Chapter 6
six
. . .
I had on my proper fight gear that night while I stood next to Jane with the mustard robe draped over my shoulders and sports bra and shorts beneath. My hands were wrapped, because otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to hit her worth anything, not after last night.
“Hey,” Joe said to the crowd of robed werewolves, climbing on the stage on the opposite side, wearing his robe over one shoulder while he nodded at the audience. “Who’s up for tonight’s test for the hopeful candidate?” He searched the audience and then pointed into the crowd. “Celeste, good to see that you’re still willing to sacrifice for the happiness and health of our pack.”
Celeste came down the aisle between benches wearing an extremely attractive outfit that wasn’t remotely practical, and her nails were, once again, absolutely perfect. Poetic justice my butt. There was nothing just in her having nails like that.
Joe gestured me to come up without the same formality of the first night. I moved slowly up the steps and onto the stage. I hadn’t gotten enough sleep, and my flu symptoms were still hanging around in the background, although the aching joints blended with all the bruising. I tried to look as confident as Celeste, who stood on the other side of Joe, smirking.
“Today’s demonstration of strength is going to take place in a different venue, since it’s been brought to my attention that we’ve got an embezzling pixie that needs to be routed and their sparks exterminated.”
Celeste took two large steps away from him, her expression falling.
“Pixies?” I whispered to Joe, not sure if I’d heard him correctly. “Like fairies?”
“Like don’t eat anything they offer you, or you’ll be infected by these little monsters that come out of you in swarms. I’ve known one person who survived that. Poor guy.” He patted my shoulder and nodded at Celeste. “Your willingness to volunteer is noted.”
She scowled at him and then at me. “Come with me to wardrobe. By the end of the night, you’ll be wishing you had broken a few ribs in a cage.” Her aristocratic accent went perfectly with her nails. Poetic injustice, if you asked me.
I gave Joe a questioning glance, and he nodded at me. “Follow Celeste. I’ll meet you at the van with the others.”
“Sure. There are really embezzling fairies? Do they go inside the computers?”
Celeste snapped at me. “Time is of the essence, Honey.” She said my name like an insult, which I’d gotten a lot when I’d competed. Honey was too sweet to make you bleed, but I wasn’t sweet at all, just confused. I followed her, trying not to feel like an idiot in this world, but it was hard not to feel something when the cage fight was turned into a fairy hunt. Sure, let’s go hunting fairies. Ooh, scary.
The gear was a base layer of impermeable latex that nothing could get through. It covered me from toe to chin, with only my face visible, but not for long, because after that was a pair of goggles, and then a helmet over that which went down over my shoulders. I breathed from the oxygen tank strapped to my back over the other two layers, a thin armor and the outer layer, which was little plates of shiny stuff, that honestly looked just like sequins. It was the weirdest outfit I’d ever seen, and even Celeste looked like an alien disco dancer.
“This is fun,” I said, voice echoing inside my helmet.
“Without the gear, we’d have no chance going up against a pix. Josiah has been researching and developing for ages, trying to get something that works consistently. He’s still working on it,” she added, which would have been more ominous if I wasn’t still hung up on logistics.
“How do Pixies embezzle?”
“Do I look like a pix to you?”
I stared at her, eyes warped to be super big, sequin suit, um… Considering that I had no idea what a pix looked like, she could very well be one. “Right. Let’s do this and get home before moon down.”
She rolled those big eyes and turned and marched away from me, somehow still lithe and graceful in spite of the suit. It actually didn’t move that terribly, considering how much was going on with it.
The van looked like a garbage truck dipped in a tub of tar and rolled in a field of branches. Literal branches were stuck to the thing, but I didn’t ask questions, mostly because I wasn’t sure what to ask. Jane would be so proud.
“You two up top,” Josiah said, his voice the only thing I recognized at first. He wore a black suit with a black helmet that only reflected a dark image of my own sequin brilliance, but his voice still gave me shivers, a low growl that made me want to curl up in a ball and purr.
Celeste tugged me, so I followed, ascending the ladder to the top where a platform and hooks were on a little railing thing. Celeste clipped herself to the rail, and I followed suit, in our matching suits on top of the van.
“Do you hate this because you have to dress like a disco ball?”
“I hate this because… Whatever you do, don’t let go of the net.”
“What net?”
“You’ll see.” It’s like she was trying to be annoying.
We drove through the night with the moon above us, a little brighter than it had been the night before. When we got to a large building labeled ‘Saint Dominic’s South Tower,’ Josiah and a dozen other black geared guys got out of the surrounding vehicles, some of which were actual vans. Everyone broke, jogging to their places, covering the entrances, and then there was a low-key explosion that made me jump while the werewolf shadow ninjas swarmed into the building and I stayed tied to the top of the branchy garbage truck with Celeste, two disco balls made to order. Go us.
“Being a werewolf must be a lot of fun,” I said.
She gave me a glare that was kind of cute with the especially big eyes. “Between being a werewolf and being dead, I prefer the former.”
“By how big a margin?”
“I’ve never been dead.”
“Right. Just out of curiosity, are there dead things running around? No, of course not. No zombies or?—”
“Vampires, yes, but we don’t hunt vampires or zombies unless it becomes an issue with our territory. The vampires take care of their own, like we do, unless there’s some—Hang on!”
An explosion of glass and lights came out of the seventh floor, sparkling glass heading towards us, and that’s when Celeste stomped on the big button on the platform that I hadn’t realized was a button until we were launching into the air, in the perfect trajectory of the glass shards. What does it sound like when a sequin hits glass? I’ll just say that it’s not as pretty as me screeching like a banshee as I’m thrown into the sky clutching a bar that was coming with me.
An enormous net flowed after us, sparkling and glittering like an electric cape, meeting the shower of glass and wrapping around it, around us, and the figure in the center of all that chaos. When the sides of the net met, they came to life in a glowing cage that was a million times worse than the cage on the mat. Of course it was, because inside that cage was a pix, who was the size of an ordinary human, but had in his tufts of short green hair, little specks of nastiness that clouded around him before he flung out his arms and they sparked out, hit the electric cage and bounced back at him. At that moment, we had reached the top of our trajectory and had started to descend. Celeste handed me a rubber handle holding one side of the electric net, then another, as she shot little hooks out of her special gloves and captured more of them. Was I supposed to be doing that while we were still falling? She’d said to hold on to the net, not the bar, but how could I let it go? Not that a bar would save me from this height.
I released the bar and held onto the net. At that exact moment, the pix turned his gaze on me, his bright neon green wings pumping behind him, and an electric shock went over me, not exactly through me, but over my suit, finishing the circuit of the net, so when he did shake his hair in my direction, the little magic bullets didn’t puncture me and my suit because there was a slight electric shield running through me. Woah. Weird and cool.
The green-haired Pix floated above us, frowning while we started to descend, staring intently at us instead of the other strands. Of course, because we were the weak link, or the net’s opening.
Bullets hit me from all sides as the pix’s pests struck me, trying to get me to drop the net. I held on, mostly from the inability I had to release my fingers through the electricity going through my suit and the net rather than my own strength or determination.
The fall was longer than gravity would have indicated, but we still came down hard, back into the truck’s depths, whose sides had opened like a petal that enfolded us and our prey all while being pelted by those bullet pests.
One hit particularly hard and cracked my helmet’s face plate before dropping to the floor in a sizzling spark of death. I hoped it was dead. Every one of those thousands of creatures would leave a deep bruise, maybe a welt, maybe draw blood, even through all of my layers.
The pix’s eyes glowed green, and he leapt up, wings expanding and sparking as he tried to break through the top of the net, yanking it hard enough to knock me over into Celeste, but she stayed firm, growling at me, or him, or the pests, maybe all of us.
He came back down, crouching while electricity danced with his own neon green light. Finally, it went out, leaving just the dim light of the electric net. He ran a mitted hand through his hair and shot us a charming smile, or it would have been charming if his nasty bugs weren’t still pounding us.
“You have no proof of whatever you’re accusing me of.”
Joe’s laugh was low, dangerous, terrifying the way it came out of the shadows of the truck’s belly. “I don’t have to bother with proof when I can kill you so easily. But I didn’t kill you, so you have an opportunity to converse with someone who might be understanding.”
The Pix sat down on the floor, leaning back on his arms and studying me and my cracked helmet with sudden intensity. “You’re human. Who did you piss off to get sucked into this mess?”
“The coffee werewolf. How about you?”
Celeste elbowed me like I shouldn’t talk to the captives, but I was stuck in this net as much as he was, and those nasty crappy bullet pests were getting old. Every second brought a dozen new bruises.
He whistled long and low. “I’ve enraged my share of monsters, but never that particular beast. You see, you have to be careful not to get involved with the ones who are as cunning as they are ruthless, as wicked as they are organized, and who never take prisoners.”
“No? But he has so many cages.”
He laughed while Josiah stepped into the shadowy light so I could see his face without the helmet.
How was he so handsome? Joe said, “You flatter me, Pinstar. Are you going to confess, or do I have to execute you?”
“What am I confessing?” the green-haired pix asked, like he couldn’t decide about his order.
I said, “Who hired you to hit the building? You could confess to something else, like the computer infection thing, I don’t know. I’m new at this.”
The pix studied me thoughtfully. “You aren’t going to last long either, at this rate. Your helmet is very badly cracked.”
I shrugged. “If I die, it’s all good, and do I really want to survive five more nights of poetic justice until the full moon?”
“The full moon? What happens at the full moon?” he asked, cocking his head like a puzzled punk.
“I’ve served my term.”
“How peculiar. I had no idea that werewolf justice had branched into torturing random humans.”
“And I had no idea that pixies were real. No offense, but I prefer Tinkerbell. You’re just a normal dysfunctional person with obnoxious super gnats. I mean, the wings are kind of cool, but don’t they catch on everything? I would hate that.”
“Are you hungry? I have the most amazing?—”
“I will rip your head from your body and burn every last spark of you if you speak another word to the human,” Josiah growled.
His growl cut through my stomach’s sudden growl, because at the Pix’s offhand suggestion, I’d become desperately hungry. And then another buzzing bullet hit my windshield, sending another crack across the visor.
“Fine,” the pix said, scooting around so he faced Josiah’s bearded face. The werewolf didn’t look kind or gentle in the reflection of the buzzing electric net, and his eyes didn’t look soft as he stared into Pinstar’s.
“Do you choose to die or cooperate? Celeste is very eager to kill you,” Joe growled.
The pix glanced over his shoulder, but his eyes were on me, not her, before he turned back around. “I can see that. How did you get such a glamorous flunky? You are truly gifted, most mighty Joe.”
“I see you choose death. That is my preference as well.” His hand burst out of his bulletproof gloves, transforming into the mega-beast, with the dusky red skin, claws like small knives, just the hand, and grabbed the pix by the head and yanked him against the electric net, so the pix was twitching and sparking green and blue while the scent of burning hair somehow made it through all the layers of my suit. Pling. Pling. Crack. The spark bullets were moving faster and faster in the pix’s final struggle.
“Carmel hired me!” he finally yelled, and Josiah released his head and retracted his claws, letting the pix fall in a heap on the floor, blood coming out of his ears, eyes a bit glassy, and the spark bullets plinging more quietly, still painful, but not quite as bad as before.
“You’ll have to provide proof,” Josiah said quietly.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve got proof. Are you giving me a deal, or is my life the deal?”
“You ask me for a deal when I have all the cards?”
“The human’s face crack is a distraction. The back of her helmet is two hits away from cracking like an egg.”
Josiah’s eyes glowed blood red and his face stretched out into the monster canine muzzle that would have given me nightmares if I had time for sleep. “But you know that won’t keep you alive.”
“No, it won’t, but still, you don’t have all the cards. Five more nights until the full moon. Do you really want to spend them digging sparks out of her? It would no doubt be the most effective torture, but she very likely wouldn’t survive.”
“You don’t have the cards that you think you have,” Josiah said in a low voice, then finally nodded. “I will give you a deal as well as your life.” All the sparks went back to the pix, climbing in his hair, on his skin, all over him in the most revolting way imaginable.
It was so marvelously pain and noise free without the constant pinging of the awful pests.
Celeste kicked a pair of sparking blue handcuffs over to him. “Feel free.”
“I’d feel freer if I wasn’t in a net and a pair of manacles, but I will do my best, because what else could I do in the face of such great beauty?”
Celeste growled with a flicker of gold in her eyes. “I hope you’re talking about Joe.”
“I’m talking about the human, naturally. Such a great beauty. You’re probably dying for a strawberry, or some other kind of dessert.”
Saliva exploded in my mouth and I shifted uncomfortably. I needed dessert. When was the last time I’d had dessert? Other than the strawberry sorbet earlier today? It had been far too long. I needed to find something sweet before I filled up my helmet with my spit.
The pix clamped the handcuffs on his wrists, and with a flash of blue, his green sparks went out, all except for his eyes, which glowed creepily.
The electric force of the net released, and I promptly fell over, since apparently I’d only been held upright by the charge going through my suit. Celeste didn’t budge. Of course not. When I tried to get up, I only spasmed a few times.
“Come on, lucky hopeful,” Celeste said, dragging me to my feet. My feet should work better, but they were so far away.
“I have a cake I made earlier in the shop, carrot with cream cheese frosting,” Monster Joe said, the words absolutely inconceivable coming out of that monster’s maw. “It would be good with a nice anise tea, I think.” Surreal.
“I love carrot cake,” I said, but I wasn’t sure if it was real, or just the pix’s food magic talking. I was aware that it wasn’t normal for me to suddenly be painfully addicted to whatever food the pixie suggested, but I still needed it.
Celeste dragged me through the truck, past Monster Joe and the pix, and through the darkness to a small trapdoor that she opened for me.
I dropped down. Okay, I fell down, hit the pavement and landed on my back, which cracked my helmet open entirely. I rolled over and pushed myself up, losing my helmet in the process. Oh yes, Grace should be my next name. I rolled out from under the truck between the wheels and then got up and walked stiltedly over to the back seat of the car whose door Jane was holding open for me. At least I really, really hoped that this was my ride.
“There’s carrot cake at the coffee shop that I need to get,” I told her, because that was the most important thing.
“Desserts, hm? It could be worse. Haagis, for example…”
I got into the car, fell over on the seat, and couldn’t move other than rolling from side to side over every single one of those tiny pinprick bruises until we finally pulled up at Joe’s living dead coffee shop, and then there was the sophisticated process of me wriggling out of the car until I was on the pavement. I was officially not a sequin and latex rubber kind of girl. Somehow, I got up and into the coffee shop, and there was most of the carrot cake under its glass cover beckoning to me.
“I need the cake,” I said, pushing through the three people in line, who gave me golden glares, but they let me plow through them in my ridiculous outfit, maybe so that they didn’t have to get dressed up like a mauled disco ball the next time the wolves went hunting pixies.
“Anything else?” the guy at the counter said as he took off the glass cover. How did Joe get it so pretty and delicious? It smelled so good, so incredibly perfect.
“Anise tea, thanks. I’ll take the whole plate.”
“How are you going to pay for that?” he asked.
I looked from him to the cake and then smiled at him. “You don’t charge the disco balls unless you want to wear some sequins. Understood?”
He pushed the cake over the counter and I took it to the corner table the furthest from the door. I took a deep breath and then shot a hook across the café while I tried to pick up the cake.
“Watch it!” the lady said whose chair I’d speared. These gloves weren’t working, but no stress, because there was cake, and I had no face mask, so I could just…
I would have face-planted into the cake, but it was pulled to the side before I got a chance. Joe sat down on the chair opposite me and pulled out a fork. He cut a neat piece and held it out to me before I could protest. My mouth was already open, and the cake was so good, so moist, so rich, so perfectly carroty, with layers of not-too-rich cream cheese inside of it. I sank back with my eyes closed and ate cake with my techno gloves hanging at my sides. Mm. The first sip of anise tea was startlingly perfect, but I didn’t open my eyes, just sipped it and then cake, then more tea, and then the fork clattered on the plate and I was left with the difficult task of opening my eyes. Had anything been so hard?
“Honey, can you get home or do you need me to carry you?” Joe’s voice was low, amused, relaxed, nothing like it was with the pix in the back of the branch garbage truck.
I forced my eyes open and my spine straight. “What was with the branches?”
“They are part of the circuitry.” His smile was soft, like his eyes.
“Huh. You came up with that whole thing?”
“I paid for it.”
I nodded, but not well because of the rubber latex that went over my chin. “You’re so cute.” I blinked at him while his smile got crooked and amused.
“I would thank you if you weren’t letting the frosting do your talking for you. You’re sugar drunk.”
“How do I get this suit off? Can you help me?”
He leaned back, and I noticed what he was wearing, which was a base layer of taut black tank top over taut black sexy pants. He was so fit, so rippling with muscles that somehow looked perfect for snuggling. They were. He was. I remembered that much and more.
“Honey, Jane’s here to help you out of your suit and get you home. Your work was acceptable tonight."
"Your work as a carrot cake diva was far better than acceptable."
He cleared his throat and stood. Jane took my arm and helped haul me to my feet, then dragged me into the back of the café where a large bathroom, including tub, was waiting for me.
She helped pull off the outer layers, then the rubber suit, which rubbed every single one of my millions of bruises, leaving me absolutely raw by the time it was off my feet. She pulled up my hair and examined me, looking for any of the nasty sparking bugs buried in my skin. It was like checking for ticks. Bullet ticks? Talk about nightmare fodder.
I got in the tub, closed my eyes, and was out, fully snoringly asleep until she grabbed my arm, making me cry out before I managed to control myself. My body was covered in dark spots that were spreading from impact point of each of those miserable bullet ticks.
“I hate pix,” I said as I shook her off and got out of the tub carefully on my own.
“They aren’t popular,” she said drily.
I looked down at my body, and I was absolutely covered in the subcutaneous bleeding. “I’m going to die tonight, aren’t I?” It felt like I was already dying, slowly, by a million pinpricks.
“He’ll probably only have you spar someone soft again.”
“Like you?”
She snorted and wrapped a robe around me, which I tied carefully around my waist. “Don’t mistake control for gentleness.”
“Cool. I don’t suppose there are some slippers I can wear.”
She put a pair of large black slippers on the floor in front of me that were way too large for me, but I didn’t care. They matched the robe, and they both smelled like him.