by Carmen Caine
But with each breath, a deep sense of dread began to grow, and all at once, the very air itself felt thick and evil.
I froze.
A scratching sound was coming from the kitchen. Biting my lip, I forced myself to walk forward.
My heart sank.
It was Marquis.
He stood in the kitchen, poking through the groceries littering the kitchen counter, but his livid eyes were locked on me, and his lips lifted in a ruthless sneer.
“Welcome, Sydney,” he greeted me, sweeping the groceries off the countertop. “I’ve been waiting for you for quite a while. It’s about time you got home.”
“Where is everyone?” I gasped. “What have you done to my family?”
The words just naturally sprang from my lips, and it was then that I realized I really did consider Al, Betty, and Grace to be my true family.
I felt totally sick with fear that they’d come to harm.
“Oh, she’s safe … for now,” Marquis promised. Crooking his finger for me to follow, he led me to the family room where Betty sat on the couch.
To my horror, she looked just like a Madame Tussaud wax figure. Hunched sideways on the couch, she was staring straight ahead with a vacant look in her unblinking eyes. On the coffee table in front of her was a plastic plate with a cheese sandwich. And judging by the look of the dried piece of cheese hanging out the sides, she’d been mesmerized for quite some time.
“Betty!” I cried with my voice choking.
“Oh, she can’t hear you.” Marquis laughed and bowed, holding out his hand. “Go ahead, take a look! There’s nothing you can do to wake her up. Nothing!”
I ran to her side and waved my hand in front of her face, but she didn’t respond. She was in a deep, cataleptic trance.
“Stop it!” I said, turning on him. “Take her out of it!”
“Oh, not until I get what I want.” He smiled, clucking his tongue. “I’ll let her starve first.”
I shuddered.
“What do you want from me?” I gasped in a strangled voice.
His cold, sharp eyes narrowed into razor thin slits as he advanced, and pausing inches from me, he whispered in a low, menacing tone. “I want the Tulpa.”
I swallowed hard. “I don’t know where it is.”
He lurched forward, grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked hard. “Wrong answer, Sydney!”
Tears stinging my eyes, I gasped, “I’m telling the truth!”
Twisting my arm behind my back, he pushed me forward. I struggled, fighting against his punishing grip, but he was hard and unmoving, seeming to possess an unholy strength.
“It’s here,” he hissed, his voice rumbling in that low, distinct, Mesmer way. “We all know it is. We can taste it.” His tongue flicked out in the most disturbing of ways.
“I haven’t seen it! It isn’t here! I’d know if it was!” I swore. “Even Ajax can’t find it. It probably went back to where it came from.”
“It didn’t return from its mission!” His gaze frightened me. “It isn’t in our facet of existence. It’s still here!”
“Mission?” I felt nauseated. “Then it really is alive!”
“Oh, it is very much alive now!” Marquis grinned widely, and his pupils turned into vertical slits. “And we have humanity to thank for that! Your collective terror gave it life!”
I closed my eyes, not wanting to hear anymore as the voice I feared the most whispered in my ear.
“We meet again, Sydney,” Blondie’s rasping voice hissed at me.
It was all I could do to keep from screaming as I saw his sickening form again.
I knew there wasn’t any way I could reach Rafael, but Jareth was a different story. Desperately, I tried to recall the phone number he’d written down on the piece of paper, the one I’d used to call him when I’d unleashed the Tulpa from Marquis’ tube. If I could just think of it, he’d come immediately. At least, I hoped he would.
“You humans are ridiculously simple,” Blondie hissed insidiously. Slithering over to Betty, he encircled her wrist with a claw.
As I watched, Betty seemed bathed in a golden light. My throat closed in horror. I couldn’t think of any numbers then. I could only think about the golden cord of light extending from Betty’s navel.
Blondie laughed. “Oh, she’s not connected to us, silly human. She’s of no value. She’s still attached to her egg.”
As I watched, I saw what he meant. Betty’s cord was attached to an egg of light suspended in the air a few feet behind her.
Blondie withdrew his claw and the illusion faded.
“All it takes is a simple snip, Sydney,” he cackled. “If she’s severed from her egg, she’ll cease to exist. It’ll be as if she’d never been. Only you would remember her existence, because I’ll make you perform the actual deed.”
I gaped.
I didn’t know if they were telling the truth or playing on my fear, but it didn’t really matter. I was totally and utterly terrified.
“We can’t lose this Tulpa,” Blondie rasped, sliding off the couch to circle around my feet. “We’ll risk anything to find it.”
Frantic, I searched my mind for Jareth’s phone number. I tried several combinations, whispering them aloud.
I must have remembered the right number because Jareth suddenly appeared.
His dark eyes widened, and he drew his trion out in an instant, pointing it at Blondie, and at that moment, I totally and utterly knew I could trust him.
He really was one of the good guys!
Blondie shrieked.
Marquis pointed his own trion straight at me. “One false step, Jareth, and she’ll be gone,” he said with a maniacal gleam in his eye.
Jareth didn’t move. He stayed where he was, trion still trained on Blondie.
“You’re one of us, Jareth!” Blondie’s lips drew back into a sneer, and his golden eyes seemed to be glowing. “You’re an agent of chaos and fear. You’re one with the Brotherhood!”
Jareth didn’t answer.
I decided to answer for him. “No, he’s not one of you! Jareth’s good!” I said, forcing the words out of my dry throat.
Blondie’s head swiveled my direction. “Jareth belongs to us, foolish human.”
Jareth moved. He began to approach in a slow, calculating manner as something dark unleashed behind his eyes. “I’ll never belong to anyone, Fae or Brotherhood,” he swore. “You’ll never control me.”
Blondie turned and smiled at that. “Your test has not yet arrived, foolish lizardling.”
Jareth’s lip crooked in a mocking smile of his own. “And your arrogance will be your undoing. You may not give birth nor may you die, but you may cease to ever have existed. This truth I know.”
Both Blondie and Marquis’ eyes widened in alarm, and they hissed in a horrible, rattling sound.
Suddenly, Blondie leapt onto Betty’s lap, laying one claw on her wrist and holding the other up to her cord of light, clearly preparing to slice through it.
“No!” I screamed.
“It is this worthless human, or the Tulpa,” Blondie grated. “You have three seconds. One. Two. Th—”
“Wait!” Rafael’s voice rang through the family room. “I know where the Tulpa is!”
I burst into tears of relief and launched myself straight at him.
Marquis didn’t even try to stop me.
Rafael squeezed my shoulder in a comforting gesture and nodded towards the kitchen with his chin. “Follow me. Leave the human alone.”
Blondie eyed him suspiciously, and then exchanging a long glance with Marquis, slithered off Betty’s lap to lope into the kitchen.
He moved in a creepy, disturbing way, slinking and slithering like a mutated snake creature out of a horror movie.
“Rafael—” I sobbed, but he silenced me with an elegant finger on my lips.
“Odd that Blondie’s taking your orders, Rafael!” Jareth’s dark eyes were filled with anger.
But Rafael merely silenced
him with a look.
We all followed him to the kitchen where he pointed to the garage door.
I didn’t even have time to ask before Marquis lifted his trion, and the door disappeared as if it had never existed.
Marquis motioned me in first, and I gingerly stepped through the opening to see Al’s PVC pipe tent filling up the garage. It really was covered on the outside with chicken wire.
What was Al up to?
Rafael approached the tent, lightly touching the plastic sheeting with his fingertips before rapping the piping with his knuckles. “Clever,” he said. “It’s an effective shielding mechanism. It’s no wonder we couldn’t detect its presence. Crude, but effective.”
Marquis moved to join him, placing his hand on the plastic before drawing back with a sharp hiss, “Lysol!”
Reaching back to grab my arm, Marquis wrenched me forward and ordered, “Get it!”
I stared at him, open-mouthed, in confusion and then looked to Rafael.
“Get it, Sydney,” he said in a strangely monotone voice.
I frowned, unsure of what was happening. I saw Jareth still standing close, his trion still pointed at Blondie, but with Marquis’ trion still pointed at my forehead, he wasn’t making any moves.
“Get it, Sydney,” Rafael repeated, but he was strangely pale and looked a little ill.
With a trembling nod, I stepped inside the tent.
There was just a chair and a card table, and on that card table was a large hamster cage. And inside the hamster cage was the alien detection kit Al had given me before last Thanksgiving, with its glass tube, panel of lights, and metal disk on top that had reminded me of the blade inside a food processor.
But the tube was red.
I frowned.
It hadn’t been red before. It hadn’t been filled with anything. And this red seemed to be moving.
All at once, I realized with horror what it was.
It was the Tulpa.
It was caught in the alien detection kit.
We’d finally found it.
Jareth was shouting at me, “Let it loose, Sydney! You’ve got to let it loose. It’s the only way!”
I looked at him like he was mad.
“If you don’t let it loose now, Rafael will make the wrong choice!” he was choking with emotion. His hand holding the trion was beginning to shake. “This is his Blue Thread!”
“Don’t let it free, Sydney,” Rafael ordered me calmly. “You know how dangerous that is. Just give it to me. It looks like Jareth might be mesmerized.”
It wasn’t a hard choice for me to make. While I might be just beginning to trust Jareth, I knew I certainly trusted Rafael.
Opening the hamster cage, I took the alien detection kit out and stretched my hand out to Rafael.
I saw Jareth fall to his knees, dropping his trion on the ground.
“No!” he choked.
I froze.
Something was wrong, but it was too late.
As if in slow motion, I watched Rafael reach out, take the Tulpa, and calmly hand it to Marquis.
“You’ve done something meaningful for the first time in your life, Sydney.” Marquis laughed, holding the Tulpa up in a gesture of pure triumph.
Blondie jumped onto his shoulder, his tongue flicking in and out of his mouth in a very lizard-like way. “We do not die. We do not give birth. We do not transcend the dimensions as humans do. We are here, always constant … until now.” His eyes glowed with anticipation at the Tulpa. “Because of this Tulpa, we will soon enter the facet of human existence.”
My stomach tightened.
There was a cloud of mist and Melody appeared. She didn’t seem the slightest bit disturbed to see Blondie or Marquis. And she barely spared Jareth a glance.
Her eyes were focused solely on the Tulpa.
“At long last, you have found it, my prince,” she said, bowing before Rafael.
Unable to comprehend what I was seeing, I simply stood there, watching as Marquis and Blondie joined Melody to bow deeply in front of Rafael.
“Then let us be gone,” Rafael was ordering them. “You know what must be done next.”
Marquis, Melody, and Blondie all nodded with deep respect.
Jareth drew in a long breath of horror, and I found myself running towards him. Tears fogged my vision and I tripped, falling heavily, the cold cement of the garage stinging my palms.
“Who are you to order them?” Jareth was asking Rafael hoarsely, even as he swung around and caught me in a close protective embrace.
Slowly, Rafael turned to face us. He avoided looking at me and focused his gray eyes only on Jareth.
“I invited them here,” he said in a cold voice.
Melody smiled. She held up her hand and snapped her fingers.
There was a poof of mist and a white mask appeared in her hand, complete with feathers and sparkling gems, but it was the symbol on the forehead that made me pause. The strange pattern of the two rings, one of them a complicated almost Celtic-looking design weaving around the simple solid circle.
I gasped.
It was the white mask that I’d seen in the Hall of Mirrors.
Jareth choked, staring at Rafael in astonishment. “Then you’ve joined the Inner Circle!”
Waving a dismissive hand, Rafael’s lips curved in a mysterious, cool smile.
“No, I haven’t joined the Inner Circle, Jareth,” he said calmly, even as he plucked the mask from Melody’s hands and with slow, deliberate moves, slipped it over his face. “I would find that impossible.”
“You lie!” Jareth gasped in a strangled voice. “You’re standing before me now, masked as one of them!”
Rafael gave a deep, mocking laugh and shook his head slowly. “You only see what is before your face! You never look deep enough to uncover what might be hidden! That’s why you’ve never gotten far in your investigation of the Inner Circle!” He paused dramatically before adding the fateful words, “No, Jareth, I could never join the Inner Circle! How could I join … when I never left?”
In that instant, my world turned upside down.
… to be continued in
Book Three of the Glass Wall - The Inner Circle
Click this link for a list of Carmen's books on Amazon
Like many of us on this planet, Carmen Caine/Madison Adler is from another world. She spends every moment she can scribbling stories on sticky notes that her kids find posted all over the car, house, and barn.
When she is not working as a software engineer, she is busy ferrying her kids to various appointments, writing lyrics for her husband's songs,raising her Doberman Ajax, attempting to tame her three insane cats, scratching her three Nigerian Dwarf Goats behind the horns or coddling her flock of thirty bizarre chickens from around the world.
And although I am terrible at tweeting and posting on Facebook (though I do strive to improve), please find me at the following places:
Carmen and Madison's Facebook Fanpage
Facebook friends with Madison Adler ( aka Carmen )
Facebook friends with Carmen Caine ( aka Madison )
Madison's Twitter - more paranormal content
Carmen's Twitter - more medieval content
Carmen and Madison's website
THE GLASS WALL SERIES (PG-13)
What if humans were more powerful than they thought? What if an alien race had a reason to keep humanity entrenched in fear? And what if ancient beings that we've met before were still trying to protect us?
And just what if the fate of Earth depended upon an average 17-year-old girl with a few secrets of her own?
Would she discover that the power of love was truly the strongest of all?
Prequel - the short story "Behind the Mirror"
Rafael Channing is a Fate Tracker, protecting his world and Earth from disaster, but what should he do when disaster appears in the form of love?
Book One - The Glass Wall
17-year-old Sydney's only interest in life is flying
under the radar.
But destiny has other plans when the tall, handsome, formal, and unusual Rafael Channing moves into the neighborhood. Athletic and with killer looks, he wears black eyeliner like a magician and seems to be watching Sydney's every move.
What starts out as a light-hearted investigation with her gadget-happy foster father takes a serious turn when she discovers that Rafael isn't human. Add Jareth, the country's latest rock sensation, into the mix and Sydney is swept into a mysterious world of Tulpas, the Fae, and the Brotherhood of the Snake.
Sydney doesn't know she's a Blue Thread of Fate. She doesn't know the fate of humanity depends on her choice of whom to trust--Jareth or Rafael. And she certainly doesn't know that she's taken the first step on the unexpected path of love.
Book Two of the Glass Wall- The Brotherhood of the Snake
The excitement and mystery continues as the romance begins. After breaking the Glass Wall, Sydney finds herself on the run with Rafael. And as her feelings for him awaken, danger arrives in the form of Mesmers, agents of evil sent by the Brotherhood of the Snake.
But when Jareth struts back onto the scene, it isn't long before Sydney finds herself immersed in sinister secrets, and the subsequent whirlwind of events leaves her wondering just who is right and who is wrong?
Book Three of the Glass Wall - The Inner Circle
As the predictions from the Hall of Mirrors come true, Sydney seizes control of her destiny and makes a choice between Rafael and Jareth. A choice of true love.
And as she evades Mesmers, Tulpas, and the Fae's Inner Circle, she discovers the power of human thought.
But then one of the three makes their Blue-Threaded decision, the decision of fate.
Is it the right one?
Book Four of the Glass Wall - The Egg (2014)
A death. A beginning. And the final Blue-Threaded decisions are made.
A NEW ADULT PARANORMAL SERIES
The first book of other-wordly creatures: "monster" (2014)
THE HIGHLAND HEATHER AND HEARTS SCOTTISH ROMANCE SERIES (PG-13)
The Kindling Heart
(Scotland, 1478) - Ruan MacLeod was through with women. They were nothing but trouble. Leaving the rash life of his youth behind, he returned to Skye, seeking peace. He never meant to split the clan or start a war with the MacDonald of Duntulm. He certainly never foresaw an arranged marriage to the most scandalous woman in Scotland. Even though she was twice his age, the size of a horse and mother to more than one illegitimate child, he agreed to secure his sister's freedom.