The Brotherhood of the Snake (Return of the Ancients Book 2)

The Glass Wall - Book Two

The

Brotherhood

of the

Snake

By

Madison Adler

and

Carmen Caine

Published By Bento Box Books

Edited By Grace Benson

Copyright © 2012 by Madison Adler/Carmen Caine

ISBN: 978-0-9835240-7-6

Ebook Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and didn’t purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to MyBentoBoxBooks.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

This book is dedicated to my favorite Starbucks baristas

You guys are always there with a smile and you keep me going every day!

Thank you:

Jessica, Jenna, Chris, Danny O,

Danny S, Julie, Kate, Trevor,

Kelly, and Annie!

And Brock, thank you for letting me pick your brain!

Table of Contents

Sydney’s Note to the Reader

Chapter One - Another New Neighbor

Chapter Two - Shadows in the Night

Chapter Three - In Love with Who?

Chapter Four – Chupacabras

Chapter Five – The Impersonator

Chapter Six – The Red Sky

Chapter Seven – The Puppet Masters

Chapter Eight – Abnormally Normal

Chapter Nine – The Tree of Life

Chapter Ten - Marquis

Chapter Eleven – Too Many Answers

Chapter Twelve – Home Again, Home Again

Chapter Thirteen – Brock the Troll

Chapter Fourteen – “Silence, Minion!”

Chapter Fifteen – The Figure in White

Chapter Sixteen – The Many Uses of Nail Polish

Chapter Seventeen – Blondie

Chapter Eighteen – The White Mask

Sydney’s Note to the Reader

It would be much better if you just read the first book
The Glass Wall
, but let me summarize it for those who didn’t.

My name is Sydney. There’s nothing extraordinary about me. I’m not a vampire, a werewolf, or an angel, and I don’t have any superpowers. I’m just an average seventeen-year-old girl, struggling a bit in school but making it all work.

A few months ago, I found myself in Mercer Island, Washington, with my mother back in rehab and with myself bundled off to a new foster family. I thought they were a bit nutty at first, but now I think they’re just loveably unique. In fact, I’m feeling a bit like they’re more my real family than my poor mother, Maya.

The day I arrived in the neighborhood, a mysterious and extraordinarily handsome stranger moved in across the street. From the very beginning, there was something odd about Rafael and his sister, Harmony, but it wasn’t until Jareth, one of the hottest rising rock stars in the nation, began showing up that my life took a strange twist into the stuff of legends and dreams.

I’d started spying on them all with Al, my foster father—using his kooky spy contraptions that surprisingly worked—and discovered that Rafael, Harmony,
and
Jareth were Fae (whom we call “fairies”) and that they were searching Earth for Rafael’s missing mentor, Melody.

But as destiny would have it, they soon became interested in me.

It turned out that Rafael and Jareth were Fate Trackers, those who traced the Threads of Fate, looking for the Blue Threads in the noble pursuit of diverting disaster.

They told me that I was Blue-Threaded.

Being Blue-Threaded didn’t mean that I’d get superpowers or anything cool. It meant that it was my fate to make a choice. And it was a double-edged sword type of thing. It was a choice that would affect everyone in either the most wondrously positive or the most horribly disastrous of ways.

Unfortunately, there was no way to know ahead of time when I would make this choice. I’d just have to keep wondering if each decision I’d just made had been
The One
.

Apparently, the Fae were very worried that I wouldn’t make the
right
choice because they all hovered around me, watching my every move.

And then both Rafael and Jareth turned Blue-Threaded as well.

But it was when I stumbled upon the Tulpa—the manifestation of emotion that humans create in the second dimension—and it tried to devour and convert me into the emotion of fear, that Rafael broke the rules and saved my life by transporting me to Avalon, the world of the Fae in the first dimension.

There I saw the Glass Wall, a wall the Fae had built to protect humanity from the lizard people. But the Tulpa’s presence on Earth convinced Rafael that the wall was broken and that it wasn’t really protecting Earth at all but hiding something sinister instead.

It was then that he told me more about the lizard people, the race of aliens watching humanity from the second dimension, eating our emotions and looking for ways to possess our bodies so they could walk our planet once more as they used to, long ago.

Anyway, the first book ended with Jareth pointing his trion at me in Avalon, narrowly missing my head and burning off a chunk of my hair as I stood with Rafael in front of the Glass Wall. He really gave us no choice but to run right through it, and since I was human, the entire wall shattered, removing any protection humanity had against the lizard people, or, as Rafael was convinced, revealing what it had been protecting all along.

After what seemed like endless hours of falling through showers of broken glass, I found myself once again back on Earth in my bedroom with Rafael. And then Harmony, who wasn’t actually Rafael’s sister but his bodyguard, appeared and told us to
“start running”
because the protection runes she’d given us to keep us safe had broken.

But before I get ahead too far, it’s time to start the first chapter of
The Brotherhood of the Snake.

Chapter One – Another New Neighbor

“Start running!” Harmony shouted again, her blue eyes wide with horror. She stood there, cradling the crumbling remains of her protection runes in her outstretched hands, her blonde hair flying wildly in all directions.

I felt the blood drain from my face as I glanced down at my own rune. It was black and smoking. Only a moment ago, it had been white and sparkling with Harmony’s gold mark protecting me from the Fae now on our trail.

Dimly, I heard her alternately begging, cajoling, and commanding us to leave. Rafael’s fingers of steel curved about my wrist, pulling me forward, and I felt the surge of adrenaline as I prepared to run.

“Go!” Harmony pushed us toward my bedroom door. “The Queens’ Guards are after you now, Rafael! I’ll return to Avalon to distract them, but you’ll have to run! You shouldn’t phase shift, they might’ve already set up traps for you!” And she disappeared abruptly in a puff of mist.

“Where are we going?” I asked as Rafael pulled me down the hall and through the living room filled with mountains of Betty’s Ebay boxes. My heart was pounding, and my lips could barely form the words. “Where can we hide?’

He didn’t answer. He wrenched the front door open but stopped so abruptly that I crashed right into him.

“Where’s the fire, kiddo?” I heard Al’s distinct voice ask.

Peering around Rafael, I saw Al standing on the threshold in his fatigues, a battalion cap covering his bald head and his arms full of white PVC pipes and rolls of plastic sheeting. His bright blue eyes turned suspicious as his brows knit into a frown. “What’s up?”

I knew we didn’t have time to talk. We had to get out of there. Recalling the Mackenzie Covert Code Phrase Al had taught me to say when no questions should be asked, I said in a rush, “We’re just on our way to get some of those
Blue Pickles
, Al. We’ve got to hurry!” I hoped he had enough faith in me to give me his complete trust.

I wasn’t disappointed.

His face lit, and he stepped back immediately, balancing the plastic and pipes long enough to snap off a sharp salute. “Then you'd better get going! We’ll talk when you get back.”

Rafael didn’t hesitate. Firmly grasping my arm, he almost lifted me across the porch, and as I passed Al, my foster father pulled his neighborhood watch whistle from around his neck and tossed it to me. “Take this with you, kiddo.”

Somehow, I caught the chain.

We ran across the yard, past the evergreen trees, and across the street to Rafael’s house.

“Sydney!” Mrs. Patton’s raspy voice called out from next door. “Rafael!”

The little old lady stood in the front yard of her pink Victorian house, almost hidden in her lawn ornament menagerie of garden gnomes, deer, and flamingos. She waved her hand for our attention, watching us through her Coke-bottle glasses, a red parka bundled over her purple housecoat.

I barely had time to wave back before Rafael pushed me through his front door and into the living room.

Once again, he stopped abruptly.

I blinked in surprise.

The living room was completely empty, except for a mirror hanging on the wall next to the window.

Rafael caught his breath and stared at it as if he’d seen a ghost.

In the reflection of the glass, I saw him at my side, tall and imposing, black eyeliner ringing his charismatic gray eyes, his usually perfectly styled blond hair disheveled, and the long dark sleeves of his bodysuit torn from fighting Jareth in Avalon. The cloth had ripped over one shoulder, revealing glimpses of his hard and toned physique beneath.

A cloud of smoke and blazing fire exploded in the center of room and a tall, dark form emerged from it.

It was Jareth.

Wearing black leather wrist cuffs, laced leather pants, and a graffiti t-shirt, he swaggered forward to pause in front of the window and bowed with a dramatic flair. His long, black hair fell loose over his shoulders, not teased or tortured in the usual rock star manner, but smooth and sleek.

Straightening, he began brushing dust from his sleeves and shoulders, dust I recognized as bits of the Glass Wall that Rafael had sent through the pocket mirror just moments before.

“
I got your message, Rafael,” he drawled sarcastically. “I’ll have this glass in my hair for days.”

They locked gazes in the tense silence that followed before 
Jareth’s dark lashes flicked my way.

Rafael’s arm instinctively flew out in response, blocking me in a protective gesture. 
Suddenly, I was aware of how close he’d been standing, and then he was leaping forward, slamming Jareth back against the wall and forcing him to his knees.

I blinked in surprise.

Rafael had always been the cool, calm, and collected one, a bit formal and perpetually polite, but now I realized there had always been an undercurrent of emotion barely contained beneath the surface. He was complex. Secretive. Fascinating.

He towered over Jareth, stance wide, intimidation radiating from every inch of him.

Jareth shot him an angry look.

As I watched them, I suddenly remembered Rafael telling me that they were 'counterparts’, what should have been the perfect team of Fate-Trackers. The Dark Fae and the Light Fae. The Yin and Yang.

But they weren’t a team.

They were borderline enemies.

Rafael broke the prolonged silence with a smile. It was a cold smile, one without a hint of warmth.

“And what brings you here, Jareth?” he asked. “Only a short time ago in Avalon, you seemed quite intent on my death.”

With eyes blazing in anger, Jareth struggled to his feet. Shoving Rafael back, he braced himself against the doorjamb and took a deep breath. “I’m here because you asked for my protection, you fool!”

Rafael inhaled sharply, his lips parting slightly in surprise. “
Your
protection?”

“You’ve seen Harmony’s runes.” Jareth shrugged. “There’s only one way they could’ve fractured…” He paused dramatically.

Rafael’s eyes narrowed.

“You broke them yourself, Rafael,” Jareth announced. With a flamboyant gesture, he drew a small, triangular rune from his pocket. “You rejected her protection in favor of mine, moments ago.” He tossed the stone to Rafael.

Catching it in mid-air, Rafael held it up to the light.

It was white, shiny, and new. I immediately recognized the black protection symbol glistening on the stone’s smooth surface. Apparently, Jareth had used his Fae Fate Tracker symbol to market his rock star career on Earth. He’d emblazoned it on the covers of his albums, and there were t-shirts and posters of it everywhere.