I next tried sending a message out to the green elves at the compound using my connection with The Green, but found something blocking me. I could bring up my power into this place, but I couldn’t send it out. This one-way communication thing was a new one on me. It reminded me a little too much of the spell I suffered in the public toilets. Somebody was hunting me down and doing a damn good job of it. We were well and truly trapped, powerless. Fucked to the highest degree.
I walked over to the French doors and opened them up, taking a step out onto the terrace, half expecting to be electrocuted with some kind of messed up spell; but my feet passed onto the stone surface, no problem. When I went back inside and searched Jared’s pockets, I even found the keys to the van. They made me feel jubilant and deflated in equal measure. I had the means to escape but not the desire — not without my friends.
Standing there in the middle of that ballroom, I had the worst case of indecision I’d ever suffered in my life. The witch’s challenge kept echoing in my mind, making me doubt myself. I could leave, drive back home, and come back with reinforcements — risking the lives of all my friends in the meantime, because they’d probably either become a troll buffet or lab rats for Judith’s sick spell experiments; or, I could continue on to the portal by myself, which would also risk the lives of all my friends, but at least end up with me fulfilling my duty to the rest of the fae. Oh, and I couldn’t forget the third option, which was just as awful as the first two: I could filet that troll open and at least rescue one friend right now. I pictured that happening and then if I had enough time, me dragging the others out by their arms so I could load them up in the van. I probably wouldn’t make it to the portal on time and would piss off the guardian to the Underworld, which could then make it so that evil is unleashed on the entire world, but I’d still have a shot at having my friends with me, alive and well…
What to do, what to do, what to do?
A flicker of movement near the troll caught my eye. I looked again, and I could swear I saw his stomach move. Running over, I leaned in, pressing my hands against the beast’s lumpy grayish-green skin. “Tim! Tim! Are you in there?” I put my ear to the smelly monster’s skin, wondering if it would be possible for a pixie to speak when inside a troll stomach.
I was almost certain I felt something moving inside its belly beneath my hands. Backing away from the beast, I looked up at it, marveling with a sick kind of fascination at the size of its nostrils and the hideousness of its complexion. My gaze roamed farther upwards, and I noticed for the first time that it had long eyelashes. Weird. A lump grew in my throat when some of my mother’s words came back to me as a whisper from the past.
Such beautiful eyelashes. She always used to say that I had eyelashes like a camel, long and pretty. She hadn’t said it after Rick the Dick entered our lives, but before that day she’d mentioned it often. My heart squeezed in my chest. Did this troll have a mother who loved him? He must have. Everyone had a mom, and while this beast had a face only a mother could love, surely the momma-troll who gave birth to him was out there somewhere or had been at one time, and she’d wanted to have a child like him, held him in her arms when he was born and looked down at him with love. Did she think her boy was handsome? Cute with his long eyelashes and impossibly wide nostrils?
I put my hand on his stomach and tried to speak; the lump in my throat made it really difficult, though. “Tim. I think you’re in there, and I want to get you out, but to do that, I have to kill this beast. And I know that should be an easy decision, but he isn’t doing anything to me to hurt me, so it doesn’t seem right. It seems like … murder.”
A thought that I wasn’t entirely sure was coming from me jumped to mind. Poke him in the toe. Wake him up. If he tries to kill you, then you have an excuse.
I slowly moved my sword out in front of me, drawing the point closer and closer to an immense big toe that was black with dirt and the trampled remnants of smaller fae, if the smell was anything to judge by. “Just one poke,” I whispered. “That’s not going to hurt anyone, right?” I bit my lip, knowing I was lying to myself. Even one tiny prick from my demon sword could be enough to send someone to the Underworld. As much as trolls sucked, they didn’t deserve to go to Hell any more than any other innocent fae did. As far as I knew, trolls were inhabitants of the Gray. I had no idea what these guys were doing hanging out in the Hotel California, but that was neither here nor there. I needed a plan, and even though I didn’t have one, I wasn’t so desperate that I was going to commit murder.
I backed away before I could do anything I’d regret. Then I sank to the floor and cried, because I couldn’t think of anything better to do. How lame.
Ten seconds into my crying jag, I started hearing my roommate’s voice in my head. According to my imagination, he wasn’t in a troll’s stomach slowly being digested into sparkly pixie poo; he was literally the little man on my shoulder, acting as my conscience. Who do you think you are, sitting there on the floor feeling sorry for yourself? No elemental I know. Even Willy on his worst day wouldn’t stoop to these levels. Get off your fat butt and do something productive, or you’re going to have to move out of our room. I’m not kidding. I don’t suffer wimps for roommates.
Tim’s imagined lecture did the trick, and pity parties aren’t really my thing, anyway, so I got over myself pretty quickly, my whimpering and moaning dying down to nothing in a matter of seconds. I got up and wiped my face off with the front of my tunic, talking out loud to myself because it made me feel stronger. “Okay. Enough of that shit. Time to make some decisions.” I walked over to Tony and stood in front of him. His frozen face made me go a little squishy in the middle. Was he going to regret becoming my friend in history class once more? I sure hoped not. “What would you say to me if you were awake right now?” I asked softly.
I listened for the voice of my friend in my head, and I wasn’t disappointed when it came through loud and clear. Another man who loved me, acting as my conscience. How did I get so lucky?
Don’t hurt the troll. He didn’t do anything to you, and you don’t have proof he did anything to Tim, either.
I nodded and moved over to Jared. “What about you, Jared? What do you think I should do?”
Go back to the compound. Talk to the council. They will help you get to the portal. I patted him on the shoulder before moving over to Sam.
“Samantha, it’s your turn. If you were me, what would you do in this situation?”
I’d gut that troll like a fish, spell this place to keep the witch inside it, and send a message to the compound to come retrieve everyone.
“And what about me?” I asked. “Should I go back?”
Hell no. We’re Blackthorns. We don’t back down. Go to the portal. Talk to the dragon.
I nodded. “Hell yeah, we don’t back down. You’re right.” Her words made me feel stronger, even though I knew they were only imagined in my head.
I moved over to Scrum and Felicia. “What do you guys think?”
Be careful, Jayne. I don’t trust this. That one came from Scrum. I patted him on the cheek, thanking him for his worry. Poor kid. He was never going to have a moment of peace with me in his life.
The prophecy. Remember the words. Your blood is the key. I paused in front of Felicia, not sure I understood her.
“I don’t remember the rhyme,” I asked her. “Do you?”
She said nothing, and I knew that whatever I was hearing from them wasn’t really them; it was just their influence on my life that I’d embedded in my heart. It was their friendship, and as valuable as it was, it wasn’t going to supplant my own decision-making. It was just that I trusted them to act as my conscience when I was as lost as I was in that moment.
Finn and Becky were last. I paused by Finn, hoping he had something to add to the mix. “So what’s it going to be, Finn? Stand and fight or run to fight another day?”
Stand and fight. You are our Mother and we stand with you.
His words choked me up
a little. I took a moment to gather myself, putting my fist on my heart in front of him before moving on to Becky. I stopped in front of my little water sprite friend still frozen in the middle of her rendition of the macarena, her tiny hip shoved out to the side.
“What do you think, Beck?”
I’m too scared to give you the right advice, I heard Becky’s voice say inside my head. Just be careful. You’re important. We love you, Jayne. And whatever you decide to do won’t change how we feel. No one expects you to be perfect.
Some of the witch’s words came back to me like a thread of smoke through my mind, causing an inner lightbulb of awareness to come into being. My pulse rate picked up. Maybe I had the answer right here in front of me. Maybe she’d given me the key as some kind of sick joke, so she could watch me suffer with the indecision. She probably thought I didn’t have it in me to make the tough decision, but she was wrong. Way wrong.
Spill some troll blood or some of my own? Cutting myself with the sword was definitely a step backwards. I’d already been there, done that, thanks to Moriah the evil demon vampire from the Underworld who I’d earned the sword from after defeating her sorry butt by taking a hit in the shoulder and surviving. But when I’d told Judith the witch I never went backwards, thinking I was too mature for that now, she’d called me a liar. I frowned, trying to remember the exact details of our conversation and the lines from her stupid rhyme.
I reached out and hugged my friend’s stiff, macarenasized form. “I love you too, Becky. I think I know what I have to do.” Unconditional love was a powerful thing. It was also heavy, weighing me down with a hell of a heavy load of responsibility. I couldn’t let these fae down. They were my family. I owed them the best of me.
I took a big breath and walked over to the troll, holding my sword out between us. I let the Green bubble fall from my body so I could do what had to be done. Looking up at the beast, I sighed with sadness and regret as the demon blade slid across the skin, sinking in like it was glowing hot metal cutting through butter.
My words came out as a breathless set of grunts. “I hope your mother appreciates this, Troll.” I nearly fainted from the pain and the sight of all the blood that suddenly started pouring out of my arm.
The words of the witch came back to me even clearer than they had before I drew the sword: The blood of the Mother will bring them late. I hoped that meant that we’d get to the portal, even if we didn’t exactly make it on time.
Chapter Sixteen
I FELL TO THE GROUND almost immediately. “Motherfucker, that hurts!” I hissed with the pain. “Oooh, sssshhhiiiitt, mother fuuuuudge…sssshhh…” It felt like my arm was on fire. My face ended up two inches away from the troll’s big toe, the one I’d considered poking just minutes earlier. My words came out as one long grunt. “Damn, I should have poked you instead of me.”
I flopped onto my back in an effort to hide from the inescapable pain, and my arm landed on the troll’s nasty foot, but I was too out of my mind with pain to bother moving it. Blood from my demon blade injury dripped down to my elbow, pooling on the ground beneath my shoulder; I could feel it soaking into my sweater and then my tunic.
I reached over with my good arm and tried to grab onto the monster, to use his toe as leverage to get up, but my hand was slippery either with my blood or the goo he had coming out of his pores, and I got nowhere. My vision started blurring, making it difficult to focus on anything but the fire burning in my arm. I fell onto my back again, swallowing over and over. My throat was as dry as a bone, but I couldn’t get my stomach to calm down. Spewing was definitely in my near future.
The room started to spin and the nausea rose up in me even stronger. I clenched my abdominal muscles hard in an effort to keep myself from yakking my road trip snacks all over the place. I was moaning from the pain it caused when I was suddenly flipped over onto my stomach. Something had shoved me, and the only functioning part of my brain floated the idea that it was the troll who had kicked me, but that couldn’t have been right. He was frozen solid just like everyone else.
My hair suddenly fell down as I was lifted up into the air. Blurred shades of green and brown mixed together until I almost believed I was looking at a kaleidoscope of my stomach contents. Then the upward movement stopped and there was a giant eyeball surrounded by long, beautiful eyelashes just inches away from my nose.
The voice was deep and rumbling. “I eat you, little person.” The stink of a thousand bad dental decisions hit me smack in the face.
It was too much. Too much, too late, too awful. My rational, thinking brain abandoned me when I needed it most. I reached out weakly and petted his eyelashes. “You have pretty eyes,” I said, my words sliding into one another. “Did your momma ever tell you that?” Then I coughed and barfed, my upchuck hitting the floor beneath me with a loud splat. “Pretty eyelashes,” I said in a near-whisper, still trying to pet them. “Long like a camel’s.”
“Me pretty?”
My hands were still searching out his eyelashes, but I couldn’t look at him anymore. I was too tired to keep my eyes open. My fingers brushed against his lashes and then something wet and slippery. Probably his eyeball. It didn’t disgust me as much as it probably should have. I’d run out of energy to be any sicker than I already was. “Pretty eyelashes,” I said with a moan. “Pretty, pretty, pretty…”
Suddenly I was upright with my hair hanging in the right direction. A stench so awful I couldn’t even describe it reached my nostrils a half second before the side of my face was covered in something warm, wet, and slightly sticky. I dared open one eyelid, just in time to see a troll tongue retreating back into its mouth.
“Tasty.” He burped in my face, bringing with it something definitely dead and rotten. I cried inside at the idea that it was my roommate and his terrible intestinal problems that were giving this troll his halitosis.
My eyes rolled back into my head and I swayed in and out of consciousness for a few precious seconds. “Oh God,” I moaned, trying not to vomit again. My arm had started to feel dead, but then it was suddenly on fire again, and I realized it was no longer dangling at my side. I opened my eyes to find it buried in the troll’s mouth. A red glow started lighting up his face from the inside out.
“Aaaahhhhrrrraeeehhhh!!!” The scream that came out of my mouth was nothing short of insane. Whatever energy I had left in my body surged into the plan I instantly came up with to escape this brute’s grasp. I struggled and twisted with everything I had, but nothing was helping. My arm was shoulder deep in the mouth of a one-toothed, pixie-eating, troll beast. I cried with rage only felt by the truly impotent.
Closing my eyes, I wailed to the elements. The color red filled my vision, making me think the end was very near. “Whyyyy?! Whyyyy?! Why have you done this to me? To my friends? Why did you take them from me? From the world? From themselves? They didn’t do anything wrong! They were just trying to help save the fae and the humans!” I sobbed for the injustice, for my lack of understanding and ignorance, for the innocent fae who’d been stupid enough to be my friends. “I’m so sorry,” I said, whimpering because I couldn’t do any better than that. My arm had gone numb and now my body was joining it as we swirled deeper and deeper into the crimson void. The dizziness was almost unbearable, and I got lost in it as I continued to moan with soft gasps, the only breath I had left. The regret was killing me. I’d gotten so close and come so far, only to be taken out in the end by a bed and breakfast owner who made Maggie the witch look like a runway model. Life was so unfair.
Chapter Seventeen
IT WAS HOT. HOT AND dusty. My throat felt like a desert floor, and I couldn’t swallow because of it. I started retching, folding over onto my side, pokey things digging into my skin. My legs dragged through gravel and dirt that scraped me through the material of my pants.
“Oh, God,” I moaned. The rhythmic sounds of a huge group of bugs singing in tandem rang in my ears. I tried to spit, but there was no saliva left in my mouth. My lips stu
ng where they’d cracked. They tasted of iron, so I knew there was blood crusting over. “Where am I?”
A huge gust of hot wind blew over me, and the sound of a large boat sail flapping in the breeze came next. When I tried to open my lids to see where I was, I was rewarded with stinging sand thrown against my tender eyeballs.
“Ow, motherfucker!” My hand scraped across the ground on its way up to my face. I hissed out a breath of pure pain when I realized my arm was still killing me. Damn, I was in bad shape … worse than I was when Leck melted my brain and beat me silly in his chamber of horrors at the old Dark Fae compound.
“I must have made it to hell,” I croaked out, knowing full well that if I were in the Overworld, I wouldn’t still have a demon blade slice going down my forearm. So, Hell it is. Oh well. One too many bad decisions, and that’s all she wrote, I guess.
The sounds of someone jumping down from a height was followed by crunching footsteps. They stopped next to my head. I rolled over onto my back and tried to look up, but my eyelids would not cooperate.
“Who’s there?” I whispered.
“It’s Ish,” a voice said. A young, male one.
“Ish Ish?” I asked, giggling at the ridiculousness of it. “Ish Ish? What kind of name is that?” I tried to laugh again, but the lame humor got caught in my throat. A coughing fit came out of nowhere, and then I choked. Vomit spewed out of me and dribbled down my face to my ear.
“Oh, man,” I groaned. “Sucks to be me.”
Someone gripped me under the armpits and started dragging me through the dust, my moccasins piling up sand and gravel inside them as they made a path to wherever we were going. “Pits of hell,” I whispered. “I’m going into the pits of hell with a man named Ish.”