CHAPTER#85

"I don't understand." Dana shook her head, placing her face in her hands. "How could it not be real?"

"Hey." Naia lifted Dana's chin, locking eyes with her. "Have you ever had a dream before where everything is different, yet familiar? Like, you dream that you're an airline pilot, you even remember going to school for it, but you've never actually been on a plane?"

Dana nodded. "Sometimes I would dream that I had failed high school and was forced to go back to middle school, even as an adult. I hated those dreams because the girls in high school were so fucking catty." And judgmental if she remembered correctly.

"You have a false memory. Daryl made a mistake. Can you spot it?"

Dana frowned, thinking back. There wasn't anything obvious, at least not right away. Alex had seemed so real, and so had the setting. The feel of her skin against her body, the way their lips touched. The rhythm of Alex's body above hers...

"Fuck." Dana scowled at the ground. Fuck. She had been fooled. After so many lonely months, the feel of Alex's body against hers had distracted her, had made the deception possible. She knew she should be undergoing a whirlwind of emotions right now, but most of them had been stripped away. Anger at being fooled was one of the only things she had left, yet even that had been muted.

"Don't be so hard on yourself. He's had years to get good at it." Lily stood up. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to check on Cecilia. You can hug her or whatever it is you do to make people feel better." Lily placed a hand on Dana's shoulder. "Later, when you are feeling particularly murderous - come talk to me." Sashaying dramatically, she disappeared through the back door into the house.

"Tell me about it," Naia said.

"One time, we got drunk and started making out. Alex thought it would be sexy to watch some p**n." Dana laughed. "We tried to imitate one of the scenes. Alex ended up hurting her back, and I pulled a muscle in my thigh. It was more amusing than sexy, but it was the last time we tried scissoring. Well, second to last time." She smiled. "A wise man once told me that you should try everything twice, just to be sure it isn't for you."

"Yeah. Some people like it." Naia smiled. "Everyone has their kinks. But that's an act designed more for the observer than the participants. I strongly suspect that Daryl was close by, watching. Otherwise, how would he know when the worst time to pull you back was?"

"Damn." So that was that. Daryl had tricked her, and when she finally found a way to accomplish what she had asked for, he would allow her to die, her soul moving on to whatever damnation she had earned for it. He was a man who had not only stripped her life away from her, but her very soul. It was one thing to kill her, but to strip her of eternity?

Somewhere deep inside her mind, she felt the dam break. Anger, white hot, flooded through her body. Standing up, she brushed the back of her pants off and then pulled her hair out of its ponytail. Shaking her hair free, she pulled it back and redid the tail, tighter than before. She knew if she was alive, she would be able to feel her pulse in the stretched skin of her forehead.

"Where are you going?" Naia asked, worry on her face.

"Where do you think?" Dana walked toward the house. "I'm going to talk to Lily."

-

The Labyrinth had taken on a chill. Blue explained that they stood in a passageway that circled a chamber with a frozen lake inside. Rubbing his arms for warmth, Mike caught himself staring at Sofia's ass. The cyclops had said very little to him after Red had arrived, and he was in a minor state of disbelief over what he had had done to her in the chamber. It was if a part of him had briefly awakened, taking charge of both of them. While he had total control over Sofia's restrained body, he realized that maybe he hadn't had total control of himself.

Red, breathless from flying at full speed, had announced to them that there was good news and bad. The good news was that she had found Tink. The bad news was that she was being held in a cage at the center of the Labyrinth.

It had taken some digging, but Mike had gotten Red to spill that she was the captive of someone Red referred to as the Lady of the Labyrinth. Red and Green floated ahead of them, taking them on a secret route to the Lady's chamber while Blue sat on Mikes shoulder. Mike and Sofia decided that the best plan of action was to sneak in and appraise the situation for themselves, to which the fairies had revealed that there was a small tunnel that overlooked the room. They used it often to spy on their captor in hopes of finding a way out.

The fairies stopped, then quickly doubled back.

"Why did we stop?" Sofia asked. Green and Red hovered over by the wall, their light illuminating a rough stone in the wall.

"We can slip through here," Red said.

"But you will need the button," Green finished. Sofia gave the stone a shove, and a side passage opened without a sound, a narrow opening that revealed a circular tunnel that also went uphill. Mike and Sofia moved into the tunnel, and the wall closed behind them.

The tunnel soon became steep enough that Mike spent most of his time watching his footing. Sofia seemed to have no trouble, though he did see occasional flashes of light from her eye and she would change direction. Mike followed behind her, wary of more than a few loose stones on the path. He knew that a tumble would result in a downhill slide, and some of the sharper stones made him wince at the thought of cutting himself up in the fall.