The Egg (Return of the Ancients Book 4) (14 page)

I rose to my feet at the injustice of it all.
“How is rejecting the Brotherhood of the Snake the wrong choice?”
I shouted, outraged.

“Because I did so,” he replied tightly, “And now my only fate line ends with the destruction of the Tree of Life.”

“Just as my fate ends now as well,” Rafael said lightly. “At least we’ll do it together.”

We both stared at him, surprised at his flippant tone.

“We walk the same path of fate now. There’s nothing to be done now but support each other along the way and help Sydney as much as we can,” he explained with quiet determination, but the tick in his jaw betrayed the fact he was stressed as well.

Jareth just sat there, working the knots on his neck and shoulders as dark emotions played over his face.

I shuddered. “I don’t get it,” I said aloud. “Who’s judging all of this, anyway? What kind of rules are they playing by? It’s ridiculously unfair! How could either of your choices be wrong?”

“I took too long to walk away,” Jareth confessed in a tortured voice. “I wanted to taste the Tulpa. I
wanted
to join them. I
wanted
to truly belong.”

“But you walked away!” I inserted, growing angrier by the second.

“You didn’t join them,” Rafael added his voice to mine. He locked gazes with Jareth. “You didn’t join them because you already have a brother and you already belong.”

Jareth swallowed and dropped his voice. “You shouldn’t trust me, Rafael,” he said.

Rafael responded by withdrawing a glowing white stone out of his pocket and sliding it across the counter. It bumped against Jareth’s elbow and spun in a few circles before coming to a stop.

I peered over at it. I recognized Jareth’s protection rune immediately, but not the stone. It was circular shaped, edged in gold and emblazoned in the very center with Jareth’s symbol. I raised a puzzled brow.

Moving as if in a dream, Jareth slowly picked it up and spoke. “I gave this to you … years ago, on the day I left our studies and joined the Inner Circle as an initiate to spy on them.” He glanced up and met Rafael’s steady gaze. “I asked you to come with me then, to uncover their mad plots against the throne.”

“And now you know why I couldn’t tell you I was already involved,” Rafael supplied in a level tone. “It was too dangerous for us all.”

“We … became enemies over it,” Jareth whispered.

“’Enemies’ is too strong a word,” Rafael corrected with a sad smile.

Jareth held the stone up between two fingers. It was in perfect condition. Not one crack. “Yet you never lost faith in me,” he whispered. “Through all of it. Through all of the rivalry, the insults, the games we played to torture one another. You never lost faith.”

“Nor you in me,” Rafael replied, his voice thick with emotion. “The stone is as new as the day you gave it to me, Jareth. It shows the
true
bond of Brotherhood. We both believed in each other this entire time.”

Jareth slumped into the chair and bowed his head, clutching the rune tightly between his fingers.

“I
really
don’t get this!” I repeated, shaking my head. “He’s always been on your side and you on his. Doesn’t this prove that Jareth made the right choice, choosing a true brotherhood over those aliens in the Second Dimension?”

“No!” Jareth choked. “It only proves I failed. I should never have been seduced by them. There never should have
been
a choice to begin with! I should have refused them from the start.”

“You
have
to be wrong,” I disagreed vehemently, not wanting to give up. “You’ve both been secretly believing in each other for years. Your hearts knew better, even if you were both being pigheaded the entire time. I don’t get this.”

But Jareth wasn’t listening anymore. Standing up abruptly, he fixed his gaze on Galahad. The pigeon squawked and disappeared in a flash.

My mouth dropped open. “How did—” I began.

“They’re coming,” Jareth interrupted in a quiet voice, looking over my head directly into Rafael’s alarmed gaze.

Rafael leapt to his feet.

“They?” I repeated.

But I already knew he meant the Mesmers.

“No!” I gasped.

I was already running to the door.

“It’s too dangerous, Sydney!” Rafael was calling after me.

I didn’t care.

I wasn’t about to let Al, Betty, and Grace get harmed.

Opening the door, I ran outside and dashed across the street.

Chapter Eight – The Portal

Ajax bolted past me as I ran. I wondered where he’d been, but I was grateful that he’d chosen that particular moment to return. I was halfway across the street when I realized I didn’t have my Lysol. I almost stopped to go back for it but changed my mind when I remembered that Al had plenty of extra cans in the garage. I couldn’t afford to waste a moment.

Betty was backing the truck out of the driveway and rolled the driver’s window down the moment she saw me.

“Just going to the store with Grace,” she announced with an inviting smile. “There’s a sale on turkey now. Looks like they overstocked for the holidays so I was just going to pick one up. Do you want to come?”

“Go!” I barked with an impatient gesture. Her puzzled reaction clued me into the fact that I’d better play it cool so I tried to recover with a fake laugh. “I mean, no, uh, like in no thanks. I’ve got stuff … some things to do.”

“We’re going to watch a movie,” Rafael added helpfully from behind me.

I jerked around, unaware that he’d followed. He met my astonishment with a calm smile and draped his arm around my shoulders with a causal grace. Jareth hadn’t joined us. Most likely, he and the Fae Protectors had shifted directly into our house.

Grace leaned forward to grin at us as Betty smiled. “Then you two have fun,” she said. “We’ll catch you later.”

It was really hard to pretend everything was fine when I just wanted to scream at them to run before the Mesmers arrived. I almost did. It was a close one. Instead, I just urged again, “Yeah, just
go
—uh… go and have some fun.”

It seemed like years before the window rolled back up. Finally, Betty waved a warm goodbye and pulled away but not before I saw Grace’s smile shift into an odd expression as she yanked out her phone and began texting. I didn’t think much about it though. It may have had nothing to do with me.

And anyway, the Mesmers were my primary concern.

“Where are they?” I asked Rafael.

“I see no signs,” he replied, scanning the immediate area.

We both thought of Mrs. Patton’s lawn menagerie at the same time. The Mesmers seemed to like hiding there. And she’d added even more lawn ornaments recently. Apparently, she’d gotten some new ones for Christmas presents. Her yard seemed safe. For the moment, anyway.

Exchanging a quick glance, we bolted for the porch with Ajax at our heels.

Yanking the door open, we barreled inside the house as Ajax tumbled in after us. But the moment his four paws hit the floor, he adopted a guard stance and pricked his ears forward on high alert.

Fae Protectors filled the hallway, all of them facing the kitchen.

I didn’t wait. Worried about Al, I began pushing through them even as somewhere deep inside a warning bell began to ring. The Fae Protectors weren’t looking at me as I shoved past them. In fact, they seemed inordinately focused on something in the kitchen.

I hesitated and turned to glance back at Rafael just in time to see a flash of light open up to consume him. For a split second, I watched him flail, staggering sideways with his trion raised in his hand, and then the next moment, he simply wasn’t there.

I screamed, unable to process what had happened.

The Fae Protectors around me didn’t respond, and I knew then that my worst unspoken fear was true. They were catatonic and that only meant one thing.

The Mesmers had already gained control of the house.

Dimly, I heard frantic barking and then Ajax streaked by in a blur of black fur. He threw himself into me, knocking me back out of the way as he bravely pushed forward through the paralyzed Protectors.

I didn’t know what he was going for, but I didn’t want him going alone.

I took a step after him when from behind me, I heard them. The sound of heavy breathing and soft scraping of many clawed feet scrabbling over Betty’s eBay boxes in the living room. That sound alone propelled me into the kitchen. I’d much rather face the unknown than what I knew came in that direction. As I pushed my way, a wave of Mesmers surged at me, jumping out from behind the boxes and slithering across the carpet.

Continuing to push through the catatonic Protectors, I heard Ajax’s vicious barking end in an abrupt squeal of pain. And by the time I arrived in the kitchen, I saw that he was lying in the middle of the floor, panting heavily. I didn’t see any blood but he looked severely injured, and I knew that he needed help.

Keeping my eyes focused solely on him, I ran forward, and I was about three feet away when I ran straight into some kind of invisible wall, just like a bird flying into a window. I fell down, stunned at the impact.

I shook my head and for the first time gauged my surroundings.

There was no sign of Al, Tigger, or Jareth. The only ally I had was Ajax, whimpering on the floor where I couldn’t reach him.

The Mesmers had seized complete control of the room. I couldn’t even count how many covered the countertops.

Only the kitchen table was clear, well, not quite. Blondie’s catlike, hairless body hunched right in the middle of it. The spikes along his back quivered with excitement the moment he saw me.

I shuddered. I didn’t have a Faraday cap on. And even though he was huddled behind that invisible barrier where I couldn’t reach him, I knew it wouldn’t be of any benefit to me. There was no doubt that Blondie would be able to mesmerize and torture me as much as he pleased.

“We’ve been waiting for you, Sydney,” he hissed, his dark bottomless eyes emanating a magnetic force impossible to resist.

My heart sank. “Where’s Al?” I managed to whisper. I was sure Blondie had done something horrible to him.

Blondie didn’t bother answering me. Instead, he faced the Mesmers still pouring into the kitchen. “Let us begin,” he chattered, making a clicking sound with his tongue. “Soon, we will enter Earth. The portal is here.” He licked his teeth.

My eyes widened. The portal was in Al and Betty’s
kitchen
? I looked at where I thought the invisible barrier was in outright horror.

“Now!” the Mesmers chorused in voices that sent chills down my spine. “Now we will return to the lands long lost to us. The era of the Brotherhood of the Snake has begun!”

With a maniacal cackle, Blondie waved his scarred spindly arms.

The Mesmers behind me lunged. Claws squeezed my arms, clamping down to press me forward against the barrier.

It began to burn me as they began shoving me through it and I screamed as I felt myself inexorably moving forward toward Blondie’s outstretched arms.

Suddenly, I heard a low timbre growl coming from the doorway leading into the garage. The horrendous sound made every hair on my body stand on end. Despair consumed me and in that moment, I felt everything was truly lost.

Compelled to face this new horror head on, I forced my eyes in its direction.

But it wasn’t some devilish creation the Mesmers had dreamed up.

It was Tigger.

The old brindle bloodhound stood there with his lips drawn back revealing a wicked set of teeth. He looked like a demon dog, crouched and ready to spring. His eyes were locked on Blondie and every hair on his body bristled.

I couldn’t move. The Mesmers claws pinned me to the floor. I could only watch as Tigger lowered his head and charged forward without hesitation.

Mesmers zoomed through the invisible barrier to pile upon him, squealing and biting, one after another until there was nothing but a mountain of their wriggling, disgusting bodies. I knew Tigger would be crushed by the sheer weight of them all and I began to sob.

But inexplicably, the mountain of Mesmer bodies moved. Inch by inch, the writhing mass crept forward as even more Mesmers piled on top, and then out from the middle of them Tigger erupted.

He was a mass of injuries but that didn’t stop him. His aged eyes were still focused on his goal.

Blondie.

With a growl I will never forget, Tigger leapt with jaws open wide, sailing through the air and heading straight for Blondie who stood quailing in the middle of the kitchen table.

The old brindle bloodhound’s aim was perfect. In slow motion, I watched his jaws descend over Blondie’s head, closing over it in one chomp. Tigger’s entire body vibrated with growls as his teeth sank deep.

I could hear Blondie’s bones snap with a sickening crunch. With a shrill, piercing scream, his body went limp.

It all happened at once then.

The barrier disappeared.

On the floor, Ajax lay, whimpering.

The Mesmers shrieked and began scrabbling away as the Protectors around me woke up to chase after them.

One moment, a lone Mesmer made a desperate leap for me but the next, he vanished in a flash of light as Rafael appeared to surge forward and swoop me up in his arms.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Jareth arrive in a cloud of mist, trion raised at the ready and with his hair flying wildly in all directions. “What’s going on?” he was demanding.

But I only had eyes for Tigger.

The old bloodhound had collapsed on the kitchen table. He wasn’t moving and his eyes were closed.

The Fae descended upon both dogs, encasing them in bubbles of healing light.

I watched, wordlessly.

It seemed to take years. At some point, Al stumbled in from the garage, looking dazed. Apparently, the Mesmers had caught him without a Faraday cap, too. I ran forward to grab his hand and as his big fingers clamped down over mine I began to shake off the spell that had fallen over me.

“Tigger—” I began, waving to where Rafael and Brock hovered over the bloodhound still on the kitchen table.

One look at their grim faces revealed that it wasn’t going well.

Tears threatened. I glanced away to where Jareth crouched on the floor next to Ajax, cupping a glowing ball of light in the palm of his hands. The light hovered there a moment before it slowly slipped through his fingers and melted into the Doberman’s matted fur. In seconds, Ajax lifted his head and in only a few more, he struggled to his feet.