Not My Fantasy

by Sam Hall

  “Well, I’m sure that was for the best. Now, Milady Pendragon, you are looking a little pale yourself. Would you like to rest under one of the trees with Lady McKinnon? Her men can keep you safe.” Tess just nodded. She kept her mouth shut in a firm line which told me she was also trying to keep it together. “Well, come on, Mellors. Have the men send up a few of those flares. That always agitates them.”

  “You’re not concerned about the queen, sire?”

  “No harpy will best me, my old friend.”

  Tess and I, without a word, walked further away from the bloodbath, back towards the carriages. We kept our eyes to the ground, then collapsed into the grass together, gasping.

  “This is horrible,” Tess whimpered, burying her head in her hands.

  “The thing that worries me is this is his idea of a date. This man is a raving psychotic. Knox, what’s the plan here?” I asked.

  He crouched down in the grass, eyes trained on the furries. “They’re going to try and kill the lot. They have more than enough meat for the most lavish of banquets. This is just thrill killing. Thing is, we need their bloodlust up. If they’re distracted, it’s easier to take the pricks out. I agree with your statement, miss. These . . . things, they’re just monsters.”

  “So, what? We wait?” Flea asked with a frown.

  “Right now we’re grossly outnumbered, but if the killing frenzy starts, then everyone will be focused on that and he’s already disarmed half of his men to work as butchers. It’s our only way,” Knox replied, squinting to watch the prince and his men start to agitate the harpies again. “I’m going to grab some more ammo.”

  I watched him go, the worn khaki shirt and jeans and the red bandana tied around his head to keep his mullet back a bloody incongruous sight against the ornately gilt carriages that had brought us here. There were no staff to query Knox’s actions, so he grabbed handfuls of arrows, stuffing them into his quiver.

  “What happens to him if he dies here?” Tess asked, her face still deathly pale.

  “It’s not the actor, it’s the character, so I assume he just goes back to his regularly scheduled program,” I said.

  “Be pretty shit if there were no Slate Rockwell movies left in our world because we called him through an inter-dimensional portal via a mystical curse, to deal with a sentient wolf who’s all that remains of the royal family that went through a French Revolution-style Terror, who’s sporting a sadistic Beauty and Beast complex,” Flea said.

  We all looked at him as he nonchalantly lit up a cigarette. “I’ve got to say, I don’t think I could ever have predicted someone would have put those words together for me in a conversation before we arrived,” I said.

  He shrugged, “And I say, we need to get out of here and we have no plan. If you ladies are worried about your finer sensitivities, then let me play the role of bad guys. These cunts are sick fuckers. If you think they wouldn’t do the exact same thing to you that they are doing to those stinking bird women over there, you’re kidding yourself. We won’t know what’s been done to Gabe until he wakes up, but I think nothing, and I mean nothing can be left off the table. There is no depth they won’t stoop to here; we’re nothing but animals or meat to them. We need to strike, strike hard and wipe the fuckers out. They had a revolution for a reason; it’s bloody clear to me why they did.”

  We both blinked for a moment. Flea was a man of few words, usually letting his tattoo gun do the talking for him, so when he did speak, you listened. My guts turned as I looked over the bloody bodies of the harpies, as I watched another and another get shot down from the skies. He was right; it didn’t sit well with me, but he was right. “Here you go,” Knox said, passing a quiver to Flea. “Now we wait.”

  Time, apparently, passes both very fast and slowly during a massacre. We watched the hunt progress; the drummers doing more and more things to agitate the harpies, flinging small explosives into the tree that did little damage, but forced other harpies out of the roost. Each wave was shot down, only a few escaping the slaughter, those that did moving towards the top of the tree where I assumed the queen was hiding. When that stopped producing results, lit brands were thrown in, setting parts of the old tree alight. It took a while, but cheers went up when the flames took hold, slowly eating up patches of the trunk. Kills were messier, with downed bird women getting their throats ripped out with bare teeth rather than neatly dispatched and when the store boxes of meat were overflowing, some guards bent down to feast directly from the still twitching bodies.

  The screeching of the harpies seemed to get more shrill as the prince’s men drew closer, increasingly emboldened by the dwindling numbers. I couldn’t work out why until one emerged, fur singed and sooty but with a big grin on his face. Tess and I both gasped as we saw the pink-skinned featherless forms of baby harpies, struggling within the grip of the furry’s paw, crying hysterically as he hoisted them up into the air, triumphantly. The harpies saw this and their moves became more desperate, plunging down to attack the prince’s men without thought, being plucked from the sky with little effort, sometimes just with the furries' bare claws.

  One fell to the ground, the harpy bucking and struggling underneath the body of the officer, screaming in agony until his jaws closed around her throat, ripping it out. The prince’s face was a mask of bloody glee; he looked around the battlefield, eyes wild, mouth open and panting, missing the ability to tear and rend flesh with his blunt human teeth, but somehow able to experience a close approximation vicariously. Another furry, then another streaked forward and dove into the hollow inside the old tree, apparently on the lookout for more. The harpies pulled back, forming a tight group, hovering over the top of their roost. Knox’s eyes jerked up as their cries changed, becoming less shrieks of rage and more like pleas.

  “Go time,” he said, getting to his feet. “Change of plan, stay here, all of you. It’s carnage out there and I don’t want any collateral damage. Gives you plausible deniability if I’m not successful. Flea, keep them safe. The moment it goes south, get in the carriages and ride out of here. Get them as far away from this place as possible. You’ve got no idea what an animal will do if its blood is up.” Flea looked like he would argue, but one look from Knox and he reluctantly nodded. “If what you say is true, I’ll be back home by morning, so no matter how this plays out, good luck.”

  He was off before we could reply, streaking through the grassy plain between us and the nest in a low run, bow at the ready. Once he approached the killing field, he wove between snarling furries and rabid harpies, skirting bodies and pools of bloodied grass. Then our gaze was forced up. A deafening cry came from the top of the tree. We instantly clapped our hands over our ears as a sound echoed all through the valley, so loud I wouldn’t have been shocked if it shook the great stone ruins to their foundations.

  Everyone watched as a huge figure emerged out from the top of the tree, where the branches had snapped off to expose a great hollow to the sky. She was a harpy but something else again. Where the others had the torso and heads of women on the bodies of eagles, she had body parts that integrated the avian and the human more completely. She stood on long, well-muscled legs, her feet sporting great curved claws like a raptor's. Her back was straight, her torso largely humanoid, though she did sport a thin layer of feathers over most of her lower limbs. She had long, vicious claws like the supervillan, Lady Deathstrike and while the bottom half of her face was humanoid, she either wore a helm with a great hooked beak that threw most of the rest of her face in shadow, or it was all part of her face. She looked down at the furries, tracking those who returned with wriggling babies, noting the deaths of her subjects. She didn’t scream or cry, yet somehow, I saw the pain and anger in her massive yellow eyes. There was a slight shift in the muscle of her jaw and then she threw her arms wide, her wings becoming apparent just before she dropped down to the ground.

  The other furries dropped whatever they were doing, falling back and gathering arms, shifting to flank the prince, but he
held a hand up, stopping them from firing. His grin went wide as she took one step forward, bringing her claws up in cross formation, ready to strike. The prince yelled at Mellors without looking away from the queen, catching the sword his aide-de-camp threw without a glance. He drew the weapon, tossing the scabbard to the ground, just as she struck. She swept her arm out, seeking to rake her claws across his face, he stabbing forward with his sword, merely losing a few locks of hair and forcing her to flutter backwards or be skewered. She hovered there for a moment and then nodded, dropping down behind the prince, hoping to slice at him from behind, but he spun adeptly, meeting her blow for blow. She squawked at that; her talons were tough but not invulnerable to sharpened steel.

  And so began the dance. They fought with entirely different fighting styles; he striking at her body, going for a head-on attack, she seeking to hit and run, using her wings and acrobatic flips to try to stay out of his reach while slicing him to pieces. She got a few good shots in, his grin was less enthusiastic now that he sported several bleeding gashes along his face and chest, his shirt sliced to ribbons, but he seemed in no way ready to admit defeat. His strikes grew sloppier as sweat began to soak his clothing and blood ran freely from his cuts. I heard him roar as he struck at the queen in a volley of blows, neglecting to protect his side as he swung wildly, she nimbly evading each one until he shifted tactic on the fly, swiping back to cut across the harpy’s legs. She shrieked in pain and then jabbed back equally quickly, her long talons burying themselves into his sword arm joint.

  I watched Knox shift closer as the two fighters fell back, chests heaving. Mellors ran to his prince, taking in the injury in one moment then shouting for servants in the next. The prince got to his feet carefully, nursing the wound before snatching up his sword in his uninjured hand. His grin reasserted itself, but it wasn’t pure bloodlust that fuelled it now. Instead, his eyes narrowed down to slits as he fell into a ready stance, forcing Mellors to fall back, his expression grim. It appeared the foreplay was over. Now that both sported injuries they fought in earnest, a bloody, scrabbling fight with few clean hits. It seemed almost like some kind of MMA fight where weapons were used indiscriminately. Both of them seemed to be screaming now as if shouting into the face of the enemy would somehow influence the outcome. His face turned jubilant when he managed to pin the queen to the ground, his hands holding her arms immobile, his knees digging into her legs and torso. His mouth dropped open as he panted, his tongue flickering out to taste the sweat along her cheek as she cried. Then he screamed.

  She’d jerked her feet up, raking her claws along his guts. The sound that came out of him was so distorted as to almost not sound human. He went limp, flopping down onto the grass, hands shaking, wanting to go to his stomach but afraid of what he would find there. He didn’t get to find out, the Queen on her feet in the next moment, plucking him up and then shoving him face forward against the tree.

  I felt the upswell of what…? Joy? Hope? Desire? Revenge? It was some heady combination of all of those and more, my stomach clenching tight as I watched this mighty queen, her muscles gleaming in the midday sun, stand over the body of the man who had thought little of trying to hold me down and rape me, who brutalised Gabe, who wanted to do God knows what to Tess. My eyes went to her clawed hand, slowly brought up, talons outstretched, ready to make her final strike. Mellors watched, too, though with less pleasure. He barked an order; the men scrambling for their weapons, each one standing up as quick as they could, bows drawn. And Knox was amongst them, a strange smooth-skinned presence amid all of the furries. Mellors shouted something at the queen, some kind of final warning or bargain, but her eyes just flicked from the now limp forms of the baby harpies in a neat pile then back to the prince. Then it all happened at once.

  The officers let fly their arrows as the queen went to strike down. Knox took a second longer, sighting his prey which was enough time to draw Mellor’s attention. I saw his eyes flick from the man to his prince before he leapt. He collided heavily with Knox the moment the man’s arrow was let loose. And then it all got ugly.

  “Get to your feet,” Flea said as the furry pinned the action hero under him. The man struggled, but his, no doubt, inhuman strength was nothing compared to the sentient animal. “We’re going.”

  “But . . .,” Tess said, gesturing behind her.

  “Don’t turn around,” I said because at the moment, the furry’s wolfish jaws snatched out the man’s throat. He didn’t move when Knox’s lifeblood spurted over his face, didn’t let the thrashing body beneath him get free, despite its imminent death. He rode the man’s death throes like a lover, then when Knox was still, Mellor’s eyes jerked up to his prince. The queen’s strike had been queered by what looked like twenty different arrows buried into her body, but Mellors ignored her, trampling her mighty wings underfoot to get to the prince. He hauled the man upright, the prince coughing blood but still fucking alive. Servants rushed over with medical kits, Mellors shoving them away when they tried to tend to the prince, he ripping the man’s garments and pausing for a moment to take in the total of his wounds. Knox’s arrow would have flown true, the hit enough to skew it, so it buried itself into his shoulder. Mellors snapped the shaft off easily.

  “We’ve got to go,” Flea said. “This is our only chance. We make a run for the castle. Grab–” I held up my hand as several of the prince’s officers ran over to us. Flea snapped his bow up, shifting the target from one to the other.

  “Drawing a weapon against the prince’s men?” one asked, his words clipped short. “You’ll be on the spit along with that other man of yours tonight.”

  “Put it down, Flea,” I said, turning to him and glaring when he didn’t respond. He pointed it down to the ground with a growl, which made the furries sneer.

  “You’ll need to come with us,” the other furry said. “No more outings and fancy dinners for you, well, none that you are a guest at.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked, but the men just closed in on us, one grabbing Tess, the other, me. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Your man just shot the prince. What do you think is going to happen, pinky?”

  “He was trying to help bring down the harpy queen!” I snapped, attempting to force all the fear and anger I’d felt during the day into a plausibly affronted tone.

  “Not the way Captain Mellors sees it, so it’s back to the manor for you. You’ll stay in your room until your fate has been decided.”

  38

  Which is how we ended up plotting our grand escape.

  “So, Mellors knows that Knox tried to kill the prince?” Natty asked.

  “Yes,” we answered in unison, sorting through the massive pile of books and comics Flea had brought down yesterday.

  “Lord of the Rings?” I suggested, holding up a huge book to show Tess.

  She shook her head, “If it were the movies, I’d say some of the battle scenes with Legolas, but the books? Not enough detail. I’m not sure how much is literal word and how much is imagination with the curse.”

  “And reality seems to play a role. Merlin came out a lot younger, prettier, and not sporting a chrome skullcap like the character in Excalibur when we conjured him up.” Silence fell over the room while I kicked myself for bringing that up. Flea and Tess went very still for a moment; fingers paused in the midst of flipping pages.

  “Perhaps that should be a focus,” Tess said, struggling to keep her tone light and failing. She looked to me, then Flea. “He is an incredibly powerful wizard.”

  “Sounds like a good ally,” Natty said. “Which book is he in?” Flea flicked through his piles and passed three books to Natty. “We have Mary Stewart, Le Morte D’Arthur and–”

  “Not the Morte, I don’t have time to slog through medieval syntax this afternoon and Stewart’s Merlin was more knowledgeable and cunning than magical. What’s the other one?”

  “Just says Merlin 1998,” Natty said, passing it to Tess.

  “1998?” She flic
ked the book open. “It’s that miniseries, y’know the one with Sam Neill in it?”

  “A TV series? Must be a script. At least it’s on the right track; he was plenty magical in that one,” I said.

  “Yep, and the actual broadcast.” I frowned and looked at the page. It looked just like an embedded YouTube video. I tentatively reached out and tapped the triangle play button. Sure enough, the show played along with a tinny audio track.

  “Shit, I wish I’d known that,” I said. “We could have borrowed hundreds of action films.”

  “Didn’t work out so good with Knox,” Flea said. Silence fell over the room. “Here’s some of the novelisations we were looking at last night.” Several books landed by my feet.

  “Dragons,” Tess said brightly, forcing a smile, “not Pern, we don’t know if the fuel would come through, but sentient, loyal and able to breathe fire, spit acid–”

  “Something aggressive?” I said. “On it. We thinking rideable?”

  “Couldn’t hurt. I have no idea how we’re getting out of here, especially with Gabe . . . .”

  The book fell limp from my hands. I turned to look at his unmoving form. I’d wiped his limbs down once we returned and reapplied the medicine I’d been given, but still, he did not move. “Anything with magical healing powers in it?” I said, my voice cracking as I squeezed out the words.

  “Harry Potter, Dresden Files, though stick to the sections on the fae,” Tess said tossing me a few books, “and don’t worry about the TV show.”

  “Dear God, no. OK, I’m going to focus on healing, both for Gabe and for us, in case anyone gets injured. Flea, you good with transport? Dragons are one way, not the only way. Just something to get us out of here. Portals, winged horses, spaceships, magic carpet, even an invisible plane would do.”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” Tess said as she flicked rapidly. “It’s lame.”