“Hello?” I called.
Nobody answered.
The place was small, so I headed deeper into the cottage, aware of Albigard trailing after me. Again, I noted the sort of sideways familiarity of the structure. I was able to identify the kitchen, though I would have struggled to use it to prepare food. The table and chairs in the dining area were recognizable enough, as was the collection of comfortable seating arranged around a fireplace in what was clearly the living area.
Something seemed off, though, and it took me longer than it should have to realize that it was the relative lack of invading plant life inside the place. Aside from a few herbs trying to overflow their pots on various windowsills, there were no choking vines or heavy-scented flowers here. No moss growing on the floor—just neatly swept hardwood planks covered in places by homey woven rugs.
Movement caught my eye—a dark tail flicking as whatever it was attached to ducked through the doorway on the far side of the living area. I followed it, glancing back to find Albigard settling himself next to a front-facing window and twitching the curtain back.
Keeping watch, I realized.
I didn’t have long. The door through which the dark tail had disappeared was half open.
“Hello?” I asked, more tentatively this time.
Still no answer, but I thought I heard a faint rustling noise coming from within. The hinges creaked as I opened the door further. Inside was a bedroom, and I had a vague sense of light fabrics and airy, pleasant surroundings before my eyes lit on a figure seated on a rocking chair in one corner, facing half away from me.
My hand slipped from the knob, dropping limply to my side.
“Dad?” I asked in a small voice, my heart leaping into my throat and trying to choke me.
My father didn’t move or acknowledge my presence in any way, and a chill slid across my skin despite the pleasant warmth of the air.
On the bed, a huge black cat with slanted green eyes that seemed too large for its face regarded me. An odd rumble of sound emerged from its throat, and then it lifted one front paw to its muzzle, tongue swiping out to groom itself as though my presence here was of no further interest to it one way or the other.
Swallowing hard, I forced my feet to carry me into the room until I was standing directly in front of my father’s chair. He didn’t move, the chair resting motionless on its curved wooden rockers. His eyes were focused on nothing, staring right through me. I shivered.
Please, please, please let me not have come all this way only to find that Darryl Bright was gone, only the empty shell of a body left behind, I thought. Please let me not be too late.
Albigard entered, throwing the cat a disgusted look when it growled low in its chest at him. “Guards are approaching. They will be here momentarily, at which point you will once again be my prisoner.”
“What’s wrong with him?” I begged.
The Fae ran careless eyes over the man in the chair. “He’s broken, apparently. It happens sometimes, with humans.” He paused for the barest instant before adding, “I am sorry, demonkin.”
I made a small noise in my throat and dropped to my knees, my hands gripping Dad’s where they rested on the chair’s arms. “Dad, please…”
My father’s eyes focused slowly, returning from that distant, unseen place. I caught my breath.
“Dad?”
He blinked, looking at me properly for the first time, and his brow furrowed. “Zorah? Why are you here? I don’t want you here. Go away.”
His voice was perfectly flat, and I had to swallow a moan of denial. Before I could respond, the front door crashed open. The cat hissed again, leaping from its perch on the bed as several Fae appeared at the bedroom’s entrance. Albigard dragged me to my feet and swung us around, cool and collected as though armed guards swarmed the room where he was standing every day of the week.
“Hold, Sergeant,” he said, sounding arrogant and bored. Disdain dripped from his voice. “I have an important prisoner for the Court to examine.”
The guard looked at me like one might look at a wounded mouse caught in a mousetrap.
“Commander,” he said grudgingly. “This is the part-bred demon? If it’s your prisoner, why bring it here?”
I might have appreciated the jaundiced look Albigard gave the guard if my heart weren’t trying to thud its way straight out of my chest.
“That one is her sire,” he said, jerking his chin toward the rocking chair. “Where else would I deliver her? You and your men are here now, are you not? So take her off my hands and be done with it.”
The guard wavered. “Very well,” he said eventually. “But I will give a full accounting of all this to the Recorder.”
Albigard cocked a slanted brow. “As you like, Sergeant. Though, as the Recorder was the one who directed me here, it seems rather a waste of time and effort.”
With that, he handed me over to the wiry Sergeant, who regarded me with distaste. When the Fae guard’s hand closed around my arm, I felt my future narrow to a single point of darkness.
“I love you, Dad,” I croaked… but my father had already returned to whatever distant place he now inhabited. A place I could no longer reach. He didn’t even look at me as I was pulled from the room.
“Come, part-breed,” the sergeant grumbled, tugging me away from my only tie to Earth… to my home.
ELEVEN
I THREW A FINAL glance over my shoulder at Albigard, trying to convey the threat of dire consequences if he failed to do all he could for whatever was left of my father. He gazed back with every indication of complete disinterest, his green eyes without expression.
I had played the only card available to me, bet everything on this gamble. And there was every possibility that doing so had gained me precisely nothing. Nothing except a faster death than I might’ve had before, assuming the Fae decided to take the easy way out and have done with me.
At least Rans is safe, I tried to tell myself. With me gone, they would have no reason to go after him.
Yeah, sure, said the little internal voice that whispered bad things to me in the dark. Just like no one had a reason to blast a hole through his chest with a shotgun. He hadn’t even met you yet when that happened.
My throat tightened, denial burning like acid at the backs of my eyes. Jesus, I was such an idiot.
That’s the real reason he’s better off without you, the voice whispered. Your own dad doesn’t even want you. Nobody wants you. Hell, you can probably count the number of people who’ll even notice that you’re gone on the fingers of one hand.
I wrenched my attention outward, consigning that little voice to the darkness where it belonged.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked my captors, the words emerging unsteady.
The guards—half a dozen or so—formed a loose ring around us as the sergeant frog-marched me out of the little cottage. No one answered or even acknowledged that I’d spoken. The one at the front paused and muttered, throwing a new portal into existence. It seemed less stable than the ones I’d seen Albigard make—the outline hazy and wavering—but the others didn’t hesitate to step through.
A moment of sickening disorientation, and I was once more in the overgrown, downtowny looking area that Albigard and I had departed from earlier. Indeed, we were outside the very same building, I was fairly sure, though this time the sergeant hauled me around to a back entrance rather than walking in the front door.
The same white-haired Recorder guy met us, satisfaction visible on his wrinkled features. “So, you found the malcontent waiting there as I thought you would. Very good.”
“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant. “Shall I take this creature to the incarceration area now?”
“Do so,” said the Recorder. “I will make the necessary entry into the records. And I believe there is at least one operative on Earth who will appreciate being notified of its capture.”
That would probably sound ominous, if anything that happened to me now could be said to be more
ominous than anything else. I was dragged back outside—making me wonder if it was considered impolite to open a portal inside a building or something. Maybe there were official portal zones that you had to use?
Whatever the case, Shaky Portal-Making Guy threw a new one up in the courtyard behind the Recorder’s building. A moment later, he and my captor took me through it. When we stepped out, I staggered a bit, looking around in surprise. Silly me, I’d assumed the incarceration area would be some variant on Albigard’s creepy basement cells.
Wow, had I been wrong.
We were in… something that looked an awful lot like the inside of a giant redwood tree that had been hollowed out, as crazy as that sounded. The area was more or less circular, maybe seven or eight feet in diameter, and surrounded by rough walls. Only they weren’t really walls, as such. It was simply a hollow tree trunk made of unfinished, unaltered, living wood with no doors, windows, or other openings. The floor was packed dirt with twisted tree roots poking up through the surface here and there. There was a small hole dug near the edge, and the hole stank so badly of stale urine and feces that I nearly gagged.
I whirled around, taking it all in, and claustrophobia prickled at the edges of my mind. Then I craned my head up, trying to see where the light was coming from, and immediately grew dizzy. The walls… the tree… rose far above my head. Like, dozens of feet above my head, at a minimum. It looked completely unclimbable, with no hand or footholds that I could see. The illumination filtering in from the top appeared to be natural daylight.
“No,” I said a bit desperately as the reality of what was happening set in. “Please… don’t leave me in here.”
The guard who had been holding onto me gave me a shove, sending me crashing against the unforgiving wood of what was to become my living prison. He and Shaky Portal-Making Guy stepped back through the hazy ring hovering in the air. I pushed away from the wall and tried to lunge after them, but the portal snapped shut before I could reach it. All I succeeded in doing was staggering to a halt against the other side of the tree.
“Shit!” I yelled. The sound echoed hollowly around me.
I tried to quiet my uneven breathing. I was okay. No one had hurt me, unless you counted the bruise where my shoulder had hit the inside of the tree. I needed to slow down and assess things without panicking.
The hole in the floor was meant as a primitive latrine, judging by the stench. A pile of objects lay on the floor, directly across from the shit pit. I’d barely noticed them sitting there during my brief flirtation with hysteria. I approached the pile and crouched, examining the items in the uncertain light filtering down from above.
There was a blanket, along with clean clothes that looked to be roughly the right size to fit me. On top of the pile of folded cloth was a loaf of crusty bread wrapped in thin paper and what looked like a hollow gourd with a cork stopper in the top. There was liquid sloshing inside. I uncorked it and took a sniff. It was odorless, so I stuck my finger inside. Plain water, I was pretty sure.
And that made sense, I supposed. Weren’t bread and water supposed to be the standard prisoner rations? I was both hungry and thirsty at this point, too. My last drink had been after the self-defense training with Rans yesterday afternoon, and my last food had been an apple and a banana not much later. I winced at the reminder of the vampire I’d left behind, making an effort to put him out of my mind.
My fingers itched to lift the water to my lips, but memory stopped me. Doesn’t your generation read fairy tales anymore? I mean, is it seriously not common knowledge that you don’t eat Fae food or drink Fae wine?
Albigard had said I was connected to him now because I’d accepted his gift. Suddenly the pile of items looked less like a bounty and more like a trap. I set the water down and stared at it, sitting back on my heels and crossing my arms over my knees.
No one had said anything specifically about accepting Fae clothing or blankets, but I wasn’t inclined to take the chance. Nothing I had seen so far indicated that any of them gave a shit about my wellbeing. Why would they do things for my comfort if there wasn’t a catch involved somewhere?
I stood up and went to sit against the wall midway between the pile of temptations and the stinking hole. How long would they let me stew in here alone, before they came back and did something worse to me?
I tried to tell myself that being in this cell was a good thing. I tried to tell myself that Albigard was out there somewhere trying to get my dad free right now. Maybe it was like the legal system back home, where you could be held in jail for a long time waiting for a trial. Especially when something as important as an execution was on the line.
That would also be consistent with what Albigard had said about the Court barely being able to come to an agreement on simple issues. It should have been comforting. Instead I felt panic threatening again.
Fucking Christ. What was I doing? What the hell had I done? Would I be trapped in here with food I couldn’t eat and water I couldn’t drink until I died of thirst? If I did give in and eat or drink the Fae gifts, what would happen?
My breathing grew ragged, my heart pounding as a panic attack rose up and took over. I huddled in a ball on the dirt floor at the base of the hollow tree trunk, lightheadedness and nausea fighting for dominance inside me.
Damn it. Goddamn it.
Why couldn’t I be strong, like my mother had always been? Strong like Rans? I bet he’d never had a full-on, proper panic attack in his centuries-long life. I tried to breathe through the physical reaction, hearing the raspy gasps echoing louder than they should in the enclosed space. Fuck, I was trapped in here with no doors or windows… fuck fuck fuck…
The attack continued for long minutes, measured by the tripping beats of my heart. When it finally subsided, I was trembling, soaked with clammy sweat that beaded chilly and unpleasant on my skin in the cool air of the tree-cell. I covered my face with my hands and shook.
Eventually, I recovered enough to try and think rationally again. The area around me was growing darker and more shadowed as the sun crept across the afternoon sky. I should do a detailed examination of the walls while I could still see my surroundings. Rising on rubbery legs, I placed a hand on the wood next to me and started to feel around, gaining little more than a collection of splinters for my troubles.
Despite the hollowed-out center, the massive tree wasn’t rotten. The wood was hard and dense. I picked at a rough area with my thumbnail, and was only able to peel away a tiny sliver before the nail tore. I yelped and sucked on it until the sting subsided.
With the right tools, I could have chipped away at the wall, I was sure… though of course there was no way of knowing whether two inches or two feet of wood lay between me and freedom. And there was also the small matter of my captors not having conveniently left me a hammer and chisel to use—much less a pickaxe.
You should already own these tools, Zorah.
The memory of my father’s voice brought an ugly noise to my throat that might have been a bitter laugh, along with a telltale burn at the back of my eyes.
Yeah, thanks Dad. Big help there.
Did I have anything useful with me? Nothing in the pile of supplies was hard or sharp enough to help me with the task. I was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers. My belt had a metal buckle on it, but I couldn’t think of any way it would be useful.
I caught my breath, my hand flying to my pocket.
I still had my little cell phone. Obviously, relying on cellular service in Dhuinne was a non-starter, but I could at least keep track of the time and have some light once the sun slipped too low in the sky to illuminate my surroundings. I pulled it out and flipped the cover up, powering it on.
Maybe I should have sprung for smartphones when I bought the two burners back in St. Louis, but money had been a real concern at the time. Still, a proper flashlight app would have come in really handy in my current position.
The flip-phone seemed to take longer than it should have to power up. Rather
than the usual service provider logo and tinny musical flourish, the screen flickered erratically. Random numbers flashed for a bare instant before the LCD display darkened into blue-black swirls, like someone dropping ink into a glass of water. The screen’s illumination flared a final couple of times and died, after which no amount of shaking it or mashing the power button made any difference.
My heart sank, the phone slipping from my numb fingers to drop onto the dirt at my feet. Fae magic is hard on tech, Rans had said. Once again, I was reminded of the dashboard clock in Albigard’s car, flashing in random, nonsensical segments. It made sense, I supposed—you couldn’t get much more exposure to Fae magic than actually being in Dhuinne.
I shivered again, partly because the cool air against my sweaty skin was making me cold, and partly because I would now be stuck in the pitch black if they left me here overnight. The dead phone, my clothing, and the pile of Fae stuff I couldn’t use without risking more Bad Things happening constituted the sum total of what I had access to in this place.
I was hungry, thirsty, cold, and I’d barely slept last night. It seemed pretty clear that the most productive thing I could do right now was to try to get some rest in preparation for whatever was going to happen next. I returned to my spot next to the wall, my foot knocking against the abandoned phone in the deepening gloom.
Letting my head tip back, I gazed up at the sky far above me with unfocused eyes. Outside, it was still daylight, though very little of that light now reached the depths of the hollow tree where I was huddled. Even with my arms wrapped around my knees, I was still badly chilled. The woolen blanket tormented me with its presence mere feet away.
How could the Fae possibly know if I was folded up over here, or wrapped around you? it whispered in its stupid imaginary blanket-voice. Why be cold and miserable if you don’t have to be?
I closed my eyes, cutting off my view of the distant light above. After a few minutes, I scuffled around, pulling my arms inside the armholes of the thin cotton shirt and wrapping them around my middle. It didn’t help much.
The Last Vampire: Book Two Page 10