by Logan Jacobs
“Can we outrun it?” Ariette asked.
“I’m trying,” the dwarf growled. The engine roared as she floored the gas, but a moment later there was a screech right outside the back of the van. Whatever was behind us smacked into the back of the vehicle and threw me straight into Ariette. Kalista tried to maneuver away, but there was no time. A series of bangs sounded across the roof, and then three metallic clangs echoed off the back wall.
“Shit,” Kalista hollered, “it’s got like, claws, or talons, or something! Ari, I need you up top.”
Ariette nodded and grabbed a huge machine gun off the weapons rack. It was heavy and black with a huge barrel, and she cradled it in one hand and went to the center of the van where the antennae were located. The elf jumped a little bit in order to pull two ladders, spaced about three feet apart, down from the ceiling. Then, she climbed up the one on the left and pushed a hatch at the top of the van open. She left most of her lower body in the van as she positioned her gun on the roof, and then she wrapped one leg around the backside of the ladder to give herself more stability.
Suddenly, Ariette ducked as something whistled past her head, and I ran to stand beneath her.
“What is that?” I heard her mutter under her breath.
“What can I do?” I yelled up to the elven warrior.
“Get a gun and get up here,” she replied hurriedly without looking down at me.
I fumbled at my belt for the semi-automatic handgun that I had chosen back at the guild. The vehicle jerked again as I unholstered it and made my way to the second ladder on the right of Ariette. Then I hauled myself up with one hand and peeked my head out of the roof.
We were being followed by a huge flying horse. Or horse-like creature, I realized as I got a better look at it. Where a horse would normally have hooves, this thing had long talons like an eagle. And instead of blunt square teeth, the creature bared its lips to reveal sharp, pointed fangs much like a shark’s. Huge, bird-like wings protruded from its back, and I estimated they had a span of about fifteen feet.
Just as I made it to a stable place on the ladder, the horse monster let out a high-pitched screech and dove toward us with its sharp talons.
I yanked on the back of Ariette’s shirt, and we ducked down into the van as the talons ricocheted off the hatch where Ariette had been half a second earlier.
“Goddammit,” Ariette muttered as she popped up and let loose a spray of bullets in the direction of the creature. Almost effortlessly, the horse-monster-asshole tipped its wings to one side and pulled back, completely avoiding the spray of bullets.
As quickly as I could, I willed my Hand to connect with the horse-monster’s blood. But just as I felt a connection, the van rocked to the right, and I was violently thrown against the side of the hatch. My connection was lost instantly.
“I can’t get steady enough to use my Hand,” I shouted over the rush of the wind.
“Me neither,” was her response, as her ocean blue eyes were still focused on the monster.
I took a moment to see if there were other cars anywhere near us since I didn’t want to take the risk of injuring a civilian. We were on a two-lane road that ran along the side of a huge mountain. The road was lined with trees and bushes, and there was no one in sight for miles.
“HC, eyes on the monster here!” Ariette hollered over the wind.
I turned back around to try to get a good shot at the thing, but it was almost useless. It dipped and twirled through the air so gracefully and quickly that even my newfound Fae accuracy wouldn’t help.
“Can you hold it off for a minute?” I called out to Ariette as sharp talons flew over our heads. Both of us ducked, and I heard the material of my shirt rip as it very nearly took my arm off.
“I think so,” she replied, and her eyes focused on the beast as she prepared to unload another burst of bullets.
I clambered back down and stuck my head through the driver’s curtain.
“Kalista, how fast can you turn this thing around and get us underneath it?” I asked as I leaned over the dash.
“Ten feet above us, five feet behind us,” she muttered to herself as her violet eyes jumped wildly from the pitch black windshield to the pitch black window to her left. “Uh, I can do my best.”
“Alright, that’s going to have to do,” I said. “I just want to get a clear shot at its belly. See if this thing’s totally bulletproof.”
With that, I sprinted back to the ladder and hauled myself upward. The moment my head popped out of the roof, I grabbed onto the ladder as tightly as possible.
“You’re going to need to hold on,” I instructed the elf beside me.
Ariette didn’t even glance my way as she nodded and latched onto one of the bars on the van’s roof rack. Less than half of a second later, Kalista spun the Van of Death and sent the wheels skidding into a perfect bootlegger’s reverse. We immediately headed in the opposite direction in an attempt to get right up under it, and Ariette and I readied ourselves to fire.
Unfortunately, the beast had the presence of mind to propel itself forward with a screech, and it zoomed past us almost instantly.
“Dammit, that thing’s quick,” I grunted as I adjusted my grip on the gun. I finally got a shot at it and squeezed the trigger. But, as I had been afraid of, the blast that flew from my barrel made contact with the creature’s chest and simply fell away.
But that wasn’t the end of it. I watched in shock for a moment as the horse spun around in the air above us with a whoosh of its wings and then barreled toward us at an impossibly fast speed. Its red eyes glinted murderously as the talons on its two front legs stretched themselves open.
“Ariette, get down!” I shouted as I dropped down the ladder into the van.
The elven warrior quickly followed suit as she dropped back down her own ladder and landed back inside the van behind me.
“Kal!” she called out as she dropped her gun back on the rack.
“Yeah, I know!” the dwarf yelled back to us. “That thing is way faster than we are!” The engine roared as Kalista floored the gas pedal.
“This isn’t exactly the best vehicle for a car chase,” I muttered.
I barely finished my sentence before the van rocked hard to the left and the grinding screech of talons on metal filled the air. Ariette and I were knocked forward with the force of the impact, and the van’s tires screeched down the road as the beast continued to plow into us. The entire vehicle spun in a circle as we went at least sixty miles an hour.
There was no time, and no way to right ourselves before another loud crash filled the air. Ariette and I flew toward the driver’s seat and landed in a sprawling heap as the huge door of the van popped open and slid backward as sunlight filled the room.
“I can use my Hand now!” Ariette hollered, and before anyone knew what she was doing, she leapt out of the van’s open door. Kalista and I followed her quickly.
There, hovering in the air above us, was the horse creature. Its red eyes stared us down, and a shadow of a smile seemed to flash across its face. I saw Ariette call her Hand to battle and watched blue sparks dance at her fingertips as the beast flapped its wings and prepared to dive down on us.
As those giant wings folded into its back and its talons glinted in the sun, a giant bolt of electricity shot from Ariette’s hand. The beast had no time to react before it was knocked out of the sky. The horse’s body smacked into the ground with a loud thwack, but none of us moved.
Suddenly, Ariette threw her Hand forward, and two more electric bolts crashed into the creature. The smell of sizzling flesh permeated the air, and I did my best to repress a gag.
“For good measure,” Ariette grunted with a shrug as she dropped her hand.
I stared at the charred carcass warily, but I knew it wasn’t getting up again.
Kalista stomped over to the beast and nudged it with her foot before she nodded with finality to signal that it was, indeed, dead.
“Oh boy, I found someth
ing,” the dwarf gasped as she knelt next to its trunk-like neck and unbuckled what looked like a dog collar. She held it up in the sunlight, and a wave of shock and excitement crossed her face.
“What is it, Kal?” Ariette demanded.
“For someone so smart, this bad guy is pretty damn stupid,” the dwarf announced before her violet eyes landed back on us. “It’s a GPS homing beacon. He wanted to track this thing, probably because it flies and is apparently not as sentient as the bank troll had been. But I can also use this to track him.”
“And that, plus whatever information Hasan’s agent has, should--” I started.
“Should make us the top level operatives in the entire Jefferson Guild!” the dwarf cried back as she fist pumped.
“Alright, we gotta go,” Ariette announced as pursed her lips and glanced down the road where sirens sounded in the distance. “Somebody heard the commotion and apparently called the authorities.”
“Wait.” I held out a hand to stop Kalista as she headed toward the driver’s seat. “Do you guys think this might mean… Do you think there’s a traitor in the guild?”
Ariette and Kalista didn’t respond, and the three of us looked at each other for a long moment, before Ariette finally spoke.
“No way,” the elf shook her head, “No Seelie would be this terrible. No way.”
But she didn’t sound too sure.
“Okay,” I allowed, not in the mood to make us even more scared. “Turn off our GPS system first. The one on the van. I bet that’s how that beast found us.”
Quickly, the dwarf disabled all location systems as Ariette closed the van door with a slam, and then we screeched back on to the road. Fifteen minutes later, we pulled to a stop in the parking lot a block away from the address Hasen had given us, and we all took a collective breath before we got out.
There really wasn’t a dull day in the world of the Fae.
Chapter 14
We hopped out of the van as the sun began to set over the neighborhood, and the street we walked on was run down, especially in comparison to the fancy bank building we’d left hours earlier. A few bums lined the streets and grumbled in their alcohol-induced hazes, and trash littered the gutters.
Ariette had her guard up as we rounded the corner onto Oak Park Avenue, but one bum sidled up to Kalista’s side and smiled with his haggard, brown teeth.
“Uh, no,” she growled, and he instantly retreated.
Seconds later, Ariette stopped in front of a short, run-down building. A neon sign that hung on the front read “The Spot,” except the pink light of the ‘t’ was out, so it sort of looked like “The Spo.”
We stepped over the uneven cobblestone of the sidewalk in front of The Spot and brushed past a large human, dressed in all black. He put a hand on my arm before we could step inside.
“Entry fee,” he rumbled at me.
“Excuse me?” Ariette asked him with fire in her eyes.
“Not for the ladies,” he replied with a smirk. His dark eyes took in their figures, and I watched him lick his lips.
“How much is it?” I demanded, short on patience.
The guard looked back at me and considered. “Twenty,” he said.
“Seriously--” Ariette started to argue, but I simply raised a hand at her. We didn’t have time to fight over something as stupid as this.
“Here,” I grunted as I shoved a twenty-dollar bill at him. He took it and waved us inside.
“Nice place this agent’s sent us to,” the elf muttered next to me.
It was a typical dive bar, full of rough and tumble humans clad in leather and denim. The women wore dark eyeliner and deep red lipstick while the men had beards that hung to their chests and looked like they hadn’t been brushed in days. A dirty bar lined the wall to our left with a sad assortment of cheap booze and peanuts stored behind it.
A beautiful woman, clad in a tight white tank top that showed off her ample cleavage and dark skinny jeans, looked up from the drink she poured to shoot me a wink.
“Come on, HC,” Ariette muttered as the bartender stared at me. “The longer you stand here in the open, the more women fall in love with you.”
“Where do you think she is?” Kalista asked as she scanned the crowd for Hasen’s agent.
“Let’s just wait it out,” Ariette replied under her breath. “She’s probably going to make us wait to assert her authority or some stupid bullshit like that.”
We took a seat at a tall table toward the back of the bar. Ariette and I stood while Kalista hopped onto a stool so she could be even with our eye line.
Ariette’s gaze darted around the room as she continuously looked for threats, and the beautiful elf dodged winks and lewd stares from the men that filled the bar. Most of them were too drunk to even stand straight.
“I don’t see a single Fae in here other than us,” Kalista complained as her violet eyes followed a path of their own through the crowd of humans.
“That’s probably the point, Kal,” Ariette replied. “No one’s going to overhear important guild intel in a dirty human bar.”
A redheaded waitress approached our table just as Ariette finished her sentence, and I watched her raise a single eyebrow before she cocked a hip and sighed.
She was dressed in the same tight white tank top as the bartender, and her cleavage did it just as much justice. I could see the outline of her pink nipples under the fabric.
“Can I get you anything from this dirty human bar?” the girl asked as she stared directly at Ariette.
“I’m fine with a water,” the elf replied snidely.
“Same here,” Kalista stuttered when the waitress looked at her.
Finally, the redhead turned her blue eyes on me and smiled when she saw I was human as well. “What about you, honey? You look like you know how to have a good time, can I get you a beer?”
“Uh, yeah, beer’s good,” I responded.
“Coming right up.” She winked at me as she sauntered off to the bar area.
I put my hand down on the tabletop and instantly lifted it right back up. It was sticky and lumpy and definitely full of nasty things that I did not want to think about. There was a brown bowl filled with peanuts and a napkin dispenser in the middle of the table. I grabbed one of the sheets of paper and laid it down in front of me.
“I kind of like this place,” Kalista said as she popped a peanut in her mouth.
An extremely drunk blonde woman, wearing denim from her head to her toes, stumbled into Ariette’s back and threw the elf forward. Ariette’s ribs collided with the lip of the table before she turned toward the drunkard with a snarl.
“Watch where you’re going,” the elf growled. The blonde human sneered back at her.
“Why don’t you go downstairs, where your kind are more welcome?” she snapped back before she stumbled off and weaved among the tables.
The three of us exchanged looks before my eyes caught the banister of a staircase toward the back corner of the room. We’d missed it earlier. I motioned toward it with my chin, and the two women followed my gaze before each let out a quick sigh of relief.
The three of us scrambled to get to the stairs as we weaved through the crowd of humans and tables. Ariette pushed and elbowed people out of her way until she finally stopped in front of a rectangular hole in the floor against the wall. We stepped up to it to see the spiral staircase and the flash of blue-green, yellow, and pink lights that came from the downstairs area.
Ariette cocked her head at us, and then she led us down the creaky stairs into an underground club.
The light came from a disco ball that spun on the ceiling in the center of the makeshift dance floor. It looked like someone had simply unfurled a wooden mat in the center of the room. Fae danced and swayed to the loud music as it pounded through the basement room.
My eyes fell on one couple as they swayed slowly, completely off-beat with the music, at the edge of the dance floor. The male was an elf, tall and lean with a thick brown braid tha
t trailed from the top of his head to the bottoms of his knees. The female was considerably shorter and squatter, a dwarf, with a round bottom and heaving breasts that pushed into her partner’s stomach. They spun around in a slow circle, their eyes locked onto each other. Then the elf bent down and pressed a long, hard kiss to her lips.
A pixie, less than a foot tall, floated a few feet from the loving couple. Its wings twisted and turned as it flitted about in quick circles and jerked its body in time with the beat. Pale pink eyelids were stretched closed over large eyeballs, and even though the pixie was all alone, it looked like it was having a fantastic time.
Ariette motioned for us to follow her on to the dance floor, and the three of us swayed along to the music as we made our way to an empty space below the disco ball.
I looked around, but no one seemed to notice or care that the three of us were there. People were too busy as they danced, made out, or looked like they wanted to have sex with their clothes on in the middle of the dance floor.
“Dance,” Ariette whispered in my ear.
I realized I had just been standing there as I stared at everyone. I grabbed her hands and spun her around so that her back was against my front.
“Where do you suppose she is?” I muttered back to her.
“I don’t know, but we have to blend in, or people might start asking questions,” she replied, her voice low and soft in my ear.
Suddenly, I felt a feather light touch on my lower back. The hand traced from my spine to my hip bone and sent a shiver over my entire body. Every single hair stood at alert at the feeling of that touch. Ariette and Kalista looked over my shoulder with wide eyes as a woman came to stand beside me.
She was beautiful. Tanned skin could be seen in the glow of the lights, and full lips formed a perfect pout underneath her upturned nose. Her auburn hair flowed down to her waist in perfect waves and created a beautiful contrast to her green eyes. They were the brightest green I’d ever seen, like the kind of green you’d expect paint or a real emerald to be. And they looked me over with a mixture of hunger and anticipation. Clearly, this was the special agent Hasen had sent us to meet.
