by Kimbra Swain
We both started down the hill sliding on the wet pine needles that covered the ground. The truck smoldered as the front cab had been split in two by a tall pine. The driver’s door hung open. The crimson sheen of blood coated the window and door.
“Blood. Lots of it!” Troy cried out. He clicked the mic on his walkie. “Dispatch. This is officer 001. I’ve got a 10-50 PI on state highway 219, two miles from Shady Grove city limit. My cruiser is alongside the road. 10-33. 10-52.”
“Officer 001, 10-4,” a woman replied.
“Amanda, it’s Grace. Get out here,” he said skipping protocol.
“10-4” she responded.
As we reached the truck, I realized she wasn’t inside. Frantically, I searched around us. The power led to right here. I didn’t feel her beyond this.
“Levi, what’s wrong?”
“Something is blocking me. This is as far as I can feel her,” I said.
He looked around us. We noticed the drag marks. “I can track her with the blood, but I’m not going in the woods without back up. Amanda will be here in a minute with help.”
“I’m not waiting on Amanda,” I said as my phone rang.
“What?!” I yelled into the phone seeing the caller I.D.
Dylan’s voice came through the phone. “What’s going on?”
“Stephanie is at your house practically naked walking around in your shirt. Grace found her,” I said. Stopping as he tried to interrupt, I pulled power. “Shut the fuck up.”
I was greeted with silence. “You have done too much now, Dylan. None of it matters. The truck is down a ravine. There is blood everywhere, and someone is blocking power so I can’t find her. You did this! I swear to God. I’m going to kill you.” My anger toward him seethed. The man that was supposed to protect her left her open to an attack by his ex-girlfriend. If he fucked Stephanie after all of this, after being with Grace last night, I would rip his lungs out of his chest just to watch him turn to ash. I’d do it over and over until it took.
“Where?” he said.
“Fucking figure it out yourself,” I said hanging up. The phone rang again. “Fuck off, Dylan!”
“Levi, where is Grace?” Remy’s smooth voice came through the line. Just what I needed was this one on the line, too. I knew his idle flirtations. Remington Blake was waiting for his moment. The moment that Dylan fucked up, and Grace lost sight of her future with him. Remy would swoop in with his New Orleans accent and take her away. Fuck him, too.
“Why?” I growled. Hearing sirens, I knew Amanda and help was arriving.
“I just got a text with a link. It’s a video auction. Someone is trying to sell her. She looks bad,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“We just found her truck wrecked. Sell her? What do you mean?”
“Fairies are big business on the black market. Nothing is worth more than a fairy queen,” he said.
“Why do you have the link?”
“I’m not sure. Perhaps someone knows I love her. Maybe they thought I’d pay to get her back,” he suggested. “Either way, I’m watching her now. Half dead on a concrete floor as someone is shooting iron nails into her calves.”
“What!”
“She’s mostly immune to iron, because she’s lived here so long, but a direct insertion will eventually poison her,” he murmured. “You gotta find her quick. I’m bidding now, but it’s almost outside my pay range.”
My heart throbbed. Poisoning her. Fuck all this shit. I had to find her. “No. Please no,” I muttered. Troy looked at me questioning. “Someone is auctioning her off. They are torturing her.”
“Fuck. Fairy trafficking,” he said.
After I hit the speaker button on the phone, I asked, “How did I not know this was a thing?”
“We don’t talk about it, but it happens. We need to find her before they kill her or someone buys her,” Troy said.
“Remy is bidding,” I supplied.
“Yeah, but I’m running out of money!” he exclaimed.
“Keep bidding. I’ll cover it,” Dylan’s voice rang out behind me. Spinning around on him, I threw a punch to his jaw. Hitting him square, he dropped to one knee as blood rolled out of his mouth. Troy restrained me from hitting him again.
“Levi, stop! This won’t get her back,” he said.
“How did you get here?” I asked.
“I flew. You idiot,” he growled, looking horrified at the blood behind me dripping down the door as the rain thinned it out. It puddled on the ground. Grace’s blood. “What the fuck are we waiting on?”
“My idea. I didn’t want to go in with just the two of us,” Troy said.
“I’m not waiting,” Dylan said wiping the blood off his mouth. He squared to me. “You want another shot, Levi? I can take them all day, or we can go find her.”
Turning away from him, I ran toward the drag marks. I heard their footfalls behind us as I hung up on Remy. There was nothing he could do for her, but watch. The rain continued its steady fall as we ran through the woods. The trail was clear. Amanda caught up with us as a gray wolf. She ran ahead of me slightly, but not at full pace. I kept reaching out to feel Grace, but I couldn’t. Every part of me hurt like a case of the flu, but I kept running. Amanda slowed as we approached a clearing. She whined.
Troy ran up behind me with Dylan. “She says she’s in there,” Troy said. Grace once told me that if two wolves, even those without a pack, bonded, then they could speak to each other in either form. Amanda and Troy definitely moved past the mess that happened last year. They were in tune with each other. I knew that feeling, but Grace wasn’t mine. She would never be mine.
Through the trees, we could see the remnants of an old wooden cottage. The roof caved in partially on one side, and the forest grew up around it. “Let’s look around before we go in,” Dylan said.
“Fuck that,” I replied marching out of the woods toward the house. I didn’t care what was waiting on me. Nothing was going to stop me.
“Levi, wait,” Dylan said, grabbing my arm. “I know you’ve heard this before, but I can explain all of this. I know you think I’m cheating on her, but I swear to you on my life, I am not. She is everything to me. Please don’t rush in there. She loves you. She would never forgive me if I let something happen to you.”
“I am not a child, Dylan Riggs. I’m sick of your excuses. You had a good story when I told you about Kady. You skirted around the thing with Misaki, but Stephanie, in your house, in your shirt, in your bed! Even if you didn’t, you have dirt on that snake that you won’t divulge, because you are too scared. You are a coward, and I hate the day she finally gave into you. You can’t explain everything away. Not anymore. She is in there. I’m going after her,” I said to him.
“Fine. Let’s go in,” Dylan said, waving toward the house. It felt like he gave in too easily, but there was very little he could say to get me to believe him. I didn’t want to believe him that all of this was just an unfortunate stack of circumstances. It felt like the twelfth round of Jenga, and the tower teetered on the word of the honorable Dylan Riggs.
“We will go around back,” Troy said following Amanda around the side of the carcass of the house.
Slowly we walked over the rotting boards of the porch trying not to make too much noise. I knew I’d raised my voice. Whoever was in there with her probably knew we were coming. Once inside, the house didn’t look as bad as it did from the outside. In fact, the roof was solid.
“Glamour,” Dylan whispered.
I nodded. He pointed to stairs leading up. As he walked that way, I turned into a kitchen with a small satellite link up sitting on the counter. I’d seen something like it at the house of one of my card playing buddies. He said he lived so far out he couldn’t get the internet, but he could link to a satellite. Even though the connection was slow, he could get pretty good reception. I jerked the power cord out of the wall, hoping to stop the feed. The lights on the contraption died out. Behind me, I heard the creak of a board.
Spinning around toward the noise, I saw nothing. However, another door opened up to the darkness beyond. I approached it slowly. Looking past the door, wooden steps led downward. A faint light flickered at the bottom like a dying florescent bulb. I reached in my waistband and pulled out my gun. Slowly, I went down the stairs pressing my back to the solid wall looking into the room below. It was a stark empty room with concrete floors. A streak of blood trailed through another door. Following the trail, I walked into another room. A camera sat on a stand facing down to the limp body of Grace. Quickly, I looked around the room with my sight. Seeing nothing, I tucked the gun away as I rushed to her side.
“Alright, that’s far enough, Bard,” she said.
“Aw, come on. You don’t remember all of this,” I complained.
“I remember enough to tell the story. I’m on to you now, Levi. No matter what I say, you are typing what you want anyway. So, you might as well let me tell the rest, so you can twist my words,” she reasoned.
“What was the first thing you remember?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“You,” she smiled.
“That’s right! Me. Not Dylan,” I said.
“The two of you eventually worked it out,” she warned me.
“I know! I know, but it’s the truth. I found you,” I proclaimed with pride.
“You did,” she conceded. “Now hush your mouth.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.
Despite what everyone told me later about the incident, including my bard who was quite pleased with himself, I did remember a lot about what happened in that basement.
I first recalled waking up as my body hit the cold floor with a thump. The lights in the room blinded me. The man who dragged me through the forest breathed heavily. It wasn’t that I was fat, but he made it sound like I was a few inches short of being round.
“Just smile for the camera,” he chuckled. Through the blood, I could see the blinking red light of a camera.
“You bastard,” I said. The power I had remaining kept me alive. I couldn’t take the chance of using it for anything else like disrupting the electronics in the camera. I knew that Levi would come for me. Normally, I’d rely on Dylan, but at the moment, I didn’t know where Dylan and I stood.
The man’s haughty laugh echoed through the room. It sounded familiar in a way, but I couldn’t place it. The lights impaired my vision to the point I couldn’t make out any of his features as he moved around the room. When he moved closer, his shadow blurred my vision. Quickly, the pain overcame me again. I slept.
When I awoke again, the cold floor touched my bare skin. Shivering, I winced at the bright lights. The red blink continued. My clothes lay in a pile under the camera. My broken and bloody body lay bare to whoever watched beyond the lens.
Speaking with confidence the man said, “Now I will prove that she is the fairy queen known as Gloriana.”
“What the hell?” I muttered.
A sound I could only describe as a swish then a chuck, chuck pierced the air as red-hot pain shot through my left calf muscle. I screamed in pain, but my throat raw from the cold released no noise. Swish. Chuck, chuck. The searing pain ripped through me again. Dark tendrils of heat spread through my leg up to my thigh.
The man leaned over, whispering in my ear, “Even you aren’t immune to iron, my Queen.”
I groaned as the poison spread through my body. He’d fired two iron nails into my calf causing my remaining blood to curdle into black ichor killing me inch by inch. If the ichor reached my brain, there would be no reversing it. Even now, I had very little chance to survive.
“Let the bidding begin,” he muttered, kicking me in the head. Nothingness consumed me again.
“Grace, can you hear me?” Levi said. The tingle of his touch rushed through his hand into my cheek. His handsome face taut with concern looked down upon me blocking the bright lights.
“Levi, don’t touch me. It can spread to you,” I muttered. The poison would pass from me to him if we shared power.
“Let me give you a little to help,” he said quietly rolling up his sleeve.
“No, Dublin. It will spread through the power swap. You need to take me to my father,” I replied.
He grimaced. “Are you sure?” he asked. He knew very well that going to my father’s home would be a last resort. I didn’t know how long I’d lain in that basement dying. It was beyond any fairy medicine that Dr. Mistborne could perform.
“Yes,” I muttered.
“Fuck,” he said. “Dylan!”
My body tensed as he called out Dylan’s name. “What?” my voice shook with the realization that not only had Levi come for me, Dylan had as well.
“He’s here. Just lay still. He needs to know I’m taking you so he doesn’t kill me,” Levi said.
“No, I don’t want him here,” I muttered. It was too late. I heard the banging of heavy footsteps on a wooden stair.
“Levi!” he called out.
“Back here,” Levi said stroking my cheek. “We do this right, Grace. I promise to take you as soon as he sees you.”
“Grace!” Dylan cried out pushing Levi out of the way. His warm arms enveloped me.
I cried out in pain as he squeezed too hard. Releasing his grip, he apologized softly. “Oh, Grace. What have they done to you? It’s okay. I’m here now. Please just stay with me.”
“Levi is taking me to Father,” I said as firm as my weak body would allow.
His eyes darkened, and his body went rigid. “That’s fine, but I’m going too.”
“I don’t want you to go with us,” I muttered. I felt the rush of pain move through my leg into my stomach.
“Grace, I’m going,” he said stroking my platinum hair. “Levi, what do we need to do?”
“Pick her up, and I’ll shift us through the closest oak,” Levi replied.
Dylan looked at Levi begging him, “Give me one moment.”
“No,” Levi protested. “She’s dying!”
“Fine. Grace, look at me,” he said sending warm pulses through my skin. He kissed my forehead gently laying me back on the cold floor. Unbuttoning his shirt, he slipped it off his shoulders. Levi leaned me up as Dylan threaded my arms through the shirt careful not to damage the broken bone in my right wrist any further. One by one, he buttoned his shirt around me. “I did not, nor would I ever sleep with Stephanie Davis. She tried to pull some crap, probably to upset you, putting us all in this position. She’s a deceitful bitch. I curse the day I begged her to move in with me. I swear on my life that I did not sleep with her. If you don’t believe me, I understand. All of this is too overwhelming for all of us. My only concern right now is getting you to your father. Whatever you decide, I will do.” His hands slid down the backs of my arms sending the warmth though them. I’d stopped feeling them a long time ago, but his warmth surged past that numbness. As he reached my left hand, his finger traced over my ring finger. His face filled with alarm.
“She said she left it on the counter at your house,” Levi said for me.
“Okay,” he muttered sounding defeated. “I’m going to do my best not to hurt you when I pick you up.”
I shook my head knowing that pain would wrack my body when he lifted me. “Doesn’t matter,” my voice shook hopelessly.
Levi gave instructions to Troy to call Nestor. As Dylan lifted me, the pain I anticipated turned out to be more than I could bear. This time the darkness found me without hope. Dylan’s speech didn’t sway me. The same old story. Swearing on his life must not mean anything for someone who readily came back to life. It didn’t matter. I didn’t expect to survive.
“Go ahead,” Grace said, looking at me.
“Oh! So, now you agree that I should tell the parts where you were passed out,” I said.
Staring at me she didn’t answer. However, I saw the light of amusement in her eyes. She couldn’t hide it from me. I’d known her for too long. I knew everything about her now. Back then, I didn’t. It took her many years to agr
ee to allow me to write her story even though I begged. It was what I was made for, I was sure of it. I had musical talents before I met Grace, but she molded them into the bard that I became. She made me. Now it was time for me to make her a legend. Not that I had the confidence in myself to do it, but to me, she already was. I just had to make sure the rest of the world knew it.
“Do you really want to test me right now?” she asked.
“I want to test you constantly. You are sexy as hell when you are mad,” I said.
“Levi!”
“See,” I smiled.
“Just fucking tell your part of the story,” she said.
When I found her, the striking state of her body scared the crap out of me. Black lines coursed over her body where her veins usually pumped blood. When she opened her eyes to look at me, even the veins in her eyes were ebony strands of ichor. All of it too close to her brain. Even if she survived, I worried that it was doing permanent damage to the woman she had become. Absent from her eyes was the blue sparkle that I expected to see. Even her platinum locks looked dull. I was losing her. We were losing her. I decided against my best judgment to call Dylan who immediately took her from me. There was nothing I could do, but stand by and watch him lie to her again.
Her pale skin shimmered translucent popping the black veins out to the surface of her skin. If I didn’t know her heart, she looked like the evilest being I’d ever seen.
After putting his shirt on her while swearing on his life, he decided it was time to go. I spoke to Troy instructing him to call Nestor letting him know where we were taking her. Troy said he would spare him the details. I told him not to. Nestor needed to know the terrible condition in which we found her. I also told him to call Remington. I don’t know why other than he was her lawyer and might need to know for election purposes. The vote was in three days. If we couldn’t get her back before then, perhaps he could do something to delay the vote.
When Dylan lifted her, she winced in pain. Her head sank limply into his arm. I hurried up the steps with him right behind me. Walking out of the house, I headed for the first large oak tree I saw. Dylan paced on my heels.