by D. N. Hoxa
Julian waved for us to come out when he made sure that nobody was there. It wasn’t all that surprising to see Amelia’s neighborhood so quiet and empty. After all, before the coven got back together, that was how all of Bloomsburg had looked. Still, you could feel it in the air that something wasn’t right. The quiet was too quiet. The darkness too dark. Even the lampposts couldn’t seem to penetrate it.
We walked slowly out of Amelia’s front yard. The flowers around the pathway had already withered. That would take days to happen. Maybe my aunt left the house as soon as Galladar attacked? She was a coven leader, so it was only reasonable that they had an evacuation plan in case something like this happened. I could hope so, at least.
When we crossed the street and nothing happened, I began to wonder. The houses looked all empty, too. I was sure somebody would be in there if we checked, but I doubted anybody wanted to be found. By us, anyway. The coven leaders were a different story.
“Isn’t it strange?” I whispered. “Galladar must have already heard from his fairies. They must have told him we disappeared through a black hole in the middle of battle.”
“Probably,” Julian confirmed.
“So why is nobody after us?” It just seemed strange, don’t you think?
“Maybe they are. Maybe they just haven’t found you yet,” Lynn said.
Highly doubtful. They weren’t in my office. They weren’t at my aunt’s house. These two were the most logical places to search for someone you wanted found. But I didn’t say it because I didn’t want them to be afraid just yet. Even more alert than before, I spun around and looked at all sides. Clear. Not a fairy in sight—except for Julian and me.
“Where is everyone?” I asked Lynn after a while.
“Probably hiding,” she sad. “In the first days, fairies raided houses and people tried to fight them. Whoever succeeded, Galladar made sure to come personally and kill them all. That made everybody else stop fighting the fairies when they kicked them out of their homes. Better to leave than to face Galladar.” Smart asshole.
“So all the houses are empty?”
“No, I don’t think so. A lot of people returned after a few days. Things settled around here. The fairies only went after certain people. They were after Uncle Eli when I came to the fairy realm,” Lynn explained.
“Are we close?” Julian asked, and she pointed forward. I recognized her house instantly, and not because I’d been there before. I spotted it because it was the biggest one in the neighborhood. Four stories high, painted a light green with a dark red roof, the house was beautiful. No light was on that we could see. When we got close enough, Lynn began to run.
Calling out would be a mistake, so I just ran after her, too. If any fairy walked by, they’d definitely spot us.
But we made it to the double entrance doors just fine. The knob was broken, and the right door slightly ajar. Without hesitation, Lynn pushed it open.
“Lynn!” I whispered, but she was already inside. Cursing under my breath, I followed.
A narrow corridor led us to an open hallway. Six doors were around us, but that was all we could see. Until Lynn turned the light on. Shivers washed down my back.
“Uncle Eli?” she called.
I ran to her and clamped her mouth shut with my hand. What the heck was she doing?
“Are you trying to get us killed?” I hissed, but she only looked at me and shrugged.
“There’s no one here,” Julian said after a second. “They would have come out by now.”
“Or they could be hiding and waiting for us to put our guard down.” It was always a possibility.
“Which isn’t going to happen,” Julian said.
With a sigh, I let Lynn go. Lightning fast, she ran to the first door. Before I even made it there, she ran out, and made for a second. She obviously wasn’t going to wait for me.
“Leave her,” Julian said.
It was very uncomfortable, but I did as he asked. I let Lynn search her house all by herself. She knew the place better than I did, anyway. But I didn’t even breathe until she came down the stairs, after having searched the other floors.
“He’s not here,” she whispered and her voice broke. Her eyes were full of tears.
“Kitchen?” I asked. She was in need of a glass of water. Without a word, Lynn made for the second door on our right. The kitchen was huge and grey—not very welcoming. I could almost see Bender’s sister Caroline cooking in there. Even the table for twelve in the middle of the room screamed her name. Without asking, I went to the sink and filled up a glass I found in the cabinet above it and handed it to Lynn.
“We’ll find him. Don’t worry,” I whispered, but the truth was, I was worried. So was Julian, because neither of us had any idea on how to find Bender. Or Amelia. Or anyone else.
“Do you know where your parents are?” Julian asked.
“No idea. They kept changing places before my uncle lost contact with them,” Lynn said, slowly sipping the water.
“How come you ended up with your uncle?” he asked, a question I’d wanted to ask myself.
“My family wasn’t home when it started. They were on a trip. I stayed behind and my uncle was babysitting me.”
“So you don’t know where he could have gone,” Julian whispered. Goose bumps covered my arms. How the hell were we going to find everyone?
“That wasn’t there before,” Lynn whispered. She was looking at the fridge.
The chrome doors brought all the pictures attached to the little magnets to attention. Jessica, Lynn’s dead sister, was there, too, and so was the rest of her family. The little boy was the only one I didn’t recognize—probably Lynn’s little brother. He looked like a small version of Lynn’s father.
“The letters,” Lynn whispered, walking over to it. “They weren’t like this before I left.”
I looked at the magnets. Lots of letters in every color. They didn’t make any sense to me, but Lynn was looking at them like they held the secret to the universe. Waving her hand over them, she kept silent for a long minute.
“What is it?” I asked, no longer able to wait.
“Roggo,” she whispered. “It says Roggo.” And she was right. The magnets weren’t put in a straight line, but they did say roggo. I had no idea roggo was a freaking word. It meant nothing to me, but it looked like it meant something to Lynn. “We used to go to my grandparents’ old house when I was a kid. My granddad had a horse named Roggo who scared the heck out of me. Uncle Eli used it to get me to bed many times when I was little.”
Holy cow! “Where is it? Where’s the house?”
“It’s close to the Fishing Creek River. Right next to the Bloomsburg railway,” Lynn said.
“Any idea how far away that is?”
“About two-hour drive,” she said with a flinch. “He left it for me. He’s there, I know it. My parents and my brother, too.”
“Can we use the stone again?” I asked Julian. A two-hour drive was a very long walk.
“I have never been there before so I have no idea what to picture,” he mumbled. “But I have been to the Rosemont cemetery. That’s close to the railway, too.”
“Then let’s go!” I said, excited for a change. I was more than ready to see other familiar faces that didn’t want to shoot me dead on sight. Without another word, Julian pulled out the black ravenstone. I grabbed his arm and Lynn did the same. This time, we were going to find someone. I could feel it in my bones.
***
My stomach rolled. Acid made it up my throat and all the way to my mouth, but I pushed it back down. I was not going to vomit in a cemetery, too.
The first thing I noticed when I opened my eyes was the graves. The second thing, the fairies.
Something pulled me down hard, and I almost fell on my butt on someone’s grave. I wasn’t normally afraid of dead people, but come on! I was in a cemetery in the dead of the night. Of course it gave me the chills.
With his finger in front of his lips, Julian told us
to keep quiet, then waved for us to follow him. A look at Lynn and I found her even more excited than before. She was just as eager to get to her family as I was to get to mine.
Julian took us away from the fairies. It was hard to walk on all fours because the ground was wet as if it had rained just hours before, and again: there were dead bodies right underneath us. I was sweating like a pig by the time we made it to the fence that surrounded the cemetery. We pushed Lynn up first, and after she made it to the other side, where all we could see were bushes, Julian and I climbed ourselves. The tips of the grilled fence were sharp, and I pierced both my thighs while crossing over but no biggie. I’d be lucky if those were the only wounds I got for the night. At least we were away from the fairies, who by the way shouldn’t have had any business hanging out at a cemetery at that time of the night. I mean, did they even sleep anymore?
“Do you recognize the place?” Julian asked Lynn as she looked around for anything familiar.
“Just follow the river,” she then whispered, and without waiting for a reply, she took off running into the bushes.
Twenty seven
The bushes led us to the railway, behind which was the river. We had to walk for about five minutes until we found a bridge to get us to the other side. And the other side was full of trees and darkness, but Lynn claimed she knew where she was going.
Fifteen minutes in and a few scratches all over my body and face from the branches, and I began to see the signs. They were pretty obvious, even though the moonlight barely made it through the dense trees. Broken pieces of wood. Muddy leaves. Footprints in the mud.
Somebody had spent a lot of time in those woods, and judging by how fresh those footprints were, someone had just recently walked right up the path we were taking.
Lynn breathed heavily as she led the way. We could hear it from two feet away. She was scared and excited and tired, but she never stopped to even take a deep breath, which impressed me a lot, considering her age. Her spirit was inspiring.
The smell of wet wood and menthol reached my nostrils hard. I managed to grab Lynn by the arm and stop her. If I had to guess, it was a protective spell—or protective spells. Witches were definitely close by.
Julian wasn’t even breathing as he looked around and tried to see in the darkness, just like me. He’d probably noticed the smell, too.
“We have to go this way,” Lynn whispered.
“Someone’s here. We can’t risk going in blind.” It would be stupid. What if these spells were protecting fairies? They’d raided almost every shop in Geraldine Street that I knew of. They probably raided Pretter shops first.
“It’s them. The sooner we get there, the sooner you’ll see,” Lynn complained and tried to break free from my hold.
But when Julian stood up straighter and turned his head west, I squeezed her tightly to tell her to keep her mouth shut. My gun was already in my hand, aiming right at where Julian was looking. The plan was to shoot first and ask questions later because we couldn’t afford to fall into Galladar’s claws now.
It was a good plan. Solid. Except, it wouldn’t work.
Not only because we could barely see the person standing behind the branches with a large rifle in hand, but because we could hear all the other people around us. I couldn’t see them, but they probably had rifles like that in their hands, too.
“Fucking fairies,” someone hissed.
That’s when I realized how we looked. Holy shit, in their eyes, we were just a couple fairies with a kid!
“Don’t shoot!” I shouted and put my hands up. “We’re not fairies.” Uh… “I mean, we are fairies, but we’re not the bad guys.”
The first gunshot. I pulled Lynn behind me, though that might have been a dumb idea, considering I didn’t who else was there.
“My name is Julian and we—”
The second gunshot cut him off, and the bullet caught his arm. Julian fell back with a groan. Fire burned in my veins. My gun was aimed and my finger on the trigger.
“No, wait!” Lynn shouted and pulled at my arm, but I couldn’t look at her. I was busy trying to calculate all the gun barrels pointed at us and match them with the number of bullets in my gun. When it didn’t come off right, I thought screw it. Julian was still standing. He could still fight. We could take them down. Somehow.
“It’s Evelyn Davis,” Lynn continued before anybody else fired. “I’m Joseph Davis’s daughter. He’s here somewhere. Just please, don’t shoot!”
Silence. Julian met my eyes. Shoot or no shoot?
No idea.
“Come forward, Evelyn Davis,” someone said.
Without hesitation, Lynn stepped in front of me. I was not comfortable with that, but we had no other choice. The strongest flashlight in history fell on our faces. My eyes hurt like hell and they teared up in seconds, because I couldn’t let them close.
“Please, just get my father. Or my uncle. Eli Bender. He told me to come here,” Lynn said, her voice slightly shaking.
Another second of silence. Julian shook his head as if to tell me to drop the gun, but I wasn’t going to. Not yet. We had no idea who these people were. They could be working for fairies for all we knew. We’d seen worse, hadn’t we?
“Evie, what are you doing with fairies?” the man said, only this time, when he spoke, his voice was low and soft, very different from the one he used at first.
Lynn put her hand in front of her face until the asshole realized that the flashlight made it impossible for us to see him. Then, he turned it to himself.
He was a short man, kind of chubby, with a grey mustache and an ugly ass hat.
“Mr. Coleman,” Lynn said. Her sigh was filled with relief. Oh, thank God. She knew the man. “This isn’t what it looks like. This is Winter Wayne, and this is her friend, Julian Walker.”
But Coleman shook his head. “No fairies can get through here,” he said. “Can you walk towards me, slowly?”
Julian looked at me, and at my gun, his eyes full of question marks. Of course I wasn’t putting it down yet! Others were still aiming at both our heads. Things could go from worse to hell in seconds, and I wanted to be prepared for it.
“I’m not going anywhere without them,” Lynn said. “If you can’t get us there, then bring Uncle Eli to us. Now,” she demanded, making me want to grin.
The man—probably a witch—knew exactly who Lynn was, which made me think he was from the Bone coven. He looked at my face for a long second, then at Julian for a bit more. The wheels turned in his head as he tried to make up his mind.
“You will follow me, and the squad will be right behind you, okay? If anybody tries anything stupid, you’ll be dead fairy meat before you can blink. Ya hear me? If these people are holding you against your will and are making you do this, Evie, I want you to know that there’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of. Okay? You’re safe now.”
For the love of God.
Lynn smiled. “Start walking.” I really, really, really liked this girl.
***
When I calculated the guns pointed at my head, I thought I got it right—or at least close. Turns out I’d missed the number by a fucking mile. I thought ten people were there in the woods, surrounding us. There were thirty-two, including Coleman.
We only realized this when we made it out of the woods. A large mostly straight field stretched in front of us. Seven large tents were set around a huge farmhouse. Flashlights everywhere, which enabled us to see the people. All those people! I couldn’t even count.
One of the people who’d been behind us the whole way ran forward as fast as he could and went straight for the farmhouse while Coleman motioned for us to stop.
“Are you seeing this?” I whispered to Julian and Lynn.
“Mostly witches, but some vampires and werewolves, too,” Julian whispered. “Very well armed. No wonder the fairies haven’t broken the place down yet.”
“How’s your arm?” I asked him when I realized he was holding it.
“Ju
st a flesh wound. It’s already healing,” he mumbled.
Relieved, I nodded. He was fine.
“What about Galladar?” Lynn asked.
Julian shrugged. “I’d lie if I tell you I knew what was on his mind.”
So the guy made sure to personally destroy all of the ECU buildings, but he was letting this place slide? What the hell was up with him? I was going to say that out loud, just to try and get my thoughts in order, but the door to the farmhouse opened and someone came out running.
It was Eli Bender.
The relief I felt when I saw his face made me realize just how much I cared about that guy. How much I feared losing him. I wanted to use that to strengthen my resolve, but instead, it just made me sad.
Lynn ran into his arms with a cry. Bender’s eyes were full of tears as he pulled her up and swung her around. It was obvious how much he loved the girl and how much she loved her uncle. That, too, made me sad. The only person I’d ever gone running to hug the hell out of was my mother.
“It’s okay, Coleman. Get the men to stand down,” Bender said, when Lynn let go of him, and with her under his arm, he made it to us. With a sigh, I finally put the gun back in the waistband of my pants. The danger, it seemed, had passed.
“Look at what the cat dragged in,” I mumbled and waved at me and Julian. “Or Coleman.”
Without warning, Bender wrapped his free arm around my neck and pulled me into half a hug. I froze for a second, but then a smile stretched my lips. It was good to be hugged, I guess.
Julian didn’t share that thought, though. He was pale as a ghost when I met his eyes. His whole body seemed to vibrate with tension as he stood still as a statue.
“Julian,” Bender said with a nod, and Julian returned it without word. “What the hell happened?”
He looked at Lynn.
“You saw the fridge?”
“I knew it right away,” Lynn said, melting in pleasure as she held onto Bender.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?” Julian asked, taking the words right out of my mouth.
