by C. D. Gorri
“Thirty-four years,” Lady Annika’s voice betrayed her deep sadness and fear.
I stood before her, my shame weighing on me like a heavy cloak drenched with rain. I couldn’t speak. What was there to say? I was in charge—this was ultimately my responsibility. My duty. I was failing at the one task left to us. The only quest that mattered. My brothers and I had so far been unable to achieve the single goal that was the only hope of our salvation and that of our people.
“What are you doing to find her?” Lady Annika, my mother’s most trusted adviser and a seer in her own right, was one of the few from court to escape. She was the one who set us on this quest, with the knowledge that the answer could only be found in the human realm.
What are you doing to find her?
For thirty-three years, I have listened to her voice in my head asking the same question over and over.
What are you doing to find her?
Those words haunt me day and night. I hear then when I wake. I hear them when I drift off to sleep. I hear them in my dreams. Those seven words are the background track of the last three decades. Those seven words bear the weight of a crown that I haven’t even earned yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever be worthy.
A crown laced with thorns that remind me constantly how much is at stake. How much is riding on my back, on my shoulders. On me.
Those words have fueled my brothers and me for all these years. And yet here we are. Down to less than a year.
Three hundred days and counting.
That’s all we have. That’s it. Less than a year. And instead of looking for the mysterious Her, I am here, sitting in a crappy borrowed van, the kind school children are warned about, surrounded by fast-food wrappers and hideous mustard breath, trying to figure out how to get my brother out of that fucking castle that feels like an ambush just waiting for us to show our faces.
While I am contemplating the best way to proceed, movement from the previously dark and abandoned-looking castle catches my eye. I lean in trying to make sense of what my eyes tell me I see.
“Noah.” My tone tells my brother everything he needs to know.
I hear the cheeseburger hit the floor of the van as Noah’s face appears next to mine. He follows my gaze, squinting to see through the trees and across the little moat that’s filled with who the fuck knows what—probably zombie piranhas judging from what I’ve learned about that freak Malovich.
“What the…? Is that…?” Noah breathes his mustard words into my face.
We stare in stunned silence as the figure of my brother comes into view. He’s not moving under his own power.
“Is that an emu?” Noah asks, and I can tell he understands how ridiculous that sounds. “Or… a really tall… really fast… chicken?”
Under any other circumstances, I might have laughed, but that’s exactly what it looks like. It doesn’t even seem possible, but my baby brother, Jason McTeer, a guy who stands at six-two, two-eighty, and is all muscle, is sailing across the castle lawn riding on a pair of the skinniest legs I have ever seen.
Whatever it is, it’s flying.
I grab the bag on the seat next to me. “Let’s go.”
We’re out of the van in a second. Noah, who moves faster than anyone I’ve ever known, is already several paces ahead of me. He cuts through the trees, and I follow in his wake, feeling Jason’s energy growing stronger with every step I take in his direction.
This is the first time I’ve felt Jason’s presence in months. Whatever they were doing to him in that castle, it had the effect of blocking him from our awareness. Part of me feared the worst. But Noah never once doubted.
I have to fight the tightness rising in my chest and squeezing my throat so I can concentrate on running. I can’t stop now. I can enjoy the relief later.
Because now we know.
Our brother is alive.
Chapter Three
DANA
“Holy shit holy shit holy shit holy shit.” I say those two little words over and over and over in time with my steps as I run across the uneven grass and down a slight hill. If my head doesn’t pop off my body like a champagne cork, then I’m going to chalk that up to a bona fide miracle.
It’s like I can feel every cell of my skin, see each dust mote in the air as it collides with my speeding body. My blood courses through me so fast I can feel it ricocheting off the walls of my blood vessels.
All of this while I’m tracking my path, remembering the map in my head, and trying to remember to breathe.
I feel like the sheer mass of this guy on my back should send us rolling like a snowball down the rest of the hill. I can imagine us spilling out onto the driveway at the bottom by the gate, just as Malovich and his men pull up in their black tank-like SUVs.
But that isn’t what happens. The fae shit that’s dancing around in my lungs has turned me into a superhero. All I need now is a cape and some really cool boots. I’m flying through the yard, across the lawn, and through the trees like I’m part of the air.
Part of me feels like I am made of air. If I close my eyes, I can pretend I am flying over the trees, dragging the guy behind me like a balloon on a string. It’s that easy. That effortless. That insane.
No. Come back to earth, Dana.
I fight the euphoria that’s pressing in on all sides. I can see why people lose their minds trying to find fae magic. It’s powerful and amazing and really scary.
I’m not floating, I remind myself. But I may as well be for how weightless I feel. I bob and weave, avoiding branches and leaves, jumping over puddles and never once losing my footing.
I have no idea how long this fae-crack rush is going to last, so I can’t stop, and I can’t slow down, and I can’t see my watch because I must hold this guy steady as I run. I have completely lost track of time, but it’s got to be close. I think I had like a minute on my countdown when I finally got moving.
Not far now.
Malovich’s castle is part of an old historic area that was here well before the city grew up around it. It’s surrounded by state park land on all sides. Just through the other side of this section of woods, there’s a path that leads to the visitor’s center where there is a bus route, and a restaurant, and one tiny B&B.
I hacked the inn’s computer earlier this evening and learned that there are six guests. Three couples who all registered their cars for overnight parking. One of the cars is electric, which means it’s not only going to be completely silent when I drive away, but that I can gain access to it with a keycode I bought from a guy on the dark web about three hours ago.
Gotta love the internet.
*.*.*.*
So, when I had the bright idea of stealing the electric car, I wasn’t planning on so much extra… baggage.
The keycode works the first time, but this car is so small I’m not sure he’s going to fit. I’m on my third attempt to heave him off my shoulder into the passenger seat, when something flashes in the parking lot beside me.
I have no idea if it was an animal like a bobcat or even a bat and it’s just my new fae-spidey-sense is going into overdrive, or if there’s really something there. I turn back to the task at hand, trying to figure out a way to origami the guy into the tiny car, when a pair of hands grabs me around my waist.
I’m pulled backward with such force that it’s like I was kicked in the belly. I fly through the air, literally, not part of any drug-induced hallucination, and it’s like time slows down to a crawl.
I watch the guy on my shoulders tumble forward and slam onto the gravel with a weird soft crunch of pebbles that slide as he lands on his face. He drops like a drunk person, his face mushed and the rest of him blissfully unaware that he should be in pain.
Then the hands are back on me, but this time they have me by the neck. Correction, it’s only one hand and it’s large enough to encircle my throat completely. I’m on my back. The hand presses me into the gravel, holding me down.
A tall, blonde guy with a square jaw and a
strange smile on his face leans in over me. He’s got me by my neck, but he’s not hurting me or trying to cause me pain. He isn’t choking me. He’s just holding me there and looking at me like I’m from outer space.
“Well look at you, little Chicken.” His smile spreads across his face. He looks up and his eyes blue eyes flash in the passing of headlights.
A car door slams and footsteps hurry through the gravel. The fae power has all my senses firing at warp speed. I can feel the blonde guy’s pulse quicken and the muscles in his hand tense around my neck as the person who just arrived comes closer. When he shifts his grip, I catch a whiff of… cheeseburgers?
“Where is he?” The question is barked by a deep voice that sounds intense and angry.
“Other side of the car,” blonde guy says.
I try to wriggle out from under his hold, but it’s like the energy is seeping out of me suddenly, as if crashing onto the gravel has punctured the power bubble and I’m left with the strange, sad yearning as the last of the fae super-steam evaporates and escapes through the spaces between my skin cells. Damn.
“All right, Chicken. Let’s go for a ride.” The blonde guy grabs my hands together, holding my wrists in one of his enormous hands. He scoops me into his arm like he’s the one flying with drug-induced fae muscles and he places me down gently on the floor of the van, my feet dangling over the side.
If he lets go of me, I bet I could make a run for it.
The other one comes over to me at the sliding van door. He has dark hair, dark eyes, a dark scruffy beard, and a scowl that tells me he isn’t in the mood for any bullshit. He’s probably never in the mood for anything.
He barely even looks at me. He drops his bag next to me on the floor of the van and opens it, revealing all kinds of crazy shit. Ropes, duct tape, zip ties, black balaclavas, and a brick of something that looks like…
“Holy shit. Is that C4? What the hell? Who are you people?”
Dark and Angry pulls a pair of plastic handcuffs out of the bag and zips them onto my wrists, pulling them tight and continuing to ignore me, even as I hiss through the pain. He does the same to my ankles, though not as tight, and then he lifts my feet and turns me, pushing me inside the van.
“What the hell?” I ask as the door slides shut. I turn to look at the blonde guy who is crammed into the van with me and the unconscious one. I have no idea who these guys are or why they are here, but I’m kind of freaked out. Who drives around with a bag full of kidnapping tools?
“How is he?” Dark and Angry hops into the driver’s seat.
“He’s seems okay.” The blonde guy taps the unconscious man’s cheek. “Jason. Jase. Wake up.” He lays a hand on the guy’s forehead and checks his pulse at his neck. “I don’t know. I can’t tell anything. It’s like he’s asleep.”
I glance around, trying to get my bearings. I’m in the back of a panel van. An actual, true-to-life white panel van. I’ve been kidnapped by a rolling cliché. We are heading god-knows-where, and I don’t know what to do. But for the immediate future, I am still okay. I mean, I got out of there with my life and my marker and…
A zing of terror runs down my back as I notice something is wrong. My hand moves to my shoulder feeling for the strap of my pack. It’s not there.
“Oh shit.” I feel around the dark van, moving in the limited space that I can reach with my bound hands, hoping it is here, praying that it’s here. “Where is it?” I say, trying to backtrack through the last several minutes.
My hand mashes into something soft and warm. It’s too dark to see anything so I bring my hand to my nose. “Is that a cheeseburger?” I ask. “Ugh.”
The blonde guy smiles and lifts up a fast-food bag with the golden arches on it. The bag is full of food. “You want one? I have plenty.” He pulls a cheeseburger from the bag and unwraps it, crumpling up the wrapper in one hand while he takes a huge bite.
I shake my head, even though I am actually pretty hungry after all the exertion I’ve just endured. But I can’t eat right now because I think I am going to be sick.
“Where’s my backpack?” I continue feeling around while my mind moves backward to the last time I remember wearing it.
I took the marker from Malovich’s safe and dropped it in my bag. While my marker is the most important thing, it also came with everything I needed to start a new life, far, far away. I wasn’t just running—you don’t just run from Malovich. I was planning to disappear.
Think Dana. Think. I want to rub my face, but I don’t want to get ketchup and mustard and whatever else is smeared all over my fingers on my face. I had it on my back when I discovered the prisoner—whose name is apparently Jason. It slipped off me when I took the hit off the fae stream and did the junkie dead-drop, but I pulled it back on when I got up.
No. Wait. That’s not right. I picked it up, but I didn’t put it on my back. I carried it. I had it looped on one arm while I tried to get the guy to wake up. The first time I roused him he fought me. He knocked me back off my feet and I dropped my bag. I can hear it in my memory sliding across the floor, the metal zipper scraping the tile.
I was so caught up in the lack of time, so hopped up on fae juice that I must have spaced that my bag wasn’t on my back anymore.
“Hey, Chicken, are you all right?” the blonde guy says. “Maybe you should eat something. I know that always makes me feel better.”
“Take me back,” I say, feeling the sweat prickle at the base of my neck. I’m going to puke. Damn it. I can’t believe this is happening. I should never have stopped to rescue this guy.
I glance at the big dark-haired hulk lying on the floor of the van. His name is Jason. I feel an instant tug for him. I couldn’t leave him. I had no choice. I had to bring him with me. I had to.
“Can you take me back, please? You can just drop me and I’ll walk. I won’t tell anyone about this. Or tell anyone about your friend. Or anything. I swear it.”
“Are you fucking crazy?” Dark and Angry flashes me a look through the rear-view that puts his earlier scowl to shame.
“I have to. I left my…” I can’t tell them about the marker. “I have to go back. You have to take me back.” Panic starts to grip my chest and it’s suddenly hard to breathe. This can’t happen. Malovich won’t let me go. Not after this. And if he still has my marker…
The blonde guy takes another bite. “Do you know whose castle you just escaped from? You don’t want to go back there. Those guys are animals.”
I give him a wide-eyed sarcasm grin. “Thanks Cheeseburger Breath. I know. And I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. You have to take be back.”
“Not gonna happen. Sorry.” Dark and Angry’s tone tells me that he isn’t the least bit sorry and that he knows what’s best and he’s going to tell me how this is going to go down. Wonderful.
I glance at the front of the van, trying to get a look at the dashboard. It’s an older model, but I can’t tell how much of it is computer controlled. If I can get into the wiring, maybe I can stall us or force him to turn around or something.
I close my eyes, feeling around for live wires and anything that might lead me into circuitry. I want solder and plastic and chips and tech. But there’s nothing there for me to grab onto. Despair leaks through my muscles and I feel suddenly exhausted.
“You don’t understand,” I whisper. Because they have no idea what is about to go down. If Malovich finds my bag—correction, when Malovich finds my bag—and realizes that he still has my marker? And that I was planning to steal from him again? There isn’t much I can do to protect myself. Or these guys when he comes for me. Which he most definitely will.
“Hey, he’s coming to,” the blonde guy says.
Jason stirs on the floor of the van as we stop at a traffic light. The van fills with the red glow as the big guy opens his eyes and smiles up at me like he’s had several gallons of beer and he’s about to tell me how much he loves me, man.
I smile back at him—I can’t help it
. I feel stupid and dopey, but I can’t help it. He’s hurt and he’s in pain, and when I look at him, I see the wounded and shackled prisoner who couldn’t move without my help. I see the blue eyes that floated us into outer space where we were surrounded by stars for the briefest of moments. I have no idea what that was about, but I couldn’t just leave him behind.
Well, at least one of us is going to get away.
Cheeseburger Breath lets out a low whistle. “Damn. Leave it to Jason to pick up a girl while making a jail break. Even unconscious the dude is like a chick magnet.” Then he laughs at his own joke. “But in this case, maybe chicken magnet is more like it.”
I try not to roll my eyes. The guy on the floor of the van—Jason, I keep reminding myself—rolls over, bumping my thigh. He looks delirious and like he’s half dreaming. I chalk it up to the fae magic. If one hit of that stuff had the effect it did on me, I can’t imagine what it must be like for someone who was practically bathing in it.
Jason smiles again and paws at Cheeseburger Breath. “She’s the one. You have to. Have to. Tell Max. I found her.” His head lolls back and his mouth drops open and he passes out again.
Cheeseburger Breath glances at Dark and Angry and then at me. The silence that comes over the van is so huge it practically has its own zip code. A pickle slides off the bun and lands on his knee with a wet plop. The driver flashes him a loaded look.
Cheeseburger Breath looks at me and leans in, getting really close, like we’re nose-to-nose, and the details of his face are obscured by the red glow from the traffic signal. He eyes me for a long moment, then he shakes his head. “Nah.”
Dark and Angry gives a half-hearted scoff. It’s part humor and part relief. He shakes his head and glances at Jason. “Dream on, brother. Dream on.”
Chapter Four
JASON
I found her. I can’t believe it. I can’t wait to tell my brothers. It’s over. We can get on with the rest of our lives now. We can finally go home. Because it’s done.