by Brandon Witt
Instead of laughing or giving me one of his too-charming winks, Schwint’s attention was fully focused to my left.
Looking over, I saw Caitlin, her face a deep red, her hand raised like she was getting ready to cast something painful in Schwint’s direction. She looked back and forth between Schwint and Newton. Her voice was low, each word drawn out. She was ready to kill. “You mean to tell me that you fucking fairies didn’t check to see if there was a way across the damned Gulf? That we just wasted half a day on a tourist-filled sightseeing bus when we could have been rescuing my sister?”
Miraculously, her hand dropped to her side and she stormed off.
I picked up her backpack and followed at a safe distance, the fairies trailing behind.
Six
FINN DE MORISCO
A fourteen-minute taxi ride brought us to the edge of the Cabo Blanco Nature Reserve. Cabo Blanco takes up the southernmost tip of the Nicoya Peninsula and is in the heart of the rainforest. We hadn’t even formally entered the reserve when once again I was struck with certainty that the Vampire Cathedral hadn’t exterminated all magical species that weren’t pure blood or could be mistaken for human. Of course, according to Schwint, that was common knowledge to anyone outside the mainstream witch society. For me, though, it bordered on a life-altering schema change.
Caitlin stared up at the huge trees, moss dripping from their soaring boughs. “Let me get this straight. You’re telling me the Vampire Cathedral set up camp in a national park? What, they needed more food and thought a tourist trap would be a good idea?”
“Technically, it’s a reserve and probably wouldn’t necessarily increase foot traffic. It’s to preserve the land, not for human recreation. However, since Costa Rica depends so heavily on tourism, this reserve may…” Newton’s words faded out under Caitlin’s glare.
“Whatever, fairy geek. I don’t need a science lesson. I’m just skeptical that the Royals would choose such a heavily traversed area.”
Schwint jumped in before Newton could respond. “Actually, it’s only been a reserve for a few decades. At one point, much of this area was overdeveloped to the point the forest was disappearing. However, the Vampire Cathedral has been here for a couple of centuries. The Royals would have chosen this well before it was any type of tourist destination.”
Caitlin leveled her stink eye on him. “You too? First the spider and now a topographical lesson?”
He shrugged. “Fairy, remember? We’re kinda in tune to these kinds of things.”
“Apparently not in tune enough to know about boats going across the fucking Gulf. How’d you miss that with all your flying around yesterday?”
“Okay, Cate, we’ve already been through this. We’re here now. What’s done is done.” I turned to Schwint. “I gotta agree with Caitlin, though. There seems to be too many people coming in and out for the Vampire Cathedral to be here.”
“We saw it when we were flying over yesterday. Plus, it’s common knowledge where to find the Cathedral.”
“Not really. We didn’t know where it was. I mean, we knew it was in Costa Rica but nothing more than that.”
Schwint gave me a look. “Is that truly the criteria you want to go with? You didn’t even know ten correct facts about fairies, and we’re living all around you in San Diego.”
“Point taken.” I glanced around, overwhelmed by the huge forest on one side and the crashing ocean on the other. At a rustle, I looked up, and three tufted white faces stared at us from the branches, black tails curling down.
“Capuchin monkeys.” Newton’s voice actually had a hint of a smile in it. “Cute, but mischievous little devils.”
“Yeah, they’re great. I’ll make sure to get a picture with one and send it back home. Better yet, let’s capture one and take it back for Christina’s unborn baby.” Caitlin turned from Newton dismissively. “Maybe the Royals used to be here, but they’ve moved somewhere else with all the recent development in the area over the last few decades.”
Newton shook his head, his words heavy with condescension. “Trust me, they’re never gonna leave the Cathedral. It’s their home, where they’ve been for centuries. They’re not going to just pick up and go.”
“Even if they run the risk of exposure to humans?” I was over my juvenile jealousy of Newton, but his smug know-it-all attitude grated on my nerves. Not that Caitlin or I were behaving much better.
He shrugged. “I know royals. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking fairies or vampires. Royals are royals. They think they’re indestructible and above everyone else. It would never enter their heads that anything could befall them without asking permission first. Plus, do you really think they don’t have protections and security set up somehow?”
“You know, you seem to know an awful lot about this place and the Vampire Cathedral. You wouldn’t be part of their protections and security, would you?” Caitlin took a step toward Newton, her fingers splayed, spell readied.
Newton rolled his eyes. “Yes, the Vampire Cathedral demanded Finn join them in Costa Rica and then sent me to make sure I throw him off the track. You got me!” He looked over at Schwint before turning back to us. “Your new friends aren’t much better than the fairy royalty that has ostracized both our families. I’d think you’d choose better.” He turned away, his wings materializing, shockingly bright in the afternoon sun. They fluttered a couple of times, sending prisms of color over our faces. “If I’m not good enough for my own race’s royalty, what makes you think the vamps would have me?”
With a couple of beats of his wings, he lifted several feet into the air. He looked down at Schwint. “I’ll be at the hideout. Let me know when you’re ready for me to come and get her.” With that, he darted off into the forest and quickly disappeared behind the trees.
I felt my face flush with embarrassment. Time to pull my head out of my ass.
Caitlin turned on Schwint, her voice once again the quiet whisper that made me want to run as far away as I could. “Come and get her?”
“Thanks a lot, Pewlet.” Schwint rubbed his forehead, then looked at Caitlin. Quickly, he looked over at me, then decided it was best to meet the fury head-on and returned to Caitlin. “I was hoping to ease into this conversation, but I guess there is no real way to bring this up without setting you off.”
“Well then, don’t hold back, set me off.”
“Newton and I were talking and trying to come up with what we thought the best plan would be, the one that would have the highest likelihood of success…”
Caitlin placed her hands on her hips. “And?”
“And it seems to make sense if we take advantage of there being four of us now instead of just three. It might be in our best interest,” he rushed on, “in Cynthia’s interest, if we split up.”
“You want us to split up?” I couldn’t believe my ears.
Caitlin cut me off with a wave of her hand. “Let me guess. Your little groups don’t involve you and the fairy-reject scouting around while my brother and I go save our sister, do they?”
Whatever nervousness Schwint had been experiencing, he seemed to shake it off as he met Caitlin’s angry gaze. “You and Finn will help save Cynthia, but no, I don’t think it makes sense to send both of you in at the same time.”
Caitlin’s voice chilled to an even icier tone. “So, when exactly did you become the leader of this rescue mission? You’re not family. You don’t get a say. You’re just a last-minute addition, and don’t even get me started about Newton. I couldn’t care less what his opinion is.”
“If you and Finn walk in and instantly get thrown into some cell, what good will you be to Cynthia then? Even worse, what if they enslave Finn and kill you?”
She didn’t even balk at Schwint’s words, though they sent spikes of fear through me. Fears that had been playing on an endless loop in my mind, but ones I’d managed to deny solidly until now.
“And what will you do, fairy? My spells are more of an offensive power than yours. What are
you going to do? Make flowers grow out of their hair?”
“Can you do this?” Without warning, Schwint disappeared in a small explosion of silver-blue sparks.
Caitlin flinched, her eyes wide, then narrowing. “Oh, wow, making yourself invisible. Even my nephews can do that, fairy. Show me something with real magic.” She jerked away and swatted at her cheek, and then I saw it. A little silver bug zooming at her face, darting though her flicking hands and whizzing toward her eyes.
“Fuck, first spiders and now gnats. This place sucks.”
“Cate, it’s not gnats.”
She glared at me. Then she let out a growl. “Perfect, Schwint, you can turn yourself into a bug. Like we didn’t already know you were a pest.”
With another silvery flash, Schwint was back, his sparkling dragonfly wings beating so hard he hovered half a foot off the ground. “I didn’t turn into a bug. Although, now that you mention it, that might work too. I just shrank myself.”
“You really are Tinker Bell, aren’t you?” Caitlin still looked annoyed but didn’t appear to be as close to trying to murder him. “How is shrinking yourself supposed to help Cynthia?”
He stared at her, like the answer was obvious. As much as I hated to defend Caitlin, I didn’t see the connection either. “If things go wrong, I can get out of there. Before they can even react.”
“Oh, what a relief. Stellar plan. If things go wrong, abandon both my sister and my brother to the vampires. Forgive me if I want to see what’s behind door number two.”
At his words, I realized the answer was obvious. “Wait, Caitlin, I think he has a point.”
“Of course you do. You always have to agree with your boyfriend.” She glared at me. “Do you really not have any more pride than that? You’re okay with him turning tail and running while you’re trapped there?”
“Shut up, Cate. If things go wrong and Schwint is able to shrink down and fly away, he can get you, or at least let you know what’s going on so you can go get someone else to come and help.”
To her credit, she actually stopped and considered the possibility. “Okay, and I’m not agreeing. I’m just playing this out.” She started to pace back and forth in front of us. “Let’s say you and Finn go in. What am I doing in this plan of yours?”
Schwint looked nervous once more. “You’d be out here with Newton. In hiding.”
“What! Hiding? With Newton? Boy, you’d better try that shrinking trick right now before I get my hands on you.”
Seven
FINN DE MORISCO
Five minutes passed as I gawked in awe at the sight in front of me. I couldn’t force myself to say anything, let alone make a step to move toward the Vampire Cathedral.
“Pretty amazing, huh?” Schwint hovered beside me, his head about half a foot above my own. “It’s different, but equal to most of the fairy palaces I’ve visited, which is saying something for such a tasteless race as vampires.”
I think I nodded, but I’m not sure. This was the most obviously magical place I’d ever seen, even more than the fairy new moon celebration Schwint had taken me to. That had been unreal, but mainly due to the fairies frolicking everywhere. This, this was different. Nothing living was in sight, but the Cathedral could not be anything other than supernatural in nature. Yet it was feasible to believe that a human could walk by it and never notice anything out of the ordinary, especially if the Royals were using some sort of defensive magic, which they obviously were.
The Cathedral rose out of the ground, taking the form of a huge mountain and small foothills. At a quick glance, the only thing you would see would be that. Just another mountain in the Costa Rican rainforest. Just one more natural wonder in a land where every corner turned revealed a new beauty. Boulders, towering trees, tangles of vines, colorful, exotic birds soaring overhead, monkeys cavorting, the nearly obscured sea crashing in the distance. Once we paused and looked with vision unhindered by magic, the mountain showed itself to be a castle-like structure birthed from the earth itself, as if accidently formed from colliding tectonic plates eons ago. Boulders soared up to form spires ascending above the tree canopy. Jungles of trees clustered over the face of the mountain, providing both concealment and ornamentation to the cathedral’s walls. Thick mists shifted slowly over the face of the mountains, refusing to let the eye take in the full vision at once.
It could easily have been mistaken for a castle in heaven or a fortress from hell, depending on lighting and either inspirational or foreboding background music. My first instinct was more of the heaven persuasion. Nothing so lovely or natural could be evil. Then I thought of Brett—so beautiful but born from such wickedness. Angelic and demonic splendor. Two sides of the same coin—indistinguishable, until too late.
Knowing Cynthia was buried somewhere in the depths of such grandeur cast an oppressive shadow over the formations. For the briefest of moments, dwarfed by the Cathedral, a flash of terror tore through me, and I knew I couldn’t do it. If I walked though whatever entrance awaited, I’d not find my way out again, lost forever under the mountains, vanished into stone, wood, and fog.
Typically, the longer a person is exposed to something out of the ordinary, the more commonplace it becomes. The Vampire Cathedral elicited the opposite response. Schwint and I had been walking—actually, only I’d been walking. Schwint was coasting a foot or so off the ground, his iridescent blue wings stirring the muggy air around us—for over half an hour, and the closer we got, the more miraculous the Cathedral became. The path was nothing more than billions of small black stones laid so close together, moss was the only plant able to grasp a foothold in the cracks. Every so often, crumbling boulders had collapsed over the path to create a series of arches lining the way, haunting in their artistry and their appearance of corrosion.
In the reverse of what I’d expected, the closer we came to the heart of the mountain, the denser the wildlife became. The tree branches and vines were heavy with countless species of monkeys, sloths, and birds. I soon had to look down frequently at the stone path to avoid stepping on squirming reptiles and jeweled insects.
We traveled in silence. I couldn’t tell if Schwint was as nervous as I felt or as in awe of the surroundings. Maybe he wasn’t. He was more used to such lavish magic. Mom didn’t even like us using the word “magic.” She found it archaic and a little offensive. She saw our abilities as power, a natural extension of who we are as witches. Both views are true, and in some ways the same thing. However, the word “power” could never capture this. This was magic. Pure and unadulterated. Schwint was nothing if not magic, which was a way I’d never seen myself, but in our short time together, my view was slowly starting to shift. Walking down this path toward the mountain fortress that held my imprisoned sister, I had to admit “power” didn’t begin to convey what was happening here.
Every so often, Schwint would run his fingertips through my hair from where he drifted above me. More often, my hand would rise of its own accord and find the small of his back or his waiting fingers, wordlessly giving me reassurance and keeping me from diving full speed into the waves of terror that kept threatening to crash over me.
Over an hour later, we’d arrived. The mountain that had seemed so close and huge from first glance now loomed over us, its pinnacles completely lost in the clouds. I’d kept waiting to be overtaken by a storm of vampires, maybe hellish imps. If nothing else, I’d thought the ever-thickening gathering of animals would morph into hell spawn and usher us into captivity. There’d been nothing. Just increasing beauty, deepening forests, and an overwhelming sense of magic pulsing through my body.
“That’s it?” After so long in silence, my voice seemed to be a shout, and I winced at the intrusion.
Schwint craned his neck, twisting to get a better view into the crevice that jutted up the face of the mountain in a lightning-shaped scar. “I suppose so. I must admit, I was expecting iron gates or a drawbridge. Something.”
We stared a moment longer, as if expecting the d
ark recesses to illuminate at our arrival. “Do you think we go on in?”
“As opposed to armed guards swooping over us?”
I looked up at him. “So you were kinda expecting that too? Don’t you know what we’re supposed to do?”
He drifted down beside me, his wings disappearing. “Why would I? I’ve never been here before.”
“You knew how to find it and haven’t seemed surprised at anything. I figured you knew the protocol.”
“My adorable witch boy, even though I wasn’t raised in a protective cocoon as you were, that doesn’t mean I’ve ever had reason to come a-calling to the most hated species of our world.”
“Shut up! Just because we can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not listening.”
He gave me one of his charming smiles, proving how much I was truly getting to know him since I could see the nervousness shining through. “I’m sure they’d consider it a compliment.”
Another couple of minutes passed as we waited, pacing back and forth outside the fissure, looking up at the towering walls of stone and trees.
“I think we do it.” Schwint gestured up the rocky cliff disappearing into the clouds. “I guess I could fly around up there and see if I can find out anything, but….” His voice trailed off as he gazed upward.
“No. I’m sure they know we’re here. We need to stay together.” Instinctively, my hand reached out and found his.
“Yeah. I like that idea.” He turned his yellow eyes to me. “Whatever happens, we’re gonna get her out of here. I promise.”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure if he believed it or not. I wasn’t even able to fake such assertions.
“I also want to reiterate how much I love you.”
His words were the first thing that had been able to cut through the fear since we’d left Newton and Caitlin arguing back on the edge of the forest. As much terror as I felt, I had no other option. Cynthia was in there, taken by the ones we’d been taught to fear more than any other. It had been impossible to even consider leaving her or waiting to see the next step the vampires would take after nearly killing my parents and taking my sister. This was the only outcome. Not so for Schwint. He hadn’t even known me two months yet and had only met Cynthia once, if you could even count the bakery debacle as a formal introduction. He should have turned tail and run, gotten lost to the allure and haze of Spor, and found another lover in the back rooms of the Square.