by C C Solomon
I nodded, cautiously. “We both are. Except he’s a tech mage. I’m Amina Langston, my brother over there is Charles.”
“Ugh, I need a shower,” I heard Lisa say in a hoarse voice.
The guy, who I now pegged as being in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, tilted his head towards her. “That’s Lisa Xu. I’m Erik Bennet.”
Charles looked over at me as if to say, What now?
“So, what brought you guys out here?” I asked.
“Trying to find a place to settle,” Erik replied. “Where we were before wasn’t working out. You?”
“Same thing. We left a really bad situation and were headed to Hagerstown. It’s a government town. Hoping they can help us get some friends we left behind. Do y’all have a destination?”
“Silver Spring,” Lisa said through a cough.
I raised an eyebrow and looked over to Charles who frowned at me.
“Seriously?” I asked.
Erik nodded but didn’t say anymore.
“Do you know anyone named Phillip?” Charles asked, looking at me.
Lisa squinted her eyes. “No, why?”
Charles shook his head quickly. “Amina thinks we should go to Silver Spring, too. I talked her into Hagerstown.”
Lisa looked to me with wide eyes. “Really? How weird is that? Do you have images of the town too? And an older black lady named Annie Mae?”
I raised both eyebrows now, slightly relieved. If Phillip was popping up in various women’s dreams, I’d be done. “No. Someone else.”
“Maybe somebody also from the town. Maybe they have a bunch of people there who can dream hop. That’s amazing. We should all go together,” Lisa suggested, sounding more recovered.
“No,” Erik cut in.
We all looked over to Erik, who was putting his bookbag back on. The muscles on his arms strained as he put his arms through the straps of the too-small bag.
“Why not?” Lisa asked, still sitting with Charles on the ground beside her. I could see through her dirt-stained faced, striking green eyes that looked mesmerizing against her Asian features. I looked away not wanting to stare.
“No offense, but we don’t know you,” he answered, a gruff tone to his husky voice.
“Well, you don’t know the people in Silver Spring either. But you know that we stopped our car and saved your friend’s life and we didn’t ask you for anything,” I responded, hands on my hips.
“Yet.” He folded his arms.
I glared at him for a beat then shrugged my shoulders. “Okay, cool. Take care. Come on, Charles.” I turned and headed to the car. If they didn’t want to help us, I didn’t need them.
“Just like that, Erik?” Lisa began. “This world is full of assholes and you’re just going to let good people go? The more the merrier, I say. You don’t have to be a jerk. I thought you
were—”
“Fine,” Erik barked. “Ana—”
“Amina,” I said and kept walking.
“Sorry, Amina. Witches didn’t do us any favors where we came from.”
“They were into sacrificial magic. Bad stuff,” Lisa explained.
I turned back to them. “We don’t do that.”
“You can control people. That’s not a good thing,” Erik stated.
I frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“You pulled her body from the ground. That was control.”
“That’s kind of scary,” Lisa said, touching her chest.
“I didn’t think about it. I’ve never controlled a person before. I was just trying to get you out. I usually have power over natural things but I couldn’t work the dirt fast enough. I didn’t mean to scare anyone. Silly me, I don’t know what I was thinking, trying to save your life.” I put my hands up in mock surrender.
“Oh, I’m not complaining,” Lisa added, standing up.
Charles jumped up and helped her get to her feet. He was being super attentive to her. He had a crush. Must be nice to be so cute you attract the attention of a guy even while covered head to toe in dirt.
I turned to Erik. “Look, you have a right to be concerned but I’m not here to haphazardly hurt people. We were living in a small community, getting by. Then we were attacked by a group of non-gifted humans. They rounded up people like us and held us captive. They found a way to make themselves stronger by taking our blood. We have to go back and save the others we left behind. But we can’t do it alone. We were hoping to find a town that would help us. I was thinking Silver Spring but Hagerstown is closer. We can use all the help we can get.”
Erik studied me without speaking. I suspect he was purposely trying to make me feel uncomfortable. Maybe he was a cop in the Pre-world. I shifted on my feet. “And whatever you guys were running from we might be able to help with that too,” I added for good measure.
He cocked an eyebrow. “We weren’t running from anything.”
I shrugged. “Sure, a guy, who I think has some gifts, and a fairy walking around wooded areas in Pittsburg is normal.”
“Some of us don’t have tech mages who can start a car.”
“Fair enough but it’s clear you guys are moving on from something. And don’t act like you don’t trust us. If you were that distrustful, you wouldn’t have told me Lisa was a fairy. You knew I was good from the start.” I gave him a wide grin.
He didn’t respond but something in his eyes softened just a tinge.
I continued. “I think we can benefit each other. And we all have to admit that something big is going on. It’s more than a coincidence that we both want to go to Silver Spring. I don’t discard coincidences anymore.”
“Guys, maybe we want to hit the road,” Charles stated looking down at the new watch he swiped from a jewelry store. I let go of the feeling of guilt from stealing a long time ago. No one was going to arrest us. “We get to Hagerstown, if they won’t let us in, then we find some nearby shelter and head to Silver Spring the next morning.”
Lisa nodded vigorously. “Come on, Erik, let’s just go with them. If they wanted to do something foul, they’d have done it by now. Plus, I’m no weakling. I’ve got power too. Which reminds me,” Lisa began. She closed her eyes and clapped her hands together. A swirl of blue wind, the color of the Fae magic, blew around her like a mini tornado and she became a blur behind tinted whirls of smoke. The smoke was odorless and did not affect the air quality. It was actually quite beautiful.
Seconds later it dissipated and there Lisa stood, clean, wearing a pair of jeans and a plaid button-down shirt. Her hair, I could now see, was black with highlights of blue, red, orange, and green. Her makeup was fully done, fake lashes and all. I didn’t need to know how she had time to look glammed up. Magic.
“Can I get a makeover later from you?” I smirked.
She winked and nodded. “I got you, girl. That settles it, let’s pilgrimage together! Fun times!”
We all headed back to the SUV. Our new friends threw their bookbags on top of the stuff in our already-crowded trunk and we maneuvered into the car. Charles drove and Erik, due to his long legs, sat in the passenger seat. I sat in the back with Lisa.
Lisa looked at us all. “This feels right. I think we’re going to get along and make a difference in this world,” she stated, clasping her hands together.
As corny as she seemed, I think I already liked her. Charles looked through the rear-view mirror at Lisa and smiled.
I bumped my elbow to hers and grinned when she returned it.
Erik snorted.
They were strangers but something in me, like Lisa, still felt they’d be good for us. In this world, that’s what we needed.
Chapter 9
“Soo, this is fun, road tripping it with our new friends,” Lisa said in a sing-song voice as my brother drove carefully along the highway, maneuvering around obstacles on the road like he had in his old video games. All those times I used to call him an idiot drone for playing games started to make me sound like the silly one now.
&n
bsp; “How’d you get stuck in that magic dirt, anyway?” Charles asked.
Lisa let out a long dramatic sigh. “So, check this. We were walking down the road and this stupid racoon thing pops out of the dirt and grabs the bag of food I had in my hand. You guys know how hard food is to come by, so I went after it. And this stupid animal tries to disappear in the dirt. So I grabbed it and then I got sucked into the dirt with the now deceased raccoon thing and my now gone food,” she explained.
“You…didn’t want to let the food go?” I asked, eyes squinted.
“Uh, yeah, but by then it was too late. That quick dirt was fast working. Nothing like how quicksand works in the movies. It was like a vacuum. If Erik hadn’t gotten to me in time, I’d be gone.” She shivered.
“Humph, I told you not to chase it,” Erik grumbled from the front passenger seat.
That was his response? His friend almost died and he just wanted to chastise her. Was he really a nice guy? “How’d you both meet?” I asked.
Lisa gave another dramatic sigh. “Okay, so as you know, I’m a fairy and I’ve been trying to find other fairies since this whole foolishness started. Before all this, I was living a sweet life as a makeup artist and stylist in New York, but then this bullshit happened. And fairies or Fae, whatever you want to call them, are so hard to find. The only reason I know what I am is because I met another fairy but she disappeared before I could even go to fairy world.”
“I’m sorry,” Charles cut in from the driver’s seat. “Back up, did you say fairy world? I haven’t met any fairies yet, so I wasn’t even sure you guys were a real thing.”
Lisa nodded quickly. “Oh, we’re real. Rare but real. We just have our own separate dimension. Apparently, we always did. Anyway, before she left, she gave me a pretty good recap of what I needed to know about being a fairy to at least survive. Like, who knew all fairies don’t have wings? Apparently, some of us don’t need them to fly. So anyway—”
“Different dimension? How’s that possible?” I questioned.
“Did you think that all of this came out of nowhere?” Erik asked, turning slightly to me.
“Uh, yeah,” I replied, shrugging.
Erik shook his head and sat back. “We were always what we are now. When whatever event happened that caused this, all it did was lift a veil. That’s how your brother and you are witches. I had family who were werejackals…” His voice trailed off.
Ah-ha, that’s what he was.
“But our parents weren’t magic. They died of the Sickness,” Charles said.
“Maybe your parents had witch genes that may just skip generations, like some diseases,” Erik guessed.
“Like sickle cell,” I stated. “I guess I could understand that.”
“Remember, Mina, you and I used to say Grandma Bea was a witch,” Charles stated.
“That’s because she was mean,” I laughed. “She always knew when we were up to no- good. She’d pop up out of nowhere when we were about to do something we had no business doing. We probably would have set her house on fire if she hadn’t, though. Well, Charles would have.”
“You’re right,” he agreed in a low voice.
“Like Erik, I think there was always magic and the supernatural in the world before The Event,” Lisa said making quotation marks around the words “the event.” “I think some of us magical beings were strong enough to even use magic in the in the Pre-world. Definitely some witches. But for fairies, our magic only worked in fairy world. We never lived among humans. We just visited. But there were some of us who were born in this world and couldn’t ever get to fairy world. Now, in this new world order, we can go between our dimensions. I just don’t know how and I haven’t been able to find another fairy to help me yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were other kinds of dimensions too, and not just a fairy one.”
“This is so confusing,” Charles mumbled.
“Right? So, anyway, there I was minding my business, trying to find some valuables for trade to use in my community, which, side note, I didn’t like that place that much. It was so depressing. Anyway, I was looking for things in this abandoned apartment complex and I got kidnapped by some thugs who brought me back to his camp.” She pointed an index finger towards Erik. “They said they wanted to bring females in because they were low on women. But then, when I tried to use my fairy magic on them to rightfully defend myself, they got different ideas.” She stabbed Erik in the back. “Tell ‘em. Tell ‘em what your people tried to do to me.”
Erik didn’t speak.
“Don’t leave me in suspense. Someone tell me,” I cried.
“Our pack didn’t treat her well,” Erik answered.
Lisa made a disgruntled noise. “Didn’t treat me well. They tried to tie me on a log and roast me like a pig, to be exact,” Lisa stated, crossing her arms.
“This world is some shit,” Charles whispered.
“Look, remember, most weres are carnivorous. And when we are in animal form…well things can be cannibalistic if we are out of control,” Erik explained. “I’m not like that. Before all this, I was a bodyguard in New York. I use to be military back in New Zealand before I moved here for work. I help people, not hurt them. Anyway, our pack was changing. We had a new leader who was cracked. He believed if we ate a fairy we’d become more powerful.”
“Like those humans that imprisoned you both, but instead of blood, their dumb pack believed the power was in the flesh,” Lisa added.
“That was too much for me. I couldn’t go from protecting people to preying on them. I tried to rally people up against our alpha leader, but they were either too scared or they actually believed him.”
“And I don’t think people liked Erik much. Thought he was too mean,” Lisa stated. “In retrospect, Erik shouldn’t have been the one leading the resistance.”
Erik sighed. “Anyway, some of us grabbed Lisa from her chains and I got tasked with sneaking her out. We’ve been on the run for almost two weeks.”
“The big grouch has actually been my hero,” Lisa said, patting Erik’s shoulder.
I wondered if there was anything more between them. Strictly because I’m nosey.
Lisa continued. “Now you guys are my heroes too. I owe y’all some favors, so I’m down to helping you set those others free. Us good guys gotta stick together.”
“Thank you, Lisa,” I said.
“So, tell us some about this Phillip that Charles mentioned,” Erik said.
I really didn’t want to, but it felt only fair since we would end up in Silver Spring and they’d meet him anyway. “He’s a guy who keeps showing up in my dreams and we can speak telepathically from afar. He got us out of the prison.”
“He was there?”
I shook my head. “I can’t explain it. He was just able to give me my strength back through my dream, so that I could fight my way out of there.”
“Miss Annie Mae never did any of that for me. She just spoke to me in a couple of dreams. She said I’d find my people soon after I got to Silver Spring,” Lisa stated. “She told me about Erik too. Said he’d find his place in this world in her community.”
“So, what’d this Phillip promise you?” Erik asked.
I looked out of the window. “Other than helping me rescue the others, nothing.”
“Why do you want to go then?”
“It’s better than the prison and, honestly, since he helped us and has this kind of power, I want to meet him in person. What else is there to do?”
“Was he cute?” Lisa asked, clapping her hands lightly.
I glanced at her. “He’s nice looking.”
“Well, I guess we really know why you want to go, then,” Erik muttered. “Seems like a bit of a superficial reason but I’m not judging.”
“Oh, lay off her, McGrouchy Pants,” Lisa said, shaking her head.
“What part of that sentence wasn’t judgmental?” I asked, adjusting in my seat. “Fine, since you want to be all in my business, understand this: for the six
months that I was contained in that prison for the paranormal, I never dreamed except for when he visited. Why would he come out of the blue to me? Who is he? What drew him to a woman holed up in another state? How was he able to get my powers back? If you were me would you just shrug and let that go? Maybe a guy like that knows why all this happened in the world. And now that he is probably in the same town as this Annie Mae, maybe this is a pretty darn special town and I like special towns. That could mean safety, which would be nice in a freaky world like this.”
Erik sighed and then nodded. “Fair enough. But you should be careful who you show your magic to. You’re a little naive and I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”
I crinkled my nose. “Thanks for the backhanded compliment. How am I naive?”
“Your whole story about this Phillip, and even you stopping to help Lisa and I, makes you a little too much of an easy prey. I’m surprised you’ve lasted this long. It’s probably due to your brother being with you.”
“Dude,” Charles whispered.
Lisa slapped Erik on the back.
“Hey, Charles,” I said in a pleasant tone, leaning forward. “Pull over really quick so I can scratch Erik like an alley cat.”
Lisa let out a cackle.
Erik turned back to me, his eyes all too serious. “I’m just stating facts, Amina. If you were my client, I would tell you the same thing to save your life. Your nature is a danger in this kind of world.”
I leaned back.
“He’s right,” Charles whispered. “Helping and trusting people hasn’t really gotten us far in this world.”
I wasn’t naive. I was hopeful. Hopeful that this world could still be something good. That we could trust at least some people. If I didn’t believe that, then this wouldn’t be a world I wanted to be a part of. “If we can never rely on each other, then what are we doing here?” I asked, rhetorically.