Into the Twilight: a Between the Worlds Novel

by Morgan Daimler

  She looked disappointed but moved on. He stood there for a moment frowning. Perhaps it was just this one time he thought uncertainly. Or perhaps….perhaps this is part of the cost of being bonded to Allie. That would explain a great deal about Jessilaen as well. That thought was a difficult one. He did not regret saving her life, nor even being tied to her mind, although he greatly feared that she would not waver from her preference for Jessilaen alone. However the idea of not being physically able to bed anyone else but her when she was in a monogamous relationship with another person was hard to come to terms with.

  He shook himself slightly, directing his attention back outwards. He needed to focus on finding the Dark court elves hiding within the town. He could worry about his sex life, or lack of one, later. He was getting close now, he could feel it, and the sooner they eliminated this threat the better.

  He moved up to the bar and waited for the bartender’s attention. A few minutes later a harried looking older woman came over, “What’ll it be?”

  “Orange juice, straight,” he replied, keeping his eyes on the crowd.

  “Virgin juice?” the woman asked, clearly amused. She was short, barely five feet, and thin. He might have thought her a retired dancer but she was far too homely to have ever earned money stripping, even here.

  He allowed his lips to curve into a small smile as he slipped her a hundred. “Indeed.”

  The woman’s grey eyes went wide. “I can’t change this, not this early.”

  “I don’t need change back,” he replied easily. “But I am curious about something.”

  “Right,” the woman agreed, then to his surprise switched to low Elvish. “And I can keep the change if’n I satisfy yer curiosity, then?”

  Bleidd switched languages easily, looking more intently at the woman. “You can keep the money either way. But if you happen to know anything about dancers disappearing or being hurt, or about strange elves causing trouble in here, that would certainly satisfy my curiosity.”

  She grunted, sliding a large glass of orange juice his way. “I wouldn’ta thought the cops ‘ud care about strippers.”

  “I’m neither a police officer nor an Elven Guard,” Bleidd said calmly. After another moment of study he decided the woman was a goblin. Probably outcast from her clan if she was working here.

  “Aren’t ye then?” the woman said suspiciously.

  “No. I was Outcast many years ago,” and no need to tell you I was redeemed he thought. “And I have a friend in this town who has mixed ancestry that is in danger from these elves.”

  The woman peered intently at him, her whole demeanor thawing. “Mayhap I heard o’ ye. And yer trying to help yer friend?”

  “One of these elves hurt her badly several months ago. They tried to hurt her again last week. I intend to find them and see how they enjoy the experience themselves,” he said savagely.

  The goblin woman grinned approvingly. “Well enough then. Yeah I know ‘em. Come in here every couple days and start trouble. Drink too much, mess wit the girls. Use glamour on and mess with their heads. Hurt ‘em sometimes real bad.”

  “And the owner puts up with this?” Bleidd said coldly.

  “The owner’d sell his mother’s liver for a bit o’ cash,” the bartender sneered.

  Bleidd took a long drink of the juice. “When do you expect them back?”

  “Tomorrow,” the goblin said, her eyes glinting viciously.

  He nodded. “Keep the money.”

  He stood up, pushing the remains of the drink away and walked out through the crowd. Outside a cold rain was falling, and he shivered feeling a slight twinge in his injured shoulder. Tomorrow he thought Tomorrow they will come here, and they will not leave again. At least not in one piece….

  ****************************

  “Wait here,” Allie said to Jason and Natarien as she struggled out of the passenger seat of Jason’s truck.

  “Ummm, Allie, this is a bad idea,” Jason said weakly. Natarien looked uneasy but didn’t move to follow her and Allie spared a moment to be grateful that the Guard assigned to her that night was the youngest and one inclined to listen to her, even when she was acting irrational.

  She ignored both of them. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  She marched through the rain up to the gate in front of Miss Amelia’s house leaving them sitting unhappily parked by the sidewalk. She knew it wasn’t fair to Jason to make him drive her here, but she wasn’t allowed to drive, in case she passed out, and she was so furious she would have walked if she had to. Bleidd was still out, Jess was at the Outpost, and she needed to see the old mage. After what she’d unintentionally witnessed that afternoon she had to know more about what she’d done to the two elves who were spellbound to her, and this was the only place to find any answers. And Allie had no intention of leaving without answers.

  She limped heavily across the lawn, her body aching with the effort. At the door she held the doorbell down until the maid answered, then pushed past the startled woman. The maid tried to stop her, but Allie was on a mission. She dodged around the heavyset woman and into the parlor where Miss Amelia was sitting with a cup of tea.

  “I need to talk to you,” Allie said, over the maid’s loud protests.

  “It’s alright Lucy,” Miss Amelia said, totally unperturbed by Allie’s behavior. “Let her in.”

  Allie ignored the fuming maid who bowed out of the room with obvious ill grace, her eyes meeting Miss Amelia’s. “You said I had bound them to me, what did you mean?”

  “Them? I was under the impression you had only one person bound to you,” Miss Amelia said, stirring sugar into her tea.

  “Not anymore. Now there is another,” Allie said, flustered and then found herself explaining. “I was dying and he – Jess – tried to help me but his emotions weren’t enough so he brought someone else, someone he knew I loved, and I…I didn’t mean to, it wasn’t on purpose, I was semi-conscious and I needed his feelings and I couldn’t get to them so I…I guess I did what you said, I bound him to me. I don’t even really know how. I thought it was a spell, I mean I know there was a spell involved too, but there was something else…”

  “You bound him – them I suppose – because you need what they give you once they are bound to you. Casual relationships aren’t enough of a connection for you to draw what you truly need from them,” the older woman said, adding honey to her cup.

  “I don’t want them to be bound to me!” Allie said, her voice rising with each word.

  “Why not?” Miss Amelia asked, calmly sipping her tea.

  “Because it’s not fair!” Allie shouted.

  The old woman raised an eyebrow. “How so? You give them something special, something they couldn’t get otherwise, a purity and intensity of feeling that very few people ever experience. And they give you the emotions you need for your own energy.”

  “I don’t want to feed on anyone,” Allie said, fighting tears.

  “There’s no need for childish hysterics,” Miss Amelia said, still perfectly calm. “You are what you are Allie. You do them no harm. I imagine they are more than willing to give you what you need.”

  “That’s not the point,” Allie said, struggling to control herself. “They do it because I make them want to do it. That’s not the same thing. I feel like some kind of freaking drug, the way I influence them to do what I need.”

  “The fact remains that you need them. You can draw on anyone’s emotions and gain some…value from them. But unless your mixed blood makes you entirely different from the one I knew, you need to have this bond with someone to truly get the energy you need, in the way that you need, to stay strong, to heal, to empower yourself.”

  “And if I don’t?” Allie said rebelliously.

  One white eyebrow arched gracefully up. “Then you’ll weaken and pull energy from emotions, feed on to use the crude term you prefer, anyone around you. Like living on watered milk instead of cream. And the emotions will influence you because y
ou will be forced to take whatever you can get.”

  “I wasn’t like this before.”

  “Of course you were. You always have been,” Miss Amelia said dismissively. “Although you certainly have your own unique approach to everything and the way you manifest things is not what a full elf might. But what you are hasn’t changed. You never saw it because you had never bound anyone to yourself before. Now you know what that level of energy is like. Quite frankly I don’t know why you’d want to go back, to be weak and at the whim of other people’s feelings again.”

  “Because I don’t want to see people I care about changed into something they shouldn’t be.” Allie gritted out, annoyed by the other woman’s cavalier disregard for that aspect of things.

  “Does it harm them so much?”

  “It makes them different. Not like other elves. They don’t want anyone but me, for one thing, which goes entirely against their culture. They feel possessiveness, jealousy, things that shouldn’t be an issue in their culture, and now I realize they can’t be with anyone else but me…and my preferences influence them. How am I supposed to feel about that?”

  “Relieved?” Miss Amelia suggested, sipping her tea. “Don’t give me that look young woman. There’s nothing you can do about what they feel because of their binding to you. I’d guess it’s a defense mechanism, to ensure that those you bond to stay with you and keep giving you what you need. And if you agonize so over the morality of it, then comfort yourself with the knowledge that you genuinely care for them and they for you. As you’ve explained it you did not bind them – either of them – until you knew they already loved you. If it were otherwise, if you had taken unwilling people and bound them, forced them into this situation, then perhaps you could feel guilty and call yourself evil.”

  “Aren’t I evil?” Allie said bitterly.

  “Nonsense,” the old woman waved her away. “You have a right to get what you need, as much as any living being does. You harm no one and the fact that you have not one but two men who are willing to join with you and give you their emotions as you need them seems to me to be a strong reference to your character. Stop fighting against accepting what you are. It cannot be changed. Accept it and learn to use it.”

  “And what am I?” she asked softly.

  Miss Amelia gave her a long look. “I think you already know the answer to that question.”

  Allie shook her head. “That’s not possible. How would I not have known that?”

  “You can call your gift a type of human empathy or you can call it what the elves call it. What difference does it make?” the old woman said.

  Allie looked down; her hands were shaking so she clenched them into fists to make them stop. She wanted to keep arguing, but she had heard enough stories growing up about the Bahvanshee, the elves who were able to feed on other people’s emotions and sexual energy, to recognize what Miss Amelia was talking about, and to see it in herself. How could I not have realized this? she thought, angry at herself. It was all there, from the moment I bonded with Jess, even before with his strange obsessive attraction to me. I just refused to see it. Most elves, even in the Dark court, feared those born Bahvanshee because they had the power to force others to their will, to manipulate their emotions, and to drain the life force from anything. Luckily it was an extremely rare thing – Allie suspected true elven empaths were more common than the aberrant Bahvanshee. Leave it to me, she thought suddenly tired, to be the first half-elven one. No wonder I’m so attuned to death that I can track down bodies and murderers.

  “You are what you are. Accept it,” Miss Amelia said callously.

  “I don’t want to feel like I’m manipulating people,” Allie insisted.

  “We can manipulate people with our words and actions Allie. All of us can do this. Perhaps you do influence those who are bound to you through that bond, but that doubtless goes both ways. They affect you too. It is after all a symbiotic relationship,” the old woman stopped drinking and looked off into the distance, as if she were seeing something far away or remembering something she’d almost forgotten. Suddenly everything clicked into place.

  “He was your lover,” Allie said softly. “The other one like me that you knew. He was the elven lover you mentioned before.”

  The old woman nodded slowly. “Yes. He died during the Great War after the Sundering. I would have died with him, if I could have but I had…other things holding me here. And then the greatest irony of all, to find out that being bound to him had extended my own life far past his. Some days it seems like a gift, other days it’s so bitter its unbearable. But there is some small comfort for me in knowing that I am here now to help you find your way. It almost makes me feel like I have some purpose beyond refusing to die just to annoy my greedy family and keeping my staff employed.”

  Allie took a deep breath. “Can I find my way Miss Amelia?”

  “Oh Allie,” the old mage said, setting her teacup down carefully on its matching china plate. “Of course you can. If you want so desperately to be a good person, then stop judging yourself so harshly and do good in the world. It’s your choice – it’s always your choice – whether you are good or evil.”

  Allie opened her mouth to argue more and then closed it again. Miss Amelia was right about several things. Allie had no control over what she was, whether she called herself an empath or Bahvanshee. She could however learn to control her impulses and to choose what she did with her abilities. She nodded stiffly. “Thank you.”

  Miss Amelia waved dismissively. “Go home Allie. It’s late and I’m tired.”

  Allie nodded again, embarrassed now at the way she’d barged in on the elderly woman. She started to walk out when Miss Amelia’s voice stopped her. “I’ll see you promptly at 7 p.m. Wednesday for our next lesson.”

  Allie smiled. “Yes Miss Amelia. Have a nice night.”

  She walked back out into the rainy darkness trying to decide how to tell Bleidd and Jess what she’d just learned. Maybe they had already guessed, but she couldn’t assume. If they chose to stay with her, either of them, they had a right to know what they were choosing.

  And she was tired of ignoring problems and pretending things were fine when they weren’t.

  It was time to start confronting problems head on.

  Chapter 10 – Tuesday

  “She’s dead.”

  “What?” Allie asked, turning slowly towards Syndra who was pacing around the living room. Her friend was wearing her police uniform, including the jacket, looking exactly as she always had when she’d headed out for work when she was still alive. She paced around the room frowning at the wood paneling and chewing her lip now, her blond ponytail bouncing as she walked.

  “I said she’s dead, how hard is that to follow?” Syndra snapped.

  Allie sat down hard on the closest chair, a plush Victorian style seat that managed to be uncomfortable despite its welcoming appearance. Despite everything that Liz had done to her, despite everything she’d said on the phone, Allie was overcome by grief. “What? How?”

  Syndra sighed, smacking the wall with her hand, and then wincing as if she’d forgotten that it would hurt. “I found her where she was hiding. Clever, clever little bitch. And I figured I’d wait and see if I could do anything…I don’t know maybe shove her at the top of the stairs or something. Turns out I was wasting my time. Her own friend killed her. Stabbed her. Not in the back by the way. In the front. Right in the chest.”

  Syndra made a stabbing gesture and Allie winced. “What is it with this group and knives?”

  Syndra snorted. “Well fuck they shot you so clearly they aren’t that picky.”

  “Gee, thanks for that Syn,” Allie said.

  “Obviously they go with whatever works. Probably knives because they’re quiet,” Syndra said, shrugging.

  “Okay, so why are you still here then?” Allie snapped, suddenly angry at the cavalier way her friend had told her of her cousin’s death. She wanted to grieve for Liz, but she was also
angry at her too, and that left her feeling conflicted.

  “Fuck if I know,” Syndra said, smacking the wall again. “Maybe…maybe…fuck! Whatever. I don’t care.”

  Allie relented when she saw how upset Syndra was. “Well, I’ve been thinking about it…”

  “That’s dangerous.”

  “…and I think maybe you’re tied there until the residual energy from the spell is released,” Allie said.

  “What do you mean?” Syndra spun and crossed the room towards where Allie was sitting, looking eager.

  “Well, the spell uses the pain of the girls who died to create an energetic battery, right? And that echo-energy remains active, as if the torture and death is still happening all the time, or out of time, at the ritual site. That’s what’s powering everything there, all the weirdness, the weakening of reality at the site. But I was thinking, maybe part of that, because it also involves tying in the death energy, maybe tying in the death energy actually ties in the souls too, trapping them here.”

  “Well that’s completely fucking horrifying,” Syndra said softly. “Wait I wasn’t killed in the real ritual though. Just an imitation.”

  “But it was a real ritual at the site, it just wasn’t part of the bigger cycle.”

  “So you think it counted enough to trap my soul anyway?”

  “I think so yeah,” Allie said slowly. “Which means until the elven adept gets here and takes it down you’re probably stuck.”