“Because we’re all linked perfectly,” Alice said as she tilted her face down, looking at the ground. “When the human host needs to sleep, so does the Dryad tree.”
“You’re still awake.”
“Because your friend Emily offset the link with my tree,” she said. “I woke up, but my Dryad tree is still asleep. Been lost here in the park, searching for help ever since.”
“But you found me instead.” I made a soft grunt to myself. “How do you know it was Emily?”
“Wasn’t the first time,” Alice said. “Emily accidentally broke the link when you two went strolling through here a few days ago. It’s the reason why I hired you. You guys cut me loose, and I needed someone that was going to pursue this before my Dryad merged with my body again.”
That means … the tree that Emily climbed up into, during the night we confronted those dicks that burned down my last client’s house, was a Dryad tree. Emily fucked up the connection somehow, granting Alice temporary free will. That’d probably explain why she wasn’t green at the time she met us as well.
The job Alice offered us wasn’t just to find her brother. It was to save her and the others. Alice must have been banking on the hope that I’d stumble upon the Dryads. The entire case was a secret call for help, sent by a woman that wasn’t in complete control of her body or the situation she was forced into. That’s why she wrote stuff down when we first met, as it was her way of communicating secretly without her Dryad possessing tree going through her memories and learning what she told me exactly.
Alice got up from her rest and led me away from the statue, moving across the park stopping at the Conservatory Water, a big ass pond in the park. If it wasn’t for the rippling aura of the Lux energy barrier, you’d be able to see the high-rise buildings of the city standing tall above the trees in the distance.
The water in the pond looked clear, more than usual. The fae wasn’t just changing the plant life in Central Park; they did something to the water as well. Alice stood at the edge of the pond, kneeling next it, swirling her hands through the water. The ripples in the water that formed in the wake of her hand moving through it glowed blue.
She pulled her hand out from the pond, and the water that I expected to drip off her hand came together like it was alive and molded into a glittering orb. Holding onto the orb, she brought it to my face. A vision played out on it, showing the Dryad and fae-possessed FBI agents interacting with the weird trees and flowers changing the park, processing the missing people of the city at the same time.
“Central Park is being converted into a staging point for the fae’s first strike,” Alice said.
I grimaced, watching the images on the orb made of the pond’s water play out. “Against the demons of the city, right?”
“They want to start with you.”
“Why me?”
Alice brushed her fingers across the water orb, and its images changed. I saw myself with that punk kid in the park after I cut his pinky off. I was in the middle of telling him to send a message to his friends, that I was the only demon in the city he should deal with. That I was the queen and he needed my express permission to talk with other demons.
“They took the message seriously,” Alice said. “The fae believe you’re the source of all demonic activity.”
Me and my big mouth. “I guess being a half-succubus doesn’t help,” I said.
“You’ve been feeding a lot, and they know it.”
“I’ve killed all my victims with enchanted weapons, so they don’t get possessed.”
I felt my heartbeat increase when I saw Giovanni’s face flash in my head. Alice still didn’t know the truth, and our conversation was getting really close to moving into the direction of that topic.
“They don’t know that, and probably don’t care,” she said while letting go of the orb. It splashed on the ground like someone had spilled a cup of water. “The increase in demons arriving in the city started with your appearance last year, Reika.”
“That’s because Schubert and Lucifer were doing fucked up things and dragged me into it.”
“The fae has been in the city longer and were observing. As far as most fae are concerned, you’re the root of the problem.”
I crossed my arms, giving her an impressed smile. “You seem to know a lot.”
“My parents are part of that observing team.”
“So that’s their plan,” I said, putting it all together in my head. “Turn the missing people into Dryads and use them as cannon fodder in their war against me.”
“Yep, then they turn to the remaining demons, hoping to also wipe out the cause of Donovan’s possession as well, which has them worried.”
I could care less about the other demons that might be in the city, it was my job to get rid of them all anyway. Going on a quest to wipe out all demons, while adding me and possibly Emily to that list, yeah that wasn’t cool.
“What about everyone else in the city that haven’t been possessed or brought here?”
“It’s going to be a war, Reika,” she said with a shrug. “Humans will be hit in the crossfire and the fae knows it. The more human possessed fae, the fewer human casualties in the end as far as their concerned.”
All I heard was that there was a bunch of fuckers in the Lux that were afraid. Afraid that one of their kind, Donovan, got possessed by a demon, afraid how the demon population of the city increased so fast in the last year, and afraid that I’m the self-proclaimed queen of the demons in New York. Throw in Lucifer’s failed plans and Lilith’s current one, and I’d say the fae think they’re losing their war against the Umbral. They shit their pants and went to step up their game.
Now that I had the facts, I needed to find a way to turn it into a weapon that’d bring about the apocalypse in the eyes of the fae, ending their plans. This was my city, and it wasn’t going to be turned into a war-torn wasteland on my watch.
I faced Alice early and asked. “Tell me exactly what we need to do to end this.”
“Without human hosts, the fae can’t continue using the Dryads,” she said. “Without those trees, the Dryad can’t live.”
I looked to the magical living trees far off in the distance ready to process another batch of innocent people. “Free the people, chop down some motherfucking trees, I’m down with that.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
We spent the next hour scouting and meandering through the park, exchanging ideas on exactly how we were going to go about freeing everyone, while destroying the Dryad trees, without dying in the process. Best idea we came up with was to kill the Mandragora, removing their hold on the zombies, the largest threat to our plans.
After that it was it was setting the trees on fire. Trees, living or not, tend to not fare well when set on fire. Given how hot and dry it was inside the barrier covering the park, the fires should burn pretty well too. With the Dryad souls in the trees dead, their control of humans that had been converted should break as well.
Of course, we wouldn’t be in the clear once that was done. There was still the issue of making a mad dash outside and hoping the FBI would be cool with it, which I doubted, well at least for the agents here in the park. On the outside though, they’d have no choice, the police, public and FBI not possessed will be watching as we all emerged from the barrier screaming for help.
It was a dicey as fuck plan with more ways it could go wrong than right. But it was the only one we could come up with, and time was running out. The only thing we had in our favor was that both of us were fae in the eyes of those around us. Walking right up to the enemy without getting blown away was doable. Sabotaging their plans once we got there, yeah, that’s when things will get interesting.
If Emily was still here in the park, now would be a good time to make an appearance.
Alice and I kneeled behind a bush ready to act. Ahead of us were the living trees of the Dryad ready to convert more people into members of the fae’s growing army. A walking patrol of possessed FBI
agents neared us from a bike path behind. It was now or never.
“Anything I should know about fae talents?” I asked her.
She smirked at me, no doubt sensing that I still had Lux energy flowing through me. “I’d like to know how you got our powers to start with.”
“I asked your folks real nice to lend them to me.”
Alice grimaced. “How is that possible?”
I exhaled; this question was going to get asked regardless. Surprised she was only now bringing it up. “We had sex.”
Alice looked disgusted, even staggered an inch away from me. “Both of them?”
I nodded, holding a nice little smug grin on my face. “At the same time, yep.”
Now she was the one sighing. “Oh, for fuck sakes …”
“Really? You’re grossed out? I’m a succubus, what were you expecting I’d do, if I went to your parents and asked them for something? This is part of the job, and it got me here without anyone knowing. So back to the question …”
“Fae are restricted to one element,” she said, facing away from me in disgust. “My mother was a fire sprite, so you should be able to use her abilities.”
“Cool.”
“If you use those powers you’ll be stuck with them. There’s no shifting back and forth like demons can.”
I calmed my thoughts and focused, trying to access the fae elemental abilities that were given to me when I absorbed Lux energy from her parents. It wasn’t that different from my ability to attune to fire, covering my body with flames, except for one difference, I couldn’t switch to any other element. She wasn’t kidding about the restrictions, fae were locked into one element, but the abilities they got from that were more extensive.
The usual fire talents were there like fireball, flamethrower, and the ability to cover my body in flames. But there were a whole lot of others too, a list too long to practice and get used to. I was jealous, a fire fae had way more destructive abilities with fire than I had and looked a hell of a lot cooler too. Seriously, it looked like I was made entirely out of fire, even my hair was turned into raging flames that took the shape of it. Flaming fairy wings sprouted out from my back, same with Alice as she joined me, attuning to the fire.
My limited stock of Lux energy started to drain away. I was on the clock, once I ran out of Lux power, I’d revert to my regular self. The Lux energy within the barrier covering the park will work to kill me immediately afterward. No mistakes were allowed.
As planned, Alice and I walked to the gathering of trees and weird flowers. Nobody suspected a thing at first until we made our strike. The plant life around us exploded in a burst of red flames. The Mandragora went down first and quick. They were earth-based, weak to fire, their bodies and vines were reduced to blackened ash in seconds. A group of angry Dryads came running toward us with spears or bow and arrows in hand. As much as I loved the new destructive power the Lux gave me, we couldn’t go apeshit on them. They were the missing people forced into this. We had to kill their trees to free them of the curse.
I ran to the first living tree, its branches looking like arms reached out trying to grab me. But I was too fast for it, running and leaping to the side, rolling on the grass when leaping wasn’t an option, setting that on fire in the process. With my arms stretched out, I lit that tree up with a flamethrower talent that was double the size of my normal one. Its moving branches got all motionless after that, as the leaves rained around my body, all of them glowing red from the flames.
Alice and I repeated the process, black smoke rose working like a smoke signal to the rest of the fae. It was a double-edged sword. With each tree burned down, we saw the Dryad’s that were linked to them fall, holding their heads screaming. When the screams stopped, their green skin returned to normal, the branches and leaves that made up their hair transformed back into human hair. The missing people of New York were human once again, naked and confused as fuck, but back.
Gunshots clapped in the distance, the bullets that soared next to me were imbued with magic. The bullets that missed hit the grass at my feet freezing it solid instantly. Looking back down toward the bike path, were a group of pissed off fae, donning FBI uniforms; their bodies looked as if they were made of water. Water was going to do us both in. I’d switch elements if that was an option. The limitations of fae magic were brutal.
“Get these people out of here!” I shouted at Alice.
She shook her head. “I don’t think they’ve seen me, I might be able to get them to stand down.”
“Fuck it, civvies come first, get them outside the barrier now!”
Alice moved away, getting the attention of the free humans, leading them away from the burning fae flowers and trees lifting heat and smoke about. I counted four water fae when I looked around the burning tree I used as cover. They weren’t pursuing Alice and the others, yet. I had to make sure they didn’t.
I made a move, running away from the burning tree, launching fireball, after fireball at the fae. They went boom with an explosive blast releasing searing heat and flames when they hit, spreading the fires we sought to create. The four water fae weren’t affected, as I suspected, you can’t light water on fire. All I did was get them irritated at the loud sounds the explosions my fireballs made, they chased me as a result.
None of them chased Alice and the others. Good.
I kept running, keeping my head low from the bullets. I kept myself behind random trees at all times during the run, exploding a few them as I passed them, sending their branches and trunks engulfed in flames to slow the fae agents’ pursuit of me.
It didn’t matter how far away I got, every possessed agent in the park knew where I was. Being made of flames, setting the grass and plant life around you on fire will do that. I was a walking target made of glowing red and orange colors, turning everything I touched into black smoke. I’d end the attunement, but I didn’t know how. I was stuck as a fire sprite until my Lux reserves ran out. And when that happened, I’d be a dead woman.
Better to die of the Lux energy in the air than to let these assholes get that satisfaction.
I approached one of the many lakes in the park and saw my flaming reflection in its ultra-clear water looking up at me. Never in my life living in the city had I seen the water in the park look so … flawless, and clean. The fae was changing it to keep their living trees alive and happy I guessed. I hope they weren’t going to be able to see my presence as I leaped into the lake, plunging to the bottom.
My flames went out instantly while the Lux energy within me tried over and over to reignite them, not realizing I had been submerged in the lake. Can’t light a flame while underwater, my body returned to its previous state when the Lux in me ran dry. The glow of my form was gone, it was the glow the FBI fae were still searching for, as they ran past the lake, not realizing I jumped in.
My Lux reserves had depleted at that point and my Umbral ones came back. I was able to attune to any element once again, just like old times. I was back, attuned to water, and placed in a state where I couldn’t drown, a state where I could breathe water like a fish.
I gave it five minutes before I made it back to solid ground, out of the lake, rolling to my back with my face looking up. The FBI fae was gone, and so were my Lux reserves. The Lux energy that flooded all of Central Park worked like poison gas to kill me. Hell, even the water had Lux energy in it, and that too was killing me.
Like I said, better to die here than to give them the satisfaction of getting the kill shot. Hopefully, Alice got everyone else out safely, or my sacrifice would have been for nothing.
Chapter Thirty
The pain I was in was unbearable, like someone had reached inside me and squeezed hard around every organ in my body. Breathing was a grueling task, as my chest violently shook when the coughing started. I guess this was what it felt like to be a demon that got hit by an enchanted weapon, the feeling of not only your body dying, but your soul as well, everything fading away into nothing.
I lay next to the lake, looking up at the trippy rainbow colors created by the Lux barrier, waiting for the hand of death to end my suffering, and coughed six times rapidly. The sounds were going to give my dying body away. The Lux energy around me needed to hurry up and kill me before the FBI fae heard my coughs.
The sounds of footsteps grew closer to me. Someone heard my coughing and was closing the gap quick. I thought it was the fae at first until I listened closer. The footsteps weren’t boots walking on the ground. Emily perhaps? She entered as a cat and would be naked and barefoot if she had shifted to her humanoid form.
A hand pulled on my arm, dragging my body away into the grassy field. No bullets entered my head. I opened my eyes, looking up to the person that dragged me way, while my eyelids felt like there were being cut with small razors. I saw Alice stand over me, free of the flames that covered her body, free of clothes too. I was okay with dying at that point, with the view of her body I got.
“The fuck are you doing here,” I said with a sore, haggard voice, while grinning.
“Saving you,” Alice said, kneeling next to my body. “What does it look like?”
“You were supposed to leave with everyone …”
“Yeah, that included you, Reika.”
“Fuck that.”
“We wouldn’t have survived the trip, not without your help.”
“What the fuck?” I tried to sit up. It took a lot of strength just to do that. “Where is everyone then?”
“Recaptured,” Alice said grimly. “Well, not all of them, some took their chances, but I’m sure the fae got to them.”
I groaned, rubbing my head in defeat. “It was for nothing. All that for fucking nothing!”
Deception of the Demon Girl Page 17
