The louder buzzing sound drew his eyes back to the trees. Ethan didn’t know exactly what he’d expected to see burst into the clearing after the fairies, but thousands of pixies hadn’t been it. The fairies had easily chased them off before, so how had they turned into such a threat? Taking aim, he hoped to pick off a few pixies like a game of skeet practice, but the fairies had engaged them and he feared he might hit one of them by mistake. Reengaging the safety, he slid the gun back into its holster. He knew it would be useless, just as he’d feared.
Again the fairies commanded that they run, and this time the command was unmistakable. As a battle began with showers of pixie and fairy dust colliding in the air like glittering sparks, Ethan decided perhaps that was the best thing to do.
“Seriously?” asked Merrick as they all made a frantic path of escape through the trees and tangled grasses growing from the forest floor. “Pixies again? I’m beginning to feel like I’m in some demented Disney film. Vampires should not be dealing with dishonest fairies, sadistic pixies, and vicious mermaids!”
“Much less running from them,” added Cedric.
If Ethan hadn’t felt so much concern that the fairies could no longer fend off the pixies for some unknown reason, he might have laughed at that. As it was, he grabbed Danielle’s hand into his and tried not to trip as they moved as fast as they could from the fray of battling magical creatures.
The pixies were in pursuit. He only knew because the scent of rotten apples had assaulted his nose. He spared a backward glance and swallowed as his focus returned to the way in front of him. Zigzagging around the trees were hundreds of colorful streaks of movement. The dull, bluish ones he knew to be pixies. It was obvious that the fairies were still struggling to stop them, and it was quite clear the pixies were relentless this time. His breath sawed in and out of his lungs as they ran, and his legs began to burn. Mentally he vowed to run harder in their workouts to better condition himself for things like this—which were, unfortunately, becoming a common occurrence.
“Should we head for the campsite?” he asked. Ethan didn’t know if that was the best place to go, but he couldn’t think of anywhere else they might be able to hide from these things.
“The spelled bedchambers?” asked Casanova.
Ethan responded with, “Can you think of a better place?” frowning at how he was starting to sound winded already.
“No,” replied the French vampire as he ran alongside him at a slightly faster pace due to his longer stride.
“I concur,” said the prince. “We must get within those magical barriers.”
Nadia squealed and began swatting at pixies catching at her long black hair. One buzzed past Ethan’s ear and then he felt tugging at the fabric of his clothes. The pixies had caught up with them. Ethan tried to smack them away before they lifted him off the ground like they had last time.
“Bloody hell!” bellowed Merrick. “I’ve been dusted!” Ethan looked and saw that the back of Merrick’s head and the side of his cheek were covered in a glittering substance. Ethan figured it was pixie dust, but the highland warrior kept running. As he also kept moving, Ethan wondered if the magical substance would affect Merrick later, and in a bad way.
Ethan had sent many of the little blue beasts flying by smacking at them with the back of his hand, but they still surrounded him in increasing numbers, and he was forced to stop running to fight them off.
Drawing his sword, Richard hacked at pixies, slicing through several of them with one slash of the blade. This seemed to make them angrier and a good portion of their attack shifted and focused on the prince. The little blue beasts managed to wrench the weapon from his grip and then they latched onto his clothes. Fairies were unable to stop Richard from being the first to leave the ground.
With the fairies outnumbered and the pixies using what seemed like a new kind of magic, Ethan realized they might lose this battle. Swinging around, Ethan let go of Danielle’s hand to try and fight the things off. He searched the ground for some kind of weapon besides the gun. Again, a stick seemed like the best choice and he bent to pick up the longest one he could see.
Apparently Danielle had the same idea, but she’d found a longer and straighter stick. When she spun it above her head, he realized why she’d chosen it. She was using it like a bo staff, which was another weapon he’d seen her use. It worked better for her than it did for him. Ethan grunted with each swing, trying to put as much power as he could into it as he tried to repel the pixies, and he did manage to hit three to four at a time. But his girly little wife managed to send several more of the mean-spirited beasts flying into trees, probably killing them.
Unfortunately, too many of the wretched things were getting past his swinging stick and latching onto his clothes. His shirt dug into his armpits as he was lifted up into the air. Danielle and Nadia were left to fight alone, he realized, when he noticed that the other men were being lifted like he was.
He recognized Alora when she tried to free him. She sent a blast of her fairy dust at the ones attached to his sleeves. Only then did he see that the pixies had some sort of magical shield protecting them from the fairy’s magic because the dust just bounced off before it even touched the pixie.
With his attention returning to his wife, he watched as she spun the stick like a weapon, sending pixies flying in all directions, but her gaze lifted and locked with his as he was pulled farther away from her. Worry filled her expression and she took a step toward him, but was forced to stop when a swarm of pixies circled her.
“Ethan!” she called.
“Keep fighting,” he called back, not sure if she could hear him or not.
Feeling utterly helpless, he watched as a blast of pixie dust struck Danielle’s stick and snapped it in half. She discarded what was left and reached over her shoulder for the nunchakus. With one in each hand, she spun both at the same time so fast they were a blur of movement. After seeing the stick break like that, Ethan was worried about Merrick who’d taken a hit of the stuff in the head. Spotting him just a bit up the hill, the Highland warrior seemed okay, although he was wandering around a bit like he was addled or something. Ethan figured it depended on the spell they cast when they struck someone or something with their dust. They must have hit Merrick with some sort of spell to make him useless to the fight. Glancing down, a wave of unease struck him in the chest. Normally he wasn’t afraid of heights, but he felt like he could fall at any moment and he had nothing to hold onto. If he did manage to get loose, he’d be seriously injured, so he quit struggling and hoped the fairies could help stop his fall if the pixies had it in their plans to drop him.
Higher and higher they took him until he looked down at the tops of the trees. Trying to see their expressions when they stopped their upward momentum, a sense of foreboding made his heart pause and his lungs seize within his chest. They were going to drop him, they had to be....
“Oh, shi—oomph!” he grunted when he fell and hit the small branches at the top of a tree. They snapped under his weight. Desperate to stop his fall, Ethan reached out and tried to grab anything he could. One twig broke and dragged against his cheek, breaking the skin as it shoved off his glasses. Another twig, a bigger one, broke and jammed into his thigh. The one he’d grabbed onto also snapped and he had to try for something else. Feeling bark drag across his fingers and the palms of his hands, he knew he’d finally gotten a decent hold of the trunk. Once severed leaves stopped drifting past him, and he knew he wouldn’t slide any farther, he attempted to see what had happened to the others.
Counting, he saw that Max and the vampires were stuck in the tops of trees just like he was. Except for Merrick, who was still wandering aimlessly below.
Several feet down and to the north, he could just make out the movement of Danielle’s nunchakus. Squinting he thought he could see Nadia crouched down behind Danielle with arms thrown up over her face. Having lost his glasses in the fall, he couldn’t see very clearly, but it appeared as though his seemingly fra
gile wife was doing a brilliant job of protecting her friend. Bless her heart. He had to say he was quite impressed. Danielle was the most successful in the fight, besides Richard who’d sliced through many pixies with his sword before they’d gotten it away from him and lifted him into the tree.
With a prayer in his heart for her victory, he continued to watch her when a sudden shot of pixie dust stuck Danielle’s fingers and the fast-moving nunchakus were knocked from her grip. Obviously thinking quickly, she turned, grabbed a handful of Nadia’s top and urged her to run with her. Ethan noticed when she looked back over her shoulder, probably trying to see where he was, but he also knew she’d never see him up in the tree like this. He tried to call out to her, but it wasn’t likely she’d be able to hear him this time either.
The two women ran, pumping their arms, but it wasn’t enough. He knew the pixies had captured them when Nadia screamed for Max with a sense of fear and desperation soaking the name. Danielle shouted his name as well, but instead of desperation, he heard a mixture of fear and frustration in her cry. The pixies lifted them high above the trees as well. And just as he had done, Danielle and Nadia quit struggling when the pixies had them so high they would die from the fall. Unable to do anything about it, Ethan watched as his wife and his friend drifted out of sight. Several fairies took chase and he hoped they could do something for the girls, but he was beginning to lose faith in that.
Ethan drew air deep into his lungs, and then let it out slowly as he dropped his forehead against the tree. He suspected he’d cracked or bruised a rib because it hurt to take that breath, but he didn’t particularly care about that at the moment. Gone. His wife was gone ... kidnapped by a horde of horrible pixies. Damn them! His nails dug into the bark as all of his concerns resurfaced. Too many things hunted her....
“Ethan?” a small voice said.
He lifted his head and peered into Alora’s slightly blurry face. “Could you stop them?” he asked. Did you save Danielle?
Shaking her head, Alora bobbed in the air, her little wings fluttering a mile a minute. “They’re gone. I’m sorry.”
Ethan meant to ask what had happened, and how the pixies had been able to repel their magic, but he felt his fingers slip and decided that getting down should be his top priority. “Can you help me down?” he managed to grunt out with his feet searching for new footing and his hands groping for a sturdier branch.
Alora’s gaze followed the line of the trunk to the forest floor. “We can do many things with our magic, but we can’t make you fly, I’m afraid.”
“Brilliant,” he said hoping she could hear the sarcasm there.
“We can conjure flowers to break your fall if you happen to slip,” Alora said cheerily as he began to slowly make his way down.
“That’s something, I suppose,” he said, gripping a branch as he wedged his foot into the crook of the next.
Slowly, and with a lot more scrapes and bruises, Ethan worked his way from branch to branch. A stab of pain shot across his torso with his movement. He had injured something, he just didn’t know what. The other men did the same, except they let loose a lot more swear words than he did. Vampires just weren’t accustomed to being in such precarious positions with their inherited talents, even during the day. But with the curse tamed by fairy magic as it was, the guards didn’t have their usual advantages to aid them.
When he got to the last branch, he realized the drop would be a little too far for him to land safely. At least that’s how it seemed. Without his glasses he couldn’t say for certain. He looked around but couldn’t see where Alora had gone so she could do something to soften his fall. Deciding to try it alone, Ethan adjusted, slid to his stomach and then hung from his hands trying to shorten the distance. He still wound up flat on his back with a grunt. Gaining his footing and brushing himself off, he tried for a moment to find his glasses. When he didn’t find them, he gave up and moved stiffly to where the other men were.
“How did you all wind up in the trees?” Merrick asked.
Richard thumped the Highland warrior on the back. “I see you’re coming out of it.”
“Coming out of what?” Merrick asked, his eyes narrowing as his eyebrows lowered.
“You’ve got something right about—” Casanova motioned to his own cheek near his ear.
Merrick swiped two fingers down the side of his face and looked at them. His eyes widened momentarily and then his lip curled. “Oh, hell! I sparkle!” Looking mortified, Merrick snatched up a fistful of his t-shirt and tried to scrub the glittering substance off. He only succeeded in smearing it.
“Why didn’t they do that to all of us? Wouldn’t it have made it easier on them if they had?” Ethan asked thinking about the pixies Richard had sliced in half.
Alora looked at Merrick and then back at him with a glimmer of amusement dancing in her eyes. “Did you wish to sparkle too?” she asked with a dainty little snicker.
Ah, that’s why she’d found his comment funny. “No,” he said, slightly annoyed, “Why didn’t they make us all addled and useless like Merrick?”
The Highlander scowled at his words. “Thanks, man.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. I meant it would have been easier for them if they’d spelled us so we couldn’t fight them.”
“They tried to do that, actually,” said the male fairy in green. Ethan had learned he was called Elrick and it seemed like he was one of their leaders. Elrick continued, “But we stopped them by shielding you from their magic. That’s why they dumped you in the trees instead.”
Supposing that made sense, Ethan cast his gaze heavenward wishing to see Danielle and Nadia returned by some miracle. He saw nothing more than a bird or two traveling across the bits of open sky he could see past the treetops. “What are we going to do now?” His gaze returned to Elrick’s as he searched for an answer.
“We sent some of our scouts to track them so we know where they’ve taken them, but once we enter their territory, we’ll be hindered even more than we were today.”
“What happened, exactly?” Ethan asked, because he really wanted to know how the pixies had gotten away with this.
The fairy sighed and ran a hand over the leaves embellishing his tunic. “When your rings and necklaces were lost, we’re certain they were able to see that you were here. And your replacements aren’t finished...”
And because of that, they were left vulnerable and exposed. For a moment he thought about asking what the pixies had planned for them, but then he recalled that they’d already discussed the fact that the pixies might want to eat them. A sense of desperation seized his heart and his gaze swung to Max. “We’ll get them back,” vowed the knight before he could say anything.
“Do you have a plan?” Ethan asked, hopeful that his friend could and would come up with something.
Max looked at the guards and said, “We need the curse back for this.”
“Unfortunately, we can’t help you with that,” answered Richard.
“Why not?” Max asked.
“Because of this fairy food we’ve been eating ... we can’t turn you,” said Casanova.
“Not even at night?”
“Not even then,” Richard said.
Apparent frustration fisted Max’s hands. “We’ll leave this place and when it wears off—”
“It’s hard to say when that will happen,” said Elrick.
The knight’s eyes narrowed on the fairy. “What do you mean?”
Elrick shrugged his shoulders as he hovered at eye-level to Max. “It could take a day or two, or it could take weeks. We’ve never had the need to do this before, so we don’t know how long it will take for the fairy food to leave their systems.”
Max swore and threw a fist into a nearby tree, then swore again when he hurt himself with the action. If the pixies had them, they didn’t have a couple of days. They had to get to them now. Shaking his hand, Max paced back and forth, then stopped abruptly and turned to Elrick, snapping his fingers. “Ah! Teach
us a few spells, tell us where they live and we’ll get our women back on our own.”
When Elrick’s jaw dropped a fraction before the fairy re-schooled his expression, Ethan knew what the fairy would say before he did. “We can’t do that.”
“Why ... not?” Max asked, his knuckles going white, and Ethan realized Max had edited out his curse. They couldn’t afford to offend the fairies if they needed their help. Max was smart enough to know this.
“Please, we need your help. You said they might want to eat them,” Ethan said, urgency tangling his insides into a mess of panic. What if he’d already gotten her pregnant again? Mentally, he berated himself for foolishly thinking they were safe with the fairies, and could try for a somewhat normal life.
“Will you take us to where they have them?” asked Max moving up to stand by Ethan’s side.
Alora nodded. “We’ll take you, but we’ll be at a disadvantage on their land.”
“You’ll have to do this on your own,” added Elrick.
Ethan swallowed. They’d all just been dumped in the trees by pixies, so how were they going to rescue them as mortals with no magic to aid them?
Max snapped his fingers again, his mind obviously working out different ways to get their wives back. “Cedric, call Order Headquarters and get some vampires to meet us there. We’ll do this at night when the curse is the strongest.”
Ethan agreed with his friend. Thus far they had only dealt with pixies during the day, but cursed beings at night might just be the leverage they needed. A wicked smile touched his mouth as he imagined vampires feeding on pixies. Yes, he wished he could be one of them, but there wasn’t time for them to complete the change and get to their wives quickly. For now being a witness would have to do.
Chapter 10
What Could Be Worse Than Pixies?
Danielle tried to swallow the panic sucking all of the moisture from her mouth, and licked her lips. It didn’t help. A shuddering breath left her as she pinched her eyes shut. She just couldn’t keep looking at the wide and deep ocean below them as the pixies took her and Nadia to wherever it was they were taking them. Her fingers dug into her sleeves with white-knuckled grips. She really wanted to cling to something so she didn’t feel like she was about to fall at any second, but there was nothing but herself she could hold onto. Her eyes tightened, as did her fingers. At least she was wearing the hoodie. It was sturdier than her shirt, and she wasn’t terrified the fabric of her clothes would give out.
Forever (Book #3 in the Fateful Series) Page 15