken themselves. They took a few moments before replying together, “Humans are powerful creatures. With the Power of Thought—with what you label as ‘dreams’—you can alter reality. The possibilities are endless.”

  I wasn’t really sure about that. “I don’t really dream of standing in a coke bottle,” I couldn’t resist pointing out.

  Jareth interrupted us with a groan, grasping his head between his hands, and Rafael was at his side in an instant, forming a bubble of light around him that clearly eased his pain. But the expression on Rafael’s face as he looked up at the Queens disturbed me. He almost seemed scared.

  “I must aid him, at once,” he informed them.

  “Then do so,” the Queen of the Light bid imperiously. “Sift through Jareth’s past and show us the evidence of Melody and her designs. That is what you’re searching for, is it not?”

  Rafael’s brows knit into a grim frown as he replied, “Swear you’ll not stop us. I’ve shown faith in you. It’s time you should do the same. Swear upon all that you hold sacred that you’ll help us.”

  They didn’t like that. “Is what you will reveal so devastating? Is that why you crushed the evidence we sought beneath your feet?”

  I remembered Rafael crushing a gray cube with his heel, telling me it was all that the Queens had wished to know. What had they wished to know? Of Melody’s evilness? If so, then why would Rafael protect her?

  “Not her, Sydney. He was protecting us,” Jareth moaned from where he lay on the floor. He’d obviously recovered enough to see the thoughtforms I’d been generating.

  Rafael’s eyes flickered in surprise, but he met my gaze to answer my unspoken question. “Yes, I had evidence of Melody’s betrayal, evidence that she’d created a weapon. I didn’t know what kind of weapon it was then, but I saw enough in your fate lines—both of yours—to know the Queens would seek to destroy us a
ll should they find the answer.” He paused and studied my face. “And now you must see it, too. I can’t risk either of your lives over this.”

  I frowned. I didn’t think he had much choice anymore.

  Jareth was breathing hard. I watched his chest rise and fall. His life was already in danger over what Melody had done to him. He obviously needed help. But if the Queens discovered he was the weapon—created to destroy the Tree of Life—they’d probably just finish the job. Most likely, they’d kill Rafael too when they discovered his fate also ended at the tree. After that, there would be no one left to stop them from getting rid of me as well.

  On the floor, Jareth began to writhe in pain, and it was clear if we didn’t help him, he was going to die, anyway.

  “Help him,” I told Rafael, dropping to my knees beside them. “If I do have a real chance to make the right choice, then I’ll have the both of you with me, right? You said I needed you and I know I do. That means all three of us are going to make it through this right now, right?”

  It was a weird, backwards-kind of logic, but it worked.

  Rafael hesitated a moment before nodding in reluctant agreement.

  Ignoring the Queens, he rose gracefully to his feet and approached the mirrors which were already filling with a smoky haze as myriad glowing threads appeared over Jareth’s reflection. Lifting a hand, Rafael picked one and began tracking it back through time like he’d done before.

  The Queens appeared startled and even a little displeased at this ability, but they remained quiet as Rafael worked.

  Silence fell.

  Jareth began drifting in and out of consciousness.

  I’d scarcely wondered how long Rafael would take to find what he was searching for when Melody’s white-cloaked figure appeared. She loomed large on the mirrors’ surfaces, hovering over a young Jareth as he lay asleep on some kind of metallic hospital-type of bed. Holding a needle-sized crystal shard between two fingers, she balanced it on Jareth’s forehead and after only a moment of hesitation, drove it into his skull.

  I gasped.

  Apparently, that was what Rafael needed to know. He returned to kneel by Jareth’s head as the scene on the mirrors played in the background. I watched as he placed a hand over Jareth’s forehead and their skin began to glow.

  It seemed less than a minute before a crystal shard erupted from Jareth’s forehead and hovered in midair a few inches above him. Threads of root-like light—about a dozen of them—ran from the crystal to disappear back into Jareth’s brain. As we watched, Rafael slowly and methodically zapped each root with a spark of light until finally all were clipped and the shard fell into his palm.

  “You will carry out your mission!” Melody’s sing-song voice chanted suddenly.

  Surprised, we all glanced back at the mirrors to see Melody bending over Jareth, a strand of light issuing from her finger and connecting with the tip of the crystal shard that she’d buried in his brain.

  “No!” Rafael commanded, waving his hand to silence the mirrors.

  But the Queens both raised their arms and overrode his order. “Play on,” they bade the mirrors. “And stop for no one.”

  Rafael’s eyes widened in alarm and he turned back to me, but the Queens flicked a finger my way and I was immediately encapsulated in some kind of light bubble. I couldn’t move in it. And Rafael couldn’t reach me.

  “No!” he shouted angrily at the Queens. “Give Sydney her chance. See what humans can do!”

  “Nothing will stop you from your mission, Jareth,” Melody’s voice cut through the massive hall. “You will travel to the Second Dimension and you will destroy the Tree of Life!”

  I’ll never forget the complete horror etched upon the Queens’ faces as they suddenly understood Melody’s plans. They were utterly, devastatingly, overwhelmingly taken aback.

  “Destroy the Tree of Life?” they shrieked in open disbelief, raising their trions at once.

  I had no doubt they were going to destroy us all as we stood there. And they probably would have succeeded, if Jareth hadn’t suddenly leapt up from the floor. Grabbing Rafael’s arm, he reached into my imprisoning bubble as if it didn’t even exist and shifted us away in so fast a blur that the Queens didn’t even have time to speak a single word in their trions.

  One moment I stood in the Hall of Mirrors with the Queens determined to kill us all, and the next, I smelled the familiar homey scent of fresh blueberry muffins.

  I blinked in confusion.

  We stood in the kitchen of Samantha’s coffee shop.

  “Why here?” Rafael turned on Jareth to ask cryptically.

  Sweeping the strands of long dark hair from his eyes, Jareth shrugged. “Samantha is the strongest being I know,” he answered simply enough.

  As Rafael began methodically circling the area, furrowing his brows in concentration to burn protection runes on the walls, Jareth leaned against the metal kitchen table and helped himself to a fresh blueberry muffin. I guess I couldn’t blame him. Maybe he needed the energy. He certainly looked like he needed it. He was pale and his eyes puffy.

  With the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end, I sidled closer to him.

  So, Samantha was some kind of special creature. That made sense. No one else had been able to resist the Mesmers without the help of a faraday cage. Not even the Fae.

  “What is she?” I whispered.

  Jareth only looked supremely irritated and raised a curious brow to grunt, “Huh?” before he took another large bite.

  I glanced around the empty kitchen to make sure Samantha wasn’t hiding in some corner ready to pop out and surprise us before I leaned closer to repeat again, “Samantha! What is she?”

  Jareth scowled. Bending down, he planted his nose an inch from mine. “She’s a dragon, Sydney.”

  I gulped and shivered. “A … real dragon?” I hadn’t known dragons really existed. Did they possess the ability to shape-shift, just like the Fae?

  “Dragon?” he scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Did you hit your head on something, Sydney? Of course she’s not a real dragon! She’s human! Why would you think she’s not?”

  It was my turn to scowl. “I don’t get it,” I practically growled at him. I felt let down. “You said she was the strongest being you knew.”

  “And she is, Sydney,” he replied seriously. His eyes narrowed a little, and it took me a moment to recognize his expression for what it was. Admiration. “The thoughtforms that Samantha generates are among the most powerful I’ve ever witnessed. And in this place, her shop, they’re the strongest. The Queens’ trions won’t work here. No one can ultimately harm another in this shop. It’s infused with Samantha’s innate protection. And it’s a protection of the likes I’ve never seen before.”

  Samantha’s protection. A human? I held still, shocked at the thought. Could humans really be that powerful? How did they do it?

  Jareth reached over and pinched my nose. “It’s her heart, Sydney. When a human operates solely from the heart in everything they do, the true power of humanity is unleashed.”

  I opened my mouth. I don’t really know what I was going to say. Probably that I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t have time to get the words out because Rafael joined us then and pointed at the back door.

  We followed the direction of his finger.

  The Queens had arrived.

  They’d taken the time to change but not for vanity’s sake. They were dressed from head to toe in black and white body armor. It was overwhelmingly obvious that they were readied for war.

  The silence that descended upon the kitchen was absolute. We just stared at each other, waiting for some side to make the first move.

  A box fell off a stack in the storage room just as the door flew open and Samantha walked into the kitchen.

  As usual, her eyes zeroed in on me first.

  “Sydney, what are all these folks doing in here?” she asked crisply, clearly less than thrilled. A frown of disapproval creased her brow. “This isn
’t sanitary.”

  I opened my mouth but no sound came out.

  I’m not even sure Samantha noticed. Clearly working to keep her diplomatic smile in place, she waved her hands to shoo us all out. “You’ll have to go out front now, young ladies. This area is strictly employees only.”

  The Queens greeted this with a severe frown. “Be gone!” they ordered.

  But Samantha did the complete opposite. With her hands upon her hips, she headed for the Queens. Rafael moved forward as if to block her, but the Queens raised their trions before we could stop them.

  “You shall suffer for your disobedience, human!” they cried, their voices reverberating throughout the kitchen and causing the pots and pans to rattle on the walls. “Be rooted to the ground!”

  Chapter Seven – My Type

  But the Queens power didn’t affect Samantha. She just walked right up to them and snatched the trions right out of their astonished fingers.

  “Interesting toys you have there,” Samantha observed with a professional detachment. “I’m assuming you’ve had a bit too much to drink, young ladies, so I’ll just take these before you poke someone’s eye out. Now, follow Sydney up front and she’ll give you some of our blackest coffee. It’ll sober you right up.”

  The Queens just stood there, speechless. I almost felt sorry for them. They’d just been experiencing one shock after another.

  Samantha clapped her hands. “Hop to, young ladies,” she directed, clearly working to keep her smile in place. “I’ve got work to do now, and you know very well you shouldn’t be back here.”

  When they still didn’t make a move, Rafael stepped forward, waving them towards the door before pivoting on his heel to lead the way. They didn’t resist. Still dazed, they just fell in line behind him.

  Samantha nodded in satisfaction before turning to Jareth. Her cool gaze swept over him, not missing a thing. “Eat a few more of those muffins, Jareth, you look like you need them,” she suggested, nodding at the discarded cupcake wrapper on the table next to him. “You really should focus on wholesome foods. Remember, your health is a gift and not to be taken for granted. You should really use your fame for the good. Those young ladies could do with a better role model to emulate, don’t you think?”