Uniquely Unwelcome (The Shadow World)

by Brandy Nacole

  “I want to know everything you know. Do you know who’s attacking us? What do you know about the creatures? Where were your Fae taken?” With the fairies unable to tell lies, a major perk if I do say so myself, I know she will have to answer my questions. Usually Fairies will avoid letting you ask questions but the queen seemed all willing to be helpful.

  “I do not know the Vampire working with Cerelia, nor do I know their location.” I perk up at the mention of a Vampire. “As for the location of my Fae, that information has already been provided to you.” I start to interrupt Queen Kaya but she holds her hand up. “Back in your vehicle, on the map you were using there will be purple dots indicating where my Fae were taken. As for the Chimera-”

  Knowing I might be strangled to death for interrupting but unable to stop myself, I ask, “The what?”

  Queen Kaya gives me a glacial stare. “The Chimera. It’s a name I have come to associate with those monstrosities. It comes from the Greek mythology of a monstrous fire-breathing female creature that was made of multiple animal parts, just as those fathomless creatures are. They were created by Cerelia.”

  The queen then stands, turning to give a signal to her drones across the field. Her signal frees the others, bringing our conversation to an end. Danika and the rest of them start running toward me.

  “I do mean what I said. I will bring my wrath down come sunset tomorrow. It may be someone you care about here in your little hunting group or someone you know not at all. No matter, their heads will be on you.”

  The vines unravel around me and I stand. I get up the will to face down Kaya and her enrapturing eyes. “How can you do that to us? You know I’m looking for them but I may not succeed by then.”

  “Sometimes we work better under pressure. Nonetheless, it is on you.”

  I ball my fists up at my side. The soldier fairies start circling me once again, but I don’t care. “You’re wrong. I’m not the one behaving like a blithering idiot. That would be you.”

  “It will still hurt you all the same. As for the shifters, open your eyes Racquel. You are looking but you are not seeing.” She turns to leave, a strange purple mist gathers around her.

  Danika and the others are almost to me. I turn to meet them but one last warning comes from the queen before she leaves. “I warn you, the one you seek will be the one to cause you the most pain.” With that she becomes nothing more than fairy dust that is whisked away by the spiraling wind.

  I’m grabbed from behind and whirled into a tight embrace. Coy has a grip on me that’s just as tight as the vines. He pulls back running his hand over my shoulders, down my arms and back up again, searching frantically for injuries.

  “Are you okay? That stupid wench, she almost-”

  “She almost nothing, those vines couldn’t have killed me. It was more uncomfortable than anything.” I shake loose of his grip, taking a step back. His closeness is still a little overwhelmingly strange and awkward, especially in front of the others. My mind has enough time to ask “is that normal?”, before going back into strategic mode.

  I turn toward the others. “So what happened with you guys? Why did you get out of the car like that?”

  “We didn’t have a choice.” Ethan is obviously pissed about being taken captive by fairies. With his macho attitude, I’m surprised he’s still breathing. “They came through the air vents, holding us captive. I swatted one of them and the rest got all killer bee like on us.”

  “So what did the queen say?” Danika, back to her all-knowing calm self, looked at me intently wanting every word.

  “Oh you know. She wanted to chat it up. Tell me what a great job we’re doing. How if we needed any help, the fairies would be there to back us up.”

  All of them look at me in shock. “Are you serious? Then why all the dramatics?” Ethan asks, more pissed off now than before.

  “Well of course I’m not serious,” I say throwing my hand in the air, as I do miniature circles thinking about the queen threat. “She wants her Fae back and she wants them back now. She gave me a deadline. Can you believe it? A freaking deadline.”

  “When?” Danika asks holding her breathe.

  “Tomorrow at sunset. She said people work better under pressure.” Yeah, like we didn’t have our own pressure as it was.

  “What will happen if we don’t meet the deadline?” Coy asks.

  I’m about to answer him when Jared does it for me. “Death.” I nod in agreement as I meet Danika’s eyes. Both of us grasping how much more serious this is now.

  “Death? Whose death?” Coy asks looking at each of us. He’s probably thinking the threat is only limited to us, like we don’t have enough of those already.

  “Anyone; could be me, you, or some total stranger we’ve never met before. All I know is that she was serious. Even after she told me what she knew and I agreed to keep the search going until we found them. After all that she still wouldn’t change the deadline.”

  “The Queen does not threaten lightly. She has to keep her court safe. She feels every emotion that they experience. Losing a Fae is extremely hard on her, not only because she loves them but because she feels the loss that each of her Fae feels.” Danika stares into the distance.

  “She will make her threat a reality for us.” Ethan’s watching Danika now. No doubt worried about her and how she’s handling all this. She just seems too committed and emotionally wrapped up. I sometimes wonder if it’s too much for her. I wonder if I should call the Elders and request they bring her home.

  I haven’t done so yet because in all honesty we need her. Not just for the traveling perks but for her knowledge. She knows so much more about things. If I didn’t have her here, I don’t know that we would have made it this far.

  “Doesn’t seem like a loving queen at all.” Coy places his hand on my back, rubbing again. It doesn’t comfort me as much as it annoys me.

  “She might not be loving but man was she hot.” Jared says to no one in particular. He’s perched on a log with a smirk across his face. I roll my eyes, as does everyone else. I wonder if this act is his mask to cover the pain.

  Coy and Ethan look ready to kill Jared as he rambles on and on about the perfect night that could end with death. Danika is still looking off in the distance. I grab her by the arm, pulling her toward the tree line. “I need to speak with you.”

  We head off away from the others without protests.

  “What is it Racquel? Obviously we don’t have time for a friendly chit chat. The world seems to lie upon our shoulders.” Her hands are shaking as she gestures around the clearing.

  “The world is not on our shoulders. The queen might have threatened us but will she go through with it? Seriously?” I still had my doubts about her killing just anyone over something that was out of our control.

  “Yes!” Danika’s voice rings loud as she shouts. “She will bring death upon anyone who stands in her way until what’s hers is returned. That wasn’t a threat, Racquel, it was a promise.”

  “I know it’s a lot right now but I need to know that you can handle this. You keep having outbursts and snapping at everyone. Are you sure you can keep going?” Funny how a few days ago the roles were reversed, Danika was lecturing me on trust and playing it smart and now I’m having a similar conversation with her.

  Danika bites down on her lip and averts her eyes. Finally after a few seconds of her silent debate, she looks up. Tears gleam in her eyes but they don’t spill down her face. I can tell she’s fighting to stay strong. “I want to. I’m just so scared, especially after what happened to Ethan. That could happen again to anyone of us. What’s next Racquel? Our death and all those we care about?”

  She has a point, one that I had been mulling over the last couple of days. I’m not going to give up, though. I’m going to continue on, even if death is the next step for me.

  “Danika, you can walk away. Walk away from all this right now. I won’t. I can’t. But you can, no one will look down on you with shame if you do.
If I didn’t have so much at stake with this and had another purpose in life, I would probably walk.” I shake my head, realizing I’m getting off track. “It doesn’t matter. You have a choice and you can take it. It’s up to you.”

  She nods her head. Like I’m supposed to know what that means. Is she agreeing with me and is going to go? Or is she nodding in understanding?

  “I’ll stay. We all have to die one day, might as well go down for a reason.” She takes a deep breath and lets out a long sigh that seems to release some small part of her from her burdens.

  As we head back toward the guys, I keep running over everything the queen said. Her threat, the information she shared, and the warning. The warning had the tightest grip on me. Why would the one I seek bring me the most pain? Is he going to kill me in a dreadfully painful way? Do I know him? Have they tortured me before?

  I don’t say anything about the warning to Danika. Nor do I plan on sharing it with Coy or the others. This is one for me, a warning that I will soon find a response to. Hopefully.

  We’re almost back by the lake with the others when a question pops into my head that had been bouncing around since I first saw Kaya.

  “So, why is Kaya not like the other fairies?”

  Danika looks at me puzzled. “What do you mean? She’s a fairy.”

  “No. I know that. I mean why is she in full human form?”

  Danika shakes her head. The corner of her mouth tipped in a small smile. “Are you sure you went to school?”

  I roll my eyes at her. “Just answer the question.”

  “Kaya is always like that. The Fae do eventually die but not the queen. Her spirit is fed off those of her court, therefore providing her eternal life. The only way a queen can die a natural death is if she has a child. Part of her spirit is placed inside her child when it is born, giving the child the power of the court.”

  “Wow, wow, wait, how can the queen have a full Fae child if all the male Fae are…well….little?” Sex is a pretty natural thing to understand but for a little Fae to reproduce with a human size Fae, not so natural.

  Danika sighs, shaking her head once more. I know she wants to comment on my lack of education. “During the first two weeks of Samhain, all Fae are human size. They are able to frolic around with whomever they please. If the queen has come to the decision that her time is completed, she will then chose a male to her liking and conceive a child.”

  Huh, well it does seem that every life form has its family drama.

  We reach the boys, Ethan and Coy gladly turning from Jared, who is still chattering away. “Okay guys, we need to decide what we’re doing and fast.” Danika seems in control again and ready to get us moving.

  “I almost forgot. The queen did give me some vital information about our mystery man and his creatures. She said it was a Vampire who’s in charge. And not that this matters, necessarily, but she called the creatures Chimera.”

  “Wait, did you say it was a Vampire.” This brings Jared out of his weird fantasy world with a slam, finally becoming serious for once. “That’s impossible. Any Vampire with that much power and dominance would be a threat to Aldrick. But he doesn’t seem threatened or annoyed. In fact, I overheard him saying he had no clue who was behind all of this.”

  “Well, apparently he’s in the dark on this one.”

  It looks like he’s about to argue with me when Danika verifies that it is possible. “If Cerelia can do all this, what makes you think she can’t block him from Aldrick?”

  “True.” I look at Jared, raising my brows, waiting for him to protest but it would seem he’s gone again in another world. Hopefully this one is more of the reality sort, instead of frolicking with fairies. “Now that we know what type of Shadow we’re after, does that help in any way?”

  “Other than how to kill him, not really.” Ethan is throwing daggers of anger and accusations at Jared. But Jared doesn’t see them. He’s still staring off at the lake, his face grim. Ethan continues mumbling on about how he figured a leech was behind all this. Apparently I was the only one who heard him, that or everyone’s just letting him rant.

  “Yeah, that’s if we can get past Cerelia and her magic.” Danika’s voice still carries a tone of dread and worry. I know she doesn’t think we are strong enough to take on Cerelia and to be honest neither do I. But we have to try.

  Danika shakes her head, bringing herself back out of the depressed place she was headed into. “Should we keep looking for the shifters or call it quits? Maybe we can take everything we have plus what the Fae Queen told us and finally put an end to this.”

  That’s when Queen Kaya’s words come back to me. ‘You are looking but you are not seeing.’ I play her words over and over in my head. What am I not seeing? We have searched all over the area and I haven’t seen anything. No little huts, fires, glamours, nothing.

  But maybe that’s what she meant. Instead of looking for a location where they live, why not search them out.

  I walk to the edge of the lake. Closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I center myself. I coach myself into seeing what is plain in sight. Not to look so hard but just to see. When I open my eyes the scenery hasn’t changed. Everything still looks the same.

  But what is different are the animals that I now notice. There’s a small group of grizzly bears at the edge of the lake. Birds are soaring high above us. There are fish jumping and rolling around the tops of the water. I turn behind me and see the squirrels, rabbits, and even the bugs that I did not notice before.

  Danika walks up beside me. I can tell that she fears the worst: that I hear something or have a feeling something bad is going to happen. She softly whispers, “What is it?”

  “We have been doing this all wrong. Look around us. They’re everywhere.” Now that I have stopped and looked, I can feel them, a part of me now sensing the energy around us. If everyone else had stopped and done the same, they would have felt it too.

  “I can’t believe we were so stupid.” Danika says, sensing the shifters too. Not all of them were shifters, of course. There were still a few natural animals around us mixed in with the shifters of their kind. I wonder if those animals could tell the difference. And if so, why were they not afraid? Had they become so accustomed to the shifters that they trusted them? Or did they not know at all?

  “We were in a rush.” Ethan says as he looks around the lake. “You know what they say, you can’t rush knowledge. It takes time and patience.”

  Danika shoulder bumps him, a small smile playing on her lips as she looks at the ground. It’s nice to see how much they help one another. Lending one another a hand, still able to smile even though there doesn’t seem to be a reason for one.

  Although we had found some shifters, would they shift from their form to help us? Could they sense what we were and what we wanted? I turn to question Danika about this but there’s a man standing there, covered in what looked like a black bear’s hide with little underneath.

  For an older man, he wasn’t bad on the eyes. He had smooth black hair that was short but messy. His hazel eyes were rich as honey. Although he was a little rough around the edges, there was a gentleness about him that let you know he was harmless.

  “Hello little hunter, I believe you have been looking for me.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sitting here overlooking the lake, I feel lost. Where do I go from here? I had let myself build up to this moment. Hoping, I guess, that all the answers would fall into place once we found the shifters. But now, now I know how stupid that was. We’re not any closer to finding Addie than we had been from the start.

  After talking to Casper, the leader of the shifters, I’m dumbfounded. Casper- whose name is fitting considering he appeared out of nowhere like a ghost and then disappeared the same-told me everything he knew and what he thought about it.

  He knew, unlike the others, not to be deceived into believing someone had a personal vendetta against his people. He told Danika where all the missing shifters were
taken. But that was all the information he knew. He had shifters all around the world watching, trying to find anything that might lead them to their family. They had been unsuccessful so far.

  After giving Danika everything and telling us he wished us well on our journey, he had pulled me aside. Then he went on, like the others, to explain how extraordinary I was. Not because of the mixture within my blood but because of my spiritual familiar.

  He explained that the eagle was a rare gift that many desired but were never granted. It takes a special person with the heart of a warrior, the compassion and understanding of a human, and a spirit that can’t be bound to take on the honor of an eagle.

  I barely listened to him as he kept explaining how special I was and what abilities I was capable of. I was too focused on the devastation I felt in my body. I felt like a failure instead of some soaring warrior. How would we ever find the missing? We could ask every creature hiding under every rock what they knew and still come up empty-handed.

  When Casper disappeared, I collapsed where I stood. No one came over to me to offer comfort or useless words of encouragement. We all felt the same. How could we lend each other false hope, when we had none to offer ourselves?

  I look around at the others. Coy is sitting on a log looking helplessly at the ground. He’s kicking rocks around, as if it’s the earth’s fault this is happening. Jared is standing next to the lake. He’s throwing rocks across the lake, although he’s throwing them with so much momentum they just sink down below instead of skimming the waters smooth surface.

  I turn to Danika. I know she is probably taking this harder than the others. She felt responsible for all of us and those we are looking for. No one had asked her to take that responsibility but she took it nonetheless. Ethan’s trying to console her but having no luck. She shakes his hands away from her as she continues to pace.

  I return my gaze to the lake. It’s so peaceful looking. Calm. Smooth. I think back over the events of the past few days. All the traveling, the meetings, the attacks, the revelation of Cerelia, finding out the cloaked man is a Vampire. What does it all mean? There has to be a connection between all of this. We couldn’t have spent all this time finding this out without some sort of answer being hidden somewhere in it all.