by Lola StVil
“You took away my mother, and you took away the love of my life. You don’t deserve to live,” Quinn spits at Atlas.
She takes a step forward, and so do I.
“Well, then it looks like you and I have a problem,” I say. “Because there’s no fucking way I’m going to stand here and let you kill her.”
“Kill her? Oh, Kane, you continue to underestimate me. I’m not going to kill her. At least not yet. Where’s the fun in that? Instead, I’m going to break her. Slowly. And only when she comes crawling to me, begging for me mercy, will I actually kill her,” Quinn says with a laugh.
Atlas takes a step towards Quinn, her chin up defiantly.
“You know what, I’ve apologized. I’ve tried to be nice, told you you’re welcome back. Well, enough is enough. You’ve made it clear this is about me. So, let’s cut out all of this bullshit and get it over with. Give the team the blood to take back to Regal, and you and I will fight it out once and for all,” Atlas says.
“Killing you is the main event, Atlas. This is merely the opening act,” Quinn says.
“You mean you’re too much of a coward to battle me?” Atlas taunts her.
Quinn shakes her head.
“No, I mean this is going to be way too much fun to cut it short. And I’m far too intelligent to fall for your goading.”
I hear movement behind me, and I turn, expecting to see something lethal, but instead, I see Saudia approaching.
“You stand there talking about how Atlas is evil and all this bull, Quinn, but you’re the one who killed Remy. I get why you’re pissed off with Regal and Atlas, but why her? She was your friend; we were more than friends, we were a family,” Saudia says.
Quinn meets her eye.
“Remy was my friend once, but I’m a different person now. For what it’s worth, the only pleasure I took from it was knowing how it would break Regal. It was unfortunate,” Quinn says.
“You’re a fucking psycho,” Saudia snaps.
Tracey has sidled up to us now, closely followed by Langston and Perry. She digs Saudia in the ribs with her elbow.
“What Saudia’s trying to say is—” she starts.
“What Saudia is trying to say is get your fucking priorities straight, Quinn. You talk about how you’re the new big bad, but the truth is, you’re nothing but Arken’s puppet. And even Kane walked away from that,” Saudia says hotly.
I’m not sure I like the “even Kane” part, but the sentiment is a good one. Langston steps forward and puts her hand on Quinn’s arm. I cringe, waiting for Quinn to attack, but she just smiles at Langston.
“He made you think you can’t come back from this, but you can. You made a mistake, that’s all. This isn’t the real Quinn. The real Quinn helped me try to bring Drew back when no one else would. The real Quinn would warn us when we were in danger. The real Quinn was brave and loyal, and she would be brave enough now to say she made a mistake and come back to us,” Langston says, tears shining in her eyes.
“You always did try to see the good in me,” Quinn says almost sadly. “I think you’ll be the one I regret killing most of all.”
“And you all thought she was an unfeeling bitch,” Perry says sarcastically.
Langston backs away from Quinn, her face shocked and upset at the same time.
“So, that’s it then?” Atlas demands. “You’re just going to walk away? Kill your friends? The guy you claim to love?”
“Oh no, Atlas. That’s much too easy. I’m not going to kill Regal. You are,” Quinn says.
“How do you figure?” Atlas says.
“Because you are the one who put him there,” Quinn says. “Although I didn’t expect Perry to be your accomplice. Nice going, Perry. I didn’t see that coming at all.”
“Yeah. It seems the Valkyries are almost as much of a drama queen as you are,” Perry fires back. “But then who can blame them when this is at stake?”
He gestures to himself. Quinn ignores him.
“You all know me. You all know I play fair,” Quinn starts.
She ignores the humph noise that comes from Saudia and carries on.
“I’m going to give you a chance to save Regal. Let me guess what’s happening right now. Sadie, my wonderful mother, is no doubt at Regal’s side, trying desperately to save him because precious little Atlas asked her to. It’s not going to happen without this vial of blood.”
She stops and pulls out a vial of blood. Saudia takes a half step forward.
“Uh-uh.” Quinn smiles.
She throws the vial into the air and waves her hand. The vial is instantly encased in a glass cube, which floats above Spectra’s head.
“By my estimation, you have about five minutes left before Regal succumbs to the poison.”
She waves her hand again, and a timer appears on the cube. It shows five minutes on the clock, and it starts clicking down immediately.
“When the timer reaches zero, the blood will vanish, just like Regal’s life. All you have to do is get it in the time you have left, and Regal lives.”
“What’s the catch?” Perry asks.
“Oh. Did I not mention that? The glass cube is linked to an Ice Fairy. And while she lives, the cube is unbreakable.”
Quinn waves both arms dramatically. The temperature in the room plummets. I can see our breaths in front of us like white smoke.
“Tick tock,” Quinn says as she disappears.
As she disappears, the Ice Fairy appears. She arrives in a cloud of ice, and the temperature plummets further. I instinctively rub my bare arms, trying to get some heat into them.
My hands fall away when I see the Ice Fairy. She stands tall, around seven feet high. She is made entirely from ice except for her face and hair, and steam rises from her body as the warm air touches her.
Her long auburn hair is held back in a ponytail, and she wears a tiara made of sharp icicles. Her face is pretty, but I’m not letting that fool me. Anything Quinn summons isn’t going to be nice.
“Who dares to bring me here? Explain yourself immediately,” she bellows as she takes a step towards us.
Atlas also takes a step forward.
“We didn’t summon you here exactly,” she begins. “We—”
“I’m bored of this already,” the Ice Fairy says.
Without warning, she fires a silver laser from her eyes. Atlas jumps aside just in time, and she returns fire.
I step forward, followed by the others, and we all begin firing at the Ice Fairy. Langston throws up a shield to protect us from the Ice Fairy’s lasers. She is big, but I think we stand a fair chance here. If we just take her eyes out, we’ll be okay.
“Take her eyes out, and she’s defenseless,” Tracey shouts.
Exactly, I think.
Atlas concentrates on one eye, and I aim for the other. We fire at the same time. The Ice Fairy fires back, but Langston’s shield stops her shots from reaching us.
The Ice Fairy reaches up and bats Atlas’s shot away, but mine lands. She screams in rage and pain as one of her eyes explodes.
She reaches up with one hand, and I think she’s reaching to feel the damage there. I am wrong. So very wrong.
Instead, she pulls her face off like a mask. I realize then that’s exactly what it is.
Beneath the mask, she is hideous. Where her face should be is a glistening maw of flesh. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is her eyes. There are around twenty of them studded into her face at seemingly random intervals.
“How the hell does she make sense of what she’s seeing?” Perry muses.
The Ice Fairy concentrates on the shield, and every one of her eyes fires an icy laser out at once. The shield erupts.
“It’s not gonna hold against that. We have to take her down,” Langston shouts.
“And quickly. We only have two minutes left,” Saudia adds.
“We need to do this as a team,” Atlas shouts, jumping into the air to avoid a laser. “Saudia, get Perry closer. Attack at the same ti
me. Langston, heat that bitch up. Kane, Tracey, and I will keep shooting and distract her.”
I try to get in front of Atlas to protect her, but the cold stare I get in return stops me. I stand by her side instead, and we fire into the Ice Fairy. She is angry now, roaring loudly and firing from every eye in quick succession.
Saudia grabs Perry, and they disappear and reappear in seconds, so close to the Ice Fairy they could reach out and touch her. Saudia gives the Ice Fairy a harsh look and then she concentrates her power on the Ice Fairy’s legs. One ruptures, and she falls to her knees. Perry throws a red web towards her face. It sticks to the bottom half of her face, and then Saudia has them back by our side.
The Ice Fairy might be down, but she’s far from giving up. The top half of her face is still working, and she keeps firing at us. One of her shots catches Tracey in the shoulder, and Tracey screams and falls to one side, frozen solid. I can see the blood pouring out of her wound beneath her icy prison.
I glance up at the clock. Just under a minute to go.
I see Perry looking at the clock at the same moment, and coming to the same realization. If we don’t do something right now, it’s going to be too late.
He leaps towards the Ice Fairy and fires again. She sees it coming, and rather than fire back, she reaches out and smacks Perry to one side. He goes flying through the air and slams hard against the wall. He slides down it and doesn’t get back up.
His web has hit its mark though. The Ice Fairy has only one functioning eye left. She flounders around, back on her feet now, still firing at us from the one remaining eye. In between shots, she holds her mask in front of the eye, protecting it.
Twenty seconds to go. We can’t fail. We just can’t.
I fire again, but it bounces off the mask.
Seventeen seconds to go.
I look around, desperate for something, anything, I can use to blast the mask out of her hand. There’s nothing. I aim my firepower at her hand instead of her face, but the icy coldness of her causes nothing more than an unimpressive sizzle.
Fifteen seconds to go.
Langston steps forward. I’d almost forgotten she was here. In her hands is a ball of blue light. Sparks fly from it.
“Get down,” she shouts as she launches it at the Ice Fairy.
I do as she says.
Thirteen seconds to go.
The blue ball hits the Ice Fairy square in the chest. The electric sparks buzz and crackle, and little flames appear as the electricity reacts with the ice. The Ice Fairy tries to step back, but she’s too late.
She topples forwards and hits the floor hard enough to make it shake.
Nine seconds left.
“Finish her, Atlas,” Langston shouts.
Atlas darts forward.
Eight seconds left.
She fires into the back of the Ice Fairy’s head. Once. Twice. Three times.
Seven seconds left.
The glass cube splits open, and Atlas throws herself to the ground beneath it. I hear one of her ribs crack as she slams off the staircase, but she holds firm and the vial of Valkyrie blood lands in her hands instead of smashing on the stairs, which I’m sure was Quinn’s intention if we did manage to put the Ice Fairy down.
Five seconds left.
We arrive in Regal’s room with three seconds to spare. There’s no time for talking; Atlas throws the vial of Spectra’s blood at Sadie. Sadie glances over us—Perry still looking dazed, blood all down his front, Atlas barely able to move because her rib, Tracey bleeding from the shoulder—and then she looks back down at what she’s doing.
She adds two drops of blood to the mixture in front her and begins siphoning it into Regal.
She smiles to herself as the murky gray film over Regal’s eyes begins to recede.
“Just in time,” she breathes.
“It’s going to take a while for this to take full effect. Let’s go into the waiting room and talk.”
No one moves.
“Guys, he needs a bit of space while the mixture takes hold, and you need to get cleaned up,” Sadie presses us.
Atlas sighs and limps from the room, and the rest of us follow her to the waiting room. Sadie pauses to talk to a healer who is passing by.
“Atlas, Tracey, Perry, go with her. She’ll get you all treated here, so you don’t need to leave and go to the regular clinic,” Sadie says after she’s finished talking to the healer.
“I’m fine. It’s only a bruise,” Atlas says.
Sadie raises an eyebrow and sighs as Atlas stares defiantly at her. Perry and Tracey don’t need convincing, and they go where the healer is pointing.
“Atlas Morgan, don’t you dare stand there and lie to me,” Sadie says. “You have til the count of three to go where you’re told, or I will personally give you a sedative and take you to the nearest clinic. One. Two…”
Atlas sighs and follows the healer.
“I’ll be there as soon as I hear anything,” I shout at her.
I smile a little inside. I’d never admit it out loud, but it was good watching Sadie in “mom” mode, and even Atlas, who argues with everything, knew better than to argue with her.
The rest of us enter the waiting room.
“So, what happened?” Sadie asks. “What did you have to give Spectra in exchange for the blood?”
“Actually, we didn’t have to give her anything,” I say.
Sadie raises an eyebrow.
“Seriously,” I say. “Quinn beat us to her. Spectra was dead when we got there. Quinn conjured up an Ice Fairy—”
Sadie gasps.
“—and we just had to kill her, and the blood was ours. She did us a favor. A few cuts and bruises and no deal with the Devil,” I finish.
“How did she seem? Quinn, I mean,” Sadie asks quietly.
“Oh, you know. Her usual charming self,” I say.
“She’s out of control. Demented is the word, I believe,” Saudia hisses. “I can’t believe I was ever friends with her. I’m sorry, Sadie, I know she’s your daughter and all that, but she’s a liability to this team. She didn’t think for a second that we would defeat the Ice Fairy in time. She wanted Regal dead, and she wanted us all to feel responsible for it.”
Sadie shakes her head sadly.
“I can’t believe she would do something like this,” she says.
“Really? Given everything you’ve seen so far you still think she’s not going to make the wrong choice?” I snap.
“I thought she would come to her senses. I guess I was wrong,” Sadie replies.
She heads for the door.
“I have to get back to Regal, make sure the mixture is taking well enough. I’ll be back as soon as I have any news for you.”
“I’m going to go check on Atlas,” I say.
“I’m going to see Tracey,” Saudia says.
She grins. “I guess that means you get the short straw, Langston. You can go check on Perry,” she adds.
“Yay me,” Langston says, but she gets to her feet all the same.
We walk along in silence. Saudia spots Tracey and goes into her room. Perry is in the room next door, and Langston shakes her head as she pushes the door open.
“I would get the dickhead,” she mutters.
I walk down a bit further until I spot Atlas perched on the edge of a bed, a healer standing over her.
I knock lightly and go in without waiting for an answer. Atlas jumps to her feet.
“Please, sit down,” the healer commands.
Atlas ignores her.
“Anything?” she asks me.
“Sadie went back in to make sure the mixture is working. She’ll let us know as soon as she knows anything. Sit back down. You might as well be sitting here as in the waiting room. Sadie knows where you are if there’s any news.”
She sits back down, but it’s clear she doesn’t want to. The mixture is almost all in her, which is good, as I don’t think she’ll stay put for long.
“You must stay still
until all of that is in,” the healer says to her.
“Whatever,” Atlas says, waving her hand dismissively.
“Ungrateful damn kids,” the healer mutters under her breath as she heads for the door.
Atlas hears her, but rather than the mouthful of abuse I expect her to unleash, she surprises me.
“I’m sorry. I’m not usually such an entitled bitch. Thank you.”
The healer flashes a quick smile and then she’s gone, and Atlas and I are alone. I feel suddenly awkward, like I don’t know what to do or what to say. I want nothing more than to go to Atlas and hold her in my arms. I want to look after her and make sure she’s okay, but I can see by the set of her mouth and the steely determination in her eyes that’s not going to happen. She’s back in “leader” mode.
“How’s the rib?” I ask.
“Fine,” she says.
“Atlas, can we talk?” I say, sitting beside her on the bed.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she says.
She won’t even look at me.
“Atlas, please. I want to help you,” I say.
“If you mean that, then do me a favor and go and check on the others,” she says.
I stand up to leave, but something stops me. Everyone has walked away from Atlas since Remy was killed. They all left her to deal with her feelings alone. And I won’t do the same. Screw them. They didn’t have her back when she was hurting like hell, why should she have theirs now?
I turn back to face her.
“Just go,” she says.
I don’t know how to reach her, so I resort to my default defensive anger.
“I guess you’re back in entitled bitch mode,” I snap.
She looks at me, the hurt on her face clear to see.
“Look, I didn’t mean that,” I say. “But you’re so guarded. I feel like you don’t trust me.”
“Well, excuse me if I’m not in the running for the girlfriend of the year award this year, but in case you haven’t noticed, there are more important things happening right now,” she snaps.
