Chapter 201

Helen’s POV

The end of everything felt like being under a collapsing tower of wooden blocks. Even though it brought relief, it wasn’t easy. All the edges and corners and individual pieces pummeled my heart, brain, and body. Julianne looked as if she felt the same.

Julianne nodded at me. “I feel sick to my stomach,” she said.

“You and me both,” I agreed.

Now I gripped Julianne’s hand. “We need to try and look and see if we can find any of the other pixies. Was there anything upstairs where he kept you caged that would have indicated that there were other prisoners up there?”

Julianne shook her head.

I bit my lips in frustration. “How about before he put you up there? Were you take it anywhere by Martin? Did Martin say anything about anywhere else that they were keeping people?”

Julianne sorted through her thoughts; I could tell. Her face was screwed up in concentration, and if her head felt anything like mine, it wasn’t an easy task trying to find the memories because everything from the last five days was a strange blur of magic and reality and disbelief.

Finally, she nodded. “I think he did say something. I think he told me that if I caused any trouble while I was up there that he would have to throw me in the jail. I think they turned the community clubhouse into a prison.”

“Then we need to get there,” I said.

My heart sank. “What about Martin? He left while the Huntsman was still in his death throes. I think he figured out that we were killing a demon, and he took off, and he left.”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Freya said in her high-pitched pixie voice. “I made sure to let Justin know on the comms where Martin went. I gave Justin the earpiece that I made for you. He knows that the Huntsman has burned to ash. And he knows that Martin left. So I’m sure he was on the lookout for anyone trying to escape the community.”

Freya continued to soothe. “There’s a wall all the way around this neighborhood and gates at the front. There are only so many ways that Martin could go out. And your mate and his warriors have the whole thing surrounded. We’ll just have to trust that they’re as good at their job as Russo and Lisa were at theirs.”

The first thing Julianne and I did was search the house for wherever Martin or the Huntsman had hidden our original clothes. The last thing we wanted to do was go out dressed up like the victims we’d been forced to become. Once we’d put those on, both Lisa and I rushed out of the house.

“Freya,” I said, “fly up high and see if you can find the quickest way to get to the community clubhouse.”

Freya buzzed off my shoulder where she’d been riding as a little ball of light, flying straight up above the roofs of the houses. The street that had been so busy while I remembered the Huntsman taking advantage of me in the living room was now suddenly completely empty. I could only hope that meant that all of those people who had aligned themselves with the Huntsman were now fighting with Justin’s warriors.

A moment later, Freya was back, squeaking so excitedly that I couldn’t hear her in her high-pitched voice.

“Slow down,” I soothed her. “If you keep up like that, I won’t be able to help.”

She fluttered directly in front of my face, so close that my eyes blurred, trying to focus on her. “To your right,” she said. “Take that alley between the houses.”

Julianne and I both bolted in that direction, our feet pounding out our panic on the pavement. From there, Freya flew ahead of us, creating a little golden streak of light that we could follow. We kept passing between houses, running down the sidewalks, and still, we saw no one, not a single person. At this point, the emptiness was almost creepier than it would have been if we had seen people trying to stop us. But I wasn’t going to be distracted by that now.

For months I had been trying to find a way to rescue these sweet pixies who had adopted me as their queen. If there were any of them left, I wasn’t going to wait a moment longer.

After several blocks of houses, a different sort of building emerged from the darkness ahead of us. This one had lots of wide windows in the front and a peaked roof. But it was clearly not someone’s house.

Through the huge picture windows, the light of a night light or an emergency light inside illuminated the room. I could see pool tables and bookshelves and what I thought might be exercise machines. If the Huntsman and the people he had gathered here hadn’t been so evil, it looked like it would have been a nice place to hang out with other people in your community.

I wondered where in there he could possibly have used as a jail because, with all of those windows, it didn’t seem like the kind of place you could lock someone up. Of course, the main door was locked when we reached it. I rattled desperately on it, but Julianne grabbed my arm.

“Let me help.”

“It’s locked,” I moaned.

She giggled and held up a big rock. “I found this over in the landscaping. Think that’ll work?”

With that, she drew back her arm and chucked the rock directly at the glass. The glass shattered and in the eerie silence of the neighborhood, it sounded like a deafening roar. Still, no one came to check us out.

Julianne and I stepped over the broken glass and inside the room, and immediately I knew that this was what they had turned into the prison. It reeked like old blood, unwashed bodies, and unclean toilets. Whatever had gone on in here was not pleasant.

Julianne and I split up, and I took a hallway to the left while she went to look in an office to the right. Only the little emergency lights lit the hallway that I was in, and when I tried the light switch, nothing came on.

Several doors seemed to open off the hallway. When I opened the first one of these, I suddenly understood how the Huntsman had turned it into his jail. Actually, jail might not have been the right word. He created his own personal hell, and as a demon, he ruled it.

Inside this door, the room had probably once been a room for doing crafts or quiet reading. It was small and had carpet on the floor, which was now soaked with questionable substances, all dried and crusty and stained dark. Makeshift bars had been placed between the ceiling and the floor, dividing the room in half.

And in the back half of this horrible room lay several bodies, all of them motionless. Even in the dim light, between the smell and the shine of slime on them, I knew they were in various stages of decay. No one I could help here.

I shut the door, trying to hold back the vomit which was creeping up my throat. In some ways, I was glad I had been taken and tortured previously. Because if I had walked in on that without having been through the hell that I had already gone through, I would have lost my lunch right then and there.

The next room also contained a motionless form, but this one didn’t look like it was decayed. I hurried over and tapped on the bars with my fingernails, trying to make enough noise to rouse whoever this poor soul was. They groaned and tried to push themselves to sit up but couldn’t.

“Oh, my God! You’re alive!” I gasped out.