Fairest 02 - The Frog Prince (7 page)

“Let’s go,” he said, holding a hand out to her.

She placed her hand in his. “Another random direction?”

“Oh yeah.”

She groaned. “Goody.”

They were going to be stuck in here forever.

Maximillian Zaran wrapped his arm around the throat of the screaming fae and swayed with her about the room. She whimpered, her voice like music as she began to plead and beg. He enjoyed the way her crying bounced off the walls and he kissed her lovingly upon the shoulder as he continued their dance. Years ago, an amount of time not easily measured by human standards, the fairies had made the mistake of going up against the Black Widows. Oh, the fairies had the firepower to be worthy contenders, but they also had morals. A sense of right and wrong. Of dignity and justice. The Black Widows suffered from no such handicaps, and as a result an entire race of magical beings had been wiped out.

There was no such thing as an afterlife for the
fae. Not in the human sense. Magic didn’t just cease to exist. But rather it was shunted to one side. The fae had ended up trapped within the ether. Limbo for creatures like them. Unable to return to either the human realm or the realm that they called home. As a demon, Zaran could travel betwixt any realm he wished. The humans believed his kind to be nothing more than slaves. Which meant that he was always being summoned from his own little corner of hell to cater to the idiotic whims of some air breather with a desire for riches and fame. Other demons thought that Wish Granters such as himself were beneath him, but it couldn’t be denied that his species had certain perks that larger, more powerful, demons lacked.

Like being able to harvest the fairy souls wandering aimlessly through the In Between.

Not only did the demons who couldn’t travel between realms pay a lot of money for them, they also made a fine soup. Not to mention how useful their ground up carcasses happened to be for certain spells. In his world, status was everything. A demon could make or break himself based on his status. Status was what determined whether or not he would be considered a lord over his kind or just another mindless drone. Zaran had always had high aspirations. Much higher than just following along blindly with the other Djinn. For centuries, when he’d spent most of his time trapped within magical bottles and boxes, waiting for a human with more curiosity than common sense to set him free again, he’d lamented his imagination. Now, foresight had finally managed to pay off.

All he had to do was
wait for the Toadstone to mature. It should only take a few days more. Then he’d be able to carve it from that sniveling human’s skull. He knew, perhaps better than the man himself, why Danielle had turned him into a frog. As a Widow, the webs she wove were complex and far-reaching. She wouldn’t do anything unless it benefited her in some way in the long run. Zaran believed that she was physically incapable of doing so. It was just in her nature. The bitch would fight him for the stone, but that was alright.

That’s where his secret weapon came in.

Once the Toadstone was in his possession, he’d be unstoppable. No one would be able to touch Zaran. Not even Him. He was confident that his reward for doing so would give him all the prestige and power that he deserved. He’d be a lord, rather than a lowly peasant. Someone other demons trembled at the mention of.

Then the real fun would start.

Zaran chuckled, purple eyes blazing bright as he spun the fae around and around. She tried to run, wings glittering like rainbows in the flickering, uncertain glow of the fire in the hearth, but he pulled her up short. He grabbed her by the chin and pressed his cheek against hers. He grabbed her hand and started to tango. Her cheeks were wet with tears, and he licked the salty trails away with a purr.

“Keep crying, darling,” he whispered, leaning down to bite her neck. “You won’t have the strength for it once we move past the skinning and start breaking bones.” Her agonized keening was an orchestra’s concerto as he danced with her throughout the night. He chuckled, pleased that he was able to enjoy such a peaceful night at home after such a hard day’s work.

***

“What’s the matter?”

Chris looked up from the ground. “Hm? Oh. Nothing. Why?”

“You keep rubbing your head,” Rachel said, concern etched in every line of her face.

Chris tried to make his grin reassuring, but was pretty sure he failed.

“It’s nothing,” he told her. “I just have a headache.”

She looked unconvinced, but dropped the discussion and Chris was relieved. After the failed experiment with climbing the walls, the rest of their day had been uneventful. They’d managed to rest for a few hours after he turned into a frog. It had almost been peaceful, though Chris did remember waking up at one point only to see Rachel’s spirit hovering over her sleeping form. Spirit Rachel stayed asleep, mimicking the actions of her physical form, but it had still been disconcerting. He’d found himself hopping up onto her chest to await the return of the sun. Somehow believing that by doing so, he was helping make sure that her spirit didn’t just fly away. Since she’d merged back together once again at daybreak, Chris decided not to mention it to her.

All the travel and stress of the last few days must have been catching up to him. His head had been throbbing since the day before and the pressure in his skull had only increased as time passed. He struggled to remember when the headache had taken root, but all he could think of was the incident in the castle when he’d blacked out for that moment before the mini flood. He sighed. It was bad enough that freaky things kept happening around him lately, but now he had some sort of brain malfunction to be the icing on the cake of what had turned out to be an overly productive week. Things had been going haywire ever since he’d met Rachel. They’d been strange before of course, but now they were verging on the edge of ridiculous.

He winced as agony echoed through his brain. Feeling movement behind him, he turned to look at Rachel as she shied away from something, her eyes growing wide.

“Did you see that?” It was more of a demand than a question, and Chris glanced about accordingly.

“I don’t see anything,” he replied honestly. She shuddered, and he couldn’t help but place a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“What is it?”

“I thought I saw…” She ran shaking hands down her face and shook her head. “Nothing. Never mind. I think I’m just tired.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he told her, pulling her into motion once more. “This place can get to you after a while.” He chuckled. “You should have seen it when everything was still on fire.”

She laughed, but it was more as if she were trying to appease him than expressing true amusement. They continued onwards, but Chris found himself watching shadows more closely. Stiffening when the wind shifted the foliage as if preparing for attack from some unknown adversary. He was unsurprised when his heightened attention had his head aching even more than before. Though the day passed without him catching a glimpse of a single thing, that didn’t stop him from looking. Chris had learned a long time ago that just because you couldn’t see an enemy didn’t mean that there were none around.

Some called that “paranoia.”

He called it hindsight.

***

Mara had been working for the demons for as long as she could remember. Her average work week had long ceased to impress her and she sighed as the phone rang yet again.

“Hello,” she
said, false cheer in every syllable. “Welcome to the seventh level of hell, how can I help you?” She eyed her nails critically before applying another coat of red nail polish.

“Mara.”
The woman on the other end of the phone sounded irritated and Mara rolled her eyes. “Put Zaran on the phone.”

“Ma’am, please state the nature of your sin, and I’ll be able to connect you to the proper demonic department.”

“Dear Lord, girl.” Mara winced, ears stinging. “If you don’t let me speak to Max, I will rip out the stinking strands you call hair extensions and strangle you with them.”

Mara sighed. Some days you were the plague, and some days you were the Egyptian.

“Fine,” she snapped. Mara put her on hold and called Zaran’s office. “Sir,” she began, “Danielle is on the other line.”

He sighed. “Put her through.”

Mara transferred the call obediently, but rather than hang up, she placed her hand over the mouthpiece and listened in.

“What do you want, shrew?”

“You’re especially handsome when you’re spiteful, darling.”

“I’m a little busy, Danny. What is it?”

“I need a favor.”

“The answer is no.”

“You don’t even know what it is yet.”

Mara heard a squeak as
Zaran leaned back in his seat.

“You want Fairy Dust.”

“How did you-?”

“You’re not my only customer, love,” he said sweetly. “In fact, you’re not my customer at all anymore.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I have other obligations.”

“I doubt that.”

“It’s true. I have a Toadstone to find after all.”

There was a moment of silence before Danielle spoke again, voice growing tight with rage.

“You don’t want to get on my bad side,
Djinn.” There was a dark quality to her tone that had Mara shivering and pulling the phone away from her skin. Hearing her speak, hearing her hiss the ancient name of genies over the phone as if it were nothing more than an endearment, made Mara feel dirty, almost violated. As if there were worms crawling beneath her clothes. “Test me and I’ll have you back in a bottle before you can blink.”

“I love it when you talk dirty, Danny.”

“Do you want to die? I’ll make it slow,” she snarled, and Zaran moaned in pornographic exaggeration.

“Say it again, only this time
make sure you moan my name at the end.”

The line went dead as Danielle hung up.

Zaran chuckled darkly. “Mara?”

Mara jumped guiltily. “
Ye-yes sir?”

“Screen the rest of my calls, won’t you, love?”

She blushed. She couldn’t help it.

“Yes, sir.”

***

Rachel couldn’t stop her mind from racing. Instead, she lay beside the makeshift fire that Chris had managed to build with a few loose vines and some
sticks. She was starving. She hadn’t eaten since before she’d been cursed. The magic had been the only thing that had kept her from starving to death, but now that she was awake, she’d lost that protective layer. It had been so long since she’d felt hunger that she’d forgotten what the twisting agony in her belly actually meant. When the dragon fire had been the norm, nothing had lived within the maze. That had obviously changed, if the mermaid and koi fish were any indication. Even if they were some strange by-product of the fairy dust and a dream.

But, Rachel had begun seeing other signs of life.
Insects for one. She was watching a ladybug crawl up her hand at the very moment. She thought it wouldn’t be surprising if they came across bigger animals in another day or so, as the natural wildlife began to investigate. In fact, it was probably a bunny she’d seen earlier darting into the hedge. If bunnies had white eyes and skin stretched so tightly over their bones that it was more like looking at a walking corpse than an actual animal. In fact, Rachel was sure she’d seen bunnies with razor sharp teeth and forked tongues.

That’s all the creature had been.

A bunny.

A creepy, nightmare inducing, pee on yourself in fright, bunny.

The vines groaned around her and Rachel got the distinct feeling that she was being laughed at. The pouch of fairy dust in her pocket began to heat and she wrapped her fingers around it. At first the heat had felt unnatural. Now it was almost comforting. It felt right to hold it, and she clutched it to her chest as she finally lay down beside Chris and snuggled close for warmth.

Even if she’d had hopes of getting to sleep that night, they were dashed as soon as she closed her eyes. She just couldn’t shake the image of the monster from her
mind. It haunted her, a vision plastered on the inside of her eyelids. In her mind, they stared at one another, unblinking, until morning came. The pouch was a searing heat against her palm and the nightmare creature grinned in satisfaction.

On the morning of the fourth day, they saw him.

Rachel had spent nearly half an hour trying to convince Chris that he could make it rain. She knew no such thing, but if he could bring floods, then why not a light drizzle?

“Can’t you at least try?” she asked angrily.

“I am trying,” he spoke without looking back at her, and his shoulder hunched a bit in irritation. “It’s not working.”

“Maybe you need some encouragement. Does the thought of dead puppies make you angry or sad?”

“What do puppies have to do with anything?”

“Well, if this is like anime, then your power only works during high levels of stress,” Rachel explained. “Dead puppies should give me something.”

“I’m not picturing dead puppies.”

“…what about dead kittens?”

“What is it with you and murdered bundles of adorableness?”

He stopped walking abruptly and she smacked into his back before she could think of an answer. She peeked around his side, her thoughts going immediately to the thing she’d seen the day before. They’d come to another oval-like clearing where several paths branched out. In the middle of the circle, sitting at the base of a tree trunk, was an old man. He was fast asleep, long white beard trailing down his chest and pooling in his lap like a fluffy, geriatric cloud. He was
snoring loudly, and Rachel and Chris’s eyes met in mutual surprise.

She stepped toward the stranger only to have Chris pull her back by the waistband of her jeans. She glared at him, but didn’t argue for fear of waking the old man up. If he was a threat, it wouldn’t exactly be a smart thing to do. His steps were silent as he made his way across the clearing. He examined the stranger for a few seconds before reaching out a cautious hand to shake him awake.

Nothing happened.

Chris shook him again, harder this time and the man’s head lolled to one side. His cowboy hat flopped forward to reveal his shiny, bald dome of a head. If not for the volume and power of the man’s snoring, Rachel would have been convinced that he was dead. Chris looked over at her helplessly and shrugged.

“Oh for god’s sake,” she muttered. Striding over to the both of them, she stared down at the gray haired man. Then she got to her knees, and cupping her hands around her mouth screamed:

“Wake! Up!”

Chris winced, and sent her a sour look.

“That’s not attractive, you know,” he told her, and some strange sense of mischief had her sticking her tongue out at him in reply. The old man, meanwhile, hadn’t moved an inch.

“Maybe we should just leave him,” Chris said.

Rachel shook her head. “We can’t,” she answered with a sigh. “He’s just a harmless old man. We can’t leave him here to waste away.”

“Harmless?” Chris scoffed. “Nothing in this place is harmless.”

Taking a page from his book, she looked up at him through her lashes.

“What about us?”

That shut him up fairly quickly, and Rachel smothered a smile.

Slipping her hand into her pocket, she dipped a single finger into the pouch of fairy dust without having to pull it out. Then she reached forward with that same hand and tried shaking the man awake again.

“Sir?” She said. “Can you hear me?”

The stranger jerked awake with a gasp. His hat slid the rest of the way from his head and he glanced between both Rachel and Chris with wide blue eyes. Then he started screaming.

***

The old man flipped over the side of tree trunk and army crawled away, hat in hand, and beard dragging behind like a tail. Chris wondered how his life could have ended up this way. What had he done as a child to deserve this? What bug had he killed? What wall had he drawn on? What underwear drawer had he vomited in? When he was a kid he’d never pictured his life ending up this way.
Chasing a senior citizen around an enchanted maze while he rolled and dodged like an extra in an army film. Chris could hear the old man’s bones creaking even from yards away, and he was pretty sure the old geezer had dislocated his hip before popping it back in place a few seconds later. Despite his adversary’s advanced age, Chris was the one who tired first.

He found himself
laying on the ground, panting for air, while the old man struggled to pull a branch from the wall so that he could use it like a club. That was around the time that Chris thought of something.

“Why am I doing this again?” he asked aloud.

Rachel’s face came into his line of sight as she hovered over him.

“Because I asked you to?” she said, smiling uncertainly. She may have been trying to manipulate him, but Chris was too charmed by the shape of her mouth to care. Groaning, he pulled himself to his feet. The old man managed to break a piece of vine loose, and seeing no alternative, Chris put his fists up.

“What the hell are you doing?” Rachel exclaimed. The old man shipped the length of vine around like a martial artist with a bow staff and Chis shuffled his feet and hardened his jaw. Chris was too busy looking for a weakness, so it was the old man who answered her with a tip of his hat.

“We’re about to engage in fisticuffs, young miss.”

She blinked.

“
Fisty what?”

“Fisticuffs,” he repeated kindly. “It is a pastime amongst gentlemen such as
myself, and though brutal, it is an extremely satisfactory way to handle disputes.”

“What?” she breathed,
incredulous.

“He said that he’s about to have his ass kicked,” Chris spoke up for the first time and the old man puffed up, offense making his face turn puce.

“I should think not,” he boomed righteously, and they began to circle one another again with renewed vigor.

Rachel shook her head.

“But…why?”

The question made both men hesitate and they looked across the intervening space at one another in blank faced assessment.

“Young sir,” the old man said, “what dispute do you have with me?”

Chris scowled. “I don’t have a ‘dispute,’” He told him. “I was just trying to wake your post-traumatic ass up.”

The man frowned, obviously at a loss. “Whatever for?”

Chris sent Rachel a look that spoke volumes, but she dismissed him with a wave of her hand.

“We’re trying to find a way out of here,” she told the stranger kindly. “We wanted to know if you’d like to accompany us.”

The man lowered his impromptu weapon to the ground so that he could lean on it like a walking staff.

“Apologies, little miss,” he said jovially. “But it took me many years to find my way within these sacred walls. I’ll not leave them willingly.”

“What do you mean by that?” she murmured. “By these walls being sacred?”

Chris grumbled something rude beneath his breath and turned away to collect their pack. He clearly wanted to continue on his way, but Rachel ignored him in favor of sitting on the abandoned tree stump. Sensing an ally, the man straightened, his blue eyes growing bright as he ambled to Rachel’s side.

“The
fae spelled this part of the world many years ago, when they still lived. It’s a rare breed now. A pocket. A tear in space. The witches try and fill them in. Fix the holes so the demons can’t use them to get through. But sometimes…” he tapped the side of his nose and winked as if they were co-conspirators. “Sometimes they miss one.”

“A pocket,” Rachel said softly. “What is this place?” she demanded, a sense of urgency filling her at his words. “Where are we?”

The old man smiled, and it was as if he pitied her.

“This is where fairytales, where stories, go to die.”

Dread was a cold ball in the pit of her stomach.

“We don’t belong here,” she told the old man, getting to her feet and trying to keep her legs from shaking. “We have to go,” she nodded in farewell, but before she could leave he’d grabbed her arm, his age-riddled hands dug into her skin, the bones in his hands painfully prominent.

“You can’t,” he told her, his earlier geniality fading beneath viciousness. “The stories? They hide in the hedges. Waiting, hungry and alone. Afraid of the fire. Of the witch and her wrath. But she has no time for us anymore and the dragon is gone.” He nodded and his nails bit so deep that Rachel was afraid that they’d draw blood. “The dragon is gone, and the chains are broken. But the cage? It’s still locked, little miss. You can come in, but there is no getting out. Not for us. We can’t risk bringing our magic into the world.” His eyes narrowed slyly and he grinned, displaying a row of crooked teeth. “Your Toadstone on the other hand…”

The man stiffened suddenly and Rachel managed to drag her gaze away from his long enough to realize that Chris was standing behind the stranger. He had broken off a thorn from the wall, and since it was the size of a butcher knife, he was able to wield it like one. He pressed the wicked looking point to the old man’s neck and his voice was cold when he spoke.

“You have three seconds to let her go before I do something you’ll regret.” Chris whispered, and Rachel shivered at the repressed menace emanating from him. The man released Rachel’s arm and she clutched her wrist to her chest, backing away as Chris circled around to meet her.

“Can we go now?” he demanded. She could tell by the stiffness of his stance, the hard gleam in his eye, that he was less than pleased with the situation. Though whether he was more irritated with Rachel for starting the whole thing in the first place or the old man, was unclear.

Rachel nodded, her head dropping.

He gripped her hand and pulled her down the closest path. It didn’t matter where it led. They’d never find their way out no matter how many right turns they made.

“Call for me, little miss,” came the old man’s booming cry. “If ever you need a hand, or a sympathetic ear, or a shoulder to weep prettily upon, call for ol’ Rip Van Winkle. He’ll take care of you.” It was a long time before they were far enough that Van Winkle’s laughter didn’t ring in their ears like the tolling of a death bell.

Toadstone.

She mouthed the word silently, and despite her better judgment, suspicion began to fill her as she eyed her scowling companion.

What the hell was a Toadstone?

***

There was a girl sitting on a hill before them. They had to pass directly by her to continue on, and Rachel found herself eyeing the child as suspiciously as Chris.

“What do you think is wrong with this one?” she asked in a whispered aside.

He glanced down at her and shrugged.

“No telling.” They found each other’s hand by rote, and while the path was wide enough for the two of them to walk side by side, Rachel let herself lag a bit behind Chris. He walked briskly, head down, shoulders stiff. Everything about him screamed “Warning: Do Not Engage.” Rachel was only able to follow his example for so long before curiosity got the better of her. She eyed the little girl from the corner of her eye at first. But the longer she stared, the more confused she became. The child wore a flounced dress, with a ruffled white lace underskirt that peeked out along the edges. Lovely, spiteful lace too severely starched to even so much as ruffle in the wind. Her yellow dress matched her yellow hair, pigtails hanging over either shoulder. She had a bowl in her hand and she was eating something. Humming under her breath and swaying back and forth with every spoonful she took.

The closer they got to her the colder Rachel became, and by the time they had stepped even, she was pulling on Chris’s hand to try and drag him away, but by then it was too late. There was a
chittering noise, like a thousand pebbles dancing around in a tin can, and the grass behind the child buckled as the spider lifted the rest of its body from the hole it had dug in the ground. Rachel reared back violently and her spine connected with the wall and vines bit deep into her skin. She was impervious to the pain, because she was too busy gaping in horror at the thing before them to even give notice to her wounds.

The spider was the size of a truck, every organ and limb grotesquely engorged. The thing they’d thought was a child was actually a part of its body. In fact, even as the spider reared up on four of its hind legs and roared at them, the limbs of the “child” were still moving, still making it appear as if she were sitting in her pretty dress on a nice summer’s day and eating calmly. The rocking motion Rachel had noticed before was simply the sway of the animal’s body as it shifted from one leg to the next, and the next, and the next.

When she thought about it logically, it was really very clever. An angler fish. Only with humans and a giant man-eating arachnid. The spider ran forward, its many legs kicking up dirt, its fangs dripping poison. Rachel’s thoughts scattered and she screamed, turning to run only to realize that the “path” they’d been on was nothing but a dead end. She turned again, only to run face first into a thick, sticky substance that pulled her from the ground. She struggled there in midair, mind going blind with panic when she realized that the spider’s web had been designed in such a way that it camouflaged the wall of thorns hidden behind it.

She couldn’t see the spider approaching, but she could feel it in the vibration deep in the ground. The way each of its footsteps made the web tremble and bounce. The world got just a little colder as the spider’s massive body blocked the sun from her and she pressed her face into the vine wall and screamed.