by Kristie Cook
“I’m not askin’ you anything you won’t do anyway,” she said. “You wanted to know why we helped you, so I told you. That’s all.” She stood up. “I better go now.”
I jumped to my feet. “No! You can’t leave us here. I don’t even know where we are!”
She lifted a brow, and I immediately regretted the outburst. If she stayed, she could demand anything of me, which she would definitely do when she realized I had no intention of fighting Lucas and the Daemoni.
“I can’t stay in this world for long bouts anymore,” she said as she headed for the door, “but I’ll be back.”
I followed the faerie out of the sitting room and into the foyer. “What’s it like out there?”
“In the Otherworld? Didn’t you see it?”
“Yes. I mean on Earth.”
She turned to look at me and frowned, a deep sadness filling her eyes. “It’s dire. If you feel up to it when I return, you can go out and see for yourself.”
“Can you tell me where Dorian is?” I asked. That was a favor I didn’t hesitate to request.
“I’ll take a mooch in the Otherworld and let you know what I find out that will help you.” She had no problem opening the double wood doors. “But I can make no other promises.”
Panic rose as the reality of her leaving us here alone hit me. “What do I do about Tristan? How do I help him?”
“I don’t know,” she shouted over the howl of a wind outside. “Stay here until … bring … back ….”
The wind drowned out her last words, and the doors slammed shut behind her, leaving me staring at them in bewilderment. The hell I was just going to sit around here, waiting. I needed to figure out how to get my husband back.
Except I couldn’t leave. I fought the doors myself, used my powers and superhuman strength, but they failed to open for me. We were trapped.
At first, I told myself she’d come back, as promised, because that only made sense. How did she expect me to do anything when I was held captive here? But after a while, doubt crept in until it became a full-blown monster. And that monster morphed into the beasts of Hell, taking over my mind while the screams clawed and scratched at my soul. I tried to fight the nightmare, coming in and out of consciousness, begging Stacey or someone, anyone, to return.
After what could have been a day or a month—just like in the Otherworld, I had no concept of time—the illusion of the Amadis mansion around me disappeared, leaving Tristan and me in a cold, dark room with a low, rounded ceiling and rocky walls. He lay perfectly still in his black leathers on a stone slab while I sat in a ball on a dirt floor.
And I knew then that Stacey wouldn’t be returning.
Chapter 8
The realization that we were completely alone and on our own snapped me out of my personal darkness. If we wanted out of here, it was all up to me now. The sense of purpose gave me a rush of adrenaline.
After I pushed myself to my feet and stumbled around for a moment, I gained my bearings and an idea of our surroundings. Based on the dirt floor and rocky walls and ceiling, I assumed that Debbie and Stacey had hidden us in some kind of cave. Feeling my way around the room, I found a small pile of packaged food, but no openings, no exit except a tiny, irregularly shaped fissure several feet above my head, where the wall curved into the ceiling. Low gray light seeped through it. Was that outside? Based on the wind howling through the cracks in the dirt and stone walls, I assumed it was. What sounded like great forces of water splashing against a hard surface also came from the other side of the rocks, although I couldn’t be sure if waves caused it or rain from a storm. Wedging my fingers and toes into crevices and pushing away the image of scaling the wall in Hell, I climbed up to peek out and saw that I could fit myself through the hole.
I wiggled my way out and found myself on the top of a mound of huge, gray boulders that made up an island as tiny as our suite back at the mansion. An infinite, dark sea heaved and rolled all around the island, with massive waves crashing onto the rocks and spraying foam and droplets high into the air. Dark clouds hovered low enough to kiss the sea, and wind gusts nearly knocked me off my feet. My hair slapped and stung my eyes, and ice crystals blew in my face. A small cloud poofed out of my mouth with each exhale into the below-freezing air, and snow quickly piled up on the boulders. Standing at the top of the mound, I turned in a complete circle. No land could be seen on any of the horizons.
Nothing at all to tell me where we were except in the middle of a cold, raging ocean.
My mood as dark and tumultuous as the sea, I squeezed myself back through the hole and dropped to the floor below. Darkness had fallen outside and swallowed me in here, where Tristan still lay completely unaware on the stone slab. The cold didn’t usually bother me, but this was like the cold of Hell, seeping deep into my bones, making my body tremble and my teeth chatter. I almost wished for Hell’s fire. Almost. If only I could shoot a flame out of my palm like my husband and son could, because sparking a web of electricity around me did nothing to warm my body. So I climbed up on the stone slab, lay down on top of Tristan, let my wings come out, and enclosed us within them to hold the heat in.
And my mind churned over ideas of how the heck we were going to get out of here.
Flashing was probably too high-risk. The Normans’ traps would likely be defunct now from the war, and even if a trap caught us, there were no Normans out because of the radioactive fallout. But according to Stacey, the Daemoni could roam freely and would likely be the ones to catch us. And me against all of them, while trying to protect Tristan’s body, didn’t make for good odds. Besides, flashing required a destination, and since I had no idea where we were, I had no idea what was in flashing range.
Tristan was the mastermind with this kind of stuff. He’d seen all parts of the world so many times, he could probably pinpoint exactly where we were and also be able to determine the best place to flash from here. But nobody was home in Tristan’s body, and there was no way I could save him while stranded on this island. I had to figure out a way to go back to Hell to help his soul and bring him back.
“Mom! Rina!” I called desperately. “I need you. I need to go to Hell!”
My pleas echoed noisily around the cave with no response. Or, more likely, the lack of reply was my response. They still refused to help me save Tristan. Which meant I really was on my own. What were the faeries thinking, stranding us here? Or had that been their plan all along? If so, that meant Stacey had been lying to me about needing my help, which didn’t feel right. But I couldn’t care about her or the faeries. Get off the island. Go to Hell for Tristan. Save our son. Those were my objectives.
And Hell would probably be the harder part. I doubted I could walk up to a Demon-possessed zombie at a bus station and request a ticket downward when I had no intent to stay there. On the other hand, the Demons didn’t seem too bright, so maybe I could convince one to take me. But since I hadn’t noticed any flying around the island in their native form, I was back to my other problem of getting us off this mound of rocks.
Flying around the island …
Oh! My breath caught. I’d provided my own answer … assuming these wings could fly.
“I’m going to get us out of here, Tristan,” I whispered against his chest. “I’m going to take care of you like you always take care of me. I’ll make you proud, baby. Just stay strong, okay? Promise me you won’t give up, and I won’t either.”
I lifted my head and rested my chin on his chest, staring at his face. How I missed his sparkling hazel eyes and the way I’d get stupid when he winked at me. His glorious grin that still made my knees weak after all this time. His way with words, always knowing what to say to calm me, or excite me, or make me feel better about all the hell we’d been through and still had to face. He wasn’t my Tristan like this. Just a shell with a heartbeat.
“Please come back to me.” Thinking that maybe he needed to feel my love like he’d had in the past, I pressed my fingers to the stone in my chest while k
issing his soft, cool lips. I tried to push love and Amadis power into his body at the same time. He didn’t wake up. “Guess you aren’t Sleeping Beauty, are you?”
I prayed for his soul next, that it would stay strong enough to escape from Hell, but then I chastised myself for thinking prayer would help. Nobody was listening. So I returned to my plans for learning what these wings could do until I fell asleep laying on my husband.
After what felt like several hours of sleep and regeneration, I stared upward at the fissure between the rocks, waiting impatiently for the morning light. It seemed to take forever, making me wonder if the sun would ever rise. Had I not slept as long as I thought I had? Were my hours turned around? Finally, dark gray light came through the hole. I’d barely scaled the wall, squeezed through the opening, and explored the little island when it began to fade again. That and the blizzard that still blew full force clued me in that we were near the North Pole in winter. Or were we? Without knowing how much time had passed while I’d been in the Otherworld, I didn’t know the month, or even the year, here on Earth. So for all I knew, we could have been off the coast of Antarctica, near the South Pole, in June or July.
Only one way to find out.
“Here goes nothing,” I muttered as I brought my wings out of hiding.
Although they were enormous and covered in feathers, I could barely feel their weight. I even looked over my shoulder to make sure they were actually there. They kind of cupped against my back in a vertical position, the tops of the arches about an inch over my head and the bottom tips by my feet laying on the cold, wet rocks under me. As they spread out seemingly on their own—it took me a moment to realize I’d commanded them to do so in order to see them better—the shock slammed into me like a freight train.
I had wings! Freakin’ wings!
How was this even possible? I knew I was far from being an Angel, but these weren’t Demon wings either. They were thick and feathery, and I was unable to help myself from admiring their purple and black beauty, even when their presence shocked and confounded me. What did their shape and colors—their very existence—mean about who and what I was? I considered this question only fleetingly before telling myself not to go there. I probably didn’t want to know the answer.
“Wings,” I said aloud, although my voice was lost on the wind. I just needed to speak the word because some weird part of me thought doing so would somehow make this moment less surreal. It didn’t. “Well, let’s see what you can do.”
I thought of my wings opening up further and spreading out to my sides, and they responded like any other part of my body would. The tips lifted from the ground, stretching out and away, each feather reacting and moving appropriately. I hadn’t even fully extended them yet, and they each reached over a foot beyond my fingertips, making my wingspan at least seven feet across.
“These are kind of cool,” I had to admit.
I’d been assuming I could fly with them, but it occurred to me now that maybe I couldn’t. Maybe they didn’t work like that. But what other good would they be? What other purpose would they serve? Perhaps none except to be an annoyance, but that made little sense. I’d received them in the Otherworld, so surely they’d been given to me for a reason. Cassandra had said I was there to be prepared, so the wings must have been what she meant. Even if I didn’t believe in the Angels’ purpose for me anymore, I knew firsthand that their gifts didn’t come lightly. So unless this was a punishment, which it very well could have been, I’d go with my first assumption that they were useful. This had to mean they’d allow me to fly.
I just wasn’t sure how. Did I jump in the air and flap them like a bird? Did they somehow lift me off the ground on their own? Testing my control, I wiggled my back and shoulder muscles, pulling them in and pushing them out, and then I stretched them further outwards, imagining how birds spread theirs wide when they took off for flight. I made them as big as possible.
Then the wind gusted up, caught my wings like sails, and launched me off the boulder.
“Ack!” I yelped as my feet caught against the rocks, and then in the crevices between.
I stumbled backward, stepping on my wings several times, unable to figure out how to catch myself because the wings kept getting in the way. I tripped and rolled all the way down the mound of rocks, the momentum and the wind working together to push me along with no chance of grabbing onto something. My breath flew out of me as I stopped right before plunging into the angry sea. I lay facedown with a jagged rock jutting into my stomach, salty spray hitting my face, and a string of profanity spewing out of my mouth back at the water.
“Son of a mother-effin’ witch,” I swore as I pushed myself up with my hands.
I couldn’t help the glance around to make sure no one had seen that. And then I wished someone had, because I desperately missed all of the people who would have been laughing at me. Tristan, Owen, Vanessa, Dorian … Where were they all now? Would I ever see them again?
Rather than letting it bring me down, the feeling of loneliness gave me a surge of determination.
“Nobody can save Tristan but me, and I have to do that before I can worry about anything else.”
I stomped up the pile of rocks again, stood at the top, and turned my back to the wind this time before spreading the weird, feathery appendages emerging from my shoulder blades. This time when the wind gusted up, I sprang up and out, away from the rocks. I thrust my shoulders back and forth, and then undulated my whole upper body in an attempt to flap my wings. They didn’t respond, and I could only imagine how ridiculous I looked. If not for the howling wind, I’d probably hear the shouts of hilarity from the Angels watching me through the veil. My body did move, though—about five feet from where I’d been, but only because gravity brought me down lower on the mound of boulders.
Why couldn’t I just lift off like a rocket and soar upwards? Wasn’t that how the Angels did it?
And with that thought, my body jetted into the air.
Ice and snow pelted into my face as I shot twenty-five feet above the top of the rock island before I even realized it. With another thought, I spread my wings to slow my ascent and gain some control. Thinking of Dorian and birds in flight, I leaned my body forward. And I soared.
“I’m freakin’ flying!” I shouted, fist-pumping the air as I sped over the violent sea below. I’d figured it out. I’d done it. I would get Tristan and myself off this island in the middle of frozen nowhere.
But then the wind died down, and the dark sea rapidly came closer, the foam on the white caps growing as I plummeted toward them.
“Shit!” I screamed. I hadn’t been flying after all. I’d only been catching and drifting on the wind like a kite or a discarded plastic bag.
Before I crashed into the freezing water, I pulled myself more upright, tried to bank left and then right, and those motions worked, but now I was headed face-first for the pile of snow-dusted boulders. With another twist of my body to the right, I swerved around the island, the tips of my wings scraping against the rough edges of the rocks. As I tried to turn back around to attempt a landing, another wind gust caught me, and sent me tumbling ass-over-end in the air, rolling like a tumbleweed until I smashed into the rocks. Any birds in the sky had certainly joined the Angels in their resounding guffaws. The earlier list of profanity was nothing compared to what came out now.
“Why do I have these stupid, useless, piece-of-shit things anyway?” I muttered as I climbed to the top of the mound, hid the worthless things, and slid through the opening to drop to the floor inside. My bloody lip and scraped up palms and knees were already healing, but my ego wasn’t. I was done for the day. Maybe forever. Since amputating the things sounded quite painful, I wondered what would happen if I just kept them hidden forever. Nobody would need to know they even existed. Assuming I ever saw anyone again.
“Guess what, Tristan?” I snapped as I walked over to his unconscious body on the stone slab. “Chalk up one more slash under the Failure column for me.
Not surprising, is it?”
I stopped by his side and sighed as I picked up his hand. My anger immediately deflated, pooling into sorrow from seeing him like this. My imagination didn’t have to work too hard to picture him in Hell, battling the Demons and probably Satan, too. At least, I hoped he was still fighting. I just wished he would hurry up and win and return to where he belonged—with me.
“Please come back to me, baby,” I whispered against the lump in my throat.
I stared at him for a long moment, but of course, he remained motionless. My stomach growled and ached with hunger, but I had to force down one of the wrapped little cakes Stacey had left, my throat too tight to swallow. Then I climbed up on the slab, sat next to Tristan, pulled my knees up under my chin, and stared into the darkness, feeling sorry for myself. It didn’t take long for tears to moisten my cheeks as I replayed all of my failures, questioning what I could have done differently. My heart felt small and heavy as I thought about Dorian and how I hadn’t done enough to keep him with the Amadis, and then it broke when my mind moved on to Tristan fighting the Demons in Hell and how I’d left him there. I was officially the world’s shittiest mom and wife. Nobody could argue that. Because really, who else would let their family end up in Hell? I was the one who belonged there. Not them. My self-pity quickly spiraled into a dark depression.
After an unknown amount of time passed, I lay down and curled up next to Tristan, wishing I could pull on his strength and the calming effect he always had on me. But this body was soulless. He wasn’t really here with me. Even his unique scent was fading. I grasped his hand again to bring it to my lips and frowned. It felt cooler than it had before. Pushing myself up, I studied his face in the darkness. He looked the same, although his skin seemed paler than it had been.