A Fork of Paths Read online

  If there was one thing I possessed, it was speed. And Jocelyn didn’t exactly strike me as the most athletic of sorts, especially in her clackety heels. Likely, I could dodge beneath the tables out of view quicker than she even managed to pull the trigger of the gun. But that thought only brought me back to the same question as before. Where would I go? Even if I managed to outpace her and avoid getting hit by a bullet, I was trapped in the midst of a colony of hunters.

  But I simply couldn’t hand myself over to her like this. As futile as trying to escape would be, I wouldn’t willingly step in that room. They would have to drag me in there kicking and screaming. I had the right to know what they were going to do to my body, dammit. I was not an animal to be herded from place to place and probed all they wanted. And I would fight to not be treated like one.

  I took a gulp and met her eyes steadily.

  Would she really attempt to shoot me? I knew by now that they saw value in me as a half-blood. It seemed that I was the first half-blood they had ever come across, and consequently I was also rare. But I didn’t have time to debate the matter. I had made up my mind.

  Before Jocelyn could react, quick as a flash, I’d ducked beneath the table behind me.

  “Alice!” Jocelyn’s voice echoed around the lab.

  Keeping down low, I scrambled across the floor from table to table, winding through the maze toward the door which led to the staircase.

  Her footsteps sped up across the room. By the sound of it, Jocelyn had removed her heels and she was running fast, faster than I’d expected.

  But she couldn’t come close to my speed. I had already reached the exit and launched myself down the stairs by the time she’d made it quarter way across the room. I sped up, leaping three steps at a time, wondering as I did why they didn’t have a damn elevator running through this lab when they seemed to have them everywhere else. I’d almost reached the last flight of stairs when, turning the corner, I collided with someone. I was knocked backward, landing on my backside painfully against the sharp steps. My eyes shot upward. It was Mark. And approaching behind him were six other hunters.

  I had not heard Jocelyn sound any alarms yet, and from the look of surprise in Mark’s eyes as he stared down at me, I guessed that he and his companions had already arranged with Jocelyn to meet us up in the lab. What else would they be doing climbing up these stairs at this time in the morning?

  Which meant… what exactly? What were they planning to do to me in that operating room that required all of them to be present?

  Mark, along with the men behind him, drew out a gun. My attempt at escape had been even more short-lived than I had feared. Desperation overcoming all logic and caution, I hurled myself down the stairs. Even though they barricaded it, I hoped that the shock of my throwing myself toward them while they held loaded guns would work to my advantage.

  And it did, but not enough. One of the men recovered from the surprise and he leapt at me. As he fell to the ground, his hands closed around my ankles, causing me to trip and crash down against the steps. I would have knocked my teeth out had I not instinctively put my hands out to shield my face in the fall.

  “Let go of me!” I grunted, trying to wriggle away from him. I was almost successful, until the other men caught up with us and swooped down on me. When Mark approached and pressed his gun firmly against my neck, I knew that the game was over.

  They quickly secured my hands behind my back with cuffs, and then they bound my feet. They carried me fighting and squirming back up the steps and into the lab. Jocelyn trailed behind us, her heels clutched in one hand.

  “Convenient timing,” she murmured to one of the hunters.

  They marched me back to the operating room and wrestled me down onto the table, where they secured me with metal restraints.

  “No!” I yelled. My back arched, the muscles in my arms and legs straining as I tried to break free. But whatever these restraints were made from, they were impervious to my strength. A sweat broke out on my forehead. “What do you want with me?” I panted.

  The hunters’ mouths remained closed in hard lines as they finished securing me in place.

  And then, perhaps all too predictably, one of them reached for a syringe and sank it deep into my neck.

  Julie

  I thanked my lucky stars when we finally arrived at Uma’s island. As we entered shallow waters, again, Aisha insisted that I handle the box myself. I hauled it off the boat and managed to pull it onto the sand without getting it too wet.

  Aisha joined me next to the container. I gazed up at the sloping hill, at the top of which stood a castle—the witch’s medical center. I already guessed that Aisha expected me to drag the box all the way up there by myself. This was just her wanting to inflict suffering on me, because she could have easily used her powers. Wasting time waiting for me to lug this thing up the hill was just plain stupid. But even aside from that, I had another incentive for wanting to do things a different way.

  “It’s going to take far too long,” I dared to complain. “Let me go and get the witch. I’ll try to convince her to come down here.” I eyed the jinni cautiously.

  Aisha paused, then to my relief, she nodded. “I’ll wait here by the box. But don’t take too long, or I’ll come after you.”

  “Okay,” I said, thankful that she had agreed without fuss. Aisha waiting here was best for many reasons. For one, the presence of the jinni would only get the witch’s guard up and make it more difficult for me to persuade her. Aisha was so prickly, I was sure that one misplaced comment from either of them would blow the whole deal.

  Secondly, and more importantly, I would be freer to steer things in the direction that I needed them to go without the jinni breathing down my neck and listening in on every word I spoke during the initial meeting… assuming I was even going to be able to get one.

  Before heading off, I waded into the ocean to wash away the worst of the filth from my body, so that the witch wouldn’t slam the door in my face in disgust the moment she opened it. Then, even as it pained me to leave Braithe alone with Aisha, I turned my back on her and the ocean and began racing up the hill toward the witch’s medical center.

  It was early in the morning. I guessed that the witch sisters would be asleep. I hoped that they wouldn’t be too angry at my disturbance.

  Arriving in front of the castle, I moved cautiously toward the front door. I placed my ear against the wood, listening for any sounds indicating that someone was awake inside. All was quiet. Waves crashed against the shore in the distance.

  I knocked loudly, five times, then waited for several moments. I took a step backward, craning my neck to look up at the tall building. All the windows were dark, which worried me. I hoped they were home. And I didn’t want to be forced to break in to verify it. It would make my task of convincing her to help us ten times more difficult. I knocked again, and waited some more.

  From the corner of my eye, I caught a light flickering on in one of the downstairs windows. Yes!

  Footsteps sounded on the other side of the door, which swung open. Standing before me could only have been Uma, the witch doctor herself. She bore much resemblance to her sister, who acted as her receptionist and whom we had met before. She shared the same bouncy auburn hair, light blue eyes and rounded features, although she was taller and more slender in build than her sister. She wore a purple velvet nightgown and her long hair was bound in a braid that hung down one shoulder.

  Her brows furrowed as she looked down at me. “Who are you?” she asked. “And what brings you here at such an early hour?”

  Although I had visited her castle with Benjamin, Arron, and Aisha, due to my getting rid of the merflor, we hadn’t actually met the doctor herself. Only her sister.

  Now that she stood before me—clearly I’d woken her up—I’d expected her to sound more irritated. She just seemed mildly surprised. “My name is Julie,” I said. “Julie Duan.”

  I took a moment to shoot a glance behind me, anxious th
at Aisha might be stalking me, wanting to listen in on my conversation with the witch. But it was just my paranoia. I could make out her form still hovering on the beach in the distance, next to the white box. And something told me that she would remain at the beach and wait for my return, because jinn avoided witches like the plague—and vice versa. The only reason Aisha had ever agreed to Arron’s idea of letting the witch operate on Benjamin before was that she had believed that there was absolutely no other way to release him from the Elder’s curse.

  My eyes returned to Uma, then darted over her shoulder toward the inside of the building. “I’m very sorry to disturb you at this rude hour, but may I come in? I have a very… urgent situation.”

  The witch stiffened, looking me over with slight suspicion, but then she took a step back and opened the door wider for me to enter. After entering, she closed the door behind me and led me across the entrance hall to a door behind the desk where her sister usually sat. She opened it, and we emerged in what appeared to be her potion room. It was huge—far larger than even the spacious entrance hall—and there was barely an inch of the walls that wasn’t covered by shelves filled with bottles of exotic-looking substances.

  She led me over to a small table and gestured that I pull up a chair. We sat down opposite each other.

  Clasping my sweaty hands together, I began, “I’ve discovered what I believe is a new species of supernatural… And you’re the only person I could think of who could help in understanding what it is exactly.”

  She stared at me, disbelieving. “A new species? Where and what?”

  I began to describe to the best of my ability the characteristics of the creatures, based on my observations of them so far, as well as the meager scraps of information the Elder had thrown us. By the time I was finished, the witch’s mouth was practically hanging open. “You’re joking with me,” she said.

  I shook my head. “I swear to you, I’m not here to waste your precious time,” I said, looking earnestly into her blue eyes. “Besides, you don’t need to believe me—I can show you.”

  “And where did you say you found them?” she pressed.

  I hadn’t said yet. I’d been skirting around the subject until now. “I got stranded with a friend in the ocean—long story—and we found them aboard a ship. My friend got taken by them and turned, leaving me alone. As I mentioned, I have brought a specimen to show you and will happily hand this over to you for inspection, but I must ask for something in exchange.”

  I could see from the look on her face that by now I’d perked the witch’s interest enough to be able to demand my own terms. I hadn’t been sure exactly how she would take to this information about the Bloodless, but it seemed that she was truly passionate about her profession and the discovery of a new species was both exciting and valuable to her.

  “What do you want?” she asked, sitting up straighter in her chair. “Are you ill in some way?”

  “I’m not ill,” I said, even as I wished that in this myriad of bottles surrounding me there was a cure for broken hearts. “I have three requests to make of you. First, I want you to examine the creature I have brought here and, to the best of your medical knowledge, tell us how you think this species could be killed. Second, after you have examined the specimen, I want you to help exterminate the ship that is filled with these monsters… except for three of them, which I will select. These three are not to be harmed, which brings me to my third request: after we have exterminated the rest, I want you to bring those I’ve chosen back here to your island, keep them somewhere safe, and try to find a cure for them.”

  There was a span of silence as she took in my words.

  “A cure?” She looked worryingly dubious about this.

  “Yes,” I said, gazing at her hopefully. “If you can’t find a cure, then I don’t know who will be able to… But even if you aren’t able to find a cure, I need you to promise me that these four will remain safe.”

  There was another agonizing pause before she nodded her head slowly. “All right,” she murmured. “You take me to this new species and be clear about those you wish me to take under my wing, and I will do so. In truth, despite the devastation you’ve described these ‘Bloodless’ are capable of wreaking, I’m more interested in examining them and taking samples for research than slaughtering them all outright.”

  “Good,” I said, breathing out. I wasn’t sure exactly how many minutes had passed since leaving Aisha, or even what the impatient jinni considered as “too much time”, but I didn’t want her coming after me before I’d managed to seal the deal with the witch. Aisha was already suspicious of me. I needed to speed up. “Now, the specimen I have brought for you is locked in a box, down on your shore near the harbor.” I hesitated, bracing myself for what I had to tell her next. “The thing is, I’m not here alone. I’m here with a jinni.”

  The witch’s face instantly soured. “What are you doing with a jinni?”

  Getting into the full history of how we met would be wading into uncomfortable and dangerous waters, especially because some of that history involved me murdering Arron—who had apparently been a good acquaintance of the witch. I was sure that she wouldn’t take kindly to the news that I’d slit his throat on her very own beach.

  So rather than explain the whole saga, I simply said, “Let’s just say that I owe her a favor… But for the most part, she is working for the same thing that we will be. She wants to stop the infestation and nip it in the bud before it continues to spread. I’m certainly not ignorant of the discord that exists between your kind and jinn, and I’ll try to prevent her from getting in your way as much as I can…” I paused, swallowing hard. “There is one thing that I must mention though. She doesn’t know that four of them used to be close companions of mine and, for reasons that would take me too long to explain, I can’t reveal this to her. If I did, she’d likely target them first.”

  Of course, Aisha already knew about Arletta, but at least the jinni was still oblivious to the brothers… As long as she remained ignorant of who they were, they wouldn’t be specifically targeted by her. They would just be three more pale faces among the crowd of Bloodless.

  “I will point them out to you discreetly,” I continued, “and it should look like they are your own selection of Bloodless you wish to examine, completely uninfluenced by me. One of the four is Braithe—whom I have brought with me here as the specimen.”

  This third request of mine thankfully worked to my advantage. The witch was naturally against anything that the jinni was for, so it wasn’t difficult to persuade her to agree to help me preserve Hans’ siblings.

  Hans. I thought of him still stuck in that horrid cave back in Cruor, along with yet another crowd of Bloodless. They were, in fact, the original Bloodless. If they ever got out, they could start spreading another epidemic, but… until somebody went and let them out, I didn’t see how they would escape. God knew their prison was well hidden. When I’d first discovered that Hans was being held prisoner by the Elders after the war between Cruor and Aviary, I had scoured the entire realm for days on end. I would never have found the cave if one of the Elders had not escorted me there.

  Of course, I had not told Aisha about Hans, or the cave in Cruor that was filled with more Bloodless. And I certainly wasn’t going to—I would tell neither her, nor the witch, unless there arose a specific reason to. My desperate hope was that the witch would keep Hans’ siblings safe, that she would discover at least some form of cure for them that could bring them closer to their former selves, and that I would somehow rid myself of Aisha after the ship of monsters was destroyed so that I could go and reclaim Hans.

  Together, the witch and I worked out a plan of action. She also asked me what she was to do with the siblings if, after her experimentation, she failed to find a cure for them. I didn’t have an answer for her other than that they still should not be killed. I just wanted to take things one step at a time because I couldn’t bear to consider the possibility that there might be
no way out of this for them. For Hans. For us.

  All my hopes hung on a cure.

  Once I was satisfied that the witch and I saw eye to eye, I agreed to show her Braithe. And it was about time, too. I could just imagine the jinni seething with impatience as she stalked around on the beach.

  Uma used her magic to transport us to the shore, where Aisha was hovering next to the box. Aisha cast me a dirty look, but she barely even glanced at the witch before averting her eyes away, as though the ocean was more interesting to her than what the witch had to say. I was glad. If Aisha wanted to be a cold fish and not even greet the witch, it only worked to my advantage.

  We circled the box cautiously before I stopped in front of the lock and planted my hands against the lid. I could hear Braithe pounding against the walls, still fighting to get out.

  “Be careful,” I advised the witch. “These creatures are dangerous even to witches. As soon as I open the lid, paralyze him and take him back to the castle.”

  “All right,” Uma muttered as she rolled up the sleeves of her nightgown.

  “How long is this going to take?” Aisha mumbled.

  “We’re not sure yet,” I replied, eyeing the witch. “First Uma needs to take him to the castle so she can examine him, see what’s what and try to work out how we can kill the creatures.”

  “And this is in exchange for what exactly?” Aisha asked.

  “For three samples of the species. Uma would like to choose three others to bring back to her castle and experiment further on them for her own research and interest.”

  I paused, holding my breath, fearing yet more probing questions from Aisha. But the jinni fell silent again after that.

  Steeling myself for what I was about to do, I gulped, my eyes falling to the lid of the box. Reaching inside my bra, I pulled out the key and unlocked it. The lid sprang open without my even touching it. Uma and I stumbled back across the sand as Braithe burst out like a jack-in-the-box. His back and chest were heaving, his expression the picture of utter fury.