by Nina Smith
“He’s two.” Poppy fished in her pocket and took out a battered photograph of a smiling toddler with sticky-out hair. “That’s him. His name’s Drew.”
“Who looks after him?”
“His dad.” The picture disappeared back into the pocket.
“Your husband?” Hippy understood this much better. Most fairy husbands took turns looking after the children when there was a war on. Everyone knew women got more done on the battlefield.
Poppy chuckled. “God no. I’d never marry a man named Bob Smithers. The very idea.” She stared off into space for a minute. “It was all quite foolish, really. He was a good deal younger than me, so I was rather flattered by the attention. We had a romance, I got pregnant and had the baby, and all of a sudden he seemed to think I was going to clean his house and cook his dinner all the time. Never mind someone rather unpleasant was hounding me for money I’d borrowed and making threats against the child. I left before things got ugly. All in all it worked well. Bob met a nice young girl and got married within the year, giving Drew a nice normal mother and me the freedom to make a lot of money the best way I know how.”
Hippy cast a worried glance at the horizon. The sun had halfway disappeared. “Seems a complicated way to do things.”
“What would you do?”
“Throw fairy dust on the bad guys.”
“Yes, well, we have some rather inconvenient laws about turning people to dust here. Does that muse even know where he’s going?”
Pierus, who had been striding ahead, stopped abruptly and turned back. “Did you say something?”
“I was just wondering if you knew where we were going. I presume we’re looking for Freakin Fairies.”
“Hippy, tell her the best way to look for a Freakin Fairy,” Pierus said.
“Oh, that’s easy.” Hippy gestured at the opulent neighbourhood they were passing through. “You just look for the biggest, most ostentatious, ugliest place you can find.”
“I see. That’s very interesting, but how do you know they’re in Athens? Or even in Greece? My elderly gentleman was in Venice. The thugs could have come from anywhere in the world.”
“That’s mildly inconvenient.” Pierus looked up and down the street. “Hippy? See anything?”
Hippy shook her head. “I don’t think there’s a fairy for miles. Can I go hunt vamps now? They’ll be waking up soon.”
“I told you, you’re no match for Rustam Badora on your own!”
“Then come with me.”
Poppy cleared her throat. “I have a hotel room not far from here. For the record, I’m all for steering clear of the vampires and figuring out a more useful way of searching than wandering the streets of every city in the world looking for a flash house with a Freakin Fairy in it.”
CHAPTER TEN
Hippy sat on the edge of the narrow balcony railing, leaning against the brick wall. She tossed the knife she’d stolen from the kitchen into the air and caught it. Then she did it again. And again. There was nothing else to do.
To her left, through the glass door into Poppy’s hotel room, Poppy and Pierus were still arguing about the best way to track down the Freakin Fairy. To her right was the longest drop to the ground she’d ever seen, and down there, lots of shiny lights and cars and ladies in pretty dresses. Another hotel rose up on the other side of the street, facing all the balconies and windows with mirror images of themselves.
She knew where she’d rather be. But no, Pierus had expressly forbidden her from going vamp hunting. Never mind that with every hour they wasted, Rustam Badora was building another army. Never mind if they killed him now, the vamp army on Shadow would fall apart. No, she had to sit here and do nothing because blah, blah, blah.
She caught the knife and jammed it into the wooden balcony rail. Maybe Poppy was right. Maybe she should just knock Pierus’s teeth out.
Hippy jerked the knife out of the wood and secured it inside her pinned-up hair, where she knew it wouldn’t fall out. Pierus and Poppy could be busy arguing for ages. She curled her feet around the thin railing and slowly stood up, arms out for balance. She’d never jumped from anything so high the people below looked like ants before. Nothing in Shadow was this high except the mountains, and you couldn’t really jump off them.
She looked over her shoulder. Pierus had his back to the door. Poppy was waving a book around. Good. She turned back.
Hippy almost shrieked in surprise. She clapped her hand over her mouth just in time. There, on the balcony directly across the street, a hooded, cloaked figure leaned on the balcony rail watching her. He pulled back his hood.
In the dim light Hippy could see a dark face framed with long black hair, plaits and dreadlocks. He put his hands on the rail and leaped up to balance on it, just like she was doing.
Hippy eyeballed the figure for a whole ten seconds. She could call Pierus. Or she could do things her way and liven up an otherwise dull night. She pointed down.
The figure nodded.
Hippy jumped. It wasn’t like jumping off the fortifications at all. She plummeted down, down, down through the air. Wind rushed past her face, stung her eyes, whipped her hair. She never took her eyes off the fairy plummeting with her.
They landed at the same time on opposite sides of the road. Hippy’s knees buckled slightly, but that was the only sign she’d jumped from a greater height than usual.
The fairy waited only long enough for her to cross the road before he took off.
Hippy gave chase. She pushed her way through knots of women in sparkly dresses and men in black and white suits, dodged people on bicycles and crowds flowing out of cafes and bars.
The fairy just kept going. Every time she thought she’d catch him, he ducked down another corner. Every time she thought she’d lost him, there he’d be, right ahead.
Hippy was about ready to give up and go back to look at the sparkly dresses when she rounded a corner and smacked right into him in a dead-end street that smelled like rotten cabbage. Walls towered on three sides and the only light spilled from a few windows overhead.
She shoved him hard. “Freakin Fairy!”
He tilted his head to one side and studied her with a lively curiosity that made her want to shove him again. “Bloody Fairy. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
“Believed what?” Hippy raised her hands to her hair to make sure the knife was still there.
Another two figures emerged from the shadows, both cloaked. They were taller than the fairy, but not tall enough to be muses.
“Who are you people?” Hippy closed her hand around the hilt of the knife. Just in case.
“There’s no need for weapons. We only wanted to talk to you,” one said.
“Then show me your faces.”
The other one snorted. “To a fairy who consorts with the muse king? Unlikely.” She made an impatient movement. “Get on with it. This has taken too much time already.”
“Get on with what?” Hippy moved her hands away from her hair.
“We want you to give a message to your friend the muse king,” the fairy said.
“What message?”
“Tell him to go back to Shadow. He’ll never find the Apple of Chaos.”
Hippy drew herself up. “Want to bet?”
“Yeah.” The fairy folded his arms. “Even if it wasn’t safe from him, he’s hardly going to get anywhere with only a Bloody Fairy for help.”
Hippy leaped, tackled the fairy and pinned him to the ground by the throat. “Say that again!”
“That again!” The Freakin Fairy used the bewildered second Hippy took to figure out his response to gain the upper hand and push her off.
Hippy only got in one good smack to his face before the tall couple dragged them apart.
“This achieves nothing.” The man’s voice was stern.
“This is what you get when you deal with fairies,” the woman muttered.
The Freakin Fairy looked at his feet and kicked at a
rock. “Sorry,” he muttered.
The hood turned in Hippy’s direction.
She scowled. “We need the Apple of Chaos,” she said. “It’s the only way to drive the vamps back!”
“We know the situation and sympathise, but you must find another way,” the hood said. “We will not allow the Apple of Chaos to fall into the muse king’s hands. You have no idea what he could do with it.”
“Nothing, without my cooperation.”
“Is that what he told you?”
Hippy glowered at all three of them and brushed dirt off her arms from the scuffle. “Rustam Badora is running around right now making new vamps. Maybe the three of you should think about helping, instead of playing games.” She turned her back and walked away.
“We know about the situation with Badora,” the hood said.
Hippy looked over her shoulder. “Do you know where he is? I for one am not planning on sitting around waiting for him to come knocking.” She gave the fairy a pointed look. “Bloody Fairies aren’t afraid to go on the hunt.”
The Freakin Fairy lunged. The hood grabbed him by the back of the shirt and held him back. “Don’t forget to give the muse king our message.”
“Whatever.” Hippy left the alley. She was halfway down the next street before she realised she was completely lost and had no idea how to get back to Poppy’s hotel. No big deal, she wanted to find the sparkly dresses again anyway.
She followed the streetlights until she came to busier roads, where lights from the overflowing bars made it almost as bright as day. She slowed and stared around her with big eyes. Ladies in sparkly dresses leaned on the arms of men in black and white. They sat at tables and crowded into small spaces drinking sparkling liquid out of shiny, shiny glasses. This was nothing like Shadow at all. She liked it. She wondered where she could get a sparkly dress and a shiny glass, but she was too shy to go up to a human and ask. The ladies looked forbidding in their painted faces and the men who noticed her looked at her like she was a piece of meat.
Hippy stuck her tongue out and squashed up her face at a man who was doing just that. He went bright red and hurried away.
She strolled down the street and kept admiring the sights. The pointy letters she didn’t understand were scrawled on almost every building. Some of the cars had the most interesting little metal animals on their hoods. She wanted to break one off and take it home, but that might have been impolite, she wasn’t sure.
She sighed. She liked looking at the shiny things, but she really needed to start looking for signs of Rustam Badora. So far the necks of all the humans she’d seen had been fairly intact, so he obviously wasn’t here.
A car that had been meandering down the street through the crowds of pedestrians braked sharply next to her.
Hippy looked around in time to see a man jump out of the back door and head toward her. Oh! She knew that car. She waved. “Hi Tony!”
“You!” Tony grabbed her by the shoulder. “I want to talk to you. And don’t you try anything with that damn spider of yours either. Get in the car. Come on.”
Hippy folded her arms. “I don’t want to.”
“I said get in the car. Don’t argue. You and me, we’re just going to have a friendly chat.” He tightened his hand around her shoulder and shoved her in the back door.
Hippy tripped and almost fell into the car. She saved herself from an undignified face-first sprawl by catching the back of the seat. Tony shut the doors and the car moved off.
Hippy scowled at him. “What? I wasn’t doing anything.”
“Oh, I’m sure you weren’t. Just wandering the streets at nine o’clock at night dressed like Robin Hood or something. Shouldn’t good little girls be at home in bed?”
“I’m not good, and I’m not a little girl.”
Tony chuckled, but the sound held no mirth. “See, I suspected that. What you doing with a crook like Praeconius and that other geezer anyway?”
“Hunting vamps.”
“Huh. You don’t have to tell me, I’m not your father.” Tony leaned forward. “What’s your real name?”
“Hippy.”
“Figures. Well Hippy, I’ve got a problem. I’ve been looking for my friends all day, the ones Praeconius kicked out of the car. Now they’re big blokes who can look after themselves, see? And they know what to do if they get separated from the team. But they haven’t checked in and I can’t find them anywhere. I didn’t really think Praeconius was the vicious type, she’s just after money, see? But I got nothing else. So you tell me where my men are.”
Hippy felt a finger of cold seep into her chest. So that’s where Rustam Badora had started. What had he done, followed their trail as soon as the sun went down? Followed them underground somehow? Had Tony’s friends strayed into a cave, or crossed his path after dark?
“I don’t like the way you’re looking at me,” Tony said.
“Vamps,” Hippy said.
“What do you mean, vamps?”
Hippy twisted her fingers together. She didn’t know how to explain it to him.
Pierus had said humans knew nothing of Shadow. It had taken a long time for Poppy to believe them. How was she supposed to convince Tony? “There’s a very bad man,” she said, hoping Tony would be happy with a half-explanation. “Pierus and I are trying to stop him, but he followed us here. Your friends may have met him.”
“Sweetheart, I’m a very bad man.” Tony smirked at her. “My friends are very bad men. What’s this geezer going to do?”
“Drink their blood.”
Tony screwed his face up. But he didn’t laugh, as she’d feared he would. “You’re serious?”
Hippy nodded. “I’m trying to find him,” she said. “Before he can kill too many people.”
“You? What’re you going to do? You’re nothing more than a little piece of jail bait.”
“I don’t know what jail bait is, but I’ve killed hundreds of his kind.”
“Well then you’re the youngest psycho I ever met.” Tony ran his hand over his bald head. “Fine, I’m game. How do we find him?”
Hippy stared. “You want to help me hunt Rustam Badora?”
“Sure, why not?”
Hippy drew her legs up under her and thought hard. Tony’s friends had had hours to be killed, wake up and come back. If Rustam stayed with them they could be anywhere. If not, they might not know what had happened. “Where were they supposed to go?”
“We got a rendezvous point,” Tony said. “But I checked in twice already. They weren’t there.”
“Try it again,” Hippy said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“This is your rendezvous?” Hippy walked on her toes around a busted table to avoid treading on anything nasty with her bare feet. Two long fluorescent lights flickered and blinked overhead, picking out jagged shadows and not much else in a really, really big room full of broken furniture and bits of glass.
“Well it ain’t exactly a romantic dinner for two, but something tells me you’re not that kind of girl,” Tony said.
Hippy shrugged. “I just like nice wide open spaces better.”
“Hippy.”
“What?”
“Nothing, I was just calling you a hippy.”
Hippy screwed up her nose at him. These humans didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
“This way.” Tony headed for a big steel door and pushed it open. “You first sweetie.”
Hippy brushed past him and entered the next room. She stopped short. This one was lit by gas lamps hanging from the walls, just like the muses used back home. And sometimes the vamps. Tony came in behind her and closed the door.
Hippy looked over her shoulder. “Why’d you close the door?”
Tony chuckled and curled his hand over the back of her neck. His fingers were cold.
Icy cold.
Hippy said a bad word she’d heard Poppy use earlier. Now he was so close she could see a mark on his neck that had been concealed by his collar.
“They tol
d me you were dumb, sweetie, but I had no idea just how dumb. What happened, you get dropped on your head as a kid?”
Hippy balled a fist, twisted around and punched him in the nose. “You’re a vamp!”
“Ow!” Tony stumbled back, clutching his nose.
A low laugh rumbled through the room. Footsteps paced toward her from the shadows in the far corners. “Close,” a voice said. “He’s close. I’ll give him the gift of blood soon enough, but for now I need someone who can pass for human.”
Hippy bolted for the door. There was a rush of wind at her back. Rustam Badora slammed into her, pinning her to the cold metal. His fingers were so cold they burned her skin. He leaned close and inhaled near her neck.
“Ah, fresh fairy. You make me homesick.”
Hippy reached for her belt.
Badora’s free hand closed around her wrist and pinned that to the door too. “Tut, tut, tut. You keep that spider safely locked away or I’ll squash it.”
Hippy scowled. “Let me go.”
Badora leaned in close and breathed on her neck again. “Oh, I will, my dear. I have humans enough and more to satisfy me here. But I do intend to kill you the moment we both set foot in Shadow again. I’m saving you for last. I’m anticipating the bouquet of your blood with every breath.” He made a growling noise in her ear and then licked the side of her face.
“Eeeeewwwww!” Hippy wriggled out of his grip and broke away. She madly scrubbed at her face, stumbled backwards and almost fell over Tony, whose nose was bleeding. She lashed out in revulsion and punched him in the side of the head, which sent him crashing into the wall. “Ew ew ew! That was disgusting!”
Badora lounged against the door. His mouth crooked up. “You must make the muse king a very amusing pet.”
Hippy stopped jumping around and scrubbing her face. “I’m not a pet.”
“Of course you are. What else would he want with you?”
“I’m helping him find-” Hippy clapped her hands over her mouth.
“Find what?” Badora pushed himself off the door and paced toward her, hands behind his back. “Find what, Fairy?”