Heroines and Hellions: a Limited Edition Urban Fantasy Collection

by Margo Bond Collins

  So, to sum up, what I had feared was actually happening: being up in the air and no longer surrounded by supernatural creatures, had made my aura detectable again. It had taken the tengus only a few minutes to pin-point my position, and now they were chasing me en masse.

  “Tengus! And we cannot face them all!” William shouted.

  “Brilliant deduction, Will,” I replied, reaching behind my back to unsheathe my jade katana.

  I must think quickly: James’ barrier was gone and so was his invisibility spell. There was no way I could defeat such an amount of tengus, all I could do was keep them busy long enough to get back to the Goblin Market where James could assist us.

  “Will, I want your most powerful barrier around me and the bird.”

  “Child, you do know that the bigger my barriers are, the least effective they turn out.”

  “I do, and I don’t care. This poor creature was caught in the crossfire, it’s terrified and it’s my duty to protect it.”

  “Child, be reasonable, must you really risk your life more than necessary for this bird?”

  “I must,” I said, giving him one of my stubborn looks. We both knew that there was no time to argue. Defeated, my ghost surrounded me and the bird with his most powerful barrier. Just in time, since the tengus advanced guards had just reached us and were now painfully crashing against Will’s barrier. The peacock shrieked with fear and accelerated.

  “We have a problem!” I shouted, while Will was engaging with the Japanese demons.

  “Only one?”

  “We don’t know which way the Market is, what if we’re heading into the wrong direction…no! Look over there!” I shouted, exhilarated, pointing at a distant, luminous dot on the ground. In spite of the distance, I could see that it was surrounded with trees, but in a sort of clearance and… flickering. Flames. We weren’t going in the wrong direction, we were heading back! For once, a strike of luck. Now, all I needed to do was to stay alive long enough to land safely. Land safely in a place that was burning to the ground. Again, one worry at a time.

  “Above you!” William yelled, as an oversized tengu sank his sword into my protective barrier, piercing through it. There was now a crack the size of a small ball right above my head. Big enough for a tengu’s arm to pass through and slash at me. Pity for him that I ducked and chopped his arm off. Both arm and the rest of the body dissolved into the expected green cloud.

  More and more crow demons were catching up with us: most of them bounced or crashed against the barrier, but some managed to hit it with their axes and daggers, producing many, too many cracks in it.

  It was only a matter of minutes before it’d collapse, exposing me and the poor peacock to their poisonous claws and beaks.

  The peacock shrieked again and, as if it knew what was about to happen, it accelerated even more, moving faster and faster. Too fast. I could now spot the roofs of the Market’s burning stalls. There were still dozens and dozens of supernatural creatures down there trying to douse the fire or fighting each other, or both.

  “We are flying too fast, child. We must slow down, or we’ll crash,” William said, sealing the cracks in the barrier with ghost slime, while throwing all sorts of destructive spells at our enemies. “This bird is mad with fear, I’ve tried to slow it down with magic, but it hasn’t work. Have to use all of my magic against the tengus, cannot concentrate it in one point…” he continued, making three tengus explode with a spell.

  He was right. Gently landing the peacock somewhere near the market would be difficult enough in normal conditions, since it was a wild creature frightened by the chaos on the ground. But, add to that the tengus on our tail made it beyond impossible.

  “OK, let’s think of something!” I shouted, slashing my katana at a tengu’s head that peered through another crack in the barrier, this time right in front of me. It managed to duck once. The second time I beheaded it with my jade blade.

  “Do you know where Turner is?”

  “While I was taking off to chase after you, he shouted that he’d wait for us in the wood, close to Thalea’s stall. I wonder if he could still be there”

  “There’s a chance he is, since he should still be invisible, and no one’s after him,” I shouted back. “Go find him! He could help us. First, slow the bird down.”

  “And leave you here alone?” Will replied, throwing a giant ball of slime at a bunch of incoming tengus. He was trying to stop as many as he could, before they could reach the barrier, which was so damaged now that I had no idea how long it would hold. One crack above my head had become big enough for a whole tengu to pass through and fight me on the peacock’s back. There was no way I could fight a tengu hand-to-hand and keep my balance while riding a giant bird flying at crazy speed. I needed to land fast, or the next entry in my paranormal CV would be “turned into a human omelette onto the Goblin Market’s ground, perfectly cooked, thanks to supernatural fire”.

  I must think quickly and act faster.

  “William, go now. Find Turner, please!”

  “But you…”

  “I can handle this for a short while. James is our only hope. Go!”

  “I will find him. I promise. Hold on tight!” He replied, and then disappeared.

  I was on my own. All I could do then was hope. And fight. Tooth and nail.

  “Come on, Wise, you can do it!” I thought, tightening my legs around the peacock’s back, as a tengu crashed against the crack in the barrier above my head. I killed him instantly, before he could get through. But another came. And another. They started attacking me, one by one. I slashed my katana right, left and centre, killing one after the other, as the bird flew faster and faster, as if it was suddenly desperate to reach the ground. It seemed to be aiming at the middle of the Market, where the fire was burning most fiercely. There was plenty of space to land elsewhere, there was a clearance on the left, but no. The peacock seemed irresistibly attracted by the fire. Maybe it functioned like a moth of some sort and was attracted to the light?

  “Gotcha!” I yelled, slashing through the chest of a tengu halfway through the crack. He died and I choked on his green cloud’s fumes. “Damn it!” I gasped, coughing violently as my eyes watered. Definitely NOT the moment to lose my sight. I slashed through a shadow coming toward me and it dissolved in another green cloud, making things worse. My eyes stung like hell. I was exhausted and half blind. I was running out of juices. And out of time. So, either a miracle needed to happen or I’d be done in a couple of min…

  “I HAVE FOUND TURNER, CHILD!” Will’s voice roared triumphantly in my head. “We see you coming. You’re approaching very fast, I must stay here, with Turner. We will slow the bird down with a conjoint spell, it is the only chance we have…”

  “Great Will!” I yelled telepathically, wiping tears from my eyes. Without giving any warning sign, the peacock accelerated again, reaching such a crazy speed, that the tengus couldn’t keep up with it anymore. The fastest ones were now a few yards behind us, which meant that I could focus on keeping my balance and not get splattered on the ground. And God knew I needed to focus, the Market being three hundred feet away, and getting closer and closer by the minute. I could now see that the fire was mostly concentrated in the mid-right area of the Market, while it had been totally extinguished in the left part. It was a wreck of burnt ruins, but it was likely safe to land on. If only the peacock would turn left, and not right. But, it was irresistibly attracted to the area on fire, kept aiming at it…

  A golden spell gently hit the bird on its right, producing a sort of resistance, to make it go left. That was wizard’s magic, coming from James who was doing his best to not hurt the peacock, like I had asked. My mount went left for like a nanosecond, then was back to pointing at the fire.

  “Child, the bird cannot be controlled,” William said in my head. “We need to kill it. I am sorry but…”

  “NO! NO HARM TO THE BIRD! IT’S MY FAULT IF IT’S UNDER ATTACK!”

  We were getting closer
and closer. I had almost no time left: I knew that, in a few seconds, James and Will would disobey me and kill the peacock to save me. I was approaching the ground at crazy speed, with a giant flock of tengus on my tail, had to think…fast…

  I suddenly noticed a carriage parked near a burnt stall, on the left side of the market. The carriage seemed abandoned, covered with a large grey tarpaulin, from which protruded large quantities of…hay! Yes! An abandoned carriage full of hay, some luck eventually!

  “Change of plan, Will,” I told him telepathically. “Slow down the bird as much as you can, then I’ll jump at the last minute onto that carriage on the left, can you see it?”

  “WHAT?”

  “I’ll jump onto that carriage on the left side, where there’s no fire…”

  “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?”

  “That’s the first time I’ve heard you swear, Your Grace! I must have made an impression…be ready to wrap me in a barrier, both of you, I’ll need help to cushion my fall…”

  “Child, no!”

  “Slow this thing down! NOW!” I yelled, now a hundred feet from the ground. Immediately, a beam of ghost and wizard magic combined hit the bird, producing a resistance that forced it to slow down considerably. Still, we were flying fast. The Goblin Market was getting closer and closer, I could see clearly the supernatural creatures running around, I managed to spot William behind a giant tree, throwing all he had against the bird, to slow it down more. Sixty feet…fifty… I slowly lifted into a crouch on the bird’s back, holding onto his feathers to keep my balance. A thousand shrieks filled the air. I turned and saw the tengus a few yards behind, catching up with me and they looked really, really pissed off. I turned back to my target, every last muscle of my body contracted, blood pumped in my ears like crazy, my eyesight sharpened. It was all or nothing. Thirty feet…twenty feet…and the bird was gaining speed again, the spell was wearing off…

  “NOW WILL!” I shouted, jumping off the peacock, cutting a caper in mid-air to slow my fall, as James’ powerful barrier surrounded me.

  “OUCH!” the landing on the carriage was more painful than I’d expected, there was more than hay beneath the tarp.

  “Hey, you! What are you?…” A voice yelled at me, muffled by the cries of like five hundred tengus coming after me as my bird miserably crashed into the fire, frustrating my efforts to protect it, but I couldn’t think of it now, I had to protect myself. Something hot jumped into my hand. It was a catapult, it was charged with something, something green, maybe. I couldn’t really see, the heat of the fire was making my eyes weep. The tengus were about to get me. Without knowing why, I just turned to face them, stretched the catapult’s elastic and let go. I hit the target. Or so I thought. There was like a massive reaction, a wave of powerful, blinding energy and something even more powerful; powerful and ancient rising from the fire… The bird? And then I lost consciousness.

  11

  The Skrulls

  And I was with Megan again. She was still in the dungeon that I’d seen during James’ tracking spell. The only difference was that all the other prisoners were now gone, and I hoped that they hadn’t been killed already. At the bottom of the room, towering in the darkness, was a heavy lead cauldron, with something disgusting and dangerous bubbling within it.

  Megan was curled-up in a huge iron cage, fighting her own desperation and fears. I could feel it all: her feelings, her strong emotions, and even her very thoughts. How could she be so reckless? So foolish? She wasn’t supposed to be involved with a human, it was against Queen Titania’s law. She had let her guard down and she shouldn’t have. And now, she was held in an iron cage, prisoner of the most powerful meta-human of the Eastern world. She had no way to get home or to contact her people, nor had she a chance to recover the talisman of Xipe. She felt like a total failure. She had let her tribe down, her people and her fairy master. The thought of the latter troubled her especially. He had trusted her with such an important mission! Her, a young, unexperienced, wingless fairy! And what had she done? Instead of focusing on her task, she had let a handsome human distract her.

  But, he was the one friendly face she’d met in the unknown, scary world that she’d been thrown into. He had been kind and understanding from the start. He had welcomed her when he thought she was just a foreigner, then they had fallen in love, and he had stuck around even after she had told him her secret.

  She was so homesick, and so scared of Okasan, that she shouldn’t be blamed for finding some comfort with an amazing human, should she? Megan was trying to forgive herself, but she was failing. She continued to feel guilty.

  On the one hand, I could definitely relate to Megan’s feelings. On the other, I was envious of her. I knew very well how it felt to be an outsider in a hostile word: that had been my condition since I had been born. But, I had no idea how it felt to be really homesick, perhaps because I’d never really felt at home anywhere. Or maybe, I believed, that I had never felt safe anywhere. Or both. I had a home with my parents in Oxfordshire, but they didn’t know my secret, they didn’t know who I really was, so was that really my home? For a while, I’d thought I could make Cambridge my home, but that was only a brief delusion. Everywhere I went I got attacked by something, I always had to keep my guard up, could never really relax around anyone. So, I knew very well how Megan felt. I knew how desperate you are to connect to someone, when you’re alone against the world, facing a supernatural guy who could very well kill you. Fear and loneliness can easily cloud one’s judgment. I suddenly felt very close to her, and so wished that I could talk to her and tell her that it wasn’t her fault! But I couldn’t. All I could do, was to feel her pain and her thoughts.

  Megan sighed, angry and disappointed with herself. She knew I was coming for her, but she…didn’t trust me? Or she didn’t trust in my abilities? Maybe it was that she didn’t think I could defeat Okasan without help, and she wished she could help me.

  Not only was Megan’s prison guarded by hundreds, maybe thousands of tengus, but… there were others. Other creatures, more ancient and much more dangerous. I needed her help, or I wouldn’t be able to make it. I felt an utter sense of despair taking over both of us -- first her. Then me. If the end result was to be death, what was the point of all we’d been through?

  Megan stared at the iron bars of her cage, dispirited. She couldn’t just stay there, waiting to be killed, waiting for me to be killed. If only…

  “The Mistress said it’s a matter of hours,” a croaky voice said. It was speaking Japanese, probably ancient Japanese, but I was able to understand it, nevertheless. I could, because the fairy could. We were connected.

  The heavy wooden door creaked opened and two tengus entered the dungeon. They were minor demons, rather small and with mangy crow wings. Megan knew them already: they were Goichi and Goru, two angry, frustrated low rank demons.

  “Sharaku said to check the colour of the potion and report back to him,” said Goichi. “He said it should be dark green by now.”

  Goichi and Goru approached the cauldron at the bottom of the dungeon. There were many wooden tables filling the room, but only the one beside the cauldron was covered with magic alchemical paraphernalia, such as test tubes, alembics filled with dark, poisonous liquids and, on the far right of the table, a huge crystal jar filled with what looked like steel marbles. Oddly, the marbles seemed to be alive. They were furiously ping-ponging against the inside of the container which was evidently enchanted to resist them. Megan looked at them and I instantly knew what they were, skrulls. Minor demonic creatures used as ingredients in the darkest of spells, and only by very powerful wizards or meta-humans. They were very fast and nearly impossible to catch, since when they are free, they can shoot around like super-fast, deadly bullets. The fairy had an idea.

  “Do not touch anything while I check the cauldron,” Goichi told Goru in a patronising voice. They were both of the same rank, but Goichi felt himself to be superior to his pal. Goru nodded sheepishly, his small
, obtuse eyes naturally drawn to the steel marbles in the jar. Tengus were hunters and so they are naturally attracted by things that moved, especially if they moved fast and were all shiny. Tengus of a higher rank are powerful enough to keep said attraction at bay, to resist it, if they need to. Little demons like Goru had a few problems with it. I looked at Megan: I could see she was up to something, I felt it. And those tengus were part of her plan.

  “All right, the potion is just like the Mistress wants it,” Goichi said, all satisfied. “I’m going to report back to Sharaku Sama. You stay here, keep an eye on the prisoner and do not touch anything. Am I clear, you idiot?”

  Goru bowed deeply as his companion wrapped himself into his wings and disappeared in a puff of black smoke.

  Once he was gone, Goru stood still, beside the cauldron, his small, evil eyes fixated on the Skrulls in the jar.

  “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” Megan said tentatively.

  “NO talk to prisoners!” the tengu rushed, his eyes still focused on the jar.

  “Not only are they very beautiful, but they also taste sooo good, you know?” Megan continued, sounding like the snake tempting Eve. “They’re juicy and meaty. And, they have a powerful blood that boosts one’s magic. I bet that, if you eat one, you’d be able to take down that nasty Goichi who treats you so badly…”

  “Why are you telling me that? What do you care?”

  “No reason,” she shrugged. “I’m going to die tonight anyway, right? It’s just that, well, your colleague abused me more than any other guard. And, so, I’d prefer to see him go, before I do. I’ve seen how badly he treats you: don’t you want to get rid of him?”

  “That’s a trap,” the tengu rebuffed her. But he was listening, nevertheless.