by Terry Spear
"You will not get rid of me that easily," Brett said, slumped over. He looked pale as death.
"Good, keep that in mind and come back to us in better shape than you're leaving us. Or else."
And then Addie, with tears in her eyes, put her arm around Brett's waist, and they were gone.
"Will he make it, do you think?" Jacob asked.
Ena took a deep breath and glanced around at the woods. "They have strange ways. When they see his sword wound and the blood on his clothing, they may think he's killed someone. They may lock him in a jail cell."
"And not attempt to heal him?" Ryker asked.
"No, they would take care of his injuries first, and his fever. But it might take a while for him to get well."
Everyone watched her, looking a lot concerned.
"Hopefully he'll be back before we know it. We have to move on."
They considered the dead bodies around the wagons.
She frowned. "I will take care of this, quickly, before reinforcements show up." She incinerated the thieves' bodies, giving them a proper send off.
Seven hours later, Ena and her people sat around the campfire and ate the meal Cook had served them. Everyone was quiet. Ena missed Brett and Addie. She couldn't deny it. She'd had every intention of returning the human home after they reached the hawk fae kingdom. He didn't belong in the fae world. He never would. Though she had to admit that the notion saddened her. And if he objected strenuously to returning, she probably would be talked into allowing him to stay.
"It's been hours and Addie hasn't returned," Kerry said, stating the obvious.
"She is undoubtedly watching over Brett in the event the humans decide to put him in one of their jails," Ena said, stirring the fire. Secretly, she worried that he would not get better, but die in the human world.
"How long will we stay here waiting for them?" Ryker asked.
She knew he felt the same as her. That they could all be at risk if they stayed and waited for them. "As long as we can. If we stay too long, the phantom fae watchers will think we are squatting on their king's land, intending to claim it. We can't afford that. Hopefully, they'll be aware that we had to send the human home due to his injuries."
Muriel cleared her throat. "Maybe one of us should follow Addie's trail dust and see for ourselves what is going on."
"Like you?" Ena asked.
"Then there would be fewer to fight if the thieves attack again," Ryker said, poking at the fire.
"If we stay put, we can keep the warding spells in place." Ena sighed. "Like all of you, I want to know how Brett and Addie are faring. But for now, we wait." She motioned to their bedding. "Sleep. It will be morning before long." Not that they had anything to do until their companions returned, but they had fought long and hard and everyone needed their sleep.
This time, she settled down on her bedding and looked at the bedrolls that Kerry and Muriel had set out—Addie's and Brett's—just in case they returned in the middle of the night. There would be no talking tonight without Brett here she realized with a heartfelt sadness. She couldn't help how much she missed the disobedient but fascinating human.
Chapter 8
Brett was afraid the phantom fae was correct when he said he was going to die and that Ena wasn't right when she said he would make it to the border. He barely remembered anything about getting here—the hospital where he had his broken arm set last year after a bad martial arts move, the only medical facility he knew the location of off the top of his head.
He wondered what his friends had told the cops back home when they returned there. Why they had disappeared and reappeared without transportation at the Renaissance fair that was closed for the rest of the year. Why they were so black and blue as they had been beaten while the dark fae were trying to learn where they had taken Princess Alicia and kept her prisoner.
And what had happened to him? How long had he been away? A week, maybe? And now he turns up bruised and battered and sliced and diced.
Addie was sitting in a chair near him, her eyes closed, but she wasn't really sitting there. Well, to anyone else, she wasn't. But he could see her as clearly as if she was visible to anyone else and he knew she was using her fae ability to remain invisible. Maybe this was the only way for her to stay with him in the room since she was not family.
The thing of it was that the fae looked like just anyone else. No pointy ears. No uniquely styled brows. No difference in their eye color from humans, unless they were angered and then their eyes would glow gold—at least if they were the seelie kind. Addie could have said she was his sister. Then again, she said she'd never been to Earth world and she'd been terrified of the prospect. Had she half carried him to the hospital, but been invisible the whole time to non fae seers? That must have been a strange sight.
He was lying on his side, the uninjured one, feeling more like himself, a bag of blood bleeding into his arm, but it was almost done, and an IV of some clear liquid also entering his blood stream—antibiotics, he assumed. His side still hurt and he was hot despite the coldness of the room. He was about to speak to Addie when he heard something behind him, and listened hard before he said anything.
Addie's eyes popped open and she saw Brett's eyes were also. She smiled at him, but then put her finger to her lips and looked at something behind him. Someone, rather, reading a newspaper.
His foster mother or father?
Addie got up from her chair and leaned over and whispered in Brett's ear, "A police officer is here to question you. The nursing staff wouldn't allow him to when you were so out of it earlier. They said you should be coming around soon."
She then put her ear next to his mouth so Brett could respond. "Is he drinking coffee?"
"Something."
They had to be careful when talking. Even in her invisible form, her voice could be heard.
"Make him spill it on his lap. He'll have to leave us to get cleaned up, and we can take a moment to speak."
She nodded, then hurried over to do the deed. It was something the fae seemed to be born and bred for—making human's lives unpredictable. One moment they had a good grip on a hot cup of coffee, and then without any rhyme or reason, they'd lose their grip and the contents spilled all over themselves.
The man swore, moved out of the chair quickly, and headed out of the room.
Good. He hadn't used the patient's bathroom.
"He is gone," Addie said softly. "Can you leave? They gave you antibiotics and blood." She shivered. "So barbaric. And they stitched your wound closed. One of the men attacking you had cut you in the same location as the other and made it worse. So, can you leave?"
She was worried about Ena and the others as much as he was. And he knew if he stayed longer, he would be questioned to the nth degree and how could he explain any of this?
"I've got to get dressed," he whispered, but then the police officer walked into the room, wiping off his pants with paper towels, scowling, and saw that Brett was awake. Just great.
"Good, you're awake. I'm John Carter with the Dallas Police Department. You were in such bad shape, you couldn't tell anyone who you were last night and you had no ID on you. Who are you and who cut you? Where did you get those jeweled-handled daggers and sword?"
His weapons. Brett had to get them back! Not just because they were not his and only borrowed from a dragon fae who hoarded her treasure, but because he needed them to stay alive in the fae world. And because Ena would kill him. He probably would have to take several human life times to pay her back if he couldn't locate the weapons and take them with him.
Addie leaned down and whispered in his ear, "They are fae weapons and will have a special aura. I will be able to locate them." Then she vanished.
The police officer said, "So let's start with your name." He poised his pen over his open notebook and eyed Brett warily.
"Brett Sadler," Brett said. He figured there was no sense in making up a story. Well, some of what he said had to be made up, but he could at least
tell partial truths.
"Home address?"
Brett gave it and the man looked up from his notebook. "How did you get so far from home? And what was up with the clothes you were wearing? The weapons? The injuries you suffered?"
"I'm a larper. As in I love playing a LARP."
The officer's brows rose again.
"A Live Action Role Playing Game. You know, like the Civil War Reenactors? Only this is for fantasy role-playing, horror, military, whatever genre the group wants to play. We do fantasy."
"Fantasy."
"Yeah, like Lord of the Rings kind of stuff. Instead of just playing board games or computer gaming, we actually play it for real."
"And you are?"
"Just… what you see. A human."
"Wearing… medieval clothes."
"Right."
"Expensive clothes."
Brett worried even more then. What if they had confiscated his clothes also? How would he manage to slip out of here wearing only a hospital gown? He had to get them back.
"I bought them at one of the Renaissance fairs. They have shops and sell all kinds of things."
"Hmm," the man said. "Which Renaissance fair?"
Brett gave him the name of the one in Maryland. When he had lived there, he and his buddies had gone there several times to practice spying on the fae who were at the fair without their knowing it.
"All right. And so you were playing a game and were seriously wounded. What about the other player? The one who cut you? Is he still alive?"
No, but Brett wasn't about to tell the officer that the man wasn't human. That he was a thieving phantom fae and that Brett had been trying to protect a dragon shifter's gold and the dragon fae women in the cavalcade. The officer would think he was playing a game with him.
"Sure, he's alive. I don't know his name. He was a fae, though. Phantom fae."
"Ah, and he disappeared," the police officer said, as if he was really getting into their role-playing world, and Brett knew he was just humoring him. If only the officer could really see the fae world like it was.
"No, I mean, sure. He was probably afraid he'd get into trouble, but he was the one who dropped me off at the hospital. He didn't mean to injure me. We get cut sometimes. That's the danger of wielding real swords. I've used them in martial arts demonstrations. I know how dangerous they can be."
"Martial arts."
"Yes." Brett gave him the location of the martial arts center where he used to attend and teach classes.
"Don't tell me you're an Eagle Scout graduate also."
"I am," Brett said, and proud of the fact. He gave him the name of his Boy Scout unit where he'd earned his Eagle Scout, and the name of his Scoutmaster. Brett had never been in any real trouble, except when it came to the fae.
The officer pulled out his phone and began checking on something. He frowned. "There was a police report concerning two of your friends who they say were abducted by people they couldn't describe. They'd had black hoods over their faces the entire time. Your friends were dressed like regular teens though. No medieval clothes so they weren't role-playing at the time. Your friends were found at the Renaissance fair in Waxahachie, Texas, no visible signs of breaking and entering. They didn't want to break out, which I have to concede was admirable of them, so they called the police and said they were dropped in there somehow and they needed help getting home.
"The boys were badly bruised, shaken, and thought for sure their good buddy, Brett Sadler, had been murdered by these same men. But that's been a week ago and we found no sign of you. They said when they were taken at the school—which was verified—they were there, then they disappeared, that you were at separate locations. They weren't sure what had happened to you. You had vanished at the same time, so we figured you were taken to a different location. Now we learn that all you were doing was playing games? And this had nothing to do with what had happened to them? And about that time, one of these same boys' fathers vanished?"
Brett didn't know what to say to that. He thought his story sounded great, until his friends created more of a problem for him. As to the man who had vanished? He was a pile of ashes, but Ena had done such a job on him using her dragon fire, the police must not have realized that was him. But why wouldn't they have analyzed the ash and found it had been human before she torched him? Unless her dragon fire had changed the properties so much, it was no longer recognizable? Or, the fae had removed them. Brett wanted to know, but he couldn't let the police in on the secret that Brett could have been a pile of ashes right beside Mr. Iverson if Princess Alicia hadn't intervened.
"And then, Cassie Wimberley, who was in one of the boys' classes, vanished. Was she a LARP, too? The other boys?"
This was a nightmare. He couldn't tell the police officer that Cassie was happily with a dark fae, not to worry.
"I don't know Cassie."
"She was a good friend of Alicia—"
"Princess Alicia," Brett said, before he could bite his tongue.
"Princess Alicia," the officer said. "So she was into this role-playing also? That would explain the way she was dressed at school in the same medieval kind of costume and just as expensive looking, according to students who had witnessed her gown. She vanished also. And other students said some Goth girl was there for a little while at the school before Alicia disappeared. What the hell is going on?"
Brett wanted to reassure the officer that everyone was well and happy, all except Mr. Iverson, and that he really, really had to get back to fight the evil phantom fae thieves in the fae world, or all might be lost.
"I don't know anything about what happened to the others. All I know is that I was playing in a game and got injured through my own fault, and…"
"Missed a week of school, vanished, along with a lot of other people—and all this time you were playing a game? If the other boys were hurt, and you even more seriously so, what about the two girls?"
"I don't know."
"The oddest thing is that Alicia had moved from the area and there was no current home of record for her or her mother anywhere. And Cassie's parents don't seem to recall that they have a daughter," the police officer said.
Brett wondered how the fae would take care of that mess.
"And your foster parents? They said they released you back into the system and those in charge of the program said they had no word of it."
Brett said nothing. What could he say? The fae had mysterious ways.
"Okay, then what about those weapons? A weapons' expert said there was nothing like them in the world. They were ancient. The metal like nothing they'd ever seen. Nothing looking like the ones you had on when you arrived here. Nothing that has been stolen from any museums. Jewelry experts said that the jewels were real and the daggers and sword were priceless. Which means, they are so valuable, a price can't even be attributed to them."
Yeah, and if he didn't get them back to Ena in one piece, he was in really hot water. Why hadn't he thought to leave them behind in Ena's safe-keeping before Addie brought him here?
"And you were using them in a role-playing game? Hell, son, one of the emeralds would have amounted to six years' salary for me. So where did you get them? Not only one sword, but two daggers that were just as unusual, jewel-adorned, and priceless. Two of them. And they weren't a matched set either."
Brett shrugged. "I bought them at a different Renaissance shop. I didn't have a clue as to what they were worth. The guy was selling them as weapons adorned with gems, sure, but that's part of the role-playing. I didn't know they were real."
"Name of shop?"
"I don't know that. They all have strange sounding names in keeping with the Renaissance theme, and I never really paid a whole lot of attention."
"You're underage and you were drinking alcohol."
"Huh?"
"The wineskin you had attached to your belt contained wine, of a sorts. It wasn't like anything that is bottled. Homegrown, it appears."
Brett had been missi
ng, bloody, near death, wearing strange clothes and carrying priceless weapons, and the cop was worried about him drinking fae wine?
"Part of the reenactment. In medieval times, they didn't drink the water because it wasn't clean. So everyone drank mead, ale, or wine, when it was finally in existence."
The officer smiled a little then. "You have a story for everything, don't you?"
Yeah, but the real story would get Brett into a psych facility pronto.
"The shirt and pants you were wearing when you arrived here were splattered with blood—not your own," the officer said.
That Brett hadn't considered and it didn't sound good. "We do get a little carried away sometimes."
"Like the guy who cut you so badly that you could have died. And you really don't know his name?"
No, he was just a nameless fae. Well, both of them were, since two different ones had cut him in the same area. "No. We often don't. That's part of the game. They're just—fae, or whatever. And I'm just a human—to them."
Which was totally true.
Brett closed his eyes and placed his hand gently over his injury. Though he felt better, he was still tired. And the questioning was wearing him out.
"Just a few more questions."
Now that could kill him.
A nurse came into the room and said, "I need to see to the patient if you could step out of the room for a little while."
"All right. I'll be in the waiting area. When you're done, I'll need to question him further."
"He needs to rest."
"We need to know where the other missing kids are," the police officer said, irritated, then cast Brett a dark look, as if he knew that Brett knew just where they were.
Which he did. And they were safe and happy, last he'd heard.
But Ena and her staff could be in the worst trouble and he had to get back to them.
"But make it brief. He needs to rest," the nurse reiterated.
When the police officer left the room and closed the door, the nurse pulled aside Brett's covers and said, "How are you feeling?"
"Fine."
