True of Blood (Witch Fairy Series) (25 page)

Kallen turns me to face him with his hands on my shoulders and he shakes me.  “Xandra, listen to me.  It does not have to happen this way.  Every little decision affects the future and can change its outcome.  Give us the opportunity to make this turn out a different way.”

I shake my head and I feel the first of what will probably be many tears on my cheek.  “I can’t.”  Turning to Maurelle, I say, “I will go with you but you have to free my brother first.”

She looks at me as if I’m crazy.  “Why would we release our only leverage before you have completed your task?  Would you have us believe that Kallen would not try to jump in and rescue his little half-breed lover?”

I look at Kallen pleadingly.  “Tell her you won’t.  Promise you won’t.”

His face looks carved in stone as he looks down at me with fear and what just might be hatred in his eyes.  I understand if that’s what it is, he has every right to hate me.  His voice has a hard edge to it when he speaks.  “You may choose not to fight, but I will not.”

“I’m not choosing not to fight, I’m choosing to save my brother’s life,” I reason.

“Dig deep down into your heart, do you really believe that these two,” he says as he points to Maurelle an Olwyn, “will do anything they promise?  They are mercenaries, Xandra.  If your brother is still alive he will be the first one they kill just because they won’t want to have to deal with bringing him home!”  He’s practically shouting at me now.

Maybe if Kallen hadn’t been focusing all of his attention on me, just maybe he would have felt the Fairy darts coming from the woods and been able to avoid them.  As Kallen’s face contorts in pain, he drops to his knees.  I drop down next to him.  “Kallen, are you okay?” 

His breath is strangled as he attempts to talk.  “Don’t let them make you do it,” he says and he drops his head as his hands fall onto the snow.  He is barely able to keep himself off the ground.

With a shell shocked look I turn to Maurelle.  “How?” I ask and she knows what I mean.  There are only two of them, could only be two of them, so who threw the Fairy darts?

“Kallen should have been a much better instructor because he knows that I can perform the spell of glamour.  If his emotions and senses were not all wrapped up in you, he may have remembered that.”  She couldn’t look more pleased with herself, as if she had just stolen the first prize trophy at the science fair from the smartest kid in school.  But this isn’t school and the prizes at stake are lives, not trophies.

I feel my magic building as I watch Kallen struggling to breath.  Without even turning my head, I ask, “What’s glamour.”

Maurelle laughs wickedly.  “Not that you need the information for later, but I can make things appear to be here when they are not.  Even other Fairies.”  She says a word I don’t understand and when I look over at her, the figure of Olwyn is gone.  I wondered why he was so quiet and let her do all the talking.  It was because he wasn’t really there.  He was in the woods waiting for the opportunity to catch Kallen off guard.  Which he did because of me.

“Now, I am afraid it will be just too risky to attempt to bring you home if you are in any condition to fight.  I do not believe Kallen that it was not his magic that affected us so yesterday but no sense in taking any chances when we are this close to getting what we want.”  As soon as those words leave her mouth, I feel something hit my chest and half a second later, something hits my arm.  I look down to find two Fairy darts have sliced through my coat and are embedded in my skin.  Now that just wasn’t nice.

 
Chapter 20

I wait for a long moment expecting to be incapacitated as Kallen is.  His arms and legs are getting weaker and I don’t think that he’ll stay conscious much longer by how pale he is.  “Why did you shoot him with two if one would have incapacitated him?” I ask Maurelle as I continue to stare at Kallen.  I really need to help him because he’s dying.  I wonder why I’m so calm about this.  Maybe I’m in shock or maybe I’m just dreaming now because I’m a Fairy so I must be sensitive to Fairy darts and am probably unconscious.

It seems to take Maurelle a moment to find her voice.  She looks so discombobulated when I turn to look at her.  Discombobulated.  I always wanted to use that word in a sentence just because it sounds so funny.

“Because two darts will bring a Fairy so close to death it can be difficult to tell they are really alive,” Maurelle says in a voice that sounds so much less confident than it did before.  I wonder what happened to make her sound like that.

“So, now you can transport us to my father without us being able to fight you off.  And then he’s going to kill me, right?”

“Yes,” Maurelle says and I think she’s trying to sound confident again.  Good for her, she should stick to her guns.

I see Olwyn coming towards us from the woods.  He has the strangest expression on his face.  I wonder if he’s going to carry me away or if Maurelle is.  He looks stronger, he’ll probably have to carry Kallen because I don’t think that Maurelle could lift him.  She’s so short that if she slung him over her shoulders, his head and feet would probably scrape against the ground.  I get that mental image in my mind and it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen and I start laughing.  It would definitely be better if Olwyn carried Kallen.

“What’s going on?” I hear Olwyn ask Maurelle.  Okay, I never thought he was the brightest bulb in the box but even he should be able to see that they’ve won and they can just drag us out of here and do what they want with us.  Moron.

“Hit her with another one,” Maurelle says in a harsh whisper.  I wonder what she means.  A second later, something puts another hole in my jacket in the area of my chest.  Okay, this is just getting downright rude now.  I really loved this jacket.  It’s been like my second skin for days now.  I imagine myself as a snake shedding my skin because someone has rudely put a hole in.  I’d make a pretty snake I think with black skin like my hair and pretty green eyes like mine.  Oh, is that too vain of me?  Kallen did say I have beautiful eyes, though, so it must be okay for me to say it.

“It’s not working,” Maurelle hisses.  “She looks like she’s drunk but nothing else is happening.”

Drunk?  Does she mean me?  I hope not because I’ve never had a drop of alcohol in my life.  Oh no, is that what these darts in my coat are?  Did they get me drunk with them?  I’m only seventeen.  It’s not right to contribute to the delinquency of a minor. 

Turning to Maurelle, I ask, “Did you get me drunk?”  Hmm, my words aren’t slurring. Shouldn’t they be slurring if I’m drunk?  I don’t know because Mom and Dad never drink but that’s how it always happens on TV.

“Um, yes,” Maurelle says as if she’s not sure.

Standing up I put my hands on my hips as I face her.  “You’re not supposed to give alcohol to minors.  That’s against the law.”

“What is she talking about?” Olwyn hisses.

Maurelle shrugs.  “I do not know, just go with it.”  To me she says, “It is not against the law where we come from.  And we need to be getting back there now.”

Back there?  Where?  Oh, I remember now.  They want to take me back to the Fae realm but there’s something else.  Something about me and my blood.  Then it hits me and I start to feel really mad.  “Hey!  You guys are going to kill me!”

Maurelle and Olwyn are backing up because I’ve started walking towards them.  “It’s even worse to try to kill someone than it is to give a minor alcohol.  You are not nice people, or Fairies, or whatever you are.”  I put my hand to my head because I’m starting to get a headache.  It must be because I’m now getting bombarded with visual memories.  There’s Kallen being a jerk, that one’s coming up a lot in this barrage of images scrolling through my mind.  I remember Maurelle and Olwyn trying to catch me in the woods and Maurelle threw me into a tree.  I remember kissing Kallen and that’s so much better than any of the other memories.  But the scrolling of memories stops as the last two sink into my mind.  They may have killed my brother and they may have killed Kallen.  Neither of those actions are forgivable.

It’s as if remembering these two things clears my mind of a lot of its haziness.  My eyes focus more clearly on Maurelle and she gasps as she comprehends that I’m no longer as confused as I had been for the last few minutes.  “You hurt people I care about,” I say as I move closer to her.

“Olwyn, do something,” she hisses at him.

Like an ox, Olwyn lumbers towards me.  I don’t want to waste my time with him; it’s Maurelle who needs to pay for what they have done.  Olwyn’s just her lackey.  Taking my eyes briefly from Maurelle, I pull on my magic and ram it so hard into Olwyn that he flys backwards several feet.  “Sleep,” I order him and then his eyes are closed.

“What can I do to save Kallen?” I ask Maurelle as I focus my attention back on her.  She’s looking from Olwyn to me and back as if she doesn’t understand what happened.  Well, she should be paying attention to just me.  Pulling on my magic again, I reach out for her and I feel it the second my magic starts to burn inside of her.  Not too much, not enough so she can’t tell me what I want to know.  “What can I do to save Kallen?”  I ask again.

“N-nothing,” she stammers.  “The poison has been in his blood too long.  He’s going to die soon.”  Oh, now that just pisses me off so I shove more magic inside of her and she screams.

“Oh, be quiet,” I say and no more sound comes from her mouth for the moment.  I look back at Kallen and he’s completely on the ground now.  “Stay there,” I say to Maurelle and I hold her in place with my magic.  Now I reach out to Kallen and I imagine my magic burning the poison from his body.  I’m not burning him, just the poison.  There’s a lot of it, so it takes a moment.  I wish it would hurry up because I still need to get more information from Maurelle about my brother. 

After what seems like forever, Kallen coughs and then coughs again and his breathing becomes more regular and some color starts to come back to his skin.  Finally.  But now I have this poison hanging between us.  Magic needs balance Kallen told me.  The poison can’t be taken from Kallen and then given no place else to go.  I turn back to Maurelle and smile at her but it must not have been a very nice smile because her eyes are as big as saucers and she’s trying really hard to say something but I still have her gagged with my magic.  “Live and let live – fairly take and fairly give,” I say right before I shove the poison inside of her and she screams a silent scream as it burns a path to her vital organs.

“Speak,” I say and sound is coming from her now.  “Tell me where my brother is.”

She shakes her head and doubles over with the pain of the poison just like Kallen had.  “I can make this last a very long time,” I tell her matter-of-factly because it’s true.  I can.

She looks up at me and between gasps she asks, “How are you doing this?”

I point at my chest.  “Witch Fairy, remember?  You know, a dichotomy wrapped up in an enigma.”  She doesn’t seem to understand the big words so I roll my eyes and spell it out for her.  “I’m not affected by magical things the same way a Fairy or a Witch is because I am both joined together.  And my magic is stronger because of it.  Which I’m willing to continue to prove to you if you don’t tell me where my brother is.”

Maurelle debates whether she’s going to tell until she convulses with another wave of pain.  “If I tell you will you promise not to kill me?”

I purse my lips.  “Murder is pretty distasteful.”

“We never had him.  We went back to your house and they were all gone, even your ghost parents.  I only said we had him to force you to come with us.”

“Wow, Kallen was right all along.  I should probably listen to him more but he just frustrates me so much it’s hard to not push him over a cliff sometimes.  He’s gorgeous, though, isn’t he?”

Maurelle looks at me like she doesn’t know if she’s supposed to answer me or not.  I raise my eyebrows in an ‘I’m waiting’ way.  “Yes,” she finally says, “he’s the handsomest Fairy in the Fae realm.”

“Did he have a lot of girlfriends there?  You know, did he date a lot?” I ask.  Why does she keep looking at me like that, I think it’s a pretty reasonable question if I’m considering dating the guy. Fairy.  Whatever.

“I-I do not recall ever hearing of him having any connections to a female Fairy other than friendship.”

I narrow my eyes at her.  “Are you telling me the truth?  I don’t want you to say something just because you think it’s what I want to hear.”

Maurelle glares at me.  “I hate Kallen, I’d be glad to tell you if he did.”  Oh, jealous much?  Sounds like she has the hots for him, too.

A sudden wave of nausea hits me and I stumble slightly.  Looking down at myself, I realize I never pulled the Fairy darts out of my coat.  I tug on the first one and a sharp gasp of pain escapes my mouth.  Looking down at it, I complain loudly, “Hey!  These have barbs in them so they hurt more coming out!”  I pull out the other two getting madder each time the pain hits me.

Maurelle is on her knees and she’s looking at me like she thinks she may have a chance at escape so I refocus my magic and she falls to the ground again.  You know, I thought it would be more fun hurting these two but it’s really not.  With a heavy sigh of disappointment I stand over her.  I’m distracted momentarily by Kallen who is now sitting in the snow staring at me like he’s never met me before.  He better not use being poisoned as an excuse not to remember that he’s got a serious crush on me.  I’ll be pissed.

Pulling my attention back to Maurelle, I say, “What am I going to do with you two?  Kallen thought that if I showed you how much stronger I am than you that you’d just leave me alone and live out the rest of your life in this realm but I think he’s wrong.  I think you’d just be coming back over and over and over again until just the sight of you would make me want to forget that I don’t have a taste for killing Fairies.  I didn’t even like to eat the animal that Kallen killed for us to eat because I had to see it with its head on.  Isn’t that gross?  It would be much grosser if it was a person.”  Maurelle nods her head dumbly as if she doesn’t know what else to do as she holds her middle and fights the pain. 

“You know what seems like the best solution?” I ask and I wait politely until she shakes her head no.  This is a two-sided conversation after all.

“I think I should just send you home.”  Her eyes get huge as she looks up at me.

“Xandra, you can’t do that!” Kallen says loudly as he picks himself up and starts walking towards me.  He seems a little unsteady.  Maybe I didn’t get all of the poison out.

I smile at him.  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to let the other Fae out, I’m just going to send them back in.”

His eyebrows slam together and he shakes his head adamantly.  “Xandra, it doesn’t work that way.  If you open the realm to send them back then it stays open.  And remember,” he says much more gently as if he’s talking to a child.  I really, really hate it when he does that.  “You would have to die for that to happen.”