Chapter Four
Neith
I’m now increasingly glad the walk back to the spot where Winston dropped us off is so far away.
He continues, “I get why you’re worried about trusting him. But Baz isn’t him. I can prove it. I remember what his essence feels like. I’ve never let myself forget, so I would know immediately if he ever became a threat to you again, despite the fact that Coen and I ripped him apart.”
I melt. The fact that he still remembers after everything that happened between us shows that, despite the control that Casimir had over him, he always kept a hold of a part of himself, and us.
“You did?” I ask.
“Of course I did, Love,” he replies. He carries on explaining, “If you allow me to, I can look through your eyes at Baz, because I use my magic to see through you, I’ll be able to see if Baz’s signature is the same as his, or even if Baz’s intentions aren’t true.”
“Will it be enough for you to get an accurate reading?” I ask him.
I can hear the smile in his voice as he says, “Well, I mean, I could always do it in person if you want me to?”
“Dimitri,” I reply firmly. “You’re in the strongest prison in the realm, guarded twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week by extremely strong wards and supernaturals.”
I feel like it's necessary to remind him.
“You think that could stop me from getting to you?” Dimitri asks.
Suddenly, arms wrap around me from behind, squeezing me tightly, as he kisses my neck and inhales deeply.
“I will always find you, Love,” he mutters softly in my ear before he disappears again.
“What the fuck!” River exclaims.
“Was that Dimitri?” Coen asks, while everyone remains frozen and staring in my direction.
“Thank fuck you guys saw him too,” Van mutters. “Neith, what the hell?”
My whole body is buzzing, and my hands are shaking. It has been a really long time since I’ve been held by Dimitri, and well, fuck.
“Give me a minute,” I mutter as I plop my ass on the floor. It’s not just that I was in his arms again, and not just to calm him the fuck down, but because he wanted me there, it’s what he said.
He said that he could always find me.
That means that this whole time, the whole time I’ve been running, he could have just popped up. He could have found me in an instant.
Which means he’s deliberately not done it, he’s kept me safe in the only way he can, without him being with me himself, he’s kept me safe from him, and that realization shatters any hesitation that I had left about forgiving him.
“Shit,” I curse as I realize that he’s going to get in trouble.
“What?” Reed asks, as he and Baz study our surroundings, looking for a threat.
“Sorry, hang on,” I say.
Poor Baz looks completely and utterly confused, and if he wants to stay with us after this clusterfuck of an evening, then I will be very surprised.
“Dimi,” I say, reaching for him. “Are you okay? Are you going to get in trouble? Do you need me to call Ty?”
“Whoa, slow down for a minute, Love. Honestly, I thought you would be freaking out about entirely different things right now. Don’t worry about me, Love.
Baz is safe, you can talk to him. I recognize him from somewhere, well, I recognize his magical signature, not him, but I couldn’t tell you where from. I do know that he is safe to talk to.”
With those last words, he’s gone.
I bite my lip.
“What’s wrong, Love?” Coen asks.
“I’m worried about Dimi, he shouldn’t have appeared here. What if someone picked up on it?”
The guys share a look. I know that they’ve got thousands of questions, but I also know that they care about Dimitri too, even though they don’t know why.
“Doc, can you take me to the prison?” Ransom asks. “I don’t need to be too close, but I do need to be closer than this.”
“Yeah, I can do that. I know a blind spot,” Doc replies, surprisingly.
When we look at him questioningly, he adds, “I check for them every now and then. I decided not to tell anyone about that one, just in case. I have one of Raiden’s trip spells set on it to alert me if anyone comes out, just in case, but I figured it may come in handy eventually. ”
“Well damn,” Griff mutters. “I wish I’d thought of that.”
“Exactly who the fuck are you all?” Baz asks, looking more curious than worried.
“Technically, the good guys,” Van explains, although he pulls a face because he's aware that at the moment we very definitely do not sound like we are the good guys.
Baz’s eyebrow raises, and he smirks slightly, “Are you sure about that?”
River grins, “Pretty sure. We can explain more at home.”
Ransom walks over to me and cups my cheek in his big palm, “I’ll sort it. We’ll keep him safe.”
I pull him close and kiss him fiercely, “Thank you, Ransom.”
He nods, and then Doc smirks, grabs Ransom’s shoulder, and they both disappear.
“It appears that we have quite a lot that we need to talk about,” River says, bouncing on his toes.
“I have no idea what’s going on,” Baz grins, not seeming perturbed by the fact that he’s got no idea what is happening.
To be honest, if anything, he looks excited and intrigued by the turn of events.
He continues, “One minute I think that you guys are the good guys, and then an incredibly strong supernatural appears who is supposed to be in prison, says a few words, and then voluntarily goes back.”
I grin, “Yeah, it does sound pretty nuts, I’ll give you that. We can explain what we can at home. It’s complicated.”
“It definitely seems to be,” Baz smirks.
I’m glad that none of this seems to be fazing him.
He seems to be taking it all in his stride, which is surprising but also very welcome.
If he were freaking out, then that would have been a major sign that we shouldn’t tell him about everything because this shit is just scraping the surface of the crazy that we deal with.
“Dimi? Ransom and Doc are coming to erase any evidence on the cameras that you disappeared,” I tell him.
Dimi sounds surprised as he says, “Thank you. You guys didn’t have to do that.”
“Yeah, we did,” River replies.
“He’s right,” Raiden adds.
The others are soon all chiming in, and I smile. I can feel the way that he’s joined us so that we’re all able to hear each other. I’m realizing that as much as I know about Dimitri’s magic, there’s a hell of a lot that I don’t know as well.
“I need to go, thank you. I mean it,” Dimitri replies. “Especially after everything that I’ve done.”
“Are you okay?” I ask with worry obvious in my voice.
“Yes, Love. Just need to recharge for a moment, that’s all,” he replies. He adds questioningly, “Keep me updated?”
“You got it, man,” Van replies. I look at him questioningly, and he shrugs.
“Thanks, man,” Dimitri says, and then the connection goes dead.
“We’re going to keep him updated?” River asks with a knowing smirk on his lips.
Van shrugs, “He’s one of us.”
“Agreed,” everyone says, even Doc and Ransom, who suddenly reappear.
I don’t even know how to unpack that right now. So I don’t.
“Did it go okay?” I ask.
Ransom nods, “Yeah, it only took a bit longer than I intended because I wanted to add some stronger magic to the spell that Doc put down.”
Doc grins, “He’s made it so that only we can get through.”
“We being?” Reed asks with a smirk.
Ransom waves his hand around at us, “All of us, and Dimitri.”
I can't help it, I laugh.
It only takes a moment, and they’re all joining in, apart from Baz, who is smiling but also looking a little bit confused. He hasn’t run off though, so I guess that’s a win.
Or a sign that he’s as crazy as the rest of us. Which is probably a good thing.
“Thank you,” I tell Ransom and Doc.
“Are we not going to talk about how crazy it is that he did that?” River asks.
“Am I right in thinking that he is in the strongest supernatural prison that the Earth Realm has, and he has just popped up behind you and then went back?” Baz asks.
I nod.
His eyes widen, “Fucking hell. He shouldn’t be able to do that.”
“No, he shouldn’t,” Coen agrees. “I don’t think that is something that we should be discussing now.”
“Good point,” Van replies. “At least it's stopped raining.”
There’s a huge clap of thunder as lightning once again lights the sky, and the heavens open again.
“You just had to say it, didn’t you dickhead,” Raiden teases.
Van winces as he directs the rain around him so he’s not getting wet, “Whoops.”
“I’ll start taking people back to House. We can continue the conversation there,” Doc says.
He takes hold of Ransom since he’s still standing next to him, and then, one by one, takes everyone else back.
I deliberately make sure that I’m not taken.
Doc must realize that, for some reason, I don’t want to be taken yet, because he doesn’t insist on taking me next when he reappears, but he always checks in with me before he takes the next person.
There’s just something that’s niggling at me.
If we could have gotten whatever we were supposed to get tomorrow, then Winston wouldn’t have insisted that we come now. I remember him saying that there was something that we had to get now. Emphasis on the now part.
Which means that we shouldn’t be heading back and then returning in the morning to find whatever it is.
Baz is right. If there was just something that he wanted us to see, then he would have said that.
Eventually, it’s only River, and I left.
“What’s going through that beautiful brain of yours?” He asks me.
“Winston was really specific. There is something here that we need to get now,” I reply.
“Okay, let’s look,” he replies.
I smile and pull him down to kiss him, “Thank you.”
He smiles, his eyebrows dipped down in confusion, “What for?”
“For always believing me,” I reply.
His confusion melts away, and he smiles, “Always.”
I grin, and we start to look around for anything that could remotely be what we’re supposed to find.
“We assumed that the stone summoning circle thing was what we were supposed to be looking for, but what if that was just a coincidence?” I ask.
“That’s a good point,” River agrees thoughtfully. “I mean, Winston did teleport us to this spot, not to the stone circle, and he wouldn’t usually leave us with so much uncertainty, so you could be on to something.”
We carry on looking, and I slowly lose any hope that I may have been right.
“What are you two doing?” Doc asks, making me jump because I was looking down a rabbit hole and trying to tell my overactive imagination that a rabbit wasn’t going to jump out and claw my face off.
I don’t even think that rabbits are known for doing that.
I tried telling that to my overactive imagination, but it was having none of it.
I mean, there’s always a first time for everything, right?
“Looking for whatever it was that we’re supposed to find here,” River tells him.
I open my mouth to explain our reasoning when there’s a huge rumble of thunder and a flash of lightning, so bright that I have to close my eyes.
I feel something press against my palm, and I instinctively close my hand around it.
When I open my eyes again, I glance down to see a hagstone in my hand.
It buzzes ever so faintly with magic, and then it just fades away again.
Huh.
“What’s that?” Doc asks, still blinking to get his eyes to adjust to the darkness again.
“Well, it looks like that’s what you were supposed to get,” River says as he moves close and studies my hand. “A rock?”
“It’s a hagstone,” I explain. When they both look at me questioningly, I carry on, “So you see how the rock is completely smooth, but there’s this hole in the middle?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t look natural,” Doc replies as he takes it off me and studies it, before handing it over to River to study.
“It is, it’s worn away by another pebble tumbling in the ocean for years.
The lore behind hagstones says a couple of things.
One is that if you look through the hole, then you can see through the veil to Fae, and another is that you can see the Fae folk through it.
At least that’s what I remember. I always loved them.
I did think that they were just stories made up by humans though,” I finish explaining.
“Well, if Winston wanted you to get it, then maybe they aren’t just stories after all, although I don’t really know why he wants you to have it or what purpose it will have. The imps are Fae folk, and you have no problem seeing them,” River points out, with a confused frown.
“Good point,” Doc mutters. He hands the hagstone back to me, and I put it in my pocket. He continues, “Come on, I am thoroughly fed up with being wet now.”