by CC Solomon
The crazed woman with the brown bob exited the backseat with a disappointed frown. “I wanted to see if he could heal fast. It’s a massive disappointment that he does not,” she said, looking very let down.
“You could have asked instead of slicing me in the back of my neck with a damn knife, you crazy puta!”
She gave him a confused look. “Well, what’s the fun in that? And what did you just call me?”
Phillip gave her an incredulous look. “Keep her away from me.”
“Is that anyway to treat our guests, Mercy? Now you have to keep your distance.” Ed chided her with a look of full amusement. “You’ll have to excuse her. She tends to get a bit…stabby, when she likes someone.”
She pouted. She had to have been in her mid- to late-20s but she behaved as though she were a spoiled teenager. “Aww, but he’s so cute. I don’t see many like him, except in the old shows. Can I keep him?”
“Fuck, no!” Phillip shouted before turning to me. “Can you heal my bloody neck, please?”
I nodded and then paused. “I didn’t get a cut on my neck.”
He frowned. “What?”
I looked at the small surface cut on his neck and then touched my own neck to confirm what I already knew. “If you got cut, I should have been cut too, but I wasn’t.”
Phillip deepened his frown. “How?”
I smiled. “I’ve gotten stronger.” I didn’t know for certain but maybe when I was able to finally block him from my dreams, I was able to put up more of a barrier than I thought. I wondered if that barrier was strong enough to separate us if one died.
“It won’t,” Phillip stated, lips twisted. “Unless you want to try.”
“You could read my mind?”
“I can read your face. You want me dead that bad?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Wouldn’t you, if you were me?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. “How do you know anyway?”
“There are logical limits on how much we can separate. Unless we split the soul we share, I don’t think it would work.”
“What are you two going on about?” Ed asked, squinting his eyes as he walked over to us.
“How much he gets on my nerves and that sometimes I want to kill him.” All of that was true. “Turn around, jerk, let me fix your neck.”
After I healed Phillip’s wound, Ed gave us a walking tour of the town. It was actually a village made up of a collection of streets lined with houses, a couple of corner stores, one café, and fields used as gardens and farms for cattle. It was all surrounded by a wall, built of various housing materials, which went up two stories. There was also a covered tower where someone stood watch.
There were gardens that held arrays of vegetables, fruit, and wheat, while a fenced-off field held a few cows, several chickens, goats, and pigs. In another section of the village, there were also a few horses, which appeared to be the main mode of transportation, along with bicycles. Most of the houses were residences but a few were converted to a school, a hospital, and other needed businesses. There were also vacant houses that they would use as the town grew. Ed mentioned if they needed, they would build more houses or extensions to existing houses.
“How high are you trying to build your wall?” I asked as we walked down the center of one of the streets.
“Tall enough to keep out a giant,” he answered.
“If you want, we can ward this village.”
“What does that do?” Mercy asked, suddenly appearing beside me.
Phillip snorted. “You don’t know what a ward is?”
She peaked around me to smile at Phillip. “That’s why I asked, silly.”
I sighed. “Phillip, please. If someone is covered in a ward or surrounded by a ward, then either she can’t get out of the surrounding or nothing can get into her surrounding. It all depends on the type of ward. There are many types. It’s the best tool you have against the supernatural. Even if we leave here, the ward can still hold up unless someone breaks it.”
“We had a ward up when we were attacked by Fae before. Didn’t keep them out,” Ed stated.
“Then it just wasn’t strong enough,” Phillip surmised. “Amina and I can make you a good one.”
“We don’t need magic. We’ve been doing much better since we got the wall up,” Mercy said, crossing her arms and glaring at me.
Why was she angry with me? What was her problem? I hoped she didn’t think I was a threat to her little crush on Phillip. She could have him.
“You say that now, until some giant troll wanders by and kicks your wall down. Or a vampire leaps over it. Or something swoops in from the sky. Or another witch teleports in,” Phillip replied. “You can’t fight the supernatural by natural means.”
Mercy frowned, her face giving way to worry.
“Well, it certainly can’t hurt to have it.” Ed replied in a low voice. “And you say it’ll last even when you’re gone?”
“Until someone breaks it or the maker of the ward dies,” I answered.
“Well, then, let’s keep you alive.”
Phillip and I separated again as I worked on the ward. I didn’t trust him to do it, so I sent him to help heal people who were ill. He wasn’t too excited about that job but he was rational enough not to fight me on it.
Only a small handful of people had a problem with us being there and bringing magic. Most of the town, however, seemed to have no problems with getting back to where they were before the world crashed. They were trying to survive and abided by the no-magic rules. However, most of the village residents came after the fairy attack and weren’t as rigid about keeping paranormals out, especially if they were willing to help the village.
We were rewarded with a big dinner and an empty cottage to stay in. Phillip and I had to share and I was not too happy with that, but was too exhausted to make a fuss.
Before my head hit the pillow, we tried to contact our friends via email. If we couldn’t get to them via magic or the old school way, maybe they could get to us. I sent emails to Erik and Charles on the desktop computer we found in the cottage’s living room.
The emails came back undelivered. Phillip tried as well. Same result.
“Something is beginning to tell me that even if we found a boat or someone who could fly a plane, it wouldn’t work,” I surmised. Real despair was starting to crash into me. I couldn’t be stuck here.
Phillip kicked the computer desk, cursing.
“Easy, man,” I stated, throwing a hand out to steady the small metal desk. “Maybe this fairy banishing magic can wear off. Ed says there are lots of fairies in Ireland. Maybe we can find one and they can break the spell,” I said more to myself than to him.
Phillip looked down on me with a face twisted in anger. “If I see your friend again, I’m going to kill her.” He walked past me and headed for the stairs.
“Hold up, dammit!” I shouted. “Come back here! Let’s stop this right here, right now.” I was tired as hell, mind, body, and soul, but I didn’t know how long we had here. If I was stuck with him, we were going to fix this once and for all.
He stopped and turned around, smiling. “I kind of like it when you yell at me. Turns me on.”
I scowled, giving him the very reaction I knew he loved.
“What do you want to do? The final challenge?” he asked.
“Screw the challenge. We’re soulmates. It’s fair to say that neither of us is more powerful than the other, but we need to stop working against each other.”
He threw out his hands. “All I ever wanted.”
“Stop threatening my friends and family. Stop being a dick. I know you controlled these people to get them to accept us. Don’t do that anymore. They treat us good, we’ll do the same.”
“They’re just humans.”
“So are you!” I shouted. I paused and collected my nerves. I put my hands together in prayer and moved them up to my lips. “I know you aren’t possessed. If you were, you would be pure evil. I sense regret in you and even ki
ndness. Sometimes. Mae believed you could be healed.”
He gave me a bored look, eyes lazy. “I told you I wasn’t possessed.”
“And you weren’t always like this either.”
“I feel like we’ve had this conversation before. Correct me if I’m wrong.”
I crossed my arms and tilted my head. I was coming to something in my mind. I was beginning to get what was going on now. “You aren’t the great evil Mae spoke of. You aren’t possessed. But you hate ungifted humans. Maybe you really are cursed. Or did something happen with humans that caused you to change? What did they do to you?”
“What did they do to you?” He spat back. “They held you as their slave for half a year. How can you think of them as your equal? If you let humans, no, if you let anyone who isn’t as strong as you take control over you, then you’re a fool. I use my abilities because I can. Why wouldn’t I? Before, I was kind to humans. Our former leader was kinder and because we had powers, he got a little too comfortable. We traded with a group that said they came from Fredericksburg, Virginia. One day, they took advantage of our kindness and kidnapped some of our people. They wanted to use them as slaves. Not in the way those humans did you. They had no formula. They really wanted to use them for magic labor. Since we weren’t willing to live with them, they just took.”
“Didn’t they know you’d come for them?” I asked.
He gave a grimace. “Of course, they did. That’s why when we went to the town, it was cleared out. It wasn’t a large one to begin with. A quarter of our size. They had planned for this.”
“How’d you know it was really them and what they were planning?”
He looked at me with cold eyes. “We found them several months later. Got some revenge. Don’t ask what kind.”
“That greatly affected you.”
His smile returned. “Are you my psychologist now? You want to fix me? I’m not a head case, mi corazón. I didn’t just wake up and change because some bad guys did some bad things. In the Pre-world I was getting my MBA. I’ve got my head on right.” He laughed. “I grew to decide that I would never allow myself to be weak.”
He could joke around all he wanted but he’d broken inside and became this new hardcore man. “I call bullshit,” I replied, standing up.
He gave a short laugh. “I am a complex man. Can’t it just be that?”
“I’m going to get to the bottom of this whole thing with you,” I began. “I won’t waste this time that we’re here together.”
He walked over to me but I stood unmoving. He brushed my cheek with the back of his hand and his eyes were large and sincere. For a millisecond, I thought of the man that I’d first met but that man was a master of lies and deceit. “I wouldn’t want us to waste this time alone together either,” he said in a low voice.
I moved my head back. “That isn’t what I’m talking about and you know it. You can’t even tell me what’s happened to you.”
“Nothing happened to me. Can’t you accept that?”
“If I did, then I would always hate you.”
He looked visibly pained by what I said, which I couldn’t reconcile. How could he be so heartless and at times be so sensitive?
“What can I do to change your mind?”
My eyes widened. I thought of my friends back home and of all the people he’d hurt. “I don’t know that you can. But you could start with lifting your spell on these people.”
He frowned. “What? Then they might kick us out of here.”
“Then we’ll be kicked out. I know it’s what you’re used to, but we can’t control people. We take our chances just like everyone else does.”
“But we aren’t everyone else. We’re better. They are just humans.”
“And that, right there, is the reason I could never love you. The man I love is a protector of all people.” I pointed my finger at him. “If you do anything to hurt these people, I’ll stab you in the eye.”
Phillip raised an eyebrow. “That’s a very specific threat.”
I gave a sinister smile. “Well, I know I can do it without hurting myself now. Break your spell on the villagers!”
He tilted his head, considering me. “I’d like to, mi corazón, but I can’t. However, you can. I won’t stop you, as long as the villagers don’t pose a threat.”
Why couldn’t he do it himself? I wanted to ask but decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. If he was willing to give in this much, then maybe there was hope for him and I wouldn’t have to kill him.
Chapter 16
A month had passed when I found myself back home in my apartment in Hagerstown, sitting on the edge of my bed. The sun’s rays shone through my window, bathing the room with light. I felt a warm breeze through the open window, informing me that summer was not ready to end. I leaned back onto my hands and sat still, feeling the slight wind on my skin.
“I tried every night to reach you in my mind,” I heard his voice say from behind me.
My heart jumped and I turned to see Erik’s back as he sat on the opposite side of the bed facing my doorway.
“I didn’t know if weremates had the same type of power to communicate in dreams like soulmates. Everyone said we didn’t. But I figure between us being this special Six and you being a soulmate, maybe it would work. So, every night, I went to bed and pictured you in my mind before I fell asleep. Most of the time the dreams I had of you were just dreams. This is probably the same but I just…I can’t give up,” he continued.
I shot up and raced to the other side of the bed. I lowered myself in front of him and grabbed his face with my hands. “I’m here, Erik,” I said.
He searched my eyes, a look of peace in his own. “I search for you every night. For a month, I’ve been searching.”
“You found me. This isn’t a dream. Well, it’s not a regular dream. We’re communicating.”
He frowned. “How do I know the difference?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.” I let go of his face and sat down beside him.
“Where are you, Mina?” he asked. His eyes looked almost pained now.
“I’m in—” I began to say but the word wouldn’t come out of my mouth. It was as if I had lost my speech. “I’m in— I’m in— I can’t say. It’s the spell.”
Erik seemed to ponder this before speaking again. “Are you in America?”
My body froze. I couldn’t so much as shake my head or nod. “I can’t say. The spell won’t let me.”
He cursed under his breath. “I’ll work on Lisa. I’ll find a way to make her bring you back.”
My heart sank. She really didn’t want me to return. She had purposefully sent me away. I tightened my hands into fists.
Erik grabbed my hand and brought it to his lips to kiss. “I don’t know how I did this or if it’s even real but I’m happy to at least see you. Wherever you are, are you at least safe?”
I nodded. “Yes, we’re in a good place. You don’t have to worry.”
He frowned. “Phillip’s still with you? Is he causing trouble?”
“No. He’s been on his best behavior. Erik,” I looked down at our now entwined hands. I didn’t know if I’d see him again. I couldn’t waste it. “I miss you. I’m so sorry I pushed you away. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“You weren’t,” Erik cracked, giving my hand a playful squeeze.
I lightly slapped his chest with my free hand and he grabbed my wrist. I looked into his hazel eyes, which were filled with something I’d never seen from him before. “I love you, Mina, you know that? I’m in awe of you,” he replied in a whispered voice. “I wanted to say that before.”
My vision blurred from the tears that were filling them. “I love you, too,” I stated.
Erik leaned in to me and I closed my eyes as I felt his lips press onto mine. It had been so long since I kissed him. I didn’t want it to end. I scooted closer to him and wrapped my arms around his neck, cherishing the moment as his tongue parted my mouth. I moaned, pressin
g even closer, and nipped his bottom lip, which sent a growl from him. His lips felt like butter on mine and I craved more.
Erik suddenly pulled back, resting his forehead on mine. “I think I have to go,” he whispered.
I grabbed his shirt by the sides, not wanting to let him go. “No,” I said.
I felt him chuckle. “If I could snatch you through this dream and bring you home, I would. I just need to say a proper goodbye before I wake up. I’m going to find you, Mina. Stay safe. I don’t know if we’ll be able to dream meet again but I’ll try. I’ll—”
I woke up. Afternoon daylight hit my eyes. I lay horizontally on my bed, blinking my eyes as they adjusted to the light and smiled. This was the first time we’d connected. Usually, dreams of Erik were nonsensical or nonlinear, skipping settings, leading me to believe that they were just my subconscious. However, this was different. This was more like my dream communications with Phillip.
Finding a way to connect with Erik had been a challenge. We were six hours apart, time-wise, so sleeping at the same time was tough. Trying to reach his mind during the day like I could do with Phillip was unsuccessful. Our mate bond just wasn’t as powerful.
Connecting with Erik that day had been a complete surprise. It appeared that my Saturday afternoon nap had overlapped with his regular night sleep. I’d tried it before with no success, but now it’d somehow worked.
I got up and did a little two-step in celebration. I still couldn’t tell Erik where I was but this was encouraging.
Perhaps getting home would happen sooner than I thought.
During our stay, we tried everything we could to communicate with home. We even had some town people send emails on our behalf. Their emails went out but any email mentioning Phillip or myself and being in Ireland just came right back as undeliverable.
I’d never dabbled or encountered Fae magic, outside of Lisa’s, and it was proving to be a very challenging magic to overcome. It was actually quite humbling. I had to admit that I was beginning to get a bit cocky with my magic; believing that maybe I was super powerful.
