Beyond the Iron Gate (The Faery Meadow Book 1)

The mayor of Hegley Hallow moved like a phantom in the night. He wore a tight fitted black suit with a matching trench coat. His followers roamed around him in a line as they trudged over hill after hill. The group marched over newly squashed rotten pumpkins; their seedy, mushy innards spilled onto the dead hay below.

A pungent odor, from the decaying mass of pumpkin around them, filled the air. The endless rows of the mashed vegetable was a despicable sight. They spread over hill after hill in vast quantities -- as far as the mayor could see.

He knew it wasn’t the doing of his own people.

It was the demon who evaded him time after time. Two of his pointed hooded followers standing directly behind him were holding the landscape portrait they used to track the elusive creature wandering about his land and destroying his people’s crops.

The mayor turned around and strode over to it seeing the shadow’s form fade away in a row of trees. The tip of his bony finger stayed on the shadow’s form until it completely disappeared.

When it did entirely vanish from the surface of the painting, he recoiled his finger into his fist and stepped backward biting into the flesh of his bottom lip until it drew blood. He turned his gaze to the very horizon the demon did indeed disappear somewhere in. The mayor kicked the slop of mashed pumpkin beneath his feet with a ferocious snarl of defeat. He pulled up his own hood concealing his face in shadow as his body quadrupled in size.

It stretched over the hill and kept growing until it expanded over his town nestled at the foot of the hill they stood upon shrouding the little town in darkness as the sky turned to black eating up the light of the ever-present crescent moon that hung above them.

One way or another he knew the demon and he would meet. He was counting on the girl to expose the demons and deliver them both to him. He thought she would surely die soon venturing around with Colt and once she arrived in his world he was betting on the other demon coming out of hiding too.

Nevertheless, he refused to give up his search and turned his back to his town below. He proceeded to enter the Hallowed Woods on the other side of the hill in hopes of combing through the land and possibly finding the demon if it just so happened to appear again.

***

Lorcan flew down right outside his childhood home where his brother waited.

“What happened to your mate?” Brayden asked, but he already had a good guess seeing the witch land beside him on the front porch.

“She ran away.”

“Ran away? Yeah right.”

Silvia propped up her broom against the wall of the house. Lorcan wasn’t in tune with portal dealings, but he knew her and her sisters were. She was mentored by Gurnava in the dealings of craft, but she specialized in portal tracing.

Silvia was the one who had alerted the Aeringdal court about a demon’s miraculous crossing into their world. It had come through one of Gurnava’s portals that got stolen months ago. The portal ended up back in the witch’s hand when she found it laying out in the woods on the outskirts of Aeringdal.

“Who are you?” Brayden asked the dark-haired witch.

She eyed him with quick calculation. “Silvia.”

Brayden recognized her name. However, he was not aware Silvia was the first to know word from Gurnava that a witch had stolen one of her portals and messed around with forbidden craft to summon a demon.

Perhaps it was a younger witch or group of witches fooling around. The only thing left behind was their pointed boots a few feet away from the portal laying on the ground. It was a relief to the witch community the portal was obtained, but another matter entirely that a demon escaped hell through it and entered their world. Silvia had confessed these things to Lorcan, but pretty much the whole faery city was aware of the situation already and on high alert.

One of the jobs of the royal blooded fae was to assist in transferring separated family members between the human realm and his own. Lorcan had done it several times before, but never was he asked to bring an older teenager over. His job specifically in retrieving these faery children was known as a “deliverer” because that was pretty much the extent of his job. He wasn’t supposed to make things personal between the families or children he dealt with when reuniting them in the faery realm.

It made him wonder what exactly Elaine’s family was trying to hide or leave behind in the human world besides Elaine. Usually, when the fae like him settled in the human realm they only did so until they gave birth to a child. He was guessing her parents were young when they had her, and like many others, were not ready to care for her.

It wasn’t an issue for his kind because they could only transform and grow in his world. It was only natural he be around when she turned. He couldn’t help being intrigued by such an event when her parents should have been there to help her through it and not him.

Lorcan had tried talking to Elaine’s true parents in Hunrel about it before he went to seek her out for them. However, they refused to provide an explanation for their delay in asking their daughter to be brought to them. Now he knew why; she was the oldest faery he ever attempted to deliver back to the faery realm. He would finish the job because it was his duty and for many other reasons too. Including the new sense of...protectiveness he felt for her.

He just couldn’t help it and her parents should have known better than to send him to get her without telling him her age. Mating her to him was an accident. When he saw Elaine in her room he hadn’t really thought about it before blowing his faery dust onto her face. She wasn’t cooperating because she, of course, had no idea who or more importantly what he was.

Brayden frowned at Lorcan waiting for him to explain his new friend he brought to their house.

“I think the demon took her.” Lorcan finally admitted.

Brayden laughed in his brother’s face as Silvia raised her chin in agreement with Lorcan. Brayden eventually gathered they were serious though and became silent as Silvia filled in the blanks for him.

“Elaine’s parents had a picture of another child on the mantle of their fireplace. Of course, the image was taken in the human realm and we could make no sense of their identities -- they were babies in the photo. We could only see their heads in the picture so we don’t know if this other sibling of hers is a boy or girl or even alive,” Silvia explained.

“Well, we don’t even know if it was her sibling,” Lorcan added in.

Brayden scoffed. “So what are you trying to tell me? You think this random baby grew up and summoned a demon? Gurnava said witches were behind the demon’s entering of our world. Everyone in Aeringdal knows this already. What is there to worry about? She and the Aeringdal court will find it soon enough.”

“Those were my sisters that disappeared around the portal! They died,” Silvia snapped back.

Braydon’s stare hardened on her. He didn't desire to be reminded of her disturbing relation to the craft-users. He heard enough about how covens were run. The witch at heart was surely just another cold-blooded killer.

“Oh really? Then, I don’t suppose you know anything about this?”

“Listen, the other baby could be as old as Elaine and us. We need to talk with her parents about it when she returns. Maybe they’ll be ready to talk more then,” Lorcan cut in.

“What makes you think they had any part in this? I take it this is why you’re interested in tracking down Elaine now that she’s gotten some sense and left her forced relationship with my brother. You think they’re a witch, don’t you?” Brayden huffed and then continued, “You know what? Who cares about the photo anyway. It’s irrelevant. Thanks to your friend here, a demon of all things is going to destroy our realm. You better hope they find it fast and Elaine too.”

Lorcan was growing irritated at having to explain everything to his brother. He also didn’t like having to bring Silvia along, but she refused to depart claiming her other witch friends could help them track down the demon and Elaine quicker.

“Bray, just shut up. Silvia didn’t help summon it here. She traced it to another town five miles east of here and has been following it since. She could see it in one of the shops and we know it took Elaine from there,” Lorcan told him sternly.

A slow smile formed on Brayden's face. “See it? Hah! You know witches and how they feel about demons. Why would she be interested in helping find it?” he finished in a sarcastic tone while watching the subject at hand.

It was Lorcan’s turn to glare at Silvia.

Silvia spoke slowly ready to defend herself. It was true her kind dealt with darker things, but performing such an evil act of summoning a demon mortified her.

She was disappointed in her witchlings and felt cornered. “Her parents are hiding something about their family. We don’t know what, but it has to do with the picture,” Silvia began. Then she added in a whisper, “And Elaine. It could be why they appeared to want to forget about their daughter in the human realm. Something must have happened.”

“What do you mean 'something must have happened'?” Brayden asked sharply.

“I don’t know!” Silvia yelled, “But witches don’t usually speak of freeing demons from hell! They clearly were forced to. Not to mention, they died in the process! So does it matter if they intentionally did it or not? They’re gone.”

It scared her though because she was fairly certain this missing person was dealing with witches. Something in her knew they were still alive just like Elaine. Maybe they even grew up in the human realm and were in contact with her sisters who got involved in the incident.

“How did you get separated from her, Lorcan? I’m surprised. You’ve gotten sloppy with your work, but that was because you let your feelings get in the way of your job. She’s probably lost and scared. It wouldn’t have taken a demon to make her run from you. For all we know, the demon could have left our world already,” Brayden sighed.

Silvia stomped her foot speaking with a hiss, “No! Haven’t you been listening? We have the portal it used! We know what it looks like thanks to me and Gurnava. You faeries underestimate our capabilities!” She pulled out a small shard of glass from her cloak pocket and held it out in front of the faery men. “It’s a piece of glass chipped off from the portal. See! It has her!”

Brayden watched the small surface of the mirror growing unsettled, but he still wasn’t thinking it could be a demon. The dark haired man standing in the small room with Elaine that the mirror showed certainly did not look demonic. Although his eyes were white as demons were said to be. His hair was black though, but at the same time it could have been dyed to not look white.

He wasn’t so sure, but he realized his mistaken thinking. Elaine did appear to be with someone else and the odds she would have been able to afford the inn room they looked to be in were unlikely. She would have needed the help of someone else to get where she appeared to be. She seemed to look content though and not nearly as miserable as she did when he saw her with Lorcan not too long ago.

Silvia slid the mirror back into her cloak.

“So let’s say your witch friend here truly was keeping a watch on him through this mirror. How did the demon manage to steal her away without you at least knowing? Didn’t you watch it leave with her?”

“We don’t really know that yet. Demons are far more powerful than we are, Brayden. This is why the Aeringdal court is reaching out to the witch community right now,” Lorcan answered.

“Then what are you doing here? Go to them with the mirror or do they have the whole portal mirror now?”

Silvia crossed her arms wishing Brayden would just shut up. “Gurnava smashed it up and burned it just in case anyone else tried using it like a demon. You forget the portal works two-ways. I managed to confiscate the last bit of it. It’s our only hope. We can’t tell the court or they will just punish us for 'stealing' it. It’s up to us to find the demon now.”

“So, will you help us?” Lorcan asked with a stiff smile.

Brayden stepped back into his home. Lorcan suspected his mind was set the moment they landed on the porch. Lorcan thought he would have been useful to have around. He knew his brother was wary of witches and was normally busy making a living off of doing odd jobs for their people. He would neither want or have the time to help them.

“Well, looks like you’ve destroyed your relationship with your mate, stolen court property and are unlawfully working right under their nose. You better find them or you’ll lose not just your job, but your future. By the way, the guards already swung by here yesterday demanding I tell them where you were. You’re welcome to return here for a place to crash, but this is your problem Lorcan. Good luck fixing it,” Brayden replied harshly right before shutting the door in his brother’s face.