by D. N. Hoxa
“M-hm. He gets into my head sometimes and calls for Winter. I can only see his face and that he is in a cage, like the bird cages,” Ezra explained.
“Have you seen him before? Do you recognize him?” Bender asked but the boy only shook his head.
“Do you see where his cage is?” asked Julian, and Ezra had no idea.
“Enough talk about the man in the prison, okay? We’re going to rest for a few more minutes, then get going,” I said, too tired to even begin to try and figure out who it was we were talking about—a person who could apparently get into little kids’ heads. “Do you think your TV works?” I asked Bender.
Lynn stood up. “I’ll check. Come on, Ezra.” That girl was a true blessing.
Bender and Julian walked in front of me, on the other side of the counter, looking at me like I had the answers to everything. I didn’t. Not even close.
“We need to come up with a plan,” was all I thought to say.
“We need to find Jane Dunham,” said Bender.
“Can you get us into the ECU morgue or wherever they put dead bodies? I think analyzing or even spelling her old body could give us a hint,” I said reluctantly. Messing with dead bodies was not my strong suit but if it needed to be done, I’d do it.
“That might be tricky, because I’m supposed to be looking for Ezra,” Bender said. “But I think I can manage something.”
“Raina has a powerful position in the Seelie Court,” Julian said. “She has the right to command the King’s army, or a portion of it, and getting rid of them is going to make killing her easier.”
“We need to expose her. If the Seelie King sees her true face, she’ll probably be banished from the realm.” Oh, how awesome that would be… “You can banish someone, right?”
“The Kings can,” Julian said with a nod.
“You’re a Prince. Make an official request to the King or something,” Bender said. That was exactly what I was thinking, but Julian flinched.
“All they’d have to do is strip her of everything on her person. She’s using something to mask herself. If that something comes off, it’s done,” I said.
“Fairy politics are worse than anything you’ve seen here,” said Julian. “Demanding that the King humiliates a member of his Court by stripping them naked is as close to a declaration of war as it can get.”
Ah, hell. “But what if we give them proof?” Bender said. “We’ll bring Jane’s dead body to the fairy realm if needed.”
“The Queen might be tempted,” Julian said, looking down at the counter in front of him, but not really seeing anything as he thought it through. “I hear her relationship with Raina isn’t stellar. She’s the only one who can convince the King.”
“That’s good enough for me,” I said excitedly.
“Sounds like a plan,” Bender said, rubbing his hands together. “I’m going to need to make a few phone calls to get us into the ECU archives, and we can get going right away.” Taking his phone out of his pocket, he made for the door and disappeared outside the house.
When he did, Lynn appeared right where Bender was standing, her backpack in her hands. She looked at Julian, a huge smile on his face.
“Ezra is watching TV,” she said, and waved at the living room, where Ezra was sitting on the ground in front of the large screen, watching a movie. The TV that had been mounted on the wall was now half falling, but by some miracle, the picture in it was perfect. “So, before we go, I thought you might want to take a look at this.”
Lynn took out the silver chest from the backpack. Of course. If anybody knew what those things were, it would be Julian.
“What is that?” he said, curiosity burning in his eyes at the sight of the beautiful silver-string flowers, and Lynn opened it with pleasure.
“These belonged to Dena Waldorf. I found them after she got killed,” she said proudly. “It’s where I found the black ravenstone. But I have no idea what any of these other things are.” She pushed the chest over to Julian, who dove in immediately.
“I know what this is,” he said, taking out the ax hammer without the handle. “We made these for the war. They are designed to cut through mortal spells.”
“Mortal?” I’d never heard that term before.
“It’s how we refer to witch spells,” he clarified. “This could only mean that Dena Waldorf’s grandfather fought in the war. Only the legions sent here from the realm had these.” Fascinated, he touched every curve of the ax hammer and every line engraved in it.
“Or maybe he just found it,” Lynn mumbled. “What about the rest?” She looked pointedly at the chest in front of Julian.
He left the thing on the counter and took out another. “Oh, this is priceless,” he whispered, holding the old, worn, brown leather piece in his fingers. “Dragon skin.” His eyes reflected fire.
“Really?” It looked so ordinary to me—and ordinary piece of leather with a really bad smell.
“Internal,” Julian said as he analyzed it. “Not exactly sure about everything it can be used for, but it really is something precious.”
“So cool,” Lynn whispered. “And this?” She put her hand in the chest and drew out the pen-looking thing with the dragon embossed on it.
Julian brought it closer to his face and looked at every inch of it before shaking his hand. “No idea,” he whispered, his voice dripping with curiosity.
I took it in my hands because that was the only pretty thing in the chest—and my favorite.
“Maybe it’s a pen? It looks like that to me.” But for the life of me, I couldn’t find the lid.
“No, it could b—”
“Ouch!” The scream came out of me before I knew what the hell was going on. Apparently, by playing with the thing, I’d pricked my thumb on the extended, really sharp dragon tail. I threw the thing on the counter, watching it fall to the floor, and sucked the blood off my finger. I didn’t like the dragon pen very much anymore.
Julian smiled. “It’s a prick,” he said, chuckling. But it wasn’t. Sharp, small things—like needles—terrified me. Throw a lion my way—no problem. But needles? No, thanks.
Before any of us could speak, there was a knock on one of the floor to ceiling windows.
It was Bender, and he looked terrified as he ran fast toward the door. Definitely not a good thing.
My heart already racing in my chest, I jumped to my feet. Thank God I’d armed myself up to the teeth. It looked like I was going to need everything on my person sooner than I’d hoped.
“Fairies,” Bender hissed when he pushed the front door open with all his strength. Julian was already running toward him. I ran to Ezra.
“Lynn!” She put the closed chest back in her backpack and came to us. “Take him. Hide and don’t come out until I come for you, okay?”
“But I want to help!” Lynn protested, though she’d already grabbed Ezra’s hand.
“You are helping,” I assured her. “Go!”
With a nod, she dragged Ezra towards the stairway, and I ran to the door, my heart in my throat.
Julian and Bender stood a few feet away from the front door. There, half hidden in the bushes, were about twenty fairies that I could see, and in the middle of them was Jane Dunham, wearing her perfect fairy disguise. She was smiling like the whole world was hers and she couldn’t wait to destroy every part of it, little by little. The blood in my veins boiled and my magic went wild inside my chest. I had my guns in my hands, my beads bloodthirsty for another taste of her face. Oh, I was going to enjoy hurting her like I shouldn’t.
I stepped forward, Julian and Bender right behind me, ready to kill some fairies. Despite the fear colliding with the anger inside my head, I gritted my teeth and offered the fake fairy a smile.
“Look at you, getting together once more against me,” she said, her voice gnawing at the inside of my ears. She made the hair on the back of my neck stand to attention, no matter that I didn’t want to admit it. “I assume Winter has already told you about me, and you
already know you can’t defeat me.” She casually waved at the fairies surrounding her, armed with swords and knives and deadly magic to be unleashed at her whim. “It beats me why you bother.”
“I suggest you leave now, before you end up dead,” I said through gritted teeth. But I already knew that there was no way she was going to leave without a fight. There were three of us and twenty-one of them, so our odds didn’t look so good.
“You never seem to get less annoying,” Jane said with a flinch, as if the sight of me disgusted her. “You know, I was going to give you some time off, let you run around like a little chicken, thinking you can hide from me, but then I heard it.” She closed her eyes and turned her face toward the sky. “Oh, those beautiful words. I’ve yearned to hear them for so, so long. I just couldn’t let it go.”
I looked at Julian. Could she possibly mean the chanting Ezra had done that had caused the ground to shake? How on earth could she have heard that? But Julian had no idea, either.
“Well, you’re too late. The kid is already gone, far away from here.” Yes, I know how pathetic that attempt was, but I had to say something!
Jane seemed to smell my bullshit from twenty feet away. “We’ll see about that,” she said, and looked around at the fairies around her, swarming Bender’s front yard. “Are you ready?”
Not that we intended to, but she didn’t give us the time to answer. With a nod, her fairies charged us, all at once.
“Stand by the door,” Bender called, and he and Julian ran forward. Good thing I had my guns, because he was right. I was Ezra’s last line of defense. Jane could not get through that door, no matter what. With that thought in mind, I began to aim at fairy foreheads while she stood back, hands on her hips, and looked at her fairies getting killed with a smile on her face.
I’d already emptied the bullets of the gun in my left hand, then put it away in my waistband, and straightened my fingers. My beads moved forward, as fast as the bullets I shot from my other gun. Fairies hit the ground, not dead, but weak enough to stand down for at least a few minutes. More than enough time for Julian and Bender to end them for good.
When all the bullets of my other gun were gone, I had no time to recharge, so I put it away and moved on to my knives. I had nine in my hip belt, so I threw them forward without thought—until two fairies made it between Julian and Bender and charged me. My beads were busy making a mess of the throat of another fairy, so while I called them back, I conjured my shield because the fairies hadn’t raised their swords yet. That could only mean they were going to use their magic on me.
The sparks that flew in between us when their magic hit my shield proved my theory. Taking advantage of the distraction, I dropped my shield, went down to my knees and conjured an electric wave spell. The fairy on my right fell back, lost balance and hit Julian right in the back. Julian turned fast, an ice shard in his hand, and buried it right under the fairy’s chin.
The fairy to my left found an opening and brought his sword down on me. All I could use to stop it was the knife in my hand. Unfortunately, the curved tip of it was turned to me, so when the fairy hit the blade, it brought the tip right to my face. My cheek burned as the blade cut through my skin. My eyes teared, but I couldn’t risk a second to close them. My arm began to shake, the fairy pushing his sword down with all his strength. Calling out to my magic, I unleashed it at the guy’s middle because I wasn’t able to concentrate on his chest or to even think of a spell. The magic that hit him was weak, but it did make him budge. Pushing his sword away with my knife, I spun around and kicked his feet from under him.
My beads were already on his face, and I jumped forward, landing with him between my feet, and buried my knife on the top of his head. There. That should disable him from moving for a good long while.
Before I could even look up to where Jane was, another fairy was in front of me. Had I miscalculated? Because it felt like there were more than twenty of them coming at us.
Grabbing a spell stone from my braid, I threw it at the running fairy’s feet. I charged it with my magic, then barely managed to raise my shield around me, before the spell stone exploded and sent the fairy back flying. It would have done the same thing to me without my shield, because we’d been so close. With the fairy falling on his back a few feet away, I could now see Jane Dunham again—and the smile that hadn’t left her face. I almost convinced myself to run over to her and just end her right then and there, but I knew that was a stupid move. She had people with her, and they could attack me before I could get close enough, making it easier for her to get through me and to the house. So I stayed put and waited for the next fairy who was already running toward me.
Bender’s front yard had turned into a bloodbath. I had no time to look out at the street behind the fence, to see if anybody was watching us, but I trusted Jane had taken that precaution and shut down the entire neighborhood. One would think, how would she even do that?, but I’d remind them that she came back from the dead once—that I knew of.
The fighting continued until there was more dead and wounded fairies in the yard than grass and bushes. Julian and Bender, both bloody and barely standing, threw their magic forward. Bender had his guns to fill in the gaps, and Julian his ice shards. The fingers of my left hand were already starting to go numb as I moved my beads and directed them toward the fairies the two of them fought. When my eyes met Jane’s again, she winked at me like she couldn’t see what the hell was going on right in front of us. Yes, we were wounded and bleeding, but we were still standing, and there were only about nine of her fairies left—in an even worse condition.
But that wasn’t why she winked at me, no.
I found that out a second too late, when I was looking right at her, and she disappeared into thin air, as if she’d never even been there to begin with.
My knees shook as I looked around, my heart beating like crazy. My shield slipped from me and a scream gathered in my throat as I watched the remaining fairies begin to retreat, until they were rushing toward the street.
I turned around and ran inside the house breathlessly, not daring to even think Jane had found Lynn and Ezra. No, Lynn knew how to hide. She was good at this stuff. I was going to get to Jane before she got to them.
Running up the half-broken stairs, I fell and hit the corner of a stair with my chin. Blood exploded from my mouth. Pain filled my head, turning the view in front of me dark for a second, and my whole jaw turned numb. But I didn’t have time to check if all my teeth were still in my mouth. I ran forward on all fours until I made it to the second floor, breathless.
My magic roared, shaking me to my core, when my eyes met Jane’s again. She was standing right there, holding Lynn by the hair with one hand, and Ezra by the neck with the other. I don’t think I’ll ever forget how scared they both looked in those seconds. Their faces were going to haunt me for the rest of my life.
“Let them go,” I said, spitting blood with every word that came out of my mouth. Something happened to me, something that slowed my heartbeat to a crawl and made all my muscles relax. Something that had yet to scare the shit out of me.
“See, I would, but I do need them, believe it or not. I’ll get them back in one piece,” she said, showing me all her teeth.
My beads charged forward, aiming for the door right behind her eye sockets.
That’s exactly where they landed, buried deep into the wood, because Jane disappeared again, taking Lynn and Ezra with her.
When my magic retreated, disappointed, I fell to my knees as if that had been the only thing holding me up. It would have reached her on time, my magic, but I hadn't allowed myself to blast her. Ezra and Lynn had been too close, and I could have hit them by accident, too.
Julian and Bender made it up the stairs, running, breathing heavily, dripping blood, but I couldn’t bring myself to open my eyes.
I’d let her go. I’d let her take them. In my whole life, I’d never felt more worthless.
“Oh, no,” Bender whispered
, walking to the middle of the hallway and back. “Oh, no, no, no.”
Julian kneeled beside me and took my face in his hands. “Are you okay?”
No, I wasn’t okay. I was very far from okay. Pushing his hands away, I stood up, desperate and angry, and ran down the stairs again. This was not over. It would not be over until I had Jane’s head in my hands, without the body. I was going to put it as a decoration on my fucking desk, and stare at it all day long.
“Wayne, where are you going?” Bender said as they both followed me downstairs.
“To find her,” I hissed. “Julian, open a portal.”
“No,” he whispered reluctantly. “We’re not going anywhere like this.”
I looked at him, eyes wide and mouth open. His left arm was a mess and he was limping, too. He’d healed in most places, but the cuts and tears in his clothes showed just how much he’d been hurt in the fight.
“Open the goddamn portal,” I demanded. I didn’t care how hurt I was. I was going to go after that witch and kill her while I laughed.
“He’s right, Wayne. If we go in like this, we’re going to get killed. We’re no use to Lynn and Ezra dead,” Bender said with a flinch. “What we need is a plan.”
Laughing dryly, I shook my head. “If we’d left right away, without trying to plan, she would have never found us here!”
“No, she would have found us someplace else,” Julian said. “If she heard Ezra chanting, I doubt we’d be able to hide for long.”
“How the hell did she disappear like that? What…” Bender didn’t even know what questions to ask.
“Black ravenstone,” said Julian. “She had it on her ring.” Ravenstone? Wasn’t that the portal opener? Shit. It was.
“Goddamn it,” I hissed. How had I missed that?
“Look, we need to think with a cold head here. If we allow ourselves to lose it, we’re as good as dead.” Bender walked fast around the living room, his head down as he tried to think clearly but couldn’t.
