The Xoe Meyers Trilogy (Xoe Meyers Young Adult Fantasy/Horror Series)

by Sara C. Roethle

  Chase shook his head. “I don't know what I'm going to do with the two of you,” he said playfully.

  “You're going to eat with us, duh,” I responded tartly.

  We all quickly filled our plates. Out of our complete group, the three of us are the ones with the biggest appetites. Ordering the pasta was definitely a good idea.

  “So why is Lucy mad?” Max asked, mouth full of pizza.

  There it was, no building up to it, no warning of intent. I didn't really know why Lucy was mad. I knew why she was bothered, and maybe a little uncomfortable, but all any of us had done was to protect her and everyone else.

  I shook my head and swallowed my bite of pasta. “She's upset because of what happened with the vampires that ended up in our rugs. She's also upset that I would have put Maggie in the same place if I'd had any choice.”

  Max stared at me for a heartbeat. “Why would that make her mad?”

  Hallelujah, I wasn't the only one that didn't get it. “I'm not sure, really. I would love for someone to explain it to me.”

  We both looked at Chase, and he shrugged. “They would have killed us. I don't see what the big problem is.”

  I found myself wondering just what Lela's viewpoint was. For some reason, I thought she'd side with us. Lela was a lot of things, and one of them was a survivor. She did what she had to do. Maybe we could make teams and have a nice little debate on the topic.

  “How's your shoulder?” I asked turning towards Chase, changing the subject.

  He shrugged, then winced. “It would be fine if I didn't keep forgetting there was a chunk torn out of it.”

  “It's healing okay though?” I prompted.

  “In a few days I'll be right as rain,” he replied.

  You gotta hand it to supernatural healing. Out of the three of us, Chase actually healed the slowest, even though he had more demon blood than I do.

  Both of his parents were demons, so he got demon blood from both sides, whereas I only got it from my dad. The difference is that my “demon line” is more powerful, hence better healing. Max heals even faster than I do. Werewolves are freaky like that.

  “That raises another question,” Max interjected. “What the heck did you do to that vampire Chase?”

  Chase looked down, embarrassed. “You didn't tell them?” he asked me.

  I shrugged. “When you told me, you made it seem like it was for my ears only.”

  Chase smiled. “I appreciate that.”

  Max was staring at us with his mouth open in mock annoyance. “When you two are done grinning at each other, could one of you please answer my question?”

  I blushed and looked down. “My mom was a Naga,” Chase explained.

  Max raised his eyebrows. “What the heck is a Naga?”

  “A snake person,” I answered as if it was common knowledge. “like in Hindu mythology.”

  “So . . . ” Max prompted.

  “I'm poisonous,” Chase answered.

  “That,” Max began, “is So. Cool. So what happens when you make out with chicks? Do they die?”

  Chase laughed. “No Max, they do not die. My fangs are retractable.”

  “So unlike our little Xoe here,” Max joked, “You probably won't accidentally kill your mate of choice.”

  I frowned at him. “I'm yet to kill anyone by accident, thank you very much. You better just hope I don't start with you.”

  “Speaking of our choice in mates,” Chase said to Max, “care to enlighten us about your brief stint as Allison's suitor?”

  “Yes Max,” I added, fluttering my eyelashes at him. “Do tell.”

  Max shrugged as a blush crept up his cheeks. “She's cute, and I like how she's all bossy, so I asked her out.”

  “She might be cute,” Chase answered, “but that girl is scary.”

  “Aw,” I cut in. “I thought I was the scariest girl around.”

  “You're scary because you can light things on fire with your mind, and you're beautiful to boot,” Chase said casually. “Allison is scary because she has absolutely no doubt of her ability to get her way, no matter the situation.”

  Max laughed at Chase's analysis. I was stuck on him calling me beautiful. Had it been a slip up? I didn't think so. He didn't seem at all embarrassed about saying it.

  “I guess I like 'em confident,” Max replied. “Though it becomes a major personality flaw when the confident person wants to become a werewolf.”

  We sobered up a bit at that.

  “I'm not going to let her do it,” I stated.

  “You may not be able to stop her for long,” Chase countered.

  I frowned, thinking about Allison.

  “Oh, shut up and call her beautiful again,” Max said loudly. “Her expression was a lot better then, than it is now.”

  Chase finally blushed. “I was simply stating a fact,” he explained. “Xoe is a scary beautiful demon with a penchant for destroying household appliances.”

  I was still thinking way too hard about things, but we all laughed and went back to our food. We managed to finish every scrap of food, and have an uneventful dinner, complete with witty banter and entree sharing.

  Imagine that.

  After dinner we reluctantly drove back to the inn. I found myself once again thinking about just giving up and going home. I missed home. What I wouldn't give to just lie down in my bed and feel safe again. I hadn't felt completely safe in a really long time.

  It wasn't really the werewolves that had caused problems, though many of them had been quite unpleasant. I had a bad feeling we hadn't seen the last of Maggie. Honestly, she didn't seem all that scary to me. Sure, she was super strong, and super fast, but who wasn't around here? Yet she came with friends, and we'd just killed her sister. Grief can fuel a lot of rage. Rage gets people dead.

  Chase, Max, and I walked across the front lawn, bodyguards in tow. We all stopped at the same time.

  Things seemed unusually quiet around the inn. Like way too quiet. As in, there was no one. Anywhere. In the words of Scooby Doo, “Ruh Roh.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Max and one of the bodyguards trotted ahead into the inn. They came back out quickly. Max shook his head. Gone. We'd left Jason, Allison, Lucy, and Lela in the room. Chase tried to grab me as I bolted. They couldn't all be gone.

  I slipped his grip and made it to the front door. Max followed me inside. I assumed Chase wouldn't be far behind. The bodyguards stayed on the porch. Apparently we'd fallen outside of their job description.

  I frantically climbed the stairs to our floor, not willing to wait on the elevator. The inn was completely deserted, not a single sign of life. I went in through the girls' room, since that was where we'd left everyone. It was spotless. The beds were made, and everyone's luggage was gone, including mine.

  Numb, I went to sit on the nearest bed. I was too afraid to check the other room. I knew what I would find. Max entered the room, shortly followed by Chase. They each came to sit on either side of me on the bed.

  “What's going on?” Max asked, voice shaky.

  I turned to look at his elvish face, usually filled with good humor to find a single tear sliding down his cheek. I hadn't gotten to tears yet. I knew they would come in time if we didn't figure things out.

  Chase put his arm around me. I could smell the blood from his bandages. “We should keep looking. If we can't find anyone, we need to leave. Waiting here won't do any good.”

  I nodded and stood up slowly, letting Chase's arm drop from my shoulders. I stumbled as I started to walk to the door and Max caught me. It took me a second to regain my footing. I felt like I was in a dream. I looked down at my ring and it was dead, no signs of swirling lights.

  When we reached the lawn, the bodyguards were gone. Gre-at. The sky was blue and perfect. It seemed wrong given the circumstances. Something was going on, some kind of . . . magic.

  “We can't get out!” Max called from my left.

  I turned to look at him, he was pushing at thin air l
ike there was something solid there. I walked cautiously to the edge of the lawn. It got harder to breathe the closer I got. I raised my hands, and there was . . . something. Not a wall exactly, it felt more like static. Static so thick that we couldn't push through it.

  Chase came to stand by my side. He lifted his hand up beside mine, then slowly let it drop.

  “It's some kind of magic,” he said, shaking his head.

  Max came to stand at my other side. “I found the bodyguards.”

  I looked a question at him. He looked green. Rather than answer with words, he pointed. I followed the direction of his finger to the inn's front porch. We'd run right past them. Well, what was left of them.

  Even from the distance I could tell they were no longer . . . intact. Blood dripped in a steady flow down the wooden slats. It was one of those train wreck moments where you wanted to unsee everything, but instead you walk closer to find out all of the details.

  We stopped walking about ten feet away from the corpses. Ten feet was more than close enough. A foul odor seeped up from the pile. I'd always heard that fresh death came with an ugly smell, especially when someone is cut up enough that the fluids and other matter inside are exposed to the clear blue sky. I turned away quickly and lost my lunch. Max wasn't far behind me. Chase managed to keep his cookies.

  I spit a few times to clear the taste of bile out of my mouth, then stumbled farther from the bodies to sit in the grass.

  Chase came to stand beside me. “We have to try to get out.”

  I tried to summon a flame into my hand. Maybe if I could make a flame large enough I could throw it at the magical barrier. My hands didn't seem to want to work. I had a sneaking suspicion that I was going into shock. I couldn’t get my magic, or ability, or whatever you wanted to call it to work.

  Max sat down, far to my side but still in my peripheral vision. He was obviously trying to not interfere as I stared at my hand like it was a tool that was broken.

  “Why aren't they coming?” I asked no one in particular.

  “Who?” Max asked.

  It took me a minute to realize what he'd asked. Yeah, definitely in shock. “Whomever killed the bodyguards. Why are we still alive?”

  “Do you guys smell that?” Max asked, ignoring my question.

  I was pretty sure that my question was a lot more pertinent, but I answered, “I've been trying not to smell too hard.”

  Max shook his head. “I couldn't smell it before, all I smelled was the bodies, that's why I noticed them. It smells like musty stone. Like a cave.”

  I took a whiff. I smelled moisture, like the smell before it rains, but there was something different about it. Max was right, it smelled like a cave, or somewhere underground.

  I closed my eyes and focused on the smell. Once I focused on that, I felt cold. The grass beneath me felt like stone. I opened my eyes and the sky was gone.

  “We're not in Kansas anymore,” I mumbled. Then I realized I had no one to mumble to. I was mumbling alone in an empty stone cavern. I wasn't alone for long.

  Chapter Eighteen

  She was preceded by a rather wicked cackle. First I saw torchlight. There was other light in the cavern, but I couldn't tell where it was coming from. Maggie came prancing around the corner, torch in hand. She'd swapped her floral dress for a black one. It flowed past her knees to meet with knee-high black boots. I wouldn’t have chosen stilettos for stomping around in caves, but then again, I hadn't chosen to go stomping around in a cave to begin with.

  “Oh little girl,” she chimed. “Did you really think it was a good idea to stand up to a vampire.”

  My laugh was harsh and dry, and probably sounded more like I was choking. “You didn't do this on your own. You don't have that kind of power.”

  She cocked her head. “Don't I?”

  I looked her dead in the eye. “No, you don't. Where are my friends?”

  She laughed. “Oh you don't need to worry about them. Well, at least the ones you left at the real inn. I still care a little for Jason after all of these years. I might just have to explore those feelings more, once you're out of the way.”

  Ignoring her not-so-subtle prod, I asked, “What about Chase and Max?”

  She shrugged. “Them you might have to worry about. If they ever manage to think their way out of that fabricated reality, they'll just end up down here, and I assure you, I'm not the only bad thing in this neck of the woods.”

  I smiled bitterly. “I'm assuming the one that actually created that reality is down here? I'd say that wolf is probably much bigger and badder than you.”

  She smiled back, but not like she was happy. “We are far better than wolves my dear. Though yes, he is down here somewhere. I'll have to have a word with him. It should have taken you longer to get out. I was so enjoying watching your confusion. By the way, you reek of vomit.”

  She'd walked close enough that I spit at her, wiping the smile off her face. Now she could smell like vomit too. Surprisingly my gesture didn't cause her to attack me . . . yet.

  Her smile returned quickly. “Remember how you couldn't arouse your magic in that other reality? You can't do it here either. I wanted to show you just how weak you are. I wanted you to realize your inferiority before I killed you.”

  I smiled again. “You know, you're the third psychopath that has lectured me before you killed me. Yet, here I still am. Can't say the same for the other two.”

  I was bluffing. I was screwed without my magic. I'm stronger and faster than a normal human, but nowhere near as strong and fast as a vampire. She either had a demon or a witch helping her. Since we were in a creepy underground lair, I guessed demon. They had a weird penchant for creepy underground lairs. Not that the realization helped me any.

  “So what did you offer the demon that helped you?” I asked, throwing her off guard.

  Her smile faltered again. Yippee. “That, little girl, is none of your concern.”

  It was my turn to smile. “No, I guess it's not, but it should be your concern. I think you should be concerned with getting out of here after you kill me. I think you should be concerned with the fact that a demon would just as soon eat you as send you merrily on your way.”

  “I'm not afraid of demons.”

  I laughed. “No Maggie, you're not afraid of me, or maybe you are, seeing as you went to all of this trouble to magically neuter me. This demon had the power to create an alternate reality that trapped two demons and a werewolf. I'd say maybe this demon is a little scary.”

  Maggie sneered at me. “I have a deal with him. I'll be home safe and sound as soon as I dispatch of you.”

  “If by home,” I replied, “You mean the burning fiery hell pit in which you belong, then yes, you will be there very soon.”

  An anger filled, “Enough of this,” was the only warning I had before she rushed me. I stood and tried to dodge out of the way, but she was too fast for me. She grabbed me and used her momentum to toss me in the air like a rag-doll.

  I smacked into the stone wall with a thud, and slid into a pile of rocks. I looked down in horror when I realized that amongst the rocks were bones. Most of them had been either shattered or gnawed to little stumps. I tried to pretend that they were animal bones, but I knew I was fooling myself. The teeth on that jawbone looked a little too human.

  My left shoulder throbbed from the impact, but I was otherwise numb. I was guessing numb was a bad thing. Numbness after getting hurt usually meant either your body was yet to register the pain, or nerves were damaged. I was probably hurt a lot worse than I could feel.

  Maggie stalked towards me. The only way she could tower over me was if I was on the ground, so that's where she'd put me.

  “You brought this all on yourself,” she spat down at me. “You had to be a snarky little twit. You could have just walked away.”

  I smiled and felt something wet drip down my face. I realized it was probably blood, but I ignored it. “Now Maggie,” I lectured. “If I had walked away, you would have ju
st been more jealous when you realized that my butt is way nicer than yours. You would have probably tried to kill me on the spot.”

  I was going to die, but I'd be damned if she had the last word. Suddenly Chase materialized behind her and tapped her on the shoulder. She whipped around in surprise and I took the opportunity to kick her just below her right kneecap. There was a loud crunch and she went down.

  Before I could blink I had her dainty little fangs inches from my face. Chase grabbed her hair to hold her back as she snapped at me like a rabid dog. The leg I had kicked was bent at an odd angle, but she didn't seem to feel it yet.

  Like a slow-motion horror scene, her snapping jaw inched closer to my face. I fumbled around in the pile of rocks and bones until I wrapped my hand around a large stone. I promptly smashed that large stone to the side of Maggie's skull.

  She fell away from me, but within seconds turned on Chase, screaming unintelligibly about him killing her sister. He fell back with his right arm raised to keep her teeth away from his throat and she started worrying at his arm like a starving animal. For the second time today Maggie was seconds away from doing some serious damage to Chase. I didn't want to do what I was about to do, but I couldn't quite stand up to help him, so I was doing it anyway.

  “I want to make a deal!” I called out.

  Maggie paused and faced me with blood running down her mouth and neck. “What are you doing!” she snarled.

  I ignored her. “Oh big powerful demon!” I called. “I think I can offer you much more than some little vampire!”

  Maggie lunged at me as another form materialized in the cavern. He was Friggin. Huge. He had to be around 6'7” and built like a tank. His skin was the darkest color I'd ever seen on skin, so dark that it had purple and blue highlights. His eyes were black, and not just the pupil and iris, the entire eye.

  He grabbed Maggie mid lunge like she weighed nothing. She was left dangling from his grip on the back of her dress. “We had a deal!” she screamed, enraged.

  Ignoring her, the demon turned to me. He smiled. His teeth were pointed. “What kind of deal, little one?”

  “Um,” I began, glancing at Chase. He was cradling his bloody arm to his chest. He gave me a what are you doing? look and I turned back to the demon. “First I have to know what Maggie offered you, then I'll better the deal.”