Over My Dead Body

by Michele Bardsley

  He issued a tiny “Hmph!” Then he shot to the ceiling, the epitome of pissed-off fairy. I heard his teeny mutterings and rolled my eyes. I looked at Zerina. “You wanna tell me how to make another pixie trap?”

  “That’s your question?” She laughed. “I don’t know what to make of you, Simone Sweet. He tells you I’m an abomination and you don’t even blink. Aren’t you curious about his accusation?”

  “I make my own judgments,” I said, “and no assumptions about folks. Besides, words are just words.”

  “You’re wrong. Words are power. That’s why he won’t tell you his name. If you know it, he’ll have to do all that you say—because if you did save him, then he’s your shiny little slave until he repays that kindness.” Her pink gaze assessed me. Then she nodded, as if she’d made some sort of decision. “Sit down. I’ll tell you a story.”

  I had a sofa tucked into the corner. I led her to the beat-up old thing, then curled into one corner of it. She sat on the other side and crossed her legs. Her leather boots rubbed together as she adjusted her position. She didn’t look at me. Instead, her gaze was on the agitated pixie.

  “I’m more than four hundred years old. That’s very young for my kind. Most fairies have been around forever. The gods created them, just the same as they created oxygen and amoebas and mountain ranges.”

  I knew the story of Ruadan, the first vampire. Even before he was Turned, he was sidhe. More than four thousand years ago, he’d died on a battlefield and his mother, the goddess Brigid, begged her own mother, Morrigu, for the life of her eldest son. I’d met Brigid once. And even though I knew she existed, I couldn’t quite shake my own belief system. I’d been raised a Christian, although there’s not much room in Christianity for vampirism. Not in a good, demon-free way.

  “But Ruadan . . .” I muttered.

  “Yeah. His dad, Bres, was half-human. His human blood made him weak. He died trying to take over Eire. That stupid war killed him and his sons. If Brigid hadn’t made a bargain with her mother, Morrigu, who is older than time and scary as hell, he wouldn’t be walking around. Neither would any other vampire.” She waved her hand dismissively. “The sidhe are many. And they’ve bred with humans and other creatures. Pixies, however, aren’t born. They’re magic incarnate. A gift from the gods to the Earth. Until they disappeared.”

  “Maybe it’s like the honeybees,” I said. “They’re disappearing, too. It’s called colony collapse disorder. The adult worker bees just . . . fly away. And you know the weird thing? Predators like the wax moth don’t go into the CCD hives and take the honey. I think it should bother us. The bees disappearing like that.”

  Zerina’s pink eyebrows nearly touched her hairline. “You must watch the Discovery Channel a lot.” She smiled to show she was joking. I smiled back, but truth was, I watched the Discovery Channel all the time. “But yes,” she said, nodding, “maybe it is like that. Maybe the pixies removed themselves from the world.”

  I pointed to my new friend. “Except him.” Spriggan had zipped to the far end of the garage, presumably to stay as far from Zerina as possible. “He said he was bound to a giant.”

  Zerina’s expression was pure shock. “There aren’t any giants. Not anymore.”

  Wasn’t that what happened to species over the course of time? They either died out or evolved to fit the changing world. Then again, paranormal creatures didn’t really fall into the same categories as the rest of Earth’s creatures.

  “As I was sayin’,” continued Zerina, “pixies were made by the gods. It’s one of the reasons the little bastards are so arrogant. Blessed with noble purpose by their makers, and all that rot.” She snorted. “But me? I was made by humans.”

  My mouth dropped open. I snapped it shut, but I couldn’t stop staring at Zerina. She wasn’t a real fairy? She sure acted like one. “How is that even possible?”

  “Alchemy.” She stretched her arms over her head and yawned. I knew better than to believe she was bored. I had never heard this story. I bet no one in Broken Heart knew it, except maybe Gabriel. Zerina had been part of the group who’d arrived with him last November. They’d all been outcasts, for one reason or another. Now they weren’t.

  At least, I’d thought that was the case. It never occurred to me that Zerina might still feel out of place. Not that she tried very hard to fit in or make friends.

  She didn’t seem interested in saying more. Or maybe she just needed to be prompted. “So you mean like the sorcerer ’s stone kind of stuff?”

  “Yeah, but not in a Harry Potter sort of way.” Zerina’s expression bled amusement. “Alchemy was more a medieval thing, but most men interested in the mystic mumbo jumbo followed Hermes Trismegistus. You know, the Emerald Tablet?”

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t want to bore you with the history,” she said. “The sect that created me built their beliefs around the elementals, creatures of fire, water, earth, and air. They called air elementals sylph.

  “As far as I know, I’m the only one. And I’m certainly the only one ever created by a hermitic order of humans who got the formula right. I think they were just as shocked to see me as I was to see them.”

  I stared at her. Here was a woman, an otherworldly creature, fashioned by mystics—or rather, plain ol’ human beings using mystical knowledge. I was in awe. “Is that why Spriggan calls you an outcast?”

  “I’ve been called worse,” she said. “No, he’s upset for a good reason, I suppose.” She blew out a breath. “The humans . . . well, they used pixies to make me.”

  It took me a minute to process Zerina’s words. “You said pixies were immortal,” I pointed out. “They can’t be killed. Right?”

  “The law of conservation of energy.”

  I looked at her blankly. Hey, I may understand mechanics, but that didn’t mean I was a physics genius.

  “Energy cannot be created or destroyed,” recited Zerina. “It can only change form.”

  Realization dawned and I felt my stomach squeeze in horror. “Oh, my God. They transmuted the pixies into . . . you?”

  “Got it in one.”

  “Oh.” I began to see why Spriggan was so repulsed by Zerina. What if she was made up of the essences of his friends and family?

  “If you think about it,” she mused, “no one can be killed, not really. We all just . . . change form.”

  My thoughts were inexplicably drawn to the death of my husband. I shuddered to think what his essence changed into—nothing good, I was sure. Evil perpetuated evil.

  “You need to call in the Mod Squad,” said Zerina as she popped to her feet. “They’re gonna want to know about your pixie problem.”

  “Yeah,” I said. Gah. Nothing like presenting another issue to a pregnant, crabby, lycanthrope-vampire queen to make a girl’s oh-so-fun day even better. “You got any hints about the care and feeding of pixies?”

  “Hide your jewelry, because they like shiny objects, especially anything silver or gold. They eat honey and like to sip on morning dew drops.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Unfortunately,” she responded. “Pixies are fantastic gardeners, if you like that sort of thing. Also, if you show them any kindness, they have to repay it. And that little spot of joy is all yours till he saves your life. Pixie traps are nasty magic. He was probably dying when you plucked him from the post.”

  “Terrific.”

  “No good deed goes unpunished.” Zerina chuckled. “Even though he’s bound to you, you can only really boss him around if you know his true name. And he owes you a wish.”

  “What? Like a genie?”

  “No. Like a fairy. Well, like a pixie. Magic has rules,” she said, reiterating what Spriggan had already told me. “And pixies are pure magic. Sunshine of the gods. And pains in the asses for the rest of creation. All the same, he owes you a wish. You caught him.”

  “How many do I get?”

  “One per customer,” said Zerina.

  I nodded. “Right. B
ecause magic has rules.”

  “And I have a sense of self-preservation,” she said. “The last time I saw Patsy, she was threatening to rip off the tail of the next lycanthrope who asked if she needed any help. Especially any who suggested a wheelbarrow might be in order for transporting her.”

  I laughed, then slapped my hand over my mouth, slightly ashamed. “Whoever said that to Patsy must be suicidal.”

  “Drake always was a risk taker.” She grinned, then waved to me. She disappeared into a poof of pink sparkles.

  I unhooked my cell phone and started dialing.

  I just loooooooved meetings with bureaucratic big-wigs. No, really. Ten people staring at me, then at the pixie, then at the damaged post, then at me (shampoo, rinse, repeat) . . . woo-hoo. Fun on a bun. Patsy, Gabriel, Damian, Doc Michaels, Jessica, Patrick, Eva, Lorcan, Brady, and our just-visiting-from-Russia Consortium Chairman Ivan Taganov stood in my garage. I mentioned the ping-pong staring part, right?

  The only nice thing about the whole shindig: Brady stood so close to me that I felt the heat emanating from his body. I also heard the strong beat of his heart. He smelled earthy, the tang of sweat mixing with his scrumptious male scent. And beneath it all, with it all, the ferruginous succulence of his blood.

  “Simone?” asked Patsy.

  I shook off my thoughts (since when had I started thinking of Brady as a snack?) and turned toward Patsy.

  “Let me get this all straight.” She rubbed her belly, looking really tired for an immortal being with über- power. “You found a pixie. You rescued him, and he said he’s yours until he saves your life. Then you called Zerina—God help us—and her big contribution was to tell you he’s a dude.”

  “And he’s the only one anyone’s seen in a hundred years,” added Gabriel.

  I held up the red string. “And he was in a pixie trap.”

  Everyone’s gaze turned to the string. I hadn’t felt it pertinent to mention the whole made-from-pixies confession. Gabriel probably knew, anyway, but it was Zerina’s story to tell.

  “I’ve done a lot of research about the sidhe. If I remember correctly, pixies can’t lie. And they must answer direct questions,” said Eva. She was Broken Heart’s former librarian and now schoolteacher. She was also married to Lorcan—yep, the very vampire whose craven hunger killed us all. I didn’t hold it against him. At least he hadn’t meant to nosh on us. He had the excuse of being out of his damned head.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Zerina was direct and he didn’t answer her.”

  “Because he doesn’t have to. He’s only beholden to the one he owes. You.”

  I was silent as I considered Eva’s words. I told the crew everything, skipping only Zerina’s story about her origin. So they knew what the little gold dot had done from the second he popped into view. Well, except for his reaction to Zerina. That would lead to questions I didn’t feel comfortable answering.

  “I asked what his name was and he said Spriggan,” I pointed out.

  “Which is one of his names,” mused Eva, smiling. “You must ask him his true name.”

  Zerina had said that I would have control over him then. Did I want control of the little booger? I guess I didn’t have a choice. He was mine until God knew when. Ack!

  “What about the wish?” asked Ivan, his Russian accent thick. His glacier blue eyes were on Spriggan, who’d retreated to the opposite corner of the garage. He couldn’t leave because of his debt to me (oh, brother!), but he obviously didn’t want to be the object of everyone’s attention, either.

  I studied Ivan covertly. He was a big man, nearly as tall as Brady, but much more muscular. He had black hair and was the only vampire I’d ever met with a goatee. I didn’t realize I’d sidled closer to Brady until I felt his fingers curl around mine.

  I guess Ivan’s size and manner intimidated me more than I wanted to admit.

  “Brigid is the one we should talk to,” said Ivan. “She will know how to use the wish.”

  “Which belongs to Simone,” said Jessica. “Besides, Brigid had some family business to attend to. She can’t help us with this one.”

  Ivan’s gaze flicked to the brunet. Jessica was mated to Patrick, and they unofficially ran Broken Heart. Or had, until Patricia had been named queen and took over the duties. The Consortium still had its hand in things around town, though. But they usually consulted and deferred to Patsy’s wishes.

  Speaking of wishes . . .

  Jessica countered Ivan’s fierce glare with one of her own. She fingered the gold half swords on her hips, looking as though she wanted to lop off his head. The swords had been created by Brigid herself from fairy gold. They were indestructible. And Jessica was really good at flinging them around.

  “One damned thing at a time,” said Patsy. “Simone, find out the little guy’s name. Then we should get more cooperation. We gotta know why anyone would build a pixie trap when there aren’t any pixies. And how the hell did he end up in one of the Invisi-shield posts?”

  “Spriggan,” I called. “Come here.”

  He floated toward us, obviously reluctant, and finally hovered before me. His glow dimmed—a sign of his petulance, no doubt.

  “What’s your true name?” I asked.

  He sighed. “I am Flet.”

  “Who set the trap?” asked Patsy. “How’d you get here?”

  Flet said nothing. I wanted to tug on his tiny ears. “Answer her,” I said.

  “Whatever you say, my liege,” he said, his teeny voice dripping sarcasm. “I don’t know who set the trap. Most people who set traps don’t warn their prey ahead of time. Seems to defeat the purpose, don’t you know.”

  “Flet,” I warned. “Don’t rant.”

  “Sure, an’ take all the joy from me,” he groused. “The circle wasn’t closed, so I got out, but the black-thorn’s poison slowed me down. I tried to magic my way into the post. You see how well that worked out.”

  “What do you mean, the circle wasn’t closed?”

  “When you invoke magic, you have to close the circle. The thread was the circle and the ends weren’t touching.”

  “So, either someone’s incompetent or they wanted you to escape.” This observation came from Brady. He locked eyes with Damian, who nodded. Apparently, the lycan had been thinking along the same lines.

  “How did you get here, in Broken Heart?” I asked, repeating Patsy’s second question.

  “Not sure. I saved the giant and then I woke up starving. There was honey, and I went for it, straight into the damned trap.”

  “Did he say giant?” asked Eva.

  I nodded. “Zerina said there weren’t any more.”

  “ ’Tis true,” said Patrick. “The last time anyone saw one alive and walking around was more than four hundred years ago.”

  Hmm. Zerina had been created about that same time. Flet had known she was the outcast, but seemed not to know that the pixies and giants were no longer around. “Flet, where did you live before you came here?”

  “Dorchester,” said Flet. “Though me and mine have lived forever. We were part of the world before it was the world. We settled among the Dumnonii and lived peacefully in their kingdom for thousands of years.”

  “The Dumnonii were a Celtic tribe that occupied part of what’s now Dorset,” said Eva. “There’s a very famous giant there, near a town called Cerne Abbas.”

  “Yes!” said Flet excitedly. “That is where last I lived. The giant rescued me from a spider’s web and I became his for a time.”

  “Wait,” said Patsy. She moved the hand rubbing her belly to her forehead. She closed her eyes and sucked in a breath. “There’s a giant wandering around England?”

  Eva laughed. “No. The Cerne Abbas giant is a chalk outline on the hillside. Many pagans claim it’s been on the hillside since the second century, maybe even earlier, as a fertility symbol. It’s more likely the giant was carved into the hillside four hundred years ago, perhaps representing Oliver Cromwell as Hercules. The giant carries
a club and it’s . . . er, naked.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” muttered Patsy. “I’m so not in the goddamned mood for naked anything.” She patted her husband’s shoulder. “No offense, babe.”

  “None taken,” he said, drawing her into his arms.

  She leaned her head on his shoulder and said, “I’m cranky, hungry, and dragging ass here, folks. Let’s get down to brass tacks already.”

  Four hundred years ago, the last of the giants had disappeared—and one had appeared as a drawing on an English hillside. Around that same time, Zerina had been an alchemical wet dream realized. Three centuries later, all the pixies were gone. . . . All but one. How did it all link together? Maybe it didn’t. Shoot. It wasn’t like I was Sherlock Holmes. Still . . . I narrowed my gaze. Flet flickered backward a few inches.

  Then I asked softly, “What was the giant’s wish?”

  Chapter 8

  From the field journal of Cpl. Braddock Linden Hayes

  08 MAY 98

  After almost four months of exhaustive preparation and instruction, we reported at five a.m. to begin the last phase of our training. Four more weeks of busting our balls, and we would finally be deployed to execute our purpose.

  The General marched us to the field outside the barracks. Some poor bastard was blindfolded and chained to a metal post. The General explained that this guy, who looked like he’d wandered away from his IT department, was a vampire.

  We laughed.

  The General ignored our snickers. He said that vampires were real. In fact, he told us that most of the creatures of our childhood nightmares were not only real, but also considered paraterrorists. We had been training not as an elite counterterrorism assassination alliance, but as the first covert paraterrorism extermination team. (Yeah. We were ETAC PETs.)

  We didn’t laugh, not then, but we didn’t believe him, either. I was starting to wonder if the last phase was all about the psych-out. What makes more sense? That they were fucking with our minds or that the schmuck who struggled against his chains was a vampire?