Blood of Retribution (12 page)

The third floor sprawls before us in all its tacky grandeur.  This is obviously the private section of the palace.  There is a sitting room with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the escape of the river from its palace confines to its widening and flowing grace that goes off into the woods.  A great gorge has developed and formed beautiful rock sides in varying shades of red and orange.  It must be beautiful when the setting sun hits them.  I guess I’ll find out tonight. 

The furniture is slightly less tacky than the stuff in the public areas, but not much.  It’s all overstuffed and comfortable looking, but it’s gold.  With forest green trim.  The walls are a brilliant white that almost hurts the eyes.  The carpet below our feet is also white.  I feel like I’m ruining it just by standing here with my shoes on.  There is no way this room could be considered cozy.  I don’t see myself curling up with a good book here any time soon.

From the circular sitting room, there are ten closed doors that I assume lead to bedrooms.  It is obvious which doorway belongs to my biological father.  The thing is massive with two large oak panels and brass knobs on each.  There are lion head knockers and the doors gleam as if the sun is shining on them.  The maids must use a lot of wax on the things.  On either side of Dagda’s room, there are doors that are not as large as his, but definitely larger than the other seven.  Following my eyes, Kallen says, “Those are for the Royal Offspring.”

Royal Offspring?  How charming.  I close my eyes and shake my head.  “Do I even want to know what they look like on the inside?”

Kallen chuckles.  “The one on the right is a pastel nightmare.”

“The one on the left?”

“Tolerable,” he says.  “Barely.”

The maid starts to walk to the room on the right but Kallen stops her.  “For security reasons, we will stay in the other room.”

A confused look washes over her face, but she is quick to school it.  “Of course,” she says.  “I will have someone prepare it for you.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” I say, not comfortable with having Dagda’s staff wait on me.

I can tell she wants to argue, but Kallen comes to the rescue.  “Thank you, Mathild.  We can take it from here.”

Color flushes into my cheeks.  I’m supposedly uncomfortable being waited on yet I didn’t even bother to ask the maid her name.  I’m a walking contradiction.  “Thank you,” I say sincerely, hoping the emotion in my voice will make up for my faux pas.

She smiles.  “Please let me know if you need anything.”  She walks towards the pastel room, presumably to take care of whatever niceties had been put in there for our arrival.

Kallen opens the door on the left of Dagda’s and pulls me inside.  He’s right, this room isn’t so bad.  I’m guessing it was planned with a boy in mind because the colors are all dark and vivid, blues mostly.  The large oak bed is placed in the center of the room, not along any wall.  That seems odd, but the way the room is set up, everything else surrounds it.  I guess it’s kind of cool like that.  It will take some getting used to, though.  There’s an odd sort of security knowing that there is a wall along the back of the bed, one less side that an enemy can come from.  Maybe that’s just paranoia on my part from all my death threats.  I doubt most people worry about things like that.

Always wanting to conquer my fears, I take my husband’s hand and pull him to the bed.  He doesn’t resist and talking trees have been pushed to the back of my mind.  “I think we should test the mattress, make sure it’s to our liking,” I purr with what I hope is a sexy smile.

From the way his body responds, it is.  His hard muscles have tensed with desire and his expression is purely predatory.  “Amazing how often our minds are in sync,” he says, making his shirt disappear so I can see his sleek muscles move under his skin. 

If I wasn’t trying to seduce him, I’d snort.  Our minds are hardly ever in sync, but that’s part of the attraction.  I like that we look at things differently and can learn so much from each other.  “Not fair,” I say placing my hand on his bare chest.  “I’m way over dressed.”  Before the last word is out of my mouth, I am only wearing my bra and panties.

Crawling onto the bed, I give him a sly smile and then lasso him with my magic.  The surprise on his face dissolves into lust as I use my powers to bring him to me.  Pulling him onto the bed, I press him against the mattress, stroking his smooth, hot skin.  Only I can do the touching because I have his arms captured still.  He lets out a low growl when he realizes it and I grin wickedly and continue to explore his body.  Soon, his low growl is for a completely different reason than wanting to be set free.  Straddling his body, I lean down to kiss him and he captures my lips with no plans of letting them go anytime soon.  With a low moan, I press myself to him, eager to share everything I have with him.

I am so lost in him that my first thought after hearing the blood curdling scream is that if the person isn’t dying already, I’m going to kill her.  Kallen and I pull apart and my clothes are instantly back in place.  Jumping off the bed, his long legs get him to the door faster and he swings it open, practically tripping over Taz.

“Watch out, you whacka!” Taz says with a growl.  Kallen just glares at him for a heartbeat and then steps over him.

The screaming is coming from behind the door of the pastel room.  It has to be Mathild.  Kallen reaches the door and tries the handle, which of course doesn’t give.  He opens it a second later with magic and barges into the room, with me and Taz right behind him. The three of us stop short to see what is going on.  Mathild is alone in the room.  She’s standing in the far corner, hands crushing against her ears and her eyes tightly closed.  From her screaming, I expected a bunch of zombies or something trying to eat her alive.  What the hell?

I give Kallen a questioning look, but he just shrugs.  He doesn’t know any better than I do what’s going on.  Great.  I guess I’ll find out.  I take a step forward only to find myself suddenly falling face first on the carpet, narrowly missing a dresser.  I’m going to kill Taz.  “What are you doing?” I demand, swinging my head back to look at him.  He has the bottom of my jeans in his mouth, which is how he tripped me.

Spitting out the denim, he says, “Saving your reckless hide from doing yet another stupid thing today.”

In general I don’t like it when anyone calls me stupid, but coming from a forest creature, it really pisses me off.  “You are on dangerous ground,” I warn him as I get to my feet.  “I’m trying to find a reason why I shouldn’t wrap your little hairy body in bacon and leave you out for the jackals.”

“There are no jackals here,” Taz huffs.

“Then I’ll feed you to a crocodile for god’s sake.  You’re missing the point of what I’m saying.”

“I know perfectly well what you are saying.  It is you who is misinformed about the indigenous wildlife here.”

Oh my god, I’m seriously going to kill him.  As I stalk towards him, I realize that the only voices in the room now are mine and Taz’s.  The screaming has stopped.  I look to the corner where Mathild is and find Kallen holding her while she sobs and she is getting snot all over his t-shirt.  He is so taking a shower before I touch him again. 

With a final glower at Taz, I walk to Kallen and Mathild.  “What’s wrong?” I ask, wishing she wasn’t using my husband as a repository for her mucus.

Kallen shrugs.  “She stopped screaming as soon as I touched her and now she’s…” he looks down at her and is at a loss for words.  I can tell having her cling to him like that is kind of freaking him out.  She seems to have a death grip around his waist and we’re probably going to need a hammer and chisel to pry them apart.

I don’t know why I’m not being more sympathetic.  Geez, she’s terrified and I’m worried about her snot and clinginess.  As I pause to consider this, I feel it.  I feel the presence in the room now.  The one that’s thriving on the anger and terror, pushing away anything else.  I turn around in a full circle, looking for an embodiment of the evil that I believe has now exposed itself. 

There it is, in the doorway looking like a grim reaper.  Black cloak, covered face, evil laugh.  “That is such a cliché,” I say, disgusted by the whole façade.

Apparently, that wasn’t the expected reaction.  The evil laugh stops and the body under the stereotypical robe tenses.  As soon as it does, I feel pressure against my brain.  It kind of feels like someone’s trying to peel it back so he can get to the good stuff in the middle.  I feel like a banana.  Not wanting to have my brain ripped apart, I push back at the magic trying to force its way into me. 

As the dark figure and I do battle, the room falls away.  Where the walls once stood, there’s black, an all-consuming black, a complete absence of color.  Images begin to appear, images that I think are supposed to scare me.  There’re spiders.  I haven’t been afraid of a spider since calling a few million of them to build me a web.  There are snarling animals, but I grew up in Colorado and my familiar is a Tasmanian devil.  Please.  I’m not running in fear of those.  Next come images of death.  Grotesque corpses, mutilations, and human sacrifices are appearing all around me.  Okay, this is going to sound terrible and may be considered proof of the desensitizing of teenagers by movies and video games, but I’ve seen way worse in a Wes Craven movie.  I’m not a fan of horror movies, but I’ve seen a few.

It dawns on me that the brain meld thing that the devil wannabe was doing was probably to find my deepest, darkest fears.  Since my magic was too powerful to penetrate, old Grim over there is trying random things hoping to hit the jackpot.  Now I’m even more annoyed.  I pull more magic so I can end this once and for all when the room fills with a noxious gas.  It smells like manure mixed with vinegar with a little sulfur thrown in.  It infiltrates my nose, making my nose hairs stand on end.  I can’t decide if I need to scratch my nose or blow it but I find myself wishing for a sneeze, hoping it would set things right in there.  I can taste the gas at the back of my throat even though I have my lips tightly closed, trying hard not to take more of the stuff inside of me.  Regardless, after a couple of seconds the room starts spinning.  The black walls are gone and the regular walls have come back and they seem happy about it because they’re dancing.  Everything in the room is dancing.  Suddenly, the room turns sideways causing my stomach to lurch, making me want to hurl.  But, a scratching against my cheek tells me it wasn’t the room that flipped.  I did.  I’m lying with my cheek on the carpet and I can’t move my arms or legs.  There’s nothing left to do now but close my eyes.  So I do. 

Chapter 13

For the second time today, I wake up without Kallen by my side.  My head is pounding and at the slightest glimpse of light, my parting eyelids slam back together and go on strike.  My mouth tastes like I shared dinner with Taz and my whole body aches.  What the hell happened to me?

Slowly, forcing my unwilling eyelids to work again, I begin to understand why Kallen’s not here.  I don’t even know where here is.  Ignoring my pounding head that feels like two kangaroos are kick boxing inside of it, I open my eyes wide and sit up.  I’m in a cage.  A gold, barred cage that looks like a bird used to live here.  The only other thing in the cage with me is the red velvet pillow I’m lying on.  Looking down at what I’m wearing, my attire is a fantastic impression of a harem girl straight out of Arabian Nights.  What a nightmare.

“The bird awakens,” a voice cackles.

I spin my head around so fast I’m surprised I don’t snap my spine.  Standing about ten feet away from the cage is the dark figure from the pastel bedroom.  She has let the hood fall from her head and as cliché as that whole look was, I wish she hadn’t.  She is atrocious looking, though I’m not sure ‘she’ is really the appropriate pronoun.  She could just be a somewhat feminine looking male with a high pitched voice.  I’ll go with ‘she’ for the time being until I find out otherwise.  Her head is bald save for a few wisps of blackish gray hair.  There are open sores here and there on her scalp that I’m pretty sure are oozing.  Gross!  Her nose is long and crooked like she was once hung from it and whacked around a bit like a piñata and her skin has bruises that add to the ill effect.  The bruises are in varying degrees and size, but none of them look like they’ll be healing anytime soon.  Where her skin is not black, blue and green from bruising, it’s this really unhealthy sallow color that resembles candle wax.  Hold a match too close to her and I bet she melts.

“Where am I?” I ask, pulling magic.

Clasping her hands in front of her, she does that cackling laugh again.  “You call upon your magic to no avail.”

I doubt it, but I’m willing to see where she’s going with this.  “Why is that?”

She spreads her hands wide and says, “Because this is a place of your making.”

“Right,” I say looking around at the gold bars.  “I decided to put myself in a bird cage.”

“The design was of your choosing.  I do find it interesting that out of all the things you could fear, the one thing that scares you the most is the luxury of your birthright.”  The figure begins to pace back and forth in front of the cage.  “You do not fear for the safety of your friends or family as darkness spreads through the Fairy realm.”

“I can protect them,” I say, causing her to cackle again.  Okay, I guess that doesn’t sound impressive from someone currently in a bird cage.

“Yes, you do believe that.” 

“It’s true.”

Moving on, she says, “You do not fear the task set before you by the Angels to somehow bring harmony to the universe, nor do you fear the crushing depression that will overcome you when you finally discover it to be an impossible task.”

“It is not impossible,” I say.  Why am I arguing with a crazy person?  I’ve done it enough to know it never works.

“Because of your poor choices, you will eventually drive away everyone who cares for you.  Do you not fear the isolation or the guilt from crushing the spirits of others you bully?  You will even destroy those you profess to love.”

I roll my eyes, not really wanting to think about what she’s saying in fear there is some truth to it.  “Do you have a point?” 

She stops and smiles, baring teeth that are yellowish brown.  Dental hygiene is not high on her priority list, obviously.  “The point, Xandra, is that you will become me.”  Her pale, colorless eyes burn brightly now.

A strangled laugh catches in my throat.  “Right.  I’m going to become an ugly old crone who gets her jollies from discovering people’s fears.  I don’t think so.”

That laugh again.  I swear, I’m going to shove that laugh so far down inside of her she’ll be able to wear it as nail polish.  “Foolish girl,” she hisses.  “I am you.”

Well, that gets me to shut up.  For a minute anyway, but then I have to ask.  “What do you mean, you are me?”  Sure, it was a self-explanatory statement, but I need her to elaborate a little bit more before panic sets in. 

“Before you came to be in this cage, you saw me in that room.  You hated me, loathed what you saw in me.”

That’s stating the obvious.  “True.  You’re pretty disgusting.”

She bares those teeth again in a smile.  “You were the only one who could see me in that room.  I’ve come in a vain attempt to show you, Xandra, your path.  I am the future face of a life gone awry.  The piece of a selfish mind that lives in the shadows.  I am the embodiment of power used only as a weapon.”

“Hey, I don’t use my magic just as a weapon!” I exclaim.  Though, at the moment I am having trouble remembering something else I’ve used it for lately.  Regardless, I’m not buying any of this.  No way.  “You know what, I’ve heard enough.  I’m out of here.”

I stand up and reach out to the cage door and it dissolves in my hands.  The entire cage just disappears and I feel the magic pour back through me.  Apparently, it really was of my making.  Well, good.  Now I have free access to the crone in front of me.

She shakes her head as if she’s disgusted with me.  “You cannot harm me,” she says.

“Yeah?  Why not?”

“Because I am not really here.”

Okay, that stops me.  “What do you mean?”  She just told me she came from the future and now she’s saying I am just imagining her?  And I thought I was full of contradictions.

She waves her hand around the darkness.  “This, all of this, is all in your mind.  You have created the darkness and you have locked yourself inside of it.”  Her pale eyes flash.  “This is where you belong.  You want to believe I am not of you, and you want me to be the evil stranger terrorizing this realm.  You require me as a figure to blame for the actions brought about by you and I have answered the call.  But, refusing to acknowledge what I really am only proves how you continue to ignore the darkness inside of you.  This,” she shakes at her robes and motions to herself, “is not real.  I am simply the face you put to the evil inside of you.  The face you will one day harbor as your façade.”  Her stare becomes intense now, not just creepy.  “If you truly love your friends and family, you will remain here.  Do not become this.”  Again, she motions to herself.

She has to be lying and I am definitely not staying here.  I look around trying to figure out how to get out.  Everything is so dark.  The only light in this place is surrounding me and the crone, everyplace else is black as a moonless night.  There is no escape.  But, if she is right, I can will myself out of here.  Even if that means that I acknowledge at least some of her words as truth, which I don’t.

I’m going to get out of here and get back to Kallen, I’m going to get out of here and get back to Kallen, I’m going to get out of here and get back to Kallen…as I continue to repeat this in my head like Dorothy in Oz, I can feel the darkness slipping away and find myself lying on a bed in the middle of a room with the worried eyes of my husband staring down at me.  I think it’s time to acknowledge the truth.