by Ruth Vincent
“Why?”
Obadiah sighed. “They’re werewolves.” He paused, weighing his words. “They don’t like fairies. And being your mother’s daughter, I’m not sure they’d believe your ‘proof’ that she’s not the cause of their problems. They might be more likely to listen if the information about Korvus comes from me—I’m sorry to say. I won’t stay long—I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
At last I conceded.
“Take this at least,” I said, handing him the Vale Cleaver I’d been carrying with me. “You never know when it might come in handy.”
Reluctantly, he took it.
“There are some books under the bed,” he mentioned as we said our goodbyes. “They’re all in Faerie. Plus, there are some Elvish romances. You can read Elvish runes, right?”
I nodded. “As enjoyable as that sounds, hurry back, okay? I’ll be worried about you.”
He touched his fingers to my cheek, then kissed me. “I promise I’ll be back soon.”
I stood in the doorway for a long time after he’d left, still feeling his lips on mine.
At last I walked over to the bed, curled up under the warmth of the wolf skins and waited.
After a long time of reading deliciously lurid elven romances, I realized it had grown dark outside the House Tree’s round window.
How long had Obadiah been gone?
It felt like I’d waited a long time, but then again, there were no clocks in here. That was part of the house’s charm. All I could do was wait.
So I lay there, listening to the sap whoosh through the walls of the tree like a beating heart, and trying not to think about my fears.
The events of the last few days kept going through my mind. We had to stop Korvus from getting at more women, but even if we did, it wouldn’t help the untold number of women he’d already hurt. Meanwhile, my mother was going to die without a cure for her Elixir Thirst. And Obadiah needed Elixir too. He might not be as far gone as the Queen was, but if something didn’t change, that day was coming. Dammit it, where was he?
These worries running over and over in my brain were like great stones slowly grinding me down, and I felt exhausted. I closed my eyes, letting my head fall back into the pillow of pelts. A restless sleep overtook me. I didn’t know how long I was out for. I heard faint sounds from outside the House Tree that stirred me. It sounded like fighting, but it could just as easily have been from my dreams.
I woke with a start. Obadiah was standing over me, his clothes covered in bits of broken leaves and dirt.
“You’re back.” I leaped up out of bed and into his arms.
For a moment, he stiffened, then he threw his hands around me, pressing me hard against him.
I closed my eyes, breathing in the smell of him. His natural scent had been replaced by the smell of the forest.
“I was worried about you,” I whispered. “What took you so long? How did the meeting with the werewolves go?”
“Ah, it went all right, I suppose,” he said. “I’m sorry it took me a while. I’ll have to go back again tomorrow.”
“That’s all right.” I kissed his cheek.
I threaded my hands through his hair and he kissed me full and hard on the mouth. His lips were hungry, demanding. There was an urgency there, a need, and I flushed with pleasure at his obvious desire for me.
His fingers traced down my cheek, trailing deliciously across my neck, then down to my waist. He placed his hands possessively in the back pockets of my jeans and pushed me up against the wall of the tree. I could hear the pulse of the sap throbbing, just like my own hot, excited heart, as he continued to kiss me, raising my wrists up above my head, leaving my whole body deliciously vulnerable to the whims of his tongue and teeth.
He was slowly sliding my shirt up over my head, then unzipping my jeans. I shivered as the cold night air hit my bare skin, before he pressed against me. Seconds later, his own shirt was off, and he leaned forward, pushing me back onto the bed, so that I sprawled out across the soft pelts. He loomed over me, his eyes sparkling dominantly. I smiled up at him. So it was going to be like that, was it? That sounded just perfect right about now.
His hands pinning mine against the wolf-carved headboard, he looked down at me, and an expression I couldn’t read crossed his face. But a moment later it was gone, and his mouth was roving over my body, whiting out all the worries from my mind.
It had always been good with Obadiah, ever since the first time, but we’d been dating for eight months now, and we’d fallen into our tender routines. But something was different tonight. There was a fierceness, a longing, I hadn’t seen in a while, and I liked it. I didn’t want tender and sweet tonight; I wanted not to think. When I looked up into his eyes, I almost didn’t recognize him. I could imagine what those maidens in Greek myths must have felt like, being ravaged by a god.
When it was over, I lay panting beside him, sweat trickling down my stomach, wondering what had just happened. It had all been so sudden, so intense, I still felt like I was in a daze. I rolled over on my side to look at Obadiah. He was lying quite still, staring up at the ceiling, and he seemed startled when I put my arm around him. I nuzzled my head against his chest, and slowly his stiff shoulders relaxed.
“Good night, my love,” I whispered, nuzzling my cheek into his chest.
“Good night,” he whispered back. When I looked up into his eyes, there was something deeply sad in them. He lay still for a moment, not touching me, then slowly picked up one of the wolf skins and laid it over my shoulders.
I was about to ask what was wrong, what that look had been, but he had turned his body to face the wall of the tree. He was probably exhausted, I thought, from his long negotiations with the werewolves, and what we had just done. I’d talk to him tomorrow, I told myself. I turned over onto my side, laying my arm across Obadiah, stroking his chest, but he didn’t respond. He must have already been lost in sleep.
Chapter 11
The first rays of dawn woke me, coming through the curtainless quartz window set into the tree. I yawned and stretched, slowly opening my eyes. Obadiah had gotten out of bed, and was standing at the window, his backside gloriously naked in the rosy morning light.
He turned towards to me at the sound of my yawn.
“Good, you’re awake. Come, get dressed, we have to go.”
“Where?” I asked sleepily, rubbing my eyes. I wanted to stay in bed with Obadiah, maybe fall asleep again under the warm pelts. I wasn’t ready to face the day yet.
“I told the werewolves we’d meet them at dawn.”
I sat up in bed.
“So you want me to come with you this time? We didn’t have time to talk about how the negotiations went last night. Did they understand? What was their reaction?”
“Good, I think,” said Obadiah, though he frowned. “But they still want to meet with you. Come on, let’s get dressed. We’re already late.”
I scrambled out of bed, gathering up and putting on my clothes from last night. As I did, I cast a glance at Obadiah, buttoning the tiny buttons of his crisp, white shirt.
Something suddenly occurred to me.
“Obadiah, your hands have stopped shaking.”
He looked up at me, his brow furrowed, as if confused.
“Last night I don’t remember you having the tremors once,” I said. “And you haven’t had any this morning, have you?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t think you had nightmares last night either. At least, I didn’t hear you.”
“I don’t think I did,” he said quickly. “I don’t think I dreamed of anything.”
I grabbed his hands, bouncing with excitement.
“So you’re feeling better?” I asked.
He shrugged nonchalantly. “I feel alright.”
“But the Elixir symptoms, they’re gone?”
“Yes. I suppose they are.”
“Oh my god, that’s great. I wonder if it’s because we’ve been in the Vale. There’s Elixir
in the water here, in the air; that’s why you can smell it. Maybe there’s enough of it in the atmosphere that you’re absorbing it, getting enough just from the environment?”
“It must be.”
“I don’t want to get your hopes up, or get my hopes up, but this is the best sign we’ve had in a while.” I smiled at him, and tentatively he smiled back.
I put my arms around him.
“Well, fingers crossed that this sticks around,” I said.
My mind was whirling with the possibilities. Was Obadiah’s “cure,” if it was that, dependent on him staying in the Vale? He’d be pissed if that turned out to be the case. Obadiah hated it here. To him it would always be associated with his capture.
“Mab, we have to go now. You know you can’t be late for Wolfmen; it’s an honor thing with them.”
I nodded, and threw on the rest of my clothes. Together we ran down the winding flight of stairs.
We walked a long way through the woods in silence, the leaves crunching under our feet, till we reached an unfamiliar House Tree.
“This is it,” Obadiah said briskly.
I stared at the trunk.
“This isn’t where I remember the werewolf camp being.”
“Ah, well, that’s not surprising. The rebels change their location frequently. It’s how they stay one step ahead of the Queen’s spies.”
The bark of the tree was a greenish gray, sloughing off in places. It looked sickly. Perhaps it was already succumbing to the Elixir drought and the werewolves would have to find a new meeting place soon, even without the Queen’s discovery. There was something foreboding about the gnarled trunk, mottled and molting, and I felt suddenly ill at ease. Obadiah knocked in a rhythmic pattern on the bark of the tree and a small door swung open. There was only a yawning blackness inside.
“Come,” he said.
We stepped through the small door together.
I blinked in the dark, trying to adjust my eyes to the lack of light inside. The forest had been dim, but this was pitch-black. I couldn’t have seen Obadiah if he’d been waving his hands right in front of my face.
“Couldn’t they have gotten some Perpetual Candles or something?” I muttered, reaching out to grab Obadiah’s hand so I didn’t trip.
“Werewolves can see in the dark, remember?”
“Well, humans have no night vision at all,” I muttered, clinging on to him. “Don’t let me trip. Can you see?”
“I can see enough.”
It must have been the Selkie in him. I’d once been able to see in the dark too, before I’d lost my powers.
I clung to his hand and let him lead me like a blind person down a long hallway. I could tell it was sloping. We were going deeper underground.
At last we came to a stop. With my free hand I reached out and touched something. It felt like the back of a large chair.
“Have a seat,” Obadiah said, “and I’ll go see about some light.”
I hoisted myself up and took a seat on the big chair.
Something lashed itself over my arms and I screamed.
“Obadiah, what the . . . ? It’s a trap!”
Something lashed itself over my feet too.
I screamed, then the lights came on: green phosphorescent torches.
I stared around in horror.
The room looked like a laboratory. The walls were lined in shelves of glass vials, with labels I couldn’t read. The script appeared to be Goblin. There was also a rack of terrifying surgical instruments gleaming in the greenish light. I looked down at my hands and saw they were bound to the chair with straps, and that the straps were locked. There was no way I could break myself out of that.
“Obadiah!” I cried out. Where was he? Had whoever had captured me captured him too?
From somewhere nearby I heard an anguished cry.
And then I saw Obadiah looming over me.
“Obadiah, thank god you’re free. Get me out of this thing; we have to get out of here!” I cried, panicked.
But Obadiah only smiled, a terrifying smile. And then he raised his hand. He was holding one of the surgical knives.
Was I dreaming? Was this some kind of horrible nightmare? I blinked my eyes, trying to convince myself I was still asleep, that I could wake up, and Obadiah would be lying beside me under the wolf-skin pelts of the House Tree. I blinked once, twice. My eyes were open, and he was still standing over me holding the knife.
“I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, Mabily Jones,” he said.
I heard that voice again, screaming. It was a man’s voice—I could tell that much—a gut-wrenching, agonizing cry.
I craned my neck as far as I could through the bonds in the direction of the voice.
There was another room, next to this one, with another chair. Someone was strapped to it, writhing against the bonds. He wrenched free of a gag over his mouth and cried out, the voice unmistakable. “Mab, no!”
It was Obadiah.
But Obadiah was also standing over me holding the knife.
Had I gone mad?
“Mab, that’s not me. It’s him,” Obadiah’s voice was screaming.
Obadiah smiled his terrifying smile over me.
“Yes, it’s me,” he said, and my stomach turned to ice.
Chapter 12
I stared wildly up into Obadiah’s face, the knife glinting between us in the sterile light. A wave of terror rocked me, and I felt like I was going to vomit. No, it couldn’t be.
But it was.
“Korvus?” I said, my voice shaking.
He smiled.
Hot tears filled my eyes. I couldn’t see. It couldn’t be. He looked exactly like Obadiah. How had he fooled me?
And then a thought even more horrifying than Korvus standing over me with a knife occurred to me. Memories of last night filled me: Obadiah’s body arching over me, except it hadn’t been. I couldn’t bear to think that. I leaned over the side of the chair as far as I could with the bonds and vomited.
Korvus jumped out of the way, cursing at me, but I kept throwing up, roiling from the anguish, praying that what I knew was true wasn’t true.
How had I not known?
Oh my god, how had I not known?
Korvus just grinned his sickly grin.
“It was certainly a lovely evening we spent together, wasn’t it?”
“Shut up!” I cried out, trying to punch or kick him, but the bonds wouldn’t let me.
“I enjoyed myself immensely.”
“Shut up!” I was screaming and crying, snot running down my face, my mouth full of bile.
“Oh come on, Mabily, you enjoyed yourself too: don’t lie to me and tell me you didn’t.”
And then to my horror, he began to do an impression of my voice in intimate moments of pleasure.
I wanted to plug my ears, but my hands were tied. I tried to bite his hand, but the restraints stopped me.
I wanted to die.
I kept praying this was some sort of sick nightmare and I would wake up. Please, let me wake up. And Obadiah, the real Obadiah, would be by my side, rubbing my back and telling me it was all just a dream.
I kept blinking my eyes, but he was still standing there over me with his sick grin and his knife. And I wanted to die, because it was true. I had willingly slept with him. I hadn’t known. I’d thought it was Obadiah. Oh god, I’d had no idea it wasn’t Obadiah.
And Obadiah, the real Obadiah, was lying in the next room, screaming from behind his gag, crying out for me. Could he hear my conversation with Korvus right now? Could he hear what Korvus was saying? How could I tell him what had happened? How could I tell him how Korvus had deceived me?
I leaned over the chair and vomited again.
I looked up at Korvus, radiating hate from my eyes, wishing I could cut him with the sheer force of my rage.
“How could you? How could you do this? Why?” I asked, more a cry of the soul than a question.
He paused, cocking his head to the side as i
f considering. “Why? You broke into my house. I saw your fingerprints on all my notebooks. You pried your dirty fingers inside everything I hold dear. So maybe I wanted to do the same to you. But that’s not the real reason I took you captive, or your friend Obadiah either. I have far more pragmatic reasons for that.”
My heart was pounding in my ears, my stomach roiling, and all I could think of was Obadiah tied to his chair in the next room. I could hear him screaming my name over and over again. He couldn’t see me. His bonds wouldn’t let him turn his head. He could probably just hear me when I screamed, like I could hear him. And as I listened, his anguish twisted in my heart like a knife. How could I tell him I hadn’t known? That I’d thought it was him, Obadiah, my love? How would he ever forgive me?
I could never forgive myself.
“You’re the key to the Elixir drought,” Korvus said.
I stared at him, not understanding.
“I realized it recently,” he went on. “That’s why I came to the human world, and seduced your roommate, so she’d take me home with her, and I could plant the Vale Cleaver in your room.”
“That was you?” I gasped. “I thought my mom sent the message.”
“Of course you did. I was banking on that. Because it would make you come back.”
Suddenly it all made a terrifying sense: the presence of “Cory” the morning the knife had appeared, and why the Queen seemed surprised to see me.
“But why?” I cried. “What do you want from me?”
“Don’t you see? You’re the world’s only changeling, both human and fairy at once.”
I still stared at him, dull hatred replacing any thoughts. I didn’t know where he was going with this and I didn’t care.
“Haven’t you wondered why you never experienced the Elixir Thirst, even though you didn’t touch the stuff for years?”
“Because I’m human,” I said.
“Yes, that’s right, you’re human, but you’re also a fairy. And the combination keeps you safe. Somehow the taint of humanity preserves the fragile Elixir in your blood, and it keeps it from evaporating. It’s why the Fey have been able to use the dopamine they steal from children to keep themselves alive. But it’s even better with you, because your fairy nature and your human nature have been bound together by being a changeling; the two live symbiotically. You don’t need to look for the cure, Mabily Jones, you are the cure.”