Broken Compass: Supernatural Prison Story 1 (10 page)

I spoke out loud this time. “I understand what you’re saying, I’ll always fight when we’re directly attacked, but in this instance we’re actively looking for trouble. It’s not smart.”

Jessa sighed. “Way too much human in you, Misch. We’re part animal, designed to act on instinct. It’s been honed for thousands of years. Don’t ignore your instincts.”

She took off then, darting through the trees. Um, hello, my instincts were saying to stay right here, in relative safety.

With a shake of my head I followed her. Braxton was totally going to kill her. She’d better enjoy her time outside Stratford, because soon she was going to be on heav
y lockdown.

Don’t ignore your instincts…

Seriously, the last time I’d followed my instincts I fell for a vamp and got knocked up. Instinct could kiss my butt. The grass whipped around me in a dusty array of seeds and winter-browned growth. New greenery was just starting to push its way up. Spring. My absolute favorite time of the year. Let’s just hope Jessa didn’t get me killed. I’d like to be around to enjoy it.

My twin’s dark hair disappeared briefly amongst the first set of trees. Keeping my waddling to a minimum, I managed to gain some ground on her, and as the darkness of the canopy closed around me, she came into view again.

Running while this pregnant was neither practical or elegant. I thrashed through the bush with the same grace as a herd of elephants, but I was pretty impressed with my speed. The engine sound was louder now, a deep thrumming ricocheting off the trees, which were creating a large, naturally acoustic stadium. The closer we got to the noise, the less it sounded like a vehicle. In fact, despite the smooth and seamless nature of the hum, I could hear clanking, and mechanical whirling, almost like it was a large saw mill or something with a conveyer belt…

My thoughts died off as Jessa ground to a halt. “What the actual…”

“Fuck?” Jessa said.

I hurried to her side, and together we spent a few tense seconds trying to discern what the hell this was.

“Hansel and Gretel, right?” Jessa’s voice was no louder than a whisper. “I’m not totally up on human fairy tales, but there was one about a house made of candy.”

I snaked out and gripped onto my sister’s hand. “Yes, the old witch lured the children in, then fattened them up so she could eat them.”

Jessa’s head shot around to face me, her blue eyes wide, and glassy. “Witches don’t eat children.”

I shrugged. “Well, that was the story, and I don’t think she was a witch like you know from the supernatural community. She was a human version of a witch, so she was evil and stuff.”

How the hell was this possible? Here, in the middle of this perfectly normal forest, was a house straight out of the storybooks. Single level, not overly large, styled in colors of pastel rainbows – pastel rainbows which were made totally of candy, cake, and sweets. Peppermint stick railings on the wraparound porch. Gum drops, Twizzlers, goobers and more. Buttercream icing was perfectly swirled on the roof tiles, and none of it dripped or anything. Not only was the place covered with every sort of sweet imaginable – trust me, my wolf senses were having a field day with the scents – but each candy was so perfectly positioned across the structure that there had to be a ton of magic holding it all together.
It was also the source of the mechanical whirring noise.

Jessa shifted forward and I tightened my grip on her hand. “Do you think it’s a good idea to go any closer? The house sounds like it’s going to transform or something.”

She tilted her head back to me. “This is Supe land, where our Guilds come to drop off goods, where our criminal search teams travel through to get in and out. This house should not be here. I don’t even care that I haven’t had cake in days and the roof seems to be made of slabs of chocolate cake, with buttercream swirls and flaked chips of real, German-made cacao flakes…”

Her voice got all breathy at the end. Someone needed to get her chocolate fix. “Are you sure it’s not your cake addiction talking right now? Because if we both end up in a cage while a witch feels our fingers to see if we’re fat enough, I’m going to be really upset with you.”

Jessa’s eyes fell down to my large stomach and I followed to hers. Both of us cracked up then, our laughter mostly silent.

Still, as we sobered, both of us placed a hand on our bellies. “Maybe I should wait for Braxton this time,” Jessa said. “I’m not saying that we need men to do things for us, but with our precious cargo on board, a little backup wouldn’t go astray.”

I nodded. “Good plan, sister. I’m totally down with that.”

Of course, before we could turn and make our way back to the clearing to find the guys, a huge gust of wind started churning around us. As my hair whipped across my face, I squinted into the unnatural and newly formed whirl of air.
It was coming from the house.
Holy hell. That explained the mechanical whirring noises we were hearing. The house was creating its own weather or something, and Jessa and I were in a crap-ton of trouble. There was no way we could cross the heavy wind barrier that had gusted up to surround us, we would be swept up and thrown to our death.
      

Jessa and I squished ourselves closer together. “Any brilliant ideas?” she shouted to me.

I nodded. “Yes, go back in time and kill you in the womb.”

Jessa cracked up then, holding her stomach while she tried not to fall down. “I think I love the new, asshole version of you. It’s so much better than the pod person you were in the sanctuary.”

I circled around, trying to see if there was a weakness in the wind. “I was under a lot of stress and did some stupid stuff. I’m not proud of myself, but you, my sister, just leap every time before you look.”

Jessa shrugged, and I could see that she didn’t disagree with that statement, but didn’t really think it was a bad thing either. And generally it wasn’t.

“You just have to remember that you don’t have a dragon to fall back on any longer.”

Jessa’s face fell and I felt terrible for bringing up her loss. Josephina had left a massive hole in my sister’s heart and soul, and she was definitely still hurting. But I needed her to stay alive, even if I had to drill it into her. Despite my earlier jest about killing her in the womb, I couldn’t live in a world she wasn’t in. I loved her more than almost anyone else in my world. Except my baby.

Which was the emotional manipulation I hit her with next: “Plus you have two little dragon babies to think about. And yes, knowing you and Braxton, your children are definitely going to be all-powerful, natural dragon babies which could take on the world … but just in case they aren’t, you need to be more careful.”

Jessa started to growl, but she also reached across and hugged me. “You’re probably right, sister.” She pulled back a little to meet my eye. “And you’re going to make an amazing mom. I haven’t told you that enough. I’m so proud of you. Your strength is admirable.”

Don’t cry.
I ordered my tear ducts to dry the hell up. We were in the middle of a situation here; this was no time to fall apart. I pulled Jessa back in for one last fierce hug, and then both of us focused fully on our surroundings.

“Should we just take the risk and see if we can dive through the barrier?” Jessa said as we inched our way closer to the right side of the wind tunnel. As we stepped closer the wind whipped across our bodies and I could feel the strength of it. “Or should we go into the cake house and see what we find?”

The wind cut us off on all angles except for the direction of the house. Which didn’t seem like a great thing. “I’m sure we both realize now that this is a trap to lure stupid supes or humans in with the candy and then blow up the tornado. Now we have no option but to go into this quaint, surely not dangerous at all, perfect cottage.”

My sarcasm was on point.

Jessa sighed, just a little exhalation, but I could feel her annoyance. “I’m not great with patience, and despite the fact that I’ve called through the bond for Braxton, he’s still not here.”

“Maybe this wind thing is more than just a physical barrier. Maybe it’s also a magical one that’s blocking your call?”

My twin straightened and took a few steps closer to the whirling vortex around us. Her hands drifted along the edge, the way a mime’s would during a performance.

“It’s odd,” she finally said, without turning away. “Generally I can sense magic with ease, and while there’s something threaded through this wind, it’s not like any magic I’ve known before.”

Great. Weird, unknown magic. Just what we needed. As Jessa continued creeping along the edge of the wind, her hands brushing up and down in a sweeping manner, I followed closely behind. Like Jessa, I had always been able to detect magic.

In the human world I’d never understood why these weird, almost static electricity-like sparks would trigger between me and certain humans. Now I knew why, of course, and also why those sparks had filled my blood with energy. Magic. So foreign to my understanding, but at the same time starting to feel pretty normal.

Jessa’s pace picked up and we were soon standing in front of the house. She had that “cake glazed look” again as she stared up at it. She was totally trying to figure out how to get some of the icing off the roof.

“We shouldn’t go inside,” I said, nudging her to bring her back to reality. “Every instinct I have is telling me it’s a bad idea to go in there. People go in there and never return.”

“What are you basing this information on?”

I was probably grasping, but something about this scene triggered a memory. “Mom has always watched the news, every night without fail. Now out of habit I find myself flicking it on. While you were in Faerie, we had a lot of human news stories about hikers going missing in this state, and other weird things with animals. No one in Stratford seemed to care. The supes had much more important things to worry about with Larkspur, but now that I see this here, it’s all starting to make sense to me.”

“We don’t interfere in human problems unless there’s a supernatural element,” Jessa mused. “Normally, though, something odd this close to Stratford, on our outer territory, would definitely be investigated. The whole Larky thing left everything a mess. No leaders. War across the councils. This slipped through the cracks somehow.”

That bothered her. A lot. Surprisingly, I felt the same strong sense of anger and annoyance. I was really starting to feel as if Stratford, and the supernatural community, were my true home and family. I didn’t like that someone was trying to take advantage of the recent conflict, and I kind of wanted to rip their heads off and shove them up their own butts.

“Even if this is targeted mainly at humans, it’s clearly still supernatural in nature. So we need to investigate it, right?” For the first time I was the one to step closer to the building. “We can’t let them prey on humans, or others. What if it’s Kristoff or the bear shifters and they’re using them as sacrifices or something.”

Jessa’s head shot around to me. I could see the thoughts firing through her mind also. “Ever since Giselda went on that extended visit to Italy – which kind of bothered me at the time but I was actually really happy she left – I’ve been thinking that there was something extra weird up with her.”

Giselda was my sister’s arch-enemy, a witch who was the daughter of Kristoff. What if his daughter was the one helping him with whatever plan he was trying to enact?

“Giselda might never have left America either,” I said. “Despite her getting the all-clear, she’s probably helping her father.” The witches had used some sort of spell to clear her of anything to do with Kristoff and his crimes, but that wasn’t totally foolproof.

Jessa growled, picking up my last thoughts. “If anyone knows how to get around those truth spells, it’s the Krass family. There was a reason they refused a shifter be in the room. They wanted only magic users dealing with the issue. And since Giselda never technically committed a crime, she still had the right to refuse other races be present.”

I was slowly learning how our world worked. I should have been taught from birth, but circumstances being what they were … I was way behind. I was taking the most basic of classes, and some private lessons to try and hurry my progress, but was still pretty ignorant to the ins and outs.

From what I knew, supes didn’t have that many “real” laws. The races seemed to keep track of their members, and make sure they didn’t go around causing too much chaos. For the larger crimes, then the Book of Guidance passed judgment, and criminals could end up in one of the supe prisons. There was no death sentence unless you fought in the field, but with our long lives you might wish you had been put to death after hundreds of years locked in a prison.

The howl of the wind increased and I found myself spinning around, my back to the candy house. Jessa and I had been so busy talking that we’d missed the sweeping wind closing in on us. It was so close now that if I took a single step forward I’d have been swept up into it.

“Any ideas?” I said, as we both slid back as close as we could to the house. My heels were against the front step; if I moved back any further I’d been up through the peppermint railings and onto the chocolate deck.

Before she could answer, I noticed movement on the other side of the wind wall. Shadows moved into view, large and distinctive.

“Braxton,” I heard my twin say with an exhalation of air. “We stay put until the boys figure out how to break through this.”

Of course, that was a brilliant plan. Except for the fact that the house must have heard her and decided it was not okay with that. The wind exploded around us. My feet left the ground and we were swept up into the gale. I reached out and grasped onto Jessa’s hand, covering my stomach with my other as I fought to protect my child from whatever was going to happen.

The front door of the house slammed open, and I swear as we were sucked into the unknown beyond, multiple roars ripped through the wind. The Compass shadows disappeared when the front door slammed behind us, enclosing me and Jessa in darkness.