Anamnesis, p.3
Anamnesis, page 3
I reached for Wren and helped her to her feet. “We just need to get over the city limit.”
It was farther than I’d expected. The car had moved quite a distance during its destruction. Wren struggled to walk beside me. I dragged her as quickly as possible.
A howl started up in the trees around us. Not a normal howl. I shivered. “What’s that?” I asked Starren, working hard to keep the panic out of my voice.
“Get over the border, now.”
We rushed forward even more quickly.
Two beasts burst out of the darkness, their eyes bright glowing white, bodies black and feathery. Dogish, but way too big.
Reflexively, I begged the trees for help. Branches lashed around the creatures to hold them in place, but withered and died the instant they touched the beasts.
“Death hounds,” Starren panted out. “This was well planned.”
I hardly blinked and they were between us and the border.
Wren’s gulping breaths and Starren’s little swishes with her sword were all I could hear over the hammering of my heart.
“Kill the other two. Leave the tree girl alive.” The voice was breathy on the wind, sending an extra couple shivers down my spine. I shuffled Wren and Starren behind me, using myself as a shield. No one would die before I did, unless it was that stupid bounty hunter or his evil dogs.
“You two go. I’m immune to magic.” Starren pushed around me. “I’ll probably be fine.”
“Probably?” my voice squeaked. “Even if those things didn’t have magic, you ‘probably’ wouldn’t be coming out on top.”
A yip sounded from the right. I knew that yip. Storm came bounding toward us, rushing at the creatures who had started to advance. He didn’t even weigh a tenth of what they did. Even though he was a big dog, he looked like the kind that people hauled around in their purse compared to the others.
“No, go back!” I yelled. There was nothing he could do, he’d just die for no reason.
But I was wrong. As soon as he leapt across the border, his body instantly changed. He morphed into a… dragon?
“What is that?” Wren asked, sounding very much like she wanted to vomit. I was with her on that.
“My dog?” I half asked.
“What?” Starren said. “That’s not a dog. It’s a dragon.”
“Obviously, but he’s a dog most of the time!” I’d been feeding a dragon this whole time? No wonder he was never full.
Starren just stood there, face blank. “Dragons haven’t been seen in two hundred years.”
Well yeah, the fae were awful, of course they didn’t want to be seen.
Storm spewed out a stream of fire, and both dogs yelped. He’d grown when he’d changed, but he still was far out of his weight class. His deep gold scales winked in the light of the flames he spewed.
The heat warmed me down to my toes, and I stood spellbound as he swooped at the hounds.
“Don’t touch them!” I screamed.
“He can fend for himself,” Wren said, and jerked me forward with surprising force for a small, injured lady. “Let’s get over that stupid border.”
She was taking all this weird pretty well. If I’d had time, I’d have been impressed.
We scooted as a trio around the three beasts. One of the death hounds peeled its lips back and spit at Storm. The spit hit the ground and sizzled. Acid? We sprinted away, making a break for the city limits. The stench of burning earth was a great motivator to get out of the way, the clash of dragon and dog creating a din loud enough I couldn’t hear myself pant.
I knew when we’d made it. Everything that made me special, made me fae, left my body. The extra spark of energy was gone. That part I missed. But I didn’t care much for the fae, the reminder that I was one could stay gone as far as I was concerned.
Speaking of concern. As soon as we were safe I whirled around. Fire flashed, lighting up the sky for a second. That meant he was still alive, unless the hounds could do that too.
“Storm!” I screamed into the dark.
Starren gripped my shoulder, trying to drag me from the border, but I would have none of it. I fought back.
“Storm!”
“We can’t wait,” Wren said, moving in front of me. Kudos to her, there was a touch of sympathy in her voice. “We need to get somewhere safe.”
“We are somewhere safe,” I said, brushing her out of my way. “They can’t touch us here.”
Wren’s gaze whipped from me, back to the brawl going on not nearly far enough away, and back to me. “Can’t touch us here? Are you crazy? We’re only like a hundred feet away!”
“Feet mean nothing to me. We are safe.” Wow. Maybe all that TV wasn’t helping Starren as much as I’d thought.
“There’s a border here at the city limit. They can’t hurt us once we’re inside. All good.”
Wren pursed her lips, looking decidedly unconvinced.
Ignoring her, I tiptoed as close to the line as I could without crossing it. “Storm, come back, we’re safe!” The shrieking and screeching continued. “I’m going back for him.”
I barely made it over the line before two very different hands dragged me back.
“Don’t make me knock you unconscious,” Starren said. The threat was real. She sounded bored. Whenever that happened, watch out.
I gestured helplessly toward the puffs of fire. “I can’t do anything this side of the line. If something happens to him, I’ll never forgive myself.”
The words were barely out of my mouth when everything around us went silent. Completely silent. If any animals had been stupid enough to stick around, they at least were smart enough to not announce their presence now.
“Storm?” I whisper-yelled. “Storm?” My voice was starting to go up. I couldn’t lose him too. I couldn’t live through that.
And then, movement to the left, in the dark. Starren’s sword went up and Wren tensed. She must have lost her gun.
Storm trotted toward us in his normal dog form. Actually, which would be considered normal? I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I dropped to my knees and clutched him tight to my body, even with him being more mangy than normal.
“You’re such a brave boy!” I shoved him away and glared into his eyes. “Don’t you ever do that again. You could have gotten hurt.” How much could he understand? I didn’t know, but he definitely knew I wasn’t happy. “Thank you.”
“It really was her dog,” Wren said to no one, sounding a little out of it. She had taken a lot in over the last twenty minutes. Who could blame her?
“Let’s go. We have a long walk,” Starren said.
All three of us looked towards the remains of Wren’s car. There wasn’t much left. Sirens sounded in the distance.
“Even more reason to go,” Starren added. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I could call…” I thought about Wren being here and changed my mind. She didn’t need to know about Jaden. Not yet, anyway, not until we figured out if she could be trusted or not. “Never mind.”
Yep, super sneaky. No way she caught that. Okay, I was really bad at this stuff.
“Never mind it is,” Wren said briskly. She brushed her hands off on her pants. “Girls. Let’s get back to your apartment. We have a lot to talk about, and I want to do it somewhere a little more comfortable.”
“A little?” I asked, insulted.
She gave a firm nod. “A little.”
Chapter 4
The walk back to the apartment was quiet. And cold. None of us had taken the time to grab winter clothing when we’d left the apartment earlier. We had been in a bit of a hurry.
Storm escorted us all of the way to the apartment building. But, per usual, he stopped outside and wouldn’t enter.
Wren eyed him warily, and kept me between us. She’d shown her protective side, so apparently she just thought he wouldn’t hurt me. She was right.
“You’re such a good boy,” I crooned at him. “Don’t you want to come in? Come on, you can do it. No way Starren can say no after what you just did for us.”
She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, but didn’t say no.
He walked with a slight limp, and had patches of singed hair, but seemed in over all good health. More than I could say we would have been if he hadn’t shown up. I shivered, remembering how the tree branches had jumped to my aid, but hadn’t been able to do a thing. Starren and Wren would have died tonight if he hadn’t gotten there just in time. And I would be on the way to Faerie right now, about to visit my super villain father.
I scratched him under his chin in one of his favorite spots, and he nearly groaned in joy.
“Why haven’t you shown me that side of you before?” I asked.
He cocked his head, but of course, no answer. Looked like dragons couldn’t speak any more than dogs could. Had he come through a portal? He had to have right? How had he gotten through? Could he change back and forth from a dog to a dragon on a whim, or did it just happen when he crossed out of Sanctuary? I wished I could ask him.
“Let’s get in where it’s warm,” Wren said.
Storm let his tongue hang out for a second, then tore off into the night, like there was something out there only he could hear.
Maybe there was.
I watched until he was gone. Partially because I always worried about him, and the other part because I really, really didn’t want to have this whole conversation with Wren.
She hadn’t run screaming yet, that was something.
But would she put up with the weird as well as Nina did? She’d seen a whole lot of weird tonight. And a good chunk of that weird had been me. Twinges of old fears hit me right in the gut. What if she wouldn’t accept me for who I was? What if she thought I was a freak?
To humans, I was a freak. Something so different from them, it could hardly be understood.
But so far, the humans that had found out had still looked at me as me first, not fae. Trish me. Stupid, mouthy teen, Trisha. Not heal quick, command plants Mareena, or whatever my dad had called me.
Rebecca, Dan, Nina. They hadn’t cared that I was fae. Would Wren?
My shoulders slumped as I moved to the front door and paused. I couldn’t be lucky this many times. Wren hadn’t called the cops on us, or shot us or anything. Well, hadn’t shot us because she found out, the shooting had really been unrelated.
I hoped. I mean, I had said ‘we’re fae,’ right before she shot at us, but I was going to choose to believe it had been Starren running at her with a sword that had caused her aggression, not what I’d told her.
She’s Nina’s sister. She’s cool. My pep talk didn’t help my mood much. What if she’d hit some secret button on her watch like in Supergirl, and now all her military buddies were on the way to grab us and drag us off somewhere? There was no going back to her not knowing with everything she’d just seen.
She’d kept it together surprisingly well. Definitely better than Nina had. But then, Nina was a lot more attached to me than Wren was, so watching me get hit by an arrow had probably been more traumatic.
What was worse than this? At the moment I’d almost throw myself out of a window to get away. Might not work out so well in Sanctuary though, I’d just get carted back over the border, putting Starren at risk again.
We got into the apartment. Starren was last, closed the door behind us and leaned on it. “Okay, human. Spill. What are your plans for us?”
I was tired enough at the moment that the addition of spill almost made me giggle. It sounded so foreign coming from Starren’s mouth.
Wren held her hands up. “I don’t have enough information to have a plan at the moment. How about we sit and talk about all this?”
Starren glowered from the doorway. Talking wasn’t her strong suit, by a long shot.
“Sure.” I gestured toward the old, smelly couch. “Have a seat.”
She did, watching us out of the corner of her eye the whole time.
I followed, but sat on the floor in front of the TV. Starren came and stood beside me, leaving Wren with the entire couch to herself.
“So, how about we switch off who asks questions?” Wren asked, her tone so bright it sounded fake. Not a good plan. Starren didn’t like fake.
“Okay,” I answered. “How did you know about the lying thing?”
“I didn’t, not for sure.” She settled into the couch, grimaced, and sat back forward. “Nina slipped up once and said something about it being nice her teen couldn’t lie to her. She brushed it off really well and I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but once they started acting weird I went back through all of our conversations in my mind and wrote down anything strange that had come up. Around you, it’s a lot of quiet, or a lot of weird. Like why they suddenly wanted to move to Fort Wayne. I have the answer to that question now. How exactly does all this work with you being safe inside the city limits? You’re sure we’re safe here? Nina and Dan are safe? Who was that guy, and why was he trying to kill you?”
“Too many questions,” Starren grumbled. But her voice sounded better, a little more at ease. The fact that Wren was handling safety issues first probably made Starren feel like maybe the human wasn’t so bad.
“Okay, then,” Wren said. “Are we totally safe here?”
“Yes,” I answered. “It’s called Sanctuary, and there’s no violence allowed.”
“Our turn,” Starren butted in. “Do you intend to tell anyone what you saw tonight?”
“What would you do if I said yes?”
Starren leaned forward, eyes slits. “You have to answer my question before you get another question.”
“At this moment I don’t intend to tell anyone. I wouldn’t put my niece at risk.” Her eyebrow went up. “But if I find out that you did something to Dan and Nina, or that you don’t care about them and have been using them this whole time, you’re going to wish I hadn’t seen all that.” She relaxed a little and smiled. “I trust Nina’s judgement, even though sometimes she is a little too forgiving. I just wanted to get that out there.”
Starren relaxed against the wall a little. Apparently Wren’s honesty even when she didn’t have to be honest meant something to her. The fae were a very deceitful people. Every time I thought about the days we’d spent in Faerie, I disliked my kind more.
“How does Sanctuary work?”
“There are Sanctuary cities scattered around the earth, where fae powers do not work and fae aren’t allowed to harm each other,” Starren answered when I didn’t. “This is one of them.”
Wren cocked her head. “How many cities?”
Starren started to answer.
“Wait, nope, I’ll circle back to that, I don’t want to waste my question,” Wren said. “But you hurry up and ask yours, I have a lot more I want to know about this whole situation.”
“Dan and Nina are safe,” I interrupted. “You shouldn’t have to use a question for that.”
Starren sent me a withering look.
“They are perfectly fine, they just forgot everything in their life that has anything to do with Faerie.” I teared up, the hot tears warming my still chilled face. “Including me.”
“Oh, honey,” Wren jumped forward and pulled me into a tight hug. It felt so much like Nina’s, the strength, the warmth, that it just made the tears start to flow.
Starren stepped away, looking incredibly uncomfortable.
Wren held me close until I got myself together, even pretending not to see the snot stain on her still-perfect-after-a-car-accident-and-terrified-getaway jacket. Well, used to be perfect, until a minute ago.
She leaned back, squatting close enough to pull me back in if needed.
“How did it happen?”
“They ate food. In Faerie. It affects humans to differing degrees,” Starren said.
“In Faerie?” Wren looked shook. More shook than when we’d been running for our lives from demon dogs who spit acid.
“Wait, the food affects humans to differing degrees?” I asked. “How do you know that? You didn’t know that before.” All my attention was on Starren now. She wouldn’t meet my eyes, kicking backward at the wall a little. “Starren?”
“Well, I told you I might have someone who can help. I’ve been looking into things. For you.”
I jumped off the floor and got all up in her space. “And?”
“Can we talk about this later?” She did a little head boop toward Wren. Yeah, good excuse, but it wasn’t going to fly.
“No.”
She still avoided my gaze.
“And?”
“I couldn’t find out much, because it hasn’t been used much. But I’m sure that the guy I told you about will be able to point us in the right direction. I talked about the whole thing with a friend and was assured that our trip wouldn’t be for nothing. If, and this is a big if, he knows anything, we wouldn’t have to go back into Faerie.”
I whooped and jumped at her, grappling her into a hug that she would pretend she didn’t want, but was getting anyway. And ignoring the fact that she hadn’t mentioned any of this earlier when we were talking. We had been interrupted.
“How do we get a hold of him? Is he near? Does he have a phone? Please tell me he has a phone.”
“No such luck. We’d have to travel. Outside of Sanctuary.”
Ouch. I stepped back and plopped onto the couch, back in the pit of despair. I would do anything for Dan and Nina. But tonight had quickly proven that leaving Sanctuary was a really, really bad idea. Nina would kill me if I died. And if she knew who I was.
“What are we going to do, Star,” I whispered.
“Hey,” she came over and sat down beside me. “At least he isn’t in Faerie. He’s somewhere you know.” She smiled. “The Fae Distribution Center.”
The Fae Distribution Center? I hadn’t even known she’d heard me call it that. “So we just have to make it to D.C.?”
“Yes, not nearly as bad as trying to get back into Faerie.”
The wild swing of emotions was on its way back up. D.C. We could do D.C. We just needed a plan.
“As in Washington D.C.?” Wren asked.
Starren just fluttered a hand at her like she wasn’t worth answering.
