Taken

by Quinn Blackbird

  Inside, it’s as bland as the meal I just had. Beside an ordinary iron table, sits a cot with a thin white blanket that I suspect was looted from this world. It looks too much like the hospital blankets I’ve seen in my life.

  With his back to me, the fae healer mutters something in his foreign tongue. I frown at the dark blue hair falling down his back in a ropey plait. He fiddles with an odd object on the metal table. A black-metal syringe, I suspect from the looks of it.

  “Sorry, I don’t understand,” I say.

  He abandons his syringe. His shoulders tense before he slowly turns to look at me.

  “Kuris,” he spits in a thick, earthy accent. “What you want?”

  His English isn’t as good as the General’s, so I just hope he understands me enough.

  “General Caspan sent me to you,” I say. “To check my wounds.”

  A sneer twists his face. Instinctively, I take a small step closer to Adrianna. It ignites a cruel chuckle in the dark fae.

  “Lies punish by post,” he tells me.

  It takes a moment for that sentence to string together in my mind. He means the post where the runners are still tied up, one of them dead. If caught lying, I’ll be sent there.

  I shake my head. “I’m not lying. He hit my head off a wall, and I have some cuts on my arms.” I show him my arms to prove my point. “He told me to come here when I’m finished with my tasks.”

  He studies me for a quiet moment. The sneer drifts away to a curious look with a hint of disgust. “No. No kuri, only dokkalf.”

  I have no idea what that means. My mouth sets into a grim line and I shoot an exasperated look at Adrianna. She’s fighting a small smile.

  With a defeated sigh, I say, “Fine. I’ll tell the General you won’t treat me.”

  Before I can move, the healer is advancing on me. He comes closer until he’s nose to nose with me and I can feel his faint breath on my lips. Through those white slitted eyes of his, he scrutinises me. A stiff moment thickens between us. Then, he pulls back suddenly and points to the cot.

  “On.”

  There’s not a moment wasted before I’m climbing into the cot. I sit up, but the healer’s hand hits me square in the chest, and I fall back.

  “Stay.”

  I just nod.

  Shooting a glance in Adrianna’s direction, I can see that she looks more than amused. Her smile is in full tilt, and she folds her arms over her chest. I could be wrong, but an impressed glint seems to twinkle in her eye.

  I peel dirty strands of yellow hair out of my face.

  The healer moves around the side of the cot and roughly pulls my arm straight. He inspects my scars before he suddenly tenses. After a long pause, he slowly brings his gaze up to mine. He looks startled.

  “This?” he asks and presses his fingertip into the skin of my tattoo.

  I frown at him. “It’s just a tattoo.”

  His curious gaze turns bright, like the glowworms trapped in the mason jars. He lets my wrist go, then—as if he has to force himself—looks at the fresh cut that runs down my inner forearm. Blood congeals there into still-moist scabs. As I trace his gaze to my cut, I notice the yellow stains around the edges of it.

  “Infect.” That’s all he says, but I don’t need him to elaborate. It’s as clear as water that my wound is infected.

  The healer reaches across me for the iron table, where he grabs onto a wooden jar of dark-green paste. He scoops his fingers into the open jar, then smears a healthy spread of the paste over my cut. Looks like moss, I think.

  He sits back on the balls of his feet and looks at me. “More?”

  With a nod, I shimmy up my tank top. Along my right rib cage, black and purple bruises smear my skin. He just grunts at the sight.

  My heart stops dead and my veins run cold when the healer trades the wooden jar of moss for the black-metal syringe and a bowl of mysterious midnight powder. I watch as he sprinkles a bit of black powder onto a plate, then pours a pungent orange liquid on top of it. After he mixes the ingredients together, it makes a thick, black sludge that he syphons up into the syringe.

  I wince, bracing myself as he brings the needle closer. It bites my skin hard when he sticks it into my side, in between two ribs, then injects the black poisonous-looking stuff into my body.

  But the effect is instant. A warm sensation that floods through my body and fills me with the urge to giggle.

  I look down at my torso. My ribs protrude still, but a blackness is spreading all over me. I fall back on the cot and look up at the tent-ceiling.

  “More?”

  I don’t look at the healer as I gesture to the back of my head. His hand grips the back of my neck firmly before he forces me onto my side. I follow his lead, suddenly more relaxed than I’ve been in over a year. My muscles feel like balls of candy floss, and my bones like feathers.

  My eyes flitter shut as the healer peels dried-blood from my hair. The gentle sensation feels therapeutic, though that could just be the black sludge washing over me. It’s strong stuff. I barely even feel it when the healer cuts away some of my hair, then smears that mossy paste over my scalp.

  “What is that stuff?” I ask, but I don’t hear my voice louder than a faint whisper. “I feel funny.”

  The tent starts to move. It twists in on itself, then bloats out. Adrianna starts to look like slender man the more I stare at her. She wears a toothless grin and the stink of marmite radiates off her.

  “You have bad dream.” The healer’s voice is like a boulder crushing me.

  The cot shifts under me. Adrianna moves toward me then helps me to my feet. The world is spinning. I clutch onto her like a drowning man to a rock.

  Adrianna half-carries me out of the tent, and back to our little area of the camp. She drops me into a small tent. I lie on the dirt at someone’s feet.

  The healer wasn’t lying.

  I have terrible dreams.

  6

  Distant sirens penetrated the air. A constant howl carried on the tails of the wind.

  The streets below were plagued with a swarm of people. Soldiers stood at the edges of the pavements and had rifles tucked to their chests. Occasionally, they shoved a person back onto the pavement, shouted for others to keep up and stay in formation, ordered that everyone keep calm.

  Up here on the balcony, I was anything but calm.

  For such a small town, I never expected to see so many come out of their homes. The mass amount of people stunned me to silence, and it was all I could do but to just watch them from the balcony.

  Beside me, Tash stood just as silent as me. Her hand glided along the railing to hold mine. The touch of her warm skin eased some of the tingles that marched through my body.

  The streets were littered with people, but the road was clear, save for one van with a megaphone fastened to the top of it. The van crawled through the crowd at the pace of a turtle in a race.

  From the megaphone, Finnish garbled the air like static on a television. White noise clung to the edges of the announcement. But the hotel we were staying at warned us about this the other day, when the darkness reached the small town in Finland. It was an evacuation.

  The government demanded all tourists in the country be evacuated to the major cities, and encouraged their civilians to follow suit. Only the other day, Martial Law had been announced, and now with the darkness swallowing the air with only street lamps to penetrate it, all of Europe seemed to be descending into madness.

  The voice that came from the megaphone paused for a beat before it returned, speaking English; “All foreigners must report directly to the evacuation point. Please leave all non-essential personal belongings. Bring your travel itinerary and passport to report to the nearest evacuation point. Repeat, this is not a test. All foreigners must report—”

  “Guess we better get going,” Tash said, hand still clutched onto mine.

  “I don’t want to go down there,” I admitted quietly.

  Her hand squeezed mine. “We�
��ll be fine, Vale. They’ll take us to Helsinki, and they’ll probably just put us on a flight home.”

  I looked at my girlfriend as she watched the swarm of people move up the street to the evacuation point. Her sharp profile was as cutting as a model’s on a runway. Her crimped black hair was free of its usual pastel-blue wig, and instead tied into a wild bun that sat at the back of her head. But even though she tried to reassure me with promises she couldn’t keep, a ghostly pallor had taken over her dark complexion, and convinced me that she was just as worried as I was.

  Tash was never worried. I was the worrier in the relationship, and she was the rock I clung to for support. Seeing her fallen expression sent bubbles of fear through my body, and they all wound up deep in my churning belly.

  “Come on,” she said and, with her hand holding mine, took me back into our hotel room.

  Clothes and wigs and make-up and charcoal sticks were strewn about the place. Looked like a bomb had exploded in our suitcases and sent everything scattering around the room. Of course, the mess seemed daunting only now because we had to pack for the evacuation, and most of what we had with us would be ‘non-essential’. We would be leaving behind a lot of what we owned.

  “Here.” Tash threw a leather backpack at me. I caught it with a swipe of my scarred arm, and hugged it to my chest. “You pack food—get some drinks from the mini-bar.” She dug out her own backpack from the suitcase opened at the bottom of the bed. “I’ll get our clothes and your art stuff.”

  As I kicked open the mini-bar and started emptying its packets of nuts and drink cans into my bag, I looked over my shoulder at Tash. She wore a grim look on her face when she was sure I wasn’t looking.

  There was still some empty space in the bag, so I rammed fresh underwear and some face wipes into it before zipping it up.

  “Passports?” I asked.

  “Got ‘em.” She zipped up her bag, then pulled the straps over her shoulders. “You got a jacket?”

  In answer, I tapped the bag slung over my shoulder.

  “Hey.” She came up to me and stole my hands in hers. Levelling my gaze with her steady one, she squeezed my hands tight and promised, “We’ll get through this, all right? All that’s going to happen is we’re taken to the city, then to the airport. We’ll be home before you know it.”

  I turned my stare down at my brown-leather boots. “It won’t be any different. Back home, it’s the same, isn't it? All that darkness in the air—and no one knows what it is or where it came from.”

  “We know where it came from,” she said and tried her mouth at a small smile. “Scotland’s North.”

  I glowered at her from beneath my lashes. “You know what I mean, Tash. It’s not funny. We go home, and then what? It’s not life as normal.”

  “Who says so?” she challenged. “Who says it won’t all go away, or we find a way to live with it? It’s probably just some pollution reflecting in the atmosphere—you know, like the Northern Lights. Just one of nature’s tricks.”

  My mouth set into a grim line, and I looked away. Neither of us believed that. Not one bit.

  “Look, we’ll talk on the bus, all right?” She took my chin in her grip before she planted a firm kiss on my lips. “But right now, we really need to leave.”

  I nodded, then fixed the bag straps over my shoulders. Taking my hand in hers, Tash led me out of the hotel room and to the lift down the corridor. We stood there for a while, waiting for the elevator. But it didn’t come. Eventually, we headed down the staircase to the lobby.

  Not a receptionist or concierge in sight. The place looked abandoned already, and they had only just started evacuations that morning.

  “Looks like they’ve all gone,” I said, my fingers threaded through Tash’s. I shot her a small smile. “Customer service doesn't really hold up, does it?”

  “I’ll be sure to complain,” she joked.

  I laughed. “Maybe we’ll get a refund.”

  She squeezed my hand once before we pushed through the swivel doors to the street. The crowd was quick to swallow us whole. We were shoved into the throngs of it. Despite the soldiers all around the street, people were pushing at others and elbowing their way through.

  “I thought Finnish people were supposed to be nice,” I muttered under my breath. But I didn’t think Tash heard me over the sirens and loud, panicked chatter of the crowd.

  We followed the crowd like branches down a river. Ahead, the evacuation point started to come into view. A mass of soldiers were gathered there, armed heavily, and guarding rows of canvas-covered trucks—the kind that troops drive. Before being loaded onto the trucks, people were being inspected. Bags and suitcases were confiscated from the hoarders in the crowd, passports were checked, and identifications being scrutinised.

  “Do they think it’s terrorists?” I wondered aloud at the sheer force of the troops inspecting everyone reporting to the evacuation point.

  “Oh, shit!” Tash stopped dead beside me.

  Before she could elaborate, the crowd shoved us forward with them, and I swore someone hit the small of my back with their fist. I turned around and glared wildly at the people behind me, but none met my gaze. The force of the crowd just pushed us onward.

  Tash grabbed me by the arm and yanked me out of the river. I staggered to a stop beside her, pressed up against the wall of a shopfront.

  “I forgot your art book.”

  “What?” I hissed at her, and I pulled my hand from hers. “You said you would—”

  “I know,” she sighed and ran her hands down her face. “I got your charcoals, but I forgot the book. Shit!”

  A frustrated groan crawled up my throat as I turned my gaze around the pushing crowd. They moved forward and forward, up to the stand-still ahead. The shoves were becoming more violent.

  An older woman was barged to the ground before a soldier made to help her stand. But then, he wasn’t helping her stand at all—he was pointing his rifle at her head, shouting Finnish words at her. An old man rushed to the woman’s aid and hoisted her up to her feet. They melted back into the crowd.

  “Ok,” I started and met Tash’s devastated brown eyes. “Wait here. I’ll go back for it.”

  “Vale, no. I don't think that’s a good idea. We should stick together.”

  “It’s all right. I’ll be a few minutes, that’s all. I’ll move faster on my own. Just—” I rested my hands on her slim shoulders. “Just don’t move from here, ok? Wait.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  I didn’t have a moment to turn my back on her before she snatched my wrist and pulled me to her for a kiss. A kiss of fear. Of possible goodbyes. When she drew back, she was slipping my passport into my hand.

  “Just in case,” she told me.

  I nodded, and slipped the passport into my jean pocket. “I’ll see you in a minute, ok?”

  She smiled once before I turned and rushed down the side of the crowd, wedged between them and the wall. I was right—I moved much faster without Tash. I ran up the four flights of stairs and barrelled back into the hotel room, saying a silent thanks to Tash for leaving the door unlocked. It wasn’t like I could call the concierge to let me in.

  I found my sketchbook under the nightstand. Quickly, I stuffed it into my bag, hearing the calls for evacuation outside from the crackly megaphone. Tugging on my backpack, I raced back out to the corridor and scrambled for the stairs. I had to be quick, just in case Tash moved from our spot—in case the soldiers forced her to rejoin the crowd, or the shoving guided her up the way.

  I was running down the stairs when I heard a heavy sound come pounding down behind me. I swerved around just as a bulky middle-aged man barrelled down the stairs, right at me. His shoulder slammed into me as he raced past me, and I was thrown back against the wall.

  The back of my head crunched against the wall. Instantly, I dropped to the floor and the stairs came rushing up at me. I fell down them, spiralling like a pig on a roast, until I landed on the flat floor.
Darkness was quick to take me.

  When I woke up, dizziness had its clutches on me.

  I forced myself to sit up against the wall. The ground seemed to be moving beneath me, stretching and pulling like heated toffee. I reached up a shaky hand for my throbbing tremble. My fingers came away smeared with glistening, crimson blood.

  How long I was unconscious, I didn't know. But urgency was quick to gnaw at me, and it spurred me forward. I staggered down the stairs, leaning against the railing as my legs weakly carried me as fast as they could.

  Outside, the crowd had thinned. It looked like a quarter of the people as before, at most. Clearer now that the crowd had thinned, the evacuation point up the street looked nearly empty. Only five trucks left that I could see.

  I raced up the street to the shopfront where I left Tash. I looked around, checking in the shops and down alleys, calling her name, but she was nowhere near where she promised to wait.

  After at least fifteen minutes, I whipped out my sketchbook and flipped to a page with Tash’s face drawn onto it with dark-brown charcoal.

  I ran up to the nearest soldier. “Do you speak English?” I aimed the page at him. “Have you seen her? She’s my height, has dark skin. Her hair is tied back—”

  “Go!” The soldier pointed to the evacuation point. “Go there!”

  “She’s up there?” I shook the sketchbook. “You’ve seen her? You’re sure she’s up there?”

  “Joo.” He nodded.

  “Joo? Yes?” I slammed the book shut. “Thank you!”

  With that, I rushed up to the evacuation point, and shoved my way through the crowd. Up on my toes, I searched over the heads of the people for Tash. A hand shot out from the edge of the crowd and yanked me out.

  A soldier had his tight grip on me. He shouted something Finnish at me, then pulled out the passport from my pocket. He inspected it before he repeated his foreign tongue.

  I shook my head. “English. England. I don’t understand.”

  “You—” He jabbed me on the chest, hard, with my passport. “Go, now. There.”

  As I slipped the passport into my pocket, I followed his gaze to the truck that was loading.