Wings

TWENTY-THREE

A SHRILL, DEAFENING SCREAM REVERBERATED IN LAUREL’S head as the room filled with the crack of gunfire, but somehow only a small whimper escaped her lips. As the smell of gunpowder burned her nose, a muted yell forced its way into her consciousness. Laurel’s eyes sprang open and flew to Tamani. His face was contorted in pain and a groan continued to work its way through his clenched teeth. He clutched his leg and his fingers were wet with sap as he glared up at the troll.

Barnes pointed his gun again, and this time Tamani couldn’t hold back a cry of agony as a bullet ripped through his other thigh. Laurel’s whole body trembled as Tamani’s scream seemed to invade every organized, symmetrical cell in her body, throwing them into chaos. She crawled one step forward, and Tamani shot her a look that ordered her to stay put. No sooner had his eyes met hers than they were back on Barnes. A sheen of sweat glistened on Tamani’s brow as Barnes set the gun down on the desk with a loud clunk and walked forward.

“Not going anywhere now, are you?”

Hate burned out of Tamani’s eyes as he stared up at the hulking figure.

“You’re here the day I’m supposed to go down and sign papers on the land holding your precious gate. I’m not stupid enough to blame that on coincidence. How did you know?”

Tamani closed his lips and said nothing.

Barnes kicked Tamani’s foot, and a low growl escaped his tight control. “How?” Barnes shouted.

Still Tamani said nothing and Laurel wondered how long she could bear to watch. Tamani’s eyes were tightly closed, and when he opened them he looked straight at Laurel for an instant.

She knew what he wanted. He wanted her to keep her promise. He actually wanted her to turn her back on him, walk down the stairs alone, and return to the land to fetch Shar.

She’d given her word.

But she knew she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave him. In one glaring instant, she realized she’d rather die with him than leave him to die alone.

In that moment of surrender, her eyes lit upon the gun.

Barnes had left it sitting on the desk and was paying no attention to it at all. Under lowered lids Tamani followed her gaze. He looked back at her and shook his head in such a small motion she barely saw it. Then he winced and moaned as Barnes kicked his leg again.

“How?”

Barnes crouched in front of Tamani. Laurel knew it was the best chance she was going to get. She crept forward, trying to imitate the deft strides she’d watched Tamani take all morning.

“In ten seconds, I’m going to take your foot and break every stem in your leg.”

Her hands curled around the cold steel and she tried to remember everything her father had taught her about guns a few years ago. This one was a heavy, squarish pistol — the kind that almost looked like a black water gun. She looked for a safety or a hammer and saw neither. She closed her eyes for just a second, hoping with all her might that this was one of those point-and-pull kinds of guns.

“You get one more chance to give me my answer, faerie. One, two—”

“Three,” Laurel finished for him, pointing the weapon at his head.

Barnes froze.

“Stand up,” Laurel commanded, staying just out of arm’s reach.

Slowly, Barnes stood and turned slightly toward her.

“Against the wall,” she said. “Away from him.”

Barnes laughed. “You really think you’re going to shoot me? Little snippet of a thing like you?”

Laurel flinched as she squeezed the trigger, almost crying out in relief as her efforts sent a bullet into the wall. She pointed the gun at Barnes again.

“Okay,” he said, and backed up a few paces, turning all the way around to face her. His eyes widened as he recognized her face. “I thought I had you killed.”

“Think harder next time,” Laurel said, proud her voice was not shaking nearly as much as her legs.

“Did my boys forget…Wait, no.” He sniffed the air suspiciously. “You — I don’t…” His voice faded as he turned to Tamani and gave a sinister chuckle. “I get it now. The faeries have resorted to placing changelings. Changelings!” He looked down at Tamani, his tone casual. “When are you going to learn that we trolls come up with all the best ideas?”

Laurel fired another shot at the wall and Barnes jumped. “We’re done talking,” she said.

The two stood together in some kind of impasse. Barnes seemed almost sure she wouldn’t shoot him, and Laurel was just as sure she couldn’t. But she couldn’t let Barnes know that.

Unfortunately, the only way to put his doubts to rest was to actually shoot him. Her fingers felt sweaty on the trigger as she let the gun rise till the barrel covered his face, blocking it from her sight.

That was as far as she could go.

“Remember what I told you, Laurel,” Tamani said very quietly. “He ordered you to be killed, he poisoned your father, he manipulated your mother…He’ll do it again if you let him get away.”

“Stop, really, you give me far too much credit,” Barnes said with a mocking smile.

Loud, ragged breaths hissed in and out of Laurel’s mouth as she tried to make her fingers contract. But her arms lowered a few inches and a smile tugged at the corner of Barnes’s mouth.

“I knew you couldn’t do it,” he jeered. He dropped into a crouch and flew at her.

All Laurel saw was red-rimmed, murderous eyes and hands extended more like claws than fingers. She didn’t even feel the gun in her hand as her fingers clenched and the crack of a gunshot roared in her ears. Barnes’s body jerked back as the bullet tore through his shoulder. Laurel screamed and dropped the gun.

With a groan, Tamani pulled himself forward and his hands clutched at the weapon. Barnes roared in pain, but his eyes found Laurel again.

“Leave her alone, Barnes!” Tamani yelled, aiming the gun.

Barnes barely had time to focus on the gun pointed at his head. Even as Tamani pulled the trigger, Barnes leaped at the window and crashed through it, dropping to the ground below. Tamani’s shot embedded itself harmlessly into the wall. Laurel ran to the broken windowsill and caught one last sight of Barnes fleeing toward the river before his bloodied form disappeared over a hill.

Tamani let the heavy gun clatter to the ground. Laurel flung herself to her knees and into his arms. He groaned in her ear, but when she tried to pull back, he held her tight against his chest. “Don’t you ever, ever scare me like that again.”

“Me?” Laurel protested. “I’m not the one who got shot!” Her arms snaked around his neck and her whole body shook.

Her head jerked up when she heard footsteps pounding up the stairs. Tamani shifted her a little to the side and grabbed the gun, pointing it at the doorway.

David’s white face appeared at the top of the stairs. Tamani sighed and let the gun fall back onto the floor, his arms limp.

“I heard the shots and saw Barnes run away,” he said, his voice shaking. “Are you two okay?”

“Eye of Hecate, do neither of you know how to follow directions?” Tamani growled.

“Apparently not,” Laurel said dryly.

“What happened here?” David asked, looking wide-eyed around the disaster of the room.

“We’ll talk in the car. Hurry, David, Tamani needs help.” They each ducked under one arm and managed to raise Tamani from the floor. Tamani was trying to be brave, but Laurel winced every time a choked moan escaped his lips. They half-dragged him toward the doorway when Laurel stopped. “Wait,” she said, transferring all of Tamani’s weight to David. She hurried to the desk and looked at the papers. The top layer was peppered with a fine spray of blood. Troll blood, Laurel thought with a grimace. But she took a breath and forced herself to sort through them anyway. Anything that mentioned her mother or the address of the land, she scooped up to take with her. Luckily, it was a small stack.

“Let’s go,” she said, ducking under Tamani’s arm again.

They were silent as they passed the bodies of the dead trolls. The sun was out in earnest now and Laurel hoped no one would see them dragging this obviously injured person out to their car. Belatedly, she wondered if anyone besides David had heard the shots. Looking up and down the street at the other crumbling and dilapidated houses, she wasn’t sure it mattered. It looked like a neighborhood where gunfire was commonplace.

David laid Tamani in the backseat and tried to make him comfortable, but Tamani brushed his hands away. “Just get me back to Shar. Hurry.”

David held Laurel’s door open, but she shook her head and, without looking at him, slid into the backseat with Tamani.

Laurel settled Tamani’s chest and head on her lap and he clung to her like a child, groaning each time David drove over a bump. His face was pale and his black hair slick with sweat. She tried to get him to open his eyes, but he refused. As his breathing grew more and more ragged, Laurel glanced up at David, who watched her in the rearview mirror. “Can’t we go any faster?” she pleaded.

David pursed his lips and shook his head. “I can’t speed, Laurel. It’s too risky. What do you think a cop would say if he pulled us over and saw Tamani?” His eyes met hers in the rearview. “I’m going as fast as I dare — I promise.”

Tears filled Laurel’s eyes, but she nodded, trying not to notice that Tamani’s grip on her arms was getting looser.

The road was mostly empty, but Laurel held her breath the entire way through Crescent City and then Klamath as they passed close to several other cars. One man even looked over at her, and she wondered if his sunglasses covered mismatched eyes. Just as she felt sure he was a troll sent to finish them off, he looked away and turned down a side street.

Finally the driveway came into view and David pulled off the road. The unpaved drive was bumpy, but Tamani didn’t protest as the car bounced over ruts. Laurel’s breath stuck in her throat as David reached the end of the drive and shifted into park.

“Please hurry, David,” Laurel begged in a whisper.

David ran around to the other side of the car and helped her ease Tamani out. They dragged him past the house and down the now-familiar path. As soon as they passed the tree line, Laurel began shouting in a sob-strained voice, “Shar! Shar! We need help.”

Almost instantly, Shar stepped onto the path from behind a tree. If he was shocked, it didn’t register on his face. “I’ll take him,” he said calmly. He lifted Tamani from David and Laurel and slung him gently over his shoulders. “You can’t come any farther,” Shar said to David. “Not today.”

David’s brow furrowed and he looked to Laurel. Laurel threw her arms around him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered and turned down the path.

David caught her hand. “You are coming back, aren’t you?” he asked.

Laurel nodded. “I promise.” Then she pulled her hand away and hurried up the path after Tamani’s limp form.

As soon as David was out of sight, other faeries stepped onto the path, adding their shoulders beneath Tamani’s weight — a parade of unbelievably beautiful men, several clad in camouflaging armor. Each faerie who appeared made Laurel feel better. Tamani wasn’t alone now — the faeries would find a way to make everything all right. She had to believe it. They led her down a twisted path that looked strangely unfamiliar and came to a stop in front of an ancient tree that, even in the chilly late-autumn air, had not changed color.

Several of the faeries took a turn placing a palm in a shallow hollow on the tree’s trunk. Finally, Shar lifted Tamani’s limp arm and placed his hand on the tree. For a few seconds, no one moved and nothing happened. Then the tree began to sway and Laurel gasped in surprise as a crack appeared at the base. It widened and grew, pushing the trunk out, molding it into an archway. The air glimmered and sparkled until it was almost too bright to look at. Then a brilliant flash shone and Laurel had to blink. In the instant it took to close her eyes and open them again, the shimmering air had turned into a golden gate snaked with brilliant white blossoms and glittering with millions of sparkling jewels.

“Is that the gate to Avalon?” Laurel said breathlessly to Shar.

Shar barely spared her a glance. “Bar her way; Jamison’s coming through.”

Spears crisscrossed in front of her and Laurel realized she’d taken several steps forward. She was almost overwhelmed by the urge to push through the spears and run to the shining gates, but she forced her feet to stay where they were. The gate was moving now, swinging slowly outward in an arc as all the faeries backed away and made room. Laurel couldn’t see much as she strained against the spears, but her eyes found an emerald-green tree, a sliver of cerulean sky, rays of sunshine that sparkled like diamonds. The thick aroma of fresh earth rolled over her, along with a heady, intoxicating scent she couldn’t identify. A white-haired man in long, flowing silver robes waited on the other side of the shimmering gate. Laurel couldn’t help but stare as he made his way forward to stand by Tamani. He ran a finger down Tamani’s face and looked back at several other faeries carrying a stretcher.

“Take him quickly,” he said, beckoning them forward. “He’s fading.”

Tamani was transferred onto the soft white stretcher, and Laurel watched helplessly as he was borne into the shining light that poured from the gate. She had to believe he would be fine now, that she would see him again. Surely no one could enter a world so full of wonder and not heal.

When she looked up, the older faerie’s eyes had settled upon her. “I assume this is her,” he said. His voice was too sweet, too musical to be of this world. He walked toward her as if he were floating on air, and the face she looked up into was so beautiful. He seemed to glow, and his eyes were soft and blue and surrounded by wrinkles that fell not in the uneven crevices she saw on Maddie’s face but in exact, even folds like perfectly hung drapes. He smiled at her gently, and the pain of the last twenty-four hours melted away.

“You’ve been very brave,” Jamison said in that sweet, angelic voice. “We didn’t think we would need you so soon. But things never go quite as planned, do they?”

She shook her head and looked back through the gate, where she could just see the top of Tamani’s head. “Will he…will he be all right?”

“Don’t worry. Tamani has always been stronger than anyone expected him to be. Especially for you. We will take good care of him.” He placed a hand on her shoulder and beckoned her down the unfamiliar path. “Will you walk with me?”

Her eyes stayed locked on the gate into Avalon, but she responded instinctually. “Of course.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes before Jamison stopped and invited her to sit on a fallen log. He joined her and sat close, their shoulders almost touching. “Tell me about the trolls,” he said. “You obviously ran into trouble.”

Laurel nodded and told him how Tamani had been so careful and brave. Jamison’s eyes glimmered with respect as she described how Tamani refused to talk even after being shot. She hadn’t expected to tell him about herself, but she began speaking of how she’d held the gun and couldn’t bring herself to shoot the monster until her life depended on it. And even then it was mostly an accident.

“So he got away?” There was no judgment in his voice.

Laurel nodded.

“It’s not your fault, you know. Tamani is a trained sentry and he takes his work very seriously. But you, you were made to heal, not kill. I think I’d have been disappointed if you were able to kill someone, even a troll.”

“But he knows now. He knows who I am.”

Jamison nodded. “And he knows where you live. You must be on your guard. For your parents’ sake as well as your own. I am appointing you as their protector. Only you know the secrets that can keep them alive.”

Laurel thought of her father lying in his hospital bed, perhaps even now taking his last breaths. “My father is dying, and in a few days there will be no one left but my mother and me. I can’t be what you want me to be,” she admitted in a shaky voice. Her face dropped into her hands and desperation washed over her.

The old faerie’s arms were around her instantly, pressing her against his robes that cushioned her face as softly as down feathers. “You must remember that you are one of us,” he whispered in her ear. “We are here to assist you in any way we can. Our aid is your right — your heritage.” Jamison reached into his voluminous robes and pulled out a small, sparkling bottle filled with a dark blue liquid. “For times of trouble,” he said. “This is a rare elixir one of our Fall faeries made many years ago. We create very few potions that can help humans these days, but you need it now, and you may need it again in the future. Two drops in the mouth should be sufficient.”

Laurel’s hands shook as she reached for the tiny bottle. Jamison placed it in her hand and closed his palm over hers. “Guard it carefully,” he warned. “I don’t know for certain that we have another Fall faerie strong enough to make an elixir like this. Not yet.”

Laurel nodded.

“We would also like to assist you in one more way. But,” he said, one long finger in the air, “it is a conditional offer.”

“Whatever you need,” Laurel said earnestly. “I’ll make it happen.”

“It’s not a condition for you. Here,” he said, opening his palm to reveal what looked like an almost golf ball — sized piece of rough crystal. “I would like you to offer this to your mother.” He placed the rock in Laurel’s hand, and she gaped at the gem.

“Is this a diamond?”

“Yes, child. One that size should be sufficient for any need you may have. Here is our offer. You know you were placed with your human parents for the sole reason of obtaining the land upon their eventual death.” When Laurel nodded, he continued. “Recent events have made your purpose so much more important, and we must see this property transfer ownership sooner. This gem is for your parents if they will put the land into a trust in your name as soon as your father’s health allows. How and what you tell them is a decision only you can make.” His voice became very firm. “But you must own this land, Laurel. And we are certainly willing to pay a fair price for that to happen.”

Laurel nodded and tucked the gem into her pocket. “I’m sure they’ll agree.”

“I believe you are right,” Jamison said. “You need to hurry, Laurel. Your father’s time is measured in hours now, not days.”

“Thank you,” Laurel whispered, and turned to leave.

“Oh, Laurel?”

“Yes?”

“I hope to see you again soon. Very soon,” he added. His eyes sparkled as he lifted his old lips into a gentle, knowing smile.