by Evelyn Avery
Unable to tear his gaze away, Vaughn was forced to watch as Izzy threw herself into the arms of one of the men, kissing him with passion. His heart tightened into a painful knot in his chest, but only a moment later, it got even worse. The other man came up behind her, fondling her body and kissing her neck. Instead of pushing them away or acting scandalized, Izzy collapsed into their arms as if there were nowhere else she’d rather be.
The pain of it was more than Vaughn could bear. Without stopping to think through the consequences, he lashed out and slapped the orb from the Erlking’s hand. It flew across the room and smashed against the far wall, bursting into a thousand glittering pieces.
When he turned back, the Erlking held an identical orb in his hand. Perhaps it was even the same one, because when Vaughn looked again, there were no longer shards of glass on the ground.
The unreality of it had finally started to get to him. This had to be a dream or a nightmare. This strange man with wild eyes and a cruel smile couldn’t possibly be real. The Izzy he knew nearly jumped out of her skin when he touched her arm, she wouldn’t make out with two men she had only just met.
“Would you like to see more?” the Erlking murmured, voice perfectly mild.
“No!” Vaughn was starting to hyperventilate. He pinched himself hard on the arm, but the pain did nothing to wake him up. And he could feel things that shouldn’t be possible in a dream, the cold that numbed his toes even through his shoes and the pain in his back from being trussed up like a hog. “This can’t be happening.”
The Erlking sighed as if disappointed. “I’ve always found this part to be the most tedious, I have to admit. You are a pawn in a game that isn’t within your capability to comprehend. If Isabella can complete the challenges, she will win your life as victor. If not, it becomes forfeit. And mine.”
Vaughn wasn’t stupid, and his mind was perfectly capable of connecting the dots. But understanding something and believing it were two entirely different things. “You’re the Erlking. From Izzy’s play.”
The man nodded once, eyes narrowed. “You’re quicker than most.”
But Vaughn wasn’t ready to completely relinquish his hold on reality, not yet. “That’s just a story, none of it is real.”
“Would you like me to prove it to you?”
Vaughn understood then that challenging the Erlking was a bad idea, but it was too late to take the words back. The man made a gesture like he was batting away a particularly irritating fly.
“What the hell—”
A wide chasm opened up in the floor at Vaughn’s feet, and he had to scramble back as it ate up the ground in front of him. He stared down into a hole that seemingly had no bottom, or at least not one close enough to see.
The Erlking tossed the orb he was holding into the chasm. Vaughn watched as it winked in the light and then disappeared into the darkness. He listened hard but never heard it hit the bottom.
With a negligent glance down into the hole, the Erlking looked back at Vaughn with a smirk. “This is where I put things that I want to forget about. I’m told they’re bottomless, but I’ve never tested the theory myself. After a year or two spent plummeting into darkness, I wonder if you’d believe I was real then.”
“Yeah, you seem pretty real,” Vaughn acknowledged as his heart rate slowly returned to normal. He kept a watchful eye on the edge of the chasm, worried that the edge might shift closer.
“Not completely, but perhaps soon.” The Erlking picked up another of the glass orbs and tossed it at Vaughn, who just barely caught it before the thing tumbled to the ground. “You can see not only what is, but what perhaps will be. Perhaps you might see a vision of your future. Take a look.”
Heart aching, Vaughn lifted the orb to his face hoping to see another image of Izzy’s face. It barely mattered to him what she was doing, but he needed to know that she was okay. If the Erlking was threatening him with bottomless pits, what was he doing to her?
But Vaughn saw only a reflection of his own face. Then the orb went cloudy as if suffused with smoke. He suddenly felt lightheaded and overcome with a somnolence like he’d been drugged. Swaying on his feet, he fell to his knees, inches from the chasm that yawned down into an eternal fall. The urge to pass out overwhelmed him, but the orb stayed in his hand, and it was impossible to tear his gaze away from it.
He barely heard the last words the Erlking spoke before the world faded around him, but the mocking note was unmistakable.
“Enjoy the dream, boy.”
I spent about thirty minutes trying to explain what the hell was going on to Chloe, but by the time I’d repeated myself for the dozenth time, I was about to give up. Not only was she acting willfully unable to parse the details, but she focused on precisely the wrong things.
“Okay, let me get this straight,” Chloe insisted, the same thing she always said when we were about to start the story all over again. “All of that shit you created, the art and the play, it’s based on a magical world that actually existed that also happens to be full of crazy hot men.”
Choosing to ignore the hot men part because that’s a road I didn’t want to go down, I shrugged. “That’s about the long and short of it. If we ever make it out of here, there’s probably something in there that will take the edge off.”
“As if I’d ever go crazy,” Chloe scoffed. She got the sardonic look I cast her and gave me an apologetic smile. “You know what I mean.”
As far as she was concerned, it was impossible for me to play tricks on her like this, which meant that this place had to be real. It was as simple as that. I envied that confidence in herself. “You’re not even going to ask how we got here?”
“Magic, obviously.” She peered at the necklace around my neck, mouth falling open slightly as one of the stones changed color. “I’m not saying I understand how it’s possible, but it clearly is. I refuse to be that idiot who denies the magic thing is happening when the crazy person starts freaking out. That bitch always dies early in the movies.”
My mouth dropped open. “Where the hell was this cool-ass Chloe before. You love telling me that I’m crazy as fuck.”
She stroked my arm in a comforting gesture. “That’s because you are, honey. But this place is obviously real.”
“It’s really going to hurt when I punch you square in the tits.” I gestured at the overturned bowl full of maggoty fruit that lay a few feet away. “Next time you’re trapped in a garbage heap delusion, I’ll just leave you there and watch while you eat worms.”
She made a gagging face. “Was I really going to eat that?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Okay, you’re right. You’re always right. Now can we get the fuck out of here?”
“Gladly,” I snapped, even though our banter left a light feeling in my chest. Chloe was an asshole, but so was I, and it was a huge relief to have her back. Regardless of the finer details, I needed the person that always gave me honesty even when it hurt. “But you’re still a bitch.”
“Right back at you, babe.”
Feeling better than I had in hours, I looped my arm through hers and pulled her down the path. “And we really need to talk about how you relate everything back to movies or television because I think you might have a problem. The first step to recovery is admitting it.”
“You can recover my foot from your ass if the Netflix password gets changed,” she declared with a cheeky smile. “All work and no streaming services makes Chloe a dull girl.”
“They have shock therapy for that,” I assured her, trying not to laugh. “Believe me, I know.”
“I mean, if anybody would . . .” she murmured, obviously loud enough for me to hear.
Puck and Tamlin watched us with a strange sort of curiosity as if our interchange was deeply fascinating. They probably didn’t have a lot of experience with girls who both sort of loved and hated each other.
“We only have about seven hours left,” I told her as we made our way out of the junkyard that spread further
than it had originally seemed. Piles of trash dozens of feet high blocked our view of whatever lay beyond. I didn’t have to guess that it would be something bad. The Erlking had no reason to make this easy for us.
With a confident nod, Chloe set off in the wrong direction, and I had to turn her around.
“Let’s get going,” she said cheerfully. “And on the way, we can talk about these hot guys that are following you all of a sudden. I don’t remember either of them from your play.”
Puck and Tamlin had fallen back to give us some privacy, but I knew they could hear every word we said. A blush darkened my cheeks, and I looked away from Chloe’s knowing smile. “Not everything is the way I imagined it. There is definitely more random dick roaming around that I would have anticipated.”
“You run into the Erlking yet? From the parts of your play I read, he seemed like a real asshole.”
“That’s definitely one way of putting it, although that might be an insult to assholes.” I was still convinced that the Erlking was capable of hearing what we said about him, especially when his title was spoken. But it surprised me that he hadn’t shown up again to taunt me, almost as if he had no plans to actively get in my way. That didn’t exactly make perfect sense, but I wasn’t going to kick a gift horse in the teeth.
I had completed three challenges, there could only be so many more standing in the way of escaping this place with my friends.
“Vaughn is here, too.” I refused to look at Chloe even as her gaze swung toward mine because I didn’t want her to see whatever emotion was on my face. “The Erlking has him, and we won’t get him back unless we get to his castle before time runs out.”
Chloe opened her mouth as if to say something, but then closed it again. Finally, she offered me a reassuring smile. “Let’s not waste any more time, then.” But I heard her mutter under her breath as we navigated through the trash. “Maybe after this, one of you will finally make a move.”
I pretended that I didn’t hear her, hoping that Tamlin and Puck hadn’t either.
The situation with Vaughn was complicated, only more so now that we were trapped in a game with a maniacal fae king. Of course, I liked Vaughn. Anybody with eyes could see that was the case. He was the only person, aside from Chloe, that I made any effort to spend time with outside of class. But liking wasn’t the same thing as assuming that you’d end up in a relationship. Vaughn had plenty of chances to tell me he wanted to be more than friends, and he never did. I could only assume that meant he wasn’t interested.
I was still desperate to save him, but I’d do the same thing for anyone I called a friend.
Okay, that didn’t sound convincing even to me.
The fog had cleared, and we found ourselves wandering through an abandoned village. It looked like a picture out of a brochure for some quaint town in a touristy part of Europe, save for the fact that it was completely abandoned. All the vegetation was overgrown, covering the walls and doors of the houses as if nothing had been disturbed for years.
Tamlin gestured for us to stay behind him as he strode ahead of us, hand on the pommel of his sword. Puck rolled his eyes but followed the other man so that they were both in a position to protect us from whatever might be coming next.
“They seem very strong and capable,” Chloe murmured as she walked next to me. “I didn’t think you were into the tall, dark, and handsome types.”
“Feel free to fuck right off, thanks,” I said sweetly. “I’m just trying to get out of here before the Erlking kills us all.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Is he as gorgeous as these two?”
That was a question that I had no intention of answering where someone else might hear it. “They’re all fae. Looking good is kind of their thing.”
Seeming to sense that I wasn’t going to give her the juicy gossip that she obviously longed for, Chloe focused on our surroundings. “How did we get from the trash heap to this? This looks like a movie set for a folk horror movie.”
“The Underground becomes what its master wills it to be. There is no anticipating what the Erlking has planned for us.” Tamlin’s tense voice drifted over us; clearly he and Puck had been listening in. “You should stay alert.”
Puck bounced back to us, his smile wide enough to fill his entire face. “Hopefully, the next challenge will involve more kissing. I haven’t gotten my fair share.”
I picked up a nearby stick and threw it at him, but Puck easily dodged away, laughing as he spun to catch back up with Tamlin. “Missed me.”
“Next time, I’m aiming for your balls.”
He looked back and winked. “Don’t tease me.”
When I turned back to Chloe, she stared at me with a strange expression on her face. “I’ve never seen you like this before.”
“Like what?”
She hesitated before answering, then shrugged. “Usually you walk around acting like nothing about the world makes any sense to you. But now, you seem way more relaxed, like you’re more comfortable here than you’ve ever been anywhere else. Even with the fact that we’re about to go toe to toe with some mythical bad guy. I almost get the impression that you’re looking forward to it.”
And maybe I was. The fear and urgency were there, but those feelings were distant and easy to manage. I’d felt more afraid giving oral presentations in class then I was experiencing now. My most predominant emotion was a sense of determination that I’d never felt before as if everything in my life had led me to this moment. This was the culmination of a lifetime spent feeling like nothing in the world made sense when I was moments from finally putting all the pieces together.
I wanted to face down the Erlking, stand in the center of his castle, and declare that I had met his challenge. I wanted to see the look on his face when he was forced to accept defeat.
My entire life had been leading up to this moment, even though I never knew it.
Instead of explaining that to Chloe, who couldn’t possibly understand it, I focused on the task at hand. “We need to be careful, something doesn’t feel right.”
“I know, this empty town is freaking me out.” She looked around us with a curious gaze, as if considering something. “You know what this reminds me of?”
“If you’re going to say something creepy, please keep that shit to yourself.”
“Too late.” She snapped her fingers and made a triumphant sound. “This looks just like that horror movie we watched a few weeks ago. You know, the one where the whole town gets turned into werewolves, and then these random teenagers end up there when their car breaks down. They think the town is abandoned, but then the full moon comes out, and all the werewolves appear. It was scary as hell.”
Everything reminded Chloe of something she saw on television or a movie. But I couldn’t stop myself from looking reflexively at the darkened sky overhead. A bright white moon hung there as if suspended from a string by the hand of a god, hugely round and full, where it loomed just above us.
I couldn’t remember the film she was talking about at all. Sometimes, I would hang out on the couch with her and watch a movie, but I usually fell asleep before we ever got through the opening credits. “This doesn’t look exactly the same though, right?”
“Pretty damn close.” Chloe wandered closer to a small house with overgrown vines covering the windows. “Actually yeah, I think this was the first house they tried to hide in after the werewolves attacked.”
A shiver of fearful awareness rolled up my spine. “And what happened to the teenagers?”
“They all died. You think the main girl is going to survive in the end, but then you see an old lady that you thought was dead get up and shift into a werewolf behind her. It was so creepy.”
“We need to get out of here.” I grabbed her arm and forced her to walk faster until we caught up with Tamlin. “I think something bad is about to happen.”
He turned back to look at me, a question in his gaze. But before he could say anything, we all heard a distinct and unwelcome sou
nd that froze us in our tracks.
The baying of wolves.
Puck, his reaction time the fastest, saw them first. “They’re coming from behind.”
The look on his face would have been all the warning I needed. I was already moving and pulling Chloe with me when he yelled for us to run.
Wolves several times larger than any of I’d ever seen at the zoo, burst from behind the dilapidated houses and buildings. Frothing lips snapped over teeth glistening with spittle and sharp enough to slice through flesh with very little effort.
Tamlin unsheathed his sword, bracing as if he planned to fight them all off. But this wasn’t a fight that one man could win on his own, no matter how strong he was. He might have been made of stone until hours ago, but I knew he would bleed red now like any other living thing.
“Come on,” I screamed. “We can’t fight them!”
Tamlin reluctantly ran after us, just behind Puck, who urged us forward between gasping breaths. But there wasn’t anywhere for us to run, the little town stretched up the rise of the hill, and it was impossible to know what lay beyond it.
A stitch in my side that turned into a dull ache made me wonder if I’d even make it that far. “Can we outrun them?”
“We can try,” Chloe insisted.
“No, we have to fight.” Tamlin gestured for us to keep going as he came to a stop and turned back. “You two go, Puck and I will hold them off.”
“You and Puck will do what?” Puck caught up with us, gasping for breath. “I’m a lover, not a fighter, remember?”
Tamlin scoffed. “You’ll be whatever you have to be today.”
The wolves were gaining on us. We were moments from being torn apart with absolutely no time for this argument. But I couldn’t just leave them here. “I’m not letting you sacrifice yourselves.”
“They don’t want us.” Tamlin raised the sword and pointed at the leader of the wolf pack who was less than a dozen feet away and bearing down fast. “And the most important thing is that you make it to the castle and save yourselves. You still have a chance at escaping this place, the same isn’t true for us.”