by Anna Sanders
A beautiful woman sat in the branches. She had reddish-brown curls that framed her plump, shapely figure. Freckles dotted the ridge of her nose, down to her cheeks, to her neck, and the tops of her rounded breasts. Her dress was white and flowing with the wind. Her eyes were so azure that they nearly radiated.
Winx snapped awake. She was very used to nightmares, so it only took a few deep breaths to pull her out of her disquietude. But to add to her unease, she noticed that the sun was sinking in the horizon. It was sunset already, and Keaton had not returned.
She was still resting on the hood of the Mazda. Her fingers were numb from cold, and her back was stiff. She sat up slowly and placed her palms to her lower back for an adequate stretch. All of the vertebrae along her spine cracked audibly, sending some semblance of blood flow back to her limbs. The bite of the crisp air was still in her lungs, which was uncomfortable after her nap. She should have slept in the car, where there was a heater and soft seats.
Winx held a hand to her head and tried to get her bearings. But her solitude was broken by a nudge.
There were savages nearby.
Oh God. She jerked violently and made the car creak.
Of course her damn dream was true. What about her nightmares didn’t hold an element of reality to it? She had obviously connected with something in the forest, something nearby.
There was no mistaking the feeling welling up inside of her. The dread. The emptiness. The sheer sadness. There definitely were savages in the forest, and they were not far off from where she had slept on her parked car.
Winx had no desire to seek them out. Keaton was far away, miles, leagues, who knew? And she was by herself. From what she felt, there were at least five savages off to the west. Even if she could take them, she had no desire to.
But against her better judgment, she linked with the closest one she could find. Closing her eyes in concentration, it wasn’t a difficult thing to see what images were playing the mind of the creature.
They were all grouped around a tree. They were clawing at the bark, moaning with yearning and gnawing at one another to get as close as possible. They reached up, up, and hissed with hunger.
And in the tree was the woman in her dreams. The full-figured beauty was clinging to the branches, but instead of trying to get away from them, it seemed as if she were lowering herself. She was speaking, but the words were unclear to Winx. She held out a hand to them, and it glowed white light. When she touched one of the savages, it bit her greedily. Blood poured from her hand and fell onto their faces. They licked at one another viciously to get as much as they could.
The woman screamed, sat back in the tree, and touched her palm to the freely-bleeding wound. Her hand glowed again and the gushing bite disappeared. She shook her finger at them, as if in admonishment.
Winx cut off the connection and sat back with an exasperated glower.
It was a fucking lixyn. Some fucking lixyn was in the forest. And from what she could tell of the stupid woman, she was actually trying to heal the savages.
Really? Did the idiot know anything about dead humans come back to life?
Her resolve to do nothing doubled. Stopping the savages was one thing. Helping a lixyn? She had no agenda with the lixyns, save getting rid of their involvement in her life.
For a full five minutes, Winx sulked. A lixyn could handle herself. That girl wouldn’t get too badly hurt; she could heal herself. And maybe eventually the fool would realize that helping a savage instead of killing them was asking to be killed yourself. The fact that Keaton was not there to chastise her decision helped wonders with this delusion.
However, it became harder and harder to keep the savages out of her conscious. They were, after all, a mere ten-minute walk away from where she sat. And not linking to their ravenous minds was nearly impossible. Also, the thought of them going from possibly killing the lixyn to terrorizing Keaton’s clan kept pestering at her, too.
Winx hummed to herself and drummed her fingers. She searched the internet on her phone and checked her email.
Nothing was working. She felt the need to go to them.
Eventually, Winx stopped kidding herself. A lixyn getting killed when a supposed member of the eradication force was next door would only end badly for her. The Three and their ilk would not understand why she allowed one of their kind to get herself torn to bits and devoured like a powdered doughnut. It could only mean more punishment for her. And that was a good enough reason to get up.
Grumbling to herself all the while, Winx went into her trunk and pulled out the shovel. Tied to it was the drawstring bag with the vial of acid.
Winx started her walk slowly, dragging her feet with a pout on her face. Why did she have to risk her life for a stupid lixyn anyway?
GENEVIEVE MERRICK WAS A PRACTICAL girl. She never asked for much. But not being eaten by flesh hungry zombies was high on her list right now.
She clung to her branch with a steely gaze, refusing to shed a tear whenever one of the creatures got too close. She hated these things that she had been sent to deal with. However, she also felt extreme pity.
Humans were so dear. And dead humans were so depressing. She could help these poor beasts, if they just let her near enough to do it.
Yet every time she lowered herself enough to bless their gray skin with her healing grace, one of them would lash out at her. They had already torn a good-sized chunk from her wrist, gashed a cut on her leg with their sharp nails, and bitten whatever else they could reach several times. Luckily, she was able to regroup and heal herself each time.
Terror mingled with concern. All she ever wanted was to assist those in need. Who more in need than these poor souls? They clamored for help even as they defied her touch. Every taste they got of her blood did nothing to satisfy their cravings; it seemed to only intensify it tenfold.
She withdrew away from them and fixed yet another wound. Despite all she had ever heard of savages, she’d never heard of anyone trying to help them. The sadness as well as weariness overcoming them had to be reversible. If there was anything that her mother had taught her, everything could be fixed.
Genevieve tried again. She reached her hand out and tried to heal them from a distance. She focused on stretching out her gift, the light of her hand barely grazing them. It illuminated their ghastly appearance.
“I want more than anything to fix this,” she told the murdering savages. “I want you to know the light. To be touched.”
When she stretched her hand out further, one of them grabbed her. It took literally all of her strength to keep her hold on the branch, her nails digging into the bark. The maniacs began to eat her arm, ripping the flesh off with their teeth. They snapped at one another in their voracious frenzy to eat from her.
It didn’t hurt—not really. It would take far more than that to damage a lixyn.
Genevieve felt her wings sprout. She tried to flap them, but the massive appendages got tangled in the branches and leftover leaves of the tree. She was stuck.
The savages continued to maul her. They tugged so hard that the joint in her shoulder made a sickening popping sound, and her forearm bone snapped. The pain shot through Genevieve’s extremity. She struggled in vain to bring her arm back, but they had a decent hold on her. The tree bark cracked, and the hold she had slipped.
She was going to be pulled from the breaking tree. And then she would die.
“Stop.”
It was a simple word, and it took Genevieve a moment to realize it was not from her. She was crying while trying to get her quickly vanishing arm back. But from that one command, the savages released her, and she flew back into the tree so hard that the branch broke the rest of the way. She fell and landed on her back on the mossy ground.
Genevieve tried to regain her footing as fast as possible. There was no way that those things weren’t going to jump at her now that she was at their level. She started to run away, but she tripped over a juniper bush and landed screaming in a collection o
f sap-covered needles.
After struggling for a while, Genevieve observed that she was actually not being eaten alive by the waiting gang of the dead. She was in one piece, not including her bitten arm and the blood pouring down her body. She quickly began to heal herself. While her body rejuvenated, she looked up to find the savages.
They still stood at the foot of the tree, staring in the other direction, not interested in her at all.
A bald black woman walked from the clearing. The left side of her neck was dotted with jewels. Her dark clothing fit her curvaceous form in a devilish manner. She had a slightly wide nose, the nostrils of which were currently flared, a pretty oval face with a pointed chin, thick luscious lips and big eyes. She held a shovel and looked like she meant business.
“Come here.”
THE SAVAGES BEGAN APPROACHING WINX. Their gait was slow and measured, and they growled with renewed energy.
Winx ignored the victim who was flopping around like a dork in the sticky bush. Instead, she focused all of her attention on the savages. Controlling more than one was difficult, and if she broke contact with them by thinking of the silly lixyn, then they would go right back to their attempted feeding frenzy. She probed their empty minds, searching for a hold. But she could not find one. Her eyes widened.
The savages were not stopping. Winx watched as they came closer, despite her verbal and mental commands for them to do otherwise.
“Oh. Fuck.”
Their closeness was a necessity, but they were getting too close. Winx had to back up quickly, doing her best not to trip over anything in her path. Five savages. Filthy, dragging, slobbering things. And one daevor who could not make them stop.
Winx lifted her shovel. She was quickly regretting her decision to come to the lixyn’s aid. With a hard shout, something resembling a war cry, she ran toward the dead. She swung her shovel in an array about her, the movements an artful blur. Her feet crunched into the crumpled dead leaves as her gait increased.
Her shovel connected with the underside of the first adversary’s jaw. He went down, but he wasn’t out yet. While he was momentarily stunned, Winx kicked another one back. The other three swarmed in close, eager to tear at any flesh that they could, but Winx was too quick. She shoved them all back with the handle of her tool, taking advantage of their slowness.
Winx hurriedly made her way to the first savage that hadn’t quite regained his balance from the ground. She bashed his head in three times with the shovel. It was short work, but while she had been dealing with him the second savage crawled over to take a bite out of her ankle.
The pain was nothing new to her. But it did take her by surprise, and it slowed her down. She still had four savages to deal with.
Taking the blade of the shovel, Winx brought it down hard on the fiend’s neck. She continued until his neck was good and broken, wrestling her foot out of its limp grasp.
Stumbling out of the reach of the remaining three, Winx surveyed the damage to her ankle. It was bad, but not broken. And even if it were, she was still on her own.
“Stop!” She tried the command again, authority permeating her impulsion. “Stop now.”
They staggered. Winx probed their minds once more, attempting to force their will. Only one listened. The other two still made their way closer.
“You, make yourself useful.” She addressed the one that she could contact, her voice was rough with pain. She withdrew Deja’s blade. “Catch.”
The savage to her immediate left caught the blade.
“Stick it into your friend’s head.”
He made his way to the other savage. That left Winx with only one to deal with for the moment.
She used the shovel to make lunch meat of the creature’s rotten brains.
A cry sounded behind her as the one obedient savage did as he was told, sticking the wicked knife into his companion’s temple. He stood back afterwards, waiting for a command.
Winx didn’t give him one. Instead, she knocked him down with the shovel and ended him without preamble.
CHAPTER 13
WINX WIPED MUCK OFF OF her hands onto her jeans and winced in disgust. Who knew when she would be able to wash her clothes again? She doubted the Bandits had a community washer and dryer.
Worse than that, her ankle was mangled. She twisted her leg about to get a good look at the damage. It wasn’t pretty, and now that the adrenaline was leaving her, it hurt like hell. But there was nothing to do for it right now.
Deciding to check on the lixyn, Winx limped into the direction of the girl who had caused the disruption of her once-quiet evening. She sidestepped the bodies and walked behind the tree.
The girl from her dream sat beside the bush. She had just finished healing her mangled arm and was readjusting it into its socket. Her palm still glowed ethereally. “You are a daevor,” she said in her high pitched voice.
Her shoulder cracked back into its socket properly, and she let out a sigh.
Winx crossed her arms. She stared while the lixyn got to her feet and held her glowing palm out.
“You’re hurt.”
The lixyn tried to touch Winx, but Winx shifted away.
“That’s what got you into this mess in the first place, remember? Trying to heal those that you have no power over.”
“I can still try!” The lixyn reached again, only to be denied once more.
“Stop it! What is your problem?” Winx took a step away from her. “I do not need you to heal me, even if you could. And a savage? Do you not see what they did to you?” She pointed to the blood that still stained the other girl’s white clothing.
The lixyn turned up her nose in a haughty expression. “So I should have just killed them, you are saying?”
“It would have saved us both time,” Winx shot back. “And harm.”
“I have never killed a thing in my life!”
“How noble. You might want to rethink that when a fucking zombie is eating your arm.”
Then Winx turned on her heel and stalked away.
Unfortunately, the lixyn followed her. “Well, whoever you are—it might please you to know that I am Genevieve Merrick. Daughter of the Goddess Edina, ruler of the Queendom.”
The warrior groaned. Every step she took seemed to lead her closer to the Order. What the hell? And to top everything off, she had actually risked her own life to save the princess of lixyn royalty. Life was bullshit sometimes.
Winx wrinkled her nose and faced the bodies. “Of course. That makes total fucking sense.”
“So you have heard of me?” Genevieve followed Winx over to the clearing, doing her best not to step on the dead savages.
Winx didn’t answer.
“Well, then you know that I will one day be crowned Queen, and that I will inevitably be in charge of all of the lands. Including that of your people.” Genevieve said the last with supreme satisfaction.
“Huh.” Winx took the tied bag from the handle of the shovel and pulled the small vial out, uncorking it.
Genevieve nodded. “I accept your apology.”
Winx at this point was so aggravated that she was barely listening to the princess. Instead, she went about pouring a good amount of acid over each body on the ground.
“What are you doing?” Genevieve shrieked when she saw the bodies of the savages start to dissolve.
“I am getting rid of the evidence.” Winx’s voice was bland. After splashing a few drips onto the last body, she walked over to a spot she deemed worthy and started to dig.
Genevieve was horrified. All of the flesh was immediately melting off of their bones. And even the bone was fizzing in preparation of receding. It was a completely sordid sight, one that she was unused to.
“The poor dears.” The lixyn actually looked close to tears. “They didn’t know any better. They didn’t know their actions would lead to this end.”
Winx gave her a look that radiated annoyance. Before she could say anything, a blur crossed her vision. She stopped what she wa
s doing and looked around. A trail had been cut through the fall leaves on the ground, and dust had kicked up into flurries in the air. Winx waved her hand, trying to see better.
“Keaton? Was that you?”
“It sure was, my dear.”
The dust cleared and Winx saw his outline. Relieved that it was him, she dropped her shovel.
“I see you busied yourself while I was away,” he said.
“I had no choice. Little Miss Sunshine here was in trouble.” Winx approached him until she could speak to him in an undertone. “I thought you said lixyns were never seen in your forest. Was that a lie to get me here?”
Keaton stared at her ankle. “Are you all right?”
“I am just fine, thank you. Will you answer the question?”
Genevieve attempted a smile. “Well, hello there. You’re a Bandit that I haven’t met yet.”
He smiled back, of course. As if Keaton could do anything else. “Yes, I am! You are a new face as well.”
“That I am. I’m Genevieve Merrick—”
“Princess of the lixyns,” Winx finished for her, her tone overly dramatized.
Genevieve glared. “Yes. Well, I was going to tell him that.”
“You are royalty?” Keaton asked, eyes widening. “What are you doing here? Who sent you?”
“The Order,” she replied primly. “And The Three.”
Winx felt herself go colder. Keaton stiffened. “What for?”
“To keep watch over… well, you, I suppose.”
“So. You know my name?” Winx asked. “My accused crimes? Where I’ve been all this time?”
“I am afraid not,” Genevieve answered. “It was my first day with the eradication forces located in Dallas when I was informed that my duties would be better suited here, keeping an eye on the daevor in Gunnison and assisting the Bandits that were overrun by savages. Those were my precise orders. So I made way quickly. However, I got here much sooner than you had. Almost a week, to be exact.”
“A week? I didn’t even know that I would be in Gunnison last week.”