Rose: Briar's Thorn (8 page)

On days that the group went inside the walls to disarm the druid circles on the opposite side of the wall of ones that Gretta had already unraveled, Rachel would take Amanda and me into the woods.  I felt free there.  I stayed away from them when they met with the two most unorthodox members of their pack.  A squirrel and a huge bull moose.  I didn't want to inadvertently take their lives.

But I felt free in the mountains.  The Cascades reminded me of the mountains back home in Romania.  I could roam through nature, knowing there were no humans I could harm.

It was two nights before the full moon when we were inspecting the wolf cages in the motel, to be sure they could hold Rachel and Amanda when they changed.  I was sitting on the floor looking at the latest set of modern clothing which Parker had brought me from her apartment inside the city when they retrieved Ella's motorcycle.  I suddenly lurched up on five or six gnarled black vines and hissed at the door.

I could feel all the women were suddenly on guard and pulling in huge amounts of energy.   Maireni whispered to me, “What is it?  Enemies?  Pike?”

I bared my teeth in a snarl as I felt the movement outside the motel room door.  I growled out, “Worse.”

I didn't see her move, but she had a crossbow in her hands suddenly.  I heard Gretta's pack ready their weapons and I smiled sheepishly.  I hung just off the ground on my spider like vine legs and said with an air of resignation,  “It is the Scales.”

The weapons all disappeared as quickly as they appeared.  Then there were three slow knocks on the door.  The Red Hood stepped up to it with Daria at her side and opened it.

The smug looking handsome man with his neatly trimmed beard and mustache, and his flowing brown hair, just grinned at her and said,  “Maireni.  Good to see you, it has been too long.”

She squinted her eyes at him and the man behind him. “Jacob, Wilhelm?  You?  You're the Scales?  Aren't you two supposed to be dead?”

He shrugged one shoulder and his smug look never left him as Ella muttered, “Fuckin' Grimm brothers.”

Then he said, “A necessary deception.”  He paused and looked at the unveiled distaste on all of our faces, so he added, “Oh come now, you all aren't upset about the fairytales we spun about you are you?  We changed your stories to keep the human race from hunting you all down before you could accomplish your tasks.”

Then Wilhelm chimed in, in his overly friendly manner,  “Aren't you going to ask us in?  It is getting a bit nippy out this night.”

Mari asked, “Do we have a choice?”  She stepped aside with a growling Daria as the two men stepped into the room like they owned it.

My heart stopped beating as a third form stepped in.  I skittered back a bit at the impossibility of it.  Standing there in her gleaming silver armor, looking as beautiful as the night sky, was... “Nicole?”

I could barely hear the serpentine hiss of my voice as I said her name.  My chest was burning, I needed to breathe.  Her eyes snapped to mine at the sound, then the strained hopeful expression on her face was replaced with joy as she strode right toward me with deliberate purpose, as I skittered farther back.

I was pinned against the wall hissing out, “No, stay back Nicole!  I don't want to...”  I was shut up by her soft, hot lips pressing against mine.  I knew only pure, unadulterated terror at that moment.  My touch was going to kill her this time, not put her in an endless sleep.  She had made direct skin contact.

But she did not fall, she just pressed in more desperately.  I found myself leaning forward, returning the kiss as my vines retracted back into my body.  This was Nicole.  My love.  And she could touch me!  She finally broke the kiss and she had that cute half smirk of hers on her face and spoke in heavily accented English,  “Hello Rose.  You don't know how long I've wanted to do that.”

Everyone was silent, just watching.  Parker had a tear rolling down her cheek.  I whispered as I cocked my head, “How?”  She lifted an armored finger and put it on my head and guided it up to a more natural human angle and said as she took her gauntlets off to caress my face with her soft, warm hands.  Then I buried my face in her shoulder and let out a heartrending sob.

I was muttering an incoherent babble to my own ears, they may have been words, but I couldn't hear them over the sound of blood rushing through my ears and the pounding of my heart.  “I've gone mad right?  She really isn't here.  Crazy, insane, mad, not right in the head, nuts. Finally lost it.  Broken.”  But...  I could feel her cold silver armor under my fingertips.  

She moved back and held me at arms length, my back still against the wall.  “Rose, look at me,”  she demanded in a tone I remembered.  The one she used when I was doing something that displeased her.  I looked up into her eyes.  Eyes I remembered.

She gave me a little smile and wiped a tear from my cheek.  I was crying?  I hadn't cried for centuries, then lately, since I met the other Avatars, I seem to be doing an awful lot of it.  I had thought all my human emotions gone.

She lowered her head a bit to look directly into my eyes when I dipped my head, and said, “I am here.  I awoke when the brothers Grimm said you yourself had finally awoke inside, to make the decision to join the other Avatars to stop the Alphas.  They had to race to my crypt before the Alphas and their proxies made it to me when they realized I had awakened with you.  They brought me here to you in this new land in a flying machine.”  She looked around and up to the electric light fixture and smiled. “It is truly full of wonders.”  Her voice drifted.

I reached a shaking hand out to her face and timidly cupped her cheek.  She closed her eyes and nestled her face into my touch.  I whispered in more of a serpentine hiss than a voice,  “Nicole?”  She nodded, her eyes still closed.  Then even quieter I whispered, “I... love you.”  She nodded again.”  Then again quieter, “I've missed you so very much.”

She chuckled and nodded and opened her eyes as a tear rolled down her cheek, wetting my hand.  Then with that familiar self-assured smirk she said, “Of course you do.  What's not to love, you silly woman?”

I caught myself smiling at her and I heard a couple chuckles from the other women.  I looked at her in wonder and said in a pained voice, “You were asleep for so very long.  I protected you.  Visited you and read to you.”

She nodded.  “I know, I was aware the whole time as time passed.  I was locked inside and could not respond.  I loved your visits and when you couldn't be there to read to me, Jacob and Wilhelm would come read to me and describe how the world was changing and all the new wonders there were to see.”

Then she added, “No other living thing could get through that impenetrable patch of black briars which had a heartbeat that sounded so much like yours.”

Daria whimpered and I looked down, then around the crowded room.  I had forgotten anyone else was there, I had only eyes for Nicole.  I straightened, and dropped my hand from her face.  If I could blush, I would have.  I made introductions.

Then when the pleasantries were over, I spun on the brothers Grimm and thrust my hand forward and vines sawed their way out of my flesh in an explosive manner.  The pain was excruciating but so worth it.  A moment later the men were trapped in a domed cage of black thorns.  I spidered over to them and tilted my head almost upside down to regard them.  “What games are you playing now?”  Then I glanced back at Nicole, then back to them.  “Explain!  Is this the endgame?”

Wilhelm stroked his well-manicured beard with that blasted amused smile on his face which he always seemed to have.  He actually reached out and rested a hand casually on my poisoned vines, more to demonstrate his immunity to it that anything and he said,  “Now calm down Rose of Deva.  That is why we are here and brought your heart.  We cannot interfere in the outcome of events, but we can move the chess pieces.  We are here, now, to tell you all.”

Jacob held up a finger with a half smirk on his face and used a modern colloquialism in non-accented English, “What he said.”  It always annoyed me that they seemed to speak every language without any trace of an accent.

I growled and made a dismissive motion with my hand and the vines slammed back into my body almost instantly.  The last one pulling the men's feet out from under them and they landed on their asses.  Petty?  Sure.  But satisfying.  The men just chuckled and stood back up.

The Red Hood though much smaller than the brothers seemed to loom over them.  When had she put her red cloak back on?  She spoke for us all and said with authority, “Then speak.  We think we know what is coming, and we need to be ready.  Gretta is working as fast as she can to foil part of their plan.”

Jacob shook his head sadly and said, “You think you know what is approaching Seattle, but you do not.  You can only hear the war drums.  You do not see the force the werewolf Alphas has gathered.  It is too late for Perchta's efforts to stop it, they come on the full moon and the balance may be upset for all of time.  The only chance the world has to maintain the balance is the octad before us.  The Avatars and their keepers.”

Ella asked, “Keepers?”

Wilhelm looked surprised. “Did you all think you met your soulmates by happenstance?”  He chuckled at our vacant stares.  “We moved the chess pieces on the board so each of you would find the one who could give you balance, focus, a reason to fight.  Keep you from giving in to the darkness inside you.”

Then he pursed his lips and said with a little bit of humor in his voice,  “We had no idea your actions would cause your keepers to become as formidable as yourselves, that shifted the balance closer to equilibrium.”

We were all digesting what he was saying, when none of us said anything, he grinned, and said, “It wasn't chance that the sewer breach under the city walls caused the meeting of Daria and Maireni.  Nor was it a happy coincidence that Miss Snow was hired to retrieve the kidnapped child on the same case that Rachel was on.  It was not the hand of fate that disabled Parker's car, allowing for her and Ella to meet.  And it was us who sent for a Wolf Hunter to the forests where Death's Lady here would come upon her.”

Parker recovered the fastest of all of us and was looking between them and Ella.  She whispered, “You mean...”

Jacob stepped in.  “No, you truly are soulmates.  More than that actually, it is hard to explain so that you could understand, they are truly the other half of your souls.  Destined for each other, we just provided the opportunity of meeting a bit faster than the fates had intended.  Those three are so annoying, always babbling about their loom of life and threads unraveled and whatnot.”  He shrugged and smiled. “We... just moved the pieces around on the board to allow for the best chance of balancing the scales.”

Then he looked a little sheepish.  “But it appears our machinations have had an unanticipated result.  The brothers Marcus have used the unpredictability of human choice to throw the scales so far out of balance that we fear not even your octad can counter it.  They have put things into motion that we could not have foreseen, awakened things long dormant.”

Red snapped, “Explain!”

Wilhelm shook his head sadly and said, “If only we could.  We cannot interfere.  If we were to tell you of the Alpha's plans, it could irreparably damage the balance.  But it does not preclude us from moving the pieces around for the most favorable outcome for us.  The balance.”

Ella growled, “Fuckin' Scales.”

Jacob sighed, I could see his frustration.  He said offhandedly, “We bent the rules of destiny enough already by moving one of the pieces ourselves.  There wasn't time for anything else.  The changes the Alphas had made recently made them aware of sweet Nicole here, they... cheated... so we retrieved her ourselves before they could reach her.”

Then Wilhelm spoke, he made sure to catch each of our eyes before he clearly enunciated each word in his next sentence.  “You do not know what is coming tomorrow night, nor the scale of it, and Seattle is not prepared.”  He paused looking around in earnest.  I was sure he had just bent some of his precious rules, but what did it mean?  He took a deep breath and exhaled.  “Now ladies, if you would excuse us, there is one last pawn we need to move that may make the difference between your success or failure.”

The two men headed to the door to all of our protests and questions.  Jacob said as he closed the door, “When all is at its bleakest, look on high for salvation.”

Rachel growled out as we all just stared at the door, “What kind of fortune cookie bullshit was that?”  I didn't get the reference, but I caught the tone of it.

Mari took off her cloak with a smooth motion then exhaled in exasperation.  She looked around then motioned to the beds with her chin.  We all sat except for Nicole, who stood beside me in her armor.  I stopped a grin as the woman of my heart took my hand.

The Red Hood said, “We have to figure out that cryptic message.  Parker?  Could you please order up some food?  We can all think better on a full stomach.  Whatever is coming, it is happening tomorrow night.”

Parked moved away from the group and pulled out her cell and ordered pizza.  I liked pizza.  Pizza was good.  We had had it a few nights the past month.  Pizza, wezza, pepperoni cheese...  Round food.  She hung up and went pale.  It was comical really, how in tune the group was to each other.  I felt the shift on the bed as we all tensed, ready to stand.

Ella stood and spoke first, in that French accent that came and went, “What eez it my Parker?”

She said in a shaky voice,  “They told us.”  We looked around like we should know.  Then she shook her head.  “Whatever is coming tomorrow night, the city can't handle it.  Seattle is going to fall.”

Daria growled, and Red nodded like she understood the growl.  “I agree Daria.”  She looked at Parker and around the group.  “They told us so we could warn them.  Evacuate the city.  If that is where they are attacking, then all they will get is us.  Why didn't they just come right out and say it?”

I laughed, I realized it sounded unhinged so I reigned it into a giggle as I spat out, “Games of the Scales!  They can't tell us so they bent the rules.”