by Kristie Cook
By the time the dark gray light shone through the opening above many hours later, the corners of his lips were blue.
“Oh, no!”
I grabbed his wrist between my finger and thumb while holding my other hand over his mouth. My own heart and lungs stopped as I focused on feeling for signs of life. His pulse and breaths still came steadily, although disturbingly slow.
“They said the supernaturals weren’t affected by the radiation,” I told him as my hand slipped under his neck, feeling the smooth rocks pressing into his nape. “The faerie stones are still here, so they should be—” My heart stuttered as something occurred to me. “Are they not working anymore because the faeries are … gone? Is that what’s wrong with you?”
My stomach tilted at this possibility. I couldn’t lose him! I slid my hand under my corset and fingered the stone embedded in my chest, which was like a piece of his heart, connecting us. It warmed slightly, as did his skin under my other palm. But not as much as usual.
“Stay with me, Tristan. Don’t give up.” I pushed the thought, the feeling to him, hoping he felt me. Hoping it would make a difference.
As soon as my hand pulled away from the stone, his skin cooled again. Was he not able to regulate his temperature without his soul? Did his body retain any of its supernatural powers? The more I thought about that question, the more concern grew to worry and then to full-blown anxiety. And then another thought took my breath. What if his body is just a normal body without his soul in it? Taking him out into the world with all of the poison from the bombs could kill him. But as his face grew paler while the short span of daylight passed, I knew that staying here would definitely kill him.
Lying on top of him, trying to warm him with my own body heat, I pressed my forehead to his. “I need to save your soul and that’s not happening as long as we’re here.”
With renewed commitment, I climbed outside, brought my wings out of hiding, and tried flying again, not caring that it was dark or that snow and ice pelted against my skin. I wasn’t going to give up. I was going to save my husband and then my son, no matter what it took. Hours passed. Cuts and bruises covered my body from all of the crash landings I made into the rocks. But finally, after a couple hundred attempts, I flew. And then I landed. Neither was graceful, and I honestly wasn’t sure I could do a repeat performance, but I’d achieved the basics.
With a small sense of accomplishment, I dropped down to check on Tristan before practicing some more, my feet crunching on the wrappers of the cakes that were long gone now. He looked worse than he had before. Faint purple half-moons showed under his eyes. His normally luscious lips were chapped and turning bluer. His hands were cool, and his fingertips downright cold. I didn’t know how much longer he could last. At least if I could get him somewhere warm, his body might have a better chance of surviving until I could bring his soul back.
We needed to go now.
I picked up the two blue faerie stones and tucked them between my breasts. Standing next to the slab, I slid my arms under Tristan, knowing I could easily lift his weight, even as big and muscular as he was. But being able to lift the weight and actually being able to hold him were two different stories. He was so much bigger than my little body, and while his weight wasn’t an issue in itself, all of the other physics were. The only way I could manage to hold him tight enough to fly with him was to loop my arms around him from behind and lock my fingers together over his chest, but then his legs dragged on the ground. Not a problem once we were in flight, but landing would be an issue.
And then I looked up toward the opening and realized I had another problem. While I could squeak out of it, I couldn’t possibly get Tristan through.
“Damn it!” I shouted.
After carefully laying him back down, I aimed my hand at the opening and blasted electricity at the rocks around it. A few pieces crumbled away, but mostly only dust rained down. I clambered up the wall and while hanging onto the opening with one hand, I pushed and pulled at a rock with the other, using all of my strength. It moved about two inches outward, then stopped. I poked my head through the hole and saw why. One of the larger boulders blocked it. So I climbed out and tried to move it, but other boulders, some the size of small cars, kept it in place. As I studied what I’d called a mound of rocks before, I saw that they were actually very carefully arranged and packed together to create the cavern without collapsing in on it. And I had a feeling Normans had nothing to do with the structure. Something supernatural probably bound the rocks together.
Awesome.
I had no choice but to flash us. I just didn’t know where to go.
“I’ll be back in a bit, Tristan,” I called down through the hole, as if he could hear me. And then, because I apparently had a morbid sense of humor, I added, “Don’t go anywhere, okay?”
Using newly found takeoff skills, I launched into the air and flew. I tried to imagine myself looking like a graceful Angel from a beautiful painting, but in reality I knew I looked more like a poorly made paper airplane wobbling through the air. Every shift in wind current sent me sideways for a moment before I could compensate for it. One big gust threw me into a tailspin that I barely recovered from before crashing into the sea. But eventually, I became accustomed to these strange things on my back and improved my control. I was still no beautiful bird, but I managed to do well enough where I could concentrate less on keeping myself from falling into the water and more on evaluating my surroundings.
The wind remained unforgiving and the air cold. Snow and ice blew sideways at times. The cloud cover never dissipated, blocking out any moonlight. The ocean below was black and heaving, throwing itself on a few other rock islands that were much smaller than ours. I flew for a good twenty or thirty minutes until finally I saw land. A sheer-faced cliff covered in snow faced the ocean, and as far as I could see, snowy land stretched beyond it. I still had no idea where we were, but it was a starting point. From there, I flew my attempt at a circle, as rough as it was, around our tiny spot in the sea, but found no other place to go.
“Well, at least we have something.”
When I returned to the cave, Tristan’s body was ice cold.
Chapter 9
“Oh, no,” I gasped as I pressed my hands against Tristan’s frozen face. “What—?”
Oh, crap. I pulled the faerie stones out of my corset and stared at them before closing my eyes and cussing myself out. What had I done? In my rush to leave, I’d forgotten to leave them behind to keep Tristan’s body protected. Hot tears burned my cheeks as I pressed the stones against his chest.
“Stay with me, Tristan. Please, baby. Stay with me.”
I lay on top of him, trying to share my warmth and energy, and it was like lying on a popsicle. After creating a bubble of Amadis power within me, I pushed it out of my body to engulf him in the warm goodness. I lifted my head to watch him as moments that felt like lifetimes passed and panic began to set in. Finally, a little color returned to his skin. I blew out a breath I’d been holding forever and collapsed on top of him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders as best as I could.
“I’m so sorry,” I cried. “I promised to take care of you, and I will. But I have to try something. I have to try to flash us out of here.”
Time had run out, and I had no other choice. After putting the faerie stones in the inside pocket of his leather jacket, I moved to sit behind his head, spread my legs around him, and slid my arms under his and around his chest. I heaved him upward, into my lap. Then I held on as tight as I could, hoped we wouldn’t be snagged in a trap, and flashed.
We appeared on top of the snowy cliff, and a breath of relief rushed out of me.
Based on where we’d been before Debbie and Stacey rescued us—Washington, D.C.—and where their cottage was—York, England—I decided to take a guess that we were somewhere in the North Atlantic Ocean. Maybe Iceland? Greenland? I groaned with frustration, debating whether flashing here had been a big mistake, because I didn’t have a desti
nation for where to go next. My relief had been short-lived.
When I pressed my cheek against Tristan’s cold one, though, I knew I’d had no choice. And I had to keep going.
With my arms tight around his chest, I lifted into the air to gain a bird’s eye view of our surroundings. For as far as I could see with my keen eyes, I saw no towns or cities or even military installations. My telepathy found no mind signatures anywhere around, even as I began to fly over the top of the cliff and inland. Gray lines appeared in the snow, confusing me at first, but as I came closer, I realized they were evergreen trees. Except there was no green to them anymore. Nor brown, for that matter. Only gray, bare trunks rising from the ground with spindly branches naked of any needles.
And good thing for that because my eyes landed on an aged wood cabin nestled in the woods that I wouldn’t have seen through the cover of leaves.
Our landing was clumsy as we plowed into a bank of snow, but then I could use my power to lift Tristan up the wooden stairs and across the porch to the front door. With another shove of power, I slammed the door open, then guided Tristan inside the cold, one-room cabin.
When I glanced around, my eyes instinctively went up to look for a hole in the roof because a blanket of white covered the entire interior. There was no hole, though, and when the back of my hand dragged across the top of the couch as I directed Tristan to the hearth, the white stuff didn’t feel cold. It plumed into a cloud when I lay him on the floor. I rubbed my fingers together. It was thicker than normal dust, more like ash. Was this fallout? I had no idea, but that was my best guess.
There was no wood in the cabin, so I had to go back outside and hunt some down. Once I had a few logs stacked in the fireplace, I had to hunt some more for matches or a lighter, and blankets and food would have been nice. I didn’t find any blankets at all, but I found a matchbook with a single match and one can of sausages. Miraculously, I managed to light the fire with the one match, and then I cut open the can with my dagger. The sausages smelled like farts and tasted like ass, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. So I shoved them in my mouth and forced them down as tears spilled over my cheeks at the memory of my son, my husband, and my team choking down sausages just like these on the train in Russia.
The fire barely warmed me and did nothing for Tristan. When the few logs I’d found crumpled into coals, I went outside to find more wood. A new blizzard howled through the woods, blanketing any fallen logs. I found one piece that lasted another hour or so, but it quickly became apparent that we couldn’t stay here.
So where to next? And how?
Since I’d been successful in taking off and landing to bring Tristan from the cliff’s edge to the cabin, I considered flying us out of here, but decided to give something else a stab first, because flashing was so much faster and more efficient. So I focused on my destination of “one hundred miles south of here” and hoped that didn’t send us farther away from civilization. Well, not that there was any civilization left on this world, but I needed to go closer to the equator. Oh. Maybe that was how I needed to think it. I clarified my destination, one hundred miles closer to the equator, and flashed.
We appeared on the edge of a dark, lifeless village. No mind signatures around. The place was eerily still, but I couldn’t stop and contemplate. Tristan could be dying. I had to keep us moving. I tried flashing again. This time, I sensed the minds—all Daemoni—close by the moment we arrived in another village, but before I could concentrate on a new flash, a red light streaked toward us and blasted into my wing.
The shock of impact rattled throughout my body, making me yelp. After a moment, though, I realized that I otherwise felt no effects from the mage’s spell. The feathers of my wings had hardened and taken on a steely edge along with a silvery glow. Another light shot at us. I immediately folded myself over Tristan and pulled my wings around us, enclosing us within their protection. More spells pinged against them. I peeked out through a crack between feathers. Several Daemoni witches had emerged from the town’s buildings, standing on the roofs around us, firing their spells as we sat in the middle of the road. But none did any damage. My opinion of these wings improved drastically.
Knowing the witches couldn’t hurt us but sensing the mind signature of a more powerful mage nearby, I focused on another hundred miles closer to the equator and flashed us out of there.
We slammed into what felt like a brick wall.
The Daemoni had trapped us, blocking the flash. We still sat in the middle of the same road. My mind and body picked up on the more powerful mind and magic of a warlock, and a moment later, a spell blasted at us, feeling like a sonic boom that crashed into us. The pressure hit my ears, and my heart stopped for a long moment. I couldn’t pull in a good enough breath. The mages circled us, following the warlock’s lead. More spells soared at us. I covered us with my wings, wiggled my legs out from under Tristan’s body and still hanging on to him, crouched upward as best as I could without removing the protection of my wings from his legs.
“Don’t worry, Tristan. I’ll get us out of here.” My promise was made more to boost my own confidence than anything.
I lifted my palm up just enough from his chest and parted my wings. An electric bolt shot out of my hand at the same time that I launched us upward.
More spells streaked up at us as we climbed to a few hundred feet above land. I swerved and twisted, dodging them and throwing my own powers back downward while somehow managing to keep a hold of Tristan, too. Then I turned us to head toward what I felt in my gut was south. As we flew farther away from the mages, I thought we might have made it. But apparently the warlock had flashed ahead, because a powerful spell surged at us again. The movement in the air sent me flying backwards, and then tumbling uncontrollably. My hands’ grip on each other loosened … then broke. I lost my hold on Tristan.
He plummeted for the ground.
“Tristan!” I screamed as I nosedived after him.
Another spell hit me, sending me off course and farther way from him. I arced around to fly for him again while zapping electricity toward the warlock, having no idea if I actually hit him and not caring. Tristan’s limp body plunged toward the ground entirely too fast. I focused on zooming toward him, hoping that even if I caught him, I didn’t slam us into the unforgiving ground. A spell flashed by me. I twisted and swerved. Shot Amadis power blindly behind me.
Almost there, baby. Almost there.
Another sonic boom carried through the air. And I immediately knew I wasn’t going to reach Tristan before it hit him. I reached my arms out, trying to grasp his ankles, but he was still too far away.
“Tristan,” I tried to call again, but the wind carried his name away as my chest tightened and my throat closed.
A gold streak flashed before the boom hit us. Something wrapped around my wrist. I yelled one more time for Tristan when everything around me disappeared.
The air changed—the smell of it, the very feel of it. The sounds of growls and grunts and metal clashing against metal reverberated all around me. When my eyes adjusted to the new scene, my mouth fell open. Angels and Demons surrounded me, swords and other weapons flying, lodging into shields and flesh. Silver and black blood flowed like water.
I blinked, but the scene remained. I stood in the Otherworld, facing a golden-haired faerie who held Tristan in her arms.
“Bree!” I squealed, but when I was about to lunge at Tristan’s faerie mother, she shook her head.
“I need to get him out of here before he suffers the consequences. Where are the faerie stones?”
“In his pocket.”
She nodded. “Good. I’ll be right back. You stay here.”
Her head flicked to the side, and the veil to Earth parted.
“Wait! Where are you taking him?”
“Where he’ll be safe until you can get back to him.” She disappeared, taking my husband with her.
My heart didn’t even beat once before she returned without him.
>
I glared at her with my hands on my hips. “It’s a good thing I trust you!”
“Duck!” She grabbed my shoulders and pushed me down right before a Demon’s mace swung my way. The air swished over my head, blowing through my hair. “Come on.”
She became a gold blur darting through the battle, pulling me along with her. I had to tighten my wings close to my back before an errant sword sliced through them. I didn’t know if they’d stand up to the weapons of the Otherworld as well as they did those of Earth.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I’m taking you to Hell so you can save my son. We have to hurry before it’s too late for him.”
“What?” I came to a screeching halt as my heart leapt into my throat. “What do you mean, too late?”
She jerked me back into motion. We left the fighting behind and became swallowed up in a sea of gray. The light blinded me, and I could no longer see Bree, but could only hear her. I followed her voice.
“His past is bogging him down, Alexis. He’s letting the pain of other souls—pain he caused—to get to him. His soul will succumb soon. Only you can reach him. Only you can save him.”
We emerged from the gray fog into a dim light where I could see again. We stood on the jagged edge of a blackened cliff. Far below us, at least hundreds of feet, raged a river of lava, parts of it glowing orange and yellow. The smell of death and sulfur made me gag, and I had to swallow down burning bile.
Bree turned to look at me with piercing golden eyes. “You’ll save my son, Alexis?”
My eyes widened, and I pulled back with surprise. Her golden locks flashed in the darkness.
“Of course!” As if she had to ask.