Waking Delilah was easier said than done. As much as my sister wanted to slap her awake for getting us all into this mess, we all figured that her mind was probably in a fairly delicate state after what she had gone through and waking her like that would do more harm than good. And yet, I was pissed with her too, but as much as I didn’t want to have to drag her along or something, I didn’t want to leave her behind while we all escaped either. Not even Delilah deserved what they did to her and what they were planning for all of us.

I was keenly aware that we probably didn’t have much time before someone in charge of this operation came to inspect their new ‘merchandise’ and every second that passed brought that possibility closer. So, I might have been a bit nervous and impatient as Mallory gently shook Delilah’s shoulder and tried to rouse her without possibly causing more trauma. “C’mon, Del, wake up,” she encouraged quietly.

After a moment, my blonde nemesis began to stir, frowning and closing her eyes tighter as if to ward off consciousness. Then she was suddenly wide awake, her body tense as she scurried away from Mallory’s gentle touch as if burned, and fled into the corner of the cell where she curled up in a ball, whimpering and trembling. Her voice was tremulous and cracked a bit as she murmured, “No, please… not again…”

We did not have time to play around with her fragile ego. As Mallory tried to move closer to try to get through to her, I didn’t have the patience to wait. “Delilah!” I snapped as I stood there glaring at her. “Snap the fuck out of it!”

I couldn’t be sure if it was my tone or her name, but she looked up. She looked scared shitless, broken, and a little confused from seeing me and Jess side by side, but she was awake and alert… perhaps too alert as her eyes darted around the small cell in terror. “C-crystal? Mallory?”

“Crystal, Jessica, and Mallory,” my sister corrected, stressing her name. “I’m here too, Bitch.”

“Of course, it’s us,” I added acidly. “Or did you forget that you planned this little party for us? It’s your own damn fault that you’re here too. I can’t believe that you were stupid enough to go to the fucking Chimera Syndicate!”

As I raised my voice, Delilah shrunk back into her corner, her eyes going wide with fear. “I… I… didn’t...”

“Didn’t what, Delilah? Think at all? Because that’s what it looks like, you selfish, conniving, bitch!” I told her as I tried to keep my tone low instead of screaming at her, much as I would have liked to. I couldn’t afford her going catatonic again, she needed her fire if we were going to get out of here. I was hoping that I could ignite it with our rivalry, because the scared little girl she was right now was only going to be dead weight. It worked, I could see a spark there from my words as she tensed up and her eyes narrowed, but she needed more, she still looked more terrified than angry.

“Maybe we should just leave her here with her new friends,” Jess pointed out. I knew she didn’t mean it though. My sister had caught on to what I was doing and was trying to goad her as well. “I mean, it is her fault we’re all in this situation. She’s worthless to us like this anyway.”

“N-not worthless,” Delilah mumbled, her hands shaking even as her back straightened and she glared at my sister, “I’m not!” Shit, that hit a nerve. I don’t know if it was something that those assholes who had raped and beaten her had instilled in her or if it was something that she struggled with before, but that fire was back. It might be a shadow of the fire she used to have, but it was there.

“Prove it,” I told her. “Get up, shut up, and let’s get the fuck out of here before those assholes come back. Or didn’t you notice that I got those stupid collars off us?”

Delilah’s hands went right to her bare throat and her eyes widened. “Y-you… how?”

“Trade secret, now do you want to get out of here or not?” She nodded in response to my question as she got shakily to her feet, so I added, “I propose a temporary truce. No loopholes from me and no backstabbing from you. We all work together to get the hell out of here, protect one another, and it ends when we’re all out of here and safe at our homes. Do you agree to these terms, Delilah?”

It seemed that her fresh trauma and fear of this place outweighed her caution and wariness about making deals with me again. She only thought about it for a moment before answering in a shaky voice, “I a-agree to the t-terms of this contract, Crystal.” She reached out to take my extended hand and we shook on it. Her hand was trembling as I took it but she didn’t let that fear and nervousness show on her face this time.

“Good,” I told her with a smile. “You and Mallory are up then. Let’s get through that door and start paying these assholes back for what they’ve done. Mallory, flame on.”

From the look in Deliliah’s eyes, she could really get behind some good, old-fashioned Fey vengeance right now. I almost felt sorry for any Chimera Syndicate thugs we might encounter on our way out. Almost.

“On it,” Mallory replied to me as she shifted into her natural, demonic-looking Efreeti form. It mostly looked like her usual human form but with crimson skin, a pair of curved black horns on her head, and bald. Well, she was bald until her head and back burst into flame, forming a fiery mane and wings.

Almost immediately, Mallory started turning up the heat on those flames until they were nearly white hot, causing Jess to shrink back a bit from the heat she was giving off. I followed suit, not wanting to give away my resistance to fire and heat to Delilah. Meanwhile, Delilah focused on those flames that her former bestie was pumping out and directed them at the steel door until it glowed red from the heat and finally there was a hole large enough for us to pass through from her assault.

With our exit made, I quickly gathered the ice that I had made earlier from our chains and worked on cooling off the still-glowing remnants of the door. Sadly, that meant that all my ice went up in smoke, or rather steam, to accomplish that. “We’ll need to hurry,” Jess suggested, “If there was anyone outside guarding that door, they probably noticed that.”

That was when I felt it, a strangeness in the wards that protected the building. They were becoming rapidly unstable as if someone was attacking them with something big. No, not just attacking them, those wards were being shredded, ripped apart spell by spell and layer by layer until there would finally be nothing left. It was like nails on a chalkboard to anyone who could sense magic half decently and I saw Delilah stop halfway through the remains of the door, wincing as she looked around in sudden concern and fear.

“W-what the hell is that?!” the Fire Mage asked in a panic as her eyes darted around.

I knew of maybe two people who might have the raw power and skill with Divine magic to do such a thing and that could only mean one thing. “The cavalry is here,” I told her with a manic grin. “I think these assholes have bigger things to worry about than this former door right now, what with their wards collapsing and guests arriving. So, who’s up for finding our rescuers and maybe getting some revenge on these jackasses on our way out?”

Delilah was the first to reply. “Nothing would make me happier,” she said, almost growling the words. That fire in her eyes was suddenly back in full force, but it was almost like looking at a wounded animal instead of the arrogant and vindictive girl I knew from school. Mallory and my sister looked concerned, and I couldn’t really blame them.

We all wanted some payback, but Delilah was hurting, and she wanted to hurt the people who did it. It was understandable, and I felt pity for her, even if this was something she brought upon herself. I didn’t feel pity for our kidnappers though. If Carmilla was here, they were all dead men already, whether they knew it or not. For their sake, they had better hope that the Night Princess got to them before Delilah did because at least Carmilla might make their deaths quick and relatively painless.

I was scared and very worried about Momma. At first, I didn’t know what was going on, only that everyone was angry, or as scared and worried as I was now. It all started when Nana Tiffani got a phone call before she and Nana Pandora went to open the club for the night. I had been with her on the couch working on schoolwork and we were finishing up when Nana Tiffani answered the phone, and then she turned white and nearly dropped it at whatever she was told.

That was when everything went crazy. Nana Tiffani called Dr. Diaz at work and said that something happened at Momma’s school and that Carmen and Melody were hurt. She and Nana Pandora had a hushed conversation and then decided to close the club for the night before Nana Pandora said she would get everyone upstairs so they could tell them what happened. Then Nana Tiffani made another phone call.

“Come on, Grundle, pick up,” she said as she tightly gripped her phone and paced back and forth. Then someone answered and she had a rushed conversation with them. “Grundle, we need your help… No, don’t worry about her. If you help us with this, everything will be forgiven, and I can guarantee you that Carmilla will drop her grudge over the Salamander incident… I need you to get here as soon as you can… Thanks, Grundle.”

A few minutes later, everyone who had been downstairs to open the club was back upstairs and looking as worried as Nana Tiffani, and that only worried me more. “Okay, the club is locked up tight and we’re all up here now, Tiff. Can you tell us what’s going on now?” Krysti, the nice Kitsune lady asked. “You never close the club without a very good reason, and it looks like you’re freaking out, and that’s making me freak out.”

“I got a call from Crystal’s and Carmen’s magic teacher, Elsa Norstrom. The girls were attacked as they were leaving St. Michelle’s,” Nana Tiffani responded, as she tightly gripped the phone in her hand. My heart clenched in my chest at those words. “Carmen and Melody are hurt and currently in the school infirmary. Elsa is doing everything she can for them…”

“Tiffani, what about Mallory and the twins?” Mallory’s mother asked, cutting her off.

“They’re missing,” Nana Tiffani replied, almost choking on the words. “Elsa believes they’ve been kidnapped. It was too organized to be Snatchers, she said they came prepared, so I’m worried it might be the Chimera Syndicate.”

“Fuck,” someone said in a hushed tone, but I wasn’t sure who.

The flames atop Mallory’s mother’s head flared violently as expressions of shock, horror and then fury briefly played out on her face. “What are we going to do? We can’t just abandon them!”

Her raw, hot anger was nowhere near as frightening as the aura of cold fury that radiated from Carmilla though. I almost wanted to run away and hide then and there, even though I knew it wasn’t directed at me. I had never seen anyone that frighteningly angry before, not even in my hazy memories of the vicious and nasty people who had raised me before I ran away and was eventually saved by Momma.

I could practically feel the temperature in the room drop as Carmilla said with a calm that belied the fury burning in her eyes, “They kidnapped our children. We are going to take them back, find the people that did it, and destroy them.”

“I’ve already contacted Grundle,” Nana Tiffani said, making Carmilla frown. “I know you’re still angry about the Salamander incident, ‘Milla, we were all angry at the time, but if anyone can find where the girls are being kept and get them out of there quickly and quietly, it’s Grundle.”

Mr. Grundle turned out to be a tiny man who looked kind of like a garden gnome with his beard and pointy hat, and he just walked out of one of the walls while everyone was discussing rescue plans. The plan was for him to make a magic tunnel (at least that was how Nana Pandora explained it to me) and sneak in Carmilla and some other people to help rescue Momma and the others and bring them home. Unfortunately, the plan didn’t work.

“What do you mean, ‘I can’t do it’, little man?” Carmilla snarled, making him flinch.

“I’ve tried making a back road to Crystal and Jessica, but there’s something blocking me,” he hurriedly explained while looking warily at the angry Vampire. “Wherever they are, the place must be protected with wards, powerful ones, and most likely including ones to specifically block extra-planar travel. I can’t tunnel to them and Crystal probably can’t teleport out either.”

Nobody was very happy with that news, and I was suddenly even more worried about Momma, Auntie Jess, and Mallory. I couldn’t lose Momma now, the very thought made tears sting my eyes and I suddenly couldn’t breathe. “Okay, plan B then,” Nana Tiffani said with a sigh before turning to look right at me. “Honey, Ashe said that you can probably track magic and people who use it. If we take you to where Crystal and the others disappeared, do you think you can track them?”

Everyone’s eyes were on me as I tried to calm down and make myself breathe properly again. I had never tried what they were talking about before, I was still getting used to the strange scents and tastes that were how I usually sensed magic. “I… ummm…” I began uncertainly once I could breathe again, unsure of what I should say, and even more unsure if I could even do what Nana Tiffani was asking.

This was for Momma though, the one who had taken me in and given me a body I didn’t hate and a life where I was happy for the first time. Momma needed me, so I had to at least try. There was one scent, one taste of magic, that I knew and had committed to memory, heart, and soul, and that was the one that I had sensed when I first awoke in this new body.

“I’ll do my best,” I finally said into the lengthening silence, “I would know Momma’s scent anywhere.”

“Grundle can you take Selina, Carmilla, Merry, and Anika to the school? Just tunnel to Carmen or Melody, we’ll need to bring them here anyway so Isabella can have a proper look at them, and they can rest comfortably. Then Selina can track Crystal from where the attack happened.”

“Yeah, that I should be able to handle,” the Gnome said with a nod.

After that, plans were quickly revised for the rescue mission. Aunt Merry, Carmilla, and Anika would escort me to keep me safe while I tracked Momma, and once we found the place where Momma and the others were being held, Aunt Merry would use Wind magic to let them know to send the rescue team and figure out a way to get past the wards. The kidnappers had to get past the wards themselves somehow, so there had to be a way that we could too.

Aunt Merry and Annika had left briefly and returned looking ready to start a small war. Aunt Merry had a pair of guns, swords, a knife handle sticking out of each boot, and even a bow and arrows. Annika had a much bigger bow and arrows and a very large sword as well. If it wasn’t for Carmilla carrying no weapons whatsoever, I would have felt underdressed as well as nervous.

Everyone wanted to have a hand in rescuing Momma and the others, but Nana Pandora quickly pointed out that not everyone was a fighter or had abilities or magic that would be helpful, and we didn’t want any more of us in danger than necessary. Many of those who could fight would already be accompanying me. Mallory’s mother insisted on coming for the rescue, but Mr. Grundle made his magical tunnel thing before I heard more than that and soon, we were traveling through a garden-like place along a path that took us to a place that looked like a doctor’s office or something.

Carmen was lying on a bed, with her head wrapped in bandages and her left arm in a sling while a blonde lady with big, white, feathery wings was standing looking over another bed that was hidden partially behind a curtain with her back turned to us. At least her back was turned until we stepped into the room, and the winged lady turned around suddenly, looking ready for a fight. Aunt Merry quickly explained, “We’re family, Tiffani Cummings sent us. How are the girls?”

The winged lady relaxed and nodded. “I’m Elsa Norstrom. Carmen should be fine with some rest. A mild concussion and dislocated shoulder seem to be the worst of it. She should be fine in a couple of days with the healing spells I used on her. She was groggy but awake when she was found but wasn’t able to tell me much about the attack. It happened too fast; these people were organized and prepared.”

“And Melody?” Carmilla asked, her voice softening in concern.

“Like I said, these people were prepared, specifically for Melody,” the angel woman said with a frown. “She was shot four times with bullets steeped in Divine magic, Demon-hunter rounds. One barely missed her heart, but none of the others were in critical locations. If she was a full Demon and only aligned to Death, she would probably be dead right now. I had to pull the bullets out by latching onto the spells themselves, but she’d lost quite a bit of blood, and any healing spells I tried on her would have only caused her further harm. Thankfully, it looks like her regeneration has started kicking in with those bullets gone, so she should heal up on her own.”

Aunt Merry’s frown deepened at that news. “If they were that prepared, someone must have given them that information, and this kind of organization makes me even more certain that the Chimera Syndicate is involved somehow.”

“Well, you might want to check out the bodies at the crime scene then, if the PDA investigators will let you. The attack happened on the access road, near the end, just before the street. Melody didn’t go down without a fight, she took three of their attackers down. And if you’re going after them, then I want in. These people attacked my students.”

“We’re putting together a rescue team,” Annika told her grimly “If you want to help, I doubt that Tiff and Pan will turn you down, and by the time we did things through proper channels with the PDA who knows where those girls would end up. Do you think you can help Grundle get Carmen and Melody back home? We’ll be contacting everyone there once we’ve found where the girls have been taken. Carmen’s mother is a doctor, and she’ll want to look them over. Not that we don’t trust you…”

“I understand,” Ms. Norstrom said with a sad smile. “I think I would feel the same if I were a mother and in her position. I’d be happy to take them home.”

Aunt Merry talked to the PDA investigators for a while but they didn’t find anything on the bodies that might tell us who the people who attacked Momma were, or who they worked for, and she didn’t want us to stick around and wait for them to try to track them down by mundane means. They could have called in a psychic, but not the kind that could see the past or future to tell us what happened or where they were taken. I guess that kind of psychic is really rare.

We had me though, and I was able to recognize Momma’s magical scent before they shooed us away from the crime scene. They were kind of jerks about it, so I was glad that Aunt Merry and Carmilla decided that we didn’t need their help and left to find her ourselves. Momma’s scent was mixed with two scents that were familiar and with some others that I didn’t recognize, but I was able to pick out Momma’s from the bunch and follow it.

The problem was that we had to follow the trail on foot when I was pretty sure the kidnappers had a van or something. Fortunately, it was dark by that time and Carmilla used some kind of shadow spell to keep normies from noticing us, though it made tracking Momma’s scent a little more difficult. My guess about the van was proven right when we found one abandoned on an access road to Gallagher Park, which wasn’t very far from the school. The van had Momma’s magical scent all over it and then I was able to follow it along a slightly overgrown park trail that smelled of magic.

Aunt Merry sensed the magic right away too, she said it was a very subtle Divine spell like one of the ones on the club, to make normies ignore it and forget about it if they’re looking for it. We followed the trail to what looked like an old shed, which also smelled of magic to me, almost like Carmilla. “Hmmph,” Carmilla harumphed, as we looked it over. “More magic.”

“Yeah, they definitely have a Divine Mage working for them. A good one too, that spell on the trail was subtle, a lot of weaker mages would probably have overlooked it and been as fooled as the normies. And this adds a Death Mage to the list as well, any idea what the spell is, ‘Milla?”

“It is a Shadow Gate,” the Vampire said with a frown. “Flex a little Death magic or carry the right enchanted item and it will take you to the matching gate. Even if normies stumbled upon it they wouldn’t be at risk of activating it accidentally. These are probably how Paranormals are traveling to and from the Caverns, and I would imagine there are more like it all over the city.”

Annika let out a long sigh as she unbuckled the massive sword that was strapped to her back. “I had a bad feeling that this trip was going to lead us to the Caverns. Stick close, Selina, and let’s be ready for anything, girls.”

Carmilla nodded. “I’ll keep my shadow cloak spell on us, it should keep anyone but a Death Mage or a Divine Mage from taking an interest in us. And the spell should be enough to activate the gate for us as well.”

The Caverns were a massive network of caves with buildings dug into the walls and all sorts of nasty and scary Paranormals like Trolls, Vampires, and Goblins wandering around, including several gangs that we saw. There were a couple close calls, with some of the Vampires, but they practically ran away as soon as they saw Carmilla. Other than that, the Night Princess’s spell kept us hidden as we made our way through the Caverns, but we didn’t really need to go very far.

The gate we came through was only a ten-minute walk from what turned out to be our destination as I followed Momma’s scent. We probably didn’t even need my tracking ability for the last five minutes of that, we could have just followed the Divine magic. Mr. Grundle was right about those wards being powerful and they smelled complex too, like there were layers and layers of magic there.

“Not exactly subtle, are they?” Annika grumbled as she looked at the big building dug into the wall of the cave across from us. “I don’t have shit for magic, and I can feel those wards. That has to be what’s keeping Grundle out.”

“This confirms that it’s the Chimera Syndicate. They’re the only group down here that could afford to pay for wards like that, or have someone that could create them themselves. Those wards make that place a veritable fortress and it’s just like the Chimera Syndicate to feel that overkill is underrated,” Carmilla grumbled as she glared at the warded building.

“The only way through those wards is going to be the front door, and I doubt that they’re going to let us just walk right in. Maybe Tiffani, Krysti, or Crystal’s magic teacher will have some ideas. I’ll contact Grundle to bring the others here and take Selina home, where she’ll be safe,” Aunt Merry said with a thoughtful look.

I immediately protested as I hissed quietly, “Noo! I want to help save Momma too!”

It was Carmilla who shook her head as she crouched down to look me in the eyes and placed her hands gently on my shoulders. “You have helped save Crystal and the others, we would not have found them without you, Selina. This is where things get dangerous. You could get hurt, or worse, especially in that den of villainy. We do not want that, and Crystal would not want that either.”

“But I…”

“Please, child,” Carmilla whispered kindly. “Go home, we cannot allow you to endanger yourself further. You are unique and if the Syndicate finds out about you, I fear that you will never know peace again. We will bring your mother and the other girls home safely, I promise you this, and you do not want to see what comes next.”

I knew she was right, but I couldn’t help but stare at the place where Momma was being held for a moment in frustration before silently nodding my head. “I… okay, Carmilla.”

“You are such a good girl, Selina, and so very brave to help us get this far. I am sure your mother will be as proud of you as I am,” the Vampire assured me as she wrapped me in a hug. A few minutes later, one of Mr. Grundle’s tunnel things appeared on the wall behind us and people started stepping out from the path that brought them here.

Mallory’s mom with her flames flickering violently and Lou’s Mom in her werewolf form came first, followed by Momma’s magic teacher, who was wearing some kind of old looking armor and carrying a really big hammer. Then came Krysti and Nixie, I didn’t think that either were fighters, but I knew that they were pretty good with their Divine and Water magic. Last of all came Mr. Grundle with Nana Tiffani and Melody and though Melody looked a little pale and tired, both looked determined.

“Melody, what the hell are you doing here?! You should be resting!” Aunt Merry hissed as they stepped through behind the others. “You were just shot with Demon hunter rounds and I don’t care if you think…”

“I came to save my girlfriend and my friends,” the half Demon interrupted as she reached into her purse and pulled out her really big gun.

“Merry, save it,” Nana Tiffani said with a sympathetic look toward Melody before Aunt Merry could protest again. “I wasn’t able to convince her either and she has as much right to be here as any of us. It’s her life to risk, and it’s not like we can stop her from just teleporting in anyway the moment we get through those wards. Now is that where they’re holding my daughters?”

Aunt Merry sighed but nodded in surrender. “Yes, Selina followed Crystal’s scent here and those wards have to be what’s keeping Grundle from getting through on the back roads. Any ideas?”

“Just one,” Nana Tiffani replied with a glare at the building. “No wards, no problems. Grundle, please take Selina home and be ready to come get us soon.”

“How soon?” the Gnome asked before as he motioned for me to enter the tunnel thing.

“However long it takes to destroy every trace of the people who took our children,” Nana Tiffani replied coldly without taking her eyes off the building.

“We better go, kiddo,” Mr. Grundle said as he visibly shivered. “We do not want to get between Fey and their vengeance.” He pushed gently at my legs urging me toward the magic tunnel in the wall. I could smell the potent magic coming off my nana and as I turned to step into the tunnel, I looked over my shoulder.

There were times that I thought I could not just smell and taste magic, but see it too, especially when it was powerful. As I left with Mr. Grundle and looked back, I saw it clearer than any magic that I had ever glimpsed before. Nana Tiffani was glowing with a bright white light to my eyes and the wards on the building looked like they were being torn apart. I kept watching over my shoulder until we were too far down the tunnel to see anymore.