Captivate (17 page)

“What?” I demand.

“I smell blood.” He says the word slowly, quietly, like a curse.

“What kind of blood?”

“Pixie.”

I don’t know how I do it but I manage to pull myself away from him. I pivot and lunge for the front door of the big white Victorian house. The door hangs open, off its hinges.

I lurch inside and stop. Nick is right behind me.

“Oh no….,” I whisper.

He pulls me into his chest, but I’ve already seen it. I’ve already seen and it’s stuck inside my brain like panic and terror, like a bad horror movie image that won’t let go: bodies twisted on the marble floor, blood splashed across walls like arteries have been cut, severed hands in the middle of the floor not connected to anything, eyes open, mouths stuck in screams. I yank away from Nick and stare. Then I start moving. I hold my breath as I go from one corpse to another.

“Zara, what are you doing?”

“Looking for my father.”

His eyes are pained but alive, hollow but still moving. I wonder if my eyes look that way too, or if they are like the eyes of the dead pixie, crumpled on the floor.

“I have to see if he’s here, Nick.”

His mouth tightens and releases. “I’ll look with you.”

“You don’t have to.” I walk up the big curving staircase, step past a blond pixie, male, young—not Astley. His throat has been slashed. Something in my stomach meets my tongue. I go to steady myself on the railing but there’s blood there, too. There’s blood everywhere. My hand presses against my lips.

Nick moves past me. “I’ll go first. Take out your knife.”

With the same hand that holds my knife, I grab on to the back of his jacket, follow him up the stairs. We get to the top. There aren`t any lights on in the hallway that runs both directions.

“Can you smell anything?” I whisper.

“Death. I smell death.” He takes my hand.

“Is anyone alive?” I whisper. “My skin feels spidery.”

He breathes in. The heaters are on in here, but I still shudder. “Nick?”

He nods slowly, motions for me to move behind him a little more. I don’t. I clutch on to his jacket, but I stay next to him as we make our way down the hall. My boots squish in something. I expect blood, but it’s water—spilled from a Poland Spring bottle that someone dropped by a bedroom door. It reminds me of when my stepdad died, right after we’d been running. He’d dropped a bottle just like it on our kitchen floor. Nick motions for me to be quiet, bringing a finger to his lips. He steps inside the bedroom.

I raise my eyebrows. The light is on in here, but nobody’s in sight. There aren’t even any bodies on the floor. The bed, full of satin and velvet sheets, isn’t even ruffled. The hall is dark, scary, tinged with the smells of blood and old carnage. Nick scowls and makes a hand motion, telling me to stay. I shake my head no and follow him anyway.

His eyes meet my eyes. His eyes plead. My eyes must plead back, because he nods slowly and takes my hand in his. Our hands clutch around the knife. We take another step inside. There are two large wooden doors off of the room, beyond the bed. I nod at the far doors and Nick’s whole body gets caught in a shudder. His hand in mine spasms and relaxes and then holds tight. He is going to change. He lets go of my hand as he spasms again, but not before I feel, for just a second, finger digits shorten and morph into something alien, something shorter, something furrier. I am afraid to even whisper. I push myself back against the wall. The seams in Nick’s pants rip. I won’t look. I won’t look. While he changes he is vulnerable. I’m vulnerable. I stare around the room, searching for threats, ready to protect him.

Nick snarls from somewhere down on the floor. Even though I know he won’t hurt me, something inside my stomach flips upside down. Obviously, our cover is blown. I snap my fingers to get him to come closer to me, which I know I’ll catch hell for later. He hates it when I treat him like a dog. But he stands up and pushes himself against my side.

“What is it?” I whisper.

He answers with a low growl. His earns flatten against his head. His teeth bare. His eyes stare at the closet door.

I push my free hand down into the heavy fur on his back. Muscles ripple, ready. Hès going to jump, to attack something. My fingers long for a collar, something to grab on to so I can hold him back, keep him safe.

The door flies open.

“Ah, Zara, or should I say ‗princess’? Human still?” says the pixie standing there. He is tall, pale, dark-haired like me, older than we are. He licks his lips with a bloody tongue.

He is not Astley. He is not my father. He is another one entirely and he exudes power.

‗Not for long, though. Look at that Lovely blue tint. Getting closer already.”

I don’t look at my arms or my hands. I stare into his eyes.

“You might want to check on Daddy.” He smiles.

Nick’s back muscles tense. My heart falls. The fur beneath my fingers is gone. “No, Nick! Stay.”

Nick leaps over the bed and plows into the pixie man, who has jumped as well. They meet in midair. Fur mixes with flesh. Nick’s jaws snap as the pixie opens his mouth to show teeth. They both move so quickly that they are a blur. The force of the jumps knocks them sideways. They smash through a window and are gone.

“Nick!” My voice is a scream.

I stumble run to the window. They are on the ground, fighting. I can’t jump. It’s too far.

I whip around. Something groans from the bathroom. “Zara.”

My father stumbles to the door. His neck is gashed and bleeding. Blood clots his dark hair. I gasp, reach out my hand.

“Go. I’ll be fine. Zara…” His voice cracks.

“What?” I reach out to him, pull him onto the bed even though the whole time I want to go down, to help Nick, to do a million things all at once.

“Be careful. Warn your mother about me, if I—”

I nod. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

His eyes meet my eyes. He looks away.

I run down the stairs so fast it is like I am flying. I break out into the yard, where wolf and pixie stand off against each other. They are both bleeding and winded. Their eyes are wild and feral. The dark-haired pixie king smiles. Claws flash where fingernails should be. The wolf leaps.

“Nick!” The word escapes my mouth before I realize it, and he turns toward me for a second. It is all the king needs.

Crazy-sharp teeth slash into Nick`s fur, ripping at his neck. Nick’s teeth snap and close on the pixie’s arm, but it isn’t enough. The pixie claws hack into Nick`s chest, throwing him to the ground. Nick’s body spasms and he whimpers as blood gushes out of his neck. Fear overtakes me.

“No!” I run. I run over the snow, my feet crunching into it. I grab a railroad tie and put myself between the pixie and Nick.

The pixie lifts the corner of his mouth in a slow, degrading smile. “How fun, Iron in one hand. A knife in the other.”

Nick’s tail flops idly on the snow next to me. He makes a tiny wolf noise, then a large huffing of breath.

“You will not hurt him.” I raise the tie higher. “Do you hear me? You will not hurt him.”

“Oh, scary human girl. I’m shivering.” The pixie laughs and lunges toward us despite his bleeding arm.

I swing the tie. It clonks the pixie in the head and he backs away. A giant burn mark mars his pale, perfect skin. His hand reaches up to his head.

“I shall remember this,” he says. He smiles—cocky—and reminds me, for a second, of my father. “Princess.”

“Enough with this princess crap!” I lift the bar again, move in front of Nick’s collapsed form. The bar is steady in my hands. My sprained wrist throbs but adrenaline is keeping me going. My voice is steady too, and for a second I don’t recognize it even though it’s coming out of my mouth. “I’ll give you more to remember if you want.”

His eyes widen, but so does his smile. He takes a step backward and lifts his arms to the sky. “I shall return for what is mine.”

But I don’t want him to go. I want to hurt him and this voice comes out of me, taunting, hard, “Why are you leaving now, huh? Why don’t you just take me now?”

His head tilts slightly toward me, just on the right side. He’s bleeding pretty badly from his ear and neck. “It pleases me more to leave you here watching you wolf die. I enjoy the melodrama. And I shall be back for you. Do not fret.”

He flashes fast through the sky and is gone. Nick makes a soft aching noise that breaks my heart. I drop the bar, drop myself, heave Nick’s heavy wolf body into my arms.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t keep you safe,” I whisper. “So sorry.”

His chest moves up and down, ragged. I touch his ribs; at least one has to be broken. His eyes slowly open. They are big and brown and full of reproach. A tear falls onto his nose. It is my tear. His tongue reaches out and softly touches my cheek. I yank off my jacket, press it against his neck wound.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I say. “I never wanted anything to hurt you.”

He tries to lift his head up, but it falls back down. He closes his eyes again, letting unconsciousness take him in a way he would never let anything else. I settle him onto the snow, grab my new cell out of my pocket, and speed dial Issie, but of course there is no signal. Stupid granite mountains and bad cell phone towers.

I shift up, trying to pull Nick onto my lap and apply pressure to his wounds. I’m going to get you out of here,” I whisper. “I promise.”

When pixies die they lose their glamour. It`s glamour that makes them look like they have people skin. In death their skin is a light blue covered with tiny vines that seem like ivy crossed with darker veins that circle around their arms, across their faces. It is beautiful in a severe, alien way.

In order to get Nick out of here I have to walk past several bodies. In order to get Nick out of here I have to go back in the house and find something to drag him with, because I am not strong enough to carry him to the snowmobile, and the snowmobile can’t cross the iron bars and broken wires.

I step inside the house and listen. Therès no movement anywhere. No moans. Just death.

“Dad?” I yell up the stairs that are covered with an ornate red rug and dead pixies.

Nothing.

I have never called him Dad.

“Pixie king?” I yell again.

Nothing again.

I run up the stairs, trying to avoid bluish limbs, blood. I smash through the hallway and into the bedroom. He’s gone.

“Great,” I mutter. “Nice. Ditching me. Another nomination for Daddy of the Year right there.”

I grab the comforter off the bed and drape it over my shoulders, barrelling back down the hallway and the stairs and back outside. Nick is still collapsed on the snow in wolf form and he is still bleeding.

Placing the comforter down, I try to pull him onto it as gently as I can, but it’s hard. He looks up at me with pained brown eyes. He squinches. His jowls flop and his eyes seem to ache with embarrassment as I move his hindquarters onto the blanket.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I’m trying to be gentle. I swear.”

He growls, just a tiny bit, and in a nice way.

I pull the comforter around him, grab on, and begin to drag.

Aristotle wrote, “We make war that we may live in peace.”

I don’t know what to think about that. I don’t know at all. All the wars, all the dangers that have happened have always seemed far away. Still, I don’t panic now that the dangers are here. I work methodically even though my face should be painted white with fear. My heart should be a drum machine, it thumps horribly hard. The entire time I work I scan the sky for predators, for pixies with sharp teeth, for women with black swan wings.

“You hold on,” I tell Nick. “You hold on. I’ll get you out of here.”

I manage to make a kind of sled out of the comforter and railroad ties and fasten it to the snowmobile with chains. My fingers freeze and numb and make me clumsier than I normally am, but eventually it works.

“You okay?” I ask and he doesn’t answer, barely whimpers.

“You’re okay,” I tell him anyway. “This is the only life we have, so you have to be okay.”

The surface of his body heaves out these bewildered breaths. His eyes close and open. I reach my hand into his fur and watch as my fingers braid themselves deep. We are braided together. I know that. I know.

“I will not lose you,” I whisper and it is an order, not just to him but to me.

Before I climb on the sled and go, I take a second and glance back at the pixie house. It’s invisible again, protected by an old glamour that hides it from human eyes. But I know the middle of that field isn’t some idyllic New England scene of softly fallen snow surrounded by pine trees that stand sentry and blah, blah, blah. No, I know that the middle of that field is blood and carnage. It is all that’s left of the sentient beings that I trapped there.

This is my fault. It is at least partly my fault. And that knowledge presses against my ribs like some horrible, horrible weight that seems to suck all the hope out of me. And it’s done. It’s done. They are dead and Nick is hurt. There is nothing I can do to change it.

So I just rev up the snowmobile, check one more time to make sure Nick is secure, and try to move somewhere that my stupid cell phone will get reception and then I will call Issie and Betty and I will get help for Nick and I will try to figure out where my father is and how to stop the new pixie guy. Because it is obvious—really, really obvious—that he will be back, that he is not done, that the war has just begun.

Do not hesitate to kill a pixie. Just kill.

It takes about half a mile but I finally get reception. I stop the snowmobile, press speed dial, and rush back to Nick.

“Gram?” I blurt as soon as I hear a click.

“Nope. This is Officer Clark. This Zara?”

“Yeah. Yeah.” I stare at the gray sky peeking above the trees like it’s going to fix things.

“Is Betty there?”

“Um.” Officer Clark clears his throat. “Things are bad right now, Zara. We’ve got…Well, there’s been an accident.”

“What?” I whip around, almost drop the phone. “Is Gram okay?”

“She’s fine. She’s attending. It’s just….it’s bad. I’ve got to go. I’ll have her call you.”