Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
PIERCE
“Run,” Sam had said. “It’s your chance to get away,” Sam had said.
Well, Sam was deranged because the Old Lands were an absolute mindfuck.
All of the unfounded fears and concerns I’d had when I first entered this place with Sam and the Unseelie Prince were apparently well-founded.
So far, I’d been stalked by a pterodactyl, pecked at by some weird giant chicken thing, and been chased by a herd of chimeras that did not react to my growl the same way they reacted to the Prince’s .
. . I was trying not to let my pride take a hit on that.
“Do not let the colors fool you, or you may find yourself as prey,” was what the Unseelie Prince had said to me.
I wondered if he somehow knew he’d been right.
The sky had cycled through every color of the rainbow one at a time, including colors I’d never even seen before.
Every plant and tree looked unnervingly similar to ones in the regular world, except in colorful variations that didn’t exist out there.
This place was stunningly spectacular, and that somehow made it even more terrifying.
Nothing this gorgeous should be this lethal.
Wait a minute. I stopped short and turned to my right.
I’ve seen that tree before, haven’t I? I specifically remembered it because it reminded me of the Lorax trees from the Dr. Seuss book, with its narrow-striped trunk and puffy pink leaves that looked like clouds.
With a curse, I glanced around, but nothing else jumped out at me as familiar.
I scrubbed my eyes and groaned. My mind was beginning to unravel.
There was no way to tell how long I’d been walking or in which direction.
I wasn’t even sure if there were multiple exit points from this place or just one.
Running was a fool’s errand. I wasn’t prepared enough.
I didn’t know enough about this place to navigate my way through it.
My stomach growled for the hundredth time, yet I didn’t dare eat anything in here.
The throbbing in my fangs hadn’t gone unnoticed either.
I’d been in here for far too long. I wasn’t even sure if I was walking in circles or not.
So let’s find out, Pierce. You’re no damsel in distress.
I walked over to the Lorax wannabe, then pulled out my pocketknife.
Part of me hated what I was about to do, given the internal reference to the Lorax, but I was losing my mind with every step.
So I pressed the tip of my blade to the trunk and carved the letters P and F really small.
Instantly the menu from PF Changs appeared in my mind and my stomach growled again.
My mouth watered. A little chuckle slipped out.
I’d never made the connection between my initials and one of my favorite restaurants before, which probably spoke volumes about my level of starvation and delirium.
More of a reason to check if I was walking in circles.
I sucked in a deep breath to brace myself, then spun on my toes and hurried back over to the pseudo-trail I’d been following.
It wasn’t an actual literal trail but someone had definitely been wearing away a pathway here because the grass and soil was a little more beaten down.
The tree branches sticking into the pathway left barely enough room for my body to walk without getting whacked, yet the bushes caressed my shins as I moved.
I ducked beneath a low-hanging tree branch with purple thorns, then stopped short.
I’d hit a fork in the road, figuratively.
The pseudo-trail I'd been following had vanished entirely. Instead, I found a wall of bamboo trees so densely packed together I couldn’t get my hand through them.
To my right the air smelled jasmine flowers, yet to my left I smelled the ocean.
If I’d learned anything since becoming a vampire, it was that things that smelled too sweet tended to be too evil, so I made a left turn and worked my way through a sort of minefield of red bushes that had long, needle-like leaves that were so sharp I saw the reflection of sunlight on the edges.
When I found an opening between oak trees with pink leaves, I leapt through it—and slid to a stop.
The Lorax tree stood in front of me.
My breath left me in a rush. “What?” I breathed.
It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t have been.
I hadn’t walked far enough to have gone in a circle, yet there it was.
I scrubbed my face with my hands, then hurried over to inspect the trunk.
My stomach rolled. PF was carved right where it should have been.
No, no, no. This can’t be. I stumbled backwards and then leapt to the right, moving off that pseudo-trail I’d been on and between two bushes that were taller than me and filled with purple flowers.
When I came out of the other side of the bushes, I found myself at the Lorax tree.
Again.
I screamed and scurried backwards, but instead of hitting those same bushes, my ankle slammed into a thick tree root and my feet were swept out from under me.
My back slammed into the ground with such a thud that I felt a ripple of an aftershock through my body.
I hated this place. There had to have been a better, easier way to escape than this, but it was too late to think about that.
Sam had said run and I’d run, with little hesitation.
I was no better than the Unseelie Prince when it came to Sam.
The poor guy had no idea what he was up against.
I was lying there staring up at the twinkling stars in the dark-pink sky trying to find a single constellation I recognized when a leaf the size of my palm dropped onto my face.
And stayed. Despite the breeze sweeping over my body, the leaf was practically glued to my face, like a starfish sucking on to me.
It covered my nose, upper lip, and one of my eyes, but it wasn’t hurting, which I took as a win given the horrors of this place.
After a few seconds and several more gusts of wind couldn’t move it, I finally reached up and peeled the leaf off my face.
The second I lifted my arm, the leaf coiled itself around my finger.
I frowned and tried to shake it off, yet there it remained.
Though, the longer I looked at it, the less I was worried about it.
This was by far the prettiest leaf I’d ever seen.
It was white yet every other color at the same time.
Depending on how I held my hand, different colors would shimmer within it.
Rather fascinating. It was probably poisoning me slowly, but so far it wasn’t painful, and a painless death would be nearly a best-case scenario at this point.
I was so focused on this fascinating sticky-rainbow-leaf that I hadn’t noticed something crawling on me until I felt four little warm hands on my cheek.
A pair of orange eyes the color of embers in a fire were set on the front of a small, dark-gray head that had bright-orange spots all over it.
It was too close to me for me to see it clearly.
Whatever it was, it stood on my cheek looking straight down into one of my eyes, which was surprisingly unsettling.
“What are you? A gecko?” I asked the little thing. “Are you dangerous?”
It cocked its head to the side and blinked, a motion over-exaggerated in those eyes that were far too big for its face. Its little tongue slipped out the side of its mouth, then it cocked its head the other way.
“Right, so I think on my face might be a bit much? Let’s follow your friend here and jump onto my finger?” I held my hand up toward it, and it immediately hopped on and wrapped all four legs around my pointer finger and looked down at me. A little chuckle slipped out. “I appreciate that.”
With a deep breath I sat up straight and looked down at my hands.
On my left pointer finger, I held the prettiest leaf ever.
On the right, I held the coolest gecko I’d ever seen.
Like everything else in this place, I’d never seen a gecko that looked like this.
It almost looked like a miniature dragon.
Almost. Its body was dark-gray and had little scales but like a dalmatian, it had orange spots covering all four legs, hands, and up the back of its head down to its nose.
The gecko blinked up at me again, then looked at the leaf still clinging to my other finger, then looked back at me.
I scowled. For reasons I could not explain, I knew this gecko wanted the leaf, so I held my hands next to each other with my pointer fingers side-by-side.
The sticky-rainbow-leaf leapt off my finger and—flapped its wings.
It’s a BUTTERFLY! That made so much more sense than a sticky leaf.
The butterfly hurried straight to the gecko and landed on its back.
The gecko looked up at me and smiled.
I must be hallucinating. This place has finally warped my mind.
The gecko jumped off my hand and landed on the ground with the butterfly still in place. They both took one last look at me, then turned and quickly scurried away. I was on all fours crawling after them before I even realized what I was doing.
The slide of cold metal against the bottom of my chin made me freeze in place.
My breath slowly released, but the movement caused a sharp point to press into the skin on my throat.
Without moving, I glanced up to follow the long silver blade of a sword reflecting the trees and the colors of the sky until it reached a gloved hand gripping a hilt.
“Move, vampire, and thy head will meet the ground,” a deep male voice with a thick accent came from just above me, no doubt the sword-wielder.
I swallowed roughly, still gripping the cold dirt with my fingers. “Um, I come in peace?”
“Peace is a word not yet earned by thy Queen. How dare you let it leave thy lips.”
“Thy Queen . . . thy lips . . . thy head . . .” I frowned. Some of the older vampires in Avolire talked weird like that. “Wait, what year did you enter this place?”
The pressure of the sword’s blade against my skin eased ever so slightly. “Tell me from where you came first, vampire.”
“Okay, dude, my name is Pierce Fenn. Can you quit it with the vampire shit? I wasn’t born this way and didn’t choose it.
I’m gonna look up now. If you’re going to kill me, you’ll have to look me in the eyes while you do it.
” I had no idea where this bravado was coming from, though it felt more like exhaustion and a lack of patience.
When the sword lowered off my skin, I took a deep breath.
“All right. Don’t shoot. Let’s just talk—”
“Shoot? Arcana do not use pistols or rifles. They serve us little use. Rise, Mr. Pierce Fenn, though my blade still aims for thy heart.”
“My head, my heart, yeah . . . I get it.”
I sighed and rose off the ground until I sat back on my heels.
If he was going to kill me, I saw no reason to stand up.
I slowly lifted my head until I met the amber eyes of a tall male half-shaded by the trees above.
My eyes widened. The guy standing before me was nothing like I expected.
Granted, I had no idea what I’d been expecting.
I tried to smile. “What’s your name?”
The guy narrowed his hazel-gold eyes on me and raised the tip of his sword to my face. “My name is not of importance right now. You ask what year I came to be in the Old Lands? Tell me yours first.”
I rolled my eyes. Like I didn’t see that coming. “I came in here in 2019.”
His eyes widened as his face fell. The sword lowered toward the ground. “No, cannot be. The year was 1712 when I entered.”
I groaned. “Oh no.” I bent over at the waist and rested my hands on my knees.
Three centuries. This guy had been here for three centuries. My stomach rolled.
“Tell me, Pierce, in 2019 is Queen Sweyn still breathing?”
I lifted my head to meet his stare. He’d said he was arcana, and now that I looked at him, there was no doubt in my mind he was being honest. The energy radiating off of him was tingling.
The left side of his face was covered in swirling blue lines that sparkled as if his magic ran through them.
It was quite pretty against his olive-toned skin.
He stepped fully from the shadows to reveal the tips of his black hair were the same blue as his markings with gold tips that made his eyes sparkle. “If you come in peace, vampire, you have no reason to hesitate—”
“Says the guy who hasn’t seen Sweyn in three centuries,” I grumbled before I could stop myself.
I scrubbed my face with my hands and sat back on my heels again, then met his cold stare.
“Yes, Sweyn is still alive and terrorizing the world. The final war for Earth has begun. Lilith will be returning soon, but her son, Everest, has betrayed them both and joined his soulmate within The Coven.”
His jaw dropped. “Everest finally left her?” His voice was soft and he spoke with reverence.
I smiled and nodded. “Finally. Yes.”
“And you? Mine eyes do not deceive me. You are a vampire.”
It wasn’t a question.
I smiled wider so he could see the tips of my fangs. “I was human until late December when my girlfriend decided the best way to reveal her being a vampire to me was by turning me . . . in my sleep . . . without my consent. So, I assure you, Sweyn’s vampire court holds none of my loyalty.”
He narrowed his eyes. “And where does thy loyalty rest?”
I started to say with Heaven, then thought of saying The Coven—except, the only angels I’d met were fallen and I did not know The Coven.
I hadn’t been a religious sort of guy before being turned, and the idea of magic-wielding witches still blew my mind.
I didn’t want this observant guy to sniff any doubt from me.
But then I thought of one person I could say had my loyalty without a sliver of a doubt. I swallowed roughly. “With Everest.”