by Emma Harley
“I’ll make you a deal princess. If your dear aunt Thea tells you the truth about who you are, who we all are,” she tittered, gesturing around the room, “not only will I let her go, I’ll let you shoot me yourself.” Raina didn’t falter as she stepped away from Logan, her gun steady in the air.
“What is this bitch talking about Thea,” Raina asked, trying as much as possible to steady her voice as her aunt whimpered again.
“I promised your mother,” she sobbed, “I promised her.” Coralynn’s grin was widening as Thea wept.
“Promised her what?” Raina roared, a tear sliding down her face as Thea recoiled at her voice. Through streaming tears, she looked Raina in the eye.
“I promised her I would keep her secret, your secret, and we’d let you grow up normal. You didn’t deserve the life you were cursed with, and they wanted to force you back to it,” she cried, shaking so hard she could barely form any more words.
“Give it a rest Coralynn,” another voice boomed. Jonathon Green limped into the room, avoiding Raina’s eyes shamefully. “I would suggest being careful who you shoot, there’s an entire S.W.A.T. team outside this manor, waiting to take you all out on my order. They’ll storm this place if they hear a gunshot.” Nick checked a tiny screen he had in his pocket and nodded, backing up to Raina.
“He’s not lying, we’re surrounded.” The team moved back to her but didn’t put their weapons away. Raina lowered her gun from the captain.
“I should have left your ass in the water.”
He merely turned to Coralynn, ignoring the jibe.
“You’ve gone rogue. You know we can’t allow you to operate here. Regardless of how useful you may be to us, we can’t allow you to operate outside of our control any longer,” he muttered gruffly. Coralynn scowled at him and sighed.
“I’m almost done anyway. You should stay for the show captain, little Raina here is about to hear all about how she ruined our lives.” Raina gave a loud growl and rolled her eyes.
“I killed your boyfriend, get over it, you killed my mother. Aren’t we even now?” she snapped. Coralynn’s psychotic eyes roved over to her.
“You killed my mate you bitch,” she growled. A thought clicked in her mind as she moved in front of her team.
“Call him whatever you want, I don’t care. Did you ever wonder why I was sent after him?” The Raven almost screamed at her in response.
“He was the one that found out how to send us home! You kidnapped him and locked him up before you killed him!” she screamed, her expression almost becoming unhinged, “Poor little princess Raina couldn’t deal with responsibilities, so you killed him to keep us all trapped here!” Raina’s lips curled as she turned her gun on the captain.
“You tell her.” Coralynn looked between them wildly, her porcelain skin now blotchy and pink with rage. The captain stared at Raina, wide eyed like a deer caught in headlights.
“Tell her who sent us after Brent Ironwood.”
Alicia whispered into the comm quietly behind her visor. “Shift your weight over if you’re planning something.” Raina adjusted herself as she kept aim at the captain.
“I don’t know what you were told by him, but I knew nothing about whatever the hell you’re talking about Coralynn. Brent Ironwood was listed as a rogue agent, and we were to take him out. But who gave that order to kill captain?” Jonathon paled to a sickly green and stayed silent. Raina turned to the Raven.
“That S.W.A.T. team isn’t for us, it’s for you. You’ve been hunted for years as a criminal, but I’m guessing you got whatever intel Brent had before he was killed. The captain didn’t know this until after the order was given to assassinate him. He didn’t want to lose such precious assets by sending you home.”
Jonathon had stumbled backwards as Raina looked around the basement and over to the Raven with an evil grin on her face.
“There’s a little flaw in your plan for coming here captain,” Raina hissed, stepping around him to lock the door, “This room is underground and soundproofed. Otherwise S.W.A.T would have barged in when I threw a stun grenade.”
Jonathon trembled as he limped backwards away from Raina and the Raven.
“She’s lying, I swear. She knew everything,” he whimpered, backing towards Kalen. The eldest brother stuck his foot out and swiped under the old man. Raina pointed her gun at the captain.
“Last chance to come clean, or I’m going to shoot your good leg first.” He whimpered and cried, a pathetic shell of the man who had once sat bragging about his brave navy days.
“I needed them to stay,” he whimpered, “the research was almost finished. You weren’t the first people to land into our world.” Raina lowered her gun slightly.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean,” she hissed. Behind her, Thea begged him.
“Don’t do this, she doesn’t deserve this!” she screamed. Logan finally spoke up.
“It’s time she learned Thea, you shouldn’t have kept this from her!” he roared, rattling the restraints on his chair. The captain smirked as he stared Raina in the eye.
“You aren’t from our world. Neither are those beasts.”
The Raven grinned as she turned to Raina.
“Allow me to elaborate on that,” she sneered, stalking back to her chair as Raina lowered her gun to her side. “You are a princess. In another world of course, here, you’re nothing. When your parents… your real parents,” she spat with a glance at Thea, “realised how much of a danger you were, they decided to throw you through a portal between worlds.” She paused slightly as Raina cocked her head in disbelief.
“There was an army sweeping through our lands, demons from the depths of the underworld itself, and they wanted you for your power. Your dear bastard mother didn’t realise what blood she bore, a curse placed on her paternal bloodline, forbidding them from ever controlling power. And she mated with a man with a veritable powerhouse under his skin. Your father was literally bred for his power alone. You were so unstable, even locking your power away by magic couldn’t hold it. I was devoted to your mother, so when the plan came to send you away, we were to go with you to keep you safe.”
Raina shook her head and laughed. “You don’t honestly expect me to believe this bullshit do you?” she cackled, “You really think I’m some damn princess from another universe?” She raised her gun to the Raven once more but the woman simply giggled with a venom laced laugh.
“Why don’t you ask your ‘aunt’, or even your little loverboy over there?” Logan growled behind her, but Raina didn’t even turn to look at him. She glanced over at Thea, who had stopped crying, instead she was kneeling, staring blankly at the floor in front of her.
“Thea?” Raina called, slight panic tinging her voice. Thea balked faintly before looking up at her with bloodshot eyes. She just shook her head as tears fell again.
“I’m sorry Raina,” she choked, tears streaming down her cheeks, “I wanted you to have a normal life, I didn’t want you to know anything about this.” Raina almost dropped her gun in shock as Coralynn clapped her hands gleefully with a loud shriek of laughter.
“Didn’t you wonder why this research started long before we appeared?” she hissed delightedly, “the captain told us all about it. We weren’t the first beings to come through the rift, but most of the others have been monstrosities from other worlds.”
Kalen groaned as he strained against the straps on his chains.
“We went through with you to keep you safe. The mother you knew was your real mother’s closest friend, she loved you like her own. Our queen couldn’t abandon her lands, she had to stay. She had our bodies glamoured to fit in with humans, but when we got here we realised how badly stunted we were,” he stammered, his words slurred through his swollen mouth. Coralynn growled.
“Our queen somehow used your power as a catalyst for our glamour, then sent us to a world with no magic. Our powers were gone, our strength and abilities were sapped. All we had was our Fae blood to stop us from a
ging, but we could be killed as easily as those human slugs.”
Raina shook her head in disbelief.
“You’re all fucking crazy,” she snarled, turning to her aunt, “what the hell did they give you to make you go along with this?”
Thea was breathing heavily, her greying hair hanging loosely around her face.
“They want me to help them open the rift,” she stammered through sobs, “I told them I don’t know how to but they don’t believe me.” Coralynn chuckled devilishly, crossing the room to unstrap her “brothers” from their chairs. Elias began stirring and Kalen dived to check he was okay. Logan tried to step closer to Raina but she turned her gun on him.
“Don’t even think about it,” she hissed.
Suddenly he was yanked backwards and pinned against a wall with a yelp. JJ had a knife to his throat as Logan winced in pain from the knee to his groin. Izak and Nick had Kalen and a still unconscious Elias pinned down with guns aimed at them, Alicia covered the captain and Davin came to stand beside Raina, his gun aimed at the Raven. She squealed delightedly, darting back to point her gun at Thea.
“Do you want to know why I really have her princess?” she taunted, dragging her aunt’s hair back with the barrel, “I don’t need her to tell me how to open the rift. I needed you here to do it.” Raina shrugged.
“I already knew you got Brent’s research before the captain could destroy it. What do you need with me?” The Raven grinned, showing every one of her white teeth.
“I need you to die. You see our glamour is linked to your power. And your power is locked away somehow by your mother. If you die, like all Fae, your power will release, and return to the earth. We can finally regain our beautiful Fae bodies, and tell your mother and father that you died in the process of returning,” she winked at Raina as she slipped her finger onto the trigger pointed at Thea.
“You’re a military woman, surely you know collateral damage can’t be helped.” Her finger twitched, and Raina leapt with a guttural scream.
“NOOO!”
Before she could pull her arm up to shoot the Raven, the bitch turned the gun on her and pulled the trigger.
Raina registered a piercing boom as a searing pain ripped through her throat and she landed on the cold hard ground. She knew Davin opened fire by his roar. Or maybe it was Logan’s as he kneeled over her. Someone pushed him away, screaming her name. She couldn’t see anymore. Colours swirled and blending, growing darker and deeper by the second.
Something warm was running down her chest. A hand was pushing on her neck, she couldn’t see who it was. She couldn’t see anything anymore.
The pain was ebbing away but her chest was burning. Something was burning her, and she couldn’t move to take it away, she tried to scream but her mouth wouldn’t move. The fire spread throughout her body, blistering and brutal, seeping into her bones as they splintered apart within her flesh.
Were they burning her alive?
Was she even alive?
This was death. The afterlife.
Her penance for taking lives unnecessarily. Perhaps those delusional preachers were right about a hell, because she was in it. Unable to scream or put the flames out, she was burning and no one was coming to help her. That screaming in the distance must be the others forced into this darkness, they were burning too. Except it wasn’t darkness, it was blindingly bright. And it was her name they were screaming.
Raina.
How did they know who she was?
Raina.
She knew those voices from somewhere. The light was dimming. The invisible flames were dying out.
“RAINA!”
Logan’s scream mingled with her own as her throat burned. Something was wriggling in her stomach, her hands were not her own and the scream was not her voice. Alicia was holding a crying Thea, or something that looked like Thea. Something was different about everyone, as she scrambled away, blood coating her clothes with a metallic tang that filled her nostrils. She scrabbled for her gun before realising her armour had been removed. She palmed a dagger from her shaking boot, ready to fight.
“Who are you,” she croaked, her throat burning in agony.
The Logan imposter slowly crept closer, his wounds and swollen eye now gone somehow.
“Raina, I need you to calm down okay,” he soothed, stopping a safe distance back from her, “calm down princess.”
“What did you do with Logan?” she snarled, her eyes squinting in the too-bright room. The lights above her hummed noisily, the imposter’s breathing so loud it hurt her eardrums. The Thea look-a-like crept closer.
“Raina, you changed,” she choked out, before Logan held her back, not taking his eyes off Raina.
“You turned back into Fae when Coralynn killed you,” he whispered, but it was so loud he may as well have shouted.
He slid a small dental mirror across the tiled floor to her, the metal scraping horribly. Raina picked it up cautiously and peeked at herself. She dropped the mirror with a scream, clutching at her delicately pointed ears.
“Your Fae senses are overwhelming you right now, everything feels different, and sounds are louder aren’t they?” - she nodded – “we probably look a bit different to you too. Your human senses were different, but we’re the same people okay?” Logan explained gently.
Raina shook her head softly, peering into the tiny circle of glass on the floor. Everything was different. Her face was different. A throbbing ache in her bones roiled the nausea in her stomach as she looked at everyone around her.
Logan and Kalen had grown at least a foot taller, their muscles were straining through their clothing, their features more refined and striking, and most obviously, their ears and canines were longer and pointed.
Elias was waking up too, suddenly looking like a humanoid mass of muscle. Davin and the rest of the team looked shorter though, they hadn’t changed into these Fae things. The thing was still writhing in her gut, but it seemed to be calming down as she took one breath at a time. She struggled to her feet, her bones crying out in agony as she took a wobbly step forward.
The Raven’s body lay in a bloodied, perforated heap at the back of the room. Raina clutched a hand to her throat, still sticky with her blood but no longer bleeding.
“She killed me,” she whispered, jumping as someone touched a hand to her shoulder. Davin stood beside her, now barely a few inches taller than her.
“I know she was yours to take, but she shot you, and I couldn’t stop myself,” he apologised. Raina just shook her head and repeated, louder this time, “But she killed me.”
Kalen stepped slowly towards her, earning a warning growl from Logan and Alicia as she aimed her gun at him.
“Is that your mother’s necklace?” he asked softly, his lengthened canines glinting in the light. She nodded stiffly and put her hand to it.
“It burned me, when I died, I was burning. I thought I was dead, I couldn’t open my eyes it was so bright, but I was burning and couldn’t move,” she shrieked, the panic rising steadily in her voice. Davin put his arm around her for comfort as Kalen tried to explain.
“I think your mother had a resurrection spell placed on the necklace. She must have thought we would hurt you if we figured it out, but she ensured you would be able to heal by turning back into Fae if you were injured.”
“So it’s true then,” she whimpered, leaning against Davin as nausea churned in her stomach. Kalen and Thea nodded and Raina turned to her aunt.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Thea’s face fell.
“Your real mother didn’t think she’d ever see you again. I was her handmaiden, and a dear friend. Before we took you through the rift, she made us promise her that you would enjoy a normal life.” Raina wiped a tear from her cheek as she looked her aunt dead in the eye.
“My real mother was slaughtered by that bitch. She died to keep me safe, to keep a promise she made,” she turned to Logan and Kalen with a snarl, “a promise you also made. My mother is dead because of you, a
nd now I’m a monster. I can’t stay among normal people now because of you. I’ll be found here and probably dissected.” Izak stepped over a puddle of her blood to take her hand.
“Princess or not Phoenix, you’re still on our team. We always have your back.” She smiled gratefully at him and squeezed his hand gently. Judging by the expressions and salutes from the rest of her team, they mirrored his sentiments.
“I can’t stay here anymore. I’ll have to live my life in hiding, my whole future is over now I look like this.” She dropped his hand and walked towards the captain, who had sat silently in the corner watching the events unfold. She squatted down in front of him, watching him carefully while a strange stench wafted from him. “You betrayed me,” she stated quietly. He nodded.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he whimpered, crawling onto his knees, “I’ll make it right. I have the research to open the portal, I’ll give it to you, I swear.” His pleading was irritating, but Raina smirked.
“Do you know what I did before we came here?” she asked innocently. He sat silently, waiting for her to answer.
“My team took a little detour to visit your husband. I know those earpieces you gave us had trackers in them. That’s why we left them in the van, and not on our person. He was so happy to see me you know. I guess he doesn’t know about your little projects.”
The captain began blubbering, his begging growing desperate.
“Here’s how this is going to go,” she said calmly, sitting down and crossing her lengthened legs before him, “you’re going to tell us how to open that portal thing. And you aren’t going to say a word to anyone about what happened here. You will pretend to be the hero, tell them you led the Raven into a trap and killed her. You’ll call off your dogs outside. And if I find out you told anyone before I leave, I’m going to make you watch as I rip your husband apart, and force feed him to you.”
Raina kept her face calm, barely even blinking as the worm in front of her grovelled.