Chapter Eight #3
“Imps,” Erlik called as he picked something out from between his teeth.
“Just another one of the many creatures that crossed over during the Great Invasion. Not known for killing their targets, they are content to use tricks and illusions to get the upper hand—and how much longer are you fools going to give it to him?!” he burst out, almost making me jump out of my skin.
“Get up and kill it! Kill it now! If one little imp is all it takes to stop you running in a straight line, you might as well lie down and die as the worthless cunts you are! Filth! Trash! Leeches! Mutts!”
Shaking my head, I tuned his ranting out.
Man, that guy needs to relax. I rocked back on my heels, assessing the situation with new eyes.
But at least he finally said something useful.
If imps don’t like to kill their targets and, from what I’m seeing, no one has been seriously hurt or injured either, then doesn’t that mean this little guy is just...
...playing?
My classmates started to rally, shaking off their shock, nets, and pie bits.
Spurred on by Erlik’s taunting, magic started flying all over the place.
The pieces of the woman the vampires were feeding on vanished like smoke—unleashing a hair-raising chorus of furious hisses and snarls.
The vamps vanished in a blink, and just as quickly, the giggling imp was in the sky—far out of reach of the earthbound bloodsuckers.
One tried to jump up and catch him—unleashing a burst of power beneath his feet that propelled him fifty feet into the air... where his grasping hands closed on nothing.
The imp was suddenly nowhere within his reach, giggling another twenty feet above him.
The vampire dropped back down and plunged into a vat of Jell-O.
“Agh!” He strained and shouted as the vat filled to his neck, his mouth, and then over his head—trapped like an egg in aspic. But luckily for him, he wasn’t alone in his fate, because all of his other vampire friends tried jumping at the same time... and ended up in gelatin.
Tossing my head, I sucked in a deep breath. Well, here goes nothing... My breath exploded out of me in a burst of loud, raucous laughter. “Oh my goodness, Mr. Imp, that was a good one! Hahaha! You’re so funny.”
The imp shot over a fireball aimed at his wings and spun around in the air, cocking his big bulbous head at me.
Taking one step, then another across the field, I laughed even louder. “The way you got all six of them with a direct hit to the face with those pies was truly inspiring. You’re so funny. I love playing with you!”
“Argh!” Ravenscar slashed and tore at the net, ripping it off his wings. Jumping to his feet, he plucked three feathers from his wings and waved his hands over them—shouting a string of words in a language that my brain refused to understand. A barbed net appeared over the imp’s head.
Its wide eyes still fixed on me, the imp pointed up and suddenly the net vanished... and reappeared over Ravenscar.
“Agh!” Ravenscar thrashed under his own trap, letting out a string of curses and obscenities that made my ears bleed.
“Wow, you got him good,” I sounded off, slowly skirting around a hole with an enraged werewolf in it. “You’re so clever, I love playing with you.”
“What nonsense are you spouting, boy!” Erlik bellowed. “Stop trying to get the creature to fuck you, and kill it already!”
“I like to play pranks and have fun too,” I called up, ignoring Erlik completely. “See? Look!”
Running to the left of the field, I picked up a fallen pie and scooped out the cream. I slapped some on my jaw and around my lips, gave myself a beard and mustache, and then stuck my tongue out at him.
Pulling my ears, crossing my eyes, lifting the tip of my nose, I whipped out all the funny faces in my arsenal.
“Teehee.”
I beamed, hope soaring in my chest. He laughed?
“You— Ah!” I blinked and the imp was right in front of me—their wings flapping as they giggled at my cream-covered face. “H-hey,” I got out when my heart recovered from the shock, “do you want to play another fun game?”
He nodded.
“Great! Because you know, my favorite game in the whole world is hide-and-seek, and you’re soooo awesome at creating illusions, I bet you’d come up with the best hiding places! Don’t you think?”
He nodded hard, grinning from ear to ear.
“Perfect— Oh, but wait?” I said, snapping my fingers. “It’s going to be hard to play here with all these holes in the ground. I could fall inside and get hurt, and then I couldn’t play with you anymore.”
His face fell at the very thought.
“So why don’t we”—I pointed to the finish line—“play over there.”
The imp looked from me, to the finish line, and then back to me. He nodded.
Just like that, the imp floated over and sat on my shoulder.
Complete and total disbelief fixed on us as I walked freely across the field, bypassing the carnival of mayhem as if it couldn’t touch me.
They were all so shocked, everyone forgot to attack.
Erlik lost his speech and forgot to be a d-bag.
Tristan stopped scrabbling at the dirt and just clung to the rim of the hole—gaping at me.
“This is my friend, Tristan.” I knelt before him and held out my hand. “He’s going to play with us too.”
The man goggled at the appendage like he had no idea what to do with it. “I— I’m your... what?”
That depressing conversation with Sabrina bounced back in my mind. “You’re my friend, Tristan,” I said clearly. “It means I like you.”
Jaw dropping, blood rushed into his face so fast and hard, he slapped his hands over his cheeks to hide them and—
“Ahh!”
—fell on his ass.
It took some more scrambling, and more blushing, to get the adorable hunk back onto the surface. By then, the other werewolves, vampires, demons, fae, and Erlik had recovered from their shock.
Erlik was losing his mind, roaring at me that the imp was right on my shoulder and in perfect killing distance, so what was I waiting for?
I wasn’t taking his advice, but everyone else was. Magical attacks were coming at us from every which way, but it seemed dodging wasn’t the only trick up the imp’s sleeve.
A fireball whizzed at my head.
“Teehee!” He pointed at it and it changed, turning it into a ball of cotton candy.
“Oh, sweet, I love this stuff,” I gushed. Capturing the ball, I ripped off a chunk, shared it with my new imp friend, and offered some to Tristan. “Here you go.”
The wolf was still so stupefied, all he could do was stare at me as I popped a piece in his open mouth.
Together we crossed the rest of the distance while the imp turned magical attacks into confetti and candy, and cut short my classmates’ physical attacks with Jell-O vats, nets, pies, and in the case of the pack of alpha wolves that charged us—a whole mess of banana peels that had them slipping, sliding, and colliding with each other.
We stepped over the finish line and I tossed a wink at the imp before turning to Erlik, and tossing him one too. “How’s that for losing, sir?”
Erlik’s brow shot up to his hairline. Rage stole across his face, ripping a snarl from his throat—but before his shock turned to rage, I could’ve sworn for a split second... he smirked.
“This is bullshit!” Ravenscar peeled himself up out of the dirt and fixed a glare on me so incensed, it made me take a step back. “First, a hellhound, and now this filthy diseased wart tames an imp? This is a trick! A lie! Something you demon rats cooked up to humiliate your betters!”
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t talk to me,” he barked—that beautiful, radiant face twisted into something that was still irritatingly beautiful even with hate etched all over it.
Even his name, Iarla, which I’d finally heard that day, was pretty.
“Did I give you permission to speak in my presence, you disgusting shitfuck of a worthless parasite. A little cunt-sucking worm like you should’ve been stepped on when you crossed the gates, eaten, and then shat back out where they found you! ”
Okay, now I was mad.
“What the hell is your problem, man!” I roared back. “You lose one little race and start tantrumming like a five-year-old— Oh no, wait, not even a child would behave like you!”
“Hey!” All of a sudden, all of Ravenscar’s fae cronies were at his side. “Don’t you dare address Prince Iarla in that tone! How he behaves isn’t for the likes of you to comment on.”
The fae always dressed like palace courtesans, and that day was no different.
Ravenscar had opted for gorgeous silk robes spun with ivory and cornflower-blue thread.
His hair was pulled back and tied into a simple ponytail, but on him, he looked like he just got out of the hairdresser’s.
That he was covered in dirt and his hair was a mess made no difference, this was the most beautiful asshole who ever yelled at me over dumb shit.
And as a former waitress, quite a lot of people have yelled at me over dumb shit.
But if I expected anyone else, or even the flipping instructor, to back up that this was all ridiculous—I was sorely disappointed.
The wolves, demons, vampires, and fae were all gathering around—albeit in separate, distinct groups.
Even Ronin had woken up from his nap and was watching us, but the same could not be said for Erlik.
The instructor was preoccupied with something stuck in his hoof, and he wasn’t paying this brewing fight any attention at all.
“Yeah, something’s not right,” a furry-faced demon said. “First, he cheats his way through the entrance trials by compulsing a hellhound, and now he’s using the same tricks on an imp.”
“Why’d that thing go after literally every single one of us except you?” the blond alpha demanded. “Why were you egging it on like that? Was it under your control from the fucking beginning?”
“Rigged,” one of the vampires confirmed.