The Wardens Boxed Set

by Heather D Glidewell

  “Miss Prudence, I am far more in tune with what is going on here than you think. Do you really believe that the Reaper was getting to Wesley without a little help?” His eyes shot over at me. He was far from a dumb little boy. This man was as smart as a fox.

  “What Reaper?” I looked at him and gave him a warning sign. “Marshall, how about you pull over. I think I would like to drive my car,” I demanded. He did as he was told and we got out.

  I yanked him down a short incline to an area of the forest that was uninhabited. There were no creatures and, as I scanned the area around us, I felt as if not even an animal was in earshot.

  “What do you know?” I put my arms across my chest.

  “I know I don’t belong here,” he said, his eyes hard. “I was brought here against my will. The only reason I stay is for my sister.”

  “Lilly said something about your sister the other night.” I felt a sudden rush of wind.

  “There is magic that I cannot explain going on here.” He pointed around him. “Nobody knew of this Priestess then suddenly out of nowhere it’s all that they talk about.”

  “What do you think of that?” I asked, my eyes boring into his.

  “I think that the demons have set foot into the war. I think that Heaven and Hell are opening their gates and, more sooner than later, Armageddon is going to be unleashed on the world.” He motioned with his hands like the world was exploding.

  “You think this will be the end of the world?” I wanted to laugh. Mind you, the boy had the right idea, his theory was just way off.

  “I think you are one of the four horsemen.” I broke out into hysterics. He looked at me, confused. “I mean it. I think you are the rider of the pale horse.”

  “Marshall, you make me laugh.” I patted him on the shoulder.

  “You want Wesley for some reason. The way you look at him. He knows you.” Marshall smiled as the fear spread across my face. “What is he to you?” he asked me sharply.

  This was too much to bear. Marshall knew that I had other reasons for being at the camp. He knew that I wanted to take Wesley with me. He just did not know who I was. The idea that I was one of the four horsemen was just hysterical. When you really think about it, I guess it could be a possibility.

  “Beware the false prophets, ma’am,” he professed and I took a step toward him.

  “What prophets?” I asked. He knew he had hit a nerve.

  “They have one on the inside at the other camp. Masked his mind so that the angel in charge was unable to pull anything from him.” Marshall pulled on his shirt. “I tried to warn them. Before they brought me here.”

  “How do you know this?” I asked him.

  “I am the gopher boy. They send me to do things and I just hear stuff. Not to mention before you got here I was working for Lilly as her lackey. That is how I got to you in the first place.” Marshall put his hands on his hips.

  “So you are telling me that you are not supposed to be here?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “Almost as I’m sure you aren’t.” He bit his bottom lip.

  “So how did you wind up here?” I couldn’t drop cover even for a second. So what he guessed that I wasn’t on the same side as Miranda but at the same time he had no clue that I was the Fire Warden.

  “My family and I were coming in from Newport, heading toward Missouri. They say there is a small town out there that houses all sorts of beings. They were calling it a safe house.” He looked at the sky. I fought to keep a straight face.

  “What do you know about this place?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “We ran into this guy at a gas station. He looked at us and mentioned my mother’s eyes. They are aquamarine, oddly, and it really intrigued him. He told us about this place we were heading but he didn’t say where it was. All he said was that, as soon as we got close enough, a group of girls would escort us to the camp.” He frowned. “We never made it. Halfway there we got hijacked by John and his lackey girlfriend. They killed my father for not complying and have kept my mother locked up in one of those wooden cells in the camp.”

  “So what are you doing there?” I asked. He was far too willing to share this information which made me giddy to ask for more.

  “Waiting. I think if I wait long enough someone will come and rescue us. However, as each day passes I think more and more that they aren’t coming. That was until today, when I heard her say that there was a group headed this way.” He smiled. “I just want to get out of there.”

  “I do not understand.” I ran my fingers through my short blonde hair, dropping all royalty in the process.

  “What do you not understand?” he questioned, his eyebrows narrowing.

  “How you can come to any of these conclusions. I don’t quite understand. You shouldn’t know any of this,” I squeaked.

  “The question is, am I right?” he asked, his eyes sparkling.

  I threw up my hands and turned to walk away.

  Chapter Thirty: Surprise

  We got back into the car shortly after his epiphany. I never shared who I was or that I was going to get all of them out of there one way or another. I just nodded and asked more questions. He was a smart boy. Probably too smart for his own good. However, his intelligence was not what I was questioning. I was starting to wonder if Miranda was on to us. Then again, if she was, she never would have asked me to take charge while she went to her mother.

  I had originally thought it the perfect opportunity to get everyone out of there. On second thought, I figured the time wasn’t right yet. I had to get word to my mother that there was a spy in the camp, someone working for Miranda and supplying her with information.

  Who could it be?

  That was one question that I wasn’t sure of at that moment. However, the repeat of the text message I had received stated ‘beware the false prophets.’ The only one that I could think of that would share was Nick. I couldn’t understand why I thought instantly of him. We were family for the longest time. Would he really put what my mother and his uncle had to the side in order to make a redhead demon happy? If it was him then it would explain the reason that Rose and Helen were acting peculiar. Could he be feeding them false information to turn them against me, I wondered?

  “Miss Prudence, what is on your mind? You’ve been silent.” Marshall handed me one of the bags in his hand so that he could push his bangs from his eyes.

  “I’m just thinking about all the things you said to me.” I smiled at him as he fought with his hair.

  “Oh?” He raised an eyebrow and scratched his nose.

  “I am just trying to figure out how you have managed to play her for this long,” I said softly. I had purchased the boy some new clothes and a pair of new shoes in hopes that he would feel a little more appreciated. He had next to nothing and even though I knew he bathed, his clothes were just revolting to the senses. I had the full intention of torching them at the first moment I found it possible.

  “I’m not playing her really. I do as she tells me so that she won’t kill me or my sister. Lilly has my sister convinced that the purebloods want to slaughter all of us. If I were to be imprisoned like my mother I would hate to know what they would do to her.” He shook his head and frowned.

  “You love your sister, don’t you?” I stated, pointing toward a high-end store in the mall.

  “Yes, with all my heart. She’s sixteen, she doesn’t know any better. Plus, she’s innocent, so she is easily brainwashed.” He followed my lead as we stepped inside the store.

  “I have a brother by blood and a sister by marriage. While I get along with my brother my stepsister and I have some pretty bad issues.” I walked back toward the jeans on the back wall. I had worn a hole in the knee of the pair Miranda had given me. Because I had to maintain my sense of high style I decided I would get several pairs just in case this happened again.

  “Issues huh? Let me guess—she’s pissed that her mother is married to your father.�
�� He laughed. “I had a friend that had that exact same issue.”

  “I lost a good guy to her so you would think she would be happy. However, unless I’m miserable she’s not,” I grumbled. I hated talking about Rose that way but it was the only way I could get the aggression out. She had won a battle that she never knew had been waging the day she pulled Adam from me.

  “That sucks.” He pulled a pair of jeans from the stack and looked at me. “You are about a size seven, right?”

  “Yeah, in or around,” I laughed as he handed me a pair of jeans.

  I looked at him softly. I had grown attached to Marshall. That was not something I had been intending to do. The silence was stifling, I had to say something.

  “You said you can shift into anything.” I remembered one of our first conversations.

  “Yes. You name it I can shift into it. As long as it has a heart. We tried to see if I could do it with inanimate objects and it wasn’t exactly successful. I looked funny for a week,” he chuckled.

  “How long can you hold the shift?” I had an idea forming.

  “Depends. Animals are easier than humans. I can be a cat for much longer than I can be another person,” he shrugged.

  “Let’s say you skin shift. What’s the longest you have held it?” I asked softly as I grabbed another pair of jeans and started walking toward the dressing room.

  “Three days was the longest.” He wasn’t understanding the reason for my questions and I knew that.

  “That’s not too bad.” I shifted my head to the right and handed him back the bag he had given me outside the store. “I’m going to try these on.”

  “Why are you so interested in this, Miss Prudence?” he asked me through the door of the dressing room. I was pretty sure an attendant was going to be in there soon, pulling the boy away, believing him to be a Peeping Tom.

  “I have my reasons, Marshall,” I laughed as I pulled the denim up my legs.

  Looking in the mirror I was impressed. However, these jeans didn’t do anything different to my body. There was no butt-lifting device or tummy-slimming mechanism. For two hundred dollars they pretty much did the same as the twenty dollar jeans I got from Walmart.

  “Are you really a Priestess?” He was getting bold.

  “Of course,” I said, pulling off the first pair of jeans and putting on the second pair.

  “Where are you from?” His voice was tense.

  “Maine,” I said simply, without hesitation.

  “Have you ever met the Queen?” I seriously thought he was getting even for all the questions that I asked him.

  “No. Have you?” I asked, turning my body to the left and right.

  “No. She calls Lilly to her but never comes to see the camp. At least not that I know of.” I pulled off the second pair of jeans and put back on the pair that I had received from Miranda. I frowned at the tear in the knee.

  “I don’t think she leaves her castle very often,” I said, laughing.

  “Nobody knows where she is. Even Lilly has to be summoned to her.” He took the jeans from me as we returned to the floor.

  I was going to need to purchase more down-to-earth shirts. The silks and satins that Mona had packed for me were nice and all, but I didn’t want to tear or stain them in the woods.

  “Being summoned is a pain,” I said hoarsely as I started picking through racks of high-dollar t-shirts.

  “You’ve been summoned?” He looked at me astonished.

  “Not in a very long time. With age comes power in my world. It would take someone older than me to bring me to them.” I smiled at him. As I was asking him questions I never once let it slip that I was someone other than who I said I was.

  “If you found all of this blasphemous you would have struck me dead on the side of the highway. I wonder why you haven’t done it yet.” He grabbed a shirt and held it up for me. I shook my head to the odd pink color.

  “I like you, Marshall. The one thing you will learn is that I am not bound to either side. I’m like Switzerland,” I said, laughing.

  “Switzerland is a neutral country. You are in a prison camp which says to me that you have picked a side,” he said flatly.

  “Marshall, if I felt that you were a threat I would have struck you down, yes. However, I think that we can work together to achieve a common goal.” I grabbed a gray shirt and smiled, adding it to the stack.

  “How so?” He asked, taking the stack.

  “I want the Harbinger,” I stated and he smiled.

  “I already knew that.” He dropped his head.

  “I also want to get you, your sister, and your mother out of there.” I didn’t look at him.

  “How do you plan on doing that?” I could feel his eyes penetrating the side of my head.

  I looked at him and smiled innocently.

  ***

  Shawn? We were standing outside the store with even more bags now.

  “Let’s get you a haircut, Marshall.” I grabbed his hand and led him toward the salon.

  Is it time? Shawn’s voice echoed through my lobes.

  Not yet. There is far more to this place than just a prison for Wesley. There are others here. People who they have abducted. People who were coming to us.

  “Miss Prudence, please. You do not need to spend so much money on me,” he pleaded.

  “Nonsense. I never had children; let me do something for someone I care for.” I touched his hair and looked at the lady behind the counter. “Can we get this taken care of?”

  “Of course, ma’am,” she said, looking from me to Marshall. “Can I get a name?”

  “Prudence Warren,” I said as I pulled out my wallet.

  What do you mean, more people? I had to look as if I wasn’t having two conversations. Shawn was choosing the wrong moments to send me messages.

  It’s a prison camp, Shawn. There are about one hundred and fifty men with Miranda and just as many kept in makeshift cells on the far side of the camp. I pushed the card toward the woman and she took it with a confused look on her face.

  “Charge one hundred dollars to it and get the boy taken care of.” I gave her a cruel smile and she jumped on it.

  “Right this way, sir,” she said, leading Marshall to an empty seat. “I will have Kyle here in just a moment.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Marshall asked as a tall man made his way to the seat. He was nothing like the sort of person I usually dealt with.

  “Good afternoon.” He smiled at me. He probably had the whitest teeth I had ever seen. Was there such a thing as over-bleaching?

  “Good afternoon.” I gave him a seductive smile. “My brother here needs a new style. Can you get him taken care of?”

  “You two are related?” He looked puzzled.

  “By marriage,” Marshall chimed in and glanced at me out of the corner of his eye.

  “I will take care of him to the point where you don’t even know who he is. Would you like to have a seat in the lounge? Or maybe a pedicure while you wait.” He looked me from top to bottom and licked his lips. This was one of those rare moments where I was face-to-face with a straight hairdresser.

  “I’m fine, thank you. I will wait in the lounge.” I gave the man another smile and patted Marshall on the shoulder. He gave me a look of fear as I walked off.

  Prison camp? Who are you with? Shawn’s voice was quite demanding.

  Marshall. He is my assistant. I heard him laugh.

  They gave you an assistant. Man you must be playing this bitch quite well. He was teasing me.

  Marshall’s father was killed when they were on their way to us. Miranda’s group took Marshall, his sister, and his mother. I picked up a copy of the latest issue of Vogue.

  So why is he with you? I looked toward Marshall as Kyle started to mess with his hair.

  His sister is one of her young recruits. She’s telling these kids that the purebloods and Wardens are out to kill off the hybrids. I looked b
ack at the magazine.

  Shit! That’s not good. So have you found Wesley? I felt my heart pound at the thought of his name.

  Yes. Amazingly, I have been able to turn water to blood. This in turn has pretty much purchased me the boy to use at my leisure. There was a second of silence.

  That is pretty messed up. Nothing worse than being pimped out for a pitcher of blood. He sounded like he was speaking from experience.

  You sound as if you know what I’m talking about, I asked, trying not to laugh out loud.

  Long story. His voice was stressed.

  Let me guess. It involves a girl, her husband, and a chicken? For some reason the memory of us in the school came back to light.

  No. This one was a donkey. I couldn’t help it; I felt the laugh burst from my lips. I instantly put my hand to my mouth and pointed at the magazine.

  You are by far the funniest person I know. I was hoping that it was a good save.

  You think these stories are jokes when they are not. So what do you want me to do? There was his classic change of subject.

  I want you to tell Dad and my mom about what I just told you. Can you pull images? I scratched my shoulder and glanced at Marshall. Kyle had already started taking scissors to the boy’s hair.

  Yeah, if you think of something I can usually get the image of what it is. His voice was back to normal.

  Good. I’m going to send you everything I remember about the camp. I have about ten minutes before I have to cut connection.

  I thought of everything I had seen. From the first second that the blindfold was pulled from my eyes to the last ten minutes trying on clothes and having an odd conversation with Marshall.

  I’m going to pull the council together now. Nick has been talking some pretty weird prophecies recently about some Priestess. I felt my heart drop. I had been right. The only ones that should know about the Priestess were those that were connected to the Queen.

  Don’t trust Nick. I have a feeling he is the internal spy for Miranda. Just let him spout what he wants. Don’t tell Rose or Helen but let Krista know. My heart was pounding; the idea that my cousin was the spy was driving me mad.

  Hell. You know that makes sense. He didn’t seem surprised in the least.