by Nina Smith
Hippy lifted the window up, put Fluffy Ducky through and then swung in after him. “Hey!” she yelled.
The three vamps looked around. Poppy took the opportunity to kick one in the nether regions and clout a second in the head with her gun. There, that was more like it, although it didn’t slow them down that much.
Hippy wiggled her shiny fingers at them. “I’m over here.”
“So what?” The tallest of the vamps looked from Poppy to her. “You can wait until we’re finished with this one.” She motioned one of her companions to Hippy. “Hold the little girl. She’s next.”
“Oh, but my blood’s so much more wholesome. I’m a Bloody Fairy, see.” Hippy stalked toward them.
“Fairy?” the tall vamp looked around sharply. “She’s the one he wants,” she hissed.
“Oh yeah, that too. Rustam Badora wants to kill me himself. Blah, blah, blah. If you ask me, he should be keeping an eye on his army. Oh, but he can’t, he’s only got one left.” She put her hand in her pocket, took a little sharp blade out of it and aimed for the nearest vamp’s face.
The vamp caught her upraised arm in a vice-like grip. “We were warned about you,” she said. “Secure her.”
“Oh.” Hippy gave her a mock pout. “Someone help me. I’m so frightened of the scary vamp.”
Poppy raised her gun and fired. Half of the vamp’s head disappeared and Hippy’s face was sprayed with blood. She squeezed her eyes shut and shrieked. “Ewwwww! Did you have to?”
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Poppy shot a second vamp when he leaped at her.
Hippy buried her blade in the face of the third. “Wrong with me?”
“We’re killing people!” Poppy yelled. “And you’re taunting them!”
“They’re not people, they’re vamps.” Fluffy Ducky scuttled back to her shoulder. Hippy grabbed Poppy’s arm, took her to the door and peered out into the empty hall. “Poppy you have to get out of here. If you see any more vamps, just shoot them like you did there, that seemed to work. I have to get Pierus and get back to Shadow now. Do me a favour and tell Clockwork-” she stopped in the middle of the hall. “I don’t know. Tell him something.”
Poppy shoved her glasses more securely onto her nose, then looked at her over them. “Now Hippy Ishtar you listen to me-”
Hippy shook her head vigorously. “It’s no good. I have to go back, I can’t leave my tribe to be slaughtered. No matter how much I might want to stay.” She blinked rapidly to hide her eyes tearing up.
Poppy tipped her chin up and looked sternly into her face. “You do what you have to do, but be careful. That is a very bad man you’re throwing your lot in with.”
“I know,” Hippy whispered.
“My offer stands, if ever you want to come back.” Poppy stayed one moment longer, looked like she wanted to say more, then changed her mind. She ran down the hall.
Hippy stood alone in the dark and listened to the click of her friend’s boots retreating. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. From the front of the house came the rumble and crash of battle. Behind her, nothing. Above and below, footsteps. Rustam Badora’s bellow shook the walls, a sound to stir the remaining vamps into fever pitches of violence and blood lust. Maybe she should take out his voice box next. If she’d kept the eye, she could have had a vamp king souvenir collection.
Hippy’s eyes snapped open. Wow. Now she was thinking like a Bloody Fairy. And she was covered in blood and didn’t care. Today was a big day.
She made an excited squeak and did a little jump to celebrate, then set off down the hall at a run.
The roar came from above.
Hippy ran up the steps two at a time. She slowed and tip-toed through the hall, listening. At first there was nothing. Then a whisper of sound. She needed more than just the little blades she had left to take on Badora. She went into the weapons room, chose a spear and continued down the hall.
A door to her left reverberated under the force of a roar. Hippy jumped back, took a deep breath and went closer. It was closed. Locked. Weird. She spun a couple of times to work up some momentum and broke the lock with one blow of her foot before bursting into the room.
Gaslight gave a gloomy tint to a space that contained only a huge four-poster bed and a vampire. The light gave the vamp’s white skin a bluish glow. He wore a patch over his missing eye. His other eye flashed bright red when he turned away from the window. He opened his mouth, roared again and sprang toward her, but then snapped back as though secured by some invisible bond to the bed post.
Hippy raised her spear and circled. “If you’re practicing your singing, don’t give up your day job.”
Badora curled his lip back over his teeth and bared his fangs. “You. I expected you brought to me in chains.”
Hippy shrugged. “Your army was too stupid. Now it’s mostly dead. Shouldn’t you be trying to kill me by now?”
Badora took a deep breath as though working himself up, then let out another roar. The window shook. He leaped at her again and this time almost swiped her before he was snapped back to the bed.
Hippy tilted her head. “Something’s weird here.”
The vamp leaned against a bedpost. His eyelids lowered. He smiled, which was a frighteningly toothy sight. “Little Hippy Ishtar. Not the brightest bug in the spotlight. He didn’t send you then?”
“He? Pierus? What have you done with him?” Her eyes widened.
Badora’s laugh was like a blunt axe chopping down a tree. “All I have to do,” he said, “Is reach the right pitch of noise and I’ll break it. I know the muse king’s tricks. He can’t keep me here long. I’m surprised he sent you. But then, maybe he knew I was hungry.” He took a deep breath and roared again. This time the very walls shook and plaster showered over their heads. Hippy covered her ears and head, thinking the roof was going to fall in.
A resounding snap lashed through the room. Badora disappeared and the door slammed shut.
Hippy slowly turned around. He leaned against the door, still giving that nasty grin. “Came in here to kill me while I was captive, did you? Stupid Bloody Fairy. I’m going to make you pay for my eye.” He leaped for her.
Hippy drove her spear at him, but it stabbed only thin air, taking her off her balance when it failed to find a target. She stumbled. A blow to the back of the head knocked her to the ground and the spear went flying from her hands. She rolled and landed on her back.
Badora landed on top. His fingers pressed into her face.
Hippy curled her shiny fist and punched him in the nose. Cartilage crunched. Blood spurted over his mouth.
The vamp king yelled a very bad word and pressed harder into her face. “I’m going to make you suffer,” he hissed. “I’m going to keep you on a chain for the rest of your miserable life and feed from you.”
Hippy grabbed his wrists and tried to remove his hands from her face before he put holes in it. “I’m going to make you sparkle like a rainbow.”
“I’m going to kill your family while you watch.”
“I’m going to tell the muses to inspire some writers to make vamps fall in love with humans and get all starry eyed and–and–chivalrous! You’ll be all like, I can’t drink blood I’m good now!”
Badora took his hands from her face and pinned her wrists and throat instead. “I’m going to drink your brains!” he roared.
“You can’t drink my brains, they’re not liquid!” That was all she had breath for once he started crushing her windpipe. Hippy struggled for air. There was nothing she could do. The one red eye burned into her, fierce, hungry, deadly, and she remembered why the fairies feared his very name. Shadows crept into her brain.
The door crashed open. Her spear clattered and was swept off the floor. A spark of fear in Badora’s eye. A sickening crunch when the spear shaft made contact with his head. The weight left her ribs and throat. She rolled aside, gasping for breath, and got to her knees. Air flooded her lungs.
Badora bounced off the bed post. She
got to her feet and staggered against the wall. Words coiled through the air. A low voice chanted sounds she didn’t recognise or like. The room iced.
Hippy stumbled out of the room and into the brightness of the hall, where she collapsed, just breathing and savouring oxygen.
A roar echoed behind the closed door and finally she understood. It was the roar of a caged animal. A caged animal she’d almost set free.
The door opened and Pierus came out. He locked it, turned around and leaned on it. He looked Hippy up and down, but did not move toward her. “Tell me,” he said. “Because I’m very uncertain. Are you my enemy or my ally?”
Hippy rubbed her fingers gingerly over her throat. “Ally,” she said. “I’m your ally.” She took a deep, shaky breath.
“Hippy.” He crossed the hall, helped her to her feet and smoothed the hairs out of her face. He had a wild look about him, three thousand years of arrogance and cynicism stripped away by the night’s battle. “Hippy, my love, what were you trying to do? He could have killed you!”
“I was looking for you,” she said. “I thought from all the noise you must be fighting him.”
A roar shook the door behind them.
“Come on.” Pierus took her hand and led her further down the hall. He opened another door onto a similar room, again containing only a bed and a window. He closed and locked the door behind them and set Hippy on the edge of the bed. He knelt in front of her so they were at eye level. The wild look remained, but with it something cold and suspicious and knowing. Nobody else had ever looked at her like he knew all of her secrets, and she didn’t like it one bit. “Why were you looking for me?”
“Because it’s time to go back to Shadow. With the Apple of Chaos.” Hippy fought to keep her voice steady. Butterflies jumped around her stomach. In just a few days she’d forgotten the effect the muse could have on her.
“So you are with me, at least that far.” Pierus ran the back of his hand down her face. His voice went hard again. “And the fairy?”
“What fairy?”
“Don’t be coy Hippy, it doesn’t suit you. The Freakin Fairy. The boy. I saw you two together.”
A tiny, in-drawn breath. She knew it gave her away. Her heart pounded as though she’d run a marathon. “You did?”
He leaned so close their breath mingled. “You were only gone from my side for three days. Is that all it takes for a Bloody Fairy to stray?”
“Stray?” He smelled of sweat and vampire blood and the amber that had spiced his tent in Shadow. She couldn’t even think what he meant.
“Did you turn those eyes on him? Kiss him? Give him your body? Did you stray with one of my enemies?” Pierus’s breath was hot on her ear.
Hippy shook her head. Her cheeks burned because she was about to lie. “No!”
“Are you with me and only me?” His voice softened the barest bit.
She nodded.
“Then prove it.”
“How?” Hippy had a feeling she knew. Fear seeped through her blood like mercury, but it mixed with other sensations that confused her. The adrenalin of the battle running through her veins made it worse, or perhaps made it easier, to respond when Pierus kissed her. His eyes burned into her so fiercely she couldn’t even think of Clockwork.
He lifted her up and deposited her squarely on the bed. His hands moved up her thighs. He knelt over her like a big black bird and shrugged off his coat. The gaslight in the room illuminated his profile. He had the face of a young man, but the eyes of someone three thousand years old. Someone bad. Someone who looked at her and saw something he both feared and wanted.
He bent down and ran his hands over her body. His breath heated the side of her face with one whispered word.
“Pandora.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The room was dark and silent except for the sound of Pierus dressing.
Hippy sat on the edge of the bed, already dressed, Fluffy Ducky cupped in her hands. She’d found him roaming the floor, trembling. His tiny leg hairs fluttered against her palms.
She closed her eyes to shut out the dark. She thought about what Ishtar would say if she knew. What any fairy would say. Her cheeks burned. Her blood raced. She pushed away thoughts of Clockwork. There was no turning back now.
She just wished she didn’t feel so un-shiny about it.
She wished he hadn’t called her Pandora before he took the last shred of her innocence.
She wished she could go and shower and scrub the smell of the muse king out of her skin.
Pierus settled his coat over his shoulders. “Come,” he said. “Time is short.”
Hippy put Fluffy Ducky in his pouch, but didn’t move from the bed.
Pierus crouched in front of her and took her hands. His face, little more than a shadow in the darkness, was too close. “Don’t be afraid, my love.”
“I’m not afraid.” She had to clear her throat a few times for the words to come out right.
“Good. Because the greatest test is yet to come, and to succeed, you and I must be as one in thought and purpose. We have to be as two halves of a single being, the light and dark working together.”
Her reply came out harsher than she’d intended. “Is that what you and Pandora were?”
His hands tightened around her fingers. “No,” he said. “And that is why we failed. That was why we unleashed the vampires in the first place. But you and I are different. You are not Pandora.”
“I’m glad you noticed.”
Pierus chuckled. “My dear girl, I wouldn’t have chosen just any fairy. It had to be you. Someone pure. Come now.”
Hippy thought that was an odd word to use after what they’d just done, but she allowed him to pull her from the bed and lead her out of the room. She blinked in the light of the hall and was vaguely surprised to hear Rustam Badora bellow. It seemed like an eternity had passed, but there they were, still in the middle of a vamp attack.
Pierus unlocked Badora’s door.
Hippy backed away. “What are you doing?”
“He must return with us.”
“Can’t we just kill him?”
Pierus looked over his shoulder at her. His lips curved in a thin smile. “And have another leader rise in his place? I prefer to know my enemy. Besides, I have plans for our friend. Wait here.”
Hippy waited. She tapped her foot. She looked nervously up and down the hall, half-hoping one of the others would appear and try to talk her out of going with Pierus. But it was too late for that now. She closed her eyes and listened for the sounds of battle, but just then Badora roared so loud the door shook.
Silence followed.
Pierus pushed a figure out into the hall. The vamp king was hunched over, his head and torso covered by a sheet from the bed. His hands were crossed behind him as though bound, but there were no visible bonds.
Pierus grabbed his shoulder. Hippy darted into the room and retrieved her spear, then followed them down the hall.
“I can smell the fairy,” Badora said from beneath the sheet.
Gross. Hippy sniffed her hair and wondered if she needed another shower.
“Quiet.” Pierus hit him in the back of the head.
They clattered down two flights of stairs and onto the ground floor.
“Do you know where the Apple of Chaos is?” Hippy said.
Pierus gave her an indulgent smile. “Details, my dear. Did you only just think of that?”
She scowled. “I was occupied with killing vamps.” She poked Badora in the back with her spear.
“I will exact revenge for every death,” he growled.
“Shut up.” Hippy felt more like herself again now she had something pointy to carry around. “Well? Do you know where it is?”
“It has called to me since we arrived in Dream,” Pierus said. “Here, it is like a roar.” He pointed at the floor.
Hippy looked at the tiles, then back at him. “It’s on the floor?”
Badora snickered. “Didn’t pick her for he
r brains, did you? When did she get dropped on her head?”
Pierus sighed and put a hand on Hippy’s wrist to prevent her from driving the spear through his back. “It’s underground,” he said. “Come, this way. I found an entrance earlier.”
He led them at a quick pace through the entrance room and down a hall Hippy hadn’t seen before. This hall was lit for a way by long, flickering electric lights. Pictures of little winged girls lined it. They were all blue and pink and green, and there were so many bubbles and sparkles Hippy forgot what she was doing until they reached a cast iron door with five solid bolts. Fortunately every single one appeared to be quite broken.
Pierus pushed the vamp king through the door and flicked a switch on the other side. Fluorescent lights illuminated a stone staircase descending into darkness.
“I smell mould,” Badora said. “Damp. I take it we’re nearing your precious Apple, muse king. I hope you’re planning on feeding me that fairy before you send me back to my army.”
Pierus shoved the vamp in the back. He hit the wall, tumbled down the steep stairwell and cracked his head on the stone.
Hippy gave a delighted squeak. “Can I throw him down the next staircase?”
Pierus patted her shoulder. “Of course, dear. Come along.”
They hurried down the stairs and found Badora in a crumpled heap in front of another door covered in broken locks.
“Did you break all these?” Hippy pushed the door open.
“Naturally. It was terribly good of Silver to keep the vamps so busy while I searched his house.” Pierus hauled the vamp through the door by a shoulder.
Badora gave a long, low chuckle, followed by a groan of pain. “You were always famous for letting others fight your battles, Muse King.”
Pierus grabbed the sheet, twisted it tighter around the vamp’s head and neck and walked on.
Hippy had never heard a vamp choking before. In fact, she’d never even seen one taken prisoner. The whole thing could have been quite interesting, except she’d walked through a heavy velvet curtain and found Mr Silver’s collection of shiny things.