A Shade of Vampire 31: A Twist of Fates (9 page)

I
brahim did not touch
us down on land when we arrived at The Dewglades’ location. Although we arrived at a rocky shore, the warlock kept us hovering in the air. We all needed to go over some basic protocol before setting foot in this place.

“So,” Ibrahim said. “Let’s have a recap about marsh dwellers for those of you who are less aware of them. By physical appearance alone, they seem quite harmless. Indeed, they are spirits renowned for their beauty, both the men and the women. They are, in essence, creatures of seduction. In that respect, they are similar to nymphs—but marsh dwellers are more mischievous. They prey on members of the opposite sex—first comes beguilement and then comes dinner. I am definitely going to need to put protection around all of us when we touch down. And stay close together. Don’t step out of my spell. And do not, and I repeat do not, go wandering off by yourself.”

I didn’t miss the way Ibrahim’s eyes settled a little longer on my uncle Lucas as he gave the warning. Lucas was all right most of the time, but he sometimes got carried away and took off on his own excursions.

“I don’t know how we’re going to get any information out of these creatures,” Ibrahim continued. “I don’t know what their attitude will be toward us. Maybe they will be talkative, maybe they won’t. We’ll have to play everything by ear… Any questions?”

Nobody said anything.

Ibrahim descended with us to a marshland—although it wasn’t like any marshland I had ever seen before. Small trees with vibrant, turquoise leaves populated the landscape. The leaves were dense and curly, hanging from loose branches like willows, and covering the treetops like mops of hair. The canopy the leaves formed was thick, such that when we descended through it and our feet hit solid ground, we were in a new world altogether: a world of crystal-clear brooks and streams, all interconnecting in a kind of spectacular maze. The patches of ground between the waterways were dewy, verdant and sprouted with tall green grass, the soil giving way beneath our feet. The vegetation was a feast for the eyes; clusters of delicate blooming flowers spanned every shade of the rainbow, and plump, pink, round fruits that resembled peaches in size and shape trailed from the branches like hanging temptation. Glowing orange and blue butterflies fluttered over our heads, creating a natural light that made the water glisten and the place look even more surreal. Whimsical. Fairytale-like.

This place truly was stranger than a dream.

The fragrance of the flowers was already seducing my senses. I felt heady just breathing it in.

“All right, guys,” Ibrahim said, eyeing Micah and Kira, who were already venturing a little too far away as they gazed around. “Remember what I said. We need to keep together.”

Where do we look first?
must’ve been the question running through everyone’s mind as we looked around this fantasy world.

“Maybe we should just start calling out,” I said. “Who knows how long it will take us to come across someone.” This country was big. We hadn’t been able to see the end of it from the sky, even though we had been fairly high up.

“I agree,” Ibrahim said.

And so, as we began to move through the waterlogged landscape, all of us began yelling.

“Hello?”

“Dwellers!”

“You have visitors!”

Nobody knew quite what to shout out to these strange creatures we’d never even laid eyes on before, and everything we did come up with sounded comical. But the only thing that mattered was that we were making noise.

After traveling for about half an hour, still, nobody had come to us. Ibrahim decided to transport us deeper into The Dewglades, hoping that it would speed things up.

Even in spite of Ibrahim’s warnings, I was very tempted to suggest that the fae leave and go off on our own to make this search faster. But although we were usually fully capable of getting ourselves out of trouble with our ability to thin ourselves, the fact that these marsh dwellers had the ability to play on one’s mind, and were so unknown in general, made me too nervous to dare leave the group. We were stronger together, and with Ibrahim to remind us what we should and should not be doing.

We disappeared with Ibrahim and reappeared again in an area that was just as eerily beautiful, but with more open space. The trees here weren’t as low-hanging, making the moory world seem larger, less claustrophobic. More butterflies flew among the leaves here, too, casting more dancing light around us.

“We’ve got to figure out where their residences are,” Ibrahim said. “I don’t know enough about marsh dwellers to know where exactly they live. In case you couldn’t guess, I haven’t actually been here before.”

We began to yell out again, disrupting the sacred, quiet atmosphere.

A splash came from our left. Quick footsteps moved through marshland. We all fell silent, freezing and gazing toward the noise.

Whoever was approaching was making expert use of the bushes and trees in front of us. Even as the footsteps drew closer, the entity remained unseen. It must have been keeping in an eerily dead straight line behind one of the trunks. Then the footsteps stopped. Slowly, a small hand slid around a trunk directly in front of us, followed by a bare arm and then a face: the face of a young woman, framed by long, silky brown hair. Her ears were slightly pointed at the tips, and her skin was pale as alabaster. Her features on the whole—small, cherub-like, and delicate—were undeniably attractive. She stepped out fully from the tree, revealing herself to be naked except for a flimsy chain of white flowers draped around her lower waist.

Well, this isn’t awkward at all
.

Her appearance was somehow made more uncomfortable by the fact that I was standing right next to my father.

Everyone was kind of lost for words for a few seconds, even the women among us.

Ibrahim was the first to break the silence, which was a good thing. In spite of his lack of experience with marsh dwellers, he still knew far more about them than the rest of us did.

“What’s your name, girl?” he asked.

A smile spread across her lips like honey. “Ottalie,” she cooed, soft as a dove, even as a blush crept to her cheeks.

“Ottalie,” Ibrahim repeated, maintaining eye contact with her. I noticed a bead of sweat slipping from his forehead. He was under the most pressure right now; his spell was what was keeping us all protected from this mysterious being. “Would you answer a few questions for me, Ottalie?” Ibrahim asked, his voice going soft to mimic hers.

She pressed her lips together, suppressing a broadening smile. She slipped her hands behind her back, where she held them, bashfully. Her pale green irises twinkled as she remained gazing back at Ibrahim without answering.

“We don’t mean you any harm,” Ibrahim went on in his quiet tone.

Even at his words, she backed away slightly. Her back hitting the tree trunk behind her, she glided around it, until she’d gone out of sight again.

But no footsteps sounded of her walking away, and we could hear her soft, shallow breathing. She remained behind the tree, just… waiting.

She was playing some kind of game.

Ibrahim inhaled, glancing nervously from me to my father. “Let’s move forward,” he muttered beneath his breath.

Our group approached the tree cautiously, stopping about five feet away.

“Ottalie,” Ibrahim repeated, like he was coaxing a child. “I would like to speak with you.”

Her hand extended around the tree again. Her forefinger outstretched and curved in a subtle beckoning motion.

“I am shy of the others,” came her whisper. “I wish to speak only to you.”

Ibrahim groaned, cursing quietly. “Looks like I’m going to have to use coercion,” he whispered. “I’d been hoping to avoid that.”

He outstretched his palms and moved forward, as if to summon the marsh dweller to him. But before Ibrahim’s spell could even reach her, she had darted off, swift and light as a spirit, through the trees. As though she could sense Ibrahim’s intentions.

We darted after her. If we lost her, we’d be back to square one.

“Wait,” Ibrahim called.

She let out a high-pitched giggle, which echoed eerily around the forest.

“Chase me if you want me,” she called back.

Ibrahim narrowed his eyes as we hurtled after her. I could see that he was attempting to get her when she dodged a tree and came into our direct line of vision, but she was so swift. As though she was flying, rather than running through the sludge.

We were also being impaired by the speed at which the solely-physical beings among us could run, i.e., everyone other than us fae. We weren’t that far behind her. And it was just one marsh dweller. One girl. If I could just grab her…

As I caught Lucas and Kailyn’s eye, I could see that they were thinking the exact same thing. We just needed to catch up with her and pin her down, for Ibrahim to cast whatever spell he wanted to on her.

“Ibrahim, we should—”

Before I could even finish my question, Lucas gave in to impatience and zoomed forward, away from Ibrahim’s protection.

“Wait, Lucas!” Ibrahim shouted.

The urgency of Ibrahim’s voice shook me. This was a bad idea after all.

I was about to follow Lucas and pull him back, when, in a blur of alabaster, the marsh dweller soared toward Lucas, and the two went tumbling into a rolling brook.

“Lucas!” all of us roared, hurrying to the water’s edge.

I expected to see the two of them underwater; perhaps the marsh dweller had been trying to drown him. Instead we saw a far more terrifying sight… nothing.

Just the rocky bottom of the stream. No signs that my uncle had ever entered the water at all.

Lucas and the marsh dweller had vanished.

I
had been lost
in some kind of deep sleep, cocooned by warm liquid, thick as honey.

As my senses slowly returned to me, my brain lit up from an unearthly scent, a fragrance made in heaven itself. I hadn’t even known that it was possible to derive so much pleasure from a smell.

I drew a breath, my eyes slowly lifting open. My first vision was a ceiling of virgin white flowers. They were bound together in garlands, and draped so thick that I couldn’t even see what the ceiling was constructed of.

My neck creaked as I tried to sit upright. I was lying in a… wooden bathtub? And the substance around me was real. It was warm and thick and even the color of honey, and yet, it was not honey. It did not smell like it; its scent was woody. It smelled like resin.

As I regained feeling in the rest of my body, there was something strange about my feet… something not right. They felt weighed down. As I lifted them up in the bath tub, I almost yelped.

These weren’t my feet.

They were solid blocks of resin, starting at my ankles.

Either this was a nightmare, or I was tripping out on something. What was the last thing that had happened to me? What was the last thing I
remembered
?

I had been zooming through trees, chasing that… thing. That woman. Then she had flown at me suddenly and dragged me underwater. I’d felt her lips touch mine and then… that was it.

Oh, God. What is going on?

My eyes swept around me, taking in the rest of my surroundings. I was in some kind of room constructed entirely from wooden logs. The loose, melted resin surrounding me was warm, making it hard for me to gauge the exact temperature of the room outside, but it felt moderate, if not a little cool.

That girl. That marsh dweller. She brought me here. What has she done to me?

For the first time I realized that I was stark naked. A shiver ran down my spine.

I grabbed at the blocks where my feet had been and attempted to break them, push them off me somehow. As I flexed my ankles, at least I was able to move the blocks—assuring me that I still had feet… they were just buried deep inside the slabs of resin.

I came under a spell of dizziness. I was forced to lie back down. I realized just how weak I was feeling. It was an effort to sit up. Just to raise my legs.

I tried to thin myself but quickly realized I couldn’t. I was too much in contact with the physical world. Not only was I drenched in this thick resin, but the blocks around my feet clung so tightly to my skin, there was no room for my feet to even breathe.

“Hello?” I dared call, trying once again to sit upright. My speech sounded disturbingly slurred. “Is there anyone here?”

As I gripped the sides of the wooden tub, it took all the strength I had to raise myself and kneel against its edge. I was about to attempt to throw myself out and roll along the floor toward a door I had just spied in one corner of the room when the door creaked open. A familiar form glided inside. The marsh dweller I had been chasing.
Damn Ottalie
. She was naked as she had been then, but for a skimpy skirt of flowers hanging around her waist. And behind her entered another marsh dweller—only this was a male. His skin was just as pale, smooth and flawless as the female, and he was also just as naked—with the same kind of skirt wrapped around his hips.

Okay. This is getting weird.

“You need to let me go,” I breathed.

Before I could throw myself out of the bath, the girl hurried over to me and gripped my arms. She pushed me back down. Her grip was alarmingly strong.

What had she done to me to make me so weak? I should have at least been able to soar out of here in my physical body, even if I couldn’t thin myself.

“What do you want with me?” I managed.

Her pillowy lips parted in a smile. She merely knelt by the tub next to me, pressing her hand over my forehead and gazing down at me adoringly.

“Rest, my sweet,” she whispered.

Her face descended too close, until her lips were on mine again. I resisted, trying to push her away, but she caught my hands and planted them by my sides. Then she let out a giggle and raised her head. She pressed her palms against my chest and kept my back pressed down against the base of the tub.

“Stay,” she said firmly.

I swallowed as her fingers ran down my chest, tracing a line toward my abdomen. Then she stopped and moved around the tub until she was standing over my legs. She drew up a three-legged wooden stool and sat at the end of the tub before reaching her hands into the resin and lifting up my right foot so that it rested on the tub’s edge.

She glanced toward her male companion and nodded.

Since the last time I had laid eyes on him, he had picked up a bowl of… what looked like more resin. Only it was halfway between the state of the resin I was bathed in and that around my feet. It was thick, but still malleable. Not a solid block.

Still clutching my leg aloft, she took the gooey substance from the man and began spreading it over my leg, from the base of my knee to my ankle. She smoothed it downward several times, until it had stuck fast.

“What are you—”

Barely had I opened my mouth than her fingers curved against the base of the resin strip. Without warning, she yanked it upward. It felt like she’d just ripped off my skin. I roared in pain, every breath knocked out of me.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” I panted.

Jerking my leg away from her, I clutched it. As I touched the skin she had assaulted, I realized that it felt much smoother than it had just a few seconds ago. Completely smooth, in fact.

Horror dawned on me.

She’s… She’s waxing me.

No, no, no.
This is not happening, young lady. This. Is. Not. Happening.

I
threw
my weight against the side of the tub at once, attempting to scramble out of it like a wet cat. Only half of my body made it out before the man stooped down and gripped my wrists, bundling me back into the tub.

“Stop this!” I yelled.

The girl actually had the audacity to hush me as she reached for my right leg again. This time her hand settled on my upper thigh.

“Be calm,” she whispered. “I am making you beautiful, like us.”

So close to the man’s legs, I realized that he, like the woman, was hairless… I tried not to look past his thighs.

“I don’t want to look like you,” I protested, still struggling with them. The man’s grip around me tightened, painfully so.
Dammit! If only I could thin myself.

“We will make you soft, like a flower,” the girl cooed.

Her lips pressed down against my naked lower leg, making it tingle… though I couldn’t deny that it did something to soothe the burning.

She spread out the dreaded malleable resin once again, this time over my thigh, before ripping it off me once again. I bellowed even louder the second time. Somehow, the pain was worse, knowing what was coming.

All the while, I was unable to do anything.

She worked her way to my other leg and as she began moving higher, the male marsh dweller snatched up a flower, pressed it against my nose and wisely, mercifully put me back to sleep.

* * *

W
hen I awoke a second time
, my skin prickled all over like someone had just blasted electricity through me. There I lay, smooth as the day I was born… and feeling utterly violated.

This was a kind of torture that even the ghouls hadn’t thought to mete out.

Even my jaw stubble was gone.

My eyes coming into focus, I realized, to my dismay, that Ottalie was still by my side. At least the man appeared to have left the room.

She smiled again—
that sweet, innocent, schoolgirl smile
—before holding up a bowl of purple berries. She popped one in her mouth, her eyes widening emphatically with pleasure. Then she stooped over me and closed her lips around my mouth. Before I could attempt to stop her, her tongue pushed through my lips and she inserted her mushed-up berries into my mouth, feeding me like a mother bird.

If this was some kind of karmic reaction for all the times I had taken advantage of girls in my youth, I supposed that this was a very fitting punishment.
But for heaven’s sake, haven’t I already clocked my time in purgatory?

She force-fed me the rest of the berries, which were undeniably sweet and delicious. Then, gripping my hands, she pulled me out of the tub. I stood on the blocks that still remained encasing my feet, but I realized that I was no longer naked. At least, not by marsh dwellers’ standards. I wore the same chain of white flowers around my waist that she and her male friend wore.

She ran her hands down my hairless arms, delight sparking in her eyes. “See what you’ve become, my sweet?… White and smooth as a virgin.”

Lord help me.