Captivate (3 page)

I’m yanking at the wire when his voice breaks off.

“Watch out!” He manages to yell.

I whirl around. A glove drops. The other is barely halfway on. A woman stands in front of me. She’s tiny but beautiful, with long, flowing black hair and dark skin. I think I gasp. “Please, do not let her take me,” he whispers as I back up. “I won’t.” I’m not sure how I am going to keep that promise. There’s something menacing about her. And Yes, it might be because she has this armoured breastplate thing over her dark green velvety dress, but it might be something else, like the scary-intense look in her eyes.

“You know I have to take you with me, warrior.” Her voice is strong. Her eyes flash.

She steps forward. Her hands are slender and delicate but they are somehow lock absolutely deadly.

I put up my own somewhat wimpy arms. “Hold on a second. Time-out. Okay?”

She smirks. “Are you attempting to stop me, little one?”

“Excuse me? Did you just call me ‗little one’? What are you? Like, four feet tall?” I ask. My temper comes through, turning my voice a little bitter.

The guy behind me gasps. “Do not.”

The woman just smiles and takes another step forward. “It is my sacred duty to take the fallen warriors with me.”

“With you where?” I scoop up the glove and step back so I can start working on his wire again. I do it like I’m so casual, like my heart isn’t beating eighteen hundred beats a minute or anything, like this woman doesn’t have tiny little fangs sticking out on her lip. “Valhalla.”

I search my brain. Devyn’s been telling me about myths, and I think he mentioned that word before. The data doesn’t totally compute and I go, “Valhalla? As in all that Norse myth stuff? It is Norse, right? The god Odin? Is that the one?”

She rushes forward. Claws form where fingers should be. One tips into the flesh on my cheek. It cuts my skin. Her eyes stare into mine, cold and harsh. Snowflakes land on her eyelashes.

“Do you dare speak his name, human?” she says, with all this confidence and menace.

“You are punny and helpless against one such as he.”

The prick of her claw seems to resonate all the way through me. It feels like something fundamental inside has shifted. Dizziness threatens but I struggle to keep it down and look away from her and stare instead at the captive guy. I keep working at the wire. It’s a knot. I’m good with knots, though. I don’t move my cheek away. I won’t show fear.

“Whose name? Odin?”

Finally the knot comes undone. I yank at the wire and the pixie guy falls forward. I leap and catch him. He struggles to stay upright, leaning into my side. Both my arms wrap around his chest. The snow crunches beneath us. The trees around us sway with the wind.

The woman hisses, then sniffs the air. The world is chill and gray and without color. She looks at me accusingly. “You are not human.”

I struggle to keep the guy steady. “Of course I’m human.”

Her eyes narrow a little bit. “No…not all.” Her features form into a mask of disgust.

“You are a Halfling.”

The guy gets a little bit rigid and starts to shake. Our feet shuffle in the snow as I try to keep him upright. I lean him a little against the hard, rumpled bark of the tree.

“Whatever.” I pull in a deep breath, try to ignore the claws and the fangs, and think about the knife tucked into my sock. I’d have to drop the guy to get it out. My mind is working overtime trying to figure out how to be casual about it. I keep talking. “My point is that you can’t take him.”

She crosses her arms over her chest. “And why not?”

A pine cone tumbles onto the snow. It looks so strange with all its rough brown edges surrounded by bland whiteness. I try to think up an answer.

The guy speaks. “Because I am not fallen. I am still alive.”

“Not for long.” A wicked smile creeps over her features. Her tongue leaps out to capture a snowflake. The wind whistles through the tree limbs. We are so alone out here.

“Yes, for long.” I glare at her. “I am going to get him proper medical care and he will be just fine.”

“Proper medical care?” She snorts. “Do you not know what he is, Halfling? Gaze upon him.”

“Do not call me Halfling.”

“You have no strength.” She gets a look on her face that would rival a haughty supermodel who just landed a five-million-dollar contract. “You can barely support his weight.”

She’s right. The world waits in silence. An unbearable whiteness covers us as snow falls from a cloudy sky. I sniff. My nose is running. The pixie guy moans softly. The sound is filled with sadness and pain and despair. He is vulnerable. Pixie or not, he needs me.

I steel myself. “I’m not giving him up.”

She lifts an eyebrow, as if she’s pondering what the heck is going on. I’d like to ponder what the heck is going on too, but I’m busy trying to just keep standing. The cold sinks into my feet, into my bones.

She says, “There is a possibility that he may live now because you have interfered.”

I wait.

“What we offer him is a reward, not a punishment,” she soothes. “I swear this. After his death he will fight by Odin’s side in the greatest battle of all.”

His words stiffen out between his teeth, hard and fierce. “I am not ready to die. I have work here. I. Can. Not. Die.”

Another pine cone lets go of a tree branch and falls from the sky. It hits me in the shoulder and then tumbles the rest of the way to the ground. Tiny ridges of it break off and stick to the snow, left behind. The wind blows hard and wicked against all of us. It is hard for me to hold us up, but the woman does not sway.

“I see.” Feathers sprout from her back. Menace turns her eyes red. Her hair spirals out behind her, lifting in the wind. Instead of being beautiful, it’s terrifying.

I stagger away a little. The guy’s arms comes up around my waist, and even though he’s barely capable of standing up it’s pretty obvious he’s trying to protect me from her. The wind ruffles his blond hair.

“I shall not hurt the little Halfling,” she says. That’s when I realize that the feathers on her back are wings, graceful and glistening like a swan’s, but jet black.

I don’t know what to think of her. I don’t know what to say or do. I just stand there shivering, from cold or fear or both.

“Your mouth hangs open,” she says, almost smiling. “I shall let you keep this one because he may survive now that you are here. You will have to decide if that is a good thing or not, Halfling.”

I start to protest.

She holds out her hand. “Also, there will be other warriors soon. Death is coming. It is on the wind. Can you feel it?”

As she says it I think I can—a low menace, a waiting storm. The snow swirls around us.

She nods her head at me and lifts up. Her swan wings spread out and she soars up into the air to meet the whiteness of the sky.

I stagger sideways and fall. The lands on top of me. He starts laughing, a soft, crazy, exhausted laugh. “Sorry. Sorry. Wow….wow…that was close. T though—”He interrupts himself and starts laughing again. The movement makes him wince, then moan.

I pull myself out from underneath him, worried that he’s totally insane. “Are you going to be okay?”

He shakes his head. Then he nods. A trembling hand, square and scratched, reaches up to rub where his hair touches his forehead. His eyes meet my eyes. His lips move.

“Thank you.”

Then he passes out.

Great.

Pixies are not good. They are evil. Not bad-hair-day evil, but scary-movie-that-still-freaks-you-out-when-you-go-to-be evil. Actually? Way worse.

The wind blows hard and awful. Seconds stretch into two or three minutes. I have to do something intelligent, something that doesn’t involve just staring at a guy who is passed out on the snow. He’s youngish, probably just a couple years older than me—if that’s how pixies age. I have no idea. He’s not wearing a coat, just a dark Irish sweater and jeans. He must be freezing.

I look up into the white sky searching for the woman. Snowflakes drop into my eyes, instantly melting. She’s vanished. Blinking the water away, I check the guy for major wounds, big bleeding ones. I find a whooper: a massive bite mark on his stomach. The flesh is jagged and torn. It oozes blood that’s a deep bluish red, maybe because it’s mixed with the dark fibers of his sweater, or maybe that’s how pixies bleed or something.

I don’t know.

Another second flips by and his eyes start to flicker open. There’s nothing to wrap the wound with except my outer coat so I whip it off and wrap it around his stomach. I tie the arms and try to apply pressure. The smell of blood is coppery and metallic.

Flipping open my phone, I press my grandmother’s cell number. She’s good with the massive-wound thing. She’s not just an
EMT
, she’s a weretiger. Weird, I know. The phone rings once. His hand clamps over mine and the phone disconnects.

“What are you doing?” I say, anger rippling through me. “I’m calling for help.”

“No. No help.” His lips are parched. “Have to hide. Until I heal.”

“You’re speaking in sentence fragments,” I explain, “and that means you are not in a position to make this decision.”

He shakes his head. “Please. No one else can know I am here. Kill me—while I’m weak.”

The phone starts ringing. It’s Gram calling back. I start to run my hand in my hair but forget it’s all bloody. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Please.”

“I can’t let you die.”

He coughs out a bitter laugh. “If I was about to die Thruth would have taken me.”

“Thruth?”

“The Valkyrie.”

My phone stops ringing.

“Oh. Yeah.” I swallow hard. “I have no idea what a Valkyrie is.”

He raises one eyebrow and sniffs. “You are pixie, are you not?”

“No…,” I start to say, pressing my hand against his wound. He moans, but still manages to give me a look. “Okay. I am half pixie. Does that hurt?”

“Some.” He cringes more like it’s a lot. “You are half pixie. It is true—”

He loses his sentence to a moan and I suddenly feel really badly for him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m snapping. I don’t want to be mean. I’m not a mean person. But we need to get you out of here. You’re hurt. I need to get you fixed up. I need to bring you to the hospital or something.”

He groans. “Not the hospital. My room.”

“You should go to a hospital,” I insist.

“They cannot treat me.” He pulls himself into a standing position. Snow covers his dark jeans. “I need you for balance. Is that all right?”

“It’s okay,” I say as he drapes his arm over my shoulder. I get my arm around his waist.

He is much lighter than Nick, which is a very good thing. We start a sort of quasi shuffle through the woods. He coughs like a seal and stumbles a bit. My heart kind of breaks for him. “Don’t worry. My car’s not too far.”

He nods and murmurs something. Beads of sweat drip down his forehead. The wind picks up a little bit. The snow keeps trundling down, covering us, sticking in our hair, erasing our footprints. It’s a long haul, but I get him to the parking lot, which, thankfully, is nearly empty. He seems to be regaining a bit of strength.

“I have to take you to a hospital,” I insist.

“It will kill me.”

I lurch backward. “I know you aren’t human. Are you a normal one, though, or a king?”

He shakes his head. “No more questions, please.”

“Are you a king?” I ask again.

“I said—”

“I know what you said, but that doesn’t mean I have to do what you say.” I swallow hard. “We have a place to put pixies.”

His eyes whip up and meet mine. “The rumor is true?”

“What rumor?”

“Someone has been trapping us.”

I don’t answer. Cold fills my nose, crystallizing it. I hit the key fob and unlock my Subaru. It beeps.

“That is barbaric,” he snarls.

I don’t completely disagree. We hobble closer to my car, Yoko, which is parked next to a big black truck, the standard motor vehicle of Bedford High School’s male population. I try to explain. “They were killing people. They were torturing guys.”

“Because their king was weak.” He shakes his head and coughs.

“If I were not injured I would force you to bring me to them now.”

I state the obvious. “Well, you
are
injured.”

His eyebrows lower and his pupils focus on me for a second. Then he scans my face.

“Your skin is tinting blue.”

“It’s cold,” I sputter.

He smirks and I resist the urge to scream. I have no idea what to do with him now. I mean, he’s hurt, but he’s a pixie. He’s a hurt pixie, possibly a king. This is so not good.

This is beyond bad, really. I blurted, “I’m going to take you there to the house.”

“You must not.” His voice goes panicky and high. His face contorts in pain and he steadies himself. His hand clutches my wrist. “I cannot go there in this state.”

I twist my wrist away and open the passenger side door of my car. “I can’t let you kill people.”

He grabs my arm, higher this time. “I do not kill people. Just enemies. I am under control. I swear it. Not all pixies—not all of us—are like the ones here. You cannot judge all of us by your experience with a few. It is unfair.”

That hits home. Something inside me weirds up again. The world dizzies out. I must be getting the flu. I force myself to focus.

“Who bit you?”

“What?” His eyes scan me, searching.

“Who. Bit. You.?”

His mouth hardens. “A wolf.”

I was right but the rightness of my assumption does not make me feel any less sick. The pixie guy watches my face looking for a reaction. I try really hard to make my face calm.

“A wolf, huh?”

“You know him.” It is a statement, not a question. His grip on my arm tightens and it’s pretty strong even though he’s wounded.

“Yeah, right. I know a wolf. We hang and get pizza and I brush out his fur. Of course I don’t
know
a wolf,” I snark. “Get in the car.”

He cringes when he gets in the passenger seat. I’m not sure if it’s because it hurts or because the car is made out of steel and iron. Pixies are no good with steel and iron. For a second I ponder the point of the seat belt. It would go right over his wound. I bypass the idea and start to shut the door. “Watch your feet.”