“I know that the saying goes that life isn’t fair. It’s a complete and total given that life isn’t fair. I’m just hoping that death is fair; that my death will be fair. Because for anyone else to die in this place, for this reason, would be less than fair, it would be tragic, and these people have had enough tragedy for one lifetime.” ~Unknown
“Read it again,” Cypher said for what seemed like the fiftieth time. As if hearing it one more time would suddenly cause an epiphany.
“We all agree that it’s a battlefield, right?” Adam spoke up.
“We agreed that sixteen hours ago; quit beating a dead horse,” Peri barked. Her fuse was growing shorter and shorter with every hour. “We only have eight hours until this hunt starts.”
After everyone had returned from their separate fact-finding missions, they had reconvened only to discover that they had all come to the same conclusion about the type of place of which the riddle spoke. They had yet to figure out where exactly that place was located or how they would get there.
Fane, Skender, and Sorin had returned with the troll king, though it was not by their choice. He had demanded to see Perizada and insisted that he help in any way he could. Peri had been surprised and touched by the troll's out-of-character offer. The pixie king had also joined them, though that was because he couldn’t get away from Peri fast enough. He did seem to be a little calmer when she explained that there were no pirates involved. Why pirates were what scared the pixie, she had no idea, and she didn’t care to ask because she had way more important things to wonder about.
Sorin ignored the two fae and did as Cypher requested and read the riddle again. They all listened as if it were the first time they had heard it and then went to murmuring and guessing all over again.
“What does the reference to 'two faces yet one soul' mean?” Alston asked out loud, though he spoke to no one in particular.
“A werewolf,” Vasile said as he growled, “how did I not see that. It’s a wolf, two faces - the man’s and the wolf’s - but one soul.”
Murmurs of agreement and growls of irritation of not seeing it sooner cascaded across the group.
“Okay, so we have a battlefield that has only seen a werewolf for many years. We are really breaking it down people,” Fane said dryly. “I think we just might have this thing figured out by next year.” Fane slammed his hand down on one of the tables and bit back a snarl.
“Fane!” Vasile shouted. “Enough! We are all just as frustrated as you are, but this,” he motioned up and down to his son, “is not helping.”
Fane met his father’s gaze for a count of three heartbeats but then dropped it. He bowed his head as he leaned back against the wall. His shoulders were tense and his fists were clenched at his sides, but he managed to pull himself under control, barely. Vasile gave him a stern look before looking at Alston.
“Did that help at all?” he asked the fae in regards to his questions about the two faces and one soul.
Alston rubbed his chin absently as he considered Vasile’s words. “Maybe,” he answered. He looked at Peri and then said, “I need you to come with me.”
“Where?” “Why?” Peri and Vasile asked at the same time.
“I have a hunch, but before I say it out loud I need to verify it,” he explained.
Peri shook her head. “Wait a minute. You think this place is something that is so evil you aren’t even willing to speak of it out loud?”
“I don’t know, Perizada. That is why I need you to come with me.” He turned back to Vasile. “We will be quick.”
Vasile’s jaw tensed but he nodded at watched as the two fae disappeared.
“What do you know that you don’t want the wolves to know?” Peri asked as soon as she and Alston arrived in the room of the high fae council. “Not to mention the fact that you don’t want to speak with the other members of the council about it.”
“You know as well as I do, Peri, that some things should not be spoken about. And when they must, it should be with as few ears listening as possible.”
Peri waited as he walked over to a large door, one that wasn’t opened very often. Her eyes widened as he pressed his palm to the door and muttered words only the high fae knew. The door vanished. Alston turned back to look at her; his eyes were wide with fear. Peri had only seen Alston fearful a handful of times in their long lives, and she had to say, it wasn’t a good look on him.
“We need to remember,” he told her.
Peri frowned. “Remember what?”
“To know me is impossible, unless the wall is destroyed.” The words of the riddle flowed from his lips and seemed to reverberate off the walls.
“You think the wall being destroyed is figurative?” Peri asked.
Alston nodded. “The words have been haunting me since I heard them, chipping away at my mind, almost like trying to scratch an itch I can’t reach.”
“And you decided the appropriate back scratcher is in our records?” she asked him only half joking.
Alston frowned. “You’ve gotten cranky in your old age.”
“First off, I’m not old. And second, I have always been cranky. Now what wall is it that you think needs to be figuratively destroyed?”
He tapped his head. “A wall we ourselves devised and built.”
“No way,” Peri’s voice lowered as though someone might hear, though they were the only ones in the room. “You think the riddle is referring to a block we put up?”
“Yes. I’m actually pretty positive.”
“How?”
“I wrote the spell that those exact words are in, the spell that we all cast and weren’t ever supposed to remember.”
“I told you that memory spells are never a good idea,” she scolded. “They always come back to bite you on the ass. This time it just happens to be in the form of an unhinged warlock.”
“What do you think he knows?” Fane asked Decebel.
“Who knows? The fae are as notorious for their secrets as they are for their power. All I care about is that, whatever it is, it will get us where we need to be. He had better decide to share.”
Fane’s eyes narrowed. “Peri wouldn’t allow him to keep anything from us that would help us find our mates.”
Decebel shrugged. “I would like to think not. But right now all I can really think about is Jennifer and how she needs me and…,” Decebel bit back a snarl of frustration.
“And you need her,” Fane finished for him. “We will get them back Decebel. If we have to tear every realm apart in order to do so, we will get them back.”
“I agree with young blood,” Costin said as he walked over to the corner that Fane and Decebel occupied. “The world may wind up being drenched in blood, but we will find our females, and anyone in our way will die.”
“Who are we killing?” Adam asked as he tossed on of his knives over and over in the air.
“No one,” Vasile growled and at the same time Decebel snarled, “everyone.”
Adam looked between the two Alphas. “Does that mean I get to kill half as many as planned, or twice as many?”
“Anything?” Peri asked Alston again.
“I told you that as soon as I found it I would tell you.”
“Well time is growing short,” she huffed. “The hunt begins in two hours. How will you know you have found it if you don’t remember what it is you’re looking for?”
“I’m not certain, but I think that there was sort of a key in the spell itself so that once a person started remembering bits and pieces of what it is they were supposed to forget, all of it would come back to them, given the correct trigger.”
“I’m guessing you’re not talking about the kind of trigger I could pull,” she said dryly.
“You know exactly what kind of trigger I’m talking about.” Alston looked up from the book in his hands and peered at Peri thoughtfully. “You really do care about these girls, don’t you?”
She shrugged non-committedly. “They’re like a fungus; they grow on you.”
“Yes, but a fungus is something you try to get rid of, not something you rescue when it’s been taken.”
“If it’s a mushroom and you really like mushrooms, then it most certainly is something you would try to get back.”
“Whatever you say Peri,” he told her as he started flipping through the book again.
Several minutes passed in relative silence as Alston searched books and Peri stood wondering what it could have been that they had blocked from everyone’s memories, including their own. What could have been so horrible that they didn’t want anyone in any species to remember?
“The dark forest.” Alston’s words couldn’t have struck any deeper if they had been attached to a harpoon and shot straight into Peri’s soul.
“What did you say?” she asked. Though her voice sounded calm, she was anything but.
“The dark forest: Volcan, witches, wolves, death.” Alston’s words seemed to ring loudly in the quiet, still room.
Peri stumbled and caught herself on the wall. “Holy hell,” she muttered.
“We need to hurry,” Alston stood up, not bothering to put any of the books back on the shelves. He started to push past Peri and when he noticed that she wasn’t following, he turned and looked back at her. “Peri, we need to hurry; we need to get Vasile and the wolves to the dark forest.”
Peri’s eyes had grown large and held the haunted look in them of someone who had seen too many shadows in their life. “When he remembers, he is, he will…” When her eyes met Alston’s they were wet with unshed tears.
Alston nodded. “He will hurt, and the wound will feel brand new.”
“Why does this seem too easy?” Jacque asked Alina as she walked slowly around the forest where Lorelle had dropped them, literally, on their asses. Alina had let an uncharacteristic cuss word slip, causing Jacque to laugh, which earned her yet another cuss word.
“Because it is,” Alina answered. “Lorelle is fae; she will have something up her sleeve.”
“Magic?” Jacque asked.
“Exactly. Vasile will not underestimate her,” Alina spoke confidently of her mate.
Jacque wished she shared that confidence, but all she could think was that by the time the males found them, they would be frantic and probably not thinking very clearly. But instead of pointing that out she asked a question, “Do you think the others are in similar situations?”
“Probably,” she answered. “He’s set this up as a hunt, so he isn’t going to want them giving away their location by crying out in pain,” she paused thoughtfully then finished. “Then again, he could have some spell keeping any noise from escaping.”
“That’s not helping, Alina,” Jacque growled.
“Then let’s just go with their situations are probably the same.”
“Sally,” Crina’s voice broke through the fog covered air, “are you okay?”
“I’m good,” Sally answered as she stood from the ground and brushed the dirt from her palms where she had caught herself after being tossed by Lorelle. “How about you?" Sally asked.
“Say something again.”
“Something again?” Sally’s words came out as a question as she waited for Crina’s response. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt a hand close around her shoulder. “Bloody hell, Crina.” Sally grasped at her chest and swallowed down the scream that had nearly clawed its way out of her throat. “Give a girl warning before you just reach out of the fog and grab her okay?”
Crina’s face emerged from the haze and frowned. “I told you to say something so that I would know where you were since I couldn’t see you.”
“But you didn’t say, 'hey Sally, I’m going to grab your arm and scare the crap out of you',” Sally pointed out.
“Okay, next time I will make sure to tell you that I am going to scare the crap out of you.” Crina smiled a toothy wolf smile.
Sally rolled her eyes. “My inner Jen wants me to call you a smartass.”
“What does your outer Sally want to call me?”
“A bitch,” the word slipped from Sally as easy as butter slips from the hand and Crina laughed out loud.
“Then you’d both be right.” Crina winked at the now blushing Sally, then looked around. Fog surrounded them on all sides and kept them from seeing further than a foot in front of them. There were no other sounds than that of their own breathing.
“Do you think she meant to just leave us free like this?” Sally asked.
“I definitely think she meant to leave us like this, but I think we are anything but free.”
“Elle, give it to me straight, on a scale of one to screwed, how bad is it?” Lilly asked the fae as they stood as far from the ledge of the cliff as they could.
“Considering that there isn’t a cliff in the dark forest, and we are standing on a very obvious cliff, then I’d say we’re pretty screwed,” Elle told her as she stuck her head far enough out to see down. It was a very long way down.
“Well, I’ll be honest, that’s not what I was hoping to hear. But at least you were honest with me.”
“It could be worse,” Elle admitted.
Lilly looked hopeful. “It could?”
Elle nodded. “We could be in the hands of a revenge crazed warlock, hell bent on killing his brother’s mate, and you could be his brother’s mate, oh wait…” she paused and looked at Lilly with a sly smile.
“Ha, ha,” Lilly said dryly.
“You have to make your mind believe that what you’re seeing isn’t real,” Elle said suddenly serious. “That’s how we are going to survive this.”
Lilly nodded, now every bit as sober as the fae. “Okay, it isn’t real, it isn’t real,” she began repeating over and over.
“Lilly?”
“Huh, what?” Lilly asked absently as she continued to repeat her mantra.
“Does it help to tell yourself out loud that it isn’t real?” Elle looked at her quizzically.
Lilly let out a huff of laughter. “Yeah, don’t you know that trick? Tell yourself something enough times and it makes it true.”
“If it gets us off this cliff then I’m all for it.”
Lilly frowned. “What do you mean if it gets us off here? You know it isn’t real.”
“Yes, but Lorelle is smart, and the only way we are going to get off this cliff alive is for anyone seeing it to believe it to be false.”
“Son of a… Crap!”
“Exactly.”
“Did she seriously just drop us in a cave?” Jen asked as she stood at the mouth of the cave.
“Looks that way,” Cynthia’s words faded off and Jen turned to look at her to see what had caught her attention.
“What is all of that?” Jen asked.
Cynthia began opening the boxes. The first contained blankets, the next water, and the next surgical instruments. There was one box left and it was smaller than the others. Cynthia’s hand hovered over it and something inside her did not want to open it. In fact, it was screaming at her to run the other direction, but there was nowhere to run. Cynthia knew with a certainty that she couldn’t explain that they could not leave. The opening of the cave may look like they could walk away at any second but she knew better. They were stuck in this cave until someone came for them. She just hoped they made it until the right someone came.
She finally lifted the lid on the final box and found a birth announcement. The paper shook in her hand as she held it and her mouth suddenly felt as dry as a barren desert.
“Doc?” Jen’s voice was in the back of her mind, but all she could focus on was that folded piece of paper. She gingerly unfolded it and stared at the print on the inside. She read it several times, hoping that it would change and that the words on it would suddenly be wiped clean.
“The date, Jen, what’s the date?” Cynthia asked.
“Crap I don’t know. If we’re talking dark kingdom of fae then I’m thinking late August or early September, but human realm, it’s like June. Why?”
Cynthia swore under her breath as she read the paper again. Congratulations Jennifer and Decebel, on the birth of your baby girl on this 30th day of August.
“Um, Cynthia what the hell?” Jen said from over her shoulder. She plucked the paper from her hand and stood up, reading it with eyes that were as wide and worried as the doctor’s. “What does this mean?”
Jen looked over at Cynthia only to see that she was holding another piece of paper. “Crap, what does that one say, that he’s throwing me a baby shower?”
Cynthia’s eyes rose slowly from the paper to meet Jens. She shook her head. “No, it…,” she stopped and tried to look away from Jen.
“No,” Jen snapped her fingers, “You look at me when you tell me horrific news; now spit it out.”
“It says that, it…”
“Read it doc,” Jen growled.
Cynthia cleared her throat before starting, dread building in her stomach over the words she was about to force out. “Dr. Cynthia Steele, Once you see the hunting party in your line of site out of the mouth of the cave, you are to perform a Cesarean section on Jennifer, mate to Decebel. I have given you all of the necessary medical supplies to perform this safely, though perhaps not painlessly. You are to have Jennifer lie on the X marked on the ground. Once the child is born, you are to turn sixty degrees and take two steps with the child held out in front of you. You are to make sure your body is parallel with the wall so that Decebel has a clear view of his child.”
Jen stood speechless staring at Cynthia, unsure of what to say. She had just been told she was going to be gutted like a fish and have her child handed over to a mad man while she and Decebel watch helplessly.
“Can’t we try to escape?” Jen asked, suddenly very desperate. She pointed to the opening of the cave.
Cynthia shook her head, “If I were a betting doctor, I would say it’s spelled to look as though we can walk out or anyone can walk in. I’ll double check though, just so that we aren’t the idiots who trapped themselves because they didn’t bother to attempt to run away.”
“Please do, because of all the blonde idiots on T.V., I don’t want to be the one in the horror shows who gets killed first because she’s too stupid to run,” Jen told her as she tried to shake off the terror that was threatening to suffocate her. She wasn’t ready for her child to be born. It was too soon. They hadn’t found a way to save her and now she was going to be brought cruelly into the world only to be taken out of it before Decebel could even hold her.
“ARRRRRRGGGGHHH!” Jen screamed. “She’s just a baby! I just need to kill something! But there’s only you,” Jen pointed wildly at Cynthia, “and dammit I need you to deliver Cosmina.”
“Glad to know that I’m unavailable for your hit list based on my credentials,” Cynthia said as she returned back from her unsuccessful attempt to leave the cave.
“Yeah, well just be glad that I’m, for all intents and purposes, a nice person who usually doesn’t just kill people because she’s ticked off.”
“Oh believe me, I’m glad,” Cynthia pointed to her face. “See, this is me being glad.”
Jen flipped her off as she pulled up a box to sit on, lowering her aching pregnant body to it slowly. “I’m just saying.”
“I know Jen. I don’t like this any more than you do.”
“What if we don’t do what he says?” Jen asked.
“I don’t have a clue. He might start killing the males while we have to helplessly watch.”
“Damn this sucks.”
“Understatement.”