A Shade of Vampire 31: A Twist of Fates (10 page)

M
y feet weighing
me down like the bricks that they were, the marsh dweller led me away from the tub and through the door, into a second room much like the one I had just left. But instead of the bathtub, in here stood a long, narrow table, whose top was covered with more of those blasted white flowers.

I felt weaker than ever, nauseated almost. Those berries had done something to my brain.

The marsh dweller led me to the table and gestured that I lay down on my stomach. What was she going to do to me now? I could hardly even bring myself to ask the question anymore. What was the point? She had me, and she was going to do whatever she wanted with me.

She pulled me down, quickening my descent to the tabletop. I lay on my stomach, my arms trailing down on either side of the table. I felt like an animal being prepared for slaughter.

She moved to the end of the table, just in front of my head. As her small palms descended on my shoulder blades, mixing with the warm resin that still clung to me, I realized that she had brought me in here for a massage. At least this was less painful than her previous beauty treatment.

Her strong little hands dug deep into the knots in my back, making me groan and feel all the more sleepy. She worked expertly, until my entire neck, back and shoulders felt light and loosened.

Then she tugged on my arm, indicating that I stand up. She led me through yet another door. We emerged on a balcony, revealing that we were in a two-story wooden house, surrounded by The Dewglades’ strange yet beautiful forests. A stream flowed nearby, deep and wide enough to be considered a small river. She led me down a narrow, rickety wooden staircase—my feet hitting against the steps with a
clunk, clunk
—across a patch of slushy grass, to the edge of the water.

Without warning, she pushed me hard, causing me to lose balance and topple in. She jumped in after me, her lithe, supple body quickly finding its way to mine. Clutching my hair, she pushed my head downward until I was submerged in the water. She let me surface a few seconds later, allowing me to breathe, before proceeding to rinse the resin off my body with her palms.

“What are you doing this for?” I asked her.
What are you going to do with me?

“Tonight is a dance,” she responded simply. “A very special dance.”

“
Dance
? What are you talking about?”

“You will see,” she whispered, another mysterious smile playing across her lips. “You will be the guest of honor… for our queen.”

Queen
? I hadn’t known that marsh dwellers had a system of royalty. But I supposed most supernaturals had some kind of leadership structure. Why shouldn’t they have kings and queens?

“What does your queen want with me?” I dared ask.

She rolled her eyes. “Too many questions, beauty,” she whispered.

She led me out of the water again and back toward the house… back toward the dreaded tub room. She handed me a thick cloth which was absorbent, yet smooth as silk. Apparently the marsh dweller equivalent of a towel. I dried myself down before gesturing to my feet. “Why did you put these on me?” I asked. “How can I take part in a dance if I cannot even walk properly?”

She ignored my question.

Before I could ask it again, a familiar male voice called from the other side of the room, “Ottalie.”

The same male who had so courteously assisted Ottalie earlier entered the room. He eyed her meaningfully and nodded. “It is time,” he muttered.

My gut flipped. I hurried toward the man as fast as I could, grabbing his shoulder and shaking him. “Time for what?”

The two marsh dwellers said nothing. Ottalie moved to the other side of the room, where I realized there was another doorway. It had been obscured from view by a low-hanging silken drape. They escorted me through it to a second rickety staircase attached to the exterior of the building. We moved down it and arrived in a small round clearing, shrouded by trees and dappled with the light of glowing butterflies.

In the center was erected a wooden log, dug into the ground and pointing upright. It was tall, about twice my height.

The marsh dwellers led me to it, and disturbingly, I already guessed what they were about to do.

They twisted me around and pressed my back against the log. Then, grabbing both of my hands, they pulled them back, wrapping them around the log in an awkward kind of backward embrace. I felt some kind of tough string being fastened around my wrists and the next thing I knew, they were bound tightly together.

As I strained to break free, the male marsh dweller lashed out and slapped me across the face, leaving a raw, stinging trail.

I stared at him, stunned.

Ottalie was more gentle. She touched my arm and whispered, “Just be still.” She turned on her male companion, a cross look forming on her face. “Go, Diordor!”

Diordor scowled before stalking off.

And then the girl and I were left alone. The quiet of the clearing felt suffocating. Sweat trickled down my brows.

Why would they want me tied to this log?

Were they about to perform some kind of pagan sacrifice? From the position they had put me in, it sure felt like it.

I found myself wishing that this could be some kind of burning. Anything to do with fire. But they were probably smarter than that. Given these blocks on my feet, they must have known that I was a fae and what kind of power I possessed. I could think of no other rational explanation for why they would’ve done it.
Ottalie would have seen me zooming toward her when we were chasing her. She saw exactly what I am.

This was all my fault, anyway. I shouldn’t have disobeyed Ibrahim. He’d told us categorically that we must not stray from his protection. And what was the first thing I’d done? Exactly that. I deserved what was happening to me for being such a fool. Though I vowed that if I ever managed to get out of this mess, I would never, ever take that warlock’s instructions for granted again.

I glanced down at my flowery skirt and winced. I would almost rather be naked.

“Come, come!” Ottalie suddenly called out.

I followed her gaze across the clearing. She was looking at a group of five marsh dwellers skipping out of the wood and closing the distance between us. Four females and one male, all wearing the same skirt as Ottalie and me. More marsh dwellers followed after them—a group of ten this time—and then came another group. And another. Until the clearing was filled with smiling marsh dwellers, every single set of eyes on me.

A girl stepped forward from the crowd carrying a small flower garland and pulled me down by my shoulders so she could reach my head. She placed the garland over my head before backing away, her eyes twinkling with delight… or was it mockery?

They began to skip around me in circles, the sea of rotating faces making me dizzy. I closed my eyes and hung my head, facing the ground.

Derek, you’d better come for me. You’d better come for me…

Cheers swept around the gathering. The women began to laugh and squeal excitedly. Still, I kept my eyelids sealed shut. I felt almost like a child in that moment. Vulnerable, helpless. What was the point of even seeing who had arrived? I already knew. It must be their queen. I would prefer to keep my eyes shut, head down, attempting to hold on to at least some sense of dignity… even if it was only in my head.

I need fire. God, I need fire.

They had been careful to keep flames away from me until now. Truth be told, I wasn’t even sure how those wooden rooms had been lit. There had been a soft yellow lighting, but I had neither sensed nor spotted any actual flames. I had been too out of it to verify the source. They could be powered by some of the glowing bottled-up insects that infested this realm for all I knew.

They began to sing around me. Though singing was actually the wrong word. It was more like a humming, a haunting choir of high- and low-pitched voices. It seemed to have no particular rhythm. It meandered like a river, though somehow always strangely in harmony.

“Open your eyes!” a woman called from my left. Probably Ottalie.

Then a male voice called more forcefully, repeating the instruction. “Open them!”

I only pressed my lids more tightly together.

It took fingers to literally press against my lids and force them upward. And when they did, oh, how I wished they had remained closed.

The crowd around me had parted slightly, forming an aisle that began directly in front of me and led toward a woman about fifteen feet away at the edge of the clearing. She was the only marsh dweller not wearing a white flower skirt. She wore nothing at all. Her knee-length blonde hair blowing against her body in the mild breeze was her only form of chastity.

Her jasmine eyes were fixed right on me, her plump, high cheekbones highlighting her cherubic face.

She drifted slowly toward me like a beautiful nightmare. I wished there was a remote I could hit pause on as she reached halfway down the aisle, then three quarters of the way, and then when she was standing just three feet away from me.

Up close, she was even more striking to behold, but in my stomach I felt nothing but sickness.

“What is your name?” she asked in a whisper, her voice as deceptively sweet and honeyed as Ottalie’s.

I couldn’t bring myself to talk.

But my silence only caused her to reach out and touch me. She extended an arm and slid her hand against the side of my face, tilting my chin up to look her directly in the eye.

“What is your name?” she repeated, her lips continuing to smile pleasantly, even as her right brow quirked up, as if daring me to disobey again.

“Dominic,” I hissed. Giving her my middle name, which I never used, was the only act of defiance I could manage.

She wrapped her arms around my neck, our skin touching as she kissed my cheek. Then she drew away again.

“What is on your mind, Dominic?” she asked.

The other marsh dwellers around her had begun to dance again, continuing their bewitching humming.

“You are our guest of honor tonight,” she went on before I could even respond. “You should not look so sad.”

I stared at her, exasperated.
Well, giving me back my clothes would be a good start to cheering up my night.

“Watch the dance,” she said, gesturing all around us. “They are dancing for your pleasure… Yours and mine.”

She clapped her hand abruptly, summoning the closest male marsh dweller. “Release our guest from his bonds.”

The marsh dweller moved round the back of me and broke whatever rope was binding me. I drew my hands in front of me, wincing as I rubbed my wrists. Whatever they had tied me with had dug into my skin, leaving red marks.

The “queen” pulled me away from the upright log, and, using me like a pole, began to dance around me. Her hair blowing in my face, her mirthful laughter filled my ears.

Marsh dwellers had redefined my definition of weird.

“Is there somebody stopping you from being all mine tonight?” she asked in a whisper as she whizzed around me.

My throat tightened. To my surprise, my mind flitted immediately back to Marion. I imagined her resting somewhere in my apartment, waiting for my return. I had already asked Claudia what the last words Marion had spoken to me meant, but Claudia had blown me off, saying that she would tell me later. And then we had all been so distracted with other matters that I hadn’t found the chance to follow up with her.

“Do you have a sweetheart back home whom your mind keeps wandering to?” the queen pressed, continuing to swirl around me even as her flailing hair tickled my sides unpleasantly.

“Yes,” I found myself replying, my throat hoarse.

I do have someone back home
. My chest ached as I thought of my treehouse. Marion going about her day. Using my kitchen. Sleeping in my spare bedroom. I hadn’t longed for home so much since my imprisonment in The Underworld.

“Oh, well,” she said, with a high-pitched hiccup of a giggle. She stopped circling me and stood in front of me on her tiptoes. “We will soon solve that.”

As her face moved toward mine, I was sure that she was aiming for my lips… But then she stopped mid-motion just as she reached an inch away from me.

Her body froze, her eyes bulging. She jerked away from me and looked to the others.

All of them had stopped still as well, both their dancing and their humming.

“Everybody heard that?” she whispered so softly I could hardly hear her.

The marsh dwellers nodded.

“Then we must leave quickly,” she said. “We must move elsewhere for the rest of tonight.”

“What—?” I began, before she thrust herself toward me again, along with a male marsh dweller.

Their hands closed around my forearms and they dragged me away from the clearing, toward the small river that flowed by. All of the other marsh dwellers were already rushing in its direction. They dove into the water and then the queen pulled me down with her.

“
L
ucas
!” we continued to roar, even though it was obvious he had gone.

“What the hell?” my father said, whirling on Ibrahim. “I didn’t know they could just vanish like that!”

“As I said,” Ibrahim said, who looked close to hyperventilating, “these marsh dwellers are a kind of spirit. That means they’re not wholly physical beings. That’s why they are so dangerous, and why I told everybody to stay within my protection.”

“Oh, God,” Jeramiah breathed. “What now? Where do we even begin to look for him?”

Ibrahim exhaled, rubbing his hands over his face. “We need to find their township. Marsh dwellers tend to live together, so there must be some kind of residential area here. I suggest that we take to the sky again and try to find some clues from the air.”

The warlock lost no time in raising the group from the forest ground up through the trees, toward the sky, while Kailyn and I moved up of our own accord.

“What do you think she plans to do to him?” Claudia asked.

“Let’s not think about what they might do to him, and instead focus on finding him,” Ibrahim said through gritted teeth.

We scanned the tops of the trees, looking for any telltale signs. The trouble was, I wasn’t even sure what telltale signs to look for.

“What kind of residences do they have?” I asked. I could hardly imagine them having buildings.

Ibrahim shrugged. “I guess they would be built from trees, and other natural resources available to them in this place.”

After ten minutes of scanning, we still hadn’t spotted anything. Ten minutes of God knew what kind of hell my uncle was going through. I didn’t think that an hour more of searching was going to make a difference either. The canopy of leaves was simply far too thick. There could be a teeming township beneath us right now, and we would never know.

Thus, we had no choice but to return to the forest, once again enveloped by the moist, tree-clustered world.

“It’s just my father’s luck,” Jeramiah muttered bitterly.

Yeah, I guessed one could say that Lucas’s luck in general was crappy. Anyone who had spent two decades in The Underworld would have to have some pretty inauspicious star alignments.

“So what now?” I asked.

“Just be quiet for a moment,” Ibrahim whispered, his eyes widening and his lips parting in concentration.

Everybody held their tongues, barely even breathing, as the sounds of the marsh dwellers’ realm engulfed us. The calm trickling of the brooks, the whispering of the trees, the chirping of insects.

And then there was something more that I picked up on. Something else… a humming. Low and melodious, it was drifting from somewhere in the distance, from the east.

Ibrahim jerked his finger in its direction. “That way,” he said.

We began hurrying through the wetland as fast as we could travel. Even now that we’d gained a sense of direction, we still had to travel beneath the trees or we wouldn’t spot anything otherwise.

The humming grew eerier as it grew louder. It was the combination of at least a dozen voices, all of them high-pitched.

As we continued to race, and the humming sounded like it was barely twenty feet away, it stopped abruptly.

Oh. Great.

“Can any of you still hear it?” I asked, wondering if any of the vampires or werewolves might pick up on it with their acute sense of hearing.

“Nothing,” they responded.

We stopped, our eyes raking over our surroundings as we wondered what our next step could be. Wait here and be quiet, and see if the noise started again? Or keep moving eastward blindly?

“Look up,” Rose whispered, indicating the treetops.

We all gazed up at once to see a shower of white flowers drifting down toward us. They landed all around us in a circle like oversized snowflakes. They brought with them the most incredible scent, so divine I felt the urge to bend down and pick one up, breathe the fragrance in more deeply… but I knew better than to do that.

“Keep away from the flowers,” Ibrahim warned, his forehead wrinkled with worry as his eyes darted all around us.

“Ugh, I’m so thirsty.” Kira spoke up.

She was eyeing the crystal-clear stream that ran nearby. As my own eyes fell on it, I realized too just how thirsty I was.

That was strange to me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this dehydrated as a fae.

“It’s the weirdest thing,” my father said, “but I am too.”

The gushing water surrounding us seemed to grow louder, glistening as if in taunt. I was already imagining how blissful it would feel to take a swig, feel the cool water gliding down my hoarse throat.

Could the flowers have caused this sudden dehydration in all of us?

I already predicted what Ibrahim was about to say before he even said it: “Don’t drink anything,” he said. His cracking voice revealed that he too had developed a bout of thirst. “Just as the creatures are not to be trusted, neither is anything about this place. Don’t touch the flowers, the trees, the grass, and certainly not the water.”

“What might it do to us?” Micah asked, rubbing his throat with a grimace.

“Just… don’t trust it,” Ibrahim said.

It was as if The Dewglades’ very environment was conspiring to bring its trespassers’ to their downfall, designed to seduce at every turn.

“Let’s keep moving. I’m not comfortable with us standing here anymore,” Ibrahim said.

Thus, we continued on our trek through the marsh… But not for long.

On passing through a line of trees, we emerged in a circular clearing, scattered with flowers. In the center was erected a thick log. It looked like some sort of ritual had gone on here, a ceremony, perhaps. Had this been where the humming had come from? This was about the right location.

“Look over there,” Yuri whispered. He pointed to our left. Among the trees stood a house. We hurried forward, circling it cautiously. It looked like a house that belonged in a fairytale. Constructed entirely of wooden logs, it was bedecked with more flowers, the same white flowers that these marsh dwellers appeared to be so fond of. Two narrow staircases wound up the two side walls, and the door was small, oval and dyed moss green. Two narrow staircases scaled either side of the building. I wondered what it was like inside.

“Interesting,” Ibrahim muttered.

After exploring the circumference of the building, we huddled together again. “Do we dare enter it?” Gavin asked.

“Yes, we should check it out. I don’t think all of us should go in, though. There won’t be room, anyway. You people stay here and I’ll quickly have a whizz around,” Ibrahim said.

We waited for two minutes and then he reemerged with a shrug.

“Clearly it’s recently been inhabited,” he said. “But it’s empty. Nobody around.”

“Let’s keep looking in this area,” my father said. “If we found one house, maybe there will be others too.”

Sure enough, we came across another building just a few yards away. It was of the same construction as the first. Ibrahim searched it, returning once again with a grim expression.

“Nobody at home,” he said

We passed a dozen more houses, which led to a dozen more. But after searching through almost thirty, all of them being empty, we gave up and retraced our steps back toward the clearing.

“Let’s have a look in some other direction,” Ibrahim said.

We had searched what I guessed was north of the clearing, and now Ibrahim pointed south, past the erected log and through the cluster of trees behind it. It looked to me like we were about to simply become engulfed in more endless forest, but to my surprise, on passing through the first stretch of trees, we reached a stone wall, a wall which was obviously very old. Moss and creepers that resembled ivy had overrun it, giving it a mysterious, foreboding appearance. Although there were many tall people among us, the wall was far too high for any of us to peer over. We moved further along the wall to find that it wound around in a circle, and after five minutes we were back where we had started.
It’s some kind of circular enclosure. A secret garden of the marsh dwellers, perhaps?

“Just wait here for a second,” Ibrahim said, before lifting himself into the air. He stopped as he drifted over the top of the wall and then went quite silent. His breath hitched.

“What do you see?” several of us asked, our voices constricted with anticipation.

Still, Ibrahim didn’t answer.

“Are you all right, Ibrahim?” my grandfather Aiden called up.

When the warlock finally descended, his face had gone completely pale, shock in his eyes.

My heart plummeted.

“Say something, dammit,” my father said.

“I… I think it’s best you see it for yourself,” he managed.

He raised us all up at once, lifting us higher and higher until our heads, too, poked above the boundary.

I stared down over the enclosure, confused at first as to what, exactly, I was looking at. But after a few seconds, it clicked… and I, too, felt the warmth leave my complexion.

We were staring into a garden all right. A garden I doubted I could dream up in my worst nightmares.

A quaint stone path ran the diameter of the circular compound, in between bushes of vibrant flowers, and connecting what I had first mistaken for some kind of tall, upright, rectangular wooden blocks. They had stuck out to me as strange, like some kind of simplistic, contemporary art pieces that you would see back on Earth… until I had realized that the boxes were semitransparent. And within them were encased bodies.

As Ibrahim descended with us into the garden, I honestly wasn’t sure that I wanted to get any closer. Within the slabs of what appeared to be resin were preserved corpses of a myriad of supernatural creatures. Supernaturals who had been so unfortunate as to cross paths with these marsh dwellers. I even wondered whether all of them had trespassed in The Dewglades, or if the marsh dwellers had gone out hunting for them in other lands.

There were vampires, werewolves, merfolk, and even what I suspected to be a dragon in his humanoid form. There was probably also a witch or two.

All of them had two things in common, however. A string of white flowers bound around their waists, and smooth, hairless skin—even the males.

I felt like throwing up.

“What is this?” I breathed

“It’s like a trophy display,” Claudia said weakly. She was leaning against her husband for support.

As much as it chilled me to the bone, I realized that all of us had been searching for Lucas.

Thankfully, we didn’t find him. But how long did Lucas have? It was pretty obvious from just a few seconds of gazing around in this garden what fate all trespassers had in store for them. That humming, had it been the spirits performing some kind of preliminary ceremony for Lucas to prepare for his encasement?

How, exactly, did they kill their victims?

None of the corpses in this garden appeared to be grossly injured. Their bodies looked quite intact…
Oh
. Except for the vampires. Now I spotted narrow stab wounds through their chests, above their hearts. But the rest had barely a scratch on them.

Lucas was a fae. He would be all right if he managed to stay in his subtle form, but that marsh dweller had already grabbed hold of him. Would he be able to reassume his subtle form? Had he already done so? I suspected that my uncle’s survival would lie in the answer to that single question.

“We’ve got to find him!” Jeramiah wheezed.

“Well, he’s not in here, thank God,” Ibrahim said. “So I don’t see a reason to stay in this ghastly place any longer.”

He lifted everyone back over the wall and planted us on the ground outside. I was sure, however, that the vision of that garden would remain imprinted on my mind for a long, long time to come.

“Okay,” my father said, rubbing his temples and pulling his focused expression. “Let’s think. Let’s just think.”

I gazed around the trees again. The chilling thought occurred to me that the marsh dwellers might even be watching us now from some secret hiding place, waiting for another of us to slip up so they could pounce on us. If Ibrahim wasn’t with us, at least a few of us would likely already be decorations in their garden.

Decorations
. No. That would be far too cruel a fate for Lucas. He’d already spent twenty years as a decoration in the ghouls’ ponds.

“Let’s move around the back of this garden again,” Ibrahim said, glancing furtively around, as though he too feared that marsh dwellers were spying on us.

We bundled around the back and then left the wall altogether and traipsed deeper into the forest. We walked until we were a good half mile away from the clearing. We passed no more houses, or any other gardens—thank heavens—and we had plunged back into the deep, mysterious forest.

“Maybe our best strategy is to wait,” Ibrahim said. “When I was in one of the houses, the one nearest to the clearing, I noticed a bath of resin. Maybe that’s where they plan to do the encasing.”

Waiting seemed like the hardest thing we could possibly do. And yet I thought we all sensed that Ibrahim was right. We had found a township. The marsh dwellers had obviously heard our approach and run off. But this township was their home. They had to return sometime… After all, their garden was here.

“I’ll cast invisibility over all of us,” Ibrahim said. “Then we can wait in front of the garden, near that house, with a good view of the clearing. We’ll be able to see when they return.”

I gulped. So many things could go wrong with this plan, but what choice did we have?

We just had to hope that the marsh dwellers wouldn’t decide to carry out their encasing procedure elsewhere… before they even returned.