by D. N. Hoxa
Julian smiled half a smile. “You’re going to think I’ve lost my mind. Again.”
“If I’m willing to believe all that crap about dragon blood, trust me, I’m willing to believe in everything else you can tell me.” When he pressed his lips together, I pushed a little harder. “Don’t you think I have the right to know? I am part fairy, after all.”
“Then do me a favor,” he said. “Don’t say anything until I’m done.”
I grinned. “Deal.”
“Before the war, fairies were the strongest Paranormals on Earth. They ruled over every other species. They also took humans into their realm, but they didn’t kidnap them as the world will have you think. Every human who went there did so of their own free will. They knew the risks, knew that their memories would be wiped clean when they left, and they agreed. They lived pretty well, too. Like royalty, some might say.”
I bit my lips and let him continue, as I promised.
“In time, though, the ECU, which in that time was simply called The Order, requested that the fairies take Paranormals, too. Rogues who wouldn’t obey the law, people no prison could hold. All in the name of rehabilitation because fairies were always known to be the most disciplined species. They were also very arrogant creatures. They took that request as an acknowledgement of power from witches, werewolves and vampires, their ego never letting them doubt their true intentions. A year passed and the fairies took in every paranormal that The Order sent their way.”
Scratching his chin, Julian looked at the floor in front of him as if he could see everything he was talking about as clear as day.
“That’s when the propaganda began. The fairies never even considered that anyone would try anything against them. It happened before they realized it—The Order had turned an entire planet against them.” A sad smile touched his lips. “The war came rather unexpectedly. The fairy Courts refused to back down, even though on Earth, they didn’t have the upper hand. The first wave of their armies fought against every Paranormal here. Before the second wave could make it, the witches destroyed all portals to the fairy realm. The powers of the remaining fairies faded pretty quickly. They became weak, an easy prey, perfectly able to die in a fight against other species. End of story.”
Wow. For a long moment, that was all I could say. Wow. Julian was an incredible storyteller. All the time he spoke, I believed him with my whole being. Until he stopped.
“Help me understand here. Why would the ECU create such an elaborate plan just to send their own people to their deaths against the fairies? A lot of people died in the war, as you should know. Why would the ECU or The Order or whatever even want to fight a war against the fairies?”
Julian narrowed his brows. “Why did you come back to me?”
My mouth opened, but no words came out. Power. I’d gone back to Julian for more power.
“The only thing standing between The Order and absolute power were fairies. They had to get rid of them somehow.”
“You say that like the fairies actually cared what happened to our world. They already had their realm. Why would they even bother?”
“Because just like the fairies are connected to their realm, their realm is connected to others. Earth is one of a few dimensions where fairies can exist.”
A tangled mess of thoughts formed in my mind. “You’re telling me that everything I’ve ever known was a lie.”
Julian nodded without missing a beat. “And I don’t expect you to believe it.”
“You’ve made a pretty strong case,” I said reluctantly. Everybody knew the ECU. Everybody knew that they were power hungry. What I didn’t know is where their limits were.
“It doesn’t matter now, anyway. Those things happened a century ago,” Julian said and put another piece of meat in his mouth.
“You’re right,” I whispered. “But history helps us understand the present better.”
“It does,” he said with a nod. “Just like it messes with your head if you let it.”
“Are you telling me not to believe you?” It sure sounded that way to me.
“I’m telling you to not think about it because it doesn’t matter.”
The second he said the last word, his head turned abruptly to the kitchen and the pot that was still boiling. He stood up and ran to it, and sniffed whatever was in there a few times. Then, he turned to the table, grabbed his notebook and wrote something down.
“What is it?”
“It’s working,” he whispered, and my heart skipped a beat. “The test is working.”
I jumped to my feet and went to look at the pan, same as he was doing, but I saw nothing in it. “Can I help?”
Julian shook his head. “Not yet. The spell isn’t complete, but now it’s only a matter of exhausting all the remaining options. There are only a few left.”
Reaching for the pockets of his torn pants, he pulled out three plastic bags filled with dried herbs. The same ones that my aunt had given him. A shiver ran down my back at the reminder. All I could do was hope that she was okay and that Jeb was taking good care of her.
Julian began to mix the herbs into the pan, slowly at first, then really fast, before I got tired of watching and went back to eat some of that awful rabbit meat.
“Who was he?” he asked minutes later, still hunched over the pan.
“Who was who?”
“Your ex.”
A smile stretched my lips. “Vampire. Decent guy. Didn’t work out.” That was the short version.
“I was wondering why I couldn’t find a cauldron in here,” Julian mumbled.
“What about you?” I asked.
He stopped stirring for a second to look at me.
“What about me?”
“Anything. I don’t know a single thing about you, and you already know about my ex-boyfriend. Makes me feel inferior.”
He shrugged, smiling a little. “Ask away.”
Oh, he just made my day.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight,” he said, chuckling.
“Parents?”
“Gone.”
“Siblings?”
“None.”
“Who taught you those spells?”
“A good friend who is no longer alive.”
“Tell me the truth about how you knew what I was.”
Julian didn’t miss a beat like I expected him to. “A spell passed down to me from my father’s side of the family.”
“Blood magic?”
“Yes. Ancient. Very strong.” Maybe he really was telling the truth.
“Any living friends?”
“One.”
My brow raised in confusion. “And you didn’t think you could ask them for help?”
“We haven’t been on speaking terms in a long time now.”
“Why did the ECU fire you?”
“Because they couldn’t bribe me.”
Oh? “Explain.”
A dumbfounded smile on his face, Julian turned to me. When he saw that I wasn’t kidding, though, he spoke.
“One of the witches on the board of directors found out about my dragon blood project. They didn’t trust me with it and wanted me to shut it down and destroy all records. I threatened to go public with everything I had. They fired me. They would have killed me, too, if it wasn’t for you.”
“So why did you steal the blood?” Revenge over a job alone wasn’t that strong a motivator. I’d lost my job, too.
“Because I wanted to show them that I could do it without their help. I could make things…better.”
Hugging my knees to my chest, I thought about the next question I was going to ask him. I didn’t believe the guy, not even close, but I also couldn’t argue that everything he said made sense to me. He said it himself: he didn’t expect me to believe his stories. I was still deciding on it.
“Girlfriend?” I asked despite myself. It was really hard to keep my mouth shut when I got so obsessed with a thought.
“No girlfriend,” sai
d Julian. He put the spoon down next to the stove and turned to me.
“So then why didn’t you kiss me?” I was a very straightforward person. Not to say I liked it, or that it even always worked for my benefit, but it was just how I was.
This time, Julian was really caught by surprise. Slowly, he walked over to me, then squatted right in front of my face, his metallic eyes wide.
“Because it’s been a while since I’ve felt the way I do when you look sad. And because there’s not much I can offer you.”
My whole body was on fire. If I stayed put while he looked at me like that, I was going to explode. So I stood up just to put some distance between us.
“Except power,” I whispered.
“Except power,” Julian repeated with a nod.
Well, that was that. At least now I knew where we stood. I turned around to go to the bathroom and put some cold water on my face. I was already at the door when Julian spoke again.
“But I can still give you a kiss.”
His hands on my shoulders spun me around before his words made complete sense to me. He looked down at me like he wanted to devour me—the willing victim. This time, I didn’t have to wonder what he’d do. I saw it written all over his face. His passion ignited wildfire in my chest, and when his hands framed my face and he brought his lips to mine, I melted completely.
Kissing him was like breathing underwater: you know you shouldn’t, but you want to, anyway. He was warm to my touch, his skin like satin under my fingers. His lips slid on mine, kissing me slowly, like he was afraid that the moment was going to end too soon. I let the feeling envelope me from head to toe. For once in what felt like a very long time, I felt beautiful again, pointy ears and all.
He coaxed my lips into parting little by little. I held onto the back of his neck like he was my whole life. His tongue slid into my mouth, and a cry of pure ecstasy escaped me. My back hit the bathroom door and his arm wrapped around my waist. He pulled me closer and closer until our bodies became one. With his hand in my hair on the back of my head, he moved me whichever way he wanted and I let him. As long as he was kissing me like that, I’d let him do anything.
I wanted to jump in his arms and keep him in front of me forever. But then he began to slow down.
I knew that whatever this was had already come to an end. It broke my heart, but I knew it. When he moved away from me, my body threatened to freeze from the sudden cold. Julian looked at me like a desperate man, eyes filled with regret. I suspected I looked the same.
But we were both adults. We knew that there was no time for romances. At the end of the day, whatever the future held, we’d always have that one kiss.
***
The cold water helped in clearing my head. The tips of my fingers touched my lips with longing. I already missed kissing that stranger.
Before I let myself go too far with thoughts and daydreams that would never become reality, I stepped out of the bathroom.
Something tightened in my chest. Call it instinct, but something was very wrong. I ran to the window and looked outside. Night was about to fall, and the trees around the cabin were really dense.
“It’s working,” Julian whispered from the kitchen area.
“Something’s wrong.” It was almost as if someone was watching us, but I couldn’t see anything outside the window.
“Winter, the blood is working,” Julian said, and this time, his words registered in my brain.
“What?”
His face held the biggest smile I’d ever seen. His eyes were watery, too. “It’s working!” he shouted.
The spell was working. I was going to get my powers. I was going to…
Something moved outside the window. I barely caught it through the corner of my eye. I turned fast, just as the picture went back to normal, but I saw it. I saw black.
Heart in my throat, I grabbed the only knife I had left and ran to the main door.
“They’re here,” I whispered to Julian.
The bright smile died on his lips.
“Are you sure?” he whispered, looking at the window.
But the werewolves could see there was a window, too. They would know to steer clear of it.
Slowly, I moved the chair that held the door closed away just a bit. When the door opened a crack, I looked outside. The blood in my veins froze. Julian began to chant in that weird language like before. I couldn’t find my voice. I didn’t know how to tell him.
We were surrounded.
“Julian,” I whispered, then shut the door again.
This was bad. Very bad. I had nothing on me except the knives and my beads. I was weak, still exhausted from the night before. My mind tried to come up with options, but there weren’t any. We were in the middle of nowhere, and at least fifty werewolves that I could see were right in front of the cabin—probably a lot more on all its other sides.
“Julian, they’re everywhere,” I said again when the branches of the tree right outside the window moved.
But Julian wasn’t listening to me. He was still chanting.
“Hey!” I shouted. “They’re here!”
Instead of looking at me, he put his hand in the pan and began to spray water all around his feet. Maybe he’d lost his mind. Maybe he was just about to pass out like the night before. The strangest thing, though, were his eyes. They were…
They were completely violet.
Footsteps outside the door. How long could a witch like me keep a full-sized werewolf from knocking the door to the ground? I called for my shield as I looked at Julian, my eyes refusing to believe in what they were seeing.
They were right outside, I could feel them. Another second and they were either going to start shooting, or try to knock down the door. Both options had only one outcome: mine and Julian’s death.
But before any of it happened, Julian put his hand in the pan and sprayed the water on the ground again. His chanting became more aggressive when, all of a sudden, a black dot appeared in front of him out of thin air.
I blinked fast. Was I seeing things now?
“Winter, now,” he said. “Charge it with your magic!”
It? Did he mean the black dot in the middle of the room?
“Now!” Julian shouted.
There was no more time to think. I squeezed my eyes shut tightly and sent a surge of magic forward, much like I did when activating a stone, only this time, I didn’t put a limit to the power leaving me.
When I opened my eyes, Julian was stepping away from it. He was stepping away from the hole that looked like a tear in the fabric of reality, while it grew and grew until its ends touched both the floor and the ceiling.
Breathing forgotten, I looked at Julian, terrified to say a single word. But he didn’t need to hear my voice.
A gun fired. Julian grabbed my arm. He ran forward, dragging me behind, and he threw us both right into the hole.
Nineteen
The sound of footsteps woke me up. I was lying on my stomach on something hard and cold. Trying to control my breathing was hard when I remembered what had happened. Dylan’s cabin. The werewolves outside. Julian and his black hole…
I’d gone through too much shit the past week to doubt my eyes any longer. It was no use to try and think how this had happened. It just had. Julian lied to me, just like I knew he would.
I opened my eyes very slowly as the footsteps moved away from me. We were in a room somewhere. I could see the door, and I could see the corner of a brown leather sofa from where I was lying. Moving wasn’t an option just yet. Creating a plan was.
There was no doubt in my mind that those footsteps belonged to Julian. Nothing else made a single sound, except the raw beating of my heart. If I took him out, I could escape. There was a door. It had to lead somewhere—anywhere other than wherever he’d taken me.
Holding my breath, I gathered the courage to move my head up just a bit. My knife was in my hand, my beads ready to fly forward.
Across from me, there was a window.
Julian was standing in front of it, looking out, his back turned to me. Ten feet were between us. If I could get to him without him realizing it, this would be over, really fast.
Standing up without making a single sound wasn’t easy, but I was very motivated. I’d made it that far, hadn’t I? I was walking out of this alive, one way or another.
All of my focus was on Julian, and the beads that were now right behind his head. I could at least count on them to be as silent as ghosts. On the tips of my toes, I took the first step. Julian didn’t turn. I took another. My hands were sweating, my heart pounding in my chest. Two more steps and I was done.
But Julian looked to the side. I had no time. The second he turned to me, I jumped forward and slammed him against the window. The blade of my knife was on his neck, my beads right in front of his eyes.
He looked at me, eyes wide. Violet eyes wide. Through the corner of my eye, I saw his ears. Pointy.
But I guess I already knew, or at the very least suspected, that he was a fairy.
“You lied to me,” I hissed and pushed my knife against his skin just enough to draw blood.
“I didn’t,” he whispered. “I can explain.”
My focus was on his lips. If he so much as tried to begin to chant a spell, I was going to kill him before he could blink. He knew that, too. That’s why he didn’t move a single muscle.
“You said you were stirring a spell to enhance our powers!” Was he that evil to lie to my face again?
“That’s exactly what I did,” he breathed. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second and let out a loud sigh. “Winter, I did it.”
His eyes filled with tears. They threw me completely off balance. Was this just another one of his acts?
“What did you do?” I asked despite myself.
Julian smiled. “I made it back home.”
The words swirled inside my head, but they had yet to make sense. “What?”
“Look outside the window,” Julian said. But moving my eyes away from his face meant giving him the chance to attack me, or even chant a spell. “Please, just look.”
“If you move…”
“I won’t, I swear. Just look,” he said, that stupid smile still on his face.