"That's not what you were going to say," Dan said but laughed. "You were going to say something about a wet cat. And I know you were because I used to say the same thing back before... well, before."
"Yeah," Civig said. "You taught it to me and I thought it was appropriate. You and Samireal always got that look in your eyes when you got to spend time together."
"She got it, too?" Dan asked, feeling foolish for the hope that stabbed through his chest.
"She's crazy about you, Dan," Civig said, hopping back on the couch. "Was since the first time she heard you play."
"I don't remember," Dan said. "Being with her in the woods was nice but I don't remember much about the day we met."
"You wouldn't," Civig snorted. "You were pretty messed up when you stumbled into the court. You'd been smoking something and thought you were seeing fairies."
"I was seeing fairies," Dan pointed out.
"Pfft," the gnome snorted. "At that point you'd seen Dryads, Pixies, Nixies and Sprites but not a single Fairy. Not until you saw Samireal."
"Right," Dan nodded. "And I'm not going to ask about the obvious differences between all of those creatures because I obviously know all about them."
"Come on, Dan, I know you forgot a lot but that's all basic lore. You should have known that before you stepped into the fairy ring."
Dan nodded again. "Have you eaten?" he asked, changing the subject.
Civig looked uncomfortable. "You're out of those cakes in the crinkly packaging again."
"Alright, I'm ordering a pizza. Do you eat pizza?"
"I eat all human food," Civig declared.
"Never eaten pizza then, okay," Dan said. He sat down next to Civig and pulled his laptop off the side table. "I'm ordering what I like. You can try and see if you like it, too."
"Thanks, Dan," Civig said. "It's hungry work being out in the human world."
"How come you can be out here and Samireal can't," he asked, more focused on the computer than the gnome's answer.
"I'm a small power," Civig answered. "There's cracks in the wall between our worlds. You fell through one, I can slip through others, especially when you've been making them bigger."
"Bigger?" Dan asked. "How am I making them bigger?"
"You're a Bard, Dan. That means something on our side, even if it doesn't mean much out here. When properly grounded and with enough power, your kind can make and unmake entire worlds."
"My kind?" Dan looked up and squinted at Civig.
"Bards. They're one of the true creative forces and you're better connected to your creative center than most. Watching you weave your magic in the fairy court was awe inspiring. And that you chose me for a friend was a gift I never thought to ask for."
The gnome sniffed and Dan caught him dabbing a tear away from his eye.
"Pizza's ordered. So, being a Bard meant I had some big mojo in the fairy court but I'm sure it doesn't mean much out here. All I do is write music."
"Don't be so sure. Music is powerful in the human realm, even if it's not powerful in the way you think it is. And you have more power than you think out here, anyway, what with the cracks in the walls getting bigger."
"Yeah, you said that. And you said I'm the one making them bigger but I'm not doing anything."
"You're writing music," Civig said. "And doing pretty well for yourself at it, right?"
"Well," Dan thought for a moment. He lived in Boulder and it wasn't cheap but he'd always lived here and done okay for himself. His music was all released online, through music videos at first, but he'd found as many ways to make money with it that he could.
"Look," Civig said, breaking into his reverie. "I don't really know how it works, I'm not any kind of mage or anything like that. All I know is that what you do is magic and it's a creative force. Whatever you're doing, it's pushing the cracks between our worlds open and letting folk like me through."
The sudden implications hit him hard and Dan felt his blood run cold. "Wait, so it's not just you who can get through?"
"Well, it's just me right now, because I'm small and I know where you live. And I can't get too far away from your fridge or my magic starts to fade and I'll fade with it."
"But you said the cracks are getting bigger," Dan said.
"Well, yeah. As long as you keep making magic and pulling Faerie out here, they're going to get bigger."
"And that means bigger Folk can get through."
"Well, yeah," Civig said, then stopped. "Oh, uh, yeah. That would mean that, wouldn't it?"
Dan swore. "What am I doing that's magic? How can I stop it?"
"Uh, I don't know that you can," Civig said. "You've got all your music in that box, right?"
He pointed at Dan's computer and Dan nodded. "It's all online. I get close to a hundred thousand views the day I release a new song, even before I tell anybody it's out there."
"So, you have people all over the world playing your music. Maybe singing along with it?"
"Yeah," Dan said, swallowing back the bile that was threatening to rise.
"How much of it is in your language?"
"Half," Dan said. "Maybe more. I write a lot in different languages and do videos and stuff to get the story across."
"Hmm," Civig pondered. "I don't know if it would work if the other people singing didn't understand what they were saying. Do you know what you're saying when you write in different languages?"
"Yeah," he nodded. "We traveled a lot when I was a kid. I picked up a half dozen languages before I was 12 and we settled for a bit. Took a couple more in high school. And joined the Latin club because I thought it would be fun."
"Was it?"
Dan shrugged. "We learned a lot about obscure demons and stuff. Obscure by our standards, at least. And a lot of myths. That was fun."
They looked at each other and Dan swore again. Civig agreed.
Chapter 9
Something about Winifred's scream made Nate's blood boil. He wasn't angry at her or upset that she had screamed, he just wanted very badly to rip someone apart with his bare hands and feel their warm blood spatter across his face.
He didn't know why he wanted that but the longer she screamed, the more he wanted it.
She clapped her hands across her mouth and dug her claws into her cheeks. Blood ran between her fingers and down her neck. When it reached her breasts, he couldn't help himself and he leaned forward to nuzzle her chest to smear his cheeks with it.
When he looked up, she'd stopped screaming, and her eyes were black and glowing.
Silence dropped around them then was broken.
This time, the screaming was coming from another apartment, punctuated by a loud roar. Nate was out the door before he'd even realized he was moving, Winnie behind him, her hair floating like a cape around her.
When they got to the apartment, a gust of wind blew through the door and it exploded into splinters. Nate charged through the wreckage and sent his fist flying into the grotesque face of the monster that used to be a man.
The man hit him back and the fight was on. They pushed and shoved, throwing fists and then each other around the room. Winifred felt a thrill of delight shoot through her as she watched.
"Oh my god, stop!" the frightened woman in the kitchen screamed.
Winnie turned to look at her and had to blink. The first thing she'd seen was a fairy, about the size of a Barbie doll, with gossamer wings and dark purple hair. When the world went back to what she was used to, the woman still looked tiny and delicate with long lavender hair.
"What happened?" she asked the panicking woman.
"Make them stop!" she said, turning terrified eyes on Winifred. "It's my fault! Make them stop!"
Winifred looked at the fighting men and didn't want them to stop. The terrible blood lust that had gripped her at the restaurant the other night was shooting through her again.
Pushing hard against her desire to watch their blood fly, Winifred called to Nate. He glanced at her and took a right hook to
the face for his distraction. Growling, he launched himself at the other man and wrestled him to the floor.
"Don't move," Nate growled at him and licked his lips.
The men were both bleeding and the blood seemed to glow. Winifred found herself curling her fingers into her palms and felt the blood flow down her fingers. The blood lust surged through her again and she swallowed hard against the things it was urging her to do.
"What happened?" she asked the woman wringing her hands next to her.
"I panicked," the woman said. "It was, we'd been doing, and I thought I was still tripping but he was green! And big and ugly and-"
Her boyfriend grunted from the carpet in living room and Nate pushed him down harder, with an elbow to the nose for good measure.
"No, I didn't mean that, it was just, I panicked and he tried to help me and I bit him-"
Winifred turned to face the woman abruptly and grabbed her jaw. Blood smeared against the woman's pale cheek and her eyes opened wide with shock. Her teeth were different. More like a shark than a humans, they had remnants of blood against them, and Winifred abruptly realized it wasn't her blood.
"Let him up," Winifred told Nate.
"I don't like it," Nate growled.
"If he attacks me, you can kill him," Winifred said. "Now let him up."
Nate stood up and backed away. Winnie's eyes followed him, lingering on his injuries, until she dragged her attention back to the man pushing himself up from the floor.
"I'm not going to attack you," he rumbled, his voice painfully low. "I didn't attack Izzy, either."
He turned to them, his palms open and relaxed, head down and shoulders hunched. It hurt Winifred to see him stand like that, a piercing ache in her chest for the big man trying to appear harmless.
"Stand up," she snapped at him, and his gaze flew from the floor to her face.
"I am standing," he said, sounding confused.
"Stand up straight, dammit," Winifred told him. "Shoulders back, chin up. You look like a beaten dog standing like that."
"Well," he started and chuckled. His girlfriend was gaping at him, blood still smeared across her face.
He was a giant of a man and Winifred could see why his girlfriend had panicked. He'd probably never been handsome, and evidence of a long ago broken nose didn't help, but there was something subtly wrong about his facial features. And his skin had taken on a gray-green tint that was highlighted by the drying blood.
"You're not a dog," Izzy told him indignantly. "And I'm sorry for biting you."
Nate snorted and Winifred looked over to see him staring at her. She looked down and realized abruptly that she was naked. And so was he. Blood was smeared across both of them and felt more natural than if she was standing there clothed and perfectly groomed.
The other couple was watching her and for a moment she thought they were staring at her nudity. It didn't cause her any shame and she shoved the concern over that to the back of her mind when she finally understood what they wanted.
"Oh, fine," she told them. "Go take care of him."
Izzy threw herself across the room and into his arms and he caught her easily. She fussed over his bruises and the blood running down his face then licked her lips. Her eyes glowed with a green light moments before she started licking the blood off his face.
He stiffened in shock and she pulled back.
"Please?" she asked, her voice plaintive. "No biting this time, I promise. It just tastes so good."
The big man looked over at Winifred and she nodded.
"Get cleaned up then come see me. We're in 3-B."
She turned and left, Nate just behind her, his hand on the small of her back as they walked out the door.
"What happened back there?" Nate asked as they hit the stairs.
"Domestic dispute," Winifred said.
Nate snorted, "Obviously. I mean, you got scary and that guy wasn't human."
"Are you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Are you still human? I'm not sure I am and I have no idea what happened to make that change."
Nate took a deep breath and his nostrils flared. "You're bleeding. Did you get hurt?"
"And that," Winifred said. "How did you know I was bleeding?"
"I can smell it. Answer the question."
"Nobody hurt me but I am bleeding."
They stopped in front of the door and Nate grabbed her hands. The marks from her claws had stopped bleeding and the trails of blood were drying on her skin.
Chapter 10
Christopher stared at his steak dinner and tried to make the words form that were floating through his brain. It took a moment of him mouthing the word 'why' before he cold force it to issue forth from his lips.
"Why what?" Listrial asked, chewing delicately at her rare steak.
"Why are you being nice to me?"
"Why wouldn't I be nice to you?" She responded, her eyebrow raised.
Christopher snorted and she smiled. "We don't exactly have a history of getting along."
She waved his words away. "The past. Done and forgotten. As much a family tradition as your grandmother's pumpkin pie recipe and just as easily left."
"My grandmother was a terrible cook," Christopher said with a laugh.
"Even better," Listrial said with a smile. "Something best not remembered, then. The chef here, however, is fabulous and it would be a great insult for you to let your dinner get cold."
With a look around, Christopher nodded. They were in one of the best restaurants within fifty miles from his home and he had cause to know everything was run by humans. The wait staff looked a bit more harried than usual but everybody seemed to be a bit on edge.
He took a bite of his dinner and moaned. The steak fairly melted in his mouth and the flavors exploded behind his eyes as he chewed. Half the steak was gone before he realized he'd finished that first bite and reached for a glass of water. He drained the glass and a waitress appeared at his elbow to refill it before he'd finished putting it down.
"I would have ordered wine," Listrial said. "But I was afraid you'd accuse me of trying to get you drunk."
Christopher nodded, his mouth full again. He swallowed and sat up a bit straighter, trying to be a better dinner companion. He'd been hunched over his food, pulled in as though something hurt, though he couldn't say that he was in any pain.
"A prudent precaution," he agreed. "And one I'm sorry to say you were wise to take."
"Hopefully, I can convince you of my good intentions," she winked at him.
"Are your intentions good?"
"I wish nothing more, at the moment, than to see you fed and hear about your day."
"And what are your intentions after I've finished talking?" he asked with a wry twist to his lips.
"That depends entirely on the content of your narrative."
"Are some outcomes more likely than others?"
"Of a certainty," she nodded. "If you tell me what I suspect you will, there is a very small chance I will kill you out of hand."
He took another bite and chewed. With a swallow, he set the fork down. "What are the more likely outcomes?"
"There is a non-insignificant chance that I will simple leave. I may or may not pay the bill in that case, I haven't decided yet."
"And?"
She gave him a wicked grin. "I may also attempt to seduce you. A course of action I haven't tried in centuries and which, it has occurred to me recently, may be more enjoyable than the constant butting of heads we've been doing as of late."
"You've been butting heads with my family since the door between the worlds closed," Christopher reminded her. "What's changed?"
"My dear boy," she leered. "What makes you think I haven't tried seduction before?"
He considered what she said then shook his head. "They wouldn't have let you. Oh, maybe at first, I've read the diaries of the first knights. Some of the descriptions of your beauty, while in no way an accurate representation of your glorious self, were fu
ll of enough admiration to suggest that some of them wouldn't have minded the attempt. But you were so hurt in those days, so very cut off from your people, that I think seducing a human would have been like seducing a cockroach."
Her lips thinned and she glared at him briefly. Then she gave him a wry smile and reached for her own glass. "Well, perhaps you're correct. Those years were so full of strife, it's a miracle any of us survived, much less went on to found a line of noble warriors."
He raised his glass to her and drained it again. The water tasted better than any wine could have. With a deep breath, he set down his glass and folded his hands beneath his chin.
"What would you like to know?"
"What happened today?"
"I have no idea," he told her. "Quite frankly, I was hoping you would know."
She glowered at him and he laughed.
"Something happened," she insisted.
"Yes, yes you are absolutely correct. Something happened. I have very vivid memories of the world right after I regained consciousness."
Her eyes softened. "What did it look like?"
"Awesome," he breathed. "So beautiful, I wanted to weep. There was so much energy, so much potential, in even the most mundane objects. I spent hours watching the world turn, following motes of dust only to discover they contained entire worlds."
"You could see the magic," her voice was breathy, as though she didn't want to speak but couldn't stay silent.
"See it, hear it, smell it, taste it. I wanted to plunge my hands in it and feel it flow through me."
"Can you see it now?" She leaned forward, her fingers tight around her glass.
"I-"
"No," she stopped him. "It's unfair of me to ask. You're tired. Whatever you saw obviously drained you."
"It wasn't what I saw, it was the effort to not get swept away by it. For the first time, I finally understood what my ancestors meant about the pull of the magic. It was overwhelming, pervasive, and the easiest thing to do would have been to let go and slip away into it."
The longing on her face was raw and Christopher regretted his words as he saw the single crystal tear slide down her pale cheek.
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