Book II: These Three Remain

Chapter 1: The Forest and the Ax

I looked up.

I was in my pine forest. My head was hurting badly, but the pain came from far away, almost as if my head were in a different place altogether and sending updates via text message. It was hard to think. For a long moment I just took it in: the smell of the pine, the feel of the soft needles under me, and the soothing sounds of the birds and the insects. "Adrian," I thought to myself, through the fog of pain and confusion. "He'll be here soon. He'll heal me. He'll make it so I can think again."

But there was no Adrian. After a while, I tried to sit up and found that the atmosphere was thick, the way it always was in a dream when Adrian wasn't there. I realized that this wasn't a spirit dream, exactly. This was … whatever it was that I did.

Why was I here, in our forest? My head hurt. My heart hurt. Something was really wrong. Where was Adrian? Why wasn't he here with me? I hated trying to dreamwalk without him. And where was my body? I couldn't remember.

"One of these trees…" I muttered out loud, and almost jumped at the sound of my own voice. But in some ways, speaking aloud had made me feel more in control of myself, so I did it again. "One of these trees is the right tree. The tree that will take me to him."

That made sense to me, and I began crawling across the forest floor, looking for the right tree, the tree that had a door in it that led to Adrian. I moved slowly, painfully, through the thick dream air. As I crawled, bits and pieces of memory came back to me. Adrian. Last night. We had made love. It had been... I felt a smile come to my face, even now, here, in this confusing, painful moment. It had been perfect. And he had said he loved me. He was mine. But then... we had fought. Why? Why would I fight with my Adrian? The memory wouldn't come. It wasn't important. I had to get to him. That was why I had come to the forest, after all – to get to Adrian. I knew that with certainty, now. I tried to relax my mind, hoping that the memories would come back with more time. It was just that my head hurt so badly.

I looked down at myself as I continued to crawl and saw that I was wearing Adrian's sweater, which reminded me of something, something sad. His scent, that mixture of cologne, shampoo, and just him, came through strongly from the soft fabric, and that brought me comfort. Maybe I should just wake up and find him in the real world, I thought. For a moment I tried to wake up, but I couldn't remember how to do that. The forest seemed to be the entire world to me right now. I began my painful progress across the pine needles again.

After what seemed like an eternity of crawling, I reached a wide tree that seemed familiar. I pulled myself into a standing position in front of it and then leaned my ear against it, listening. I heard… nothing. No, wait, I told myself. Be patient. That wasn't nothing. That was the sound of the ocean, faint, like a suggestion, like watching a TV on mute and imagining the sound. I listened more closely. I knew that sound; it was Adrian's white-noise generator, the one he listened to when he was trying to sleep. Yes, this was the right tree, but there was no door. I felt around the edges, feeling for hinges, a smooth spot, anything. But there was nothing. It was just a tree.

I sank to my knees. I wanted to cry. But I had to get to Adrian. There was a good reason. Something was making me angry. Something was making my head hurt so badly. Something was scaring me.

A whisper of truth crept through me, looking for someone to understand it. That someone, I realized confusedly, was me. Then it was like suddenly understanding the lyrics to a song you've heard a hundred times. I knew.

"They came for me," I whispered out loud.

Suddenly, anger flared up inside of me, a fiery rage, stronger than anything else I'd felt in recent memory. I had a life that I loved now, a real one, and if they thought they were going to take it, well, they had another think coming. That would not stand. "The fuckers," I whispered, and almost jumped at the sound of the word. It was the first time in my life I had uttered a swear like that. It felt good, though, in a savage way. I said it again, much more loudly. "The fuckers!"

Adrian. I had to get to him. I had to tell him what had happened. He could get help to me. I just had to get through this tree, door or no door. How can you go through a tree when there's no door? "That sounds like the beginning of a riddle," I muttered to myself. "When is a door not a door?" Then I thought of the best way to get through a tree, and smiled as I closed my eyes to concentrate.

When I opened my eyes again, there was an ax in my hand. I was going to go through this tree, no matter what it took. I held the ax high over one shoulder and, remembering what Eddie had taught me about swinging a stick many months ago, I began hacking at the tree. "Sorry, tree," I muttered, as I swung the ax. "You're a beautiful specimen of Pinus ponderosa, but I have to get somewhere."

After I got in a few good hacks, I could see a faint coming through the cracks in the bark. I reached my fingers into the crack and began to pull at the sides, like I was trying to open an elevator door that was stuck. The tree gave a little, and I pulled harder. The sound of his white-noise machine got much louder. I shouted Adrian's name, aiming my voice through the crack, and pulled one more time. Nothing happened.

I concentrated as hard as I could, trying to envision the crack widening. When I looked up it had gotten an inch or two wider. This had been so much easier before, when my head didn't hurt so much, when I had been able to think. I was becoming more and more certain that those goons had given me a concussion. It was probably a pretty bad one, to judge from the pain and confusion I was experiencing. I waited another minute or two, drawing my strength together, then pulled one more time. The tree gave another inch or two, enough for me to stick my face into it a bit. I called Adrian's name through the crack again.

"Sage?" I heard Adrian's voice, and then saw him, running up to the crack in the tree. He reached out his hand to me through the crack and I grabbed it gratefully. The second our hands met, the tree opened wide enough for Adrian to pull me through. I sort of fell into his arms and he held me to him. "Sweetheart," he whispered in my ear. "I've been trying to find you for hours. Where have you been?"

For a moment, I just leaned against him, happy to be in his arms, too exhausted to think clearly or answer his question. Finally, I asked, "Is this a dream or is it real?" I looked behind me at the hole that I had walked through. It had closed up a bit, but there was still a big gash in the wall with light streaming through it, and the faint sound of insects and birds could be heard.

"It's a dream," Adrian said, beginning to move us slowly over to his bed. "I was in my room getting dressed when I felt you calling for me. It was weird – it was almost like I could hear you shouting and banging on the wall. But I was so glad to hear from you that I didn't care what was going on. I slipped into the dream as fast as I could." We sat down on the edge of his bed, side by side. He took my hand.

"We had a fight last night," I said. "I wanted to apologize. I was on my way to your apartment just now. Are you mad? Can I apologize now or is it too late?"

"Don't worry about anything, Sage, "he said, his voice soothing. "It's fine. That doesn't matter right now. Where are you really? What's going on?"

"They got me," I said. I hated the note of defeat in my voice, but I was too tired and in too much pain to be brave right now. I leaned my head on Adrian's shoulder, and he put an arm around me. "I was on my way to you and they got me. Then I couldn't find you in the forest..."

"The guardians got you?"

"What?" I said, surprised. Why would the guardians get me? "No, it was the alchemists. I think. Well, some of them were alchemists, anyway."

"Are the alchemists working with the guardians?"

"What?" I said again. "I'm confused. I think I have a concussion. Nothing you're saying is making sense."

"Oh, sweetheart," he said, and pulled me tighter. I realized he was naked, and wondered how it had taken me this long to notice. I guess I really was concussed. He leaned back a little to look me over. "Yes, there's something wrong with you," he said, looking at something over my head, my aura probably. Then he put his hands on my head and I felt faint waves of warmth and coolness flow through me. He was trying to heal me, I realized, but it didn't seem to be working. "I can't do much from here," he said, thoughtfully, a few moments later. "This is a physical problem, and your body is too far away. Did they hit you on the head or something?"

"Yes," I said, remembering. "There were five of them. Jill and I put up quite a fight. Eddie would have been proud of us." I smiled a little, remembering some of the more satisfying punches I had landed. "But there were five of them, and they were a lot bigger than we were. Jill tried to use her magic, but the water was too far away—"

"They have Jailbait, too?" Adrian interrupted. "Is that where she is?"

"Yes," I said. "I didn't tell you? They have both of us."

"Where are you now?"

"I don't know. They knocked me out in the parking lot. I'd have to guess that we're in a car at the moment, but for all I know, we already arrive at our destination. Or maybe we've been separated by now. Can the guardians come rescue me, do you think? I know I'm not Moroi but something tells me this isn't exactly alchemist business..."

"Rescue you? Sage, they'll probably shoot you on sight."

"I'm so confused," I said again. "I hate having a concussion." I wrinkled my nose. "It's not good to be asleep with a concussion, right? I should try to wake up. But I don't know how to. I could barely get out of the forest. I just knew I had to find you..."

"Hmm," Adrian said. He thought for a moment, stroking my face and looking at my aura. "Well," he said then, "I do have one idea. Let's work together on this. I'll try to heal you, and while I do, you can try to sort of... amplify my power, like you do in spirit dreams."

"I can't do that now," I said, in a near-whimper. "My head hurts too much. And I can't do magic."

"You can do anything you want to do," Adrian said, fervently. "I've seen you. You do impossible things three or four times a day. It's practically the Sydney Sage motto. Come on. Look at me."

Our eyes met, and he gave me a look of trust and admiration so strong, it was almost like compulsion, convincing me that I could do what he was asking me to do. "You're the magic feather," I said, and my voice seemed to come from miles away. I took his hands, and when the healing energy came toward me again, I tried to "tune in" to Adrian's power. I thought about my own body, wherever it was, and tried to use my dream body as a bridge between his power and my real body. It seemed to help, since after a minute or so, my confused thoughts began to clear, and the pain in my head lessened significantly.

"That was so weird," I said. "I felt like a power wire."

"Do you feel better?"

"Much." I wondered if somewhere, my captors were watching bruises disappear and wounds close. I hoped they were. I hoped it scared them.

Adrian kissed my forehead. "I wish we had time to just cuddle up in bed and let you heal," he said. "But we don't really have time. We have to find out where you really are and rescue you."

I agreed, then asked, "What did you mean when you said that the guardians would shoot me?"

He sighed. "They think you kidnapped Jailbait."

"What?"

"I know," Adrian said. "It made no sense to me either. Look, tell me your version of the story. Then I'll tell you what I know from my end, and we'll try to figure out what's going on."

"Ok," I said. It only took a minute or two to explain what had happened to me, and to Jill, since the last time I had seen him. Adrian took it all in, quietly. I saw his hands ball up into fists when I described the attack in the parking lot, and that surprised me a little, since Adrian was not a violent guy. When I was done talking, he paused for a moment, as if collecting his thoughts. I looked over at the wall. The gash I had left when I had come through the tree was still there, and I felt like from time to time I could still catch a whiff of pine needles and hear a strain of crickets and birds.

"Where was Castile in all of this?" Adrian asked, when he spoke again. "What did Jailbait say?"

I thought back. "She says they were kissing in her room pretty late," I said. "Then he ran off. I don't know what he did after that. Why do you ask?"

"Because there's something weird going on with him," Adrian answered.

"Tell me the story from the beginning," I said, then added, "please."

"Ok," Adrian said, a slight quirk of a smile on his face. "After you left, I lay back down, but I couldn't sleep, even with my white-noise generator. I was way too worked up."

"I'm sorry," I said, embarrassed.

"Doesn't matter now," Adrian said, a little brusquely. "Anyway. At about 7 or so I guess, I sent you a text, asking you to just text me that you had gotten home safe. And then I called you at 8 or so, but you didn't answer. I knew that you were angry, but I still thought you'd answer the phone, even to just tell me to fuck off or something. And then at 8:30 or so, I got a weird text from Castile. It said, 'Sorry I failed you and everyone else.' Soooo... that was weird."

"Sorry he failed us?" I repeated, feeling almost as confused as I had been when I was concussed.

"Yeah, weird, huh?" Adrian said. "So, I said to myself, 'Self,' I said, 'something has gone very, very wrong.' And then, it got worse. Two guardians and two alchemists came to my apartment at about nine. They wanted to know where you were, but they wouldn't tell me why. And then, funny thing – for some reason, they got the impression that I was completely hungover and that there were two Moroi girls in my bedroom. " He grinned at me. I could see his fangs a little when he smiled like that. It was sort of cute. "They soon determined that I had no idea where you were and that, furthermore, I didn't really care. And then for some reason, they got really chatty and told me everything that had been going on."

"I wonder why," I said, smiling.

"Can't begin to guess, myself," he said. "Apparently, according to my oddly chatty new friends, little Jailbait wasn't in her bed this morning, and the guardians and the alchemists got an anonymous phone tip that you were in on her disappearance – that you sold her out to anti-royalists for a massive cash payout."

I was stunned. "What? Why would anyone believe that? I'm not that kind of person. Anyone who knows me knows that."

"It wasn't just the tip," Adrian said, glumly. "Castile is confirming it."

"Eddie?" I asked, incredulous.

"He isn't making any sense," Adrian said. "The guardians are questioning him over in Los Angeles. Apparently, he's saying that a band of goons took her right from him this morning, and that you left with them, at about 6:30 in the morning. He says he tried to fight them off, but that they got away, with your help."

"Is he hurt?" I pictured him bleeding somewhere in an emergency room, being questioned from his hospital bed.

"Well," Adrian said, "apparently, he shows signs of having been in a fight – he has a split lip and a few bruises – but he's not hurt that badly. He was able to call the guardians and tell them that Jill had been taken, and they came all the faster because they had already been tipped off that something was going down."

Something about all of that struck me as odd, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I decided to think more about it later. "Interesting that Eddie said it happened at 6:30," I said, slowly. "That's about the time that we were actually taken. Eddie wasn't anywhere in sight. I mean, not that we noticed." I paused. "Wait, what time is it now?"

"It's about 11," Adrian said.

"11 in the morning or..."

"Morning, don't worry, Sage." He squeezed me. "I've been listening for you for hours. I couldn't find you anywhere, though after a while I began to sense that you were asleep somewhere, just out of reach."

"So I've been out cold for almost five hours," I said. "I guess you couldn't reach me because of the concussion." I wondered how long I had been in the forest, inching along the pine needles. Seconds? Hours? Then a thought struck me, distracting me a little. "Where's Angeline?"

Adrian sighed heavily. "Good question. She was in her room this morning, asleep, when the guardians went checking for Jill. This was after Castile had called them telling them that Jill had been taken. Angeline swears that she didn't see or hear anything, and there's a small bottle that the alchemists recognized as a sleeping potion on her bedside table. So the theory is that you gave Angeline a potion to make her sleep" – here I let out an aggrieved snort – "and then lured Jailbait out, either by force or using alchemist magic..."

"Technology," I corrected, automatically.

"Alchemist 'technology' then," Adrian said, using air-quotes. "And then you took Jailbait to your... posse, or whatever... and then ran into Eddie I guess, and had a fight or something, and then ran off, all squealing tires and evil laughter, into the rising sun, with poor Jailbait as your captive."

I mulled that over. If I was being honest with myself, I guess that as the story went, it made a certain amount of sense. Or at the very least, I could see how the story would have made sense to a group of Moroi who didn't know me and a group of alchemists who didn't trust me. "Have you talked to Eddie or Angeline?" I asked.

"Just Angeline," Adrian said. "She called me, actually. She asked if I was ok. I told her I was fine and asked her what she knew about Jill and you being gone. She didn't say much, just asked again if I was ok, and said that she had heard about the tip. I thought that was weird, because the only reason I knew anything about the tip is that I had made those extremely chatty friends." We exchanged looks, and then Adrian went on. "She seemed worried that the alchemists or guardians would be giving me trouble. She didn't count on me to have my own self-defense system in place."

I smiled and kissed his cheek, and then we sat in silence for a moment. "So let's run this all down," I said after I had thought a little. "My body is probably in a car somewhere being driven somewhere. Jill is being taken somewhere too. Someone called the alchemists to say that I'm the one who masterminded all of this, and for some reason, Eddie is confirming that tip. So I'm persona non grata to the guardians at this point, I guess. Or worse. I'm..."

"Undesirable Number One," Adrian supplied. "For sure."

"Meanwhile," I said, "Eddie's unreachable, in all meanings of the word, and Angeline is..."

"Possibly the source of the tip," Adrian said, through gritted teeth.

"At the very least, she's hardly a fan of either me or Jill," I said, but I thought that Adrian could very well be right. "The jerks who have us captive have a five hour head start. And there's no one you can turn to for help."

"Rose will help if she can," Adrian said. "She's your friend."

"But she's on the other side of the country," I said. "And well, if Eddie's had his memories modified - and it looks like he has - then maybe Rose has as well."

"Oh," Adrian said, thoughtfully. "Yeah. Things do look a bit dire at the moment. We're practically friendless, you're captive, we have few resources, and we don't know where you are. But." He grinned at me. "I am not giving up hope. I am going to find you, Sydney. There is nowhere on this planet that they can hide you from me for long. I will do whatever it takes to get you back. These assholes won't know what hit them." He kissed me then, briefly, with an intensity that threatened to take over both our senses, but we both backed off before it went too far. "The thing I'm wondering is," Adrian added, slightly out of breath, "who are these guys? Are they the evil reprogramming police you've been worried about?"

"Well," I said, "I don't think they're actually alchemists, or at least, not active with the organization. For one thing, if the alchemists took us, why would they be questioning you as to my whereabouts? Wouldn't they know?"

"Maybe they're just trying to play along, make the story look plausible? Cooperate with the guardians, when they know all along where you are?"

"Maybe," I said. "It's possible. But that still wouldn't explain why some of the guys who took me have lily tattoos and some don't. Alchemists are a secretive group. They don't exactly cooperate with non-alchemists. Plus, their tattoos..." I added, thinking out loud.

"What about them?"

"They were really faded. I get mine touched up once a year. These guys looked like they hadn't had theirs touched up for at least two years."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know for sure," I said. "It suggests that they left the organization, but doesn't prove it. Still, I think it's important."

We sat there for a while longer, but couldn't think of anything else to add to these thoughts.

"Well," Adrian said after a few moments. "The most important thing is for us to try to figure out where you are. We can worry about who took you later, after we get you back."

"True," I said. "I guess I should go wake up."

"Me too," Adrian said. "I'll try to think of something while you scout around and see what's going on with your body, and then we can meet up again in a short while."

"Sounds like a plan," I said.

I must have sounded pretty miserable because Adrian gave me a hug and said in my ear, "Don't be afraid. Like I said, they can't hide me from you."

"Ok," I said. "I guess... I better go, then." I looked around at Adrian's bedroom. I tried to ignore the gash in the wall and to instead focus on the familiar things that I loved: the paintings in the corners, his black silk sheets, a few empty containers of ice cream. And most of all, Adrian himself. Then I braced myself to do what I had to do.

I started to focus my energy on waking up but Adrian pulled me to him suddenly and squeezed me tight. "God, I don't want to let you go," he said. "I know we have to wake up and stuff, but oh, Sydney." He pressed kisses all over my face, and I closed my eyes and took it all in, as if I could maybe save these kisses for later if I just concentrated hard enough. When I looked at him again, I saw tears in his green eyes. He was scared, I realized. I was, too. "I love you," he said.

I opened my mouth, meaning to say the words that were bouncing around in my head, but I still couldn't. Even now? the Traitor opined, from deep inside my brain. What is wrong with you? "I don't know," I thought back at myself. "I know how I feel about him. But still..." But still. All I could do was kiss him again and whisper, "Oh, my Adrian."

He smiled at me, wanly. "Go wake up, sweetheart. Check in with me when you can. I'll keep 'listening' for you. But for now I have to let you wake up."

"Don't let anyone modify your memories," I said, and the fear came through in my voice.

"Impossible," Adrian said. "I'm kind of a big deal, you know."

"Ok," I said. I took a deep breath, kissed him one more time, and closed my eyes.

Then I woke up.