I fret about this for a long time. And then I don’t know exactly how it happens—maybe because of the adrenaline or the fear or the completely rotten day. Or the chamomile tea.
But despite everything…I fall fast asleep.
Chapter 4: Another World
I wake with a start and a rush of breath. My neck hurts so much as I open my eyes, sit up…but it probably hurts terribly because I fell asleep sitting up in my comfy chair, my head falling back against the chair top like I’m a ninety-year-old woman.
I rub at my eyes with the heels of my hands, yawn and stretch overhead a little, my head to the side as I massage my right shoulder. Huh. What a weird night. I had the strangest dream, and…
I blink and stare at the couch across from me for a long moment, breath coming in short gasps as my heart rate increases.
There’s a puddle of dried blood on the cushions.
Okay.
So it probably wasn’t a dream then.
I stagger upright, which doesn’t last long, because on my first step, I’m tripping over Shelley who was fast asleep on my feet, and I sprawl on my living room carpet. Shelley yelps as I wake her up ungracefully from what was probably a lovely dream about excess kibble. She scrabbles beneath me, and I crawl off her quickly, but she doesn’t seem to mind much, as she instantly bounds up, shaking her puffy coat, and then she’s wagging her tail hard again and pointing her long nose up with one of her cute doggie grins as she stares up at…
“Are you all right?” There’s a strong, warm hand at my elbow and my waist, and then gently, I’m turned over and raised in muscular arms, and I’m held in this incredibly gentle embrace…
And oh, my God, it’s the woman from last night.
She’s standing in my living room.
Holding me.
My eyes are drawn to those beautiful, full lips that are curled upwards in a graceful smile. Her eyes, crinkled at the edges as she grins down at me, are the most intense blue I’ve ever been witness to, made even more intense by the daylight, as if that were possible. They seem to glow from within, an ice blue that’s clear and vibrant beyond description. As I stare up at her, at her gorgeous face with her lovely, strong high cheekbones, her graceful jaw and full lips I’m trying to memorize, she gently lets me go, steps away from me, gazing at me and clearing her throat softly, brows up and still smiling as she inclines her head toward me.
“Um,” I breathe out, as I stand there with my mouth open. Very articulate. “Um…” My voice trails off as my gaze drifts down, and I stare at her leg, at the gigantic hole in her leather pants.
At the complete lack of blood.
And, you know, at the lack of wound.
The wound is gone.
“Are you all right, m’lady?” she asks then, cocking her head. She’s taken off her fur capelet and cloak, and stands in her armor over her shirt and pants and leather boots, one hand on her hip, and one hip cocked up. She’s standing there in front of me with such an aimless surety, actually, and this raw sort of sensuality that my breath catches in my throat, and then I’m swallowing again, my mouth suddenly and instantly as dry as any desert I can think of.
Virago, I remember, grappling with my brain. She said last night that her name was Virago.
“Virago…” I mutter, clearing my throat. I can’t stop staring at her muscular, tanned leg through the hole in the leather pants. (I’m kind of fixating on the leather pants thing, I realize.) “What…happened? Where’s…I mean, didn’t you have a really bad wound there last night?” My eyes drift back up to her face, my cheeks reddening because my gaze pauses for a long moment on her armor-clad chest. The wound on her stomach is also completely healed—I can see the bare, tanned skin through the hole in the shirt beneath her armor. It’s as if she was never wounded in the first place.
“I healed,” she says simply, gazing at me with brows raised, as if that statement was the most natural thing in the world. She strides past me with the same practiced ease as a wolf, running her long fingers over her head and through her ponytail and over the wolf’s tail dangling over her shoulder. “M’lady Holly…I need to speak with you.”
“You healed,” I repeat flatly, and then I’m sitting back down in my chair again quickly because my legs apparently no longer want the job of holding me up. Shelley noses at my hand with her long muzzle anxiously to be let outside, and that’s what brings me back to reality. My dog needs to pee. You can’t get more reality-based than that.
“Um. Just…wait a second, okay?” I tell the woman in armor standing in my living room. I get up ungracefully from my chair and make my way to the back sliding glass door, tugging back the curtains and then cautiously pulling up the blinds.
I’m cautious and uncertain about these things, because part of me doesn’t even really want to glance at my backyard. Because I’m not really sure what’s going to be waiting for me outside.
But it’s just my normal backyard out there, with its closely cropped grass, still glistening with the previous night’s rain. It’s stopped raining, thankfully, and the sunshine filters down into the backyard like a spotlight, highlighting the tall maple trees behind the fence in my neighbor’s yard. There’s some divots in the backyard, in the grass. I open the door, and Shelley bounds out happily, sniffing around in the damp grass, her white-gold tail wagging. I watch her prance across the lawn for a long moment.
“Holly, it is quite urgent that I speak with you,” says Virago, suddenly very close to me, staring down at me with wide, ice-blue eyes, her fingers gently at my elbow again as her hand curls around my arm. I stare up at her.
“I’m listening,” I murmur.
She nods, searches my eyes. “I need to leave immediately, need to find the creature, as it is my responsibility that it’s here, and if anyone is injured by it…” She swallows, and her eyes flash as she breathes out slowly, her jaw working. “I need to do right by this,” she finishes, voice strong and low. My heart begins to beat faster as she inclines her gorgeous head toward me. “I must thank you for last night,” she whispers, searching my eyes with her own. “It was you who startled the beast. Without your help—”
I swallow, suddenly going cold. There’s that word again. “Beast.”
“This is all just…very, very strange,” is what I manage to say then, hardly capable of getting the words out. “Um…your leg just healed? Wounds don’t…they don’t heal overnight. What’s going on? Who are you? I don’t understand…” I trail off, searching her face, ready and waiting for her to tell me that this has all been an elaborate stunt for the Knights of Valor Festival that somehow went very wrong. That maybe they have a motorized “beast” that they’re going to start including in shows, and that it had, somehow, wound up in my backyard…
But I have a very strange feeling that this isn’t what she’s about to tell me.
Virago sighs, gestures back to my coffee table. “I have been looking through your books, and I think that it is safe to say that I am no longer in my world, and that what we attempted to do to detain the creature did not, in fact, work.” Her glittering gaze flicks back to my eyes and pins me to the spot as she straightens, drawing herself up to her full height and crossing her muscled arms in front of herself. “So to begin with, we must start at the beginning. I must know—what world am I in?”
“Earth,” I blurt out, before I realize in the next instant how absolutely crazy this is. What world she’s in? “Virago…” I splutter, “you can’t possibly…” I settle on the only rational thing that comes to mind: “I thought you were from the Knights of Valor Festival?”
She stares at me blankly, head to the side.
“I mean…just look at you…” I say, throwing my hands to the sides and indicating her armor, her capelet, her cloak. Her friggin’ wolf’s tail that’s dangling over her shoulder from her ponytail. “You can’t…you can’t possibly expect me to believe that you’re from another world.” I pale, and clear my throat, stiffen when she continues to watch me with g
uarded eyes, her arms crossed. “Wait, did someone set you up to this?” I ask her, anger making my voice shake. “Because if they did…” She remains silent, watching me, and I go quiet, watching her, too.
“M’lady, would that I had a simpler explanation for you,” she remarks wryly, again with a small, sideways grin as she shakes her head. “But it seems that I am out of my element, at the present, and can not present you with anything but the truth. I am no longer on my world. As is my beast, who—right now—may be wreaking havoc and hurting innocents.” Her face goes grave again, her ice-blue eyes flashing, and she sighs, pushes her broad shoulders back, the pads of her armor moving with her. “I need to track him down and destroy him—exactly what I was trying to do last night before my unfortunate wounding. Neither I nor the beast expected to end up here, and I think he simply recovered quicker than I might have, and—”
I can’t believe I’m actually saying it, but I blurt out: “Whoah. Wait. Start at the beginning.”
Virago draws herself up to her full height (which is a full head taller than me), and nods genteelly, that graceful arch of neck and jaw a gravity that my eyes are compelled to follow. She indicates the chair I slept in all night with a gentle wave of her hand. “If m’lady would take a seat, I shall recount my journey here as best as I’m able.”
I sit down quickly.
In one smooth, fluid motion, Virago is crouching down in front of me on one graceful knee. She is kneeling in front of me.
“I am Virago of the Royal Knights of Arktos City, capital of Arktos,” says Virago, her voice strong and clear. She touches the place over her heart with long fingers and inclines her head to me in this sweeping bow, causing my own heart to beat even faster as I try to understand what she just told me.
And then with a dancer’s grace, and still down on one knee, she takes the hand that had touched her heart and proffers it out to me. In a stunned sort of silence, I give her my hand, because I assume that’s what she wanted: me to give her my hand. And, God yes that’s exactly what she wanted, because she’s kissing the back of my hand, her lips just as soft, just as warm as I’d imagined. Her hot, satin mouth lingers against my skin for a single beat too long, my heart thundering against my chest like it’s going to stop working completely.
She’s smiling softly as she lets her warm fingers trail over my palm, her bright blue eyes gazing at me unwaveringly and then she lets go of my hand, and it falls back into my lap, and it’s all warm and tingly from where her lips brushed against it.
Virago stares at me intently, this gorgeous woman on one knee in front of me, perfectly balanced and steady, with her elbow on her knee, her armored elbow. She breathes out softly, slowly, and straightens, then as she sits back on her heels in a single fluid motion, I find I can breathe again. Just barely.
“I have been a knight since I took my oath to Queen Calla in my seventeenth year,” she tells me, her face serious and impassive as she says the words with a quiet strength. “It is my solemn and sworn duty to protect the people of Arktos City, and the kingdom of Arktos, and that is what I have done to the best of my ability. Until last night.” She grimaces, sighs, places her hands on her legs—one on the bare skin of her thigh, actually, since there’s still a gaping hole in her pants. Not that I’m still paying attention to that, obviously.
She searches my gaze, her beautiful, full lips beginning to turn downward into a frown. “We received word in Arktos City that a great beast was terrorizing the peoples of the northern mountain range,” says Virago, raising one brow as she growls out the words. “So a group of my best fellow knights and myself were asked by the queen to journey and stop the beast in its tracks, before it had cause to reach more populated areas. You see, we’d received more than one story like this, stories that had come in from many different places, different villages and towns—there was even word that an entire village may have been wiped out by the creature. So we went quickly, and we engaged it in battle. But this…” She pauses for a long moment, searching for the words, her bright white teeth worrying at the edge of her full lip. “This was a very different creature than any we’d ever encountered before, and it didn’t respond to swords or spears or arrows, not to axes, and not even to magic when we used it.”
I stare at her, my mouth open, as she pauses, clears her throat. She said the “m” word. Magic.
“So we concocted a plan…” she continues, raising her chin. “If we could open one of the portals from our world to an in-between place between worlds and lure the beast through the portal, it would be trapped where it could not destroy or harm anything or anyone, ever again. We believed, you see, that this was no ordinary beast, but a construct, built of magic. Dark, evil magic.”
“Magic,” I repeat softly. “And…and portals.” Virago is watching me, head to the side, and she nods slowly, thoughtfully.
“So we sought the only local witch that we could find…”
“Witch?” I manage weakly. She ponders this for a moment.
“They do magic…” she turns her long, graceful fingers in a circle. “Sometimes, they’re called sorceresses.”
“Oh,” I reply, swallowing. Sure. Actual witches. Sorceresses.
“…and there just aren’t that many villages in the northern mountain range, so it was hard to find a witch. Thankfully, she was near where the portal was located. You see, only a witch can open a portal, and—”
“I’m sorry…” I mutter, standing, spluttering. Virago’s brows both go up, but she watches me quietly from her position, crouching on my living room floor, her elbow on her knee like she’s just been knighted. “But…” I splutter again and fall silent, staring down at her ice blue eyes, her set, strong jaw. I swallow, continue quietly: “You can’t possibly be asking me to believe that you’re from another world,” I tick off my fingers, “that you’re a knight from a kingdom, that you came here with a beast that happens to be a construct of sorcery, and—”
Virago stands too, then, her eyes flashing as she spreads her long-fingered hands. “I am sorry, m’lady, but it is the only explanation that I can muster. I do not know why it went wrong. Why I came here. I only know now that I am here, and that there is a beast that I brought with me that may hurt or kill others. I will be responsible for this, and I must not let that happen. I will not let innocents suffer because of me,” she says, her voice low, passion making her words break at the end. She searches my eyes. “M’lady Holly…I do not know why I came here, but I arrived here…you were there when I came through…” She trails off, and I’m not certain what she’s going to say next, but my heart’s beating so quickly, I can hardly breathe. We’re so close to each other. So close. I can smell the scent of her, leather and metal and something a little like sandalwood, and the warm, sweet scent of her skin. She works her jaw, and she stares deeply into my eyes.
She’s waiting for me to say something, I realize.
And I hate myself for what I say next, but it’s the truth. “How can I believe that?” I whisper, balling my hands into fists. All of the fight is knocked out of me, but I have to speak the truth. “How can I believe that you’re from another world? That’s…that’s not possible.”
We stare at one another for a long moment. Her eyes are wide, pained, and then something comes across her face, and her jaw hardens, her expression hardens, and she grimaces, shaking her head, shifting her weight back onto her heels.
“M’lady Holly,” she says stiffly, standing at attention and staring straight forward, over the top of my head. “I realize that I have troubled you too greatly. You have been quite kind in all of this, and I do not wish to further trouble you. I will be on my way, then.”
I swallow as she turns, taking up her still wet fur capelet—it lays across her arm like a sad, unconscious animal—and her still wet cloak. “No. Please. Wait…” I mutter, stepping forward, putting my hand on her warm arm, my fingers against muscled skin that’s surprisingly soft to the touch. “Please…” She turns to look back at me, her
blue eyes a gravity that pulls me down and into them, and that gaze again…the jolt of it goes all the way down my toes and back again. When she looks at me, it’s as if she can see into the very heart of me.
Her gaze packs a punch.
“Okay,” I say slowly, breathing out. “If all that you say is true…” (Oh, my God, Holly, oh, my God, I think to myself, but I push through all of the doubt and keep talking.) “If all you say is true,” I repeat, and gulp, “then how did you end up with that thing…that ‘beast,’ here?”
“Well,” says Virago heavily, licking her lips as she shakes her head, rolls her shoulders down, “the witch was supposed to open a portal to the in-between place between worlds, but she opened it to here…I suppose. ‘Earth.’ And she was trying to change the direction of the portal when the beast—which, unfortunately, our knights could not control nearly as well as we’d hoped—broke through our ranks, and pushed through the portal. Dragging me with it. In its mouth,” Virago adds helpfully, patting her leg, and the wound that had sealed in her skin. A wound from a gigantic mouth and teeth, I now realize. “And then the portal was closed. And it still is,” she folds her arms, her leather gauntlets creaking against the fluid motion as she sighs again. “But it doesn’t matter if the portal is closed or not, because I have to find another portal, and another witch, so that I can do what we set out to in the first place: trap the creature in the in-between space. Or it will wreak havoc on your world. And destroy it,” she says, words weighty and final.
I breathe out, run my hands through my hair, sink back down in the chair again. “Destroy it,” I repeat, gazing up at her, and she nods, hands on her metal and leather-clad hips.
“So you see, it is quite imperative that I find the creature. And a portal. And a witch,” she says, kneeling smoothly down before me again on one knee. She leans toward me, her bright blue eyes trained on my face, her full lips downturned as she murmurs, beseeching, her low words strong and intense: “M’lady Holly, I beg of you…I am a stranger here. I do not know the ways of your kingdom, and we are running out of time. Please help me find these things?”
A Knight to Remember Page 5
