Huntsman's Prey

by Marie Hall

  “Why?”

  “Because I needed to make reflection believe I was actively trying to kill Lissa. You were not the only one who didn’t realize Lissa and I share a body. Reflection has no idea that Lissa isn’t just another creature of Wonderland, but an actual part of me. The surest way to keep Lissa and reflection in the dark was to pretend she’d been abducted before I could reach her.”

  This was all making a perverted sick sense. “Why are you lying about the drink? I know you gave that to me, you had to have.”

  “I swear.” She shook her hands. “It wasn’t me. What did the drink look like?”

  His jaw clenched. “It was green and thick and tasted like pure sugar.”

  She grimaced and clutched her stomach. “I know what that is. It’s a very powerful fairy tonic; Danika would feed it to me as a child when the voices in my head grew too loud. It’s called Dragon Piss.”

  “Piss? Tell me that wasn’t—”

  “I’m afraid so. But its purpose isn’t to harm, its purpose is to open your senses. And if you were forced to drink it, then I’d imagine you should ask Danika about that.”

  “Danika? What does she have to do with any of this?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and grabbed her skull, taking a moment to breathe deep before answering, “she’s my godmother, I don’t know any more than that. It’s just a guess.”

  Her voice shook, but he didn’t trust her. For all he knew she was just working herself up to trick him again.

  But if she were telling the truth, and it’d been Danika who’d paid off Pillar to get him to drink the potion, why? Why would she do it? And most importantly, if she’d been following his quest, then she had to have known the truth of Lissa and Chrysalis. Why wouldn’t she stop by to warn him? Not once since showing up in Wonderland had she made herself known.

  “Why would Danika want my senses to be opened?” He looked at her.

  Her skin looked paler than before. “Tell me, man, after you drank it, did Lissa seem more real to you?”

  Aeric was just about to say no, that she’d been real all along, but he realized that after drinking it was when Lissa had stopped being invisible, she’d become solid. She’d even wondered aloud how he’d been able to see her as a woman when she should have been in cat form, but if the drink was meant to open his eyes to see the truth, had there been more to it than just feeding him a drink so he could see all of Lissa?

  “Yes. Why?”

  There were small pinch lines around the corners of her mouth. Chrysalis really didn’t look well at all. “Because like my father I can’t always tell whether I’m spinning reality or illusion in this place. Maybe she wanted you to really see me. Or maybe she wanted you to believe me.”

  Her blue eyes were huge. “I kept you safe, I led you out. Every trap laid for you, it was done by reflection. The sinkholes, the troll bridge… all of it, I fixed it, made it right. It was why I had Lissa find you, because I knew if she could sense that inside of you too, then she’d help me to guard you, could thwart reflection’s plan. You had to see. You had to, Aeric. You had to.”

  His heart fluttered in his throat. “Why?”

  The silence between them in that moment was so absolute it was thick and intense. She blinked.

  “Because when we first met you saw me. You saw the real me, not reflection and I knew you could save me. You hesitated to kill me. And I can’t explain it now, but in that moment I knew with all my heart that you would save me.”

  He shook his head, because those were the exact words spoken to him when he’d been debating his decision to accept Rumple’s offer or not. “Lissa didn’t need to tag along. In fact, I never even needed to meet her, did I? So why did you make her stay?”

  “I told you, Lissa and I aren’t the same person. I can’t control her. I can only guide her. Nudge her. The day she saw you wrestle my spirit, she grew curious, as all proper cats do. But Lissa was free to leave if she really wanted to.”

  “So why didn’t she?”

  “You really don’t see?” she whispered. When he didn’t acknowledge her question, she answered it herself. “Lissa loves you.”

  The moment the words left her lips she screamed, clutched onto her stomach and began convulsing violently.

  Aeric ran to her, dropping to his knees, he grabbed onto the net, ready to rip it away from her, but she turned bloodshot eyes to him and gave a forceful shake of her head. “No,” she groaned, “not… want.”

  And then there was only a swirling madness lingering behind that gaze, but even as he stared at her he recognized immediately that the eyes did not belong to Chrysalis. They were still the vivid electric blue he’d come to associate with the woman of many souls, but they were different too.

  Hard. Violent. Crazy.

  “She thinks I didn’t know. Thinks I didn’t plan this!” A horrible laughter ripped from her mouth, the sound guttural and full of throaty inflections. Chrysalis’ shimmery pale flesh, turned more molten in color, like a gleaming gold. “I planned all of this. She cannot escape me, she never can.”

  Sitting up, she curled her fingers through the holes in the rope netting and slashed at him with her wickedly curved nails. Hissing at the immediate ripping pain, he jumped back.

  “She is mine, now and forever. I will never let her go, never. Never. Never. Wonderland is mine, as are you. All of you.”

  He slapped her. Aeric had no clue what else to do. “You are mine,” he snarled, “I will kill you. I will bring her back. You will release Lissa and Chrysalis, they belong to me.”

  She snorted, her pose now more seductive instead of wild. Thrusting her chest out, making certain each long, lean line of her body showed itself to perfection. “Come now, hunter, surely you know the better of us is me. Release me and I will give you all you desire. You wish your kitten, I am yours to please.”

  Then she transformed herself, silkily, easily, into Lissa. With a mane of electric blue hair and her exotic endless midnight black eyes. He swallowed hard, wanting nothing more than to take her out of there. To hold his woman once more.

  But though the body was the same, the woman was not there. Lissa’s softness, her gentleness, didn’t exist behind that hard gaze.

  “You are not Lissa,” he spat, “you might wear the body, but the soul is vile.”

  With a roar, she transformed back. But now her flesh burned even brighter, so bright he had to shield his gaze. The fire began to consume the netting, began to blaze out of control. Stinging his flesh, making it sizzle and burn, and waft a horrible odor through the air.

  Aeric could hardly breath as the oxygen in the air was consumed, he couldn’t move from the shock, could only stand and burn and wonder what he’d done wrong.

  The sky turned an immediate shade of pitch black, the moon was thick and heavy and dangling overhead. A pure pulse of brilliant lavender white light shot from its center and then a man’s deep voice snapped Aeric from his dull stupor.

  “Siria, stop!”

  The man was tall and powerful looking. With a shock of wild brown hair, his feet were planted solidly in the ground where just seconds earlier the moonbeam had landed. Beside him flew Danika, and beside her Hatter and Alice. The two of them were hugging, Hatter patting onto the back of Alice’s head he’d tucked into his shoulder.

  Aeric twirled, confused by the sight of them and gasping in lungful’s of sweet, sweet air.

  “Jericho, grab the net, her fire cannot burn you,” Danika pointed at Chrysalis.

  “Danika,” Aeric choked out her name, still gasping for breath. “What is going on here?”

  “She was going to kill you.” Danika turned soulful blue eyes on him as she worried her bottom lip. “Aeric, I never knew when I sent you here that reflection was as powerful as she was. I did not know who she really was, or what she’d done to my goddaughter. I didn’t even bloody know she existed!” She said the last with such a sincerity of remorse that he could not doubt her.

  Hacking one final tim
e, he slammed a palm against his chest and shook his head. “Who is she? Chrysalis could never really tell me.”

  “She is Siria.”

  He’d heard that name before, it was hard to place from where or when, but he knew it.

  “The sun,” Danika supplied. “Many years ago I made a great enemy of her. This was her form of repayment. I thought Jericho’s curse and mine would be enough, but it wasn’t.” She hung her head. “And for that, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  Jericho dragged the netting as far from the group as possible. Chrysalis writhed and screamed, shredding the last bits of her clothing until she was fully nude. Not that she seemed to mind or care. Spitting and hissing, she shoved her hands out toward Jericho’s face, frantically attempting to claw at him.

  “Release me, Jericho, this has naught to do with you!” The voice was deep and shivered with a raw and untapped wellspring of power.

  It made all the fine hairs on Aeric’s arms stand on edge.

  “Siria, how dare you!” Jericho shook the bag.

  Alice cried out, trembling in Hatter’s arms.

  Danika wrapped her arms around the duo, looking at her husband with concern reflected in her gaze.

  Aeric stepped beside the three of them, leaning in he whispered beneath his breath to Danika. “What are they going to do to her?”

  Hatter’s jaw clenched and his nostrils flared as he whipped a furious gaze in Aeric’s direction. “You’ve mated with my daughter, I smell her on you.”

  Aeric’s eyes widened and he took three very large, and cautious steps back.

  Danika swatted at Hatter with no fear whatsoever. “This is hardly the time for a father’s jealousy.”

  Alice nodded. “Agreed. Focus on our daughter and what we need to do to save her.”

  That caused Aeric to frown. Forgetting Hatter’s sudden intense hatred toward him, he pointed at Jericho who was still dragging a kicking and screaming Chrysalis toward the body of water.

  “What is he planning to do? I thought when you all showed up there was a way to fix this.”

  Alice’s jaw quivered, her molten brown eyes (so similar in shape to Lissa’s that Aeric momentarily forgot to breathe) were shaded with hopelessness. “No,” she shook her head, “there is no plan. We’d hoped you would fix her. But you have not. I saw her talk to you,” he could hear the shattering of her mother’s heart as she spoke, “I’d hoped the net had worked, I’d hoped that this wouldn’t be…” she hiccupped, “wouldn’t be… could be…” she sobbed, unable to form the words.

  Hatter just rubbed her shoulder and glowered at Aeric. “Get away from my family. You’re useless to us now.”

  His words resonated with the undercurrent of a threat and made Aeric’s hackles rise. But this wasn’t about him, or his distaste for Lissa’s father, he’d promised her he’d fix this, and by damn he’d fix this.

  That one night, when they’d huddled under the stars for warmth and talked of their pasts and their futures Lissa had mentioned something then that’d triggered a strange sense of foreshadowing. He’d brushed it off as the crazy ramblings of someone half asleep, but what if it’d really been Chrysalis giving him the hint of what to do.

  Jericho was next to the water now, the sky was pitch dark, his entire body glowed with moonlight, causing Chrysalis to smoke as the power of the moon consumed her. Kneeling down, Jericho began to undo the knot holding the rope together.

  “Wait!” Aeric reached out his hand and without glancing at the three beside him, he ran to Jericho. “Wait.”

  Jericho stalled him with a lifted hand. “Do not come any closer, Siria’s fire cannot consume me while night reigns, but she can kill anything else that comes too close.”

  The ground where she’d been dragged was charred and black, the grass nothing but ash, and the dirt devoid of any water. Chrysalis herself (or at least her body) was drying out before his eyes, peeling and cracking, being consumed by an internal flame she could not control.

  The woman he loved lived inside that shell and he’d be damned if he’d let her die because of a curse. He was cursed too.

  A curse that Rumpelstiltskin said would work to his advantage the moment he figured out the riddle.

  Licking his lips, Aeric hedged all his bets. “I’ve traveled all the worlds of Kingdom. And always there are constants. Water is purity, a blessing, water can heal.”

  Chrysalis laughed from cracking, bleeding lips. “What do you know? You’re all so stupid, Jericho, I’ll never forgive you for this. I own this body, there is no way to rid yourselves of me. Drown me if you like, but what I’ve wrought cannot be undone.”

  Aeric shook his head. “Always so sure of yourself are you, Siria? You know a few nights ago Lissa told me something, something that I don’t think you know anything about. Something that at the time made no sense to me.”

  She smirked, brushing a large twig out of her hair as she ran her palm across the glowing moon pool as if in defiance of the very act Jericho had been set to commit. “You bore me, go ahead and drown me, Jericho. Do as you would. There is only one soul that will die and it won’t be mine. This body will live forever, to serve my bidding and my needs.”

  Jericho’s glow was so powerful that Aeric made out the rapidly beating pulse in her neck. Siria was bluffing, there was something to the water. But it was more than just the water, because alone the water could not hurt her. She was right in that. But she knew that Aeric knew and he wanted to pump his fists with joy when he realized he was right.

  “But you see, it wasn’t Lissa talking to me that night. It was why I felt the difference in her touch, her body. It was why I couldn’t focus on the words she’d said to me. You knew of Lissa, but you did not realize she and Chrysalis were one, that is how Chrysalis tricked you, that is how she told me the truth.”

  She smirked, but now there was also terror lurking behind her steely-eyed gaze.

  “Chrysalis was right, you can’t see everything she does. She discovered the truth of this curse, Chrysalis was right all along. There was a way to rid herself of you. It’s why she played double agent, it’s why she gave you just enough to make you think she was your puppet, but Chrysalis was smarter, stronger than even you knew. Because I know how to destroy you parasite.”

  She hissed and screamed. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Her eyes rounded on Jericho as if pleading with him.

  Jericho laughed. “Oh, Siria, you’ve ruined yourself, and all for nothing. I know where this is going. I know what you’ve done, and now the rest of the world will too.”

  Danika rushed forward just then. “I don’t understand,” she said, “what’s going on, what’s happening?”

  Jericho tossed her a proud grin. “Stay back, angel. Until we’ve split Siria from Chrysalis she is still very dangerous. But grab Galeta and Esmerelda, tell the Blue to alert the fairy council, all will be revealed soon.”

  Aeric’s heart sped, his pulse thundered through his ears like a stampeding herd of wild stallions. As much as he hated the imp, Rumpel had saved his ass.

  As if thinking of the demon conjured him, suddenly a pillar of flame manifested just beside Aeric.

  Chrysalis continued to scream and wail, trying desperately to sever the bonds of rope penning her in.

  “What do you want?” Aeric turned to Rumpel who was still dressed in black leather, but with the flames licking at the collar of his jacket he looked more like a demon from hell than the malformed man child most fairy tales made him out to be.

  Rumpel’s smile was wicked as he said, “You owe me, hunter. I’ve not forgotten your debt. And I call it due.”

  “Now!” He growled. “I’ve not even saved my girl yet. This can wait.”

  Scrubbing his jaw, Rumpel shrugged. “I’m a patient man, you’ll save her, then you come to me.”

  Locking his jaw, Aeric curled his fists.

  Suddenly a scroll appeared; the very one he’d signed his name in blood with.

  “You see this,
huntsman? This…” he shook it, “is an unbreakable pact, you don’t keep to your end of the bargain, and neither will I.”

  “I already know how to save her,” he snorted.

  Rumpel chuckled. “Humans, such hubris you all possess. Do you honestly believe you solved the riddle all by yourself? I planted the truth in there, only to be revealed the moment needed. Because, if you weren’t aware already, Siria has gleaned information from Chrysalis’ pathetic, little brain in the past. If you’d so much as hinted to the truth, the outcome would be…” he looked around with a look of profound satisfaction, “much, much different.” Staring right at Aeric, Rumpel smiled. It was an easy going, friendly grin. One that, to an outsider, would make the man appear much more trustworthy than he was. “Now, what do you think would happen if I turned back the hands of time, oh say,” he glanced at the watch on his wrist, “thirty minutes ago? Hmm? And perhaps I might even pluck,” he mimed plucking an object from Aeric’s head, “the memory right out.”

  Fury boiled and bubbled like a frothy cauldron in his blood.

  “Ah yes, now you see.” Golden eyes glimmered. “Fix this mess, and then we leave.”

  “You filthy son of—” Aeric turned to rush him, but Rumpel vanished in a plume of sulfurous smoke.

  That’s when he was aware of the eyes blinking large back at him. Alice was like a deer caught in a hunter’s crossbow. Hatter didn’t look shocked, so much as confused.

  “Who were you talking to?” Alice whispered.

  Knowing that Rumpel could only be seen if he wished to be seen, trying to convince the two of them he’d not gone crazy seemed pointless at best. He shook his head.

  “Then can you please,” Hatter growled, “tend to my daughter?”

  “Please?” Alice said it softer, much more kind than her husband.

  Just then a pop of indrawn air sounded and before them was the Green wearing only a cloak of Ivy and Hawthorn, Danika buzzing agitatedly, and a glowering Galeta in a robe of arctic ice.