Faerey Normal

by brett hicks

  I licked my lips again and I found my voice.

  “Then why did you come over here?”

  I only sounded a little husky to my great credit! Jace seemed satisfied with himself and I breathed in deeply and I felt myself blushing crimson.

  Fuck! He can totally smell me! This is so wrong, you stupid mutt!

  My grin became feral and I felt the glamour slipping around my eyes. My power was crackling just below my flesh now. Jace could feel this too and he studied me with more caution than he had when I was sparring with him earlier.

  “It appears you have been holding back on me as well, little Faerey.”

  I shrugged with one shoulder.

  “A girl can’t reveal all her tricks on the first date.”

  I am totally going to bang my head against a very hard wall after this is over! That sounded so freaking tacky!

  Casey looked more amused than terrified now. Apparently, my self-deprecation was enough to help her overcome her lupine phobia.

  “What Amy means to say, is that she cannot tell all her secrets in one day.”

  Casey winked at me and I was caught between gratitude and anger. Then a fresh wave of embarrassment rushed through me with all the force of a tsunami.

  “I just came over to walk with you to practice. You are still trying out for the football team, right?”

  I nodded dumbly and I tried to swallow down the lump in my throat.

  “Yep, still in the running, apparently my coach was not done with me after yesterday. I’m hoping she lets me spend more time on offense today so I can display my true skills. But, this school seems to have a very competitive lineup for both offense and defense positions. Heck, I only scored once on that damnable goalkeeper from the boy’s team!”

  Jace’s lips twitched in amusement and he absently scratched at his cheek.

  “That goal keep is one of the best in all of Britain. Bugger was all hot and bothered that a brand-new little girl got one by him. I heard him growling in the loo.”

  I blinked and Jace’s smile widened further.

  “Finn was impressed, but bloody furious with himself!”

  Casey smacked my arm, “Doofus, you never mentioned that you scored off Finn!”

  I shrugged and looked over at my friend, who suddenly looked as if I had won the World Cup.

  “You make it sound like I achieved the impossible.”

  Jace snorted in amusement and Casey rolled her eyes at me.

  “Not the impossible, but the improbable!”

  “Finn only gave up two goals last season. He is the reason our boy’s football team went to the finals in the Faerey Cup.”

  I spun around and my eyes were probably gleaming with my excitement.

  “Wait a sec, are you telling me I can still compete in real tournaments?! I can play socc… football competitively?!”

  Casey chuckled and twiddled her fingers together in excitement.

  “You’ve just unleashed the beast inside her, man! I mean, Alpha Man!”

  To my supreme shock, Jace actually turned and smiled at Casey and shrugged casually.

  “That was not my intention, but at least now I know that the boys are going to be in for a right good clobbering today!”

  Casey nodded in agreement and she pointed at me.

  “She’s like a practical soccer—I mean football—freak.”

  Jace seemed to ignore our American slips. He wasn’t the type to go picking fights with us over our habitual use of the wrong term. Well, the wrong term on this side of the pond.

  “Come on killer, let us get ye to yer tryouts. Keep that energy nice and ripe, ready to be unleashed like thunder from one of the gods or goddesses.”

  I quickly downed the rest of my sandwich and my OJ, and then I followed Jace towards the summer field stadium.

  Twenty-Three:

  “What if I blow the ball apart when I kick it at full power?!”

  Jace chuckled darkly and he waved me off. Casey quickly put in, “Oh, please, if this guy here can kick the damn ball on a regular basis, then so can you! You act as if you’re the only chick with super-strength to ever walk onto the faerey field!”

  Jace growled in a weird lupine form of agreement. Perhaps this was a very bad sign, but I was beginning to interpret the many types of strange canine sounds that Jace made. Casey already seemed to know what each sound was because her body language reflected her bone-deep comprehension. Vampires were no one’s prey, but they were extremely wary of shape-shifters of any variety.

  “Go knock’em dead.”

  Jace gave me one more hot lupine look and then he spun and rushed off towards the next field over where rugby practice was about to start.

  “He’s been captain of the rugby team since his freshman year. Believe me, when I say, the previous captain did not want to submit to a damn freshman! Jace beat the living crap out of him on the field and he had no choice but to accept his defeat.”

  I shot the vampire a quizzical gaze and raised my brow up in question.

  “Are you terrified of him or hot for him?”

  Casey laughed loudly and spread her arms wide.

  “Both? He’s about as delicious as a man can possibly ever get! But, he could bite my throat out as fast as lightning…”

  My eyes seemed to swirl with jealousy and Casey stopped that sentence short of completion.

  “Easy tiger, save it for the football players, not the friendly neighborhood vampire chick.”

  I snorted and rolled my eyes at my goofy friend.

  “Are you doing anything tonight?”

  Casey shook her head in a big “no.”

  “Why don’t we go into town? I haven’t even seen a single piece of the city, except for the trip into the school.”

  Casey’s face lit with excitement and her body seemed to relax. She nodded in agreement.

  “Sure, I get we can find a good pub to hang out in.”

  “We’re fifteen!”

  Casey waved me off and snorted derisively.

  “Glamour is a girl’s best friend, besides; do you really think these fine English gentlemen will want to keep all of this out of their watering hole?”

  She swept a hand over each of us in turn, indicating our collective sex-appeal. I bit my lip and I felt myself shift foot-to-foot in insecurity. Casey huffed at me and blew her bangs out of her eyes.

  “Please, like you don’t know you are hot! God, you have the damn alpha lupine drooling all over your tiny little body!”

  I blinked and my eyes widened and I shook my head in denial.

  “You’re crazy, you know that, right?!”

  Casey grinned and her canines grew longer and pointier.

  “Just go to your football practice, so I can round up the troops for a good pub party.”

  “Why does that sound terrifying to me?!”

  I said with real dread in my tone and Casey waved me off.

  “You just haven’t seen a faerey party yet! We really know how to let our hair down!”

  Her violet and raven locks glinted as she spun around like a trained dancer. I laughed at her sudden vibrancy.

  “Fine, but my dad is going to kill me, like worse than dead! I mean, like six-feet-under kind of dead!”

  Casey chuckled and rolled her eyes.

  “Like Saint Maris has any room to talk!”

  I cringed at the implications and waved a hand in front of Casey’s face.

  “I’m just going to stop you there before you activate my up-chuck reflex!”

  Casey faux-pouted at me and then she was a blur of motion moving towards some new evil pub-crashing plan.

  Drusilla Brenton was eyeing me like a very suspicious hawk when I walked onto the soccer—football—field. It took a considerable about of self-control not to twitch or squirm under her scrutiny. Her eyes were burning on me the color of bright-green grass. Her silver hair was almost reflective of the field around her; Drusilla was a terrifyingly beautiful and exotic flower!

  S
he blew her whistle and my ears rang like I had a metal bell-ball loose in my head!

  I walked over to the rest of the girl’s team who were all huddled up tightly finishing their pre-practice gossip. Naomi the ginger lupine, gave me a shy smile and a limp little wave. The other girls turned and looked at me approaching. The lupine girls mostly looked hostile, but they didn’t seem keen on attacking for some reason.

  “Hopefully you’ve gotten your fill of our alpha, so we can stop worrying about his DNA polluting your faerey body.”

  I blinked up at them in surprise.

  “You do realize you just insulted him, not me, right? It should have been, me polluting his body.”

  I corrected her like a neurotic grammar-Nazi. Naomi looked amused, but she bit down on her lip. She didn’t seem to care much one way or the other. The other lupines growled at me, but still, they didn’t attack me. I gave them one more long lingering glance before I turned and began to find a place to stretch.

  A nixie (think human-sized pixie) fluttered out of the sky and a glamour swirl of spring colors rushed around us and leaflets began to shower down on all the teens on the field. The green leaves had a golden script that read, “Pub Crash!”

  Despite the now angry coaches glaring at the goofy young Nixie teen, everyone whooped in excitement.

  Crazy vampire!

  I didn’t need to know Casey long to know that she had been the mastermind behind this campaign to spread the good word about a very public party.

  Naomi looked at the leaf in her hand and she nibbled at her lip. I walked over and squeezed her shoulder lightly.

  “We’ll get you all dolled up for tonight, what do you say?”

  She peered at me through widened surprised eyes and nodded reluctantly. I winked to her and gave her shoulder one more squeeze and then I dropped to begin stretches with the rest of the girls and the guys.

  ***

  “I just don’t see how you are expecting the faereys and the lupines to drink and get along?!”

  Patrick Vaughn, highest ranking young beta of the lupine pack of England insisted firmly. His eyes were set with a fiery intensity. Casey sniffed and she walked over and looped her arm through his.

  “We’re making everyone swear to non-violence for the night. While partying, we are all allied as one, seeing as we are a single school, this is logical, yes?”

  He continued to grumble but I could see the stress seeping out of his posture. Patrick was worried about possible threats and he was also a wee-bit grumpy when we took his sister home with us and we found some very Casey-approved evening wear for her.

  Naomi peeked out from the semi-closed bathroom door and I sighed.

  “Come on out, we won’t bite Naomi, that’s your department, remember!”

  I snarked at the lupine girl and her brother growled at me. I managed to ignore him since Jace’s growl was far scarier and I was somehow unafraid of him as well. Naomi was shy to the point of awkwardness, but she finally opened the door to reveal a perfect red flowing gown with burnt-orange weaved in with spindles of gold. The dress was off-the-shoulder design and it had a modest cut that only hinted at the surprisingly robust breast-size Naomi had been hiding.

  “Holy monkey! You look like a Ten!”

  I said sincerely and Naomi beamed at me, forgetting her shyness for a split second. Her hair was pinned up; she looked more like she was going to prom than to crawl the pubs of Cambridge.

  All of us had delicate layers of glamour weaved to subdue the almost luminous quality of our supernatural species. I hid my ears behind my dirty-blonde curls. Casey was apparently a wiz with a curling iron. Not that it was actually made of anything related to the toxic substance.

  “How am I supposed to relax when my little sister looks like she’s being trotted off to market?!”

  Patrick grumped and I snorted at him and Naomi gave him huge blue puppy-eyes. He was powerless before the pleading look of his little sister. He growled and gave her a firm look.

  “You will stick close to these two, and you will find me if we are separated and you even think there will be any trouble!”

  He sounded almost as insistent as Jace right now. I was beginning to see how much more assertive and menacing dominant lupines were, compared to the less dominant. Patrick was second only to Jace after all, so he was a very strong wolf.

  Speaking of, he was nowhere to be seen. I looked around the halls for Jace as we all walked towards the front. Patrick snorted at me and said, “He’s with the cabby, Jace is. He’s seeing that all the students have proper rides back and forth, so no one gets any dumb ideas.”

  “Oh, that’s awfully responsible of him.”

  I said lamely and a bit more impressed with Jace’s maturity than I probably should have been. Pat waved a hand in the air.

  “All of this is his land. Jace takes his role in the pack and in the surrounding community very seriously. He has not behaved like a kid since he hit puberty and he and his father had it out. Jace won, so yeah, he earned the responsibility of all his classmates in that one night too.”

  My mouth dropped open in shock.

  “Jace fought his own father? As in like some kind of dominance fight?!”

  I remembered the barrel-chested boy’s football coach. He was not someone I would have imagined Jace as a young teen being able to beat, period. Pat sighed and grumbled, “Please forget that I mentioned that. It’s a sore topic for him since that was also the last time his da had any real interest in him. The alpha gene sometimes skips a generation, due to our nearly endless life-span. So, it was no small blow to Jace’s da that it skipped him over in favor of his son.”

  “Wow, that sounds terrible for Jace, I mean the way it divided his family.”

  Pat shook his head slowly.

  “He didn’t really want to beat his da, but he couldn’t back down, he’s too bloody dominant to do that you see.”

  I nodded my understanding. Jace fought like a damn ninja on steroids!

  “So, what’s Jace’s father’s rank in the pack?”

  Patrick seemed to consider this for a very long moment before he decided to answer.

  “When the gene skips a generation, that alpha-born wolf has to submit to the pack hierarchy. There were many in the past that incited rebellions and attempted coups. He had to accept the role as second-beta. I am stronger by just a hair so he could not stand right next to Jace in pack structure.”

  My eyes widened.

  “Wow, sounds like you and Jace had a lot thrust upon you at an early age.”

  Pat nodded and spread his hands in a vague gesture.

  “This is just the lupine way, my little faerey friend.”

  Twenty-Four:

  Gentry was leaning against his stretch-cab of some bizarre love-child between a limo and a fifties era taxi cab. His eye widened as he caught sight of me. His wide smile became a fierce grin of excitement.

  “Ello, Amy!”

  I smiled wide and I trotted over to him and I stuck out my hand in a friendly shake. He gripped my small hand with his massive Cyclops-sized meaty hand and shook delicately. He looked me over, I was talked into wearing an emerald green sheath dress that Casey had conveniently liberated from my father’s collection. He had always kept dresses for me that fit perfectly, just in case I suddenly felt the urge to look more girlish on occasion.

  I felt flush at the scrutiny.

  “You look like a real faerey princess.”

  I barely managed to smother the thanks on the tip of my tongue. Gentry looked at my friends and I noticed the recognition that sparked in his eyes.

  “Ah, young First Beta, good to see ye again. How’s your mum?”

  Pat stepped forward and clasped hands with the much larger man and still managed to look every bit as deadly as the Cyclops in the process. He was wearing a finely tailored charcoal grey suit and a black dress shirt underneath.

  “She’s good, still using all those tools your brother forged for her.”

  Gen
try smiled wide and he laughed with a thundering boom of humor.

  “Well, come on you lot, let’s get ye to yer party then!”

  I frowned and looked over at Casey questioningly.

  “I thought we were just going to a human pub or two?”

  She grinned widely and waved me off.

  “Please, that’s so passé. We’re going to an exclusive lupine and faerey run nightclub.”

  “It’s technically always night there!”

  Gentry corrected from his cab door. Casey snorted waved her hand around excitedly.

  “Anyway, think of this as your first real glimpse of non-school faerey life.”

  Pat grumbled, “I wouldn’t bother wearing me good suit to a pub, lass.”

  I snorted and I nodded to him as he held the doors open and let all of us girls into the weird bright yellow limo-cab.

  ***

  Mists of every color spun around me as we rolled through the mystical side of Cambridge City. Most of the ancient gothic architecture is similar to or identical to, the buildings of the human dimension. The buildings were similar, but without the weathering and aging, preserved by magic.

  Pixies and other magical beings with wings fluttered through the open skies. Faerey fire lit the lamps along the streets of night. This scene spread out before me was akin to something you might read about in a steam-punk fantasy novel. Granted there was no iron, just stone, wood, and other alloys.

  Where I had seen modern fast-food joints and other such dining joints in the human dimension, there were instead open balconies with small brownies serving up feast-like meals. There was also a place beyond the others on the far end of the main strip called “Ogre and Son’s Pizza.” Instead of delivery cars, winged bird-like men and women fluttered with packaged pizza pies.

  “Those are sylphs and old man Rolf Ogre employs several nixies as well.”