by Bonnie Lamer
“Princess,” a younger Fairy calls out, “I think I could use a good nap now.” Several Fairies around him laugh but I can tell he’s serious. He was one of the stronger Fairies sending magic my way therefore he was among those who took the brunt of my magic. Still, I’m glad he’s on our side.
“I am more than happy to oblige,” I tell him. “I will give you all a few minutes to get comfortable.” With the moaning and groaning going on amongst those hurt the worst by my magic, I’m not certain that will be possible for everyone. A good night’s sleep will speed their recoveries, though. If I help the process along.
After their few minutes are up and they are as comfortable as they are going to get, I grasp Isla’s and Tana’s hands. I definitely need to siphon some of their power to say the spell now. When they both indicate they are ready, I begin my spell, adding a couple of lines for the Fairies’ healing. “The night brings temptation from ones who would do harm. But those who slumber shall not fall prey to their charms. Hearts both true and untrue shall sleep this night through. Guardians in the night shall watch over you. Nothing shall wake you before the morning dew. Neither charm nor spell shall touch you. Magic neither ancient nor new will have any effect hitherto. My magic alone will hold and heal you. Lay your head down and feel at ease. Wake on the morrow rested and at peace. With dawn comes sanity and light, be safe in slumber this dangerous night.” Magic pours forth from the three of us. It is ripped from Isla and Tana and funneled through me to join all of ours together. The amount of magic the spell takes may have killed lesser Fairies. Both Isla and Tana breathe a sigh of relief when the Fairies are finally at rest. I pulled a lot of magic through them. Isla seems okay but Tana is much paler than normal.
“Killing wicked step-mothers slowly, that’s the way to do it,” Taz snarks as he takes in the Queen’s pallor.
Turning to me with hands on her hips, Tana demands, “What the hell were you thinking? Do you know what your father would have done if any of those Fairies hurt you? And you!” She rears on Isla. “You encouraged it.”
Isla is unperturbed by Tana’s outburst. “Yes. I admire Xandra’s sense of fairness and determination.” She unnecessarily adds, “Even if it is misguided at times.”
I eye her. “Do you mean this time?”
Isla is trying not to smile. “Of course not.” Liar. My skin feels like a hundred bugs are skittering across it as proof she is lying.
Tana shakes her head. “This was an outrageous use of magic and you know it. Now, we are all weakened.”
I don’t know, I feel pretty good. I’ll keep that to myself, though. “Should we search the grounds for outliers?” I ask.
Isla shakes her head. “No, we have more important things to worry about than those too stupid to seek shelter in time.”
Wow. I wonder how she really feels about it. “You know, I did have the doors locked. There may have been some late comers who couldn’t get in.” I can tell she didn’t think of that.
“I will send staff members in small groups of search parties,” she relents. “But they are to return before full dark. As it is still half an hour until dusk, that should be plenty of time.”
“What are we going to do, then?” I ask.
“We are going to prepare for war.”
Two wars in one day. I’m such a lucky girl.
Chapter 16
“What are those for?” I ask Isla when she places several crystals on her desk. She had them in a locked cupboard in the corner of the room. They’re pretty cool. They glow in varying shades of blue and purple under the lamplight.
“We are going to set traps,” she informs me and Tana.
I give her a dubious look. “Are there going to be spiders involved?” The last time she had me work with crystals it was to make a giant spider web. I called millions of spiders to create it. Creepiest thing I have ever seen.
Half a smile touches her lips. “No, there will not be spiders.”
“We’re trapping Sirens? Like how my mom set up Fairy traps around our old house?” I don’t miss the disgusted expression on Tana’s face. “Dagda didn’t exactly leave a positive impression of Fairies on her,” I say in Mom’s defense. I hope she and Dad are doing okay. I haven’t seen them since coming to the palace. They are working with Adriel and Raziel to keep stray Fairies from killing themselves. And keeping my little brother safe.
“Indeed,” Tana drawls, not liking the reminder that Dagda cheated on her with my mom so I’d be born.
“No,” Isla interrupts knowing a dangerous topic when she hears one, “these will not be the same. They will be more of an alarm system than an actual trap. You experienced the power of deception the Sirens utilize when hiding their location. Even when they are close by, their magic saturates the air and it can be impossible to find the source. These,” she picks up a purplish crystal, “will help us narrow down their location.”
“How so?” I ask, ignoring Tana’s pouting. Geez, get over it already. I guess that’s easy for me to say since Kallen hasn’t ever cheated on me. But, I had to come to terms with the circumstances of my birth and so does she if we are ever going to have a healthy relationship.
“They do not measure magic, they measure heat.”
Heat sensors. Interesting. “They pick up body heat?”
She nods. “They can be tricky as animals also put out body heat, so we cannot completely rely on them.”
“Better than nothing,” I say with a shrug.
Tana unrolls a blueprint of the palace Isla had waiting on her desk. “A hundred yard perimeter with crystals every fifty feet should do nicely.” I guess she knows about crystals.
“Agreed,” Isla says. “We shall each take crystals and place them.” She glances at her watch. “Dusk is upon us. We need to do this now.”
“Do we have to do anything magical when we place them?” I ask. I know nothing about crystals.
Isla shakes her head. “Tabitha charged them earlier.” Tabitha is apparently great with crystals.
“Where is she now?” I ask. I haven’t seen Tabitha since lunch yesterday.
“She is at home. If there is a war, her place is not on the battlefield. Her healing powers are too valuable.” Considering the fact that my healing powers are about a thousand times better, I’m not buying that. Did Isla send her home because she was worried her old friend wouldn’t be strong enough to fight? Reading my mind, Isla drawls, “I have no qualms about Tabitha’s strength in regards to battle. But she can read people better than anyone I know. She can see down to their souls and determine how much darkness is there. If we capture any of the Sirens, that will be a useful tool in regards to finding a solution to our problems.” That might be part of it, but there’s also a big part of Isla that wants to keep her oldest friend safe. I’m okay with that.
“Okay, which crystals do I take?” I ask reaching out for several of the bright blue ones.
“Those will be fine,” Isla says. “There is no particular order in which they must be placed.”
Something magical without picky little details? Weird. “Okay, I’ll take this area,” I indicate a section on the blue prints. “Let’s meet back here in fifteen minutes. That should give us each enough time.”
“Agreed,” Isla says. She and Tana each take their share of the crystals.
Outside, I find the growing darkness eerie. It’s so still and quiet. Usually, there’s a lot of bustling going on around the palace. Bustling, a word I never thought I would use in a sentence. It’s such an old fashioned word, but it’s an apt description. To be walking around the grounds with no one in sight and no sounds indicating there are others about makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I feel like the stupid chick in a horror movie that decides taking a stroll alone in the woods is a good idea when there is a serial killer on the loose. I guess I feel that way because I am doing exactly that. Only, there may be more than one serial killer out here waiting to mow me down. My life is very strange.
“Boo!” Taz
shouts, jumping out from behind a tree and scaring me half to death.
I stop, my heart pounding. “Taz, I’m going to kill you.”
“Nah, you’d miss my witty repertoire and keen sense of humor.”
“In my time here, I have found evidence of neither,” Felix informs him. I am definitely keeping Felix and getting rid of Taz.
Once I swallow my heart back down into my chest, I do what I came out here to do. Since I have no idea how far out a hundred yards is, I count out three hundred steps and put a crystal down. As soon as it touches the ground, it loses all color. I really hope it’s supposed to do that and I didn’t somehow suck all the magic out of it when Taz scared me. I’ll do another one and see what happens. Counting out fifty steps to the right, I place another blue crystal on the ground. Again, all the color drains out of it. Okay, I’m going to assume they are supposed to do that. I count out fifty more steps and place another crystal. I do this until I have placed all of them.
“Uh, Xandra, you might want to look behind you,” Taz says quietly.
“I’m not falling for your tricks,” I inform him.
“Move!” he screeches as he leaps past me, teeth bared. Felix is right beside him, growling and gnashing his teeth with the same ferocity.
I whirl around and come face to face with a man holding a sword. We are only face to face for an instant. He cannot remain upright when two Tasmanian devils lunge at him and begin tearing pieces of flesh from his body. Eew. I appreciate their loyalty but could do without the blood and gore. The biggest question going through my mind at the moment, though, is why didn’t I sense him? Moving closer, I call off my Familiars. “He’s down guys. Thanks for that.”
Not happy to leave their prey, the Tasmanian devils reluctantly back away but they don’t go far. If the guy moves, they’ll be on him again in an instant. I move closer. It hits me why I couldn’t sense the guy coming. He’s human. Or Cowan as the Fairies will call him. He’s also big. At least six feet and a good three hundred pounds of solid muscle. I can’t believe Felix and Taz got him down. It was probably the surprise of the attack. No one expects to randomly be attacked by Tasmanian devils.
“Who are you?” I ask. Why didn’t the crystals work?
Reading my mind, Felix says, “He was already inside them.” He adds, “Cowans are not nocturnal.”
Oh, crap. This is not good. There could be warriors already in place around the village and palace simply waiting for the Sirens to wake. I need to warn everyone. But, what do I do with this guy? He still hasn’t answered my question but that’s okay. Knowing who he is isn’t important. Finding out what he knows is. “We’re going back inside,” I tell my Familiars. I reach down and grab the man’s leg, half expecting him to kick out at me. He doesn’t. He’s more worried about stopping the blood flow from his neck wound than anything else. Felix may have nicked his carotid. I’ll worry about that inside.
I teleport us straight to a holding cell. Pulling magic, I use it to heal the guy’s neck wound, but nothing else. I don’t want him to die but I don’t want him back to full strength, either. Cruel, yes. Fair in war? I guess I’ll have to rely on hindsight later to give me the answer to that. As soon as his neck is healed, I teleport to the other side of the cell enclosure. “Felix, keep an eye on him. I’ll be right back.”
“You got it,” Felix growls. His teeth are bared and there’s a little foam gathering at the corners of his mouth. He could be the poster child for rabid forest animals.
“Taz, with me.” There’s not enough time to run through the palace. I teleport to Isla’s office. It takes one glance at the panic on my face for Isla to know something is seriously wrong. “They are already here,” I tell her.
Isla closes her eyes for a moment. When she opens them again, they are a green so dark with fury, they don’t look real. Freaky. “How do you know?”
I tell her about the Cowan. “What do we do first?” I ask. I’ve never fought a war before. Not like this, anyway.
Tana comes rushing into the office. “I saw one,” she says between breaths.
“We know,” Isla informs her. To me, she says, “Find out what he knows of their battle plan.”
“What about Kallen and Dagda? They need to know what’s going on.” That is higher on my priority list than interrogating a prisoner.
Isla grimaces. “I suspect they already know. Regardless, I will get a message to them.” A paper appears on her desk. She scrawls a note on it and when she’s done, it folds up into an origami swan. She uses magic to open her office window and the paper flaps its wings and takes off into the night. Okay, I’m impressed. “That is the best we can do,” she says. “Tana, gather the staff so we can develop our own battle plan. I will seal the exits.”
She doesn’t ask me to do it. She must want me to conserve my energy. I take a deep breath. This is about to get ugly.
Chapter 17
The prisoner is leaning against the cold, dirty wall of the cell. I am sitting in a comfortable chair on the other side of the clear wall holding him in. “How many of you are there?” I ask. The man stares past me like he’s in a daze. I’m not certain he even knows I’m here talking to him.
“Remember, he is under the Sirens’ spell,” Felix tells me. “He has most likely been instructed not to talk to anyone who is not of their clan.”
“Is there a way to make him talk?” I ask.
“You won’t like it.”
I think about what Zyrene told us. Annihilation of the Fairy race. “Tell me anyway.”
“Pain is the only thing that can temporarily wrest his mind from their control,” Felix says sadly. He thought his days of dealing with things like this were over.
“Meaning, as soon as he’s not in a lot of pain his mind will go back to being theirs?”
“Correct.”
“He must be in pain already,” I point out. He and Taz tore some big chunks of skin from the guy.
“It is not enough. Xandra, I am sorry.” Felix knows how different I am from his Witch Fairy. She derived pleasure from these things. It makes me sick.
I already tried to use my ability to read deep, dark secrets on the guy. It didn’t work. His mind is so consumed by the Sirens’ spell that he really doesn’t have any thoughts of his own. No thoughts of his own means no secrets. Can causing him an enormous amount of pain really be enough to lift the spell long enough for him to talk or will I simply be torturing an innocent for no reason. If he is not acting of his own free will, he technically is an innocent.
“I will do this for you,” Felix says staunchly. He would, too.
I shake my head. “No, I will not make you do it.” I would be no better than his old Witch Fairy if I did.
“It’s not the same,” my new Familiar says. He has an uncanny ability to read my thoughts. “I am volunteering. I have done this before, you have not.”
“You’ve done this specific thing before?”
“No,” he admits. “But inflicting pain on him will be no different than any other situation in which I’ve done such.”
“Let him do it, you’re too much of a pantywaist,” Taz snarks. “I’ll help him.”
Though his loyalty is not always as apparent as Felix’s, I know Taz would give his life for mine. Still, I must do this. “Thank you, guys, but I can’t ask you to do anything I’m not willing to do myself.” My decision made, it’s time to get down to it.
I teleport into the cell. It’s cold and damp on this side of the enclosure. The Cowan before me is wearing only jeans, his massive chest bare. Several bite marks are still slowly oozing blood. I study him for a moment. How do I go about this? I’ve hurt people before. Badly. Generally, though, it was in the heat of battle. This is different. Taking a deep breath, I pull magic.
Within this guy’s brain, there must be memories of his own. I simply need to clear a path for them. I hope. I think back to my anatomy lessons and say a silent thank you to dad for teaching me from a doctor’s perspective and not just a tea
cher’s. I know where the long term memory center of the brain is. I need to attack his temporal lobe. Closing my eyes, I gather my courage and send my magic out. I don’t need to open my eyes to know when it hits him. It is reasonable for me to assume the instant he starts screaming my magic has made contact.
I’ve been inside other’s minds before. I have an idea of what to expect. Usually. This guy’s brain is, for lack of a better word, mushy. His brain feels like a damp sponge to my magic. One that has sat in the sink too long and has become mildewed. I want to pull back it feels so gross. I may need to give my magic a shower after this. Still, I keep digging. He keeps screaming. I pour more magic into him and force my eyes open. If I’m going to torture him, I’m going to have the courage to watch him deal with it. Tears fill my eyes as he presses his hands against his temples and begins begging for it to stop. His first words. Stop, you’re killing me.
“Stay strong, Xandra,” Felix encourages. “If he can communicate with you, you are almost there.”
I push harder until it feels like a dam breaks inside the guy’s mind. Memories flood out. He was from Persia when it was a thriving country. A Siren called him to the sea because he was a brutally abusive husband. Okay, feeling a little less guilty about hurting him, now. When the Siren laid eyes on him, saw his strength and vigor, she decided to take him as a slave instead of killing him. She would treat him as he treated his wife. Okay, there’s some justice in that. If only he wasn’t being deployed to kill me and everyone I care about I might be on the Siren’s side.
These are old memories, though. I’m in his long, long term memories. I need more recent information. I push away more of the murkiness. As I get closer to his more recent memories, the guy lashes out. I’m not expecting it and end up getting knocked on my butt when he sweeps my legs out from under me. Felix and Taz attack immediately. This gives me time to right myself and change tactics going after more than just his mind. I expand my magic, flooding the guy’s body with it until his cries are surely heard as far away as the Giant’s territory.
