“Maleficent,” she hissed. “Maleficent. Mal-!”
A man turned the corner and stopped in his tracks at the sight of her. Her fist clenched around the sphere as he looked her up and down.
“Who are you?”
“I’m ah…”
He sniffed the air, his eyes closed, and then they were blazing white with hunger.
“What did you do?” he hissed, striding forward in an explosion of air that sent Rachel’s hair flying back from her face. His hands clutched her shoulders and when he spoke next she could have sworn that she could see elongated fangs where his canine should have been.
Something told her that she’d finally met the Collector.
Fangs gleaming, he grabbed her by the hair and jerked her head back. She felt him move in for the kill and she cried out without thinking.
“Maleficent!”
She appeared in a swirl of purple smoke. Dressed all in back, her hair was pulled back in a severe bun, she looked harsher and crueler than Rachel had ever seen her. She grabbed the Collector around the throat and snapped his neck. Rachel was horrified by the casual violence of the act. But that was nothing to the stunned disbelief that filled her when the Collector got back to his feet from where he had fallen, and wrenched his head back into place. The worst part was that he didn’t even seem upset. In fact he ignored Mal completely. He kept smelling the air, and with every exhalation his eyes grew a little brighter, his grin a bit more wicked. He was practically salivating and Rachel screamed when he came for her again. Maleficent grabbed Rachel around the waist and pulled her out of the way, shoving her towards the door.
“Get out of here.”
“But, Chris-?”
Maleficent gritted her teeth and her eyes darted beyond Rachel. With a curse, she swept a hand over Rachel’s head, enveloping her in a cloud of magic. Rachel felt that familiar pulling sensation and then she was standing on the roof again. Alex and Sam were there, waiting, and she ignored them. She tried throwing herself back towards the portal, but it simply snapped closed in her face, leaving her heartbroken and speechless, trapped outside of the ether.
Chapter Twenty
As soon as Rachel was out of the way, Sultan Shahriyar, Collector of Tales, sagged in disappointment.
“Why did you do that?” he asked, almost sadly. “I was really hungry, and her story smelled so nice.”
Maleficent couldn’t help but sigh. She’d been quarantining warped fairytales for as long as she could remember. It had been her calling as a witch, her specialty, and she’d been forced to slack in that regard ever since she’d taken on the role of godmother. Sultan Shahriyar was the first story she’d relocated to the maze. Back in the real world, he was man who wouldn’t sleep. The men and women he captured would be forced to spin tall tales for him day and night in hopes of rectifying that. Some of them died from natural causes, others were executed.
When she’d met the Sultan, she’d been hunting another creature entirely. A certain Djinn who was getting a little big for his britches. Rumors had led her to a small town in the middle of the desert, where word of a thief and a princess were running rampant. She’d captured Zaran, but too late to keep him from claiming the souls of the royal family as well as the thief who had summoned him in the first place. On her way home, she’d run across Shahriyar. The damned man had kept her for weeks, months, years. She’d kept track of the days on the walls of the harem where’d she’d slept with the rest of his concubines. She’d been unable to magic herself away, simply because to do so would be to lose Zaran within the ether. She’d told hundreds of stories, thousands, millions of them, until she’d finally grown bored of the game.
1,001 nights later, she cursed him. Cursed him to live for the stories, and the stories alone. For the blood the stories swam in and the magic trapped within the telling of the tales. They sustained him as food and sleep couldn’t and he’d spent the next few centuries terrorizing the land. Hunting. Searching. Feeding. She knew him as the Collector. The humans called him Vampire. It was all a gray area as far as she was concerned, and she’d hidden him within the maze before she could be blamed for his antics.
Despite their history, Shahriyar wasn’t the worst thing living within the maze. He wasn’t even the most violent. Hell, the three blind mice lived in the next hedge over, and their diet had consisted of female eyeballs. All in all, Maleficent had a soft spot for the Sultan and she relaxed as soon as his eyes darkened back to brown.
“I’m sorry, love,” she said. “But she wasn’t for you.”
“Oh.” He looked at something beyond her shoulder and grew hopeful. “Can I have the frog?”
“Shit.” Maleficent turned to see a tree frog clinging to the side of the ground tub and scowled. “No,” she snapped, as Shahriyar began to edge slowly past her. “No,” she said more gently. “He’s my charge. I’ll need to take him home.”
The Sultan grumbled for a moment before growing hopeful.
“Will you stay for a bit first?” he asked. “Tell me a story? For old time’s sake.”
She stared at him for a moment, at the dark skin and ink black hair. Seeing him again after so long simply reminded her that keeping Zaran under wraps hadn’t been the only reason she’d stayed with Shahriyar as long as she had. He smiled at her, the charm of his smile competing with the sensuality of his mouth, and Maleficent felt her face warm. She cleared her throat and turned away.
“Just one story,” she warned, ignoring his deep chuckle as she made her way over towards the charm room. Some might think it strange that she’d tasked Shahriyar with protecting these curses, but this particular brand of magic didn’t spike his hunger. In fact, were he to ingest any of it, he’d make himself sick. When she reached the door, she retraced the ruin ingrained in its surface. She watched the door transform back into steel with a jaundiced eye. It had taken forever to figure out how to use some of the Gift of Midas in a controlled setting, but the security measure seemed to be working out nicely. Midas gold was the one material that couldn’t be affected by other magic, making it ideal to incorporate in a lockdown.
Once the safety measure had been reversed, Maleficent opened the door and stepped into the room. She was unsurprised to find the room empty and every spell on the shelves broken and scattered. She knew what had been in each of those bottles, and as she ran through a mental inventory of the curses that had just been released and/or broken, her mouth grew tight. She stalked through the room, high heeled boots crunching the glass beneath her feet to dust. It wasn’t until she reached the back of the room that she felt fear fully bloom within her.
There was one bottle, one curse, that neither Danielle nor Zaran would have been able to break. No matter how hard they tried. The curse that held the Black Widow’s power at bay. They may not have been able to break the curse, but they had done the next best thing.
One of them had stolen it, likely to bring it to the one person who could do all of the hard work that had gone into making the Widows helpless in the first place. Maleficent began to shake.
“Mal?” She jumped as Shahriyar stepped up beside her, his hand resting gently at the small of her back. Still proprietary even after all these years and after everything that they’d done to one another.
“What?” she asked stiffly.
He bent, pressing his lips against the back of her neck.
“Come to bed.” His lips curved into a smile against her skin and she shivered as her resolve weakened. “For old time’s sake.”
She struggled with herself, but in the end she gave in. After all, Alex would still be just as screwed by the time Mal managed to pull herself from Shahriyar’s embrace. As she followed the Sultan from the charm room, she bent and scooped up Chris. His poison coursed through her body, but she ignored it. She’d handled her fair share of his kind, though usually they were ingredients in whatever spell she happened to be mixing at the time. Chris was special, however. Thanks to the magic living within the Greyson bloodline, he’d manage
d to create a Toadstone. The ultimate symbol of luck and protection. His body was simply producing toxins to help protect the stone, a defense mechanism that could get extreme if not held in check. She could help with that, if nothing else. The rest would be up to him and his Sleeping Beauty. Holding him gently in her grip, she lifted him until they were eye to beady little eye.
“One of us deserves a happy ending,” she told him gravely. Then whispering a soft word, she released him. “You should go get yours while you still can.”
***
Danielle screamed in frustration as she pulled and beat at the stubborn vial labeled “Wicked.” It was frustrating to have the solution to all of her problems in her hands, but still be unable to do anything with it. For now, the Toadstone was lost to her. She wouldn’t be able to protect herself or the other Widows from the magic of the Witches or the Dragon’s fire, but that wasn’t as much of a set back as she thought it would be. The dragons were flirting with extinction, and already there was talk of dissent amongst those that still lived because of Samuel’s brutal and “unprovoked” murder of his second in command. Which meant that there was no guarantee that they would stand behind Sam, should the need for their support ever arise. Meanwhile, the witches were so scattered and overwhelmed with their workload that it would be a miracle if they noticed anything was amiss at all.
So she wasn’t worried about her old enemies. She was more concerned with her new ones. Ever since Rachel had been taken, Danielle had been steadily losing more and more of her power. She couldn’t hunt for new victims while she was tutoring Alex. Not if she wanted to keep her coming to lessons. And Alex needed to continue her training. She needed to become a full-fledged Widow. Then, and only then, would Danielle be able to consume her heart and return to her former strength and glory. She would no longer have to suck the life from the young because she would be able to sustain herself from her own life-force.
She had been grooming both of her children to one day help her achieve her goals, so far only Chris had managed to disappoint her aspirations. Danielle’s life depended on Alex being more reliable than her older brother. After a long moment, Danielle managed to calm herself. As she bent down to pick up the vial, she caught sight of herself in her bedroom mirror. Her hair, the strands that were left, were white with age and only highlighted the age spots that decorated her wrinkled scalp. Her skeleton was painfully visible beneath her paper thin skin and most of her teeth had rotted out of her skull. She turned away, blinking back tears and trying to calm the wild beat of her heart. She clutched the vial of wickedness against her chest and shook.
She had to succeed.
She had to.
To lose was to turn into dust and cobwebs, to be lost within the ether. Danielle wouldn’t allow herself to die that way, even if it meant sacrificing the one person on this earth that she truly cared about.
***
There was a well on the far side of the world that had no bottom. To fall within it was to fall forever between the worlds. A state of affairs that the demon, the well’s only occupant, was unaware of. When the sleeping spell broke, the imp opened his eyes with a grin. His arms reached out, nails scraping along the stone sides until the traction brought a halt to his free fall. Then, settling his claws more deeply into the wall, he began the long, long, climb back to the surface.
***
Maximillian Zaran wasn’t used to stress.
For the most part he liked to think of himself as pretty laid back.
Anyone seeing him now wouldn’t have thought he was the same man.
In a way, he knew that all of this was his own fault.
Ambition had cost him. He’d helped the girl break the sleeping curse knowing full well that she wouldn’t be the only person freed from it. He’d thought that if he could get his hands on the Toadstone beforehand then he would have no reason to fear Him. But he’d sabotaged himself. The fairy dust he’d given Rachel Constance Dupree had done more than offer temporary relief from her curse. It seemed to have strengthened secondary powers in her as well. Powers she wouldn’t have been able to lay claim to before the Sleeping Beauty curse had been cast on her. She was back in the real world now. Out of his reach unless they visited within dreams once again. Something she was sure to avoid now that she knew what he was after.
Which meant that the Toadstone, and the protection that came with it, may as well have been a million miles away. At this point, he could only hope that he’d accumulated enough goodwill to protect him from the demon’s ire. Which pretty much ruined any hope that Zaran might have had into forcing the more powerful demon into placing him higher up in hell’s hierarchy.
A shame really.
He would have made an excellent high lord.
His intercom buzzed, much sooner than he expected, and he barely refrained from jumping in his seat.
“Sir?”
Mara’s voice was tight and a muscle in Zaran’s eye began to jump as his suspicions were confirmed.
“Send him in,” he told her. No point in dragging this out.
The door seemed to open in slow motion, and as his guest entered, Zaran met him in the center of the room. He knelt, head lowered, as was custom, and tried not fill the room with the scent of his fear.
“Maximillian Zaran,” his voice was like lava over stone, a gravely sound filled with heat. “A pleasure to see you again.”
When the demon lord offered his hand, Zaran accepted it long enough to place a kiss upon the signet ring. “The pleasure is all mine, sir,” he assured him quickly. Rumpelstiltskin smiled down at him, green eyes sparkling, and Zaran tried not to cringe away.
Epilogue
It had been weeks since Rachel had last seen Chris, and she was starting to lose hope that she would ever lay eyes on him again. It made eating dinner with her family difficult. It made sleeping impossible. It made breathing hurt. The more she told herself not to think about him, the more intensely her thoughts seemed to focus on him. It was a special kind of hell and Rachel often found herself sitting at her window late into the night when she should have been sleeping.
Even if she had wanted to, she didn’t seem to need as much sleep as everyone else did anymore. Whenever she tried to force the issue, she could almost feel her spirit rising from her body again. Unlike before, it wasn’t a release, it wasn’t a form of freedom, but something cold and frightening. She was convinced that one day she wouldn’t be able to get back into her body, and that fear was enough to make her avoid even the mention of astral travel.
Since she’d never had the chance to give it back to him, she’d kept the Toadstone close. She’d gone to a jeweler to see if they could work with the stone, but none of the man’s tools could cut or shape it. In the end it had been Alex who managed to drill a small hole through its center with magic so that a strong leather chord could be slid through. Now Rachel wore the stone as a necklace, a talisman. Not just because it made her feel safe but because she hoped it would help draw Chris to her when nothing else could.
Being with family again was its own headache, but Sam and Alex visited her regularly enough to make up for it. It comforted Rachel somewhat, to know that she wasn’t the only one worried about Chris. That didn’t make his absence any easier to bear.
So time and time again, she found herself sitting at the exact same spot as the night before. Hand clutching the windowsill, eyes straining to make out the shapes in the darkness. And one night, she saw it. It was the barest movement at first. Just a rustle of leaves. But she lifted her window anyway, staring out breathlessly out over her parent’s back yard. There was another rustle, a plaintive croak, and Rachel abandoned her perch. She didn’t bother with a coat, or even shoes, instead sailing down the steps barefoot and out the back door. She stopped, scanning the yard as the wind blew her pajama bottoms flush against her legs. She wouldn’t have found him if he hadn’t decided to hop onto a stepping stone at that very moment.
Rachel approached him cautiously. She had no idea if this
was the right frog. Ever since she’d lost Chris she’d been capturing ones she’d found in her mother’s garden and giving them experimental pecks on the head. She was pretty sure that she’d contracted some sort of frog-based disease by now and was surprised that she hadn’t broken out in warts. The odds of this particular frog being Chris were astronomical, but…he didn’t try to run away. He just sat there, patiently, until she knelt down before him. And when she put her hands out, he stepped onto her palms. There was a familiar ache in her arm, as if it remembered the source of its discomfort even if her mind wasn’t so sure about his identity.
“Chris?”
He still possessed the blank gaze of an animal, but as she stared at him, his tongue darted out to slap across her cheek. She wrinkled her nose in disgust, but couldn’t help but smile. It was Chris. It had to be. If it wasn’t, then she’d just picked up the world’s friskiest amphibian.
“Well,” she told him, feeling understandably nervous, “here goes nothing.”
Closing her eyes, she clutched the Toadstone and kissed him.
She knew instantly that this time was different than all the others. This wasn’t the uncaring kiss of a stranger. She kissed him because she loved him. She kissed him because he was hers. She kissed him because, in the long run, she needed Christopher Greyson more than she needed sleep or security or a world that made sense.
And as it turned out, the idea of true loves kiss wasn’t all bullshit after all.
With a sigh, she felt him transform before her for the last time. Body filling out, growing, until he was the one kissing her, leaning her back over the arm he wrapped around her waist and dipping into her mouth with his tongue.
“Welcome back, Mr. Greyson,” she said, voice thick.
He chuckled into her mouth and the rest of the night was a haze of muffled moans and rediscovered flesh. Rachel knew that things were far from being over; they were both a long way from being safe. But for now…for now she was exactly where she needed to be and that was enough.
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