by Jamie Wyman
You let your guard down, and you get burned, she said. This is the consequence. You deserve this. Take your medicine.
Terrible understanding wrenched at my stomach.
You don’t belong to you. You haven’t for years, and you never will again.
I closed my eyes and stopped struggling, whimpering in pain and sadness.
“Just as I thought,” Marius said, smoothing my hair.
This time when his body pressed over mine, I ached not with desire but with despair. I looked away, a single phrase echoing in my mind like a dark mantra.
I am not my own.
As he rose above me, his lips pulled back in an eager grin. Every muscle in his body flexed to the firmness of steel, and he jerked. His eyes lost their green glow, pulsed with orange, then went dark. As if he were a puppet whose strings had been cut, Marius crumpled on top of me, lifeless. Behind him, stone-faced and angry, stood Flynn.
“Fucking satyrs,” he growled.
Flynn grabbed Marius by the hair and tossed his body away from me. Drawing a knife, the mage sliced through the vines. Cut off from the earth and from the spell-casting satyr, the barbs fell from my skin, leaving oozing welts.
“At least I get to be the hero,” he said.
I couldn’t speak. I tried to say the two words racing through my entire being—thank you!—but the sound came out of my mouth as a choked sob. I flung myself at Flynn, wanting nothing more than to feel his comforting arms around me, to make all of this go away. He pushed me back from him and fixed my eyes with his.
“I’m bailing you out. Again. Come on,” he said tersely.
Confused, I blinked.
On the floor, Marius began to gray and shrivel with age as death took him. A part of me mourned the friend I’d thought I’d had, while another quivered that he’d been so sadistic. Which Marius had been real?
Flynn hauled me off my feet and dragged me up the creaking, rickety stairs. Disorientation filled my head with a fog that seeped into my limbs. I moved sluggishly beneath that leaden weight.
We emerged in the kitchen of a decrepit house. From the looks of it, no one had lived here but maggots and mice for the last ten years. The few remaining cabinet doors hung listlessly on their hinges like the last leaves of autumn. Inside the peeling walls with its blistered paper, I heard skittering, crunching noises of rodents. Black slime formed a skin in the porcelain sink. I coughed and gagged, overwhelmed by the fetid smells of rot and shit.
“Don’t be a baby, Cat,” Flynn said. “We need to get out of here. Then you can collapse into a puddle, okay?”
Numb, I nodded and followed him from the kitchen into a derelict living room. The threadbare carpet was covered with stains. Some were yellowish like dried vomit, others the rusty red of old blood. Shafts of white sunlight thrust between the boards on the windows and through the bullet holes in the door.
“Open it,” he said.
I lifted a hand to discover the door had no knob. Just a deadbolt with no keyhole. “I don’t know how,” I croaked.
His eyes rolled with annoyance. “Seriously? You can’t fucking open a door? It’s just a door. If you can’t do this what’s the point of having powers in the first place?”
My palm shook as I cupped the deadbolt. I reached out to find the tumblers, the clicking mechanisms that made up the lock, but I couldn’t feel them. The cold steel was dead to me.
“Useless,” Flynn said. The words bit into my heart and turned my blood cold. “You’re useless. Move over.”
The mage shoved me aside and stroked a single finger down the doorjamb. Instantly, the lock clicked, the door creaked open, and sunlight poured in. Flynn stepped through then turned around, blocking my path.
“I think I was wrong about you, Cat. You don’t have powers. You’re just a tech geek who’s gotten lucky a few times.”
“You can show me,” I said. “You promised you would.”
His laugh rang out in a peal of chilly, bitter notes. “Right. Why would I waste my time? Get yourself out of this one,” he said. “Assuming you can.”
Disgusted, he shut the door, leaving me alone in the shack.
“No! You can’t leave me here.” Silence. “Flynn? Flynn!”
Hurling myself against the door, the punctures on my arms screeching with agony, I called out his name again and again. But no one answered. No one but the voice in my head with her unwelcome truths.
He’s right, you know. How many times has Flynn had to ride to your rescue? How many times have you gone crying to him when you’ve screwed something up or needed someone to help put you back together again? Well, Humpty Dumpty, no king’s men will come for you today. If you can’t get yourself out of this one, you deserve to die here. Maybe the rats can get some use out of you.
Hours or minutes—I don’t know how long it went on. I could have been punching at that door for a year, and still no one came. I pounded and kicked, screaming all the while, until my knuckles bled and my shredded throat choked on my breath. Spent, I slid down to the floor in a sobbing heap. With my cheek pressed against one of the bullet holes, I sat there crying until my heart ran dry.
“I warned you,” Dahlia said from behind. “I warned you to stay away from him, but you didn’t listen.”
Pawing at my eyes with the heel of my hand, I wiped away my tears. She didn’t need to see them. She’d caused enough of my pain to have it memorized. I shifted so my back rested against the door. Even surrounded by the detritus and decay of this house, she managed to shine with her ethereal beauty. Dressed in ivory gossamer that complimented the mahogany of her skin, Dahlia glimmered with faery power. Her raven hair hung unbound to her waist.
Her oil-black eyes regarded me coolly. “And now look at you,” she said. “What is left of you?”
“Not much,” I rasped. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back against the door.
“Oh, you still have something? What is it?” she asked as she crossed the room.
What did I have left? Dignity? Pride? Please. I’d been humiliated by Marius, abandoned by Flynn, and left to become another rotting corpse in this shithole of a house. I didn’t even have my unusual talent. I’d only unlocked it a few hours ago, but already the absence of my technomagic left me feeling cold and empty.
What could I possibly muster that would amount to anything now?
I lifted my hands and let them fall uselessly to my sides.
Dahlia’s plump lips parted in the slightest of pouts. “Poor Cat,” she said. “I expected more of you.”
So did I.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I sneered, “do you feel cheated?”
She shook her head. “I had such high hopes when I met you. So did my Lord. But now, look at you. On the floor and wasted. Used and broken.”
An anger born eight years ago that I’d nurtured and cosseted rose up within me. For so long, I’d left it pent up, but now I’d been reduced to so little, I realized this was the last of me. This was the final ember in the dying fire I’d become.
“You know, Dahlia,” I said. “I do have something left.”
“What’s that?”
“Rage.”
I lunged for her, knocking her back to the stained carpet. I lashed out and took her throat in my hand. Her pulse jumped beneath my thumb, quickening as her eyes widened with shock.
Hatred blazed in my belly. Her delicate face—pained and surprised—became the avatar of all the things I loathed. Every frustration, every tiny inconvenience of the past eight years flooded me.
I couldn’t get a decent job. I was stuck in Las Vegas. I couldn’t keep a relationship. The fact that I was forced to work for Eris, that I’d been chased by living statues and killed a shark-man in my parking lot. And Marius! If it hadn’t been for Dahlia, I never would have met the bastard, would never have let myself want him, let alone give in to need and wrap myself around him. I wouldn’t have needed Flynn to rescue me. Or anyone else. If not for her, I would still belong to me.
Rig
ht or wrong, in this moment all of it was Dahlia’s fault. My broken heart and everything that came after. Each transgression boiled through me, distilling in my hands around her neck.
“Can’t…do…this,” she sputtered.
Veins began to bulge in her temples.
“Watch me,” I snarled.
“He’ll come…for you.”
“I. Don’t. Care.”
Kneeling over her, I squeezed with everything I had. Her eyes rolled back into her skull, and with a sudden pop! I no longer held a woman’s life but a pile of cinders and glimmering dust. Behind me, the door crashed open and four faery men burst in. They wore leather armor and oak-leaf brands. At the sight of the ash in my hands, the largest thrust out his fist.
“Murderess!” he cried.
What was left of Dahlia blew away through my fingers in the cool breeze along with the remnants of all that I’d once been. Carefree, hopeful, and naive Cat had died right alongside the faery.
Now that even my rage had been spent, I felt empty.
Now, Dahlia. Now there is truly nothing left of me.
The soldier barked an order to his mates. “Fetch her! We will take her to our Lord, and he will see that justice is served.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Strip My Mind”
The faery soldiers led me out of the shack and into a front yard. Years of neglect had left it dry and brittle, overgrown with weeds standing as tall as my shoulders in some places. The leader held his hands out to his sides, and the stale grass parted at his whim to clear our path. Briefly, I’d entertained the notion that faeries had been responsible for crop circles. It made sense that they’d do nothing but run around in confusing rings.
It might have been minutes after dawn or high noon, I couldn’t tell. Though the sky was bright, the sun itself hid behind a veil of clouds.
“Where are we?” I asked, my voice callused and warped.
The leader glared at me over his shoulder but gave no answer.
It wasn’t long before the weeds gave way to a meadow of heather and thistle. The dale spread out to the horizon where the earth rose to form a soft mound. On the hill, an enormous tree stretched her branches to the sky, leaves fanning out in a full canopy. This tree, it turned out, was our destination.
When I stood beneath it, I shook, humbled by its sheer size and grandeur. Like a birch, the bark was pale silver and gleamed in the indirect light of the sun. As the leaves rustled in the breeze, there came an eerie sound. Whispers? Was someone crying? No. Just the wind moaning through the treetop.
The leaves themselves were remarkable, too. Flat and as large as my head, they looked like black leather with veins of crimson. The roots twisted, sinking knobby knuckles into the earth. There between the roots, his legs tucked up against his bare chest, sat Puck.
Like most of the Fae, Puck appeared ageless. His face was smooth like a young man who hadn’t grown his first beard, and yet his eyes—silver and black—spoke of centuries of mischief and gathering secrets. His hair, the color of spring grass, swept up and back from his face to form curling horns. He reminded me of a certain comic book bruiser, but Puck’s claws were not made of adamantium. This faery’s cruelty would never be so obvious.
“Welcome,” he said in a musical tenor. Unfolding his legs, the faery stood. With a barrel chest and short stature I thought of bantam roosters—small, potent, and wily.
“Cat Sharp, isn’t it?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Well, aren’t you a fine addition?”
He circled me, those alien eyes appraising me.
“I will not serve the Fae,” I said icily.
“No? And why is that?”
The smile at his lips told me he knew damn well why not.
“An old grudge.”
“I’m told you have collected on that debt. Poor Dahlia rides the back of the wind, and I believe yours are the hands that killed her. Is that right?”
I nodded mutely.
“Surely you know her blood must be answered for. If not with your obeisance then with your own life.”
I straightened my spine and lifted my chin. “Go ahead. There’s nothing left to get out of me and my stupid life.”
Puck giggled and skipped to the tree. As he capered around it, his stubby fingers caressed the trunk lovingly. “It’s a remarkable tree, isn’t it?” he asked. “My people call her the Giving Tree, for she gives us shade, comfort, food, and life eternal. Her sap is potent as both a poison and as a medicine. A single sliver of her bark can be taken and pounded into strong armor. But it is her fruit, you see, that is most valuable.”
I looked up into the branches. I don’t know how I’d missed it before. The pear-shaped fruits—the color of a pomegranate with the smooth-looking skin of a tomato—sagged from the branches, plump and ripe, as if they might fall off at any time.
“They are not to be harvested en masse, as your people seem to prefer,” Puck continued. “No, these are sacred. We take of them when dire times demand it, for we understand this is her greatest gift.”
Above me the fruit pulsed. Not as one, but each individual orb had its own rhythm.
“Catherine Sharp,” he said, voice carrying into the vastness. “Do you refuse to pledge fealty to the queens of Faery and become an emissary of the Sidhe?”
I made sure to enunciate so he’d understand. “Fuck. You.”
His mouth hitched into a smirk. “Very well.”
Before my eyes, the roots of the tree writhed, and a seam appeared in the trunk. The wood creaked and groaned as it shifted, and once more I could hear that eerie mewling of the wind.
“You will be executed,” Puck announced. “Traitors and upstarts like yourself think they can ignore their duties, but in the end you all bend to the will of the Sidhe.”
As if on hinges, the silver bark opened to reveal the inside of the tree. She bristled with splinters and spikes. The Fae—allergic to ferrous metals—had invented their own version of the iron maiden.
I gulped in shallow breaths. Who wouldn’t be terrified looking into a maw of wooden stakes and quills? My heart raced. As I turned to run, two of the faery soldiers took me by the arms and pulled me forward.
And then it made sense—the leathery texture and red veins of the leaves, the throbbing, crimson fruit.
“The Giving Tree,” Puck said reverently, “provides us with the elixir of life. Your blood will fertilize the land and nourish our sacred fruit.”
The soldiers shoved me into the trunk. I stood as far from the spikes as I could. Puck placed both hands on the sides of the opening and leaned in, his eyes level with mine.
“So you see, in the end, you will still serve the Fae.” He bowed. “We thank you for your sacrifice to the Realm.”
Then, the tree moaned and popped as the trunk constricted around me, and splinters pricked my flesh. I raised my arms to my face and drew in a breath, trying to brace myself for the horror to come. As the first of the points pierced my stomach I let out a shriek. As the tree knitted itself back together, the spines drove into my legs, my back. Bones crunched beneath the pressure, and hot blood flowed out of me in gushes. The pain was infinite. Though I ripped apart, I couldn’t fall, couldn’t pass out. The same wood that tore at my flesh and muscles held me up and together.
I closed my eyes and screamed, begging for one of the spikes to slice my brain and end me.
Chapter Nineteen
“Warped”
The searing agony of the wood in my flesh stopped abruptly, though my wailing went on until my voice was little more than a weak breath. Someone gripped my wrists and pulled my hands away from my face.
“Catherine!”
What the…? Jolted by the surprise of hearing Marius’s voice, I opened my eyes. The satyr stood in front of me, fully clothed, alive and well. His face—without any bleeding cuts or abrasions—twisted not with malice but with confusion.
I pushed away and took a few wobbly steps back. The memory of his h
orned face and sweaty leer blazed in my mind. My feet stumbled over something. I turned to see I’d bumped into Dahlia. Also very much alive… She still wore her black leather, and regarded me with a mixture of wary hesitation and haughty triumph.
My temples began to throb, the pressure of questions and shock squeezing my head like a vice. My eyes darted between Marius and Dahlia for an explanation.
“Catherine, breathe!” Marius ordered.
I gasped and cool, evening air flushed through me. Head spinning like a deflating balloon, I doubled over and braced myself on my shaking knees. When I was mostly certain I wouldn’t pass out, I looked up to get a lay of the land.
The sky was fully dark, and the light of Las Vegas blotted out the stars. A lush garden replaced the faery glade and its Giving Tree. The grass, an emerald green, had been cut short to the soil, almost like a golf course. Flowers sprang up from the earth in bursts of color. A blossom of cherry red, here. Lemon yellow, there. I even saw something like a spiraling cattail thrusting up into the air in a series of black-and-white stripes. Toadstools, big enough to sit on their caps, sprouted near a wooden footbridge. A small brook gurgled in a winding path through the garden, the gin-clear water rippling with the jewel tones of the koi within. Over the sounds of water and wind, loons called into the night.
As my gaze fell onto the throne, my whole body began to quiver with horror. The chair had been carved out of silver wood. The back fanned out into a display of massive branches and a canopy of leathery, black leaves.
“Excellent!” Puck sang merrily form his throne.
The Sidhe lord bounced up and clapped his hands in slow applause. As before, his hair was spring green and his face boyishly fresh; however, instead of the tanned leathers and bare skin I’d seen earlier, he wore the clothes of a modern mortal with little to no fashion sense. His wardrobe—black-and-white striped pants, a red tee, and a long purple coat—brought to mind another comic book character, this one more appropriate to Gotham City.
Puck giggled. “Oh, it’s fantastic! You really are a prize,” he said. “Such passion! Such fury! And who knew you possessed such a deep well of self-loathing. Fantastic!”
