“Where the hell are we, Brax?” I tried to dial back the anger, but I was still a little snarly. “Are you just randomly walking or is there some sort of path?”
He stopped moving, the first break we’d had in ages. “I’m following a scent, something a little different from the forest we’re in. It’s the only thing standing out to use for direction.”
I hadn’t scented anything, but Braxton was pretty good with those things.
His features were hard; his jaw would probably break a brick wall if he threw it in that direction. I knew the next words out of his mouth would not be good news.
“I’m pretty sure I know where we are,” he sighed, running a hand through his black hair so it stood up a little. It kind of freaked me out to see even the slightest falter in confidence from my usually unflappable best friend. “If I’m right, we’re … in big fucking trouble. Jacob told me a little, but he only knows secondhand … and from memory transference.”
Surely Braxton was kidding me here. I looked around the unusual forest again, and then up to the green sky. Comprehension hit me like a fist to the face, and for the first time the dread was real and heavy.
“We’re in the undying lands of Faerie!”
I didn’t ask it as a question, but Braxton nodded anyway.
Awesome, we were in the lands which had something so rotten in it there had been a mass exodus of a multitude of magical races.
No worries there. We should be just fine.
Chapter 7
Braxton and I were doing our best to ignore the fact that we were probably not on Earth. The jinn hadn’t been kidding when he said I had to prove I was supposed to live. He’d dropkicked my ass right into a pretty big challenge.
The fey were secretive old bastards about their lands, so I had next to no useful information to ensure the maintenance of our health and safety here. We could only keep moving and deal with whatever came our way. So far we’d managed to stay out of harm’s way. We just had to remain alive long enough for one of the other Compasses to realize we were missing. And hope they could trace us to Faerie land.
We could be here forever.
After hiking for about fifteen hours straight, we had to stop and try to get some sleep. We ended up slumping against a rather large tree trunk, covered in a soft moss.
“I was hoping we’d find somewhere with more space,” Braxton said. I raised my eyebrows wordlessly at him and he grinned. “I’d be able to protect you better if I was in my dragon form; no one gets the drop on him.”
He looked relaxed with his massive limbs spread out in front of him, but I knew the look in his eyes; he was alert and on guard. I was equally tense. Who knew what creatures still walked this world. But … I was also pretty tired, so I decided to be alert and comfortable at the same time. I let my head drift to the side and rest against his shoulder.
Which was not exactly the comfortable surface I was looking for.
Was it too much to ask that I have at least one best friend who was less muscle and more squishy. The quads were all hard planes, which made sleeping on them difficult. My eyes traversed the length of said hard planes and muscles … actually, scratch that last thought. Squishy wasn’t going to work for me after all, I’d just take the shitty sleep.
I picked at the sticks and rocks littering the ground beside me. “Why do you think the jinn sent us here? Despite these unknown Faerie creatures around us, we haven’t been attacked.”
Braxton laughed. “You mean yet, we haven’t been attacked yet.”
My head lifted as he raised his arm and draped it over my shoulders. Now I was more comfortable, able to snuggle into his side.
“I get the feeling the elemental wanted you out of the way,” he said.
I sat up straighter as a thought hit me. “How were you able to penetrate the veil of magic the jinn created in the forest clearing?” I hadn’t even stopped to think how lucky I was that he had managed to reach me in time, otherwise I’d be here alone. I shuddered, and Braxton tightened his arm, pulling me back into his heat.
“When we were separated I kept an eye on you, following you into the forest. I’m not sure why, I just knew something was about to happen. The way you’d been driven from our group … it wasn’t natural.”
Thinking back, he was probably right about the unnatural part.
“By the time I reached you, the jinn was already there. I could see you, but couldn’t make it across the barrier. Eventually, I partially shifted and lunged through. My dragon can go where no supernatural has gone before.”
It was true, dragons were resistant to most magic, with protections the rest of us could only dream of. Yeah … I still couldn’t really think of myself as a dragon. I’d shifted once, and who even knew if I could do it again. My dragon raised her head then, snarling little wisps of smoke, which trailed around her. She was definitely flipping me off … it was so bizarre how I could internally see the movements of my shifter animals. Truth be told, it was something I really treasured.