by Nina Smith
She stood transfixed. She didn’t know where to look first. There were statues twice her height of beautiful ladies with long hair and jewels in their hands. There were tables on which polished vases bearing pictures of dancing women were carefully arranged with bowls inset with sparkling stones, and other tables heaped with gleaming jewels. The walls were lined with gold and silver veils strung with coins. On one pedestal, inside a glass case, was a huge, sparkling diamond. Across the room in a similar case was an emerald the size of her fist. Everywhere she looked, things sparkled and shone.
Suspended from the ceiling in the centre of the room, the shiniest thing of all rested inside a glass case that sparkled with the unmistakable sheen of fairy dust. The shiny thing was nothing more than a glass sphere, a sphere shimmering with lights from within, a whole world in itself. Lights splayed across the glass case, danced around the roof, rippled on the floor. She couldn’t look away.
Badora struggled to his feet and turned around like a blind man seeking the source of a sound. “That,” he said. “I remember that. I don’t know how, but I do. Muse King, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Hippy.” Pierus laid a hand on her shoulder. “Hippy.” He clicked his fingers in front of her eyes.
“Oh. What?” Hippy looked around at him. “I like shiny things.”
“I know you do, my dear.” Pierus ran a finger down her cheek. “And I need you to get me the shiniest thing of all.” He pointed at the roof.
Hippy’s eyes widened. “Is that the Apple of Chaos?”
“Don’t do it fairy,” Badora said. “You and I might not get along now, but I’m telling you, if you get him that thing, my armies will be the least of your worries.”
Hippy glanced at the vamp, disconcerted.
Pierus gently prised the spear from her grasp and patted her on the shoulder. “Come along my dear, time is short and the Bloody Fairies are dying. Get the Apple.” He lifted the spear, swung it once and clubbed Badora in the side of the head with it. The vamp slumped into an unconscious heap.
Hippy hesitated. “What’s he talking about?”
“Nothing. He’s just trying to stop us from defeating his armies. Get the Apple for me, Hippy.”
The edge to his voice made her want to back up a step, but she held her ground. “I don’t think you’re telling me everything. What’s going to happen to the Apple after we get rid of the vamps?”
Pierus reached her in three steps. He put a hand under her chin and forced her to look into his eyes. “I didn’t bring you with me to think,” he said in a low, acid tone that made her flinch. She tried to move away, but his fingers curled around her arm and held her in place. His voice softened. “Now Hippy, my love, don’t resist me like this. You are mine now. You belong to me, and you must do as I say. I promised you I would save your people, and I will. But I cannot do it until you get me the Apple of Chaos. Don’t worry about the vampire. Forget his ravings. Forget them. It’s me you trust. I’m looking after you. Don’t you trust me?”
Hippy stared into eyes like coals. He filled the room, sucked up all the oxygen, left nothing else. Her head felt like cotton wool and deep down she knew something was wrong, badly wrong, but she couldn’t get hold of it for fear of that vice-like grip hurting more than it already did, for fear of his fierce words descending into fury with her. He was like a wall she couldn’t see past, dragging words from her soul she didn’t think were true, to be spoken into ice cold air. “I trust you,” she said.
The cold eased. He rewarded her with a smile and a kiss on the forehead. “That’s my good girl. Now go get me the Apple.” He let her go.
Hippy backed away, hesitant, unsure what had just happened or why she felt icky.
“Go on.” He never took his eyes off her.
She climbed the nearest wall, crawled out onto the roof and looked down. Pierus stood over the prone vamp, watching her. Then the lights caught her attention. She let go of the roof with everything but her feet and walked, upside down, to the glass case.
Up close it was even brighter. She put her hands on the case. It was hot to the touch, like a light bulb. The very glass seemed to hum. Her breath caught. She recognised that feel. Glass didn’t hum unless a fairy had put a curse on whatever was inside it. She’d only ever seen the Bloody Fairies do one curse and that had resulted in an interloper from the city running screaming from the village with his pants on fire. She giggled and wondered what kind of curses Freakin Fairies put on things.
“Hurry,” Pierus urged. “You need to break the glass.”
“I’m not breaking that,” Hippy said. “It’s got a curse on it.”
He made an impatient noise. “Fairy curses are nothing. Break it.”
“I don’t want to. It’s all sparkly.” Hippy smoothed her hands over the glass.
Pierus’s voice took on an edge. “Break it now, Hippy.”
“Oh, alright then.” Hippy took a dagger from her hair and cut the fine wires attaching the case to the roof. “Look out.”
“No wait. Don’t let it just drop!”
The case dropped through the air. Hippy released her hold on the roof, tumbled, flipped and landed at the same time as the case. It smashed at her feet. She grabbed the Apple before it ever hit the ground and lifted it slowly up, but shut her eyes before she could look at it properly. She held it out to Pierus. “Here. Whatever the curse is, you can have it. I’m not looking at it first.”
There was the sound of fabric tearing before he took the weight from her hands. “My dear girl, I told you curses are nothing. You have done well.”
She opened her eyes and watched him. Pierus held the Apple with a piece of torn fabric from the sheet covering Badora. He cupped it in his hands like it was the most precious thing in the world, a child he had regained after millennia. He turned toward the light and held it up. “Now I remember,” he said. “I remember the way it felt. But what’s this? It never happened this way before.”
He went silent, staring into the Apple of Chaos as though into another world. The lines and shadows deepened on his face. When he finally did speak, his voice cracked. “No,” he whispered. “No!”
Hippy took a tentative step toward him. “Pierus?”
His hands trembled. The Apple of Chaos flared a bright, angry red. His lips curled back over his teeth and angry lines marred his face.
“Pierus? What’s wrong?”
He turned murderous eyes on her. Hippy saw herself reflected in those eyes, a tiny figure looking up, and up, and up. His face was hard and set with pure hatred. The hand he flung out clipped her in the face.
She tripped and fell hard in the shattered glass of the case. A shard sliced open her hand. When she lifted the hand out of the debris, blood ran over her skin and dripped onto the floor. A familiar panic squeezed her chest.
Pierus flung the Apple of Chaos against the wall so hard it shattered on impact.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The silence that followed was broken only by the endless clink of a piece of Apple of Chaos rolling across the floor. Pierus collapsed to the ground, face in his hands. A harsh noise that could have been a sob erupted from him. His words came out like gravel. “What have I done?”
Hippy took deep breaths to keep panic at bay. Blood dripping from her hand made a sticky red pool on the floor. Badora twitched under his sheet. Her lip trembled, so she clamped down on it with her teeth, which only succeeded in drawing more blood. She inched further away from the muse. “You hit me.”
Pierus took his hands from his face and looked at her. He looked really hard, searching her face for something. Then he shook his head. “It wasn’t you,” he said. “But she looked like you. No, it can’t have been. Damn those Freakin Fairy curses!”
“It was me.” Hippy wiped an errant tear that leaked from her eye and left a streak of blood on her face. “What kind of a muse are you, anyway? One minute you love me and the next you hit me, without even a reason for a fight.” She sniffed. The clinking sto
pped next to her hand. She closed her fingers over a jagged shard of Apple.
“Hippy?” The hard look fled. Pierus crawled toward her. “Hippy, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Hippy moved away from him and dodged around the vamp. Blood dripped from her hand onto the sheet. “I want to go home.” She blinked back more tears. “You hate me.”
“No, Hippy. I don’t hate you. I love you. It’s just the Apple of Chaos showed me–I saw–”
Whatever he might have seen was lost when Rustam Badora leaped to his feet, hands still bound. The sheet slid from his shoulders. His head snapped toward Hippy and an animal snarl rolled from his throat. “Damn this infernal muse magic. You can’t tease me with your blood and expect to live, Fairy.” He leaped and knocked her to the ground.
Hippy yelped and rolled aside, but Badora had already sunk his teeth into her bleeding hand. That hurt. She curled her other fist, the shiny one, and planted it squarely in his eye patch.
Pierus hauled Badora off her, grabbed the sheet and once again wrapped it around the vampire king’s head and neck.
“Ew!” Hippy shook her hand madly and sent more blood flying everywhere. “That was even grosser than when he licked me! Did you see what he did?” She jumped up and down to try and rid herself of the memory of teeth in her hand.
“My dear girl, I suggest you stop that before you make him any worse.” Pierus spoke through set teeth while struggling to control the bucking and twisting vamp.
“Oh.” Hippy stopped shaking her hand, which was now bleeding from two puncture wounds as well as the original cut. “Can I kill him? Please can I kill him?”
Badora groaned from beneath the sheet. “I’m so hungry Muse, you can’t do this to me. Just give me the fairy and I’ll do whatever you want.”
Hippy wondered if she imagined the half-second hesitation before Pierus clouted him in the head. “Shut up,” he said. “Touch my fairy and I’ll hand you in chains to whatever is left of her clan.”
She scowled. “Your fairy? Stop calling me that. I’m not anybody’s fairy.”
Pierus finally secured a hold on the vamp king that stopped him from struggling. His voice no longer shook. There was no sign of his earlier distress. “I’m sorry I hit you Hippy, that was not my intent. Now would you get the pieces of the Apple of Chaos for me, before anything else goes wrong? I don’t even know if it’ll work now, but we have to try.”
Hippy went to the wall where the smashed Apple of Chaos lay and gathered up the remaining five chunks of glass. They felt cold and lifeless in her hands. “Of course it’ll work. Mr Silver said the Apple could be broken but not destroyed.”
“Did he now? And what other gems of wisdom did he impart to you, my dear?”
Something in his tone made Hippy wince. She kept her face averted from the muse. “Nothing much. What was the curse? What did you see?”
“Nothing to concern yourself with. Show me the pieces.”
Hippy went to him and held out the pieces on her palms. A slick of blood was painted across the largest of them.
“Put them together,” Pierus said. “I don’t dare let go of this filth while you bleed like that.”
Hippy crouched and gently set the pieces on the floor. She played with them, fit them together until she found matching shapes. When she put the right ones together they melded almost seamlessly, leaving only hairline fissures. The last piece to go in was a shard the size of her little finger.
“Good,” Pierus said. “Good girl. Now bring it here.”
Badora jerked under his hands. “Don’t do it, Fairy. Once you give him that thing, he’ll never stop.”
Hippy held up the Apple of Chaos. Pierus laid one hand on top of hers, careful not to touch the glass. “Keep hold of it,” he said. “And close your eyes, Hippy. Think about Shadow. Think about home. Think about the battlefield. Hold it in your mind.”
Hippy squeezed her eyes shut and thought about how very much she wanted to go home and see Ishtar and Mum and Dad and her brothers.
A crash at the door jarred her thoughts.
“Hippy! Don’t do it!”
Her eyes flew open. Clockwork burst through the door, looking stricken. She swallowed a lump in her throat and wondered how it was possible to tell him she was sorry with just a look.
Clockwork ran toward them. “Don’t go with him!” he yelled. “We’ll find another way, I swear we will!”
She almost pulled away from Pierus and ran to him, but the muse king spoke one of those words that sounded very bad. The very air around them ripped open. For a split second Hippy could see Clockwork reaching out for her, and at the same time, hear cries of battle in a night lit by flames.
Then the rip was gone and they were in the middle of a darkened battlefield. All around them fairies and muses engaged in pitched battles with vamps. Vamp hordes bellowed in the distance. Flames roared from the shattered fortifications and the night bled with fear and death.
Pierus reached out and grabbed a passing muse by the back of the shirt.
The muse skidded to a halt, his eyes wide and frightened. “My king! We thought you killed!”
“Fool. Would you be here to fight if I were dead?”
“N-No, my king.”
Pierus thrust the prisoner at him. “This is the vampire king. See he is secured, then send me Flower, if she lives.” He paused. His voice imperceptibly hardened. “And Nikifor.”
“Yes, my king.” The muse hauled Rustam Badora away.
“Now my dear, we put an end to this.” Pierus pulled Hippy close. Once more they placed their hands around the Apple of Chaos.
“What do we do?” The Apple grew warm under her skin. The cuts on her hand tingled. The lights swirled.
“Think of a light,” Pierus said. “The brightest light you’ve ever seen. Think of the sun rising at midnight and driving every vampire back into the Darkness where they belong. Keep this image in your mind and do not waver. Do not resist what you feel, for this is where we must truly work as one.”
Hippy felt a momentary dizzying fear when a memory of a kiss where the life had seemed sucked from her soul flashed through her mind.
“No,” Pierus said. His free hand curled around the side of her face. “You must not block me, Hippy, not now. You must give yourself into my hands as you did once already tonight.”
That just wasn’t fair, bringing that up. Hippy squeezed her eyes shut. The battle raged around them. The fingers on her face weighed like lead. Alien images flickered past her mind’s eye. She saw the Acropolis again, but it was whole and sparkling and new. She saw people she didn’t know, a world in the grip of night and terror, muses, so many muses. She saw a green-haired woman who looked like her, only older, embracing Nikifor. Pierus lay lifeless at their feet.
Fear darted through her body like lightning.
“Now.” Pierus’s fingers tightened their grip and he raised the Apple above their heads. “Now Hippy, the light!”
Hippy reined in her wandering concentration and imagined the sun bursting out of the ground beneath their feet. Then her mind was no longer her own and all she could see was light.
She opened her eyes. Blazing gold light streamed from the Apple of Chaos between their hands in living, pulsing waves. The light exploded through the battlefield, making the night brighter than the sun. Fairies and muses shielded their eyes, stunned. The vamps who did not flee the light burned to ashes where they stood.
Pierus and Hippy walked together across the battlefield, holding the Apple of Chaos high. The light grew stronger and stronger. The remains of the vast vamp army turned tail and ran. The light burned brighter and brighter until she could no longer see the vamp army or even her own hands. The Apple burned her skin. The energy that had rushed her body when she started flowed back into this thing of power she held. Her tingling blood turned sluggish and cold. Her fingertips and toes iced over. She shivered uncontrollably, but still the hand glued to the Apple burned and sti
ll Pierus did not let up. Her lips were cold. She felt so tired. The light enfolded her like a blanket. Somewhere in the back of her mind a warning stirred. She struggled to catch hold of it. Clockwork. She hung onto a picture of Clockwork, the last thread she had.
With an effort of will, Hippy tore her hands away from the Apple of Chaos. The moment she did so Pierus dropped it. The light flooded back into the orb, leaving the battleground in darkness. She swayed back and forth like a flower stalk in the breeze. Fluffy Ducky scuttled out of his pouch, up over her hand and arm and leaped down to the Apple. There he sat, every hair standing on end, all eight eyes glaring at Pierus. He gathered himself to leap again.
Pierus cringed. “You still have that dreadful spider? Get it off!”
She was beyond caring. She collapsed at his feet.
The grass was damp and fresh and smelled faintly of blood. Hippy blinked. She had fully expected to pass out or fall asleep. Maybe she had. Fluffy Ducky was nose to nose with her, firelight reflected in his eight eyes. The light disappeared and came back again when he blinked. She blinked back. Sleep pressed her into the ground like a huge, heavy blanket. She wiggled her fingers. Even that was an effort, but it was enough for Fluffy Ducky to scuttle onto her hand.
“Hippy? Hippy, I’m sorry, I got carried away. I forgot about the backlash.” Pierus’s voice sounded as though it were coming from underwater.
Hippy’s skin crawled when he touched her. She made a half-hearted effort to fend him off, but her limbs were like stones. She lay in his arms like a raggedy doll when he lifted her off the ground.
His voice was closer now, but still distorted. “Hippy? No, stay with me, I can fix you, but you must stay open to me.” His hand feverishly searched her face.
Hippy turned her head to try and escape the hand. Lights approached. Fire on sticks. Shiny, shiny fire. Flames danced and glinted off spear tips.
Pierus’s hand stilled. Her head lolled.
A voice lashed out of the darkness. “What have you done to my daughter, Muse?”
The sound of that voice made her extraordinarily, ridiculously happy, but her words only came out in a croak. “Dad?”