by Danny Bell
“Only someone truly reckless or overconfident would think walking in here would be a good idea,” Janet hissed.
I took a confident step toward the two of them; whether or not it was over as such or not was likely a matter of opinion. “Being reckless and overconfident happen to be part of my appeal,” I countered. I was bluffing. It was bluffing or running, and I knew we wouldn’t be fast enough. One of these possessed snake people nearly killed me last time, now there were two of them and we were fair game. If anything, these two looked a lot meaner. I was far from helpless—my magical well had grown considerably since this all began—but I knew when I was outclassed. What’s worse, I had no rod, no enchanted coat, and, from the look of things, no way out.
“Why would you do this to yourself, Janet?” I asked, drawing a pause from her. “That is still your name, isn’t it? Janet Suzuki or do you get a new name when you let the snake in?”
Somewhere behind me, Ann swallowed hard, but I kept my eyes on Janet, who was searching my eyes like she was trying to decide if I was dinner.
“You know my name, perhaps my face, but you know nothing about who I am.”
“I know you’re a politician,” I said, struggling to find a second thing. “Ideally that means you want to represent people. To help them. I also know that whatever they promised you isn’t going to be worth it. Have you seen yourself? This can’t be what you bargained for.”
“Like I said,” Janet hissed again, seemingly very bored with me all of a sudden. “You know nothing about me. This is exactly what I bargained for.”
“Elana!” Ann shouted abruptly.
Had it not been for her warning, I wouldn’t have seen it in time. One of the egg-like spheres popped from the man’s skin like a massive pimple and landed in his hand. He shot me a hideous toothy grin as he cranked his arm back to throw it at me.
The unnatural calm in me, whatever it was, was gumming up the magical works inside of me, and I found this out the hard way as I nearly wretched trying to call upon it. It took more effort than it should’ve, but I shook a hasty blister shield out of my wrist and extended it toward the projectile. The egg exploded with a blinding burst of light and heat, but the shield held. The egg was a distraction, though, and I learned that painful lesson as my body seized with agony. I knew it before I saw it, before I heard the disgusting suction sound, it was Janet’s tail dug deep into the meat of my shoulder.
Shockingly, my calm was still there, and I whipped the blister shield into the forehead of the egg man, staggering him. It was a mistake. I was focused on the wrong person. Blood squirted violently from the puncture wound as Janet retracted her tail, and I fell to the ground, convulsing with nausea from the sudden intensity of the injury. Blood pumped steadily, and I absently thought about what a shame it was to stain and ruin my dress so quickly.
Ann shouted something I couldn’t make out, and a tremendous, fleeting gust escaped from her. The egg man, staggered as he was, soared head over heels across the garage. Unfortunately for us, Janet held firm. It was all too much, too quickly for Ann, and I looked back to watch her collapse to the ground as well. As Janet shrugged off the effects of the wind spell and advanced on us, I weirdly couldn’t help but feel proud of my friend. Heck of an effort, Ann.
My ears were ringing, was my next thought, until I realized that wasn’t what was happening. Echoing hauntingly off the walls of the garage were low tones, like wind chimes.
“That’s what an evocation looks like when the wielder is untrained,” a familiar voice said, and I could feel my calm splintering and cracking.
It couldn’t be him. He couldn’t be here and, even if he could, I had told him to stay away.
There was a shimmer near Janet like the nearly invisible waves of heat over a grill and, from nowhere, Abarta and another man stepped into view from nothing.
Abarta had given up the robes in favor of a grey three-piece suit and a peacoat. Janet turned on him; her tail, still wet with my blood, wildly slashing through the coat.
“The trick, you see, is to focus the spell to a fine point,” he continued to explain. “Less is more.”
He languidly raised a palm toward Janet, and a booming sound cracked the air as she ragdolled across the garage like a cannonball, obliterating a pillar and bouncing over a parked car.
The sight of him, the man I once trusted as a mentor, the man who kept my friend in chains for millennia and was willing to sacrifice my sister for his own ends. The man whose actions led Logan Kobayashi, one of the most welcoming and supportive people I’ve ever known, to death’s door and set in motion everything that was happening today.
That finally did it. My calm was shattered.
I might’ve had something to say just then, but the pain in my chest and shoulder had been turned up to eleven thousand; instead, a cross between a grunt and a scream came out of me.
Abarta still hadn’t looked to me, but addressed his companion. “Mister Gray, if you would see to your cleaning duties?”
This Gray, whoever he was, stepped forward, and I had a better look at him. He was probably about my age, about as tall as Abarta, though far more casually dressed in dark blue jeans and a black and white plaid button-down shirt tucked into his pants. He had a buzz cut, something just removed from having his head totally shaved, and a strawberry blonde beard that was neatly trimmed to the same length as the hair on his head. Oh, and he carried a two-handed sword that looked like it could cleave a car in half. I probably should’ve led with that.
He had an unsettling grin on his face as he strode up to the stunned egg man. “Hey. Hey, you’re okay, you’re okay,” he reassured the boil-covered man as he gave the sword a flourish and brought it down through his chest. There was a wet sound of cracking and tearing, and Gray casually yanked the sword free. “And that leaves the other one.”
I struggled to brace my back against the side of the limousine, sitting up and coughing violently. “Stop!” I managed to shout painfully. “There’s still a person in there!”
Abarta glanced at me, then back to Gray, as he stood over the wounded and disabled form of Janet. “You heard her,” Abarta said, giving Gray pause.
Gray glanced down at a frightened Janet and back to Abarta. “You’re sure?” he asked, garnering a narrow-eyed gaze from Abarta. That was apparently a suitable answer, and Gray lowered his sword, giving Janet a disrespectful kick as she scurried away with inhuman and broken movements.
“How are you here?” I spat. Absently, I could hear Ann rousing behind me.
“What an odd way to say thank you,” Abarta replied, kneeling to look at me. “Surely you remember the dangers of being discourteous to the fae.”
“How?” I repeated, and Abarta sighed.
“Come now, you were there,” he said, examining me. “I didn’t get everyone back, far from it, but the results were far from the disaster I’d feared them to be. Now, let me get a look at that scratch.”
He was talking about the ritual designed to bring back the remaining Aos Si, and god knows what else. The ritual he was prepared to let Olivia die during to complete. The implications of him succeeding scared the hell out of Chalsarda, and I’m sure not the least of her reasons was that, apparently, Abarta was now free to visit our plane of existence. I’m sure somewhere, to someone, the mere fact that he was here at all was the worst-case scenario.
“Keep the hell away from me!” I seethed through gritted teeth. I’d been burned by Abarta before, the last thing I needed was to be in his debt.
“You watch your goddamn mouth!” Gray shouted at me. “When you speak to—!”
My eyes couldn’t follow Abarta fast enough to see how he left my side and lifted Gray by the throat, pinning him to a pillar. “Keep a still tongue in your head around Elana if you value keeping a tongue at all! Do you understand?”
Gray’s eyes were bulging in his head and his face was rapidly changing colors, his sword loudly clanged on the concrete as it slipped from his grasp. He must’ve be
en just as surprised as I’d been, and I didn’t see how he could be expected to respond.
“No deals,” I croaked, getting his attention before he killed that guy.
Abarta released his grip on Gray’s throat as he turned to look at me, sending him to the ground unceremoniously, and raised an eyebrow at me. “You’ll bleed out without my help,” he cautioned. “And I’m not sure what that would mean for dear old Ann in the immediate future, and that’s to say nothing of your quaint, rainy little town.”
I hated to admit that he was right; I was almost dying a lot lately. Definitely more than usual, but I was banking on the fact that he showed up here for a reason that wasn’t just to watch me die. This one felt different, I didn’t know if I could walk away from it without his help. “You heard me,” I choked. “Repair the physical damage only, leave my mind, magic, and everything else alone. Heal the wound and leave nothing else behind, your sworn word to this and freely given or else leave me to die.”
Abarta looked at me compassionately, something like hurt in his eyes. “If that is your request, I certainly wouldn’t want to make a fool of you,” he said, kneeling again to look at my wound. “And I know you would never wish to make a fool of me. Hold still.”
Abarta placed a hand over the steadily pumping wound and, almost instantly, I felt the muscle repairing itself; the burning and terrible itching of my skin multiplied. It hurt worse than anything else had today, but lasted only a moment before even that pain was gone and I felt good as new. “Just call me your faerie godfather,” he said softly, a pained smile flashing briefly across his face.
I scrambled to my feet and stepped away from him, still a bit lightheaded from it all. “My dress is still ruined,” I observed absently.
Abarta rose to his feet slowly. “I could—”
“No!” I shouted louder than I intended, the word echoing around us. “Why are you here?”
“Look around you. Anyone can see you’re in over your head, Elana. You’re not ready for a fight like this.”
“I do not want or need any more of your help,” I seethed. “Stay the hell away from me.”
Abarta cautiously took a step toward me. “You don’t mean that. Elana, I just need…I just need one more chance. I can make you happy again, I believe that. You know that, too.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, fury building in me; I was silent, but only because I didn’t know what to say first. The incongruous sound of the elevator ding behind me broke that tension. A recently familiar voice from the elevator gasped and broke the silence.
“Oh my god. Oh my god!”
“I doubt she means me,” Abarta said mirthlessly. “Come, Mister Gray.”
Gray gingerly scooped up his sword and, with the same shimmer of light as before, the two of them seemed to walk away into thin air. I turned my attention to see Ann shakily standing and an incredulous Kaida, her eyes darting every which way.
“What happened here?” she eventually asked.
“You tell us,” I shot back, my patience gone. “You didn’t just follow us down here for no reason.”
“That is so much blood,” Kaida observed breathlessly, examining my dress.
“Hey!” I shouted, snapping her out of it. “Who sent you?”
“N-n-no one,” she stammered, utterly devoid of the cool she’d held earlier. “It was my father, something happened to him. I overheard your name; they said Elana Black like it was a curse. He promised to kill you, but he’s never been like…I saw him change, I had to follow you…”
I didn’t get the sense that she was lying, but whether or not that was the case was pretty far down on my list of priorities. “Well, believe it. This is all him,” I said, gesturing broadly at everything.
Wheels were spinning behind Kaida’s eyes and, finally, she said, “You have to get out of here.”
“No kidding,” Ann moaned, rubbing a bruised arm.
“Here,” Kaida said, removing her coat and handing it to me. “To cover up the blood. Follow me.”
“Where and why?” I asked, unmoving.
“I know a way out of here, and you two are clearly more than you pretend to be,” Kaida replied, some of the cool in her voice returning. “And you are going to promise to save my father once you’re free.”
It felt as sincere an answer as anything else I’d heard lately and that made it all the worse. “Look, maybe you’re not trying to kill us and you mean well, but I don’t even know if your dad can be saved.”
“Then you’re going to try,” she said stubbornly. “And you’re going to promise.”
“Do you even know what your dad has gotten himself into?” Ann asked with a bit of heat in her voice.
“I heard something about a deal,” Kaida answered slowly.
“Yeah, with the Orochi,” I said impatiently. “Your dad bonded with a mythical snake monster. He did this to himself willingly. I don’t think he wants to be saved.”
Kaida looked dumbstruck. “That’s not possible,” she said in disbelief. “Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know and now’s not the time to find out,” I answered. “But, yeah, he probably can’t be helped.”
“Well, whatever happened, you’re going to try,” she said defiantly. “I just watched two men teleport in front of my eyes, so maybe the Orochi is real, but either way, you’re going to try or you’re going to wait for the police; so, yes. Yes, you’re going to try and save my dad. I want your word.”
I looked at Ann, who gave me a shrug like this one was on me. “Fine, we’ll try,” I said, putting on her coat. “But for real, we can’t promise anything. I don’t even know how he made the deal in the first place.”
Kaida seemed to consider this and finally nodded in approval. “Okay, follow me.” She said as she led us up to the first level of the garage and across to the other side where a previously unseen service ladder was found in the corner. The ladder took us up into a maintenance area which eventually led to a door that placed us in an alley. I couldn’t help but be suspicious at how she knew about that way out, but I didn’t have time to question her either.
The alley was untouched by the rain the way the rooftop garden had been, but the water appeared to be ankle-deep just beyond the alley and the storm was still raging. Kaida had her phone out and was typing something. “I’m getting you a ride home from someone I trust,” she said, absently pressing her thumbs onto the screen.
“Nuh uh!” Ann protested. “They’re just going to report back to you where we’re going!”
“Please.” Kaida rolled her eyes. “The Book’s End? It’s on your Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, not to mention you already told me you live there. That’s where I’ll have you dropped off.”
“Well,” Ann replied sheepishly. “That could be a ruse.”
“I need to get back inside before they notice I’m gone,” Kaida said to me, ignoring Ann. “You promised to try to help my father.”
“I know,” I said reluctantly. “And I will.”
The answer seemed to satisfy her, and she left us there in the alley. The truth was, I was worried about someone’s father, but it wasn’t hers—it was Logan’s. He’d be back one day and, if he happened to be short a family member when he was, I didn’t know that he’d forgive me if I had the chance to save him and didn’t. Kaito Kobayashi had no idea who he’d gotten involved with and it was underhanded as hell that the Orochi was using him to get to me. Olivia had to know and soon. Maybe we could keep him safe, drag him away from all this, somehow. I didn’t know how we’d pull that off, but it was a nice thought at least.
My friend and I stood there in the cold, shivering, unsure if anyone was coming until they did. It wasn’t the car I expected—a dented-up white Honda Accord with a kid who couldn’t have been older than eighteen behind the wheel. He knew my name and where to go, but, outside of that, he didn’t have anything to say to us, even when he dropped us off. The rain was getting scarier now for sure, and I wasn’t sure how
much longer it would even be safe to be outside.
Ann and I had done our best to stay dry under Kaida’s coat, but it was a losing effort. We burst into the store with a bit more gusto than I would’ve liked. The combined sounds of the door slamming open against the adjacent wall and the storm outside was enough to visibly wake up Teague and Jason. Claire and Olivia were having a conversation by the counter, and both of them went wide-eyed when they saw us.
“Call an ambulance!” Claire loudly instructed, running toward us, Olivia just a step behind.
It took me a moment to remember I was covered in blood. “No, stop, I’m fine! It’s not my blood,” I said. Then correcting myself, I added, “Actually, it is my blood, but I’m fine. That’s not what’s important. Olivia, grab what you need and put a goddamn tarp over your Jeep because we’ve got to go.”
Olivia looked rattled at the suddenness, and asked, “What is it? What’s so urgent?”
I put my hands on her shoulders, somehow hoping that might ground her for the news. “It’s Logan’s family, maybe just his dad, I don’t know.” I swallowed, then finished the answer she was already expecting, the three words she didn’t want to hear. “They’re in danger.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Olivia’s Jeep proved to be an unusable submarine by that point in the storm, which I hoped would motivate her into buying a top for that stupid clown car in the future, even though I knew it wouldn’t. Her inexplicable obsession with that thing being rugged and mountain worthy had long ago crossed the line into annoying. I was sure she probably saw herself as Lara Croft when she drove it around town, but as the water fell around us in sheets, I kept picturing her as something closer to Nedry in Jurassic Park.
Which was how we ended up navigating my banana boat of a station wagon across town to the home of Logan’s parents. We were parked out in front, looking in, and, though the street signs made it clear that we absolutely were not allowed to park there without a permit, I held sincere doubts that anyone would be enforcing that rule in this rain.
