Spandex, Spells and Shadows

by Melinda Chase

  “Here we go,” Hunter hissed, and sure enough, this time, he turned down a tunnel that looked just like my vision.

  There were the cells, one with the little white fairy and one with the tall elf. He was asleep on a stone bed that had been carved into the wall, but the fairy flitted about. Now that I was up closer to her, I could make out the dainty little features on her face and the soft white glow of her wings.

  She flew backward, away from the bars, only to zoom forward again and try to break free. But the moment she hit the iron, she screeched in pain and fell back down to the stone floor.

  “Are you alright?” I gasped, running up to the doors of the cell.

  “Be careful,” Hunter growled. “That iron is meant to burn a fae. Don’t get too close.”

  I stepped back, heeding his warning, but couldn’t stop staring at the poor little fairy.

  “What did they do to get in here?” I asked, hoping that he was going to tell me they were all homicidal maniacs, but knowing that couldn’t be further from the truth. After all, the hunters had tossed Tanya in here without another thought, and she’d done nothing but exist.

  “I don’t remember,” Hunter shrugged apologetically. “Probably nothing. It doesn’t take much for us to put a fae in one of these cells. Maybe she crossed the border into the human realm too close to a hunter and got caught. Or maybe she accidentally revealed herself to a person. Who knows.”

  “Can we break them all out?” I demanded, without another thought. It just seemed like the right thing to do. We were here, and free, while they weren’t. Hunter had said it himself, too. They probably didn’t even deserve to be there.

  Admittedly, the brown haired elf with the creepy gaze might have been the one exception, but I couldn’t possibly imagine this little white fairy doing anything to harm someone.

  “No,” Hunter muttered, his lips so close to my ear I could feel his hot breath brush along the outer shell. The feeling was pleasant, but I didn’t let it distract me. “We need to find Tanya and get the hell out of here.”

  “Shannon?” As if she’d heard her name, Tanya called out to me. I dashed forward to the cell I’d seen the hunter toss her into in my vision, and was just about to grip the bars before I remembered Hunter’s warning.

  “Don’t touch the bars. They’ll burn you,” she hissed quickly.

  “Got it,” I nodded.

  I looked at her for a brief moment, taking it all in. She looked exhausted. There were purple bags under her eyes, and her dark brown hair was messy and frizzy, falling out of the ponytail she’d had it in. Her eyes and nose were red and puffy, indicating she’d probably spent a lot of time crying. I couldn’t blame her. I wasn’t even locked in a cell, and this place was still giving me the heebie-jeebies.

  “I knew you’d come for me," she smiled softly. “Shannon, I have to tell you something. I knew about magic. My mom taught me all about it when I was a kid. I had to lock that part of my life away, though, which was why I got so angry with you when you performed the new moon spell.”

  “I know,” I told her. “I sort of read up on you. I know everything that happened to your mom.”

  Instantly, Tanya’s eyes welled with tears. She sniffled, tossing her head back in an effort to hold them in.

  “I’m so sick of crying,” she groaned.

  “Ladies, I hate to break up this nice little reunion, but we need to be going,” Hunter murmured quietly, throwing a furtive glance over his shoulder. “I don’t know how much more time we have.”

  “Right,” I nodded, turning back to Tanya. “Ready for a jailbreak?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.” She stepped back, making room for whatever Hunter and I were about to do.

  That was when I realized I had no idea what we were about to do. I glanced at Hunter out of the corner of my eye.

  “How are we supposed to do this?” I hissed.

  “What, no magical solution?” He asked, a little too cockily for the weighted atmosphere. He quickly realized that, unlike him, Tanya and I weren’t very used to dealing with these life and death situations, and therefore, his humor was rather unwelcome. “Sorry. Force of habit. Stand back.”

  I shifted away from the bars, too, all the way across the small little tunnel in case Hunter had some hidden dynamite and planned to bust a hold in this place.

  But he did no such thing. Instead, he walked up to the cave wall just to the right of Tanya’s cell, and carefully pressed five different spots, forming a classic pentagram.

  With a tiny little squeak, the cell door swung open toward us.

  “Freedom,” I grinned at Tanya as she nearly tripped over herself in her haste to get out of the cell.

  “Thank you!” She gasped, slamming into me and wrapping me up in a tight hug. “Thank you so much.”

  “One halfling to another, it was the least I could do,” I replied.

  “Halfling?” Tanya pulled back, looking at me inquisitively.

  “That’s a story for another time,” I replied, patting her shoulder. “For now, let’s get the heck out of here.”

  “This way,” Hunter said, leading us down the tunnel the opposite way we’d came. We passed cells full of all sorts of fae, most of whom looked perfectly innocent. There were elves, fairies, pixies, and some shorter, stout creatures who reminded me of the hobbits of the Shire.

  In fact, judging by their massive, hairy feet, they just might have been real life hobbits.

  I wanted to help each and every one of them. I no longer believed the stories that had been fed to us about the vile ways of the fae. From my perspective, running through that massive, dank, sad prison, the only vile ones were the hunters and their precious Council.

  “Laslow.”

  We were running full speed when the sound of my grandfather’s name suddenly stopped me in my tracks. I froze, and Tanya and Hunter froze with me. My halfling friend looked at me in confusion, but Hunter didn’t. He already knew.

  He met my eyes and shook his head, slowly, but the meaning was clear: don’t.

  He and I both knew I couldn’t resist, though. I backtracked, cell by cell, until I found the person who had called out my grandfather’s name.

  It was an old elf, with silver hair that seemed to have been chopped off by an unpracticed hand, and slightly wrinkled skin. Unlike other elves, this one didn’t seem to have the slightly glowing skin I was used to.

  But what really sealed the deal were his hazy blue, unfocused eyes.

  “He’s been blinded,” Hunter murmured.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, confused by the tone of his voice. It almost seemed like it had been done on purpose.

  “It was a punishment,” Hunter explained, backing up my hypothesis that someone had blinded him on purpose. “He acted out against the Council.”

  “I didn’t cooperate when they were looking for another,” the old man croaked.

  “Who were they looking for?” I demanded, though I had a feeling I already knew the answer.

  The only man stood up and shuffled across his cell, keeping his hands out in front of him so he would stop before he ran face first into the burning iron bars. A light sizzle permeated the air when his fingertips touched the iron, and he froze, lowering his hands.

  “They were looking for a friend of mine,” the elf explained. “He went by the name of Laslow.”

  “What were his crimes?” Hunter pressed.

  “Mating with a witch,” the old man sighed. “He fell in love some time ago, and the two of them had a brief affair. There’s rumors of a child. Maybe even a grandchild.”

  Blind or not, the old man lowered his hazy blue eyes to mine, looking at me with an expression that I could only have described as serene wisdom.

  I wanted him free.

  Before I even knew what was happening, my magic seemed to heed my wishes. My hands tingled and grew hot as the magic bubbled up from within me, breaking free of the surface and spiraling out of me with long, buzzing white fingers. They sna
ked up to the wall next to the old man’s cell and began to press on the rock, just as Hunter had done to Tanya’s cell.

  The two of them shuffled back to give me my space while my magic worked. I wasn’t even sure what it did, or how it knew what to do, but all of a sudden the old man’s cell door was springing free and coming toward me.

  “What was that sound?” The man whispered hoarsely, not yet daring to believe it.

  “You’re free,” I gasped, still in a little bit in shock myself.

  The elf’s brow crinkled in confusion, and then he slowly shook his head.

  “That is not possible,” he murmured. “This cell cannot be opened by any who is not—”

  “Look, sir, I don’t mean to be rude, but it doesn’t matter how she did it,” Hunter hissed. “The cell is open, and you’re free. Now let’s go.”

  Hunter's words seemed to spur the elf on, because he grinned widely, stuck his arms straight out, and started to shuffle toward us slowly.

  Tanya and I rushed forward to help him, since it was apparent he didn’t walk very well.

  But the moment his feet crossed the threshold of his cell, when he should have been safe from everything, a massive, angry alarm started to go off throughout the entire tunnel, seeming to emanate from everywhere. A cold wind blasted past us, whipping our hair about and chilling me to the bone.

  “A de-magic spell,” Hunter growled. “Your cloaking spell will have been blown away.”

  “They can see me?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Hunter replied nervously. “We need to go. Now!”

  The four of us turned and started to run, with Tanya and I still gripping the old elf’s arms for support. The squawking of the alarm continued, following us on our escape route.

  Within seconds, it was accompanied by the loud, angry roar of thousands of hunters descending upon us.

  “Get ready, guys!” I hollered.

  18

  I had never been a fan of action movies. Never would be, either. I wasn’t too partial to the idea that, out of nowhere, hundreds or thousands of enemies could just descend upon a person, and said person would be able to fight them off, almost one by one. It had always seemed rather insane to me. I figured that, if there was ever a real life fight that mimicked one in an action movies, no army would approach the enemy one by one. They’d run full force toward that one measly person and take him down in a swift, easy move.

  And it turned out I’d been right.

  The hunters came from all angles, swarming the tunnels and cutting off every pathway we tried, while also filling in behind us, until eventually I knew they would cut us off from everything, and we’d be stuck.

  “The dust!” I hollered at Hunter, wondering why he hadn’t just thrown the vial of dust down and let us leap into the black hole to go home.

  “It doesn’t work here,” he called back. “We need to get back to the cave.”

  That was just my luck. The one thing that could get us out of this mess had strange, inexplicable rules, like only being able to work in a cave with creepy blue waters.

  “This way,” Hunter said, making a sharp right turn down a tunnel that was so thin I would have missed it if he hadn’t disappeared into it.

  “I’ll help him,” Tanya murmured, taking over with the old elf for me.

  But we didn’t get too far. All of a sudden, a rough hand tangled in my hair, yanking me backward just before I could get to the entrance of the tunnel.

  “Hunter!” I screamed.

  I saw him whip around and backtrack, headed straight toward me. At the same time, Tanya and the older elf shrank back against the cold stone wall as a pack of hunters closed in around them.

  Fear was gripping my heart so hard I could hardly call my magic up. I tried to take a breath and force myself to focus, but it was no use. I was heaving like I’d just finished running a marathon, surrounded by grotesquely smiling faces that reminded me way too much of Hunter’s when he’d turned into his murderous other half.

  Which was thankfully gone, now.

  “Let her go!” Came Hunter’s roar as he skidded back out of the tunnel.

  But he was utterly helpless as two hunters dashed up to him and held spears right to his chest.

  Actual spears, like something out of the pre-modern era. If the situation hadn’t been so deadly, it probably would have struck me as funny.

  Hunter had no more magic. I glanced from his worried face, to Tanya’s terrified one, and then finally, to the face leering at me.

  It was the hunter who had kidnapped Tanya. He had smooth, golden brown skin, short, curly brown hair, and icy blue eyes that looked right through me and into my soul.

  “It’s Laslow’s granddaughter,” he sneered. “How nice of you to show up. I hardly even had to work for it.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I snapped. “Because I was listening in on that little meeting you all just had, and it sounded like you’ve been working pretty hard. It’s been going unrecognized though, now hasn’t it?”

  The leering grin turned into an outraged snarl.

  “How dare you talk about me like that!” He yelled, yanking my hair so hard I was brought to my knees, completely against my will.

  “Don’t do that!” Hunter roared. He sprang forward and fought against his captors, but it was useless. They murmured a spell and a thin, purple force field shot up around him. Every time Hunter tried to slam through it, the force field pushed him back. It was like he was running uphill while being yanked from behind by Hercules.

  “Hunter,” the man before me sneered, addressing his ex-coworker for the first time. “How do you think Bjork will feel when I bring you to him? Excited? Malicious? Vengeful? Who’s to say what he will do. After all, you were his favorite.”

  Despite his best efforts, I could detect the immense jealousy in this hunter’s voice. He was angry that Hunter was the favorite.

  That was his position. I knew that’s what he believed. And capturing the two of us was probably supposed to be a way for him to showcase that, albeit it badly.

  “You will never have his approval, John Luther,” Hunter laughed. “No matter how hard you might try.”

  My realization brought on a wonderful sense of calm. I had the upper hand now. I knew this guy’s weakness.

  He thought he was invincible.

  “You should be warned, I’m very powerful,” I whispered coquettishly to him. John Luther grinned down at me, assessing how much of a threat I really was.

  I saw the sexism in his gaze, the idea that a woman could never beat him in this fight.

  And I loved knowing that I would prove him wrong.

  “Not as powerful as me, sweetheart,” he chuckled. “I did kidnap your other halfling friend, or did you forget?”

  He jerked his chin toward Tanya, who was still standing with her back to the wall, probably able to do nothing more than process.

  It definitely didn’t help that people kept saying “halfling” around her, and she didn’t even know what that meant.

  “Wanna bet?” I asked John Luther.

  But he never got the chance to answer. I let fly the magic that had been quietly rising under my skin for the last few minutes. It stretched out from me, lashing out at the hunters in my immediate vicinity. It wrapped around a few, picking them up by their waists and tossing them against the walls, while others it simply poked, filling them with electricity and causing them to fall to their knees. It was an amazing, yet terrifying sight.

  I wasn’t even sure what I was doing. It was like a part of my brain was already wired for this, to fight off the enemy with my wild, Wolverine-like magic.

  ZING!

  A knife whizzed right past my head, so close I felt it slice open my cheek, and slammed against the rock wall next to me. The distraction was enough to cause me to break my concentration, and my magic fingers fell away, dropping their victims.

  I whipped around to see that the knife had come from a vengeful John Luther, who I’d thrown down the tunnel just
a few seconds before.

  “Run!” I yelled at my group.

  My magic had managed to clear the thin little tunnel of hunters, and we zipped down it. The old elf had bunched his hand up in the back of Hunter’s brown shirt, so that he could run without tripping and slamming into things. Tanya was in front of me, and I brought up the rear.

  Every once in a while, I threw a blast of fire back toward the hunters following us. But, where one fell, others appeared to take his place, like a creepy ocean of hydras.

  “Come on!” Hunter egged us all on. We were breathless and exhausted, but we had to keep going. The only other alternative was to spend the rest of our lives in jail cells in this place that was at once nowhere and everywhere.

  Or, in the case of Tanya and I, die. I highly doubted they’d let us live much longer after the scene I’d just caused. They’d likely use it as an example of the dangers of half faes.

  Finally, our pathway opened wide, revealing that blessed cave that Hunter had been searching for.

  As soon as we skidded in, stopping short just before the water, a now disgustingly familiar face appeared in a tunnel just to my right.

  “Going somewhere?” John Luther hollered out.

  “Hunter, the dust!” I screeched, sending a blast of fire John Luther’s way. The man expertly dodged it, hitting the floor in a perfect somersault before popping back to his feet.

  “Portland!” Hunter hollered.

  This time, he did the vial smash, just as I’d wanted earlier. Purple dust exploded as the glass shattered, but it was quickly sucked back down into the black hole of the portal.

  “Help them!” I told Hunter, pointing at Tanya and the older elf.

  He nodded at once, and as soon as I knew the two of them were in safe hands, I turned around to face John Luther.

  He had magic of his own now. One of those little purple force fields had formed a bubble around him, protecting him. I threw a haphazard stream of fire his way, but it merely died the moment it hit the force field.

  I called up my magic, ready to attempt to deliver some sort of big blow. So far in this fight, my magic had worked out in my favor. I hoped it would keep doing that.