“I dreamed I was running. I was trying to find you. Searching. Every time I got near you, you were gone. I was growing so tired and my breathing was labored, but still I ran. I called out your name but you didn’t look back. I started to fall, but you weren’t there to catch me.” ~ Jacque
“You must wake up.” Jacque knew that voice. It was so familiar to her and yet foreign at the same time.
“Jacquelyn, you must wake up.”
The voice was growing more insistent, pushing into her mind, trying to force its will on her. She wasn’t ready to wake up. The world was in chaos, her mate was gone, and her friends were broken by their loss, why on earth would she want to wake up?
“Because they need you love, I need you.”
“You need me?” She asked the voice.
It was a male voice and it sounded strange, like he was straining under a great weight.
“Who are you?” She finally asked.
“I am yours,” he answered, through gritted teeth.
She tried to think. She’d heard those words before. Her mind was a whirl wind of images and words all jumbled up like a bowl of alphabet soup. Nothing made sense.
“Luna,” the growl in his voice, brought the barrage of thoughts to a halt. “I am Fane, your mate. I have been captured. You are under a spell and you must fight it! I can feel you slipping away. I think that is the only reason that I am able to block this horrid place. My wolf and I can feel us losing you. You must not succumb. Fight Jacquelyn. Fight!”
“Mate? Fane?” Her voice sounded small in her mind. The words brought forth images now of only one. A tall, dark haired, powerful male with the bluest eyes she had ever seen. In her mind’s eye, she could see adoration, when he looked at her, and felt the love when he kissed her. This was her mate, her Fane.
She reached for him again with her mind, but all she found was emptiness. A profound sense of loss slammed into her and she tried to cry out, but nothing would emerge from her useless vocal chords. Fight, he had said, fight the spell. Jacque didn’t know how to fight the spell, didn’t understand, so she started to think of anything real and tangible, things that she knew were true. She thought of her mother and how it had been so long since she had seen or even spoken to her. She thought of her two best friends and all the things they had endured together. She thought of her pack, her new family, and the acceptance she felt with them. Then she thought of Fane, her other half. He was her home. Without him, nothing else had meaning. She let the thoughts bring the emotions and she let the emotions flow throughout her body. She didn’t know if it would work, but she wouldn’t give up. She would fight, for herself, her friends, and for Fane.
Q
It was dark when the storm finally stopped. Peri stepped out from under the overhang of rock and looked up into the now, clear sky. Mona had been in that storm. There was no doubt about it. Peri had lost control of the storm. No, the storm had been wrestled from her control. They were only alive for one reason. Mona wanted them alive for now. She looked back, as the other ladies began to climb out from their protected spot and saw that they all seemed all right. They were a little soggy, but alive and well. All but Jacque, who continued to lie still and quiet.
“Are you going to tell us why you’ve been leading us in circles for days?” Alina asked Peri, as she wrung out her hair, splattering water on her already soaked feet.
“So you noticed?” Peri’s brow rose as she watched the Alpha female.
“I have a nose Peri. It wasn’t hard to catch our scent as we kept coming back to the same places.” Alina looked around at the others. “I’m just surprised no one else noticed.”
“My mind has been a little preoccupied,” Jen spoke up. The others grumbled Jen’s sentiment as they staggered wearily to lean against the forest trees.
“Well it’s about to get un-preoccupied,” Peri motioned for them to follow. “Let’s get a fire going and get dry and warm. I have crap to tell you and you aren’t going to want to be all soggy for it.”
“Does anyone ever want to be soggy while getting information?” Crina asked.
A collective groan rippled through them as Jen spoke.
“I can think of several scenarios where being soggy while obtaining vital information can be a very fun activity.”
“You walked into that one,” Cynthia told Crina.
Crina snorted out a sharp laugh. “I’m too tired to think about Jen and having to filter all of my statements right now.”
They gathered around the fire that Peri had conjured up with her Fae mojo, as Jen referred to it, and slowly began to thaw and dry out. They ate Fae bread and sat quietly staring into the dancing flames of the fire. Sometime later, Peri began to speak.
“If my plan goes like I hope it will, then this time tomorrow we should have your males back in our care,” she announced to the group. Heads flew up, eyes widened impossibly so, mouths hung open, and there was stunned silence before the bombardment of questions started at a quick-fire pace.
Peri held up her hands to silence them.
“I’m going to explain, good grief, keep your panties on.” Peri waited until they had all stopped blurting out questions. Alina gave her a pointed look that said get on with it or I’ll eat you for breakfast, so she got on with it.
“I’m taking us to the troll who guards the bridge to the In-Between. I have a bargaining chip for him.”
“A troll?” Rachel asked, softly. “Last I remember trolls where not the most friendly of beings even on their best day.”
Peri nodded. “That is true, but you forget healer, trolls are greedy. Shiny things easily sway them. The trick is in the wording. I can’t just say we want to go in to the In-Between because then he will not let us out. I can’t just say that we want to go in and out, because then he would not let us bring anyone back with us.”
“Jen is practically Johnny Cochrane when it pertains to loop holes. Just run it by her and she can tell you if it’s fool proof.” Sally eyed Jen across the fire. Jen gave a slight smile to her friend, but that’s all she could muster.
“So what happens if the troll goes for it?” Cynthia asked.
“The simple part is he opens the veil and we go through.”
“What’s the hard part,” Elle asked, dryly.
“Making it out alive with the males.”
“Oh, is that all?” Crina quipped.
“You guys are just one big bowl of rainbows and butterfly soup,” Peri snapped.
“Okay wait,” Jen raised her hand to Peri. “I just have to know, how the hell would you get rainbows and butterflies in a bowl. If you did, who the crap would want to suck down some butterfly guts?” She shrugged her shoulders. “And who is Johnny Cochrane?” She asked Sally.
Sally and Crina both tried to muffle their laughter at Jen’s comments, but failed miserably.
“Go on and let it out,” Peri told them as she crossed her arms. “If you try to hold those laughs in your mouth any longer their liable to come out your ass.”
That comment broke the peace and they were all laughing. It was the kind of laugh that started in their toes and radiated up their bodies until they were writhing around like they had bees swarming inside. They laughed until tears flowed from their eyes and their stomachs throbbed with the effort from it. Peri stood there watching them, wondering how in the world any of them even dressed themselves in the morning.
“Are you finished?” She asked once the laughing had trickled down to a few random giggles.
“Wait,” Jen cautioned, and looked around as if expecting something then looked back at Peri. “I think we’re good.”
“As I was saying, the In-Between is dangerous, not because things will attack you, but because your mind becomes your enemy.” She began to walk slowly around the outer ring of their circle as she spoke. “We must get in quickly, and I don’t care if you have to sing the sound track to Greatest Love Songs of the Century a hundred times to keep your mind focused, then do it. If you have to shout as loud as you can over and over that you are real and your mind is lying then by all means shout. But, you must not give in to the thoughts.”
“If the guys can’t even do that, how do you expect us to be able to?” Elle asked.
“The males have been sent there. We are going of our own will. There is a big difference. Because we aren’t going there as a form of punishment, it will not affect us the same way. It will be a much weaker disruption in our minds, but it will still be there. It will dig in deep, rooting out your darkest fears, so you might as well face them now. I want you to close your eyes and picture what your worst nightmare might be. Make it real to yourself, breathe it in, feel it on your skin, bask in the heat of the fear it erupts in you. Once you have it in your mind, imagine yourself facing it and winning. Imagine standing up to that fear and telling it to….”
“Go suck it?” Jen added, helpfully.
“If that’s the terminology that gets the job done, Jennifer, then by all means, tell it to suck it until hell freezes over. The point is to face the fears that are going to be thrown at you, face them, and defeat them because the greatest fears are the ones your mind creates. Those are the only fears that can truly have power over you. Don’t let them.”
They all sat in silence, their eyes closed and their minds twisting and turning, taking them on turbulent rides through the terror that lie deep inside each of them. Peri watched as their faces changed and morphed as they went through the process of dealing with their fear.
One by one, they opened their eyes. Sally squinted against the brightness of the flames from the fire. She felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She had pictured her greatest fear, had stared it straight in the face, and she had not fallen before it. That was her triumph. It was still there, simmering in the dark, but she had faced it, and it had not broken her. She wouldn’t let it. Not now, and not when they entered the In-Between.
Everyone finally settled down to get some sleep. Like every night, they took turns taking watch. Sally’s eyes drifted closed and she hoped that she would speak with Costin again. She hoped that she could tell him that tomorrow she would hold him in her arms. But, it wasn’t Costin she dreamed of. To her surprise, it was Jacque.
“Jacque?” Sally took a step towards her friend. They stood in the forest near a fire much like the one Sally had been sitting at before sleep.
“I’m fighting Sally. I’m fighting, but I need help.” Jacques words were laced with desperation and she looked tired, as if she hadn’t slept in weeks.
“What are you fighting Jacque?” Sally asked. “I’ve tried to help you but I can’t get through.”
“I’m pushing against the spell,” responded Jacque. I’m thinking of everything I can to bring myself back to our world. Fane told me to fight, that you all needed me. Please Sally, help me.”
Sally closed the space between them and wrapped Jacque in her arms. She couldn’t believe how real the embrace felt. Maybe her mind was just that desperate to have her friend back. She felt tears gather in her eyes as Jacque squeezed her closer.
“I’ve been so alone,” Jacque’s words were muffled as she pressed her face into her friends shoulder.
“We’ve been with you this whole time,” Sally tried to reassure her.
“I know. I can hear you, I just haven’t been able to move or respond. It’s like something has wrapped itself around my brain or something.”
“I will get Rachel and we will see if we can help you, okay? We won’t let you stay like this Jac, you need to know that.”
Jacque pulled back from their embrace and collected herself. A slow smile stretched across her face.
“You had better get me awake. I hear that we’re going in to rescue our men.”
Sally nodded with a smile of her own.
“Jen hasn’t started using military lingo just yet, but I figure it’s coming.”
Jacque gave Sally one last nod, as if to say: let’s do this. And then, Sally felt the dream fading, slowly morphing into another dream... one that she would never forget.
Lying around the circle, one by one each woman slipped into her own dream. The Great Luna was blessing them, helping them bolster their wills. They each got to meet with their mates. Brief that it was, they were able to tell them to hold on, that they were coming for them very soon. Tears streaked down their faces as their fleeting moments of time with their men slipped away.
Morning came much too quickly and the chill crept into their bones, drawing them to consciousness. The females were solemn and even Jen was more subdued than ever. But, a sense of urgency, which seemed to grow with every second, danced at the edges of their nerves. They gathered their few belongings, ate some Fae bread, and every now, and then smiled encouragingly to one another.
It was Jen’s singing that finally broke the silence as the words to Leaving on a Jet Plane–Jen style of course, rang out into the gradually lightening forest.
“All our crap is packed, we’re ready to go,
We’re standing here moving too slow,
I hate to tell you all to get in gear.
But the dawn is breakin’, it’s early morn,
The troll is waiting, he’s scratching his horn,
If you going any slower I will die
If you kiss me I’ll kick your ass,
Shove you into the grass,
Let’s just get the show on the road
‘Cause we’re leaving, coming or not,
Can’t leave our men left to rot.
O’Crap, we need to go.
By the time Jen was finished with her rendition of the song, the urgency was still there, but instead of the solemnness as its company, now hope had taken root.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Peri said, shaking her head.
“It’s simple,” Jen told her. “You just pick a song and go with it. I believe my versions are always better than the originals.”
“That’s just because you use explicit words in yours and questionable content,” Sally chuckled.
“That is definitely a bonus.”
They were all finally packed and ready to go. They stood staring at each other, and steeling themselves for what was to come.
“I have another song for this moment, shall I share?” Jen asked.
A collective, “NO,” rang out among them.
Jen held her hands up in surrender, muttering under her breath. “Good grief. Let a prego chick down gently.”
The group had just begun walking when they heard a small whimper coming from the direction Jacque occupied. They all froze, waiting in rapt silence to hear it again. After a few moments, they heard what sounded like another whimper. Sally and Rachel were the first to reach Jacque’s side, and they both instantly laid their hands on her. They closed their eyes and tried, like they had so many times before, to push through the shield that was keeping them out of Jacque’s mind. But, there was no resistance this time. They slipped right in and what they saw amazed them. They saw a cage with a writhing, living darkness trapped inside. It was as if Jacque had pushed the evil from her mind and locked it up. Sally and Rachel called to her, drawing her back from the place where her wolf had taken her to protect her. Slowly, they felt her coming to consciousness until finally she opened her eyes.
Jacque looked up at eight pair of eyes staring, hopefully, down at her. She drew in a painful breath, her lungs stretching under the amount of air filling them. She blinked to clear her blurred vision and attempted to use her voice, which had lain dormant for so long.
“Hi,” she croaked.
Silence.
Then the inevitability, that was Jen, broke in. “That’s all you have for us, hi? Really Jac, we’ve been lugging your butt around for more than a week and all you can say is hi.”
Jacque smiled up at her friend and her eyes sparkled. “I missed you too Jen.”
Jen winked at her. “Well, you woke up just in time. We have a black ops assignment and you need to start pulling your weight.”
“And, so the military lingo begins,” Crina muttered.
Peri pushed around Jen so she could examine Jacque more closely. Rachel and Sally continued to try and expel the evil that was still inside Jacque's mind, although it was contained. They chanted in a language the others did not know and pushed with the magic drawn from the nature around them. Peri laid her hand on Sally’s shoulder and shared her own magic with the healers and it was enough. Jacque’s eyes closed and she let out a breath that seemed to have been frozen in her lungs. She felt the evil dissipate and the murkiness that had been filling her insides fade away.
She started to stand, but was stopped when Peri put a hand on her shoulder.
“Hold on there, wonder woman. Take a few minutes to get your bearings.”
She handed Jacque some Fae bread and a bottle of water. Jacque looked at the bottle and grinned. “Where exactly did you get a bottle of Aquafina water?”
Peri shrugged. “I have my ways.”
Jacque gulped the water, allowing it to wet her dry throat and cottony mouth. She could feel it following the path of her esophagus. It was cool and refreshing and helped her body rejoin the living. She took a bite of the Fae bread and remembered that it was supposed to give them energy that they would not otherwise possess on their own. Within minutes, she felt its effects. Finally, she stood, her legs a bit shaky, and her muscles stiff from disuse. She grinned as she watched all of her friends hold out their arms, waiting to catch her if she fell. The symbolism in that thought was profound and hit her like a herd of elephants. These women, her pack, and friends, had been there for her when she had fallen. They had caught her and eased her to the ground instead of letting her fall to her demise. They had cared for her, wept over her, talked with her even when they thought she couldn’t hear. Yes, she thought as she looked at their eager faces, outstretched arms, that they would always catch her.
She waved them off. “I don’t need eight mother hens cramping my style.”
Reluctantly, they backed up and gave her some room to move. She took a couple hesitant steps forward and when she didn’t fall over, took a few more. She stretched up on her toes, reaching her arms up in the air feeling her muscles resist against the motions. She felt good, better than good. She felt ready to get her mate back.
Peri saw the fire beginning to emerge in Jacque’s eyes and knew what was coming. She held up her hand to stop the inevitable. “Let’s give it a little while, let you get used to moving and being conscious again. You won’t be any good to us if you just fall over while we’re in that hell hole.”
Jen stepped forward and held up her hand. “I’d like to point out that if she just fell over like a fainting goat, for one second I’d laugh. That's all.”
“Thanks for the positive thoughts, Jen,” Jacque said, dryly.
“I’m always there for you babe.” Jen grinned.
Jacque’s eyes met Peri’s and there was a fire that lit them burning with unwavering determination. “We aren’t going to wait any longer, Peri. They have been in that place for long enough. My mate is not going to rot in that terrible place, because I’m some pansy that can’t pull it together after being asleep for a few days.”
“When you put it like that you sound pretty awesome,” Sally pointed out.
“Well, I am awesome, dammit,” Jacque stomped her foot.
Jen threw her arms up in the air. “That’s it, people, decision made. Jacque has stomped her foot. If she can cuss and stomp her foot at the same time, I say she’s ready to barge through the gates of hell.”
Peri looked over to Alina. “You okay with this?”
Alina looked her daughter in-law over. She saw nothing by a will of steel. “She’s going with or without us.”
Peri nodded. “That’s what I was afraid of.” With a huff, she waved for them to follow. “Well, hold on to your butts, it’s about to get messy.”
“Jurassic Park,” Sally, Jen, and Jacque all yelled out at once at Peri’s movie quote.
Peri looked back at them and shook her head. “I think your parents must have dropped you guys on your heads five times too many.”
“My mom claims it was only three,” Jen walked alongside her two best friends, finally feeling a little bit more like herself. “But, I swear it was four because I remember this one time…”
Jacque slapped her hand over Jen’s mouth, and the others let out a collective sigh.
Crina smiled at Jacque. “It’s good to have you back.”
“You’re telling me that no one has been censoring this beast?” She motioned towards Jen.
“She’s quite dangerous these days. We all wanted to keep our clothes dry and our hair on our heads.” Sally said in defense.
Jen growled low, her wolf getting agitated along with her. “I’m standing right here you know.”
“Actually you’re walking,” Jacque dodged the hand that reached out to smack the back of her head and laughed along with the others.
They walked, nearly two miles before Peri finally stopped. She turned around and held a finger to her lips. Motioning for them to come closer, she quickly glanced back over her shoulder before beginning to speak. Her voice was so low that they had to lean forward to hear.
“The bridge is just beyond those bushes. The troll is there and has very good hearing and a very good sense of smell. We are down wind at the moment so we should be safe. I’m going to approach him first. You all just sit tight and try not to screw this up.”
Elle raised a single brow at Peri and narrowed her eyes. “How about you, try not to screw this up.” Peri quietly clucked her tongue as her fellow Fae. “Come now Elle, you mustn’t hold a grudge about the past.”
Elle’s face relaxed as she shook her head. She had learned long ago that arguing with Perizada was a futile endeavor.
With a final warning finger like a mother to a child, Peri turned and disappeared from view to face the troll.
“How long do we give her before we make our move?” Crina asked.
“There’s no need to worry,” Elle said, dryly.
“Why not?” Sally asked.
“That troll has nothing on Peri. The only reason she’s going about it this way is to keep the balance of magic right. Going around blasting everyone into oblivion just because you can does not mean that you should.”
A thoughtful look came over Jen as she listened to the Fae. “When did you get so Yoda-ish on us?”
“I have no idea what that means, but if it means I freaking rock, then I’d say always.”
Their attention went back to the bushes where Peri had gone through and they waited. The opening to where their mates were suffering was most likely less than fifty feet away. Sally looked around at the girls and could tell it was taking everything in them not to just take off at a run. She too felt the urgency, but she steeled herself to wait. Wait for the exact moment when Peri gave them the go ahead, wait for the moment when she would enter the In-Between and possibly lose herself to its evil influence, wait for the moment when she would see Costin for the first time in what felt like months, even though it had only been a couple of weeks. Waiting seemed to be the theme of her life at the moment and if she were honest, she would say that it was a theme that sucked eggs. She smiled to herself at her thoughts because for a moment she felt the inner-Jen and realized she hadn’t had many of those moments lately. Sally liked to think that it was because she no longer needed inner-Jen, she was becoming exactly who she needed to be, exactly who they all needed her to be. It was time to let go of inner-Jen and embrace Sally, the gypsy healer, and mate to Costin. As she stood there, enduring the waiting, she absolutely loathed, and in that moment, she found the strength in herself that she had always turned to her inner-Jen for. It had been there all along. It had just taken trials, experiences, loss, anger, love, joy, and life to uncover it. And now, Sally, with her new found strength, was going to storm the gates of hell. Okay, not all by myself, she thought, but it’s a start.