Authors: Brieanna Robertson
Warrior's Rise (24 page)
Cyrcinus stepped back, wiped her face and let out a rage-filled shriek, striking Darien across the face with the hilt of a dagger.
Lucy winced and looked away.
“Let the humans go!” Cyrcinus snapped. “They are of no use to me! Send them back to their pathetic world!” Two guards grabbed hold of Aki, Colt and Doug and started to haul them away. They screamed in protest and tried to get to Darien, but they were bullied out of the courtyard. Cyrcinus circled Willow and Darien again, then sneered. “As for you two…” She laughed and faced everyone. “All of the Avari still living are now my property!” she shouted. “Anyone who contests this can join their beloved queen and their dear dragon warrior in death!”
Logan’s heartbeat faltered.
Cyrcinus turned in a circle and looked at all of the surrounding forest. “I know you’re out there somewhere, dragon warrior!” she shouted. “It’s too late for you to stop the Avari being enslaved! You had a chance, but you let your selfishness overrule your love for these people! Are you going to let it overrule your love for these two?” She indicated Darien and Willow. “You have forty-eight hours to show yourself and pledge your loyalty to me! If you refuse, these two and any Avari still vowing loyalty to you instead of me will be publicly executed! Do you want that on your conscience?” She let out a horrid, bellowing laugh. “Forty-eight hours, dragon warrior!”
Logan hung his head and fought against the tight band of panic that tried to suffocate him. Now was not the time. He couldn’t freak out now. Willow and Darien’s lives, as well as the lives of Willow’s people, depended on him. He had made a promise to protect them. Losing his head would only waste time.
“What is she talking about?” Lucy whispered in a frantic tone. “Why does she want you?”
Logan huffed. “She doesn’t know that Darien healed me against her poison. She thinks I’m uber strong or something and wants me to be her mate so I can give her a strong heir.”
Lucy blinked in bewilderment.
Logan nodded. “Yeah, exactly. Not in my plans.”
“But she’s going to kill them!”
“We have two days. Come on, Luce, we have to get back to the portal. We need to find the others.” He started to back down the hill.
“Do you have a plan?” she asked, following after him.
“At the moment?” He stood. “No.”
She stared at him in horror, her huge, blue eyes filling with tears.
He took her by the shoulders. “Lucy, I need you to trust me. I’ll think of something. I promise.”
“She’s going to kill them!” she cried. “She’s going to kill Darien!” Fat tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Lucy, listen to me. I know you’re scared, but you’re not the only one who has someone you love down there. Darien’s my brother. Willow is to me what Darien is to you. And I have an obligation to those people. I’m not going to let any of them down. I just need to think.” He gently wiped her tears away. “I’m not going to just go down there and surrender. She doesn’t mean what she says. She’ll just get what she wants and kill them anyway. Haven’t you ever paid attention to the villains in the movies you watch? They never mean what they say and they’re never dead the first time around. We have to find a way to outsmart her. Lucy!” He gave her a little shake to try and snap her out of what looked like the beginnings of hysteria. She met his eyes. “I’ll figure it out.
Trust me.”
She gave a hasty nod and tried to pull herself together.
He took her hand. “All right, now come on. We have to get back to the portal.”
* * * *
Logan wasn’t surprised to see, after he and Lucy slipped back through to the human realm, Colt, Doug and Aki all crying their eyes out in the middle of the forest. Lucy immediately ran to them, screaming for Colt, who pulled her into a bear hug and started to cry even harder.
“I thought you were dead!” he screamed. “We all thought you were dead! No one could find you!”
“I was in the forest hiding with Logan,” she wailed. “They have Darien! Colt, they have Darien!” She sobbed into her friend’s shirt and Logan stood by, letting her get her emotions out. She’d been a trooper all the way back to the portal and he wasn’t going to chide her now. The person she loved was in the clutches of a psycho killer. He swallowed and looked towards where the sun was starting to peek its rays along the horizon. He knew how she felt.
Willow
…
He closed his eyes, feeling like fingers gripped his heart and squeezed.
“Logan!” Aki cried, jumping up and running over to him. “We thought you were dead too!” She flung her arms around him and held on, shaking all over. Doug followed suit, as did Colt with Lucy in tow.
Logan blinked as he suddenly found himself surrounded by sobbing teens that were all clutching onto him and muttering that they were happy he was alive. It was enough to make a lump form in his throat and tears sting his eyes. “I’m glad you guys are okay too,” he murmured. “At least she let you go.”
“But she has Darien!” Aki cried. “And Miss Willow!”
Logan nodded. “Yes, I know.”
“What are we going to do?” Lucy cried.
Logan closed his eyes and forced himself to go to a place he didn’t want to return to, but it was the only way he was going to make it through this. It was the only way he would be able to think clearly and not let his feelings for Willow, his love for the kids, and the sick worried feeling he had in his stomach get the best of him. He forced himself to go to the place he’d gone when his father had beaten him. The place he’d lived for so many years… The place where he felt nothing.
Drawing in a deep breath and steeling himself, he stepped back so that he could look at the kids. “All right, I know you’re scared and I know you’re worried,” he said, “but crying and flipping out isn’t going to solve anything. We have two days before Willow and Darien, and however many Avari Cyrcinus feels like slaughtering, get killed. We can’t waste anymore time. We have people depending on us. You’re warriors, aren’t you? Isn’t that what I taught you to be?”
They blinked up at him, sniffling and shivering.
“We’re not warriors!” Colt exclaimed. “We’re kids!”
Logan snorted. “Come on! You’re the one who insisted that you weren’t children! Suck it up!” He turned to Lucy. “You know more about the Avari and the fairies than anyone. Do the Supporo have any enemies other than the Avari? Any other race, or species, or whatever, that don’t like them?”
Lucy looked confused for a second. “U-Um, I’m not sure. My book might say, but it’s back at the camp.”
Logan gave a decisive nod. “Then we’re going back to camp. Come on, guys. I need you to be with me on this. Get your brains working. We’re the only chance they have.”
Doug shook his head adamantly. “I didn’t sign on for this!” he cried. “I just wanted to come to camp and have some fun for the summer! Now, if we don’t stop a crazed fairy our friends are gonna die! I don’t like this! I like reading about fantasy! I like watching it on the big screen! I don’t wanna
live
it anymore!”
Logan put his hand on Doug’s shoulder. “Look, you guys, I know this is rough. I know this is stressful, but I need you. Do you understand me? I
need
you. I may have acted big and bad when we first met, but the truth of the matter is, I’m nothing without you guys. I need your help. Darien and Willow need your help…” He drew in a deep breath. “Are you with me?”
The four of them exchanged glances before giving small, simultaneous nods.
“We’re with you, Logan,” Lucy said meekly. “We trust you.”
In that moment, he felt more pride than he ever had. Having those four kids place their trust in him left every other accomplishment he’d ever achieved in the dust. He nodded. “All right, come on. We need to get back to camp and we need to do it in a hurry.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“You find anything yet?” Colt persisted.
Lucy looked up at him with bloodshot eyes. “Not yet.”
Logan sighed and continued to clean his gun. He’d left his favorite rifle back in the Avari village, but he still had a handgun he could use. Lucy had been combing through her mythology book for the past five hours, but she couldn’t seem to find anything on enemies of the Supporo. There had to be something. Queens like Cyrcinus had to have enemies.
“This is getting us nowhere!” Aki cried, taking a puff on her inhaler.
“I’m trying, all right?” Lucy shouted. “I’m doing the best I can! At least I’m doing something instead of just sitting on my butt!”
“Hey!” Aki exclaimed.
“All right, guys, come on,” Logan interrupted. “Now isn’t the time to turn on one another.” He set his gun aside. Everyone was on edge, and rightly so. As of right now, they had no plan to speak of and had wasted the past five hours. His stomach was in knots. What was Cyrcinus doing to Darien and Willow? He didn’t even want to think about it.
He closed his eyes as he remembered Willow’s kiss. Her soft skin and beautiful green eyes. He’d promised to protect her. He’d promised to protect her people. He’d botched that one, hadn’t he?
Waste of sperm. Useless boy.
Maybe his father had been right all this time…
“Oh!”
Lucy’s exclamation brought Logan out of his troubled thoughts.
“I think I found something!” She stabbed her finger down onto a page. “It’s not much, but…”
“What is it?” Colt prodded.
“It’s only a couple lines. All it says is, ‘The Supporo were the strongest of all the fairy races. No fairies were superior to them. The only race they feared was the Kaleydia.”
Logan’s eyes widened and he turned to face Lucy. “Kaleydia…” he whispered.
“What the heck are the Kaleydia?” Colt questioned. “Isn’t that an STD?”
“No,” Aki said, rolling her eyes. “That’s
Chlamydia.”
“They’re wolves,” Logan replied. “Wolf shape-shifters. Willow told me about them a few days ago.”
Lucy blinked. “Do you think they would help us?”
“I don’t know. Does your book say anything about the Kaleydia?”
She flipped through the thick volume and skimmed her finger down a few pages. “It says that the Kaleydia were very fierce and primitive. They traveled in packs and were very untrusting of outsiders. ‘More willing to kill first and ask questions later, the Kaleydia only dealt with those not of their kind when there was some sort of bargain to be had and a prize to be gained.’”
Logan snorted. “Great. Like
Pirates of the Caribbean
only in wolf form. Next thing I know I’m going to be handing my heart over to Davey Jones’ locker,” he grumbled.
Doug gave a very loud laugh.
Logan chuckled in spite of himself and shook his head with a sigh. “All right, is that all we have to go on?”
“That’s all I can find,” Lucy said.
“They may be our only chance then. Maybe we can convince them to help us somehow. Does it say where to find them? Where they live?”
Lucy looked back down at her book. “Um…says they would make encampments at the base of the mountains.”
He arched an eyebrow. “What mountains? Any mountains?”
She looked up helplessly. “It doesn’t say.”
Logan let out a frustrated snarl. “All right, we can’t sit here wondering and waiting and wasting time. There is a mountain range about a day’s journey from the Avari village. We have to make the trek in a half a day and pray that we find some wolves.” He stood.
“This is suicide!” Colt grumbled. “All this is going to be is a wild goose chase!”
“We don’t have much of a choice, Colt!” Aki shouted. “This is all we have to go on!”
“We need somehow to make the journey shorter,” Doug said. “Like horses or something. We can’t do the whole thing on foot and make it back in time. We need something that’s going to cut it in half.”
“Even then we don’t know if we’ll even find any wolves!” Colt cried. “We can’t just barrel into this! Don’t we know anyone who knows about this world other than us?”
Nausea swept through Logan, blind repulsion at the idea that suddenly took hold of his mind. He closed his eyes, knowing it was his only choice and abhorring the very thought of it. “Does Darien have a cell phone?” he blurted.
Colt blinked up at him. “Yeah, I think in his bag.” He went over to Darien’s stuff and rifled through it until he pulled out a black phone and tossed it to Logan.
Logan sighed, flipped the phone open and scrolled down the list of contacts until he came to the entry labeled, “Dad.” He tried to will the awful fluttery feeling in his chest away and pressed the call button. One, two, three rings… May as well have been three lifetimes.
“What do you want, boy?”
Logan bristled at the voice that had haunted his nightmares. “Sorry, Pops, this isn’t Darien,” he snarled. “It’s your other son. The bastard one.”
All of the kids exchanged shocked looks with one another.
The phone was quiet for so long that Logan thought he’d hung up.
“Logan…” his voice finally came. He sounded bewildered.
Logan snorted. “Oh, so you do remember me? Thought maybe you’d forgotten after all of these years.”
“Why do you have Darien’s phone?” The surprise faded and the harshness came back to his tone. “How do you even know Darien?”
“It’s amazing what you find out when you’re sent to work at a summer camp run by an Avari fairy, isn’t it,
Dad?
I found out all sorts of things. Like that I have a brother. And portals exist to other dimensions. Oh, and that I’m a
mythical creature
!”