Forgotten

by Victoria DeLuis

  I waved my hands in the direction of Thomas and Trystan. “Did you really think we’d walk in here unprotected?”

  I’d lost count of the number of wards I’d placed on Thomas. He was more protected than any mere mortal could ever hope to be. After being knocked for six by the magical backlash of Rachel Platt’s spell and almost being pummelled by a goblin, there was not a spell I wouldn’t work to keep my fiancé safe. And Trystan, well, I guess he has his own protections. He may look human, but there was a dragon beneath that skin, and we’d witnessed the night before the toughness of his hide.

  The blonde stood and joined her companions.

  “Only five,” I said. “Aren’t you missing someone?”

  “Surrender while you still have the chance,” one of the women ordered.

  Like her blonde companion, her hair was pulled back in a sharp bun — in fact, it seemed to be a theme throughout their group — but her attire of jeans and a T-shirt was more practical than that of the other women’s pencil dress.

  I took a moment to glance at all the women. They were young, maybe my age or slightly older. Not a one looked yet to be thirty. Although, the talkative one had purposely styled her hair a silver grey. From the way they stood and the stern looks on their faces, they were used to people doing as they were told. I guess they were in for a rude awakening. I rarely do what people tell me, and didn’t doubt for even a second that their power was no match for my own.

  “I’ll give you the same offer,” I said. My footsteps echoed on the floor as I paced a few steps forwards. “You had your one and only chance to bring me down last night, and you failed.” I clicked my fingers and allowed an indigo light to bathe my body. “I’m surprised you chose this hotel for your base, there are trees everywhere. Hundreds, if not thousands, in fact. How many of the fair folk do you have to call on? Not enough, I’ll bet.”

  The woman who appeared to be the youngest glanced nervously to the grey-haired talker, and I knew I was right. They’d been responsible for our attack, and they knew they were outnumbered.

  “Where’s Rhys Roberts?” Thomas asked.

  “Silence,” the grey-haired lady almost screamed. “You will speak when you are spoken to, pet.”

  Thomas raised an eyebrow.

  I bristled. “Well, that’s just rude,” I said and gave her my best mean-girl-look.

  There was a long pause while grey-hair and I played chicken with our eyes. Eventually, she blinked and I gave myself an imaginary pat on the back.

  Thomas sighed and turned to Trystan. “Too often, I wonder why we have to play these games,” he said.

  Grey-hair almost growled.

  “Grumble at me all you like, lady,” he said. “You’ve already tried to kill us, so I know we’re not going to be best buds. You know that Summer’s stronger than you, otherwise you would have attacked already. You’re just relying on her good nature to not attack you first. Well, I hate to break it to you; Summer’s a good person, the best, but she has the patience of a gnat.”

  Ehh, I shrugged. Fair assessment.

  “So, why don’t you sit down, relax, and answer a few questions. We can be on our way, with Rhys Roberts, of course, and you can go back to playing big bad witches. How does that sound?”

  “You’re lucky I don’t kill you where you stand,” grey-hair said.

  “No,” I said quietly. “You are.”

  You’d need a deep-sea drill to cut the tension in the air. Trystan, who’d remained silent throughout the exchange tensed behind me as though waiting to react. Thomas had remained ever ready to fight from the moment we’d entered the room. He’d hate the idea of squaring up against a woman, but he’d do anything if he thought it would protect me.

  The silence in the room was deafening. Each side stood waiting for the other to make the first move, but Thomas was right, I had the patience of a gnat.

  Without waiting for any further reaction, I gathered an orb in my hands and flung it in the direction of the witches. It impacted. No more than a push spell and they flew backwards, landing on the floor together in a heap.

  “That’s your last warning shot,” I said. “The next will put you under for a week.”

  The women jumped to their feet, joined hands, and sat on the floor. A shield circled above their heads before dropping down into a dome surrounding them. The tables and chairs stacked neatly against the walls began to rise as the women chanted.

  I wheeled on the dome, blasting it with more and more energy. The women flinched under the onslaught and their concentration wavered. The furniture shook hesitantly for a moment as the women battled for control. Thomas and Trystan surrounded me.

  “Not a piece touches her,” Thomas said to the dragon-man. I smiled at his overprotective nature, before redoubling my efforts against the shield.

  Luis, Fern, Duir. Protection, endurance, and strength flooded my body as the tattoos blazed to life on my arms and infused me with their power. Magic roared through my veins and I focused on the destruction of the dome. I looked at the women beneath and hesitated. Then pulled back at the last moment. I’d have to try another tack if I didn’t want to kill the women in the process of breaking through their shield.

  Grey-hair glanced at me and smiled while Thomas jumped up and snatched a chair from the air as it flew towards my head.

  I wanted more than anything to wipe the smug smile from the evil witch’s face, but I didn’t want to kill her — maybe I did a teeny tiny bit, but I wouldn’t — and I had an idea that just might work.

  I sat cross-legged on the floor and meditated, closing my human eyes, but opening my psychic one. I called on the power of the rowan tree to guide me in astral travel. I added a dose of willow for vision, and projected myself beneath the dome.

  “Surprise,” I said, as I opened my eyes and looked out at the women from the centre of their circle.

  They jumped once more to their feet, releasing their hands and breaking their chant. The tables and chairs clattered to the ground, wood fractured and splinted in the process.

  Before they had time to react further, I returned my spirit to my body, which remained seated outside the dome, and hit them with another blast of energy.

  Focusing my power, I held them pinned in place to the floor.

  Grey-hair glared at me as I walked over and sat on the ground next to her head.

  “Where were we?” I asked. “Ah, yes. Rhys Roberts. Why don’t you tell me where he is? It would be great to know who you’re working for while you’re at it.”

  “You won’t get anything from me,” she said and tried to spit at me. But with her inability to move her head, the glob of saliva landed on her own cheek.

  “Now, that’s just gross,” I said. “It really is disgusting to spit at people.”

  A flash of anger turned a face that already looked as though it wanted to kill me black with rage.

  “I’ll kill you,” she said, confirming my assessment.

  I sighed and rolled my eyes. Another enemy to add to the list, although, as Thomas said, we were never going to be best buds anyway.

  Glancing around at the other women, I spied the youngest staring at me with worried eyes and decided to try my luck elsewhere. I released her from the spell and she shifted uncomfortably on the floor.

  “It’s okay,” I said to the obviously terrified witch. “You can stand.”

  The young women, who in all likelihood was the same age as me, rose to her feet and looked nervously at her still trapped companions. In many ways, she reminded me of Daniel Benedict, Rachel Platt’s boyfriend: not exactly an angel, but someone caught up in events and way out of her depth.

  “You understand that there are good witches and bad witches,” I said in what some may consider a patronising tone.

  She nodded sheepishly and glanced at the rest of her coven.

  “Now,” I continued. “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume there still hope for you, but you have to make a choice. Last night, your
coven tried to kill me and my partner. You understand that makes them the bad guys, right?”

  “But—”

  “No buts. Good people don’t try to kill other people. Your friends are the bad guys in this fight. They may be pinned to the floor right now, but I haven’t hurt any of them. Do you think the same would be true if they could have overpowered my magic?”

  What little colour still remained fell from her face. She avoided looking at my eyes, and instead, decided to find a knot in the wood on the floor very interesting.

  “Do you think they would have killed us?” I asked again.

  “Yes.”

  “Exactly. Bad guys.” She flinched when a look passed between her and grey-hair, so I turned her away from the woman. “I’m Summer, by the way,” I said. “You are?”

  “Annabelle.”

  “Well, Annabelle, let’s sit down over here and have a chat, okay?” I motioned to the far side of the function room.

  As Annabelle joined me, I lifted two chairs for us to sit on, and silently wished that Thomas was the one doing the talking instead of me. He always had a way with people that put my own social skills to shame, but somehow, given grey-hair’s obvious disdain for men, I sensed that Annabelle wouldn’t react well to a conversation with one.

  “No-one in this coven will ever hurt you. I’ll see to that.” I nodded to Thomas, who nodded back, before pulling his mobile from his pocket and walking out into the hall to make a call.

  Trystan stood ever watchful, and I became doubly conscious of ensuring Annabelle remained safe and protected.

  “Do you know who Rhys Roberts is?” I asked. Annabelle nodded, so I continued my questioning. “Do you know where he is?”

  “He left.”

  I sighed. Great, that meant he wasn’t here and the trip had been for nothing. I thought of the hair from Rhys that we’d managed to gain from Leah. It looked as though we’d need a location spell after all. Thomas wouldn’t be pleased, and that’s assuming the hair truly belonged to Rhys and Leah wasn’t involved in setting us up.

  Thomas returned to the room and flashed me the fingers on his hands twice. We had twenty minutes before Joe and The Supernatural Council would arrive to take the witches into custody.

  “Just a couple more questions,” I said to Annabelle in a reassuring tone. “Did Rhys leave of his own accord, and where is the sixth witch?”

  Annabelle proved to have little knowledge relating to the sixth witch. Annabelle’s coven came from Anglesey, a small island off the north coast of Wales. They knew little of the goings on in South Wales, and she wasn’t able to put a name to the sixth witch, who’d hired them to work with her to attack me and Thomas. She didn’t know her name, but she was able to describe her as someone with long blonde hair who wore bright red lipstick and spoke with what Annabelle believed to be a Cardiff accent.

  I pushed aside the dread building in my stomach and thanked Annabelle for all her help before asking Trystan to stay with her while I talked to Thomas.

  Annabelle looked terrified of the dragon-man, and that was even though she believed him to be human. I could only imagine the look on her face if she knew the truth of his nature.

  “Did you hear what she said?” I asked Thomas as we stood beneath the doorway entering the room. “I know I could be clutching at straws, but does that sound like Manon to you?”

  The look on Thomas’ face confirmed his suspicions mirrored my own. Manon, the self-proclaimed Queen of the dark arts, worked for Dureth, or at least, she used to. She’d been the face of the underground fighting ring where Thomas had been forced to fight a goblin. Manon was another name on the growing list of people-who’d-like-to-see-us-dead. The question was, was she working alone or with Dureth, and what did we do about either scenario?

  “What did Annabelle say about Rhys?” Thomas asked. “Is he a victim in all this or working against us?”

  “I still can’t be sure. Annabelle said that he left willingly with the witch, but that he hadn’t seemed happy with the attack on us nor the company he kept.”

  “Then we’re still none the wiser, and still potentially trying to rescue Rhys.”

  “It sure looks that way.”

  Thomas’ face was grim as he glanced at Annabelle. “What about the girl?” he asked.

  I smiled at his concern and wondered at his old soul that matched my own — how could we look at a woman near our own age and think her a child.

  “Maybe Joe can set her up with The Council, keep her out of trouble.”

  “Keep a watch on her, you mean?”

  I gave him a wry smile. “As long as he keeps her away from her coven, I have a feeling she’ll be fine. I don’t sense much power in her, so she’s no threat on her own.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  With Joe and The Council en-route, Trystan determined it a good time to part ways, at least, for a short while. He remained determined to aid us in locating Rhys Roberts, almost to the point of annoyance. A part of me admired his resolve to see through his promise to help, but a larger part found it cumbersome. And okay... I admit it, the dragon-man was growing on me, and I didn’t want the troubles that followed me and Thomas like a plague to put his existence or secret in jeopardy. Thankfully, he hadn’t been exposed to the witches the night he came to our aid. Instead, Annabelle confirmed the witches had all been shocked at my ability to defeat their spell, and I decided it best not to correct her assumption. My reputation as a bad-arse was further cemented, and Trystan’s secret remained just that.

  Although it seemed to take forever, it was maybe three hours later, after Joe and the Council had taken the coven into Council custody, that Thomas and I drove back towards Trystan’s manor house in our newly acquired car.

  Thomas followed the directions Trystan had given us to his house, but the roads were small and winding, and we were never a hundred percent sure we were heading in the right direction.

  “This is it,” Thomas said at last.

  We were surrounded by hedges on all sides. I opened the window and enjoyed the quiet of nature. The soft chirping of birds, and the chittering and buzzing of insects as they went about their business. Gone was the constant thrum of human noises: cars, trains, and unfathomable amounts of people. But what was also missing was a house.

  “This is what?” I asked.

  “This, apparently, is where Trystan’s house is.” Thomas stopped the car and turned off the engine before looking over the instructions Trystan had given him. “I’m pretty sure, we’re in the right place. Did you see a road when we flew in last night or left this morning?” he asked.

  I hadn’t. Of course, we’d travelled on the back of a dragon and I hadn’t been looking for one. I thought back, and although I remembered the cobbled courtyard, I couldn’t remember a drive leading to the courtyard. I remembered very little if I was honest with myself, and for once it had nothing to do with my curse— I’d been too busy providing Thomas with a bounty of entertainment and pointedly avoiding looking at the naked dragon-man leading us to his house.

  “We could always call him and tell him we’re lost,” I suggested.

  Thomas raised his eyebrow. “We are not lost,” he said before pulling out his phone. “He jotted some GPS coordinates down. We go that way.” He pointed out the window and I spotted a wooden style, old and weathered.

  “Great, more walking.”

  Thomas laughed.

  Despite my grumbling, it was a beautiful day, and the walk along the little-worn path through the meadow and overgrown grass was pleasant. The cool touch of the wind caressed my face, and the energy of the surrounding trees restored my own.

  Thomas seemed positive we were in the right place, and I had every reason to have faith in his navigational abilities. After a while, we forded a small stream and climbed a hill. At the top, we caught a glimpse of our destination: Draig Manor. I tried not to laugh at the name — a dragon, living in Dragon Manor. Seriously, you couldn’t make this stuff up.

  Wi
th my senses alert, I eyed the building.

  “Nice place,” Thomas said.

  “A bit too big for my liking,” I replied. “I still can’t believe we met a dragon-man.”

  Thomas wrapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me in for a hug. “I know, imagine the stories we’ll be able to tell our kids.”

  I bit at the corner of my lip and sucked in a breath to steel the fluttery feeling in my stomach. “Is that your subtle way of telling me you want children?” I asked.

  “Wow, hold on their misses.” Thomas pulled back and looked at me with mirth in his eyes. “We’re not even married yet. One step at a time.”

  I chuckled and looked back at the manor house. It would never suit me. My home was in the heart of Wentwood and I’d never choose another, but it was the perfect size for a family... or three.

  “Do you think it’s a lonely life?” I asked. “I mean, living for thousands of years?”

  Thomas sighed. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

  I looked into Thomas’ deep blue eyes and smiled. He’d be good for Trystan, and after I was gone, Trystan would be good for him, too.

  Without saying another word, we trudged down the hill towards the manor. The place was deathly quiet, but as we approached the front door, it swung open before we had the chance to knock.

  “You’re just in time for lunch,” Trystan said. “I’ve made a cawl.”

  “Great.” Thomas clapped his hands together. “I’m starving.”

  *

  “How do intend to proceed?” Trystan asked between mouthfuls of the hearty vegetable stew. “I listened to what the young witch had to say and it seems that the man you’re looking for was not a prisoner as you feared. If his life were truly in danger, would he be able to come and go as he pleases?”

  I placed my bread on the plate beside my bowl. “It’s not that simple,” I said. “Rhys may appear to act under his own wishes, but...” I sighed and ran my hand through my hair.