Katie's Hellion

What kind of mother let her five-year-old son carry on with death like he was a favorite uncle?

"…and this is your portal into the shadow world," Toby said proudly, indicating a blob of silver on one side of the drawing. "Do you see where it goes?"

"Elisia."

"Yes!" Toby squealed. "Where the fairies are!"

She was shaking, cold with fear on the inside and fevered skin clammy on the outside.

The death dealer touched a gloved finger to a blank spot on the construction paper, and an orchid sprung up, ethereal and hovering over the paper. Its colors rippled and changed before the flower bent and delicate wings spread apart, revealing a creature that was surely a fairy.

Toby squealed again and bounced to his feet, beginning a whirling dance. She thought she heard ethereal laughter as the fairy danced with him. The death dealer touched the paper again, and another orchid appeared, stretched, and morphed into a second fairy. Toby laughed and whirled.

Katie's vision blurred and grew dark. She heard herself scrape against the wall as she fell and was out before she hit the floor.

* * *

So far, he hadn't been forced to change shapes since Gabriel's visit. Rhyn tested the bonds of his cell again until a mage in a brown robe hurried down the hall to repair the damage. Sometimes he could see out into the hallway and the empty cell across from his; sometimes he couldn't.

Today, the cell across from his wasn't empty. A human-like creature sat in the corner making snorting sounds he assumed was weeping. He looked closely at the creature. It was from the healer's guild, one of the oldest guild's in the universe. By the tattooed bands wrapped around his arms --each one depicting a millennium --the creature was nearly as old as Andre, the eldest of Rhyn's brothers.

"Shapeshifter!" someone called from down the hall.

He watched the mage in brown scuttle away. "Yeah," Rhyn grunted.

"I'm bored. Entertain me," the male voice down the corridor said. "Can you shut that healer up by eating him?"

"Yeah," he replied.

The sobbing, slender creature tensed and covered his head, as if expecting an attack from above. Amused, Rhyn stopped pacing and sat, staring the small creature down. The healer quieted.

"Good enough," the creature down the hall, Jared, said with a loud sigh. "What shape are you now, beast?"

"The usual."

"Not much for talking, are you?"

The rest of the freaks collected by Sasha, Rhyn's half-brother who aligned himself with the Dark One, were quiet on the cell block. They normally were, and if they weren't, their screaming was muted by the magic of their cells. Rhyn stretched out on the ground of his cell to stare at the ceiling.