Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Monkey Wrench ❯ A Road in a Yellow Wood ( Chapter 20 )

Monday October 10, 2005

 

4:13 p.m. EST

 

Milford, DE

 

Nikolai's House

 

At the moment I found myself entering a dazed sort of calm. Gage lay bleeding and dead at my feet, Meghan's nearly decapitated head fell off kilter from her now marionette-like body across the room, and two giant, bloody werewolves were circling each other ten feet away from me. Surreal didn't even begin to describe it and I'd been through a lot.

 

Snapping out of my reverie, I figured it was time to get out of this damn cage and make use of myself. I was unsure as to who would win this fight between Rowan and Nikolai. One was the legendary double-fanged lupinara and the other was the Uig Pack's Beta Guard, maybe not so legendary, but definitely just as lethal.

 

Seconds later, the wolves lunged and were snarling and snapping in the tightly confined space. As I pulled and pushed at the cage's bars, thinking maybe just a few more shoves would do it, I noticed a small, Barbie doll sized person fly through the air toward Meghan. I hadn't noticed it before due to the already overwhelming amount of commotion in the room, but now I could make out the distinct buzzing sound of wings and a miniature 7 or 8-inch person hopping about on Meghan's deceased form.

 

Great, looks like we're being visited by a pixie, the second smallest and most vicious members of the Unseelie fey. From what little I knew about them, the little warriors were often no better than contract hit men, with no scruples about killing, maiming, or otherwise torturing any species at all, including their own. Remember when I said that the fey were good with money…well the pixies are the bad side of that trait, inherent greed and a genetic predisposition to violence leaves you with one hell of a scary Snib packed in one heck of tiny package.

 

The fact that this one was so intent on Meghan had me more than a bit worried. What was its connection to her?

 

Nikolai and Rowan didn't seem to notice it; they were too busy trying to kill one another. I stopped trying to extricate myself from the cage and kept a sharp eye on that pixie…until I heard a trembling whine of pain from Rowan, and I dashed my eyes away for merely a moment to make sure he was okay.

 

It only took a moment for the pixie to pull the trigger and by then I had my answer.

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Rowan heard the shots and nearly fell face first on the floor when Nikolai went down at the same time. He followed his nose to the tiny pixie flying out the open window in a blur of reddish dust. Theryn was sprawled on the cage's floor, her blood already mixing with the blood of his Alpha, forming a brackish red river on the old hardwood floors.

 

He'd changed back to human form in record time and quickly stuck his hand through the cage to check Theryn's pulse. She was still alive; the bullets had hit her right upper chest area but he knew he had to get her medical attention now. He had no idea as to why Nikolai was suddenly panting on the floor in a daze, but he knew enough not to waste the opportunity.

 

Just then, Katie, Dom, and Frederick came flying into the room. Katie immediately went to her dead mate, Frederick stood poised with guns over the still unconscious body of Nikolai and Dom just stared at all the blood.

 

“Dom! Help me get her out of here!” Rowan ordered.

 

Visibly shaking himself, Dom kneeled at the cage's doors and proceeded to growl with ever heightening intensity at the lack of any apparent locking device.

 

“I don't see a lock, they must have used magic,” he yelled frustrated.

 

Rowan was about to try prying the thing apart with his bare hands when he heard footsteps in the hallway.

 

“Somebody looking for a magical locksmith—oh shit…”

 

Rowan turned around to see Joe, of all people, staring in horror at the carnage in the ornate Victorian bedroom.

 

Rowan didn't have time to wonder how Joe had gotten here, but now that he was…

 

“Can you get her out of there?”

 

Joe strode over to inspect the cage and grimaced at Theryn's red soaked form.

 

“Whoa, this one's damned near impossible. It needs the matching blood of one on the outside, which is crazy because anyone placed inside can't be on the outside, why would anybody invoke this spell?”

 

“We don't have a lot of time here!” Rowan snarled impatiently.

 

Joe dared to ponder the puzzle a moment longer then, as if startled by a sound, Joe turned to Rowan with a scared look of enlightenment.

 

“Give me your arm.”

 

Rowan growled menacingly in question.

 

Joe, to his credit, wasn't intimidated.

 

“I need to slice a cut in your arm and smear the cage with your blood—don't ask why I'll explain later.”

 

Rowan held out his arm, and in seconds Joe honed a sharp knife from his fingernail and quickly covered a rung of the metal cage in Rowan's blood.

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The cage dissolved into dust seconds later and when Joe looked up to watch the tiny, white particles floated in the afternoon sun, the werewolves were already bounding down the steps, all of them carrying a body in their arms.

 

Joe shook his head in wonder. There's no way that spell should have worked, not unless the person who invoked it knew she pregnant, wanted Theryn to get out of that cage and wanted the mage who freed her to know the father of her child.

 

He was suddenly very suspicious of that international phone call from a Mr. Darius, asking him to check out an ether leak in the basement of his old Victorian in Milford. Luckily Lisa had been with him when he got the call, otherwise he'd have never made it past the lupinara patrol. Things had fallen into place just a little too easily for his liking.

 

He had to talk to Theryn.

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5:15 p.m. EST

 

Elijah's Island

 

Uig's Hunt Farm

 

Lisa watched through the glass door as Doc hovered over Theryn's still limp form. Loretta had relegated her to this less than prime position and given her no details about her best friend's condition. Plus, Rowan was growling and sniping at anyone who came near Theryn that wasn't Doc or his nurse.

 

She couldn't help but think back to this afternoon. Hitching a ride home from Joe, she'd gotten out with him to see the old Victorian in Milford. It didn't take long to find a heavy contingent of werewolf security and after persuading them to let Joe in, (perk of hanging out with Dom so much) she'd learned the latest from a young tracker she'd befriended a few months ago over a talk about the latest bands coming to town.

 

This was where Theryn had been taken. This was where even now, Rowan was battling with Nikolai in a fight to the death, and where Gage had been shot. This was also supposedly where Joe was sent to fix an ether leak…what an ether leak was she had no clue.

 

It become readily apparent that Theryn was rescued when four lupinaras came flying out of the house, each with another person in tow. Lisa was overjoyed to see Theryn again, but that was sadly short lived when she saw her pregnant and bleeding in Rowan's arms.

 

Now that Lisa was back at the Hunt, she'd learned that Gage had been shot and killed by Meghan, with Theryn as the intended target, Nikolai was in the same unconscious state as she and they were trying desperately to save both her and her child's life this very moment.

 

Dom came around the corner with Seth at his side and pointed him in my direction. Seth was like the little brother she never had and she tried her best to console him, but he just sat in heap on the floor staring at his feet. Lisa just didn't know what to say.

 

Turning away from the sullen teenager she closed her eyes in resignation. After all this time they finally had found Theryn, only to have her shot and barely clinging to life once they got her back. Lisa was moments away from bawling hysterically when she felt fine Italian wool clad arms come around her from behind.

 

“I'm so sorry you had to see her like that,” Dom whispered, without a hint of his usual smugness.

 

Lisa bowed her head and sighed into the confines of his embrace.

 

“Any word?”

 

She felt Dom shaking his head no.

 

“Nothing new yet, Doc's still trying to pull out the bullets, the silver is toxic to the baby.”

 

Lisa jumped as if startled at the word “baby.”

 

“I'm sorry I thought you knew.”

 

She nodded her head in affirmation, “Yeah, I know, but I thought lupinaras and humans rarely mated?”

 

Tightening his squeeze a little, Dom stated, “You're right, they rarely do. Theryn hasn't been marked by Nikolai, she's just pregnant with his child.”

 

Lisa shuffled around, pulling his arms from around her waist and bringing his hands out in front of her.

 

“I can't figure out why. Why would he do this to her? Why did he bite Seth, why kidnap and rape Theryn, whey did he go through all this to end up unconscious and locked up in your holding cell while his unborn child fights to stay alive?”

 

Dom could only shrug his shoulders in confusion, “We don't know, but we're fairly certain he didn't count on Meghan and her pixie assassin.”

 

Lisa scrunched her forehead in bewilderment, pixie what?

 

Just then Loretta came through the doors, swishing in her scrubs and green facemask cocked askew on her chin.

 

“Doc's got her stable,” the British woman chirped happily.

 

Seth jumped up with an unnatural speed and joined Lisa and Dom in attacking the obviously weary nurse, all wanting reassurance that Theryn would make it through the night.

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Thursday October 13, 2005

 

7:00 p.m. EST

 

Elijah's Island

 

Uig's Hunt Farm

 

Whistling.

 

I definitely heard whistling. I hated whistling unless I was the one doing it…

 

Hey wait a minute, if I can hear whistling that means I wasn't killed by some half-pint pixie and managed to stay alive long enough to hear Loretta's wonderfully warbled ode to Farewell, My Own Dear and Native Land.

 

I flung my eyes open and instantly recognized the room as being the ER at Uig's Hunt. I did another quick look down to make sure nothing happened to the kid, and was happy to see the beach ball still in tact.

 

I'm sure I wasn't awake for more than a minute when Rowan came crashing through the swinging doors.

 

“You're awake!”

 

Yep, same old Rowan still making brilliant pronouncements of the obvious. I decided to let that one pass. Hey, I missed him. Which reminded me…

 

I grabbed a hunk of his t-shirt and twisted it in my hands.

 

“What the hell happened to you? Are you okay? I was in that godforsaken house for nine months!”

 

There, I felt better already. Yet, Rowan looked pained and embarrassed, not what I wanted to see right now. Go figure I'd ruin our quasi-reunion by blaming my abduction/magical torturing/rape/near death experience on him. That's not how I meant it at all.

 

Rowan grew very still, “I'll explain it to you later. It's rather…complicated.”

 

For once I was willing to let is slide, I wasn't in the mood for lengthy explanations of the third kind. I moved a little to my left and the thin blanket covering my mid-section slid down on my stomach. Rowan zeroed in on the area like a laser-guided missile.

 

He shook his head and stared at the floor, “I'm so sorry.”

 

I didn't have to ask “for what?” He was blaming himself for this whole ridiculous thing and that was just stupid. I grabbed his arm hastily to keep him from pulling away and noticed a long white scar along his wrist that hadn't been there before. It must have really been serious on that mission of his back in January.

 

“Look,” I managed to say quietly, “Before you go brooding for months at a time, it wasn't your fault. I've had a lot of time to go over this and the way I see it, if it hadn't been for you and the Uig Pack, Seth and I would have been goners a long time ago. Who knows what would have happened if you hadn't been there to protect me, I could've been killed? If you ask me, getting pregnant is a small price to pay for surviving a werewolf and vampire abduction for nine months.”

 

It was an oversimplification and getting raped and pregnant was no picnic in the park but I hope what I said quelled any doubts he had about “failing” and whatnot. That Beta Guard complex runs pretty deep.

 

Getting no response from him, I stared at the ceiling to avoid his eyes; I didn't want to watch the guilt shining through them.

 

I was surprised when Rowan put his hand on my belly, spread out like palming a basketball. It was at this oddly precious moment that I remembered what Meghan had said before she pulled the trigger…that Nikolai wasn't the father, Darastus had said the perfume would stop prescriptions from working.

 

In that split second after Gage was killed and before Nikolai flew in to snap her neck, Meghan and I had looked at each other and I knew her face from somewhere else. She had worn a red wig and classy designer clothes and had offered me a whole bottle of Chanel in a Wilmington club's bathroom.

 

That “perfume” stopped prescriptions, which effectively canceled any hope that my pill had been working that night. That night at the club, the night Rowan saved me from the Viking vampire; otherwise know as the night we had sex, twice.

 

Holy shit, it was really sinking in now…Nikolai wasn't the father, Rowan was.

 

I laid there frozen in new fear, he couldn't find out, no way, because then he'll want to be mated and that was so not on my agenda. I'd read that chapter about lupinara pregnancies and human mother or no, you had their kid, they wanted you to stick around…to be nothing but a subservient little mate, with a freaking brand on your back and bloody domineering attitude to boot.

 

I was the only one who knew, everyone else assumed it was Nikolai's, hell even Nikolai did. It hadn't been more than ten days between Rowan and Nikolai. Of course Rowan knew I was on birth control, he thought he was fine, except for that damn perfume.

 

Darastus had planned this far better than I thought, and I'm beginning to think Nikolai is just a pawn. For some reason that vicious vampire wanted me to conceive a child with Rowan and get his hands on me afterwards. I suddenly became very worried about what he'd done to my child, remembering his voodoo stunts while I was at the house.

 

Watching as Rowan stared aimlessly down at my belly, talking to a hybrid baby he didn't know was his, I made my decision. We weren't safe if we stayed here.

 

I had to take my child and leave.