Another helicopter arrived, this one carrying a massive water bucket, flying directly over Fables before dumping the entire contents in a waterfall. The fire hissed and sizzled, white smoke blooming toward the sky in a mushroom cloud.
The noise of their rotor blades shredded any and all serenity of the valley.
Wind reached us, tearing up autumn leaves in a vortex, making it hard to hear.
“You can’t just vanish, Jareth,” Kas growled, stepping out of his brother’s embrace. “You only just found me. We have things to discuss. Things I need to—”
“Too bad. I’m rather busy right now. Places to go. Throats to slit.” Jareth gave us both a mocking salute and a chilling smile. “Happy lives, guys. Don’t get caught and trafficked again, please. I’ll be busy for a while so don’t expect a quick rescue.”
“Wait—” Kas held up his hand.
“See ya round.” Jareth grinned, backing up as the first helicopter descended, its spotlight angled on us, blinding and pinning us to the spot.
Kas shielded his eyes, his attention on Jareth as he gave us one last wave, threw a one-finger salute at the helicopter as its skids touched the grass, and then he was gone.
Vanishing into the web of trees as if he never existed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I LEARNED SOMETHING NEW about myself as I sat in the back of a noisy helicopter, flying above trees that’d been my protectors and prison guards for most of my life.
I’d read about these machines. Many heroes in the fictional thrillers at Fables enlisted the aid of such transport at some point in their tales, but to actually fly in one myself? To feel the drop in my gut as we hit air pockets and the rattle of power keeping us airborne—it all threatened to knock me out.
Everything had happened so fast.
Everything had changed.
All of it.
My body fought against it.
My mind threatened to snap because of it.
I was lost at how everything had happened so quickly.
Fuck, this was past change and had gone straight into the terrifying unknown.
This was noisy and overwhelming, and I didn’t think I could cope.
My instincts went into survival mode.
I needed everything to slow the fuck down.
I needed a moment to breathe, for Christ’s sake.
Raking a hand through my tangled, sooty hair, I did my best to stay human and not resort to the animal I’d been. I tried to stay calm for Gem. If I let go and slaughtered everyone in this flying machine, I doubted she’d look at me with love anymore.
More like stark fear and bone-chilling disgust.
Sucking in another breath that tasted of metal and gasoline, I forced the whiteness back from my gaze, commanded my heart to stop trying to sledgehammer its way out of my chest, and locked my muscles so I stayed sitting like a trustworthy person.
It cost everything I had to act as if being hauled from the valley, thrown into a small cylinder with countless humans, and flown at warp speed away from the only home I knew was perfectly normal to a man like me.
A man who hadn’t spoken for over a decade before Gem arrived.
An ex-slave who watched these new men and women for any sign that they were about to tie me up, cut me, rape me, and leave my blood drying from their fun.
My nostrils flared as I glanced at Gem, my head throbbing.
She caught my gaze, her hair wild and ash smeared on her cheeks. Her hazel eyes looked black in the darkness of the cabin, wide and worried, her uncertainty merging with mine.
What was she uncertain about?
Hadn’t she wanted this?
Didn’t she want to be found? To go home to her family? To take me with her?
Christ.
I bent forward, digging both thumbs into my eye sockets as the helicopter banked and straightened out. Her hand landed between my shoulder blades, rubbing gently. Her touch both amplified my need to run away but also soothed the razor-sharp edges of my jumpy temper.
I sucked in a breath.
I let it out slowly.
I allowed life to drag me forward even while I howled inside to return to the valley.
How had this happened?
For fuck’s sake, one moment I’d been having sex with Gemma.
The next, I’d been fighting a fire that Jareth started.
Then I was eating a cookie, watching my home burn, all while Jareth admitted to mass murder and a hunting expedition that would take him years to accomplish.
And now...fuck, now I fought against another wave of white blankness as it teased my vision, whispering that all of this could be deleted. I could let go and pass out and forget.
I could forget and wake up fresh without the nightmares of today.
I groaned under my breath.
But that wasn’t true.
I’d forget, but that would be the true nightmare, not this. If I forgot everything that’d happened—forgot that I was able to touch myself, sleep with Gemma and truly be with her, and that Jareth was alive and well—that would haunt me.