“It’ll be safer for you if I lead them away from Anwyn.”
“No!” she repeated, and tugged on the headrest in an annoying way. “You have to come to Anwyn, too.”
“The police aren’t after me. I’m sure they don’t know who’s driving this car.”
“It’s not the police you need protecting from, Gwen,” Mom Two added. “It’s the woman in the red suit.”
“That’s right! She’s looking for you. And you know what that means!” Mom said, tugging on the headrest.
“No, I don’t, because neither of you would give me a good explanation of just who this mysterious woman is, or why she is after me.”
“It’s better if you don’t know,” Mom Two said with a knowing look.
“You don’t know who she is, do you?” I asked with sudden insight.
“I don’t know her name, but that doesn’t mean I can’t sense danger when it’s near. There.” She pointed, and for a second I was confused as to whether she was pointing out something dangerous. “That’s the entrance to the Krispy Kreme.”
I glanced behind me. The security car was close, but not so close that the occupant could physically grab us. Two police cars were heading straight for us, however. I didn’t have the time to argue, so I simply yelled, “Hold on, everyone!” and slammed on the brakes.
The tires squealed in a satisfyingly dramatic fashion as we slid to a stop right in front of the doors. I flung myself out of the car and yanked open the door behind me, running around the car to help Mom Two get old Mrs. Vanilla out.
The security guard hit his horn and slammed on his brakes, but he was too late. Mom Two and I more or less carried Mrs. Vanilla into the doughnut shop at a full run, my mother holding the door open for us.
“Where is it?” I asked as soon as we were inside, frantically scanning the interior. A couple of people sat in brightly colored booths, while behind a long glass counter an employee stood frozen in surprise, a pot of coffee in his hand.
“I’m not sure exactly,” my mother started to say, but Mrs. Vanilla began squeaking loudly and kicking her legs. We set her down and she bolted, moving amazingly fast for an old lady. Around the counter filled with doughnuts she dashed, and into the back area.
We didn’t wait. We ran after her, the electronic
Mrs. Vanilla scurried past the doughnut-making equipment, heading straight for a door to what must be a storage room. I prayed to every deity I could think of that it was, because if it wasn’t, we were going to be in a serious world of hurt.
Mom Two threw open the door and without a look back, dashed inside, followed by Mrs. Vanilla and my mother. I hesitated for a second. The security guard appeared behind me.
“I so hope I don’t see you in a few seconds,” I told him, then turned on my heel and leaped through the open doorway into the storage room.
Only it wasn’t a storage room.
I fell with a loud
The stars sparkled overhead, like so many glittering diamonds scattered on an indigo cloth. They looked so close, I wanted to reach up and touch them, to let their cold, brilliant light cleanse me of all impurities.
I sat up and spat out the bit of grass, half a daisy, and a very surprised potato bug. I looked around. Although the moon was high in the sky, a quarter moon that was as bright as a full moon, closer to earth a reddish haze hung over the land, like smoke from an odd sort of fire.
Directly in front of me were the three shapes of my two mothers and Mrs. Vanilla, the last of whom was being supported by the former.
“You guys are OK?” I asked, getting up. “I guess I owe Mrs. Vanilla an apol—”
The words dried up on my tongue as Mom Two shifted, allowing me to see beyond her.
A semicircle of men in plate-and-mail armor stood looking at us, each of them holding a drawn sword.
“Oh, hell,” I said on an exhale of breath.
“Anwyn, not hell, I think,” Mom Two corrected.
As she spoke, the ranks of men swept aside like a human parting of the Red Sea. Through the opening strode a woman, tall, pale, and slender. She was clad in a black leather bodysuit and had daggers strapped to either hip. Her eyes were a dark shade of green, and she had long black hair with green extensions that matched her eyes.
She looked like she belonged on the set of a martial arts movie. “Who are you?” she demanded as she approached, making an impatient gesture toward us.
I pushed my way in front of my mothers. I wasn’t abnormally courageous, but I had no intention of letting someone who looked like she could kick Jackie Chan’s ass get pushy with my moms.
“My name is Gwen. These are my mothers. The old woman is Mrs. Vanilla. Who are you?”
“Holly,” she snapped, her gaze raking us all over for the count of three. She turned, and with an imperious wave of her hand at the nearest guy in armor, added, “Arrest them. They’re spies.”
“What?” I shrieked as the men moved in. “Wait, we’re not spies! This is Anwyn, right? The afterlife? The happy bunnies and sheep and lovely rolling green hills place?”
Two men grabbed each of my arms and more or less frog-marched me toward an array of sharp black silhouettes. I looked over my shoulder to see my mothers being escorted as well, but they didn’t appear to be in distress.
“You all right?” I asked my mother, who was immediately behind me.
“Of course. You were the only one who fell coming through the entrance.”
“No talking,” the man on my left arm said, his voice gruff, if muffled, behind his steel helmet.
I bit back the words I wanted to say to him, instead focusing my attention on where we were being led. The black shapes resolved themselves into tents, of all things. Small fires dotted what could only be called an encampment, with at least a hundred (and probably more) tents of differing sizes arranged in orderly concentric rings, with larger tents in the center and the smallest on the outer ring. There were a number of dogs roaming around, all of which appeared to be of the same breed: that of a medium-sized hound that looked like a cross between a beagle and a greyhound.
A few men and women were present as we moved through the camp, some of them wearing armor like the guards, others in what I thought of as Renaissance Faire clothing—lots of leather jerkins, cotton tunics, and leggings that were bound by thin leather cords. It had the feel of a medieval military camp, which just confused the dickens out of me.
“What is a military camp, a
“Anwyn is the place of legends. Why shouldn’t there be a medieval army here?” I heard Mom Two say before she was told to be quiet. My own guards squeezed my arms in warning as we continued to trek through the tents. A small army of dogs fell into place at our heels.
In the center of the camp was a massive tent, at least three times the size of the next-largest one and flying a couple of fancy banners. I couldn’t make out what was on the banners when we were marched past the big tent, but it definitely looked like the prime accommodation.
It was not, needless to say, our destination. The guards—they couldn’t be anything but soldiers, given the armor and the way they obeyed the woman named Holly—stopped in front of a silver tent.
My hopes of a structure from which we could make an easy escape were dashed when the tent flap was pulled aside to reveal two tall iron-barred cages. They weren’t small—the two of them filled the entire tent—but they were very much a prison.
“Right. I am not going in that,” I said as one of my guards released my arm in order to open the door to one of the cages. It was about seven feet tall, and probably a good twenty feet wide, containing what looked like a couple of camping beds, two wooden chairs, and a small table. “I am not a spy, no matter what stabby girl says. I refuse to be caged like an animal.”
“Enter,” the guard said, flipping up his visor to give me a good glare.
