Home in Your Arms (11 page)

Lexi was pulled from the water and dropped onto the floor.
She gasped air into her lungs and coughed at the same time. It felt as if she
was drowning even though she was no longer in water.

“Help me,” she moaned as she reached out for King Loren.

He stood above her with an unreadable look on his face. She
grabbed his leg for support and he kicked her away.

“So, you are not a Witch nor are you the One.” His voice
dripped anger.

“Please, I don’t—”

He cut her off. “Get out of my palace. Now.”

Lexi got to her feet, still disoriented.

“Get out now!” he roared.

She ran toward the door and was glad when it opened to let
her out. She ran through the door and right into Andrew’s arms.

“What happened in there Lexi? I heard screaming and tried to
get in but the door was locked.”

She held onto Andrew’s arms. “We have to leave the palace.
King Loren told me to go. I have to save Ian, Andrew.”

Andrew looked back at the door and asked, “Did the king say
anything else?”

“He said he knows I’m not the One.” She saw the look that
passed Andrew’s face and quickly added, “He said I’m not a Witch, either. Then
he told me to get out.”

“I don’t know what to do. If Ian were here—”

She stopped him. “He’s not here and that’s why we need to go
out there and find him.”

“You’re right, of course. Forgive me.” He thought for a
moment and said, “There’s only one person I know of who has made it to the
Witches’ palace and lived to talk about it. And he is here, in this palace.”

“Good. Let’s talk to him and then go get Ian.”

Andrew took her by the hand and led her through a maze of
hallways. They finally reached a small door and he knocked softly on it.

“Come in,” a very tired voice replied.

Before opening the door, Andrew said, “Lexi, this man made
it out alive, but barely. The Witches tortured him for nearly a month before he
escaped. Sometimes he doesn’t make sense so please don’t be offended by
anything he might say.”

She nodded and let Andrew enter the room first.

“Good evening, Master Timothy. It is good to see you,” Andrew
said. “I brought someone who would like very much to meet you.”

Andrew held out his hand, indicating that he didn’t want to
wait for Timothy to answer. Lexi took his hand and walked into the room. It was
dimly lit and her eyes had to adjust to it. The room itself was tiny, barely
more than a closet, with only a small bed, and a chair near a window. Timothy
sat in the chair staring at the wall with a blank expression on his face.

He was thin, so much so that his shirt and pants hung
loosely from his body. His cheeks were gaunt against his pasty gray skin. Lexi
wondered how long it had been since he had escaped the Witches’ palace.

“Almost like a prison cell in here, isn’t it?” he said
without looking at her.

“Uh, yes sir.”

She wasn’t sure what the correct answer was supposed to be
but the room did remind her of a cell. The only thing missing were bars
covering the window. Luckily, the open window allowed the room to air out
because she was sure that without it, the room would have a horrible stench.

“If my cell at the Witches’ palace had been this nice, I
would have been in heaven. It wasn’t, just to let you know.”

She took a step closer and sat down on the edge of his bed.
It didn’t appear that the bed had ever been touched. She saw a pillow and
blanket in the corner of the room and realized he must be sleeping on the
floor.

She asked, “What was your cell there like?”

He looked at her this time and she was shocked to see that
one of his eyeballs was missing. The socket had been sewn shut, leaving a
harsh, jagged scar behind. It had clearly been sewn that way on purpose for
punishment.

“My cell was so small that I couldn’t even sit down. If I
did, I sat on spikes so sharp they pierced my skin. There wasn’t even a place
to take a piss. I think that was the hardest part to get used to…pissing on
myself like an infant or an invalid.”

He looked away again and Lexi saw that his face, neck and
arms were covered in scars. Some were little and others were not. In addition,
some were clearly deep. Her stomach jumped and she wondered what was happening
to Ian.

As if sensing her thoughts, Timothy said, “I hear they have
taken one of the Royal Guards.”

Andrew answered, “They took Ian.”

Timothy sighed softly. “I don’t want to imagine what they
will do to him. The Witches respected me, or so they said, and look what
happened to me. They despise him.”

Lexi didn’t want to think about it so she asked, “Please,
sir, we need to know how you escaped their palace.”

“Going to rescue him, are you?” Timothy laughed bitterly. “The
only way you’ll get into the palace is to surrender. Then you’ll be sent to one
of their dungeons and not necessarily the same one Ian is in. Of course, they
might kill you on the spot, which would save you so much trouble, really.”

He sounded so sure that it made her want to weep. How had
this broken man managed to escape?

“Please, how did you get out?” she asked again.

He reached under his chair and pulled out a folded piece of
paper. The once white paper had faded to a dull tan.

“I sketched this when I made it out of their palace alive. I
knew that one day someone would be crazy enough to want to get
in
their
horrible hellhole.”

He handed it to her and she opened it slowly, not knowing
what to expect.

“Is this…is this sketched in blood?”

Timothy nodded. “It was the only thing I had available, you
see, and I didn’t want to forget anything. Time is a funny thing. Sometimes I
don’t even know who I am anymore.”

She looked the map over and handed it to Andrew. The look on
his face confirmed her fears. It was nearly impossible to get into the palace,
much less get back out.

“Nothing is impossible,” Timothy whispered.

That was the second time he had noticed her train of
thought.

“Can you—”

“Read minds? No. Not anymore. Now it comes and goes as it
pleases. That’s why the Witches wanted me. My great brain would have served
them well, only it didn’t.” He eyed her. “But yours just might…”

Her heart leaped. He knew she could hear people’s thoughts.
She worried that he might say something to Andrew but he didn’t.

Andrew put the map in his pocket. “Thank you for the map,
Master Timothy.”

Lexi stood. “Thank you for everything.”

As they reached the door, Timothy called out, “You will need
great courage to face them but more importantly, you will need great heart.”

Lexi put her hand over her heart. “Then the Witches should
truly be afraid because Ian is my heart and I will do anything to get him back.”

Timothy smiled at her and then turned back to his wall. Lexi
left the room and Andrew closed the door behind them.

“That poor man.”

Andrew led her down the maze of hallways. He didn’t speak
but she could tell by the tenseness in his shoulders that he was worried.

Once outside the palace, he took her by the hand and pulled
her behind a tree.

“Lexi, I can’t let you go to the Witches’ palace. Ian would
never want you to go there, especially to save him.”

She looked into his green eyes and saw fear. She reached out
and caressed his arm.

“Andrew, I have to. I would never ask you to go in their
lair alone and you can’t ask me. We have to do this together. We have to save
Ian.” She paused and then went on, “But if you won’t go with me, I’ll go alone.”

Turmoil and conflict danced across his face as he listened
to her speech. The thought of entering the Witches’ palace terrified her but
the thought of losing Ian was worse. Without him, she would be dead inside. So
her only choice was to put on a brave front and pray Andrew would help her.

Finally, he nodded. “Okay. We need to come up with a plan
and maybe even a backup plan. Then we’ll go save Ian.”

She smiled and sat on the grass. Andrew sat next to her and
pulled out the map. As she looked at the complex hallways and secret passages,
she prayed they weren’t too late. She loved Ian and she didn’t want to think
about losing him.

“Ian,” a familiar voice whispered. “Ian, open your eyes. I
need you in me…now.”

Ian stirred under the soft covers. His head was pounding and
he couldn’t remember what caused the pain. A soft hand caressed his stomach
before moving lower. His lips lifted into a smile before he felt a sharp pain
behind his eyes.

“Lex…stop. My head is killing me.”

Her lips brushed against his as she spoke, “Poor Ian. I bet
I could make you feel better.”

Her throaty chuckle let him know exactly what she had in
mind. He felt her move and then she straddled his lap, rubbing herself against
his hardening cock.

“Lex—”

“Shhh,” she replied. “Just go with it.”

She continued to rub herself against him and then her mouth
covered his nipple, her tongue darting out to taste him. He moaned in approval.
While she teased his nipple, her free hand went between their bodies and into
his pants. Her fingers wrapped around his cock and squeezed it.

“My, so big. Have a look, sister.”

Ian had barely registered the words when he felt another
hand push into his pants. This time the grasp was firm.

“Oh yes. So big.”

Suddenly everything came crashing back to him. He could see
Hank carrying a screaming Lexi away from him as he waited for the Witches to
take him. They didn’t do anything, though. Instead, they waited for him to
inhale the flower’s drugs and he had. Shit. He remembered his lungs burning
with the need for air and then he gave in.

“I think someone is remembering where he is.”

He began to struggle, then, trying to get away from them.
The hands in his pants continued to squeeze and stroke and he hated them for
it. And he hated himself for responding.

“Let go of me. I don’t want your hands on me.”

He tried to open his eyes but a blindfold covered them.

Hot breath tickled his neck and a voice said, “You know that
isn’t going to happen. We’ve waited years for you to come to us. And now that
we have you, we aren’t going to let you go.”

It was the eldest Witch, the one who was in charge. The one
who broke his heart when he had been nothing more than a stupid teenage boy.

“Miki, please let me go. I know the kind woman I used to
date is still somewhere inside you.”

The room grew still. He knew no one had dared to call any of
the Witches by their old, human names but it was worth a shot. Maybe her name
would stir something deep in her soul. He didn’t have much to lose at this
point.

“How dare you,” one of the others exclaimed.

Miki cut her off. “No sister, it is fine. He may be the only
one in this realm who has the balls to call me by that name.” She laughed but
it was without humor. “The names Mother gave us. Miki, Vicki and Ricki—her
precious babies.”

“No. Do not use our names.”

Both hands left his pants and he felt the bed rise as they
stood. He knew Miki was still next to him, though, because of the slight dip in
the mattress.

“Silence!” Miki commanded. “Those names have no power over
us anymore. I made sure of that when we killed Mother. Now leave us. I grow
tired of your dramatics.”

“But—”

“I said leave us.”

Ian knew of what she spoke. When the three sisters first
gave into the magic, they killed their birth mother right away, leaving her
head on a spike in front of the gate of Sapphire City. It had been a small
taste of what they were capable of doing. Killing the queen and everything she
represented had been the worst thing they had done so far.

“I can tell by the tightening of your mouth that you’re
remembering the last time we saw each other,” Miki breathed into his ear. Her
breasts pressed against his chest and he tried to pull away. “No, don’t turn
from me. I often think back on that moment and wonder what if. What if I had
said yes? What if the queen had not seen us together? What if—”

“Enough.”

Miki nipped his ear and said, “Don’t worry. Your secret is
still safe with me. Not even my sisters know what happened that day.” She
paused. “Tell me, do you ever wonder what if?”

“It does no good to live in the past.” He turned toward her
voice as he spoke. “The past is over.”

She grabbed onto his face and held it still. “What would
everyone say if they knew the truth? If they knew that it is truly your fault
the queen died? Do you think the king would understand? What about Lexi? Do you
think she would want to lie next to a murderer?”

He had never meant for anyone to get hurt. Now the thought
of Lexi finding out his sins made him want to be sick.

“Stop,” he moaned. “Stop it.”

“My dear Ian. I let you go all those years ago and now that
I have you, you are mine. Do you understand? No one will take you from me. I
made a mistake then but I won’t make the same mistake twice.”

She stood and pulled the blindfold from his eyes. He
blinked, trying to see, but everything was fuzzy.

“It’s a side effect from the drugs you inhaled.” Miki said
as she strolled toward the door. “Another effect you might notice is a hard-on
that won’t go away. When you can take it no more, call for me. I’ll gladly help
you out.”

She laughed as she left him alone in the room. He tried to
sit up but chains bound both hands. How had he not noticed it before? He moved
his feet and found they, too, were bound.

“Great, just great,” he said to the empty room.

He blinked his eyes repeatedly until finally he could see.
He was not in a prison cell, thankfully, but in a bedroom. The room was dark
but he could make out a table in the corner of the room with potion bottles on
it. Miki was the only one of the three Witches who used potions. So, she had
brought him to her room?

The shackles holding him down were fastened to the wall and
the foot of the bed. He could see that the bedspread was dark green velvet. The
only light in the room came from the fireplace, which glowed green. An
enchanted fire, no doubt, so Miki could keep an eye on him.

He shifted and gasped as his pants scraped over his
erection. Angry curses left his lips. He moved again and bit down on his tongue
so he wouldn’t moan aloud. Each movement sent shock waves of pleasure
throughout his body. It was bad enough that he wanted to pump his hips and let
the friction of his pants get him off.

He took in a deep breath. He needed to focus on finding a
way to get out of Miki’s room. But first, he needed to find a way out of the
shackles. He worked his arm, careful not to move too much and discovered that
one of the chains in the wall was not secured.

It would take one hard pull and then his arm would be free. He
glanced down at his cock, tented against his pants. Even breathing was becoming
difficult now. Would it be worth the risk?

The fire blinked and danced, sending sparks out. It was some
kind of warning, he was sure of it. He didn’t want Miki or one of the other
Witches to find out about the weak shackle. He closed his eyes and tried to
prepare himself. Wrapping what little of the chain he could around his hand, he
counted to ten.

With all the strength he could muster, he sat forward and
pulled the chain at the same time. His body shook in pleasure and he knew he
was about to come. He pulled harder on the chain, thrilled when he heard the
chain breaking from the wall.

His free hand fell next to him at the same time his cock
erupted, squirting his seed in his pants. He fell back against the mattress as
the orgasm seemed to go on forever. His free hand fisted into the blanket and
he moaned softly.

When the tremors finally stopped, he looked down and cursed.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

His cock still stood hard and his pants were now damp from
his release. He used his free hand and wiped the sweat from his face. His body
shook again as he moved. It suddenly hit him what was going on. The fucking
juice from the flowers was still in his system and until it was gone, he wouldn’t
be able to find release.

Sure, he could get off, but his erection would come right
back. He thought back to a raid done at the Enchanted Fields. One of the men
they had taken into custody claimed that he had been hard for two weeks and begged
to be put out of his misery. He wished he had followed up on the man to see
what had happened to him.

“Shit,” he said as the severity of the situation hit him.

That man had been on the outskirts of the fields, not in it
like Ian had. He covered his eyes with his hands. There was no way he could
fight Miki and her sisters when every fiber in his body would be screaming for
him to fuck them.

No, he would just have to wait until the effects of the
flowers wore off. He just hoped he could survive that long.

* * * * *

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Lexi stared across the river in horror, not even wanting to
know what made the water so dark.

“How is it possible that their palace is so close to
Sapphire City and yet not one has been able to take them down?” she asked
Andrew.

The Witches’ palace sat just on the other side of the river,
surrounded by a black fence with jagged spikes everywhere. She squinted and saw
that several of the spikes had heads stuck on them. The palace itself stood
tall and menacing behind the fence.

Carved out of black marble, it looked like an empty
seashell. Only the green smoke rising from the chimneys gave the Witches’
presence away. There weren’t even guards moving around.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Andrew asked her again.

She nodded. “Stop asking me. I told you I was going in with
or without you and I haven’t changed my mind.”

“I wasn’t sure what you would think when you actually saw
it,” Andrew admitted.

He set the map on a rock and used smaller ones to hold it
down. Lexi took the time to look around. The wind seemed to be cold and angry
so near the Witches’ palace. So much so that she shivered in her cape. The
trees along the river appeared as if carved of stone and she wondered if they
were alive. Even the grass looked dead.

“Is there nothing in this area other than the Witches?”

Andrew replied without looking up. “No. Anything that could
get away did and the rest slowly turned to stone. Even the sun hides from this
area.” He patted the empty rock next to him. “I think I found a path for us to
use but I want to go over it with you. If we make one mistake, we’re dead. One
more thing. Do
not
speak of the path we’re going to take. You never know
who might be listening.”

“Of course.”

She sat down and looked the map over. Andrew pointed to one
of the secret entrances that Timothy found. It appeared to be an underground
tunnel that came out near the river.

“Where will this take us?”

Andrew was silent as he took her hand into his own. He used
her finger and traced the path. It would take them right into the dungeon where
Timothy had been kept.

“Understand? We go from there.”

She nodded and stood. Out of instinct, she scanned the
horizon and saw nothing had changed.

“This is it, isn’t it? They know we’re coming.”

“Yes,” was his reply. “But they’re going to have a hell of a
fight on their hands.”

She closed her eyes and saw the faces of her Mom and Grace
and was filled with courage.

“For Ian,” she whispered.

“For Ian,” Andrew agreed.

She took a deep breath and blew it out then began to run
down the jagged path in the rocks. She knew Andrew was right behind her and it
gave her comfort. They reached the dark river and just as he said, she saw the
stones that made a makeshift trail across the poisonous waters.

Leaping, she made it to the first one, which was also the
hardest one to make. The rest were a breeze as she stepped from one stone to
the next. Risking a glance down, she was horrified to see that some of the
stones were really skulls. Had the Witches really killed so many people that
their skulls reached the top of the river?

She reached the other side of the bank and, just as Timothy’s
map promised, she could see a slight opening in the rocks. She was about to
take her first step when Andrew stopped her.

“Don’t move.”

Something about his tone sent shivers down her spine.

“We’ve been spotted,” he said in a low voice.

Blood roared in her ears and she thought she was going to
pass out for a moment. How had they already been spotted? They had just crossed
the river.

“About twenty feet above us.”

She lifted her eyes and saw something moving among the
rocks. It blended it so much that she wondered how Andrew had seen it and then
its weapon gleamed in the light.

“Is that a spear?”

He nodded. “And it’s not the only one pointed our way.”

They were so close to the secret entrance that she knew she
couldn’t give up. A crazy idea sprung in her mind and she licked her lips.

“Think they would be thrown off by boobs?”

“What?” She knew the moment he realized what she was thinking
because his eyes grew wide. “No, Lexi.”

“If I distract them, you can get in and then pull me in. It’s
the only way for us to save Ian.”

Conflict danced across his face.

Finally he said, “As soon as I tell you to follow me, do it.
You might be able to shock them for a moment but don’t count on it lasting a
long time.”

No, she wouldn’t count on anything at this point. She was
flying on blind faith now.

“On my count. One. Two. Three.”

He ran past her and the men above her suddenly appeared.
They wore metal armor and helmets that looked like monkey heads. Their spears
lifted, aiming right for Andrew and she knew she had to act.

“Hello up there.”

She wasn’t even sure if they were going to respond. They
might not speak her language.

Finally, the one nearest to her, who was also apparently the
leader, said in a deep voice, “Move or die.”