For a Pixie in Blue

by Cecilia Randell

  Phillip swallowed. “It was enlightening. Thing is, Shardon’s been gone for a while. Brika wasn’t sure of the time, but it was sometime after the other crystals were taken and then returned. She could sense them. She’d been weakening for a while. She also wasn’t sure who Shardon had gone into. One of the elders, but not which one. And she’d been trying to get through to me, but the box had stopped her from connecting to my crystal or me, or...” He shook his head. “It gets confusing. There are too many voices.”

  Trevon jerked forward and back, and Blue shot him a look. Just go with it.

  She twisted in her seat so she could see Phillip more clearly. “Phillip. What happened?”

  He met her gaze and grinned. He looked young, and his gaze was clear. “Crazy old bat tipped her hand. She came for me in my meditations. She told me about Elder Shinzu.” Something that may have been true sorrow pulled Phillip’s lips down and clouded his eyes. “I don’t… something about her was just wrong. And then she dropped the box, my box. I could sense the being in her—so could Brika—and I broke my crystal…” He shook his head. “Now, we’re both in here. Like I said, it’s confusing. I grabbed Brika and got the hell out of there.”

  Silence fell over the occupants of the transport. A vent kicked on, sending fresh air into the compartment, and Blue sucked in a breath. The vehicle wasn’t really built to carry six people, let alone three near giants.

  “Why the mountains?” Felix rumbled. He sat stiffly, trying to keep his leg from touching Phillip.

  “Brika told me how we can trap him again. But we need to be around other crystals. She doesn’t have the power on her own anymore...” His words trailed off, and his gaze stuck on Blue. A smile played around his lips, and his eyes glowed with that eerie purple light.

  “This is not good idea.” Felix grew stiffer, if that was possible.

  “I believe him,” cut in Trevon. “It’s the thing we couldn’t pinpoint, the piece of the puzzle that connects everything else. We got played.” Admiration filled his voice on the last.

  Blue wanted to smile at the Earth slang, but she didn’t have it in her just then. “Yeah, we did. Maybe next time I say no war, you’ll listen to me,” she said grimly. Yes, the things that had made no sense were coming together.

  Trevon let out a bark of laughter. “I stand behind the decision, but we were deftly maneuvered, that is true.”

  “The suspension of the rotations…” said Levi.

  “Left the Prizzoli on edge and emphasized the threat of Phillip,” whispered Blue.

  “The reception…” Trevon began.

  “That allowed everyone in the Alliance to witness how unhinged Phillip… was,” finished Mo’ata with a glance down. “The Padilrian government’s original demands on the Alliance...”

  “They were believable enough to go along with…” Felix said.

  “And high-handed enough that it was bound to push others to the edge,” Trevon finished. “If the Chief Elder was pulling the strings, it would have been easy enough to hide behind the excuse of the danger of a criminal getting loose on the worlds. Quite brilliant, actually, poetic even. Threaten actions that would push some to the brink of war on one hand while saying it is to maintain peace. Use the fear of a newly born monster to pull it all together.”

  And I became a pawn. Yay.

  “Elder Shinzu’s death…” Levi said, his voice cold.

  “To tip it all over the edge,” Phillip spoke, his voice soft, his glowing gaze fixed on Blue. “But it made a mistake. One little miscalculation. It didn’t do its research, or it forgot its own history. I am formed by Phillip, or Phillip is formed by me. And Phillip has spent enough time with Brika to realize some things.” Phillip, or not-Phillip, didn’t say anything else after that, and Blue allowed the silence to stretch out.

  They were nearly to the foothills when another point occurred to her. “Why did you come to me first? I mean, why not just run to the hills? How the hell do I factor in to all of this? I’ve thought about it. I don’t think I can be the sacrifice, despite what everyone seems to keep implying and fighting against. I can’t connect to the crystals.”

  Each of the men around her tensed further, and Mo’ata growled.

  “Haven’t you figured it out?” Phillip smiled at her. “You’re the bait. Shardon needs two things to ensure his success: Brika’s Sacrifice must be destroyed without arousing suspicion, and you need to die. The first to eliminate the possibility of his re-imprisonment, and the second to tip the Alliance into a war, using me as the excuse. So we will take the two things he wants most and lead him on a merry chase.”

  “Why do I always end up being bait?” Blue muttered.

  Mo’ata twisted so he could whisper in her ear. “If I recall correctly, last time you insisted.”

  “Hush.”

  A beep sounded from the control panel of the transport. “We’re being tracked,” Trevon grunted out.

  “Good,” not-Phillip said.

  “You don’t know it’s her. It. Whatever.” Blue sat back in her seat.

  “The mountains are still our best option,” Not-Phillip said from behind her.

  Levi broke in, his tone even, carefully neutral, his English perfect. “How do we know that this was not your own elaborate scheme to get to the mountains where there are more crystals, more of the plinar for you to corrupt?”

  Not-Phillip was silent as they raced over the golden-green grasses of the Prizzoli’s plains.

  “You don’t,” he said, the deeper tones gone. “You don’t.”

  Chapter 18

  BLUE

  An hour later they were finally making their way into the mountains. Blue had moved to the back of the transport. She sat on Mo’ata’s lap, his arms around her reassuring both of them. Forrest was beside her, Garfield in his lap. Levi sat wedged into the corner while Felix and Jason, his arm wound beginning to bleed though his makeshift bandage, sat opposite her.

  Phillip was up front with Trevon, attempting to give some sort of direction to their merry little band, and Vivi...

  Vivi was up front with Phillip, sitting in his lap, kneading her paws into his thigh.

  Blue snuck a glance at Forrest, who had kept his own gaze straight ahead since they had picked him and Jason up. Other than a hug that had threatened to crush her bones, a hard kiss, and a whispered, “I love you,” he had been silent as well.

  She let him be. He would talk about what happened when he was ready. And from what she had seen next to the still waters of a small lake, something had definitely gone down.

  When they’d touched down, she hadn’t seen the body at first. She’d reached to hit the door control, and Trevon’s hand had stopped her. He’d tilted his head, and she’d seen it. Booted feet attached to still legs. Visions of Forrest lying dead had filled her mind, and she’d frozen. Then she’d seen the pants were wrong—the build, the color, everything.

  It hadn’t been Forrest.

  No, it had been one of the guards, which meant the Chief Elder had contacted them with orders that resulted in her own man’s death.

  They had decided to send Mo’ata out. Other than Blue, he was the most likely to be able to draw out Forrest and Jason if they were still here—or the cubs. That was exactly what had happened. As soon as Garfield and Vivi had bounded out of the trees, Blue had that door open and rushed to meet them. Forrest emerged moments later, supporting Jason with an arm around his waist. Behind them a second guard emerged from the tree line, his wrist bound and hands held high. Vivi had spun back, growled, then nodded. He’d been bound and left there.

  The reunion was short and intense. Mo’ata had filled them in, including the fact that Phillip was with them and apparently now a “good guy”. That was where Forrest had shut down. Jason had just grunted.

  The real shock had come when Vivi stalked to the transport, jumped into the back, approached Phillip, sniffed him a few times, and then curled up beside him. When Garfield didn’t raise a fuss either, some of the tensio
n had left all the men. Her protectors.

  Right now all she was picking up from Garfield was a mild anticipation. He knew something was coming, something that would get them out of this place and back to home, and he wanted it to happen and happen now.

  “No, through those two.” Phillip pointed to a narrow opening between two mountain faces.

  “The transport can’t go through that.”

  “That’s the way we need to go.” Not-Phillip’s tone was calm. That’s how she was thinking of them. Plinar Phillip was Not-Phillip, and Phillip was, well, Phillip.

  Phillip hadn’t made much of an appearance since they’d picked up Jason and Forrest.

  “Hang on kids,” Trevon said in a tight voice. “Daddy’s gonna take a short cut.”

  Blue groaned. “Please don’t ever say anything like that. Ever. Never again. Please.”

  Mo’ata’s arms tightened around her, and Forrest flashed her a smile. Just what she’d been going for.

  Trevon pulled the transport around in a large arc, gaining momentum. He sent them up, using the transport’s velocity to gain altitude, then swooped down, building speed. Like a roller coaster ride, Blue’s stomach flipped, and she clutched at the door, seeking anything to hold on to. Mo’ata’s arms tightened around her, and he braced one foot against the opposite seat. Around her the others were doing the same. Stone and scrubby trees flashed past as Trevon angled them to the right and slipped through the two cliff faces so closely Blue could have reached out and touched them.

  “Holy shit,” she breathed out.

  Trevon laughed. The sound was free, his grin wide. The part of her that craved the adventures answered him. Even with the bloody, dead bodies, this was so much better than waiting around in her room for something to happen. A new vista spread before her. They were flying over a small valley, a stream running through it. Short trees, their leaves a dark green, dotted the lower slopes.

  “Follow it,” not-Phillip said. He pulled out the turramin box that now housed Brika and released the latch.

  Blue got her first sight of the crystal everyone had been talking about. The one that was supposed to be their salvation. Like Phillip’s crystal, it glowed with purples, though these were lighter pastel tones swirling together with brighter jewel colors.

  Levi sucked in a breath, and his eyes narrowed. He jerked forward then back. After a moment he let out a gusting sigh, and his eyes slid closed.

  “Levi?” Blue reached across Forrest toward Levi, brushing her fingers over his shoulder.

  His eyes shot open. “Good. Is good.” He swallowed, his eyes unfocused. “We are doing the right thing.” His voice was dreamy, a bit like Phillip’s could become.

  Blue didn’t like it. “How much farther?”

  Ahead, the stream flowed to the right, though the valley continued straight. A slight dip, no more than a depression in the rock, altered the course of the water, which was swallowed into a dark hole.

  “There.” Phillip pointed to where the stream ended. “We need to go there.”

  Fucking great. Okay then.

  “I’ll need a blindfold.”

  Mo’ata ran his hand along her thigh. “We will make it work.”

  After Trevon maneuvered the transport to a flat area only a few yards away from the cave entrance, they prepared. Felix removed his sash, and Forrest cut a length from it for Blue’s blindfold. She was hoping they wouldn’t need it, but now was not the time to be careless and invite a panic attack. With the remainder, they rewrapped Jason’s arm. Phillip paced next to the cave entrance, Vivi next to him. Trevon hit a few buttons on the dash and jumped out. Mo’ata and Felix checked weapons. Blue—mentally kicking herself for forgetting her throwing knives—reassured herself her own blades were secure.

  They set off. Twenty feet in, Blue feared she would need her blindfold, but Phillip uncovered Brika once more. Knowing there was a living consciousness in there made it much harder to think of as just an object.

  He led the way, the glow giving off enough illumination to show the edges of the cave walls and keep Blue’s panic at bay.

  “Okay?” Felix, who had taken her hand when the daylight filtering in from outside faded, pulled her over a pile of loose rocks partially obstructing the path.

  “Okay,” she confirmed.

  The deeper they moved, the staler the air became. Each breath was filled with damp, and a musty scent tickled her nose and had her scrunching her face in an attempt to suppress her sneezes. Brika’s light reflected off the slick walls, their shine formed from what must have been thousands of years of mineral deposits where the water passed over the stone. The stream, now no more than a trickle, glittered in the purple light.

  As they continued, the air lightened. Ahead, a new glow emerged showing a round opening, no more than three feet across. Instead of being dark, it was rimmed in reflections of bright purple, so pale it was almost white.

  “Is this the light at the end of the tunnel that we’re not supposed to go to?” The words slipped out; she couldn’t help it.

  Forrest chuckled, and Trevon snorted. She wondered just how much time the Family head spent on Earth that he understood the reference. Not even Jason seemed to get it.

  Phillip looked back at her and grinned. With the glow of Brika shining up from the box, his face was cast into sinister lines. “Nah,” he said. “We are definitely going toward this light.”

  Crappity, what am I doing?

  It occurred to her that she was casting herself in the role of the stupid horror movie heroine that got herself killed. They had a fifty-fifty chance of coming out of this. On one hand, Phillip could be manipulating them all. On the other, he was right and they saved the worlds. They were putting a trust in him that he didn’t deserve. She was following her impulses, the same ones that had led her to befriend Kevin the first day at school, to tell Mo’ata she loved him before returning to Earth, and to follow the cries of two lost little cubs.

  Maybe she couldn’t trust Phillip, but she could trust herself.

  “Lead on,” she said. “Let’s just hope it’s not a train on the other end.”

  No one laughed at that one, but she hadn’t really been joking, so that was okay.

  Phillip put the top half of his body through the hole. He let out a soft gasp and climbed the rest of the way in. The guys, their faces illuminated by the glow, exchanged looks. With a shrug and a grin, Trevon went next. Four seconds later he poked his head back through, backlit in purple-white light. “I don’t know if it’s safe, exactly, but nothing in here to eat you. Come on.”

  Once Felix and Jason were through, Blue went. Forrest and Levi were right behind her, and Mo’ata went last.

  “I think I read this book a couple of years ago,” Forrest said. “In fact, I might have even done a report on it for English.”

  It took Blue a moment, but then she got the reference. They were standing in an effing crystal cave.

  It was breathtaking. A soft shaft of light shone down from a small opening high in the rock face. The chamber was thirty yards or so across and nearly as deep. Purple crystals studded the walls, most dark or giving off only the faintest glimmer.

  Arranged in a circle on the stone floor were eleven crystals, all glowing with a light similar to Brika’s. The colors ranged from deep indigo to the palest violet. Each pulsed and faded, as though the light—or the plinar themselves—breathed. It was amazing, mesmerizing, terrifying.

  “What are these?”

  “They—” Levi cut off, his voice strangled. His eyes were wide, and tears streamed down his cheeks. He swallowed. “They are... the plinar of those who...”

  “Who bonded well or formed naturally,” not-Phillip finished the explanation. “I can hear them, as can Brika. She should have been laid to rest here, but the elders held her.”

  “I didn’t know,” Levi choked out.

  Not-Phillip smiled. “You were not meant to.” His eyes slid closed, cutting off the swirl of purple. When they opened again,
he was just Phillip. That chocolate gaze sought out first Forrest, then Blue. “It’s amazing y’all. I can feel them. It’s better than—” He swallowed. “It’s better than anything.” He held out a hand. “I could try to show you?”

  Forrest, his eyes dazed, took a step forward, and Blue caught his arm. “Maybe when we’re done?” Yeah, she’d just used her humoring-the-crazy-man voice, but though she now believed Phillip wasn’t trying to kill them all, that didn’t mean she trusted his judgment. Felix and Mo’ata moved around the chamber. Small piles of stone and debris were littered across the edges of the floor. Chips and scrapes stood out like scars on the walls where crystals had been previously removed. How many were gone? Taken? She counted many more than the eleven on the floor or the five others she knew of. There had to be... at least thirty pitted holes in the stone. And hundreds more still in the walls.

  “You know what this means, don’t you Levi?” She let go of Forrest and moved to the Prizzoli, who had followed her gaze with a study of his own.

  “That the elders have lied and others have come to the mountains since Shardon, even if it was simply to place a plinar. There are seventeen crystals in our care, not counting Brika or Phillip. If a— if a crystal was retrieved for every one returned, the count is correct. To my knowledge.”

  “Brika says yes,” Not-Phillip said. “The elders were keeping the trust, but they didn’t want the secret getting out, so they brought the fully formed plinar back to this place. Most were content to go, for they simply wanted the peace of existence. Those who were not so inclined have settled. It is a good place to rest, to... to dream.” His gaze drifted over the room and settled on Blue.

  Her gut twisted, and she looked away, back to Levi, whose own eyes were on her. She took his hand in hers and squeezed. “You okay?”

  “No.”

  “Fair enough. You ready to do something to stop Shardon?”

  As he opened his mouth to answer, a scuff and the clink of metal on stone came from the opening to the chamber.