The Real Folktale Blues (Beyond Ever After #1)

by Random Jordan

  Ettie rushed up to me forcing her hands on me and drawing the fire up to her until it filled her completely, leaving me to breathe.

  A few shots rung from Bonny firing at the half-wizard trying to step away.

  My hand waved over the witch, but I couldn’t draw enough strength together to overcome the spell he had. So I grabbed Ettie before she was about to drop to the floor in pain, splitting the fire between us as I dragged her toward the other Fioravante. He tried kicking me but I grabbed his foot then forced the burning from the witch, through me and in to the magic-crafted man.

  He writhed and burned until there was nothing left of the magical body that had been pinned to the wall. Meanwhile Ettie and I were just gasping for air.

  “Thanks.” She added in between breaths while I looked to see Goldie and Roberts attempting to contain the former pirate king with the help of the new pirate king.

  “Thanks too. For the kiss.” My eyes turned to glance at her and see the blush pour over her cheeks, which made me smile. Then I looked at Ashe who smiled to me and held her axe out, ready to strike, with only being a couple feet from the man. She was the closest of any of the others there.

  “I think I can move on, finally.” I added before pulling my mind together and standing, it sounded like Ettie was going to say something but it just became a deep breath instead. So I yanked a hatchet from the wall and threw it, just after Fioravante exploded with energy in every direction, shedding everyone who was attempting to attack him, even though they had already sustained wounds on their arms, neck or head.

  The axe swirled through Fioravante’s leg, slicing it from the rest of his body and dropping him to the ground. You could hear his labored breathing as real blood gushed into the pores of the stone floor. I hobbled toward him, with pain coursing over me from the burns and smelling the scent of burnt hair that must have been mine or Ettie’s, or both.

  I could feel his reserves of energy were drying up but if he was really using a curse to fuel his power there was no telling what he could really do. So my foot descended against his chest as he tried to right himself with only one leg. I barely pushed him and he fell over the rest of the way.

  The connection of my foot to his chest allowed me to feel the burning and violent power itching to break out of him, so I gently coaxed it toward me and pulled it right from his body and in to mine.

  Magic exploded from his eyes and mouth and ran up to my chest, hitting me like I had just dipped myself in ice cold water. I shivered as the magic settled between us and I finally looked down at him.

  He was frightened, probably for the first time in his life. Because now that I could feel the curse thrumming through my body, I could also tell he didn’t have an ounce of magical energy to him.

  I scooped up the axe I had thrown and held it ready to slice his head from his body. But my eyes traced to everyone around me. Although they all looked beaten except Bonny, they also looked sullen at knowing what I would do next.

  My eyes drew on Ashe, who was just barely shaking her head with her eyes settled fiercely to me.

  I had to kill him, right?

  I leaned down to place the axe against his throat. I whispered, “You’re lucky. You won’t die by my hand tonight. I couldn’t rob someone of the revenge they will want to enact on a despicable man like you for having killed someone they knew. Instead…”

  I shook off the feelings of the curse wanting me to use magic so it could drain every last living thing that I could feel was under its sleeping effects. It had Nera’s magic print all over it and it was making me sick just thinking of it being in me.

  I slid the blade of my axe further against his neck and finished. “Instead I took what you should never have had in the first place.”

  He didn’t even stare at me, or say anything as I leaned back up and crushed my foot in his stomach one more time, forcing a burst of magic through him. Then I walked away from him with my jaw set and the anger burning in me more fiercely than the sleeping curse was.

  Fioravante barely lifted his head up to show the blue-beard he always possessed was no longer there. He managed to lift a hand up to feel at it, and tears pooled in his eyes.

  “Why?” He rasped.

  I shrugged and turned to look over my shoulder. “Brew it up to me going soft.”

  Besides, he had yet to see that although the blue-beard was gone, his normally golden hair like Goldie’s was now that same blue color the beard had been.

  A reminder: Of what I could do and so that the past would never be forgotten.

  I laughed at that thought.

  That was the same reason I always wore my red cloak.

  Thirty-One

  Blood Runs Blue

  We left Fioravante where he was. Goldie wrapped up some of his wounds while we fixed ourselves up. I couldn’t leave him to live then have him bleed to death afterwards.

  I had retrieved my axes, all of them. Then we ascended the steps of the tower with Han in the lead sniffing out the Blue Faerie, even if I already knew where she was. I could feel her energy stabbing through me more often as we drew closer. There was only one place she could have been if she needed this tower specifically and the permission to use the souls of those Bluebeard had killed.

  The room of blood.

  The same room Bluebeard had killed all those curious people that had ever stepped inside. We twisted and turned through a few corridors but it wasn’t hard to find the room we needed; it was radiating energy. My guess was because of a ritual.

  Han was the first one to step in the blood room thanks to the door being partially open. My hand fell to the skeleton key lock to make sure it stayed open as I passed through. I stopped mid-way through my stride as I took in the view of the room.

  There was no exaggeration in the legend about the blood red color all through the room. If anything, it didn’t put the horror in enough perspective.

  There weren’t just splatters like the crime scene at the smaller tower where I found Reynard. The room was so completely soaked with blood that the floor and walls were caked over and pure crimson stone, with only maybe a few spots in the floor, where skeleton keys might have sat.

  I truly had never seen so much blood in one place.

  Ever.

  It was only made worse by the skeletons that littered the room as well. Not one of them still had flesh on their bones. I didn’t even move again for fear of throwing up, until someone placed a hand on my shoulder from behind me.

  “Gnidori…” Ashe began.

  Reynard stepped from her hand on my shoulder while Kit finished for my roommate. “…Keep moving! It’s just a little blood.”

  “That…” my mouth fell open, “…is not a little blood.”

  I moved anyway, as my attention fell to the other scene in the blood red room.

  Nera sat hovering in the air and deep in concentration as my cloak and Hue’s hat floated just out of her reach in bubbles of swirling energy. Of course she had her hand repaired, a faerie like her wouldn’t have suffered more than an hour with only one hand.

  I fished out the wrapped up and shriveled hand in a pack on my belt, holding it to my side. Then stepped past Han, but stopped when the swirling energies around the cloak and hat suddenly shot forward and collided together in the air.

  The magic was so thick in the room I could taste it as a sphere grew outward from the collision. It was most likely some kind of portal being formed.

  I turned my eyes to the hand I held then tossed it across the blood red floor and yelled, “Brought something for you.”

  Her eyes flew open to gleam at me like a cat watching prey while her hands coiled away from the flowing energy. “You really shouldn’t have, darling.”

  I leaned to the side to look around her when she descended to the ground. The cloak and hat were still floating despite her concentration being broken. That meant it was a self-sustaining ritual, it just needed direction. I still didn’t understand what use my cloak was to make a portal tho
ugh.

  “Ah, lovely isn’t it?” Nera asked as she followed my gaze to the portal.

  “That’s about the last word I would use for it.” I said, while watching Goldie sneak around the wall toward the floating objects.

  Apparently Nera had followed my eyes.

  “If you plan on thieving those. Be my guest. It will just get rid of one of you faster.” She said as her head leaned to look behind her shoulder at Goldie reaching out to take up Hue’s hat. The thief reeled her hand back and looked to me. I rolled my eyes.

  “She’s probably right. It’s a self-sustaining ritual, drawing from all the energy in here from the violent deaths, but if you touched those it might draw the energy it needs from you. You’d be a pile of dust.” I explained, my eyes not faltering from Nera as she glanced back to me with her feline slits.

  Goldie backed away as Nera continued, “I see that blue-bearded folly couldn’t handle you lot. Disappointing, I had looked forward to him as a more developed apprentice, eventually.”

  “You can still have him. He’s down stairs, quite alive. You might have trouble getting him to perform though.” I grinned.

  Nera ignored me and sniffed the air. “Interesting. How does it feel to have the curse in you? Exhilarating isn’t it?”

  “Hardly…” I said in placid response. She frowned.

  “You never did enjoy the gifts you were given, former Red Faerie.”

  “And you enjoyed them too much.” I shrugged, “look at that, we’re two sides to the same troll-infested bridge.”

  Her jaw set and she glared at me. Then her hand waved in front of her. “Enough of the pleasantries. You are hampering my work. Please leave.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was being serious, until the door behind us swung wide open and she waved her other hand, sending a force of magic against everyone else in the room to expunge us from the place by tossing us all out the door before it shut and locked loudly.

  “Great… now what?” Ettie groaned as most of us stood up from the ground.

  I yanked my long-handled axe from my belt and threw my shoulder in to a chop against the door, shattering the door down the middle with the strength I still had in my arms. I glanced back to Ettie with my eyebrows raised. “Like you really thought a door was going to stop me?”

  She laughed gently while I stepped through the door, splinters falling to my feet. I could hear Nera incanting something at the other end of the room. The portal near her flashed with life before images of cities like our own came in view at the center of the sphere.

  “Finally!” Nera bellowed with excitement coursing through her. “A new world filled with so many people possessing magic trapped inside them, and it will be all for me!”

  “If you want people with magic trapped inside them, why don’t I just start with you?” I yelled while choking up on the grip of my axe as I ran toward her. Everyone else filtered in behind me.

  Nera’s face grew grim and angry as she turned to me. “You are always such an annoyance. Everything I threw at you, somehow you managed to get through it.”

  “You could have saved yourself the trouble and not tried to kill me or take my cloak.” I explained and she looked at me funny.

  “You still haven’t realized that your cloak comes from the rainbow road that used to connect this world with another, have you?” Nera began but the explosion of a gunshot sounded which forced a bullet close enough for me to feel the breeze against my hair.

  Bonny stepped up near me holding her smoking pistol, “Enough. Let’s just finish this. She might be powerful but she can’t handle the seven of us.”

  I glanced over the rest of my party, all looking like they were trying to hide how tired they were. I wanted answers and talking to give us time to rest was better, right? Why was Bonny jumping in to things?

  My eyes drew back to Nera, who was holding the side of her head while blood ran between her fingers. She roared and ripped her hand from her hair, flinging blood drops in the already blood-drenched room.

  Her fingers widened as the magic trickled out and Bonny, next to me, went flying against the wall. She was forced against the wall like she had been glued to it. She struggled but couldn’t get free.

  Nera then waved her other hand through the air and I felt the pull of energy trying to force me toward the wall. I dug my axe head in the blood-crusted floor and pushed energy in it to stick me to the ground. Everyone else slammed against the wall with a few loud cracking noises.

  “Yes, I certainly can’t deal with a bunch of nobodies who have nothing special to warrant a risk.” The blue faerie laughed, amused clearly.

  I ground my teeth. “You really don’t know anything about them.”

  My hand closest to everyone against the wall reached out before making a few hand gestures. Immediately Ashe, Reynard and Ettie dropped from the wall, soon followed by Han, Bonny, Roberts and Goldie. All of them stood with an aura of energy glowing around their bodies.

  “You couldn’t have countered that!” She yelled as I turned to look back at her with a weak smile.

  “You forget I still have some of your magic, Nera. I did more than counter you.” I let go of my axe and felt her spell take hold as I shot across the room and stuck to the wall.

  Ashe ran to me with Reynard in her chest pocket. She pulled at my hand but it wouldn’t budge from the wall. I grinned down at her and whispered, “Bring me the hand. I think it has one more use in it.”

  “But…” The animal whisperer started, her eyes showing worry about me.

  “I’m fine. I can’t counter the spell on myself. But that doesn’t mean I’m useless.” She still stood there before I yelled, “Go!”

  My roommate pulled away from me quickly, as much as I didn’t want her to leave my side, she had something to do. She started to spread the word to the others.

  “You still haven’t answered me about why you need my hood.” I started; hopefully to buy time for word to spread and some of them to set in motion.

  “You can’t see?” Nera waved her hand to look back at the mass of various energies and made a tsk-tsk sound. “I expected better of you, former faerie. You did have a magical artifact all this time and didn’t know?”

  “I see a portal. And my cloak just has an enchantment to protect itself.” My eyes briefly followed Ashe as she dashed around to include everyone. I wondered what she was thinking. Did she come up with a plan so fast?

  “Yes, and?” Her cat eyes didn’t falter from me. She probably still found the others as no threat, when really I was the least of her problems. I was weak and the only bit of magic power I had left was some of hers I had taken and the vast power of the sleeping curse in me, which I wasn’t going to touch even if my life really did depend on it.

  “That’s it.” I said while Ettie and Bonny pulled their guns to their hips.

  She shook her head. “This is exactly why you aren’t a real faerie anymore. You can never see beyond what is right in front of you.”

  “No, I’m not a faerie anymore because I chose to not be one.” I laughed while my eyes fell to Goldie, taking up a position to leap in with a strike.

  “You only think so, child. Being a faerie is about so much more than just magic and having the wings and title. You do well as a witch but not a faerie. You don’t take reality for anything other than what it is. You fail to see the potential, because you don’t want to, former faerie.”

  I really wished Goldie had chosen five seconds earlier than that moment to leap with her dagger in an attempt to stab the faerie woman. At the same time, Han dashed from his spot to where the hand was lying on the bloody floor.

  “Fool!” Nera roared and turned on Goldie while she made her sneak attack. The faerie woman’s hand blasted a stream of blue energy, but it just flashed over Goldie before her dagger sunk in the blue faerie’s stomach. She pulled out and rushed a step back as Nera gasped in pain.

  Magical bullets and real bullets exploded from Ettie and Bonny once Goldie was clear, b
ut Nera chose a safer route this time and formed a wall of energy to catch the bullets.

  “You warded them!” She bellowed in pain when the gunfire died.

  “You bet I did.” I grinned and her eyes fell to Han picking up her severed hand in his mouth.

  “You will dare not use my own hand against me!” She screamed and shot a blast out of seething acid but Roberts jumped in front of it. The acid sizzled against him without so much as a burn as he stepped forward to slice his sword across her hip, and then lunge to stab her in the chest.

  Unfortunately, Nera released a wave of energy across the room that pushed Roberts and Goldie away, now that their wards had fallen to such strong spells previously.

  Han tossed the hand from his mouth, and Ashe caught it before turning to me, not two feet away. She laid the severed body part in my hand and curled my fingers over it for me. I smiled softly to her before she turned away and snatched up my long-handled hatchet from where it remained dug in the ground.

  Every last one of my friends; warded or not, had a determined expression on their face as they stood between the Blue Faerie and me. I knew I could trust them to do their best, so I focused on the ritual I had to perform while stuck to the wall.

  The most ridiculous ritual I had ever concocted. Or probably ever will.

  “Gnidori?” My concentration shifted as I looked down to see Reynard at my feet.

  “Not now Kit.” I growled.

  “But I can help with the ritual and Reynard wants to help.”

  “How?”

  “How else?” The fox sat and wagged his bushy tail, like a puppy ready for a ball to be thrown.

  I smiled. “You clever little fox.”

  His tail just wagged faster while my attention fell back to coiling the pathways in my mind, running my fingers over the leathery flesh of the hand I held to trace the hundreds of designs required to displace the curse inside of me.

  By the time I could even draw my senses back to the fight going on around me, the only one who still had the glow of their ward against Nera’s magic was Bonny.