creepy hollow 03 - faerie war Page 8

  I lower the unconscious Unseelie faerie onto the ground. I reach for a fallen branch and transform it into a long rope. After looping it around and between her ankles, I pull it tight. I repeat the process on her hands.

  “Won’t she be able to break out of those bonds?” Tryce asks from nearby.

  “Not these ones.” I wrap my hands around the ropes and reinforce them with magic. Then, dabbing at the blood on my face, I head over to where Yale is standing. “Is the sword safe?” I ask.

  “Yes.” After a moment’s pause, he says quietly, “There were guardians in that group that attacked us.”

  I nod. “Yes, four of them. They must be under some kind of spell or influence. One was my friend.”

  I feel Yale’s gaze on me. “I’m very sorry. Is she the one you brought with us?”

  “No. I wanted someone we could question to find out what’s going on. It didn’t matter who, so I took the smallest person.” I wipe my hand clean on my pants—my clothes are already bloodied and dirty—and place it in my jacket pocket. Filigree is still there, curled up in mouse form.

  “Who do you think the others were?” Yale asks. “Unseelie faeries?”

  “Probably. I think this is all the Unseelie Prince’s doing.” I gesture to the ruined forest around us “Although, my friend did mention someone called Lord Draven. Do you know that name?”

  “Oryn, we don’t know anyone. We’ve been isolated for centuries. And I must apologize for something,” he adds. “I said we could fight, but we weren’t prepared for a surprise attack like that.”

  “No need to apologize,” I tell him, even though it was clear some members of his group could do with more practice. “Imagine how that fight would have gone down if I’d been on my own.”

  “Yes, well, I’d say it’s a good thing I convinced you to stay with us.”

  I nod. “Definitely.”

  “So, what next, Oryn? I know I’m technically the leader of this group, but you’re the only guardian here. This is more your world than ours. What do you suggest?”

  I take a deep breath and look around at our group. “I honestly don’t know. If those guardians were fighting us, then I’m afraid the whole Guild may be ready to do the same thing.” Oh, hell, what if my mother is under the same spell? Would she look me in the eye and try to shoot me, just like Dale did? I push the terrifying thought away. “I suppose the next logical step would be to look for others like us who aren’t under this strange influence. But where would we even start looking?”

  “Your guess is better than—”

  “Shh.” I hold a hand up and look around.

  “Did you hear something?” Yale whispers. He slowly draws a knife from a sheath at his waist.

  “Not exactly.” I felt something, but Yale wouldn’t understand that. I haven’t shared my secret with him. I haven’t told anyone since I told Violet.

  I scan the exhausted group of Order members, but nothing seems to have changed. They look the same: defeated, lost, miserable, angry. But what I felt just now was a spark of hope. A flare of happiness. No one here looks close to feeling anything like that . . . so who was it?

  I raise my voice and say, “Whoever you are, show yourself.”

  Low rumblings of conversation cease as people look at me. Some grab weapons and jump quietly to their feet, their eyes searching. The silence stretches. I begin to wonder if I imagined the sudden spike of emotion. I try to locate the something that was out of place, but all I feel is wariness.

  Finally, a voice from somewhere above us calls out, “Don’t shoot, and I’ll be happy to show myself.”

  I look up just as a figure drops through the air. He lands in a crouch and straightens immediately. “See,” he says, raising his hands, palms facing us. “I’m unmarked. I won’t harm you.”

  “Unmarked?” I take a step toward him. “That means nothing to us.”

  The faerie tilts his ginger head to the side. “You don’t know about the mark? It’s what Draven brands people with after he’s brainwashed them. It’s so he knows at a glance who his followers are.”

  I think of the circular outline I saw on Dale’s hand. Was that the mark this ginger haired faerie is talking about? I take another step toward him, my fingers ready—but not yet reaching—for a weapon. “You’re a guardian,” I say, noticing the intertwining lines on his wrists. “Normally that means I’d trust you without hesitation. Recent events, however—” I lift my hand and gesture to the gash on my cheek “—suggest guardians are fighting for the wrong side now.”

  “Not all of them,” he says. “You’ll be pleased to know that some of us got away.”

  “And I should trust you because . . . ?”

  He shrugs. “Because you have no other choice. And because I heard you saying you plan to search for others like you who aren’t brainwashed. Well, you need search no further. I can take you right to them.”

  He smiles, and it isn’t the kind of smile that’s just for show. It’s the kind that reaches his yellow-gold eyes and lights up his whole face. The kind that’s contagious. It makes me want to smile for the first time in days.

  It also makes me highly suspicious.

  I fold my arms and ask, “Who exactly are you?”

  “I’m Oliver. And this is Em.” He looks to his left as a woman steps out from behind a tree to join him. It’s difficult to tell how old they are by the dim light of our orbs, but I think she’s younger than him. Young enough for it not to have been too long since she graduated. She has a smile to match Oliver’s and the same coloring as Violet’s old mentor, Tora: green eyes the shade of spring grass and green streaking through her blonde hair.

  “Hi, I’m Em. London Guild.” She gives a little wave.

  “Ryn,” I answer hesitantly. “Creepy Hollow Guild.”

  Her smile spreads wider. “I always thought your Guild had such a funny name.”

  “Well, at least it’s our own name and not one we pinched from humans.”

  She laughs. “I suppose I deserve that kind of comment. And the rest of you are . . . ?” She leans to the side and looks past me. I’ve forgotten there are eighteen people standing behind me. What have they been doing? Simply watching this whole exchange?

  “We’re not guardians,” Yale says. “But we’d be honored to fight alongside you when the time comes. I have to ask, though, how you can laugh when surrounded by such destruction.”

  Em’s smile dims somewhat, and she looks at Oliver before answering. “Well, it’s either that or let myself be consumed by despair. What’s the point in living if I can’t find some joy in it? And right now, I’m overjoyed to find nineteen free men and women after five days of searching.”

  “Five days?” Yale asks.

  “Yes, that’s how far away our base is,” Oliver answers. “It’s where we’ll take you now—if you’ve decided to trust us.”

  Since, as Oliver says, we have no other choice, and after searching their emotions and finding nothing but genuine delight, I decide to trust Oliver and Em. And since everyone in the Order seems to view me as some great guardian of awesomeness—they’re obviously unaware I’ve only recently graduated—this means they also decide to trust Oliver and Em.

  The two strangely cheerful guardians lead us to their base in Fireglass Vale, one of three safe locations the Guild Council built centuries ago in case the Guilds were ever attacked and compromised. I have a vague memory of learning about these safe locations in second or third year—not where they were, of course—and thinking they were unnecessary; how could the Guilds ever be compromised? Their protective charms were meant to be impenetrable.

  I’m glad now the Council had the foresight to prepare for every eventuality.

  At the end of the fifth day, as we journey across endless open fields, Oliver lets Em take the lead and drops behind to speak to me. “I thought I should warn you about something. You won’t find many from your Guild here. The Creepy Hollow Guild was hit first and hardest. Council members from every G
uild were there at the time, attending an urgent meeting. There was an explosion in the room where they were assembled. No one made it out alive. Almost everyone else who survived the explosion was captured and brainwashed.”

  “Damn.” The good news just keeps coming. “If the Council is gone, what kind of leadership do we have now?”

  “A handful of Council members, including me, weren’t at the meeting that night. Once the attack was over and we knew for certain we couldn’t return to the Guilds, two of us deactivated the spells that kept the safe locations locked. We began searching for anyone who hadn’t been influenced by Draven. Anyone we found who was willing and able to fight was sent to Fireglass Vale. Everyone else was sent to either of the other two places. We’re still finding survivors.”

  I look away and try to squash the ridiculous hope that Violet is safe and waiting for me at Fireglass Vale. I push away thoughts of my mother and father and my old mentor, Bran. Don’t hope and you won’t be disappointed. Instead, I listen as Oliver tells me how he wound up searching for survivors in Creepy Hollow. He tells me about the beautiful woman from the Creepy Hollow Guild he fell in love with a few months ago. The woman he’s heard nothing from since our world fell apart. The woman named Tora.

  At the mention of her name, my chest squeezes tight. Oliver must be talking about Violet’s old mentor; I don’t know any other Tora at the Guild. My stupid heart starts conjuring up ideas of Violet and Tora hiding out somewhere together. Stop it. You know that’s probably not true. So I say nothing to Oliver except that I know Tora but haven’t seen her.

  Coral pink and burnt orange mingle in the sky as we descend into a valley. Long grass brushes the tops of our legs, and through trees with leaves turning golden brown I see a river glittering with the sky’s reflected colors. Draven’s touch clearly hasn’t extended this far.

  We reach the river and walk along its edge toward a waterfall. Sheets of water pound the rocks at its base, the spray wetting our faces as we get closer. As Oliver takes his first step onto the slippery rocks, I realize the entrance to the base must be behind the waterfall. Oliver takes a few more careful steps before reaching forward and pushing his hand into the slamming water. Then he pulls it aside as easily as he would a curtain, revealing a gap large enough for us to climb through.

  Above the roar of the water, he shouts, “Come on!”

  I expect to find myself in a cave behind the waterfall, but instead I walk into a large, high-ceilinged room that reminds me of the main foyer inside the Creepy Hollow Guild. Well, except for the domed ceiling of protective enchantments we had back there. The ceiling I look up at now is flat. Faeries hurry here and there, up and down the large stairway and along the corridors leading off the foyer. Oliver was right when he said I wouldn’t find many people from my own Guild here. I don’t see a single face I recognize—until my gaze alights on one that almost makes up for all the missing faces I long to see.

  My father.

  He’s down the stairs so fast I barely have time to move. He wraps me in a tight embrace before pulling back and saying, “Ryn, you just disappeared! I’ve tried so many times to contact you. Are you okay? What happened to your face?”

  I touch the square bandage that covers the gash on my cheek. “An Unseelie faerie and his knife. It won’t heal.”

  Dad frowns. “Dark magic on the blade, maybe. Or a potion. I’m sure someone here can take care of it.”

  “Yeah, anyway, that’s not important. Is Calla safe?”

  “Yes, she’s at one of the other bases with her mother.”

  I hesitate a second before asking, “And mom?” I’m not sure I want to know.

  Dad looks away with a slow shake of his head. “I don’t know. No one has seen her.”

  I close my eyes and press the heels of my hands against them. “Just like Violet. She’s also missing.”

  Dad places a hand on my shoulder and says, “If they’re alive, we’ll find them. We’ll get them back.”

  “Yes,” I murmur. “We’ll get them back.”

  I don’t open my eyes. I block everything else out. The chatter around me fades to silence as I stand there, holding fiercely to the promise my father just made. I will it to be true, hoping he means his words as much as I do. Because I do mean them. With all my heart. I will find them.

  “Linden! Come on, let’s go.” The brittle cocoon of quiet I managed to wrap myself in shatters.

  “I’m sorry, I have to go,” Dad says. “Another search and rescue mission. I could be gone for a week or more, since we can’t use the paths. We now have a herd of pegasi here at the base, but not nearly enough for all of us. The Council’s still working on other means of transportation.”

  My brain joins the dots. “You’re . . . working as a guardian again? I thought you were finished with that life.”

  “Things change. Our side needs as many guardians as it can get.” He squeezes my shoulder once more before letting go. “I’ll see you soon.”

  And then he’s gone, vanishing behind the curtain of water. The bustle of activity continues around me, but I feel as alone as if no one were here. I put my hand in my pocket and feel the warm, soft form of Filigree. As sad as it is to admit, the furry creature is the only thing giving me any kind of comfort right now.

  *

  “Dude, did you know it’s snowing out there?” one guy says. “About a day away from here.”

  I know I’ve lost track of the days since I started going on search and rescue missions, but it hasn’t been that long since I arrived. Two weeks, maybe three. The last time I checked, we weren’t even halfway through autumn.

  “It’s insane,” his friend adds.

  I’m sitting at a table in the base’s massive dining room trying to turn the strawberry sauce on my pancakes into chocolate sauce. The two guys who’ve just returned from a mission and joined me at the table are both from the Creepy Hollow Guild. They graduated a few years ahead of me and left to find new and exciting jobs at other Guilds. I can’t remember their names. We haven’t exactly chatted much.

  “It’s probably Draven,” I tell them, “messing around with the weather to make life difficult for us.”

  “Yeah, The Destruction obviously wasn’t enough. He’s probably going to subject us to an eternal winter or something.”

  The Destruction. That’s what everyone seems to call what happened. It’s a fitting name.

  “Did you find anything more exciting than snow?” I ask. “Like, you know, survivors?”

  “No,” the taller, darker haired guy says. He shovels pieces of pancake into his mouth, chews, then adds, “Oh, we did come across a group of some other fae. The scaly-skinned ones.”

  “Reptiscillas,” his freckled companion says.

  “Yeah. We couldn’t see properly through the trees, so we started shooting as soon as we realized someone was there. It was only when we got closer that we saw there were children in the group.”

  “You were shooting at children?” I say.

  “We didn’t know.” Tall Guy looks offended. “We backed off as soon as we realized they were no threat.”

  “You should have tried to talk to them. We need as many fae on our side as we can get.”

  “They were terrified. We let them run. Besides, children can’t fight. They’re better off hiding out somewhere else.”

  “And they’re most likely Undergrounders,” Freckled Guy says. “You know we’ve never worked well with that lot.”

  I shake my head. “There’s nothing wrong with Undergrounders. They treat us the way they do because they’re afraid of us, and with good reason. We’ve never exactly been friendly toward them.”

  “Because they’re a violent, unpredictable lot.” Tall Guy looks like he’s starting to wonder what’s wrong with me.

  What’s wrong with me is that I’ve had enough of guardians and their ridiculous prejudices. I’ve had to deal with them for years at the Guild, and now, in the midst of impending war, I figure it’s about time guardi
ans got over themselves. “Yeah, about five percent of them are violent and unpredictable.”

  “And those are the only ones we ever interact with, so forgive me for painting the rest of them with the same brush.” Waves of hostility start rolling off Tall Guy. I don’t care.

  “You’ve never tried to interact with any of the others,” I say.

  “And you have?” Freckled guy makes sure to get his two cents in.

  “I’m willing to bet I’ve spent a whole lot more time Underground than most other guardians.” I don’t tell them why. I don’t tell them where exactly. I don’t explain that even though the Underground clubs are filled with far more people than I’d usually want to be around, the mix of numbness and euphoria are a whole lot easier to deal with than the many emotions spinning around the Guild. “This is going to turn into a war unlike anything our world has ever seen. You think we’re going to win it on our own? We’re not. We’re going to have to play nice with all the fae we’ve thought of as inferior for so long. And people like you are going to have to suck it up and deal with it.”

  Okay, that last part was probably uncalled for.

  Just as the situation is about to blow up in my face, Em and her cheery attitude appear at our table, complete with a tray of pancakes and rainbow colored milk. “Hey, guys, what’s up? Can I join you?” If she could feel the enmity and aggression bouncing back and forth across this table, there’s no way she’d want to sit here.

  I stand up and say, “Enjoy the pancakes,” before sending my tray through the air and into a slot in the wall. I turn and stride out.

  My fists are balled as I walk along the brightly lit corridor. I hate living in a perpetual bad mood, but I can’t seem to get out from under it. Nothing is happening. We haven’t found anyone on the search and rescue missions I’ve been on, and I don’t believe we’re going to. Anyone who doesn’t know how to hide has surely been captured by now, and those who do know how to hide aren’t going to show themselves when we walk by.